The hills of northwestern Connecticut have long been dotted with the studios and homes of writers and artists. Philip Roth, Frank McCourt, and Honor Moore live in Litchfield County, as did Harriet Beecher Stowe, Madeleine L'Engle, James Thurber, Leonard Bernstein, Arthur Miller, and others. Photographs by Miller's late wife Inge Morath - on permanent exhibit at the University of Connecticut in Torrington - provide a visual history of acclaimed residents, including Alexander Calder and William Styron.
Now the region's artistic and literary culture will be further celebrated, thanks to an anonymous $250,000 gift to the Litchfield County Writers and Artists Project at UConn in Torrington, the biggest community in the region. In addition to hosting an artists' gallery and a library of first editions by leading residents, the project sponsors talk by writers and artists.
Its annual signature event has returned a longtime resident to the limelight. In the late 1950s, Professor Charles Van Doren resigned from Columbia University after he admitted to lying about his role in the TV quiz-show scandal. In recent years, Van Doren returned to teaching, this time at the Torrington campus, and inaugurated a well-attended public lecture and reading held every summer. Details forthcoming at www.lcwp.uconn.edu.
Adventures in admissions
"Fat Envelope Frenzy: One Year, Five Promising Students, and the Pursuit of the Ivy League Prize" (Harper), by Joie Jager-Hyman, formerly an admissions officer at Dartmouth College, portrays the emotional roller-coaster of the college application process.
One of the five students whom Jager-Hyman tracks in the book ultimately enrolls at Harvard. One decides to take a year off to train for the Olympics. The others attend Brandeis, Princeton, and Washington and Lee.
Jager-Hyman herself is now back in school. A doctoral candidate at Harvard's Graduate School of Education, she is studying low-income teenagers in Baltimore who are in the thick of applying to college.
Pets great and small
In his new book, animal surgeon Nick Trout invites comparisons to a latter-day urban James Herriot. Born and raised in England, Trout spins tales from his practice at Angell Animal Medical Center in "Tell Me Where It Hurts: A Day of Humor, Healing, and Hope in My Life as an Animal Surgeon" (Broadway).
His Boston-based memoir ranges from encounters with obese pets and devastated owners to making tricky diagnoses and dealing with cutting-edge technology. Trout proudly reports that Angell, operated by the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, prohibits cosmetic surgery, such as ear cropping and tail docking, as does Britain. He chides the American Veterinary Medical Association for its failure to institute a ban. "What next," he writes, "ear piercing?"
Coming out
"Onward, Christian Soldiers: The Growing Political Power of Catholics and Evangelicals in the United States," by Deal W. Hudson (Simon & Schuster/Threshold)
"Killer Heat," by Linda Fairstein (Doubleday)
"Itsy Bitsy Yoga for Toddlers and Preschoolers," by Helen Garabedian (Da Capo)
Pick of the week
Mitch Gaslin of Food for Thought Books, in Amherst, recommends "World Made by Hand," by James Howard Kunstler (Atlantic Monthly): "From the author of 'The Long Emergency' comes a novel of life in the Hudson Valley of New York after the industrialized world has run out of oil. A frightening and moving portrayal of the lives of a group of people attempting to maintain their community."
Jan Gardner can be reached at JanLGardner@yahoo.com.
