Newsweek columnist and author Anna Quindlen delivered the Baird Pulitzer Prize Lecture Monday, Sept. 27, sharing her thoughts on reading and writing during Elon University’s Fall Convocation. Earlier in the day, Quindlen held a question-and-answer session with students.
Quindlen, who received the Pulitzer Prize for commentary in 1995 for her nationally syndicated column “Public and Private,” told the convocation audience in Alumni Gym that “this is a very good time for readers and for reading.” She cited the recent success of the Harry Potter book series for children and dismissed those who said the books’ popularity with youngsters is due mainly to savvy marketing.
“Hype and marketing only go so far when a 12-year-old settles down for a long haul with a book longer than ‘Crime and Punishment,’” Quindlen said. Seeing children clamoring for Harry Potter reminded her of her own childhood, Quindlen said.
“I was always reading,” Quindlen said, laughing at the memory of her mother encouraging her to play outdoors by saying, “it’s a beautiful day.”
“In my world, there was waking, there was sleeping and there were books,” Quindlen said. Her fascination with reading wasn’t always understood by her friends, and Quindlen says voracious readers in today’s society are seen as being different.
“In America, while we pay lip service to reading, there’s something about our go-go culture that looks with suspicion upon those who read too much.”
Quindlen, who spent 18 years at The New York Times, dispelled the notion that writing is easy for her because she does it for a living.
“I hate to write. I hate looking at a blank screen. I hate having to do it over and over again. It’s sort of like housework. The dishes are washed, only to be pulled out and eaten on again the next day.”
She said her personal satisfaction comes from the knowledge that she will leave her legacy for her children through her writing, something that everyone is capable of. Because of that, she does not believe the Internet, DVDs or any other form of technology will ever replace books.
“Plato argued that if people learned to read and write, poetry would die because it could only be preserved through the oral tradition,” Quindlen said. “Well, Plato was wrong, and I believe those who predict the demise of books are wrong, too.”
Earlier, Quindlen fielded questions from students and other members of the Elon community in Whitley Auditorium. She recalled how she “almost accidentally” began writing about the rights of gay men and lesbians in her New York Times op-ed column. “Of any issue I’ve written about in the last 15 years, the issue of gay men and lesbians has moved the farthest” Quindlen said.
Asked about the recent scandal at CBS News over falsified documents, Quindlen said she looks at the story in different ways.
“On the one hand, it’s an important story, but it’s also a waste of the airwaves,” adding that with the war in Iraq and the upcoming election, the CBS story has received too much attention.
She addressed recent statistics that show 700,000 new children are living in poverty in America and criticized the U.S. for going to war in Iraq. She said the money could be better spent domestically.
“I was against the incursion in Iraq from the beginning,” Quindlen said. “I was furious with the Democrats because they laid down on that vote.” She also called the poverty level of $18,000 a year for a family of four “utterly laughable.”
Clearly thrilled by motherhood, Quindlen recalled how taking a year off from college to care for her dying mother gave her new perspective on how to live life and what was important. She embraced motherhood so completely, she said, “because I realized when push came to shove, I wasn’t going to care whether or not I made executive editor of the New York Times. But I was really going to care if I missed this great stuff on the playground.”
-30-