WEBVTT

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In a Kentucky family
whose traditions

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included telling
their own stories

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and making their own whiskey.

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He's the author of two
novels, Crossing the River

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and Scissors, Paper, Rock,
which I see him carrying around

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so maybe he'll read from.

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In 1996, he published Geography
of the Heart, a memoir,

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which is his journal
of the plague of HIV.

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The book is a compassionate
and gorgeous account

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of the death of Fenton's
lover Larry Rose,

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a high school English
teacher and the son

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of Holocaust survivors himself.

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The Library Journal
called the book,

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a testament to how humans could
and should treat each other.

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And it's particularly
fitting that Fenton

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should be reading tonight in the
middle of the Pride Alliance's

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Awareness Week--

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a commemoration made all the
more urgent by recent events

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as you know.

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There is, in fact,
a protest march

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that I'm to announce
on Sunday at 2:00 PM,

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beginning at the
park at 4th Avenue,

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between first and second.

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For more information,
you can call 795-3305,

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and I urge you to go.

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That said-- oh, here's
a little bit more.

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Fenton has received various
high honors for his work--

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a Stegner fellowship
from Stanford University,

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a Michener fellowship in
fiction from the Iowa Writers'

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Workshop.

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His work appears regularly
in Harper's Magazine

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and occasionally, in The
New York Times magazine,

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also once in a while, on
National Public Radio.

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At the moment, he's working on
a non-fiction book examining

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the nature and role of
faith in secular culture,

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based on his time among monks,
both Christian and Buddhist.

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The book is called Faith Beyond
Belief, A Skeptic's Journey

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and his fourth coming
from Houghton Mifflin.

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Fenton Johnson
is, as most of you

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know, brand new on the
creative writing faculty here

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at the university.

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That said, I think I should
explain to you how completely

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strange it is for me
to be here introducing

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Fenton Johnson to you tonight.

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It's the oddest of
circumstances really.

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I first heard Fenton read
in the mid-'80s at Stanford,

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where the two of
us were Stegners.

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His work, at the time,
completely knocked me out

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with his amazing eye
for detail and his sort

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of gorgeous and gracious
Southern narrative style.

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I learned tonight that
Fenton, in high school,

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won the state championship at
boys extemporaneous speaking,

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and I said, why am I
not surprised, Fenton?

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In the years that followed
that, we became good friends

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in San Francisco,
writing books together

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at almost exactly the same pace.

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And the thing that no one tells
you about the writer's life

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is that you are alone
for a lot of it,

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and in that deep isolation,
it was a great thing

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to have a colleague, especially
colleague like Fenton,

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though keeping up with him
was a challenge sometimes.

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We worked in studios
a mile apart,

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across the Valley that's
called the Mission District--

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Fenton up on the slope
of Bernal Heights

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and I on that first
step of Twin Peaks,

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if you know San Francisco.

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And from my studio, which
was on the roof there, I

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could look across
to Fenton's studio,

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and I could feel him
working over there often--

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his energy and
industry just emanating

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from the other
side of the Valley,

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and many days, I cursed him
and worked harder for it.

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Later, we decided to convene our
friends for a weekly gathering

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in a cafe called Babbar, and
these sometimes rowdy sessions

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continued for three or four
years, amazingly enough--

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and this is in the mid-'90s.

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Turning to our amazement
into, what was considered,

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a scene mentioned in newspapers,
and people would thank us

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in their dedication to their
books-- people we never

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heard of, and then, because
it was a scene, had to end,

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of course-- dissolved instantly
as soon as it was recognized.

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And we drifted our ways--

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Fenton went off to New York
to teach at Columbia and Sarah

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Lawrence, and I stayed
in San Francisco.

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And our communication grew
a little less frequent,

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but then-- without our ever
mentioning it to each other

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really--

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the University of
Arizona summoned us both.

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And we converged
again here in Tucson.

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We arrived here on exactly
the same day, just last month,

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and it was Thursday, the
6th of January and probably,

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about the same time of the
day, which is late at night--

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Fenton driving westward
into town from Kentucky,

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and me driving eastward into
Tucson from San Francisco.

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So it's more than
a touch dreamlike

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to stand up here
introducing Fenton to you,

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considering that last month,
he was the sole person I knew

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in this town, besides the
people-- the wonderful people

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I'd met in the process
of my interviews.

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The two of us, the
same, but these other--

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outer circumstances
completely transformed.

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So I say to you,
Fenton, hey, look.

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It's us in our new
lives in Arizona.

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So it feels like fate
to have Fenton here

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and feels like proof
that life will hold up,

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will hold its shape just
when you think it had none.

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And so it's quite a
sweet thing for me

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to be able to say to
you, please welcome

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a wonderful writer and a
good friend, Fenton Johnson.

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[APPLAUSE]

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