Transcripts For CSPAN2 Gene 20240706 : vimarsana.com

CSPAN2 Gene July 6, 2024

To become dean of the faculty professor in english about a year ago. And so im so glad to know that this book brings you to labyrinth. Hes been at work on pearl. Laurence dunbar the life and times of a caged bird, published should say by the ever wonderful Princeton University press for well over a decade. His previous books are representing race a new political history of African American literature and deans and truants, race and realism in African American literature. Hes joined evening by his colleague in the English Department simon gikandi, whos currently search projects are on slavery and modernity. Decolonization in literature and global modernism. Professor eric arnesen many acclaimed books i wont list all, but they include slavery and the culture of taste and writing in limbo. Modernism and caribbean literature. Before i hand things over, i just wanted quickly to say, right before reading gene jarrett outstanding biography of Paul Laurence dunbar, i had read saidiya hartmans wayward lives beautiful experiments in which Paul Laurence dunbar makes few appearances and does not cut a great figure. And so came to this biography a bit of a skeptic, only to become quickly absorbed by story. Gene jarrett tells precisely because it allowed me to stay a skeptic, but offers much nuance and understanding dunbar as a prodigiously gifted poet and writer, a deeply flawed human and an important and complicated political voice in the cause of black education, emancipation in jim crow, america. He was also a skilled and tireless promoter. His work who was able to make a living, a black writer and speaker at a time when the terms of his increasing fame always also diminished. And in fact characterized the ambitions of his poetry to attend to human and to answer caricature and inflict judgment with nuance, as this book does at every turn is, it seems me to teach us to see with fresh eyes and more. Could we ask for . So please join me in welcoming welcoming our guests. So delighted to be here today to have a conversation with jean about his book. Paul dunbar, the life and times of a caged bird. We are going to have a conversation for about 40 minutes and then well open it up for. Questions from the audience. Before i start the conversation, i wanted to congrats late jean for the publication, this magnificent book. I had the privilege seeing it in its different iterations in manuscript form, and once i held the actual book. I thought it was not only great book, it was an impressive book and i just wanted to say that especially because the publisher is here to acknowledge work. She did also, in terms of the production of the book, its cover and, indeed its existence as an object that opens up to life of Paul Laurence dunbar. So jean ive noticed in conversations about this book that one of the things that is quite obvious is you spent a lot of time with dunbar. You started thinking about him when you are a student at princeton . And this book took a long time to write, so i wanted to begin the conversation by asking you why. Dunbar what got interest, got you interested in him and whether there was one particular thing thats, you know, struck you when you came across poetry or his life that, made you decide this is the person i to spend a good chunk of my life. Yes, thats right. I did spend upward of 14 and 15 years with Paul Laurence dunbar as a scholar. And that was the full course. My Serious Research and and writing. But as you i became familiar with dunbar when i was a student at princeton, an undergraduate student in the last century. At that time, it was a while ago at that time i was embarking on my life as an english major, and i had to write a junior paper and i focused on a genre of africanamerican writing that did not focus directly on africanamericans experiences. It was a way in which africanamerican writers at various moments in history were to understand universal human experiences. Paul Laurence Dunbar himself published in this genre, he published his first novel called the uncle. It is in 1898, and it was about a young man who was born and raised in dexter, ohio, the fictional town. And there he learned a lot about himself in the forces that were changing his behavior and ultimately became a narrative of spiritual redemption. That me an occasion to learn more dunbars work and i realized that not only did he experiment with the novel, but he was a gifted poet. He was especially a gifted poet. That was the primary in which his contemporaries knew of him. And he was also versatile writer of essays. He was a part time labrecque test. He was someone who excelled in a variety of literary genres. And so that gave me a chance to. Understand the full expanse of, his oeuvre. And it gave a chance further to understand complexity of his approaches to literary theme and form as went on and as i was incorporating doing my interest in dunbar, in my scholarly work through dissertation and my early books. Then i realized that there was even more there. There was a way that i could enrich a story of his life by looking at the biographical material that were at my disposal. So i guess i would say that as time went on, there was the surrounding of access to the of materials about his life. And but i also thought that as time on he preoccupied me as fascinating figure from a personal in terms of his own and his relationship to alice with moral which i imagine well about in a moment but also the the the the various dimensions of his literary esthetics and approach to racial politics. What then makes dunbar an important not just African American. Writer but an important american writer. Yeah. So i would say, first of all, it was the time in which he wrote and so he was born 1872 and died in 1906. And so he was living at a time when africanamericans were trends transitioning from slavery to freedom. And so his generation bespeaks a a group people of african descent who were trying to reckon with the modernity of america at the turn of the 20th century. And i would also say that he was someone who represented the bridge from his matilda and Joshua Dunbar who were enslaved lived and in various ways were were freed or they became free. And they were trying to understand reconstruction in the United States was the bridge to that generation. People who were alive during slavery. He was a child of of slaves. And he was about the future and what it meant to be a professional writer, particularly someone came from a family and then characterized as a race of people who did not have intergenerational across generational wealth. Ill also say what what distinguished him as i mentioned before was his versatility as a literary artist. He covers the variety of genres and in his work he was able to describe you know there were poems of love and nature, the kinds of things that that would hearken back the, you know, british of the 19th century, but was also someone who wrote the form of dialect. And so dialect was in orthography of language that approximated informal english or approximate itd in certain instances, the languages of those who were undereducated as a result of their socioeconomic background or as a result of a variety of other kind of environmental conditions, such local color. And so he he had a kind of a masterful ear understanding, these many voices. And he was able to transcribe these voices, remarkable ways that to many at the turn of the 20th century. I guess one last thing i would add was, he was a fantastic promoter of his work, not only in the commercial sphere, among the literary of his time, ranging from William Dean Howells to, James Whitcomb, riley were distinguished literary critics and writers who were able to advance dunbar in his career. And so his work became successful. And he also ended having a great impact. The lives of people who read his work. And he was also quite entertaining as a writer, but also as a as a performer. So i guess if you take all of these things and the fact that he did all of these things, you know, published 14 books of poetry. Eight novels and books of short stories. He was incredibly prodigious and died in his early thirties. And so it was a long book, was able to write about a short life, but there was plenty to talk about. Yes. The use of figure of the bridge is intriguing me because i was by how, especially in the first part of the book you talk about that background slavery of his parents, the violence of it, the struggles for them to escape from it. And so it became interesting to me that he chooses poetry. He chooses to become a writer. Well, i thought had enough problems. So why what it about poetry or writing in general that was central him as a person, as an american . Yeah. And so one of the key conundrums that faced as a scholar was, you know, just to use that metaphor of a bridge again, is to connect the the social history of slavery life to a kind of an intellect history in which you can situate. Dunbar and so just to phrase it differently, his parents, for a large period of time and also of slaves who were not literate, that was a key background that he was experiencing owing to the kind of background he had as someone who was not only literate, he was a gifted. So in this respect he was someone as i lay out at the outset of the book, he heard these voices of people who were in his inner circle. Those are the voices, family, those in his community. And he was in some ways a literary free expression, an extension, those people. I think that was fundamental fascination. He had the ways that literature itself could be a vehicle for not only moving, as you know, when readers encounter literature, but also how he could in capsule8 the experiences and voices of people who were subaltern, people who as a result of circumstances did not have a history because it was out by slavery. People who were by various accounts in and he was able to bring voice and order to a particular set of lives that required different codes of expression. And so literature was was key context in which he was able to convey the life and times his family and his community to the broader world. Yeah. Well, in the introduction to the book, you say, i quote to that the writing writing, the biography of a famous writer especially one born of african descent, less than a decade after slavery invites a host of challenges. Thats right. So want to ask you, what were some of the challenges you faced and . Why these challenges of opportunity. Yeah. And so obviously, a key challenge was to talk about his parents. And so i started writing this book. I was at the Radcliffe Institute for advanced study at harvard, and i spent a lot of time just trying to piece together the lives of his parents. They were people who did not keep diaries certainly for the period of time that dunbar was Paul Laurence dunbar was squarely their in their lives. And so i had to embark on other ways, kind of recon their experiences in either antebellum america. That is to say, before africanamericans were and into the the post bellum era. So that was one of the key challenges when you are dealing with a population that been enslaved. There arent the standard set of record cards at your disposal to understand how they lived or how to reconstitute their lives. Its also true that they did not write up, you know, per se, slave narratives in the way that you would encounter it in the lives harry jacobs or Frederick Douglass or William Miles brown. There is theres when you think about the historiography of the 19th century, a lot that has occurred through a reading of these slave narratives. And there are other kinds of records that are available, such as those written by amanuensis. But joshua and matilda dunbars parents, they did not have those kinds of records. Lets say a historians of slavery can be accustomed to. And so it depended quite a bit. Dunbars own that all his own letters of correspondence to his mother his mother was into viewed posthumously after he died. And i was able to craft an understanding of her life. And his father had served. His father had in the civil war. And so i was able to put together his civil war records, understand how he was, who navigated through the union army and getting a sense of his profile as. A as a human being. And so i would i would say that that was the the central challenge that i faced early on. I would also say over the course of writing the book it was the kind, tempestuous relationship Paul Laurence dunbar had with his his a girlfriend, eventually fiancee and alice ruth more. It was a relation ship that was by turns full of flirting in great excitement. They had dreams of the world in terms of being exceptional literary artists. But its also true that it devolved into instances of verbal altercation and physical violence in ways that i do talk about in this book. And so i guess you see multiple sides of dunbar, of the kind that has been canonized in literary history, but also the kind that was whose life was full of emotional and mental unrest. Yes. So let me ask you about that relationship with with alice. Two questions. One is, what makes difficult to write about specifically . And the second question is, what does it tell us about dunbars own fragilities and limitations . And so i my time very much in writing about, alice. You know, i wrote about this book for such a long period time. It went through the metoo movement, if i may put it that way. And there was increased attention to. The the the misconduct of individuals, particularly in the massage ni that you would see in the treatment of women, particularly. In the 19th century. I thought it was important to reveal that aspect of his life and. Unvarnished, away as possible to show that much as he is someone who we would revere for his intellectual prowess. Hes also someone who was rather complicated in whos behavior based on not only the moral standards of that time, but our standards. His behavior was rather represen possible. And so as i was looking at letters of correspondence between these two, you have to kind of, you know, plumb the depths of the language. There was a kind of victor and a decorum in language such that it wouldnt be as obscene in as you would encounter today in things ranging from social media to emails to what have you. There was, a kind of propriety cultural and moral propriety that they were abiding by as. They were engaging in these conflicts. And these conflicts would have trans have would traverse their physical lives together and into these epistolary lives that they had in their in their letters. And so the thing that i try do was to elicit the complexity of their lives as best i could without trying to, you know, the facts. And so i very much on on the facts as they were laid out to me. All right. So you many contexts for dunbars life you talk about his parents in the antebellum south and the escape you talk about his father in a civil war. You talk about, course, his life in dayton, ohio so its a very extensive archive. And i just wanted to ask, were there any surprises and what other surprises in that archive . Yes. And so i guess, to make a long story short, again, accomplished so much over a short of time. But i guess in that he was able to access some the great figures of his time. So he had a relationship with theodore roosevelt. He someone that he became acquainted with when roosevelt was the governor of new york. And then obviously, as you know, became president of the United States, they had a special relationship. And in letters such that roosevelt cared about dunbar as well being personal wellbeing, but also his professional progress. Dunbar also had a relationship with someone named William Dean Howells. He was the agent for mark twain. He was someone who could make or break a career and William Howells had a great liking of. Dunbar. He was captivated by dunbar, was able to capture, as i said before, the exposure ences and voices of those who were formerly enslaved. Dunbar as well within the africanamerican community, had relationships with Frederick Douglass, who was a key. Statesman of the 19th century, and he was of the premier figures, africanamerican political progress. Also had a relationship with booker t washington, who was, i would say, foremost in the minds of many at that time, talking about how education particularly Vocational Education was a centerpiece for africanamerican pursuit of political opportunities and social opportunities. So dunbar and i think that was quite fascinating, was able to reach out to all of these esteemed figures in the American Public sphere and. He was able to build relationships with them. And so these so you can imagine someone in his twenties who descended slaves, but hes a gifted writer who has on speed dial. If i can impose that kind of idea with some of the great of his time, ranging from a president of the United States to one of the premier or raiders of his time. Well, thats thats what surprised me that here he is, young struggling artist able to not only make these connections speed dial but actually be liked. Yes. And so i wondered what it about him that enables that kind of connection other people, very powerful people in many ways. And how how does one kind of reconcile that likability with his more qualities. Yeah thats a great thats a great question i think he was unafraid of reaching out to people beyond his innermost circle as someone who was born and raised in dayton, ohio, a kind of a small town in ohio. You would think that he would have a mindset, but thats not true. He is someone who at some point, for example, 1893, he was he went to the to chicago to participate the world worlds columbian exposition. And that was where he connected Frederick Douglass for the first time in person, but also a number of other figures in the africanamerican, a community. But i think i tell that story because hes someone who out from the province of dayton to a kind of an urban enclave in chicago which he had noted for its cosmopolitanism. And he also someone further from 1893 and then later on in 1897, he travels to england where he touring the world. And he is building his cosmopolitan sensibility. And so i guess i would say he was someone who was willing to discover the world. And

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