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♪ Book Lust theme song ♪

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-Hello and welcome to Book Lust.

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I'm Nancy Pearl.

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My guest today is Ilan Stavans,
who's edited a marvelous book,

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“A Nation Wrestles With God,
American Prophets, Philosophers,

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and Firebrands.”

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Ilan, it's so great to have you

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on the show.

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Thank you.

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-It's my pleasure.

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Thank you for having me.

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-So how did this book come about?

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It's a collection filled
with essays, cartoons,

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poetry, short stories.

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It's, you know, it's a marvel.

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How did you think of it and
how much work was it to do?

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-This is a book that maybe
took about a year and a

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half, two years, Nancy,
in putting together.

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But obviously, because of the
scope, because of the ambition,

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it is a book that has been
with me for much longer than

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that, even though I didn't
know that the book was already

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germinating, trying to be born.

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I am an immigrant from Mexico.

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I came to this country in
the mid-80s with little

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English and with a view of
the United States from the

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south-north of a country
that knew itself very well,

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that had admirable laws
and principles with which

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to offer a good life, and
had a system of government

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and also an approach to religion
that separated them and

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enabled them both to
flourish in their own way.

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I am 65 at this point.

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This country has been
very generous to me.

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And for its 250th anniversary,

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I wanted to give back

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in the form of a book that
sums, brings together many

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of the views about religion,
about the good life, about the

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wrestling with God that I have
read throughout these years,

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and show that America sees
itself as exceptional, as

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unique, as having a very a
particular relationship with

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its creator, with the divine,
but that it has never been

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simple and that it is precisely
because it hasn't been simple

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that it is so interesting.

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-Like I keep notebooks of my
favorite poems or references

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to short stories or whatever.

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Do you do that?

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I mean, how did you, these
couldn't all have been

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in your head at one time.

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So how did you go about?

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-Over the years, I
have made notes.

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I have written little responses,
have remembered that when

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reading something new, that
I had read something a few

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years back that speaks to this.

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I think, you know, we live at
a time when the printed book

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as such is under siege, where
the forms of entertainment

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and maybe intellectual
stimulation come from many

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other corners of society.

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And the book, for better or
worse, has lost, at least

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apparently, its centrality or
the centrality that it had for a

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long period of time.

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And yet, I think that
the book will really

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never, as an artifact, will
really never lose that unique

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place, that crucial place.

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It's a kind of mirror
for who we are.

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And I love in
particular anthologies.

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This is an anthology.

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An anthology to me,
Nancy, is a mini library,

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a portable library.

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It is a compendium of
the representative

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aspects or chapters or
poems of different books

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in a way that invites
the reader to see the

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dialogues that they create.

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I sometimes, when I close my
eyes, when I go to sleep,

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have the impression
that libraries in the

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dark do marvelous things
that we can't see.

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The books get out of
their shelves, the pages

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get out of the binds, and
then start communicating

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with one another, and then
the words can kind of

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dance with one another until
dawn arrives and they quickly

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have to run back to their books
and to their shelves and so on.

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And I think an anthology
wants to capture some of

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those segments when they are
dancing in the middle and

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create the dialogue with
authors. James Baldwin, with

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Thomas Jefferson, with, you
know, somebody of today.

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-Philip Roth. -Philip Roth, that never
sat on the same table

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and never communicated
directly with one another.

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-How did you decide?

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It's chronological, which
when you think about it

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is the only way it
obviously should be, but

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was there ever a question
in your mind how you were

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going to arrange it?

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There was never a question.

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I think a chronological
approach is actually as

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arbitrary as any other approach.

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We just happen to be born in
this year and not in that year.

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And it allows us to keep a
tab and to keep a sequence

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of how a certain argument or
a certain symphonic voice

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has been evolving over time.

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I think, Nancy, that an
anthology, and the Bible is an

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anthology, and the “Thousand
and One Nights” or the “Arabian

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Nights” is another anthology.

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These are books that really
become kind of companions

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to the generation that reads
them for the first time

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and to future generations.

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And I think every anthology
creates its own double.

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The anthology with
everything that

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went in, the one in this book,
“A Nation Wrestles with God,”

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and then the anthology with
everything that was left out.

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And the hope is that the one
with everything that went in

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makes a statement of some kind
and claims a place for itself.

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And I could have included
so many, many, many things.

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And in the end,
it's permissions,

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it's space, all kinds
of forced elements.

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But I wanted to present
the ones that have

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been most influential to me.

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-Right. Yeah, I can imagine the
work that went into getting

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the permissions for the stuff
that's not in the public domain.

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So I call this authorial regret.

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So the book is finished,
you've sent it in, it's

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published, and all of a
sudden into your head

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comes, "Oh my gosh,
I forgot that.

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Oh my God, why didn't
I include that?”

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Did that happen to you?

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-It hasn't happened yet, but I'm
sure it will happen, Nancy.

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I did have two or three pieces
by authors that I wanted to

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include. And the estates -

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one of them had died
recently and it

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wasn't clear if the rights
were owned by the publisher.

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And so it was a cautionary
approach not to

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include it. In others,

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somebody said, “If Donald
Trump is in the book, I

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don't want to be in the book.”

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And so, you know,
there's the camaraderie

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and then the dissent.

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But that kind of regret
sometimes comes to my head.

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I do want to keep it at
bay and say, you know,

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once the book is published,
readers will complain.

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But I think a reader that
complains is an interested

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reader, is a reader
that gets involved and

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has their own opinion.

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And I want more of those ones.

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-Right. When I published
the first Book Lust

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book, I foolishly, well,
somewhat foolishly,

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gave my email and said,
“Oh, I'd love to hear from

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readers about what they're
reading and what I've

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left out.”

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And people wrote, so
many people wrote and

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recommended books that
I hadn't even heard of,

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but then went through
and read them.

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And that connection, I think,
that an author can have

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with the readers is really
a pretty wonderful thing.

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- It's wonderful.

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And in the age of
instant communication,

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you know, it used to be
that people would sit down

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and type a letter or
handwrite a letter.

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But now you can get all
kinds of reactions.

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Some of them may be too
fast, not fully processed,

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and others incredibly rewarding.

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-Right, right.

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I was thinking of a quote
that I read years ago

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that said, in the olden
days, we often didn't know

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how a war turned out until
the survivors walked

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back over the mountains
and into our little town.

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And now it's
instantaneous, really.

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We know what's happening.

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-And we both lose something
in the lack of capacity to

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see things in retrospect.

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And we win something because
we can be right there with

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a correspondent or with
somebody who's writing about

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what is happening in a war
or in a pivotal moment.

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And we are with them.

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-I think that one of the things
that readers will be amazed at,

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let me say which
I was amazed at,

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is the range of writers who are
dealing in one way or another

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with the subject of the divine,
with the subject of God.

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Is that something that you
felt that you knew all along?

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You know, that every, I mean,
Philip Roth's short story

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was, you know, I had read
before, but I had never thought

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about it in this context.

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And the last story in the book,
I just want to give a shout

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out to that last story, which
is just an amazing short story.

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-Absolutely. Yeah, I,
you know, there are

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so many, so many things that
I rediscovered, Nancy, when

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putting this together and in
having the notes that you were

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referring to, sometimes actual
physical notes and sometimes

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it's the mind of a reader or the
mind of a teacher who remembers

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that this text connects to this
other text, even though they

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don't have anything in common.

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There are stories here that,
because they are inserted in an

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anthology that has a title of
a “Nation Wrestles With God,”

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automatically you have to
think of them that way.

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That is the case of the
Philip Roth story,

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the conversion of the Jews.

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It's the story of a little
boy that is learning

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and being trained to do
his bar mitzvah in a

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synagogue, but he has all
these questions about

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God and goes into the roof
and threatens to commit

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suicide and throw himself down;

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if the rabbi and then his mother
don't kneel and say that, yes,

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Jesus was born out of
a biological cycle.

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It's an extraordinary story.

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It's cynical.

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It's realistic at the same time.

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It's a statement of where
American Jews were in the 1950s.

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And Philip Roth is the best
at capturing those moments.

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And, you know, I was able to put
it next to Flannery O'Connor of

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the story about the South that
is from the perspective of an

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older lady in a doctor's office.

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And then there's a little child
that jumps and beats her.

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And she doesn't claim to
be a racist, but every

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single thing she says to
herself is very racist.

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And it's always about how
Jesus would imagine this

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and would imagine that.

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And she protects Jesus,
but she's also using

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Jesus to confirm that
Black people are inferior.

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So these are marvelous stories
that, when read together, really

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offer us a view of how we
use or abuse religion to

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liberate ourselves or to
imprison ourselves in

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the ideas that we have
about gender, about race,

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about politics, about
so many other things.

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-I think that this is one
of those anthologies that

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can be read two ways.

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One way is that
chronological way,

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so you see the progression
or the regression

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as the nation gets
older and older

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and we see what's happening.

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But the other way I think that
is such a treat for this book

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is that you can open it anywhere

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and you're going
to find something

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that will just engage you.

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I think you must have had
just such a good time

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picking out the cartoons.

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-I had a marvelous, marvelous
time with the cartoons.

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Some of the cartoons come from
magazines and from the Sunday's

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edition of the newspapers.

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Other comes from graphic novels
like “Maus” by Art Spiegelman.

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And I wanted to emphasize,
Nancy, that for a long period

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of time, the big discussions
on and about God were the

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domain of philosophers
and theologians, that

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something radical happened
in the 20th century,

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where the division between
the highbrow and the

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popular cultures are less
and less strict, more and

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00:14:58,530 --> 00:15:02,167
more porous, and you can
have an extraordinary

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00:15:02,167 --> 00:15:06,538
investigation into the role
of the divine in life in

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00:15:06,538 --> 00:15:11,176
a movie or in a popular
song, or sometimes we watch

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00:15:11,176 --> 00:15:13,312
sports and are praying

246
00:15:14,346 --> 00:15:18,584
that our team does these or that
our team does that, and we'll

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00:15:18,584 --> 00:15:21,887
say that God is in favor
of the White Sox

248
00:15:21,887 --> 00:15:23,522
or of the Red Sox.

249
00:15:24,523 --> 00:15:27,660
So I think that one
of the beauties

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00:15:27,660 --> 00:15:34,600
of this erasing of borders is
that the questions about God

251
00:15:34,600 --> 00:15:40,105
are not the domain only of
those who are scholars.

252
00:15:40,105 --> 00:15:43,242
This is something in a
democracy in particular,

253
00:15:43,242 --> 00:15:46,912
in a pluralistic democracy,
something that pertains

254
00:15:46,912 --> 00:15:47,913
us all the time.

255
00:15:47,913 --> 00:15:52,451
And to your question, you know,
we're all readers of books,

256
00:15:52,451 --> 00:15:57,122
but we're different types of
readers depending on the book.

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00:15:57,122 --> 00:16:03,896
And a book of poems asks us to
read slower than a novel does.

258
00:16:03,896 --> 00:16:07,800
We automatically want to
savor every word and see

259
00:16:07,800 --> 00:16:10,069
how the sentences are built.

260
00:16:10,069 --> 00:16:14,606
And an anthology wants us to
jump from one place to another.

261
00:16:14,606 --> 00:16:17,376
Even if the content is
chronological, we don't

262
00:16:17,376 --> 00:16:20,346
want to be chronological
from the beginning of the

263
00:16:20,346 --> 00:16:21,914
book to the end of the book.

264
00:16:21,914 --> 00:16:24,450
We want to go to a
short story and then go

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00:16:24,450 --> 00:16:26,018
back to something else.

266
00:16:26,018 --> 00:16:30,456
And in many ways, the reader
is co-editing the anthology

267
00:16:30,456 --> 00:16:32,925
by choosing their own version.

268
00:16:34,259 --> 00:16:38,664
-Yeah, and I always think that
it's the reader and the writer

269
00:16:38,664 --> 00:16:43,402
in a non-anthology when you're
reading a book or a short story...

270
00:16:43,402 --> 00:16:47,639
it's the reader and the writer
who are collaborating on

271
00:16:47,639 --> 00:16:51,810
the finished text because
every reader is different.

272
00:16:51,810 --> 00:16:55,080
No two readers read
the same book.

273
00:16:55,080 --> 00:16:56,181
You know that.

274
00:16:56,181 --> 00:16:57,082
I know that.

275
00:16:57,082 --> 00:17:03,322
-A novel is as many novels
as readers that come to it

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00:17:03,322 --> 00:17:06,759
because we are the
ones that finish it.

277
00:17:06,759 --> 00:17:10,929
We are very active in
creating the story

278
00:17:10,929 --> 00:17:15,467
as we let it fly and
flow in our mind.

279
00:17:15,467 --> 00:17:16,502
-Is this what you...

280
00:17:16,502 --> 00:17:20,305
You're a professor
at Amherst, right?

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00:17:20,305 --> 00:17:24,977
And is this what you, do
you have a class in this?

282
00:17:24,977 --> 00:17:28,714
-I have a class that
is simply called God.

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00:17:28,714 --> 00:17:34,253
It's an attempt to offer
maybe a history of how

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00:17:34,253 --> 00:17:39,291
we have understood God from
the Greeks and the Romans

285
00:17:39,291 --> 00:17:43,262
to the Bible to the Middle
Ages and on to the present.

286
00:17:43,262 --> 00:17:46,732
But it's also an opportunity
for the students to explore

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00:17:46,732 --> 00:17:51,203
what they have received at home,
what they see now that they are

288
00:17:51,203 --> 00:17:55,974
18 to 22 in their own view, how
our relationship, you know,

289
00:17:55,974 --> 00:18:00,779
we can be absolutely
atheistic or agnostics.

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00:18:00,779 --> 00:18:03,982
But within everybody's life,

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00:18:03,982 --> 00:18:06,819
we go from one thing to another.

292
00:18:06,819 --> 00:18:08,954
And it's likely that
when we are young,

293
00:18:08,954 --> 00:18:11,557
we might be rebels and
don't want to think about

294
00:18:11,557 --> 00:18:12,391
all this.

295
00:18:12,391 --> 00:18:16,595
And when people get older,
they are more disposed

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00:18:16,595 --> 00:18:19,131
to ideas of God and the divine.

297
00:18:19,131 --> 00:18:20,999
And this is the same person.

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00:18:20,999 --> 00:18:24,503
And this is something that I
wanted to emphasize in the

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00:18:24,503 --> 00:18:26,438
introduction in particular.

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00:18:26,438 --> 00:18:30,576
It's easy to say, “Oh,
he's an atheist or he

301
00:18:30,576 --> 00:18:33,112
is an Orthodox believer.”

302
00:18:33,112 --> 00:18:37,516
But I have known very Orthodox
believers who have doubts.

303
00:18:37,516 --> 00:18:42,454
And I have known absolute
skeptics who also have doubts.

304
00:18:42,454 --> 00:18:47,659
And maybe what brings us all
together is that, the doubts,

305
00:18:47,659 --> 00:18:52,865
a doubt in order to either
fortify or reinvigorate in our

306
00:18:52,865 --> 00:18:55,434
belief or our train of mind.

307
00:18:55,434 --> 00:18:58,537
And I think that that is what
I want in the classroom,

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00:18:58,537 --> 00:19:01,240
the students not to have
easy answers, but to

309
00:19:01,240 --> 00:19:02,741
explore all those texts.

310
00:19:04,409 --> 00:19:07,546
-I wanted to give you a
suggestion of something

311
00:19:07,546 --> 00:19:11,016
that you might want to read
if you haven't already.

312
00:19:11,016 --> 00:19:17,890
And it's called “Birds Without
Wings” by Louis de Bernieres.

313
00:19:17,890 --> 00:19:19,892
Have you read that book?

314
00:19:19,892 --> 00:19:21,793
-I've never read it.

315
00:19:21,793 --> 00:19:27,766
-I think that you would find
that it speaks to everything

316
00:19:27,766 --> 00:19:30,769
that you're interested in.

317
00:19:30,769 --> 00:19:36,475
It's set around World War I
in a small town in Turkey

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00:19:36,475 --> 00:19:40,279
as the Ottoman Empire
is disintegrating,

319
00:19:40,279 --> 00:19:44,516
as World War I is changing,
you know, as war comes

320
00:19:44,516 --> 00:19:46,518
to this small village.

321
00:19:46,518 --> 00:19:50,923
But in the village is,
you know, are Muslims,

322
00:19:50,923 --> 00:19:56,228
are Christians, are Jews, all
living happily together for,

323
00:19:56,228 --> 00:20:01,833
you know, decades, generations,
until the world invades

324
00:20:01,833 --> 00:20:04,603
in the form of this war.

325
00:20:04,603 --> 00:20:08,774
And that, I mean, it's just
what you were saying, I think,

326
00:20:08,774 --> 00:20:10,976
and it's gorgeously written.

327
00:20:10,976 --> 00:20:14,780
I mean, it's probably one of the
best books that I've ever read.

328
00:20:14,780 --> 00:20:16,448
-Wonderful. I promise.

329
00:20:16,448 --> 00:20:19,284
It feels like a
wonderful suggestion.

330
00:20:19,284 --> 00:20:21,587
I was going to say
an assignment.

331
00:20:21,587 --> 00:20:23,555
I'm going to look it up right

332
00:20:23,555 --> 00:20:25,324
immediately after this.

333
00:20:25,324 --> 00:20:26,692
-Yeah, yeah.

334
00:20:26,692 --> 00:20:31,430
I think that it's just
the kind of book that

335
00:20:31,430 --> 00:20:34,299
you would find so much in.

336
00:20:34,299 --> 00:20:36,868
-Wonderful. “Birds Without Wings.”

337
00:20:36,868 --> 00:20:38,770
-”Birds Without Wings.”

338
00:20:38,770 --> 00:20:41,873
And woven in between
in the chapters

339
00:20:41,873 --> 00:20:46,578
is a biography of Ataturk,
who, of course, just wanted

340
00:20:46,578 --> 00:20:51,583
to modernize and secularize
Turkey, take away religion.

341
00:20:51,583 --> 00:20:53,986
-Wonderful. Oh, wonderful.

342
00:20:53,986 --> 00:20:55,020
I love that.

343
00:20:55,020 --> 00:20:55,954
You get it.

344
00:20:55,954 --> 00:20:59,091
That juxtaposition
of history with

345
00:20:59,091 --> 00:21:03,895
the quest, with connections
with the outside world and

346
00:21:03,895 --> 00:21:06,598
the written or the spoken word.

347
00:21:06,598 --> 00:21:09,735
It will be next to me
in a night or two.

348
00:21:09,735 --> 00:21:13,105
-Well, all right, I'll
expect a non-AI-helped

349
00:21:13,105 --> 00:21:14,573
written paper on it.

350
00:21:16,041 --> 00:21:18,310
Ilan, what are you reading now?

351
00:21:18,310 --> 00:21:19,578
-That is a wonderful question.

352
00:21:20,579 --> 00:21:25,784
I catch myself reading all
kinds of things all the time.

353
00:21:25,784 --> 00:21:29,755
I have become, Nancy, very
interested in the last few

354
00:21:29,755 --> 00:21:34,660
years in reading dictionaries
and reading about dictionaries,

355
00:21:34,660 --> 00:21:38,897
how the dictionaries came to
be, the fights behind them,

356
00:21:38,897 --> 00:21:42,868
the connection between a
dictionary and a people and

357
00:21:42,868 --> 00:21:45,237
the upgrading of a dictionary.

358
00:21:45,237 --> 00:21:49,308
So I am reading about the
OED and I'm reading about

359
00:21:49,308 --> 00:21:53,612
Merriam-Webster, particularly
the history of how

360
00:21:53,612 --> 00:21:58,583
Merriam-Webster put together
his book and how it became the

361
00:21:58,583 --> 00:22:01,386
American dictionary by default.

362
00:22:01,386 --> 00:22:06,625
I love the idea that the British
have this historical dictionary

363
00:22:06,625 --> 00:22:11,196
of many volumes, the Oxford
English Dictionary, that is

364
00:22:11,196 --> 00:22:13,432
published by a university.

365
00:22:13,432 --> 00:22:19,004
And there's a group of dons and
wiser people that legislate

366
00:22:19,004 --> 00:22:21,273
what's going to come in.

367
00:22:21,273 --> 00:22:25,777
And that in the United States,
the National Dictionary

368
00:22:25,777 --> 00:22:30,148
is a commercial venture, a
publisher that needs to make

369
00:22:30,148 --> 00:22:34,419
money in order to survive and
will put out a new edition.

370
00:22:34,419 --> 00:22:39,558
I love all those complicated
relationships between words

371
00:22:39,558 --> 00:22:41,660
in countries or groups.

372
00:22:41,660 --> 00:22:45,897
So those have been some
of the topics that I've

373
00:22:45,897 --> 00:22:48,133
been reading as of late.

374
00:22:48,133 --> 00:22:51,770
-Well, interestingly,
I just read about how

375
00:22:51,770 --> 00:22:54,373
dictionaries describe color.

376
00:22:54,373 --> 00:22:58,510
And there's a book about
that by a lexicologist,

377
00:22:58,510 --> 00:23:00,579
which was fascinating.

378
00:23:00,579 --> 00:23:04,049
But it reminded me when
I read that book about

379
00:23:04,049 --> 00:23:07,686
Dr. Johnson's dictionary
and how his dictionary

380
00:23:07,686 --> 00:23:09,321
is full of his opinions,

381
00:23:10,455 --> 00:23:14,893
just funny decisions like
what to include and what

382
00:23:14,893 --> 00:23:16,995
those definitions are.

383
00:23:16,995 --> 00:23:21,433
-And that is, you know, that
Johnson Dictionary in the

384
00:23:21,433 --> 00:23:26,071
middle of the 18th century is
a dictionary of so much joy

385
00:23:26,071 --> 00:23:28,707
and so many personal opinions.

386
00:23:28,707 --> 00:23:31,710
And we don't have
dictionaries that are made

387
00:23:31,710 --> 00:23:33,612
by a single person anymore.

388
00:23:33,612 --> 00:23:35,480
All of them are
made by committees.

389
00:23:35,480 --> 00:23:39,718
And that is too bad because the
knowledge that Johnson needed

390
00:23:39,718 --> 00:23:41,953
to have for this is astonishing.

391
00:23:41,953 --> 00:23:44,122
And he organized it.

392
00:23:44,122 --> 00:23:46,691
He had a former slave who

393
00:23:46,691 --> 00:23:51,830
worked with him, who
contributed greatly to the

394
00:23:51,830 --> 00:23:55,333
making of that essential
dictionary of the English

395
00:23:55,333 --> 00:23:58,904
language. I love all the
histories of dictionaries,

396
00:23:58,904 --> 00:24:02,808
And I love the fact that even
though young people think that

397
00:24:02,808 --> 00:24:06,545
dictionaries are not needed
anymore, I think the moment

398
00:24:06,545 --> 00:24:10,382
we don't have dictionaries,
words will be in utter chaos.

399
00:24:10,382 --> 00:24:15,020
And we will long back to that
moment of trying to corral

400
00:24:15,020 --> 00:24:19,558
them and organize them and
upgrade the definitions.

401
00:24:19,558 --> 00:24:22,394
-Ilan, this has
been such a treat.

402
00:24:22,394 --> 00:24:25,964
Thank you so much for
taking time out of your

403
00:24:25,964 --> 00:24:30,335
teaching and research and
everything and reading to

404
00:24:30,335 --> 00:24:32,337
spend this time with me.

405
00:24:32,337 --> 00:24:34,372
-Oh, it's been a joy.

406
00:24:34,372 --> 00:24:37,809
And you've been
one of my heroes,

407
00:24:37,809 --> 00:24:43,315
a librarian and a wonderful
promoter of reading at a

408
00:24:43,315 --> 00:24:47,152
time when that has
been so besieged.

409
00:24:47,152 --> 00:24:51,623
Thank you for all the
good work that you do.

410
00:24:51,623 --> 00:24:52,891
-Thank you so much.

411
00:24:52,891 --> 00:25:09,341
♪ Book Lust theme song ♪

412
00:25:11,309 --> 00:25:14,246
♪♪