W. Ralph Eubanks is the author of Ever Is a Long Time and The House at the End of the Road. He is director of publishing at the Library of Congress.
The work of William Faulkner looms as a mountain too high to climb for many readers, with his long, complex sentences and shifting point of view. But Faulkner's famously tangled mix of literary techniques meant nothing when I was about 12 years old and picked up a copy of TheReivers.
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Robert Siegel.
MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:
And I'm Melissa Block. French investigators searched former president Nicolas Sarkozy's office and home today. They were looking for evidence of illegal campaign financing. The allegations aren't new, but Sarkozy's loss of presidential immunity is.
From Paris, NPR's Eleanor Beardsley sends this report.
Francois St. Ker, 55, was on the brink of dying from AIDS in the spring of 2001. Today, he's a successful farmer and is in good health, thanks to treatment for his HIV.
Credit John Poole / NPR
St. Ker says he has been faithful about taking his HIV medicine every day for the past 11 years.
Credit Richard Knox / NPR
St. Ker, in 2001, with the coffin he picked out for himself and a plastic bag that contains his funeral clothes. With the help of medicine, he has fought off AIDS and sold the coffin.
This story begins 11 years ago. It was a time when many, if not most, experts said it was unthinkable to treat people with AIDS in developing countries using the triple-drug regimens that were routinely saving the lives of patients in wealthier countries.
If you're planning a wedding, and looking for music that's fresh, irresistible and completely unexpected, you might want to consider The Boban i Marko Markovic Orkestar, a cutting-edge Gypsy brass band from southern Serbia. A new best-of compilation called Golden Horns puts the group's wild, genre-bending flair on full display.
Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn says the pension system is putting a grip on the state's budget. As a result, other services may lose funding.
Credit Seth Perlman / AP
Illinois pensions have amounted to billions that the state can't readily afford. American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees rally against proposed pension legislation on May 23.
Ryan Curtis leans in for a kiss from Love Kovtun on Telegraph Avenue in Oakland's Uptown neighborhood in April. New businesses and investment have helped revitalize the city's downtown over the past decade.
Credit Laura Morton for NPR
A performance artist dances on 23rd Street in Oakland as First Friday Art Walk attendees pass by.
The city of Oakland, Calif. has long been associated with crime, poverty, urban decay and, more recently, violent protests tied to the Occupy movement.
So it may have been a surprise to New York Times readers when the newspaper listed Oakland as No. 5 among its top "places to go" in 2012.
In the drama Matlock, Kene Holliday (top left), Nancy Stafford, Julie Sommars, Griffith and Kari Lizer played a criminal defense team that often came out on top.
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In 2005, President George W. Bush honored Griffith with the Presidential Medal of Freedom for "demonstrating the finest qualities of our country."
Credit Bob Jordan / AP
Griffith attends the 2003 unveiling of a bronze statue of the characters Andy and Opie from his hit TV series The Andy Griffith Show in Raleigh, N.C.
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Actor Andy Griffith was best known for his role as the gentle, small-town sheriff of Mayberry on the 1960s sitcom The Andy Griffith Show. He died Tuesday at 86.
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Griffith on the set of the 1958 film No Time for Sergeants. Griffith starred in the live television, Broadway and film adaptations of Mac Hyman's 1954 novel.
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Griffith and Juliet Prowse pose on the set of The Second Time Around, a 1961 Western comedy starring Debbie Reynolds as a widow who moves from New York to Arizona.
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Ron Howard played Griffith's son, Opie. "They always have the kids in situation comedies be brats," he said, but the Andy-Opie relationship was different.
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Don Knotts played bumbling Deputy Barney Fife to Griffith's Sheriff Andy Taylor on the sitcom The Andy Griffith Show.
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Griffith's marriage to Barbara Edwards (left) ended in 1972. He married Cindi Knight in 1983, and they settled in his home state of North Carolina.
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Actor Andy Griffith died Tuesday at 86. He sits in uniform, as Sheriff Andy Taylor, on the set of his television series The Andy Griffith Show in 1967.
Credit Doug Pizac / AP
Born in North Carolina, actor and comedian Andy Griffith was known for playing the wise, gentle Southern patriarch, both in the 1960s sitcom The Andy Griffith Show and the 1980s-'90s legal drama Matlock.
In a career that spanned half a century, actor and comedian Andy Griffith starred in five different television series, made more than 30 movies and even recorded a Grammy Award-winning gospel album. He died Tuesday morning in North Carolina at the age of 86.
I know you're skeptical. Tobey Maguire's Spider-Man was last slinging webs just five years ago. Broadway's Spider-Man started singing about webs less than two years ago. Now here comes another Spider-dude: This Andrew Garfield guy. So he'd better be really something, right? Well, as it happens, he is.
London-based Barclays Bank agreed to pay a $453 million fine over charges it manipulated the London Interbank Offered Rate — LIBOR — a key global interest rate.
Every day at 11 a.m., a few big banks tell the British Bankers' Association what it costs them to borrow. Out of that comes LIBOR — the London Interbank Offered Rate, a dull but vital interest rate that underpins trillions of dollars of transactions globally, from home mortgages and personal credit cards to major corporate lending.
A sign outside the Tug Valley Chamber of Commerce in Williamson, W.Va., welcomes visitors to "Hatfield McCoy Country," referring to a legendary family feud that played out in the Appalachians.
Credit Noah Adams / NPR
The Tug Valley Chamber of Commerce in Williamson, W.Va., is also home to The Coal House, built entirely of coal in 1933.
Mingo County, deep in the southwest corner of West Virginia, has sent a "protest vote" to the attention of President Obama. In the May 8 Democratic primary, voters chose a man named Keith Judd to run for president. He got 61 percent of the vote.
Judd won't be available. He's serving a 17-year sentence for extortion. From prison in Texas, he managed to file the papers, pay the fee and get on the West Virginia ballot.
