All posts tagged: Alexander Chee

Honoring Amherst Writers

For Amherst College’s fourth annual LitFest, The Common put together a Literary Landmarks tour of Amherst College, highlighting locations on campus with special connections to literary figures affiliated with the college, from Robert Frost to Lauren Groff. Building on that effort, we’ve compiled these highlights from The Common that were written either by or about Amherst professors, alums, and even current students.


The Poet in Rome: Richard Wilbur in Postwar Italy by Robert Bagg

Richard Wilbur circa 1944, standing near the 6 X 6 truck that transported gear for the 36th Texans Division during World War II.

Richard Wilbur graduated from Amherst College in 1942, and returned to Amherst to teach towards the end of his life, from 2008 to 2014.

“Richard Wilbur first visited Rome with the American Fifth Army that liberated the city, just behind the fleeing Germans, on 5 June 1944. By 10:00 p.m., his division, the 36th Texans, in trucks, in jeeps, and on mobile artillery, followed the tanks of the First Armored Division into the southern outskirts of Rome, where it paused, expecting to camp and rest within Cinecittà—then, as now, the sprawling center of Italy’s movie industry. Ever the explorer, Wilbur wandered into an abandoned viewing room and found, already loaded into an editing machine, a costume drama set in the Roman Empire. He turned the hand crank and watched a Fascist version of ancient history until his disgust overcame his curiosity.”

Honoring Amherst Writers
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Horizontal Feminists: An Interview with Alexander Chee

By JULIA LICHTBLAU

 Alexander Chee

 

Alexander Chee’s new novel The Queen of the Night, set almost entirely in France under the Second Empire (1866–1872), is the first-person narrative of a silver-voiced American orphan who maneuvers her way to acclaim as an opera singer, via the circus, can-can dancing, prostitution, and service as the Empress’s maid. Three desires drive Lilliet: to free herself from the tenor who literally owns her (having bought her from a whore house), to become a singer, and to reunite with the man she loves. Chee’s novel sumptuously recreates the intertwined worlds of les grandes horizontales or courtesans, the opera, and the court of Emperor Louis-Napoléon and Empress Eugénie with its spies and secret police.

This winter in Manhattan, New York, The Common’s Book Reviews Editor Julia Lichtblau talked at length with Alexander Chee about his forthcoming novel.

Horizontal Feminists: An Interview with Alexander Chee
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Review: The Queen of the Night

Book by ALEXANDER CHEE
Reviewed by JULIA LICHTBLAU

The Queen of the Night

Every so often a contemporary novel makes me want to go back to college—not because I don’t get it, but because the book induces a craving to know everything about its world. Reading The Queen of the Night, Alexander Chee’s hefty second novel, ten years in the making, I was ready to fill out the applications for a Master’s in 19th century French history and literature (with a minor in opera).

Set mostly in France under the Second Empire, (1866–1872), it’s the first-person narrative of a silver-voiced American orphan and master of self-reinvention, who becomes a European opera star and brushes the pinnacles of European power before crashing back to earth in the New World. Her rebirth wouldn’t be out of place on reality TV.

Review: The Queen of the Night
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