 Lawrence Weschler
Illustration: David Hockney
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Lawrence Weschler
Lawrence Weschler, a graduate of Cowell College of the University of California at Santa Cruz (1974), was for over twenty years (1981-2002), until his recent retirement, a staff writer at The New Yorker, where his work shuttled between political tragedies and cultural comedies. He is a two-time winner of the George Polk Award (for Cultural Reporting in 1988 and Magazine Reporting in 1992) and was also a recipient of Lannan Literary Award (1998).
His books of political reportage include The Passion of Poland (1984); A Miracle, A Universe: Settling Accounts with Torturers (1990); and Calamities of Exile: Three Nonfiction Novellas (1998).
His “Passions and Wonders” series currently comprises Seeing is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees: A Life of Contemporary Artist Robert Irwin (1982);
David Hockney’s Cameraworks (1984); Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonder (1995); A Wanderer in the Perfect City: Selected Passion Pieces (1998) Boggs: A Comedy of Values (1999); Robert Irwin: Getty Garden (2002); and now Vermeer in Bosnia: A Reader (2004). Mr. Wilson was shortlisted for both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award.
He has taught, variously, at Princeton, Columbia, UCSC, Bard, Vassar, NYU, and Sarah Lawrence.
He is currently director of the New York Institute for the Humanities at NYU, where he has been a fellow since 1991, and from which base he is trying to start his own semiannual journal of writing and visual culture, Omnivore. He is also a contributing editor to McSweeney’s and the Threepeeny Review; chair of the Sundance (formerly Soros) Documentary Film Fund; and director of the Ernst Toch Society, dedicated to the promulgation of the music of his grandfather, the noted Weimar emigre composer.
Once, happening upon a Portuguese edition of Weschler’s 1990 book on torture in Latin America during a photo opportunity in a Rio shopping mall, Chilean General Augusto Pinochet flipped through its pages for a few moments, whereupon he pronounced, “Lies, all lies. The author is a liar and a hypocrite.”
Lawrence Weschler Links
Wescher's story about his grandfather, composer Ernst Toch, in The Atlantic:
www.theatlantic.com/issues/96dec/toch/weschler.htm
92nd Street Y in NYC - Weschler's Class on Narrative Nonfiction :
www.92y.org/shop
PRI's This American Life:
www.thislife.org
McSweeney's:
www.mcsweeneys.net
The Three Penny Review:
www.threepennyreview.com
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