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WORK TITLE: Love in the Time of Apartheid
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: http://www.travelsinafrica.com/
CITY:
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http://www.nebbadoonpress.com/hunter.htm * http://www.travelsinafrica.com/about/ * http://thepermanentpress.com/index.php/love-in-apartheid.html
RESEARCHER NOTES: PLEASE NOTE THAT I CHECKED ALL AMAZON ENTRIES ON WORLD CAT AND ADJUSTED ACCORDING TO WORLDCAT’S INFO…E.G. DATE PUBLISHED AND PLACES–
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LC control no.: n 89118131
LCCN Permalink: https://lccn.loc.gov/n89118131
minADING: Hunter, Frederic
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670 __ |a A Home forum reader, c1989: |b t.p. (Frederic Hunter)
670 __ |a Cune Press home page, March 31, 2015 |b (Frederic Hunter; Fred Hunter served as a US Information Service officer in the Congo, returned to the US as a journalist working for The Christian Science Monitor; now works as a screenwriter and lives in Santa Barbara; has published short stories, essays, and plays)
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PERSONAL
Married Donanne Ralston (c. 1960s); children: Paul.
EDUCATION:University of California, Los Angeles, master’s degree.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer, playwright, screenwriter, and novelist. United States Information Agency (U.S. Information Service), foreign service officer, stationed in the Congo, served in Coquilhatville, Bukavu, and Leopoldville, beginning 1963; then Christian Science Monitor, Africa correspondent; taught screenwriting at the Santa Barbara Writers Conference; at the University of California, Santa Barbara; and at Principia College, Elsah, IL.
WRITINGS
Also author of Congo Tales (eBook), 2013; Les cinq lois de la vie (title means “The Five Laws of Life”), MCGE, 2017; and Au del de la nuit (title means “Beyond the Night”), MCGE, 2017. Screenwriter with Thomas Babe of Lincoln and the War Within, Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), 1992. The Hemingway Play was produced by the Public Broadcasting Service for Hollywood Television Theatre.
SIDELIGHTS
Frederic Hunter worked as a U.S. Information Officer in remote parts of Congo in the 1960s without diplomatic protections or diplomatic links. He had just finished training in Belgium and ended being assigned to the post because no one else wanted to go to the strife-torn country. Hunter, who met his wife in Africa, eventually attended school at the University of California and earned a master’s degree in African studies to help him understand what he had experienced in the Congo. After earning his master’s degree, he worked as an Africa correspondent covering all of sub-Saharan Africa and then went on to become a screenwriter and fiction writer.
Hunter cowrote the screenplay for Lincoln and the War Within, which aired on the Public Broadcasting Service. It led him to write his book Abe and Molly: The Lincoln Courtship, a historical romance about the courtship between Abraham Lincoln and his eventual wife, Mary Todd, whom Lincoln called Molly. In an interview with Heather Vogel Frederick for Frederick’s Website, Hunter referred to the book as “quite a romantic tale: rich girl of aristocratic background and good education falls in love with a self-educated attorney from a dirt-poor background, with few social graces and even less money.” A contributor to the Small Press Bookwatch called the novel “an exciting tale of romance and high society.”
Hunter also authored The Hemingway Play, which featured four different Hemingways standing on stage together talking to each other; the play received a workshop production at the Eugene O Neill Playwrights Conference. Writing in the Hemingway Review, Kirk Curnutt wrote an article about using Hemingway as a fictional character and remarked on Hunter’s play, noting: “It seems safe to say the most interesting approaches are the most experimental: Frederic Hunters’ The Hemingway Play (1975, revived 1986) stands four Hemingways from four different life stages next to each other onstage, allowing them to ‘to be quite critical of each other’ to deconstruct his strengths and weaknesses.”
Much of Hunter’s writing, however, has focused on Africa. For example, in The Girl Ran Away: A Story from Africa, Hunter relates the tale of a teenage girl raised on a Congo mission station who is being pressured to marry a doctor two decades older than she is. Just before the wedding she flees to Nairobi, a dangerous place, especially for a woman. Joss: The Ambassador’s Wife is about an American journalist based in South Africa who is trying to reconnect with an American ambassador’s wife with whom he had a passionate affair years earlier. Hunter also wrote the memoir A Year at the Edge of the Jungle: A Congo Memoir: 1963-1964, about his work in the Congo establishing an American cultural center and the dangers he faced. The memoir is largely based on letters he wrote home to his family during the time he served there.
Africa, Africa!
In his book titled Africa, Africa! Fifteen Stories, Hunter presents stories that primarily depict Westerners and their experiences in Africa. Writing in the book’s introduction, Hunter recounts his vast experience with Africa, from his time as an information officer to the many years he spent there as a correspondent. Commenting on the short-story collection, Hunter writes: “Gradually the stories presented here began to write themselves. They came as stories, as fiction, because my imagination needed room to exercise itself. And because I wanted to work with materials in my memory, materials that did not fit in news reports.”
The stories take place in various parts of Africa, from the Congo and Madagascar to Nairobi and South Africa. The tales are primarily set in the 1960s and often depict the interactions between whites and blacks. For example, the stories “Night Vigil” and “Laban and Murguri” examine the domestic lives of a journalist and his wife in Kenya. Hunter also looks at the working world of journalists in Africa in the stories “North of Nairobi” and “A Newsman Scratches an Itch,” which takes place in South Africa.
Hunter’s story titled “Waiting for the Mwami” is based on the author’s own experience visiting a Mwami with an American journalist. “Mwami” is the title of the chief or king in Kirundi and Kinyarwanda, the Congolese Nande and Bashi languages. Two other stories, “Lenoir” and “Card Players,” were based on tales told to Hunter by someone he knew in Africa. A Publishers Weekly contributor noted that the stories depict not only the expatriates’ lives but also the “the unflappable patience of ordinary Africans in a decade of bloody political upheaval.”
Love in the Time of Apartheid
Hunter’s novel Love in the Time of Apartheid tells the story of Gat, a thirty-year-old member of the the Belgian colonial police force called the Katanga Gendarmerie. He is sent from the Congo, which has recently gained its independence, to South Africa. Gat has been ordered to disappear because of what happened in the Congo. Once he arrives in Cape Town, he meets an Afrikaner named Petra. The eighteen year old is the beautiful daughter of the doting Piet Rousseau, the head of South Africa’s Bureau of State Security for the apartheid government.
Although Gat and Petra are immediately attracted to each other when they meet at a dinner part at her parent’s home, the overall interaction is less than cordial after Gat tells Petra he does not support apartheid. Nevertheless, the two eventually begin a passionate affair, which Petra must keep hidden from her father, who, as noted by Hazel Rochman in Booklist, is “a defender and enforcer of the racist apartheid state in all its cruelty.” Meanwhile, Gat is still struggling with what he did in the Congo as a Belgian soldier.
Petra is soon to start college and is looking forward to getting out from under her father’s overprotective care. As the affair between Gat and Petra deepens, the two decide to take off on a road trip. Along the way they encounter the disturbing facts of life living in a country that has legal racism. When Gat and Petra run off and get married, Piet is determined to bring his daughter back home. A Kirkus Reviews contributor called Love in the Time of Apartheid “austere and well-told; an unlikely mix of espionage, apartheid, and love on the run.”
BIOCRIT
BOOKS
Hunter, Frederic, A Year at the Edge of the Jungle: A Congo Memoir: 1963-1964, Cune Press (Seattle, WA), 2015.
Hunter, Federic, Africa, Africa! Fifteen Stories, Cune Press (Seattle, WA), 2000.
PERIODICALS
Booklist, October 1, 2016, Hazel Rochman, review of Love in the Time of Apartheid, p. 30.
Hemingway Review, fall, 2015, Kirk Curnutt, “Appropriating Hemingway: Using Him as a Fictional Character.”
Kirkus Reviews, September 15, 2016, review of Love in the Time of Apartheid.
Publishers Weekly, October 23, 2000, “Short Story Collections,” includes review of Africa Africa! Fifteen Stories, p. 60.
Small Press Bookwatch, October 1, 2010, “The Fiction Shelf,” includes review of Abe and Molly: The Lincoln Courtship.
ONLINE
Heather Vogel Frederick Author, http://www.heathervogelfrederick.com/ (July 13, 2010), Heather Vogel Frederick, “Pie-of-the-Month Club—Frederic Hunter,” author interview.
Travels to Africa Website, http://www.travelsinafrica.com/ (July 3, 2017), brief author profile.
The American government wanted to establish a stripped-down diplomatic post in the Equateur, the remotest part of the strife-torn Congo. No diplomatic protections. Not even diplomatic communication links. Officers assigned to staff it refuse to go. They would’t serve in that “hellhole.”
Enter Fred Hunter (me), a young US Information Service officer just arrived from training in Belgium. Why not send him? Let’s see if he’ll survive.
So I went alone into the Equateur, a typewriter my only friend. (I was already a writer.) I established an American Cultural Center there, but a rebellion was brewing in that part of the country. It chased me out of my post.
Wanting to understand what I’d experienced in the Congo, I took a master’s degree in African Studies at UCLA, became the Africa Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor and covered all of sub-Saharan Africa.
Later I became a screenwriter. A PBS project about Abraham Lincoln’s first three months in office, aired as Lincoln and the War Within, led to my writing ABE AND MOLLY: The Lincoln Courtship, an historical romance written as close to historical fact as possible.
Fascination with Africa had always stimulated my imagination. It resulted in two novels, THE GIRL RAN AWAY and JOSS The Ambassador’s Wife, and two volumes of stories, CONGO TALES and AFRICA, AFRICA! My memoir of establishing the Congo cultural center and running for my life, A YEAR AT THE EDGE OF THE JUNGLE will be published in summer 2015.
FREDERIC HUNTER’s first encounter with Africa came as a Foreign Service Officer of the United States Information Service assigned to the Congo. He served there in three posts: Coquilhatville, Bukavu, and Leopoldville. After taking a master's degree from UCLA in African Studies, he served as the Africa Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor.
A playwright and screenwriter as well as a novelist, his award-winning stage work The Hemingway Play received a workshop production at the Eugene O Neill Playwrights Conference and was produced by PBS' Hollywood Television Theater series. Movies Hunter has written have been produced by PBS, ABC and CBS. He has also taught screenwriting at the Santa Barbara Writers Conference, at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and at Principia College where he also gave a course in Modern African Literature.
Donanne Ralston went to Africa in 1958 as the daughter of a State Department officer assigned as the American Consul in Port Elizabeth, South Africa. She finished her secondary education there and then left for college in the States.
Fred Hunter went to Africa in 1963 as a US Information Service officer assigned to the Congo. He served first on the country’s eastern frontier in Bukavu, then was sent to Coquilhatville (now Mbandaka) in the remote northwest to open an American Cultural Center.
Fred Hunter
Later, after Fred and Donanne married, they returned to Africa in 1969. After taking a masters degree in African Studies at UCLA, Fred had become The Christian Science Monitor’s Africa correspondent. The Hunters lived in Nairobi for four years; their son Paul was born there.
They returned to Africa several times in the new century, interested to see what had happened in their absence.
We begin with Donanne’s account of a Cape-to-Cairo trip she made from South Africa just before leaving for college. We find Fred in various parts of the Congo; he ‘s evacuated three times from Coq. Then there are journalist’s visits to South Africa, Ghana, Nigeria and a host of other places. Finally tourist trips to Botswana, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Mali, Niger and Tunisia. Photos accompany many of the accounts.
Join us on the tour! We expect to post new travel accounts each week. Send us comments. The purpose of this website is to share these experiences with friends, old and new, intrigued by travels in Africa.
Welcome abroad!
A reader requested a listing of TIA posts and the dates they were published. Here it is. The individual posts are available in the Archives on the Home Page under the categories noted.
Cape to Cairo
1. Donanne as a Foreign Service daughter in South Africa 11/1/10
2. Donanne’s Cape to Cairo trip with her parents before college 11/12/10
2. Donanne’s letter to grandparents from SAfrica 1/28/11
Orientation Congo
1. Fred’s first visit to Coquilhatville 11/19/10
2. Congo Poli Sci 101 11/26/10
Kivu Safari
1. The plan to visit the Kivu’s Parc National Albert 12/3/10
2. Recruiting Charley for the trip 12/10/10
3. Recruiting Paul Wemboyendja 12/17/10
4. Stuck in the mud near a hippo wallow 12/24/10
5. Vitshumbi rescue (God be praised!) 12/31/10
6. Visit to De Muncks’ plantation 1/7/11
People
1. Missionary Helen Hoffman in Shabunda 1/14/11
2. Col. Joseph Mobutu in Bukavu 1/21/11
Coq Early Days
1. Equateur
2. Settling into Coq #1 – the Andrés 2/11/11
3. Early Days in Coq – letters from first ten days there 2/18/11
4. Settling into Coq #1 – le pillage, offer of the André home 2/25/11
5. Christmas in Coq / Bad news arrives 3/4/11
6. More bad news 3/11/11
7. Adjusting to Coq #1 – Boudart’s maxims 3/18/11
8. Adjusting to Coq #2 – How Boudart escaped le pillage 3/25/11
9. Adjusting to Coq #3 – More on André & Boudart 4/1/11
10. Adjusting to Coq #4 – With Mme André to an art show 4/8/11
Visits
1. By Boat to Léo 4/15/11
2. An Ambassador Visits #1: Learning He’s Coming 4/22/11
3. An Ambassador Visits #2, Hectic Preparation 4/29/11
4. An Ambassador Visits #3, The Visit Occurs 5/6/11
5. Visiting Missionaries #1: Driving to Monieka 5/13/11
6. Visiting Missionaries #2: Life of a Missionary Doctor 5/20/11
7. Visiting Missionaries #3: More Missionary Doctor 5/27/11
8. Visiting Missionaries #4: An African Woman Considers Technology 6/3/11
9. Mobutu’s American Airmen Need Congolese Francs & US Ambassador to Central African Republic Chooses My House 6/10/11
10. USIS’s African Chief Drops Out of the Sky 6/17/11
Rebels!
1. Life in a Cultural Center 7/1/11
2. Running from Rebels #1: Due to the rebellion, the possibility of evacuation becomes real 7/8/11
3. Running from Rebels #2: Coquins leave Coq; panic grows 7/15/11
4. Running from Rebels #3: The Situation gets worse – or at least seems to 7/22/11
5. Running from Rebels #4: As The Situation deteriorates, preparations for evacuation continue. Significant differences remains as to when it should occur 7//11
6. Running from Rebels #5: Fred warns his friends the Andrés that the Americans intend to leave 8/5/11
7. Running from Rebels #6: Tom Madison decides to evacuate. Fred and the Madisons to Léo 8/12/11
8. Running from Rebels #7: Fred flies to Gemena to rescue American missionaries and to Coq to evacuate friends 8/19/11
9. Running from Rebels #8: Fred tries to wangle a return to Coq 8/26/11
10. At Limbo in Léo: no progress on a return to Coq, then approval 9/2/11
PG. 8 QUOTE
Story info from pg. 18
Pie-of-the-month club – Frederic Hunter
July 13th, 2010
A little something different on the menu this month — a book for adults instead of young readers. Frederic Hunter stopped by to talk about his new novel “Abe and Molly: The Lincoln Courtship” and to share his favorite recipe for — what else? — pie!
Author Frederic Hunter
Fred and I are both “alumni” of The Christian Science Monitor, where I was a staff reporter and children’s book review editor and he was a glamorous foreign correspondent (he covered sub-Saharan Africa). He also served as a foreign service officer in Brussels, Belgium, and at Coquilhatville and Bukavu in the ex-Belgian Congo. Later, he wrote screenplays for film and television, including “Lincoln and the War Within“ for PBS, which triggered his interest in the Lincoln courtship. His writings include “The Hemingway Play” and “Africa, Africa!,” a collection of fifteen stories. Fred and his wife Donanne have a website spanning fifty years of experiences in Africa.
What have you been cooking up for readers, Fred? Tell us about your new book, and how it came about.
Some years ago, I wrote a show for PBS about the first three months of the Lincoln Administration, aired as Lincoln and the War Within. While doing research for that project, I stumbled on the story of Lincoln’s courtship. Abe and Molly: The Lincoln Courtship is quite a romantic tale: rich girl of aristocratic background and good education falls in love with a self-educated attorney from a dirt-poor background, with few social graces and even less money. Once they become engaged, her family forces Lincoln to break the engagement. As they say, complications ensue. My publisher calls it Pride and Prejudice on the American frontier. Lincoln takes the Elizabeth Bennet role and Mary (Molly) Todd is Mr. Darcy, except that she’s caged in 19th-century strictures on what women should and should not do (like be interested in politics).
You had me at “Pride and Prejudice” on the American frontier. I can’t wait to read it!
How about your favorite pie-in-the-sky moment as a writer? Have you had one of those “I never dreamed it would really happen to me” moments that was special to you?
In high school my late twin brother and I wrote a one-act musical. It was performed the night of the annual one-act play contest, but out of competition because a faculty member had helped us write down the music. The audience liked it so much that it was immediately re-performed. That very evening. Can that possibly be right? At this distance from high school that seems improbable, but that’s my recollection of it. Later, in college, my brother and I wrote a musical revue. At one point I went out to introduce the next act and the audience’s applause flooded up at me. Applause is a narcotic. It’s damaged a lot of lives – maybe even mine.
Has there ever been a moment in your career when you had to eat humble pie? (I did, big-time, when I showed up at a major chain bookstore for what I thought was just a signing and found to my chagrin was educator night – dozens of shining faces looking at me expectantly, and I hadn’t prepared a talk…)
Worst moment? The evening the first TV show I ever wrote (an adaptation of Ring Lardner’s “The Golden Honeymoon” for PBS) was first broadcast. My wife and I had filled the living room with friends. I had not seen the show. It seemed disastrous! It was about a guy who couldn’t stop talking, and the director had long moments of silence, showing faces and locales. Eeeek! I writhed in horror on the floor before our assembled guests. They thought the show was OK — it was on PBS, wasn’t it? (It wasn’t as bad as I thought; nor as good as it should have been.) I learned never to invite friends to see my work until AFTER I’d already taken a look at it.
Now let’s REALLY talk pie. What’s your favorite kind? Do you have a favorite pie memory? How about the recipe you’re sharing – can you give us a little background on it?
The recipe for the pie I’m sharing is probably my favorite. I married into this recipe. It’s been in my wife’s family for years and was originally called “Utterly Deadly Southern Pecan Pie.” Velma Hile of Virginia, who was a dear friend of my wife’s grandmother, is the source, and now four generations of our family and dinner guests have enjoyed it.
Most pecan pies at restaurants have too few pecans, too much syrup (or molasses?), and are never made with butter. This is “caviar for the general.” Rich whipped cream on top never hurts, either.
“ABE AND MOLLY’S” SOUTHERN PECAN PIE
4 eggs
1-1/2 cups corn syrup
1-1/2 cups pecans
1 cup dark brown sugar
4 tablespoons butter
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 teaspoon salt
Unbaked pie shell
Boil sugar, syrup, and salt together for three minutes in a large pot. Beat eggs; not too stiff. Slowly pour hot syrup into eggs while stirring. Add butter, vanilla, and pecans. Pour into an unbaked pie shell. Bake at 400 degrees for 5 minutes. Reduce heat to 350, bake for an additional 35-45 minutes. When tested, knife inserted should come out clean. Serve at room temperature with whipped cream.
Frederic Hunter: LOVE IN THE TIME OF APARTHEID
Kirkus Reviews.
(Sept. 15, 2016):
COPYRIGHT 2016 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Frederic Hunter LOVE IN THE TIME OF APARTHEID Permanent Press (Adult Fiction) 29.95 11, 30 ISBN: 978-1-57962-444-6
Love in the Time of Apartheid
Hazel Rochman
Booklist. 113.3 (Oct. 1, 2016): p30.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist_publications/booklist/booklist.cfm
Listen
Full Text:
Love in the Time of Apartheid.
By Frederic Hunter.
Nov. 2016.312p. Permanent Press, $29.95 (9781579624446).
Haunted by guilt for his secret role in the brutal 1961 colonial assassination of Patrice Lumumba, the first freely elected president of the Congo, Belgian soldier Gat comes to Cape Town, South Africa, where he has a passionate love affair with beautiful young Afrikaner Petra. But they have to keep it secret from her doting father, Piet Rousseau, a senior police officer who protects his beloved daughter. A defender and enforcer of the racist apartheid state in all its cruelty, with self-righteousness and devoted care for his family, Piet has no guilt about his role in torture. As Gat drives Petra to university in Johannesburg, they confront the daily horror of legal racism. Like Garcia Marquez's Love in the Time of Cholera (1985), like accounts of Nazi genocide, the powerful drama shows how the privileged can value tender personal concerns and preach essential moral values while inflicting savage oppression and benefiting from the total dehumanization of "others." Sure to spark debate.--Hazel Rochman
YA/M: The focus on teenage Petra's love and her awakening to the horror around her makes this a great discussion title for older readers. HR.
Rochman, Hazel
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Rochman, Hazel. "Love in the Time of Apartheid." Booklist, 1 Oct. 2016, p. 30. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA467147996&it=r&asid=2ddc6c9b6090f0bd0bd00f8b65cee6af. Accessed 3 July 2017.
A quasi-political thriller and love story set in 1960s Africa.Gat, aka Adriaan Gautier, has been given instructions by his Belgian superiors in the
Congo: “disappear.” With $2,000 American and a forged passport, he flees to South Africa to reinvent himself and shrug off
the demons that haunt him from his soldiering in Prime Minster Patrice Lumumba’s new Congo. The lonely Gat eyes an 18-year-old
beauty from an Afrikaner and English family, and he begins a promising courtship. But Petra is the daughter of a racist Cape Town police colonel,
and Gat abhors apartheid. Gat, who is guilt-ridden and fighting nightmares of murder, helps Pet see beyond her family’s prejudices.
When a black woman is struck by a car, however, Pet’s rushed conversion to fervent good Samaritan-ism may be a bit too convenient.
The lovers skip town and marry, but Pet’s enraged father won’t let them go easily. This novel’s hodgepodge of
subplots—hiding spies, thwarted romance, systemic racism—ultimately coalesces. Hunter (The Girl Ran Away, 2014, etc.), a
former Africa Correspondent of the Christian Science Monitor, ably captures South Africa. Plain prose and dialogue keep the pace motoring, and
the simply told espionage storyline may appeal to Ian Fleming fans. There is daring, intrigue, and an ugly current of racism, but make no mistake,
this is a love story at its core. Austere and well-told; an unlikely mix of espionage, apartheid, and love on the run.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Frederic Hunter: LOVE IN THE TIME OF APARTHEID." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Sept. 2016. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA463216126&it=r&asid=713efff2d7178b0776fab4ee042ac95c. Accessed 1 June 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A463216126
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6/1/2017 General OneFile - Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1496367659030 2/3
Short Story Collections
Publishers Weekly.
247.43 (Oct. 23, 2000): p60.
COPYRIGHT 2000 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
Africa, Africa! is an attractively packaged collection of 15 stories by Frederic Hunter, veteran playwright (The Hemingway Play) and television
writer (The Beate Klarsfeld Story), based on his work in Africa for the State Department and as a journalist. Set in the 1960s, the tales capture
'the everyday rhythms of expatriate life and the unflappable patience of ordinary Africans in a decade of bloody political upheaval. White and
black men and women approach each other with curiosity and easy-going grace in these quiet, simply told stories. (Cune [www.cunepress.com],
$23.95 263p ISBN 1-885942-17-6; Nov. 20)
Bantam offers a "best of" collection of 30 short stories by Anton Chekhov, newly translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, the PEN
award-winning translators of Dostoyevski's The Brothers Karamazov. Stories by Anton Chekhov is a hefty collection at an affordable paperback
price, featuring such classics as "The Lady with the Little Dog," the tour de force "A Boring Story" and the author's own favorite, "The Student."
($1 1.95 paper 467p ISBN 0-533-38100-8; Nov. 7)
The reader is in for a rollicking ride with Wild Cards: The Second Virago Anthology of Writing Women, a collection of poetry and short stories
chosen from thousands of submissions by unpublished women writers, primarily in England. Twisting familiar themes to suit their distinctive
worldviews, the 24 writers featured dissect marriage (Ferne Arfin, "You Can Keep the Dog"), motherhood (Ros Barber, "Lone Parent Family
Breakfast"), love (Barbara Marshall, "Anniversary"), prostitution (Allyson Hallett, "Wild Cards") and the struggle for self-regard (Carmen
Walton, "The Attendant"). The overall tone of the volume, edited by Maggie Hannan, Pippa Little, Andrea Badenoch and Debbie Taylor, the team
responsible for the magazine Writing Women, is refreshingly brisk and unsentimental. (Virago [Trafalgar Square, dist.], $17.95 paper 182p ISBN
1-86049-548-6; Nov. 1)
Through the 1920s, 30S and '40s, celebrated south Texas folklorist Jovita Gonzalez de Mireles (1904-1983) gathered and revised regional folk
stories. Her life's work is showcased in The Woman Who Lost Her Soul, a collection of 33 brief fables edited by Sergio Reyna. The rich,
sociohistorically significant Chicano narratives illuminate the region's past, from Mexican domination to U.S. statehood. (Arte Publico, $12.95
paper 201p ISBN 155885-313-8; Nov. 30)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Short Story Collections." Publishers Weekly, 23 Oct. 2000, p. 60. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA66708600&it=r&asid=397bab349db23040aa6ae83fac9ea7e6. Accessed 1 June 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A66708600
Appropriating Hemingway: Using Him as a Fictional Character
Kirk Curnutt
The Hemingway Review. 35.1 (Fall 2015): p106.
NOTE: THIS IS ONLY PART OF A VERY LONG ARTICLE--DP
Readers who bear an enduring grudge against Reach, O'Connor, O'Donnell, and Clive Owen are advised to start with the sections on drama and poetry, if only because the majority of these appropriations are unfamiliar. The best known drama might be Michael Hollinger's An Empty Plate in the Cafe du Grand Boeuf (first performed in 1994, published in 2003), which enjoyed a run as recently as 2009. Set in the three days following Hemingway's death, it concerns a suicidal Hemingway aficionado named Victor who intends to starve himself to death. An Empty Plate is something of an anomaly inasmuch as Hemingway is a looming presence and not a character, but Hollinger's script nevertheless contains some of the tendencies that make Hemingway a difficult subject for dramatists: alternately flippant and sentimental in tone, drawing far too much text from Hemingway's own works, the dramas surveyed tend to tackle the legacy in its broadest outlines, often missing the contradictions of the man himself and "reducing] Hemingway, and ipso facto his writing, to the status of historical artifact" (177). It seems safe to say the most interesting approaches are the most experimental: Frederic Hunters The Hemingway Play (1975, revived 1986) stands four Hemingways from four different life stages next to each other onstage, allowing them to "to be quite critical of each other" to deconstruct his strengths and weaknesses (169). More recently, James Rutherford and Elliot B. Quick's The Importance of Being Ernest Hemingway (2013) offers a "mashup" approach in which Oscar Wilde's 1895 comedy of manners is relocated to 1926 Paris and interlaced with passages from The Sun Also Rises and A Moveable Feast. If the idea of a self-described "rollicking macho-queer tragedy of disappointed love" in which Wilde helps Hemingway come to grips with his "latent homosexual urges" at least sounds original (184), the title does not. Somebody should tell Rutherford and Quick that as a pun "The Importance of Being Ernest" is beyond tired, having at this point been dragged out of the joke book for dozens of headlines, book chapters and articles, and roundtable discussions. Then again, Papa Goes Wilde probably is not any better.
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October 1, 2010 | Copyright
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Abe and Molly
Frederic Hunter
Nebbadoon Press
PO Box 91244, Santa CA 93190
9781891331169, $23.95, www.Nebbadoonpress.com
Some relationships are of special construction. "Abe and Molly: The Lincoln Courtship" tells the story of how our inept, timid sixteenth president won the heart of an aristocrat, a match no one thought would work. Frederic Hunter uses this pairing to spin a novel out of it, providing a dramatized look at the relationship between Abraham and Mary Todd. An exciting tale of romance and high society in the first half of the nineteenth century, "Abe and Molly" is a fascinating and fun read.