WEBVTT

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It's a real pleasure
to be here tonight.

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And I just want to
thank Literacy Connects.

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Everything you folks do is just
amazing work in the community,

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and Tyler for just setting
up an event like this.

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And the beautiful Poetry Center,
it's just such a nice place

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to kind of spend an open
evening and get a chance

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to really hear about some words
that kind of are exciting.

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So it's my job to introduce
my fabulous colleague, Paul.

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And I felt like I should do it
a little differently than, say,

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I would do it in a
more academic setting.

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And I thought-- I was
thinking about a well, kind

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of an anecdote
about something that

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happened to me many
years ago that was

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brought to mind by this event.

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When I was in grad school, I
had a good friend named Josie,

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Josie Saldaña, who was
one of the brightest,

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most kind of capacious
thinkers that I knew.

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Just incredibly sort
of careful reasoner.

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And one evening a
bunch of us made plans

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to watch a movie together.

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We didn't really have
anything definite in mind.

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And lo and behold, what does
Josie bring over to my house,

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but a copy of the Texas
Chainsaw Massacre.

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And I was like,
this isn't Josie.

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Josie watches these
kinds of horror movies?

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She's such a careful thinker,
she's such a rationalist.

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But no, that was what
she wanted to watch.

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That was what she
loved, and we sat down.

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And Josie sat on the floor and
we started watching the movie.

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And as the dramatic tension
in that movie built,

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Josie kind of began to sort
of rock and I was like,

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what is going on?

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And the scarier the
movie got, the harder

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she rocked, back and
forth, 30 degrees,

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45 degrees, 60 degrees.

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So for years later, we would
refer to the Josie meter

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as a way of measuring
the scariness of a movie.

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And I never really
understood why

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someone as rational as her
would be so emotionally invested

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in terrorizing herself,
but as it turned out

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my colleague, Paul, is better
at explaining that than anyone I

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know.

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He's a specialist in 19th
century American literature.

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He got his degree
at UC Berkeley.

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And he's in particular
a specialist

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of the work of that grand
American creep-artist

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that we're all so obsessed with
this year, Edgar Allan Poe.

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He's published
widely in the field.

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But I just wanted to mention
that his book has just come out

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this summer, American Terror:
The Feeling of Thinking

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in Edwards, Poe, and
Melville from Stanford Press.

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And in some sense, I would say
that what Paul does in that

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book is he asks the same
question of America,

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American literature and culture,
that I was wondering about

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Josie all those years.

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Why does a country
that claims to be based

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on rational enlightenment
ideals and to be

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sort of precise in its
thought in every way

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have a literature that has
so much darkness and so much

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terror?

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So what is it about
Americans that

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makes them want to
be scared and what

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is this feeling, this
strange feeling we

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have about our own
thoughts that is so gloomy?

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Does this date back to
some Puritan fear of God?

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Does it just have to do
with some kind of love

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of the Gothic tradition?

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And what Paul's book says is no.

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Its brilliance is in a
sense to suggest that there's

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a kind of coldness in American
reason, a sort of feeling

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that's associated with
rational thought itself

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that's distressing.

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That there's
something distressing

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about the scientific mind.

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There's a kind of a
level of understanding

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that doubles back to
infect our sense of reason

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with this kind of
low grade terror.

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So Paul's been
doing a lot of work

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since then, where he's
in some ways I think,

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expanding in entirely
new directions,

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thinking about the relevance
of science and cosmology

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in 19th century
American literature.

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He thinks about Poe, I
think, from the perspective

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of what he calls
astronomical aesthetics,

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or the sublime scale
of outer space.

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But you know outer space
is kind of creepy too.

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And I think that there's
a way that there's

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a hanging on to
concerns with terror

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that you really can't
leave behind entirely

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when you're dealing with the
master of American darkness,

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when you're dealing with Poe.

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So with that thought, because
there are many directions to go

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and it's fun to think about
Poe together this evening

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with Paul, but you might
head home later and have

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a moment of panic when
you open your front door

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and it's a little dark.

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And so with that in mind,
let me just welcome and thank

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someone who has so much to say
about these kinds of phenomena,

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Paul Hurh.

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[APPLAUSE]

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