Posted on April 26, 2011
http://web.ku.edu/~wrightconnection/cgi-bin/wordpress/2011/04/the-life-and-times-of-richard-wright-2/
Below you will find an audio podcast of "The Life and Times of Richard
Wright," a seminar conducted by Hazel Rowley on July 12, 2010 at the
University of Kansas. The seminar was the first seminar of the 2010
NEH-sponsored summer institute entitled Making the Wright Connection:
Reading Native Son, Black Boy and Uncle Tom's Children. Running time –
2 hours and 55 minutes.
See also
Hazel Rowley, Who Wrote of Charismatic Lives, Dies at 59
By MARGALIT FOX
Published: March 19, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/20/arts/hazel-rowley-59-biographer-of-20th-century-figures-dies.html
Hazel Rowley, a biographer whose subjects ranged from a neglected
Australian writer to a famous African-American one, and from a
distinguished pair of French philosophers and their romantic
entanglements to a distinguished American presidential couple and
their (possible) romantic entanglements, died on March 1 in Manhattan.
She was 59.
Ms. Rowley died after a series of strokes resulting from an
undiagnosed infection, her literary agent, Lane Zachary, said. Reared
in Australia, Ms. Rowley had lived in Manhattan in recent years.
She wrote four biographies, all of charismatic 20th-century figures.
The most recent, "Franklin and Eleanor: An Extraordinary Marriage,"
was published in October by Farrar, Straus & Giroux.
Ms. Rowley's first biography, "Christina Stead," appeared in Australia
in 1993 and in the United States the next year. It examined an often
overlooked Australian writer whose best-known novel, "The Man Who
Loved Children" (1940), is an acidulous study of a narcissistic father
and his family.
Writing in The New York Times Book Review, the novelist Michael
Upchurch called Ms. Rowley's book "a model of clarity."
Her next biography, "Richard Wright: The Life and Times" (2001), was
about the American writer whose fiction (including the novel "Native
Son") and nonfiction (including the memoir "Black Boy") look
unflinchingly at the experience of black manhood.
In her third, "Tête-à-Tête: Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul
Sartre" (2005), Ms. Rowley explored the long, strange and erotically
multifaceted partnership of two great philosophers. Her documentation
of Sartre's amorous life prompted objections from his daughter that
caused the book to be expurgated in some parts of the world.
Hazel Joan Rowley was born in London on Nov. 16, 1951, and at 8 moved
with her family to Australia. She earned an undergraduate degree in
French and German literature from the University of Adelaide, followed
by a doctorate from the university in French literature.
Ms. Rowley taught comparative literature at Deakin University in
Victoria before becoming disenchanted with academic life and turning
to biography. She moved to the United States in the late 1990s.
Her doctoral dissertation had centered in part on Beauvoir, whom she
interviewed in Paris in the 1970s. Ms. Rowley's continued fascination
with her subject — and in particular with Beauvoir's half-century-long
relationship with Sartre and its attendant parade of lovers (some his,
some hers, some theirs), jealousies and intrigues — led to "Tête-à-
Tête."
In researching the book, Ms. Rowley drew on Sartre's unpublished
letters, in which he recounted his exploits with a welter of women
while he remained in a de facto marriage with Beauvoir. (Beauvoir had
affairs of her own, with men and women.)
Sartre's adopted daughter, Arlette Elkaïm-Sartre, who controlled his
estate, objected to Ms. Rowley's plan to quote from the letters and
other unpublished material. As a result, in an unusual move, the
publisher, HarperCollins, issued the biography in two different
editions.
In the edition sold in North America, where copyright laws allow more
liberal quotation of written matter, some of the disputed material
appears intact and some is paraphrased.
In the one sold in the rest of the world, many of the passages Ms.
Elkaïm-Sartre deemed objectionable are absent altogether.
Ms. Rowley's most recent book, "Franklin and Eleanor," also explores a
long, vital and somewhat unorthodox partnership. Here, too, there were
longstanding indications of affairs by both partners, including his
with Mrs. Roosevelt's former social secretary, Lucy Mercer, and hers
with the political journalist Lorena Hickok.
In the book, Ms. Rowley documents these relationships and others, but
leaves their precise extent an open question.
Ms. Rowley is survived by her mother, Betty; a sister, Della; and a
brother, Martin.
In interviews, Ms. Rowley was often asked what united the seemingly
diverse subjects of her books. "For those who have read all four, the
thread is clear," she wrote in an introductory passage on her Web
site, (hazelrowley.com). "They were courageous people, who all, in
some way, felt 'outsiders' in society. Above all, they were passionate
people who cared about the world and felt angry about its injustices."
*
Hazel Rowley 1951-2011
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/bookshow/stories/2011/3153721.htm
Australian biographer Hazel Rowley has died in New York.
Hazel was 59. She was about to attend the Perth Writers Festival this
weekend with her latest biography Franklin and Eleanor, the story of
the marriage of President Franklin Roosevelt and his wife Eleanor.
--
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