THE NEWSLETTER OF NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY’S CENTER FOR THE WRITING ARTS

VOL. 5WRITING NO. 3 Celebrating writing in all its forms MATTERS at Northwestern University. SPRING 2005

He joined the Washington Post in 1983, where ARE YOU PLANNING DIRECTOR’S LETTER he has covered the Pentagon, presidential WRITING EVENTS Journalist Rick Atkinson presents elections, and the Gulf and Iraqi wars. He THIS QUARTER? a lecture worth revisiting. also served as the Berlin bureau chief, and as the paper's deputy national editor and assis- LET US KNOW! By David Abrahamson tant managing editor. Director, NU Center for the Writing Arts His books include An Army at Dawn, The Just a reminder that the and Helen G. Brown Research Professor of Long Gray Line, Crusade, and In the Company Journalism, Medill School of Journalism Center’s biweekly digest, of Soldiers. The latter, published in 2004, is a NU Writing Event Digest, narrative of his time with the 101st Airborne highlights NU writing t was almost Division and its charismatic commanding events and reaches stu- midnight in general, David Petraeus, in the Iraqi War. As dents, faculty, and staff via "the middle follow-ups to An Army at Dawn, he is cur- the Center’s growing list- of nowhere" rently working on companion histories of the serv. If you know of an Iwhen Rick Italian and Western European campaigns upcoming event related to Atkinson found during World War II. Atkinson is the recipi- writing, whether it be an out he'd won ent of three Pulitzers—the 1982 prize for author visit, departmental the 2003 national reporting, a shared 1999 prize for program, or even an off- Pulitzer Prize public service, and the 2003 award for An campus event involving for history for Army at Dawn. The following is a reprint of NU students or faculty, An Army at his lecture delivered in Fisk Hall on February please let us know! We will Dawn, his compelling history of the 28, 2005. do our best to publicize all World War II campaigns in North writing-related program- Africa. "Nowhere" was 80 miles south of ming. If you would like to Baghdad. He was on assignment in Iraq, HISTORY, receive the electronic NU spending two months embedded with JOURNALISM AND Writing Event Digest, please the 101st Airborne Division. OVERING ARS send an email to As he recalled later, "The next day I C W PAST AND PRESENT [email protected]. spent in Karbala with the ...[troops], And don’t forget to give us Presented by watching an intense firefight and writ- a call! #467-4099 ing a long story about it for the Rick Atkinson [Washington] Post. That seemed appro- priate, somehow. It's always best to just hanks for invit- INSIDE get on with your work." Not bad words ing me to be to live by. with you today. 2 NU Writing News This past February, Northwestern I’m always delighted 3 WIR Landon Y. Jones hosted Rick Atkinson as part of the to come back to the 4 - 7 Atkinson Excerpt Con’t T RICK ATKINSON “Literature of Fact” lecture series, spon- Chicago area—even 7 CWA Event Calendar sored in part by the NU Center for the in February—because I 8 Jones Excerpt Con’t Writing Arts. In his presentation entitled went to graduate school at the other end of "History, Journalism, and Writing About the city, in Hyde Park at the U of C. Wars Past and Present," Atkinson con- Northwestern’s journalism school was much admired then, and in the thirty years since sidered various ways that he and others To view our writing events have approached writing about military has only become more so. In those days I calendar, please visit our conflicts. thought I wanted to teach college English; if web site: Atkinson began his career in journal- I’d had any sense I would have come here www.northwestern.edu/writ- ism in Pittsburg, Kansas in 1976, mov- instead to learn something useful about my ing-arts/ ing to the Kansas City Times a year later. future profession rather than having to learn Con’t on page 4 PAGE 1 THE NEWSLETTER OF THE CENTER FOR THE WRITING ARTS

IN BRIEF: ENGLISH DEPARTMENT SPONSORS NORTHWESTERN 2005 ANNUAL WRITING COMPETITION WRITING NEWS Entries are now being accepted for more than a dozen prizes v in categories ranging from poetry to literary criticism. In February, the 2005 Winter Quarter Writer in Residence, Alex Kotlowitz, presented a lecture in he English English department an opportunity to ANNUAL Department’s achieve recognition for their scholarly which he offered a sneak preview WRITING of the radio essays he produced for Annual or creative work. Chicago Public Radio’s Chicago AWARDS Writing According to the department’s web 2005 Competition isn’t site, “any original work is eligible, Matters: Money Talks series. The T complete series began airing in only for English whether or not it has been written for February on WBEZ (91.5 FM) and majors! Most of the a class.” This year’s application Friday, May 13th will continue through May. nearly dozen prizes are open to all uni- deadline is . Kotlowitz and co-producer Amy versity undergraduates. A few awards, Manuscripts must be submitted to Dorn compiled and edited a collec- such as the TriQuarterly Prizes in Essay University Hall #215 by 4pm on the tion of nine personal narratives and Fiction, are open to graduate stu- due date. entitled Stories of Five Dollars and dents as well. Cash awards from $50 to For details on the awards and for Other Amounts of Money. To listen $500 are given for the prizes. From the application guidelines, visit the to the radio essays and for more Edwin L. Schuman Awards in Fiction for English Department’s web site: information on the series, visit excellence in the short story to the www.english.northwestern.edu. t www.wbez.org Harriet Gilliam Memorial Prize for the In addition, students interested in “best essay dealing with the psychologi- applying to the English Department’s v Debuting this April at cal or psychoanalytic interpretation of a Writing Major must submit applica- literary text,” the Annual Writing tion materials to University Hall #215 Chicago’s Goodman Theater is Silk, t the latest stage adaptation from Competition offers students outside the by 3pm on Friday, May 6th. NU’s Mary Zimmerman. Based on the novel by Alessandro Baricco, Silk recounts the sensual journey of NU CENTER FOR THE WRITING ARTS a young man in Japan. In January, ADVISORY BOARD MEMBERS Zimmerman presented a reading of her work as part of the ongoing Reginald Gibbons WCAS English “Writers and Their Writing”series 2004 Bob Gundlach WCAS Linguistics & featuring NU faculty. More infor- & Writing Program George Harmon Medill mation on the new play is available 2005 t John Keene WCAS English at www.goodman-theatre.org Mary Kinzie WCAS English Ken Alder WCAS History Dan Lewis Education & Social Policy Sarah Maza WCAS History WRITING MATTERS Nicola Beisel WCAS Sociology Jack Doppelt Medill Saul Morson WCAS Slavic Lang. & Lit. Editor: Jessica Belle Smith James Ettema Communication Barbara O'Keefe Communication Contributing Writers and Editors: James L. O’Laughlin Writing Program Loka Ashwood Frances Freeman Paden WCAS Writing Nathan Eddy WRITING MATTERS Program & Gender Studies Haiwen Lu Spring 2005 Vol. 5 No. 3 Abe Peck Medill Nicole Price Fasig Editor: JESSICA BELLE SMITH Mark Ratner WCAS Chemistry © 2005 The Newsletter of the Northwestern Adva Saldinger Barbara Shwom WCAS Writing Program University Center for the Writing Arts. All Kim Weisensee rights reserved. Published three times during Ken Seeskin WCAS Philosophy Special thanks to Rick Atkinson. the school year at Northwestern University, Edith Skom WCAS Writing Program 1880 Campus Drive, Evanston, IL 60208. Carol Simpson Stern Performance Studies t Patti Wolter Medill

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Accidents NU’S CENTER FOR THE WRITING ARTS were fre- INTRODUCES 2005 FALL QUARTER quent. One man WRITER IN RESIDENCE, LANDON Y. JONES claimed to have been Author with long career in publishing, writing, and editing overturned insists Northwestern students must find their own voices. more than a dozen times in three andon Y. Jones, author of Great Expectations: America and the Baby Boom (1981) and, years travel- LANDON Y. JONES most recently, William Clark and the Shaping of the West (2004), joins Northwestern ing between University in the 2005 Fall Quarter to teach “The Art of Nonfiction: Find Your Own Voice.” A 37-year veteran of Time Inc., Jones served as managing editor of People maga- Cincinnati and Cleveland. George zine and as writer and editor for other Time Inc. publications including Life, Time, and Washington’s carriage once sank so L hopelessly into a mud hole on the Money. He has taught nonfiction writing at Princeton University and currently serves on the advisory council of its Department of English. For information on applying to Landon way to Mount Vernon that the Y. Jones’ course, please visit the Center’s web site: www.northwestern.edu/writing- President of the United States had to arts/. Application deadline is Monday, April 18, 2005. be extricated with ropes and planks. A stagecoach’s horses would be changed every fourteen or sixteen The following is an excerpt from William Clark and the Shaping of the West. miles while travelers refreshed them- selves at a tavern. On the new road—a better choice lark for her new life. She later asked AN ORIGINAL given their load of furnishings— left Jonathan’s wife to send cooking EXCERPT essentials like sage to “this wild William and Julia’s party would have made their way to Old Sweet Springs, Louisville and Country” in the West. She would be 30 miles northwest of Fincastle, and proceeded on to Virginia. On January transporting all the finery of planter C picked up the Midland Trail turnpike 5, 1808, he presented himself before society, including a piano, the first at Crow’s Tavern. The next stop the Botetourt County Clerk in ever seen in St. Louis. By mid-March, would be White Sulphur Springs, the Fincastle, Virginia, and asked for a they were headed west, a caravan of largest spa in Virginia. Following the marriage certificate. With him were carriages and wagons escorted by route of today’s U.S. 60, they would William Preston, who paid the $150 York and several Hancock slaves, pass Lewisburg, Rainelle, and marriage bond, and his future father- including a woman named Molly and Charleston on their way to in-law, George Hancock, who signed her family. They would have taken Huntington. It was another 220 miles his permission for the wedding of his either the southern route through the by flatboat downriver to the Falls of underage daughter “Judith” (as she Cumberland Gap or the Midland the Ohio. was named in the documents). Later Trail turnpike, a new road across pre- By mid-April, the newlyweds were that day William Clark—who already sent-day West Virginia to the Ohio in Louisville. They caught up with had sponsored two godchildren and River at Huntington. friends and family and former expe- had more than thirty nieces and In either case, travel on frontier dition members. One was Reubin nephews—finally became a husband. roads was a spine-jarring, tooth-loos- Field, who had recently married the The ceremony would have been the ening experience. Wagons and car- daughter of his brother Joseph, who biggest event in the picturesque coun- riages rumbled over washboard roads was also on the expedition but had ty seat since Clark himself had been built of “corduroy,” split trees laid been killed soon afterward. His niece toasted by the citizen of Fincastle as a side by side with the fate sides down. had become his wife. At Louisville, returning national hero almost a year Stumps were often left in the middle William and Julia’s party gained a earlier to the day. of the road, and low tree limbs could new member—Clark’s own niece Ann The newlyweds spend two months knock a careless driver off his perch. Clark Anderson, a daughter of his waiting for the ice to clear on the Coaches would ford countless late sister, Eliza, and her husband, Ohio and packing up Julia’s things streams, bogs, and sinkholes. Con’t on page 8

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everything, stinking alley with the gait of men old spondent, called infantrymen the Atkinson absolutely before their time, burdened by more ‘mud-rain-frost-and-wind boys.’ He con’t everything, on than the weight of their kit. The forgot dust. Troops here from the 101st the job, much to Mesopotamian sun is molten today, Airborne Division have for weeks been the dismay of a again, and they sweat like horses. A living in a four-inch layer of brown talc string of long suffering editors. room here, a balcony there: They that has become a fifth element, along The truth is that I now consider sweep the town in small teams, eyes with fire, earth, air, and water. myself a recovering journalist. It was darting from corner to dim corner. Pyle’s description of World War II a profession that I loved, a calling In a war dominated by armored jug- infantrymen in Tunisia in 1943 remains really, and I will always cherish the gernauts and precision munitions apt for thousands of Screaming Eagles: people the profession attracts and dropped from 20,000 feet, infantrymen ‘There are none of the little things that the role that journalism generally are the proverbial boots-on-the-ground. make life normal back home. There are and newspapering in particular If the dismounted infantry has played no chairs, lights, floors, or tables. There plays in our society and in our cul- a secondary role since the war began isn’t any place to set anything or any ture. But I have moved on to a dif- on March 20, its stock has risen in store to buy things. There are no news- ferent kind of writing, a different recent days as troops have been needed papers, milk, beds, sheets, radiators, kind of reporting, and really a differ- to seize and subdue cities bypassed by beer, ice cream, or hot water….A man ent kind of life. just sort of exists.” My ambition today is to make this into a conversation, to hear your Okay. What characteristics do we see thoughts and questions. For a few every soldier’s death here? The entire piece is short, about minutes though I’m going to talk is a public event 700 words in total. It was written about three writing genres, each of and ought to provoke quickly, on deadline, and in fact the which I’ve taken a crack at, and how the hard question: writer had another longer piece in the they might fit into the study of and same Monday newspaper that carried writing about history. why did he die? the hard news of Karbala’s capitula- Those genres are: journalism, tion. It relies on direct observation and “instant” history, and “true” history. virtually no other source material Those last two terms were coined by besides another journalist, albeit a pret- a professor at Ohio State. For classi- tanks and armored personnel carriers ty good one. fication purposes, they’re as good as bound for Baghdad. The second example is from an any. What is the relationship In a pattern repeated in Najaf and “instant history,” although I have to between these types of writing? Karbala, and which may be a template say the events it recounts seem, on What are the boundaries? Is there a for the Iraqi capital, armored forces ‘set some days, like ancient history. This is relative scale of legitimacy? Can the conditions for success by shooting from the opening of the prologue of they inform one another, with a kind the big pieces, and then the infantry the book I wrote that recounts my time of synergism? Can you practice one moves in to clean out the die-hards and as an embedded journalist with the without devaluing yourself as a secure the town,’ one Army general 101st Airborne Division. It’s titled In practitioner of another? said. the Company of Soldiers, and it’s a first- I’m going to use three brief exam- Ernie Pyle, the legendary war corre- person account of being inside the ples, and I hope you’ll pardon me if division headquarters from the deploy- I draw all three from my work. If ment out of Fort Campbell in late we’re going to eviscerate anyone February through the occupation of this evening, it might as well be me. Baghdad in mid-April. Here’s how the The first example is from the prologue starts: Washington Post of April 7, 2003, and “They found the sergeant’s body at it’s datelined Karbala, Iraq. It starts mid-morning on Saturday, April 12, like this: 2003, just where an Iraqi boy said it would be: in a shallow grave in south “They shamble through each Baghdad, near the Highway 8 clover-

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leaf known to the unusual distinction for a black comes out in paperback tomorrow— Atkinson U.S. Army as woman in those days. Odessa is 90,000 words, much longer than con’t Objective Curly. Marshall would wear her uniform to any newspaper article but about one- His interment her son’s funeral. third the length of An Army at Dawn, was imperfect; an Sergeant Marshall had left the my history of the North African cam- elbow and a knee protruded from the Army for four years in the 1980s in a paign in World War II. It’s first-per- covering rubble. He had been successful fight against Hodgkin’s son; never done that before. The stripped of boots and combat gear lymphoma. With the cancer in remis- underlying ambition is not to offer a but not his uniform, and his rank sion, he rejoined the service. The war comprehensive account of the inva- stripes and name tape sewn over his in Iraq was his first combat tour, and sion of Iraq, but rather a soda-straw right breast pocket made identifica- he was nearing retirement. His sur- view that observes the U.S. Army tion easy: Sergeant First Class John W. vivors included a widow, Denise, and from within, and attempts to show Marshall, who had been missing since six children, ages nine to seventeen. how war is waged in an age when Iraqi forces ambushed his convoy They collected his posthumous Silver wars are small, sequential, expedi- below Curly on April 8. A rocket-pro- Star and Purple Heart. tionary, and bottomless. Most of the pelled grenade had ruined Sergeant In a political democracy, every sol- material is based on what I saw, Marshall’s back and arm; four days in dier’s death is a public event. Every heard, smelled, felt and tasted, the ground had spoiled the rest of although I’ve drawn from some sec- him. Soldiers from the 101st Airborne ondary sources—particularly about Division recorded the map grid of his His interment Mesopotamian and Islamic history— makeshift burial plot, MB 4496275295, and I got hold of quite a few primary and a chaplain read from Psalms. By was imperfect; an elbow documents, including V Corps situa- the time I arrived at the site, the and a knee tion reports, after action reports, and remains had been lifted into a body protruded from the personal notes. bag, wrapped in an American flag, covering rubble. I’m willing to classify this as and carried—head first, as Army cus- “instant history,” but I’d been think- tom prescribed—to a Humvee. A ing of it in another genre that I’ve Graves Registration team took the come to appreciate while researching body for eventual burial in Arlington World War II, the “battle-memoir.” National Cemetery. soldier’s death ought to provoke the Among examples I admire are: The I learned more about Sergeant hard question: why did he die? Even Battle is the Pay-Off by Ralph Marshall in the coming weeks. He without having met Sergeant Ingersoll, who had been managing was fifty years old, making him the Marshall, I could surmise that he had editor of the New Yorker and Fortune senior American soldier killed in the his own answers. His rank indicated before going to North Africa; Road to war. He had served in the 3rd enough time in service to have sorted Tunis by David Rame; Brave Men by Battalion of the 15th Infantry out such existential issues. Later, I Ernie Pyle; Slightly Out of Focus by Regiment, a legendary unit in the 3rd would learn that in his last dispatch Robert Capa; The Road Back to Paris by Infantry Division, and he died while home he saw little merit in debating A.J. Liebling; Journey Into War by John firing a Mk-19 automatic grenade the mission in Iraq. ‘It’s really not an MacVane, an NBC correspondent in launcher at marauding Iraqi paramili- issue with me,’ he wrote. ‘I am not a North Africa; Our Share of Night by taries. The fatal RPG round had politician or a policy maker, just an Drew Middleton; Purple Heart Valley blown him from his Humvee turret, old soldier. Any doubts on my part by Margaret Bourke-White, and The and in the chaos of combat his corpse could get someone killed.’ But private End in Africa by Alan Moorehead. A had been left behind. Born in Los rationales, however valid and honor- more recent example would be Angeles, Marshall had joined the able, rarely satisfy public inquiries. Martyrs’ Day by Michael Kelly, who Army at eighteen. His father, Joseph, Why did Sergeant Marshall die?” died outside Baghdad on April 3, was an Army quartermaster during 2003. World War II; his mother, Odessa, had What about this genre? It reflects It’s a book that takes to heart the been a medical technician in the about 10 months of work. The book— observation by Samuel Hynes, the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps, an which was published last spring and distinguished professor of literature Con’t on page 6

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at Princeton, be an intriguer or [to] attempt to be porting material was not transparent. Atkinson that “war nar- clever,’ and he retained the winning It requires distance and time. con’t ratives make traits of authenticity, vigor, and Something had to ferment. war vivid, they integrity. He had displayed The methodological differences don’t make it admirable grace and character between these three examples are familiar. Indeed, one motive for under crushing strain. But he was pretty obvious; so too is the varying writing them seems to be to show hardly artless. Naïveté provided a length of the telescope through which how unfamiliar war is, how convenient screen for a man who they are viewed—basically from six strange and desolate its ordinary was complex, shrewd, and some- hours to six months to sixty years. scenes are.” times Machiavellian. The Darlan Less obvious I believe are the bound- Okay, finally, true history: I’ll affair had taught him the need to aries between these genres. What we keep this brief. This passage comes obscure his own agency in certain have in the three excerpts, respective- from the epilogue of my North events even as he shouldered ly, are the first-, second-, and third- African history, which opens with responsibility for them. The failings drafts of history. None, I would the victory parade in Tunis, on of Fredendall and other deficient argue, is a final draft. When people Thursday, May 20, 1943, and commanders had taught him to be ask whether I think An Army at Dawn describes the units marching down tougher, even ruthless, with subor- is the definitive history of Operation the boulevard. Then this sketch: dinates. And he had learned the TORCH, which was the codeword for hardest lesson of all: that for an the invasion of North Africa, I cringe. “Even after two and a half hours army to win at war, young men Great events, like World War II, are in the molten sun Eisenhower must die. bottomless; great men, like Dwight showed no sign of wilting. A ’One of the great fascinations of Eisenhower, are bottomless. There’s reporter described him as ‘lean, the war was to see how Americans more to write. There will always be bronzed, and loose-limbed. He was developed their great men so quick- more to write. happy as a schoolboy…taking the ly,’ a British general later observed. There’s an intertwining going on salutes as the units passed. When None more than Eisenhower. In the here, isn’t there? I rely quite a lot in the parade drew to an end he fall of 1942, the general continued, An Army at Dawn on journalists’ smoked, laughed, and joked with he had been ‘a well-trained and accounts, and I guess I believe they the various leaders.’ loyal subordinate’ to his more expe- are often undervalued by many peo- In truth, he had been peevish rienced British colleagues. Now he ple writing history. Journalists are, and distracted, notwithstanding was a commander. His son, John, after all, paid eyewitnesses—under- the gleeful announcement from his later wrote: ‘Before he left for paid!—often with a literary flair, an West Point classmates that they Europe in 1942, I knew him as an eye for detail, and a penchant for were renaming him Ikus Africanus. aggressive, intelligent personality.’ irony and skepticism, those twin lens- ‘All the shouting about the North Africa transformed him ‘from es of modern consciousness. And, in Tunisian campaign leaves me a mere person to a personage…full writing journalism, I look for histori- utterly cold,’ he confided to George of authority, and truly in com- cal resonances—the eternal verities of Marshall. The concept of a victory mand.’” the infantry life for example. parade appalled him, and he had Let me quote Professor Samuel tried without success to convert This is something else, isn’t it? It Hynes again. “Historians,” he writes, the event into a sober commemora- actually disputes the journalist’s “tell the big stories, of campaigns and tion of the dead. He still slept first-hand account. There are eight battles, of the great victories and the badly. If he seemed jolly, jolliness citations listed in the notes for this disastrous defeats…assigning credit was among the many masks the passage, including letters, memoirs, and blame, turning war’s chaos into commander-in-chief had learned to and oral histories. It makes judg- order. The men who were there tell a wear. ments about a subject that has been different story, one that is often quite No soldier in Africa had scrutinized, Lord knows, by many ahistorical, even anti-historical.” I changed more—grown more—than others over the past sixty years. It’s guess what I’m trying to do in the Eisenhower. He continued to pose a sketch, and an assessment, that books I write now is to reconcile the as a small-town Kansan, insisting could not have been legitimately two, to square the circle, to integrate that he was ‘too simple-minded to made at the time because the sup- the turning of disorder into order,

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that he sees as the province of histori- the University of Pennsylvania, ans, while also capturing that ahistor- has this to say in writing about the CWA 2005 ical sense of immediacy, of authentici- British historian Martin Gilbert: “It SPRING QUARTER ty. is as if to Gilbert ‘objective’ histori- In my recent Iraq book, I obviously ography is not merely impossible CALENDAR am relying heavily on journalistic but inhuman, offensively heartless trawling, yet I also try to benefit from and insensitive. To him, the writ- works of history, and sociology, and ing of history is not a science, but his quarter, please join NU’s primary sources. I make judgments distinctly one of the humanities, Center for the Writing Arts as that I would not have been comfort- and only those with deep feelings we celebrate writing in all its able making on the spot, and which for the human predicament should forms by welcoming distinguished would run counter to the prevailing try it.” guests from both on and off cam- professional ethic of daily newspa- And I guess that’s where I ulti- T pus. For a complete calendar and pers; that hard question—“Why did mately come down on this ques- recent additions, visit www.north- he die?”—would not make it through tion of genres: the one thing that western.edu/writing-arts/. the Post copy desk. Yet I freely links them together, when done acknowledge that I cannot assess Maj. capably, is an inherent interest in Tuesday, April 19th, 2005 Gen. David H. Petraeus, who was the the human predicament, whether 5:30 PM commander of the 101st Airborne it concerns events that happened Harris Hall 108 Division, as comfortably as I can this morning, or last year, or a assess Eisenhower. (For one thing, hundred years ago. I don’t think 2005 Spring Quarter Writer in he’s still alive; I swore after writing I’d be quite so rigorous in declar- Residence Peter Ho Davies reads Crusade , my book on the 1991 Gulf ing that those who lack deep feel- from Equal Love and other recent fic- War, that henceforth the only books I ings for that human predicament tion. was going to write would be about ought not practice journalism or dead people. So much for that vow.) writing instant history, but, as in But I think there are other currents those writing true history, it helps. Wednesday, May 11th, 2005 t here that cut across the genres. Each 4 PM have narrative elements. Frankly, for Harris Hall 108 me, if it doesn’t have a story, or can’t Copyright 2005 Rick Atkinson. All be told as a story, I’m not terribly rights reserved. 2005 Spring Quarter Writer in Peter Ho Davies interested. Also, there’s an emotional Residence presents charge in each, an effort to make a lecture on a topic TBA. flinty-eyed assessments while also trying to convey an emotional truth; Tuesday, May 17th, 2005 that’s a truth, I suppose that isn’t 12 PM right or wrong in a rigidly empirical University Hall 201 or historiographical sense, but one that is evaluated on the basis of how T.H. Breen reads from The it resonates. Writers of military histo- Marketplace of Revolution as part of ry have an inherent advantage in the “Writers and Their Writing” their subject matter because so much series. of military history carries a natural emotional charge, like a proton carry- Wednesday, June 1st, 2005 ing an electrical charge: it’s about life 12 PM and death. University Hall 201 I’m much taken with Paul Fussell’s concept of history “illuminated by Donald Norman reads from emotion.” Fussell, who for many Emotional Design as part of the years was a professor of English at “Writers and Their Writing” t series.

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LANDON Y. JONES’ EXCERPT FROM William Clark For information on his NU residency, visit our website: www.northwestern.edu/writing-arts/ Richard Clough On June 2, Clark left Louisville and offered two fireplaces, four downstairs “William Anderson. At descended the Ohio to the mouth of the rooms, an office, a stable, a nearby well, Clark” eighteen, Ann- Cumberland River. From there he sent his a fenced-in garden, and a wraparound con’t often called horses, carriage, and wagon overland to porch. “Nancy”-would Kaskaskia with York and two other family In a warm letter to “My dear friend,” be Julia’s trav- slaves, James and Easter. They were accom- Lewis proposed sharing the quarters eling companion into the strange new panied by Joseph Charless, an Irish-born with the newlyweds and noted that if land across the Mississippi. Her pres- printer who, with financial backing from there was not sufficient room he could ence would be especially welcome in both Lewis and Clark, was planning to start move out. He then added a teasing, if the coming months, since Julia was the first newspaper west of the Mississippi. typically strained, Lewisian reference to now pregnant. He founded the Missouri Gazette in July William’s earlier description of “the Clark transferred their personal fur- 1808. goods” he would be bringing to St. nishings into the flatboats, along with Meriwether Lewis, who had finally Louis. “I must halt here,” Lewis wrote, a load of merchandise for the govern- arrived in St. Louis a full year after he had “and ask you if the matrimonial dictio- ment trading-house and cantonment at been appointed governor of the Territory of nary affords no term more appropriate Bellefontaine. He sent back to Louisiana, was busily preparing for his than that of goods, alias merchandise, Jefferson “the skin of he sheep of the friend’s arrival. He had rented a French for that dear and interesting part of the Rocky Mountains” and a grizzly hide colonial house from John Campbell, the new creation? It is very well Genl., I shall tell to display in his Indian Hall at subagent for Indians on the Upper madam of your want of Gallantry; and Monticello. He separately boxed up Mississippi. Built in the characteristic the triumph too of detection will be three additional crates of fossils left French poteaux en terre style of logs planted more complete when it is recollected over from Big Bone Lick to ship to upright in the ground and chinked with a what a musty, fusty, rusty old bachelor I t Jefferson by way of New Orleans. filling of grass, clay, and stone, the house am.”

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WRITING MATTERS NEWSLETTER OF THE CENTER FOR THE WRITING ARTS Jessica Belle Smith, Editor Northwestern University 1880 Campus Drive Evanston, IL 60208-2215