Peter Turchi: “If it makes you happy, why the hell are you so sad?” (July 2008)

In this lecture about tonal and emotional range, the combination of darkness and light, Peter Turchi reflects on the powerful effect that mixed emotions can have in music and in fiction.  Turchi examines the ways in which Joe Turner’s song “Honey Hush” and fiction by James Thurber, Anton Chekhov, Cormac McCarthy, and Vladimir Nabokov layer contrasting emotions on top of one another; he shows how this layering can disrupt the reader’s assumptions and give the work lasting resonance.