Debra Spark: Writing in a Time of Disaster (July 2020)

“Why write?” Alex Chee asked after 9/11, questioning not the content of his writing but the very point of putting pen to paper.  How do we understand our vocation or make any sort of meaning when confronted with the tragedies of our times, the daily horrors that seem so annihilating of all other concerns?  Moving between 1920s and 2020 Paris, the lecture draws on Pat Barker’s Regeneration, Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West, Jenny Offil’s Weather, and Olga Tokarczuk’s 2019 Nobel Prize speech.