Contact
Us/FAQ Author
interviews Authortrek
Videos
Edited since 1998 by Kevin Patrick Mahoney Harry Potter News
Authors: A B C D E F G H
I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
Do you
write fiction or poetry? Then join our index by participating in the Authortrek
interview
Helen
DeWitt page
Helen DeWitt was born in Maryland, USA, in 1957. She was mainly brought up in South America, as her parents worked for the US diplomatic service (so looks to have had much the same childhood as Yann Martel – ed). She attended Smith College in 1975, but dropped out from Smith twice. After that, she studied Classics at Oxford University, where she was later awarded a DPhil. Helen DeWitt spent several years living in the UK. Her debut novel, “The Last Samurai”, received widespread acclaim upon its publication in 2001. This is Jonathan Safran Foer’s praise for the novel: “I think it is the best book, for my money, published in the last five years or so…It's so humane and so ambitious. She says all sorts of things in ways that have never been said and yet are so much more familiar than the way that you have seen a million times. It's a wonderful book.” She worked at US fast food outlet Taco Bell while finishing the novel. For many years, she was a trustee of the charity Camfed. In 2004, it was widely reported that Helen DeWitt had gone missing from her Staten Island home after sending a suicidal e-mail, but she was later found unharmed near Niagara Falls.
First Time novelists –
Helen DeWitt talks to Diane Baroni
Letter
to an Undergraduate – Helen DeWitt writes for The Yale Review of Books
Below is a
series of links concerning the cultural context of the novel.
How
Carbon-14 Dating Works - see p.3
The
Radcliffe Camera - see p. 18
The
Oxford Covered Market - p.19
MMD
Archives - mentions Debussy's Drowned Cathedral p.20
The Library
of our Dreams - more on the Library at Alexandria
p. 22
Aristarchus
of Samothrace - see p. 22
Chopin's
Revolutionary etude - p.23
Short
Summary of the Count of Monte Cristo - p.24
Rodin and
Rilke - p.25
Rainer
Maria Rilke - a bio
Letter
from Rilke to Balthus - p.26
William
James Sidis bio - the only real error I can find in The Last Samurai
is on p.29, where Helen DeWitt gets mixed up between William James Sidis, and
his father, Boris Sidis. Considering the theme of the novel, this is
quite a big error
Peridromophilia
Unbound - a further profile on William James Sidis
Frequently
asked Questions about W. J. Sidis - Dan Mahony's done a great deal of
research on William James Sidis
In Search of
the April Fool - a famous article about William James Sidis
Exerpts from Lila
by Robert J. Pirsig - Helen DeWitt's not the first novelist to mention
Sidis
The
Films of Akira Kurosawa - a not very complimentary review of Donald
Richie's book
Straight
No Chaser - hear the tune p.31
Maria Anna
"Nannerl" Mozart - a bio
Bernini
- a bio p.37
Yo-Yo Ma homepage -
p.44
The
Iliad Book 16 - see p. 48
Schoenberg's
Harmonielehre - see p. 61
Greek Girls
Playing at Ball by Lord Leighton - p.62 
Lord Leighton
- a bio and examples of his work
Schoenberg's
Moses und Aron - see p.65
Utamaro
and his Five Women - see p.127
Tsurezuregusa -
read the text online
Rosetta Stone -
p. 136
Alexandria:
The Triumph of Paulinism - mentions Aristarchus, Zenodotus, and
Didymus p.181
Der Erlkonig by
Goethe - a translation p.221
Sovernspeakout -
mentions The Eskimo Book of Knowledge p. 242
Eratosthenes
Finds Diameter of Earth! - an explanation p. 277
Lycophron -
a bio
More than Just Horned
Hats - more about Njal's Saga p. 301
The Idea of the Epic
by J. B. Hainsworth reviewed - see p. 303
Young
Man with a Skull by Frans Hals - see p. 314 
The Origins
of the First Powered, Man-carrying Airplane - see p. 136 - contains
the "My Observations of the flight of buzzards" quote
Kyzylkum -
see p. 330
Gieves
and Hawkes - the exclusive tailors p. 371
How to
be a Little Gauss - see p. 373
Hertzsprung-Russell
Diagram - p. 383
Wolf Rayet Spectra -
p. 389
Nikolai
Egorovich Zhukovsky - p. 414
The
Bathysphere Adventures - p. 415
Pablo Picasso:
Blue Period - p. 416
The
Indian upon God by William Butler Yeats - p. 439 - the "monstrous
Peacock" quote
The
Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Part the Third - source of the
"sun's rim dip" quote
Notes on
"The Shield of Achilles" by Auden - source of the "They
died as men" quote
Raoul
Wallenberg - a bio concerning what little we know about this
extraordinary man p. 459
Jonathan Glover: a
bio - see p. 490
Macbeth
Act. V Scene III - this is what Red Devlin quotes from p. 491
Glenn
Gould: Weird and Wonderous - p. 523
Lisez
cette page en français avec Babelfish Lesen
diese Seite auf Deutsch mit Babelfish
