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Thursday, 04 October 2007 |
by LINDSAY TIGAR
Lifestyles Editor
Everyone has something that helps them escape from reality. For some, it may be a vacation, going to see a movie, or taking a needed day off.
Students may escape tonight with an acclaimed author.
“Anytime a student has the opportunity to hear a writer read his work, and then be able to answer questions, it brings the work alive in ways that just reading the book doesn’t,” English professor Joseph R. Bathanti said. “It changes their perspective on things. It’s kind of like talking about a place and then visiting; literature comes alive in extraordinary ways.”
Nino Ricci will read from his works as part of the Frank Visiting
Writers Series at 7:30 p.m. in room 114 of Belk Library &
Information Commons.
He will also conduct a craft talk at 3:30 p.m. in Plemmons Student Union’s Table Rock Room.
“I just by accident came upon his work when I was doing some research,”
he said. “He has this terrific trilogy. I read the books and like them
a lot.”
According to Ricci’s Web site, ninoricci.com, his background inadvertently gave him a cultural perspective into his works.
“My experience of being an immigrant probably gave me a necessary sense
of marginality and ‘outsidedness’ that I think is important to one’s
formation as a writer, since it is often that sort of distancing that
gives writers their clear perspective on the society around them,” he
said on his Web site.
“Also, my Italian-Canadian background bequeathed me a wealth of rich
material which subsequently proved very important to my writing.”
Ricci will have an open range from which book he will discuss and read,
but Bathanti said he will focus on his most recent publication,
“Testament,” during the afternoon craft talk.
“Testament” is divided into four sections and discusses the life of
Jesus from the first-person accounts of Judas, Mary Magdalene, Jesus’
mother Mary, and Simon of Gergesa.
“My idea in ‘Testament’ was to try to look at the figure of Jesus in
purely human, and hence non-Christian, terms,” he said on his Web site.
“In other words, if we supposed that some actual historical figure lay
behind the myth of Jesus as it was handed down, what might he have been
like, stripped of interpolations and inventions of Christian tradition?”
Ricci’s other novels, “Lives of the Saints,” “In a Glass House,” and
“Where She Has Gone,” complete a trilogy focusing on immigrant
experiences, including some of Ricci’s own personal accounts.
The fall 2007 Visiting Writers Series is supported by the North
Carolina Arts Council and is named after Appalachian alumna and
supporter Hughlene Bostian Frank.
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He as a creative writing prof when I was at ASU.