White to Deliver CAS Fall Lecture Oct. 23

Date: Kathy Beal
Contact: 10/9/06

Illinois State University's College of Arts and Sciences Fall Lecture will be presented by English Professor Curtis White on Monday, Oct. 23, at 7:30 p.m. in the Bone Student Center Circus Room.

White's lecture will feature students from the School of Theater, under the direction of Kim Pereira, performing a scene from White's novel, Requiem. The evening will close with a reading by White of his story about Frederic Chopin, Marche Funebre.

A California native, White studied literature and philosophy at the University of San Francisco, and earned a graduate degree from the Johns Hopkins University and his Ph.D. in English from the University of Iowa.

The author of seven works of fiction including Memories of My Father Watching TV, The Idea of Home, Requiem, and America's Magic Mountain, White's work is funny and disturbing. David Foster Wallace, commenting on Memories of My Father Watching TV, describes White's work as "witheringly smart, grotesquely funny, grimly comprehensive, and so moving as to be wrenching."

White's second career as a social critic began in 2002 with the publication of an essay titled "The Middle Mind" in Harper's Magazine. The essay created a national furor in part because it attacked NPR's Terry Gross. Molly Ivins, commenting on the Harper's essay, called White a "splendidly cranky academic." Since then, a book of the same title has appeared with Harper San Francisco and Penguin Press in the United Kingdom, along with related essays in The Village Voice, In These Times, Harper's and Stop Smiling. Noted theorist Slavoj Zizek wrote, "The Middle Mind works like a long-awaited violent storm which brings in the fresh air and clears the table for new serious work. Not the least pleasure in reading the book resides in the refreshing malevolent irony which transpires from every page. Absolutely indispensable."

In January of 2007, White's 10th book, The Spirit of Disobedience, which is based on an essay originally published in Harper's, will be published. Distinguished social critic Lewis Lapham has commented that The Spirit of Disobedience is "a splendid book, distinguished by the clarity of its thought, the force of its argument, the eloquence of its expression. White brings a great light into the darkness that has descended upon the hope of a decent American future, and his book should be required reading for any citizen looking for a way out of the mess that we have made of both the Christian ethic and the democratic spirit."