The author discusses the updated, newly released version of her classic book “A Chance Meeting,” first published 20 years ago, with Jill Dolan, dean of the college at Princeton University.
From the Publisher:
Weaving a tapestry of creativity and circumstance, "A Chance Meeting: American Encounters" is a lauded chronicle of the many links and serendipitous meetings between giants of American culture—from Henry James to Gertrude Stein to Zora Neale Hurston to Marcel Duchamp. Reissued at its 20th anniversary by NYRB Classics, the book's inventive consideration of the lives and work of more than thirty American figures makes a group portrait and traces a web of companionship and influence that extends from just before the Civil War up through the Anti-Vietnam War march.
Cohen shows us, describing a series of, now boldly, now subtly, transformative encounters between a wide and surprising range of Americans. A young Henry James has his portrait taken by the photographer Mathew Brady—Brady, who will receive Walt Whitman in his studio and depict General Grant on the battlefield. Later, W.E.B. Du Bois and his professor William James visit Helen Keller; Edward Steichen and Alfred Stieglitz argue about photography; and Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston write a play together. Throughout, Cohen’s narrative loops back and leaps forward with supreme agility, connecting, among others, Willa Cather, Elizabeth Bishop, Marianne Moore, Beauford Delaney, James Baldwin, and Richard Avedon.
Rachel Cohen is the author of three books of nonfiction, most recently "Austen Years: A Memoir in Five Novels." Her essays have appeared in The New Yorker, The Guardian, The London Review of Books, and The New York Times, among other publications, and her work has been included in Best American Essays and Pushcart Prize anthologies. She is Professor of Practice in the Arts in the Creative Writing Program at the University of Chicago.
Jill Dolan is the dean of the college at Princeton University, where she also is professor in English and professor of theater in the Lewis Center for the Arts. Dolan received the 2011 George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism for her blog, “The Feminist Spectator.” Her book, "The Feminist Spectator in Action: Feminist Criticism on Stage and Screen," collects 20 of her blog posts and includes ten new essays. Dolan’s most recent book is "Wendy Wasserstein."
This event is co-presented the library and Labyrinth Books and cosponsored by Princeton University’s Lewis Center for the Arts, Humanities Council, and Department of Art and Archaeology.