Award-winning author Nathan Englander spoke to members of the Northwestern community Monday night as the inaugural lecturer in the Renee and Lester Crown Speaker Series.
Englander said he aimed to answer the “larger question of why I write what I write” in his speech, the first lecture in the new series.
“Great writers like Nathan Englander do not just accept but embrace their inherited tradition,” Jewish studies Prof. Barry Wimpfheimer said to the audience in his introduction of the author. “They recognize the ways in which unique ethnic realities can be props that stage the human condition and that the limitations of specificity are opportunities for creating authentically human portraits.”
In Pick-Staiger Concert Hall, Englander addressed more than 100 students, faculty, and other members of the NU community including University President Morton Shapiro, Weinberg Dean Sarah Mangelsdorf and lifetime trustee Lester Crown (McCormick ’46).
Wimpfheimer said friends of Crown and his wife Rene created the lecture series in an effort to bring high profile Jewish speakers to campus. Englander is the first speaker in the series, which is sponsored by the Crown Family Center for Jewish Studies.
Englander’s work has been critically acclaimed and has appeared in publications including The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Atlantic. He was identified by The New Yorker as one of “20 Writers for the 21st Century.”
In the last year, Englander published a collection of short stories called “What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank” and worked on his first play, “The Twenty-Seventh Man,” based on his short story with the same title. The play opened Sunday at The Public Theater in New York.
“Working on the play has been a life-changing experience for me,” Englander said, adding jokingly that he has not slept in nine months.
During the lecture, Englander discussed the role of Judaism in his writings and what it is like to be a 21st century Jewish author.
Prior to his evening lecture, Englander met with a group of 15 Jewish studies students and faculty to discuss his work. The students asked questions about topics that included Englander’s experiences as a Jewish writer, his reading habits and his writing process.
“The writing process is an out of body experience,” Englander told the group. “The hard part is not writing; it is engaging emotionally. Writing is simple when you’re utterly engaged.”
He repeated this point during Monday’s lecture and said, “99.9 percent of writing is emotional engagement”.
Wimpfheimer said he hopes Englander’s creativity “rubbed off” onto the students and the lecture “inspired students to become creative writers.”
Weinberg freshman Jonathan Kamel said he enjoyed the lecture because it brought in a new perspective.
“I think it’s great that Northwestern provides these opportunities, free of charge, for students to see the world outside of Northwestern,” Kamel said.
