WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:00.540 align:middle line:90% 00:00:00.540 --> 00:00:01.650 align:middle line:90% Thank you. 00:00:01.650 --> 00:00:03.390 align:middle line:84% I wonder if you could tell us what you've 00:00:03.390 --> 00:00:05.325 align:middle line:84% been reading while you've been doing this, 00:00:05.325 --> 00:00:07.380 align:middle line:84% because I hear so many other things. 00:00:07.380 --> 00:00:09.090 align:middle line:84% But I'm more interested in hearing what 00:00:09.090 --> 00:00:10.620 align:middle line:90% you say than harvesting them. 00:00:10.620 --> 00:00:12.810 align:middle line:84% Yeah, so obviously, I was reading 00:00:12.810 --> 00:00:18.240 align:middle line:84% a lot of stuff about hell and the different kinds 00:00:18.240 --> 00:00:25.860 align:middle line:84% of underworlds that different cultures imagine. 00:00:25.860 --> 00:00:29.010 align:middle line:84% And interestingly, not just different cultures, 00:00:29.010 --> 00:00:31.620 align:middle line:84% but different cultures at different times. 00:00:31.620 --> 00:00:33.780 align:middle line:84% So there's this really interesting thing 00:00:33.780 --> 00:00:40.140 align:middle line:84% that happens in the Chinese underworld in the 17th century 00:00:40.140 --> 00:00:46.780 align:middle line:84% when bureaucracy becomes a big part of Chinese daily life. 00:00:46.780 --> 00:00:48.360 align:middle line:84% And so then, all of a sudden, hell 00:00:48.360 --> 00:00:51.960 align:middle line:84% looks like a big bureaucracy, where 00:00:51.960 --> 00:00:53.580 align:middle line:90% you need to have your papers. 00:00:53.580 --> 00:00:56.880 align:middle line:84% And so when you die, the nightmare of dying 00:00:56.880 --> 00:00:58.737 align:middle line:84% is that you don't have your papers in order. 00:00:58.737 --> 00:01:00.570 align:middle line:84% And then you have to go to this other place. 00:01:00.570 --> 00:01:02.850 align:middle line:84% And then they send you to this other place. 00:01:02.850 --> 00:01:05.910 align:middle line:84% And it's just as bad as any other hell. 00:01:05.910 --> 00:01:08.670 align:middle line:90% 00:01:08.670 --> 00:01:16.110 align:middle line:84% And then the Mayan underworld is like a big ball game. 00:01:16.110 --> 00:01:20.040 align:middle line:84% And it's a bloody one that ends with human sacrifice. 00:01:20.040 --> 00:01:23.310 align:middle line:84% But it's a very different one than the Chinese. 00:01:23.310 --> 00:01:28.320 align:middle line:84% And so working on this book, I found myself just fascinated 00:01:28.320 --> 00:01:33.150 align:middle line:84% by these differences and try to figure out 00:01:33.150 --> 00:01:35.153 align:middle line:84% what the story-- what the differences were 00:01:35.153 --> 00:01:36.570 align:middle line:84% and the similarities between, say, 00:01:36.570 --> 00:01:40.155 align:middle line:84% what the ancient Egyptians thought happened to us. 00:01:40.155 --> 00:01:43.194 align:middle line:90% 00:01:43.194 --> 00:01:44.980 align:middle line:84% So yeah, that was one side of things. 00:01:44.980 --> 00:01:46.720 align:middle line:84% Then I was reading a lot of novels 00:01:46.720 --> 00:01:49.060 align:middle line:84% because I was really interested in just storytelling. 00:01:49.060 --> 00:01:55.560 align:middle line:84% And so that's a start to an answer, that. 00:01:55.560 --> 00:01:57.870 align:middle line:84% Did you hear anything that I should read or-- 00:01:57.870 --> 00:01:58.620 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:01:58.620 --> 00:01:59.770 align:middle line:90% This is in process. 00:01:59.770 --> 00:02:01.980 align:middle line:84% I'm trying to figure out how to make it work. 00:02:01.980 --> 00:02:04.530 align:middle line:90% You've heard of Haruki Murakami? 00:02:04.530 --> 00:02:07.200 align:middle line:90% Yeah, I've never read Murakami. 00:02:07.200 --> 00:02:09.360 align:middle line:84% But my wife is a big Murakami fan. 00:02:09.360 --> 00:02:11.150 align:middle line:84% And then I just look over her shoulder. 00:02:11.150 --> 00:02:13.680 align:middle line:84% And she's like, oh my god, this amazing thing happened. 00:02:13.680 --> 00:02:18.950 align:middle line:84% And I'm just absorbing him second-hand. 00:02:18.950 --> 00:02:20.510 align:middle line:90% Do you know [INAUDIBLE]? 00:02:20.510 --> 00:02:25.895 align:middle line:84% Yeah, but that's also just like being alive right now, yeah. 00:02:25.895 --> 00:02:32.810 align:middle line:90% 00:02:32.810 --> 00:02:36.447 align:middle line:84% Did Tyler mention that you do erasures? 00:02:36.447 --> 00:02:37.280 align:middle line:90% I don't know, Tyler. 00:02:37.280 --> 00:02:38.520 align:middle line:90% Did you mention that I do-- 00:02:38.520 --> 00:02:39.020 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:02:39.020 --> 00:02:43.140 align:middle line:84% Could you help the understand the appeal of erasures? 00:02:43.140 --> 00:02:46.160 align:middle line:84% Because they seem to be quite popular. 00:02:46.160 --> 00:02:50.630 align:middle line:84% Yeah, it's hard for me to understand 00:02:50.630 --> 00:02:52.670 align:middle line:84% the appeal of erasures because I never, 00:02:52.670 --> 00:02:56.570 align:middle line:84% ever want to have anything to do with it again after spending 00:02:56.570 --> 00:02:58.130 align:middle line:90% seven years doing it. 00:02:58.130 --> 00:03:00.710 align:middle line:90% 00:03:00.710 --> 00:03:02.450 align:middle line:90% But for me, it was-- 00:03:02.450 --> 00:03:07.070 align:middle line:84% and I've spoken to some classes today about this. 00:03:07.070 --> 00:03:10.460 align:middle line:84% It came out of a, just, dissatisfaction 00:03:10.460 --> 00:03:12.710 align:middle line:84% with my own writing and with just-- 00:03:12.710 --> 00:03:15.650 align:middle line:84% I felt unable to even just think about writing 00:03:15.650 --> 00:03:19.670 align:middle line:84% in any way that made me anything but extremely 00:03:19.670 --> 00:03:22.040 align:middle line:90% anxious and depressed. 00:03:22.040 --> 00:03:26.840 align:middle line:84% And so when you feel like you have no way of moving forward 00:03:26.840 --> 00:03:33.270 align:middle line:84% as a writer, sometimes maybe doing the opposite, 00:03:33.270 --> 00:03:36.170 align:middle line:84% instead of writing, erasing, felt 00:03:36.170 --> 00:03:38.870 align:middle line:84% like a way of trying to get out of the corner 00:03:38.870 --> 00:03:44.330 align:middle line:84% that I was in, in this creative crisis. 00:03:44.330 --> 00:03:49.610 align:middle line:90% And so that's why I came to it. 00:03:49.610 --> 00:03:51.110 align:middle line:84% And my guess is that a lot of people 00:03:51.110 --> 00:03:55.910 align:middle line:84% who do it or have done it recently 00:03:55.910 --> 00:03:58.970 align:middle line:84% may have felt like there are political reasons why it's 00:03:58.970 --> 00:04:02.060 align:middle line:84% hard for them to feel like the writing of poetry 00:04:02.060 --> 00:04:04.880 align:middle line:84% is justifiable to themselves or-- 00:04:04.880 --> 00:04:07.960 align:middle line:90% 00:04:07.960 --> 00:04:11.040 align:middle line:84% But actually, people have been doing erasures for a while. 00:04:11.040 --> 00:04:13.830 align:middle line:84% And there's some really exuberant erasures too 00:04:13.830 --> 00:04:16.410 align:middle line:90% and really ecstatic ones. 00:04:16.410 --> 00:04:18.959 align:middle line:84% The poet Ronald Johnson, in the '70s, 00:04:18.959 --> 00:04:24.540 align:middle line:84% did a really, almost, mystical erasure of Paradise Lost. 00:04:24.540 --> 00:04:28.670 align:middle line:84% So I think every writer has their own motivation 00:04:28.670 --> 00:04:31.700 align:middle line:90% for undertaking any form and-- 00:04:31.700 --> 00:04:32.510 align:middle line:90% does that-- 00:04:32.510 --> 00:04:34.840 align:middle line:90% Yes, thank you. 00:04:34.840 --> 00:04:37.600 align:middle line:84% I have a related question, which is about the translation 00:04:37.600 --> 00:04:41.050 align:middle line:84% section, specifically, but maybe more broadly as a process 00:04:41.050 --> 00:04:42.190 align:middle line:90% question. 00:04:42.190 --> 00:04:45.970 align:middle line:84% If you found yourself going at those specific poems 00:04:45.970 --> 00:04:48.130 align:middle line:84% in a single go, or if you had waves, 00:04:48.130 --> 00:04:50.230 align:middle line:84% or what the process is like for you? 00:04:50.230 --> 00:04:51.760 align:middle line:84% The translation that's in the book? 00:04:51.760 --> 00:04:52.260 align:middle line:90% Yeah. 00:04:52.260 --> 00:04:59.170 align:middle line:84% So there are these classical Chinese tales. 00:04:59.170 --> 00:05:03.880 align:middle line:84% And the genre is called strange tales. 00:05:03.880 --> 00:05:08.260 align:middle line:84% And it's a venerable Chinese genre. 00:05:08.260 --> 00:05:09.910 align:middle line:84% And then that's to be distinguished 00:05:09.910 --> 00:05:13.010 align:middle line:84% from the other venerable Chinese genre of weird tales. 00:05:13.010 --> 00:05:13.510 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:05:13.510 --> 00:05:15.070 align:middle line:84% So that tells you something about, 00:05:15.070 --> 00:05:17.440 align:middle line:84% we're missing something if we don't 00:05:17.440 --> 00:05:19.810 align:middle line:84% have a distinction between strange and weird tales. 00:05:19.810 --> 00:05:21.730 align:middle line:90% They've got it. 00:05:21.730 --> 00:05:25.510 align:middle line:84% And so these strange tales were collected 00:05:25.510 --> 00:05:29.200 align:middle line:84% by this Chinese writer Pu Songling, who 00:05:29.200 --> 00:05:33.040 align:middle line:84% wrote the most classic, classically beautiful Mandarin 00:05:33.040 --> 00:05:37.120 align:middle line:90% in the 16th century, I think. 00:05:37.120 --> 00:05:39.730 align:middle line:84% And so they're full of stories of people 00:05:39.730 --> 00:05:42.520 align:middle line:84% going into the underworld or having affairs 00:05:42.520 --> 00:05:44.675 align:middle line:84% with fairies, and ghost stories, and things 00:05:44.675 --> 00:05:45.550 align:middle line:90% like-- they're great. 00:05:45.550 --> 00:05:50.830 align:middle line:84% It's like the Twilight Zone, but in ancient China. 00:05:50.830 --> 00:05:54.670 align:middle line:84% And so I came across one that's only two pages long. 00:05:54.670 --> 00:05:56.170 align:middle line:84% It was about this guy named Chen who 00:05:56.170 --> 00:05:58.600 align:middle line:84% has to go to the underworld, because he's 00:05:58.600 --> 00:06:01.450 align:middle line:84% mortified to learn that he committed war crimes 200 00:06:01.450 --> 00:06:04.630 align:middle line:90% years before he was born. 00:06:04.630 --> 00:06:09.610 align:middle line:84% And the only translation of it is by this French sinologist 00:06:09.610 --> 00:06:11.770 align:middle line:90% named Léon Wieger. 00:06:11.770 --> 00:06:17.560 align:middle line:84% And so I began translating this Chinese-- 00:06:17.560 --> 00:06:19.660 align:middle line:84% I don't speak or know any Chinese. 00:06:19.660 --> 00:06:24.530 align:middle line:84% I barely, with Google Translate, can do some French translation. 00:06:24.530 --> 00:06:26.500 align:middle line:84% So I started translating the Chinese tale 00:06:26.500 --> 00:06:29.240 align:middle line:90% from the French translation. 00:06:29.240 --> 00:06:32.290 align:middle line:84% And then there were words like satellite 00:06:32.290 --> 00:06:36.280 align:middle line:84% that were popping up that I didn't know what to do with. 00:06:36.280 --> 00:06:40.050 align:middle line:84% And then when I looked it up, I found motorized airport 00:06:40.050 --> 00:06:40.550 align:middle line:90% staircase. 00:06:40.550 --> 00:06:41.890 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:06:41.890 --> 00:06:43.990 align:middle line:84% And so I thought, well, that's great. 00:06:43.990 --> 00:06:47.170 align:middle line:84% Why not put a motorized airport staircase 00:06:47.170 --> 00:06:49.480 align:middle line:84% into this ancient Chinese story and have 00:06:49.480 --> 00:06:50.665 align:middle line:90% Chen ride around on one? 00:06:50.665 --> 00:06:53.290 align:middle line:84% And then from there, it just got cra-- yeah, it was like, well, 00:06:53.290 --> 00:06:55.090 align:middle line:90% let's send him to ancient Egypt. 00:06:55.090 --> 00:06:59.560 align:middle line:84% And so really, it's just a two-page story in the original. 00:06:59.560 --> 00:07:06.520 align:middle line:84% But I've built it out to this 20, 30 page adventure. 00:07:06.520 --> 00:07:07.020 align:middle line:90% Thank you. 00:07:07.020 --> 00:07:08.478 align:middle line:84% There's probably time for one more. 00:07:08.478 --> 00:07:10.005 align:middle line:84% I can't take the last question, so. 00:07:10.005 --> 00:07:16.800 align:middle line:90% 00:07:16.800 --> 00:07:17.730 align:middle line:90% Excellent. 00:07:17.730 --> 00:07:18.230 align:middle line:90% Thank you. 00:07:18.230 --> 00:07:18.665 align:middle line:90% Excellent. 00:07:18.665 --> 00:07:19.165 align:middle line:90% Thank you. 00:07:19.165 --> 00:07:20.453 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:07:20.453 --> 00:07:21.610 align:middle line:90% [INAUDIBLE] 00:07:21.610 --> 00:07:22.110 align:middle line:90% Yeah. 00:07:22.110 --> 00:07:22.610 align:middle line:90% [INAUDIBLE] 00:07:22.610 --> 00:07:25.460 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:07:25.460 --> 00:07:26.000 align:middle line:90%