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Elizabeth Spencer (1) (1921–2019)

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Elizabeth Spencer is the author of more than a dozen collections of stories & novels. Born in 1921 in Carrollton, Mississippi, she currently lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. (Bowker Author Biography) Elizabeth Spencer was born on July 19, 1921, in Carrollton, Miss., to James and Mary (McCain) näytä lisää Spencer. Her father was a businessman and farmer. Her mother¿s family owned a plantation where black servants abounded long after the abolition of slavery. Elizabeth grew up in a racially segregated town of 500 and in a home filled with books. She began writing stories as a child. Elizabeth graduated from Belhaven College in Jackson, Miss., in 1942 and earned a master¿s in 1943 from Vanderbilt University in Nashville. She taught junior college classes for two years and was a reporter for The Nashville Tennessean for a year. Her well-received first novel, Fire in the Morning (1948), created a Mississippi town, with a history of its citizens, conflicts and values. Her second novel, This Crooked Way (1952), was also set in the South. From 1948 to 1951, she taught at the University of Mississippi at Oxford. After a year in New York, she returned to Oxford briefly, then won a fellowship and left for Europe. She soon released several novels including Knights and Dragons (1965) and No Place for an Angel (1967) and a collection of short stories, Ship Island and Other Stories (1968). Elizabeth Spencer taught from 1976 to 1986 at Concordia University in Montreal and from 1986 to 1992 at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Elizabeth Spencer passed away ib December 22,2019 at the age of 98. (Bowker Author Biography) näytä vähemmän
Image credit: Photo by Derek Anderson

Tekijän teokset

Associated Works

The New Granta Book of the American Short Story (2007) — Avustaja — 212 kappaletta
The Signet Classic Book of Southern Short Stories (1991) — Avustaja — 121 kappaletta
Downhome: An Anthology of Southern Women Writers (1995) — Avustaja — 115 kappaletta
The Literature of the American South: A Norton Anthology (1997) — Avustaja — 98 kappaletta
American Short Stories (1976) — Avustaja, eräät painokset95 kappaletta
Stories from The New Yorker, 1950 to 1960 (1958) — Avustaja — 80 kappaletta
Nightshade: 20th Century Ghost Stories (1999) — Avustaja — 64 kappaletta
An Omnibus of 20th Century Ghost Stories (1989) — Avustaja — 45 kappaletta
The Light in the Piazza (2005) — Original book — 43 kappaletta
Southern Dogs and Their People (2000) — Avustaja — 39 kappaletta
New Stories from the South 2010: The Year's Best (2010) — Avustaja — 39 kappaletta
New Stories from the South 2009: The Year's Best (2009) — Avustaja — 39 kappaletta
New Stories from the South: The Year's Best, 1995 (1995) — Avustaja — 34 kappaletta
New Stories from the South 2005: The Year's Best (2005) — Avustaja — 28 kappaletta
The Best American Short Stories 1965 (1965) — Avustaja — 17 kappaletta
Mississippi Writers: An Anthology (1991) — Avustaja — 14 kappaletta
The Penguin Book of Modern Canadian Short Stories (1982) — Avustaja — 12 kappaletta
Place in American Fiction: Excursions and Explorations (2005) — Avustaja — 3 kappaletta

Merkitty avainsanalla

Yleistieto

Jäseniä

Kirja-arvosteluja

Upon reflection, I changed my rating to four stars, because this is one HELL of a perfect psychological study of parenting. And it's short, at just over 100 pages. AND it takes place in lovely, picturesque Florence.

Your child has suffered brain damage, of which she is unaware -- but you are fully aware of her truncated chance for a happy, fulfilled life. When she falls in love with a boy who clearly loves her in return, what do you do? To what lengths will you go to secure her happiness? And to what lengths will you go to relieve your own burdens?

An amazing little book that packs a punch.
… (lisätietoja)
 
Merkitty asiattomaksi
FinallyJones | 6 muuta kirja-arvostelua | Nov 17, 2021 |
I wanted to love this book, written in the early 1950s. Unanimously chosen by the Pulitzer Prize jurors as the best novel published in 1956, it wasn't awarded the prize by the Columbia University Trustees, who have the final say. They said nothing. While I know nothing of the trustees in 1956-7, it suits me to picture them as all white men, the generals of business, banking, and industry, Masters of the Universe (though Tom Wolfe was decades from coining that phrase). But still reluctant to endorse this indictment of Southern Culture, this roiling of...mmm…"the race issue". This...erm...exposé was not to be condoned.

Elizabeth Spencer's third novel depicts a dry Mississippi county whose voters must elect a sheriff because the office-holder has died. He departed this life in a grocery store in the town of Lacey, where he'd gone—knowing his life was expiring—to endorse its proprietor as his successor. That man, Duncan Harper, is a local, a low-key man who was, nonetheless, the greatest running back in Mississippi football history.

The sheriff expects Harper will maintain his policies, but Harper is intent on enforcing the county's ban on liquor sales and is supportive of rights for Blacks. As interim sheriff, Harper personally busts a bootlegger. The bootlegger is a life-long friend who has always loved the woman Harper is married to. With the help of a local Black, Harper is set up so his views on race will be publicized in the county and beyond. Then the bootlegger is shot, and rumor quickly spreads that the shooter was Black, that Harper knows who he is and where he is, but that he's covering for him. The victim won't say who shot him. In only a few weeks, Harper's electoral support evaporates. Still, he remains interim sheriff and he continues to investigate the shooting.

As the story unfolds, Lacey society reveals itself as implacably segregationist. The mob rules, but it's easily manipulated. Familiar ring, isn't it?

What is shocking to contemporary readers is the endless, casual use of the n-word. You have to understand that in 1953, not only in the South, but throughout the country, it was a commonly used word. To really appreciate how oppressive the racial climate was, you have to immerse yourself in the conversation of the time. I think it's an essential element of the history, the culture, the story.

Spencer grew up in Mississippi, a member of a socially elite family, living on a plantation with an army of Black servants. It was after receiving a Guggenheim grant that allowed her to retreat to Italy that she was able to confront her own upbringing and write her novel of repudiation. Thereafter, she lived and worked in Italy, London, and Montreal, returning to the South (to Durham, NC) only in 1986.

So did I love [The Voice at the Back Door]? Not really. But I do like it and I admire it. I think it deserved the Pulitzer. I view it as an accurate reflection of an unsavory culture in the 1950s.
… (lisätietoja)
1 ääni
Merkitty asiattomaksi
weird_O | 3 muuta kirja-arvostelua | Nov 3, 2021 |
Three novellas set in Italy which deal with how Italy, its weather and its architecture, its general beauty affects the relationships of the people who visit it.

The title story was absolutely captivating, presenting a moral dilemma of a holiday romance complicated by innocent secrets and ulterior motives. The other two I found unfocused and unwieldy.
½
 
Merkitty asiattomaksi
kitzyl | 6 muuta kirja-arvostelua | Jun 26, 2019 |
time/life books
I wanted to like this. it was interesting to see how southern men thought their wives should keep house, look good, cook well, look after kids but they were really stupid. I found the book really hard to follow and there were too many characters for me. I think she might have told the story in her own order but I think she should tell her readers. I resent being expected to read the book twice to figure it out.
 
Merkitty asiattomaksi
mahallett | 3 muuta kirja-arvostelua | May 31, 2019 |

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Teokset
24
Also by
23
Jäseniä
901
Suosituimmuussija
#28,454
Arvio (tähdet)
½ 3.7
Kirja-arvosteluja
19
ISBN:t
97
Kielet
1

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