Episode 37

37 - This Mortal Coil - Island Idylls Is Back!

"I'm of an age where I can say pretty much anything and not get arrested for it."

Barry Menikoff.

After five years away, Island Idylls returns with "This Mortal Coil," and for the first time Aaron Menikoff and Barry Menikoff are recording in the same room. Barry is 87. He grew up in Brownsville, Brooklyn, "before everyone wanted to go to Brooklyn." He chose graduate school at Wisconsin over Iowa because his sister said Iowa "sounds like hogs" and Wisconsin "sounds like cheese." He wrote his dissertation on Henry James and turned down offers from Benjamin Mays and from Leslie Fiedler's department in Montana. Instead he built a career at the University of Hawaii, where he became a leading Robert Louis Stevenson scholar, researching summers at the Huntington Library.

Barry talks frankly about chasing fame through books and about writing two memoirs, Stone Mother and Lost Embers: Madison Remembered. He also describes his recent fight with cancer, which took him to Portland for treatment. When his son Aaron, an evangelical pastor, asks a secular Jewish academic what he wants younger people to know about mortality, Barry draws on Shakespeare, Keats, Hemingway and Graham Greene, then lands on the advice Henry James and Stevenson gave: "Be kind."

The episode is a moving father-and-son conversation about legacy, family and the randomness of life. It ends with a great-grandson named Henry on the way.

Do you have questions for us? Email us at islandidylls@gmail.com

🎙️🎙️🎙️

Podcast production by FullCast

Transcript
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So Dad, today the most interesting thing happened.

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For the second time I gave you a very unique gift.

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What was the gift that I gave you this morning?

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A crossword puzzle

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I gave you a crossword puzzle.

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Do you wanna tell anyone who's listening a little bit about that?

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Well, you, you went on AI, I think Claude, I'm not sure

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what, what

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AI you used, and you asked them to create a crossword puzzle for

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somebody who lived in Brooklyn, Madison, Wisconsin, and Hawaii.

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And apparently, after about 40 minutes, according to your calculation,

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it punched out a crossword puzzle which listed details from these

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various sites that I inhabited in my life, and it was astonishing.

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I mean, it was astonishing that it did it, and it was astonishing that

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some of the clues were so bizarre.

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Like, they had egg cream, which was an answer to a clue.

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Now, who but anyone growing up in the '50s in New York City

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would know what an egg cream was?

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An egg cream is a soda, a fountain

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soda,

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that's basically chocolate syrup and seltzer.

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Yeah.

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So you know, you're staying with us for a few weeks, and I

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know you like crossword puzzles.

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And I was tooling around with AI, and I've learned that basically you've

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just gotta sorta take some, some risks and just see what it can do.

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So I said something like, you know, "Create a crossword puzzle like

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the New York Times, and create it for a man your age who's lived in

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Brooklyn, Wisconsin, and Hawaii."

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And the first…

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I thought it would take maybe five minutes, and about 45

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minutes later, it created…

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And I also said it was a…

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I also said you were a literature professor.

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About 45 minutes later, it cranked one out, and then the next day or a

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couple days later, I did it again.

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H- how was it overall?

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Well, the puzzles were not hard.

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They were relatively

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Yeah.

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To me, the astonishing

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thing

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was that they created them at all, and some of the the clues

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and some of the answers which were a little bit surprising.

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There's a AI expert, he's in the business world.

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He's not so much a scientist.

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I think he's a, a business professor.

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Ethan Mollick is his name, and he's written now a couple books on AI.

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And a few years ago, he tested AI by saying something like draw me a picture of

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an otter on an airplane getting on Wi-Fi.

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And a number of years ago, it was a it was a picture.

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I mean, amazing that it could be done.

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But just a general sketch of an otter on an airplane.

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You can imagine what that looks like.

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Well, about every year, he asks AI to does the same exact task.

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A few weeks ago, he asked AI to do the exact same thing, and it

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produced a two-minute animated movie with a, a talking otter.

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And his point was, in just three or four years, the technology

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has improved that dramatically.

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I think you've really not engaged a lot in AI, so you got a little

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taste of it even with something as simple as a, as a crossword puzzle.

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Well, what can I say?

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I mean, I think the fruits of AI

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will

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demonstrate themselves long after I'm gone.

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Let's just not-- Let's just hope it's not

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as

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negative as some people claim it to, expect it to be, and hope

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that most of it is positive.

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Well, that's a very optimistic aspiration.

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Although right now I can see it putting crossword constructors out of business.

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Yeah, I don't know … Yeah, who knows how those folks are using technology

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already to create the puzzles.

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But it's a fascinating, for me, a fascinating way to begin this

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conversation, believe it or not.

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Because the last time we posted a recording of Island Idols

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was September 17th, 2021.

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It has been five

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years- Five years

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… since we engaged in this little endeavor, and the world has … I know every

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year the world changes dramatically, but I think we can agree these past

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five years have just been stunning in the way the world has changed.

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Maybe we'll get to that in a few minutes.

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I want to begin by welcoming those who might not have heard our previous

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conversations because after all, it was five years ago And I wanna begin by just

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introducing ourselves to the audience.

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Okay.

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And

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so let's just start with some personal introductions.

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So,

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Dad, tell me a little bit about yourself.

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Well, that's a simple question, and its answer can be as wide as,

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you know … You know the Stevens poem, Under the Wide and Starry Sky,

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But

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we could also narrow it, make it a little bit of a rivulet instead of a

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All right.

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I grew up in Brooklyn.

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That was a period before everyone wanted to go to Brooklyn.

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When I grew up, everyone wanted to leave

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Brooklyn,

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you see.

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But I went to school in relatively the in- what I call the interior of Brooklyn.

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That is, the Brooklyn that today everybody knows is really the

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Brooklyn that is closer to Manhattan.

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Brooklyn Heights, Park Slope, Crown Heights even.

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I grew up in Brownsville, which is really pushing

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Which is really going into the eastern part of Brooklyn.

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There's East New York and there's Brownsville.

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So you and Mike Tyson are from

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Brownsville?

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Yeah,

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We, we share the same

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Okay.

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Then I went to Brooklyn College, and Brooklyn College was at that time All the

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city colleges were separate institutions before they became the City University

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of New York, so Brooklyn was a separate.

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Hunter College in Manhattan, Queens College in Queens.

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City College, which was the original school up in the, you

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know, up in Upper Manhattan.

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After I

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graduated

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from Brooklyn, I wanted to see a little bit more of the world.

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The world meaning a little bit more of the USA that was not

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bounded by the Hudson River.

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And so I went to graduate school in the University of Wisconsin.

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Why did I go to the University of Wisconsin?

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Well, I had a professor in the English department who I was kind of admiring

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of, and she'd graduated from Wisconsin, and I thought, "Well, why not?"

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I had applied to the University of Iowa, and I was accepted

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at both Iowa and Wisconsin.

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Iowa first.

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And I went to my professor and I said to her, "You know, I was accepted at Iowa."

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And she said, "Iowa's a perfectly good school."

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She didn't tell me, in other words, "Go to Wisconsin."

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So

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I went to my sister, who was always a kind of a, a guiding light for me, and

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I said, "Well, Miriam, I got accepted at Iowa and I accepted at Wisconsin."

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And she said, "Well, Iowa sounds like hogs.

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Wisconsin

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sounds

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like cheese.

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I would go to

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Wisconsin."

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So that made my choice.

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Isn't Iowa known for…

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I- is there a creative writing program in

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Iowa?

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Iowa

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Iowa has a very famous MFA.

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The I- the Iowa Writers'

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Okay.

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And you can list all the important people who went to the Iowa Writers' Work-

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including Flannery O'Connor, who we did a

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on recently.

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Do You know

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Flannery O'Connor was our last, the last

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podcast …we

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did- Yeah … was Flannery O'Connor.

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Of course, Flannery O'Connor from Georgia.

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Well, there you go.

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And she was one of the early students at the at the writing workshop.

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So you went to Wisconsin and you earned a PhD.

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I got my master's and my PhD at Wisconsin.

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of course, they were, were great years, and I wrote a memoir about Wisconsin.

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I called it Lost Embers: Madison Remembered.

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We did a couple episodes, maybe three, on your first memoir,

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your early years in, in Brooklyn.

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Right.

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Stone Mother.

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right.

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So you've completed another one.

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Well, I…

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After I was finishing Stone Mother, I said, "What am I going to do?"

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You know, I was coming to the end, and I suddenly realized, well, I didn't

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stop living when I was 21 years old.

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Of course

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Wisconsin.

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So

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I just continued the story.

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Of course, the story's a little bit different.

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It's a

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It's a different story.

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But I finished that book, and it covered the five years that I spent in Madison.

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And after you, you got your degree in English literature-

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you did it-

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the PhD was in, well, it was a PhD in

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in English And you began looking for a job, and you, you wound

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up at the University of Hawaii.

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Right.

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you almost, you could have come to Atlanta.

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yes.

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Uh- Do you wanna talk about that?

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I had a certain interest or I c- I don't know if I would call it an interest,

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but I was al- always aware the colleges Historically Black colleges, right.

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And I had a very good friend in Madison who was going to law school.

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He was one of three Blacks in the law school at the time.

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And

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so

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my interest in, that was, was understandable- Mm-hmm … because

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of my relationship with Ed, who was

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my friend

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and became a lawyer,

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and

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ultimately actually was, was the first Black on the Board

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of Regents at the University of

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Okay.

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And then became uh, was the president of the Board of

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Okay.

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But anyway, I wrote to, I think it was Spelman College.

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I don't know whether it's Spelman or Morehouse, but I remember

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the president was Benjamin May,

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who was

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one of the- Benjamin Mays, yes ……Benjamin

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May,

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who was, who was well

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known

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in A very-

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in the A

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very prominent African American academic in the Baptist world.

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I didn't know that, but I knew the name.

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And

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he invited you to teach.

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He did.

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I mean, in those days, you see, it was before there's, there was a glut

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of

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English professors and humanities professors.

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And, you know, for somebody in the, in, in the college in Georgia, in, in a,

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in that Morehouse, Spelman world, They thought getting a, getting somebody f- a

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graduate from Wisconsin would be a, would,

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Would be a boon … would be a faculty Yeah.

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Yeah

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But

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to be

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honest, I wasn't

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brave enough

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to make a career choice where I would commit myself to uh, teaching in an HBCU.

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I'm curious, would you have been, hmm, identified at that point

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in time as a, a Jewish academic?

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In other words, would that invitation to you from Benjamin Mays, would

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he have understood himself to be hiring a Jewish scholar?

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I, of course, can't get into his mind, but I wouldn't, or that would not come to my

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Okay.

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What would come to my mind was

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the

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academic institution that

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that I was record I

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had.

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Mm-hmm.

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And whether he knew by my name that I was Jewish or would infer that I couldn't

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say.

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you weren't

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doing…

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You didn't do graduate work in any kind of, you know, Jewish

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field.

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You were studying- They didn't have those fields in

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at the time.

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So what did you, what did you focus on for your graduate work?

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I wrote on Henry James, who was in that period c- you know, the reigning

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novelist in English departments.

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And what I mean by that is he was considered the high

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watermark of American fiction.

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So, just writing a dissertation on Henry James identifies you as being

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perhaps a uh,

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a student scholar who was tending towards some of the more interesting,

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issues

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in the,

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in,

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in, in the field.

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How did you end up at the University of Hawaii?

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I got a, I got a letter from them.

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I r- I had a number of interviews.

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Actually, I wrote about this in Lost Embers.

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I had a number…

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And I, and I described the interview process that we all went through, which

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I think is kind of interesting, but that's a separate, separate subject.

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But I wrote to a number of schools, and I had a number of interviews.

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So I was doing well at that point from the, the,

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shall we say, the, the

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that we were all going through as graduate students trying to get jobs.

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Actually, I had an interview with a professor who was just today

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reviewed in The New York Times.

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One of his books, he's been dead for years, one of his books

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was brought back into print.

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And- Are you Serious sorry?

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Really?

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Yeah, and, and it, it's called Love and Death in the American Novel,

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something like that, it's the title.

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The, the author was Leslie Fiedler, and

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he was

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a famous literary

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critic,

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and sort of controversial but popular.

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That is, he was known beyond the academy,

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which

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impressed me as a New Yorker.

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Whereas when I was in school, the professors tended to be very

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old school and rather staid, and if you were popular, it

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probably- You were doing something Then you

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were doing something wrong.

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But Fiedler,

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who was then teaching at Montana, the University of Montana in Missoula,

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and the convention was in Chicago.

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So

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I hadn't finished my dissertation.

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I hadn't begun my dissertation.

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But

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it was in Chicago, I thought I'd see what the convention was like,

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never having gone to one before.

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So

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I sent a letter,

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and

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then I got back a request for an interview.

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So I figured, why not go to Chicago, it

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it isn't that far,

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and have some interviews.

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Well,

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I go into the suite where Leslie Fiedler is, and there was another man,

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man

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that opened the door, and he looked very, you know, very well-dressed.

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He looked like he could've come off 7th Avenue.

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And I'm thinking to myself, well, I don't know what was in my head,

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Montana, cowboys, Gary Cooper.

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And I

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see this guy who looks like he's, you know, f- you know, he's we- he's

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suited from

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the Garment District.

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And then Leslie Fiedler

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is there.

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And Fiedler sits me down, and unlike most of the other professors that

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interviewed you, he didn't ask me about my dissertation or anything like that.

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He just wanted to talk American literature with me.

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Hmm.

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It was the

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time I had.

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I left that room, I remember thinking to myself, "Well, how bad

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can Montana be if Leslie Fiedler and this guy, you know, is there?"

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What I did not know, and I only learned much later when I

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was writing my Wisconsin book,

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Fiedler

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and this other person, I can't remember his name, it was Jake- Jacob something,

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were both Wisconsin graduates.

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I see.

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They had their PhDs

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from

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Wisconsin.

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Okay.

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So they were inclined to interview people from Wisconsin.

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I only learned that years later.

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Also, Fiedler was Jewish

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Okay

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And I think the other man was as well, but I I wasn't sure about

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that, but I knew Fiedler was

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You didn't end up in Montana, though.

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I got an offer from

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them

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You did?

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I came back, and within two weeks, my phone rings, and it was not Fiedler,

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but it was the chairman of the Montana English department, and they

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offered me an assistant professorship

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So why didn't you go there?

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I did not go there for one reason, not because it was Montana.

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I was actually curious.

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Yeah, I liked horses

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Okay.

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I had not begun my dissertation, and in those days, there was one fear you had.

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It was

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All but

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dissertation.

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All but dissertation.

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Because if you went out without your dissertation, you would wind up spending

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years trying to finish your dissertation while you were teaching full-time,

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and that was considered a no-no.

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Okay, so the timing wasn't right.

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So you- Had the timing

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been right, I probably would've taken the offer, no question

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Okay.

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You, you end up in Hawaii.

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What year did you, did you move to Hawaii?

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And- Hawaii

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was a state for, I think, maybe six, six years or so.

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Five, six

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years.

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Okay.

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this is amazing to me because when we think about Hawaii, my

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generation thinks about Magnum, P.I.

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Before that, Ha- Hawaii Five-0, the old one, black and white one, Right.

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Yeah.

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I think there's a new one now.

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it is beautiful and maybe exotic.

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And what was it like in the '60s to be in America's newest state, presumably

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before it was a real tourist trap?

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What was it like?

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Well,

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I mean, I can say a couple of things.

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I'm not gonna quote William Wordsworth, who said, "It was marvelous to

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be young and alive in the early moments of the French Revolution."

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I was gonna use that line, I think, for something else.

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But anyway, it was great.

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I mean, I wound up buying a red Triumph Spitfire.

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I needed a car.

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I had no money.

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But I'd go to the beach, and I'd be lying on the beach and looking

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up and thinking to myself, "I could be in Madison, Wisconsin in the

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cold and the snow and all of that."

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So you're, you're a young man.

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You're still in your twen- 26 years old You're 26 years old.

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Right.

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You've finished your dissertation.

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You're an assistant professor.

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Right.

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And you're lying on the beach in Hawaii, and is it incredibly crowded?

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Are there skyscrapers?

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Do, do you

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remember what it looked like?

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No,

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Of course there wa- It was, it was just starting.

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I would say Hawaii had only been a state for, I think, 59, so it couldn't

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have been six, seven years at the most.

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And the tourist industry was just beginning

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So

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I was still-- I was there when part of Waikiki was known as the Waikiki Jungle

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because

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they had these old-fashioned houses and cottages before they tore them all down to

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put up hotels, put up a parking lot, you

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know,

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the old

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As

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song goes.

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And there were a lot of young people there coming in from the mainland d-

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Well, and one of those- And, One of those young people was my mother.

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She She got there she

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wa- she was a teenager, I

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think- Yes

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… when she left Sacramento, hopped…

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I

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think she went- Oakland.

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Went with a friend and just started, started, I would say started over.

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She, she started her life in, in Hawaii.

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She took classes.

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A- she was in your

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class?

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I didn't meet her in

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my

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class.

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class.

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didn't…

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Did you meet her at the, at the university?

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No, she wasn't at the

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Oh, okay.

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I just met her in town.

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Okay.

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So you get married, obviously skipping over a lot of details before that.

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You get married, you have a few kids.

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There's a divorce, and you just keep trucking along and teaching for decades.

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That's right.

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That was my…

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Well, I

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traveled and

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I, I, I taught as a visitor in a, a number of different universities.

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I taught at USC.

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I taught at Georgetown University of Colorado.

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I taught in Canada at University of Victoria over the course of my career,

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Mm-hmm.

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and

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abroad at le- study abroad programs in London and Florence.

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So that, that broke up, you know, a steady, you know, year,

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years upon years of just being in

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Hawaii.

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It was

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a nice…

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It was always a nice break.

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And I started going to California very early when I started my research at

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Robert Louis Stevenson, and I started working at the Huntington Library, at

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which point I would go to California

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summer.

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So

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I would be in Hawaii for nine months, and then in Pasadena and

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Los Angeles for three months.

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it was a tolerable situation.

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I wanted to move largely because the pay in Hawaii was so low, and it was

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far, and I thought I- my career would be, you know, would be s- supported

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more if I were at a larger university.

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Mm-hmm.

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But to be honest,

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I was

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not smart about it.

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I didn't do heavy research into how to move,

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and I

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didn't really push myself that hard, and partly because being

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in Hawaii for nine months was not like doing peni- doing service.

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Right.

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I

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mean, it was, I didn't realize how comfortable it was and how, despite

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the money, I wasn't driven to go to pla- some place that might not have

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been

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as

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a couple things.

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I mean, economists will say that our paycheck comes in more than dollars.

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You know, sometimes your paycheck comes in the amenities

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of living in a certain place.

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Well,

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that's what Hawaii always sold.

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"Lucky you live Hawaii," they said.

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But what you're not mentioning is you said, you know, you maybe

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weren't working really hard to move, but you and Mom got divorced.

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I moved with Mom to Oregon, and you raised two kids on your own while

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holding a tenured position, whi- teaching, while doing research.

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So my guess is there really wasn't a lot of bandwidth to figure out

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perhaps how to change the course of your life or your career.

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That's probably true.

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I wouldn't have thought about it that way, but I'm sure that was true.

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I mean, Plus, you know, your brother and sister liked being in Hawaii.

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They, they enjoyed it.

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They swam on a swim team.

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I wasn't really driven to take them out of that and find some whole new life.

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I mean, I was managing with the one I had and you came out to visit

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and stayed with us for a while.

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So, I was never so destitute-

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that I

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had to find another job.

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And then ironically, years later, after my children are adults and living their

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own lives, I'm discovering that I really enjoy living and teaching in Hawaii.

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I liked the students.

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It was a nice mix.

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I remember teaching at Georgetown.

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Everybody in Georgetown was was a good student.

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They

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all

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had gone to private schools or they had gone to good Jesuit high schools.

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I

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you had exceptionally good students, but it was not the same as a mixed class

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in Hawaii, where you could get some students who were just as good as the

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ones at Georgetown, but you have others who were what we would call B students,

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you know.

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And I liked, I liked the mix and I liked I liked that.

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Why did you like the mix?

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I mean, what, what advantage was it to you to have that type

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of diversity in your class?

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Did

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you,

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did you enjoy the challenge of helping the B student perhaps do better

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than he or she thought he could?

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What, what about it-- Were the conversations more interesting?

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What, what about it was intriguing?

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Well, you know, I I came from a large public school in a not

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great area in, in Brooklyn.

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Mm-hmm.

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So I was used-- although my classes and my cla- classmates, they were all very smart

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because at that period they-- that's those schools in New York tracked students.

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So if you were really college material, you wound up in

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class with college material

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Okay.

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It was still a public school, you know?

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And I, and, and I, and coming from my background, I felt, you know, you

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have to give a little bit of of, You have to give some credit and you have

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to give some help to students who didn't have all these privileges.

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And

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I remember when I first got to Hawaii, I was asked to be the judge

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of a It was not a contest exactly.

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Apparently, there was a program where high school students would get a

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scholarship

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to college for a small scholarship.

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they, they had to hand in

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Were These These were locals?

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These were local students.

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But it was, it was a national program.

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Every state got, I think, a number of students who were equivalent to the number

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of congressional delegates for that state.

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Hawaii had

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four delegates,

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two congressmen and two senators.

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Well, so you had to…

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The schools in the state of Hawaii would then, you know, submit

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essays from their English classes.

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I agreed to do this.

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I was a young assistant professor, and you know, you take these assignments on.

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But I started looking into the, into the past results, and I discovered all

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of, of these four scholarships, all four of them would always go to students

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in the two most important private high schools in Hawaii, Punahou and Iolani.

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And I thought to myself, "There are so many public high schools in Hawaii.

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How is it that only Punahou and Iolani gets the winners?"

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And I

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thought probably because Iolani and Punahou You know,

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they knew about these, this

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test.

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They made sure their students knew about it.

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They had

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good

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preparation Maybe they had more applicants

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Maybe they had More

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applicants.

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More applicants.

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So I, I determined, I said, "It's not gonna be four students

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from Punahou and Iolani."

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I wasn't cooking any books or anything.

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I was just trying to get s- some of these teachers in the public

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schools to be aware of this and to have students submit applications.

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I didn't do that…

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I didn't have that job for more than two, three years, but I can tell

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you there was a mix, a mixed return in terms of the schools were more

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dis- more generously distributed.

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Public schools w- were winners as well as Punahou.

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I have a memory.

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I have no idea how old I was.

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I just remember I was in the car with you in Hawaii.

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It was just you and me, and we were talking, and I think you were

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explaining to me what you were working on and what you had written.

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And in that moment, it dawned on me kind of what an academic is and the

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achievement of writing a book, and I don't know why I remember that, but

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I remember the light bulb going off that, "Oh, my, my dad is a writer.

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You know, he's, he, he's written books."

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And it would be years before I understood exactly what it meant to be

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an expert in Robert Louis Stevenson.

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But I just remember the it's a funny

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the things you remember, isn't it?

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strange.

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You couldn't have been very old

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When you look back at

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your,

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your career and you think about your research and writing, you know, you wrote,

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you've written on the, on the short story and mainly on Robert Louis Stevenson.

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But when you think about your teaching career, how do you weigh the value

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of those two halves of your career, being in the classroom, investing in

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students, versus being in the library, being the Huntington in California

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and, and producing books that are gonna, you know, presumably last?

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How do you, how do you weigh the merits, the, the value how you enjoyed

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both halves of, of your career?

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That's a good question.

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It seems like a simple question, and I find it's not as simple to,

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to give you an answer I always had ambitions as a writer because…

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Well, I read a lot as a, as a teenager and you know, I like, I liked authors.

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You know, David Balfour says at one point when he compares himself to Alan Breck

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Stewart, who's just been a great warrior, and Alan Breck Stewart discovers that some

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general whom he admires is, is nearby.

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He's gonna go visit him, and David Balfour says, "Well," he says, "I

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always tended to prefer authors myself."

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And I liked, I liked that.

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I liked authors, and in my head, I always saw authors and books that

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they wrote as the highest form of not achievement, but it's a way to fame.

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Hmm.

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You know?

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It's, it's embarrassing to say this, but, you know, I'm of an

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age where I can say pretty much anything and not get arrested for it.

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Fame was something I thought about.

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Now, it wasn't something I was craving, but maybe coming from Brooklyn,

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coming from where I come from, but coming from New York, that's what New

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Yorkers understood, and to me, that's what's possible through writing books.

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And I, you know, I read popular books, so I knew about popular authors.

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Why didn't I try to become a popular author?

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I didn't think I had the talent for it.

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But you did think you could become an, a, a very successful academic.

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No, I didn't at the beginning, okay?

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I didn't go to ac…

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I didn't actually go to graduate school because I wanted to become an academic.

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I went to graduate school because I couldn't think of anything else

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to do, and I, I, you know, I had worked all those years in the, as

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a waiter, and I had m- some money.

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So I figured I could spend a year, you know, reading

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books and getting a master's.

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That's all I thought of.

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I, I never thought of becoming a professor.

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I didn't even know what

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being becoming a

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actually.

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Do

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do you remember the first thing you wrote that was published?

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Well, I had publication in I think it was The Atlantic when I was a teenager.

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A letter, you know, I pub- I wrote a letter to the editor and

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I was complaining about something.

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Really?

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And do you remember how you felt when you saw that letter in The Atlantic?

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Not really, but I'm sure I was pleased with it.

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I see-- You see your name under a letter.

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I was making a…

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There was an, there was an ad, a jingle, and it was not grammatically correct.

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Not that I was a great grammarian, but I knew it was not grammatically correct.

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So I figured I'd write to them and tell them how to correct it,

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which was, of course, ridiculous.

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But, you know, I was, what, 15, 16 years old, and they printed the letter.

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When I was a, when I was a kid, there was a magazine, a free newspaper

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in Portland called This Week.

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I think it was called This Week Magazine, but it was a newspaper.

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Steve Snapper Jones, a former, I think ABA and NBA star, had a little column,

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and you could ask in and write a question.

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And the Chicago Bulls played the Portland Trail Blazers, and in this

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game, to the best of my knowledge, Michael Jordan was at the free throw

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line, missed the free throw, grabbed the rebound, and scored two points.

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And my question to Steve Jones was: Is it legal according to NBA rules to

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purposefully miss a free throw that you might get the rebound and score?

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I don't remember what the answer was, but I got two free tickets to an- … to

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a

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Blazers preseason game.

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So that was the first time that I had been, quote-unquote, "published."

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But what's a little bit interesting to me about that and about your honest

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assessment of yourself and this desire for fame is a- as a writer, I kind of came of

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age in the early years of the internet.

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And evangelicals are actually fairly well known for being on the cutting edge

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of using technology for the propagation of, you know, Christian principles.

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It goes all the way back to Gutenberg's printing press.

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I- in American history, you, you find it in, in the pamphleteers,

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in radio, and so forth.

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So when the internet came out, you know, I had some, some, some,

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some peers who maybe worked at various internet Christian websites.

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And so occasionally I'd have an article published, and i-i- there is

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sort of a thrill to see, you know, your name attached to this, this

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title, and it might encourage you to write more for this to happen again.

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Oliver Wendell Holmes said, you know, the great 19th century Oliver Wendell

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Holmes, not the justice, his son, said, "Once you get published, it's like, you

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know, you get lead ink in your veins."

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Well, it's interesting because one of my kids, one of your grandkids, went to

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school and worked or interned for a season at the school paper and had two or three

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articles published on their online and presumably in print newspaper, but my

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child w- wasn't impressed and didn't have the, like it, it didn't mean very much

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and stopped working for the newspaper.

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So people are different,

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aren't they?

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Well,

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Obviously very different.

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But people who are

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by

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by it, it's

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is that,

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it's, it's, it's like Holmes' remark, they get lead ink, lead in their

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veins, lead ink in their veins.

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And you- Something

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that

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And

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you

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affected.

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Well,

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I was on the newspaper in high school, but I wasn't doing any much writing for it.

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I remember when I was in college they had the, the theater department.

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They put on a play, and I was asked, you know, I somehow was asked

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to review it for the newspaper.

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I don't know how that came about, but I gave it a, a really a harsh review.

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I was really…

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And I, I, I found out that the, all the, all the actors on that play

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wanted to know who I was and what they were gonna do to me if they found me.

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So I had a little bit of that.

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But when I was graduating, I thought, "Well, I could go up to the

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Catskill Mountains where I was…

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You know, I could rent a, a cabin up there.

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I

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could work,

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and I have a lot of time to write."

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But in my mind, what would I write about, you see?

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I, I had a couple of friends in, in college who were writers, poets, and

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they seemed to have a lot of imagination.

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And all I could think of was I would write about a, a book about my life

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growing up, and then what would I do?

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I'd have to make something up, and I wouldn't know how to do that.

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So

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I

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say

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it was a, a, a lack of courage or maybe not driven enough to be

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able to do something like that.

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And then I could have had a whole different life.

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I could have been a full-time writer.

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But- But-

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you wound up carving for yourself sort of a niche in Robert Louis

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Stevenson studies, and you had a, a successful academic career.

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Yeah.

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Granted, you're in this, you're, you know, you're thousands of miles from

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the mainland, so you're far away, but,

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But you

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But you learn--

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I learned one thing too, that once you did something that was-- you

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published something that was recognized, it didn't matter where you were

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Okay.

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so do, what year did you retire from teaching?

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2010.

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2010.

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So, here we are in 2026, and a number of years ago, obviously, we decided to sit

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down and record a, a podcast together.

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We called it Island Idols Books and Life.

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Why don't you share your memory of the genesis of this project, and

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I'll see if it tracks with my memory

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Well,

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my memory is that this was something you were-- oh, I actually, I

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can get a little more specific.

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I remember we were riding in the car and you said to me, "You know, Dad I

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need a reading list of books," you know, that I hadn't read, you hadn't read.

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" why don't you c- up with a reading list?"

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So I started

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reeling

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off a few titles And I don't know how the podcast came to be, but that's was, how

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we began, we began with Books and Life.

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It was gonna be a podcast about books.

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First of all, these were books that were classics, but they were no longer in,

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you know, in the mainstream, you know?

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And so we were gonna do a revival of a, a, a podcast that dealt with these

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books as if a student were taking a literature class in, say, 19th or 20th

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century American or British literature.

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Interestingly, I discovered only recently that the London Review of

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Books has a podcast introdu- introduced a podcast that was doing precisely

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that thing only a couple of years ago.

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Fame- well-known scholars in UK, you know, going over classic texts.

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Where

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the life

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comes in, I think is wanted to make it more than just a seminar in books.

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Talk about some observations you and I might have or about just living.

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I mean, you were already a pastor, seasoned in dealing with

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people much more than I was.

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I had my own experience teaching and living,

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and so Life

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and Books came about.

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Island Idols, give it a little twist.

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I was in Hawaii, so we talk about…

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And idols, something…

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The English pronounce it idols, the Americans pronounce it idols.

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You know, pleasant experiences, you know, pleasurable remembrances of experiences.

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There was a book published in the 19th century called

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South

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Idols by Charles Warren Stoddard, whom Stevenson had met.

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And so Island Idols seemed

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intriguing

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and we know people are gonna confuse idols with I-D-O-L-S.

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Mm-hmm.

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But

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that's how the name come about.

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Yeah, I remember asking you for a list of books to read, and maybe the first

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book that I, I, I started reading was Portrait of a Lady by Henry James.

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And I called you and was making conversation about the book, and of

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course, you hadn't read it for years, but you started sort of riffing on, like,

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the first sentence of the first chapter.

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And I remember thinking to myself, "I mean, this is pretty surprising to me.

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I mean, I know you taught English your whole life, but nonetheless, I mean, you

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haven't looked at the book for years."

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And you were so ready to talk about it, and I thought, "This is gold.

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Why not-" Why not record this?

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And this was about 2018, and you know, podcasts were already a thing,

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but technology had increased to the point where it seemed doable.

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You had a classmate who had a partner who produced podcasts, and so you put us in

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touch with-

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Yeah, she was a mine

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yeah, so Harry Duran of Full Cast, w- he was able, is able to produce them.

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And but the, the other thing that I think made it so interesting, and I

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don't know who's gonna listen this round, Dad, but ear- early on is we

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had some former colleagues of, of yours listening, family listening.

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Of course, I'm an evangelical pastor, and you're not.

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You know, you're a-

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a- I'm not … a

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Jewish secular academic and, and father and son.

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So it struck me as like how many podcasts have this dynamic?

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And I don't think any of us really expected a large audience but I

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knew it would be interesting, and if only to give you and I an excuse

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to have a lengthy conversation.

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You might think, "Well, what's up with our relationship that we need

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to have podcasting equipment to have such a lengthy conversation?"

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That's not exactly it, but the fact that, you know, you were in Hawaii, I was in

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Atlanta, it's just so hard to communicate with that kind of distance, and this

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kind of podcast was such a great excuse to build in a kind of intentionality.

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Well, I, I give you credit for that.

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And I have to say, although I was initially…

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I was not necessarily that keen on it, I came to enjoy it, and I enjoyed

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the, the time that we had together when we were recording because, you

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know, we could see each other on the screens and it was a great opportunity.

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And I enjoyed it.

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I got more pleasure out of it, let's say, than I thought I would have.

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Well,

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that's a nice…

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That, that's a nice thing.

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I mean, life is short, and it's good to have

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some things that you- It is … …that,

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that you, that you can enjoy, and, and, and I certainly enjoyed it a great deal.

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And yet we stopped So why don't we just talk a little bit about that?

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'Cause it's not just that we got busy.

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In fact, it's not that we got busy.

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You really went through a difficult time, I got ill.

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I mean- I just want you to share what you would like to share

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about, about what you went through.

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I got ill.

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I got cancer, and I was living in Hawaii, obviously, and I knew I could

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not get the treatment or manage it alone.

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So your brother and sister were living in Portland, and I decided that it

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would be best for me to go to Portland, get treatment there, which had a very,

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you know, advanced cancer center, OH- in OHA- Oregon Health Sciences

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University, and I could stay with

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your sister, and your other brother would be close by.

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And that motivated that move.

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So I went there, and I was there for a substantial length of time,

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and I give credit, credit, great credit to your brother and sister

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and to you, who made a number of trips out when you could to help out.

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Fortunately you know, the treatment appeared to be successful, though

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when you have cancer, as my nephew, who is a retired doctor,

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says, you're always on the hook.

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You know, you constantly have to be, you know, retested and retested, but

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that's the, that's the name of the game.

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But so far, I've been able to manage pretty well.

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I mean, I'm walking ste- regularly.

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I actually have a trainer in Hawaii, which I never imagined doing, and

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I was able to make a trip out here.

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I've made trips to the Northwest.

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So from that perspective, I would say, I don't like to talk about it specifically.

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You know, after all, everybody's health is very personal.

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You know, is the, if for…

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It's, it's not for no reason that's incorrect, but you know,

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it's not for nothing that doctors always say, "This is confidential.

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My patient's history is confidential."

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Now, there are a lot of people I know, but not that I know personally, but

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who, who take pride or pleasure in talking about their health situation.

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Celebrities sometimes get illnesses and then they talk about it.

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They think that they're gonna help people maybe by informing them and

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making them less self-conscious.

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I remember When Tatiana Schlossberg, Carolyn Kennedy's daughter, had a

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terrible illness and she wrote an article about it in The New Yorker.

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It was really, it was absolutely heartbreaking, you know,

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because the disease was fatal.

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She had just given birth to a daughter, and that's when they discovered the

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illness it was basically they gave her enormous treatment, but ultimately

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it was not gonna be successful.

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And that affected me actually because I had an enduring

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affection for the Kennedys.

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You know, not for the Secretary of Health and, you know, his ill health.

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Not the Secretary of Ill Health, but his father, Bobby Kennedy, who was

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the most charismatic politician of my lifetime, and of course John F.

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Kennedy.

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It's impossible to describe to people, young people, what Kennedy's

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election meant or what it felt like.

Speaker:

That truly was a case that mirrored Word- Wordsworth's description.

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I mean, he was incredibly handsome.

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He's the, you know, the, the pictures coming in through the press of him, you

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know, sailing the waters off Cape Cod, you know, in a polo shirt and slacks.

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His beautiful wife with her big sunglasses French stripe jerseys

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that she made a fashion of, and of course these two darling children.

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For our generation, he was our prince, I know there are gonna be trolls coming up

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and saying, "Well, don't you know about Kennedy's flaws and his womanizing?"

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Well, we didn't know about that any more than, you know, Franklin Roosevelt's

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citizens knew about his polio.

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We learned much later.

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But still, i

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would side with Alan Jay Lerner and Richard Burton any day.

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That once there was a spot for one brief shining moment

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that was n- known as Camelot.

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So that was, that was our world, none of us who grew up under that, who, who

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were of age then, ever forgot that.

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So, you know, it's a Kennedy bias.

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What can I say?

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But that's a, that's a,

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uh- I'm

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sitting here listening to you, and it is, in the 21st century, in our day and age of

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regardless of what side of the political aisle you sit, to hear someone speak in

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such glowing terms of a politician is just not something we, we hear today.

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But, but back to cancer, and speaking of politicians, you know,

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Ben Sasse, about a year ago, maybe

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more, Right, right …was

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with a very severe late-stage pancreatic cancer.

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And I think because at that time, you know, he did not know if the

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medicine that he was gonna take would be all that effective.

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H- his days, all our days are numbered, but I think he was pretty sure his

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days were really, really numbered.

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And because he had such a prominent place as a Republican senator, university

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president, he hit the podcast world pretty hard, sharing sharing details

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about his cancer, but I think really using it as an opportunity for him

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to speak about the future of America.

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And they were really some poignant interviews.

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I mean, I listened to two or three of them.

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I, I listened to-- I, I saw-- I remember seeing one in particular.

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You're absolutely right.

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They were very poignant.

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And I, I don't mean to

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suggest

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in any way that people shouldn't share these experiences, but I

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say it's a personal thing, No two people have to have the same view

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about how they approach or view

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their,

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their lives and what they're willing to talk about and what

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they're not willing to talk about.

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And, you know, I'm still-- I would still say I'm of a generation,

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you know, that grew up…

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We grew up with Steve McQueen and James Garner and Jean-Paul

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Belmondo in "Breathless."

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We didn't talk very much about ourselves.

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You know, we tended to be much more close-minded, close-mouthed,

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should I say, about personal things.

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I'm not saying that's a good thing,

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you know?

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I

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remember years ago you told me that your family, your parents, your

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grandparents, did not tell you very much about what they experienced in Eastern

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Europe, in the former Soviet Union.

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It was a-- They didn't wanna talk about it.

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They wanted to turn the page and move on.

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And now this is the, you know, this is an opportunity to write

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a misery memoir and you know, everybody talks about everything.

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That's right But I don't think that's necessarily good.

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You know, when I wrote Stone, Stone Mother, of course, you're a

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child, you're a young man, there's not much that you have to h- you

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know, to worry about or hide.

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But I was always-- I was surprised about one comment that would be a recurring

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motif on people that read the book.

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They kept saying, "This is so honest."

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I said, "Well, it's a memoir.

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What do you expect it to be?"

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Well, of course, we know people don't necessarily tell the

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whole truth in their memoirs.

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They-- Most people, you know, they tend to, you know, I don't wanna say airbrush,

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but they tend to make things lighter or better or make themselves appear

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a little better than, is actually the

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case.

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When

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I was in my late 20s, early 30s and beginning in ministry, there

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was a word that kept popping up a lot, and the word was authenticity.

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I kept hearing that word again and again and again, authenticity.

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And it was something to aspire to.

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It, it, it was a sense of, of being genuine, a sense of being transparent,

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a sense of being real, authentic.

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And I don't know if it stuck with me, but when I wrote the book about the

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fruit of the spirit from Galatians chapter 5, a book for pastors on

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shepherding with these biblical virtues in mind, love, joy, peace, patience,

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kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control.

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I, I wrote the book and I, I felt like I had to share personal stories

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about how I, I needed these character traits to be developed in me.

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Otherwise, I mean, what good is the, the book?

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It's just a commentary.

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We've got commentaries on Galatians.

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We don't need another commentary.

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What I perceived would be helpful is someone understanding in real life, in

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an authentic way, how I was affected, how I was struggling, and so forth.

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That's probably a kind of authenticity that your generation would not

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have landed on so naturally

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That's probably right.

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You're probably right about that.

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I mean, I, I c- I was thinking about, Well, I think I wrote

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about this in Lost Embers.

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I had very good friends in, Madison.

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Really, you made close friends because of the…

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You know, going through graduate school, going through a PhD program

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is a little bit like going-- It's not like going through a war

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together, but you're very close.

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You know, you're all having to do, jump through the same hoops, you know,

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pass the same exams So we were all-- we were very close, and yet when I

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thought about it, nobody revealed much about themselves personally.

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I had a friend who was going with a, a, a woman,

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and

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I know he was having a difficult time with that relationship,

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but he never talked about it.

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I had another close friend who was having a relationship in, in Madison,

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but he wouldn't ever reveal who she was.

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I mean, I'm not saying…

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I'm not, I'm not marking that as a positive.

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I'm just saying that's what it was.

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I don't think…

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I think that's partially generational, and I can't help but think that's partially

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a result of the kind of community you experienced in, in your life.

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So for example, I think this is gonna be true of virtually any religious community.

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If you think back to the Methodists, why are they called the Methodists?

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Because they had a method for how to do Christianity, and part of John

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Wesley's method was forming small groups.

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So he would get together with three, four, five of his friends, and they would

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share about their evangelical experience.

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Well, that's happening right in this, in, in the 18th, 17th century, where you,

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where people are exper-- are sharing very personal things about their devotional

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lives, and I think that's probably carried forth in a lot of Christianity.

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I mean, I don't know a lot about, you know, a an Orthodox, what an Orthodox

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Jewish community is like, but I wouldn't be surprised if there isn't a kind

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of transparency in such a community.

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So I wonder if part of that is sort of a life lived outside the scope

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of, yeah, a religious environment and not just a generational thing.

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I can't really answer that.

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I wouldn't know how to answer that, actually.

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It's kind of like a fish answering the question, what is it like to be dry?

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But I think one

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I, I…

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There's

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no question.

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Generational, as a generation, my generation, I don't…

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You know, I, I, I dislike intensely the

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description of the

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silent generation.

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That

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just coming to my mind.

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Why are they called the silent generation?

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I don't really know.

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I don't know whether it was, I somehow associate it with

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Nixon, but I don't know if…

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No, Nixon, Nixon had this…

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There was a silent generation that was supporting Nixon that,

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that you wouldn't know about.

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I…

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Somehow that's in my mind, but I w- I, I wouldn't attest to that.

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But I dislike the term, frankly, because it, it's, it, it, it has

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a pejorative note to it, you know.

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Like these were people who never did anything, who never spoke up never- I see

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talked about the racism and the

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misogyny and, that,

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that existed during these years.

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But there's no question that we were not like generation

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that exploded in the 1960s.

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I don't wanna say…

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I don't mean just hippies, but just everything is suddenly exposed.

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We were very different from that.

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We were closer really to the…

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My generation, what I think was closer temperamentally to the World War II

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generation.

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And this play-

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The Well, I didn't use that term.

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I don't know if Tom Brokaw was the one that created that

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and made it stick or not.

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He may have.

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But you, you saw it play out in the universities.

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The people that came into the university faculty, that came into

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universities who were really of the Vietnam War generation were very

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different than my group, who was…

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And also, the other thing about my generation is we were a small demographic.

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The World War II generation was very large, and the boomer

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generation was very large.

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So in a way, we were, we were squeezed between two larger generations.

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I mean, you had Bush, the elder Bush, Bush One, was a World War II veteran.

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Right

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Bill Clinton followed him.

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Bill Clinton was a boomer.

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Now, if you were following according to ritual or rite, between Bush and Clint-

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instead of Clinton, it should have been my generation as a in this in the way it was

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skipped.

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just weren't enough of you-

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There weren't … enou- …to

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produce a candidate.

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Exact- Well, exactly right, basically.

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And I always felt that.

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I always felt that there's a generational issue here that I was, I was thinking

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about before generations, I think, became such a big subject, that my

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group my generation was squeezed between World War II and the boomers.

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There weren't enough of us, and you saw it in univer- You could see it in

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universities that whereas my generation should have moved into deanships and

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provostships, we were actually…

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The tendency was to move people of the Vietnam era into those

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jobs.

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Hmm.

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I,

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I don't-- This is not anything that I do- You know what?

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A statistical analysis

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of any sort.

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It's

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just observational.

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What I'm about to say may be a little bit ironic for reasons

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I'll explain in a moment.

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But, but one thing that I find interesting about the opportunity

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that we have to talk, and for whomever chooses to listen, is, is your age.

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You're, you're 87 years old.

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87

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And on, on one hand, what's ironic about, about me bringing this up

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is the obvious reality that so many of our elected leaders are, if you

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will, refusing to leave office and staying until the very last minute.

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So there is that elevation of age at the political level,

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and that's a different topic.

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But I think generally speaking, we live in a culture that is oriented towards

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the young if you wanna understand technology, you know, you basically, you

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n- you need to be, you need to be young.

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And there is such a need to both understand and learn

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from people with experience.

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And so I have found it to be helpful, useful to, to sit down with someone

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who is older, who's had a career, who's finished a career, who's gone through

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cancer, and who's willing to talk.

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And so I appreciate the difficulty of opening yourself up for a recording.

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But at the same time, I mean, surely there's utility in helping

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someone who one day might be in the position you are in understand

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a little bit of what that's like.

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And for that reason, I'm just gonna ask you, how has going through whe- what you

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went through, how has it changed you?

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That's-- I would say that's a good question.

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I'm not sure I can come up with a satisfactory…

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Well, there's no satisfactory answer.

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You know, you don't have to have had cancer at my age to be aware of mortality.

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I mean, people start becoming aware of mortality in their 70s at least.

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You know, I mean, people start reading obituaries.

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You know, I read obituaries when I, you know, there's no c- there was no need to.

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Obituaries are very interesting li- little mini biographies, good ones.

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But having, well, I would say recovered But as I said earlier,

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you're always on the hook.

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You're al- you're more conscious of the fact.

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And then the other thing is, you know, your friends are dying.

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I mean, so you're aware of that.

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I mean, the people that you're connected with or you go back with, even if

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you haven't seen, start passing away.

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You know, so you're more aware of the let's say the fragility

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of life, but the how do I say?

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The capriciousness of life, really.

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Life-

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capricious, you mean unfair,

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Not-- No, no, no.

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I mean, just, just,

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uh- Random.

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Random.

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The randomness of life.

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If you're around and you're still functioning, you're appreciative of that.

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If you have family that you're connected with,

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you're

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especially appreciative of that.

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It makes you more conscious of the, the things that are, are of ultimate

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value and of ultimate meaning.

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And what can you pass along to others?

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You know, you can pass along to your children maybe some of the things that

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you believe in and that you value.

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I mean, I always say to-- One of the things that, that unites my three

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siblings, although all, each of whom is in a different profession,

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work together- Your three children or- My children.

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Yeah.

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Is that they all have a very strong work ethic, you know.

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And that's something valuable, and that's something to be in-- admired and

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to be passed along to their children.

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It's, it's try to say you have to live every day as well as you can as,

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with as much courage and as much, you know, openness as possible.

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So in, in your lowest moments, thinking back to those couple of hard years,

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in your lowest moments, what word best describes what you were enduring?

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Would you say resigned, fearful, content, apprehensive?

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No, I, I don't think those words really apply.

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You're not really fearful.

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I'm not really fearful.

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I'm not really apprehensive.

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I don't see any-- I don't-- not even sure resigned works.

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You're just…

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I, I mean, I take pleasure in things that I recall that, you know, lines of poetry.

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I mean, I sometimes think of, of these you know…

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I wasn't a Shakespearean, but I noticed that Shakespeare, some of

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Shakespeare's lines keep coming up in my head here and there.

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You know, I was thinking of the one, you know, where-- which has to do with aging,

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in, in Cymbeline, where the character says, "Fear no more the heat of the

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sun nor the furious winter's rages."

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You know, it's, it's like a, not a dirge exactly, but it's

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saying, you know, "This is life."

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You know, "Golden lads and girls all must, as chimney sweepers, come to dust."

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I mean, this is

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life.

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this is in what play?

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Cymbeline.

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And then Keats, when he's a young man, says,

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"When

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I have fears that I may cease to be before my pen has gleaned my teeming brain."

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You know, imagining that he's not gonna live long enough to

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write all the wonderful odes that he, he can conceive of.

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I mean, people think of death in so many ways.

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I mean, Hemingway is a great, is a great source for understanding that death

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is raw and uncompromising, and that in order to face it or to live with

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that knowledge, you have to develop a certain amount of courage and grace.

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And he writes this in his, this great book, Death in the Afternoon,

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where he talks about the bullfights.

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So facing

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death,

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even at, at my age, is not something you think about.

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You know it's there.

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My sister is ninety-eight years old.

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I mean, every time I talk with her, she's always telling me, you

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know, "Well, I'm on my way out."

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Well, she's been on her way out for a long time.

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So, you know, it's not pleasant.

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It's not great.

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But, you know, you…

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I don't know what-- I don't know really where I'm going with this, but-

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Well, you're making…

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It sounds like you, you feel like you dealt well with your mortality

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when- Well … you were struggling mightily with your health.

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Looking back, what I'm hearing is I, I'm hearing resignation,

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but not necessarily in a negative way, and I guess you would be…

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You haven't used the word stoic yet, but a certain stoicism.

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And not despair.

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No, I don't-- I, I hope I'm not despairing.

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I hope-- Because if you're despairing, you're really…

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Other people-- Your family doesn't wanna be with you, you know?

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I mean, nobody wants to be with a person who's in despair except maybe

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a priest or a pastor, you know?

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So that's not good.

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I mean…

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y- y-

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look, you know you can die at any moment.

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There's n-

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every- That's right

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you know, you don't have to have cancer.

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37 or 87.

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You Y-

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exactly.

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So the only thing you know at 87 is it's more likely to come to you sooner

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than it is to somebody who's 37.

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But that puts you in a broad category of people.

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There are a lot of old people around.

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I guess one of the reasons why I, I wanna ask you about this is because

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you've devoted your life to literature, and I, like you, am no Shakespearean

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scholar, though I think you are so much closer to it than I am.

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But the one little bit of Shakespeare that I remember is from Hamlet when he

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said something like, "What is a man, if the chief good and market of his time be

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but to sleep and feed, a beast, no more?"

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So what is Shakespeare saying?

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There's something about humanity that demands attention to the soul.

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We're not mere machines that get, you know, fed and bed and go on.

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We are beings who think and grapple with life.

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And so as a man of letters as you are, you've not only read about mortality,

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but there's a sense in which you've, you've wrestled with it, not just

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with, with aging, but with cancer.

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And perhaps you've answered the question already, but it's worth

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what do you want people younger than you to know as they

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spend time thinking about mortality?

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Now, I ask that question as a Christian pastor, and you've heard me preach

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more than once, so you know I've got all sorts of thoughts about that.

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But I'm not asking what my thoughts are, I'm asking what your

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thoughts are as you want to be of service to the next generation.

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Whew.

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I know.

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Go big or go home, as they say.

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Yeah.

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Well, I think if you're young- You have to take advantage of that, enjoy

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it, and not think about mortality.

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That's a mistake.

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You don't want young people thinking about their dying.

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You know, the Greeks said, "Whom the gods love dies young," but you

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don't have to get involved in that.

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Enjoy your youth, be of service.

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And you know what?

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You know, I, I can't say any more than Henry James said, "Be kind."

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I mean, here's a man who's written 27, 28, 30 volumes, and what does he say when

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people ask him what they should, what they should learn from life or do in life?

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And he says, "Be kind."

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And that's exactly what Ro- Robert Louis Stevenson said, "Be kind."

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That's what they come up with.

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And, you know, I'm no S- Stevenson or James, but I would say that's a big

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f- that's a big thing you can get-- you can, you can advise young people.

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Because when you're young, that's not the first thing in your mind.

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The first thing in your mind is getting ahead or getting an

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advantage or getting, achieving your

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needs or your

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wants.

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Becoming famous.

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Becoming famous, right.

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And becoming famous was, you know, something that I, as I said earlier,

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that I thought about, you know?

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And even writing academic books, I thought of fame, which is of course ridiculous.

asking again:

But there was a man at Hawa- came to Hawaii who was a, the

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biographer of Henry James.

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And anybody that w- was writing on Henry James would always

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be mentioning this biographer.

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And I thought to myself, "Well, maybe I could do that for Stevenson."

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When somebody mentions Stevenson, the next thing they'll say is Menakop, because they

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have to know what Stevenson was about.

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Well, I, in a way, in a small way, I probably achieved that, but what does

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that really mean in the w- wider world?

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It's not like, you know, John Grisham, you know, or, you know…

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But it's a good, but it's a good, it's a good a transition to the question:

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Did, did cancer and y- again, your struggle, did it, did it cause you to

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think any more about, about legacy?

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You know, I, I, I hear the word all the time, as everybody does,

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when they're always talking to politicians, "What is your legacy?"

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I always find it so ridiculous, you know?

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Golden lads and girls as almost as chimney sweepers come to dust.

asking again:

You know, General de Gaulle when said somebody died who was indispensable,

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he said, "The cemeteries of Europe are filled with indispensable men."

asking again:

I mean, what does legacy mean really?

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I mean, my legacy as far as I'm concerned are my children, my

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grandchildren, and I don't really-- I don't-- It's not really a legacy.

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I mean, they-- you are who you are.

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You're born and you have your life and their other lives,

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your children's lives go on.

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I mean, you're not leaving something.

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People

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with a lot of money give money to institutions and they have their names

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on buildings and that's their legacy.

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But then people use those buildings, nobody knows whose name is on

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the top or where it comes from.

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So it's, it's a little bit of a

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vanity.

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Can I

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ask you why, why when I asked you what your legacy is, did you say,

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and I hope this is a softball, but why did you say your children and

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grandchildren and not, not your books?

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Well, because my books, you know, are in most, in, in probably every major

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university library in the country.

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That's…

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I think about that sometimes and say, "That's not so bad."

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I mean, from Harvard to Cal, if you go into their libraries, my books are there.

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But who really knows them?

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You know, who's gonna know them 20 years or 50 years from now?

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I've been in enough libraries, I've gone through enough shelves, and

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I've seen books that have been on those shelves for 50 years, 70 years.

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Even writers who are popular, what is their legacy?

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I mean, 10 years later, nobody even knows their name.

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But if you write a book like John Milton or Henry James maybe,

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or Stevenson, that stays on.

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But there's so few of those, you know?

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Uh-

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said, you, you, you're actually keen on Ecclesiastes.

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What, what book is, is h- finds its title from a

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The Sun Also Rises

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said, "All has arises."

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Well,

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in that same book we read, "Of the making of books, there is no end."

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No, I'm, I'm-- don't get me wrong.

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I mean, I don't, I don't-- I'm proud of the books that I've written.

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I think sometimes I've looked back on some of them, and I'm

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actually amazed when I look at it.

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I said, "Who wrote that?"

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I mean, that's how far you get from it.

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I've read, you know…

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I even read recently an article I wrote on Jack London.

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I'm no London scholar, but it was for some textbook that they were gonna use

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for teaching London in the schools, and I contributed an essay on Martin Eden.

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I happened to see a new, a, a new television version of

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Martin Eden, so I just…

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I looked at my article after that.

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I thought to myself, "This is not very-- this is not too bad," you know?

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It's, it's readable.

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Now, that's one thing, that's one test you ha- you can always-- you can

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ask of a, of an author Can the book

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still

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be read by people five years later- Mm-hmm … 10 years later?

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And you'd be amazed how many can't.

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So to be able to be read years down the line is no small

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feat.

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So

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made,

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you've made a good case for the value o- of books, no doubt about it.

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But nonetheless, when pressed, you said your kids, your grandkids.

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Why?

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I suppose because on some level, I wonder whether I should have been a writer

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of popul- of, for a larger audience.

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That's what

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I tried to do when I started my autobiography very late.

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I thought I'd be writing a book not for the few, as Milton called them-

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Mm-hmm … but for a greater audience.

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Not a popular book.

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I wasn't looking to be popular.

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I was looking to be…

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do something that would reach a wider audience.

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I wanted to see if I could do that, having written

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academic What I realized, and I, I wish I had known, my academic criticism

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was more readable than most academic

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When I started writing Stone Mother, I realized I could write because

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when I was getting into it, I realized I was writing very well,

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and I had to teach myself things.

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I had to unlearn some things about writing for an academic audience

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and writing for a larger audience.

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One of the things I realized was I didn't have to explain everything.

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For academics, academics are inclined to explain everything, and if they know

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something, then you can-- they, they're gonna be sure you have to know it.

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When you're writing for a larger audience, you realize you don't

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have to explain everything.

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I, I, remember

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in Stone Mother, I had a chapter on the streetcar, the trolley, and

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I thought to myself at some point, "Well, I have to explain what this

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trolley was," because, you know-

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That's right.

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I remember That great

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… nobody ever sees a trolley.

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And I said to myself, "I'm not writing a, a book about trolleys.

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I'm writing a story about a trolley that I used to take to school."

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I don't have to explain it.

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If they wanna know about trolleys, they can go to the library and

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find a book about trolleys.

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So that was something I actually had to learn, how to leave

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stuff out that as an academic…

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Well, I was-- Even as an academic, I was pretty good at it, but how to leave

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stuff out and write a narrative because all writing at its best is narrative.

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You have to keep the reader interested in reading, and that's

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the problem about academic writing.

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The academics don't know, mostly don't know how to do that.

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They don't know how to keep the reader reading.

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What they think they should do is let the reader know how smart they are.

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And so-

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They're trying to prove themselves, prove that this is worthwhile reading.

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You're gonna g- you're gonna gain something

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That's right …in,

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the And they should-- They, they, they, they would do well

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to learn Stevenson's great quote.

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the,

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great art is the ability to omit

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Yeah, leave a lot on the cutting room floor

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That's right.

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Well, that, that's a little side va- side avenue, the-- I suppose, but, I don't know

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where, where, where are we picking up?

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Well,

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what I'm-- I mean, again, you, you, you've made a great, a, a great case for both

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your books really not being an adequate legacy and yet not being insignificant.

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But if I could be so bold as to say the reason why you mentioned your kids

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and your grandkids, and the reason why I've observed in these past, you know,

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two decades especially, you laboring to make an investment in your family

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is because your books don't love you.

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Your books don't think about you.

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Your books don't hug you.

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Your books don't remember you.

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Intellectual history is valuable, but it is not even of the same kind of

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value as a, as a son or a daughter or a granddaughter or grandson who looks at you

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with affection and tenderness and care.

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You know who said something similar to what you just said?

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A great English writer, Graham Greene, who was being interviewed and, you know,

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the interviewer was, you know, trying to compliment him on how many books

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he wrote and how widely read he was.

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And he said, "You know, books are not people."

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That was Graham Greene, whom, you know, I, I was a great fan

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of

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Where we differ, and we might talk a, a little about this more before

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this season is over, is I, I think that there is something salutary

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about thinking regularly about death.

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Uh, and maybe, you know, you would say I'm playing to type, but at the

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end of the day both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament are just filled

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page after page with reflections on the brevity of life that they're not,

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they're not depressing, and that's, I think, what makes it so compelling.

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So there's one psalm written by Moses.

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When we think of the Psalms, we think of David mainly as the psalm writer.

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But Moses, we have one psalm of Moses.

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It's Psalm 90, and he says…

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And it's a prayer, and he says: Lord, you have been our dwelling

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place in all generations.

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Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever you had formed the

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earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God.

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You return man to dust and say, "Return, O children of man."

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For a thousand years in your sight are but as yesterday when it is

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past, or as a watch in the night.

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You sweep them away as with a flood; they are like a dream, like grass

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that is renewed in the morning: in the morning it flourishes and is renewed;

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in the evening it fades and withers.

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For we are brought to an end by your anger; by your wrath we are dismayed.

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You have set our iniquities before you, our secret sins

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in the light of your presence.

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For all our days pass away under your wrath; we bring our

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years to an end like a sigh.

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The years of our life are seventy, or even by reason of strength eighty.

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Well, you've surpassed that, Dad, so nicely done.

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Yet their span is but toil and trouble; they are soon gone, and we fly away.

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Who considers the power of your anger, and your wrath according to the fear of you?

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So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom.

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So Moses considered an awareness of the brevity of life as the path to wisdom

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it's a lovely thought

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Well It is a, it, it is a lovely thought.

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And I,

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I,

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I don't say, you know…

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I think sometimes I think of death more than I-- is good for me.

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Maybe

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more than you care to admit.

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Right.

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Right.

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you.

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know, so much has happened since we last sat down for this recording.

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You

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know, we got through COVID, and we, we had some recordings during COVID

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actually, which were interesting.

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But we got through COVID, and that was such a, a difficult time.

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You and I took a trip to Maine together, your first trip after

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that- Right.

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That was a great

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terrible season …that

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was a great trip.

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My mother died.

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The same time you were battling cancer, she was battling cancer,

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and I wrote her obituary.

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there is something very interesting about writing somebody's obituary.

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And people who've never done it before don't realize you're,

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you're sort of limited with the number of words, you know?

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The Wall Street Journal wasn't going to write an article on Mom.

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So I had a limited number of words, and to try and summarize

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someone's life in three paragraphs,

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I mean, what,

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what a challenging thing.

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And to try to honor someone and communicate your affection for

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her and, and what, what she meant.

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I, I can…

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I, I actually don't read obituaries apparently the way

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you do, but I have written one.

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So that's happened, and, and that, that's a huge thing.

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And you've recovered from cancer, and that's a huge thing as well.

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And that means we have a few more takes at Island Idols.

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Well, I'll look forward to it.

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And it's great to be here, Aaron, and it's great to see you and to see your

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family, my grandchildren, and to actually know that my granddaughter, you know-

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You can say it

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… is

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going to have a child.

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Rachel is expecting, Rachel and Drew are expecting Henry in March of

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Who is not named for Henry James, I know, but nevertheless, I think it's

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nice.

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And yet,

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as you would say, it brings you a little pleasure-

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Exactly … to think that

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shares, shares, shares a name.

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Well, Dad,

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we are in the same room.

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I think this is the first podcast episode we've done we're actually in the same

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room.

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Right.

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1000% better, isn't it?

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Correct …To

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do it Correct.

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I

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think we- So- I, I somehow remember we were doing one in this room

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with- with microphones Yeah

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but it, it's good to do it.

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So, well let's end with this.

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The title of this episode is from Shakespeare, This Mortal Coil This Mortal

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This mortal coil.

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It's it, it comes from Shakespeare, from Hamlet's most famous, you know,

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monologue, "To be or not to be."

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And he says, you know, where he's thinking about whether he should commit

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suicide, you know, or, or whether that would be even worse because he'd

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have these terrible dreams after.

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He doesn't know where he's going, the undiscovered country.

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And the phrase is to shu- having shuffled off this mortal coil, meaning life.

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Nobody really knows exactly what the coil means.

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You know, it could mean a large mess, a large confusion of things,

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but it's generally taken to mean to give up, you know, to die.

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Mm-hmm.

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And

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In the odd illusion, Aldous Huxley, a great, great English writer, wrote a-- you

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know, published a collection of stories, and the title he gave it was Mortal Coils.

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It was, you know Huxley was a here's a bit of trivia.

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This is an ex English professor can never be, you know, it's like an occupational

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hazard.

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Hey,

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you're the star of the show.

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it.

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He died on November 23rd, 1963, which of course was the day

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of Kennedy's assassination.

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And who else died that same day?

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So Hux- C.S.

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Lewis.

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Yeah, C.S.

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Lewis.

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So Huxley's obituary, which was on the front page of The New York

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Times, did not get nearly the attention- Mm … that it would have

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had-

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Mm …President

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Kennedy been around.

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This Mortal Coil.

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It seemed right as we begin the podcast afresh to remind our listeners of, of your

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story and to tell them where we've been, and to bring to the forefront even some

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of the differences in our approach toward those very difficult, big life questions.

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Well, more of that in the future.

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Good to talk to you, Dad.

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Ciao.

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