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Phillip Lopate on Adopting a Voice Against Sentimentalism.

Novelist and essayist Phillip Lopate. In "Against Joie de Vivre," his new collection of essays, Lopate writes about - and rails against - the enforced gaiety of dinner parties, camaraderie in bars, teaching Chekhov to 10-year-olds and overwrought writing about architecture. In one essay, `Samson and Delilah,' Lopate uses the biblical essay to ruminate on power relations within his own family, and his confused love relationship with his mother and wife. His other books include "Bachelorhood," "The Rug Merchant" and "Confessions of Summer." One of his best-known works, "Being with Children," recalls his trials and triumphs as a teacher of writing at a New York City public school. (Rebroadcast. Original date May 26, 1989).

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Other segments from the episode on November 6, 1989

Fresh Air with Terry Gross, November 6, 1989: Interview with Phillip Lopate; Review of Art Pepper's album "The Complete Galaxy Recordings"; Interview with John Haines; Commentary on the television…
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10:49

What John Haines Has Learned from the Solitude and Work of Living in the Wilderness.

Poet and essayist John Haines. Haines' new book "The Stars, The Snow, The Fire," recalls the 25 years he spent homesteading in the Alaskan wilderness. Haines is "one of our best nature writers," according to Hayden Carruth of Harpers Magazine. Carruth writes that Haines also "knows the ecological crisis ... as a crisis of consciousness, the human mind in ultimate confrontation with itself." (Rebroadcast. Original date July 25, 1989).

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