What a lucky board that was great. Thank you
. Associate Dean research in the cultural genocide. Um
, and I want to welcome you all the plan
to come intention account. Okay. And also those
we've got you covered to study. Uh let's talk
for 20 minutes or so. I want to thank
those in the library or instrumental and say so she
resulting us jennifer and also going to be conditioned posters
are all appreciate their support. We do have three
more sessions schedule. Yeah, the host cases online
, right Christina with his injection. Next on october
be talking about an article. She will call the
vulnerable involvement Surprised with an article intelligence studies, November
six heather number from the Department of History. Talking
about hurting as well. Envisioning socialism, television,
World war in the G. R. And then
finally in december 3rd most covert from the department foreign
languages and Literatures. Talking about her book, racing
narrative, italian women's writing. So they were nice
selection of scholars coming up this fall spring were experimenting
with formats. Uh, I'm always open to suggestions
about other ways to, I think advance the primary
purpose of the series, which is to make visible
the scholarship, the College of Life Sciences and particularly
in partnership with the Life. Um, we're also
experimenting with locations as you can tell all of these
locations. Uh but as the library changes, you
know, we're finding new ways to integrate into these
spaces. Uh certainly over the last three years the
library has changed dramatically physical layout, but talk in
the barn use talk and it's really impressive. Yeah
, I may have said this before Medicaid when I
got here, but an article in the Times by
a graduating senior who had never been in the library
crowd. All right, come better help. Um
, so one of the best parts of my job
is finding authors for this series. I really enjoy
looking to see what family have done, the kind
of scholarship, the kinds of productivity. I want
to be easier person my job to invite somebody come
in and talk about their research. Um that's the
easy part. I think the next part is harder
, which is asking a scholar who has spent years
Sometimes even longer on a particular project to talk about
it for 20 minutes and figure out what's most interesting
, what's most relevant um what's most significant about that
? And so it's one of those really easy invitations
to make knowing as you make it, that it's
going to be a challenge. But those of you
who have come to the series of the last couple
of years, I think seeing not only a variety
of approaches, but a number of really interesting ways
to communicate back to an audience, the kind of
work that goes into a block an article of it
. So I'm looking forward to hearing from all of
the dollars as well. So at this point I'll
turn it over to call, starting to talk about
his new book to Ukraine A Life. That's right
. Good afternoon. Can you all hear me okay
? Great. Before I begin, I'd like to
thank three people first tom for inviting me to be
part of this project visible scholarly initiative. Second,
I'd like to thank Bruce Open house for doing behind
the scenes work at the library to make this happen
. And third, I would like to thank Laurie
lee for designing the poster advertising this event. It's
an honor for me to be here today. It's
also ironic that I am here today. In fact
, when I say I want to be not only
in the library, not only in english department at
the university as well, because when I was in
high school my worst subject was english and the last
thing I want to do is to become a teacher
. I hated american literature as a junior. I
had to read once a month, a book,
a novel by an american author. And I was
given this long list. I did not recognize any
of the names on the list. So I went
to a neighbor and I said mrs Selman, do
you recognize any of these authors? And you have
any of these books? She looked at the list
and she saw a book by Sinclair Lewis called Main
Street, May I borrow that? Sure paul,
go ahead and take it. And so I spent
a month reading it. And as was the case
in my school, you would take an oral exam
on the book that you read, you stand in
front of the teacher, he would ask you questions
. I go into the classroom, The teachers there
, I'm standing 15 minutes of questions about main street
silence. Then teacher looks to the left, looks
out the window and says 75 mm. So I
got into the hallway. My friend goes in as
well. I wait him to come back. 15
minutes later he comes back. I say John What
did you get? He said, I got in
92 I said, I got a 75. Let
me see your book Now. My main street was
450 pages long. He had a book 150 pages
long called the Red Badge of Courage and I thought
perhaps shorter is better. All authors were equal to
me Next month. I read this book, I
went in 15 minutes later after being in our exam
, the teacher looked to the left and said 92
and I decided shorter is better. Fast forward now
to my coming here to Virginia tech and this is
the case for professor it. You have to have
some kind of research project. And I thought I'm
going to write a book really quickly so I can
get tenure. I'm going to write a book simply
of facts and I scratch my head and thought what
consists simply of facts. I thought a biography is
simply, this is when the person was born,
when the person died throwing a few facts and I
decided I want to spend just two years on this
because I was going to be coming up for tenure
. So I went through enough medical list of american
authors and decided I'm going to write a biography about
somebody who didn't live beyond the age 30, I'm
flipping through cards, Crane, comma Stephen died at
age 28 Bingo. That was more than three decades
ago. And I just have published that biography that
I thought would take two years to do what happened
in between. In many ways. When I look
back at my career, I see it as scholarly
adventure of things, various kinds of things that happened
to me that are the stuff of you think about
how could this possibly be? I want to give
you two examples. The first is my attempt to
do the biography. I ran into problems. Initially
, if you have ever talked with a biographer,
you know, the biographer has to rely on primary
documents. These consists of letters, diaries, journals
, that sort of thing. If you were working
on, say, Mark Twain, for example,
There are about 30,000 letters to and from Twain,
about 50 notebooks of detailed notes that he took.
Sometimes the amount of primary documents are overwhelming. If
you wanted to write a biography of George Bernard shaw
, there are roughly quarter million letters. If you
wanted to write a biography of the American poet and
critic, Azra pound about 300,000. So you can
have an overwhelming amount of primary documents. What problem
that I have when you look at Stephen Crane And
look at the correspondents to him and from him there
only about 750 letters and many of these are prosaic
. They say things such as I'll see you tonight
at 8:00. Yes, I can do it.
That's consistent letter. So there are very few of
those. But the second problem also occurs when you
want to work on Stephen Crane, because another source
of evidence in writing biography is to look at the
reminiscences about that author, written by contemporaries in the
case of Stephen Crane. When you look at the
reminiscence about people that he knew, there are lots
of contradictions even to what he looked like, the
color of his hair, the color of his eyes
. One person Hamlin Garland, a contemporary, wrote
four reminiscences about Stephen Crane and Hamlin Garland contradicted himself
. So how do you sort all of this out
? That's the problem of writing about Stephen Crane.
But a third problem in the major problem that occurred
was dealing with an author named thomas, beer thomas
Beer In the early part of the 20th century was
extremely influential. American writers unknown today. Uh he
wrote novels, he wrote over 125 stories, very
well known at the time and one of his books
, not a novel, is a biography of Stephen
Crane. That is in the 20th century the single
most important and influential book and Crane Scholars. As
I was working on the letters with a colleague to
publish the correspondence of Stephen Crane, I noticed that
a lot of evidence was missing the documents, the
primary documents weren't there, that thomas beer was quoting
letters, but we could not find thomas Bieber is
also talking about people that Crane knew that we could
not identify, thomas. Beer was also giving anecdotes
about Stephen Crane's life that appeared only in thomas beers
biography. Now, a lot of scholars have questioned
the validity of this biography, but it was a
great biography, it's a great story, it's the
source of a lot of important quote, important information
about Stephen Crane, my colleague, and I start
to doubt this and we thought is it possible that
thomas beer made up things? Nobody would believe us
on this, That we when we published the correspondence
of Stephen Crane, we separated anything that's in towns
beers book from everything else that we had a real
hard evidence of it. Within months of our correspondents
coming out we've found the smoking gun. What did
we discover, thomas beers? Biography is a forgery
. It's fabricated. Through and through we found the
hard evidence of this. We found the on catalog
papers of thomas beer buried in Yale. And they
quote the beer of papers and their whole beer family
papers. What did this mean? Oh my gosh
! About 100 years of scholarship has been based on
a forgery. How do you write a biography of
somebody when you suddenly have to remove all this stuff
? That is not true? Lots of letters that
were very influential and influencing critics. Letters written by
Stephen Crane turned out to have been written by thomas
beer. And so that made it even more difficult
to write a biography. When you say I first
have to separate fact from fiction that eventually happened.
It was a long process on it and it was
an uphill battle because I discovered that thomas beer not
only damaged Crane scholarship, but he also damaged a
scholarship about a number of other writers. People teddy
Roosevelt because it turns out that thomas beer invented facts
about them as well. So as he was like
a computer virus that's infected so much of american literary
scholarship, not just simply scholarship about steven Green,
but there's a second example I want to give you
and this is perhaps an more exciting at the time
in hindsight. It's very exciting, but it was
scary at the time as well. There was a
long lost collection, Stephen Green documents, a man
named Melvin eight Shabalin who in the 19 thirties and
forties collected documents about Stephen Crane collected Crane letters inscribed
first editions. When Crane scholars would say could we
see them? Mr Sherman. He said, no
, I won't show them to you. I'm keeping
them for myself. I want to write a biography
of Stephen Crane. And so people start to doubt
whether or not these documents actually existed. They then
disappeared. Now I'm at this point an untenable assistant
professor and I've decided I want to do in two
years in his biography. I said I want some
more facts and I tracked down the collection to home
in Hawaii where Mrs show Berlin was living. Her
husband had died years before. And so I wrote
her and I said Politely, this is a collection
exists and number two, May I see it.
No response. I wrote her more letters. No
response. 12 months of letter writing. I even
had they officials in Birth hall. Right saying Sorrentino
is a real person. He's coming up for 10
year. And then finally, I get a letter
from her and she says, you may call me
. So I called her and we chatted briefly.
But when it got to the point of asking about
the Stephen Crane collection, silence on here. And
I did not want to push on this. I
called It two More Times. Finally, she said
, dr Sorrentino, if you want to come out
to Hawaii to see what I have, I can't
tell you what's there because I have not looked at
the collection since My husband died in 1977. And
this is now early 80s. So, I don't
know what you're going to find. So at the
time I had to do some of this work I
had, you know, I thought how am I
going to make this work? Because I'm a fly
out to Hawaii find nothing there on there. But
if I do find something, how do I negotiate
the sale of it? So before I left I
got a benefactor, somebody Connect with your Curious University
where crane used to be a student for one semester
. And the person said if something is there,
you evaluate it, tell me how much and I'll
write the check. So I fly out. I
go to Mr Sherman's house. There is a long
table box after box after box surrounding it. And
she says dr Santino, this is it. I
take one box, take the lid off. Within
10 minutes. I know I've found a literary pot
of gold. I am seeing documents that nobody else
other than Commander Shabalin Mr Schauble had seen, I
am seeing incredible documents inscribed first editions. I'm seeing
manuscripts written by Stephen crane unknown documents. And so
at the end of each day I would call back
to Circus University and I said, it's here,
it's there. Can you estimate paul? I'm not
sure yet, but I know one letter was looking
at was at least 8 to$10,000 Just one letter
by itself. And so I said, um I
don't want to do the negotiating on this because there's
a lot of stuff here. And so for the
next 10 days I'm there. But the first day
I know I'm going to be able to stay because
before I live Left as I was looking at documents
to£80 dogs regarding me. One had his head
on here, the other one had his head on
here. And as I left mr Schauble and said
, well, dr Santino um if you want to
come back you can. I said oh yes and
he said and I know I can trust you.
And I said well I hope you can. She
says you know you're the first person who come to
this house that those two dogs have not tried to
attack. And so the next 10 days mrs Shoveling
would make me lunch, we would watch soap operas
together. And at some point I realized that I
had to say to her, listen, I think
here are your choices of this on here. The
collection you can you can give it away or if
you want to keep it needs to be protected.
Because part of the problem was that these were simply
documents simply in boxes in a humid setting with lots
of bugs. I said mrs Sherman and I'll help
you if you want to keep the collection protect preserve
it or if you want to sell it, I'll
arrange for it to come in different amounts so you
don't have to get suddenly a huge tax. And
I'm here. I said, somebody else would take
the pork at the details. And as I continue
to work through, I came through a piece of
paper hi handwritten note by mr Schauble in and it
said, I cannot finish my biography. But someday
a young scholar will come along and he or she
will complete what I had hoped to do before I
died. And I showed that note to Mrs Shabalin
and she had a tear in her eye. And
then she looked at me and said, you're the
one on there running out of time. Of course
not there, she said paul, by this time
we run first name basis, paul take these manuscripts
with you to the hotel room. I don't think
so. No, I trust you. I trust
you. So I take them to be able to
look at them. And on that particular weekend,
a friend of mine who taught, who teaches at
the university of why he said, let me show
you around the island. Let's do some, some
surfing. Let's go, do have some fun.
So I go out with my friend on here.
And when I come back that evening, I noticed
as I walked towards my little condo that the glass
window is broken and there's blood on the hall.
I think, oh my gosh, somebody's broken in
to my condo. Oh my gosh. I hope
the person is in a literary scholar, ex professor
at Virginia Tech denied tenure. I get in and
I discover good news and bad news. Good news
. The manuscripts are there right there on the table
. The bad news is that the thief stole my
plane tickets And I immediately called United Airlines and they
said, you don't have a flight off the island
. That person has cashed in your, your air
ticket. So I called back to the department head
, somebody named Art Eastman, department of english.
And I say art. I realized that next week
is the first meeting of the department department meeting.
That's how close we were to the start of the
fall semester. And I said, I can't,
I won't be able to make that meeting. I'm
stranded. Oh, paul. Where you stranded?
I'm stranded in Hawaii Hawaii. Yeah, I'm here
. I can't get off the island. Oh,
you can't get off the island. So eventually get
after several days. Yeah. Getting a darker and
darker 10. Because I was on the beach quite
a bit on here. Finally, I get a
call from United Airlines saying, paul, we've got
a ticket freedom off the island here. Can you
be here within a few hours? Oh my gosh
. Mr Sugarman says, let's go race around.
You. Make photocopies of what you haven't had a
chance to look at yet. So we're racing around
island, photocopying manuscripts of Stephen Crane. Unheard of
the unseen before racing back and forth. She's flying
around, she's four ft 11, but she drives
like a crazy person on here and rushes me to
the airport. I'm already packed up. I'm flying
with the photocopies to get back onto the plane and
I made it. Good news is that came back
. I was given access to the documents for 18
months before they were publicly available. The good news
is that the curator of the special collections, that
circuit university flew out, pack up the material.
Good news is that mrs Sherman got a huge amount
of money for this. The bad news is that
I lost a lot of empathy from my my colleagues
and I got back here because here I was in
this dark tan and say I was straight in Hawaii
and said, yeah, right, I'm here.
So the happy ending of that is that some of
those documents, some of those things are in the
biography. It took a long time to write this
. But I'm glad I did for a lot of
authors. You know, their lives are somewhat prosaic
because really what they do is is be by themselves
the writing hey story there writing a novel. They're
getting up and going to its hype writer piece of
paper or computer. They're not going to the office
. But for Stephen Crane, his life is as
exciting as his work. It's the stuff of Hollywood
. If you're familiar with the life and his Hemingway
F scott Fitzgerald, that's Stephen Crane, somebody who
becomes a celebrity, he's in the limelight. It
becomes world famous In 1895 with the writing of the
Red Badge of Courage Saturday. Within a few years
June of 1900 it will be dead. His colleagues
considered him the most important writer of his generation.
People said he is the future of american literature when
he was a reporter during the spanish american war,
his colleagues said you are the best journalists here.
So it's a sad story that his ends up or
he does. He becomes front page news when he's
feared lost at sea after but he is on sinks
and he is in a 10 ft deng with three
other people. He will re create that experience.
And a famous short story called The Open Vote I'm
here. His life is so exciting. Not dull
at all. And as I got to the ending
of the book, why new What was coming had
a tear in my eye because I knew I had
to say goodbye to him. The reason why I'm
here today is because of what he did for me
to put it another way. Let me go back
to that time in high school when all authors were
the same to me such as three piece of rope
. They all are the same. I looked at
them, I saw no difference in them at all
. They all were like and so I ended up
choosing somebody who is shorter because I thought shorter was
going to be better in hindsight. I've learned quite
a bit about this, but when I look at
it, I can say to myself, you know
what? There are some long books are some medium
sized books but for me shorter turned out to be
better. Thank you. I'd be happy to take
any questions if anybody as one don. Yes,
for instance, what have you specifically, what's something
you discovered that was made up by beer? And
how did you verify? But was something that he
fabricated rather than something that was recorded in Los Yeah
. First wait for the fabrication. I found my
colleague and I found uh multiple drafts of letters so
badly written by Crane that thomas Beer wrote and he
would combine part of one draft with another draft on
here. As far as uh Yes. Yes.
Also it turned out that Okay Beer, there's a
thomas Beer says that he got a lot of information
and he names somebody and there's no evidence that the
person ever existed. It's actually um a fictional alter
ego of thomas beer based based on something that Edgar
Allan Poe did about fictional persona. So I've noticed
as I was going through your stuff, I saw
him playing games, making allusions to isolated things in
american literature, in other fields of literature. And
I was able to crack the code that he had
and then he ended up writing a short story uh
about biography, which is a story that is part
of the code as well. Once I cracked the
code, I was able to then to find out
lots of other things on here. So it was
a lot of guessing, a lot of luck as
far as something new. I'll give you one quick
example when you those of you red badge of courage
. You know the book has a lot of color
in it and it's no novel in american literature that
has more color in it than that. And there
are times when Crane will talk about a colour,
but he will associate the color the sight seeing color
with another, a sense accessory thing you associate the
sound with with a site for example. And people
have always wondered where did, why did he do
this? And I discovered that he was had synesthesia
that nobody has ever known. And so he was
when he was seeing a color he would hear sounds
as well. And when I discovered that that helped
me interpret lots of different things about is it okay
? His association with color and sound and sight on
there? So that's one of the new things on
there. There's some new things about connections between Mark
Twain and Stephen Crane unknown. So there are lots
of screen scholars will notice what's new and they want
to say, where does Sorrentino get this? And
that's why there's a lot of notes, other questions
or comments. Where is the steepest rain archive now
that you can Okay, Why Now that one is
at Circus University, The three major places where there's
Korean material Circus University, University of Virginia and Columbia
University. And they're smaller collections at Dartmouth and a
couple of other places on there. So, but
that collection that was in Hawaii um I had I
had somebody ready to pay big bucks for you and
I had to act quickly on that too. See
Uh huh. Work was the window initially some resistance
because quite a few articles and collections of books are
based on beer, on that. So in some
cases careers. And so there was my colleague and
I talked about this and I said to my colleague
stan I said stand, it's going to take at
least a decade for people to start to accept this
. Because what we're saying is upsetting. It's turning
upside down a lot of scholarship. It's calling into
question generalizations that are made of books and so by
eliminating all this stuff, it took away a lot
of the great stories about Stephen Crane and some of
the so called great letters on this, but it
would have had to be done and now it's accepted
. I say generally, bye 99 of the scholars
once they saw the evidence. Yeah, my questions
. I know it's a busy day, but I
know if you have a chance to have a snack
, I'd like to say to you again, thanks
for coming. I appreciate it. Yeah. Mhm 501 --> A:middle L:90% .