WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:00.570 align:middle line:90% 00:00:00.570 --> 00:00:02.025 align:middle line:90% Few words about Ben Rybeck. 00:00:02.025 --> 00:00:07.807 align:middle line:90% 00:00:07.807 --> 00:00:09.120 align:middle line:90% Your Mom still there? 00:00:09.120 --> 00:00:12.420 align:middle line:90% 00:00:12.420 --> 00:00:15.840 align:middle line:84% Ben Rybeck was in two of my graduate classes, 00:00:15.840 --> 00:00:18.600 align:middle line:84% a fiction workshop and a screenwriting class. 00:00:18.600 --> 00:00:22.080 align:middle line:84% I was also his manuscript advisor. 00:00:22.080 --> 00:00:24.420 align:middle line:84% He was a great student, smart and hungry, 00:00:24.420 --> 00:00:28.530 align:middle line:84% rebellious and challenging in all the right ways, 00:00:28.530 --> 00:00:30.340 align:middle line:90% and always hardworking. 00:00:30.340 --> 00:00:33.600 align:middle line:84% In the fiction workshop he wrote edgy high-octane stories 00:00:33.600 --> 00:00:37.320 align:middle line:84% that took huge risks, had some spectacular writing, 00:00:37.320 --> 00:00:40.330 align:middle line:90% and didn't always come together. 00:00:40.330 --> 00:00:43.890 align:middle line:84% He was a passionate, committed reader of his classmates' work. 00:00:43.890 --> 00:00:46.530 align:middle line:84% He wrote perceptive comments on their stories 00:00:46.530 --> 00:00:49.080 align:middle line:84% and gave them heartfelt criticism in class. 00:00:49.080 --> 00:00:50.730 align:middle line:90% He worked all the time. 00:00:50.730 --> 00:00:52.260 align:middle line:90% He read widely. 00:00:52.260 --> 00:00:54.900 align:middle line:84% He was the same way in the screenwriting class, which he 00:00:54.900 --> 00:00:57.660 align:middle line:90% took in a different semester. 00:00:57.660 --> 00:01:02.070 align:middle line:84% For his MFA manuscript he wrote 150 pages from a point of view 00:01:02.070 --> 00:01:04.410 align:middle line:90% of a young François Truffaut. 00:01:04.410 --> 00:01:07.020 align:middle line:90% Parts of it were brilliant. 00:01:07.020 --> 00:01:10.110 align:middle line:84% Though he'd already exceeded the requirement, 00:01:10.110 --> 00:01:12.690 align:middle line:84% he decided what he had written was not good enough 00:01:12.690 --> 00:01:14.640 align:middle line:90% and started something new. 00:01:14.640 --> 00:01:17.850 align:middle line:84% This new piece was astonishingly good. 00:01:17.850 --> 00:01:20.190 align:middle line:84% In it, I saw that he had brought together 00:01:20.190 --> 00:01:23.700 align:middle line:84% everything he had learned about narrative, rhythm, pace, 00:01:23.700 --> 00:01:28.470 align:middle line:84% texture, situation, and scene from the fiction 00:01:28.470 --> 00:01:31.200 align:middle line:84% and screenwriting classes, and made a quantum leap 00:01:31.200 --> 00:01:37.410 align:middle line:84% in which he wrote the first 100 pages of a poised, risky novel. 00:01:37.410 --> 00:01:39.540 align:middle line:84% It was like watching a gymnast who 00:01:39.540 --> 00:01:43.050 align:middle line:84% had synthesized separate pieces of a routine into something 00:01:43.050 --> 00:01:46.650 align:middle line:84% whole, and fluid, and transcendent, and greater 00:01:46.650 --> 00:01:49.090 align:middle line:90% than the sum of its parts. 00:01:49.090 --> 00:01:51.960 align:middle line:84% It showed that he'd already learned more about narrative, 00:01:51.960 --> 00:01:55.410 align:middle line:84% and learned it better than many writers ever do, 00:01:55.410 --> 00:01:56.895 align:middle line:90% and that he'd made it his own. 00:01:56.895 --> 00:01:59.610 align:middle line:90% 00:01:59.610 --> 00:02:04.660 align:middle line:84% I'll tell a story, and hope I'm not being too personal. 00:02:04.660 --> 00:02:06.900 align:middle line:90% He was a cigarette smoker. 00:02:06.900 --> 00:02:09.780 align:middle line:84% Sometime after a mutual friend of ours, another teacher, 00:02:09.780 --> 00:02:15.310 align:middle line:84% had died of lung cancer, he too had been a heavy smoker. 00:02:15.310 --> 00:02:17.520 align:middle line:84% I gently chided Ben during a class break 00:02:17.520 --> 00:02:20.220 align:middle line:90% to give up cigarettes. 00:02:20.220 --> 00:02:23.730 align:middle line:84% The next time I saw him, I noticed his pallor had changed. 00:02:23.730 --> 00:02:25.980 align:middle line:90% He looked much better. 00:02:25.980 --> 00:02:28.890 align:middle line:90% He confirmed that he'd stopped. 00:02:28.890 --> 00:02:32.010 align:middle line:84% Later he emailed me that he'd had a couple of relapses 00:02:32.010 --> 00:02:34.980 align:middle line:90% when he'd gone out for a drink. 00:02:34.980 --> 00:02:37.170 align:middle line:90% So he stopped drinking. 00:02:37.170 --> 00:02:40.890 align:middle line:84% Now he told me he just got up very early in the morning 00:02:40.890 --> 00:02:44.190 align:middle line:84% and wrote until the middle of the day. 00:02:44.190 --> 00:02:51.000 align:middle line:84% Passion, energy, talent, and commitment driven by will. 00:02:51.000 --> 00:02:55.470 align:middle line:84% His reading here tonight from his first published novel 00:02:55.470 --> 00:02:59.100 align:middle line:84% incarnates the values of an authentic ending. 00:02:59.100 --> 00:03:01.980 align:middle line:84% The realization of the elements of the story, 00:03:01.980 --> 00:03:04.620 align:middle line:84% so that they earn their meaning, are 00:03:04.620 --> 00:03:09.120 align:middle line:90% inevitable and yet a surprise. 00:03:09.120 --> 00:03:14.080 align:middle line:84% Except that, in my case, this ending is not a surprise. 00:03:14.080 --> 00:03:16.760 align:middle line:90% It is exactly what I expected. 00:03:16.760 --> 00:03:18.000 align:middle line:90%