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Elderhostel - 1987 During the week of June 15-19, fifty elderly students from around the United States participated in a Basque Culture course at UNR under the auspices of Elderhostel. An additional 45 person applied and were not accepted due to space limitations. The daily routine included two classes in the morning and one each afternoon. Evenings were devoted to films, lectures and a banquet at a local Basque restaurant. The courses included lectures on Old and New World Basque culture, nationalism, prehistory and history, literature, language, and cuisine. Faculty included Linda White, Gorka Aulestia, Jose Mallea, Robert Laxalt, William Douglass, Janet Inda, Maria Otero-Boisvert, and Carmelo Urza. Elderhostel - 1988 There will be a week-long Basque Studies course held in Reno under the auspices of Elderhostel between May 22-28 of 1988. The courses will essentially be a repetition of the 1987 Elderhostel program described elsewhere in this newsletter. Interested persons should apply immediately as space is limited to the first fifty applicants. For further information contact: Elderhostel Division of Continuing Education University of Nevada Reno, NV 89557 Robert Laxalt’s A Man in the Wheatfield The University of Nevada Press has recently reprinted Robert Laxalt’s novel A Man in the Wheatfield. Robert Laxalt is perhaps best known for his several books dealing with Basques in both the Old and New Worlds. While he is therefore recognized as the literary spokesman of the Basque-Americans, he did not limit his scope to Basque topics. A Man in the Wheatfield rivals Laxalt’s famed Sweet Promised Land in importance. It is a gripping morality play set in the Nevada desert. Father Savio Lazzaroni knows for a positive fact that there is a devil, and the priest is obsessed with a vision of evil. Mayor Manuel Cafferata, a benevolent and aging despot, is only concerned with his own standing and reputation in the community. Into their small, isolated town of Italian immigrants in the Nevada desert comes a stranger –– Smale Calder, the first outsider to set up business in the tightly knit society. Out of these ingredients comes a stark and chilling tale of human nature and the ways in which people deal with fear and prejudice. When the stranger’s secret, single-minded passion for rattlesnakes is revealed, the lives of all involved are changed in a dramatic series of emotions and events. Written with precision, beauty, and compassion, this story is one that no reader will easily forget. A Man in the Wheatfield was first published by Harper and Row in 1964 to critical acclaim, and the book was named one of six Notable Works of Fiction that year by the American Library Association, sharing the honor with works by Saul Bellow and Ernest Hemingway. It was reprinted in England for distribution in the United Kingdom, and it was translated into Spanish for the readers of Spain and South America. “A fascinating, ambiguous allegory of men’s various ways of confronting fear…Author Laxalt has chiseled out a narrative that is lapidary, unadorned and original.” – Time A Man in the Wheatfield may be obtained at a cost of $16.00 from the University of Nevada Press, Reno, NV 89557. |
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