The world of letters lost a number of prominent voices in recent days:
Winner of the 2007 Nobel Prize for literature Doris Lessing 94, died at home in London on Sunday. Her 1962 book The Golden Notebook remains her best-known work, and her editor Nicholas Pearson at Harper UK tells the NYT it was a handbook for an entire generation. The NYT adds: “The 1962 book was daring in its day for its frank exploration of the inner lives of women who, unencumbered by marriage, were free to raise children, or not, and pursue work and their sex lives as they chose.”
Author of the Junie B. Jones series and creator of over 50 books for young readers in all Barbara Park, 66, died on Friday following a lengthy battle with ovarian cancer. Random House says the Junie B. Jones series has sold 55 million copies in North America alone. With her husband she founded Sisters in Survival, a charity that supports women with ovarian cancer, and donations are invited to the organization in her honor. She once said: “There are those who believe that the value of a children’s book can be measured only in terms of the moral lessons it tries to impose or the perfect role models it offers. Personally, I happen to think that a book is of extraordinary value if it gives the reader nothing more than a smile or two. In fact, I happen to think that’s huge.”
Co-founder of Algonquin Books and longtime creative writing professor at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill Louis Rubin died Saturday, three days before his 90th birthday. The Raleigh News Observer calls him a “monumental voice in Southern literature.” They note: “As an educator and mentor, he humbly and generously kindled the muse in many — including such noted Southern writers as Lee Smith, Jill McCorkle, Kaye Gibbons, Clyde Edgerton, Annie Dillard and John Barth.” Edgerton says, “He was a brilliant editor which grew out of his childlike enthusiasm for literature and his wisdom for narrative.”
William Weaver, the prolific translator of dozens of works by authors include Italo Calvino, Umberto Eco and Primo Levi died in Rhinbeck, NY last Tuesday at age 90. The winner of a National Book Award in 1969 for translation for his work on Italo Calvino’s Cosmicomics, the NYT notes that Weaver “helped lift Italian literature to prominence among readers of English.”