Titanic talent
In connection with her new novel, ”The House of Velvet and Glass,” in which the sinking of the Titanic figures, Katherine Howe, a lecturer in American studies at Cornell, spoke to CBS This Morning‘s Mo Rocca April 9 about Americans’ obsession with the Titanic.
“One of the reasons is that there was as much celebrity culture in 1912 as today,” Howe wrote in a subsequent email about the interview. “[The public] just paid attention to socialites and industrialists rather than actors. The response to Titanic in 1912 was as if everyone at the Vanity Fair Oscar party was all on a boat together, which went down.”
Howe, author of the best-seller ”The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane,” continued: “[The] Titanic is also about hubris and our faith in technology. We talked not only about the design of the ship, but also about the role that wireless technology played both in the rescue and in the dissemination of news while it was still happening. Titanic is really the first time that newspapers were able to learn about an event while it was still under way.”
Howe’s interview will air in the 8 a.m. hour April 13 – two days before the 100th anniversary of the ship’s sinking.