Parini sends Tolstoy to Tinseltown

Author: Katie Washburn

On a drizzly morning in downtown Middlebury, several customers lounged at Carol's Hungry Mind CafÈ. Shortly after 8 a.m., a familiar customer, Axinn Professor of English & Creative Writing Jay Parini, enters, proceeds to order a coffee and drifts toward the back of the room.
"For the past 40 years I've come to a cafÈ everyday to write," explains Parini. "I only like to write for a couple of hours in the morning, and I often start very early."
This daily ritual has produced poetry collections, novels, biographies, literary critiques and now the inspiration for a Hollywood film starring Meryl Streep and Anthony Hopkins. "The Last Station," Parini's novel based on the last year in the life of Russian author Leo Tolstoy, is currently being made into a movie by director Michael Hoffman.
The evolution of "The Last Station" has been a lengthy process for Parini, who began working with renowned actor Anthony Quinn to adapt the novel into a screenplay after it was published in 1990. Quinn had planned on playing the lead role of Tolstoy until he passed away from complications of throat cancer in 2001.
Parini then went back to work with Bonnie Arnold, associate producer of "Dances with Wolves," to set the film in motion. When director Michael Hoffman picked up the project, he completely rewrote the screenplay, basing his work on the original novel. After sending out the script, movie stars Anthony Hopkins and Meryl Streep signed on as leading actors.
"I am delighted to have such major figures of today in the film," says Parini. "I'm especially interested in the lesser known figures, like Paul Giamatti."
Giamatti will be playing the emotionally rich character of Vladimir Cherkov, Tolstoy's apprentice. Parini also anticipates James McAvoy's performance with excitement. McAvoy recently starred in "The Last King of Scotland."
"The Last Station," will begin shooting in Russia later this year, but is only one of many different projects in which Parini is involved. He is a multi-faceted writer, not strictly adhering to or favoring a certain type of work.
"I think of poetry at my center, [but] I would not give up anything," he says. "It works better to shift among genres, [as] one genre informs another."
In 2005, Parini's "The Art of Subtraction: New and Selected Poems" was published. "The Art of Teaching" was also released two years ago and, as Parini says, "was surprisingly successful." The work used anecdotes from his experience as a professor to tackle many classroom issues.
This past fall, Parini finished a book called "Why Poetry Matters," which he describes as a "history of how poets themselves justify their work." In it, he emphasizes the importance of correctly using metaphor.
"Like Frost said, if you're not educated in metaphor, you're not safe to be let loose in the world," says Parini. He used President Bush as an example. "The misuse of metaphor leads us into dangerous places, such as Iraq."
A recent event at the Center for the Arts featured a reading of one of Parini's newest works, "Mary Postgate," based on a short story by Rudyard Kipling, which Parini describes as a "story [he'd] been brooding on for the past twenty to thirty years." Parini is currently writing "Promised Land: Thirteen Books That Made America."
Yet Parini notes that his true love is teaching. He sees the profession as "an active conversation" between him and his students.
"I love to meet with students and talk to them, and guide their reading," he says.
Though he has been teaching for the past 35 years, he still insists, "It seems to me I just started yesterday."