Susan Coll ’81’s latest comic novel, Professor Amy Lyford’s examination of the art and life of Dorothea Tanning, and more
Real Life and Other Fictions, by Susan Coll ’81 (Harper Muse). Cassie Klein is a 50-something aspiring novelist waiting for her literary dreams to take flight—only now her plot points aren’t lining up. Orphaned at age 2, Cassie has long wondered why her D.C.-based parents were driving on the Silver Bridge in West Virginia when it collapsed on Dec. 15, 1967, taking their lives. Her search for answers prompted a failed career in journalism, and Cassie is teaching at a community college when she learns that her once-doting husband, Richard, is cheating on her. Cassie has had enough. Scooping up her 8-month-old rescue Lab, Luna, she embarks on a road trip, heavy on impulse and light on planning, to answer the question: What really happened to her parents in 1967? In the process, she encounters an enigmatic cryptozoologist who helps her in the quest to discover her past, and she looks for answers regarding curious sightings of a creature known as the Mothman in the months before her parents died. As the line between real life and fiction blurs, Cassie grapples with the nature of stories, myths, and who gets to write the endings. Real Life and Other Fictions is the seventh novel by Coll (Bookish People), who lives in Washington, D.C.
Exquisite Dreams: The Art and Life of Dorothea Tanning, by Amy Lyford (Reaktion Books). Dorothea Tanning (1910-2012) has for decades been known primarily as a Surrealist, but Exquisite Dreams shows how the work of this passionate, dynamic, and voraciously curious artist is impossible to categorize. Tanning’s lesser-known but equally powerful sculptures, abstract paintings, and films are explored here, and her writings, biography, and art are examined in the context of 20th-century developments in advertising, fashion, popular culture, and art in New York and Paris. Using new archival sources and analyses of Tanning’s work in a variety of media, Amy Lyford broadens our understanding of the artist and illuminates her stunning diversity and achievement. This richly illustrated book is an important contribution to the history of women artists, gender, and sexuality studies, as well as the history of Surrealism. Lyford is the Arthur G. Coons Professor in the History of Ideas at Occidental College.
The Brain Development Revolution: Science, the Media, and Public Policy, by Ross Thompson ’76 (Cambridge University Press). The science of human development informs our thinking about children and their development. In his book, Thompson seeks to answer the question of how and why early brain development is such a predominant lens through which we perceive young children. Answering this question draws him in many directions: a discussion of why neuroscience has such a compelling effect on our thinking, reflections on the intersection of developmental neuroscience and developmental science, and the 1997 “I Am Your Child” campaign that created a national awareness of early brain development and its importance—and led to many public policy initiatives, including California’s Proposition 10 (First 5 California). A magna cum laude graduate of Occidental as a psychology major, Thompson recently retired from UC Davis as distinguished professor emeritus of psychology.
The Only Way Out: The Racial and Sexual Performance of Escape, by Katherine Brewer Ball ’01 (Duke University Press). America has long held a fascination with the escape story as a means of exploring our conceptions of freedom and constraint. Such stories become mythic in their episodic iterations, revealing the fantasies and desires of society, storyteller, and listener. While white escape narratives have typically been laden with Enlightenment fantasies of redemption where freedom is available to any individual willing to seize it, Brewer Ball examines a range of works—from 19th-century American literature to contemporary art and writing—to explore how Black and queer escape offer forms of radical possibility. Brewer Ball is assistant professor of theater at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Conn.
Top photo: Susan Coll '81, photographed at Politics and Prose bookstore in Washington, D.C.
