Romania took hold of my heart in 2015 and since then has consumed my mind and soul. As with any genuine commitment, my relationship with this beautiful, complex country has grown and deepened over time as I have learned of its many tragedies, as well as its many triumphs. I have surrendered myself to Romania. [...] As I continue my Romanian journey, I marvel over the resiliency and fortitude of the people. I am fortunate to have developed close relationships, familial in many ways, with many Romanians. And I am eternally grateful to have been granted a Fulbright and honored to become part of this amazing community.
Legenda Meșterului Manole
Former Fulbright Scholar Tom Cousineau spent the month of May in Romania teaching classes at Lucian Blaga University in Sibiu and giving public lectures related to his current book-in-progress, “To Double-Business Bound: The Symmetrical Imperative of Writing.” The day before leaving Sibiu to return to the states, he received from Editura ULBS a boxful of author’s copies of his latest book, “The Séance of Reading: Uncanny Designs in Modernist Writing.” Inspired by Mircea Eliade’s interpretation of the Romanian ballad “Legenda Meșterului Manole,” it gathers together guest-lectures he presented at various Romanian universities that explore the disguised return of archaic building-rituals in selected monuments of modernist writing, including “The Great Gatsby,” “The Sisters,” “The Book of Disquiet,” “Waiting for Godot,” “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” “Endgame,” “A Short History of Decay,” “A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” and “Light in August.” Anyone wishing to receive a pdf version of this book is invited to contact him at tomcousineau1989@gmail.com.