The Archive Project

In this episode of The Archive Project, Colum McCann gives a talk he’s titled “Can’t Go On, Must Go On.” Drawing from the famous quote by Samuel Beckett, McCann uses this talk to explore storytelling and his refusal of cynicism. He shares insights into the inspiration and process behind some of his most famous works and discusses how four books that he’s written are connected in compelling and surprising ways. He asserts that, ultimately, all things are given to us for a purpose, including struggles and darkness, to help shape our lives.

Everywhere we’ve been is everywhere we are now, and everything experience is something that helps us move into the present moment.”

“I love writing books because I get to write what I don’t supposedly know. I get to investigate the world and see new things and go to new places.”

“We have to engage with the darkness. Only by engaging with the darkness do we recognize that there is some form of light that is apparent.”

Colum McCann is the author of six novels, including Let the Great World Spin (Random House, 2009) and three collections of stories. His most recent book is the collection Thirteen Ways of Looking (Random House, 2015), a novella and three stories, which earned him praise from the Wall Street Journal: “McCann is a passionate writer whose impulse is always toward a generous understanding of his diverse characters.” Born and raised in Dublin, Ireland, he has been the recipient of many international honors, including the National Book Award, the International Dublin Impac Prize, a Chevalier des Arts et Lettres from the French government, election to the Irish Arts Academy, the 2010 Best Foreign Novel Award in China, and an Oscar nomination. He is the co-founder of the nonprofit global story exchange organization, Narrative 4, and he teaches at the MFA program at Hunter College.

In this episode of The Archive Project, Barbara Kopple opens by talking about being grateful that documentaries are moving into the mainstream, with audiences appreciating these “real-life, nonfiction films.” She then tells about her journey to becoming a filmmaker, which started while she was studying political science in college and, instead of writing a paper, decided to make a short film showcasing people who’d had lobotomies. “My professor was outraged,” she said. “I got a D….but I was hooked.” Kopple goes on to discuss her process making several films, including Winter Soldier, Harlan County, USA, American Dream, Fallen Champ: The Untold Story of Mike Tyson, Century of Women, Wild Man Blues, and My Generation. She emphasizes her desire to portray people in truthful ways—to delve deeper than the headlines and expose her audiences to new perspectives that they would never see otherwise.

Barbara Kopple is a two-time Academy Award-winning filmmaker. A director and producer of narrative films and documentaries, her most recent project is the documentary Running from Crazy, which examines the personal journey of writer, model and actress Mariel Hemingway, the granddaughter of Ernest Hemingway, as she strives for a greater understanding of her complex family history. Barbara has received several awards, including the Human Rights Watch Film Festival Irene Diamond Award, National Society of Film Critics Award, the SilverDocs/Charles Guggenheim Award, the White House Project’s EPIC Award, the International Documentary Association Career Achievement Award, and the Sundance Film Festival Grand Jury Prize. In 2010, Kopple received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from American University. She is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, the Director’s Guild of America, New York Women in Film and Television, the British Academy of Film and Television Arts, and actively participates in organizations that address social issues and support independent filmmaking.

I had parents who did, and still do, everything they could for me and gave me a real sense of self so I could take risks. And I decided that I really wanted to do films that were so far from what I understood and what I knew to sort of bring me closer and make me able to communicate.”

“What was the most important thing for me, really, was to go beyond the headlines, and go beyond the tabloids, and really find out who this kid is, and what he’s about, in a way that nobody else could. And something that I really like to do is to look under a blanket where you’re not supposed to see, and pull things out, and that’s what I tried to do in the Mike Tyson piece.”

In this episode of The Archive Project, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, Tracy K. Smith, explores why our position as readers and writers continues to be crucial to the viability of our culture. She discusses literature’s role in both her private and public life, shares excerpts from her own writings, and gives insights into the process and struggle by which her poems come about. She also shares selections from other writers, including George Orwell, Emily Dickinson, Seamus Heaney, Yaa Gyasi, Solmaz Sharif, and Federico García Lorca, describing the achievements these writers have made with their works, and why those achievements have impacted her and are valuable.

The success of both of those poems, and any poem really, relies upon creating a palpable sense of encounter with the reader; creating a discernable mindset, a mood, a time and a place where the poem’s speaker and its reader might meet.”

“Literature is about facilitating the necessary realization that we are not so very different from those we pity and those we abhor.”

“As a writer, I’m convinced that the only defense against the degradations of our market-driven culture and our increasingly vulnerable political process is to cleave to language that fosters humility, awareness of complexity, commitment to the lives of others, and a resistance to the overly-easy and the patently false.”

Tracy K. Smith is the author of the critically acclaimed memoir Ordinary Light (Knopf, 2015), a finalist for the 2015 National Book Award, and three books of poetry, including the 2012 Pulitzer Prize-winning collection Life on Mars (Graywolf, 2011). Toi Derricotte said of Smith’s work: “The surfaces of a Tracy K. Smith poem are beautiful and serene, but underneath, there is always a sense of an unknown vastness. Her poems take the risk of inviting us to imagine, as the poet does, what it is to travel in another person’s shoes.” Among her many honors and awards, Smith was the recipient of the 2014 Academy Fellowship from the Academy of American Poets, which is awarded to one poet each year in recognition of distinguished poetic achievement. She is currently the Director of Princeton University’s Creative Writing Program.

In this episode of The Archive Project, Michael Lewis – in conversation with NPR’s Hanna Rosin – discusses his latest book, The Undoing Project. He describes the unique and powerful emotional core of the working relationship between Nobel Prize-winning psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, the monumental work they did in the field of mental biases and flawed perceptions, and why he was inspired to put their story to page.

On the work/relationship between Kahnerman & Tversky: “The ideas don’t happen without the love affair. The work they do together is unlike the work they do apart. It is a pure collaboration.”

“On accessibly writing on difficult topics: “I don’t want to try to seem smarter than my reader, because I don’t feel smarter than my reader.”

“On our flawed memory and mental biases: “We’re always responding to the last tragedy. We’re not calculating the odds in any way. We’re only responding to what just happened.”

Michael Lewis, the author of the best-selling books Moneyball, The Blind Side, Flash Boys, and The Big Short, will join NPR’s Hanna Rosin for a live onstage interview. His latest book, The Undoing Project (December 2016), examines how a Nobel Prize–winning theory of the mind altered our perception of reality. The book explores the work of Israeli psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, whose research into decision-making and judgment offered new trends in behavioral economics, politics, advanced medicine, and sports.

Hanna Rosin is the co-host of the NPR podcast Invisibilia, which debuted at #1 on the iTunes podcast charts. She is the author of several books, including The End of Men. Her writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Washington Post, The New Yorker, and GQ magazine.

Mary Oliver reads poems from several of her collections, focusing on brief images of the natural world that she believes people need to attend. These poems include “Messenger,” “Thirst,” “Percy 1,” “The Swan,” “Beans,” “Swimming with Otter,” “Wild Geese,” “Percy 2,” “There you were and it was like spring,” and “The Sun.” Between poems, Oliver shares details about her personal life, including her time as a teacher and her time spent observing the world with the help of her partner, photographer Mary Cook.

 Certainly anybody who starts reading a sentence has the curiosity to finish that one sentence, yes? And this is why I’ve kind of done what you could do with dashes and semicolons and so forth. A good number of my poems are 36 lines long and one sentence.”

“Attention without feeling, I began to learn, is only a report. An openness and empathy was necessary if the attention was to matter.”

“People travel to keep from crying in place.”

A notoriously private person, Mary Oliver has been described by The New York Times as “far and away America’s best-selling poet,” and has written more than 30 collections of poetry and nonfiction. Her allocates include a Pulitzer Prize, a National Book Award, and a Lannan Literary Award. While she never formally completed a degree, Oliver has received honorary doctorates from four institutions, including Dartmouth College and Tufts University. As a teenager, Oliver lived briefly in the home of Edna St. Vincent Millay, where she helped Millay’s family sort through the papers the poet left behind. In her review of Oliver’s poetry, Maxine Kumin noted that Oliver “stands quite comfortably on the margins of things, on the line between earth and sky, the thin membrane that separates human from what we loosely call animal,” acting as an “indefatigable guide to the natural world, particularly to its lesser-known aspects.” Though Oliver currently resides in Florida, she lived in Provincetown, Massachusetts, for roughly 40 years with her partner, photographer Mary Cook, and the location has served as the inspiration for much of her work.

In this episode of The Archive Project, Carlos Fuentes gives a talk titled “After the Cold War: The Rise of a New Agenda.” It is the keynote address for a conference intended to help Oregonians put into a global perspective the cultural, economic, and political significance of the emerging Hispanic population of Oregon and the United States. Fuentes discusses the changes taking place in the world since the end of World War II, mainly focusing on the increases in technology and economy brought on by rapid globalization. Because of this globalization, he says, it is incredibly significant to bridge the gap between “us” and “them.” He makes the case that the solution to many of the divisions in the world lies in coexistence, collaboration, and understanding.

The problem that is rushing forward to meet and embrace us is that of the other—learning to live in our new multi-polar world with he or she who is not like you and me.”

“Melting pots are now either unmelting or brimming over, for the city of the 21st century is demanding that we not only assimilate the foreign, but that finally we accept its continual cultural personality.”

Carlos Fuentes was a Mexican novelist, playwright, critic, and diplomat referred to by The New York Times as “Mexico’s elegant public intellectual and a grand man of letters, whose panoramic novels captured the complicated essence of his country’s history for readers around the world.” His novel The Old Gringo earned him international acclaim in 1985 and was made into a movie featuring Gregory Peck and Jane Fonda. It was the first book by a Mexican novelist to become a bestseller in the United States. He received the Cervantes Prize, the most prestigious Spanish-language literary award, as well as the National Order of Merit, France’s highest civilian award to a foreigner, and was shortlisted for the Nobel Prize in Literature several times.

In this episode of The Archive Project, Diane Ackerman shares the incredible, true story of Antonina Żabińska, whose diary she draws from in The Zookeeper’s Wife. She reads a selection from the book, and expands upon the history of the Żabińska family’s heroic efforts to save over 300 people during WWII by moving them through the underground railroad that ran through their home and zoo. She also expands on the, perhaps surprising, environmental views the Nazis held, including their great respect for rare plants and animals, and their conservation efforts.

“What fascinates me is how often, and with what wholeheartedness, ordinary people will perform acts of compassion, courage, and sacrifice for absolute strangers.”

“Staying emotionally limber enough to love, play, nurture, and marvel, despite all the ligatures of war, that takes a rare kind of courage.”

“[The Nazis] hoped to alter the world’s ecosystems. Not only dominate nations and politics, but the whole planet’s DNA. Changing the genetic spirals of evolution. A goal that, of course, legitimized genocide.”

“There’s been so much written about the Nazis. But for me, looking at it from a natural history perspective goes to the heart of what the Nazi lunacy was all about. Through their passion for genetics and the natural world, we can see the horror of what they were doing, but also a kind of innocent obsession with nature, and animals, and the environment – rather wholesome, all things considered – coexisting with a maniacal, sadistic, murderous racism.”

Diane Ackerman is a naturalist and poet and the author of ten books of literary nonfiction, including A Natural History of the Senses, A Natural History of Love, and Cultivating Delight. Also the author of six volumes of poetry and several nonfiction children’s books, she contributes to the New York Times, Discover, National Geographic, Parade, and many other publications. In her most recent book, The Human Age: The World Shaped by Us, she confronts the unprecedented fact that the human race is now the single dominant force of change on the whole planet. Humans have “subdued 75 percent of the land surface, concocted a wizardry of industrial and medical marvels, strung lights all across the darkness.” Ackerman lives in Ithaca, New York.

In this episode of The Archive Project, award-winning poet Li-Young Lee reads seven of his poems: “Station,” “The Children’s Hour,” “Have You Prayed?,” “Self-help for Fellow Refugees,” “Immigrant Blues,” “Trading for Heaven,” and “Virtues of the Boring Husband.” He introduces each poem with anecdotal information, including his philosophies about romantic love and its connection to finding God. In the Q&A afterward, Lee talks about the psychological and physiological processes involved in reading a poem and the role that personal identity plays in poetic composition.

“Now I realize . . . our original condition can’t be summed up somewhere back in time. That can’t be true. It must be here and now, or nowhere.”

“Before you fall in love, before you find somebody who loves you, you’re isolated, and terrified, and lonely. Then you fall in love, and you are overwhelmed, and inhabited by giant feelings and thoughts and cosmic-sized angels walking in and out of you. And you can’t articulate these feelings to anybody. And then you find that you can’t even articulate them to the beloved, and you’re more lonely than when you started. But I have a theory about that . . . romantic love may be, ultimately, supposed to bring you to a place where you encounter God. It’s a way to wean you from the world, and then from the beloved—the mortal beloved—to discover an immortal beloved. But I might be wrong.”

Li-Young Lee was born in 1957 in Jakarta, Indonesia, to Chinese parents. His family settled in the United States in 1964. He is the author of Rose (1986), which won the Delmore Schwartz Memorial Poetry Award; The City in Which I Love You (1990), which was the 1990 Lamont Poetry Selection; The Winged Seed (1995); Book of My Nights (2001), which won the 2002 William Carlos Williams Award; and Behind My Eyes (2008). Lee has been the recipient of the Lannan Literary Award; the Whiting Writers’ Award; the PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Award; the I. B. Lavan Award; three Pushcart Prizes; grants from the Illinois Arts Council, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, and the National Endowment for the Arts; and fellowships from the Academy of American Poets and the Guggenheim Foundation. In 1998, he received the honorary degree of Doctor of Humane Letters from State University of New York at Brockport. He lives in Chicago, Illinois, with his wife, Donna, and their two sons.

In this episode, Marjane Satrapi discusses her writing and art, specifically the film production of Persepolis (2000). She first establishes that she makes “comics” not “graphic novels,” dismissing the term “graphic novel” as a marketing ploy among publishing companies. She also establishes that the comic form is not a genre, but an artistic medium—one that allows for narrative structures that are quite different from books and paintings. She goes on to explain that she wanted to stay true to this medium throughout the film production of Persepolis and touches on her initial difficulties with the extremely social moviemaking process in contrast to the solitude of creating comics. Her humor is evident when she talks of the luxury of civilization, the need for gaining distance—in terms of both time and geography—from a personal story to tell it well, and the challenges of traveling as an Iranian with a French passport.

Marjane Satrapi is an Iranian-born French graphic novelist, illustrator, film director, and children’s book author. She was born in Iran in 1969 and grew up in Tehran in a middle-class Iranian family, attending the Lycee Francais until she left for Vienna and, later, Strasbourg to study Decorative Arts. She eventually moved to France, where she now lives with her husband, Mattias Ripa. Satrapi has worked on many graphic novels and animated films, but she attracted worldwide attention for her autobiographical comic series Persepolis. The work chronicles her childhood in Iran and her adolescence in Europe. In 2007, Persepolis was adapted into a critically acclaimed animated film of the same name that received over 25 major international award nominations and over 15 major international awards.

This use of humor was very, very important for me. And the comic gave me this possibility. And, as I said before, it also gave me [the] possibility to use this humor without falling into cynicism. Because if there is one thing that I really hate over all, it’s cynicism.”

“I wouldn’t call my work an autobiography, because an autobiography is normally a book that you make because you have problems with your family and friends and you don’t dare to say it to them, so you make a book and, you know, you solve your problem with people. Believe me, I am not like that.”

“Any intellectual and any artistic work, by definition, is an anti-fanatic work. Fanaticism presses on the button of emotion…When you make an intellectual and artistic work— when you don’t pretend that you have the answers, but you only have questions to ask—when you make this work, for the person who listens to or reads you, not only do you ask them to be smart, but to work—to try to find the answers themselves.”

In this episode of The Archive Project, Sebastian Junger begins his lecture by stating that he had no idea he was going to be a war reporter. Starting out as an anthropology major, Junger spent several years as a tree-climber until he cut open his leg with a chainsaw and began questioning his path in life. “There was a war in Bosnia,” he says, “and I just went.”

Junger talks about his work reporting on combat in Afghanistan just before and during the U.S. invasion and how this intense experience informed both his writing and his life. He notes his own strange fascination with war, which fuels his reporting, explaining it as a desire to understand why humans think war is both horrifying and entertaining. Specifically, Junger shares anecdotes about his experience with a unit in the Korengal Valley of Afghanistan, famous for being the most combat-heavy area in the Afghan War, giving vivid description of combat and every man’s brushes with death, including his own. Throughout the evening, Junger delves into the complex nature of war, the brotherhood that develops amongst soldiers, and society’s responsibilities to these soldiers.

“I realized war is a lot of things. It’s horrifying, but it’s also very exciting, you know. It’s profound, and it’s also very meaningless. It’s a lot of things. And I realized that if I wanted to be a war reporter, I couldn’t step outside the tent for the unpleasant stuff.”

“There are two things that we all have complete control over, that can’t be taken away from us, and that you’re not born with: courage and compassion.”

Sebastian Junger is the internationally acclaimed bestselling author of A Death in Belmont, Fire, and The Perfect Storm, which stayed on the New York Times’  bestseller list for more than three years, set sales records, and became a major motion picture from Warner Bros.

nAs a contributing editor to Vanity Fair and a contributor to ABC News, he has covered major international news stories in Liberia, Sierra Leone, and other locations around the globe. He has reported on the LURD besiegement of Monrovia in Liberia, human rights abuses in Sierra Leone, war crimes in Kosovo, the peacekeeping mission in Cyprus, wildfire in the American West, guerilla war in Afghanistan, and hostage-taking in Kashmir, in addition to working as a freelance radio correspondent during the war in Bosnia.

For over a year, Junger and photojournalist Tim Hetherington embedded with the battle company of the 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team in the remote and heavily contested Korengal valley of eastern Afghanistan. Reporting on the war from the soldiers’ perspective, Junger spent weeks at a time at a remote outpost that saw more combat than almost anywhere else in the entire country. The professional result is twofold: the book WAR and a documentary, Restrepo, that won the 2010 Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival.

Junger has been awarded the National Magazine Award and an SAIS Novartis Prize for Journalism, among other accolades. He currently lives in New York City and on Cape Cod.

“That is what makes war so complicated. You can’t package it in a neat liberal or conservative package and dispense with it. War insists on being puzzled over and engaged with. It’s incredibly elusive. It’s like love, like one of these things that’s eternal and ancient and completely elusive, and you’ll never fully understand it.”