Anna, how are you? >> I'm doing well. >> We're here on the campus of Harvard University. >> We are. >> In some parts of Harvard Yard. And we came here because we're very excited about a piece of experimental prose written by John Keene for his book Counternarratives. I wonder if you would take just a second and describe what Keene is trying to do with this experimental pros in the that book generally? >> The whole book? >> Yeah, what's happening? >> It's so good. So it's, basically, the premise is, Keene's interest in the other side of stories that we know. >> Right. >> So for instance, one of- >> Which is why he says the word, counternarrative. >> Counternarratives, yeah. >> Right. >> So to me one of the most successful stories Netflix called Rivers. >> Yeah. >> And it's a story that tells the story or a story that tells the sort of after where, it's a picks up where Huck Finn lives off. >> Right, right. >> It tells the story from Jim's perspective. >> Right. >> And he, Keene's version has Jim meets Huck and Tom across opposing sides of the Civil War in the story. >> Right, right. >> So that's just one example. >> Sort of the rest of the story. >> Yeah. >> As we might be imagined by an experimental African American poet, critic, theorist, novelist, John Keene. >> Yeah. >> And then we come to a piece in the book, it's a very short piece called Persons and Places. >> Yes. >> That's the one we're going to talk about now. And that's sort of the I mean, we were we're looking for a way to get John Keene into. >> [LAUGH] >> [LAUGH] Because we're just so admire the work, but I have to say that this poem is perfect. Because there I go poem. >> Yeah. >> This prose poem, this short story. So what happens here is, he takes two journal entries really, right? >> Yes. >> A journal entry written in October 1890 by W.E.B Du Bois, who was a student here at Harvard. >> Right, in the 1890s. >> In the 1890s. >> He started studying that. >> Right. So then on the other side of the column, we have the journal entry of George Santayana by that point was a professor for many years, a philosopher. >> A graduate student, I think. >> No. >> Yeah, because he says somewhere Du Bois says, did you graduate student in my likely tutor? So they're expecting to work together. And then- >> Yeah, I don't think so. I think he was a professor by that point. You might be right, when Wallace Stevens the book came at the end of the century in 1900, Santayana was a professor, but you might be right. >> Yeah. >> You might be right. In any case, Santayana is lecturing and he's sort of an established figure, right? And Du Bois here has strong homosocial relations and there's an implication that he's interested in voice and he has a companion named Morgan. Santayana though hardly closeted was officially not known as homosexual. >> Right. >> But really was active in the sort of gay 90s is the right word. [LAUGH] >> [LAUGH] >> And really had a kind of circle of young boys who used to hang out with him. And so, Keene is also playing with a possible relationship between Du Bois and Santayana. >> Well, he is but he also isn't, right? Because the whole experimental structural conceit of this particular story is that the two columns are separated. >> That's right, and they are both in Harvard Yard and walking around Harvard Square, but they don't really contact each other, they don't- >> No, it says fleeting glance between them. >> They sort of see each other, they know about each other. >> Right. >> Right, so you have, just to make it really clear, you have columns. >> Yeah. >> One on the left, one on the right. And they don't intersect except accidentally. >> Right. >> Which is what's so great and what's so chapter 9.1 about the whole thing. >> Yeah. >> So yeah. >> I should say also, when you were asking about the entire project that each individual story has an experimental quality that helps the text do what it says. >> Right. >> Which is very idea. >> Yeah. >> That the text should do what they say in this text is really, really great example about it. >> By the way, here we are on location and we're passing by Widener Library, which is the undergraduate library. This is where Du Bois would have gone to study. >> Certainly. >> All right, so what we're going to do is we're going to read this not in its entirety, we're going to do it two ways, right? >> Okay. >> We're going first to, I guess we're going to alternate. I'll read the Du bois, you read the Santayana, just a little bit excerpts so that people watching this video have a sense of it. Then what we're going to do is to read it the way John Keene probably meant for us ideally to read it, which is simultaneously. >> Okay. >> And we won't do that for very long or people watching this video will grab, go to the bathroom, grab the aspirin and never watch us again. >> [LAUGH] >> But that is I think the kind of overlapping quality that he's trying to get at. >> Okay. >> All right. So I'll just read the first paragraph or the first part of the Du Bois and then you can read the first part of the Santayana. >> Sure. >> Congress journal October blank 1890, of what did this chilly afternoon consist. After lunch with Morgan, his friend in Mem Hall, Memorial Hall is not far from where we're walking. Work, meaning homework, and a swift visit to 20 flag probably where he's living renting rooms. I took a roundabout way from the gymnasium for my breather. Past the square, Harvard Square Terminus, dodging the chattering crowds and dust and clattering books that transform Cambridge at times into something of a mini Metropolis. And then he goes on to say, he's feeling out of sorts about his landlord and so forth. All right, you read the Santayana. >> Cool, after lecturing on thought and the color sense during which I pressed the students to investigate how the context of one's perception shapes, mental impressions I took lunch with one of Bryce's students, a robust, politically minded young platanus from New Hampshire. We navigated for an hour around the shoals of idealism and the literal embodiment of the absolute and a lyric moment to which he is rather romantically subscribed. >> I love the contrast between the two. >> [LAUGH] >> Why don't we each say one thing about the contrast of these two characters. >> Well- >> That you can see from this. >> Du Bois is very sort of matter of fact about this day he's dealing with the sort of setting out the things that he did, the actions that he took. >> He's telling us where he is, he's locating us. >> Right. >> It's very particular. >> Yeah, whereas Santayana is more interested in what was being discussed. >> And it's all theory >> Exchange of ideas and theory, yeah. >> He's lecturing on thoughts. That's a small topic. >> Yeah. [LAUGH] >> Thought and the color sense. >> Yeah. >> And then of course, there's a particularity here. >> Right. >> And the particularity is that he is having lunch with one of the male students and, that's a redundancy. There weren't women students, but- >> I was going to say. >> I'm emphasizing the homosociality of the whole thing. >> Right. >> So he's having lunch with a young Platonist. From New Hampshire. It's a platonic relationship. >> Right. >> Yeah and they're talking, and the conversation is very theoretical and academic but they're skirting around, what more they might say. >> Sure. >> I mean I think Keane is trying to convey that, all right, so now what we should do is try to read simultaneous. Can you say what happens when the two accounts take account of the other? And I think I know what the purpose is, but maybe you'll say it and then what's the effect for us as readers? >> Well the idea is that these two people will see an attack in part we're about to read, is they're actually just about to cross each other like this, like literally cross each other. >> Right. >> Go across each other's paths. >> Right. >> And they're both aware of each other. >> Right. >> They're both interested in each other. And they're both feeling I think a little other are a little outside of the typical Harvard. >> Can we stop there, remember what you were going to say and remember that question I was asking you but let's talk about the two of them. So DuBose who is black. >> And it's 1890. >> It's 1890, of course DuBose becomes the voice of his generation. >> Right. >> For- >> Intellectually. >> Intellectually for black radicalism, right? Okay, and Santayana I guess I know more about him than you do but- >> Go ahead. >> Well Santayana Spanish, gay, queer and very much an outsider because of that, and also what they would have called swarthy a dark skinned person who has never white well, he was accepted finally, but didn't feel accepted. >> Well it's true I mean he ended up being pretty famous. >> Of course and so did DuBose, so as he wrote his things, there wasn't the kind of Harvard Yard scuttlebutt about Santayana that would follow him, into readers of his philosophical and aesthetic tract,- >> No but I think if there's any theme we come up with- >> The biography is something that he's a bit of an outsider yeah. >> Yeah, and if there's anything that we can say about our Harvard experience, thus far in our filming experiences, it's that Harvard inspires a bit of impostor syndrome. >> Yes everybody we've talked to here thinks- >> Feels intimidated. >> Mmh, do I really belong here? >> [LAUGH] >> Yeah exactly, and just beyond us, so we're back at the undergraduate library just beyond the sun, the Hill is the Hotan library, where Susan Hau herself and we talked about this in another video Susan Hau herself, going to see the Emily Dickinson manuscripts. The one she wrote famously about the first time she gets to the hook library, she feels like an impostor. >> Yep. >> She doesn't feel like she can get in. >> So if that's a tragedy of this text right that both of these men are feeling this way. >> Right. >> And yet there's all these various layers of separation that's going to prevent them from- >> Right, right. >> Really meeting or. >> Right. >> And that the text becomes this great what if, right? Like what if these two, if instead of crossing each other and not- >> Right. >> Speaking,- >> Right. >> Had actually met and had actually exchanged the ideas and how much richer would we be as a society? >> That's right, that's the great thing about counter narratives book, which is that Keane is saying, for all these things that prevent people from getting together, right? In this case, race and sexuality right, for all those things, we are much poorer intellectually and aesthetically. >> Yeah. >> Yeah, yeah and he does that with a piece about Langston Hughes. >> Yes. >> All right, so now I interrupted us a few minutes ago, so we could talk about the characters. >> Right. >> And the question I was asking you, had to do with the readers experience right of coming to a spot which we're about to read, where they make the two passages intersect they see each other. >> Yes they do they see each other. >> What's the effect? Well the effect is I mean when you see it's like if you read the DuBose first, and then you read the Santayana. >> Yeah. >> What you you have is this like spark of recognition when you see the similarity and phrases, you realize that exactly at the point at which they cross,- >> Right. >> Each other's paths, and he does it textually. >> And, I guess I want to say that writing film does this really well, right, but writing, it's a little harder for writing to do this kind of thing. And I guess we're just saying, the bottom line of this discussion we're having is, that we admire that John Keane known as a novelist, as a prose writer, has found a form, that will create formally aesthetically, the impact of his themes, his subject matter. His subject matter is what if, we hadn't kept people apart through institutionalized racism that infects even the highest levels of intellectual and academic thought, right? >> Right. >> Here we are right in the middle of Harvard yard, and these two texts can't connect, and so the reader, my gosh, I'm getting excited. >> [LAUGH] >> Because the reader, the reader does the work, of connecting something that history didn't connect, and that even Keane didn't connect for us, our job is to hear the connections or read the connections, it's pretty exciting. >> Yeah. >> All right, so now just to emphasize that, we're going to do a simultaneous reading of the moment where they're both on Mount Auburn Street, and they kind of see each other. >> Right. >> Okay, I'll read- >> You should start from where he mentions Santayana, right? >> Okay, I will, except I want you to join in only when I get to a indeed and you get to later. >> Fair enough. >> Okay, all right so, first is a little DuBose setting up a simultaneous reading. >> Yeah. >> And I bet you never thought that you would play the park of George Santayana. >> I never did. >> Okay. >> Or DuBose rather. >> Or DuBose, here we go. I was concentrating on my questions for the coming meeting of the philosophical club, where Santayana the new graduate student, yes, you're right. And my likely tutor, is set to speak on Spinoza, and the ethical sensibility, indeed- >> Later, as I strolled down Mount Auburn Street, quietly composing, concepts racing in my head- >> As I was passing down Mount Auburn Street, I spotted his black clad figure floating by. >> Like the regattas these New Englanders love to hold. >> Ghostly, yet swarthy, An Iberian by birth, though perhaps not in temperament, something dangerous and daring in those black eyes. Our gazes met, glancingly, as he [CROSSTALK] to do whenever we had seen each other, he abruptly turned away striding faster than before he had caught sight of me. I continued on toward the river, where I thought I might walk for a while and observe the currents slowly [CROSSTALK] whatever craft still lingered towards the [CROSSTALK] >> My gaze, pressing intently toward some hidden points. >> I'm telling you, we didn't rehearse that, but the concordance was so beautiful. All right, final words, there's more that one can say when one reads this, but you first, what are your thoughts? >> Well just to cheer again for Keane's entire project, to- >> Counter narratives. >> Yeah to find out that these two thinkers whom I'm sure he's familiar with and admires greatly, to find out that my God, they were on campus at the same time. >> Yeah. >> I wonder if they ever met maybe >> Missed opportunity. >> Missed opportunity right. >> American history is, A series of missed opportunities. >> [LAUGH] I think so. >> For American literary history anyway. >> Yeah, so I just end to use this text, prose poem, short prose piece, whatever you want to call it experimental prose, as an opportunity to consider the missed opportunity. >> Right. >> And as you said, because the texts sort of like kiss each other in passing, we that his readers get to do a wonderful imaginary work of my God, what if? >> Yeah. >> Because if you read the full piece you'll hear them think about each other. >> Right. >> And really considering like there are differences, where we as readers are actually thinking more about their similarities. >> Brilliant beautiful, all right, for my final thought, I want to riff on the idea of counter narratives a little bit. I think that the the idea of counter narratives, and it's political, it's a political idea. When we first encounter it, in the poetry of the United States, contemporary poetry starting, let's say with the New York school who create non-narrative and anti-narrative work, right? >> Right. >> Because they, they just don't trust, it's not a political sharpness in there for Ashbury, or O'Hara, certainly not for Barbara guest. But underlying it is, are the social discriminations and other kinds of discriminations, that prevent poets from feeling fully aligned with American culture, right? >> Right. >> So, when you get to the language poets, language poets are pretty seriously committed, to non narrative, and, but embedded in that as a counter narrative always. So for instance, Linda Jinan in my life, she creates the life of an American girlhood post war, it's very political and she comes of age, but she cannot tell the cold war story of growing up. The 40s, the 50s, and then finally the 60s which exploded and creates the 70s where she and her colleagues become language poets, and they blow up the literary structures, right? They decide that, that narrative is inherently conservative. Right now that's a contentious statement, but narrative straightness was in Stein as well, that narrative straightness, that narrative A to Z-ness, is inherently going to conserve the current order. >> Right. >> And when we encounter John Keene writing a book counter narrative, in which he gets very explicit about the political, social and ethical losses, that are entailed in narrative. He gives, new emphasis to the literary movement, which a lot of people think of as just avant garde and it doesn't mean anything. >> Yeah. >> So he gives us John Keene, K-E-E-N-E, gives us a single word and a great book, that allows us to look at all of the fun weeks at Mokpo and say, there's a lot of politics here, and there's race, there's sexuality, there's gender. There's the whole American experience, which has succeeded in spite of the fact that it's kept people like these two apart. >> Damn. >> Thank you and I think I want to break the fourth law here. >> [LAUGH] >> And I want to say that there are these two gentlemen who have been walking,- >> [LAUGH] >> In front of us, and the crowds of people visiting Harvard with all their dreams of coming to Harvard, and what? 6% of them can actually do it, all of their dreams and they've had to sort of these two have had different part the waters the visitors to Havard yard. And dodge the puddles,- >> And I must say so Zach and Chris they're really heroic, and it wouldn't be a counter narrative if we didn't flip the screen, and I'm almost tempted to turn the camera on them, but I know they won't let me do this. >> Probably not. >> So I guess we should end simply by thanking them. >> [LAUGH] >> Thank you Anna >> Thanks Tom. >> All right. >> Okay.
