Word: kenan
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...surprisingly, Tims Creek is much like Chinquapin, N.C., the impoverished outpost where Kenan grew up "going to hog killings one minute and watching Star Trek the next." He was sent there at six weeks old by his parents, who were unmarried and residing in New York, to be reared by his great-aunt. His upbringing became the collective endeavor of a group of elderly relatives with abiding faith in both religion and folklore who spent endless hours telling fantastical stories--"tales of ghost dogs and people rising from the dead." The residue of these stories has found its way into...
...world he created in Yoknapatawpha County, perhaps the best-known plot of literary real estate, exerts its influence over the aspirations of the region's writers and the expectations of readers and critics. It could therefore be construed as an act of either bravado or foolishness that Randall Kenan, who lives in Memphis and was raised in North Carolina, has also constructed a fictional Southern locale, a swampy speck called Tims Creek, N.C. "I could have run," says Kenan, 37, of the inevitable comparisons, "but I'd be spending a lot of energy in vain. It's like the Bible...
...Kenan does not, however, shy away from reinterpreting the sacred texts. While Faulkner explored the remnants of a failed white aristocracy, Kenan is concerned mainly with Tims Creek's black population, descendants of the former slaves who founded the town. This network of working-class families, introduced in his novel A Visitation of Spirits (1989) and the short-story collection Let the Dead Bury Their Dead (1992), recurs in the novel he is currently writing, Fire and the Baptism, due early next year. It is a community clinging to the traditions of the past while grappling with the pressures...
There are also some old favorites taught again this summer. A Shakespeare course taught by Kenan Professor of English Marjorie Garber and "Baseball and American Society, 1840 to the Present" taught by Professor of HistoryWilliam Gienapp will likely draw a sizable number of students...
...might think. It's not because Harvard students score too high on their SATs or bubble with abnormal ambition; Wolfe has already spent a month researching at Stanford, certainly a Harvard competitor. The reason for his Harvard aversion, Wolfe confided to FM over champagne at the home of Kenan Government Prof. Harvey C. Mansfield Jr. '53, is that Harvard has no Division I sports teams. (Apparently lacrosse and swimming don't factor into his equation. Hockey, at least, merits a brief mention: "I'm so glad that so many of these Canadian semi-pro hockey players can all score...