Maureen Corrigan
Maureen Corrigan | |
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| Born | Maureen D. Corrigan July 30, 1955 New York City, US[1] |
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Maureen Corrigan is an American author, scholar, and literary critic. She is the book critic on the
Early life
Maureen Corrigan was born on July 30, 1955, and raised in
Career
Corrigan is The Nicky and Jamie Grant Distinguished Professor of the Practice in Literary Criticism at Georgetown University[4] where she began teaching in 1989.[1] Her specialist subjects include the work of F. Scott Fitzgerald, the literature of New York City, Public Intellectuals in America, American Detective Fiction and Contemporary Literature. Her first book reviews were published in The Village Voice while she was in the graduate school at University of Pennsylvania.[1]
Corrigan serves on the advisory council of the
Corrigan has been a book critic for
Along with
She wrote about the novel David Copperfield by Charles Dickens in The Books That Changed My Life.[7]
So We Read On
Corrigan investigates what makes F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby so captivating and influential, through "archives, high school classrooms, and even out onto the Long Island Sound, to explore the novel's hidden depths, a journey whose revelations include Gatsby's surprising debt to hard-boiled crime fiction, its rocky path to recognition as a "classic," and its profound commentaries on the national themes of race, class, and gender."[8]
Corrigan pinpoints restlessness as a quintessential American quality, one she perceives in Fitzgerald's knowing depiction of New York City, the great mecca for dreamers with its promise of freedom, new identities, success, and "unsentimental sex." She explains why she considers The Great Gatsby to be "America's greatest novel about class" as well as the vanquishing of God and the worship of idols in the aftermath of World War I, the fantasy that one can truly reinvent one's self, the grandeur of longing, and the spell of illusion.[9]
Leave Me Alone, I'm Reading
Corrigan has written a literary memoir, Leave Me Alone, I'm Reading: Finding and Losing Myself in Books, first published in 2005, which reviews the books that most influenced her personally, belonging in the main to three non-canonical genres – female extreme-adventure tales (narratives recounting "private tests of endurance" in women's lives), hard-boiled detective novels, and Catholic-martyr narratives.[10] The main focus of the book, however, is on the first extreme adventure tales, and Corrigan observes that narratives themed around female suffering are today breaking with a millennia-old tradition.[10] Where women used to suffer in silence, all the while plotting under a surface of stillness – like Penelope in Homer's Odyssey, who has to put up for years with unwanted suitors – in more recent narratives women begin to act: they talk back, and fight.[10][11]
Awards
Corrigan was awarded the 2018
Personal life
Corrigan lives in Washington, D.C., with her husband and daughter.[4][12]
Bibliography
- Corrigan, Maureen (September 9, 2014). So We Read On: How The Great Gatsby Came to Be and Why It Endures. Little, Brown and Company Publishing Group. ISBN 978-0-316-23007-0.
- Corrigan, Maureen (January 2, 2007). Leave Me Alone, I'm Reading: Finding and Losing Myself in Books. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. ISBN 978-0-375-70903-6.
- Winks, Robin W.; Corrigan, Maureen (1998). Mystery & Suspense Writers. Scribner Writers. Charles Scribner's Sons. ISBN 978-0-684-31661-1.
References
- ^ a b c d e f Taeckens, Michael (February 13, 2019). "Reviewers & Critics: Maureen Corrigan of NPR's Fresh Air". Poets & Writers: The Practical Writer. Retrieved May 20, 2019.
- ^ a b c "Best Critical Work 1999: Mystery and Suspense Writers". Edgars Database. Retrieved May 20, 2019.
- ^ a b c Squires, Bethy (March 14, 2019). "National Book Critics Circle Winners Include New York's Christopher Bonanos". Vulture. New York. Retrieved May 20, 2019.
- ^ a b c d e "Maureen D. Corrigan, Biographical Information". Georgetown University. Washington, D. C. Retrieved May 20, 2019.
- ^ a b "Maureen Corrigan, Book Critic, Fresh Air". People at NPR. NPR. Retrieved March 3, 2011.
- ^ ISBN 978-0-7914-7381-8. Retrieved March 3, 2011.
- ISBN 978-1-59240-210-6.
- ISBN 9780316230087. Retrieved August 28, 2014.
- ^ So We Read On: How the Great Gatsby Came to Be and Why It Endures by Maureen Corrigan. Retrieved August 28, 2014 – via Booklist Review.
- ^ ISBN 978-0-8132-1673-7. Retrieved March 3, 2011.
- ISBN 978-0-375-70903-6.
- ISBN 978-0-316-23007-0.
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