WEBVTT

00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:01.230 align:middle line:90%
Thanks, Elizabeth.

00:00:01.230 --> 00:00:03.300 align:middle line:84%
And thanks for coming
out on the first evening

00:00:03.300 --> 00:00:07.140 align:middle line:84%
after spring break,
especially when people,

00:00:07.140 --> 00:00:08.640 align:middle line:84%
I guess, in Tucson,
would think this

00:00:08.640 --> 00:00:11.180 align:middle line:84%
is some sort of winter
storm that we've

00:00:11.180 --> 00:00:16.440 align:middle line:84%
been experiencing, which
I can't really fathom yet,

00:00:16.440 --> 00:00:19.230 align:middle line:84%
having come from northern
Utah just a few months ago.

00:00:19.230 --> 00:00:21.870 align:middle line:84%
But I want to especially thank
Elizabeth for all of her help

00:00:21.870 --> 00:00:24.090 align:middle line:84%
with setting up the
reading, and thank

00:00:24.090 --> 00:00:28.140 align:middle line:84%
the Poetry Center, of course,
and the Department of English.

00:00:28.140 --> 00:00:31.170 align:middle line:84%
So this reading is part
of the prose series.

00:00:31.170 --> 00:00:33.930 align:middle line:84%
But it's also the inaugural
reading in a series

00:00:33.930 --> 00:00:36.840 align:middle line:84%
that I'm curating called,
"The Next American Nature

00:00:36.840 --> 00:00:38.640 align:middle line:84%
and Science Writing,"
with support

00:00:38.640 --> 00:00:40.800 align:middle line:84%
from the Institute
of the Environment,

00:00:40.800 --> 00:00:43.230 align:middle line:84%
support that I
think demonstrates

00:00:43.230 --> 00:00:44.790 align:middle line:84%
the active commitment
to bridging

00:00:44.790 --> 00:00:46.920 align:middle line:84%
the cultures of the
humanities and the sciences

00:00:46.920 --> 00:00:49.440 align:middle line:90%
on this vibrant campus.

00:00:49.440 --> 00:00:51.660 align:middle line:84%
The name of the
series really suggests

00:00:51.660 --> 00:00:55.230 align:middle line:84%
what we're after, what's next,
what's new, what's different,

00:00:55.230 --> 00:00:58.470 align:middle line:84%
in a genre that's often
seen as stuffy, moralistic,

00:00:58.470 --> 00:01:01.320 align:middle line:84%
and elitist, or, in the
case of science writing,

00:01:01.320 --> 00:01:04.230 align:middle line:84%
too plainspoken and
too journalistic.

00:01:04.230 --> 00:01:06.060 align:middle line:84%
So I'd like to invite
all of you to help

00:01:06.060 --> 00:01:10.680 align:middle line:84%
me think about the edges of
nature and science writing,

00:01:10.680 --> 00:01:14.280 align:middle line:84%
and bring to our attention any
writers working in this genre

00:01:14.280 --> 00:01:18.930 align:middle line:84%
that you think would be exciting
presences in this new series.

00:01:18.930 --> 00:01:21.603 align:middle line:84%
John Price is the perfect person
to kick off the "Next American

00:01:21.603 --> 00:01:22.770 align:middle line:90%
Nature and Science Writing."

00:01:22.770 --> 00:01:24.420 align:middle line:90%
He's not stuffy or elitist.

00:01:24.420 --> 00:01:26.250 align:middle line:90%
He's smart.

00:01:26.250 --> 00:01:28.980 align:middle line:84%
When he draws a lesson,
a moral, as it were,

00:01:28.980 --> 00:01:30.630 align:middle line:84%
for himself and for
his readers, it's

00:01:30.630 --> 00:01:33.810 align:middle line:84%
after a journey of authentic
exploration of self, family,

00:01:33.810 --> 00:01:36.420 align:middle line:90%
community, and the wider world.

00:01:36.420 --> 00:01:38.160 align:middle line:84%
I first met John Price
several years ago,

00:01:38.160 --> 00:01:41.070 align:middle line:84%
when he was working on his first
book, which is for sale here.

00:01:41.070 --> 00:01:43.260 align:middle line:84%
And I was told by
Cybele that they're

00:01:43.260 --> 00:01:45.010 align:middle line:90%
20% off the cover price.

00:01:45.010 --> 00:01:47.732 align:middle line:90%
So, FYI.

00:01:47.732 --> 00:01:49.440 align:middle line:84%
I first met John Price
several years ago,

00:01:49.440 --> 00:01:51.630 align:middle line:84%
when he was working on
his first book, Not Just

00:01:51.630 --> 00:01:54.240 align:middle line:84%
Any Land, which grew out
of his creative nonfiction

00:01:54.240 --> 00:01:56.310 align:middle line:90%
dissertation at Iowa.

00:01:56.310 --> 00:01:58.380 align:middle line:84%
And I was struck by the
balance of the personal,

00:01:58.380 --> 00:02:00.480 align:middle line:84%
the environmental,
and the scholarly.

00:02:00.480 --> 00:02:03.900 align:middle line:84%
I was struck also by his wit,
by his self-deprecating humor.

00:02:03.900 --> 00:02:06.210 align:middle line:84%
And this humor plays a
large role in John's work.

00:02:06.210 --> 00:02:09.570 align:middle line:84%
And his well-known readings at
the Western American Literature

00:02:09.570 --> 00:02:12.060 align:middle line:84%
Association and the
Association for the Study

00:02:12.060 --> 00:02:13.890 align:middle line:84%
of Literature and
Environment conferences

00:02:13.890 --> 00:02:15.990 align:middle line:90%
have become legendary.

00:02:15.990 --> 00:02:19.170 align:middle line:84%
The sad truth is that
a lot of nature writing

00:02:19.170 --> 00:02:22.140 align:middle line:84%
is dull, or, at
least, so freighted

00:02:22.140 --> 00:02:25.830 align:middle line:84%
with self-conscious significance
as to be of interest only to,

00:02:25.830 --> 00:02:28.620 align:middle line:90%
as we say, the choir.

00:02:28.620 --> 00:02:30.630 align:middle line:84%
Some of you have
heard me rail against

00:02:30.630 --> 00:02:33.450 align:middle line:84%
the high moral seriousness of
some of our most beloved nature

00:02:33.450 --> 00:02:36.660 align:middle line:84%
writers, writers I've
admired and learned from.

00:02:36.660 --> 00:02:39.660 align:middle line:84%
But-- and I'm switching
metaphors here--

00:02:39.660 --> 00:02:43.920 align:middle line:84%
their preachy groove has become
a skipping record, the needle

00:02:43.920 --> 00:02:47.580 align:middle line:84%
of their righteousness playing
the same notes over and over

00:02:47.580 --> 00:02:48.540 align:middle line:90%
and over again.

00:02:48.540 --> 00:02:50.850 align:middle line:90%
And it's gotten old.

00:02:50.850 --> 00:02:52.590 align:middle line:84%
The rhetorical
gestures that helped

00:02:52.590 --> 00:02:55.350 align:middle line:84%
to clarify our predicaments
in the last century

00:02:55.350 --> 00:02:58.050 align:middle line:84%
are not the gestures
we need today.

00:02:58.050 --> 00:03:00.420 align:middle line:84%
We need today a flexibility
of voice and subject

00:03:00.420 --> 00:03:03.820 align:middle line:84%
matter, less preaching, fewer
epiphanies in the wilderness.

00:03:03.820 --> 00:03:05.730 align:middle line:90%
We need, actually, to laugh.

00:03:05.730 --> 00:03:07.650 align:middle line:84%
We need to walk around
our neighborhoods

00:03:07.650 --> 00:03:09.270 align:middle line:90%
and touch the entire atmosphere.

00:03:09.270 --> 00:03:13.080 align:middle line:84%
We need streets and birdsong,
dining rooms and spiders.

00:03:13.080 --> 00:03:16.470 align:middle line:84%
We need to find writers who
find kinships everywhere.

00:03:16.470 --> 00:03:18.420 align:middle line:84%
We need to find the
wisdom and energy

00:03:18.420 --> 00:03:23.460 align:middle line:84%
that joy offers, joy coming from
the neglected, the undersung.

00:03:23.460 --> 00:03:25.620 align:middle line:84%
John Price gives
us that, writing

00:03:25.620 --> 00:03:27.420 align:middle line:84%
from a house in
Council Bluffs, Iowa,

00:03:27.420 --> 00:03:29.340 align:middle line:84%
with a family that's
very much present,

00:03:29.340 --> 00:03:31.470 align:middle line:84%
in perhaps the most
degraded bioregion

00:03:31.470 --> 00:03:35.340 align:middle line:84%
on the planet, the North
American tallgrass prairie.

00:03:35.340 --> 00:03:37.260 align:middle line:84%
In John's essays,
we find a man truly

00:03:37.260 --> 00:03:39.570 align:middle line:84%
ill-suited to the role
of apartment maintenance

00:03:39.570 --> 00:03:41.580 align:middle line:90%
guy, as we'll hear in a moment.

00:03:41.580 --> 00:03:43.560 align:middle line:84%
We meet a neighbor
of his offering

00:03:43.560 --> 00:03:45.720 align:middle line:84%
the vaguely threatening
fact that male squirrels

00:03:45.720 --> 00:03:49.440 align:middle line:84%
will chew the gonads off
of rival male squirrels.

00:03:49.440 --> 00:03:51.000 align:middle line:84%
And we encounter
an errant pheasant

00:03:51.000 --> 00:03:53.160 align:middle line:84%
flying into the writer's
head as he hurtles down

00:03:53.160 --> 00:03:54.990 align:middle line:90%
an Iowa highway.

00:03:54.990 --> 00:03:57.540 align:middle line:84%
Closer to home
here, John recounts,

00:03:57.540 --> 00:04:00.750 align:middle line:84%
in "Man Killed by Pheasant,"
sitting in the control

00:04:00.750 --> 00:04:02.760 align:middle line:84%
council of the
Titan Missile Museum

00:04:02.760 --> 00:04:04.920 align:middle line:84%
with a schoolgirl, a
moment that becomes

00:04:04.920 --> 00:04:08.100 align:middle line:84%
a revelation of the importance
of family and faith.

00:04:08.100 --> 00:04:13.710 align:middle line:84%
These two realms are crucial
to John's work, as you'll see.

00:04:13.710 --> 00:04:16.050 align:middle line:84%
That he makes worlds
such as this not only

00:04:16.050 --> 00:04:18.810 align:middle line:84%
accessible but lovely and
necessary to someone like me,

00:04:18.810 --> 00:04:21.240 align:middle line:84%
a childless atheist,
is a testament

00:04:21.240 --> 00:04:24.210 align:middle line:84%
to the grace of his
vision and his voice.

00:04:24.210 --> 00:04:26.430 align:middle line:84%
The Iowan has said
of John's work,

00:04:26.430 --> 00:04:29.220 align:middle line:84%
if David Sedaris and Annie
Dillard had a literary love

00:04:29.220 --> 00:04:31.172 align:middle line:90%
child and raised him in Iowa--

00:04:31.172 --> 00:04:32.880 align:middle line:84%
I'm not sure what the
adolescence of that

00:04:32.880 --> 00:04:36.690 align:middle line:84%
would be like, but
it's not my quote--

00:04:36.690 --> 00:04:38.070 align:middle line:90%
he would write like this.

00:04:38.070 --> 00:04:40.920 align:middle line:84%
The landscape of Price's memoir
is a grace-filled territory

00:04:40.920 --> 00:04:43.920 align:middle line:84%
of wit, wisdom, and most
of all, great compassion.

00:04:43.920 --> 00:04:46.470 align:middle line:84%
John is the author of the
memoirs Daddy Long Legs--

00:04:46.470 --> 00:04:48.180 align:middle line:84%
The Natural Education
of a Father, which

00:04:48.180 --> 00:04:49.770 align:middle line:84%
is forthcoming from
Trumpeter Books,

00:04:49.770 --> 00:04:53.550 align:middle line:84%
an imprint of Shambhala
Press, Man Killed by Pheasant

00:04:53.550 --> 00:04:55.860 align:middle line:84%
and Other Kinships, which
was published by De Capo,

00:04:55.860 --> 00:04:58.650 align:middle line:84%
and for which he won
the Orion Readers' Award

00:04:58.650 --> 00:05:00.570 align:middle line:84%
and earned national
praise in such venues

00:05:00.570 --> 00:05:02.610 align:middle line:84%
as The Boston
Globe, and which is

00:05:02.610 --> 00:05:05.610 align:middle line:84%
just now out in a new edition
from the University of Iowa

00:05:05.610 --> 00:05:07.710 align:middle line:90%
Press, and Not Just Any Land--

00:05:07.710 --> 00:05:10.590 align:middle line:84%
A Personal and Literary Journey
into the American Grasslands,

00:05:10.590 --> 00:05:13.320 align:middle line:90%
published by Nebraska in 2004.

00:05:13.320 --> 00:05:16.950 align:middle line:84%
His nonfiction writing about
nature, family, and spirit,

00:05:16.950 --> 00:05:20.100 align:middle line:84%
has appeared in many places such
as Orion, The Christian Science

00:05:20.100 --> 00:05:23.010 align:middle line:84%
Monitor, Creative Nonfiction,
Isotope, Best Spiritual

00:05:23.010 --> 00:05:24.450 align:middle line:90%
Writing, and so on.

00:05:24.450 --> 00:05:26.340 align:middle line:84%
He's a professor of
English at the University

00:05:26.340 --> 00:05:29.220 align:middle line:84%
of Nebraska Omaha, where he
teaches nonfiction writing,

00:05:29.220 --> 00:05:31.680 align:middle line:84%
now has his hands
on a major endowment

00:05:31.680 --> 00:05:33.810 align:middle line:84%
there, which I'm
quite jealous of,

00:05:33.810 --> 00:05:36.510 align:middle line:84%
and is fellow of the
Black Earth Institute.

00:05:36.510 --> 00:05:39.180 align:middle line:84%
He also does a killer
Austin Powers impersonation,

00:05:39.180 --> 00:05:40.650 align:middle line:90%
which you may not hear tonight.

00:05:40.650 --> 00:05:41.520 align:middle line:90%
I don't know.

00:05:41.520 --> 00:05:42.840 align:middle line:90%
Please welcome John Price.

00:05:42.840 --> 00:05:46.190 align:middle line:90%
[APPLAUSE]

00:05:46.190 --> 00:05:52.000 align:middle line:90%