I'd like to use the word "electrifying" in the following post. I'd like to use it several times.
Because that's the word that kept coming to mind throughout our time with Jill Lepore, who last evening graced Villanova University as the third speaker in The Lore Kephart '86 Distinguished Historians Lecture Series. If I had allowed myself to wonder, theoretically, how one young woman could have already achieved so much in life—she's a professor of American History at Harvard and one of my very favorite writers at
The New Yorker; she's published books on topics ranging from the Tea Party to the origins of American identity; she's gone to Dickens camp and read 38 volumes of original Ben Franklin; her work has won the Bancroft Prize and been a finalist for the Pulitzer; she's even co-authored a novel—I stopped wondering two minutes after she walked into the room. The answer is pretty basic, pretty simple: Jill Lepore doesn't waste an ounce of her intellect on posturing or presumption. Her enthusiasm is equal to her intelligence. Her facility with language, structure, theme is all in rather happy accordance with her capacity to sleuth her way toward truth.
She was extraordinary last night. She was—here it comes—
electrifying as she spoke about Jane Franklin, Ben Franklin's sister and truest correspondent (for more on the topic, please click
here). My mother would have loved Jill Lepore. She would have sat there as I sat there, on the edge of a seat in a crowded room, happy to be in the company of one that exhilarating, that engaged.
There are so many who make an event like this happen. I'm particularly grateful to my friend Paul Steege, a Villanova University associate professor of history who sits on the speaker selection committee, to Diane Brocchi, to Father Kail Ellis, to Marc Gallicchio, and to Adele Lindenmeyr. And of course, none of this would be possible without my father, Horace Kephart, who had the foresight to create this lecture series in memory of the woman he loved.
I'll be headed to London in a few days for a very quick trip and so, in typical Beth style, I am trying to complete every single task on every single list before I get on that plane. Stupid, I know.
That means that the last few days have been consumed with the writing of the second draft of a commemorative book for a client, the back-and-forthing with an insurance agent, the prepping for a school visit at the Eighth Grade Center @ Springford, the watching of a documentary about graffiti, the blogging about Ismet Prcic's debut novel
Shards, the writing of stories for a client news magazine, the neglect of a few emails I still have to write, the repolishing of my nails, the development of a plan to put my William novel into the world, the forgetting to pick up the dry cleaning, the thinking through of my spring Penn course, the preparation for the upcoming
Jill Lepore lecture at Villanova University (wait, how does one prepare?), the reading of the first two chapters of
The Art of Fielding because it is about time, the cooking of a dinner that could have been better, the reading of a friend's forthcoming novel, the writing of verse for our holiday card, the realization that the roof is leaking again, and the completion of an adult novel that has been in the works for years. I also purchased a few early holiday gifts and made the decision—an emphatic one—that I do not like shopping. No, I do not.
{For those, who, understandably, plan to read no further, please note (see below) that this tongue-in-cheekish list was produced to make a larger point.} In the midst of all of this, I paged through (lightning speed) the December 5 issue of
Newsweek. (Frankly, I still have a lot of questions about this new iteration of
Newsweek, but those questions are for another day.) I stopped at page 61, the Omnivore page, where Diablo Cody and Charlize Theron look out upon the reader. The story is called "The Narcissist Decade," and it's an essay Cody has penned in anticipation of the December 9 release of her film "Young Adult."
"Young Adult," as it turns out, is about a not-very-nice seeming young adult author. Cody tells us: "Mavis's humble peers possess something that eludes her more each year: growth. They've matured into seasoned adults with perspective and humility, while Mavis continues to flail in a self-created hell of reality TV, fashion magazines, blind dates, and booze."
(I sincerely hope that Mavis is not meant as a stand-in for all YA authors. I sincerely hope that. I do.)
In any case, later on in the essay, Cody, whose husband has told her that she shares a number of traits with Mavis (an assertion Cody at first denies), goes on to suggest that perhaps we are all narcissists.
Before you get as offended as I did, allow me to explain. Sure, we're not all deranged homewreckers in pursuit of past glory. But if the era of Facebook and Twitter has fed any monsters, it's those of vanity, self-obsession, and immaturity. Who among us hasn't Googled an ex, or measured our own online social circle against that of a perceived rival, or snapped multiple "profile photos" in an attempt to find the best angle? Who hasn't caught herself watching an episode of "Jersey Shore" and thought, "I'm a grown-up. Why am I con
A week or so ago, when my husband and I were powerless, my father called and invited us to dinner at his home, where my mother's orchids still grow, the figurines still shine, and the sun yet goldens the rooms. Glimmers of
my mother, all. We were almost finished with this delightful repast (cloth napkins! dimmed lights! smart vegetables! organic cookies!) when my father mentioned that the Villanova University committee entrusted with the selection of a scholar for the Lore Kephart Distinguished Historians Lecture Series had made its decision, and that Jill Lepore was slated to come. She follows Pulitzer Prize winning
James McPherson and the utterly engaging
Andrew Bacevich in this role, and she will appear at the university on the evening of December 6th, details to come.
Jill Lepore happens to be one of my idols. She's not just the David Woods Kemper '41 Professor of American History at Harvard University and a staff writer for
The New Yorker. She's a woman who smiles warmly back at you from her portrait photos, despite the fact that her head is preposterously full of stuff about Charles Dickens and the Constitution, Benjamin Franklin's youngest sister and the Tea Party, eighteenth-century Manhattan and the King Philip's War (she has written or is writing books about it all). For an apparent change of pace, she's even co-authored a widely acclaimed novel called
Blindspot. And once she wrote a
New Yorker piece called "The Lion and the Mouse" (about E.B. White, Stuart Little, and the sometimes ridiculously short-sighted nature of critics and publishing houses) that was so letter perfect I didn't just blog about it
here. I wrote Ms. Lepore a gushing fan letter. Miraculously, Ms. Lepore wrote back.
Jill Lepore will be talking about the Tea Party and the Constitution in December. I'll be providing more details as I can. For now I'm simply expressing my excitement that my mother and father are working together once again to bring all of us something grander than grand.
My thanks to Paul Steege, a good friend, fine teacher, smart writer, and great soul, who remains a key member of this selection committee.
On the eve of the inaugural Lore Kephart Distinguished Historians Lecture Series program, my mother came to me in a dream. We were walking, down. To either side of us the view was green. There was an alter at the bottom of the hill, a white gleam, and something about its architecture that she wished to share with me. That was all. That, and she seemed to be at peace.
What a wonderful way to spend an evening...and what a wonderful tribute to both your parents.
ditto Serena!! Thanks for sharing this.