Francine Prose
Teoksen Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them tekijä
Tietoja tekijästä
Francine Prose was born on April 1, 1947. She graduated from Radcliffe College in 1968. She received the PEN Translation Prize in 1988 and received a Guggenheim fellowship in 1991. Francine Prose novel The Glorious Ones, has been adapted into a musical with the same title by Lynn Ahrens and Stephen näytä lisää Flaherty. It ran at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater at Lincoln Center in New York City in the fall of 2007. Prose has served as president of PEN American Center, a New York City based literary society of writers, editors, and translators that works to advance literature in 2007 and 2008. Prose novel, Blue Angel, a satire about sexual harassment on college campuses, was a finalist for the National Book Award. One of her novels, Household Saints, was adapted for a movie by Nancy Savoca. In 2014 her title Lovers at the Chameleon Club - Paris 1932, made The New York Times Best Seller List. (Bowker Author Biography) näytä vähemmän
Image credit: Credit: David Shankbone, 2007
Sarjat
Tekijän teokset
Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them (2006) 3,698 kappaletta
Master Breasts: Objectified, Aesthetisized, Fantasized, Eroticized, Feminized by Photography's Most Titillating Masters (1998) 40 kappaletta
The Seven Deadly Sins Set: Consisting of Greed, Gluttony, Envy, Lust, Sloth, Anger, and Pride (2006) 12 kappaletta
School For Murder 1 kappale
Para leer como un escritor 1 kappale
Associated Works
My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me: Forty New Fairy Tales (2010) — Avustaja — 982 kappaletta
My Bookstore: Writers Celebrate Their Favorite Places to Browse, Read, and Shop (2012) — Avustaja — 557 kappaletta
You've Got to Read This: Contemporary American Writers Introduce Stories that Held Them in Awe (1994) — Johdanto — 380 kappaletta
The Art of the Story: An International Anthology of Contemporary Short Stories (1999) — Avustaja — 346 kappaletta
This Is Not Chick Lit: Original Stories by America's Best Women Writers (2006) — Avustaja — 342 kappaletta
Mirror, Mirror on the Wall: Women Writers Explore Their Favorite Fairy Tales (1998) — Avustaja — 298 kappaletta
The Condé Nast Traveler Book of Unforgettable Journeys: Great Writers on Great Places (2007) — Avustaja — 255 kappaletta
The Friend Who Got Away: Twenty Women's True Life Tales of Friendships that Blew Up, Burned Out or Faded Away (2005) — Johdanto — 203 kappaletta
What Orwell Didn't Know: Propaganda and the New Face of American Politics (2007) — Avustaja — 126 kappaletta
Know the Past, Find the Future: The New York Public Library at 100 (2011) — Avustaja — 116 kappaletta
The Sophisticated Cat: A Gathering of Stories, Poems, and Miscellaneous Writings About Cats (1992) — Avustaja — 100 kappaletta
A Fork in the Road: Tales of Food, Pleasure, and Discovery on the Road (2013) — Avustaja — 99 kappaletta
The Dark End of the Street: New Stories of Sex and Crime by Today's Top Authors (2010) — Avustaja — 93 kappaletta
Choice: True Stories of Birth, Contraception, Infertility, Adoption, Single Parenthood, and Abortion (2007) — Avustaja — 93 kappaletta
Who's Writing This? Notations on the Authorial I, with Self-Portraits {not Antæus} (1995) — Avustaja — 72 kappaletta
Genesis as It Is Written: Contemporary Writers on Our First Stories (1996) — Avustaja — 62 kappaletta
Beautiful as the Moon, Radiant as the Stars: Jewish Women in Yiddish Stories: An Anthology (2003) — Johdanto — 57 kappaletta
The New Diaspora: The Changing Landscape of American Jewish Fiction (2015) — Avustaja — 13 kappaletta
And We Came Outside and Saw the Stars Again: Writers from Around the World on the COVID-19 Pandemic (2020) — Avustaja — 12 kappaletta
Antaeus No. 73/74, Spring 1994 - Who’s Writing This: Notations on the Authorial I {magazine} (1994) — Avustaja — 5 kappaletta
Merkitty avainsanalla
Yleistieto
- Syntymäaika
- 1947-04-01
- Sukupuoli
- female
- Kansalaisuus
- USA
- Syntymäpaikka
- Brooklyn, New York, USA
- Asuinpaikat
- New York, New York, USA
- Koulutus
- Radcliffe College
- Ammatit
- Visiting Professor of Literature, Bard College
writer - Organisaatiot
- PEN American Center (president)
- Palkinnot ja kunnianosoitukset
- National Book Award (finalist)
Guggenheim Fellowship (1991)
Washington University International Humanities Medal (2010)
The Rome Prize Fellowship (2006)
Dayton Literary Peace Prize
Jäseniä
Kirja-arvosteluja
Primitive People Tekijä: Francine Prose
This book was fairly tedious and found humor in people who had major problems, something that does not amuse me. Of course the woman who had lived a very difficult life and had very little material sustenance was the person who best understood life and its circumstances. It was truly a book of despair that did not appeal to me.
½
That’s it, I’m never reading a novel that has anything to do with a chimp/monkey again.
pages to mark when I buy this title: xv, xvi, 13, 117, 225, 257, 264, 268 -9, 271, 272 (entered 11.19.23)
tag 'Powells' means I saw author at reading there
tag 'Powells' means I saw author at reading there
Dismissing Historical Misogyny & Hollywood Luridness
Review of the Yale University Press paperback (October 17, 2023) of the original Yale University Press hardcover (November 1, 2022).
She continues to fascinate us to this day. The final ruler of Egypt before its annexation to the Roman Empire is known to us as Cleopatra (c70 BCE - 30 BCE), but was actually Cleopatra VII of the Ptolemic Dynasty. She was a descendant of Ptolemy I (367 BCE to 282 BCE), one of Alexander the Great's Greek Macedonian generals who ruled Egypt as one of the several successor kings who carved up their conquered empire after the death of their leader.
Because of some gaps in the knowledge of her parental lineage, there is speculation that she may have been of mixed race. This has resulted in recent controversies such as the reaction to the Netflix documentary (2023) and the possible casting of the mixed race actor Zendaya in a rumoured future feature film.
Francine Prose gives a "feminist reinterpretation" of both the ancient historical accounts and the later Hollywood film depictions. All of these emphasize her as a diabolical temptress and seducer who led "noble" Romans such as Julius Caesar and Marc Antony astray. Those early accounts were written by Roman historians of course, often well after the actual events. These accounts often ignore the fact that she was the ruler of Egypt and sought to protect her children and the independence of Egypt for the future. She unfortunately allied herself with the losing forces who were either assassinated such as Caesar or committed suicide such as Antony. Cleopatra herself chose to commit suicide rather than be paraded through the streets of Rome by Octavian (later known as Emperor Augustus).
Sidenote: A lot of this reminded me of the blackening of the reputation of the last Plantagenet-Yorkist King Richard III in the later Tudor accounts such as Shakespeare's play. Recent history has sought to restore that reputation. Mystery fans should read Josephine Tey's The Daughter of Time (1951) for a fictional reexamination of the murder of the princes in the Tower of London.
Back to Cleopatra. In any case, Prose makes an interesting argument for reading those early accounts with a grain of salt and remembering who they were written by and for whom. Hollywood of course takes the most extreme stories and builds on them even further. So we have bizarre stories handed down such as Cleopatra being presented to Caesar after being rolled up in a rug and later committing suicide with the aid of an asp being smuggled in a basket of figs.
See photograph at https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3e/Kleopatra-VII.-Altes-M...
Bust of Cleopatra VII in the Altes Museum Berlin. Image sourced from Wikipedia where it is described as a Roman sculpture of Cleopatra wearing a royal diadem, mid-1st century BC (around the time of her visits to Rome in 46–44 BC). For an interesting video on What Did Cleopatra Look Like? based on extrapolating from this bust, see Trivia below.
See graphic at https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/ba/Kleopatra-Cesarion-god...
Cleopatra introduces her son Caesarion to the Egyptian falcon-headed god of war Montu. Image sourced from Wikimedia Commons.
I enjoyed this reinterpretation of the life of Cleopatra and look forward to reading more of the Ancient Lives series from Yale University Press. I had previously read Sarah Ruden's Vergil, The Poet's Life (2023).
Other Reviews
Francine Prose dispels the sexualized mythology surrounding a powerful ruler by Allison Arieff, Datebook SF Chronicle, October 31, 2022.
Trivia and Links
See a video of What Did Cleopatra Look Like? at the Royalty Now YouTube channel here.
Read an excerpt from the book at The Legend of Cleopatra at Yale University Press.
Cleopatra: Her History, Her Myth is part of Yale University Press's Ancient Lives series which currently includes: Marcus Aurelius: The Stoic Emperor (expected publication February 2024), Vergil: The Poet's Life (2023), Ramesses the Great: Egypt's King of Kings (2023), Julian: Rome’s Last Pagan Emperor (2023), Crassus: The First Tycoon (2022), and Demetrius: Sacker of Cities (2022).… (lisätietoja)
Review of the Yale University Press paperback (October 17, 2023) of the original Yale University Press hardcover (November 1, 2022).
She continues to fascinate us to this day. The final ruler of Egypt before its annexation to the Roman Empire is known to us as Cleopatra (c70 BCE - 30 BCE), but was actually Cleopatra VII of the Ptolemic Dynasty. She was a descendant of Ptolemy I (367 BCE to 282 BCE), one of Alexander the Great's Greek Macedonian generals who ruled Egypt as one of the several successor kings who carved up their conquered empire after the death of their leader.
Because of some gaps in the knowledge of her parental lineage, there is speculation that she may have been of mixed race. This has resulted in recent controversies such as the reaction to the Netflix documentary (2023) and the possible casting of the mixed race actor Zendaya in a rumoured future feature film.
Francine Prose gives a "feminist reinterpretation" of both the ancient historical accounts and the later Hollywood film depictions. All of these emphasize her as a diabolical temptress and seducer who led "noble" Romans such as Julius Caesar and Marc Antony astray. Those early accounts were written by Roman historians of course, often well after the actual events. These accounts often ignore the fact that she was the ruler of Egypt and sought to protect her children and the independence of Egypt for the future. She unfortunately allied herself with the losing forces who were either assassinated such as Caesar or committed suicide such as Antony. Cleopatra herself chose to commit suicide rather than be paraded through the streets of Rome by Octavian (later known as Emperor Augustus).
Sidenote: A lot of this reminded me of the blackening of the reputation of the last Plantagenet-Yorkist King Richard III in the later Tudor accounts such as Shakespeare's play. Recent history has sought to restore that reputation. Mystery fans should read Josephine Tey's The Daughter of Time (1951) for a fictional reexamination of the murder of the princes in the Tower of London.
Back to Cleopatra. In any case, Prose makes an interesting argument for reading those early accounts with a grain of salt and remembering who they were written by and for whom. Hollywood of course takes the most extreme stories and builds on them even further. So we have bizarre stories handed down such as Cleopatra being presented to Caesar after being rolled up in a rug and later committing suicide with the aid of an asp being smuggled in a basket of figs.
See photograph at https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3e/Kleopatra-VII.-Altes-M...
Bust of Cleopatra VII in the Altes Museum Berlin. Image sourced from Wikipedia where it is described as a Roman sculpture of Cleopatra wearing a royal diadem, mid-1st century BC (around the time of her visits to Rome in 46–44 BC). For an interesting video on What Did Cleopatra Look Like? based on extrapolating from this bust, see Trivia below.
See graphic at https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/ba/Kleopatra-Cesarion-god...
Cleopatra introduces her son Caesarion to the Egyptian falcon-headed god of war Montu. Image sourced from Wikimedia Commons.
I enjoyed this reinterpretation of the life of Cleopatra and look forward to reading more of the Ancient Lives series from Yale University Press. I had previously read Sarah Ruden's Vergil, The Poet's Life (2023).
Other Reviews
Francine Prose dispels the sexualized mythology surrounding a powerful ruler by Allison Arieff, Datebook SF Chronicle, October 31, 2022.
Trivia and Links
See a video of What Did Cleopatra Look Like? at the Royalty Now YouTube channel here.
Read an excerpt from the book at The Legend of Cleopatra at Yale University Press.
Cleopatra: Her History, Her Myth is part of Yale University Press's Ancient Lives series which currently includes: Marcus Aurelius: The Stoic Emperor (expected publication February 2024), Vergil: The Poet's Life (2023), Ramesses the Great: Egypt's King of Kings (2023), Julian: Rome’s Last Pagan Emperor (2023), Crassus: The First Tycoon (2022), and Demetrius: Sacker of Cities (2022).… (lisätietoja)
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