Warren Roberts Blog

An article in yesterday’s New York Times, “Alzheimer’s and Other Late-in-Life Storms,” (7/23/17) is about Tina Howe and her husband, Norman Levy, who has Alzheimer’s.  The article doesn’t say much about Tina and Norman’s life together, aside from a few comments on how they met and on Norman’s medical condition, which was diagnosed in 2013.  There is a picture of them together in the article; they are in their apartment in the Upper West end of Manhattan; this is where my wife, Anne, and two Albany friends visited Tina and Norman in 2009.   Norman was a colleague of mine in the History department at the University at Albany for a few years, before he and Tina left Albany and moved to New York city.  We never lost touch with them and we saw them several times when Tina was invited to Albany to give talks.  She had written plays when she and Norman lived in Kinderhook; she showed Anne one of her plays, which Anne thought was funny but a bit bizarre; men l...

I was surprised to see a reference to one of my books in yesterday’s Book Review section of the New York Times (7-17-2017):  “In 1979, Warren Roberts produced a thoughtful study called “Jane Austen and the French Revolution.”  The great event is never mentioned in the novels, but it is there, Roberts argues, invisibly woven into the narratives.  Kelly (who wrote the book under review) makes the same point herself to support her “secret radical” thesis.  But Roberts conclusions are cautious.  Kelly’s are adventurous.  Some work better than others.” My book on Jane Austen came out in 1979; I wrote it after spending a sabbatical year in England in 1970-71.  I had just completed my first book and had no idea what I would do next.  We lived about fifty miles from Steventon, where Austen grew up; I had read her novels and decided to drive to Steventon, even though her village house no longer stood.  But the chapel, just outside the village, st...