Marni Sandweiss, author of PASSING STRANGE, Q&A in PW

Passing Strange
by Parul Sehgal -- Publishers Weekly, 12/22/2008

In Passing Strange (Reviews, Dec. 1), Sandweiss uncovers the double life of Clarence King, the renowned geologist who mapped the American West—and crossed color lines, passing as a black Pullman porter, James Todd, to marry Ada Copeland, a black nursemaid.

How did you come across this story?

I read Thurman Wilkins's spectacular biography of Clarence King in graduate school. It haunted me. Reading Philip Roth's wonderful The Human Stain got me thinking again, as did the Clinton scandal: Clinton messed up for 30 minutes and the story was spread around the world. King sustained a secret life for 13 years. So I sat down one day to see if there was anything I could do with the story. In five minutes I found the census document of King reporting to be black.

King's life reads like a Who's Who of the time: Henry Adams, Henry James, John Hayes—

James Weldon Johnson! Who would have thought? And Frederick Douglass. It's like six degrees of Clarence King. In the 19th century, he would have been on the cover of [the equivalent of] People magazine, but when the story came out in the 1930s, he had dropped out of public consciousness.

For the rest of the article, click here.

Susan Fox Rogers, editor of Antarctica: Life on the Ice, Q and A on World Hum

Susan Fox Rogers: Antarctica for ‘Dreamers and Readers’

Days after the ice claimed a cruise ship, Jim Benning asks the editor of a new Travelers’ Tales story collection about the magnetic pull of the end of the earth.
From WorldHum.com

As a child, Susan Fox Rogers read stories about Antarctica explorers Ernest Shackleton and Robert Falcon Scott that sparked her imagination. In 2004-05, she spent six weeks at McMurdo Station as part of the National Science Foundation’s Antarctic Artists and Writers Program. She went there with plans to edit a story collection that included contributions from professional writers and others who work there. The result is the new Travelers’ Tales anthology, Antarctica: Life on the Ice. It’s the 11th story collection she has edited. I dialed her up this week at her office in the Hudson River Valley—she teaches creative writing at Bard College—to ask her about the book and the allure of Antarctica.

World Hum: First off, what’d you make of the cruise ship wreck over the weekend?

Susan Fox Rogers: There are a couple of things that are really fantastic about it. Here’s this ship built specifically to go into dangerous terrain, icy waters. None of the reports say the ship was structurally weak. I don’t know much about boats but I know the technology of tracking what’s below a ship is powerful and accurate. You know what’s around you. The fact that this happened shows that the variables involved in traveling in this terrain are enormous.

And the trip was called “Spirit of Shackleton.” They got what they were looking for. These passengers must have been terrified. They didn’t know they were going to be rescued when they climbed into these boats. Shackleton’s men kept their spirits up by singing. And apparently, these cruise passengers were telling jokes to keep their spirits up. Psychology is a huge part of one’s survival there.

For the rest of the Q and A, click here.

Christopher Lane Q&A in Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Q&A / CHRISTOPHER LANE, author: Experts play with people's emotions

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 12/09/07

Christopher Lane is the Miller research professor at Northwestern University and the author of the newly published "Shyness: How Normal Behavior Became a Sickness."

His last book, "Hatred and Civility: The Antisocial Life in Victorian England," explored misanthropy, or people-hating, in the 19th century. "One of the things I was trying to do in this new book was think about what happened to misanthropes in the 20th and even 21st century," Lane said.

"As one psychiatrist that I interviewed put it, 'Well, they probably all got medicated, right?' Although his response was a bit glib, the risk is that indeed a lot of these emotions have been distorted or interfered with through medication."

Lane's book focuses on the process by which the psychiatric "bible" —- the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders" —- was revised in the 1970s and '80s by a task force of specialists appointed by the American Psychiatric Association.

The AJC spoke with Lane recently by phone. Here is an edited transcript of that conversation:

Q. You were able to review hundreds of documents pertaining to the 1980 revision of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual —- documents that offered a glimpse of the process that few people had ever had before. What were some of the things that surprised you most in those files?

A. I was astonished at the carelessness of the psychiatrists and the degree to which their own self-interest often trumped scientific rigor. There are tremendous revelations of their own ambition and their willingness to sacrifice scientific rigor on the altar of expediency.

For the rest of the Q&A, click here.