literature
Selected Shorts on Tour: New Milford Public Library, NJ
Thu, Jun 27 at 7:30 pm
Uptown Showdown with Janeane Garofalo and Dave Hill
Wed, Jul 17 at 8 pm
Selected Shorts: The Stories of John Updike
Wed, Oct 16 at 7:30 pm
Selected Shorts: A Surprising Night of Shorts!
Wed, Nov 6 at 7:30 pm
Selected Shorts: The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2013 with Jennifer Egan
Wed, Nov 20 at 7:30 pm
Selected Shorts: In and Out of the Kitchen with Lucky Peach
Wed, Dec 11 at 7:30 pm
Selected Shorts: How to Be a Man with Colum McCann and writer friends
Wed, Jan 22 at 7:30 pm
Selected Shorts: Funny Fictions with B.J. Novak
Wed, Feb 5 at 7:30 pm
Selected Shorts: Heroes and Villains with Chip Kidd
Wed, Feb 26 at 7:30 pm
Selected Shorts: Back to the '80s
Wed, Mar 19 at 7:30 pm
Thalia Book Club: Catch 22 50th Anniversary with Christopher Buckley, Robert Gottlieb, and Mike Nichols
An evening of readings and discussion: Heller's friends and colleagues including Christopher Buckley, Robert Gottlieb and Mike Nichols, revisit his classic black comedy set at the end of WWII, one of the most important books about patriotism, honor, the absurdities of war and beauracracy of the twentieth century. The conversation will be led by Lesley Stahl. An excerpt is performed by Scott Shepherd (Gatz).
Performance playlist:
Joseph Heller's Catch-22
Reading and Discussion
Question and Answer
Christopher Buckley is the author of thirteen books, most of them national bestsellers. They include: Boomsday, The White House Mess, Wet Work, God Is My Broker, Little Green Men, No Way To Treat a First Lady, Florence of Arabia, and Thank You For Smoking, which was turned into a major motion picture. In additional, Buckley has contributed over 60 comic essays to The New Yorker magazine. His journalism, satire, and criticism has been widely published -- in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, New Republic, Washington Monthly, Vanity Fair, Vogue, Esquire, and other publications. He is the recipient of the 2002 Washington Irving Medal for Literary Excellence and was awarded the Thurber Prize for American Humor in 2004. Buckey wrote the introduction to the Catch-22 50th Anniversary edition.
Joseph Heller (1923-1999) was born in Brooklyn, New York. He served as a pilot in World War II, which provided the material for his first novel, Catch-22. Heller was a lecturer in English at Pennsylvania State University in the early 1950s, when he began to formulate his first ideas for Catch-22. In addition to adapting Happens, Good as Gold, and Closing Time the sequel to Catch-22. He continued to write until his death in 1999 of a heart attack; his last novel, Portrait of an Artist, As an Old Man, was published posthumously.
Robert Gottlieb was a young editor at Simon and Schuster when he edited Catch-22 by the then-unknown Joseph Heller. Gottlieb later served as editor-in-chief of Simon and Schuster and Alfred A. Knopf, which he left in 1987 to succeed William Shawn as editor of The New Yorker, staying in the position until 1992. Gottlieb has edited books by John Cheever, Salman Rushdie, John Gardner, Ray Bradbury, Elia Kazan, Michael Crichton, Toni Morrison, Sidney Poitier, John Lennon, Paul Simon, Bob Dylan, and many others. He is also a frequent contributor to The New York Review of Books, The New York Times Book Review, The New Yorker, and The New York Observer. He is the author of several books including Reading Dance; Reading Jazz; Sarah: The Life of Sarah Bernhardt, and mostly recently Lives and Letters.
Mike Nichols is one of only twelve people to have won each of the major American entertainment awards: an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony Award. His first film was Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? followed by The Graduate, for which he received the Academy Award for best director. In 1970, he directed the film version of Catch-22, working closely with screenwriter Buck Henry, who also starred in the film. He has directed numerous films, including Silkwood, Postcards from the Edge, Regarding Henry, The Birdcage, Closer, and the made-for-television moves Angels in America and Wit, for which he received Emmy Awards. In addition, Nichols is one of the co-founders of the New Actors Workshop, where he occasionally teaches.
Scott Shepherd starred in the critically-acclaimed Gatz at the Public Theater, a production based on the novel The Great Gatsby by the experimental theater group Elevator Repair Service. His several appearances with Elevator Repair Service include No Great Society, Total Fictional Lie, and McGurk: A Cautionary Tale. He has worked with The Wooster Group since 1997, appearing in Vieux Carré, Poor Theater, Brace Up!, To You, The Birdie!, The Hairy Ape, and Hamlet, among others. His film credits include Meanwhile, Brief Reunion, Made Up Language, and Throwing Down. His upcoming projects include Eugene O'Neill's Early Plays with The Wooster Group at St. Ann's Warehouse this winter.
Lesley Stahl got her big break in network television covering the Watergate scandal from its beginning as a rookie reporter for CBS. During her career, she has interviewed world leaders and newsmakers including Boris Yeltsin, Margaret Thatcher, and Yasser Arafat, and served as moderator of the venerable CBS news program Face the Nation. Stahl has won numerous Emmys as well as other journalism awards, including the Fred Friendly First Amendment Award, the Edward R. Murrow Award for Overall Excellence in Television and the prestigious Alfred I. DuPont-Columbia University Journalism Award. She has been a correspondent on 60 Minutes since March 1991. The 2011-12 season marks her 21st on the broadcast.
