WEBVTT

00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:01.170 align:middle line:90%


00:00:01.170 --> 00:00:04.440 align:middle line:84%
It's really a rare
pleasure and a privilege

00:00:04.440 --> 00:00:06.900 align:middle line:84%
when a student has
the opportunity

00:00:06.900 --> 00:00:10.560 align:middle line:90%
to thank in public--

00:00:10.560 --> 00:00:14.880 align:middle line:84%
excuse me, writers for
whom I have such respect

00:00:14.880 --> 00:00:17.550 align:middle line:84%
and gratitude,
because of the service

00:00:17.550 --> 00:00:20.650 align:middle line:84%
that they have done me
over these many years.

00:00:20.650 --> 00:00:24.960 align:middle line:84%
So I'm really grateful to
the College of Humanities

00:00:24.960 --> 00:00:27.510 align:middle line:84%
for providing me the
opportunity to do that.

00:00:27.510 --> 00:00:33.330 align:middle line:84%
I first met Clark Blaise at the
Iowa Writers' Workshop, where

00:00:33.330 --> 00:00:35.430 align:middle line:84%
I was a student in
the early 1980s.

00:00:35.430 --> 00:00:38.250 align:middle line:84%
And Bharati came in, I
believe, once that semester,

00:00:38.250 --> 00:00:39.270 align:middle line:90%
just to say hello.

00:00:39.270 --> 00:00:42.070 align:middle line:84%
So I can claim to have known
Bharati as long as well.

00:00:42.070 --> 00:00:46.860 align:middle line:84%
And over the years, I've been
astonished by the commitment

00:00:46.860 --> 00:00:49.808 align:middle line:84%
that they have been able to
maintain simultaneously--

00:00:49.808 --> 00:00:51.600 align:middle line:84%
they're part of that
rare breed of writers,

00:00:51.600 --> 00:00:53.430 align:middle line:84%
who are able to
maintain simultaneously

00:00:53.430 --> 00:00:57.420 align:middle line:84%
a commitment to their own
work and a, completely

00:00:57.420 --> 00:01:00.000 align:middle line:84%
selfless commitment
to their students,

00:01:00.000 --> 00:01:01.500 align:middle line:90%
both past and present.

00:01:01.500 --> 00:01:04.239 align:middle line:84%
And I'm enormously
grateful for that.

00:01:04.239 --> 00:01:07.680 align:middle line:84%
I'll tell you a little bit
about their qualifications.

00:01:07.680 --> 00:01:08.760 align:middle line:90%
I'll summarize them.

00:01:08.760 --> 00:01:10.980 align:middle line:84%
There's no way I could go
through the whole list.

00:01:10.980 --> 00:01:16.560 align:middle line:84%
And then I'll say a bit about
my impressions of their work.

00:01:16.560 --> 00:01:18.420 align:middle line:84%
Beginning with A North
American Education,

00:01:18.420 --> 00:01:20.190 align:middle line:84%
Clark Blaise has
published collections

00:01:20.190 --> 00:01:23.580 align:middle line:84%
of short stories, novels,
and works of nonfiction.

00:01:23.580 --> 00:01:26.040 align:middle line:84%
Culminating in my personal
works of nonfiction,

00:01:26.040 --> 00:01:30.690 align:middle line:84%
I Had a Father, a postmodern
autobiography recently reissued

00:01:30.690 --> 00:01:35.430 align:middle line:84%
by the University of Iowa press,
and one of my favorite memoirs,

00:01:35.430 --> 00:01:36.810 align:middle line:90%
and Time Lord--

00:01:36.810 --> 00:01:39.870 align:middle line:84%
Sir Sandford Fleming and the
Creation of Standard Time,

00:01:39.870 --> 00:01:44.130 align:middle line:84%
published in 2001, and recipient
of Canada's prestigious Pearson

00:01:44.130 --> 00:01:46.740 align:middle line:90%
award.

00:01:46.740 --> 00:01:48.840 align:middle line:84%
Porcupines Quill
press in Canada has

00:01:48.840 --> 00:01:50.490 align:middle line:84%
undertaken to
publish three volumes

00:01:50.490 --> 00:01:53.520 align:middle line:84%
of his new and selected
stories, of which I

00:01:53.520 --> 00:01:55.530 align:middle line:84%
had the honor of introducing
the first volume--

00:01:55.530 --> 00:01:56.505 align:middle line:90%
Southern Stories.

00:01:56.505 --> 00:02:00.630 align:middle line:84%
He is currently on the creative
writing faculty of Long Island

00:02:00.630 --> 00:02:04.350 align:middle line:90%
University at Southampton,

00:02:04.350 --> 00:02:06.300 align:middle line:84%
Bharati Mukherjee is a
distinguished professor

00:02:06.300 --> 00:02:08.970 align:middle line:84%
of English at the University
of California, at Berkeley,

00:02:08.970 --> 00:02:11.340 align:middle line:84%
and has published six
novels and two collections

00:02:11.340 --> 00:02:13.560 align:middle line:84%
of short stories, of which
The Middle Man and Other

00:02:13.560 --> 00:02:17.070 align:middle line:84%
Stories received the National
Book Critics Circle Award,

00:02:17.070 --> 00:02:20.580 align:middle line:84%
possibly our most
distinguished literary prize.

00:02:20.580 --> 00:02:23.520 align:middle line:84%
Both Clark and Bharati have
distinguished teaching records,

00:02:23.520 --> 00:02:26.340 align:middle line:84%
having served on the faculties
of the nation's leading

00:02:26.340 --> 00:02:28.410 align:middle line:90%
creative writing programs.

00:02:28.410 --> 00:02:30.630 align:middle line:84%
They write of the paradoxes
and contradictions

00:02:30.630 --> 00:02:32.100 align:middle line:90%
that accompany all borders--

00:02:32.100 --> 00:02:36.120 align:middle line:84%
external or internal-- a subject
that arises from their personal

00:02:36.120 --> 00:02:37.290 align:middle line:90%
histories.

00:02:37.290 --> 00:02:39.750 align:middle line:84%
Clark was born in
Fargo, North Dakota,

00:02:39.750 --> 00:02:43.200 align:middle line:84%
of a French-Canadian father,
who anglicized his name

00:02:43.200 --> 00:02:46.170 align:middle line:84%
to become a US citizen
and moved to Florida.

00:02:46.170 --> 00:02:49.770 align:middle line:84%
Bharati was born and raised in
Bengal, immigrated to Canada

00:02:49.770 --> 00:02:51.135 align:middle line:90%
and then to the United States.

00:02:51.135 --> 00:02:54.570 align:middle line:90%


00:02:54.570 --> 00:02:57.240 align:middle line:84%
The great religious
historian, Mircea Eliade,

00:02:57.240 --> 00:02:59.550 align:middle line:84%
describes how
Judeo-Christian civilization

00:02:59.550 --> 00:03:02.280 align:middle line:90%
invented linear time.

00:03:02.280 --> 00:03:05.700 align:middle line:84%
Earlier cultures envisioned
time as a circle, or a spiral,

00:03:05.700 --> 00:03:10.440 align:middle line:84%
or a sphere, in which history
endlessly repeated itself.

00:03:10.440 --> 00:03:13.530 align:middle line:84%
Then the late Jewish prophets
initiated the conception

00:03:13.530 --> 00:03:17.640 align:middle line:84%
of a linear, chronological
progress toward apocalypse--

00:03:17.640 --> 00:03:21.300 align:middle line:84%
the end of time, after which
the saved and the damned

00:03:21.300 --> 00:03:26.820 align:middle line:84%
would dwell in some eternal
place, a place outside of time.

00:03:26.820 --> 00:03:29.340 align:middle line:84%
Probably because of his
status as an outsider,

00:03:29.340 --> 00:03:32.820 align:middle line:84%
Clark Blaise seems always to
have resided in, and written

00:03:32.820 --> 00:03:35.460 align:middle line:90%
from, non-linear time.

00:03:35.460 --> 00:03:38.730 align:middle line:84%
His round seamless narratives
share more with the southerner

00:03:38.730 --> 00:03:42.120 align:middle line:84%
Eudora Welty, or the
Canadian Alice Munro, than

00:03:42.120 --> 00:03:46.410 align:middle line:84%
with the ideal of rising
action, climax, denouement.

00:03:46.410 --> 00:03:49.140 align:middle line:84%
His fictions circle
back on themselves.

00:03:49.140 --> 00:03:52.860 align:middle line:84%
They dwell not in chronological,
but in circular time.

00:03:52.860 --> 00:03:55.230 align:middle line:84%
The time not of the
railroad engineer,

00:03:55.230 --> 00:03:58.440 align:middle line:90%
but of the priest and the poet.

00:03:58.440 --> 00:04:00.210 align:middle line:84%
Clark's writing
was postmodern well

00:04:00.210 --> 00:04:02.100 align:middle line:84%
before the term
came into vogue--

00:04:02.100 --> 00:04:05.130 align:middle line:84%
so postmodern its
pre-modern, evoking

00:04:05.130 --> 00:04:07.890 align:middle line:84%
the roots of western fiction
in Smollett, Richardson,

00:04:07.890 --> 00:04:09.600 align:middle line:90%
and Stern.

00:04:09.600 --> 00:04:13.050 align:middle line:84%
To read his work is to journey
into the synapses of memory,

00:04:13.050 --> 00:04:17.310 align:middle line:84%
to understand how its flawed
and warped mirror is reality,

00:04:17.310 --> 00:04:19.320 align:middle line:84%
how we construct
identities that are not

00:04:19.320 --> 00:04:22.140 align:middle line:84%
so much whole and distinct,
as shifting images

00:04:22.140 --> 00:04:26.880 align:middle line:84%
in an ongoing
ever-changing collage.

00:04:26.880 --> 00:04:29.130 align:middle line:84%
Time and its machinations
forms a subtheme

00:04:29.130 --> 00:04:31.380 align:middle line:84%
of the Bharati Mukherjee's
most recent book, Desirable

00:04:31.380 --> 00:04:33.900 align:middle line:84%
Daughters, which is
just out in paperback.

00:04:33.900 --> 00:04:35.940 align:middle line:84%
By the way, the books
will be available,

00:04:35.940 --> 00:04:37.320 align:middle line:90%
and are available in the lobby.

00:04:37.320 --> 00:04:42.510 align:middle line:84%
And both authors will be happy
to sign copies afterwards.

00:04:42.510 --> 00:04:44.790 align:middle line:84%
The novel's narrator
writes, "Time

00:04:44.790 --> 00:04:47.610 align:middle line:84%
moves in cycles when
it belongs to the gods,

00:04:47.610 --> 00:04:51.450 align:middle line:84%
and in straight lines when
it belongs to the mortals."

00:04:51.450 --> 00:04:54.330 align:middle line:84%
In all her works, Bharati
explores the dramatic tension

00:04:54.330 --> 00:04:57.660 align:middle line:84%
between these two very different
ways of seeing and being

00:04:57.660 --> 00:04:58.590 align:middle line:90%
in the world--

00:04:58.590 --> 00:05:01.040 align:middle line:90%
circular and linear.

00:05:01.040 --> 00:05:04.550 align:middle line:84%
In Desirable Daughters, the
protagonists gay son becomes

00:05:04.550 --> 00:05:08.060 align:middle line:84%
one of the heroes, exactly
because his status as a double

00:05:08.060 --> 00:05:12.380 align:middle line:84%
outsider-- both immigrant to
America and sexual outlaw--

00:05:12.380 --> 00:05:15.560 align:middle line:84%
gives him a
peculiarly rich place

00:05:15.560 --> 00:05:19.880 align:middle line:84%
from which to perceive history,
as well as to shape the future.

00:05:19.880 --> 00:05:22.100 align:middle line:84%
His heroism, however,
has its foundation

00:05:22.100 --> 00:05:25.790 align:middle line:84%
in an ancient non-western
understanding of the world,

00:05:25.790 --> 00:05:28.790 align:middle line:84%
as his wise grandmother
makes clear at the books end.

00:05:28.790 --> 00:05:32.330 align:middle line:84%
"You don't have to go
outside yourself to find God,

00:05:32.330 --> 00:05:34.640 align:middle line:84%
you must first
value yourself," she

00:05:34.640 --> 00:05:38.000 align:middle line:84%
says, "we all embrace
the goddess gaily,

00:05:38.000 --> 00:05:40.940 align:middle line:90%
gay is the secret word."

00:05:40.940 --> 00:05:42.740 align:middle line:84%
Bharati has drawn
on her experience

00:05:42.740 --> 00:05:45.710 align:middle line:84%
as an outsider to become one
of the few non-gay American

00:05:45.710 --> 00:05:49.550 align:middle line:84%
authors to create a successful
integrated gay character,

00:05:49.550 --> 00:05:51.320 align:middle line:84%
an achievement
that speaks volumes

00:05:51.320 --> 00:05:55.970 align:middle line:84%
about her breadth of vision
and largeness of heart.

00:05:55.970 --> 00:05:58.400 align:middle line:84%
The New York Times Book Review
called Bharati Mukherjee

00:05:58.400 --> 00:06:00.620 align:middle line:84%
"the literary mother
of young Indian writers

00:06:00.620 --> 00:06:02.840 align:middle line:90%
now flourishing in the west."

00:06:02.840 --> 00:06:05.930 align:middle line:84%
It's no exaggeration to say that
Bharati blazed the publishing

00:06:05.930 --> 00:06:08.510 align:middle line:84%
trail for those writers
of the subcontinent.

00:06:08.510 --> 00:06:11.643 align:middle line:84%
Now we find them in every
literary magazine and forum,

00:06:11.643 --> 00:06:14.060 align:middle line:84%
but it's important to remember,
that when Bharati attended

00:06:14.060 --> 00:06:16.700 align:middle line:84%
the Iowa workshop,
in the early 1960s,

00:06:16.700 --> 00:06:19.670 align:middle line:84%
the notion of a Bengali woman
becoming a force in world

00:06:19.670 --> 00:06:22.190 align:middle line:90%
publishing was inconceivable.

00:06:22.190 --> 00:06:25.010 align:middle line:84%
Like all leaps forward,
this one required someone

00:06:25.010 --> 00:06:28.040 align:middle line:84%
to have the courage to live
it out, and in doing so,

00:06:28.040 --> 00:06:33.470 align:middle line:84%
to demonstrate that it was not
only possible, but essential.

00:06:33.470 --> 00:06:35.810 align:middle line:84%
I want to say a word about
the remarkable collaboration

00:06:35.810 --> 00:06:38.240 align:middle line:84%
that Clark and Bharati have
sustained across the decades,

00:06:38.240 --> 00:06:40.400 align:middle line:84%
since their meeting at the
Iowa Writers' Workshop

00:06:40.400 --> 00:06:42.860 align:middle line:90%
in the early 1960s.

00:06:42.860 --> 00:06:45.650 align:middle line:84%
Writing in all forms of
fiction and non-fiction,

00:06:45.650 --> 00:06:48.290 align:middle line:84%
they have co-authored books
and numerous articles,

00:06:48.290 --> 00:06:50.810 align:middle line:90%
along with raising two sons.

00:06:50.810 --> 00:06:53.450 align:middle line:84%
As citizens of the west,
they write from a place

00:06:53.450 --> 00:06:57.080 align:middle line:84%
where spirit and flesh
are separate and distinct.

00:06:57.080 --> 00:06:59.720 align:middle line:84%
As citizens of India,
they write from a place

00:06:59.720 --> 00:07:02.240 align:middle line:84%
where spirit and
flesh are seamless.

00:07:02.240 --> 00:07:05.300 align:middle line:84%
"Geography is
destiny," Clark writes.

00:07:05.300 --> 00:07:07.310 align:middle line:84%
And in their East
West existence,

00:07:07.310 --> 00:07:10.910 align:middle line:84%
they are the living embodiment
of our national geography,

00:07:10.910 --> 00:07:14.120 align:middle line:84%
from which so much creative
endeavor has arisen.

00:07:14.120 --> 00:07:16.640 align:middle line:84%
Our east coast faces
across the Atlantic,

00:07:16.640 --> 00:07:20.720 align:middle line:84%
toward our European roots in the
old world, while our west coast

00:07:20.720 --> 00:07:26.810 align:middle line:84%
faces across the Pacific,
toward Asia and the older world.

00:07:26.810 --> 00:07:28.580 align:middle line:84%
For more than 20
years, I have turned

00:07:28.580 --> 00:07:30.830 align:middle line:84%
to the writings of Clark
Blaise and Bharati Mukherjee,

00:07:30.830 --> 00:07:34.040 align:middle line:84%
as I might hire an interpreter
in a foreign land--

00:07:34.040 --> 00:07:37.460 align:middle line:84%
someone to help me understand
my own borderlands,

00:07:37.460 --> 00:07:40.040 align:middle line:84%
the rich and scary places
where I am brought up

00:07:40.040 --> 00:07:42.980 align:middle line:84%
against the shifting
construction of identities

00:07:42.980 --> 00:07:45.260 align:middle line:90%
I call myself.

00:07:45.260 --> 00:07:49.130 align:middle line:84%
Clark and Bharati are both of
my America, and apart from it.

00:07:49.130 --> 00:07:53.480 align:middle line:84%
Clark is it once Canadian and US
citizen, Yankee and southerner.

00:07:53.480 --> 00:07:56.810 align:middle line:84%
Bharati is at once
Bengali and US citizen,

00:07:56.810 --> 00:08:00.110 align:middle line:84%
of the Commonwealth,
an interloper in it.

00:08:00.110 --> 00:08:03.290 align:middle line:84%
They are one and the same
time natives and exiles.

00:08:03.290 --> 00:08:06.020 align:middle line:84%
They were global citizens
before we invented a phrase

00:08:06.020 --> 00:08:08.330 align:middle line:90%
to describe the condition.

00:08:08.330 --> 00:08:11.000 align:middle line:84%
In their different ways,
they write of our entry into,

00:08:11.000 --> 00:08:13.400 align:middle line:84%
and resistance
to, globalization,

00:08:13.400 --> 00:08:16.760 align:middle line:84%
from the most peculiar and
fascinating perspective--

00:08:16.760 --> 00:08:22.310 align:middle line:84%
the outsiders timeless time,
the immigrants placeless place.

00:08:22.310 --> 00:08:24.020 align:middle line:84%
So it's with a great
deal of pleasure

00:08:24.020 --> 00:08:28.100 align:middle line:84%
that I introduce my friends
and mentors, Clark Blaise

00:08:28.100 --> 00:08:30.410 align:middle line:90%
and Bharati Mukherjee.

00:08:30.410 --> 00:08:33.000 align:middle line:90%