Berkeley Writers at Work Speakers

Spring 1997: Ronald Takaki

Professor, Ethnic Studies/Asian American Studies

Quotations:
"I can write sometimes for eight hours, ten hours with just a break for lunch."

"It’s that way with almost every book; I get absorbed in it. When I was in Hawaii, I was writing Iron Cages, and I would often go jogging or bicycling–-some of you know that I’m a surfer, right? I’d go to the beach around 4:00. What’s kind of interesting here, I’m also still thinking about that chapter that I was working on. Maybe just being out there, away from my desk, enables me to see pieces of the puzzle come together in a different kind of configuration."...

Fall 1997: Robin Tolmach Lakoff

Professor, Linguistics

Quotations:

"Proofreading is what I hate. I detest editing and one of the things I’ve had to learn with more difficulty than almost anything else in the course of learning how to write is that you have to proofread and you have to edit.

"I do not use a spell checker because it’s more annoying than helpful, I find. I certainly don’t use a grammar checker because I am the syntactician here. Nobody’s going to tell me–-no stupid machine is going to tell me–-how to write a sentence. But, yes, you do have to proofread...

Spring 1998: Nancy Scheper-Hughes

Professor, Anthropology

Quotations:

"I tend to write. . . to individuals. In fact . . . I generally have photos in front of me when I write. And maybe this is the vestige of my Catholic education; they're like little relics. [Shows a photograph to audience] This is my favorite informant, Bieu, who's taken out her false teeth--the playful side of Bieu. I try to amuse her sometimes. Or some of my favorite street kids will be out there. Or a picture of the local priest, and I'll be then arguing with aspects of Catholicism."

". . . Sometimes...

Fall 1998: Frederick Crews

Professor, English

Quotations"If you are serious about revision, and serious about listening to people who can give you a really hardnosed, rational critique of your work, your eventual prose is going to turn out to be better than yourself. It's going to be more logical than you are."

"It's going to be more eloquent than you are. It's going to impress people in a way that you don't impress people. And then you get the thrill of being known for something that is an artifact of a process, rather than for your own beautiful inner nature–-and, at my age...

Fall 1999: Alan Dundes

Professor, Anthropology and Folklore

Quotations:

". . . a lot of my things–-even the book on India, which I consider my best book–-went to, I think, six university presses before it finally found a publisher. So, even though you’re experienced and you’re a veteran and you’ve been a lot and you’ve had a reasonable publication record, you can’t just send out the manuscript that you think is fine and then somebody’s going to publish it. Doesn’t happen."

"My philosophy–-and I’m glad I have a chance to say it–-my rule has always been, whether it’s a book...

Spring 2000: Bharati Mukherjee

Professor, English

Quotations:

"[I usually write] three total drafts. As I write, I don’t look at the earlier draft. It’s a very weird and wasteful way of proceeding, I suppose, but for me a draft is simply to find out what is the story I really want to tell, whose story is it that I want to tell. Sometimes the character I thought was the main character will get thrown out and put in file boxes and basements of houses in Iowa or Saratoga, and a very minor character will take over."

"I’d say that rewriting is not cosmetic for me, but...

Fall 2000: Orville Schell

Dean, Graduate School of Journalism

Spring 2001: Arlie Hochschild and Adam Hochschild

Arlie: Professor, Sociology; Adam: Lecturer, Graduate School of Journalism

Quotations:

Adam Hochschild:

"One thing I always tell my students at the journalism school is I think there is just as much, if not more, to be learned about good storytelling by reading short stories and novels and putting the techniques used there to work in telling nonfiction stories. There are certain disciplines, history is one, I think, where the art of storytelling is sometimes not completely lost."

"But you know, about storytelling, I think most people have some storytelling...

Fall 2001: Timothy Ferris

Professor, Graduate School of Journalism

Spring 2002: Leon F. Litwack

Professor, History