00:00:04
thank you very much it's an honor and a
00:00:08
really a thrill to be here and thank you
00:00:11
Scott for that kind introduction and
00:00:12
correct pronunciation of my name I'm
00:00:15
very impressed as an Italian are there
00:00:17
any other Italians in here great the
00:00:19
rest of you can leave no no you can stay
00:00:22
you know speaking of Italian I'm
00:00:25
reminded as I give this talk in some
00:00:28
ways I'm it's kind of strange that
00:00:30
someone like me should give this talk
00:00:32
because I actually grew up in a house
00:00:33
with no books my family were immigrants
00:00:37
very smart hardworking people Italian
00:00:40
immigrants and yet you know they didn't
00:00:43
really have education that a grade
00:00:44
school education and so whenever I would
00:00:47
be sitting reading you know my mom would
00:00:49
come up behind me and saying her
00:00:51
Calabria and dialect jewsí that's a
00:00:53
celebrity Vimala la testa Jill put that
00:00:56
book down it's gonna give you a headache
00:00:59
so reading in my house you know brought
00:01:01
on migraines that was the theory I
00:01:03
listened to my parents and almost
00:01:05
everything except really for that with a
00:01:09
great thing about my family you know
00:01:10
they kept you humble I'm one of six kids
00:01:12
and when I got my first job after
00:01:15
graduate school I said to my mom you
00:01:16
know I got a teaching job I was a
00:01:18
visiting professor at Penn the
00:01:20
University of Pennsylvania and I said
00:01:22
mom you know finally I got a job a
00:01:25
university Tudela Pennsylvania I even
00:01:28
said it in Italian it was founded by
00:01:30
Benjamin Oh Franklin founded by Ben
00:01:32
Franklin I said you know it's IKEA do
00:01:35
you know who Ben Franklin is ma and she
00:01:37
said that's the meter philia know Tony
00:01:40
me know Keiko so up it Colette
00:01:41
she owned a leave me alone my son I
00:01:43
don't even know what I had for breakfast
00:01:45
this morning
00:01:46
that's how impressed she was that I
00:01:48
taught it and Franklin's universe
00:01:51
but you know yeah so it seemed very
00:01:54
natural in an organic in a way for me to
00:01:57
become a professor because I they they
00:02:00
didn't have a great you know there
00:02:02
wasn't a lot of books in our house but
00:02:03
there are a lot of stories I grew up
00:02:05
with a storytelling culture maybe many
00:02:08
of you have as well you know these great
00:02:10
stories about my my grandfather on my
00:02:13
mom's side who had come to America as a
00:02:15
gravedigger served in World War one and
00:02:18
enabled my mom to get citizenship and
00:02:21
she came alone to the United States
00:02:23
without the family without her four
00:02:25
children in Italy and established the
00:02:27
family in my dad who had worked two jobs
00:02:30
getting up at you know 3:30 in the
00:02:32
morning working 16-hour days these were
00:02:34
the stories I grew up with and so when
00:02:36
it came time to choose a career it
00:02:38
seemed real inorganic to pick something
00:02:41
that combined both stories and my love
00:02:44
for Italy and love for their culture so
00:02:46
I became a professor of literature and
00:02:49
also Italian Studies so I never really
00:02:52
questioned the path that made so much
00:02:54
sense and then something happened
00:02:56
exactly really 12 years ago in November
00:03:00
2007 that changed everything changed
00:03:02
everything for me personally but made me
00:03:05
ask this question about literature how
00:03:07
it can change your life you know what
00:03:09
what's the impact is and so I went to
00:03:13
teach a class at Bard College where I'm
00:03:15
a professor and the morning started out
00:03:17
like anything any other you know any
00:03:19
other class day and I walked into a
00:03:21
10:00 a.m. class I was joking with my
00:03:23
students and I saw a security guard at
00:03:26
the door and my immediate thought was
00:03:28
I've done nothing wrong
00:03:29
so I'm joking you know I said look
00:03:31
they're coming to arrest me and I'm
00:03:34
laughing and I noticed that the security
00:03:35
guard wasn't laughing and he said are
00:03:38
you Joseph Lutze and I said yes and I
00:03:40
knew in an instant something terrible
00:03:42
had happened so I raced out of the
00:03:45
building past the Vice you know vice
00:03:49
president of the college running up the
00:03:50
stairs to get me a van was waiting and I
00:03:53
heard the words which would change my
00:03:54
life Joe your wife's had a terrible
00:03:57
accident and my wife Katherine at the
00:04:01
time
00:04:02
had just had a fatal car accident and so
00:04:05
I had left the house that morning at
00:04:07
8:30 by noon I was a widower but also
00:04:11
something else
00:04:12
Catherine was eight and a half months
00:04:14
pregnant and she delivered the child
00:04:18
emergency cesarean and the baby was
00:04:21
healthy and made it 45 minutes before
00:04:23
she died so in one morning everything
00:04:27
changed and this is this talks not about
00:04:30
me it's not about you know this great
00:04:31
tragedy that I went through in the road
00:04:34
to recovery but something happened that
00:04:36
was really unexpected as part of the
00:04:40
road back I turn to something that had
00:04:42
really been part of my professional life
00:04:44
I turned to a book that I had spent
00:04:46
years studying Dante's Divine Comedy
00:04:48
Dante wrote 700 years ago
00:04:52
couldn't be more remote right from us
00:04:54
and yet for the first time even after
00:04:57
studying him for decades I heard his
00:04:58
voice the way I never heard before
00:05:00
I heard him describe exile dante spent
00:05:04
the last 20 years of his life in exile
00:05:06
roaming essentially you know the
00:05:09
medieval version of castle surfing from
00:05:12
one castle to then and looking for work
00:05:14
always on the run and I learned from
00:05:17
Dante these words in a dark wood in the
00:05:22
middle of our life's journey I found
00:05:25
myself in a dark wood in a meadow that
00:05:28
come in the nostra Vita Miri throw Viper
00:05:30
on a salvo scooter I felt that I was in
00:05:34
the dark wood
00:05:36
Dante's dark wood this book resonated
00:05:39
with me this universal space of human
00:05:42
suffering and what did Dante teach me I
00:05:44
used to think it was what lands you in
00:05:47
the dark wood is what defines you but in
00:05:50
truth I came to see that it's what you
00:05:54
do to get out of the dark wood that
00:05:57
defines you and I also learned something
00:05:59
else Dante wrote his great work after
00:06:04
his exile the Divine Comedy he was
00:06:07
rumored to have even perhaps
00:06:09
contemplated suicide we don't know we do
00:06:12
know that he was absolutely devastated
00:06:14
by the loss of
00:06:15
his hometown and I felt that I felt the
00:06:18
loss of my own former life and I wanted
00:06:21
my life back
00:06:22
and Dante taught me you can't get it
00:06:25
back you have to rebuild a new one so my
00:06:28
journey with this book became part of my
00:06:31
journey back to the living and it made
00:06:33
me ask a question that I want to ask you
00:06:35
today what is it about literature what
00:06:38
is it about great writing these books
00:06:40
that stand the test of time that can
00:06:43
change our lives why why did someone why
00:06:46
did I turn of all people to a poet who
00:06:49
wrote 700 years before I did and what
00:06:53
can you do in your own lives to make
00:06:56
literature great writing great books a
00:06:58
part of your own everyday life that's
00:07:01
the mystery that I want to explore to
00:07:03
you today and what I'd like to do is as
00:07:06
a almost my scientific I'm not a
00:07:08
scientist but you know I'm a literary
00:07:10
scholar so I want to give you my take as
00:07:12
a scholar as someone who spent his life
00:07:15
studying and reading what it means to be
00:07:19
what these books do I want to tell you
00:07:22
five things that I think of the magic of
00:07:24
these books okay the first one is this
00:07:27
idea of alternate worlds okay
00:07:30
I love f scott Fitzgerald's hair you
00:07:33
know you got to love the part down the
00:07:35
middle that's old 1920s hairstyle but f
00:07:37
scott Fitzgerald who read The Great
00:07:39
Gatsby many of you have it's a you know
00:07:42
I love it it's a it's a classic it's
00:07:44
accessible the story of Jay Gatsby the
00:07:46
bootlegger who's in love with Daisy and
00:07:48
tries to win the girl and eventually by
00:07:51
the end of the book loses his life it's
00:07:52
an extraordinary story why do I bring it
00:07:55
up and this passport to alternate worlds
00:07:58
that I think great literature gives us
00:07:59
because I want to tell you I grew up in
00:08:02
a working-class family an immigrant
00:08:04
family we couldn't travel we didn't have
00:08:06
money but my town had a library and in
00:08:10
books you can go anywhere I remember
00:08:12
reading about Renaissance France by this
00:08:15
French author Rob Lai I couldn't travel
00:08:17
to the real France but through this
00:08:19
writer I could go to France and I could
00:08:21
go back in time
00:08:22
literature brings you all throughout the
00:08:26
universe
00:08:27
and it connects you to worlds that
00:08:28
happen even before you when I think of
00:08:31
great got the Great Gatsby
00:08:33
I think of scenes like these parties
00:08:35
that Jay would throw at West Egg I'm
00:08:38
sorry in the in the you know in East Egg
00:08:40
in the the West Egg area where he would
00:08:42
have these mansions and he had gotten
00:08:45
everything in life materially he could
00:08:47
ever hope for
00:08:47
and yet the way that shell describes it
00:08:51
he says girls were putting there sure
00:08:53
women were putting their heads on men's
00:08:55
shoulders in a puppyish way you know but
00:08:58
no singing quartet formed around Gatsby
00:09:01
when I read passages like that I'm back
00:09:05
in America of the 1920s I'm in this
00:09:07
alternate world I'm in a world more
00:09:11
importantly of Jay Gatsby the man who
00:09:14
got everything he wanted materially and
00:09:16
as a friend once said to me don't wish
00:09:19
for something too much you just might
00:09:21
get it right he got it and he realized
00:09:24
his American dream wasn't what it was
00:09:26
caught up to be as I tell my students
00:09:29
literature's like this fossil of people
00:09:32
who lived in a different time you know
00:09:34
like a father an imprint of a fern in
00:09:36
Iraq literature gives you the way people
00:09:38
thought and felt a history book can tell
00:09:42
you about the 20s in America but can it
00:09:44
recreate the atmosphere like the Great
00:09:47
Gatsby do you see what I mean this idea
00:09:49
of creating an alternate world that
00:09:52
literature can do which leads to money
00:09:54
number two right if literature can
00:09:56
create alternate worlds right it can
00:09:59
also bring us into the area where
00:10:02
fiction almost becomes fact or truth
00:10:06
this is a painting by another nice
00:10:09
Italian boy like Dante Raphael the
00:10:11
school of athens right and you see Plato
00:10:14
the great philosopher pointing up into
00:10:17
the heavens
00:10:17
Plato saying truth is up in the heavens
00:10:20
there is everything we see in real life
00:10:22
is a simulacra beauty justice humans can
00:10:26
never know that we're too imperfect we
00:10:29
live in the land of the cave the shadows
00:10:31
on the wall we have to use philosophy to
00:10:33
try and arrive at some sort of notion of
00:10:36
extraterrestrial truth but on his right
00:10:39
I'm sorry on his
00:10:41
you see Aristotle pointing down to earth
00:10:44
the Greek philosopher saying no Plato we
00:10:47
only know what we see on earth I think
00:10:50
that Aristotle is a patron saint of
00:10:52
literature because literature tells us
00:10:55
what we see on earth describes it it
00:10:57
knows we're imperfect we don't have
00:10:59
access to perfect truths so Aristotle
00:11:02
wrote history tells us what happened it
00:11:05
gives us the specific the contingent the
00:11:08
one-off event literature poetry epic
00:11:12
gives us the universal it gives us the
00:11:16
code of the should of what you know that
00:11:18
it extrapolates you in the particular
00:11:20
inch of the universal so think as I tell
00:11:24
my students literature is the opposite
00:11:25
of fake news fake news pretends it's
00:11:28
true and tries to manipulate you into
00:11:30
believing it literature is imaginative
00:11:33
tells you that it is and then leads you
00:11:36
to the truth in this way that Aristotle
00:11:40
described think of Hamlet by Shakespeare
00:11:42
then one of his most famous plays you
00:11:44
know Hamlet sees a ghost who's gonna
00:11:46
believe a ghost maybe had too much to
00:11:48
eat the night before maybe it was
00:11:50
indigestion and his dad says Hamlet you
00:11:52
must avenge my death
00:11:53
Hamlet's doesn't he wants proof right
00:11:56
what does he get his proof do you
00:11:58
remember the scene when he has Claudius
00:12:01
stage he has a play performed for
00:12:04
Claudius the mousetrap and the murder of
00:12:08
the King Claudius who had killed
00:12:09
Hamlet's father his uncle Claudius says
00:12:12
his uncle sees the play and runs off the
00:12:16
plays the thing in which I'll catch the
00:12:18
conscience of the king right that's an
00:12:21
imaginative situation that leads to the
00:12:25
truth and that's what literature does
00:12:27
when I read of Dante's exile sure it's
00:12:30
autobiographical but it's a poem who
00:12:32
knows that we if everything happened the
00:12:34
way Dante exactly described it but it
00:12:36
was so real it was so truthful that I
00:12:39
can imagine myself into it in a way it's
00:12:42
the opposite
00:12:43
literature teaches you to ask the right
00:12:44
questions it won't provide all the
00:12:46
answers in books that do provide that
00:12:48
all the answers aren't being honest
00:12:51
because there's some things that there's
00:12:52
no answer to the
00:12:53
no rulebook for getting over the death
00:12:55
of a spouse or raising a child on your
00:12:58
own okay the third thing I want to talk
00:13:01
about is universal connections that come
00:13:03
with literature we live in beautifully
00:13:06
in an age of multiculturalism of we
00:13:08
celebrate ethnic identity and this is
00:13:10
all great I'm a hundred percent behind
00:13:13
this I also think we should think about
00:13:15
the things that connect us as people
00:13:16
what do all people share right this is a
00:13:19
painting by Botticelli of st. Augustine
00:13:21
who lived 16 over 1600 years ago he
00:13:25
wrote the confessions in 398 ad if you
00:13:29
went back to 398 ad that would be like
00:13:31
landing on Mars right you know the
00:13:33
average life expectancy was in the 30s
00:13:36
literacy was so low I think they had
00:13:39
only dial-up internet nah no just
00:13:42
kidding
00:13:43
you're talking about a totally different
00:13:45
world and yet Agustin wrote the memoir
00:13:48
that is still the template for today his
00:13:51
confessions Agustin was addicted to the
00:13:55
life of the flesh you could almost say
00:13:57
he was addicted to sex a little bit
00:13:59
right he was addicted to glory he could
00:14:02
almost say he was a workaholic these are
00:14:04
very familiar patterns right I mean you
00:14:06
know Keith Richards ain't got nothing on
00:14:08
Agustin for his autobiography so this
00:14:11
model for an autobiography you can trace
00:14:13
back 1600 years and it's still relevant
00:14:16
I find that miraculous I'm reminded of
00:14:18
that scene in LA story where Steve
00:14:20
Martin says you know see that building
00:14:22
over there it's over almost you know
00:14:23
it's over 20 years old Wow
00:14:26
this book is 1600 years old and it still
00:14:30
makes sense
00:14:30
it speaks to something that's universal
00:14:33
in us after the death of my wife I
00:14:35
needed to know that I wasn't alone other
00:14:37
people had been through it and I found
00:14:39
that universal connection the fourth
00:14:41
thing I think is reading as a ritual
00:14:44
this is Machiavelli a not so nice
00:14:46
Italian boy right you know he wrote the
00:14:48
prince he wrote this book about
00:14:50
political brinksmanship and gamesmanship
00:14:53
sure we know that but he also loved
00:14:55
literature and when he was exiled from
00:14:57
Florence he would describe reading like
00:14:59
four hours a day getting he says I put
00:15:02
on my best clothes and I go into a study
00:15:04
where I'm lovingly received
00:15:06
by ancient men in there it's that
00:15:09
product ritual of reading something
00:15:12
happens when we read if I gave you a
00:15:14
book right now some of you are carrying
00:15:17
them it's just symbolic notations on a
00:15:20
page you I always tell my students
00:15:22
you're the co-author you bring the book
00:15:25
to life each writer needs a reader
00:15:29
reading is that ritual with something
00:15:31
profound happens where it can literally
00:15:34
change your life and the last thing I'll
00:15:36
say is the power of stories what is it
00:15:39
about stories you've all Harare in his
00:15:41
book sapiens which some of you may have
00:15:43
read says that that's really what
00:15:44
distinguishes us from a lot of other
00:15:46
creatures our ability to tell stories to
00:15:48
bring people together through narrative
00:15:51
the power of narrative where we are a
00:15:55
storytelling species I think it's just
00:15:57
as important as the opposable thumb it's
00:16:00
what's made us what we are think of
00:16:03
Shakespeare the story of Othello the
00:16:05
famous story of Othello he's an outsider
00:16:08
in Venetian society he's you know
00:16:10
considered old probably in his 40s it
00:16:13
wasn't the new 20 back then right and
00:16:14
he's married the most eligible woman in
00:16:18
Venice Desdemona
00:16:19
right she'd have her own show
00:16:20
Bachelorette right and people are
00:16:23
accusing a fellow of bewitching her and
00:16:25
you know what a fellow says he says her
00:16:29
father oft invited me basically to tell
00:16:31
my life story to hear these things with
00:16:34
Desdemona seriously inclined she felt
00:16:37
compassion for them and I did love her
00:16:39
for it dis Damona falls in love with a
00:16:43
fellow because he's a storyteller and
00:16:46
Shakespeare destroys all the prejudice
00:16:49
surrounding Othello through the power of
00:16:54
story
00:16:55
once you hear someone's story you can
00:16:57
never think of them as a category or a
00:17:00
group you have to see them as a human
00:17:02
being for that reason we need stories
00:17:04
more than ever today in our society our
00:17:07
divided society how can you make these
00:17:11
five riches of literature your own I
00:17:14
think it's easy or practicable I've
00:17:17
created what I call the rule of four
00:17:19
okay and I always think of my father
00:17:21
when I do this cuz my father was not a
00:17:23
reader but boy could he use language he
00:17:25
would say things like you know Madeleine
00:17:27
over to Albany they made a new harm
00:17:29
befall you or you know you know these
00:17:32
crazy poetic
00:17:34
King Lear like curses de beaujeu pas de
00:17:37
la faccia knew gone and made a dog rip
00:17:39
your face off you know he was a real
00:17:41
poet in his own way it's a he wasn't a
00:17:45
reader how do you become readers very
00:17:48
simple my rule of force think of it like
00:17:50
working out or walking or getting good
00:17:54
night's sleep four days a week
00:17:56
45 minutes a day four different books
00:18:00
one your favorite kind of book let it be
00:18:04
romance Harry Potter and whatever
00:18:07
anything gardening whatever your second
00:18:10
category contemporary writers who were
00:18:13
the writers today the fiction writers
00:18:14
changing the conversation
00:18:16
the third group nonfiction doesn't have
00:18:19
to be make-believe to be literature and
00:18:20
the fourth group let one of those
00:18:22
categories be a classic your Wordsworth
00:18:25
your Nietzsche's your Virginia Woolf
00:18:26
your WB Dubois eases that mix of four
00:18:30
will bring you the greatest glories of
00:18:32
reading and it will bring you to what my
00:18:34
favorite writer Dante called that thing
00:18:37
that that connects all readers long
00:18:40
study and great love I want to close
00:18:43
with an image as I raised my daughter
00:18:45
after those years it took it was very
00:18:48
hard I needed a lot of help from my
00:18:49
family after my wife's death what really
00:18:51
brought us together more than anything I
00:18:54
look back as when we started reading
00:18:56
together and I went through all of Harry
00:18:59
Potter with this girl and I felt by the
00:19:02
end in that space of long studying great
00:19:05
love we were becoming a family again
00:19:07
thank you so much
00:19:10
[Applause]
