Posts Tagged ‘donald friedman’
My latest INTERFACES essay–a new art form
Voilá, the latest issue of INTERFACES, internationally renowned journal of text and image and my contribution to it–an extended essay on Frederic Tuten along with an on-camera interview with him. Note this is not the brief commentary previously posted but an expanded discussion of the prolific author Tuten, and his art, including a first-of-its-kind art in…
Read MoreAN EDITOR’S PICK
I am happy to report that Book Life selected Still Phyllis as an Editor’s Pick, saying: “Incisive, moving, and stripped of sentimentality…scrupulous prose… Scenes of brother and sister still managing to understand each other despite the fraying of Phyllis’s capacity for language have rich power… That commitment to rigorous thinking and writing about life…
Read MoreSTILL PHYLLIS: A CAREGIVER’S MEMOIR
“Donald Friedman brings his considerable literary gift to this memoir of despair, and with that gift fills the pages with the flickering light of the spirit.”
– William Kotzwinkle author of ET the Extraterrestrial and Felonious Monk
My sister Phyllis was a vital, single woman, a photographer and writer, who was enjoying life in the city when she was suddenly stricken by Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD), a disease rarer than a lightning strike that spreads, incredibly, via a non-living molecule called a prion. Terrified to realize …
Read MoreFREDERIC TUTEN FOUND A NEW JOY
“At this time of my life–someone would say, the winter of my life, although I don’t feel cold,” Frederic Tuten, novelist, essayist, short story writer, and art critic, tells of finding a new joy in painting. “Practically no day passes where I’m not either writing and painting or painting and writing, whichever comes first in…
Read MoreRoberta Allen: “Language is the bridge…”
“Language is the bridge…” Roberta Allen began making and exhibiting her conceptual art more than a half century ago, before she came to author eight books and more than 200 works of short fiction. Indeed, as she explains in this 2021 interview, her earliest writing was about her art. Allen had her first solo exhibition…
Read MoreThe Two Sides of Peter Selgin
A two-fisted writer-artist, Peter Selgin, award-winning novelist, essayist, memoirist, and short story writer, earned his living as a freelance artist for thirty-six years, before deciding to abandon the visual arts for the literary in 2009. By 2014, well into his writing career and established as a professor of creative writing he realized he could not separate the writer from the artist. That they needed each other.
Read MoreENJOY THE LATEST ISSUE OF INTERFACES
Voilá, the latest issue of INTERFACES, internationally renowned journal of text and image. This issue focuses on format. By that is meant the vehicle selected by a creator — a writing or a painting, for example — to express her ideas. Included is my extended essay and on-camera interview with Fernando del Paso, among the greatest Spanish language novelists of the last 100 years, who began drawing to kill time between news reports while working at the BBC and before he knew it was being exhibited alongside leading figures in the art world. Also included is my review of “The Lehman Trilogy,” which utilizes a stripped-down set and localizes and identifies characters through language, and telescopes more than a century into a few hours. Click on the link and enjoy!
Read MoreHow Peter Sacks Joined the Greats
“Paint seems more embedded in the cosmos than language.” The Poet Picked Up a Paintbrush You are about to witness a historic moment. A little more than twenty years ago, Peter Sacks, a successful poet and Harvard professor, decided to pick up a paintbrush for the first time. Today, hailed internationally, his work is…
Read More“Unorthodox”: A Fantasy Based on a Fiction
We all know that when a movie opens with “based on” or “inspired by” true events that what we are about to see is only remotely connected with historic truth. But we want to believe we’re getting lived reality and not just writerly invention so we’re happy to accept the fiction that follows. “Unorthodox,” the…
Read MoreLawrence Ferlinghetti is turning 100!
Legendary poet, artist, publisher and social activist Lawrence Ferlinghetti will celebrate his 100th birthday on March 24. My on-camera interview with him in 2001 has been edited into a four minute homage by Michelle Memran, producer and director of last year’s critically lauded film “The Rest I Make Up.” After producing no fewer than 30…
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