Roger Rosenblatt
ROGER ROSENBLATT, whose work has been published in 14 languages, is the author of five New York Times Notable Books of the Year, and three Times bestsellers, including the memoirs KAYAK MORNING, THE BOY DETECTIVE, and MAKING TOAST, originally an essay in the New Yorker. His newest book is THE STORY I AM, a collection on writing and the writing life.
Rosenblatt has also written seven off-Broadway plays, notably the one-person Free Speech in America, that he performed at the American Place Theater, named one of the Times's "Ten Best Plays of 1991." Last spring at the Bay Street Theater in Sag Harbor, he performed and played piano in his play, Lives in the Basement, Does Nothing, which will go to the Staller Center for the Arts at Stony Brook, and the Flea Theater in New York in 2021. He also wrote the screenplay for his bestselling novel LAPHAM RISING, to star Frank Langella, Stockard Channing, and Bobby Cannavale, currently in production.
The Distinguished Professor of English and Writing at SUNY Stony Brook/Southampton, he formerly held the Briggs-Copeland appointment in creative writing at Harvard, where he earned his Ph.D. Among his honors are two George Polk Awards; the Peabody, and the Emmy, for his essays at Time magazine and on PBS; a Fulbright to Ireland, where he played on the Irish International Basketball Team; seven honorary doctorates; the Kenyon Review Award for Lifetime Literary Achievement; and the President's Medal from the Chautauqua Institution for his body of work.
“I'm going to kill Fairy Tale Dora and my little dog too.”
“Why do we write?"To make suffering endurableTo make evil intelligibleTo make justice desirableand . . . to make love possible”
“Do not keep company with people who speak of careers. Not only are such people uninteresting in themselves; they also have no interest in anything interesting. . . . Keep company with people who are interested in the world outside themselves. The one who never asks you what you are working on; who never inquires as to the success of your latest project; who never uses the word career as a noun -- he is your friend.”
“Children love to be alone because alone is where they know themselves and where they dream.”
“There may be no more pleasing picture in the world than that of a child peering into a book - the past and the future entrancing each other.”
“A library should be like a pair of open arms.”