Daniel Stern, short story writer
From the Houston Chronicle comes this chronicle about writer Daniel Stern, whose “…witty fiction plumbed the vagaries of the human heart, died Wednesday in Houston after a short illness.” He was 78. Since 1992 Stern had taught in the University of Houston’s Creative Writing Program, where he was a Cullen Distinguished Professor of English.
In an era when literary writers typically emerged from academia, Stern enjoyed a varied career. Born into a poor Jewish family in 1928, he grew up on New York City’s Lower East Side. At the age of 10 or 11 he discovered the cello and seemed headed for a life of music. At 17 he skipped his high school graduation to go on the road behind jazzman Charlie Parker.
“He spent a year playing with the Indianapolis Symphony, during which time he began writing stories. Although he studied at various institutions, including Columbia University and the Juilliard School, he never earned a college degree.”
“In 1953 he published The Girl With the Glass Heart
“The late 1980s marked a watershed in Stern’s writing. He published Twice Told Tales, stories organized in a fresh, imaginative way. Stern took famous works like Melville’s Bartleby the Scrivener or Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams and wove their themes into a new context. ‘What got my pulses racing,” he wrote, “was this idea: that a text by a writer of the past whom I loved, even a nonfiction work, could be basic to fiction; as basic as a love affair, a trauma, a house, a mother, a landscape, a lover, a job or a sexual passion.’”
~~The ODDones for OurDailyDead.com
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February 1st, 2007 at 12:12 pm
My earthbound angel. You literally saved my life, “My Mentor” — My Dan. “Goodnight, Dan Stern…wherever you are…”
I love you.
Your mentee, student and imminent protégé,
Professor (a title I never would’ve earned without your guidance and “gentle” prodding) Annie McDermott