Kitty Carlisle once said to me when she was about 85: “Have you noticed, Lewis, that as you get older time appears to go faster and faster? For me at 85 it seems like I’m having breakfast every 15 minutes.” And as I write this spring blog the fall seems to have just flashed by. Of course this is an illusion created by the fact that I am productive and enjoying myself. It will surprise you how time will viscerally slow down if you set up a bridge chair in an empty, windowless room and just stare at the wall.
But since fall 2012 at The Hunter College Writing Center was amazing, spring should be the next superlative up. Our lead-off speaker for our Best-Selling-Author Series, A.M. Homes, is an extraordinary writer, think “The Safety of Objects”, or “The End of Amy”, and the rest of the roster is equally exciting. You probably just saw Tom Cruise playing Jack Reacher in the first blockbuster film based on Lee Child’s novels. We are lucky enough to have Lee Child visiting us on March 6 and I hope you will join us. In April we will host Yiyun Li, a MacArthur Fellow who was named by the New Yorker Magazine as one of the top 20 writers under forty in the country. Steve Berry the mega-selling suspense writer will conclude our series on May 13.
This spring we will again run our Great Thinker’s Series and here superlatives may not even be enough. Lewis Lapham, who will visit us on February 19, is the founder and editor of Lapham’s Quarterly and was the brilliant editor of Harpers’ Magazine for 17 years. I can hardly say enough about Edward Witten who is one of the world’s leading string theorists, a mathematical physicist who along with Alan Guth, another of our speakers, is one of the nine scientists recently awarded the Fundamental Physics Prize which carries with it a $3 million dollar stipend — twice that of the Nobel Prize.
Speaking of the Nobel Prize, Sheldon Glashow, who will be visiting us in April, actually won the Nobel Prize in Physics for important work he did extending electroweak unification models. In case you are not into electroweak unification models, Shelly can also enlighten you on the subjects of quarks, leptons, charm and many of the other fascinating informatal denizens of the quantum world. By the way, don’t bother to look up “informatal”; it’s a mysterious portmanteau-adjectival-neologism I just created to mean the plural of various units of data and information that also allowed me to keep typing without having to go back and correct whatever word I started to write that seemed wrong at the time. If you can’t follow that last sentence not to worry just pretend it didn’t happen and go on to the rest of this blog directly.
So where were we? Ah yes, the Great Thinker’s Series which should be outstanding. I wouldn’t want to miss it. And then there are all our courses taught by Daphne Merkin, Sidney Offit, Sharon Johnson, Grace Edwards, the poet Danielle Blau, etc. etc. It’s a hell of a spring if I do say so myself.
I’d also be remiss if I didn’t mention our third annual Writers Conference coming up on Saturday June 8 at Hunter. Adam Gopnik and Erica Jong are the keynotes and Alan Furst, Edward Hirsch and Ben Cheever are teaching the intensives. The 70 other luminous writers, editors and publishers on the dozen panels will hold forth on the new transformations taking place in publishing, the inside scoop on self-publishing, fiction, agents et al. Do contact us at 212-772-9292 or 212-650-3850 to register for courses, RSVP for events, or find out more information. Or follow us on Facebook, Twitter, or our website, or send an e-mail to twcce@hunter.cuny.edu.
Fall 2012 at the Hunter Writing Center promises to be extraordinary. . . in fact the whole year promises to be extraordinary. The new Tina Flaherty Winston Churchill series that launched on June 8th at the Morgan Library will continue at Hunter’s renowned Roosevelt House on September 19th with the eminent scholar/historian Andrew Roberts. In October you won’t want to miss author/teacher Sidney Offit discussing his best friend, the late Kurt Vonnegut: their friendship and Vonnegut’s signature vision as it continues to be relevant today. Joyce Carol Oates, our Gerta Vanderbilt Whitney Connor Guest Writer, will appear twice this fall, once in October and again in November, and real estate titan Dan Rose will give the Jack Burstyn Memorial Lecture. Speaking of lectures, the distinguished sculptress Elizabeth Strong-Cuevas has generously endowed a new lectureship that will commence in November with our first Stong-Cuevas speaker, Gay Talese.
If you are up for a master course, you might want to sign up for either Daphne Merkin teaching her famous memoir class, or the New Yorker’s Patricia Marx giving a workshop on “How to Be Funny.” To give you a sense of Patty’s humor, consider that in her resume she credits herself with having won the “Friederich Medal,” an award she created and named after her air-conditioner. In addition to our other fine writing courses we offer some new ones this year including “Editing for Self-Editors,” taught by Beena Kamlani, a senior editor at Viking Penguin where she once edited the great Saul Bellow. All of our regular courses are of course available, and I should mention that in the Spring we have invited some of the literary greats for our Best-Selling Author Series, and some of the finest minds on the planet for our Great Thinker’s Series. For major supporters of the Hunter Writing Center you can look forward to the exclusive, by invitation only Benefactor’s Dinner at Doubles in March. . . and once again our Hunter Writer’s Conference this year will be held on Saturday June 13th. If you haven’t visited us before please know that all our speaking events are free though we urge you to R.S.V.P since there are limited spaces and seating is on a first come first serve basis.
If anyone has not yet purchased “Favorite Words of Famous People,” by your blogger you probably should. . . I cannot imagine a more enjoyable read. . . words and essays from the funniest and finest intellects around. And you might also tune in to my radio show, The Lewis Burke Frumkes Show, Sunday nights on WPAT-AM at 8PM. I have been interviewing high-profile personalities from the worlds of arts and sciences for the last 30 years and if you wish to meet writers you have read up close and personal, as they say, this radio show is as close as you can come to live broadcasting. I edit nothing. We take risks this way but the result is very entertaining and sui generis. Hope your life goes well and that you will join us at Hunter this Fall. We are doing all this for you.
Assuming you’ve all purchased a copy of “Favorite Words of Famous People,” I’d be interested in hearing which of the selections was your favorite. Which new word you loved best, or even what your own favorite word is.
So lets move on to my program at Hunter College.
Just a week ago we held our annual Benefactor’s Dinner, aka The 2nd Anniversary Dinner of the Hunter College Writing Center. It’s by invitation only, and our way to thank people who have been supportive of the Writing Center. Among the celebrants were authors Barbara Taylor Bradford, Erica Jong, Elizabeth Strout, Bruce Jay Friedman, Ben Cheever, Patty Marx, Patricia Volk, Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, Carol Gilligan, Sidney Offit, Linda Fairstein, Richard Panek, Barbara Goldsmith, Nelson DeMille, Peter Straub, Grace Edwards, Malachy and Alphie McCourt, Susan Isaacs, 100 year old Bel Kaufman, and honorees Hilma and Meg Wolitzer, as well as many others. Also present were President Jennifer Raab of Hunter who co-hosted the evening with me, President Regina Peruggi of Kingsborough Community College and supporters and major benefactors such as sculptor/artist Elizabeth Strong-Cuevas, Jim and Marilyn Simons, Peter and Sharon Green, Joyce and Gene Eichenberg, Denise LeFrak and John Calicchio, Tina Santi Flaherty, and Mimi Levitt. For entertainment, we presented the gorgeous “Glad Girls” consisting of Jeannette Watson Sanger, Barbara Ascher, Helen Houghton, Betty Sargent, Anne Wazell, Joan Jakobson, who sang Cole Porter songs and charmed the audience with their retro style. Most of the “Glad Girls” are supporters of the Writing Center as well.
Of course, The Writing Center, which is becoming known as one of the fine showcases for culture in the city is continuing with it’s Spring schedule of authors and thinkers. We have already presented biographer and Pulitzer Prize-winner Stacey Schiff, National Book Award-winning novelist Alice McDermott, cognitive scientist and linguistics professor Steven Pinker and his wife novelist Rebecca Goldstein who gave a bravura performance and social arbiter and editor of Quest Magazine David Patrick Columbia. These fantastic speaking events are all free to the students and faculty of Hunter College and to the New York City community, and I hope you will join us to hear upcoming authors and thinkers. These consist of Author Alan Furst on March 27th, the Director of Brown University’s Institute for brain research, John Donoghue on April 3rd, the Kleiers from “Selling New York,” on April 12th, quantum engineer Seth Lloyd from M.I.T. on April 16th, and Harvard’s renowned Lisa Randall perhaps the most distinguished female particle physicist in the world and an expert on the Great Hadron Collider on May 3rd, and finally best-selling suspense writer Stuart Woods on May 21st. All of these events are held in the Faculty Dining Room of Hunter College at 7PM.
Please also note that on June 9th we will be holding the 2nd annual Writer’s Conference at Hunter with keynotes Mary and Carol Higgins Clark, and Colson Whitehead. Among the other participants will be Lee Child, Harlan Coben, Steve Berry, Daphne Merkin, Peter Straub, Francine Du Plessix Gray, Bruce Jay Friedman, Adam Ross, Helen Schulman, and dozens of others. The cost is not much for such an august event and if you care about writing you won’t want to miss it. As with all our offerings, you can find out more about them and register or call 212-772-4292. And please do say hello to me; I’ll be happy to see you.
ee. cummings, who walked in front of my car many years ago and whom I almost ran over that night after he spoke at Smith College, said “Springtime is love time, and viva sweet love.” So if truth be told while it is only December the Hunter Writing Center has just announced its spring 2012 program and you’ve got to love it. At least I hope you love it because we worked very hard to bring the best speakers and teachers here in the spring so that you could enjoy the speaking events free as long as you RSVP to 212-772-4292 (space is limited). To that end I feel like a cultural Robin Hood because I struggle in these parlous times to raise monies from generous benefactors and supporters in order to present these events without charge to you, to the students, and to the community. We also offer refreshments and book-signings for your delectation so it is a good deal and we hope you will join us.
So who are these fascinating speakers you may ask? And I answer: in January we begin our Best-Selling-Author Series with two-time Pulitzer-prize winner Stacy Schiff, author of Vera and Cleopatra. Stacy will be followed in February by National Book Award-winner Alice McDermott, who in turn will be followed in March by best-selling espionage writer Alan Furst. And as if this were not exciting enough, April will bring one of America’s most beloved novelists, Susan Isaacs, who will be followed in May by suspense-writer Stuart Woods, who has produced 28 consecutive books that have made the New York Times Best-Sellers list. We are quite proud of this series, but I am not finished. Also in the Spring we will present our “Great Thinkers of Our Time” series, beginning with the legendary writers Steven Pinker, the renowned Harvard cognitive scientist, and his wife, Rebecca Goldstein, the author and philosopher, in February, to be followed by John Donoghue director of The Brown University Institute for Brain Science who is doing state of the art work with paraplegics who are now able to move limbs and objects with pure thought. Then in April the quantum engineer Seth Lloyd from MIT who has built the first quantum computer will visit with us and discuss the future of computers and nanotechnology, while in May Lisa Randall, who was featured recently in the New York Times as the Harvard physicist and expert on the Great Hadron Collider who is searching for the elusive Higgs Boson or “God particle” which if found could transform our understanding of the known universe. This is exciting stuff folks and I hope you will come hear these outstanding thinkers.
For a change of pace we have also invited David Patrick Columbia, editor of Quest Magazine and The New York Social Diary and New York’s supreme social arbiter to spend an evening with us on March 5th, . . . also Michele, Sabrina and Samantha Kleier the hosts of the hit HGTV show “Selling New York, “ who also happen to own the giant real estate firm Gumley, Haft, Kleier, and who have written a best-selling novel “Hot Property,” will do the same on April 12th. Add to these special offerings our master classes with Daphne Merkin, Alison Espach, Bruce Jay Friedman, and a new workshop on songwriting with Marty Panzer the musical genius who wrote most of the Barry Manilow’s songs as well as songs for Julio Iglesias, Dolly Parton, Kenny Rogers, and Dionne Warwick. . . and you are previewing what we believe is one of the finest cultural programs anywhere. Please join us in the Spring for what I believe will be a truly uplifting educational experience. Call 212-772-4292 for more information or to register, or visit us at www.hunter.cuny.edu/ce/the-writing-center.
I love the fall, and I particularly love directing The Writing Center at Hunter College CE where I offer cultural programs of my own choosing to the Hunter students, faculty, and friends in the community. You may remember some of the highlights from last year. We presented a suspense panel in the fall with Mary Higgins Clark, her daughter Carol Higgins Clark, Alan Furst, and Lawrence Block; then there was the Best-Selling Author Series in the spring with Susan Cheever, Joseph O’Neill, Barbara Taylor Bradford, Francine Prose, and Jane Smiley. We introduced a new series “Great Thinkers Of Our Time,” with Freeman Dyson, Nobel laureate Frank Wilczeck, Howard Gardner, and Carol Gilligan. Meeting Freeman Dyson in the flesh who in my estimation is one of the smartest men on the planet, and cutest, was an experience that no one who was there will ever forget. And then perhaps you attended the first Hunter Writer’s Conference with keynotes Walter Mosley, and Nelson DeMIlle. We had seventy luminous writers, editors, publishers, and literary agents there on 12 different panels . . .all who attended walked away smiling. Hunter is a great college, New York is a great city, and if you are smart you will take advantage of all that we offer. . . you cannot lose.
While I am at it I should mention that I published my new book “Favorite Words of Famous People,” during the summer and if you haven’t read it yet it would behoove you to do so. . . truly fun and enlightening. It’s at bookstores like Rizzoli’s in the city or Barnes & Nobles can get it for you or failing all else go on the internet. And while I am speaking about books Lucette Lagnado has just published her sequel to the brilliant “The Man in The White Sharkskin Suit,” which appeared a year or two back to rave reviews from Kakutani in the New York Times and everywhere else. The sequel which is also garnering outstanding press is called “The Arrogant Years,” and is published by Ecco Press an imprint of Harper Collins. In it Lucette thanks Grace Edwards one of the Writing Center’s stellar fiction teachers with whom she has been studying for several years and President Jennifer Raab for establishing the Writing Center at Hunter with its potential to mold and encourage promising authors of different ages, backgrounds, and venues. I should mention that it was Lucette who first trumpeted my arrival at Hunter last year when I moved here from Marymount Manhattan College. So onward and upward. . .
Pete Hamill will be visiting us on September 22nd for the first of the beloved Tina Flaherty Irish Voices Series. It is free and open to the public and will be accompanied by a cookie and coffee reception and book signing. Pete will be followed by Barbara Leaming, New York Times columnist Dan Barry, and Iris Cornelia Love in succeeding months. Also in the fall the magnificent Bel Kaufman, now in her 101st year, talking about the humor of her grandfather the great Yiddish writer Sholem Aleichem. Bel will hold forth on November 1st. On October 17th The Center will host Dr. Alan Manevitz one of the esteemed psychiatrists in New York who will be speaking about his new treatment for difficult to treat depressions which have eluded other methods. And on October 27th you might want to hear the “enfante terrible of Broadway,” the redoubtable John Simon who will talk about his favorite subject, criticism. John is an erudite critic and seminal thinker who has also written books on music, and film, etc. In November I will moderate a panel of some of our most talented young writers namely, Stefan Merrill Block, , Alison Espach, Haley Tanner, and Benjamin Hale. These are the literary lights of our future. Alison who wrote the highly regarded “The Adults,” will also teach a master class in fiction for us. Daphne Merkin who needs no introduction I’m sure will teach a master class in memoir.
I am so excited about the fall that I won’t even talk about the Best-Selling Author Series in the spring of 2012 but it is truly fantastic as is our 2012 Great Thinkers Series. All in all I hope you join us this fall at Hunter for some of these truly high quality programs. . . and if you haven’t visited before perhaps this is your time.
Some years ago I or rather Delacorte published a book called The Logophile’s Orgy in which I asked famous writers and some of the cleverest minds around (seven Nobel laureates, etc.) to tell me their favorite words. Despite its peculiar title (no one knew what the title meant), the contributors one and all were unabashedly enthusiastic about the project, often confessing to never having considered the question before. When the book was published Susan Isaacs, I understand, bought a dozen copies to give to friends. Through the responses sometimes one could discern the very landscape of a writer’s mind, or his vision of life. When not being profound or revealing, writers were frequently witty or linguistically clever. Edward Gorey for example said “My favorite word is ‘silence.’ It would be perverse to go on.” Others were just direct or succinct.
The thrust of the book was that we all have favorite words, words that tickle our ears and please our eyes, words that we seem to use more often than other words. I for example use the words “eggplant” and “kumquat” more often in my writing that other words, and I just love the German word “tafelspitz,” which is a boiled beef dish quite tasty though it sounds to me more like the name of a dominatrix, especially when you pronounce it “Toffelschpitz.”
In any event this new book, the one you will be reading I hope, this time called Favorite Words Of Famous People, and published by Marion Street Press in which I incorporate the best entries from Logophile’s Orgy, such as Erica Jong’s “Breath” which only rhymes with death, Mary Higgins Clark’s “memories,” Dominick Dunne’s, Edward Said’s, Jack Rosenthal’s, Margaret Atwood’s, John Updike’s, Dave Barry’s favorite words, etc., and add to it a hundred new ones, such as Al Gore’s, Martin Amis’s, Muhammed Ali’s, Hillary Clinton’s, Freeman Dyson’s, Thomas Kennealy’s, Nelson DeMille’s, Alan Furst’s, etc. is in my judgment not only superior to the original, and endlessly entertaining, but important as a reference book, and linguistic record of our time. Browse through it and savor the words of great people who adore words. . . you can only be enriched.
Twenty-seven years ago McGraw-Hill threw me a book party to celebrate the publication of "How To Raise Your I.Q. By Eating Gifted Children, " at the Hunter Elementary School For Gifted Children. This year I have come full circle and returned to Hunter as the Director of The Writing Center at Hunter College CE. That CE by the way stands for Continuing Education something you all need if you are over five and a college graduate. With that in mind I have created a spectacular array of cultural offerings for anyone who has a scintilla of intellectual curiosity left and have even made the lectures and talks free so that if you have been affected by the dive-bombing economy you can still afford to attend them. Courses I'm afraid do cost a bit, though they are reasonable considering that we attract the crème de la crème of professional instructors. You can take a memoir course for example with Erica Jong this Spring or a course in column-writing with Daphne Merkin, or some exciting literature courses, self-defense, Abraham Lincoln, what have you. In addition to our Best-Selling Author Series beginning with Susan Cheever on January 25th, and continuing with Joseph O'Neill, Barbara Taylor Bradford, Francine Prose, and Jane Smiley, we are beginning a new series entitled "Great Thinkers of Our Time." Freeman Dyson, a futurist and one of the legendary mathematicians and physicists of the twentieth century who worked with Oppenheimer, Hans Bethe, and Richard Feynman and has for years been a senior member of the Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton will be visiting us in April. Frank Wilczeck a nobel-laureate in physics and another of the world's great minds will be speaking in March, as will Harvard's Howard Gardner, popularizer of MI (multiple intelligence) theory, and Carol Gilligan a great novelist and pioneer in woman's studies. We at the Writing Center are very proud of what we have begun at Hunter College and look forward to welcoming all of you to our programs. In most cases there will also be free refreshments and a book-signing. You can go on the web to the Hunter College Continuing Education listings and click on Writing Center. There I will be waiting for you, anxious to meet you. . . or go to my website lewisfrumkes.com and learn more than you ever wanted to know about me until you are nauseated. And for my money while things may look daunting and even grim around the world I have lived long enough to know that somehow we always manage to endure the scary and hard times and go on to enjoy the good times. I suspect that will happen again. . . so keep a smile on your face. Come to Hunter, enjoy our programs and say hello. You will feel better. . .
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Lewis Burke Frumkes is a writer, radio show host, educator/teacher, lecturer and Director of the Writing Center CE at Hunter College. He is also a member of the editorial board of "The Writer Magazine," ...Read More
With that in mind I have created a spectacular array of cultural offerings for anyone who has a scintilla of intellectual curiosity left and have even made the lectures and talks free so that if you have been affected by the dive-bombing economy you can still afford to attend them. Courses I'm afraid do cost a bit, though they are reasonable considering that we attract the crème de la crème of professional instructors. You can take a memoir course for example with Erica Jong this Spring or a course in column-writing with Daphne Merkin, or some exciting literature courses, self-defense, Abraham Lincoln, what have you. In addition to our Best-Selling Author Series beginning with Susan Cheever on January 25th, and continuing with Joseph O'Neill, Barbara Taylor Bradford, Francine Prose, and Jane Smiley, we are beginning a new series entitled "Great Thinkers of Our Time." Freeman Dyson, a futurist and one of the legendary mathematicians and physicists of the twentieth century who worked with Oppenheimer, Hans Bethe, and Richard Feynman and has for years been a senior member of the Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton will be visiting us in April. Frank Wilczeck a nobel-laureate in physics and another of the world's great minds will be speaking in March, as will Harvard's Howard Gardner, popularizer of MI (multiple intelligence) theory, and Carol Gilligan a great novelist and pioneer in woman's studies. We at the Writing Center are very proud of what we have begun at Hunter College and look forward to welcoming all of you to our programs. In most cases there will also be free refreshments and a book-signing. You can go on the web to the Hunter College Continuing Education listings and click on Writing Center. There I will be waiting for you, anxious to meet you. . . or go to my website 
Preview of Fall 2012