Comments | novak: Theological Notebook: Obituaries for Madeleine L'Engle: NYT, Her Website, and National Review

novak

Theological Notebook: Obituaries for Madeleine L'Engle: NYT, Her Website, and National Review

Sep 08, 2007 21:45

As New York City was a perennial setting - or even character - in her writing, I make a point of including here The New York Times obituary for Madeleine L'Engle. I also add her website's brief obituary.

Madeleine L’Engle, Writer of Children’s Classics, Is Dead at 88
By DOUGLAS MARTIN
Published: September 8, 2007
The New York Times

( Read more... )

mysticism/spirituality, writing, theological notebook, literary, obituary, new york times, books, art, l'engle

Comments 5

seraphimsigrist September 9 2007, 03:10:50 UTC

thanks for posting this ,good to
see a good photo of her. a couple of
times I atteneded her all angels epsicopal
church on the west side(a charismatic oriented
parish with a praise band and altar service
after eucharist ) and saw her from a
distance there.

novak September 12 2007, 04:14:01 UTC

Yes, I liked this photo as well. I hadn't heard about the orientation of All Angels - thanks for describing that for me.

friede September 9 2007, 03:45:34 UTC

I saved this to my hard drive when I first read it, as it makes me think about other ways to approach my true/false class.

novak September 12 2007, 04:14:53 UTC

How so? I'd be interested to hear that one.

friede September 12 2007, 12:17:48 UTC

Any number of reasons. This bit immediately sprang to my attention:
Much of her later work was autobiographical, although sometimes a bit idealized; she often said that her real truths were in her fiction. Indeed, she discussed her made-up stories the way a newspaper reporter might discuss his latest article about a crime.

When her son, then 10, protested the death of Joshua in “The Arm of the Starfish” (1965), she insisted that she could not change the tale, which was still unpublished at the time.

“I didn’t want Joshua to die, either,” Ms. L’Engle said in 1987 in a speech accepting the Margaret Edwards Award from the American Library Association for lifetime achievement in writing young adult literature, one of scores of awards she received.

“But that’s what happened. If I tried to change it, I’d be deviating from the truth of the story.”
So there's the sense of an author who is deeply-invested in guiding her readers to truth through fiction, for one, and who (like Jane Austen before her) believed her characters had continuing ( ... )