Joyce Carol Oates Inaugurates the Joel Conarroe Lecture Series
Joyce Carol Oates read some of her poetry during her evening talk.
|
1/29/2003
Contact: Bill Giduz 704/894-2244 or bigiduz@davidson.edu
Author Joyce Carol Oates honored Davidson with a two-day visit in honor of another outstanding figure in American literature—her longtime personal friend and 1956 Davidson graduate, Joel Conarroe.
Conarroe introduced Oates to a full-house crowd in Duke Family Performance Hall on Monday evening, January 27, for her delivery of the college's inaugural Joel Conarroe Lecture. This annual event will commemorate Conarroe's achievements by bringing a noted author to campus to enhance the literary experience of Davidson students. It has been made possible by an anonymous donor, who also had a surprise awaiting Conarroe during his visit. In introducing the lecture, President Robert Vagt announced that the donor has also endowed a new professorship in Conarroe's name.
Oates, author of almost 100 books and three-time nominee for the Nobel Prize in literature, talked during her visit about creativity, teaching writing, and boxing. She also referred frequently, fondly, and humorously to her relationship with Connaroe, calling him a "consummate lover and supporter of the arts" and someone who "has ceaseless energy and enthusiasm that amazes even me."
The two met years ago when serving together on a literary jury, and have developed a close relationship. Conarroe's life has revolved around literature ever since his Davidson graduation, including one semester early on as a guest professor at his alma mater. The college recognized his achievements previously with an Honorary Doctor of Letters degree in 1987.
Oates spoke with students and townspeople following her talk as she signed their books, and met with English students the following morning in a class in Tyler-Tallman Hall. President Robert Vagt also hosted the two honorees at a dinner, and they ate breakfast with English department faculty members.
Joel Conarroe '56 chats with professors from the English department
|
Conarroe retired December 31 from seventeen years as president of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, which last year provided $6.75-million to 184 men and women for scholarship and creativity in natural sciences, social sciences, humanities, and creative arts. Oates has been a recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship, and is a trustee of the foundation.
Conarroe was chair of the English department and dean of arts and sciences at the University of Pennsylvania, and executive director of the Modern Language Association. He is the current president of the PEN America Center, the largest of nearly 130 centers worldwide that compose International PEN. This fellowship of writers has worked for more than seventy-five years to promote and encourage the recognition and reading of contemporary literature, and to defend free expression worldwide.
Conarroe has also written and edited books and essays about American poetry and fiction, including his hallmark 1993 work, Six American Poets. The poet Joseph Brodsky was so impressed with that book that Brodsky financed the purchase of thousands of copies for distribution in hotel rooms nationwide.
Conarroe has served on more than twenty literary juries, including the Pulitzer Prize jury. He directed literary contests as chair of the National Book Foundation, and has chaired American PEN literary forums concerning Langston Hughes and several other notable writers.
Oates, who has been teaching at Princeton University since 1978, said the two classes and three tutorials she meets are a "reward" for the solitary writer's life. "The classroom to me is sacred space," she said. "When I'm in it I'm in the service of the text. It's not in any way about me."
She teaches writing by having students take one small step at a time. "First they write one paragraph, then a page, to get them feeling confident so they can go forward," she said. "Then they perform a one-page dramatic monologue, and we move on to dialogues and short stories, which are quite hard to write. I lead them with assignments, so that if they just do the assignments it's almost effortless. They're writing."
Oates signed books following her evening presentation
|
She also recommended that her students and other young writers, whom she characterized as "somewhat of a lost generation focused on themselves," should interview their relatives about previous eras. Oates said interviews she had done with her grandmother uncovered personally meaningful information that became the basis for a novel.
She fielded several other questions about the source of creativity that helps her produce an average of two or three books per year. Oates responded by talking about imagination as a quality inherent in all children that can either be nurtured or subdued with age. She said her own flights of imagination as a youngster in rural upstate New York were fueled by Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland. "I got a copy at age eight, and was overwhelmed by it," she said. "Eventually I memorized it, including the wonderful illustrations. It infused my sense of metaphysics of the universe, the world of wonders and mystery and magic beyond the physical world. That was the most lasting influence on me. I was a little girl and Alice was a little girl, too, having pretty profound adventures."
Oates said she still spends as much time as possible in that "other world" beyond the physical. "My personal life is of minimum importance," she said. "I love to enter into the other world, the writing world, because everything comes alive for me there. It's another emotional realm where I visualize everything like a movie. I get so caught up in the characters and imagining what they must feel like that I can't think about anything else."
At age 64 she is an avid runner, and said her workouts give her time and energy to explore and develop the stories in her mind. She only begins putting them on paper, writing them out in longhand, once she has imagined the tale from beginning to end. "I don't call up the muse because I don't know the telephone number!" she joked. "Writing is not a job or hobby, it's just my life. It's like the dream life that everyone has. It's forever and forever replenishing, rich and mysterious. My writing life comes from the same source of energy as my dreams. It's a continuous supply of imagination, a stream that keeps running. When I finish one work, the next story ideas rush into my head as if I have opened a window. They overwhelm my thoughts and consume me to the point that I get so excited I sometimes can't even sleep."
One student asked if she has ever gives up on a story once she has started it. She responded emphatically, "No. I never give up! Like a boxer, I never go backwards, only forwards. There is almost a spiritual will that doesn't allow me to quit on a work once I've begun. It's like a boxer, who's really fighting his own weakness rather than the opponent. If you give up once, it becomes easier to give up the next time. It's a matter of will to keep moving forward even if you're bleeding or hurt."
Oates said she's now working on a novella for a crime anthology, and is writing another novella for young adults. She said the latter demands a different approach than her adult fiction. "Mainstream adult writing is saturated in irony," she said. "Very few novels that aren't cast in a certain air of tragedy are taken seriously. So in my mode as an adult writer I have a tragic sense of life. But that tragic view is not operant for young audiences. Young people are changing rapidly, learning from elders, and having experiences that demand choices. They're looking for models and mentors, and in writing they're looking for ways of living. You have to show the way out for characters, and have upbeat, strong endings."
Oates and Conarroe fielded questions from students in a special session
|
Conarroe said he was delighted with his time at Davidson. He toured the campus, and enjoyed conversations with faculty, students, and old friends who came to the dinner and lecture. He also cherished the opportunity to bring Oates to the Davidson community, both for her sake and Davidson's.
|
