The Violet Hour : : Great Writers at the end

Locations
Call Number: 809 Ro
On Shelf At: Downtown Library

Location & Checkout Length	Call Number	Checkout Length	Item Status
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	809 Ro	4-week checkout	On Shelf

"In this category-defying book, Katie Roiphe takes an unexpected and liberating approach to the most unavoidable of subjects: death. She examines the final days of five great writers and artists. Here is Susan Sontag, the ultimate intellectual, finding her commitment to rational thinking tested during her third bout with cancer. Here is Sigmund Freud fleeing Nazi-occupied Vienna for London only to continue the constant cigar-smoking that he knows will soon kill him. Roiphe takes us to the hospital room where, after receiving the worst kind of diagnosis, seventy-six year old John Updike immediately begins writing a poem. She vividly portrays Dylan Thomas's extraordinary self-destructive tendencies that culminate in his infamous final collapse at a Greenwich Village tavern. And she shows us how Maurice Sendak's beloved books for children are infused with his lifelong obsession with death, if you know where to look. In each of these glorious creators' final moments, Roiphe finds bravery, suffering, bad behavior, passionate love, peacefulness, bursts of energy, and profound thinking. In a voice that is unsentimental, compassionate, urgent, Roiphe helps us to look boldly at death and be less afraid"-- Provided by publisher.
Examines the final days of five great writers and artists--Susan Sontag, Sigmund Freud, John Updike, Dylan Thomas, and Maurice Sendak--in an original meditation on mortality.

REVIEWS & SUMMARIES

Booklist Review
Publishers Weekly Review
Summary / Annotation
Table of Contents
Excerpt
Author Notes

COMMUNITY REVIEWS

No community reviews. Write one below!