Panel

Allison Lurie

Literary Laughs Alison Lurie and Bill Savage

ABOUT 

  • ABOUT Alison Lurie

    Alison Lurie is the author of nine novels, including the Pulitzer Prize–winning Foreign Affairs, The Truth About Lorin Jone, and Truth and Consequences.  Lurie has also published Women and Ghosts, a collection of supernatural stories; Familiar Spirits, a memoir of the poet James Merrill; and The Language of Clothes, a study of the psychology of fashion.  She is married to the writer Edward Hower, and recently retired from the Cornell University English Department.

    Profile
  • ABOUT Bill Savage

    Bill Savage is a teacher, writer, and researcher. His interests include hermeneutics, especially in relation to material aspects of literary culture; twentieth-century American fiction; popular culture; Chicago writers; and narratology. The winner of the James Friend Memorial Award in Literary Criticism, Savage is also series editor for Chicago Visions + Revisions, a series of nonfiction books about Chicago from the University of Chicago Press. He teaches at Northwestern University.

    Profile
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What does your laughter say about you? Alison Lurie, author of nine novels including the Pulitzer Prize–winning Foreign Affairs, and recently retired from the English department at Cornell University, discusses humor in literature and how her own satiric fiction has frequently taken aim at campus life, with Bill Savage, senior lecturer in English at Northwestern University. They share examples and discuss why—and for whom—they are funny.

Generously sponsored by Paula R. Kahn

Pictured: Alison Lurie.

Dig Deeper

Broader Investigation

Lecture

Barry Sanders: The Subversive Humor of Lenny Bruce

Barry Sanders, a prolific author and professor emeritus of Pitzer College, will discuss Bruce’s outrageous routines and how they forever changed American popular culture.

Lecture

Tom Wolfe: Chicago Tribune Literary Prize

Satirist Tom Wolfe illuminates the state of young writers and the second American gilded age.  In this wide-ranging and very funny lecture, Wolfe also highlights his favorite American novels and his observations on the dotcom bust.

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