[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,
Ben
PS. If you were
at NeMLA 2020, I’d love to hear your thoughts and takeaways as well!
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