Writing in Time: Literature after Darwin

The philosopher Kierkegaard was sure: Life “can only be understood backward, but must be lived forward.” This program, produced in collaboration with USC’s Visions and Voices, challenges Kierkegaard’s certainty. These events ask how notions of time and identity have changed in the modern world, the world that Darwin made, and the role of art in both memorializing and redefining the human. What values does art maintain that otherwise threaten to collapse over time; how can we create coherent narratives as we increasingly recognize the fragmented nature of identity; and how are we to form human connections in the nerve-jangled world of the modern? In the unrecognizable vastness of time (as the Rockies may crumble, Gibraltar may tumble), how are we to recognize ourselves? And, how have contemporary media transformed our understanding of these questions, for to the magic of language we must add the new realms of cinematic vision, sound and light, and the jump-cut work of a film editor, moving us across time and space? To answer this question, we will host three writers, novelists A.S. Byatt and Russell Banks, and the poet and memoirist Robert Pinsky, along with filmmaker Atom Egoyan, and highlight the brilliant imaginative worlds they have created.

Tuesday, October 13, 2009
A.S. Byatt: Angels and Insects

Monday, October 19, 2009
A.S. Byatt: Rewriting the Past, Inventing Memory

Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Russell Banks and Atom Egoyan: The Sweet Hereafter

Monday, November 23, 2009
Russell Banks and Atom Egoyan: The Scripting of Time

Monday, April 19, 2010
Marking Time: On Time and Place in Poetry and Film