It is killer, actually.
But you won't hear it tonight.
Thank you, Chris, for that wonderful introduction.
And thank you to the University of Arizona English department.
And this is such a beautiful facility.
What a treat to be here.
It's special for me, for a number of reasons,
to be on this campus.
One of them being that I have a lot
of family history in the area.
A lot of families settled here on my father's side.
My grandparents wintered here, and I'm happy to say,
several of my relatives from my Grandmother Price's family
are here tonight.
I want to thank them personally for coming down here to--
I hope I don't embarrass the family.
But I'm sure you'll tell my parents if I do.
The last time, actually, I was on this campus,
it was part of a grand tour that my maternal grandmother,
Katherine, took me on.
She wanted me to see the medical school here.
And then she took me on a tour of the wealthier neighborhoods
of Tucson because I had just told her
that I was no longer going to be pursuing pre-medicine,
that I was going to give that up for a life of a writer.
And she wanted me to see exactly what I wasn't
going to be able to afford.
[LAUGHTER]
So, I was having some flashbacks today, driving around.
I want to start out tonight reading
a little bit from this book, Man Killed by Pheasant.
And I'll finish up with some stuff from the new book.
I'm unapologetically a memoirist.
And there's lots of talk about what memoir is
and what it isn't, lots of controversy surrounding it.
One thing for sure, it's an ancient form.
In the West, going back to St. Augustine, at the very least.
And it's always, I think, in one way
or another, been used to explore the sources
of our ethical lives.
What are our most cherished values and beliefs?
Where do they come from?
How have they changed?
How have they been challenged over time?
How do they separate us from communities
and draw us into closer connection
with those communities, including
ecological communities?
And that's what a lot of my work is about.
I was raised in Fort Dodge, Iowa.
And like a lot of Midwestern kids, wanted to leave,
wanted to go elsewhere to more exciting, more beautiful
places, even though I come from a very supportive family
and community, and so forth.
But that changed over time.
And I'm going to I'm going to read about that change here.
I'm going to start off with this a little section
from a piece called "High Maintenance," which
is about my time in Iowa City as a maintenance man.
It's set in 1992, during the first year of my marriage.
And Steph and I were desperate to find cheap housing.
And some of you know, in a college town,
that's very difficult to find.
So I struck up kind of a deal with the devil
with this landlord in town, that for half off the rent,
I would take care of the maintenance for 24 apartment
units.
And anyone who knows me knows that trusting me with wiring
or plumbing is insanity.
And that turned out to be the case.
It turned out very badly for the tenants in that apartment.
I spent a lot of time under the covers, hiding from phone calls
from angry tenants and the landlord.
And one other responsibility I had during that time
was to figure out if there were any illegal pets
in the apartment complex.
And it turned out there were a ton of them.
And as soon as I showed mercy to one,
of course that got around in the college community.
And it was like Noah's Ark.
They started flowing in.
And suddenly, it was completely out of control.
I'm imagining that we're going to be kicked out
of the apartment and into the streets, which would confirm
exactly what my mother-in-law told Steph would happen
if she married me.
So I'm very frightened at this point in the essay, about what
I'm going to do about this.
And this is the beginning of an extended flashback.
"It may have been under those covers
that I began to recall the happier times I'd
spent at DeLuca Dwellings, a dumpy
foursquare where I'd rented a room starting in my junior year
and on into graduate school.
It was owned and operated by Clarence C. DeLuca,
a bald elderly man who always dressed
in the same olive coveralls, zipped too tight at the crotch.
During my initial week as a resident of DeLuca Dwellings,
I received the first of many newsletters Clarence
would deliver to me and the other 12
people living in the house.
"To the new leasee," it began, "I say welcome to your new home
away from home.
You and each of you are a select person in the strictest meaning
of the word.
The landlord is very proud of you
and have literally set you upon a pedestal.
Therefore, the landlord expects you
to be exemplary as a tenant in compliance with the agreements,
including a clean dwelling and the maintenance
of your good reputation.
Quotes of the month, Samuel Smiles.
'To be worth anything, character must
be capable of standing firm upon its feet
in the world of daily work, temptation, and trial,
and able to bear the wear and tear of actual life.
Cloistered virtues do not count for much.'
Clarence C. DeLuca.
Be mindful of other people, and the purity of one's character
will manifest itself generously if one is truly well-meaning."
At first, I found Mr. DeLuca's high-minded enthusiasm
to be infectious.
I was in the process of switching from pre-medicine
to a religion major and was in a high-minded mood myself.
In addition, the other tenant occupants of the house
were the kind of people who, like me, had moved there
out of a hard-earned desire for privacy,
mostly humanities majors, foreign students, and ex-cons.
They made very few social demands,
so there was plenty of time to maintain my dwelling
and my good reputation.
Then I got a pet mouse.
I can't recall why I purchased him.
Pets were strictly forbidden at DeLuca's.
Perhaps it was because my girlfriend had just dumped me
or because the consequences of giving up a medical career--
again, the lost girlfriend-- had begun to finally hit home.
Whatever the reasons, I brought him home
and named him Ernest T. Bass, after the mischievous hillbilly
on The Andy Griffith Show.
During the first week, Ernest repeatedly escaped
from his cage and, like his TV namesake,
thwarted all efforts to contain him.
I finally bought him one of those plastic free-rolling
hamster spheres.
But then, one evening, he rolled out my door
and bounced down two flights of stairs.
I caught up in time to see him roll into Kurt Moody's room.
I stood in the doorway panicked that this stranger would
report my pet to Clarence.
Kurt picked the sphere off the floor
and grinned at Ernest, who stared back,
apparently unfazed by the strange face or the two
flights of stairs.
During the ensuing conversation, I
learned that Kurt was a graduate student in the creative writing
program.
He was the first serious writer I'd ever met.
And the close friendship that developed
was one of the reasons I had become a writer myself,
all because of a wayward mouse.
Ernest soon became the house mascot,
roaming the halls in his sphere, entering other rooms
and introducing me to more people
than I would have ever approached on my own.
As a vibrant, sometimes rowdy social life blossomed
at DeLuca Dwellings, we had less time
for maintaining the bathroom on our floor,
and its condition rapidly deteriorated.
We weren't the only ones who noticed.
Clarence's newsletters became increasingly despondent,
culminating in volume 8, number 9, April 2, 1987.
"Exposé.
Landlord denounces and labels four residents
as bad tenants, namely Jane Pillhouse, John Price, Travis
King, and Ling Yuk Chong.
By definition, 'bad' means failing
to reach an acceptable standard.
Fact, the bad tenants named above
have failed to meet the clean bathroom standard
during the mandatory clean bathroom
days of March 15 and 29, 1987.
The landlord hopes that this public revelation has done its
intended job well, that a wise attitude of course of action
subsequently will reflect intelligence commensurate with
their chronological age and apparent educational status,
that the four bad tenants are not incorrigible and will
recall and heed the good home training taught
by their parents, that the characteristic which carries
the label 'bad' shall be discarded for the label 'good.'
Two adages are worth repeating here.
Character will out, and time will tell.
The landlord hereby makes apology
to all except the four bad tenants for terminating
the letter at this point.
Their frustration and depression,
which has resulted in the writing of this report,
consumed all the energy and enthusiasm
which is usually devoted to an upbeat communication.
Quote of the month.
Eschenes.
'He who acts wickedly in private life
can never be expected to show himself
noble in public conduct.
He that is base at home will not acquit himself with honor
abroad, for it is not the man, only the place,
that has changed.'"
In addition to being distributed to every resident of the house,
the letter was sent to parents and to those who
had written recommendations.
Among them are bosses, professors,
and spiritual mentors.
"He sent this to Reverend Hearn, for God sakes,"
my mother shouted into the phone.
"He makes it sound like you all crap in the bathtub.
What's going on over there?"
She's still upset about it, by the way.
In response to this humiliation, my floormates and I
cranked our favorite Smiths' song, "Sweet and Tender
Hooligan," and spent the afternoon
scrubbing porcelain, pausing only to drink more beer
and pay homage to Ernest, who directed us from his cage
on the back of the toilet.
In a generous spirit, we even cleaned the bathrooms
on the other floors, helping Kurt
overcome his orange-streaked, mildewy shower stall.
A month later, to my mother's relief,
we were publicly exonerated in the DeLuca Dwellings
newsletter.
This is an extended quote.
"Yes, a single happening, that's all it
takes sometimes to make or break one for life.
Remember Wallace, Agnew, Nixon, and Hart?
This single accomplishment bathroom cleaning
may be construed virtuous, demonstrating
a commendable quality and conformity to a standard
of what is right and good.
For anyone who may be struggling and are now vindicated,
your landlord suggests that you exercise your integrity
over small and weak.
Consequently if you are truly one of goodwill,
predisposed to conform to sanctioned codes
or accepted notions of right and wrong,
your character shall grow and become strong."
My floormates and I celebrated by filling the bathtub
with ice, purchasing a pony keg, and throwing a house party.
All night, amidst the revelry and dancing legs,
the guest of honor rolled in his plastic sphere.
Ernest lived another year or so before
dying peacefully in his sleep.
When I told my neighbors, there was general sadness.
We had lost one of our own.
At a sunset funeral in the front yard,
Kurt read a poem while others tossed violets and small
bundles of seed into the grave.
I remain close to several of them,
including Kurt, who took off for Los Angeles
to become a screenplay writer.
A few years later, he was murdered in an attempt
to steal his car.
The last time I saw him, during one of his brief visits
from California, we sat in our favorite bar reminiscing
about DeLuca Dwellings and about Ernest.
We lifted our glasses to the memory of a lost friend.