Featured Interview With Enid Langbert
Tell us a little about yourself. Where were you raised? Where do you live now?
In the sixties, I spent my time marching, sitting in, and raging against segregation and the war while, in raising three children in my spare time. Eventually, I went to law school. I loved advocating for my clients as an attorney, whether they deserved it or not, until my husband became ill and I closed my practice to care for him. After he passed, I traveled widely and enrolled in an English literature master’s program.
While I was raising my children, in a big old house in the country, I had dogs and cats and chickens. Now that I live alone on the 39th floor of a Manhattan tower.
At what age did you realize your fascination with books? When did you start writing?
Books are among my earliest memories. My mother, an avid reader, surrounded me with books which she read to me often. When I was as young as three, she wrote down and showed me things I said, including poems like: Birdies flying overhead; Please come down and eat my bread. Sadly, I have to admit that this doggerel did not display much talent.
Who are your favorite authors to read? What is your favorite genre to read. Who Inspires you in your writings?
I am obsessed with James Joyce and am an avid fan of other Irish authors as well: William Butler Yeats – I attended the Yeats summer school in Sligo, Ireland; Brendan Behan – he spoke at Vassar when I was a freshman; Samuel Beckett and Oscar Wilde. I currently read mysteries — especially by Irish, Scottish and English authors. And, of course, Arthur Conan Doyle! I often re-read Dylan Thomas, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, e.e. Cummings, Alan Ginsberg, T.S. Eliot. I love Milan Kundera and always wanted to study with him. My favorite current author is Colm Toibin and I do enjoy many contemporary authors chosen by my long-standing book club.
Tell us a little about your latest book?
Paula Levy is fourteen years old in 1956, a unique moment in time. Adults, traumatized by the Depression and the Holocaust, cling to sameness, safeness and prosperity. But restless adolescents feel the beginnings of the revolution which will explode in the 1960’s. A conspiracy of silence surrounds the Holocaust, which has not yet even been named. And there are no words for the coming revolution. My book is about living in the shadows of the past and celebrating the future in the birth of rock & roll.
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