On Monday, Nov. 21, the UNLV’s Black Mountain Institute will celebrate its 10-year anniversary with talks by six international writers. “The Writer in the World” event examines if literature can be political without being partisan or ideological. Here, BMI’s executive director, Joshua Wolf Shenk, adds context to why you should join the conversation.
For the last several days, when I could steal away to write, I ended up pacing instead, staring at my screen, falling into Twitter holes, eating too much chocolate. I could get purchase on this note only when I conceded that its difficulty should be my subject, that I should speak to my struggle to speak, and the relevance of that struggle to our work.
As a citizen, I was dazed and infuriated by our recent election, and as a Jew, I am more than a little afraid. As a writer, I’m drawn into the fray, fascinated by our next president’s mind.
But I need to speak here as the leader of a literary center, as the facilitator of community, and there’s the trouble. Our community includes many points of view. And how do we even draw them out? I do know that many of our supporters also support causes I oppose. But I’ve been a little chicken talking about it, afraid to dig into disagreements — or, more precisely, afraid of what I might say in disagreement. (I often muzzle myself for fear of what will happen when my jaws move.)
A mentor suggested to me that I begin by asking after shared values. Can we agree, for example, on freedom of speech and legal protection for the press, for writers and artists — as for all of us? I hope we can, and I’d like to talk out the implications of that agreement. BMI has long stood for free and open conversation across difference, and, as the first-ever City of Asylum in the United States, we have dedicated ourselves to writers censored or persecuted for their work. What will that commitment look like going forward?
I’m sure freedom of expression is only one of many shared values. But to talk about them, we also have to confront fear. No matter how much common territory we stake out, there will be borders, and across the borders will lie lands of difference, their chimneys smoking.
My psychologist friends tell me that a reluctance to approach these borders is entirely natural — homophily, or love of the same, is a core quality of the human species. Yet, as writers, and as humanists, our work is to resist these limits, to get as close to the fire as we can stand.
And then what do we do in the heat? I’ve been thinking about what literary writing is really good for. First, it can represent subjective experience with precision — by speaking to a human experience, it can speak to all human experience. Second, it can distill complex truths in clear and compelling ways. It can inform, and illuminate, what we need to know, and feel.
My own passion as a writer has to do with a third function — the artful, creative representation of paradox and contradiction. How do we look at views we find loathsome but with compassion? And how do we find points of mutual respect without sacrificing our principles? How do we do all this, as F. Scott Fitzgerald asked, without cracking up? This is the test, he said, of first-rate minds.
At BMI’s The Writer in the World event, we welcome six first-rate minds to UNLV. Olivia Clare, Vu Tran, Tom Bissell, Charles Bock, Cheryl Strayed, and Wole Soyinka will all speak to us, in original pieces, written for the occasion, about their understanding of the writer's role in the world. Coming less than two weeks from election day, it is sure to be hot. I hope you’ll come and help me continue the conversation about what we share and what we stand for. And I hope you'll help stand in the contradiction that the great halls of courage are often lit up by kerosene lamps of great fear.
About the Speakers
Joshua Wolf Shenk is journalist, essayist, editor, teacher, and literary innovator, Shenk brings to BMI experience in nearly every aspect of the world of letters. He is the author of the national bestseller Powers of Two: How Relationships Drive Creativity and the acclaimed Lincoln’s Melancholy.
Wole Soyinka is a Nigerian playwright, poet, and political activist. He was awarded the 1986 Nobel Prize in Literature, the first African to be honored in that category. Soyinka has been involved with BMI since its beginning.
Cheryl Strayed is an American memoirist, novelist, and essayist. The author of four books, her award-winning writing has been published widely in national magazines and anthologies.
Tom Bissell is the author of nine previous books, most recently Apostle, and has been awarded the Rome Prize and a Guggenheim Fellowship. He writes frequently for Harper’s Magazine and The New Yorker. Bissell was BMI’s first visiting fellow.
Vu Tran is a Vietnamese-American writer whose debut novel, Dragonfish, is set in Las Vegas. He received his PhD from UNLV in 2006 and is an assistant professor at University of Chicago.
Charles Bock is an American writer whose debut 2008 novel Beautiful Children (published by Random House) was selected by The New York Times as a Notable Book of the Year for 2008, and won the 2009 Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He was born and raised in Las Vegas.
Olivia Clare is the author of a short story collection, Disasters in the First World, and a novel (forthcoming from Grove Atlantic). She is also the author of a book of poems, The 26-Hour Day (New Issues, 2015). She received her PhD from UNLV in 2016 and is an assistant professor at Sam Houston State University.
