Jay Parini | |
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![]() Jay Parini | |
Born | April 2, 1948 76) Pittston, Pennsylvania, U.S. | (age
Occupation | Novelist, poet, biographer, academic |
Alma mater | Lafayette College University of St. Andrews |
Period | 1972 - present |
Spouse | Devon Jersild |
Children | 3 |
Website | |
jayparini |
Jay Parini (born April 2, 1948) is an American writer and academic. He is known for novels, poetry, biography, screenplays and criticism. He has published novels about Leo Tolstoy, Walter Benjamin, Paul the Apostle, Herman Melville, and a novelized memoir about his road trip with Jorge Luis Borges.
Parini was born in Pittston, Pennsylvania, and brought up in Scranton, Pennsylvania. He graduated from Lafayette College in 1970 and was awarded a doctorate by the University of St. Andrews in 1975. [1]
He taught at Dartmouth College from 1975 to 1982, [1] and has taught since 1982 at Middlebury College, where he is the D.E. Axinn Professor of English and Creative Writing. [2]
In 1976, Parini co-founded the New England Review with Sydney Lea. [1] Parini was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1992. He was the Fowler Hamilton Fellow at Christ Church, Oxford University, in 1993–1994. He was a fellow of the Institute for Advanced Studies at the University of London in 2005–2006. [1]
He is a member of the Board of Visitors of Ralston College, a liberal arts college in Savannah that was founded in February, 2010. [3]
Parini has written nine novels, many of which are about the lives of literary icons, and narratives from his own personal life. [4]
His 1990 international best-selling novel The Last Station is about the final months of Leo Tolstoy. It was translated into more than thirty languages, and adapted into an Academy Award-nominated film released in December 2009. [5]
Borges and Me: An Encounter (2020) is a road trip novel based on a true story, a young Jay Parini's travels with renowned Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges. With Parini having to recreate 50 year old conversations largely from memory, the book has been called a novelized memoir. [6]
Parini's historical novel Benjamin's Crossing was a New York Times Notable Book of the year in 1997. [7] It is about the Jewish critic and philosopher Walter Benjamin, and his escape over the Pyrenees from Nazi occupied France into Spain. Michael Lackey notes: "Parini brilliantly dramatizes one of Benjamin’s most important contributions to intellectual history, and it is this contribution that would pave the way for the biographical novel." [8]
The Passages of H.M. (2010) explores the literary great Herman Melville. [9]
His poems have appeared in a wide variety of magazines, including The Atlantic , The New Yorker , and Poetry . [10]
Parini's books of poetry include Singing in Time (1972), Anthracite Country (1982), Town Life (1988), House of Days (1998), The Art of Subtraction: New and Selected Poems (2005), and New and Collected Poems: 1975 - 2015 (2015). [1]
Parini has published non-fiction books on a variety of subjects, including biographies of Robert Frost, John Steinbeck, William Faulkner, Gore Vidal and Jesus.
His other works of non-fiction include Theodore Roethke, an American Romantic (1980), [11] Some Necessary Angels: Essays on Writing and Politics (1997), [12] The Art of Teaching (2005), Why Poetry Matters (2008), Promised Land: Thirteen Books That Changed America (2008), [1] , The Way of Jesus: Living a Spiritual and Ethical Life (2018), and Robert Frost: Sixteen Poems to Learn By Heart (2024).
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Parini's biography Robert Frost: A Life won the Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize for best non-fiction book of the year in 2000. [13]
His biography One Matchless Time: A Life of William Faulkner was a New York Times Bestseller. [14]
His biography of his longtime friend, the late Gore Vidal, Empire of Self: A Life of Gore Vidal (Doubleday, October 2015), was called "A superbly personal biography that pulsates with intelligence, scholarship, and heart." by Kirkus Reviews. Parini figures prominently in the 2013 documentary film Gore Vidal: The United States of Amnesia. [15]
The Last Station was adapted by Michael Hoffman into an Academy Award-nominated film ( The Last Station ) starring Helen Mirren, Christopher Plummer, James McAvoy, and Paul Giamatti. The film was released in December 2009. [16]
Based on his biography Empire of Self: A Life of Gore Vidal (Doubleday, October 2015), Parini co-wrote the screenplay with director Michael Hoffman of the Netflix original film Gore , starring Kevin Spacey as Vidal, [17] Michael Stuhlbarg as Vidal's gay lover Howard Austen [17] and Douglas Booth as "Jamie", a fictional character created for the movie who is a young British writer. [18] The film was filmed in 2017 and was originally due for release in 2018 [17] but that release was cancelled in November 2017 after it was revealed in late October that Spacey had engaged in sexual misconduct. [19] Almost all of Spacey's other projects at the time were either cancelled or had him recast (and in the case of All the Money in the World , even re-filmed with Christopher Plummer replacing him as J. Paul Getty after filming of the original was already complete [20] ) owing to this revelation. [19]
Borges and Me: An Encounter , Parini’s novelized memoir about his 1970 road trip through the Scottish Highlands with Jorge Luis Borges, is being adapted into a film directed by Marc Turtletaub. Parini is played by Fionn Whitehead alongside Luis Gnecco as Borges, Alan Cumming as Alastair Reid (poet), and Peter Mullan as George Mackay Brown. [21]
Parini is a regular contributor to various journals, websites and newspapers, including The Chronicle of Higher Education , [22] CNN , The Daily Beast , [23] The New York Times , [24] and The Guardian (U.K.). [25] He has written for GQ , [26] The Nation , [27] The Huffington Post , [28] and Salon.com . [29]
Parini has made numerous appearances on film, television and radio, including NPR, PBS, CNN, MSNBC, [30] CBS, C-SPAN, [31] and the BBC. [32]
Parini, along with Julia Alvarez and Galway Kinnell, was invited to read his poetry at the White House in 2003. However, First Lady Laura Bush canceled the event after learning the poets were intending to protest against the Iraq War. Noelia Rodriguez, a spokeswoman for Mrs. Bush said: “While Mrs. Bush respects the right of all Americans to express their opinions, she, too, has opinions and believes it would be inappropriate to turn a literary event into a political forum.” Parini responded: "For poets to remain silent at a time of national crisis is unconscionable," he said. Fellow poet Julia Alvarez added: "Why be afraid of us, Mrs. Bush? You're married to a scarier fellow." Parini said it was naive for organizers to think he and other poets would check their politics at the door of an event sponsored by the first lady. In response to Mrs. Bush's decision, Parini joined a group of poets that took part in a reading on February 16, 2003, at the Congregational Church in Manchester, Vermont, called "A Poetry Reading in Honor of the Right to Protest as a Patriotic and Historical Tradition". [33] The event was attended by over 700 people, and received national attention, bringing in over 50 reporters and warranting coverage by C-SPAN and 60 Minutes . [34]
In 2010, Parini and Christopher Hitchens debated religion, the invasion of Iraq, and the war on terror at the Pages & Places Book Festival in Scranton, Pennsylvania, which drew more than 2,000 people. [35]
Parini is married to the writer and psychologist Devon Jersild; they have three sons. [1]
Parini has won various fellowships and awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1992. [36] His novel Benjamin's Crossing was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year in 1997. [7] Parini's Robert Frost: A Life won the Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize for best non-fiction book of the year in 2000. [13] He was awarded the John Ciardi Lifetime Achievement Award by the National Italian American Foundation in 2002. [37] He has received honorary degrees from Lafayette College, Sewanee: The University of the South, and the University of Scranton. [1]
Robert Lee Frost was an American poet. Known for his realistic depictions of rural life and his command of American colloquial speech, Frost frequently wrote about settings from rural life in New England in the early 20th century, using them to examine complex social and philosophical themes.
Eugene Luther Gore Vidal was an American writer and public intellectual known for his acerbic epigrammatic wit. His novels and essays interrogated the social and sexual norms he perceived as driving American life. Vidal was heavily involved in politics, and unsuccessfully sought office twice as a Democratic Party candidate, first in 1960 to the United States House of Representatives, and later in 1982 to the United States Senate.
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Sydney Lea is an American poet, novelist, essayist, editor, and professor. He was the founding editor of the New England Review and was the Poet Laureate of Vermont from 2011 to 2015. Lea's writings focus the outdoors, woods, and rural life New England and "the mysteries and teachings of the natural world."
Robert Pack was an American poet and critic, and Distinguished Senior Professor in the Davidson Honors College at the University of Montana - Missoula. For thirty-four years he taught at Middlebury College and from 1973 to 1995 served as director of the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference. He is the author of twenty-two books of poetry and criticism. Pack has been called, by Harold Bloom, an heir to Robert Frost and Edwin Arlington Robinson, and has himself published a volume of admiring essays on Frost's poetry. He has co-edited several books with Jay Parini, including Writers on Writing: A Breadloaf Anthology.
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Robert Frost: A Life is a 2000 biography of the American poet Robert Frost written by Jay Parini. It won the Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize for best non-fiction book of the year.
The Last Station is a novel by Jay Parini that was first published in 1990. It is the story of the final year in the life of Leo Tolstoy, told from multiple viewpoints, including Tolstoy's young secretary, Valentin Bulgakov, his wife, Sophia Tolstaya, his daughter Sasha, his publisher and close friend, Vladimir Chertkov, and his doctor, Dushan Makovitsky. The novel was an international best-seller, translated into more than thirty languages, and adapted into an Academy Award-nominated film of the same name.
"Desert Places" is a poem by Robert Frost. It was originally written in 1933 and appeared in The American Mercury in April 1934, before being collected in Frost's 1936 book A Further Range. The book was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1937.
Borges and Me: an Encounter is a road trip novel based on a true story, a young Jay Parini's travels with renowned Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges. With Parini having to recreate 50 year old conversations largely from memory, the book has been called a novelized memoir.