UDCNEWS

Other Stories:
Student Documentry – School Improvements – Student Profile – Jazz Archives

Famed Writer Visits Campus

Marc Eliot Is Biographer To Noted Americans

BY I. YANSANE

Writer Marc Eliot during an interview while on a visit to UDC in the fall semester.

"First thing, don't take no for an answer.... People who fall away are not in the battle..." celebrated biographer Mark Eliot told a group of UDC students during an Oct. 14 visit. "You must find a person who gets it and stay with that person. You must be committed to yourself.... It's like a parking spot. No one will give you a spot. You've got to go for it." A crew of television production students taped the visit with UDC TV production major Carley Lester and Lauren Johnson, an acting major at Howard University, as interviewers.

Eliot said he writes everyday for around six hours. "If I don't write I'm less of a nice person." However, he is never satisfied with his own work. "The pursuit of perfection as an art form is something I'm interested in," he explained.

Eliot has authored biographies on a number of celebrities including James Brown and Erin Brockovich. Of Brown, he said, race was never far away from his life. "The thing I liked about James Brown is that he actually became blacker. Brown came out of Georgia, explosive, real and poor. What a story! And that's what you want to hear from him."

But Eliot said he never went into writing to be famous. What motivated him was the need to move his life into the lives of ordinary people who make a difference in society.

He started out as a successful child-actor but found that real creative spark was in writing, he said. Eliot added that as a member of the baby-boomer generation he wanted to affect change in a world of strife, including segregation in the U.S. and the Vietnam War. "We saw no result from our immediate predecessors as we dealt with issues that meant something to us. We were looking for freedom. The boomers generation didn't understand segregation. It was the official line. We didn't like the official line."

 

Copyright © 2006  Freevoice Online. All Right Reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited.