Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
John Berendt, 1994
Knopf Doubleday
386 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780679751526
Summary
Shots rang out in Savannah's grandest mansion in the misty,early morning hours of May 2, 1981. Was it murder or self-defense? For nearly a decade, the shooting and its aftermath reverberated throughout this hauntingly beautiful city of moss-hung oaks and shaded squares. John Berendt's sharply observed, suspenseful, and witty narrative reads like a thoroughly engrossing novel, and yet it is a work of nonfiction. Berendt skillfully interweaves a hugely entertaining first-person account of life in this isolated remnant of the Old South with the unpredictable twists and turns of a landmark murder case.
It is a spellbinding story peopled by a gallery of remarkable characters: the well-bred society ladies of the Married Woman's Card Club; the turbulent young redneck gigolo; the hapless recluse who owns a bottle of poison so powerful it could kill every man, woman, and child in Savannah; the aging and profane Southern belle who is the "soul of pampered self-absorption"; the uproariously funny black drag queen; the acerbic and arrogant antiques dealer; the sweet-talking, piano-playing con artist; young blacks dancing the minuet at the black debutante ball; and Minerva, the voodoo priestess who works her magic in the graveyard at midnight These and other Savannahians act as a Greek chorus, with Berendt revealing the alliances, hostilities, and intrigues that thrive in a town where everyone knows everyone else.
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil is a sublime and seductive reading experience. Brilliantly conceived and masterfully written, this enormously engaging portrait of a most beguiling Southern city is certain to become a modern classic. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—December 5, 1939
• Where—Syracuse, New York, USA
• Education—A.B., Harvard
• Awards—Southern Book Award for General Nonfiction, 1994;
Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in General Nonfiction, 1995
• Currently—lives in New York, New York
"I like crazy people," John Berendt once told an interviewer for The Independent. "I encourage them, they make good copy."
They do indeed, if Berendt is writing about them. His first book, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, which Berendt has called "a nonfiction novel," could be classified as a true crime story, or a travelogue, but it's also an absorbing collection of crazy people, cranks, eccentrics and oddballs, whose lives Berendt chronicles with as much detail as he devotes to murder suspect Jim Williams, ostensibly his main character.
As readers and critics have noted, the true "main character" of Midnight in the Garden is the city of Savannah, Ga., which enjoyed a tremendous boost in tourism as a result of what Savannahians now refer to simply as "the book."
Berendt started visiting Savannah in the early 1980s, flying in from New York, where he worked as a writer at Esquire. "All I did the first year," he later said in the London Daily Telegraph, "was take notes and interview, because I knew, the longer I was there, the less strange the whole thing would seem."
For Berendt, who once edited New York magazine, Savannah may have seemed strange at first, but in a fascinating way. As he explained in an Entertainment Weekly interview, "People in Savannah don't say, 'Before leaving the room, Mrs. Jones put on her coat.' Instead, they say, 'Before leaving the room, Mrs. Jones put on the coat that her third husband gave her before he shot himself in the head.'"
After gathering facts, gossiping with the locals and getting to know the city, Berendt shaped his experiences into a work Kirkus Reviews called "stylish, brilliant, hilarious, and coolhearted." Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil spent a record-setting four years on the New York Times bestseller list and sold 2.7 million copies in hardcover.
Not everyone adored it, however. In a controversy that perhaps anticipated author James Frey's troubles in the publishing world, some journalists wondered whether Berendt's embellishments were too numerous and substantial for the book to hold up as nonfiction. The book included an author's note explaining that Berendt changed the sequence of some events in the narrative.
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil became a fixture on bestseller lists and was made into a movie directed by Clint Eastwood. Some of the real people profiled in the book became minor celebrities in their own right—most notably Berendt's drag-queen friend Lady Chablis, who played herself in the movie and later published an autobiography.
Readers wondered what Berendt would do for an encore, but the author was relatively slow to oblige them. It wasn't until more than ten years after the publication of his first book that Berendt released The City of Falling Angels, a portrait of Venice as experienced not by tourists, but by its year-round residents, who turn out to be as eccentric and weirdly compelling as the Savannahians of Midnight in the Garden. ("The man whose palazzo features three space suits and a stuffed monkey is par for the course," noted Janet Maslin in the New York Times Book Review.)
Though some critics thought Berendt's second book lacked the narrative pull of his first, many agreed that, as Washington Post critic Jonathan Yardley put it, "The story of the Fenice fire and its aftermath is exceptionally interesting, the cast of characters is suitably various and flamboyant, and Berendt's prose, now as then, is precise, evocative and witty."
As Ann Godoff, Berendt's editor (first at Random House and now at Penguin Press), explained it, "By no means is this the same book. But nobody else could have written them both."
Extras
From a 2005 Barnes & Noble interview:
• I never use an alarm clock. I have an internal mechanism that wakes me up when I want to wake up. I'm not sure how I developed this ability, or what its significance is. Anyhow, I always fall asleep secure in the knowledge that I will wake up within ten minutes of the desired time. And I always do.
• When I'm writing, I like to gain distance from my work so I can tell how it will strike a reader who is seeing it for the first time. I do this through a trick I devised while I was living in Savannah writing Midnight—I would call my apartment in New York, the answering machine would pick up, I'd read the page of text I'd just written, then I'd hang up. A minute later, I'd call my apartment again and listen to the "message." Hearing my own voice reading the page over the phone—my voice having traveled 1800 miles (900 each way )—gave me just the detached perspective I needed.
• On occasion, while I was working on Falling Angels, I used the same technique, ridiculous though it may sound; in this case the calls were from Venice to New York rather than from Savannah. Gay Talese says he achieves a similar detachment by tacking pages to the opposite wall and then reading them through binoculars. Whatever works."
• I had an early start in the world of books. I was hired at the age of fourteen as a stock boy at the Economy Book Store in downtown Syracuse. It was my first job. I worked after school every day for four hours and made ten dollars a week."
• I stay fit by exercising daily on a treadmill or a stationary bicycle for close to an hour. I'd be bored out of my mind doing this if it weren't for the fact that I watch movies at the same time. That way, time flies. I call it my Treadmill and Bicycle Film Festival. I've found that if I'm watching a thriller, my pace ratchets up a notch."
• My number-one hobby, my preferred means of unwinding, and my most often-used route of escape are all the same: reading. Nothing takes me out of myself faster or more completely than a good read. It relieves stress, lifts me out of a funk, and makes me feel I'm doing something worthwhile.
• When asked what book most influenced his life as a writer, he answered:
I could cite any number of great classics that, when I first read them, introduced me to the excitement of books, but the book that meant the most to me is not at all well known and is now out of print.
It's Small World a novel published in 1951 by Simon & Schuster. The story concerns a family of four living in upstate New York. It's charming and beautifully written. Carol Deschere, the athor, happens to be my mother, and the family depicted in her novel closely resembles our own. The book sold about 2,000 copies and, although my mother never wrote another book, Small World was a life-changing experience for me, because in addition to making me enormously proud of her, it showed me for the first time how real life could be transformed into words and stories and published in a book for all to read. It also planted the first seed in my mind that I might become a writer one day. (From Barnes & Noble.)
Book Reviews
Mr. Berendt's writing is elegant and wickedly funny, and his eye for telling details is superb.... Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil might be the first true-crime book that makes the reader want to call a travel agent and book a bed and breakfast for an extended weekend at the scene of the crime.
Glenna Whitley - New York Times
After discovering in the early 1980s that a super-saver fare to Savannah, Ga., cost the same as an entree in a nouvelle Manhattan restaurant, Esquire columnist Berendt spent the next eight years flitting between Savannah and New York City. The result is this collection of smart, sympathetic observations about his colorful Southern neighbors, including a jazz-playing real estate shark; a sexually adventurous art student; the Lady Chablis (' "What was your name before that?" I asked. "Frank," she said.' "); the gossipy Married Woman's Card Club; and an assortment of aging Southern belles. The book is also about the wealthy international antiques dealer Jim Williams, who played an active role in the historic city's restoration—and would also be tried four times for the 1981 shooting death of 21-year-old Danny Handsford, his high-energy, self-destructive house helper. The Williams trials—he died in 1990 of a heart attack at age 59—are lively matches between dueling attorneys fought with shifting evidence, and they serve as both theme and anchor to Berendt's illuminating and captivating travelogue.
Publishers Weekly
It's difficult to categorize this book. On one level, it is a travelogue, recounting former New York magazine editor Berendt's eight years in Savannah, Georgia, that beautifully preserved hothouse of the South where eccentric characters like black drag queen Lady Chablis and charming con man Joe Odom blossom in rich profusion. It is also a true-crime tale, the saga of antiques dealer Jim Williams whose 1981 shooting of his sometime lover Danny Hansford in the historic Mercer House obsesses Savannah denizens; they watch as Williams endures four trials and is eventually acquitted, only to die of a heart attack a few months later, haunted (some say) by Hansford's vengeful ghost. Although non-fiction, Berendt's book reads like a novel (he admits he has taken 'certain storytelling liberties'), and this reviewer sometimes wondered where the truth ends and the fiction begins. Still, this entertaining book will appeal to many readers. —Wilda Williams
Library Journal
Perhaps one of the things that make this nonfiction work unique is that its plot centers on a murder, but Berendt takes his sweet time getting around to that fact, allowing the reader to be as surprised as he must have been watching the events unfold. Midnight is a solidly rewarding read. —Martha Schoolman
Booklist
Steamy Savannah—and the almost unbelievable assortment of colorful eccentrics that the city seems to nurture—are minutely and wittily observed here. In the early 1980's, Berendt (former editor of New York magazine) realized that for the price of a nouvelle cuisine meal, he could fly to just about any city in the U.S. that intrigued him. In the course of these travels, he fell under the spell of Savannah, and moved there for eight years. Central to his story here is his acquaintance with Jim Williams, a Gatsby-like, newly moneyed antiques dealer, and Williams's sometime lover Danny Hansford, a 'walking streak of sex'—a volatile, dangerous young hustler whose fatal shooting by Williams obsesses the city.
Other notable characters include Chablis, a show-stealing black drag queen; Joe Odom, cheerfully amoral impresario and restaurateur; Luther Driggers, inventor of the flea collar, who likes it to be known that he has a supply of poison so lethal that he could wipe out every person in the city if he chose to slip it into the water supply; and Minerva, a black occultist who works with roots and whom Williams hires to help deal with what the antiques dealer believes to be Hansford's vengeful ghost.
Showing a talent for penetrating any social barrier, Berendt gets himself invited to the tony Married Women's Card Club; the rigidly proper Black Debutantes' Ball (which Chablis crashes); the inner sanctum of power-lawyer Sonny Seiler; and one of Williams' fabled Christmas parties (the one for a mixed group; the author opts out of the following evening's 'bachelors-only' feast). The imprisonment and trial of Williams, and his surprising fate, form the narrative thread that stitches together this crazy-quilt of oddballs, poseurs, snobs, sorceresses, and outlaws. Stylish, brilliant, hilarious, and coolhearted.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. John Berendt describes Savannah as inward-turning, a "semitropical terrarium" (p. 28). What effect does this characteristic have on the life of the city and of its inhabitants? In what ways does Savannah differ from other cities or communities you know?
2. Eccentrics thrive in Berendt's Savannah. Does this mean that the people of Savannah are unusually tolerant? In what ways are they tolerant, and in what instances do they prove to be intolerant? How tolerant are they when it comes to the crossing of sexual, racial, or class lines?
3. Do you think that people would put up with Joe Odom and his countless misdemeanors in a city with a different character from Savannah? Might he end up in jail if he lived somewhere else?
4. How would you describe Jim Williams's character? Do you find him amusing? Sinister? How much sympathy do you have for him? Reading the book, did you hope for him to be acquitted? Why, or why not?
5. Some of Jim Williams' acquaintances think that the Nazi flag episode was insignificant; others do not. "Nazi symbols are not totally bereft of meaning, " says one man. "They still carry a very clear message, even if they're displayed under the guise of `historic relics'" (p. 178). Do you believe that Williams was being deliberately offensive when he displayed this flag? If so, why?
6. There was a tacit acceptance in Savannah of Jim Williams's homosexuality before the murder. How would you describe the shift in climate after the murder? Were people really surprised to hear about Williams's sexual practices? How did they adjust their attitudes?
7. After everything you have heard about Lee Adler, do you goalong with the general opinion people have of him in Savannah? Do you think that the reservations so many people hold about him spring from the fact that he is Jewish? Would his actions and behavior be more good-humoredly accepted if he did not happen to be Jewish?
8. Do you think that Danny's actions and violent scenes indicate that he was following a suicidal course? What were his real feelings towards Jim Williams? What was he trying to get out of him?
9. Is Chablis as frivolous a person as she likes to present herself as being? What does her argument with Burt at the nightclub tell you about her character?
10. Talking about the Oglethorpe Club types, Jim Williams says "When people like that see somebody like me, who's never joined their silly pecking order and who's taken great risks and succeeded, they loathe that person. I have felt it many times" (p. 237). Do you think that Williams is correct?
11. Black and white people's lives "are more intermingled here than in New York, " Berendt has said (USA Today). "I love the banter back and forth among whites and blacks. They don't mix socially that much, but there's a civility that's remarkable" (Washington Post). Do you find that relations between the races in the Savannah that Berendt describes are healthier, or less healthy, than in other parts of America? What might the high black crime rate indicate about the city?
12. What does the black debutante ball tell you about the black community—or at least that part of the black community—in Savannah? Why is Chablis so scornful of the ball and the people there? Do you sympathize with her feelings?
13. At the St. Patrick's Day parade, the narrator observes that the wagon following the Confederate marchers contained "a blue-clad Union soldier sprawled motionless on the floor of the wagon. It was a chilling tableau, the more so because it was meant to be surreptitious" (p. 257). What does this say about attitudes in Savannah? Does the scene indicate that the passions roused by the Civil War are still alive there? Why did the marchers keep the tableau surreptitious?
14. What do you think the narrator's attitude is toward the voodoo that is practiced on Williams's behalf? Does he imply that it is of any value? How would you describe Minerva? Is she the sort of person you would expect to be practicing voodoo?
15. After the trial, Minerva says "I saw it all: The boy fussed at him that night. Mr. Jim got angry and shot him. He lied to me, and he lied to the court" (p. 380). Do you concur with Minerva's scenario?
16. How would you describe Savannah's feelings to tradition and to the past? Are these feelings characteristic of the South in general? How do they differ from those in other parts of the country?
17. One reader from Georgia has said of Berendt, "I think he captured what it is to be Southern. He captured the not-talked-about way of life" (USA Today). If this is true, what would you say it is to be Southern? What does the South Berendt describes represent? Does it differ from stereotypes about the South?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
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The Zookeeper's Wife: A War Story
Diane Ackerman, 2008
W.W. Norton & Co.
384 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780393333060
Summary
A true story—as powerful as Schindler’s List—in which the keepers of the Warsaw Zoo saved hundreds of people from Nazi hands.
When Germany invaded Poland, Stuka bombers devastated Warsaw—and the city’s zoo along with it.
With most of their animals dead, zookeepers Jan and Antonina Zabinski began smuggling Jews into empty cages. Another dozen "guests" hid inside the Zabinskis’ villa, emerging after dark for dinner, socializing, and, during rare moments of calm, piano concerts. Jan, active in the Polish resistance, kept ammunition buried in the elephant enclosure and stashed explosives in the animal hospital.
Meanwhile, Antonina kept her unusual household afloat, caring for both its human and its animal inhabitants—otters, a badger, hyena pups, lynxes.
With her exuberant prose and exquisite sensitivity to the natural world, Diane Ackerman engages us viscerally in the lives of the zoo animals, their keepers, and their hidden visitors. She shows us how Antonina refused to give in to the penetrating fear of discovery, keeping alive an atmosphere of play and innocence even as Europe crumbled around her. (From the publisher.)
See the 2017 film version with Jessicaa Chastain.
Listen to our Movies Meet Book Club Podcast as Hollister and O'Toole discuss the movie and book.
Author Bio
• Birth—October 7, 1948
• Where—Waukegan, Illinois, USA
• Education—B.A., Penn State; M.A., M.F.A, Ph.D., Cornell University
• Awards—D. Lit. from Kenyon College; Guggenheim
Fellowship; Orion Book Award; John Burroughs Nature
Award; Lavan Poetry Prize; honored as a Literary Lion by
New York Public Library.
• Currently—lives in Ithaca, New York
Diane Ackerman was born in Waukegan, Illinois. She received an M.A., M.F.A. and Ph.D. from Cornell University. Her works of nonfiction include, most recently, The Zookeeper's Wife, narrative nonfiction about one of the most successful hideouts of World War II, a tale of people, animals, and subversive acts of compassion; An Alchemy of Mind, a poetics of the brain based on the latest neuroscience; Cultivating Delight: A Natural History of My Garden; Deep Play, which considers play, creativity, and our need for transcendence; A Slender Thread, about her work as a crisisline counselor; The Rarest of the Rare and The Moon by Whale Light, in which she explores the plight and fascination of endangered animals; A Natural History of Love; On Extended Wings, her memoir of flying; and the bestseller A Natural History of the Senses.
Her poetry has been published in leading literary journals, and in the books Origami Bridges: Poems of Psychoanalysis and Fire; I Praise My Destroyer; Jaguar of Sweet Laughter: New and Selected Poems; Lady Faustus; Reverse Thunder: A Dramatic Poem; Wife of Light; The Planets: A Cosmic Pastoral. She also writes nature books for children: Animal Sense; Monk Seal Hideaway; and Bats: Shadows in the Night.
Ms. Ackerman has received many prizes and awards, including a D. Lit. from Kenyon College, a Guggenheim Fellowship, Orion Book Award, John Burroughs Nature Award, and the Lavan Poetry Prize, as well as being honored as a Literary Lion by the New York Public Library.
She also has the rare distinction of having a molecule named after her—dianeackerone. She has taught at a variety of universities, including Columbia, the University of Richmond, and Cornell. Her essays about nature and human nature have appeared in the New York Times, Smithsonian, Parade, The New Yorker, National Geographic, and many other journals, where they have been the subject of much praise. She hosted a five-hour PBS television series inspired by A Natural History of the Senses. (From the author's website.)
Book Reviews
Nature is patient, people and animals fundamentally decent, and the writer, as she always does, outlives the killer—that is the message of The Zookeeper's Wife. This is an absorbing book, diminished sometimes by the choppy way Ackerman balances Antonina's account with the larger story of the Warsaw Holocaust. For me, the more interesting story is Antonina's. She was not, as her husband once called her, "a housewife," but the alpha female in a unique menagerie. I would gladly read another book, perhaps a novel, based again on Antonina's writings. She was special, and as the remaining members of her generation die off, a voice like hers should not be allowed to fade into the silence.
D.T. Max - New York Times
A lovely story about the Holocaust might seem like a grotesque oxymoron. But in The Zookeeper's Wife, Diane Ackerman proves otherwise. Here is a true story—of human empathy and its opposite—that is simultaneously grave and exuberant, wise and playful. Ackerman has a wonderful tale to tell, and she tells it wonderfully.
Susie Linfield - Washington Post
Ackerman (A Natural History of the Senses) tells the remarkable WWII story of Jan Zabinski, the director of the Warsaw Zoo, and his wife, Antonina, who, with courage and coolheaded ingenuity, sheltered 300 Jews as well as Polish resisters in their villa and in animal cages and sheds. Using Antonina's diaries, other contemporary sources and her own research in Poland, Ackerman takes us into the Warsaw ghetto and the 1943 Jewish uprising and also describes the Poles' revolt against the Nazi occupiers in 1944. She introduces us to such varied figures as Lutz Heck, the duplicitous head of the Berlin zoo; Rabbi Kalonymus Kalman Shapira, spiritual head of the ghetto; and the leaders of Zegota, the Polish organization that rescued Jews. Ackerman reveals other rescuers, like Dr. Mada Walter, who helped many Jews "pass," giving "lessons on how to appear Aryan and not attract notice." Ackerman's writing is viscerally evocative, as in her description of the effects of the German bombing of the zoo area: "...the sky broke open and whistling fire hurtled down, cages exploded, moats rained upward, iron bars squealed as they wrenched apart." This suspenseful beautifully crafted story deserves a wide readership. (8 pages of illus.)
Publishers Weekly
The 1939 Nazi bombing of Warsaw left its beloved zoo in ruins with many of its animals killed or wounded. Worse was to come when Berlin zoo director Lutz Heck had surviving rare species shipped back to Germany as part of a Nazi breeding program and held a New Year's Eve hunting party for German officers to finish off the remaining animals. Witnessing this horror was the zookeeper's wife, who wondered, as she recalled later in her memoirs, how many humans would die in the same manner in the coming months. As Antonina Zabinski and her husband, Jan, soon learned, the Nazis had targeted Poland's large Jewish population for extermination, and the couple, who were already supplying food to friends in the Warsaw Ghetto, pledged to help more Jews. And help they did. Ackerman's (A Natural History of the Senses) moving and eloquent narrative reveals how the zookeepers, with the aid of the Polish underground, boldly smuggled some 300 Jews out of the Ghetto and hid them in their villa and the zoo's empty cages. Based on Antonina's own memoirs and newspaper interviews, as well as Ackerman's own research in Poland, the result is an exciting and unforgettable portrait of courage and grace under fire. While some critics might feel she glosses over Polish anti-Semitism, Ackerman has done an invaluable service in bringing a little-known story of heroism and compassion to light. Highly recommended.
Wilda Williams - Library Journal
Discussion Questions
1. How does Diane Ackerman's background as a naturalist and a poet inform her telling of this slice of history? Would a historian of World War II have told it differently, and, if so, what might have been left out?
2. Reviews have compared this book to Schindler's List and Hotel Rwanda. How would you compare them?
3. Did this book give you a different impression of Poland during World War II than you had before?
4. Can you imagine yourself in the same circumstances as Jan and Antonina? What would you have done?
5. How would you describe Antonina's relation to animals? To her husband? How does she navigate the various relationships in the book, given the extreme circumstances? Is her default position one of trust or distrust?
6. Do people have a "sixth sense" and how does it relate to "animal instinct"?
7. Some might judge Jan and Antonina guilty of anthropo-morphizing animals and nature. Would you? Why or why not?
8. Can nature be savage or kind—or can only humans embody those qualities? As science and the study of animal behavior and communication teach us more and more about the commonalities between animals and humans, is there still any dividing line between the human and the animal world? If so, how would you describe it?
9. The Nazis had a passion for animals and the natural world. How could Nazi ideology embrace both a love of nature and the mass murder of human beings?
10. The drive to "rewrite the genetic code of the entire planet" is not distinct to Nazism. What similar efforts are alive today? Are there lessons in Jan and Antonina's story for evaluating the benefits and dangers of trying to modify or improve upon nature? Do you see any connection between this story of more than sixty years ago and contemporary environmental issues?
11. Genetic engineering of foodstuffs is highly contentious. So are various reproductive technologies that are now common, such as selecting for—or against—various characteristics when choosing from sperm or egg banks. How would various characters in this book have approached these loaded issues? (Questions from author's website.)
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Bossypants
Tina Fey, 2011
Little, Brown & Co.
277 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780316056861
Summary
Before Liz Lemon, before "Weekend Update," before "Sarah Palin," Tina Fey was just a young girl with a dream: a recurring stress dream that she was being chased through a local airport by her middle-school gym teacher. She also had a dream that one day she would be a comedian on TV.
She has seen both these dreams come true.
At last, Tina Fey's story can be told. From her youthful days as a vicious nerd to her tour of duty on Saturday Night Live; from her passionately halfhearted pursuit of physical beauty to her life as a mother eating things off the floor; from her one-sided college romance to her nearly fatal honeymoon—from the beginning of this paragraph to this final sentence.
Tina Fey reveals all, and proves what we've all suspected: you're no one until someone calls you bossy.
(Includes Special, Never-Before-Solicited Opinions on Breastfeeding, Princesses, Photoshop, the Electoral Process, and Italian Rum Cake!). (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—May 18, 1970
• Where—Upper Darby, Pennsylvania, USA
• Education—University of Virginia
• Awards—for TV and entertainment (below)
• Currently—lives in New York City, New York
Elizabeth Stamatina "Tina" Fey is an American actress, comedian, writer and producer, known for her work on the NBC sketch comedy series Saturday Night Live (SNL), the NBC comedy series 30 Rock, and films such as Mean Girls (2004) and Baby Mama (2008).
Fey first broke into comedy as a featured player in the Chicago-based improvisational comedy group The Second City. She then joined SNL as a writer, later becoming head writer and a performer, known for her position as co-anchor in the "Weekend Update" segment. In 2004 she adapted the screenplay Mean Girls in which she also co-starred. After leaving SNL in 2006, she created the television series 30 Rock, a situation comedy loosely based on her experiences at SNL. In the series, Fey portrays the head writer of a fictional sketch comedy series. In 2008, she starred in the comedy film Baby Mama, alongside former SNL co-star Amy Poehler. Fey next appeared in the 2010 comedy films Date Night and Megamind.
She has received seven Emmy Awards, three Golden Globe Awards, four Screen Actors Guild Awards, and four Writers Guild of America Awards. She was singled out as the performer who had the greatest impact on culture and entertainment in 2008 by the Associated Press, which gave her its AP Entertainer of the Year award for her satirical portrayal of Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin in a guest appearance on SNL. In 2010, Fey was the recipient of the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, the youngest-ever winner of the award.
Early life
Fey was born in Upper Darby, PA a township just west of Philadelphia. She is the daughter of Zenobia "Jeanne" (nee Xenakes), a brokerage employee of Greek descent, and Donald Fey, a university grant proposal-writer of German and Scottish descent. She has a brother, who is eight years older, named Peter.
Fey was exposed to comedy early. She recalls:
I remember my parents sneaking me in to see Young Frankenstein. We would also watch Saturday Night Live, or Monty Python, or old Marx Brothers movies. My dad would let us stay up late to watch The Honeymooners. We were not allowed to watch The Flintstones though: my dad hated it because it ripped off The Honeymooners.
She also grew up watching Second City Television (SCTV) and cites Catherine O'Hara as a role model.
Fey enrolled at the University of Virginia, where she studied playwriting and acting, graduating in 1992 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in drama.
Early career
After graduating, Fey originally had plans to do graduate work in drama at DePaul University in Chicago, but she moved instead to Chicago, knowing about the improvisational comedy troupe, The Second City. She took night classes at Second City, immersing herself in the "cult of improvisation" and becoming, as she described it later...
like one of those athletes trying to get into the Olympics. It was all about blind focus. I was so sure that I was doing exactly what I'd been put on this earth to do, and I would have done anything to make it onto that stage. Not because of SNL, but because I wanted to devote my life to improv. I would have been perfectly happy to stay at Second City forever.
In 1994, she joined the cast of The Second City, where she performed eight shows a week, for two years. Improvisation became an important influence on her initial understanding of what it means to be an actress, as she noted in an interview for The Believer in November 2003:
When I started, improv had the biggest impact on my acting. I studied the usual acting methods at college—Stanislavsky and whatnot. But none of it really clicked for me. My problem with the traditional acting method was that I never understood what you were supposed to be thinking about when you're onstage.
But at Second City, I learned that your focus should be entirely on your partner. You take what they're giving you and use it to build a scene. That opened it up for me. Suddenly it all made sense. It's about your partner. Not what you're going to say, not finding the perfect mannerisms or tics for your character, not what you're going to eat later.
Improv helped to distract me from my usual stage bullshit and put my focus somewhere else so that I could stop acting. I guess that's what method acting is supposed to accomplish anyway. It distracts you so that your body and emotions can work freely. Improv is just a version of method acting that works for me.
Saturday Night Live (1997–2006)
While performing shows with the Second City in 1997, Fey submitted several scripts to NBC's variety show Saturday Night Live (SNL), at the request of its head writer Adam McKay, a former performer at Second City. She was hired as a writer for SNL following a meeting with SNL creator Lorne Michaels, and moved to New York. She went on to write a series of parodies, including one of ABC's morning talk show The View. She co-wrote the "Sully and Denise" sketches with Rachel Dratch, who plays one of the teens.
Fey played an extra in one of the episodes in 1998, and after watching herself, decided to diet and lost 30 pounds. She told The New York Times, "I was a completely normal weight. But I was here in New York City, I had money and I couldn't buy any clothes. After I lost weight, there was interest in putting me on camera." In 1999, McKay stepped down as head writer, which led Michaels to approach Fey for the position. She became SNL's first female head writer, a milestone she downplays.
In 2000, Fey began performing in sketches, and she and Jimmy Fallon became co-anchors of SNL's "Weekend Update" segment. Fey said she did not ask to audition, but that Michaels approached her, explaining that there was "chemistry" between Fey and Fallon. Michaels, however, revealed that choosing Fey was "kind of risky" at the time. Her role in "Weekend Update" was well-received by critics. Ken Tucker of Entertainment Weekly wrote: "...Fey delivers such blow darts—poison filled jokes written in long, precisely parsed sentences unprecedented in Update history—with such a bright, sunny countenance makes her all the more devilishly delightful." Dennis Miller, a former cast member of SNL and anchor of "Weekend Update," wrote that "Fey might be the best "Weekend Update" anchor who ever did it. She writes the funniest jokes."
In 2001, Fey and the writing staff won a Writers Guild of America Award for SNL's 25th anniversary special. The following year at the 2002 Emmy Awards ceremony, she and the writing team won the Emmy for Outstanding Writing for a Variety, Music or Comedy Program.
Amy Poehler replaced Fallon in 2004, which was the first time that two women co-anchored "Weekend Update". Fey revealed that she "hired" Poehler as her co-host for the segment. The reception to the teaming of Fey and Poehler was positive, with Rachel Sklar of the Chicago Tribune noting that the pairing "has been a hilarious, pitch-perfect success as they play off each other with quick one-liners and deadpan delivery."
The 2005–2006 season was her last; she thereafter departed to develop 30 Rock.
30 Rock (2006–present)
In 2002, Fey suggested a pilot episode for a situation comedy and eventually developed the pilot project under the working title Untitled Tina Fey Project. In October 2006, the pilot aired on NBC as 30 Rock.
In 2007, Fey received an Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Actress in a Comedy Series. The show itself won the 2007 Emmy for Outstanding Comedy Series. In 2008, she won the Golden Globe, Screen Actors Guild, and Emmy awards all in the category for Best Actress in a Comedy Series. The following year, Fey again won the Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild Award in the same categories. In early 2010, Fey won the Screen Actors Guild Award for Best Lead Actress.
Feature films
Fey made her debut as writer and co-star of the 2004 teen comedy Mean Girls. Characters and behaviors in the movie are based on Fey's high school life at Upper Darby High School and on the non-fiction book Queen Bees and Wannabes by Rosalind Wiseman.
Fey and former SNL castmate Amy Poehler starred in the 2008 comedy Baby Mama, which received mixed reviews, though many critics enjoyed Fey's performance.
In 2009, she appeared in The Invention of Lying alongside Ricky Gervais, Jennifer Garner, Rob Lowe, and Christopher Guest.
Fey will star in an upcoming comedy entitled Mommy & Me alongside Meryl Streep, who will play her mother. The film will be directed by Stanley Tucci.
Impersonation of Sarah Palin
From September to November 2008, Fey made frequent guest appearances on SNL to perform a series of parodies of Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin. On the 34th season premiere episode, aired September 13, 2008, Fey imitated Palin in a sketch, alongside Amy Poehler as Hillary Clinton. Their repartee included Clinton needling Palin about her "Tina Fey glasses." The sketch quickly became NBC.com's most-watched viral video ever, with 5.7 million views by the following Wednesday. Fey reprised this role on the October 4 show and on the October 18 show when she was joined by the real Sarah Palin, and on the November 1 show where she was joined by John McCain and his wife Cindy. The October 18 show had the best ratings of any SNL show since 1994. The following year Fey won an Emmy in the category of Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series for her impersonation of Palin. Fey returned to SNL in April 2010, and reprised her impression of Palin in one sketch titled "Sarah Palin Network." Fey once again did her impression of Palin when she hosted Saturday Night Live on May 8, 2011.
In December 2009, Entertainment Weekly put her impersonation on its end-of-the-decade, "best-of" list, writing, "Fey's freakishly spot-on SNL impersonation of the wannabe VP (and her ability to strike a balance between comedy and cruelty) made for truly transcendent television."
Other work
In 2000, Fey partnered with fellow SNL cast member Rachel Dratch in the Off Broadway two-woman show Dratch & Fey at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater in New York City. The production was well received by critics, with The Wall Street Journal's Tim Townsend writing that production "isn't about two women being funny. [...] Dratch and Fey are just funny. Period."
She has appeared on PBS's Sesame Street, as a guest judge on the Food Network program Iron Chef America, in Disney's "Year of a Million Dreams" campaign as Tinker Bell, along with Mikhail Baryshnikov as Peter Pan and Gisele Bündchen as Wendy Darling. She has also done commercials for American Express credit card.
On February 23, 2008, Fey hosted the first episode of SNL after the 2007–2008 Writers Guild of America strike. For this appearance, she was nominated for an Emmy in the category of Individual Performance in a Variety or Music Program. She later hosted SNL on April 10, 2010, and received an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series.
Her book, an autobiographical comedy entitled Bossypants, was released in 2011, receiving a positive review from the New York Times, though somewhat mixed reviews in other periodicals.
In the media
Fey was ranked in the Hot 100 List at number 80 on Maxim magazine in 2002. She was named one of People magazine's 50 Most Beautiful People in 2003, and one of People magazine's 100 Most Beautiful People in 2007, 2008, and 2009. In 2007, she was included in People's 100 Most Beautiful issue.
In 2001, Entertainment Weekly named Fey as one of their Entertainers of the Year for her work on "Weekend Update." She again was named one of the magazine's Entertainers of the Year in 2007, and number two in 2008. In 2009, Fey was named as Entertainment Weekly's fifth individual in their 15 Entertainers of the 2000s list. The newspaper editors and broadcast producers of the Associated Press voted Fey the AP Entertainer of the Year as the performer who had the greatest impact on culture and entertainment in 2008, citing her impression of Sarah Palin on SNL. She has appeared on Forbes' annual Celebrity 100 list of the 100 most powerful celebrities in 2008, 2009, and 2010, at No. 99, No. 86, and No. 90 respectively.
In 2007, the New York Post included Fey in New York's 50 Most Powerful Women, ranking her at number 33. Fey was among the Time 100, a list of the 100 most influential people in the world, in 2007 and 2009, as selected annually by Time magazine. Fey's featured article for the 2009 list was written by 30 Rock co-star, Alec Baldwin. She was selected by Barbara Walters as one of America's 10 Most Fascinating People of 2008.
In 2011, Tina Fey landed at the top of the Forbes magazine’s list of the highest-paid TV actresses.
Personal life
Fey is married to Jeff Richmond, composer on 30 Rock. They met at Chicago's Second City and dated for seven years before marrying in a Greek Orthodox ceremony in 2001. The couple have two daughters. In April 2009, Fey and Richmond purchased a $3.4 million apartment in the Upper West Side in New York City.
Charity work
Her charity work includes support of Autism Speaks, an organization that sponsors autism research. In April 2008, she participated in "Night of Too Many Stars," a comedy show benefit for autism education.
Fey is also a supporter of Mercy Corps, a global relief and development organization, in their campaign to end world hunger. Fey narrated a video for Mercy Corps's Action Center in New York City, describing hunger as a symptom of many wider world problems. She also supports the Love Our Children USA organization, which fights violence against children, who named her among their Mothers Who Make a Difference in 2009. She was the 2009 national spokesperson for the Light the Night Walk, which benefits the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. (From Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
[Fey's] dagger-sharp, extremely funny…Bossypants isn't a memoir. It's a spiky blend of humor, introspection, critical thinking and Nora Ephron-isms for a new generation.
Janet Maslin - New York Times,,
It’s probably unwise to expect soul-baring candor from a book with a made-up biographical note on the jacket flap. Those who hoped Tina Fey...would shed her comedic persona and play it straight are going to find her sort-of memoir, Bossypants, disappointing.... [Her memoir is] a collection of biographical essays and thematically related humor pieces rather than a straight chronological reminiscence.
Nicole Arthur - Washington Post
At first, Bossypants appears to be just more of the same...but inside lies a collection of autobiographical essays that should (but of course won't) prove once and for all that pretty is nowhere near as important as funny, and funny doesn't work without that rare balance of truth and heart.... In chapter after chapter, in a voice consistently recognizable as her own, Fey simply tells stories of her life.
Mary McNamara - Los Angeles Times
Oh Tina. I do slightly wish you hadn't.... Bossypants takes the interesting approach to memoir of remembering almost nothing, and providing "revelations" that might more accurately be called "concealments." Which isn't to say that it's unenjoyable. There are some hugely funny bits, and some inspiring bits, and some nerdishly interesting bits.... It's just the bookiness of it. Fey is out of her genre, and it shows.
Carole Cadwalladr - Guardian/Observer (UK)
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for Bossypants:
1. Readers and reviewers are all over the map on Bossypants: some see it as a revealing memoir, others as an act of concealment, revealing very little of her personal life. Where do you stand on Fey's book? Is the book a memoir...or a comedy book filled with one-liners. Is it humorous...or insightful...or neither? Do you want more? Or does it leave you satisfied?
2. Speaking of one-liners, which ones do you find funny or, perhaps, insightful? Talk about the lines that tickled your funny bone...or others that struck the philosopher in you.
3. Fey has never been afraid to poke fun at female vulnerability...or to twist it. How does she do that here? Do you appreciate her take on the feminine? What matters most to Fey about being a woman? What matters most to you—whether you're a woman...or a man?
4. Which essay pieces do you find most engaging or provocative—the women's magazine parody, the "prayer" for her daughter, the pretend facts-of-life brochure, or the satirical "me time" for parents?
5. How have Fey's growing-up years shaped her? Does she devote time (and ink) telling us? If not, why not?
6. Fey takes issue with various comments, by males, that women are not funny. Here is Fey's own comment on that stance:
It's an impressively arrogant move to conclude that just because you don't like something, it is empirically not good. I don't like Chinese food, but I don't write articles trying to prove that it doesn't exist.
Do you agree with her...or are men funnier than women? Is their humor different?
7. Artistically and philosophically speaking, authors tend to explore life's tragedies and the ways in which ordinary individuals cope with sorrow. Yet Fey finds that real life teaches her about comedy. What, then, is funny about life—is it funny? What kind of funny? Have you ever made observations—about people and situations—that could be turned into comedy skits or one-liners?
8. Talk about Fey's how-to advice on improv comedy. How did it prepare her for Saturday Night Live and 30 Rock?
9. What's with the book's cover? Why would Fey have given herself hairy, masculine arms?
10. What does Fey tell us about her personal life—her husband, for instance? What do we know about him?
11. What do you think of Tina Fey? Has reading Bossypants altered your view of her? Why or why not?
12. Is Fey really Liz Lemon...or is Liz really Tina Fey? Who wrote this book—Tina or Liz? In other words, are they one in the same?
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The Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character, and Achievement
David Brooks, 2011
Random House
448 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781400067602
Summary
With unequaled insight and brio, David Brooks, the New York Times columnist and bestselling author of Bobos in Paradise, has long explored and explained the way we live. Now, with the intellectual curiosity and emotional wisdom that make his columns among the most read in the nation, Brooks turns to the building blocks of human flourishing in a multilayered, profoundly illuminating work grounded in everyday life.
This is the story of how success happens. It is told through the lives of one composite American couple, Harold and Erica—how they grow, push forward, are pulled back, fail, and succeed. Distilling a vast array of information into these two vividly realized characters, Brooks illustrates a fundamental new understanding of human nature.
A scientific revolution has occurred—we have learned more about the human brain in the last thirty years than we had in the previous three thousand. The unconscious mind, it turns out, is most of the mind—not a dark, vestigial place but a creative and enchanted one, where most of the brain’s work gets done. This is the realm of emotions, intuitions, biases, longings, genetic predispositions, personality traits, and social norms: the realm where character is formed and where our most important life decisions are made. The natural habitat of The Social Animal.
Drawing on a wealth of current research from numerous disciplines, Brooks takes Harold and Erica from infancy to school; from the “odyssey years” that have come to define young adulthood to the high walls of poverty; from the nature of attachment, love, and commitment, to the nature of effective leadership. He reveals the deeply social aspect of our very minds and exposes the bias in modern culture that overemphasizes rationalism, individualism, and IQ. Along the way, he demolishes conventional definitions of success while looking toward a culture based on trust and humility.
The Social Animal is a moving and nuanced intellectual adventure, a story of achievement and a defense of progress. Impossible to put down, it is an essential book for our time, one that will have broad social impact and will change the way we see ourselves and the world. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—August 11, 1961
• Where—Toronto, Ontario, Canada
• Raised—New York City, New York, USA
• Education—B.A., University of Chicago
• Currently—lives in Bethesda, Maryland
David Brooks is a Canadian-born political and cultural commentator. He was born into a Jewish family in Toronto, Canada and grew up in New York City in Stuyvesant Town. In 1979 he graduated from Radnor High School (a suburb of Philadelphia, Pa.) and, in 1983, received his B.A. in history from the University of Chicago.
He worked as an editorial writer and film reviewer for the Washington Times; a reporter and later op-ed editor for the Wall Street Journal; a senior editor at the Weekly Standard from its inception; and a contributing editor at Newsweek and Atlantic Monthly
Although Brooks considers himself a moderate, he currently writes for the New York Times as a conservative columnist. He is also a commentator on National Public Radio and the PBS NewsHour. Brooks was a visiting professor of public policy at Duke University, teaching an undergraduate seminar there in the fall of 2006.
He and his wife live in Bethesda, Maryland.
Books
In 1966 he edited an anthology of writings by new conservative writers, Backward and Upward: The New Conservative Writing. In 2000 he published his cultural commentary, Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There, following it up four years later with On Paradise Drive: How We Live Now (And Always Have) in the Future Tense. The Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character and Achievement came out in 2011.
Political views
Brooks describes himself as being originally a liberal before "coming to my senses." In 1983, he wrote a parody of conservative pundit William F. Buckley, Jr., which said "In the afternoons he is in the habit of going into crowded rooms and making everybody else feel inferior. The evenings are reserved for extended bouts of name-dropping." Buckley admired the parody and offered Brooks a job with National Review. A turning point in Brooks's thinking came later that year in a televised debate with Milton Friedman, which, as Brooks describes it, "was essentially me making a point, and he making a two-sentence rebuttal which totally devastated my point."
Before the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Brooks argued forcefully for American military intervention, echoing the belief of commentators and political figures that American and British forces would be welcomed as liberators. In the spring of 2004, some of his opinion pieces suggested that he had tempered his earlier optimism about the war.
Brooks' public writing about the U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq closely identifies him with the neoconservative political movement in the United States. His angry dismissal of the conviction of Scooter Libby as being "a farce" and having "no significance" was derided by political blogger and editor Andrew Sullivan.
On August 10, 2006, Brooks wrote a column for the New York Times titled "Party No. 3". The column proposed the idea of the McCain-Lieberman Party, or the fictional representation of the moderate majority in America.
Ottawa Citizen commentator David Warren has identified Brooks as the sort of conservative pundit that liberals like, someone who is "sophisticated" and "engages with" the liberal agenda, in contrast to a "real conservative" like Charles Krauthammer. Brooks has long been a supporter of John McCain; however, he did not show a liking for McCain's former running mate Sarah Palin, saying she represented a "cancer" on the Republican Party. He has referred to her as a "joke," unlikely to ever win the Republican nomination.
In a March 2007 article published in the New York Times titled "No U-Turns," Brooks explains that the Republican Party must distance itself from the minimal-government conservative principles that had arisen during the Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan eras. He claims that these outdated concepts had served their purposes and should no longer be embraced by Republicans in order to win elections.
Brooks has been a frequent admirer of President Barack Obama. In an August, 2009 profile of Brooks, the New Republic describes his first encounter with Obama, in the spring of 2005: "Usually when I talk to senators, while they may know a policy area better than me, they generally don’t know political philosophy better than me. I got the sense he knew both better than me. [...] I remember distinctly an image of—we were sitting on his couches, and I was looking at his pant leg and his perfectly creased pant, and I’m thinking, a) he’s going to be president and b) he’ll be a very good president.” Two days after Obama’s second autobiography, The Audacity of Hope, hit bookstores, Brooks published a column in the New York Times, entitled "Run, Barack, Run", urging Obama to run for president.
In writing for the New York Times in January 2010, Brooks described Israel as "an astonishing success story." He wrote that "Jews are a famously accomplished group," who, because they were "forced to give up farming in the Middle Ages...have been living off their wits ever since." In Brooks' view, "Israel’s technological success is the fruition of the Zionist dream. The country was not founded so stray settlers could sit among thousands of angry Palestinians in Hebron. It was founded so Jews would have a safe place to come together and create things for the world."
Social views
Brooks opposes what he sees as self-destructive behavior like teenage sex and divorce. His view is that "sex is more explicit everywhere barring real life. As the entertainment media have become more sex-saturated, American teenagers have become more sexually abstemious" by "waiting longer to have sex...[and] having fewer partners." He sees the culture war as nearly over, because "today's young people...seem happy with the frankness of the left and the wholesomeness of the right." As a result, he is optimistic about the US' social stability, which he considers to be "in the middle of an amazing moment of improvement and repair."
Brooks also broke with many in the conservative movement when, in late 2003, he came out in favor of same-sex marriage in his New York Times column. He equated the idea with traditional conservative values: "We should insist on gay marriage. We should regard it as scandalous that two people could claim to love each other and not want to sanctify their love with marriage and fidelity.... It's going to be up to conservatives to make the important, moral case for marriage, including gay marriage."
Regarding abortion, Brooks has advocated for pro-choice government regulations: abortion would be legal, with parental consent for minors, during the first four or five months, and illegal except in extremely rare circumstances afterward. (New York Times, April 22, 2002.) (From Wikipedia.)
Book Reviews
The book is really a moral and social tract, but Brooks has hung it on the life stories of two imaginary people, Harold and Erica, who are used to illustrate his theory in detail and to provide the occasion for countless references to the psychological literature and frequent disquisitions on human nature and society.... One doesn’t care what happens to them because in spite of Brooks’s earnest attempt to describe their psychological depths, they do not come to life; they and their supporting cast are mannequins for the display of psychological and social generalizations.
Thomas Nagel - New York Times Book Review
[S]harp, clear and often very funny.... Many of us, Brooks believes, are in the grip of an outdated theory of human nature. We give priority to cold-blooded reason, to deliberative, conscious, logical and linear thought...but] Brain research, Brooks tells us, "reminds us of the relative importance of emotion over pure reason, social connections over individual choice, character over IQ." Brooks is right that many psychologists, philosophers and neuroscientists believe this to be true. The Social Animal is a savvy, accessible and enthusiastic defense of their position—they are lucky to have him on their side.
Paul Bloom - Washington Post
Mr. Brooks is at his best as a social observer, documenting the changing patterns of contemporary life.... he shows genius in sketching archetypes and coining phrases. Here we learn of the "composure class" (who earn their money "by climbing the meritocratic ladder of success").... There is plenty of Mr. Brooks's vintage comic sociology here, too...[b]ut Mr. Brooks is after much more than witty aperçus about life's winners. He wants to explain what makes the "composure class" tick.
Chistopher F. Chabris - Wall Street Journal
The Social Animal is an odd beast of a book with a slightly arbitrary quality. It is never quite clear on what grounds Brooks has decided to explore the implications of some new ideas and not others, other than that they confirm his own views and can be worked into his narrative. Indeed, his rather casual use of academic research sits strangely with his avowed respect for science. There are other tensions. Brooks is impressed by the evidence marshalled in Wilkinson and Pickett's The Spirit Level, and elsewhere, that "the mere fact of being low on the status totem pole brings its own deep stress and imposes its own psychic costs". Yet he remains an almost unqualified meritocrat, arguing that the great challenge for government is not to promote greater equality but to make it easier for people to rise from one class to another.
Ben Rogers - Guardian (UK)
New York Times columnist Brooks (Bobos in Paradise) raids Malcolm Gladwell's pop psychology turf in a wobbly treatise on brain science, human nature, and public policy. Essentially a satirical novel interleaved with disquisitions on mirror neurons and behavioral economics, the narrative chronicles the life cycle of a fictional couple—Harold, a historian working at a think tank, and Erica, a Chinese-Chicana cable-TV executive—as a case study of the nonrational roots of social behaviors, from mating and shopping to voting. Their story lets Brooks mock the affluent and trendy while advancing soft neoconservative themes: that genetically ingrained emotions and biases trump reason; that social problems require cultural remedies (charter schools, not welfare payments); that the class divide is about intelligence, deportment, and taste, not money or power. Brooks is an engaging guide to the "cognitive revolution" in psychology, but what he shows us amounts mainly to restating platitudes. (Women like men with money, we learn, while men like women with breasts.) His attempt to inflate recent research on neural mechanisms into a grand worldview yields little except buzz concepts—"society is a layering of networks"—no more persuasive than the rationalist dogmas he derides.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) An uncommonly brilliant blend of sociology, intellect and allegory.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for The Social Animal:
1. What is David Brooks's over-arching argument in this book? What does he point to as the determinants of individual success or failure? Do you agree...or disagree with him?
2. Brooks writes that he wants to "counteract the bias in our culture":
The conscious mind writes the autobiography of our species. Unaware of what is going on deep down inside, the conscious mind assigns itself the starring role. It gives itself credit for performing all sorts of tasks it doesn’t really control.
Talk about that statement. First, what does Brooks mean? Second, how does he define the difference between the unconscious and the conscious? In what ways is the former more important than the latter? Finally, how would you write your own narrative—and would it be truly descriptive of your life—inner and outer?
3. What does Brooks mean when he says "the adult personality—including political views—is forever defined in opposition to one’s natural enemies in high school"? Does his statement have relevance to your own experience?
4. What does Brooks mean by his term, the "underdebates" in American politics?
5. To what does Brooks attribute the class divide? Given the Congressional Budget Office's 2011 findings regarding the top one percent of the income tier vs. the lower 99%, do his theories hold up? Can an economic view and a cultural-behavioral view both be correct? Or does one have precedence over the other?
6. What does Brooks point to as examples of our social policy failures? Why have so many well-meaning initiatives failed? What are his solutions? Are they workable?
7. Describe some of the findings by cognitive scientists, such as priming ... or framing? Have you experienced, or used, either mental phenomena?
8. Is this book funny? What does Brooks poke fun at? Does the book's satire capture the way we live and what we value as a society? Or is Brooks off base? Talk about his coinage of new words and phrases: "composure class," "sanctimommies," "extracurricular sluts," and "misbagged."
9. Do Erica and Harold work as fictional characters? Do they come alive for you? Do you care about them? Do they work well as the fictional embodiment of Brooks's theories? Or do they come off as clumsy and unworkable? (Critics are all over the map on this...so there is no "correct" answer.)
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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The Middle Place
Kelly Corrigan, 2008
Voice
288 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781401340933
Summary
For Kelly Corrigan, family is everything. At thirty-six, she had a marriage that worked, two funny, active kids, and a weekly newspaper column. But even as a thriving adult, Kelly still saw herself as the daughter of garrulous Irish-American charmer George Corrigan. She was living deep within what she calls the Middle Place—"that sliver of time when parenthood and childhood overlap"—comfortably wedged between her adult duties and her parents' care.
But Kelly is abruptly shoved into coming-of-age when she finds a lump in her breast—and gets the diagnosis no one wants to hear. When George, too, learns that he has late-stage cancer, it is Kelly's turn to take care of the man who had always taken care of her—and to show us a woman who finally takes the leap and grows up. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—August 16, 1967
• Where—Chicago, Illinois, USA
• Education—B.A., University of Richmond; M.F.A., San
Francisco University
• Currently—lives in the San Francisco Bay Area
Kelly Corrigan is a writer living in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband, Edward Lichty, and their two daughters. She is a graduate of The University of Richmond and San Francisco State University (for a Masters in Literature).
Shortly after her own battle with breast cancer, she launched CircusOfCancer.org, a how-to web site for friends and family of women with the disease. The website includes a photo album of her own struggle against breast cancer and writings in such categories as “Finding a Lump” and “Losing My Hair.” Below is an excerpt from “Getting the Diagnosis”:
At 1pm, Emily Birenbaum called and said these exact words, "Kelly, I understand that you called in this morning. I have the biopsy report and Kelly, it's cancer." I called out: "Edward!" and he came to me and we crowded around the phone, politely asking the simplest of questions. "Is the test always correct?" "Does it say how much cancer there is?" "Could it be a false positive?" After a very short conversation where we learned the phrase 'invasive ductal carcinoma', we hung up. The girls were at our knees, needing to be fed and put down for a nap. There was so much to do, on so many fronts, that the only thing to do was to start doing.
Kelly is a newspaper columnist with columns appearing in print, online and notably in the January 2009 issue of O, The Oprah Magazine. Her first book, The Middle Place, is a memoir about her Irish-American father’s battle with cancer and her own triumph over the disease. Published in 2008, the memoir became a New York Times bestseller.
Kelly is also the author of an essay about "women's remarkable capacity to support each other, to laugh together, and to endure." Publisher Hyperion/Voice videotaped Kelly as she read her essay and posted it on Youtube. It has recieved millions of views. (From Wikipedia and GoodReads.)
Book Reviews
Come for the writing, stay for the drama. Or vice-versa. Either way, you won't regret it.
San Francisco Chronicle
If you're in a book club or just love to read, make sure this book ends up in your lap, where it will remain until you finish. Plan to laugh, cry, and be consumed by Kelly Corrigan.
Winston-Salem Chronicle
Newspaper columnist Corrigan was a happily married mother of two young daughters when she discovered a cancerous lump in her breast. She was still undergoing treatment when she learned that her beloved father, who'd already survived prostate cancer, now had bladder cancer. Corrigan's story could have been unbearably depressing had she not made it clear from the start that she came from sturdy stock. Growing up, she loved hearing her father boom out his morning "HELLO WORLD" dialogue with the universe, so his kids would feel like the world wasn't just a "safe place" but was "even rooting for you." As Corrigan reports on her cancer treatment—the chemo, the surgery, the radiation-she weaves in the story of how it felt growing up in a big, suburban Philadelphia family with her larger-than-life father and her steady-loving mother and brothers. She tells how she met her husband, how she gave birth to her daughters. All these stories lead up to where she is now, in that "middle place," being someone's child, but also having children of her own. Those learning to accept their own adulthood might find strength—and humor—in Corrigan's feisty memoir.
Publishers Weekly
This is Corrigan's heart-wrenching and humorous memoir of her struggle with breast cancer. The chapters alternate between detailed descriptions of her chemo and radiation treatments and her happy childhood growing up in a large, loving Irish family. The text is well written and poignantly read by Tavia Gilbert, whose narration brings out the personalities and feelings of the main characters: Corrigan's ebullient father, her worried mother, her loving husband, and her supportive brothers. Corrigan writes magazine articles (her most recent appears in the April 2008 issue of Glamour magazine) and a newspaper column. Highly recommended for self-help and health collections in public libraries.
Ilka Gordon - Library Journal
A cancer survivor's memoir with a welcome twist: a laughter-filled celebration of family. Newspaper columnist Corrigan was 36 when she discovered a lump in her left breast. Happily married and the mother of two young daughters, she was also still very much the adoring daughter of demonstrative, exuberant George Corrigan. Being upbeat and funny was de rigueur with her optimistic father, so the author's reaction to her breast-cancer diagnosis was to send an e-mail to about 100 people inviting them to a party one year hence to celebrate her recovery. But when George was diagnosed with bladder cancer and seemed too casual about his treatment, she became exasperated. Living in the Bay Area, she hounded his East Coast doctors by e-mail and took over the central role of information gatherer and advice dispenser. Only her own upcoming surgery kept her from heading to Philadelphia to take charge. At the same time that she was coping with her own cancer and trying to micromanage her father's, she was busy mothering two little girls too young to understand what was happening. Tender scenes with her daughters and some frustrating ones with her strong-willed mother give context to Corrigan's account of two battles against cancer. She also tosses into the mix funny, often self-deprecating tales of growing up in a boisterous Irish Catholic family, her adventures abroad in her 20s and her marriage to the comparatively subdued Edward. The author is, in her words, living in "the middle place-that sliver of time when childhood and parenthood overlap." Attachments to both the family she grew up in and the family she created remain strong, but as her husband reminds her, their daughters, not her parents, are the future. Warm, funny and a touch bittersweet.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. What is the effect of having the book structured as it is? Why do you think Kelly’s childhood is presented as flashbacks rather than chronologically? In what ways does her childhood affect her adult self?
2. What role does religion play in the Corrigan family? How do you think Kelly feels about her parents’ faith? About her own? What sorts of things does Kelly believe in?
3. How do you think Kelly feels about her mother? What does she seem to want from her and what does she actually get from her? What events cause her to see her mother differently over time?
4. How do Kelly’s parents help her to feel secure and protected as a child? How does that continue or fade in her adult life? Which of her parents does she emulate in her own role as a parent?
5. How does Kelly’s breast cancer diagnosis prepare her for her father’s cancer? Does her own experience help her to help her father, or does it hinder her ability to cope?
6. Given her attachment to her family, why do you think Kelly moves so far away from home at the age of twenty-five? Do you think families need to live physically close to one another to remain emotionally close? Why or why not?
7. Kelly plays the role of both patient and caretaker. How does being a patient change her? How does being a caretaker change her? Do you think having an illness matures Kelly? Does caring for her father?
8. Why do you think it is important for Kelly to travel in Australia and Nepal? What need does the act of traveling fill for her?
9. How does Kelly change when she becomes a parent? In what ways does she choose the family she’s created over the one that created her? Do you think is a common occurrence as we mature into adulthood? Discuss.
10. Do people need crisis—like the illness or death of a parent—to become full-fledged adults? Is it possible to outgrow childhood without losing a parent? In what ways do our parents keep us in the “child” role?
11. How does Kelly learn to be sick? How much help do you think she should have accepted from others, and how much should she explain and share with those trying to help? What are the benefits she finds from letting people be involved? How do Kelly’s attitudes about sickness differ from her father’s?
12. Kelly’s family is her safety net. She turns to them when she’s in trouble and they run to help. What are the safety nets in your life? What are the mainstays in your life that you can’t imagine living without?
14. What is “The Middle Place”? Why is this the title of this book? What does being in The Middle Place mean to Kelly? What does it mean to you?
(Questions from the author's website.)
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