title: Robert Arthur Johnstone

texts:
 command of mounted and armed Aboriginal troopers. The duty of the Native Police was to conduct punitive raids on Aboriginal communities that interfered in colonial expansion. <mask> became a cadet in this force and was appointed Acting sub-Inspector to the Native Police in 1867. In this year he also married Maria Ann Gibson at Lansdowne near Mackay. Gibson was the daughter of a Royal Navy captain. Native Police operations around Mackay
Johnstone was based at the Fort Cooper barracks, now known as Nebo, in the ranges to the west of Mackay. One of his first duties was patrolling the north side of the Pioneer River in April 1867, where he encountered several Aboriginal camps, one of which contained more than 200 people.These camps "were dealt with in the usual and only effectual mode for restraining their savage propensities", which meant indiscriminate shooting of the occupants by <mask> and his troopers to clear them from the area. The brutal operations of the Native Police were well known throughout the colony and beyond, where troopers would usually "make a night attack on the slumbering tribe and generally slay a large number". A large group of Aboriginal men, women and children were pursued by a Native Police force led by Sub-Inspector <mask>, in April 1867. The group was camping on Balnagowan pastoral lease where cattle had been speared in February 1867. They sought refuge in caves at the top of a mountain, but were forced to jump off a cliff on Mount Mandarana of several hundred feet, rather than be face the carbines of the Native Police Force. The area is still known as Black Gin's Leap. Later in the same year, after some Yuibera men had speared five head of cattle at

masks: Johnstone Johnstone Johnstone


title: Robert Arthur Johnstone

type: original

texts: Koumala, <mask> chased members of the clan to some islands offshore and when they tried to return to the mainland "such a lesson was administered" to keep them from "committing outrages in that locality".In 1868 a large group of Aboriginals killed 7 cattle at Greenmount with <mask> and his troopers "administering a lesson to the blackskins...who richly merit a severe one". Also in 1868, <mask> "meted out...the customary chastisement" to Aboriginals who were frightening shepherds and livestock at the Cardowan run on the Connors River. <mask> himself describes in his memoirs other punitive expeditions he led while stationed at Nebo, including that of "punishing blacks" for the killing of a shepherd at May Downs. When he returned from this mission, he found a group of Aboriginals camped near his barracks. He chased them off and then later tracked them into the ranges where he shot a number of the "would-be murderers". He also reported how after punishing a group of Aboriginals at Collaroy station on the Connors River, his troopers, while returning to Nebo, were shot at by panic stricken workers at the Tierawoomba station. When taking cover from this unexpected attack, <mask> found a large Aboriginal weapon-making site in a ravine between Tierawoomba and Blue Mountain.In early 1869, a pastoral squatter by the name of James Collins was killed by Yuibera near Fort Cooper at North Creek. <mask> and his troopers mustered two local family groups of Aboriginals living in the area and coerced confessions from a number of them by holding family members hostage and tying others to the stirrup irons of their horses and forcing them to run along with the horses. Retributions against those

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title: Robert Arthur Johnstone

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 identified were conducted with local squatter Sylvester "West" Fraser from Grosvenor Downs. Fraser was a survivor of the 1857 Hornet Bank massacre and his brother was the notorious William Fraser who killed many Aboriginals both as a private citizen and as a Native Police officer in the years after the events at Hornet Bank. Although having armed settlers partake in the punitive expeditions of the Native Police was against official orders, <mask> allowed West Fraser to participate on the "promise of secrecy and obedience". In fact, it was relatively common for armed civilians to ride with the Native Police on these missions either as volunteers or as special constables. Albert Wright of Avon Downs wrote in his diary that "about 60 blacks were shot at Grosvenor Downs" as part of the armed excursions following the killing of James Collins.These punitive operations have now become known as the Nebo killings of early 1869. In March of the same year, <mask> was again out with his troops endeavouring to punish "the blacks" after the killing of a Chinese shepherd at Mt Heilcalong station near Lake Elphinstone. Property manager at Bellenden Plains
<mask> resigned from the Native Police in 1869. While in the Mackay region, <mask> had evidently become acquainted with John Ewen Davidson, a sugar planter who had formed plantations in several parts of Queensland. One of these was the Bellenden Plains property north of Cardwell. The Bellenden Plains was an open area of around 600 acres amongst the rainforest on the Murray River of Queensland downstream from the Murray Falls. John Ewen Davidson, however, still remained a co-owner of the property with fellow blackbirder and sugar planter John

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 Raymond Trevelian.In 1869, they appointed <mask> as property manager to continue the Bellenden Plains project. <mask> moved to Bellenden Plains with his wife and newborn child. He had numerous violent encounters with the local Dyirbal and Girramay people while re-establishing the property. He went on several punitive missions with his "own black-boy" and also with the local Native Police led by John Murray. The Kanakas who worked on the cane farm also participated in violent raids against the Aboriginals as part of their duties. <mask> describes one incident early in his stay where "the blacks" used their wooden shields as a movable barricade and the cover of smoke from deliberately lit fires in a counter-attack on the property's homestead. <mask> shot at them continuously from the verandah with multiple firearms pre-loaded by his wife.He "followed up" the Aboriginals as far as Tam O'Shanter Point with John Murray to punish them. After this experience, he sent his family to reside in Cardwell, while he stayed on at Bellenden Plains with the farmworkers. <mask> "had a lively time of it" on the property until it was sold in 1871 to F.J.W. Beardmore. Reappointed to the Native Police
<mask> was reappointed to Acting sub-Inspector in the Native Police in 1871. He was posted at various locations throughout coastal Far North Queensland until his resignation from the force in 1881. Some of the barracks in which he was stationed include Cardwell, Valley of Lagoons Station, Herbert Vale and Fort Herbert near Ingham.During this decade of service, <mask> was involved in numerous patrols, expeditions and massacres. Descriptions of the most notable are outlined chronologically below. Gould

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title: Robert Arthur Johnstone

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 Island killings (January 1872)

In January 1872, dugong fishermen Henry Smith and Charles Clements were killed by Aboriginals on Gould Island. Accompanied by a number of local Cardwell squatters including Philip Frederic Sellheim, <mask> and his troopers scoured the island and nearby Hinchinbrook Island, finding a fishing net and two boxes. Punitive expeditions after the wreck of the Maria (March 1872)

On 26 February 1872, the brig Maria carrying 75 people of a gold prospecting expedition to New Guinea was wrecked upon Bramble Reef. The survivors escaped the sinking ship on 3 boats and 2 rafts. Two of the boats made it safely to the nearest British settlement of Cardwell, but the other three craft were washed up on beaches to the north of the town.Up to ten of these crew members, including the captain, were found to have been killed by Aboriginals residing in this region. Lieutenant Sabine of the Royal Navy happened to be in Cardwell at this time and led a mission to recover the boat, which they found and were preparing to re-float. As the men were preparing a meal about 120 Aboriginal men rushed to the boat. In response, the group open fire, killing 8 native people. Brinsley Sheridan, who wanted to secure the safety of Cardwell, ordered <mask> with his troopers "to inflict decisive punishment". <mask> was significantly aided by another Royal Navy officer in Captain John Moresby who also had sailed into Cardwell as part of his expedition to New Guinea. Moresby provided additional armed marines and a large schooner for <mask> to fulfil his mission.Moresby described how the Aboriginal Native Police troopers surprised one camp of Aboriginals with "unrestrained ferocity", resulting


title: Robert Arthur Johnstone

texts:
 in the deaths of several Aboriginal people. A six-year-old boy was brought back from the raid and sent for education to England by Mr. Hayter. The boy died there from disease of the lungs three years later. <mask> and his troopers, together with armed sailors and volunteers, scoured the coast from Cardwell north to Cooper Point, searching every Aboriginal camp they came across. A member of this party later wrote that <mask> "spoke of killing whole camps, not merely men but girls and piccaninnies" during these raids. <mask> apparently bragged that the Premier of Queensland, <mask> Palmer, approved of his methods and protected him from any possible recriminations. The statements were denied by <mask> in 'the most emphatic manner'.Newspapers reported that <mask>'s detachment of Native Police killed a total of 93 local Aboriginals in the Maria reprisals. Accusations of mass murder by <mask> even reached the Permanent Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies in London, <mask>. A subsequent investigation by the Queensland government condoned <mask>'s actions on the grounds that the Aboriginals of the north were "savage and treacherous". Wyandotte Station killings (July 1872)

A travelling correspondent to the Valley of Lagoons area by the name of Richard Bird Hall wrote several letters to the Queensland Government and to various newspapers about the murderous actions of <mask> and his troopers. In particular, a massacre of Aboriginals working on Walter Jervoise Scott's Wyandotte run conducted by <mask> caused a minor scandal. Eight Gugu-Badhun men and two women were killed with most of the corpses "left exposed on the roadside till they stank". The government and the commissioner of

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 police, David Thompson Seymour, defended <mask>'s actions and he was promoted to full sub-Inspector not long after this.Valley of Lagoons dispersals (1872)

During the early 1870s, <mask> was stationed at various outposts of the massive Valley of Lagoons Station owned by Walter Jervoise Scott. <mask> describes how the Gugu-Badhun who speared livestock on this property which was once their land were punished in most cases by general massacre. However, he does point out that on one occasion he only shot dead the dogs of the Aboriginals when it was discovered the main target, a man named Tallboy, had previously saved the life of a white man. Herbert River dispersals (February and March 1873)

<mask> reported to Police Commissioner Seymour that on 14 March near Mt Leach "I dispersed a large mob and returned to camp...on 21 February I succeeded in dispersing three mobs on the Seaview Range...and on 27 March on the Lower Herbert River I dispersed a large mob." Green Island killings (April and July 1873)

In April 1873, the Goodwill vessel arrived at Green Island with 3 European crew and 5 Manbarra people press-ganged from Palm Island to collect and process beche de mer. The Aboriginals, including 3 men and 2 women, resented their treatment and killed two of the whites and stole the "Goodwill". The third, Daniel Kelly, escaped to nearby Oyster Quay Island to report the killings to another beche-de-mer fisherman named Philip Garland.The incident was reported to authorities in Cardwell and Police Commissioner Seymour ordered <mask> via telegram to organise a punitive mission. <mask> and his troopers sailed to the area in their police boat and found the "Goodwill" abandoned and burnt on a


title: Robert Arthur Johnstone

texts:
 beach in Trinity Bay where the modern-day community of Yarrabah is now located. "The blacks were given a proper warm reception" when <mask> arrived and after proceeding inland for 3 miles his troopers dispersed another group of local Yidinji people first by firing on them from a distance and then charging amongst them. <mask>'s section then sailed to the mouth of what is now called the Mulgrave River and dispersed "a large mob of blacks" with gunfire. They then sailed further south to the Gladys Inlet (which is now known as the Johnstone River) where a large group of Aboriginals led by a very tall man decorated with pipeclay resisted the troopers' approach. <mask> punished their "insolence" with gunfire and this leader was one of those killed in the shooting. <mask> sailed a little further up the river towards its bifurcation, noting the dense jungles and thick soil which could be exploited for sugarcane farming despite the area being populated with Aboriginal people.The Northeast Coast Expedition (September to December 1873)

In the latter quarter of 1873, <mask> accompanied George Elphinstone Dalrymple in his Northeast Coast Expedition funded by the colonial Queensland government. This group was heavily armed with thirteen Native Police troopers assigned to the expedition. After leaving Cardwell and exploring Mourilyan Harbour, they sailed north to Gladys Inlet. Here Dalrymple renamed the river entering the inlet as the Johnstone River after his Native Police travelling companion. After several days evaluating the potential of clearing this region of thick jungle for exploitation of cash crops such as sugar, the group sailed back to the mouth of the river. The expedition then

masks: Johnstone Johnstone Johnstone Johnstone Johnstone


title: Robert Arthur Johnstone

texts: sailed north to Trinity Bay and camped on Double Island. Needing water, Dalrymple directed Mr. Thompson towards the smoke from an Aboriginal beach camp on the mainland at a place now known as Palm Cove and <mask> and his troopers proceeded there in the police boat.The group obtained water from a narrow lagoon about 2 miles long that ran parallel to the shore. While approaching the lagoon, a large number of Aboriginals came out of the camps and prevented <mask>'s advance. According to instructions, <mask> did not fire a shot. When the Aboriginal group advanced to about 30 yards and were shipping their spears into their woomeras and were poised to throw, Dalrymple reporting that the "sniders opened upon them". After this, the expedition sailed north to the Endeavour River where the land was quickly deemed unsuitable for agriculture. Whilst at anchor during midday, a local Aboriginal man was spotted taking a survey flag that was set up on a sandbank in the river. For this action, <mask>, his troopers and others aboard the ship opened fire on this man who managed to escape despite many rounds being fired at him.The troopers "were wild to go over for the purpose of teaching the myalls better behaviour". Two men followed the tracks for about a mile but failed to reach the camp. The expedition briefly returned to Cardwell before heading north again to another river inlet which Dalrymple named the Mulgrave River. Again this area was found to be populated by Aboriginals with numerous gunyah style houses, rafts and canoes observed along the banks. <mask> and a number of troopers set out from here and managed to climb to the summit of Mount Bellenden Ker. At Constantine Point at the mouth


title: Robert Arthur Johnstone

texts:
 of the Mulgrave River, <mask> found a large gunyah and stole the mummified remains of an Aboriginal woman from it. Dalrymple's description was "The head of this mummy is small — the animal organs being developed to distortion, the mental being next to nil; in fact, it is of the very lowest type of human formation."<mask> left two blankets and a tomahawk for "the bereaved relatives, who would doubtless rightly appreciate the exchange". The preserved corpse was given to the Museum of Brisbane. The expedition then travelled to rivers further to the north which Dalrymple named the Mossman River and the Daintree River. The final leg of their journey in December involved returning south to Cardwell. Along the way, they again stopped at the mouth of the Johnstone River where <mask> found that a group of Aboriginals had dug up the remains of one of the crew members from the Maria shipwreck. Albert and Edward incident (June 1874)

The crew of a sugar trading cutter by the name of Albert and Edward which anchored in Challenger Bay off Palm Island, kidnapped some local Aboriginal women for sexual purposes. In response, the vessel was attacked by Palm Island men, who attempted to burn down the ship and kill the captain and the mate.Despite newspaper reports describing the attack as a "murderous outrage", both sailors were only wounded and escaped to report the incident at Cardwell. <mask> was sent to Palm Island to punish the natives. On arriving there he found that the islanders had not run away because they thought they would all be shot if found in other localities. <mask> demanded they give up the ringleaders otherwise "everyone will be punished". He decided not to indiscriminately kill


title: Robert Arthur Johnstone

texts:
 the islanders on this occasion considering the kidnapping of the women, but told them they would be punished in the future if a similar attack on whites occurred. Seymour River dispersal (January 1875)

After "the blacks" had robbed a hut at Dalrymple's Gap, sub-Inspectors <mask> and Burrowes and their troopers tracked them to the coast at Seymour River estuary where they were "dispersed". Retribution after the Conn killings (April 1875)

British settler William Conn and his wife were murdered by Aboriginals on their selection near what is now the modern town of Bemerside.For three days, <mask> and his troopers searched all the native camps they could find in the mountains around the immediate region. At one of the camps they came across three Aboriginal women, one of who was gnawing on the dismembered feet of Mr. Conn. Another group "got their just deserts" when they were killed trying to flee to Hinchinbrook Island. After going to Cardwell to obtain some re-inforcements, <mask> returned to the area and went on another punitive mission "until we caught them". Founding of Cairns (1876)

Up until 1876, the area around what is now Cairns was simply known to the British either as Trinity Bay or Smith's Landing. It was also known as Battle Camp after beche-de-mer fisherman Philip Garland killed a number of Aboriginals there while stealing a canoe. In 1876, <mask> with other Native Police officers in Alexander Douglas-Douglas and George Townsend, aided in the creation of a track from the Hodgkinson goldfields to the coast where Battle Camp became a port for the miners. This port was later named Cairns.In the same expedition, <mask> sailed into the river to the north of Cairns, naming


title: Robert Arthur Johnstone

texts:
 it the Barron River. He walked through the rocky areas and went as far as the Barron Falls, noting that the local Aboriginals were constantly indicating (from a safe distance) for his exploring group to go away. Chilcott Islet and Dunk Island killings (February 1877)

Captain Thomas Harris of the schooner Douglas had three Aboriginals from the Dunk Island area to work loading guano and beche-de-mer from Chilcott Islet. During the night while the crew were sleeping, the Aboriginal men killed four of the crew after they had arrived at the islet, and took control of the ship. Two of the Dunk Islanders were killed by the ships crew during the re-taking of the ship, but the remaining one, a man by the name of Dungaree, escaped by swimming to a nearby island. He was later picked up and transported to Sydney for trial. Ominously, <mask> himself describes a later patrol on Dunk Island as unnecessary as he "knew there was no blacks furthermore on this island."Dungaree was acquitted in Sydney but was forced to become a Native Police trooper under the command of <mask>. After several years in the Native Police, Dungaree was advised by <mask> that he could return to his tribe but "if ever they murdered a white man we would return and shoot all the men". Dungaree decided to stay in the force, but was killed not long after by "Burdekin blacks". The Riser killings (1878)

The two man crew of the cutter Riser were found dead, supposedly killed by Aboriginals, after their vessel was wrecked near Sisters Island. <mask> and troopers scoured the South Barnard Islands and along the mainland around Kurrimine Beach for Aboriginals. He "searched the camps..punished the murderers" and returned to his


title: Robert Arthur Johnstone

texts:
 barracks at Cardwell. Tam O'Shanter Point incident (November 1879)

Two white brothers who were robbed of their belongings and horses by around "40 male blacks" at Tam O'Shanter Point, reported the incident to <mask>.He and troopers went out after them and <mask> had the matter "satisfactorily seen to". Molonga cattle property
The area that had been used for the Native Police barracks at Palm Creek just east of Ingham became the property of <mask> when he retired from the Native Police in 1881. He called the property "Molonga" which somewhat appropriately meant "Devil" in a local Indigenous language. Interestingly, the term Molonga was later used by Aboriginal people in western Queensland such as the Pitta Pitta to describe a corroborree depicting a white spirit who would cause havoc and steal young girls away. <mask> utilised Molonga for cattle grazing, but later it was sold and became a famous lychee plantation. One of <mask>'s daughters, Ruby, continued the tradition of naming properties Molonga. She and her husband gave this title to their house in the Brisbane suburb of Graceville and Molonga Terrace in Graceville exists today where the property once was.She also called her beachside land at Burleigh Heads by the name of Molonga. This land was sold off and subdivided in the 1920s. Amateur naturalist
Throughout his career as a Native Police officer, <mask> had the opportunity to collect plant and animal specimens that had not been seen by Europeans before. Probably the most notable was the freshwater crocodile which he found in abundance around the headwaters of the Herbert River. <mask> sent the preserved remains of one to zoologist Gerard Krefft, who gave the scientific


title: Robert Arthur Johnstone

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 name Crocodilus johnstoni to the species in honour of <mask>. Promotion to Police Magistrate
In 1881, <mask> was promoted to Police Magistrate and posted at Winton. Here he broke his kneecap while riding and was transferred to Cooktown as a clerk of petty sessions in 1882.After a brief period back in Ingham as police magistrate and inspector of Pacific Islanders, he was transferred to Bundaberg as police magistrate there until 1887. From 1887 til 1891 he was police magistrate for the Maryborough region. In 1891, <mask> retired from public service and in 1896 moved near to one of his married daughters in Beenleigh. In the early 1900s, <mask> moved to the Brisbane suburb of Toowong. Spinifex and Wattle autobiography
By the early years of the 20th century the policy of the Queensland government towards Aboriginals had switched from one of violent repression to a system of control and incarceration. Archibald Meston, a government appointed Protector of Aborigines, started to publicly criticise the methods of the Native Police. These criticisms were acknowledged and publicly refuted by <mask>.<mask> wrote a series of autobiographical articles for The Queenslander newspaper giving details of his career in the Native Police. These were originally published in that paper in the years 1903 to 1905 and later were collated and published in book form in 1984. Death and legacy
Late in his life, <mask> moved into a house on Archer Street in the Brisbane suburb of Toowong. He died here on 16 January 1905 and is buried at Toowong cemetery. He had nine children and some of his daughters married into notable families in Queensland society. His second daughter married one of the sons of Sidney


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 Yeates a prominent landowner at Adavale. His third daughter married into the orchard owning Mullett family of Monduran, while his eldest married Edgar Young a prominent Beenleigh resident.While having the Johnstone River and the scientific term for the freshwater crocodile being named after him, a tragic aspect of <mask>'s legacy was his role in the destruction of Aboriginal society in northern Queensland. References

1843 births
1905 deaths
Explorers of


title: Ferdinand von Prondzynski

texts:
<mask> (born 30 June 1954) is a former university leader in Ireland and Scotland, a lawyer and legal academic, and a high-profile public commentator. Formerly the Principal and Vice-Chancellor of the Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen, Scotland, he also previously served as the second President of Dublin City University (DCU) in Ireland (2000-2010), and before that as a professor and dean at the University of Hull, and lecturer and Fellow at Trinity College, Dublin. A German-born Irish citizen, Prondzynski is an authority on employment and commercial law and on certain EU and competition policy matters, as well as an active commentator on aspects of academic affairs and public policy. Personal life

Family background
<mask>nski, were originally of Pomeranian-Kashubian origin, with earliest records going back to 1366, but his lineage can be traced back with greater certainty to 1550. He is a direct descendant of <mask>, a 19th-century Prussian general from Groschowitz, near Oppeln in Silesia (now Groszowice, near Opole within Poland). Konrad, his great-grandfather, started a Silesian cement business in the late 19th century; the town square in Groszowice is named after him. <mask>'s grandfather, Alfred, was a lieutenant in the First World War, in which he was seriously wounded; he died later from his wounds, in 1932.His grandmother later remarried in the 1930s to a retired admiral, Karl Feldmann (who worked for the Ministry of Labour) when <mask>'s father, Hans, was still a young man. <mask> <mask> was a captain in the German army during the Second World War, was wounded several times in battle, and was inter alia awarded the Iron Cross Class 1 (EK1). After the war, he lost his lands in what became part of Poland, moved to the new West Germany, studied law in Göttingen, and then joined the cement-producing

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title: Ferdinand von Prondzynski

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 company Dyckerhoff AG, eventually becoming a director. He married Irene Gräfin (approximately Countess) Grote in the Grote family residence at Breese im Bruche, in Lower Saxony (Hanover) in 1950, and they had four children: Isabelle, <mask>, Aglaja and Pia. Early life
<mask> <mask> <mask> was born at Bevensen on 30 June 1954. The family home at Breese, Germany had to be partially demolished in 1958, because of structural damage to two wings during the war and immediate post-war years, and Hans and Irene, with their <mask> and two sisters, Isabelle and Pia, moved to a farming estate in Ireland in 1961. According to Prondzynski, his father's poor health, lack of funds to maintain Breese im Bruche, and a desire for a less stressful lifestyle, led to Hans and <mask> <mask> leaving Germany and moving to the Knockdrin estate near Mullingar, County Westmeath, where they settled in Knockdrin Castle.After a few years, Hans grew weary of farming and moved back to Germany and to Dyckerhoff AG, but the family kept their new estate in Ireland, and Hans retired to there in 1982. He died in Ireland in 1998, after a long illness. <mask> <mask> lived in Knockdrin until she died in 2017. Education and early career
After his family moved to Ireland in 1961, <mask> <mask> was educated at Headfort School, Kells, County Meath. In 1968 the family returned to Germany, and after a short time in the Schule Schloss Salem boarding school, Prondzynski attended the Thomas-Morus Gymnasium in Oelde, passing his Abitur examination in 1972. Having worked for Dresdner Bank AG in Germany from 1972 to 1974, <mask> returned to Ireland. Having not planned to go to college, he then enrolled in Law at Trinity College, Dublin, graduating in 1978 with B.A.and LL.B. degrees. He then pursued a PhD in Law from the University of Cambridge, graduating in

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title: Ferdinand von Prondzynski

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 1983. <mask> became an Irish citizen in 1976. Family life
<mask> met at Trinity College Dublin and later married Heather Ingman, Adjunct Professor of English at Trinity College Dublin, formerly of the University of Hull, and an academic author and novelist; she has also been an occasional writer in the Irish Times. Ingman and <mask> have two sons, Sebastian (adopted from Ecuador) and Theo. Prondzynski is a member of the Church of Ireland and a keen follower of Newcastle United football club.He is also a keen amateur photographer, and DCU published several calendars of his photographs. The <mask> family home was for many years Knockdrin Castle and estate, near Mullingar, County Westmeath, Ireland; this was placed on the market in 2017 and sold in January 2021. Academic career

Trinity College, Dublin
In 1980 <mask> was appointed as a lecturer in the School of Business Studies, Trinity College, Dublin, and became a Fellow of the College in 1987. During this time he became known for his views on industrial relations and labour law matters, often taking an approach sympathetic to the trade union movement and gaining the nickname "the Red Baron." Industrial relations and employment law
Von <mask>'s published academic output has been influential in particular in the field of industrial relations and employment law. In his early work he argued for a disengagement of the law from industrial relations, taking the position that problems and disputes were better resolved through bargaining than through litigation. The most elaborate expression of his views during this period is contained in his book Freedom of Association and Industrial Relations (1984).However, from the later 1980s onwards his views began to change, and he argued for a framework of employment regulation that took account of economic pressures and the

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title: Ferdinand von Prondzynski

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 need to maintain competitive conditions. This culminated in his contribution to a major international book in 2000 in which he argued that the law should protect employees' rights, but also promote business success and economic growth. He has also published a number of books and articles on social policy and in particular on the importance of legal protection against discrimination. He achieved national status as an authority on employment and commercial law in Ireland, co-authoring the first academic textbook on Irish employment law. He is also an expert on European Union matters and on competition (antitrust) policy. Hull
From 1991 to 2000 <mask> was Professor of Law in the University of Hull; for much of that time he was also a Dean – first of the School of Law, and latterly of the whole Faculty of Social Sciences. He was also a Director of the British-American Business Council.Dublin City University
<mask> was appointed as the second president of Dublin City University (DCU) in July 2000, for a ten-year term, succeeding its founding president, Danny O'Hare, after 22 years. He developed a high public profile and became known for his comments on higher education and other public policy issues. Achievements
In his role as president of DCU, he oversaw improvements in the campus facilities, for both students and staff. Though seen by some as one of the new breed of so-called 'reforming' university presidents, on the whole he avoided the large-scale structural reforms that have characterised the leadership in other third-level institutions ', instead focusing on interdisciplinary 'Academic Themes', introduced in the University's initial strategic plan during his term, Leading Change (2001). These were designed to reinforce and develop DCU's reputation for cross-disciplinary teaching and research and influence

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 the university's research mission; they had a significant effect on the university's research strategy in particular, and found a place in DCU's organisational structure – but the appointment of 'Theme Leaders' proved to be difficult. During his tenure Prondzynski oversaw growth in student population, and performance in attracting research funding. DCU secured several high-profile research grants (particularly under the Programme for Research in Third Level Institutions, and under the Science Foundation Ireland programme for Centres for Science, Technology and Innovation).The two largest SFI grants have both gone to projects led by DCU. There was also a continuing drive to develop innovation in teaching and learning. At <mask>'s proposal, a new post of Vice-President for Learning Innovation was established in 2004, and in 2007 the university adopted a new "Academic Framework for Innovation". DCU tended to be successful in recruiting students, often increasing its share of the total pool of applicants, and this pattern continued under <mask>'s presidency, even when student applications nationally were decreasing. The university's achievements were recognised internationally when, in 2007, DCU entered the Times Higher Education World Rankings at number 300. By 2009 the university had risen in the rankings to 279. Controversy
According to one newspaper profile, Prondzynski was liked by colleagues at DCU, even when there were disagreements.However, while corporate matters rather than personal, there was some controversy around three employment law cases at DCU during his tenure. These involved three members of academic staff, two senior, at the university, received much media attention and the university lost all on appeal, including once at the Supreme Court. There was also controversy over new contracts of

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title: Ferdinand von Prondzynski

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 employment and negotiations on a new disciplinary procedure, which had begun before Prondzynski's term of office but continued throughout his tenure without resolution. As part of this controversy, a "vote of no confidence in the conduct of negotiations by senior management of the university" was narrowly passed by those staff who voted, while several parliamentary questions were raised on this matter by the Green Party. There was further controversy when Prondzynski was criticised by his colleagues and also by union officials for briefly postponing Executive elections at the university when a senior academic (who was also one of the litigants mentioned) was nominated as a candidate, though the elections proceeded and the candidate was not elected. Robert Gordon University
<mask> became Principal and Vice-Chancellor of the Robert Gordon University (commonly called RGU) in Aberdeen, Scotland, at the end of March 2011. He quickly developed a high profile in Scottish higher education and in June 2011 the Scottish Cabinet Secretary for Education and Lifelong Learning, Michael Russell MSP, appointed Prondzynski to chair a national review of university governance (see below).In a number of interviews and public statements, <mask> declared that he wanted Robert Gordon University to be a leader in the development of Scottish economic and cultural growth. In 2012 he also became associated with the proposal, prompted by the university's billionaire Chancellor, philanthropist Sir Ian Wood, to redevelop the area around Aberdeen's Union Terrace Gardens. He was a prominent signatory of a letter addressed to the City Council urging it to adopt the proposal for a new 'City Garden'. In early 2013, <mask> took a leading role in a high-profile local campaign by the university to prompt the regeneration of the Aberdeen city

masks: Prondzynski Prondzynski Prondzynski


title: Ferdinand von Prondzynski

texts:
 centre. He is a board member of Aberdeen City and Shire Economic Future (ACSEF), and of Aberdeen City Council's City Centre Regeneration Board. Prondzynski also commented on the value for money of university salaries; his RGU package was at the time over 250,000 pounds. <mask> has also made several public statements questioning an aspect of British public policy designed to focus research funding on a small number of older universities, arguing that all excellent research should have the potential to be funded regardless of the university that hosts it, and arguing also that some of this funding should be directed more closely to match national economic priorities.Achievements and issues
The university attained strong standings during <mask>'s tenure. According to the 2013 Times Good University Guide RGU was the best modern university in the UK, while according to the Guardian University Guide 2013, it was the best modern university in Scotland and second best in the UK. Analysis published by the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) has indicated that graduates from full-time undergraduate degrees in each of 2011-2016 had among the top 20 employment rates of any university in the UK, with the ratio being 96.5% in 2016, and 97.6% in 2017, and it was rated the best Scottish university for graduate prospects. However RGU also suffered a decline in some UK university rankings, falling from #36 in 2010 to #78 in the 2019 edition of The Guardian University Guide, as well as seeing a similar decline in performance in The Complete University Guide. Also during <mask>'s tenure, the university centralised its activities on a modernised single campus at Garthdee, with the Principal's office moving in 2013.

Review of governance of Scottish universities
In 2011 the Scottish Ministers commissioned <mask> to chair a

masks: Prondzynski Prondzynski Prondzynski Prondzynski


title: Ferdinand von Prondzynski

texts:
 review of higher education governance. The review was welcomed by student and staff representatives across the university sector. Initially the University and College Union (UCU) raised concerns about the appointment of <mask> to chair the review, because of a then ongoing dispute about recognition of the union at his university, RGU, which predated <mask>'s appointment as Principal.This dispute was subsequently resolved, and in the event the UCU strongly endorsed the published report. <mask>'s committee reported in January 2012, and the report was published by the Scottish government in February 2012. The report was generally well received, but some of its recommendations - and in particular the recommendations that the chairs of governing bodies should be elected, and that bonuses should largely be eliminated - were seen by some as radical. Overall the report suggested that Scotland's universities were part of the wider idea of the 'democratic intellect' and should behave in a transparent and accountable manner. The report also recommended that universities should enjoy institutional autonomy, and that they should maintain and defend academic freedom. The Scottish government welcomed the recommendations of the review, and the Cabinet Secretary for Education and Lifelong Learning announced to the Scottish Parliament that the government would implement its findings. In November 2014 the Scottish Government published a consultation document in which it declared its intention to introduce a statute implementing key aspects of the Prondzynski governance review.RGU appointment controversy
In May 2018 an internal review was launched after a whistleblower flagged that RGU's newly appointed Vice-Principal for Research, Gordon McConnell, a senior academic and formerly the Head of the Office of the President at DCU,


title: Ferdinand von Prondzynski

texts:
 was co-director with Prondzynski in the company holding Prondzynski's family estate (on sale for around 13.5 million euro), and this was not disclosed under the RGU conflict of interest policy. Although Prondzynski had a contractual obligation to disclose it, the information had in fact been in the public domain since 2009, and was accessible to anyone by a free search in the Irish register of companies. It was found that this breached the policy but that the appointment was valid, and the non-declaration was a "genuine omission or oversight" and did not warrant substantial action. This finding lead to a letter of resignation from another of the three Vice-Principals, Paul Hagan, who condemned RGU for failing to punish the pair, stating that this damaged the institution ("In the future, other staff may use the defence that they 'forgot' when challenged in investigations and it will be difficult then to sanction them ... having failed to sanction members of the Executive.") He did make it clear that the issue was not personal to the appointed fellow vice-principal, stating "I am firmly of the belief that had this information about this personal conflict been made available at the appropriate time an alternative appointment process would have been instigated, one with more than a single, hand-picked candidate, selected by you. ... The irony is that Gordon may well have been appointed through such an alternative process..." while commenting "This outcome will undoubtedly drive a wedge between the staff and members of the Executive.Our stock is already extremely low." Departure and legacy
On 9 August 2018, RGU announced that <mask> would voluntarily step down from his post on 31 August. <mask> acknowledged that the outcome of the investigation "has caused division and therefore had a damaging impact on the


title: Ferdinand von Prondzynski

texts:
 university’s reputation, which I personally hugely regret", and stated that his primary reason for resigning his post was "to allow RGU to recover", adding that he was "confident it will do so quickly." In the same press release, RGU announced that Deputy Principal John Harper had already been appointed to succeed <mask>, an action which Mary Senior of the University and College Union criticised as "ironic that while he made such a huge contribution to improving university governance, his former university is shoe-horning in his replacement without any recruitment process." It was also announced that Vice-Principal Hagan had withdrawn his resignation, and that RGU had accepted this. The Chair of the RGU Board of Governors commented "Under his leadership, the University has had significant successes and has been recognised for its sector leadership in the national skills agenda, for the continuing development of student-centred excellence and for industry-focused research and support. RGU is recognised for its leading position in the rankings for graduate employment for students, has received a 'Gold' ranking in the Teaching Excellence Framework, and led the way in Graduate Apprenticeships."while the UCU Scotland official Mary Senior commented "It is disappointing to learn of Prof <mask>'s resignation." and "While we've not agreed on everything, particularly at a local level, he has made a significant contribution to higher education in Scotland." Public profile
<mask> was author of a blog and a weekly column in the Irish Times newspaper. In his blog and elsewhere he described the benefits of immigration, the risks to universities caused by the failure of the Irish Department of Education and Science to prioritise higher education, and the need to recover civility and courtesy in society. On the 'free fees'

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Prondzynski
von Prondzynski
Prondzynski


title: Ferdinand von Prondzynski

texts:
 scheme in Ireland, under which Irish and EU students pay only "registration" fees, he argued that too much of the money spent on this went to wealthier people who did not need it, while poorer students are neglected. He also criticised the so-called 'points system' in Ireland which determines student entry into university courses. He has argued for a 're-think' on the numbers of lawyers educated and trained at Irish universities contending that there are too many, although during his time DCU approved a new BCL law degree.He made similar comments about the number of law graduates in Scotland when giving evidence in March 2012 before the Scottish Parliament's Education and Culture Committee. He argued for higher levels of entrepreneurship and interaction between universities and industry in Scotland. Other roles
<mask> was a member of the Irish National Competitiveness Council between 2002 and 2011, and of the National Executive Council of Ibec (then the Irish Business and Employers' Confederation). He was also a director of the Irish Universities Quality Board, the US-Ireland R&D Partnership and, for two years, chair of the Research Advisory Committee of Ireland's National Disability Authority. From 2000–2010, he was also a director of the Irish National Chamber Choir. In April 2011 he was appointed to the board of directors of Educate Together, a post he left some years later. He is a non-executive Director of the formerly NASDAQ-listed e-learning company Skillsoft.Recognition
In 2006 <mask> was elected as a Member of the Royal Irish Academy, one of the highest academic honours in Ireland. In September 2010 Prof. <mask> was invested by H.E. Don Carlos de Gereda y de Borbón as a Knight of Justice in the Military and Hospitaller Order of St Lazarus of Jerusalem. External links
 Biography on webpage of The


title: Ferdinand von Prondzynski

texts:
 Robert Gordon University
 Blog by <mask> Prondzynski
 <mask> <mask> speaking at Ignite Dublin #1

References

Alumni of Trinity College Dublin
Alumni of Christ's College, Cambridge
Fellows of Trinity College Dublin
Irish legal scholars
Presidents of Dublin City University
Principals by university in Scotland
Members of the Royal Irish Academy
People associated with Robert Gordon University
Irish people of German descent
German emigrants to Ireland
Irish Anglicans
1954 births
Living

masks:
Ferdinand von
Ferdinand von
Prondzynski


title: Max Kaser

texts:
<mask> (21 April 1906 - 13 January 1997) was a German professor of Jurisprudence who taught successively at the universities of Münster, Hamburg and Salzburg. The principal focus of his scholarship and teaching was on Roman law. He became a member of a number of learned societies. In addition, between 1958 and 1992 he was awarded honorary doctorates by no fewer than ten different universities on three different continents. An eleventh honorary  doctorate, from the Jurisprudence faculty at the University of Regensburg, was awarded only posthumously, however, in 1999). <mask> is respected as the author of pioneering writings on the step by step progression from classical legal concepts to modern European civil law. His text books on Roman civil law and modern civil procedure (for many purposes outside Anglo-American common law precepts) break new ground in presenting the historical evolution of legal concepts and principals, incorporating analyses and commentaries on written sources, and using research techniques that he himself (with others) developed.Life
<mask> was born in Vienna where his father, the historian Dr. <mask> (1870–1931) worked at the time as a university tutor ("Privatdozent"). On both his father's side and his mother's sides, his ancestral roots tracked back through many generations of Austrian government administrators, lawyers, physicians, army officers and artists. Soon after his birth his father accepted an appointment which included an extraordinary professorship at the University of Graz, and the family relocated to that city. In 1914 the family moved again when Dr.<mask> accepted a full professorship at the University of Czernowitz (as it was then known), a couple of hundred kilometers south-west of Kiev. The First World War and, more indirectly, its aftermath, brought about the need for further moves, and during the second part of his boyhood <mask>'s family moved repeatedly between Czernowitz, Salzburg and Graz, as his father pursued his career as a university professor of medieval and modern history. In 1924 <mask> enrolled at the University of Graz where between 1924 and 1928 he studied Jurisprudence. He was taught by Artur

masks:
Max Kaser
Max Kaser
Max Kaser
Kurt Kaser
Kurt Kaser
Max Kaser
Max Kaser


title: Max Kaser

texts: Steinwenter who taught Roman law, and whom Kaser would always single out as a powerfully positive influence, on account of his "extensive knowledge and exceptionally well-balanced judgement".The two would remain firm friends till Steinwenter's death in 1959. A student contemporary at Graz was Walter Wilburg who later achieved eminence as a legal scholar and lawyer, and who also became a life-long friend. He received his doctorate at Graz, awarded on 19 November 1928. Many years earlier <mask> (1841–1916), his grandfather, had also received a doctorate in Jurisprudence from the University of Graz. It was on the recommendation of his doctoral supervisor, Steinwenter, that <mask> switched in 1929 to Munich where he was supported by a scholarship. He was taught by Leopold Wenger at the university "Institute for Papyrus Research and Legal History in Antiquity" ("Institut für Papyrusforschung und antike Rechtsgeschichte"). The primary focus of his research was a question arising from the Roman civil law of property which two years later formed the based for <mask>'s habilitation and his book "Restituere als Prozeßgegenstand" (1932:  republished with extensive further notes in 1968).Meanwhile he delivered a programme of lectures at Frankfurt University during the winter 1930/31 term before moving on to the nearby University of Giessen where he worked as a research assistant to Otto Eger. It was Eger who supervised <mask> for his habilitation degree which he received in June 1931. In 1932 he accepted a teaching post at Münster where he took over from Hans Kreller who had transferred to Tübingen. In October 1933, still aged only 27, he accepted a full professorship in Civil and Roman law. He would remain at Münster till 1959. Although his duties required him to take in interest in Civil law, his strong preference for Roman law was never in doubt. An administrative post was added in April 1937 when he was made dean of the law faculty.In this post he won and retained, through the energy and ability that he brought to the job, the confidence of his mostly rather conservative senior colleagues, while quietly resisting pressure to pander to Germany's increasingly

masks:
Ludwig Kaser
Max Kaser
Kaser
Kaser


title: Max Kaser

texts: institutionalised Nazism which he characterised (quietly) as an "Anticulture" ("Unkultur"). For <mask> 1933 was the year in which he met Erna Lehnig whose mother's family came from the Münster region. Her father's family came from the coastal region of Pomerania. By the end of 1933 the two were married, demonstrating through their "Austrian-north German partnership" a "perfect harmony" as <mask> later wrote. It was both a loving and an efficient partnership. Erna <mask> proved a highly competent administrator, running the house - even to the point, slightly unusually for a "housewife" at that time, of taking care of the family's annual tax declaration - leaving her husband to concentrate on his work at the university. The marriage also produced, in rapid succession, a son and a daughter.Meanwhile <mask>'s academic career and reputation progressed. He received and rejected apparently attractive offers of professorships from Heidelberg, Freiburg i.B. and Marburg in 1937, 1939, 1940, in every case preferring to stay put at Münster "at [his] own wish", as he expressed the matter at the time in a letter to a colleague. When war broke out in 1939 <mask>, despite being still relatively young, was exempted from military service on account of a serious heart defect. However, as the slaughter of war intensified such matters counted for less, and in November 1943 he was conscripted into the army. He was initially engaged in anti-aircraft warfare but was soon sent back to Münster where he worked as a clerk for the regimental administration ("Regimentsstab"). The army permitted him still to lecture at the university for two days each week.In April 1945 the Americans came. War ended a month later and <mask> became a prisoner of war. He was held in various American and French camps till his release, which followed in 1946. He returned to the university and resumed his teaching. The National Socialists had had their own views on Roman law. They found it "materialistic" and incompatible with their racist ideals, so they planned to replace the German legal code with their own People's Legal code which would (among other things) remove the influence of Roman Law over the

masks:
Max Kaser
Kaser
Kaser
Kaser
Kaser
Max Kaser


title: Max Kaser

texts:
 German system. But now they were gone.<mask> could now be less constrained in his lecturing, his writing and on his networking. His reputation continued to grow. Offers of professorships came from Marburg (again) and Heidelberg (again). There were also offers from Graz (1951), Göttingen (1952) and Vienna (1959). Till 1959 he rejected all such offers. When, in 1959, <mask> finally accepted an invitation to move, it was to accept a professorship at the University of Hamburg where he sustained a successful career in academic teaching and research till his formal retirement in 1971. Three of his personally supervised habilitation students from his time at  Hamburg subsequently achieved eminence as university professors of jurisprudence.One of these, Dieter Medicus, later wrote an affectionate obituary in which he surmised that <mask>'s decision to retire from his professorship at Hamburg had been accelerated by the student unrest of 1968 and its aftermath. He found himself unable to endorse or even to understand either the methods employed or the objectives of those involved. Whatever the truth of the matter, his retirement from Hamburg certainly did not mark an end to an active career as a law professor at a top university. Between 1971 and 1976 <mask> held a special professorship at the University of Salzburg, occupying the teaching chair for Roman and Civil law. He obtained the position following discussion with Theo Mayer-Maly and Wolfgang Waldstein. He let it be known to his friends that he very much relished the chance to teach Roman law to students who were not motivated by the tightly prescriptive regime under which study and exams were operated in the German system. He continued teaching at Salzburg till 1985, by which time he was almost 80.Between 1954 and 1972 <mask> was a co-producer of the prestigious Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte (ZRG), a venerable specialist journal for scholars and students of historical jurisprudence and related topics. Memberships
<mask> was a member of various learned societies and other scholarly associations, some of which are listed below:
  In 1959 he became a full member of the Akademie der

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Kaser
Kaser
Kaser
Kaser
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Max Kaser


title: Max Kaser

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 Wissenschaften zu Göttingen ("Göttingen Academy of Sciences and Humanities"). In 1960 he became a foreign member of the Accademia delle Scienze di Torino  ("Turin Academy of Sciences and Humanities"). In 1968 he became a member of the Naples Accademia delle Scienze ("Academy of sciences"). In 1969 he became a foreign member of the Milan-based Istituto Lombardo Accademia di Scienze e Lettere ("Lombard Academy of Sciences and Letters "). In 1971 he became a member of the Rome-based Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei (literally, "[Italian] Academy of the lynxes"). In 1972 he became a member of the Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften ("Austrian Academy of Sciences and Humanities").In 1973 he became a corresponding member of the Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften ("Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities") in Munich. In 1973 he became a member of the London-based British Academy. In 1975 he was elected an honorary member of the Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies in London. In 1988 he became a member of the Ακαδημία Αθηνών ([modern] "Academy of Athens"). Celebration and recognition
The "<mask> Kaser Seminar" at the University of Salzburg is named in Kaser's honour. The seminar's library, set up in 1966, consists of books, newspapers and other printed material by Ernst Levy, Erich Sacher and <mask> himself. The collection is meticulously kept up to date.<mask>'s text books about Roman Civil Law and Roman legal history more broadly are widely studied and respected. They have been translated into a number of languages including English, Dutch, Finnish, Spanish, Japanese and Korean. <mask> also received a remarkably large number of honorary doctorates. Notes

References

1906 births
1997 deaths
Writers from Vienna
University of Graz alumni
20th-century jurists
Scholars of Roman law
Members of the Austrian Academy of Sciences
Members of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences
Members of the Lincean Academy
Members of the Academy of Athens (modern)
Commanders Crosses of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany
University of Giessen faculty
Goethe University Frankfurt faculty
University of Münster faculty
University of Hamburg

masks:
Max
Max Kaser
Kaser
Max Kaser


title: Daniel Boyarin

texts:
<mask> (; born 1946) is a historian of religion. Born in New Jersey, he holds dual United States and Israeli citizenship. He is the Hermann P. and Sophia Taubman Professor of Talmudic Culture in the Departments of Near Eastern Studies and Rhetoric at the University of California, Berkeley. He is married to <mask>, a lecturer in Hebrew at UC Berkeley. They have two sons. His brother, Jonathan Boyarin, is also a scholar, and the two have written together. Career
Raised in Asbury Park, New Jersey, Boyarin attended Freehold High School.A graduate of the class of 1964, Boyarin was inducted into the school's hall of fame in 2009. Boyarin was educated at Goddard College, the Jewish Theological Seminary, and Columbia University before earning his doctoral degree at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. He has taught at Ben Gurion University of the Negev, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Bar-Ilan University, Yale, Harvard, Yeshiva University, and the University of California at Berkeley. He is a member of the Enoch seminar, and of the Advisory Board of the journal Henoch. In 2005, he was elected fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. A number of Boyarin's students, including Christine Hayes, Charlotte Fonrobert, and Azzan Yadin, occupy Rabbinics posts at various American universities. A discussion of the merits of Boyarin's scholarship is featured in the opening scene of Joseph Cedar's Oscar-nominated film Footnote.Views and writings
His first book, Sephardic Speculation (written in Hebrew), examines the Talmudic methodology of Isaac Canpanton

masks:
Daniel Boyarin
Chava Boyarin


title: Michael Chabon

texts:
<mask> ( ;
born May 24, 1963) is an American novelist, screenwriter, columnist and short story writer. Born in Washington, DC, he spent a year studying at Carnegie Mellon University before transferring to the University of Pittsburgh, graduating in 1984. He subsequently received a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing from the University of California, Irvine. <mask>'s first novel, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh (1988), was published when he was 25. He followed it with Wonder Boys (1995) and two short-story collections. In 2000, he published The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, a novel that John Leonard would later call <mask>'s magnum opus. It received the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2001.His novel The Yiddish Policemen's Union, an alternate history mystery novel, was published in 2007 and won the Hugo, Sidewise, Nebula and Ignotus awards; his serialized novel Gentlemen of the Road appeared in book form in the fall of the same year. In 2012, <mask> published Telegraph Avenue, billed as "a twenty-first century Middlemarch," concerning the tangled lives of two families in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2004. He followed Telegraph Avenue in November 2016 with his latest novel, Moonglow, a fictionalized memoir of his maternal grandfather, based on his deathbed confessions under the influence of powerful painkillers in Chabon's mother's California home in 1989. <mask>'s work is characterized by complex language, and the frequent use of metaphor along with recurring themes such as nostalgia, divorce, abandonment, fatherhood, and most notably issues of Jewish identity. He often includes gay, bisexual, and Jewish characters in his work.

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Michael Chabon
Chabon
Chabon
Chabon
Chabon


title: Michael Chabon

texts:
 Since the late 1990s, he has written in increasingly diverse styles for varied outlets; he is a notable defender of the merits of genre fiction and plot-driven fiction, and, along with novels, has published screenplays, children's books, comics, and newspaper serials. Biography

Early life
<mask> (pronounced, in his words, "Shea as in Shea Stadium, Bon as in Bon Jovi", i.e., ) was born in Washington, DC to a Jewish family.His parents are <mask>, a physician and lawyer, and <mask>, a lawyer. Chabon said he knew he wanted to be a writer when, at the age of ten, he wrote his first short story for a class assignment. When the story received an A, he recalls, "I thought to myself, 'That's it. That's what I want to do. I can do this.' And I never had any second thoughts or doubts." Referring to popular culture, he wrote of being raised "on a hearty diet of crap".His parents divorced when he was 11, and he grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and Columbia, Maryland. Columbia, where he lived nine months of the year with his mother, was "a progressive planned living community in which racial, economic, and religious diversity were actively fostered." He has written of his mother's marijuana use, recalling her "sometime around 1977 or so, sitting in the front seat of her friend Kathy's car, passing a little metal pipe back and forth before we went in to see a movie." He grew up hearing Yiddish spoken by his mother's parents and siblings. Chabon attended Carnegie Mellon University for a year before transferring to the University of Pittsburgh, where he studied under Chuck Kinder and received a Bachelor of Arts in 1984. He then went to graduate school

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Chabon
Robert Chabon
Sharon Chabon


title: Michael Chabon

texts:
 at the University of California, Irvine, where he received a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing. The Mysteries of Pittsburgh and initial literary success
<mask>'s first novel, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, was written as his UC Irvine master's thesis.Without telling Chabon, his professor, Donald Heiney (better known by his pen name, MacDonald Harris), sent it to a literary agent, who got the author an impressive $155,000 advance on the novel, though most first-time novelists receive advances under $7,500. The Mysteries of Pittsburgh appeared in 1988 and was a bestseller, instantly catapulting Chabon to literary celebrity. Among his major literary influences in this period were Donald Barthelme, Jorge Luis Borges, Gabriel García Márquez, Raymond Chandler, John Updike, Philip Roth and F. Scott Fitzgerald. As he remarked in 2010, "I just copied the writers whose voices I was responding to, and I think that's probably the best way to learn." <mask> was ambivalent about his newfound fame. He turned down offers to appear in a Gap ad and to be featured as one of Peoples "50 Most Beautiful People." He later said of the People offer, "I don't give a shit [about it] ...I only take pride in things I've actually done myself. To be praised for something like that is just weird. It just felt like somebody calling and saying, 'We want to put you in a magazine because the weather's so nice where you live.' "

In 2001, Chabon reflected on the success of his first novel by saying that while "the upside was that I was published and I got a readership, ... [the] downside ... was that, emotionally, this stuff started happening and I was still like, 'Wait a

masks: Chabon Chabon


title: Michael Chabon

texts:
 minute, is my thesis done yet?' It took me a few years to catch up." In 1991, he published A Model World, a collection of short stories, many of which were previously published in The New Yorker. Fountain City and Wonder Boys
After the success of The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, Chabon spent five years working on a second novel, Fountain City, a "highly ambitious opus ... about an architect building a perfect baseball park in Florida."It ballooned to 1,500 pages, with no end in sight. The process was frustrating for Chabon, who, in his words, "never felt like I was conceptually on steady ground." At one point, he submitted a 672-page draft to his agent and editor, who disliked the work. Chabon had problems dropping the novel, though. "It was really scary," he said later. "I'd already signed a contract and been paid all this money. And then I'd gotten a divorce and half the money was already with my ex-wife.My instincts were telling me, 'This book is fucked. Just drop it.' But I didn't, because I thought, 'What if I have to give the money back?' " "I used to go down to my office and fantasize about all the books I could write instead." Chabon has confessed to being "careless and sloppy" when it came to his novels' plots, saying how he "again and again falls back on the same basic story." When he finally decided to abandon Fountain City, Chabon recalls staring at his blank computer for hours before suddenly picturing "a straitlaced, troubled young man with a tendency toward melodrama, trying to end it all." He began writing, and within a couple of days had written 50 pages of what became his second novel, Wonder Boys.<mask> drew on his


title: Michael Chabon

texts:
 experiences with Fountain City for the character of Grady Tripp, a frustrated novelist who has spent years working on an immense fourth novel. He wrote Wonder Boys in a dizzy seven-month streak, without telling his agent or publisher he'd abandoned Fountain City. The book, published in 1995, was a commercial and critical success. In late 2010, "An annotated, four-chapter fragment" from the unfinished 1,500 page Fountain City manuscript, "complete with cautionary introduction and postscript" written by <mask>, was included in McSweeney's 36. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay

Among the supporters of Wonder Boys was The Washington Post critic Jonathan Yardley; however, despite declaring Chabon "the young star of American letters," Yardley argued that, in his works to that point, Chabon had been preoccupied "with fictional explorations of his own ... It is time for him to move on, to break away from the first person and explore larger worlds." <mask> later said that he took Yardley's criticism to heart, explaining, "It chimed with my own thoughts.I had bigger ambitions." In 1999 he published his second collection of short stories, Werewolves in Their Youth, which included his first published foray into genre fiction, the grim horror story "In the Black Mill." Shortly after completing Wonder Boys, <mask> discovered a box of comic books from his childhood; a reawakened interest in comics, coupled with memories of the "lore" his Brooklyn-born father had told him about "the middle years of the twentieth century in America. ...the radio shows, politicians, movies, music, and athletes, and so forth, of that era," inspired him to begin work

masks: Chabon Chabon Chabon


title: Michael Chabon

texts:
 on a new novel. In 2000, he published The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, an epic historical novel that charts 16 years in the lives of Sammy Clay and Joe Kavalier, two Jewish cousins who create a wildly popular series of comic books in the early 1940s, the years leading up to the entry of the U.S. into World War II. The novel received "nearly unanimous praise" and became a New York Times Best Seller, eventually winning the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. <mask> reflected that, in writing Kavalier & Clay, "I discovered strengths I had hoped that I possessed—the ability to pull off multiple points of view, historical settings, the passage of years—but which had never been tested before."Summerland, The Final Solution, Gentlemen of the Road, and The Yiddish Policemen's Union

In 2002, Chabon published Summerland, a fantasy novel written for younger readers that received mixed reviews but sold extremely well, and won the 2003 Mythopoeic Fantasy Award. Two years later, he published The Final Solution, a novella about an investigation led by an unknown old man, whom the reader can guess to be Sherlock Holmes, during the final years of World War II. His Dark Horse Comics project The Amazing Adventures of the Escapist, a quarterly anthology series that was published from 2004 to 2006, purported to cull stories from an involved, fictitious 60-year history of the Escapist character created by the protagonists of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay. It was awarded the 2005 Eisner Award for Best Anthology and a pair of Harvey Awards for Best Anthology and Best New Series. In late 2006, <mask> completed work on Gentlemen of the Road, a


title: Michael Chabon

texts:
 15-part serialized novel that ran in The New York Times Magazine from January 28 to May 6, 2007. The serial (which at one point had the working title "Jews with Swords") was described by Chabon as "a swashbuckling adventure story set around the year 1000." Just before Gentlemen of the Road completed its run, the author published his next novel, The Yiddish Policemen's Union, which he had worked on since February 2002.A hard-boiled detective story that imagines an alternate history in which Israel collapsed in 1948 and European Jews settled in Alaska, the novel was launched on May 1, 2007 to enthusiastic reviews, and spent six weeks on the New York Times Best Seller list. The novel also won the 2008 Hugo Award. Manhood for Amateurs and Telegraph Avenue
In May 2007, <mask> said that he was working on a young-adult novel with "some fantastic content." A month later, the author said he had put plans for the young-adult book on hold, and instead had signed a two-book deal with HarperCollins. The first, a book-length work of non-fiction called Manhood for Amateurs: The Pleasures and Regrets of a Husband, Father, and Son, was published in spring 2009 (2010 in Europe); the work discusses "being a man in all its complexity—a son, a father, a husband." The collection was nominated for a 2010 Northern California Book Award in the Creative Nonfiction category. This was <mask>'s second published collection of essays and non-fiction.McSweeney's published Maps and Legends, a collection of Chabon's literary essays, on May 1, 2008. Proceeds from the book benefited 826 National. Also in 2008, Chabon received the Peggy V. Helmerich Distinguished Author


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texts: Award,  presented annually by the Tulsa (Oklahoma) Library Trust. During a 2007 interview with the Washington Post, Chabon discussed his second book under the contract, saying, "I would like it to be set in the present day and feel right now the urge to do something more mainstream than my recent work has been." During a Q&A session in January 2009, <mask> added that he was writing a "naturalistic" novel about two families in Berkeley. In a March 2010 interview with the Guardian newspaper, Chabon added that "So far there's no overtly genre content: it's set in the present day and has no alternate reality or anything like that." Telegraph Avenue, adapted from an idea for a TV series pilot that Chabon was asked to write in 1999, is a social novel set on the borders between Oakland and Berkeley in the summer of 2004 that sees a "large cast of characters grapple with infidelity, fatherhood, crooked politicians, racism, nostalgia and buried secrets."Chabon said upon publication in an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle that the novel concerns "the possibility and impossibility of creating shared community spaces that attempt to transcend the limits imposed on us by our backgrounds, heritage and history." Five years in gestation, Telegraph Avenue had a difficult birth, Chabon telling the Guardian newspaper, "I got two years into the novel and got completely stymied and felt like it was an utter flop.... I had to start all over again, keeping the characters but reinventing the story completely and leaving behind almost every element." After starting out with literary realism with his first two novels and moving into genre-fiction


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 experiments from The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay onward, Chabon feels that Telegraph Avenue is a significant "unification" of his earlier and later styles, declaring in an interview, "I could do whatever I wanted to do in this book and it would be OK even if it verged on crime fiction, even if it verged on magic realism, even if it verged on martial arts fiction.... I was open to all of that and yet I didn't have to repudiate or steer away from the naturalistic story about two families living their everyday lives and coping with pregnancy and birth and adultery and business failure and all the issues that might go into making a novel written in the genre of mainstream quote-unquote realistic fiction, that that was another genre for me now and I felt free to mix them all in a sense." The novel has been optioned by film producer Scott Rudin (who previously optioned and produced Wonder Boys), and Cameron Crowe is adapting the novel into a screenplay, according to Chabon. In a public lecture and reading of the novel in Oakland, California, Chabon listed creative influences as broad as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Robert Altman, and William Faulkner.Moonglow, Pops, Bookends, and current work
<mask>'s latest novel, Moonglow was published November 22, 2016. The novel is a quasi-metafictional memoir, based upon the deathbed confessions of Chabon's grandfather in the late 1980s. <mask> followed-up Moonglow in summer 2017 with the edited collection Kingdom of Olives and Ash: Writers Confront the Occupation, a non-fiction collection of essays by writers concerning the continued Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, featuring


title: Michael Chabon

texts: contributions from writers including Dave Eggers, Colum McCann, and Geraldine Brooks. <mask> co-edited the volume with Ayelet Waldman, and they both contributed essays to the collection. <mask> had previously weighed in on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in 2010, having written an op-ed piece for the New York Times in June 2010 in which he noted the role of exceptionalism in Jewish identity, in relation to the "blockheadedness" of Israel's botching of the Gaza flotilla raid and the explanations that followed. Pops: Fatherhood in Pieces was published in May 2018. Pops is a short non-fiction memoir/essay collection, the essays thematically linked by the rewards and challenges of various aspects of fatherhood and family.<mask>'s next non-fiction book, Bookends: Collected Intros and Outros, was published in January 2019. This volume is a collections of introductions, afterwords, and liner notes that Chabon has contributed over the years to various books and other projects, also exploring <mask>'s own literary influences and ideas about writing and reading. The book serves as a fundraiser for MacDowell, to which Chabon is contributing all royalties. In an interview with the American Booksellers Association promoting Moonglow in November 2016, <mask> stated that his next fiction project would be "...a long overdue follow-up — but not a sequel — to Summerland, my book for a somewhat younger readership. It’s something I’ve been trying to get around to for a long time." In 2014, <mask> was involved in writing lyrics for Mark Ronson's album Uptown Special, and later collaborated with Adam Schlesinger on the song "House of Broken Gingerbread"

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 written for the Monkees' October 2018 album Christmas Party. Despite his success, <mask> continues to perceive himself as a "failure," noting that "anyone who has ever received a bad review knows how it outlasts, by decades, the memory of a favorable word."Amazon vs. Hachette controversy
In 2014, Amazon.com, a leading book distributor, was in a dispute with Hachette, a publisher. Hundreds of authors, Chabon included, condemned Amazon in an open letter because Amazon stopped taking pre-orders for books published by Hachette. Personal life
After the publication of The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, Chabon was mistakenly featured in a Newsweek article on up-and-coming gay writers (Pittsburghs protagonist has liaisons with people of both sexes). The New York Times later reported that "in some ways, [Chabon] was happy" for the magazine's error, and quoted him as saying, "I feel very lucky about all of that. It really opened up a new readership to me, and a very loyal one." In a 2002 interview, Chabon added, "If Mysteries of Pittsburgh is about anything in terms of human sexuality and identity, it's that people can't be put into categories all that easily." In "On The Mysteries of Pittsburgh," an essay he wrote for the New York Review of Books in 2005, Chabon remarked on the autobiographical events that helped inspire his first novel: "I had slept with one man whom I loved, and learned to love another man so much that it would never have occurred to me to want to sleep with him."In 1987, <mask> married the poet Lollie Groth. According to <mask>, the popularity of The Mysteries of Pittsburgh had adverse effects; he later explained, "I was married at


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texts: the time to someone else who was also a struggling writer, and the success created a gross imbalance in our careers, which was problematic." He and Groth divorced in 1991. He married the Israeli-born writer Ayelet Waldman in 1993. They live together in Berkeley, California, with their four children. <mask> has said that the "creative free-flow" he has with Waldman inspired the relationship between Sammy Clay and Rosa Saks toward the end of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, and in 2007, Entertainment Weekly declared the couple "a famous—and famously in love—writing pair, like Nick and Nora Charles with word processors and not so much booze." In a 2012 interview with Guy Raz of Weekend All Things Considered, <mask> said that he writes from 10 p.m. to 3 a.m. each day, Sunday through Thursday.He tries to write 1,000 words a day. Commenting on the rigidity of his routine, Chabon said, "There have been plenty of self-destructive rebel-angel novelists over the years, but writing is about getting your work done and getting your work done every day. If you want to write novels, they take a long time, and they're big, and they have a lot of words in them.... The best environment, at least for me, is a very stable, structured kind of life." <mask> was a vocal endorser of Barack Obama during his 2008 election campaign, and wrote an enthusiastic opinion piece on Obama for the New York Review of Books, titled "Obama & the Conquest of Denver", in October 2008. Subsequently, Chabon included a brief, fictionalized 'cameo' by Obama in his 2012 novel Telegraph Avenue. Since 2016, <mask> has been an outspoken critic of Donald Trump, both during his

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 campaign for the presidency (signing a petition with over 400 other writers against his presidency in May 2016), and during his administration.During an interview with The Guardian before Trump's inauguration in January 2017, Chabon remarked of the incoming president, "I really have no idea what to expect. He’s so unpredictable. He’s so mercurial. You know, I would be no more surprised if he stood up there and declared amnesty for all illegal immigrants to the United States than if he said he was going to take them all out to be shot. He’s like a random impulse generator." In a 2017 radio interview, <mask> spoke of Trump: "Every morning I wake up and in the seconds before I turn my phone on to see what the latest news is, I have this boundless sense of optimism and hope that this is the day that he’s going to have a massive stroke, and, you know, be carted out of the White House on a gurney." Interest in genre fiction
In a 2002 essay, Chabon decried the state of modern short fiction (including his own), saying that, with rare exceptions, it consisted solely of "the contemporary, quotidian, plotless, moment-of-truth revelatory story."In an apparent reaction against these "plotless [stories] sparkling with epiphanic dew," Chabon's post-2000 work has been marked by an increased interest in genre fiction and plot. While The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay was, like The Mysteries of Pittsburgh and Wonder Boys, an essentially realistic, contemporary novel (whose plot happened to revolve around comic-book superheroes), Chabon's subsequent works—such as The Final Solution, his dabbling with comic-book writing, and the "swashbuckling


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texts: adventure" of Gentlemen of the Road—have been almost exclusively devoted to mixing aspects of genre and literary fiction. Perhaps the most notable example of this is The Yiddish Policemen's Union, which won five genre awards, including the Hugo Award and Nebula Award. Chabon seeks to "annihilate" not the genres themselves, but the bias against certain genres of fiction such as fantasy, science fiction and romance. Chabon's forays into genre fiction have met with mixed critical reaction. One science fiction short story by Chabon, "The Martian Agent," was described by a reviewer as "enough to send readers back into the cold but reliable arms of The New Yorker." Another critic wrote of the same story that it was "richly plotted, action-packed," and that "Chabon skilfully elaborates his world and draws not just on the steampunk worlds of William Gibson, Bruce Sterling and <mask>, but on alternate histories by brilliant science fiction mavericks such as Avram Davidson and Howard Waldrop.The imperial politics are craftily resonant and the story keeps us hanging on." While The Village Voice called The Final Solution "an ingenious, fully imagined work, an expert piece of literary ventriloquism, and a mash note to the beloved boys' tales of Chabon's youth," The Boston Globe wrote, "[T]he genre of the comic book is an anemic vein for novelists to mine, lest they squander their brilliance." The New York Times states that the detective story, "a genre that is by its nature so constrained, so untransgressive, seems unlikely to appeal to the real writer," but adds that "... Chabon makes good on his claim: a successful detective story need not be lacking


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 in literary merit." In 2005, Chabon argued against the idea that genre fiction and entertaining fiction should not appeal to "the real writer," saying that the common perception is that "Entertainment ... means junk.... [But] maybe the reason for the junkiness of so much of what pretends to entertain us is that we have accepted—indeed, we have helped to articulate—such a narrow, debased concept of entertainment.... I'd like to believe that, because I read for entertainment, and I write to entertain. Period." One of the more positive responses to Chabon's brand of "trickster literature" appeared in Time magazine, whose Lev Grossman wrote that "This is literature in mid-transformation.... [T]he highbrow and the lowbrow, once kept chastely separate, are now hooking up, [and] you can almost see the future of literature coming."Grossman classed Chabon with a movement of authors similarly eager to blend literary and popular writing, including Jonathan Lethem (with whom Chabon is friends), Margaret Atwood, and Susanna Clarke. On the other hand, in Slate in 2007, Ruth Franklin said, "<mask> has spent considerable energy trying to drag the decaying corpse of genre fiction out of the shallow grave where writers of serious literature abandoned it." The Van Zorn persona
For some of his own genre work, <mask> has forged an unusual horror/fantasy fiction persona under the name of August Van Zorn. More elaborately developed than a pseudonym, August Van Zorn is purported to be a pen name for one Albert Vetch (1899–1963). In <mask>'s 1995 novel Wonder Boys, narrator Grady Tripp writes that he grew up in the same hotel as Vetch, who worked as an English

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texts: professor at the (nonexistent) Coxley College and wrote hundreds of pulp stories that were "in the gothic mode, after the manner of Lovecraft ... but written in a dry, ironic, at times almost whimsical idiom." A horror-themed short story titled "In the Black Mill" was published in Playboy in June 1997 and reprinted in Chabon's 1999 story collection Werewolves in Their Youth, and was attributed to Van Zorn. <mask> has created a comprehensive bibliography for Van Zorn, along with an equally fictional literary scholar devoted to his oeuvre named Leon Chaim Bach.Bach's now-defunct website (which existed under the auspices of Chabon's) declared Van Zorn to be, "without question, the greatest unknown horror writer of the twentieth century," and mentioned that Bach had once edited a collection of short stories by Van Zorn titled The Abominations of Plunkettsburg. (The name "Leon Chaim Bach" is an anagram of "<mask>," as is "Malachi B. Cohen," the name of a fictional comics expert who wrote occasional essays about the Escapist for the character's Dark Horse Comic series.) In 2004, Chabon established the August Van Zorn Prize, "awarded to the short story that most faithfully and disturbingly embodies the tradition of the weird short story as practiced by Edgar Allan Poe and his literary descendants, among them August Van Zorn." The first recipient of the prize was Jason Roberts, whose winning story, "7C," was then included in McSweeney's Enchanted Chamber of Astonishing Stories, edited by Chabon. A scene in the film adaptation of Chabon's novel The Mysteries of Pittsburgh shows two characters in a bookstore stocking August Van Zorn books. The

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 Chabon universe

Chabon has provided several subtle hints throughout his work that the stories he tells take place in a shared fictional universe. One recurring character, who is mentioned in three of Chabon's books but never actually appears, is Eli Drinkwater, a fictional catcher for the Pittsburgh Pirates who died abruptly after crashing his car on Mt.Nebo Road. The most detailed exposition of Drinkwater's life appears in <mask>'s 1990 short story "Smoke," which is set at Drinkwater's funeral, and refers to him as "a scholarly catcher, a redoubtable batsman, and a kind, affectionate person." Drinkwater was again referred to (though not by name) in <mask>'s 1995 novel Wonder Boys, in which narrator Grady Tripp explains that his sportswriter friend Happy Blackmore was hired "to ghost the autobiography of a catcher, a rising star who played for Pittsburgh and hit the sort of home runs that linger in the memory for years." Tripp explains that Blackmore turned in an inadequate draft, his book contract was cancelled, and the catcher died shortly afterwards, "leaving nothing in Happy's notorious 'files' but the fragments and scribblings of a ghost." In <mask>'s children's book Summerland (2002), it is suggested that Blackmore was eventually able to find a publisher for the biography; the character Jennifer T. mentions that she has read a book called Eli Drinkwater: A Life in Baseball, written by Happy Blackmore. Drinkwater's name may have been selected in homage to contemporary author John Crowley, whom <mask> is on the record as admiring. Crowley's novel Little, Big featured a main character named Alice Drinkwater.There are also instances in


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 which character surnames reappear from story to story. Cleveland Arning, a character in <mask>'s 1988 debut novel, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, is described as having come from a wealthy family, one that might be expected to be able to endow a building. Near the end of Wonder Boys (1995), it is mentioned that, on the unnamed college campus at which Grady Tripp teaches, there is a building called Arning Hall "where the English faculty kept office hours." Similarly, in <mask>'s 1989 short story "A Model World," a character named Levine discovers, or rather plagiarizes, a formula for "nephokinesis" (or cloud control) that wins him respect and prominence in the meteorological field. In The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay (2000), a passing reference is made to the "massive Levine School of Applied Meteorology," ostensibly a building owned by New York University. Film and television work
Although <mask> once described his attitude toward Hollywood as "pre-emptive cynicism," for years the author has worked to bring both adapted and original projects to the screen. In 1994, <mask> pitched a screenplay entitled The Gentleman Host to producer Scott Rudin, a romantic comedy "about old Jewish folks on a third-rate cruise ship out of Miami."Rudin bought the project and developed it with Chabon, but it was never filmed, partly due to the release of the similarly themed film Out to Sea in 1997. In the nineties, <mask> also pitched story ideas for both the X-Men and Fantastic Four films, but was rejected. When Rudin was adapting Wonder Boys for the screen, the author declined an offer to write the screenplay, saying he was too busy writing The

masks: Chabon Chabon Chabon Chabon Chabon


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texts: Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. Directed by Curtis Hanson and starring <mask>, Wonder Boys was released in 2000 to critical acclaim and financial failure. Having bought the film rights to The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, Rudin then asked <mask> to work on that film's screenplay. Although Chabon spent 16 months in 2001 and 2002 working on the novel's film adaptation, the project has been mired in pre-production for years. <mask>'s work, however, remains popular in Hollywood, with Rudin purchasing the film rights to The Yiddish Policemen's Union, then titled Hatzeplatz, in 2002, five years before the book would be published.The same year, Miramax bought the rights to Summerland and Tales of Mystery and Imagination (a planned collection of eight genre short stories that Chabon has not yet written), each of which was optioned for a sum in the mid-six figures. <mask> also wrote a draft for 2004's Spider-Man 2, about a third of which was used in the final film. Soon after Spider-Man 2 was released, director Sam Raimi mentioned that he hoped to hire <mask> to work on the film's sequel, "if I can get him," but Chabon never worked on Spider-Man 3. In October 2004, it was announced that Chabon was at work writing Disney's Snow and the Seven, a live-action martial arts retelling of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs to be directed by master Hong Kong fight choreographer and director Yuen Wo Ping. In August 2006, <mask> said that he had been replaced on Snow, sarcastically explaining that the producers wanted to go in "more of a fun direction." Although Chabon was uninvolved with the project, director Rawson Marshall Thurber shot a

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texts: film adaptation of The Mysteries of Pittsburgh in fall 2006. The film, which stars Sienna Miller and Peter Sarsgaard, was released in April 2008.In February 2008, Rudin reported that a film adaptation of The Yiddish Policemen's Union was in pre-production, to be written and directed by the Coen brothers. However, as of 2018, Chabon expressed skepticism that the Coens would make the film, saying that they had effectively chosen to make A Serious Man instead, and did not wish to do another film with such similar themes. In April 2009, <mask> confirmed he had been hired to do revisions to the script for Disney's John Carter. In July 2015, <mask> was hired to do revisions to the script for Disney's Bob the Musical. Chabon joined the writing team of Star Trek: Picard, a new Star Trek series starring Patrick Stewart, and was named showrunner in July 2019. In November 2018, a Star Trek: Short Treks episode co-written by Chabon, titled "Calypso", was released. Another short, written only by Chabon and titled "Q&A" was released on October 5, 2019.<mask>'s Star Trek series premiered on January 23, 2020, with <mask> referring to himself as a lifelong Star Trek fan. After the release of Season 1 of Star Trek: Picard, <mask> said in an interview with Variety in March 2020 that he would be involved with Season 2 of Picard, but as an executive producer rather than as showrunner. <mask> was also listed as co-creator of the Netflix miniseries Unbelievable, and has been working on a television adaptation of Kavalier and Clay with Ayelet Waldman since at least December 2019. In April 2021, following an article in The Hollywood Reporter which alleged numerous


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 instances of physical and emotional abuse from Rudin towards his employees, <mask> wrote a public apology, stating that he had "regularly, even routinely" heard Rudin shout at and insult staff during their twenty years of collaboration, and had once witnessed Rudin throw a pencil at an employee's head. <mask> said, "I’m ashamed. I regret, and I want to apologize for, my part in enabling Scott Rudin’s abuse, simply by standing by, saying nothing, looking the other way." Honors

1997 International Dublin Literary Award longlist (for Wonder Boys)
1999 O. Henry Award Third Prize (for "Son of the Wolfman")
2000 National Book Critics Circle Award finalist (Fiction) (for The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay)
2001 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (for The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay)
2000 California Book Award (Fiction) (for The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay)
2001 PEN/Faulkner Award finalist (for The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay)
2002 International Dublin Literary Award longlist (for The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay)
2005 National Jewish Book Award for The Final Solution.Chabon serves up his colossal tale of darkness and light in fabulous language, as befits this modern fable.") 2017 National Book Critics Circle Award finalist (Fiction) (for Moonglow)
2017 California Book Awards Gold Prize (for Moonglow)
2018 International Dublin Literary Award longlist (for Moonglow)

Bibliography

References

Sources

Further reading
Costello, Brannon (ed.). Conversations with <mask>. University Press of Mississippi, 2015. [Collection of interviews with Chabon between 1995 and 2012]
Dewey, Joseph. Understanding <mask>.

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 University of South Carolina Press, 2014.Gibbs, Alan. Contemporary American Trauma Narratives. Edinburgh University Press, 2014. [contains a chapter discussing trauma in relation to contemporary counterfactual history novels, discussing The Yiddish Policemen's Union alongside Philip Roth's The Plot Against America and Paul Auster's Man in the Dark]
Groß, Florian. "'To emerge from its transitional funk': The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay'''s Intermedial Dialogue with Comics and Graphic Novels." Scandinavian Journal of Comic Art, vol. 1, no.2 (Winter 2012), pp. 3–28. Huber, Irmtraud. Literature After Postmodernism: Reconstructive Fantasies. Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. [contains a chapter on history as escape in relation to The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay]
Kavadlo, Jesse and Batchelor, Bob (eds.). <mask>'s America: Magical Words, Secret Worlds, and Sacred Spaces.Rowman & Littlefield, 2014. [collection of essays considering various aspects of <mask>'s body of work up to Telegraph Avenue]
 Levine, Daniel B. "Josef Kavalier's Odyssey: Homeric Echoes in <mask>'s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay". International Journal of the Classical Tradition, vol. 17, no. 4 (December 2010), pp. 526–555.Scanlan, Margaret. "Strange Times to Be a Jew: Alternate History after 9/11" in Duvall, John and Markzec, Robert (eds.). Narrating 9/11: Fantasies of State, Security, and Terrorism . Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015. [contains discussion of The Yiddish Policemen's Union]

 External links

 The Amazing Website of Kavalier & Clay, an unofficial but thorough site recommended by Chabon

 Stories and essays by Chabon at The New

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title: Lee Towers

texts: <mask> "<mask>" Huijzer OON (; born 23 March 1946), better known by his stage name <mask>, is a Dutch singer with international success. He remains as one of the best-selling artists of the Netherlands and holds the record for the most concerts performed by a single artist at the Rotterdam Ahoy, making him one of the most successful Dutch artists of all time. <mask>' performing range has included pop, show tunes, country, soul and gospel. He was discovered in 1975 as "The Singing Crane Mechanic", while laboring as a dockworker in Rotterdam. His music has charted in the Netherlands' music charts successfully from the early 1970s up until the present day. He is well known in the Netherlands for bringing large theatrical performances to his fans in the style of Las Vegas shows. He holds a record in the Netherlands for performing the most concerts for a single artist at one single venue.Since the 1980s, <mask> has held 50 gala performances at Rotterdam Ahoy, a multi-purpose arena, which now hosts

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Towers