 Good evening, everyone. For those of you who don't know me, I know that most of you do know me. But those who don't, I'm Ellen Umanski, the Carl and Dorothy Bennett Professor of Judaic Studies, and director of the Bennett Center here at Fairfield University. I want to welcome all of you to the third Diane Fyganson lecture in Jewish literature. This biennial lecture series is held in memory of Professor Diane Fyganson, a longtime member of the Fairfield University faculty and a masterful teacher who died in 2011. These lectures are made possible through an endowment given to the university, primarily by Diane's sons, Andrew and Robert, as well as by their extended family. The Fyganson Lectureship recognizes Diane's legacy of outstanding teaching and community involvement during the 20 years that she served on the faculty of our English department. Diane was deeply committed to the work of the Bennett Center for Judaic Studies, as well as to the university's Judaic Studies program, and developed courses on Jewish literature and literature of the Holocaust that became integral components of Fairfield's undergraduate Judaic Studies program. At the inaugural Fyganson lecture in 2016, Diane's son, Andrew, offered a few words about his mother, helping paint a picture of who Diane Fyganson was. I've asked Andrew to share some words with us this evening. So before I formally introduce tonight's speaker, Nathan Englender, I'd like to welcome to the platform Andrew Fyganson. My daughter here, who's eight years old, Julia, said she already doesn't understand anything, so. So first of all, thank you all for being here. It's amazing to see everybody. It's very meaningful to me. It's meaningful to my family, you know, to Ellen as well. When Ellen asked me to say a few words, I thought, well, you know, what's the best way to start any kind of talk like this? And I know you're thinking the same thing I am as Jerry Seinfeld, right? We'd start with Jerry Seinfeld. So it's a quick story. About five years ago, I was asked to do a presentation of what they call a TV upfront. And for those of you who don't know what that is, that's when TV networks release their new programs for the year and they bring in these famous celebrities and they put them all on stage to entertain a bunch of people who are gonna buy ads from them. They try to get advertising dollars. And so of course, I'm not a famous celebrity and I'm not really that interesting. I happen to know numbers okay. So they asked me to be the numbers guy up there to talk about numbers. So you gotta imagine this, I come in, I'm wearing my suit and I show up and they bring me down to this green room and down in the green room you got really cool people. Like there's a band with tattoos all over and Dennis Quaid and David Spade and the robot chicken authors. And there's this impressive group and we're sitting here watching a screen of what's happening on the stage and we're all gonna be going afterwards and it starts off with the CEO of Sony and then they bring in Jerry Seinfeld, right? And of course, he's talking about comedians in cars drinking coffee and the audience is laughing and as they bring me up into like the back of where the curtains are, I'm thinking good God. Like I gotta go on now. And so Jerry Seinfeld wraps up and he says and now I'm gonna introduce another boring suit. Of course, here I am in my suit. I'm the only guy in a suit and I walk on and I don't know why just out of my mouth I said, Jerry, thanks for opening for me. I'm sure your mom would be proud of you. And the whole audience laughed and I say this because I think my mom would have been proud of me mainly because one of the courses that she taught here was called make them laugh. And it was all about how Yiddish culture ended up influencing America through humor. And she started off talking about the Yiddish theater and then moved on to Vaudeville and onto, of course, George Burns and all the way to Jerry Seinfeld which is about where she wrapped this stuff up. And I think what impressed me about it was that she knew two things about humor. One was as Mel Brooks once said, was that humor is the thing that protects us from the rest of the universe, right? And so when things are tough or you got crazy stuff going on like the coronavirus now, kind of humor gets you through these things, right? But the other thing that was a part of it and I think what she captured in her class really well was that it's also a way of building empathy, right? Because when you build in humor, it's a way of understanding each other. And the reason I'm excited to have Nathan here today is what I love about his writing in his books is that it brings this very light way of looking at the Jewish culture that I think bridges the gap between who people are Jewish and not Jewish and also within the different beliefs people have within Judaism which are all kind of all over the place as well. So I'm very excited to have you here today. With that said, I wanted to thank you all very much for being here. I want to thank Ellen for just keeping these lectures going and everything you do for this program and the university overall for not just this, but everything they do in the community and lives in this community knows Fairfield does a heck of a lot and thank you, Nathan, for being here. So yeah, thank you. Thanks very much, Andrew. Just about a year ago, I was reading a review of Nathan Englender's newly published novel, Karis.com. And I instantly thought Nathan Englender would be the ideal person to deliver the 2020 Diane Fuygensen lecture in Jewish Studies. I wonder if I could get him to come here. Nathan was my ideal choice for several reasons. First, he is a writer who doesn't just happen to be Jewish but is a writer whose work in one way or another focuses on Jews, Jewish identity, Jewish history, and religious belief, disbelief, or doubt. His works include short stories and novels inhabited by contemporary Orthodox Jews, young and old, Holocaust survivors, scores of rabbis, both modern Orthodox and Hasidic, Jewish writers imprisoned in Stalinist Russia, Israeli spies and West Bank settlers, a Jewish lameal or a fool in 1976 Argentina, and a few American Jewish men who are attracted to or obsessed with pornography. Karis.com is Nathan Englender's fifth book and it focuses not only on Jews but also perhaps more fully than any of his other works on Judaism itself and the conflict or intersection of religious faith and technology. The second reason I wanted to bring Nathan here is because I love his writing. And in fact, if I could write as well as he does, I might even consider writing fiction. The third reason I wanted to bring Nathan to Fairfield University was that I knew Diane Fyganson loved his work. And in fact, just after he published his first short story collection for the relief of unbearable urges, she came into the Bennett Center, saw Elaine Bowman who used to work with me and apparently recommended that Elaine read Nathan's short story collection. And I know that Diane would have loved to have read and teach Karis.com for she very much believed in exposing students not just to the value and beauty of Jewish literature but also to its darkness and humor. Karis.com has all of this with a protagonist who is often sympathetic but at other times less so. Nathan Englender's work has been favorably compared to that of such giants of modern literature as Philip Roth, Isaac Bacheva Singer, Bernard Malamud, Saul Bellow, Nikolai Gogol, James Joyce, John Cheever, and Franz Kafka. For over 20 years from his first best-selling collection of short stories for the relief of unbearable urges published in 1999 when he was 29 years old through the publication of Karis.com in hardcover last year and in paperback just a few weeks ago, Nathan continues to write in words that as one reviewer accurately put it, are both precise and evocative. Nathan grew up in a modern Orthodox family in Long Island, New York. He attended the Hebrew Academy of Nassau County for high school which is relevant background for readers of his works and received his BA degree from SUNY Binghamton. He then earned an MFA from the Iowa Writers Workshop, a two-year in residence graduate program in creative writing at the University of Iowa. He has won a ton of awards and with him sitting right in front of me, maybe he doesn't want me to go through all of them, but I can mention that his 2012 story collection, what we talk about when we talk about Ann Frank was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in fiction. He's also received a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Bard Fiction Prize, a fellowship at the Dorothy and Lewis Coleman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library. There are a few more awards, but in his spare time he teaches fiction in the MFA program at New York University. It truly is an honor for me to welcome to Fairfield University to deliver this year's Diane Feigenson Lecture in Jewish Literature on the topic guilt, memory and the beta God, Nathan Englinder. Thank you so much, Professor Manske, that's a lot of times it's Wikipedia which is never accurate. It takes a lot of time to sound that smooth and writing takes time, I know, I spend a lot of time alone doing it. Anyway, thank you for a truly personal and generous introduction, that really, really means a lot. I don't have positive feelings or fleeting with me, so I'm just gonna feel good for one second in front of you and then be depressed again as usual. And to the Feigenson family, lovely having dinner with you all and meeting you all and I'm honored to be doing this. And I really, I'm not doing any, I'm in writing mode now, so I'm really, this is my, it's smooth, this is my dress hoodie, that's what I wear for formal occasions, for endowed lectures and things like that, instead of my day-to-day hoodie. But yeah, I really am in work mode, this is the only thing I'm doing for paperback tour because I'm working on a play right now, but yeah, I'm deep in. So yeah, just means a lot to be here. Thank you all for coming out of your houses, there's lots to stream, you have to get back to cheer, are they gonna win? You'll see. Anyway, but yes, thank you all for coming out. And yes, this lecture needed a title, I remember getting that email, so I have a title, so I'm gonna talk about the guilt memory and the beta God. Got it. I'm gonna hit all those points. And for Geneva Convention, I always say, I was, yeah, once at this reading where this writer just brought out a stack of books and said, I'm now gonna read a little bit from every book I've ever written. And I was like, well, how long is that gonna take? Anyway, order of operations for the evening, I guess I'll set up the book for exactly eight seconds or two minutes, and then I'm gonna read you just like the first chapter which is just so you can hear my voice and hear the book. And then I'll talk about these things, but I really talking, getting to see this beautiful campus and it's lovely. I always like being, I saw some people climbing the stag, but yes, it's a campus. I always like to leave time and I'm trying to professor, you man ski about this but we should leave some time for questions. And so I'll really try and leave some space for that. Anyway, yeah, the book's called coddish.com. My wife, we're gonna talk about TV, every writer's writing a TV show now. I'm like, I'm gonna write a TV show. Anyway, but the point is, if I'm pitching something, it takes longer than the thing. So if I would explain this book, it would actually take longer than if I read you the whole book. I'm not good at setups. I start telling each joke in order. But yes, it's called coddish.com. I got this idea for this book years ago and the first thing I did was go online and check coddish.com because I really didn't wanna write coddish.edu or coddish.net. It doesn't work for me. It was really weird to have a book tied to its title but this marriage of religiosity on the internet which we'll talk about. But yes, it was probably a decade after my father had passed away and I was really thinking about memory and loss and the coddish itself which is the prayer for mourning. It's a pretty safe room but I'll explain anyway. But yes, and I really wanted to write this book about it and I thought, again, about this person ends up seeking out a site where you can say coddish. Basically, he's not up to the task, the main character that you're gonna meet in the first chapter who then becomes born again again which we'll talk about. But nonetheless, he signs up on a site to say the coddish. The only fact I really wanna tell you about that is I really tried to buy the site immediately. I was like, I need this site for when there's a book. I gotta have coddish and they wouldn't sell it to me. And then my publisher tried to buy it before there was a book and then whoever from Germany like the whole public, they really put the pressure on. They would not sell us the site so if you wanna read about the book online it's coddish.com.com which I think is funnier back to the joke point. I actually thought that was a win but about six months I totally forgot about this but got asked about it at dinner and I was like, fun fact, stories break their boundaries, you know? And you know what, let's just talk a little and then I'll read. But so, you know, just you learn how you write over the years. I don't know anything about myself. Like I just do the work and then I find out what it's about after. You know, I spent a decade writing this book on Argentina because I was obsessed with the Dirty War and Injustice and the Desparositos and you know, then I'll finish it after a decade and someone will say, this is a book about fathers and sons and I'll say, I had no idea. So I learned a lot on the road about what I'm doing and then I call it playing my own grad student. Each city I become more eloquent because I steal someone's question or answer from the last city because I just tell stories. I only care about the story. But back to getting to this book, you know, talking about its Jewishness, you know, that idea, I had just written, you know, this book, Dinner at the Center of the Earth because I lived in Israel for a bunch of years. I'd lived in Jerusalem and I'd moved there for the peace process and I was just so heartbroken. I really want my peace back. You know what I'm saying? When Intifada II came, when everything fell apart and it's just a hot mess, you know, since and become a nice model for the complete deconstruction of our republic which is pretty much a dictatorship at this point. Nonetheless, all politics are welcome. You know, but I just really wanted to go back to this time, visit this time, because you get older, my hair, I have a friend here from college, she looks this, I only remember from people at college if they approach and don't scare me where I'm like, you look like I remember. Otherwise I'm like, I didn't go to school with you old man but nonetheless, as to my gray hair, things change, time goes by and I was like, history starts to change and we forget that things were possible, you know. So I wrote this book, Dinner at the Center of the Earth because peace was right there and now we talk about this impossible Middle East peace. I lived in Jerusalem and we had it. You know, I learned as we watched the world over that it takes maybe four or five people to deconstruct everything that tens of thousands and millions of people have built in good faith and I wanted my peace back. So I wrote this book that had like maybe six times lines and five genres and like my head hurts just trying to explain it. It's set on four continents. It was impossible to construct, I call it like a Turdukian of a novel because it's like, you know, it's really like a magic, realist, literary, thriller, historical novel. You know, each one stuffed into the next. But the point is I wanted to go back to basics which are the two points of this book that I wanna set it up with which is where I started. You know, that introduction made me think of all this. Where I started, like talking about the Jewish community and the world I grew up in, I was like, I wanna go revisit it but 20 years later. You know, like what is it like to go back to this space and again after all the timelines I wanted a singular arc, someone on a journey. And they also wanted to, I spent, you know, 20 years back to comparisons to Roth and I had a nice relationship with Roth over the years. You know, he was having this, answering the same question for a million years where I'm, you know, many generations American but I have to be a hyphenated writer, a Jewish writer. I was like, why don't I get to just be American? You know what I'm saying? John Chiefer didn't have to be a Christian writer. You know what I'm saying? Like he, you know, updyke, like they get to be an American. I just, for 20 years, but back to this moment and back to what's happening and back to how this country has shifted, I was like, oh, I'm as Jewish as they come. You know, now I write with like 10 yamakas stacked on my head. But so this is oddly in way of introduction my most Jewish book yet, which also makes me dizzy because I was like, if each book is the most Jewish, a book could be. How could it be the most more than anything? But I really do believe, you know, I'm working in theater now. I think I said I was working on this play. The framing devices, like the more focused a world, the tighter is, the more universal it better become. Like you can go on a deep, deep dive and then it opens out. So yeah, back to looking at the cottage. I think that started when you say where do stories come from? I started to learn the dark jokes of how I work. You know what I'm saying? Like I used to have long hair down my back. Picture maybe a chair circa Moonstruck or the drummer from Rat. You know, like I looked like that and I'd go to like Shabbos dinner at my sister's who wears a wig and is very religious and her friends would say like, oh, I can make such a wig out of that hair. That's a good joke. But jokes have no mass, you know what I'm saying? They have no, and I get very interested. I've started to learn. Like I thought, what about a Hasidic woman who makes wigs, who would never, in her own community with a close friend, never be alone in a room with a man, not her husband, let alone approach a stranger, you know, in Chelsea with long, long hair that she just has to have. Like I started to see how those things became stories. Like my story, Rob Kringle, it's, you know, a big Hasidic rabbi, the big belly, the long beard, the whole look, you know, and he can't afford to pay his rent. So he works his Santa Claus in, you know, you know, at Macy's. So, you know, to bring that all home, the 90 threads that I've got going so that I can read. But like that notion, which is, you know, two things, like the joke of this, like I started to see, which is I'm, you know, radically, radically, radically secular, you know, except I'm very bad at being secular and I think my wife's always afraid she's gonna walk in the door and I'll be like nailing up 20 Mizzizzes and eating Hamentasian and like, you know, I'm really hair trigger, it's like I should get, if they gave like AA chips to not religious, I count every day that I stay not religious, you know, it really is a battle for me, you know. So I was thinking about the flip of the flip, you know, I'm saying that's the core of this book. But back to that Santa Claus story, what I wanna say there is I have met in the last 20 years every single Jewish Santa Claus in America when they are legion, I'm sure one of you will come forward tonight. So as you dream these stories and put them out into the world, I say I learn from community to community, I also find the truth, there's nothing you can write down that doesn't become true. You know, I have a story where I talk about Gabernia, for years my family were from Gabernia, that's all I know is that my great grandmother came from Gabernia in Russia, but I learned that it just means state, like New York state, you know what I'm saying? It just means, it's like we were walking around saying we're from state or province, you know? But I told the story in San Francisco like 15 years ago and this woman came up to me, she was like, you know, I'd say in her late sixties, I think that and she's like, her whole life she's like, I'm from Gabernia too, you know? So back to this website and what I'm talking about, so about six months, did I tell this part yet? Did I finish this story? I don't think I did. But I have a seven month old by the way now, so as long as I don't fall asleep at the thing, so back to not doing events, so I haven't slept in about 54 days. The other thing my wife's told me, never say you're tired on book tour or traveling because she's like, I was up at four. Anyway, so yes, the end of the cottage.com thing is I wanted this website, we couldn't get this website, I was doing this book, I have to have it, but I'm back to stories breaking their boundaries. About six months after the book came out, I got a call from a journalist asking me what I felt about the site. So whoever owned it or was able to own it read the book and liked the book and so the story that is a made up story about cottage.com has now become a real website where you can hire people to say the prayer for the dead, which I always forget to say, but it's of interest. And there's a very Jewish idea, there's ideas if you like help, if you introduce a Jewish couple and they get married, like there's ways to get into heaven, but I'm wondering if there's any proxy way that I get in for, now that this site has gone live. That's the longest introduction I've ever given. I'm really gonna read for you at 10 or 12 minutes and then I will talk about a couple of things and then we'll chat to each other, which I'm all excited about. Mirror's covered in front door jar, collar torn and sporting a shadow of beard. Larry leans against the granite top of his sister's fancy kitchen island. He says, everyone's staring at me, all of your friends. That's what people do, Dina tells him. They come, they say kind things, they feel uncomfortable and they stare. It's only hours after the funeral and honestly Larry hates himself for bringing it up. He really thought nothing could add to the despair of his father's loss, but this quiet muttering stream of well-wishers has made it for Larry all the worse. What he's taking issue with is the look that he's getting. It's not the usual pain nod one naturally offers. Larry's convinced there's a bite to it, condemning. He doesn't know how he'll survive a week trapped in his sister's home, in his sister's community when every time one of the visitors glances over, Larry feels himself appraised. And so he keeps raising his hand to the top of his head, checking for the yarmulke sitting there like a hubcap for all its emotional weight. Its absence at his own father's Shiva would be the same as standing naked before them. Sneaked off into the kitchen with his sister, their first moment alone, Larry unloads his complaints in a hiss. Tell them, he says, to stop looking my way at a condolence call. You want them not to look at the Dina pauses, what are we, the condoled, the aggrieved, we are the grievances. The mourner, she says, you want them not to show that they care. I want them not to judge me just because I left their stupid world. Dina laughs her first since they put their father into the ground. This is so like you, his sister tells him, to make it negative, to complicate what can't be any more simple, this bitterness in the face of what is pure niceness is on you. On me, are you kidding? Are you really saying that today? You know that I am, little brother. I love you, Larry, but if you choose even yesterday to throw one of your fits, my fits, don't yell, Larry, people can hear. Fuck the people. Oh, that's nice. I mean it, Larry says, thinking that fit may not be a completely inappropriate word. Go on then, curse the terrible people who will cook for us and feed us and drive carpal for me all week and make sure that we don't mourn alone. Yes, curse at the nice man who washed our father's body and prepared the shroud and laid the hands atop his eyes and now come to make a minion in this house. Spare me, Dina. It's my morning, too, and I should get to feel at home in your home as much as them. Who's saying different? But you have to understand they aren't used to it, Larry, used to what you do. Dina takes a breath, reorganizing her thoughts. Memphis Jews are even more conservative than the ones we grew up with. In Brooklyn, even the edgeless have an edge. Here, if you're gonna be radical, people may a little bit stare. Larry's now the one staring. He stands before his older sister, giving her the best of his blank looks about what he was doing that anyone could think radical. Larry has no clue. Tell me you don't know, she says. Honestly, tell me it's not on purpose that you've actually forgotten so much. Honestly, honestly, I don't eye, and here Larry was going to swear which Orthodox Jews are forbidden to do. In deference, not so much to his sister, but to the opportunity to prove his innocence, that he is not as odd a duck as they think him, that he isn't doing anything anyone would consider wrong. Larry writes his sentence, and with a stutter ends it on the word promise, I promise, he says. You really need me to tell ya, I do. Dina rolls her eyes as she has since Larry was old enough to understand what a man had likely before. She explains what she's sure he knows and is without a doubt doing on purpose. You step out into the yard, you read a book, she says, with true sisterly fury. You sit like it's nothing on a regular chair. Larry straightens up at that, pushing with his hands against the counter, stepping back into the radius of his offense. He gives himself a moment, letting the blood flow to his cheeks, his face reddening as if like a chameleon he can change color at will. It's no reason to treat me like a freak, he says. They're just stupid rules. But even as he says it, rebellious little brother that he is black sheep and yes apostate, Larry understands that for Dina they're much more than that. For him to step out of the house, to read a page for pleasure and above all to reject that special sheave of perch, the low chair, the wooden box, a couch with the cushions removed. It is too much. The ancient pose, the mourner sitting slope shouldered, ash in face and close to the ground. It represents for Dina pure sorrow. A stupid chair isn't what makes it mourning, Larry says, doubling down. Though he knows for his sister, a chair absolutely did. There lies Larry wedged in his nephew's narrow bed in his nephew's narrow room, freezing under a thin polyester comforter in Dina's arcticly over air conditioned house. Sleep does not come on the first night of morning when Larry mustering all his Zazen-based mindfulness cannot disengage from the shock of his own thoughts. He wants to scream daddy and he wants to scream mommy and it's that pure regression on top of the grief that has him so alarmed. A grown man frustrated with his frustration wrestling to keep his hurt pent up. If Larry wasn't already headed there on his own, Dina had nudged him the rest of the way back to childhood by sticking him in an 11 year old's lair instead of settling her 30 year old brother in the more uncle worthy den. But the den is where their father had taken sick during his Passover visit. It's where he'd convalesced between the many trips to the hospital until his final fateful admittance. That room was blocked off in Dina's mind and so the skinny bed for Larry on which he flips to face the glow of his nephew's aquarium. It's watery light bathes him while illuminating the wall opposite. The fish gliding before a shelf of giant trophies the likes of which Larry in his sporting years had never won. And now he does not want to yell for his parents but yell at his sister furious over what he couldn't exactly say. Maybe it's the light of the tank turn blinding keeping a sleepless man awake. Maybe it's because in their already tiny family his big sister hadn't been able to make their father not die. Or because when he was his nephew's tender age Dina, older, wiser hadn't been able to stop their flaky mother from running off to Marin County with Dennis her ridiculous new age husband. The newlyweds fresh from a marriage that took place the very day their dear father held the get in his hands. Their mother had literally gone from her divorce in rabbinical court straight to a chupa in Prospect Park. She forced Larry to hold one of the supporting poles while Dennis broke the glass stomping it with his fat Birkenstock foot. Larry shakes his head at the memory and pressing a pillow over his face until he sees stars. He figure he's maybe mad at Dina simply for representing all that was left of the only family unit he'd ever known. Now it was the two of them alone. Except Dina is not alone. She has her husband and her three kids and the hundreds of religious clans people who'd pour in all week the Southern Memphis Gracelandian Jews who'd never give up or go away. Larry overcome with exhaustion and emotion with the endless exploration of his sorrows gives up and crawls from bed. He yanks the fish tanks plug from the wall with a force edging on violence and sighs with relief as a restorative darkness floods the room. Feeling his way back under the boy's blanket tucking himself in, Larry floats towards sleep in that wonderful blackness but he can't let go haunted as he is by the thoughts of death and of dirt of gravel thrumming against coffin and the literal specter of a soul formerly separating from its body his father's ghost on the loose. With Larry's own body stretched out in the narrow casket of a bed and chock full of superstition it's as if he dug up his old religious self just as his father was buried. Eyes closed he tries again and again to let himself drift but his ears train themselves on the fish in the tank concerned with their well-being. More and more Larry worries that by pulling the plug he turned off the whole contraption that he'd somehow suffocate the fish or undrown them or whatever the term is for stopping things that breathe underwater from doing whatever it is that they do. He can't quite obviously hear them swimming so he instead tries to isolate the sound of the water filter separating it from the unfamiliar electrical hum of the house but everything is overpowered by the drone of whatever tireless compressor is anchored nearby and forcing all that icy air through the vent above his bed. So Larry opens his eyes again stirring further and strains his vision against the darkness hoping to make out the smokestack of bubbles rising from that stupid aquarium's pump. He is and he knows it's not rational fully terrified that the family will wake to another set of funerals all of them his idiotic avuncular fault. He pictures them all crunched into the bathroom in their funereal clothing now poised over one of the houses stately silent flesh rich person toilets. Larry's nephew will preside while his two nieces like Paul Barrers hold a fish heavy skimmer. The kids watching those murdered charges tumble off to their maker just as they had with their grandfather the day before. Every time sleep comes the fish pull Larry back until he drags himself from bed to plug the damn thing back in. With the light burning Larry gives himself over to the endless of the night lying there missing his father loving his father who white bearded and full of faith had been the only one from Larry's old life from their cloistered community who saw his true nature loving Larry for exactly who he was and cherishing the man he'd become. I want you to know his father had said from his hospital bed that you in this world and the next will be fine. You think Larry had said do you know what I think? I'm asking I think the world to come is just a long table where everyone on both sides sits men and women. Pets? No pets his father said. None? Fine his father said. Under the table the dogs and cats but no birds. I can't picture it with birds. Fair enough Larry said. This long table with its perfect white cloth is set not with food and drink but with the Torah copies for everyone so that you can read to yourself or learn in pairs. I can picture that. And you know what happens at this table? What? All you do for eternity is study. Nothing else. No interruption. No day, no night, no weekend or holiday. No yeme hagrachol for it is the afterlife. Time unbroken. All of it given over to one purpose. Sure Larry said. This is why for the souls gathered that single place serves as both heaven and hell. Here his father had gulped at the air fish like himself. It goes like this his father said. If you got a good mind and a good heart if you like to learn Torah and take interest in knowledge then studying for eternity is for you heaven. He had looked to his son and Larry had nodded. And if all you want is to waste your time on nourishkite and bunk stuff to think your greedy thoughts though the money has gone and to think your dirty thoughts though your schvants is buried down below that for you that same table is tortured then sitting there with your bad brain you'll find yourself in hell. Larry considered the idea poised at his father's side partly thought it was funny and thought about making a Larry like joke but being his father's son Larry also took it seriously. He was awed at the notion and somehow afraid. His father who could read him like no one else reached out with his liver spot at hand and laying at a top Larry said I'm sure in that place for you it would be heaven. Larry had guessed not from surprise but choking back the rush of comfort he took in his father's ruling. Trust me Larry. It's all right that you don't believe this period in your life it feels like it's forever but if you're lucky life is long and each of these forever's will one day seem fleeting. You think when I was your age that I could have pictured this that it would be 1999 the edge of a new millennium and I'd be saying goodbye to a handsome grown son at the end of my days. I can tell you that even back then I already felt old and thought I knew it all. His father gave a weak squeeze to Larry's hand. You're a good boy and I pray that I don't see you across from me until you reach 120 years but for you my boy chick when it's the right time to take your seat that table will feel like a blessing without end. I'll stop there. Thank you. So yeah I think that'll start us with the guilt part and the memory part but I was trying to think it gets political for me quick but I think only if you're Orwell you can write politics intentionally. You have to just be your true self. Didactic work is fiction cannot sour like milk we were just talking with great passion about custom of the country. A 100 year old Wharton novel that reads like it was written yesterday like it has to stay current and it also your intent. Writers don't ask them to babysit don't lend them money don't ask them to pick you up at the airport like it's a terrible a broken bunch of people they're all my dearest friends like I am one of them but when you're working that's a separate system that waits in measures like your heart has to be in the right place when you work. You know what I'm saying? If you don't understand good and evil you can't write characters you know what I'm saying? It's not about funny or sad but you have to understand up needs to read up and down needs to read down and I think your true self it like edges into your work and that's gotta be it's like operating procedure so politics for me that's a personal thing but what I think about back to having lived in Israel when I talk about this last book the books work in Paris for me when I look at this one it's about you know I think so much about our country torn you know something that's happened that we've imported from I think like Israel to America it took me a long time there to understand that I was living a Jewish boy in Jerusalem and my holy site was Har Abayat like the Temple Mount and that my Palestinian neighbor was living in El Koods like a separate city you know what I'm saying? in Haram al-Sarif a separate holy site like we weren't on ends of a disagreement or a spectrum we were two functioning realities but we have that in the States now we have you know you got your MSNBC and your Fox News we have two separate realities we are so split and it's torn the communities apart it's torn the whole country apart but you know my universe it's not a partial universe it's not a kind of universe it's not a hyphenated America the world to me is all Jewish you know I was on book tour in Moscow last year like any country I get to I'm in like Moscow four hours and I'm drinking whiskey with Hasidim and having like the best Georgian kosher food like the whole world is Jewish to me so when I write a book like this that's so insular and so naval gazey it is a universal and what I wanted to look at back to guilt and that pressure I wanted to look at a family how families you know what is a country, what is society why have a civilization if we're not gonna take care of each other but nothing sums up family and community more than mourning and nothing puts more pressure on a family than a disagreement about mourning and fiction better be the most pressurized form that is you meet the dean of the sister in this book you know she's not egalitarian she doesn't want the separation between men and women to come down she doesn't want the right to say this prayer she wants to be Jewish and the way she's Jewish and you know does not want this responsibility what she wants is her brother the only male in the family to have this responsibility and their father who you just met wants the cottage set over him like back to empathy like we have such a short of empathy now what obsesses me in fiction is ideas of empathy but you have to be able to understand the other side even if you don't get it at all or think it's bunkers but to this father to this sister when a Jewish soul dies and goes to the next world which I think we took from the Romans there's a lot of professors here it's not the Greeks we didn't have heaven to hell I like the old Jews we had Shao, we had Limba, we had witches I liked when we had witches witch of, you know, Eindor anyway, I like me a witch anyway, nonetheless we have heaven and hell now but really you have this conscious of Olam Habba which still touches on that which is the world to come it's a singular space in that way but this idea when the father dies for a year his soul is being judged and if someone doesn't go to a minion three times a day I like to pray to go to synagogue not from home to be with 10 men at quorum and say this prayer for the dead eight times a day so you have to three times a day leave your house, go say a prayer with a group and say this prayer eight times a day like if you skip it, daddy burns in hell like for real hell fires you know what I'm saying and I just wanted to set up that thing for a brother who is not religious who is secular, who has left the fold the expectation that he is gonna go to synagogue three times a day for 11 months and not miss, not once you know, be like there's a spin class you know, no skipping you know, like that is an impossible ask and that to me is what sets up the pressurized form of fiction to set this brother and sister at odds you know what I'm saying and what happens you know which is my super long and windy introduction the born again again part I was thinking about this book has an illusion I love negative space I love absence just the idea of me being here of all of us being together like this group of people it takes infinity for this room to have gathered it's never happened before it'll never happen this way again but what makes it real is I don't have all your stories you know what I'm saying like I say like you know we met I say this that absence is what every fact makes things unreal boring backstory makes things unreal what you need is just life happens and there was a skip 20 years later we just meet him and he's super orthodox again he's got the beard and the belly and the suit you know and he's born again again because I was really thinking about that that we get one flip you know what I'm saying I just I turned 50 God help me it happens anyway I like it it feels good the build up my mom reminded me I was so upset she's like don't remember I cried every single day for a year when I was 49 I was like I do remember that the morning up feels great I feel good anyway but you know you know like back to this notion of change I still get introduced as you know he left or that you're like defined by these things of childhood like and I thought about this idea I love a good Jewish wedding like I like to dance you know what I'm saying I like I like that food you know what I'm saying I like to go home and I thought how strange back to Gil Galim would have obsessed me the cycles of life like wouldn't it be more normal if more people switch back you know like that's it you get to you know change sexuality once you get to like change political but we don't want you want to become a libertarian we'll hear about it for like an hour but like you don't get to switch back you get we all get one switch and I wanted to give this person a second switch you know back to this idea of memory of childhood of loving those things and that's where we find him back in this world and back to the guilt part there's this notion of Tikkun Olam of putting things right and I love the idea of hiring someone by the way for the cottage is totally as kosher as can be one thing I like about Jewish religion is it's super super super strict it asks you to do everything but then if you can't do it we're like let's make a deal you know we really so that you have to say the cottage he's the only one in the world who can say this cottage and any rabbi will tell him he has to say this cottage and they're like okay you're not saying the cottage you can hire someone it's fine it's just as kosher but you start with it you know what I'm saying like you can't have a kosher Jewish wedding if like if the wife doesn't want to go to the mikvah like you have to go to the mikvah if you don't want to go to the mikvah still kosher it's fine skip the mikvah you know what I'm saying I really find that beautiful I find that something that's both super strict you know and limiting and framing and then also like really really generous in that way you know so this idea is he's hired someone to say the cottage and what he recognizes like a biblical thing is he's given away that right to mourn you know he feels like I can't get it back and that's that's the arc of this book is us chasing him on it you know this idea of proxies back to that Moscow trip my mother gave me $18 for it cash money to give to charity because guess what then nothing's happening to me on that flight because I'm not on that flight Nathan talking to you is not on that plane anymore who's on that plane is an emissary who's sent to do a charitable operation I'm on a flight doing a mitzvah I'm a representative of a do-gooder to do a good deed and that protects you and that you know even selling the Passover Chumites when you know a Jews have to sell all their Chumites on Passover and you find the nice town Gentile which are becoming more it's it's it's going good America's hanging together we're all right but um but you know that person that kindly neighbor who buys it they become a proxy for the whole Jewish community I think that's one of the nicest thing in America like to have your neighbor represent like a singular non-Jewish neighbor represents the whole community for a week like he becomes all of them like that's a beautiful beautiful notion so yes he wants to find this proxy and to put things right but you know back to going back to his life I think it just comes from that notion that I started at the beginning like that as years go by you know a friend who interviewed me about this book who's like an NPR critic Glenn Weldon who I love very much but he went to grad school with me and he said like 25 year old you couldn't have written this book and that's also interesting you know to me about how you know watching life go by which is you know back to the father in this book my relationship with my father who's passed away has changed so much over this decade like I didn't know those relationships continue you know we're here at a lecture in honor of someone like you don't know that that like those that relationship can still grow over time that really interested me and also those memories that you can alter those things where I you know I think it's like snapping a rubber band you know we have students here to change sometimes you have to make this radical leap to leave orthodoxy I like broke every rule I could in religion like you have to like rip a limb off a living animal and eat it raw you know I was going through the tour to find everything that was forbidden for me to you know check off the list that was possible you know and then but then I do you can like it's not even mellowing it's just like shaping seeing nuance to the world and that's what also drives like the heaven part of this I started to think memory has become a significant part of my work now in a different sense so this the plan working on is called what we talk about when we talk about Anne Frank and it's based on the short story that I wrote but I was in my forties and the way my sister and I make order of the world is you know if we meet a new couple like some like whatever we'd be like oh yeah yeah he would hide us and she would turn us in since I'm born like just always not a joke not a game like I'm telling you like we mean it you get assessed you are assessed but you know when we meet people who would hide us in the event of a second Holocaust that is our first question we want hiding places I hadn't thought I was in my forties and I was like that seems pathological that is probably the stuff of fiction you know and then I started to think into memory that way and back to this I thought of that Yeshiva education and how it changes you get this very beautiful biblical childhood and then as soon as the boys hit puberty and might you know kiss an Italian girl the rabbis heaven changes real quick they get real nervous and then you start getting these you know the nicer version of heaven like I said it's this place of learning you're learning which is I remember being really scared when I heard that you're learning Torah 24 hours a day seven days a week like if you're a good boy you're in heaven if you're a bad boy you're in hell but they'd also tell a 13 year old boy heaven is you're sitting on a chair with God on one side and your mother on the other and you just watch a movie of your life what's to be afraid of you know but one of them which is also central to this book is this idea which I love very much which is that heaven is this extraordinary infinite feast a table set you know with everything you could want no diet you know you can have your carbs you can have your sodium everything Glott kosher whatever gluten free even if it's not like eat what you want for eternity but you go to eat and you see God has taken your elbows away that's this heaven and if you are a selfish person and a greedy person you're going to stand there flailing for eternity knocking food and starving but if I feed you sir and if we reach across the table to each other like and then you are like having an eternal feast you know it's those kind of memories I've started tapping into and dreaming with dreamscapes which I really am against dreams and fiction except back to the worlds that you build for a Jew and a rabbi on a mission in Jerusalem Jews take dreams seriously like seven years of famine seven year of feast if it's a Jerusalem related dream like it's not even a dream in the book it's another reality so that's that's the whole book that's the setup that is the you know drive of the book and one other element is the dot com part which really obsesses me which I think also drove this book and it stripped out it's maybe one paragraph in the book even though I feel like it's in the spirit of this book which I was like I wish I was naughty again seeing that from from college like why don't you make me smoke weed you know like I don't know I was like so you know we were goody two shoes and like we lived in this our whole dorm was painted black they were all dropping there were like a few of us we were in the craziest dorm but I was so good right we were like well well-behaved kids yeah I wish I'd been naughty and snuck out and run wild but I would get in trouble for theological questions you know like that's what I'd get thrown out for for like challenging a syllogism you know anyway but like one of the things that I think probably is a thing that drove me away even of like these questions that nobody could answer again Alan asked me to talk about this you know maybe we'll do in the Q&A but how you get to be a writer is because anyone who's a professor of literature who's a writer it's because books saved you you know what I'm saying when I couldn't get answers it was the books that I saw didn't have the answers they weren't afraid to ask the questions but really one of the things was this idea of omniscience of God knowing everything knowing where everything everybody in here has done what you're doing now and what you're gonna do next you know what I'm saying like that is just too much to ask that like processing power and what's really started to obsess me which I wanted to put in this book you know on the internet part of it which is we've sort of built a beta God like that idea my phone now it's you know it's not a joke it literally knows everything I've done like if you are in the world and again I spent a year living in Malawi like they're plugged in there too in Zumba like maybe there are some places there I saw where you could be possibly not filmed or tracked but most of the places on the globe now you know if you like you are I call them the good bomber for being the bad bomber but this guy tried to blow up you know in 42nd Street in the tunnel but he was a very good bomber for being such a bad bad bomber but like when they had to have his court because they had basically a movie of him moving through the city from CCTV cameras from like you could just watch so I'm saying if you've touched a smartphone in here like you have no secrets you know what I'm saying it's we are tracked everything we're done is known where we are right now is absolutely known but I've noticed now with my Instagram like it's not like you know it's not like I want a cookie and I get an ad for food you know what I'm saying and it has some concept of hunger it's like if I want a double stuffed Oreo I open Instagram and it's a double stuffed it's not a regular Oreo you know what I'm saying it's the double stuffed you know it's real I just started talking to this artist woman who draws a lot about she's super feminist author like I talked to her like we've had a couple of conversations about maybe collaborating on something she paints these pictures that I love I literally I just sent her a screen I got an ad for a reasonable period underwear today in fact my Instagram but I'm like they like the phone knows that I'm talking to a woman who's interested in female functions of the bot like she literally is interested in like menstrual but like I was like that is cray cray you know what I'm saying it is tapped it's that one's wrong so that's not exacting but again I'm interested now but anyway but I'm just saying this idea of predictive technology it literally knows what we're want what we're going like the ads know what's next and I felt like that is literally that I questioned as a you know teenager this idea that a machine you know can build it that I couldn't believe that a God could know what everyone's doing like it makes me think you know as spurring this book maybe I need to be religious again because maybe I was wrong you know what I'm saying like I literally see now that omniscience is possible like truly possible because we have a really pretty good working version of it going right now and I also want to say it's a Jewish God because the internet is vengeful and unforgiving and does not forget so it isn't not only if we built a God we've built a very Jewish Old Testament God you know I'm saying maybe that's the next maybe that's internet 2.0 will be a turn the other cheek you know internet where you don't get you know yeah where you don't get I'm you know I'm afraid to say cancel I might get canceled for saying canceled anyway nonetheless but yes that really is the shape of the book but I promised I'd leave time for questions so I better stop right there it's not is this on Jamie you can hear yeah yeah let me just start by asking you a quick question I think you've got the mic we talked a little bit at dinner about your becoming a writer and I think your first collection of short stories was dedicated to your mother yes you always acknowledge your mother in your books as having you know thanking her for reading your manuscripts yes and I'm wondering when you first told your mother your father that you were going to become a writer were they supportive or what did they think of that idea oh I think you know what my family's really good about stuff like that so I think both terrified and horrified and supportive if that's possible yeah you know we like you know I remember money worries growing like there was a lot of push you know I knew like when I was four to be like I'm gonna be you know you know I'm gonna you know trade monies like literally I was gonna be like I'm a stockbroker you know like yeah probably at five I said arbitrage in the seventies you know I'm saying like I knew this idea that you need to be able to take care of yourself and there was a real fear of this kind of thing but I think maybe this is it about exposure about school about taking that class my mom you know women got married people are marrying young again too I hear a lot more now but you know what she got married at eighteen or whatever it is but like she was a real super talented artist you know and married my dad and we always had a love of art I like I charge her with making me subversive like we were super religious but I went to museums you know I'm saying like I remember getting taken into MoMA to say goodbye to Guernica when it was going back to Spain and like what is it seventy eight or something like that you know these are so I there was a real respect and love for art so yes I think there was a terrible fear of being able to support yourself or to live but but an understanding also I just didn't listen my sister listened I was very well behaved but it's not like you could tell me what to do I happen to have chosen to be well behaved but yeah it was as extraordinarily stubborn on that front I think I think they knew what's what I was going to do and from the moment that was clear they were really supportive of it I mean but you're asking on campus there's a part two about dreams like sometimes parents ask me like with great terror my kid wants to do writings the easiest one to support because it involves sitting alone in a room and turning off your devices and focusing I was like you should tell them you're even going to pay their rent if they can sit in that room for they will quit before you have to quit them you know I'm saying so I think there's some things that are like going to be you know easy to support but I also think you don't know anything like I really did I've never I don't think I've ever talked about that on stage like I was so afraid I was working I was we didn't like I didn't go to summer camp when the other kids did I was taking a train into the city to work in an arbitrage you know I was like studying for my Siri 7 as a teenager like I really was going to do this you know like that kind of thing and then I understood what I really loved and I thought like I could have like ended up at you could spend your life at Bear Street you could dedicate your life to something and then your pension's gone there's no promises like you watch people's whole things we don't have to go with stories of specific things I'm saying I think anybody wants to do something is much more likely to succeed as like you know I'm going to become a professional rock climber I think the kid that's going to climb 20 hours a day and practice holds and like rub their fingertips on gravel all night you know in sandpaper and just study roots and like I think that kid is so much more likely to you know you know whatever it is free solo El Capitan that is a great movie to watch except it's we'll talk about the ethics of filming it nonetheless but I'm just saying that success to me is so much more built in than making someone be miserable at whatever you know I'm saying I don't want you need your appendix out I don't want a miserable surgeon who really doesn't you know who wants to dance dance surgeon dance you know I'm saying so I do think if you're asking me statistically the chance is the world is scary and challenging we watch this disruption you could be you know I hope it's not someone in here I have a hundred million dollars of taxi medallions and now they're worth 80 but like it's so crazy nothing you know it's a scary time you know right now on the planet like I think you got to do what you want to do with full force and also you could be a very interesting something else after you try something you've got to at least give yourself the chance to try back to this question that's turned out really personal my mom should have had a chance to like be you know I always tell her now go draw go paint like sometimes she draws but like that idea I thought at least I'm going to take the chance on the thing that I want to do thank you questions yeah throughout the story I get to see we're basically reading about someone who's just like goes from simple cottage dot com just like something in the nineteen nine yeah just late nineties and then we cut to like a newer generation a new world website and this we need like gave real to understand yes I explain everything to him um with this so I guess what I'm asking is like how is this feeling like trying to relate to like older like older generations trying to connect to like the newer technology and everything just like trying to like connect all this how does that feel or what it's oh I I guess that's that idea you know I think one of the things I like about writing and I you know we're all for it's really a kind sport or at least these days we don't have a good British fight so much anymore but you know like the older generations like you know I have uh you know the young up-and-coming writers that I'd be friends and then all my you know friends in their you know eighties and stuff like that like I think you know certain sports keep you connected and I think writing you don't function if you don't stay up on it but I did want to look at that bridge of just I don't know it's you know maybe it goes to the thing that I was saying about politics of having uh watch the world change politically like that you remember things you know even to talk about remembering winter you know I'm saying I remember when we used to skate on the pond in my town which is now I think boils through February you can you know make hard boiled eggs in it you know I'm saying like that's a weird thing to so yes I'm both we talk you know part of this talk is about memory but I think it's really that idea of uh I wanted to look at a different kind of bridge and technical tech the technological is another kind of bridge what he's asking about is there's a student when shuli needs to find this guy who hasn't you know spoken to in 20 years to the internet he needs he doesn't even know how to turn on the new smooth mac he doesn't touch computers anymore he needs someone to help him with the technology and yeah I really wanted to look at that bridge and how we bridge and how you know that we teach up and learn up like there's all kind of wisdom in age and then there's like reverse wisdoms where you have to like learn you know ask someone to help you because I do have that memory my grandmother's she would clean the house in white glove very new england clean the house in white gloves click click click high heels white gloves very fastidious spotless house and then she'd have a nice cigarette you know and a cup of and she turned the radio on maybe a spot of soda but she turned this radio on same station over here same seed same ashtray same cigarette with lipstick on the edge that I can see on that filter but like that notion I remember I'd go to like change the radio station and she'd freak out like my station you know like don't touch that I was like just put it back but now if like my nephew takes my iphone I hear myself being like don't touch that you know like I'm just gonna unlock don't change anything I know where and I thought like oh my god like it's happening to me where like I know how to do this stuff I know how to do you know and then you have to choose to stay current now I'll be like okay I got a zoomist this week I got a zoomist do whatever it is they tell you you know like so I think I yes I wanted to look this is a book about circles about giggling about those connectivity to generations past to the father but I thought technology is the generation in this book that points where the where the world spins in the other direction in the book it you go from like the at a sister's house with saying and then going at the dot com and the next thing he's like religious yes there's no yes why he really of the tradition why he made that switch yeah you know back to like fifth book and things like that things that become important to you like it was like a big aesthetic choice and again books are books are points of discussion I'm writing this this play that I'm working on now and we had you know like we have readings and you bring groups in to see it like the ideas people need to have stuff to art like what work does what it does for me is make thought make conflict make argument I don't want to like confused is not bad if this opening that's in Memphis and half of you think it's in Detroit I failed as a writer that's like loss of control but you make commitments and aesthetic choices and ideas and yes this one comes up you know you know some people truly embrace it and some people really you know have trouble with it but like I love that skipping of space because that's I reality to me a fictional reality it's called a fictional reality it's a reality it is real you know I'm saying there's no other art form I'm like adamant about this you don't watch a movie like if you watch you know the new Star Wars and then you think that happened to you like go to a neurologist like something's not right like a picture remembers a picture a book you say like oh when did that happen to me oh no I read that it builds realities and we were just talking at dinner when I you know portrait of a lady came up I read that in Binghamton in you know in the 80s and the book comes up and I see a train I see a room I see a table set for tea across a rolling hit like it forms memories it is my job to build realities no less if it is ever not real to you for a second that is not a good that book is broken you know I'm saying and to me that's this notion I've used it as a reference twice but my friend I have not seen her since 1991 is that it's more than 10 years now but that's like 30 fucking years ago you know I'm saying like she and I like she walked out we hugged we don't care about the but we're gonna hug anyway we do care wash your hands well elbow touch tonight let's all be really careful but nonetheless an old hug can happen but um but I'm just saying like that whole point is I'm absent 30 years like that is reality like we just picked up where we left off we are I'm gonna talk to her after but we are missing 30 years but it didn't seem less real I knew who it was like it all came rushing back and I like I feel like that's how story forms and certain things that interim time doesn't matter and I didn't want my reader to have to read through that and maybe by the way back to things like why I love new forms as I said I reached out to this wonderful talented artist I wanted like I'll do the words you do the art like I love collaboration as you learn I have learned more doing drama and maybe it's the drama leaking into fiction that's also behind that jump because in the novels we love to explain everything you know it's like you can have 600 pages about why you know why I have you know why I drink too much and why my wife is telling me to drink less that would be like 700 pages novel like on theater on the stage you play drunk you play sober and now change you know I'm saying I'm interested in the like how reality forms and how drama works and I felt to me that it was much more moving for someone's life those are lost years to him and they should be lost years to us that was he was off the dark he was off the path and I felt we didn't need to see that that like stepping right into his brain regaling us over those missing years like that to me is how real life works but I understand again I don't control like some people you know it's I understand it's a a wrestle point you know in a book group do we have time yeah I don't have a clock you want time for one or two more or no more we have time for plenty more yeah oh sorry George uh mr englander thank you very much Nathan please I I confess at the outset I have not read your book um I downloaded it on my Kindle I read three pages as long as you bought it but I bought it I paid for it that's all we care about so so the question does not relate to the book um it relates to something you said when you were describing the child you know in putting them in the room and focusing and this last hour has been very entertaining you are incredibly creative you are not so focused yes so could you please my question is could you describe your writing process well you just summed it up which is like yeah that usually comes up and then I say and this is why I don't have a radio show like the I remember still a friend in high school while I panicked people standing in a circle while I'm telling nine jokes simultaneously you know and then she's like just stay with it it'll all come back to but like literally this is it I'm very thankful to get asked to give and I've learned to be myself which is it it's scattered it's in circles like this it's like you don't you know what you've left your homes everyone's really busy and it's like if I'm not going to be my true self here like sometimes it is and I can do like a typed up keynote but like what else tonight but to really be me and and and do the map of my brain what I want to know is when you sit down to write yes what is that process like for you yeah we we are a multiplicity of selves so this is like you know onstage me at a university like what it is is what you hear tonight the the thoughts like that that's how it looks all over the pages if I write you know I used to go to the I think they changed that room at the British Museum you could look at people's long hand drafts they used to keep it out and now it's away but you'd see people like write down the page and write back up the page and like it's everywhere I some people have very organic a process that's very like laid out I'm gonna write you know this book has 10 chapters I know each chapter I'm gonna execute this one in this data friends who work that way I really believe in the spirit of the piece it comes from a really organic deep down place where I just find it and then follow it so the process there's many parts to the process but first there is an extraordinary amount of pages of circles of ideas that's why I love the form because up here I can try and control it but it just makes me feel suffocated if I have to like talk in order you know that's boring to me you know you'll get some ideas tonight I'll make some jokes so really why I love the form is what you're asking is because then I can put my brain in order you know I'm saying so I may write the end I may write the middle I might have 700 pages that are off to the side that are about on when almond trees bloom and that's why I love this form which is you will not see it I will not back to not shaking hands you know whose hands I haven't shaked even before this virus is writers who say oh I wish I'd spent more time with that book or I would I would change the end now that it's out like nothing goes into the world until I would not change a comma so for me the world is chaos like I'm a very you know adult and confused person like the idea of having this space where I can sit I don't care about time I don't care about money I don't care about anything like the the things I turned down the things I won't do that I spent 10 years on my second book was a very bad you know economic choice sure I don't care I just care about making things I really believe in the craft part of this so yeah the process is sitting alone is imagining is laying it all down and then back these two questions are married to each other I pronounce you you know wife and wife but like and then it's an active illusion of negative space of infinite drafting the the story that I owe my whole career to is the 27th man that I wrote these writers Stalin had murdered these I don't like and so that's the other point I don't really write about Jews that I say in the beginning I write about what the whole world's Jewish I write about injustice a lot and making things fair I want to put things right this is a book if you do get through it on your kindle about putting things right but like Stalin had killed these Jewish writers and you know and again there were women involved and there was it was men and women and you know an anti-fascist but you know the general story was this night of the murdered poets where he'd killed the last of the Yiddish writers in one of his rages all on the same day and I heard about this right as the wall was coming down you like and I just I heard about it because my professor was a russia expert and her husband was a huge russia like nobody knew this story like like Stalin shouldn't get to win like he'd kill these writers with the like the best story of their life to tell and I just thought I waited years that's how I became a writer back to Ellen's question I waited for someone to tell this story these writers deserve their story they've they've they've been erased it shouldn't be gone and when no one did I wrote that story and that story like I think it took me you know I got the idea at 19 and it came out in a book form when I was 29 like a decade and that's where I learned this process which always been I drafted and drafted and redrafted I have it's definitely taller than me which is not that impressive but maybe we'll get a taller person up here but nonetheless I must have like you know six seven eight feet of that story which is until things sound the way you want them to sound so yeah it back to ideas of creation I think it really maps you know why I say like you know this stuff from childhood that holds with me notions of creation which is you take you know tobu bohoo I love that's one of my famous English favorite English words right it's tobu bohoo it's it's yeah it's it's in English straight up anyway but like you take this chaos and you make order and to me like nothing is calming to me in the world except getting a sentence right so yeah the process is much like this anyway we have time for you know well it's it's quite quite a memorable time for me and all of us listening to you I found cottage.com a book of order because what I saw was this man surely what you think about becomes shul oh nice yeah and he had this problem of going to shul but but he and Kimmy I'm gonna give this away those of you haven't read it but you're talking about making things right and yeah he makes things right and fair at the end yeah for his father for himself he performs a mitzvah you know those two men say kaddish for all the people they conned yeah and that that was a glorious ending I also see a Faustian bargain going on but and and like in Faust Faust wins yeah yeah and so does surely and and I like the way uh you also I also thought of Jacob and Esau yeah I did yeah that's that's yes yeah because he's gonna give away his rights his birthrights and but but he claims them back but all this this chaos and his guilt and his mind and his love uh one the year after his father's death his tears are for himself yes and then and then he he needs to claim his money back not his birthright but then then things fall into place and he is saying kaddish not only for his father but for all yeah people in in Israel yeah no thank you for that closer I mean I think that's it it's like it shouldn't be a syrupy thought I really do think it's in reference to like what's you know just how I you know I'm not aware when I'm writing it but like things I hunger for in the world today like my word if I give you my word I do something like I'm just you know just shocked at like just this idea of us just you know you know on every level of society but like you know that's you know and especially on global levels of like you know commitments and promises and like I just think I got obsessed with someone who just wants to put things right like at whatever cost and also it's like a quixotic journey which also interests me which I think why I mentioned a climbing movie I'm very interested you know like that his wife it's you know that she has to put up with it we everyone you know especially uh we all have relationships whatever they are in whatever form but that we uh sometimes get these things in our head that are constructs but nonetheless like I'm interested in the drive for anything you know I'm saying I'm always when we're rescuing people on top of Everest I'm like we can leave I'm not sure sure we need to like when people were still alive so I'm like you got up there get down but you know I'm very interested in a fictional way about this notion of people getting it into their head to you know get on a journey and yes I'm was very very obsessed with this notion of shooley fixing it with everyone as you mentioned with the people you know with his wife with his kid with his father with the memory and with himself and I think you know I I think it's an honor an honorable if neurotic makeup for a person and don't and also he remembers that his father said he'll be good he'll be fine and his wife says you can forgive yourself uh so that those would be I'm learning to let myself be in the book I do not forgive myself anything so I was like I was thinking about this notion I bet some people can forgive themselves anything you know I'm saying I'll remember like you know if I didn't deliver a punchline right back that joke fell flat in 1974 you know like you can forgive yourself and that notion of never growing up which I don't know if everyone feels that but it's that very strange notion where he really does need this fatherly support like as I said I just had a big birthday I don't know when I'm gonna feel like a grown-up it's really interesting you know I'm saying like I you know I know when I'm like being a professor be a professor and be a writer be a writer but like this sense I think it's built into some people and I have it I never I never feel like a grown you know I'm saying I'm capable in the world I can do my things I can make my phone call but like it's that notion I was very interested in that in that way that when you think back to parents or something or a certain part of our brain is still seeking that extraordinary you know kind of support so Nathan when you're in the middle of writing yeah you give yourself a certain amount of time to write each day or a certain number of pages or you just stay in the room and continue to write as long as you're feeling it it depends where we are in parenting or you know I'm saying I used to be a very bad boyfriend I mean I would just work all night and sleep all day and stuff like that but yeah no I I'm extraordinarily disciplined back to things you know chicken or egg but a lot of that stuff of religious life like this idea of repeated routines I'm very interested in dissociative states and the subconscious and literally how our synapses fire it's not accidental the same thing if you want to like hit a basketball if you want to like you know if you have to take a foul shot to win the game and your Nike contracts on the line and like 70,000 people are booing you like that same thing that an archer has to do that a yogi does that a religious person does that a writer does it is about training the brain you can enter this it you know true dissociative states like you never read a word that I wrote as conscious me that's talking to you there's a part of each day where I fall away and you know you've trained you basically every writer has trained their hands to type while daydreaming so it's I've like taught myself to like move the pieces of a dream and then type at the same time but it's not me it's it's it's a subconscious act and that needs routine and I think more you train it's like being compulsive versus obsessive you know I don't know how to separate the person I could smoke crack with you after this event it'd be like that was delicious and then go back to dinner but if I'm like I walk on that side of the street you know I'm saying like once a routine builds then it becomes an anchor for me so I think it's that notion of like it used to be building up I to anyone who wants to write in here I got this from Frank Conroy who you know who's one of my teachers who used to tell us it's about zits flesh the ability to sit in a chair so you need to compose three hours a day six days a week that's your starting point you know and then you go from there so now it's about training myself to take a day off or training myself that a person's a lot have an evening or you know listening you know my daughter should go like this like a dad dad daddy daddy Nate she knows I answered a Nate or I'm like oh like I go off into my world like off into the but uh you know so I really think yeah it's it's it's you know it's it's big routine is you know how I survive and also it's about controlling the routine you know does that answer it should we call it that maybe last I feel like yeah no no thanks I'm good here's one of things I'm really curious about so I can imagine your right as go back to your writing process yeah the chaos and the ideas and the free flowing and and how liberating that must be and yeah cool I'm wondering when you come to the end is it an abrupt end or is it a slowing down that happens when you're how do you know you're at the end oh uh uh I used to make a charlton has to joke but those jokes aren't funny anymore but um uh oh yeah just it's it's clear to me um it's a Gerhard Richter thing that I think about I was at this lecture about like this very famous painting of Richter which is like this table and it's the German painter and it's like this you know hyper realistic table in the whole middle is like this you know circle painted over it and I listened to this whole like smart you know lecture about how it was about like German and the rebuilding post the war and this like massive thing and then I I knew exactly what happened I like went to this very like to the Richter expert I was like can I give you my theory of that painting that's not about like industrial revolution and post war and the rebuilding of German it's like I said it's like I think he painted this table and it was finished and then he's like it's not finished it's horrible and it was 4 a.m. and he started to erase the whole thing and he's in there in his studio like circling it and destroying him then he was like yes and then he stepped away like I I'm telling you I'd go to my grave I know there's like a you know that painting is like central to his career but to me I'm like I know that's what happened like I've never met you know like anyway but uh yeah so I I think it's this notion of also back to how I function in the world nothing's clear to me nothing's make sense to me I will suffer after this reading in my hotel and being like what did I say tonight you know like everything is torturous to me except you know back to that gentleman's question about order it is very clear to me it's the only thing that's done think about it when I finish this book the publisher buys it hopefully but they bought this one like I've literally sold it back to this woman's you know pointing out birthrights and things like that I literally don't own this book anymore you know I'm saying they like if I sell enough they send me some money but it's like I am literally I don't own it it is not mine and and I and that to me is such a giant clear thing it is the one thing in my life that there's an end point you know I'm saying there's no conversation we could have that there'll be an end point to you know like there's no we're going to end this after this you know I'll take your question but like you know nothing ends for me and that it is so clear with art and craft that like there has to be a moment yes it really gets to be done and you know you also need people around you who you trust when I hand this book in let's say it was like 650 pages you know or the one before yeah there's like a 700 page draft and I can literally like cut it in half and cut out 400 pages and my editor will be like there was a line about a cookie and I was like oh I was missing that line too you know I'm saying there there I know it's like subjective and like chaos theory and many worlds and there's infinite versions of a book but there aren't there really is a right and wrong you know I'm saying you have to stand by it and someone can be say you know like whether this jump is working or not working like you must stand there really is an end point it is the most joyous thing in my life that there is a point where they end you know you pick an order the stories go to in a collection and that's it so yeah it's really really clean to me again I torture everyone around me I'm probably not fun to be around in those weeks but I will recognize it with with help that's that's why I'm mentioning other people with help I will know that it's done and then I will see that it's done maybe that's one of the differences between writing fiction and nonfiction you know I can write an article and then to revise the edition of that article or a book yeah um and I can go in and change certain things or yeah you're dealing with that yeah because the because the ground beneath it can change that's the point but this these worlds are yeah but once you're in a short story collection somewhere the stories are there yes yeah yeah I think yeah this last last yeah this man yes we're having a Geneva this is Geneva Convention I will answer I yeah well I I found that toward the at the end yes where his dream was he he seemed he took himself and then he said he satisfied someone else yes and I can't get into that yeah can't understand yeah how you could do that um he had no I I don't understand that yeah oh okay so there's a a pornographic moment in front of the book back to using this thing that that ends up returning in a dream and that goes back very quickly to this internet thing and back to all the ideas where you know it's like to my family that was a truly shocking scene you know I'm saying like it makes the book pornographic but it's like that notion which is back to those relationships in the internet we're having societal breakdown so at the beginning he's watching this like you know I don't know what percentage of like people or men look at pornography it's got to be I'll go with in the high 99% you know I'm saying like this idea so back to if I'm talking about putting things right it's my job as a writer to do the most pressurized form of things so back to him there's like a a gender switch in there but we can talk about ideas of like Schreiner and the female god and like transfers in the word kadosh which both means holy but kadesh is pressed I'm not going to do a deep Kabbalistic dive on that moment but to the idea of this woman is there's people in the fucking internet you know I'm saying like if you're looking like everyone's going to look at the porn's not going to stop but like at least right like I thought that was the most pressurized form so like I'm saying I I'm not on Twitter now maybe I'll go back to by say like a bunch of people say nice stuff and someone sees too much nice stuff about you so they'll be like your book sucks or whatever you know I'm saying like or whatever I like forget like what people are dealing with who like are journalists and and anti-semitism and rate like it's just but the idea of saying that to another human being that you wouldn't say in here like it's it's it's causing a societal breakdown I don't think they're like shooting up a black church or shooting up a synagogue without the help it really eases us into societal fucking breakdown you know I'm saying so to me the best example for novelistic form is to say you can look at this porn video and look at this woman doing what she has to do and then she goes home at night and takes a shower and like that's so I wanted him to understand part of that it seemed to me the most extreme and clearest and fictional example to say there's people in the machine just because someone's a public figure you know I'm saying like I don't know anyone back to Philip Roth I remember before like two books ago came out when he was alive and I said Philip I'm so nervous like am I ever gonna feel I'll feel stronger now I'll be able to handle the reviews better and the you know anything better and he said no no you're gonna get your skin will get thinner and thinner until I can hold you up to the light like it doesn't get easier to be out you know like when you see a Britney Spears shave her head and lose her mind and everyone think that's funny it's because we take a little girl and we make her the most famous thing in the world that's not I don't know her genetics or her brain chemistry I'm saying that happened because it's on you can we break people all the time so back to having a pornographic example in this book and then a pornographic reckoning it's because I wanted him as a character have to recognize there's people in the machine whether you're insulting them or looking at them or scrolling through them or saying bad things to your partner like Nate looks you know fat on Instagram today whatever like I just think we've built a thing that is allowing us to practice breaking down humanity thank you just a few short words before we all leave first of all we'll be selling cottage.com out in the lobby and Nathan you know you're gonna stay and sign some copies for people of your book I also want to tell you that in two weeks from tomorrow Michael Cohen who is the chair of Judaic studies at Tulane University will be coming here to Fairfield he was supposed to come in December on that one day that we had a vice he's going to be talking about his recent book it's called cotton capitalists Jewish entrepreneurship in the reconstruction south and it's really a fascinating book about how these Jewish immigrants largely German Jewish immigrants went and settled in the south and became kind of the middlemen between plantation owners that is freed slaves who wound up owning plantations in the south after the civil war and store owners and they became the middlemen and from there they became involved more broadly in finance and some of them went to New York and you know the Lehman brothers among them it's really a fascinating story and again Michael will be here two weeks from tomorrow I also want to say last thing I know some of you were with us I think it was only last week when David Miola was here from the University of South Alabama I did make a pitch after the lecture I'm going to do the same thing now you know the Carl and Dorothy Bennett Center for Judaic studies has been here at the university for 26 years we are the oldest Judaic studies center at any Jesuit college or university in the United States although my chair in Judaic studies is in doubt our center has no budget from the university and therefore we really do rely on donations from people like you and so if you'd like to see programs like this continue and without the generosity of the Fuygensen family we would not have this lecture this evening we are in the middle of a fundraising campaign we have a challenge grant the Frank Jacobi Foundation of Bridgeport is willing to match $10,000 if we can raise $10,000 we are well on our way to that goal we began this campaign at the end of January we're running it to the end of the fiscal year which is June 30th 2020 we have forms in the back whatever you can give really $15, 20, 36 you know 54 500 a thousand anything really will help show your support for the Bennett Center and for the many programs that we bring both to the university community and to the general community as well my thanks to Nathan Englinder for being here this was really fabulous and inspires me to take some time for myself this summer in Wright so thank you so much and thank you to all of you for being here with us