Benjamin A. Railton's Blog, page 174

March 21-22, 2020: StoweStudying: The Stowe Center

[On March 20, 1852, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s titanic novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin was published in book form for the first time. So this week I’ve AmericanStudied a handful of Stowe contexts, leading up to this special post on the wonderful Stowe Center in Hartford!]On three inspiring sides to the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center (beyond its important focus on Stowe herself, of course).1)      The Salons: As I highlighted in Monday’s post, two of Stowe’s earliest forms of public engagement and activism were communal conversations: her membership in the Lane Seminary’s Semi-Colon Club; and her successful efforts to bring a series of debates over slavery and abolition to that Cincinnati school. As such, I think she would be especially excited about the Salons at Stowe, a series of “courageous conversations on social justice” that feature impressive invited speakers, difficult and important topics, and a great deal of community attendance and participation. I’ve had the chance to attend a couple of the Salons over the last few years, and would rank them near the top of the many impressive and inspiring public scholarly conversations I’ve been part of in my career. 2)      The Prize: In that hyperlinked post I reflected on my chance to be part of the Stowe Prize lecture and celebration in 2017, when the amazing Bryan Stevenson received the semi-annual Literary Prize (there’s also a concurrent semi-annual Student Prize). Given how much Stowe wed her lifelong commitment to activism and reform to her equally lifelong career as a professional writer, I might challenge my earlier statement and say that she’d be especially excited about the Center awarding a prize for “a distinguished book of general adult fiction or non-fiction that illuminates a critical social justice issue in contemporary society in the United States.” But it’s not either-or, and indeed it is precisely the combination of the Salons and the Prize that makes the Center so much more than just a historic house or museum (although it does that very well too).3)      The Nook: The Salons and the Prize ceremony take place at particular times throughout the year; but honestly the Stowe Center is worth a visit at any time, and again not just for what it offers as a historic house & museum. No, just as inspiring is the West Hartford neighborhood known as Nook Farm in which the Center is located (and which it shares with the Mark Twain House). Twain and Stowe were neighbors who became friends, and walking the grounds of Nook Farm offers a glimpse into a world shared by two of the 19th century’s (and America’s) most prominent and important authors. I don’t know any other place in America that feels quite like that, one more reason to visit and support the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center.Next series starts Monday,BenPS. What do you think? Other great sites you’d highlight?

March 20, 2020: StoweStudying: Uncle Tom’s Cabin

[On March 20, 1852, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s titanic novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin was published in book form for the first time. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of Stowe contexts, leading up to a special post on the wonderful Stowe Center in Hartford!]On whether we can in any way blame an uber-popular cultural work for its misappropriations.I’ve written before in this space, such as in this June 2016 post, about my first published article, in which I argued (among other things) that we can and should blame Margaret Mitchell’s stunningly popular novel Gone with the Wind (1936) for its destructive effects on American society and culture. After all, I would say (as I did at length in that article) that both of those elements of Mitchell’s novel were entirely intentional: of course she intended it to be popular (as do virtually all writers and artists, if of course precious few achieve that goal anywhere near as fully as did Mitchell); and it’s my contention that she likewise entirely intended it to affect American narratives of region, race, and Reconstruction (she did after all write to Thomas W. Dixon, one of the most overtly white supremacist novelists in American history, “I was practically raised on your books, and love them very much”). Mitchell in no way originated the mythic and racist narrative of Reconstruction in particular that the second half of her book features (even Dixon didn’t originate it, although he was much closer to its origin points), but she both built upon and amplified it in ways that frustratingly continue to echo down to our own 21st century moment.If Gone with the Wind was the 20thcentury’s most popular American novel (and I’m pretty sure it was, statistically at least), Uncle Tom’s Cabin was the 19th century’s. And while Gonespawned one equally popular and influential film adaptation, UTC has almost certainly produced (as I highlighted in yesterday’s post and as my Dad’s website examines at great length) more adaptations and aftermaths than any other American cultural work. Moreover, a great many of those UTC aftermaths have been implicitly or (as in the use of the phrase “Uncle Tom” itself) explicitly racist in their meanings and effects. Yet of course there’s an important distinction between the two novels when it comes to these prominent and enduring effects (among many differences we could identify between the two books): not only did Stowe not intend to amplify racist narratives, but indeed I would argue that her book is (at least in its purposes and goals, and certainly for its 1850s moment of publication) one of the most overtly anti-racist works in American literary or cultural history. Which is to say, even if you don’t think as highly of Stowe’s novel as I do, the frustratingly longstanding racist aftermaths of Uncle Tom’s Cabinhave to be called misappropriations.Of course an author can’t entirely control what happens to her work after it is published, nor necessarily even influence broader societal forces in her own era (much less those that extend into subsequent centuries). Yet just as I wasn’t completely willing to let my fav Bruce Springsteen off the hook for the frustrating misunderstandings and misappropriations of his song “Born in the U.S.A.,” so too would I say that there are ways to critique Stowe’s novel in relationship to these subsequent misappropriations. After all, while her novel is as I argued strikingly anti-racist in its overall purposes and goals, Stowe also relies in her creation of particular African American characters (especially Tom and Topsy) on racial stereotypes that were all-too-easily turned into fodder for minstrel shows and other racist depictions. I don’t believe for a second that that invalidates the most progressive and activist sides to Stowe’s book—but it’s part of the complex story and legacy of this hugely important American novel as well.Special post this weekend,BenPS. What do you think?

March 19, 2020: StoweStudying: Tomitudes

[On March 20, 1852, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s titanic novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin was published in book form for the first time. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of Stowe contexts, leading up to a special post on the wonderful Stowe Center in Hartford!]On the very complicated, confusing, and crucial case of the Uncle Tom’s Cabin toys and games.In a long-ago Tribute Post here, I wrote about my Dad, (now retired) University of Virginia Professor Stephen Railton, and more specifically about his public scholarly and pedagogical websites. While the Mark Twain site focuses pretty specifically on Twain’s major works and on their many biographical, historical, cultural, artistic, and scholarly contexts, the Uncle Tom’s Cabin site has a very different additional emphasis (while still highlighting many elements in those categories for Stowe’s novel): tracing the novel’s multi-faceted, multi-century legacy in American culture. It’s fair to ask, as the site itself does in each case (and as I’ll explore a bit more in tomorrow’s series-concluding post as well), whether any of those aftermaths—from the touring Tom Shows to the dozens of film adaptations, the collectibles to the card games, and many many more—can tell us much at all about Stowe’s novel itself, whether they’re more about their own particular moments or connected to enduring national narratives, how, indeed, we American Studiers analyze this century and a half of Stowe-inspired cultural and material cultural stuff.Those questions are relevant to any and all of the Stowe legacies highlighted on the website, but are nowhere more vexed and challenging than when it comes to the Tom-inspired children’s merchandise (or “Tomitudes,” as the material culture artifacts inspired by the novel are often known). What on earth do we make of these jigsaw puzzles, these Tom’s cabin pieces included in assemble-your-own-village sets, these paper dolls and cut-outs of characters and scenes from the novel? Do they simply and neutrally reflect the way that (imagine this next word in the voice of Yogurt from Spaceballs) “merchandising” can and will find its way into anything in our capitalist society? Are they part of the process of stereotyping and watering-down that (building on certain aspects of the novel but ignoring many, many others) has reduced Stowe’s novel from impassioned protest to cultural mainstay? Could they instead represent a way in which those moral lessons and goals of Stowe’s novel could be passed down to open-minded and impressionable young Americans, not unlike the ways in which Tom influenced young Eva (and then she in turn influenced her father, the reformed slaveowner St. Clare), in the novel’s most idealized relationship? Hell if I know. But I do know this: while Stowe’s novel may be an extreme case (I’m not familiar, at least, with the Marrow of Tradition jigsaw puzzles, the Ceremony cut-out dolls, the Awakening ocean-suicide dioramas), there’s something unavoidably true and important about the fact that our most prominent cultural figures, events, and texts eventually filter down to our kids. Obviously the versions of the America Revolution and the Civil War, of Mark Twain and Martin Luther King, of the frontier and the Cold War, that become toys and games, children’s books and snippets of kids’ TV shows, and the like can seem far removed from those with which we scholarly, adult AmericanStudiers engage. But we’d better not think of them that way, not treat them as distinct in any absolute sense—had better, instead, remember that national, historical, and cultural narratives are created and passed down in a variety of forms, and that the ones that seem the simplest are often those that become the most ingrained in our identities and communities. I’m not saying we all need to play with the Uncle Tom’s Cabin cut-out dolls, necessarily; but we’d all better think about them.Last StoweStudying tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think?

March 18, 2020: StoweStudying: New England Local Color

[On March 20, 1852, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s titanic novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin was published in book form for the first time. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of Stowe contexts, leading up to a special post on the wonderful Stowe Center in Hartford!]On how and why to link Stowe to the popular 19thcentury literary movement.I haven’t been able to find too much information about it, but Harriet Beecher Stowe’s first published literary work (after 1833’s ground-breaking educational textbook Primary Geography for Children ) was an 1835 short story collection entitled New England Sketches. Published while Stowe was living in Cincinnati, the collection nonetheless reflects her deep and abiding literary and personal interest in New England, one that she would extend across her career with works in multiple genres: other short story collections like The Mayflower; or, Sketches of Scenes and Characters among the Descendants of the Pilgrims (1843); novels like The Pearl of Orr’s Island: A Story of the Coast of Maine (1862) and Oldtown Folks (1869); and nonfiction like Poganuc People: Their Loves and Lives (1878). Stowe was born and died in Connecticut, and lived for many years in Maine (where the family moved from Ohio when Calvin got a job at Bowdoin College), but it was through these and other literary works that she most fully and influentially contributed to New England culture. Better remembering that central through-line to her literary career helps us challenge a couple of overarching narratives in important ways. Obviously it complicates any narrative of Stowe’s writing and her literary interests that focuses only on UTC, or even on UTC and Dred; but I would also say the opposite: that linking these different sides to her writing and career reminds us of the deep interconnections between New England and the South, between the “free” and “slave” states (as of the immediate antebellum moment), between seemingly divided and opposed American communities. Stowe was frequently criticized by Southerners for not being familiar with the Southern communities about which she wrote in those anti-slavery novels; but among the many problems with that narrative is that assumption that either Cincinnati or Connecticut were fundamentally divorced from the world of the antebellum slave South. Nothing could be further from the truth, as these distinct yet interconnected threads of Stowe’s work and career illustrate quite effectively.Engaging with Stowe’s New England local color writing also helps us (and by us I mean me, as usual) complicate our general sense of that literary movement’s timing and influences. I’ve been writing about New England local color since my dissertation/first book, and there as elsewhere I’ve thought about it (as many scholars do) as principally a post-Civil War/late 19th century movement, connected to best-selling writers like Sarah Orne Jewett, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Rose Terry Cooke, and many more. Yet if we consider Stowe one of the movement’s originating voices, and one who began exploring that literary landscape decades before the Civil War, that could have a couple particularly striking effects: helping us identify a first wave of New England local color authors in the early 19thcentury (a group which would certainly also include Catherine Maria Sedgwick, from her debut book A New-England Tale; or Sketches of New-England Character and Manners [1822] on); and, in the case of Stowe most especially, linking this literary movement’s origins to social reform generally and abolition specifically in a way that offers one more argument for seeing New England local color writing as anything but provincial or limited. Next StoweStudying tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think?

March 17, 2020: StoweStudying: Dred

[On March 20, 1852, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s titanic novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin was published in book form for the first time. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of Stowe contexts, leading up to a special post on the wonderful Stowe Center in Hartford!]On two reasons why it’s crucial for us to remember Stowe’s second novel.I highlighted Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Dred: A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp (1855) in this post on cultural representations of slave rebellions, and as usual when I mention a prior post, I’ll cut this paragraph short and ask you to check out that post as a starting point for further thoughts on her fictional follow-up to Uncle Tom’s Cabin.Welcome back! I mentioned in that post that I hadn’t read Dredsince graduate school, and that remains the case, meaning I don’t remember its details nearly well enough to engage them in this post. What I can do, though, is highlight a couple reasons why the novel should be on all of our reading lists, or at the very least should occupy a space in our collective memories alongside UTC. I wrote yesterday that better remembering Stowe’s decades-long abolitionist work helps us see UTC as far from an isolated text or moment, but we don’t even have to go outside her literary career in order to do that; Dred was published less than three years after UTC and makes clear that Stowe was committed to depicting that social and national issue through multiple literary and cultural lenses. Moreover, some of the critiques most frequently directed at UTC and especially its title character—his passive acquiescence to the horrors of slavery, for example—are directly countered by Dred and its title character, the leader of a slave rebellion modeled on historical figures like Denmark Vesey and Nat Turner. Between the two novels, Stowe represents many different forms of both slavery and resistance, and at the very least we owe it to her to read both of them.I would go one step further, however. It’s true that (in both my memory of it and the critical consensus about it) Dred is a less aesthetically and stylistically successful novel than UTC, and that may well have contributed to its failure to achieve the same level of sales and prominence (although no other 19th century novel got anywhere close to UTC, of course). But I would argue that it was Dred’s subject matter and tone, its focus on a story of slave rebellion and its pessimistic (even apocalyptic at times) depiction of the American future if slavery remained legal, that made it a far more difficult pill for American audiences to swallow, at the time of its release and ever since. Helen Hunt Jackson wrote of her inclusion of romance within her reform novel Ramona “I have sugared the pill,” and for better or for worse that sugar is what audiences have most remembered from that book; similarly, Stowe’s readers seem to have focused most fully on the sentimental (white) character of Little Eva and her tragic death. Dredcontains no such sugar, just painful medicine—and it’s all the more important for our collective health, here in 2020, that we take it.Next StoweStudying tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think?

March 16, 2020: StoweStudying: Stowe beyond UTC

[On March 20, 1852, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s titanic novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin was published in book form for the first time. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of Stowe contexts, leading up to a special post on the wonderful Stowe Center in Hartford!]On three sides to Stowe’s life & identity beyond (if still connected to) her uber-successful first novel.1)      Religion: It’s impossible to read Uncle Tom’s Cabin and miss the central role that religious plays, not just in the lives, perspectives, and experiences of Stowe’s characters (especially Tom himself, who comes to closely parallel Jesus), but in her moral arguments against slavery. But the presence and influence of religion in Stowe’s family and relationships was even more prominent still: from her father, the radical Calvinist minister and reformer Lyman Beecher; to her brother, the even more progressive Congregationalist minister and reformer Henry Ward Beecher; to her husband, the Reverend Calvin Ellis Stowe, a professor of Biblical literature at Cincinnati’s Lane Seminary. What links all those men is the same combination of religion and reform that lies at the heart of UTC, making clear that Stowe herself, despite living in an era when she could formally work as a minister, should be seen as an integral part of this family of Christian reformers. 2)      Education: Calvin Stowe’s links to education went beyond his work as a professor, as he was also an early advocate for Horace Mann’s concept of “common schools” (part of the nation’s move toward compulsory public education in the mid-19th century). Harriet certainly shared that educational emphasis, as from a young age she had the opportunity to pursue an extensive academic program at the ground-breaking Hartford Female Seminary (run by her sister Catherine; Sarah Payson Willis [Fanny Fern] was a fellow student!). When she joined her father at Lane Seminary, Harriet continued this emphasis, helping found a literary salon known as the Semi-Colon Cluband helping organize a controversial and influential 1834 series of debates around slavery and abolition at the seminary. In all those ways, through the lenses of gender, race, and access, Harriet both experienced and contributed to the democratization of American education, an important corollary to her religious reforms.3)      Abolition: Those 1834 debates, which culminated in a large group of students leaving Lane for the new, neighboring, and more overtly abolitionist Oberlin Collegiate Institute, reflect Stowe’s commitment to abolitionism long before she wrote its most famous literary text (she was only 22 years old when she helped organize them). So too, after her marriage just two years later, did Harriet and Calvin’s use of their Cincinnati home as a stop on the Underground Railroad, which in a city as divided as Cincinnati in that period (it saw anti-abolitionist, white supremacist riots in 1829, 1836, and 1841, making it one of the most hostile cities in the nation for African Americans and their allies) was a particularly dangerous and courageous action. Better remembering these early activisms help us see UTC in a much less isolated way, see it indeed as one prong of Stowe’s decades-long, multi-pronged activism on behalf of enslaved African Americans. Next StoweStudying tomorrow,BenPS. What do you think?

March 14-15, 2020: What’s Next for NeMLA

[This past weekend, the 51stNortheast MLA convention was held in Boston. As always it was an impressive and inspiring experience, and this week I’ve recapped a few of my highlights and takeaways from the convention. Leading up to this special weekend post on what’s next for NeMLA and how you can get involved!]The most straightforward way you can get involved with NeMLA is to propose a session for next year’s convention, which will be held from March 11-14 in Philly. Go to this page, create a login, and propose a session to ensure that you can be part of NeMLA 2021!But there’s a second, more in-depth and more relevant to AmericanStudies way, one I’d love to talk about further with all interested folks: running to succeed yours truly as the American Area (now, as I noted earlier in the week, renamed the US, Transnational, and Diaspora Area) Director. The Area Directors serve 3-year terms, and have a good bit of work a couple times a year but mostly have a chance to really connect to all the great panels, papers, special events, and other work that happens at the conference. The elections take place in May; I have one person in mind as a possibility but am not sure she’s interested, and in any case would again love to chat more about with any and all interested folks. As I’ve written in this space before, the NeMLA Board is quite simply the best academic community I’ve ever been around, so any chance to join it is one you should definitely consider!Next series starts Monday,BenPS. Questions or ideas about NeMLA? Lemme know!

March 13, 2020: NeMLA Recaps: Mentorships

[Last week was one of the busiest of my professional career, featuring a series of great Boston events, culminating in the 51st Northeast MLA convention. So this week I’ll recap that convention and those other events, leading up to a special weekend post on what’s next for NeMLA and how you can get involved!]On two overt initiatives and one subtler form of mentorship at NeMLA.1)      The CV Clinic: I remember quite clearly when my friend, the feminist comp/rhet scholar (and truly badass poet) Indigo Eriksen, created this new initiative for grad students and early career folks at NeMLA. I’m pretty sure I knew right away how valuable this service would be, in no small measure because I sure could have used such advice and guidance in my own grad school and adjunct faculty stages. And through my own sessions at just about every CV clinic since that first version (something like 6 or 7 years ago now), I’ve come to believe it’s one of the very best things any conference could offer—not just for the practical advice, but also and perhaps especially because it builds connections, conversations, and networks that can endure far beyond these 30-minute sessions. I’ve kept in touch with many of my CV Clinic mentees, and value these relationships a great deal.2)      Publishing Mentorship: Over the last couple years, another remarkably badass scholar and NeMLA community builder, Claire Sommers, has taken over the leadership of those professional sides to the conference and organization and added new ones to the mix as well. That latter list includes the inspiring Undergraduate Forum, but also a less visible and equally important initiative, the Publishing Mentorship program. I talked at the conference on a session (organized by Claire, natch) about my experiences in the first year of that program, which certainly seems to have been helpful to my mentee but which I know for a fact was deeply meaningful for me. The chance to read, give feedback on, learn from, and help move forward the work of a fellow scholar with whom we have no other relationship—meaning that this particular dynamic can be entirely about this form of support and collegiality—is quite simply different from any other side to the profession I’ve experienced, and I recommend that everyone who has the chance to take part in an initiative like this find a way to do so.3)      Annual Reconnection: This is a complex point, and I don’t imagine I’ll be able to do justice to it in a few sentences. But I found myself thinking a lot at this conference about the number of people whom I see at and around NeMLA (and in most of those cases only at and around NeMLA), but with whom (because those connections are more or less annual and thus part of one of my more consistent professional communities) I feel that I’m engaging in often decade-long conversations. That’s a truly meaningful dynamic in lots of ways, but perhaps an underappreciated one is that it helps us both talk about and reflect on our stages and arc, our continuities and changes, the ongoing development of our work and career. I can safely say that I’m a significantly better scholar thanks to my NeMLA connections and relationships, which is just one more argument for being part of this exemplary community and conference! Special post this weekend,BenPS. If you were at NeMLA 2020, I’d love to hear your thoughts and takeaways as well!

March 12, 2020: NeMLA Recaps: Three Great Panels

[Last week was one of the busiest of my professional career, featuring a series of great Boston events, culminating in the 51st Northeast MLA convention. So this week I’ll recap that convention and those other events, leading up to a special weekend post on what’s next for NeMLA and how you can get involved!]I had the chance to attend a number of great panels at NeMLA—here are takeaways from three particularly excellent ones:1)      A Space of One’s Own: I went to this panel on “articulating the scope of the female in American lit” in order to support my friend Katie Daily, whose wonderful first book won the NeMLA Book Prize a few years back and who presented on part of her next project (on 21C women’s combat memoirs). But Katie’s turned out to be the fourth of four compelling and compellingly interconnected papers, from Kait Tonti’s on 18thcentury commonplace books and political and social protest, to Vicki Vanbrocklin’s evolving concept of “lost womanhood” (an antidote to “true womanhood”), to Skye Anicca’s reading of late 20th century immigrant novels as intersectional alternatives to the bildungsroman. One of the most multi-layered conversations I’ve ever encountered in a panel, each distinct yet building on each other very powerfully.2)      Gothic Domesticity: One real benefit of being the NeMLA American Area (now renamed to the US, Transnational, and Diaspora Area) Director is the chance to watch panels develop from their initial proposal through the submission of abstracts and the choice of presenters up through their final form as the conference panels themselves. I felt that particularly strongly at this conference with Danielle Cofer and Caitlin Duffy’sGothic Domesticity sessions, which began as one proposal and transformed into a two-parter after receiving so many great abstracts. I had a conflict with the first part, but got to see the great second half, featuring Beth Sherman on Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle, Kelly Suprenanton Jackson’s novel alongside Katherine Dunn’s Geek Love, and Molly McCullough on the gothic orphan in Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life. I don’t want to speak for Danielle and Caitlin, but to me this session truly embodied the diverse and rich conversations their wonderful initial idea was intended to bring together and amplify. 3)      Black Men, White Publishers: Another reason I love the chance to attend so many panels at NeMLA (which is really due to my role and my desire to support the American Area sessions) is that I learn so, so much in the process. I attended this panel to support my longtime fellow Board member and friend Don Ramon, who gave a great paper on Damon Young and the tradition of fight scenes in African American men’s memoirs. Ben Fried gave an equally great talk on the original New Yorker publication of and contexts for James Baldwin’s “Letter from a Region in My Mind” (later expanded as part of Notes of a Native Son ). While I had some sense of both of those subjects, I knew precisely nothing about the topic of Emanuela Kucik’s talk: the memoir of Hans Massoquoi, the longtime Ebony magazine editor who grew up in Nazi Germany (the son of a Liberian father and German mother) and for a time in his early teenage years sought desperately to become a member of the Hitler Youth. That I had never heard of this striking figure and his stunning life and book offers one more example of why NeMLA is such a vital contributor not just to my communal and personal experiences, but to my knowledge and career. Last recap tomorrow,BenPS. If you were at NeMLA 2020, I’d love to hear your thoughts and takeaways as well!

March 11, 2020: NeMLA Recaps: Andre Dubus III

[Last week was one of the busiest of my professional career, featuring a series of great Boston events, culminating in the 51st Northeast MLA convention. So this week I’ll recap that convention and those other events, leading up to a special weekend post on what’s next for NeMLA and how you can get involved!]On the inspiring, vital words of wisdom from our keynote speaker.NeMLA conferences have long featured both a scholarly opening address and a creative keynote speaker, as illustrated by the presentations by Jelani Cobb and Monique Truong respectively at my 2016 conference in Hartford. But over the last few years the creative address in particular has evolved in a couple significant ways: first with the NeMLA Reads Together initiative, where we choose a particular book by our chosen author at the prior conference and thus are able to read it together during that year ahead of his or her talk; and now with the Humanities on the Road program, where the goal is that the chosen author be deeply connected to each conference’s host city/area (and, I believe, that we will eventually highlight other such local authors as part of each conference as well). The inaugural choice for that latter initiative was the writer (and UMass Lowell professor) Andre Dubus III, whose compelling newest novel, Gone So Long , was our NeMLA Reads Together book this year.Dubus’ event featured a Q&A with both NeMLA’s inaugural Creative Writing Area Director Cristina Milletti, an award-winning novelist in her own right and the creator of the Humanities on the Road program, and audience members/conference attendees. But first he gave a stunning address (more told a story, really, in the best senses that I talked about in yesterday’s post on Serena Zabin’s book talk) drawn in part from his memoir, Townie (2011). Dubus’ subject was nothing short of how writing saved his life, which he meant in a very literal sense—after a series of events in his profoundly difficult childhood and young adulthood led him into a life of violence (righteous violence, as his chosen targets were men who physically abused women, but brutal violence nonetheless), one which he knew full well would eventually end with his death, a single, unexpected, immersive period of writing opened up to him that new world within which he has lived ever since.Every part of Dubus’ story and address was both moving and wonderfully well-crafted, but I want to emphasize here an aspect of his writing advice (about which he talked more in the Q&As with Milletti and the audience) that I believe stems directly from his particular way into the world of writing and words. Dubus described writing as a profoundly empathetic endeavor, one in which the key is to open one’s self up entirely to the characters and allow them to reveal themselves and their identities and perspectives to you; as he put it, if you judge your characters in any way, they will know that and turn away from you. In some ways this idea might seem ironic, as Dubus’ earlier violence had exemplified his judgment against men who abuse women (an overarching perspective he still holds, albeit without the violent component, and one which I share with him). But if anything, I believe a man who has experienced such a striking example of that judgmental side of life and identity is particularly equipped to speak about the difficult, vital alternative, about the idea of empathy and true openness to others—and while there are places in this world for judgment to be sure, Dubus made a compelling and convincing case that in the world of writing and words, it is empathy which provides the crucial core.Next recap tomorrow,BenPS. If you were at NeMLA 2020, I’d love to hear your thoughts and takeaways as well!