Latest news with #InOurTime
Economist
12 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Economist
Hemingway remains the most famous 20th-century American novelist
Photograph: Getty Images I N the early 1920s Ernest Hemingway was a little-known journalist slumming around Europe and getting into absinthe-fuelled scrapes. Then, a century ago, in 1925, he published 'In Our Time', a book of short stories; in July of that year he started working on 'The Sun Also Rises', his first novel, which fictionalised his antics. It became the most celebrated book about the 'Lost Generation' in post-war Europe. Our choices show how power is wielded and abused Two new books look at the heyday of Vanity Fair, Vogue and their ilk The conservative Babylon Bee is finding it easier than the Onion A tech bro created a viral reservation-trading website. The industry wants to shut it down Here are five of the best tracks by heavy metal's 'prince of darkness' Chances are you have come across a 'Strix' cushion or a 'Rinnig' tea towel
Yahoo
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
In Our Time
Credit - Every week, British parliamentarian and author Melvyn Bragg interviews a panel of three academics on specialized subjects pertaining to history, religion, culture, science, and philosophy. Although designed as an intellectual conversation about "ideas, people and events that have shaped our world," the BBC Radio 4 show is more than accessible, thanks to Bragg's direct questions and single-topic episodes. When he first started the show in 1998, Bragg expected it would last only a few months thanks to a poor time slot, but over the next year he quickly grew his audience into the millions and expanded the show to around 45 minutes, which remains the average length for today's episodes. The show was made available as a podcast beginning in 2004 and now counts more than 1,000 episodes in its archives. The trick to its success? In Our Time often feels like you're listening in on a private meeting of the sharpest minds of our era, providing you a better, more holistic understanding of the world and our place within it. Contact us at letters@
Chicago Tribune
14-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Chicago Tribune
Children's ‘running of the bulls' highlights Hemingway Birthday Weekend in Oak Park
Three days of readings, a lecture, musical performances and even a children's version of the running of the bulls are planned for the Hemingway Birthday Weekend, July 18-20 in Oak Park. 'Part of our mission is his legacy,' said Keith Strom, executive director of the Ernest Hemingway Foundation of Oak Park, which runs the annual event. 'Him being born in Oak Park in 1899 is part of our institutional programming.' Strom said in addition to commemorating Hemingway's local connections, the weekend 'also allows us to give voice to the foundation and our mission of not only his legacy but also our work towards supporting artists of today and tomorrow.' The events also help support the Hemingway Business District financially by bringing in visitors. This year's Hemingway Birthday Weekend will also celebrate the 100th anniversary of the 1925 publication of 'In Our Time,' a collection of short stories and vignettes which became Hemingway's American debut. 'It was the seminal start of his career,' Strom said. To introduce people to that work, there will be a tour of the Hemingway Business District on July 18 with stops at three locations for readings from the book. Reading 1, at 6 p.m. at Yoga Loft, 115 N. Oak Park Ave., will be an interpretive discussion of 'Indian Camp' by Hemingway Foundation volunteer Renee Malknecht, who is a former literature teacher. Reading 2, at 7 p.m. at Dandelion Bookstore, 139 S. Oak Park Ave. will feature 'Soldier's Home,' with Nancy W. Sindelar, vice chair of the Hemingway Foundation, doing an interpretive discussion. The series concludes with Reading 3 at 8 p.m. at Scoville Building, 137 N. Oak Park Ave., with an interpretive discussion of 'Big Two-Hearted River' by Hemingway scholar J. Gerald Kennedy. All three readings are offered free of charge. The weekend celebration continues from 10 a.m.-noon on July 19 with the 2025 Kids Running of the Bulls, another free event. Children will decorate their own cardboard bull and parade them around Scoville Park at 800 Lake St. The event is produced in collaboration with the Hemingway Business District and the Collaboration for Early Childhood. 'It's been a remarkable success over the years,' Strom reported. 'It's a lot of fun.' From 3-4:30 p.m. on July 19, educator J. Gerald Kennedy will present the Hemingway Birthday Lecture at Oak Park Public Library, 834 Lake St. in the Veterans Room. 'Professor Kennedy is probably the main scholar around 'In Our Time,' because he was the editor of the Norton Critical Edition of 'In Our Time,'' Strom said. Kennedy is also the author of books about Hemingway called 'Imagining Paris' and 'French Connections,' the latter coedited with Jackson Bryer. 'I was vice president of the Hemingway Foundation for nine years and I have taught Hemingway for my entire academic career,' Kennedy said. Kennedy praised 'In Our Time' as 'Hemingway's first important work. It was really a huge breakthrough for Hemingway. It was the start of his career. It marked Hemingway as a significant author.' Kennedy is calling his lecture, 'The Rough Edges of In Our Time.' 'This is a collection of pieces that Hemingway composed over approximately two-and-a-half years,' Kennedy said. 'When he began the process, he had no idea where he was going. He started writing short pieces that appealed to him that in some way represented his own experience or his sense of the modern world after the Great War.' The process of creating the book was hampered by a series of mishaps, including the traumatizing loss of manuscripts, Kennedy said. In terms of the 'Rough Edges,' Kennedy explained, 'Even in the final work there are still many elements that you scratch your head at.' The only weekend event with a charge is the Hemingway Birthday Porch Concert with Local Memory and Lydia Cash, 7-9 p.m. July 19 at the Hemingway Birthplace Museum, 339 N. Oak Park Ave. Admission is $15. Strom said they chose these newer local groups because, 'It works with what we're trying to do in terms of supporting new artists. The Chicago-based group Local Memory, which started about a year-and-a-half ago, consists of Amy Myers (songwriter, rhythm guitarist, lead vocalist); Lucas Chamberlain (electric guitar); Matt Ciani (bass guitar); Nico Ciani (drummer); Nicole Murray (keyboards); and Lydia Cash (backup vocalist, viola). 'I feel like we're kind of country-adjacent indie-rock. The alternative is the best I've been able to come up with at this time,' Myers said. They have performed at Chicago venues including The Empty Bottle, The Hideout and Judson & Moore. 'We perform original music,' said Myers, who writes all of the band's songs. 'Occasionally, we'll throw in a cover or two.' She has been writing songs for a decade. At the Hemingway Birthday Porch Concert, Myers said, 'We're going to split the bill with our friend Lydia Cash. She's going to perform her original music as well. She's releasing a new record. We split band members.' The gig means a lot to Local Memory, Myers said. 'We love the opportunity to play outside, especially in such a historic town on such a big day for celebration.' The weekend celebration concludes with a concert of American roots and country music by Reverie Stone, 6-7:30 p.m. July 20 at Scoville Park, 800 Lake St. Strom praised the Hemingway Birthday Weekend for 'providing an opportunity for educators to show their talents and their knowledge.' In addition, Strom indicated that he enjoys acknowledging student scholarship winners at the Porch Concert. 'I get a kick out of that kind of stuff,' he declared. More information is at
NBC News
26-05-2025
- NBC News
Susan Brownmiller, author of the landmark book on sexual assault, ‘Against Our Will,' dies at 90
NEW YORK — Susan Brownmiller, a prominent feminist and author of the 1960s and '70s whose 'Against Our Will' was a landmark and intensely debated bestseller about sexual assault, has died. She was 90. Brownmiller, who had been ill, died Saturday at a New York hospital, according to Emily Jane Goodman, a retired New York State Supreme Court justice and practicing attorney who serves as the executor of Brownmiller's will. A journalist, anti-war protester and civil rights activist before joining the 'second wave' feminist movement in its formative years, Brownmiller was among many women who were radicalized in the '60s and '70s and part of the smaller circle that included Gloria Steinem, Betty Friedan and Kate Millett who radicalized others. While activists of the early 20th century focused on voting rights, the second wave feminism transformed conversations about sex, marriage reproductive rights, workplace harassment and domestic violence. Brownmiller, as much as anyone, opened up the discussion of rape. 'Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape,' published in 1975 and widely read and taught for decades after, documented the roots, prevalence and politics of rape — in war and in prison, against children and spouses. She denounced the glorification of rape in popular culture, contended that rape was an act of violence, not lust, and traced rape to the very foundations of human history. 'Man's structural capacity to rape and woman's corresponding structural vulnerability are as basic to the physiology of both our sexes as the primal act of sex itself,' she wrote. In her 1999 memoir 'In Our Time,' Brownmiller likened the writing of 'Against Our Will' to 'shooting an arrow into a bulls-eye in very slow motion.' Brownmiller started the book in the early 1970s after hearing stories from friends that made her shriek 'with dismay.' It was chosen as a main selection of the Book-of-the-Month Club and considered newsworthy enough for Brownmiller to be interviewed on the TODAY show by Barbara Walters. In 1976, Time magazine placed her picture on its cover, along with Billie Jean King, Betty Ford and nine others as 'Women of the Year.' Brownmiller's book inspired survivors to tell their stories, women to organize rape crisis centers, and helped lead to the passage of marital rape laws. It was also received with fear, confusion and anger. Brownmiller remembered a newspaper reporter shouting at her, 'You have no right to disturb my mind like this!' Brownmiller was also faulted for writing that rape was an assertion of power that helped all men and was strongly criticized for a chapter titled 'A Question of Race,' in which she revisited the 1955 murder in Mississippi of Black teen Emmett Till. Brownmiller condemned his gruesome death at the hands of a white mob but also blamed Till for the alleged incident that led to his death: whistling at Bryant's wife, Carolyn Bryant. The chapter reflected ongoing tensions between feminists and civil rights leaders, with activist Angela Davis writing that Brownmiller's views were 'pervaded with racist ideas.' In 2017, New Yorker editor David Remnick would call her writing about Till's murder 'morally oblivious.' Asked by Time magazine in 2015 about the passages on Till, she replied that she stood by 'every word.' Steinem would criticize Brownmiller for comments she made during a 2015 interview with New York magazine, when Brownmiller said that one way for women to avoid being assaulted was not to get drunk, suggesting that women themselves were to blame. Brownmiller's other books included 'Femininity,' 'Seeing Vietnam' and the novel 'Waverly Place,' based on the highly publicized trial of lawyer Joel Steinberg, convicted in 1987 of manslaughter for the death of his 6-year-old daughter, Lisa. In recent years, Brownmiller taught at Pace University. 'She was an active feminist, she was not one to just agree with the popular issue of the day,' said Goodman, whose friendship with Brownmiller spanned decades. She recalled remarkable gatherings, including poker nights, at Brownmiller's longtime Greenwich Village apartment, which was the subject of her 2017 book, 'My City Highrise Garden.' Another longtime close friend, 92-year-old Alix Kates Shulman, a fellow writer and feminist, lived within walking distance. 'We were women's liberation comrades,' she said. Brownmiller was born in New York City in 1935, and would note proudly that her birthday, Feb. 15, was the same as Susan B. Anthony's. Her father was a sales clerk, her mother a secretary and both were so devoted to Franklin Roosevelt and so knowledgeable of current events that Brownmiller 'became very intense about these things too.' She was a Cornell University scholarship student at and had a brief 'very mistaken ambition' to be a Broadway star, working as a file clerk and waitress as she hoped for roles that never materialized. The civil rights movement changed her life. She joined the Congress of Racial Equality in 1960 and four years later was among the 'Freedom Summer' volunteers who went to Mississippi to help register Black people to vote. During the '60s, she also wrote for the Village Voice and for ABC television and was a researcher at Newsweek. In the late 1970s, Brownmiller helped found the New York chapter of 'Women Against Pornography,' with other members, including Steinem and Adrienne Rich. Organizers agreed that porn degraded and abused women, but differed over how to respond. Brownmiller wrote an influential essay, 'Let's Put Pornography Back in the Closet,' disputing arguments that pornography was protected by the First Amendment. But she opposed anti-porn leader Catherine MacKinnon's push for legislation, believing that pornography was best confronted through education and protests. In the 1980s, Brownmiller stepped back from activism and in her memoir noted her despair over the 'slow seepage, symbolic defeats and petty divisions' that were both causes and symptoms of the movement's decline. But she still remembered her earlier years as a rare and precious chapter. 'When such a coming-together takes place, when the vision is clear and the sisterhood is powerful, mountains are moved and the human landscape is changed forever,' Brownmiller wrote. 'Of course it is wildly unrealistic to speak in one voice for half the human race, yet that is what feminism always attempts to do, and must do, and that is what Women's Liberation did do, with astounding success, in our time.'
Yahoo
25-05-2025
- Yahoo
Susan Brownmiller, author of landmark book on sexual assault, dies at 90
NEW YORK — Susan Brownmiller, a prominent feminist and author of the 1960s and '70s whose 'Against Our Will' was a landmark and intensely debated best-seller about sexual assault, has died. She was 90. Brownmiller, who had been ill, died Saturday at a New York hospital, according to Emily Jane Goodman, a retired New York State Supreme Court justice and practicing attorney who serves as the executor of Brownmiller's will. A journalist, anti-war protester and civil rights activist before joining the 'second wave' feminist movement in its formative years, Brownmiller was among many women who were radicalized in the '60s and '70s and part of the smaller circle that included Gloria Steinem, Betty Friedan and Kate Millett who radicalized others. While activists of the early 20th century focused on voting rights, second wave feminism transformed conversations about sex, marriage reproductive rights, workplace harassment and domestic violence. Brownmiller, as much as anyone, opened up the discussion of rape. 'Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape,' published in 1975 and widely read and taught for decades after, documented the roots, prevalence and politics of rape — in war and in prison, against children and spouses. She denounced the glorification of rape in popular culture, contended that rape was an act of violence, not lust, and traced rape to the very foundations of human history. 'Man's structural capacity to rape and woman's corresponding structural vulnerability are as basic to the physiology of both our sexes as the primal act of sex itself,' she wrote. In her 1999 memoir 'In Our Time,' Brownmiller likened the writing of 'Against Our Will' to 'shooting an arrow into a bulls-eye in very slow motion.' Brownmiller started the book in the early 1970s after hearing stories from friends that made her shriek 'with dismay.' It was chosen as a main selection of the Book-of-the-Month Club and considered newsworthy enough for Brownmiller to be interviewed on the 'Today' show by Barbara Walters. In 1976, Time magazine placed her picture on its cover, along with Billie Jean King, Betty Ford and nine others as 'Women of the Year.' Brownmiller's book inspired survivors to tell their stories, women to organize rape crisis centers and helped lead to the passage of marital rape laws. It was also received with fear, confusion and anger. Brownmiller remembered a newspaper reporter shouting at her, 'You have no right to disturb my mind like this!' Brownmiller was also faulted for writing that rape was an assertion of power that helped all men and was strongly criticized for a chapter titled 'A Question of Race,' in which she revisited the 1955 murder in Mississippi of Black teen Emmett Till. Brownmiller condemned his gruesome death at the hands of a white mob but also blamed Till for the alleged incident that led to his death: whistling at Bryant's wife, Carolyn Bryant. The chapter reflected ongoing tensions between feminists and civil rights leaders, with activist Angela Davis writing that Brownmiller's views were 'pervaded with racist ideas.' In 2017, New Yorker editor David Remnick would call her writing about Till's murder 'morally oblivious.' Asked by Time magazine in 2015 about the passages on Till, she replied that she stood by 'every word.' Steinem would criticize Brownmiller for comments she made during a 2015 interview with New York magazine, when Brownmiller said that one way for women to avoid being assaulted was not to get drunk, suggesting that women themselves were to blame. Brownmiller's other books included 'Femininity,' 'Seeing Vietnam' and the novel 'Waverly Place,' based on the highly publicized trial of lawyer Joel Steinberg, convicted in 1987 of manslaughter for the death of his 6-year-old daughter, Lisa. In recent years, Brownmiller taught at Pace University. 'She was an active feminist, she was not one to just agree with the popular issue of the day,' said Goodman, whose friendship with Brownmiller spanned decades. She recalled remarkable gatherings, including poker nights, at Brownmiller's longtime Greenwich Village apartment, which was the subject of her 2017 book, 'My City Highrise Garden.' Another longtime close friend, 92-year-old Alix Kates Shulman, a fellow writer and feminist, lived within walking distance. 'We were womens' liberation comrades,' she said. Brownmiller was born in New York City in 1935, and would note proudly that her birthday, Feb. 15, was the same as Susan B. Anthony's. Her father was a sales clerk, her mother a secretary and both were so devoted to Franklin Roosevelt and so knowledgeable of current events that Brownmiller 'became very intense about these things too.' She was a Cornell University scholarship student at and had a brief 'very mistaken ambition' to be a Broadway star, working as a file clerk and waitress as she hoped for roles that never materialized. The civil rights movement changed her life. She joined the Congress of Racial Equality in 1960 and four years later was among the 'Freedom Summer' volunteers who went to Mississippi to help register Blacks to vote. During the '60s, she also wrote for the Village Voice and for ABC television and was a researcher at Newsweek. In the late 1970s, Brownmiller helped found the New York chapter of 'Women Against Pornography,' with other members, including Steinem and Adrienne Rich. Organizers agreed that porn degraded and abused women, but differed over how to respond. Brownmiller wrote an influential essay, 'Let's Put Pornography Back in the Closet,' disputing arguments that pornography was protected by the First Amendment. But she opposed anti-porn leader Catherine MacKinnon's push for legislation, believing that pornography was best confronted through education and protests. In the 1980s, Brownmiller stepped back from activism and in her memoir noted her despair over the 'slow seepage, symbolic defeats and petty divisions' that were both causes and symptoms of the movement's decline. But she still remembered her earlier years as a rare and precious chapter. 'When such a coming-together takes place, when the vision is clear and the sisterhood is powerful, mountains are moved and the human landscape is changed forever,' Brownmiller wrote. 'Of course it is wildly unrealistic to speak in one voice for half the human race, yet that is what feminism always attempts to do, and must do, and that is what Women's Liberation did do, with astounding success, in our time.'
