Jersey-scape Poets,William Carlos Williams, Philip Roth: “an attachment so rooted”

The writing of poet William Carlos Williams, born and living all his life in Rutherford, New Jersey (1883-1963), and of novelist Philip Roth (1933-), born and raised in Newark, New Jersey, will be the subject of the last event (Thursday, November 7, Cohen Lounge, Dickson Hall, 4-5 p.m.) in the series “Jersey: A Sense of Place.”  The mission of this year-long series, hosted by the Institute for the Humanities at Montclair State University and funded by a grant from the New Jersey Council for the Humanities, has been to investigate the role of the state as a source of inspiration for artists and humanists, past and present, and for experiments in living.

Under the rubrics of “Dramatizing Jersey,” “Living Jersey,” “Painting Jersey,” and “Singing Jersey,” four lectures in the series have already taken place  — on the reality tv show Jersey Shore (“Performing the ‘Real’ on Jersey Shore,” Hugh Curnutt, School of Communication and Media), on nineteenth- and twentieth-century utopian communities (“Utopia, New Jersey!” — Perdita Buchan, freelance writer and Richard Veit, Department of Anthropology, Monmouth University), on George Inness’ nineteenth-century paintings of Montclair and environs (“George Inness and the Poetry of Place,” Adrienne Baxter Bell, Department of Art, Manhattan Marymount College), and on the New Jersey roots of  Bruce Springsteen’s music (“‘Talk About a Dream:’ Bruce Springsteen’s American Vision — from New Jersey to the World,” Louis P. Masur, Department of American Studies, Rutgers University).  The last lecture in the series, with the twin titles of “‘The local is the only universal:’ William Carlos Williams in New Jersey” and “Philip Roth: Newark and Beyond,”  will focus on the works of William Carlos Williams and Philip Roth and take place on Thursday, November 7, Cohen Lounge, Dickson Hall, 4-5 p.m.

Dr. Neil Baldwin, Director of the Creative Research Institute at Montclair State, will talk about Williams about whom he has written a definitive biography (“To All Gentleness:’ William Carlos Williams, the Doctor-Poet [Atheneum, 1984; InPrint, 2008]), a man whom Baldwin admires, as he said in a recent radio interview, for among other things, his astonishing literary output amidst his full-time job as a Rutherford doctor, “toggling back and forth between his livelihood and his passion.”  Baldwin believes that there is a difference between “the clichéd relationship to a place, as opposed to the actuality of a place” and that this “actuality” of Williams’ local surroundings can be felt in all of his writings.  Likewise, Dr. James Bloom, English professor at Muhlenberg College, Allentown, Pennsylvania, an expert on Roth, and contributor, most recently, to Roth and Celebrity (ed. Aimée Pozorski [Lexington Books, 2012], will talk about the importance of Newark and New Jersey in general in Roth’s literary output, including the way in which the dichotomy between the New Jersey towns of Newark (Roth’s hometown) and Short Hills structures what he dubs, in the same interview, Roth’s “Jewish Great Gatsby” — his novella Goodbye, Columbus.  Like his character Neil Klugman in Goodbye, Columbus, Roth, it seems, has a “deep knowledge of Newark, an attachment so rooted that it could not help but branch out into affection.”  The event is free and open to the public: Thursday, November 7, Cohen Lounge, Dickson Hall, Montclair State University, 4-5 p.m.

rsvp https://surveys.montclair.edu/survey/entry.jsp?id=1377632595902

Clips from the radio interview may be heard here http://njch.org/uncategorized/does-place-matter/.

Further information:  contact Dr. Victoria Larson, Director of the Institute for the Humanities (larsonv@montclair.edu).