As a little girl, I listened to the stories told and the opinions expressed by my large, extended, verbal family. As a young woman and writer I loved and learned from Doris Lessing, Henry Miller, Grace Paley and Isaac Bashevis Singer.
Romare Beardon's collages and Kenneth Patchen's picture poems, Fellini's 8 1/2, the poems and vision of William Blake and Czeslaw Milosz.
The first time I saw King Lear performed was in 1964 -- the year of Shakespeare's quadricentennial. I was a high school senior and Shakespeare was everywhere in Los Angeles that year.
SF MOMA has been showing the Fassbinder epic in segments this month. The director adapted Alfred Doblin's 1929 novel about Weimar Berlin, and the 13 episodes were shown on German TV in 1980.
Richard Shelton -- whose excellent Crossing the Yard I praised in a blog post a couple weeks ago -- is featured tonight on The Jim Lehrer NewsHour along with his prison workshop.
