Photo de l'auteur

Joan Acocella (1945–2024)

Auteur de Twenty-eight Artists and Two Saints: Essays

22+ oeuvres 304 utilisateurs 9 critiques 1 Favoris

A propos de l'auteur

Joan Acocella is a staff writer for the New Yorker.
Crédit image: Joyce Ravid

Œuvres de Joan Acocella

Mark Morris (1993) 48 exemplaires
Dancers (1992) 11 exemplaires
28 Artists & 2 Saints 1 exemplaire
the Empty Couch 1 exemplaire

Oeuvres associées

La Pitié dangereuse (1982) — Introduction, quelques éditions1,699 exemplaires
Life Stories: Profiles from the New Yorker (2000) — Contributeur — 299 exemplaires
The 40s: The Story of a Decade (2014) — Contributeur — 275 exemplaires
Dance to the Piper (1951) — Introduction — 148 exemplaires
The Best American Essays 1996 (1996) — Contributeur — 132 exemplaires
The Diary of Vaslav Nijinsky: Unexpurgated Edition (1999) — Directeur de publication, quelques éditions103 exemplaires
Baryshnikov: In Black and White (2002) — Introduction — 26 exemplaires
Before, Between, and Beyond: Three Decades of Dance Writing (2007) — Avant-propos — 11 exemplaires

Étiqueté

Partage des connaissances

Autres noms
Ross, Joan Barbara (birth)
Date de naissance
1945-04-13
Date de décès
2024-01-07
Sexe
female
Nationalité
USA
Lieu de naissance
San Francisco, California, USA
Lieu du décès
Manhattan, New York, USA
Cause du décès
cancer
Lieux de résidence
San Francisco, California, USA
Oakland, California, USA
New York, New York, USA
Études
University of California, Berkeley (BA | English, 1966)
Rutgers University (PhD | Comparative literature, 1984)
Professions
editor
journalist
dance critic
essayist
Organisations
Random House
Dance Magazine
The New Yorker
The New York Review of Books
Prix et distinctions
American Academy of Arts and Letters Academy Award (Literature ∙ 2007)
Guggenheim Fellowship (1993)
Agent
Robert Cornfield
Courte biographie
Joan Acocella has written for The New Yorker since 1992 and became the magazine’s dance critic in 1998.
She also has written on dance, literature, and the arts for many other publications.

Membres

Critiques

I read this book when it first came out and had a hard time not arguing against some of Acocella's assertions, particularly her stance against feminist academics, which is the heart of this book. After this second reading it still seems like Acocella has an axe to grind against feminist academics, particularity those who claim Cather as a lesbian. I'm personally quite happy that Cather has been claimed as a lesbian. This book gives the reader an idea of how Cather's reputation has ebbed & flowed over the decades according to the political and cultural needs of her critics and readers, but it does suffer from her often dismissive attacks against interpretations or schools of thought with which Acocella disagrees. Academic literary scholarship is a weird world, sometimes it seems like another planet, and Acocella is critiquing that world. She is reactionary and dismissive, yet I enjoyed re-reading this book (perhaps because I'm no longer an academic). It is probably only of interest to hard-core Cather fans who are familiar with academic literary scholarship.… (plus d'informations)
 
Signalé
Chris.Wolak | Oct 13, 2022 |
purchased at Powell's while visiting from California for dermatological surgery - cancer forehead - I loved this book the minute I saw it - probably in New Yorker - and on the rare occasions I pull it down from the shelf - I love it still
 
Signalé
Overgaard | 3 autres critiques | Mar 22, 2021 |
This issue of The New Yorker includes a good profile of M.F.K. Fisher by Joan Acocella titled "The American Appetites Of A Girl From Whittier". The profile includes a review of the just published M.F.K. Fisher A Life in Letters: Correspondence 1929 - 1991. Illustrated with old photo of Fisher. pp. 172-7.
 
Signalé
rschwed | Sep 29, 2013 |
Acocella profiles authors, dancers, choreographers and 2 saints. She gratifyingly chooses subjects other than ubiquitous dead white males (though there are plenty of those) and includes contemporary authors such as Hilary Mantel, Susan Sontag and Penelope Fitzgerald. Her style is very smooth and readable and she includes enough background so that I was never lost. I was familiar with many of the authors profiled but Acocella provides detailed summaries of works that she analyzes. I suppose if someone has read a weighty biography or in depth literary analysis of the works, the material will be redundant but I thought she did a very fine job in capturing the essentials in a short space. The initial POV provides a center to build around so each essay is not just a recapitulation of events in one person’s life. For example, she focuses on the idea of guilt-induced love in Stefan Zweig’s Beware of Pity then gives enough background information and period details to note what is new about the story and how it relates to the Zweig’s life and historical events. Most of the essays are focused on the artist's struggle and effort in writing/creating. A number of the people profiled took extended breaks in their work or, if they were women, started their artistic career late and had conflicted relationships with the men in their lives.

Acocella has a way of making you immediately interested in the story. For example, the essay on Primo Levi opens with a description of how everyone wanted Primo Levi to appear, consult, approve of their project after his publication of books that established him as a saintly Holocaust survivor, followed by Acocella’s notation that he often disappointed people. There are a number of great first lines – for the history of Joan of Arc in popular culture – “Joan of Arc movies, understandably, have always been low on sex, but in the newest entry, The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc, by Luc Besson, the French action-movie director, that omission is redressed” or the profile of Hilary Mantel – “When the English novelist Hilary Mantel was seven years old, she saw the Devil standing in the weeds beyond her back fence.” There’s a good dose of humor as well. I had some quibbles with some of her POVs (especially in the modern dance essays though I think this might just be because I’m not too familiar with modern dance) and in many of the pieces on ballet dancers or choreographers, Balanchine would just pop up and take over, but overall I really enjoyed this book. I was familiar with most of the authors, but after reading this I was inspired to read some of their books sooner rather than later. Highly recommended.
… (plus d'informations)
½
3 voter
Signalé
DieFledermaus | 3 autres critiques | Mar 8, 2012 |

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Statistiques

Œuvres
22
Aussi par
8
Membres
304
Popularité
#77,406
Évaluation
4.1
Critiques
9
ISBN
13
Favoris
1

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