• Overture

    by David R. Slavitt
    Price $18.95
    Paperback
    Special Order
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    Overture

David R. Slavitt

discusses

Overture

This event includes a book signing

Date

Oct
12
Friday
October 12, 2012
3:00 PM ET

Location

Harvard Book Store
1256 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA 02138

Tickets

This event is free; no tickets are required.

Harvard Book Store is pleased to welcome back poet and translator DAVID R. SLAVITT for a discussion of his new novel, Overture.

While waiting for results from a prostate exam, Slavitt turns to the example of Marcel Proust and Dr. Édouard Brissaud, Proust's model for Dr. du Boulbon in The Guermantes Way and the man who first documented Gilles de la Tourette's Syndrome.

With the Frenchmen in his head and his diagnosis hovering, the writer grapples with the proper response to mortality, considering dogs as a metaphor for wandering souls, the scratch of a pen and its connection to eczema, and the contrast between his mother's murder and his own uncertain future. As Slavitt writes, "The mind is not where the real business of our lives is transacted, but somewhere else, in the recesses of the body."

David R. Slavitt
David R. Slavitt

David R. Slavitt

David R. Slavitt was born in White Plains, New York, in 1935, and educated at Andover, Yale, and Columbia University. A poet, translator, novelist, critic, and journalist, he is the author of more than seventy works of fiction, poetry, and poetry and drama in translation. He is also coeditor of the Johns Hopkins Complete Roman Drama in Translation series and the Penn Greek Drama Series. His honors include a Pennsylvania Council on Arts award, a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship in translation, an award in literature from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, and a Rockefeller Foundation Artist's Residence.

Harvard Book Store
1256 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA 02138

Walking from the Harvard Square T station: 2 minutes

As you exit the station, reverse your direction and walk east along Mass. Ave. in front of the Cambridge Savings Bank. Cross Dunster St. and proceed along Mass. Ave for three more blocks. You will pass Au Bon Pain, JP Licks, and TD Bank. Harvard Book Store is located at the corner of Mass. Ave. and Plympton St.

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