Lectures

Twice Roosevelt: Eldest grandchild of Franklin and Eleanor writes about the pitfalls of privilege

Curtis Roosevelt was in Boston recently to promote the paperback release of his book Too Close to the Sun: Growing Up in the Shadow of my Grandparents, Franklin and Eleanor. It’s an interesting childhood memoir that suggests just as every silver lining has a cloud, every silver spoon has some tarnish.

Having already travelled across the United States speaking at various engagements, the almost 80-year Roosevelt braved a rainstorm to speak to an attentive crowd at the Boston Athenæum. His accent almost too antiquatedly posh to be real, he apologized for his damp pants cuffs and facetiously expressed regret that he hadn’t brought any spare “trouse” with him. His writing is similarly sprinkled with, and made more interesting by, his occasional use of archaic, rarified vocabulary.

Curtis Roosevelt, an intelligent man well-versed in political matters, doesn’t only sound like FDR when he speaks, he looks like him as well. Despite these superficial resemblances, his grandfather’s charming, easy-going manner is something that comes very difficult to him. He admits this, just as he admits he never had the determination or strength of character that made both Franklin and Eleanor larger-than-life. However, like a member of royalty or the relic of a saint, people see in Curtis Roosevelt a special importance that exists beyond what’s observable. Roosevelt understands this too, and his conflicted feelings about it are a major theme of both his book and his life.

Eleanor being Teddy Roosevelt’s niece, Curtis’ family had celebrity even before FDR was elected to public office. After his grandfather became president, 3-year old Curtis and his sister moved into the White House with their mother. Known to the press as “Sistie and Buzzie,” this towheaded duo became what Curtis calls “a full-blown, pint-sized double act… familiar as five-year old movie star Shirley Temple to a nation hungry for distraction from breadlines and boxcars.”

The world in which he grew up was a strange one. He had a chummy relationship with FDR, his busy presidential grandfather (“Papa”), but Curtis’ mother (“Mummy”), like Eleanor (“Grandmère”), had an awkward difficulty expressing affection towards children. The person towards whom he felt the most love, his African-American nanny, suddenly and unceremoniously disappeared from his life when it was decided he was too old for coddling. He felt most at home at the White House, or at the Hudson River mansion of his staunchly Victorian great-grandmother Sarah Delano Roosevelt, but he was shuffled from the care of one person to another to such a degree that he never formed a genuine child-parent bond with anyone.

He was raised like American nobility, yet young Curtis was often plunked down in situations for which he was ill-prepared. He remembers his first week at school and his bewilderment at having to go to the bathroom without his nurse present to unbutton his pinafore, sit him on the toilet, and flush afterwards. He recalls a summer camp where kids were amazed at an 8-year old unable to tie his own shoes. He recollects his sense of relief when, at 10-years old, he was finally allowed to exchange his conspicuous short pants for long ones like those worn by other boys at his school.

In many cases, his childhood was a mirror image world where the common was extraordinary and the extraordinary common. He was comfortable riding in a car with the president as they passed cheering crowds, yet uncomfortable on play dates with other children. He knew what utensils to use at a formal dinner, but mundane activities such as playing baseball or watching a movie were alien to him. Guarded by vigilant Social Security officers, he was often barred from normal activities like bike riding and hide-and-seek.

Nature and nurture combined to make Curtis an odd child and, as he admits, “a wimp.” He describes how he was “either wildly overexcited or paralyzed with fear” in various situations. As much as he loved living at the White House and the feeling of being someone special, he was taught to be – or at least to pretend to be – embarrassed by it as well. With relatively little experience socializing with other children during his early development, some of his fondest memories are of rare situations when he did so successfully.

(Photo: John Stephen Dwyer)

Curtis Roosevelt knows the circumstances of his privileged childhood, even with its disadvantages, are more likely to provoke jealousy than sympathy. Nevertheless, it’s hard not to sympathize with the fatherless little boy crying in the bathtub off the Lincoln bedroom without a compassionate adult to comfort him. Likewise, his personal stories remind us that while money can indeed buy creature comfort, problems like divorce, substance abuse, crippling illness, and suicide spare very few families, even those brandishing such esteemed surnames as “Roosevelt.”

For those with interest in its subject matter, Too Close to the Sun: Growing Up in the Shadow of my Grandparents, Franklin and Eleanor is a very enjoyable read. It’s a quick and easy read too; the print is large and the illustrations are many. While one could fill a bookcase with memoirs written by members of the Roosevelt family, this one has its own niche that presents a particular set of intimidate details that won’t be found in any other volume. Most obviously, those having a particular fascination with Franklin and Eleanor will be drawn to it, but there’s also interesting content herein for anyone with an interest in blue-bloodedness, class dynamics, or the inheritable prestige of the US presidency.

An Interview

During his visit to the Boston Athenæum, I spoke briefly with Curtis Roosevelt. After walking in the pouring rain, lecturing for over an hour, and signing multiple copies of his book, the 79-year old Roosevelt was justly impatient to be on his way. Nevertheless, graciousness is so ingrained in him that he allowed me to ask a few questions.

JSD: You describe growing up in the White House as a mixed experience. Would you offer any advice to Mrs. Obama that might maximize the good and mitigate the bad for her daughters?

CR: No, absolutely none. I wouldn’t dare give advice. Those children are different as all children are different. They certainly are very different than my sister and I. And it was a totally different era than they’re growing up. Particularly with the intrusiveness of the media today. That’s why I give absolutely no advice whatsoever.

JSD: I have a particular interest in genealogy. Coming from one of the most genealogically notable families in the United States, do you have any reflections on how awareness of one’s genealogy might inspire someone, or, conversely, how it might be felt as a burden?

CR: I happen to be one of those people who prefers to read biography and autobiography more than any other style. But as far as genealogy is concerned, I was raised on it. You’d be surprised how extraordinarily adept my grandmother was in tracing back her lineage back to the Livingstons and so forth, and it had meaning. It wasn’t just dates and so forth as history used to be taught. It had real meaning. But beyond that I haven’t pursued it. Although I would say, being dubbed the family historian, that probably I know more about the family genealogy than anybody else in the family.

JSD: We have your great-granduncle Teddy to thank for the creation of the National Parks Service. But FDR also enacted measures that were of huge benefit to the NPS. Do you have any recollections about your grandfather’s particular love of nature?

CR: Oh yes! Driving around with him at Hyde Park, in his Ford, he doing the driving. [He was] fascinated with trees particularly. There are a couple books on that that are not quite old. They must be 30 or 40 years old. You can find them in the library, [these books about] FDR and conservation and the environment.

JSD: Many remember the dramatic circumstances surrounding [African-American opera singer] Marion Anderson not being allowed to perform at Constitution Hall and how it led to your grandmother’s resignation from the DAR [Daughters of the American Revolution]. Do you recall any circumstances when the ethnicity of people close to you such as Beebee [Curtis’ Black nanny] or Mr. Mingo [the family’s Black butler] caused a situation which you, as a child, found confusing or uncomfortable?

CR: You probably forget that when I grew up, the nation’s capitol, Washington DC, was a Jim Crowe town. So you know, that’s the way it was. So particularly as a teenager, when I was let out, so to speak, a little more, and the leash was taken off [I realized] that’s the way it was in Washington.

No, not my most riveting interview, but talking with Curtis Roosevelt was a memorably exciting experience nonetheless. I’ve met some members of the Roosevelt family before, mostly Teddy’s great-grandkids, and I’ve even worked with the spouse of one on a daily basis. But none were “twice Roosevelt” or spent years in the White House of FDR and Eleanor. Shaking his hand, knowing that he has probably shaken hands with over a hundred world leaders whose names I’d recognize, I felt the power of notability by association – exactly the phenomenon that has characterized his life and serves as a main motif in his book. It’s an interesting thing to think about.

Wolff at the Door: A Foray into the Boston Athenæum

She wrote, “Posh library. Sanctuary for eminent Bostonians. Brahmin enclave. There has always been a mystique surrounding the Athenæum“.

Yet when, as young woman, Katherine Wolff discovered the Boston Athenæum’s fortress-like door, she wasn’t intimidated. Curious, she entered. I asked if coming from the state of New Jersey, so far from the compass of Beacon Hill’s shadow, had much to do with her being undaunted by the Athenæum’s stately façade or, more importantly, its exclusive reputation.

“No,” she told me “I’ve always been a trespasser.”

Scholarship often requires trespassing in areas of thought which people have portioned off, re-examining institutionalized understandings, and delving into private lives. Wolff does this and opens the door for the curious in Culture Club: the Curious History of the Boston Athenæum, recently published by University of Massachusetts Press.

Educated Bostonians being some of the most textually self-referential people ever, the Boston Athenæum has already been written about, repeatedly and at length. Wolfe turns this into an advantage, as the time is right for someone to write not only a new history of the Athenæum, but also a fresh histiography as well. Wolff has some fascinating things to say about what has already been said, elucidating points by putting them in the context of her own theories.

Class-based interpretations of the Boston Athenæum dominate scholarly analysis. But Wolfe believes that prominent scholars have been distracted by rigid ideas of high and low culture. She also calls the emphasis on separating high culture from popular entertainment “a particularly American preoccupation.” So, rather than focusing her discussion on class, Wolff concentrates on culture. She examines the role the Athenæum played (or failed to play) in shaping the evolving identity of the young United States. She looks at “the vexing relationship between democracy and culture.” In these things, she places emphasis on the “emotional history” of matters personal, aesthetic, and political.

The author describes how certain early Americans looked to the lowest ranks of English aristocracy for a genteel, yet seemingly-meritocratic, model to follow. Her description of the Athenæum’s origins in “the attempt of a worried and self-conscious group of anglophilic readers to ennoble their nation through a purposeful institution” doesn’t necessarily contradict what she calls “the founding myths,” but it’s more candid, better contextualized, and easier to grasp emotionally.

While sharing a sense of stewardship, members haven’t always agreed who and what they are stewarding. Opposing personalities and contradictory ideas have resulted in conflict. The principle of accessibility versus the benefits of separation is a matter of perennial concern. Some of the most interesting pages of this book explore these various tensions.

Adding to the curious history of the Athenæum are colorful characters, some with well-known names or pedigrees that add interest. In seeking to illuminate the emotional lives of these people, Wolff poured over intimate letters exchanged between its 19th century founders, a process she likens to “going back in time only to eavesdrop.”

When Katherine Wolf lectured at the Athenæum last month, her main subject was the correspondence between William Smith Shaw and his intimate friend Arthur Maynard Walter. Shaw, formerly a private secretary for his uncle John Adams, was a bibliomaniac collector of all things written. While his relationship with the younger Walter may have not been physical, their emotion-charged messages had the tropoi of love letters.

Wolff’s revelation that Walter died at age 26 brought gasps from the audience. She opined how the Athenæum then became, in effect, Shaw’s “new lover.” She mentioned how a contemporary even kidded Shaw by referring to it as “your Grecian wife.”

Though her book is appropriately objective, Wolff is under the Athenæum’s spell as well. Standing before a truly gigantic painting of one of the Perkinses, facing a rapt audience seated between a Gilbert Stuart and busts from Jefferson’s breakfast room, she describes the Athenaeum as a “perfect space.” It does have many endearing old charms.

The building holds an art collection of unimaginable value, and galleries feature new exhibits, but it’s not really a museum. The author, who admits to being a “library addict,” reminds us that the Athenæum was and is, firstly, a library. In this, it’s very much a living place. It’s even a welcoming place, and the ranks of its membership are permeable.

Wolfe points out the sort of lectures and reading groups increasing seen in public libraries is similar to what the Athenæum has been doing all along. It’s true, but the Athenæum retains a refined and idiosyncratic character that keeps it distinct. Photography is forbidden past the threshold, but one may enter with a well-behaved dog. In the reading room, the air is disturbed only by the perfume of fresh floral arrangements–the pitterpat of laptop use is not allowed.

Shaw’s “Grecian wife” is so fetching, one might overlook that serious research takes place here. The Athenæum has important resources for inquiry into local, American, and English history. As Wolff mentions, most of the interior is reserved for paid members and researchers with proper credentials. While the annual membership fee is more than a token sum, it’s not exorbitant. Easily, one could spend as much on just a few hours of diversion (dinner and a show, a sporting event) rather than a year’s access to one of the city’s most pleasant and fascinating places.

Katherine Wolff, who received her doctorate in American literature and history from Boston University, began formal analysis of Boston Athenæum history while she was still a student. When asked what she would work on next, she laughed and said “maybe a children’s book” before hinting that she had ideas for more grown-up books as well.

Culture Club: the Curious History of the Boston Athenæum is engagingly and written and full of intelligent analysis. If your personal library has well-worn texts by Thomas H. O’Connor, this book deserves a place alongside them. It could be an appropriate text for courses in Boston history, post-colonial identity, and various topics in American Studies.

Editor’s Note: The Boston Athenæum offers heavily discounted memberships to those under 41 and does open up its doors to the public for art exhibitions and some of its lectures. Those with more interest might be interested in this 1851 history or this 1907 one (both now in the public domain and thus downloadable) as well as this video on the Brahmin accent, featuring two old blue bloods in, I’m pretty sure, the Athenæum.

Boston’s Lecture Scene: Not John Stoddard Anymore

If BSO tickets or the MFA’s new prices are draining your entertainment budget, Boston’s gamut of free lectures, often followed by receptions with free food and even a little free booze, offer engaging and educational relief. The MFA’s Shapiro Celebrity Lecture Series may fetch $30+ for a ticket, but Boston’s universities rarely charge even a nominal sum. Because of their prestige and wealth, institutions like Harvard and MIT attract distinguished speakers on the national and international lecture circuits and play long term host with innumerable writer, artist, faculty, fellow, or scholar in-residence programs, where public lectures are de rigueur.

The Fluxus Manifesto

The Fluxus Manifesto

Tuesday, Alsion Knowles, one of the more indelible names associated with the Fluxus movement, gave a talk at Radcliffe (see here for more Radcliffe events, she speaks again on Nov. 12th at 6:00 p.m. at Harvard’s Carpenter Center). Fluxus begin in New York in the sixties and was immensely influential on performance and mixed media art. It absorbed a lot of John Cage’s ideas about indeterminacy in performance and was really an exciting and iconoclastic thing in the sixties that cemented the careers and styles of many of the young artists associated with it. Although Knowles had some cool slides to show, Fluxus didn’t seem all too radical Tuesday afternoon in the posh setting Radcliffe Gymnasium provides. Maybe I’m just not that hip, but I’ve found reading about Fluxus more exciting than I found it Tuesday, so here’s something to look at if you’re so inclined.

Julia Robinson, “The Sculpture of Indeterminacy: Alison Knowles’s Beans and Variations,” Art Journal (winter 2004): 97-115 (11.5 MB PDF)

Tuesday night the Coolidge showed Victor Fleming’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1941) as part of their Science on Screen series. Another great freebie for Coolidge members. MIT Museum director John Durant gave a great pre-movie talk about how Victorian medicine, and later Freud, informed the novella and the film adaptations. A perspective drawn from the history of science offers a great context for Jekyll and Hyde–the black market dealings in human cadavers that Robert Louis Stevenson grew up among in Edinburgh, Darwin’s idea of the descent of man from beast, and early psychological theories of the two-sided brain manifesting itself with dual personalities. And later, substantially informing this film, Freud’s theory of the Id. Spencer Tracy’s Hyde chief malignity is his (implied) sexual violence towards Ingrid Bergman, his ‘evil’ unchecked masochistic libido. American Beauty screens December 7th, with a talk by Daniel Gilbert on happiness.

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Here are a few upcoming events of note.

John Picker, author of Victorian Soundscapes and an essay on Yankee Doodle and The Star-Spangled Banner in Harvard University Press’ recent tome A New Literary History of America, is delivering something called Transatlantic Acousmatics at MIT. I have no idea, but that only makes it more appealing.
Oct. 22, 5:00-7:00 p.m., MIT Bldg. 4-231

The Norton Lectures by Orhan Pamuk continue through November 3rd.
4:00 p.m., Harvard’s Sanders Theater
Oct. 26, Museum and Novels
Nov. 3, The Center

Shaun Donovan, United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, will speak at the Harvard Graduate School of Design.
Oct. 26, 6:00-7:00 p.m., Piper Auditorium

Harvard’s Carpenter Center current exhibition ACT UP New York: Activism, Art, and the AIDS Crisis, 1987–1993 has a bunch of associated events.

The new exhibition at MIT’s List Visual Arts Center Tobias Putrih & MOS: Without Out opens Oct. 23 and is also accompanied by a number of free talks.

Harvard’s Tanner Lectures by Jonathan Lear:
Lecture 1: Becoming Human Is Not That Easy, Nov. 4, 4:30 p.m., Lowell Lecture Hall
Lecture 2: Ironic Soul, Nov. 5, 4:30 p.m., Lowell Lecture Hall

MIT Communications Forum: Culture Beat and New Media: Arts Journalism in the Internet Era
Nov. 12, 5:00-7:00 p.m., MIT Bldg. 66-110
Boston’s own Bill Marx of Arts Fuse joins Doug McLennan of Arts Journal to discuss the changing face of arts journalism.

For more, keep an eye on The Harvard University Gazette calendar and Suffolk University’s Ford Hall Forum. And check the links in the appendix section of this site.

It all reminds one of the Golden Age of the public lecture:
lecture-poster

Stanley Donen at the HFA

I caught the Stanley Donen appearance at the HFA‘s screening of Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954) on Friday night. The film represents MGM’s first foray into CinemaScope, which produced a picture about twice as wide as the then current standard Academy format. Donen used every inch of it by the way, seven brides + seven brothers = 14 primary cast members. The print was a little spotty in parts, but it was spectacularly, well, wide. I’ve never seen a movie at HFA where they had to pull the curtains back all the way.

They screened two clips of dance sequences Donen directed early in his career from Anchors Aweigh (1945) and Cover Girl (1944) to open the evening. These showcased Donen’s work with special effects, back when special effects were an afterthought–something credited to like one guy, where today lists of special and visual effects technicians can be longer than that of traditional crew members. I’ve uploaded an abridged version of the Anchors Aweigh clip because, although Donen did not direct the entire film, it’s a testament to his strides in expanding the genre of the musical; creating splendid visual spectacles with song and dance, and how much those transcendent spectacles factor into the popular American imagination. He directed this sequence when he was only 21. The guy is practically Keats.

Donen at 85, though a little hard of hearing, is as sharp and witty as one could imagine. He speaks very pragmatically and humbly about his work, and this made him seem a little prickly at times relative to his interviewer, HFA director Haden Guest, and the audience. One woman stood up to say that when she saw Seven Brides at the age of eleven, she promised herself that (based on the plot of the film) she would marry a man from a large farming family, which she did. Donen wasn’t exactly moved by this example of his pictures touching someone so deeply (and permanently). He could also be a little snappy when given heady critical prompts by either an audience member or Guest, e.g. comment on the amalgam of dance and acrobatics. I think we forget that when he started making movies, we weren’t talking about them as we do now, and I don’t know if he was ever really part of that dialogue, not to say he didn’t create great art and great popular art. The best person to ask some things about a film isn’t always the filmmaker.

cydDonen was at his best when talking about how films got made or how they almost didn’t. Someone asked how he got Cyd Charisse’s parachute-like costume to fly like it did during the Singing in the Rain ballet interlude. They actually installed two airplane engines in the sound stage, with the props opposing each other, creating some kind of wind vortex. Donen grew up with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers vehicles, and got to Hollywood only just in time to do musicals, not far before they lost their capacity to maintain a suspension of disbelief among the American audience.  He said, paradoxically, the most frightening part of a musical picture is when someone starts singing; when the reality of speech ends and the stylized surreal ideal of the musical number begins. You got a sense that he worked hard to make his musicals believable and authentic, particuarly so in their transitions from lines to lyrics. He explained, ‘if it’s not exactly right, the audience will laugh.’ I think most of us are still laughing with him.

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Opera, from the Future?

Elly Jessop, a master’s student in Tod Machover’s MIT Media Lab research group, gave a talk Wednesday night at the Cambridge Center for Adult Education on the upcoming production Death and the Powers, billed the opera of the future. Set to premier in Monaco September 2010, and tour internationally with a stop at the A.R.T., the opera incorporates cutting edge technology into a sci-fi production that explores how one continues to exist after his consciousness has been uploaded into a computer.

hyperstring_trilogyDeath and the Powers is the brainchild and composition of Media Lab principal investigator and composer Tod Machover, famous for his hyperinstruments–instruments designed to enhance the performances of professional musicians (they’ve been used by the likes of Joshua Bell and Yo-Yo Ma) by applying layers of synthesized music, generated based on information gathered by sensors placed on the instrument, bow and the performer himself, on top of what is already produced acoustically. The research laid the foundation for Guitar Hero, created by former students of Machover. I recommend the Hyperstring Trilogy (Oxingale Records), featuring the BMOP, to anyone interested in new or electronic music.

Also on the production team is A.R.T.’s Diane Paulus (director), poet Robert Pinsky (librettist), Randy Weiner (story), and production designer Alex McDowell, who worked on The Lawnmower Man (1992) and Minority Report (2002).

In the first scene, corporate mogul Simon Powers uploads his consciousness into a home computer named ‘The System’, built by himself and his robotic-armed research assistant/adopted son, in order to to extend his life. Powers, sung by baritone James Maddalena, is off-stage for most of the opera, but continues to sing and perform through sensors attached near his mouth and to his arms and feet. The emotions of his performance, as relayed by the sensors, are interpreted by computer and projected onto two large (and still conceptual) set pieces representing The System. Large bookcases, in which the books light up and appear to move, as well as a massive chandelier that functions both as a lighting element and a stringed instrument, which can be conventionally played or plucked electronically by electromagnets. Shifts in the driving frequencies of the magnets extend and embellish the natural (or manual) range of the instrument, altering timbre and producing additional overtones. Powers, once inside The System, is able to speak through these strings. In one romantic scene, the chandelier descends enclosing around Powers’ wife Evvy. She’s able to pluck his strings, and he can pluck back.

Conceptual rendering of the stage as it comes alive as Simon Powers

Conceptual rendering of the stage as it comes alive as Simon Powers

Sixteen ‘opera bots’ voiced by live performers serve as a kind of Greek chorus, providing the prologue and epilogue. They light up and move around the stage. The one extant prototype is controlled by a joystick, but when tested recently at the Loeb was thought too unexpressive. Machover’s group is currently working on establishing an automatic positioning system, allowing the robots to move about the stage and express emotion with light and movement without puppeteers.

Jessop demonstrated a glove she designed (pictured at the top of this post) with pressure and flex sensors and accelerometers sewn into it, that allowed her to literally pick notes out of her mouth while singing and hold them. Through gestures based on vocal conducting she could add overtones, adjust harmony, and amplify the music she held in her hand. It will be worn by Powers’ adopted son and System designer, who truly believes the machine is the best place for one’s consciousness after biological life ceases.

Plot aside, the production itself sounds like something out of science fiction. It would seem there’s a lot of work to be finished before the opera premieres. So much of this epic production is still entirely conceptual and I wonder if it will be completed in time, though I sincerely hope it makes it to Boston next season. The strength of Death and the Powers, other than the creativity behind it, is that it really isn’t a geek opera. The technology is not there only because it can be. This isn’t electrified set dressing. The opera remains very human because, as the title states, it’s about death, and life as extended by machine. Powers’ wife, daughter, and son (played by live singers on-stage) must try and come to terms with this computer become man, or man become computer. They ask themselves if Simon, as he is manifested in and by The System, is really Simon, and if they want to extend their lives as he has his. It engages with questions we’re asking more and more as computers become more powerful, ubiquitous, and human; and as we become more umbilically attached to them. As Ray Kurzweil continues to prophesize a technological singularity, where the line between man and machine is no longer clear, new questions as to the nature of life and death are emerging before we have even figured the old ones out.

Granted, the idea of uploading oneself is not a new one. We’ve seen it on Star Trek, The X-Files, Max Headroom, and Doctor Who (it’s strange how a plot like this has already become a common and recognizable); but I don’t think the story has ever been told quite like this. Performing machines, disembodied performers, augmented human performances, and a set that gives form to a performance that has been digitized and transmitted do not just tell of a union between a man and a machine, but serve as portents of that union.

Below, Joélle Harvey sings Miranda’s (Powers’ daughter) aria at the September workshop at the Loeb.


Six Norton Lectures by Orhan Pamuk

Orhan Pamuk, Nobel laureate and critically acclaimed novelist, gave the first of a series of six lectures this past Tuesday to a densely packed crowd at Harvard’s Sanders Theater. The Norton lectures were first endowed in 1925 as a yearly lectureship pertaining to poetry, in the broadest sense of the word. Past lectures have been delivered by scholars, poets, novelists, artists, composers, musicologists, architects and conductors. T.S. Eliot, Copland, Robert Frost, Stravinsky, E.E. Cummings, Lionel Trilling, Borges, Harold Bloom, John Cage, Frank Stella, Umberto Eco, and most recently, Daniel Barenboim, have all once stood at the podium the podium that now belongs to Pamuk.

The lectures are usually published by Harvard University Press. In the case of Leonard Bernstein, they have actually been released on video. Pamuk no doubt has some tough acts to follow. On Tuesday he began most humbly with his first lecture, The Naïve and Sentimental Novelist, which, once stripped of its central reference to Schiller’s On Naïve and Sentimental Poetry (and this is easily done), was a most sincere testament to the pleasures of reading novels. Helen Epstein of Arts Fuse wrote an excellent review.

I’ll note that, at least from my seat on Tuesday, he isn’t the easiest speaker to hear clearly. He actually has his lectures translated from Turkish into English. Much of what is spoken is read and rather accented. It was a pleasure nonetheless.

The first drew a large crowd, which will likely dwindle in the coming weeks. I’m sure much of the buzz is due simply to the history and prestige behind the lecture series. I arrived about twenty minutes early and, after waiting in line, was one of the first to take a seat in the balcony.

The Lectures continue through November 3rd at 4:00 p.m. at Harvard’s Sanders Theater, are unticketed, free, and open to the public.

Tuesday, September 29: Mr. Pamuk, Did You Really Live All This?
Tuesday, October 13: Character, Time, Plot
Tuesday, October 20: Pictures and Things
Monday, October 26: Museum and Novels
Tuesday, November 3: The Center