March 13, 2024 • 62 mins
Dennis Clausen, is a professor of American Literature and Screenwriting at the University of San Diego in the USA. He’s a highly respected, award-winning author of many works of fiction that reflect his lived experience and special interest in American small towns. He’s also written, Storytelling as Art and Craftsmanship, offering practical strategies for Screenwriters and Creative Writers. The emphasis on storytelling as art and craft is critical which is reflected in his regular contributions to Psychology Today. He discusses the threat of Artificial Intelligence and technology to our own thinking skills, neurological development, mental fitness, our imagination, having an authentic voice and questioning, who’s soul will be in literature? We talk about the relationship in his current trilogy between social injustice, economic inequality, homelessness and how Art is critical to finding truth, purpose and human existence. Dennis shares powerful personal stories including how his father, Lloyd Clausen, was adopted to be a farm labourer, not a son, who was extremely deprived. In the 1920s, the Great Depression and droughts also made for his crushing existence. Dennis unravelled his father's life story before he sadly died from cancer and he consequently published, "Prairie Son." All of his work is a great act of humanity and an important reminder why the humanities must have freedom to survive, to respond to authoritarianism and exercise the health of our own minds.
Series Audio Editor - Joey Quan.
Series Music - Courtesy of Barry J. Gibb
Closed Captions are added to all interviews in this series. Read only, text versions of every interview, news, reviews and your host are here: www.canartsaveus.com
Discover Professor Dennis Clausen: www.dennisclausen.com
Professor Dennis Clausen, contributor to Psychology Today magazine: www.psychologytoday.com/us/contributors/dennis-m-clausen-phd
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(00:03):
Welcome to this podcastseries asking the question Can
art save us? I'm starting thefirst national and international
conversation about courage andcuriosity. What do these
qualities really mean? And whydoes it make a big difference to
our mental, societal anddemocratic health? I talk to
award winning and diverseartists across the arts to
(00:24):
explore these qualities in theirlives and work, both to inspire
and for us all to learn. I'mexploring why we need these
qualities to help change theglobal epidemic of mental
illness, loneliness,polarization of our communities,
and even global conflicts. Ifthe arts cultivate courage and
curiosity, I'm asking thequestion, Can art save us?
(00:50):
Dennis Clausen is a professor ofAmerican literature and
screenwriting at the Universityof San Diego in the USA. He's a
highly respected award winningauthor of many works of fiction
that reflect his livedexperience and special interest
in American small towns. He'salso written Storytelling as Art
(01:10):
and Craftsmanship, offeringpractical strategies for
screenwriters and creativewriters. The emphasis on
storytelling as art and craft iscritical. Dennis also writes
regularly about the threats ofartificial intelligence and
technology to our thinkingskills, neurological
development, mental fitness orimagination, having an authentic
(01:33):
voice and questioning whose soulwill be in literature. I first
discovered Dennis Clausen viathe magazine Psychology Today,
his article posed the questionAre the Humanities in a War for
Survival? Dennis was speakingdirectly to questions I also
raise in this series, thesurvival of arts and humanities,
(01:55):
from cuts and subjugation totechnology is critical,
especially when we understandtheir role in cultural identity,
representation, social cohesion,democracy wellbeing and more.
When I invited Dennis to thepodcast, I was delighted that he
replied, saying, "to say we're onthe same page is somewhat of an
(02:17):
understatement. Your titlecan art save us is the defining
message in the Accountant'sApprentice and the Return of the
Fifth Horseman, in my plannedtrilogy, the same theme will be
extended into the Untitled thirdnovel." I've since read the
Accountant's Apprentice, apsychological thriller with
unexplained murders, and aprotagonist filled with loss of
(02:40):
face and vulnerability. Butthere's more to it. Art is
critical to his search foranswers about truth, purpose and
human existence and it'sreviewed as "a screaming success."
I even share the same surname asthe lead character, Justin
Moore, if ever Can Art Save Uswas to twin with an author than
(03:05):
I think this is very definitelyit. Hello, Dennis, and welcome
to Can Art Save Us? Thank you forinviting me.
It's lovely to have your timetoday. And I know how busy you
are. So thank you again. Dennis.I wondered in order to set the
conversation up for listenerswho may not yet be familiar with
(03:27):
your work if you could share thestory outline of the Accountant's
Apprentice, the first novel inthe trilogy, and also the
struggle you had with it to findwhat you call the inner spirit
of the story? Yes, absolutely.
It kind of starts out a verypersonal experience or
(03:50):
experiences. I had a friend, acolleague at the University
where I teach. He was aRenaissance scholar, and
Renaissance actor. He came downwith Parkinson's disease and had
to retire and he moved up toOregon to be with his daughter.
And a couple of years later, Igot a call from her and she
(04:12):
asked me if he came down if shecould get him down to San Diego.
Would he would I be willing todrive him around. So you could
see some of the old places thathe and I used to go to together
and things he loved places heloved to be. And she added that
I think it's probably the lasttime he will be able to to make
(04:33):
that trip. So of course I toldher I would. So she got him down
to San Diego and I put hiswheelchair in the back of my car
and drove him to a variety ofplaces. And along the way, a
couple of things started to cometogether for me. So this is just
really strange. This is a fellowthat I knew very well. We talked
(04:54):
about everything for many years,probably 20 plus years.
And I can't talk to him becausehe struggles to communicate. So
as I'm pushing the wheelchairaround, I'm just thinking
there's something here somethingI might be able to work on.
And then the other thing Inoticed, too, that I hadn't seen
in my car when I drove throughthese areas and that was the
(05:16):
burgeoning, growing homelesspopulation in those areas. I
started to kind of work on thestory a little bit.
And I tried a number ofdifferent ways of dealing with
the, the experience and pullingthings together. And it wasn't
really quite coming together.But I heard of a place called
(05:37):
the Evergreen Cemetery, which isour version of a potter's field
where the homeless are buried.And I decided to go out there
and take a look and see what itwas. So I drove out to that
area, one of the poor areas ofSan Diego.
And I was passing still morehomeless people on I realized
(06:00):
the population was growing. WhenI got to the Evergreen Cemetery,
I noticed that there to myright, there was this beautiful
cemetery, big stones faces onthe stones, balloons, flowers,
family members, all around thatarea, a little bit farther. And
(06:21):
to my left, there were two rowsof cypress trees for their
branches had been tied verytightly, almost a symbol of what
I was going to see, which islives that could never unfold
and become anything
really meaningful. So I got outmy car and walked over there and
looked out over what is a weed field, nothing but a weed field.
(06:44):
And I decided to walk out intothe middle of it. And when I got
in the middle, I did see a onesmall cemetery stone and it said,
Never Forgotten.
And I realized I was standing inthe middle of those 10 acres, of
weeds, no cemetery markers, manyof the coffins were piled two
(07:05):
three deep. And I realized thatwas a fundamental question that
I need to answer in the story.And that is to bring all this
together with the spirit of thisplace, and I felt this is where
I found the inner spirit. Thisis going to be a story about the
(07:26):
homeless population.
So when I started writing, andmore and more seriously, the
Accountant's Apprentice,
I chose a narrator who wasdeeply troubled by something he
was living in isolation, and asmall studio apartment in
downtown San Diego close todowntown. And he spent most of
(07:48):
his time while reading andtwisting and turning a Rubik's
Cube.
We sense that he is a verytroubled man troubled by
something that happened in hispast. We don't know what it was
something he did or didn't do.
And he's, he's trying to get hislife back together. So he
(08:12):
answers an ad because he needsmoney to sustain his rather
meager lifestyle. He sees a notein the foyer of his apartment.
And it's a note that from anelderly man who is in a
wheelchair and needs a driver
to take him around San Diego.
And the places he takes him tohe asks him to drive him to seem
(08:36):
to be just disparate elements ofthings. Some are old warehouses
and appear to have drugactivities outside. And then he
also takes them to the Museum ofArt. And he seems to be
extremely knowledgeable aboutart, and about things and
historical occurrences that goall the way back to the
(08:57):
Renaissance.
And then Justin starts to thinkwell, maybe this fellow is
an art thief of some kind. Soall of these possibilities go
through his mind. And hestruggles struggles to
understand this guy and who heis or why he came into his life.
(09:18):
And over time even begins toquestion whether AC comes
from the biblical past, orperhaps the historical past, and
he's here on some kind of amission. So a big part of the
mystery here is Who is this guy?Why, why did he come into
(09:39):
Justin's life? And he also kindof gets Justin to see the
homeless situation thatsurrounds them in a very
different way than Justin had
seen them previously. That's areally good way of
(10:00):
setting the context and theposition of the leads. Because
as you mentioned, with theRubik's cube, this is very much
a philosophical puzzle. Therethere are many, many questions
that we can ask ourselves. And Ithink your writing encourages us
(10:20):
to ask ourselves,
it's, it's very significant, Ithink that you wanted to
consistently include thehomeless community, in this town
in this story, because it'sreally picking up on important
(10:42):
themes around loss, aroundbelonging, around having place,
and even not having a place. Sowould you say that your main
concern is how you want to tryand bring these disparate
(11:02):
elements together to find somesort of sense or cohesion as we
try to do with our own lives?
I think that's absolutely true.And I think it's one of these
projects that I've been involvedwith writing projects where the
minor characters, the homeless,gradually kind of come to the
(11:24):
surface and become almost thestory. Now, all of that was
happening concurrently withthings that were going on in
San Diego. There were some verybrutal beatings of some homeless
people. One was lit on fire.
One had railroad spikes driven into him.
(11:45):
And you wonder, why, what isthis?
I also read
some articles about the cause ofhomelessness, and I read a
article in Time magazine, 2020.And
they wrote that over fourdecades
(12:08):
$50 trillion dollars
was transferred from the from working Americans to
multimillionaires over fourdecades, $50 trillion dollars.
And another statistic I came upwith, or found was,
in 2022,
the Global Wealth Data Bankindicated that in America, over
(12:33):
one decade, the wealth grew by$80 trillion $80 trillion
dollars, 60 trillion of thosedollars, went into the hands of
the coffers of the top 10%, 60trillion out of 80 trillion. So
I started looking around alittle bit more because I
thought this is, the book is astory, it's not an economic or
(12:56):
sociological treatise but allof this, I think, is involved.
And I look back in time and tryto ask the question very
quickly,
when was the last time thatwe had such income inequality in
America? And then the year cameup very quickly 1928. We all
(13:20):
know what happened in 1929. Thatwas a stock market crash,
followed by the GreatDepression.
And of course, that lasted forabout 10 years. So I felt that
what was going on had happenedbefore. And it's probably
starting to happen again. And Istarted going out and actually
(13:44):
meeting with the homeless folksand talking to them.
And I discovered, it's incomeinequality.
The, you know, some of thepeople who are not aware of
this, tend to see it as acharacter flaw or, you know, our
desire to live like that. Orperhaps it's drug addictions.
(14:07):
And
all that comes in after they'vebeen out the streets for a while
they're trying to survive,that's when the drugs tend to
move into it. So I realized thatthis book has to somehow bring
these folks to the, to theattention of the people who who
read it. I became so taken bythis issue, that I I went out
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and talked to them and got to meetthem, bought one fellow a guitar
and a ukulele. Turns out, he wasa musician who just had to
go to the streets because hecouldn't afford to live and pay
the rent. Yeah, and as you weresaying, this is a deep and stark
reality. And it certainly seemsto only deepen and worsen. And I
(14:55):
noticed that one of yourarticles for Psychology Today
was also about courage and thehomeless, you had an article
that was called How Someone Whois Homeless Can Teach Others the
Meaning of Courage. And Iwondered if you'd like to
comment on that, because ofcourse, this also relates to the
(15:17):
story world that you've created.I think you recognize courage
and I think you also attempt toafford respect back to people
who are affected byhomelessness. Yeah, I would
like to comment on that. Becauseagain, one of the things I
wanted to do was to try to
(15:40):
overcome all of the stereotypesthat people have of the
homeless, and to see them ashuman beings who are struggling
for reasons that are way, waybeyond their control. This
fellow, frankly, was aninspiration to me. This was
during the COVID epidemic, and Iwould drive from my home to
school, the university, it'sabout a half hour drive, and I
(16:03):
get to this one area, one Park,on the way. And I would always
see him I'll just use his first name is Michael
dressed in this kind ofponcho is a heavyset fellow. And
he was always sitting on thesmall wall
and he was playing a littlegreen ukele. And
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people would gather otherhomeless would gather below him,
and they would listen to him,play the ukulele, he was out
there, found a little shelter,and a bus stop with an overhang
when it was raining.
And I got to where he wouldbuild up my spirits during the
COVID epidemic because Ithought, if you can do this,
(16:53):
under the conditions you'reliving, I certainly have to feel
that I can do what I what I'mgoing through is nothing
compared to what you're goingthrough here. One night, it was
raining, I'll never forget this.And I left my home and I just
went for a drive to school and Ithought I'm gonna check in on
him.
And I drove past the area wherehe usually would be sitting, and
(17:17):
he wasn't there.
And I drove by a couple moretimes, and I still didn't see
him and I thought well, a gooddecent shelter somewhere.
But then, I noticed this kind ofcolorful, something underneath a
bus stop
area where there was a roof, alittle plastic roof overhead.
(17:37):
And I drove by and I looked inand there he was, he was, his
cartload of clothing, his water bottles hanging off the
side. He was sitting thereplaying the ukulele in the
middle of the rain while therain is dripping down on all
sides of him.
And I'll never forget thatbecause I think that to me, it
was the ultimate strength ofsomeone to live like that and to
(18:01):
still
play his music. Very, verytouching, deeply movie. Yeah.
And the courage to survive, andespecially when you may well
feel abandoned, certainly in myexperience of volunteer work in
emergency homelessness shelters.I think it's a lesson that needs
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to be more widely understoodthat homelessness is not
actually very far away from mostof us. Whether that's economic
difficulty there is a phrase weoften hear over here in the UK,
at least that most people are introuble if there's just a one
(18:47):
month paycheck that's suddenlymissing. Obviously, we see
displacement through wars, wehave climate change threat and
further displacement. I thinkhomelessness is something that
isn't far away from many of usand I certainly encountered
people that had had professionalcareers, mental health or
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clinical mental health issueshad destroyed military careers.
Careers in the police it even leadto abandonment from families, or
even young women running fromarranged marriages, for example.
So I think I'm picking up onwhat you're saying that there is
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a terrible dominant stereotypearound people who are affected
with homelessness as though itis just a kind of careless
serves you right scenario. I'vehad only one experience that
even comes close to that kind oflifestyle and that was when I was
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quite young. We were quite poor.We lived in old farmhouse that
had been hauled out of
town and put on some concreteblocks. And I remember my mother
saying periodically that wemight not be able to pay the
rent next month, then as a boy,I thought, I was terrified. But
where do we go? What do we do?
(20:15):
That just kind of, I neverforgot that. And that's nothing
compared to what these folkshave to do day after day after
day, and the strength and thecourage to do that. And I don't
think people realize either howcold it is to be outside, even
in San Diego, which is a verynice area to live in, you know,
(20:37):
I have only had one experiencelike that. And that was when I
camped outside this was with my little boy too, and didn't
bring enough proper equipment.And I was just frozen that
night. And I thought to myself,I was watching Michael and
the others trying to trying toprotect themselves, how
unbelievably difficult that isand that's that became
(21:01):
the story. That actually becameeven more of the story in the
second one the Return of theFifth Horseman. Yeah. And I was
interested, Dennis, in also moreof your personal story, as you
just mentioned, in terms of yourexperiences growing up, and also
the significance of yourfather's experience, which of
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course,
is is particularly
important in your book, PrairieSon. And earlier when you were
talking about income inequalityand the Great Depression, I
understand this is aparticularly powerful story
because your father was in factadopted, but to be a farmhand
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rather than a son. And I thinkthis was probably a very harsh
experience. And I felt thatreally spoke again to issues of
place, having a place not havinga place, belonging, having a
sense of belonging, or nothaving a sense of belonging. I
(22:09):
wondered, when you became awareof that story, whether that
further informed how you grappleif you like, with the idea of
place in your writing?
Oh, yes. You know, yes, that'skind of a long story. But when I
was a boy, my parents weredivorced, it was kind of
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kind of a complicated thing. Mymother
came down with skin,tuberculosis as a child. So she
was, one leg was two inchesshorter than the other one
hip was basically destroyed. Myfather was
trying to make a living in thatsmall town and couldn't do it.
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So he had to go to another town.Minneapolis actually tried to
make a living with that. So hewas kind of in and out of my
life, a little bit of a
mystery to me.
What happened when I wasprobably about nine or 10 years
old, I guess, for the firsttime, someone stopped me in the
streets and asked how my fatherwas doing. And I told him, You
(23:14):
know, I hear from over thetelephone, he calls and
he writes, I see himoccasionally and everything. And
he said, I don't, they almostalways add. I don't know if you
know what your father's lifewas, like, on that farm, or he
was raised, but he was treatedjust terribly, just terribly.
(23:36):
One fellow who owned a littlegas station convenience store,
every time I went in there,would pull me aside and start
telling me about how my fatherwas treated on that farm.
Turns out he was friends with mydad when they were young. And so
he knew a lot. He had a lot ofinside information.
(23:58):
I, when I got older,
I started to take an interest inthis story. My father was very
ill he came down with cancer. Iwas out to visit him and him and
Houston, trying to help him outas best I could in the
remaining months of his life.More of what happened to him in
(24:21):
his youth came out and Irealized they'd kept him away
from school. If he went toschool, his adoptive father
would come and pull him out.After a couple hours and bring
him back to the farm to work. Ilearned that
if they were going fishing, hewould have to stay home and work
(24:42):
on the farm.
And there were so many of thesekinds of things I learned about
him.
And suddenly the mystery of myfather was becoming I think I
see now who he is and I spent 30years it's
a very long story, 30 yearsreally trying to figure out who
(25:03):
he is and his life and had somehelp from another adopted child
in that area, who turned out tobe his very best friend who
contacted me and said, you haveto write that story. So it's a
long story. And it's kind of awonderful story in a way because
I kind of completed his journeyand connected with his birth
(25:24):
parents on both sides, and stillcommunicate with a half sister
he has who must be close to100 years old, she invited me
into her family. And she told methey were putting my father's
name in
the book that they were puttingtogether compiling of all of the
(25:47):
Mosing descendants, ancestorsgoing back with several
generations. So it's been a veryfulfilling kind of journey than
is still going on. Yeah, it's sosignificant, and the importance
of how we all understand our,our own identities, our cultural
(26:07):
identities, family heritage, theimportance of roots. And as
we've been saying, throughoutthis conversation, the
importance of place, and clearlyyour father showed immense
courage in his life in order tosurvive that. And I'm equally
interested because of your livedexperience and emphasis on small
(26:29):
towns, and also, as you grew up,seeing small towns disappear,
there's perhaps a kind ofinsecurity or vulnerability that
comes with that. And I wonderedwhether you felt that
(26:49):
you are effectively honoring theimportance of heritage. So as
these small towns disappear aspeople disappear, you're also
honoring the importance ofheritage.
You know, I'm not sure I thoughtof it in those terms. I think it
(27:10):
is true. I just kind of gotpulled into the story. And once
I got pulled into it, I couldn'tstop. My hometown was very
fortunate. It was a town of only4000 some people when I was
there, but the University ofMinnesota put a branch of the
University of Minnesota right onthe edge of town where there was
(27:32):
a Native American school thathad kind of gone out of
existence. So it became kind ofa college town. However, my
father lived on a farm six milesabout six
miles away in a town calledAlberta. That was probably 200
people. My grandmother, mymother lived in a town about 200
(27:52):
people. And so I'm reallyaccustomed to small towns, and
my wife and I, whenever we droveback to Minnesota, we would get
off the main freeway and takeall of the state highways and
county roads wherever we couldgo through the small towns. And
what we would see everywhere onMain Street was half the shops
(28:15):
closed.
And it became a very kind ofhaunting experience to see this.
And to wonder how many of themare even going to survive for
the next 10 years? So yeah, itwas, it was sad, very sad. But
that sense of
time that's passing, I thinkworked itself into a number of
(28:38):
things that I wrote. I wrote abook for our Bantam
Books called well,
the title is the return, the Search for Judd McCarthy.
And another one was The Sins ofRachel Simms, they're all set in
small towns, and I wanted to getinto those towns and bring those
people to life, kind of the wayI did with with the trilogy in
(29:02):
this case, that case it wasthe homeless populations. But
the other cases it was the smalltown characters and how they're
struggling to create some kindof a life for themselves, even
as they see the town,disappearing right in front of
them. I lovewriting about small towns. Yeah,
(29:22):
it's really significant how,
you know, it's such a strongsetting of course, throughout
your work. And I also wascurious whether it meant that
when you yourself decided tomove on, if you like from a from
a small town via studying, forexample, whether that might have
(29:47):
been seen as a radical act, wasthat in some way disruptive for
the small community in the smalltown, where you had been growing
up?
Well,
one of the things that came tomind when you were just
describing that is, I made thedecision when I
(30:10):
left my small town, that I wouldnever look back. And I looked
out my side, the side mirror ofmy car, as I was leaving, and
I thought I'm done.
And then all I ended up doingwas looking back in writing all
of these things.
I think that
(30:32):
the people in my father's storyanyhow, were so good to him.
So good. And many of them triedto intercede in his situation,
they knew what he was goingthrough. And they told his
adoptive parents, you have totreat this boy better, you have
(30:53):
to get him to a dentist, you'dhave to let him go to school.
That he, he felt so littleaffection in his life that even
a little pat on the back made adifference. It's such a
terrible story of child crueltyand neglect that he had to
(31:13):
survive. And there's one storyI'll tell you about that I took
I was on a book tour and almost every stop and 12
cities back there, when Istarted talking about this,
there was someone who would turnto a friend and said that could be
my father's story, or that can bemy mother's story. It was very,
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very common, much more than Ithought it was to adopt children
and turn them into farmlaborers. In fact, I learned
later that there's a thingcalled the Orphans train. I
don't know if you've ever heard of what happened. New Jersey orphanages
and some New York, basicallytried to empty out their
orphanages by sending thechildren out west, they thought
(31:57):
they were giving them a betterlife. As it turns out, in some
cases, that was true. But therewere between 1859 and 1929 and
it was 350,000 children weresent out west to have the better
life. And it turns out about 1/3of them ended up in the same
kind of situation as my father,maybe not quite as bad.
(32:20):
But it is so absolutelyshocking. And of course, this
all speaks to in other ways,your concerns around the
homeless communities you'vewitnessed, there's a terrible
sense of neglect, there's aterrible sense of abandonment
and being forgotten. And soyou're really drawing on such
(32:45):
deep personal experiences inyour family and stories, as well
as you as well as what youwitness in a contemporary
setting. You know, the socialcontext of escalating poverty
and homelessness, for example. Ithink, also, it's in a tradition
(33:07):
that I really, really appreciatein American literature.
And that is, and I think part ofthe defense of the
humanities, I believe, as agroup, we tend to be far more
sympathetic towards people whoare disadvantaged, who are
marginalized,
(33:28):
one writer that comes to mindimmediately not a very
household name, StephenCrane, who wrote the Red Badge
of Courage, but he saw how thepeople in New York were living
in the slums. He decided to movein with them, and to write about
them and to bring to the surface,what their lives were like, and
(33:49):
what does income disparity wasdoing. And he died at the age of
29 from tuberculosis fromliving in that kind of squalor.
You know, you have JohnSteinbeck, the Great Depression,
everybody identifies with him,he went out and spent time and
lived with the Okies, who arecoming up to California from
(34:10):
Oklahoma and told their story.So, you know, I'm just one
person doing this. But I thinkone of the great advantages of
the humanities and why we can'tlet them push us out of the
universities, is we tend, Ithink, to tell the stories of
those kind of people. And thosestories need to be told to
overcome some terrible injusticesthat are, you know, in almost
(34:34):
every community, I suppose everycountry. Yeah, absolutely. And
this, of course, is somethingelse you do brilliantly well,
particularly in this trilogy.
You're
work around how you include artor the arts versus if you like,
(34:59):
controlled
patterns in themodern world, it's very much
about reminding us as readershow the arts can be vital door
openers, door openers that speaktruth, for example, or door
openers on to otherperspectives, other realities in
(35:22):
the world. How would youdescribe the importance of the
relationship AC has with theArts throughout that journey in
the Accountant's Apprentice thatsets this whole trilogy up?
Well, I think there's a quote byBertolt Brecht, that kind of
(35:48):
tells me everything. When I sawthis, I don't have the exact
words but he basically said in1847, he said that, first
they come after the culture,then they come after the people.
He was referring to fascism inhis time. But he was also I
think, referring to the moreuniversal sense of
(36:10):
authoritarianism. And what itdoes, in other words, once they
remove the arts, then the peopleare vulnerable. I think AC is a
character, of course, he's kindof shrouded in mystery and
ambiguity, which I think hehas to be. But he's trying to
(36:31):
get Justin to recognize, pardonme, that art has a very crucial
role in society. In manyrespects, it keeps the forces of
authoritarianism at bay for atime by teaching us to look at
life and in ways that theauthoritarians never look at it.
(36:52):
Everybody's disposable to them.And
AC, as the title suggests, andit seems that he is setting up
Justin as the Accountant'sApprentice. And then there is
another possibility, and that iswith a young girl and her mother
who come in off the streets andlive in a rescue shelter. And
(37:18):
this little girl seems to havesuch artistic talents, that she
seemed almost to be connected insome way to the Renaissance and
the great Renaissance artists.And I think those artists told
us or tried to tell us throughtheir paintings, and AC tries
to tell us, that we have toreexamine the human form, every
(37:43):
so often, we have to askourselves, who are we? Where are
we? What are we doing here? AndI think in many respects, we're
at that kind of a turning pointagain, right now.
I think with all of thetechnology coming our way, and
what it's kind of doing to us,taking over our lives, and in
many respects, taking over ourthinking. I think AC ultimately
(38:08):
is a character who
almost sees the whole of humanhistory and sees the artistic
traditions that go way back andtries to bring them into the
future, and to allow them tohelp us see the future ourselves.
(38:28):
Yeah, yeah. And also, I thinkit's worth looking at your
particular choice, of course ofRenaissance art. And so
in the first novel, there's thatparticular emphasis from AC
to go to the museum, he wants tosee the Renaissance art
exhibition. And of course, therenascence is concerned with
(38:50):
revival,
Rebirth for example. It was atime where Arts and Sciences, or
the great artists likeMichelangelo, Leonardo Da Vinci
would equally embrace Arts andScience, whereas today's context
(39:12):
feels very, very divisive. Wouldyou think that's fair to say?
Yes, I do. I think that thereis, you know, almost been a war
on art. Our universities, forexample, have been pushing the
humanities out the doors.There, there's a dwindling
number of students who aremajoring in any form of art,
(39:34):
music, literature,
what have you and are, you know,majoring in Business and
Technology one kind or another.We have
in our classrooms we have thetech people taking over
everything we're dealing with AIwriting, which is not AI is also
(39:54):
AI thinking.
We have cell phones that becomeaddictive.
We have all of these things. Andmany of they're telling us how
to teach our courses, you know,to pull down menus, I just think
that we are at a place where wehave to somehow get back. And
I'm not opposed to all allscience and all technology not
(40:16):
in any way. I mean, open heartsurgery, I know I'm glad to have
that for saving my wife's lifebut I think we have to look at
the past artistic traditions,and see how they stood up
really, to the oligarchs, and tothe,
you know, the monarchs of theirtime. And of course, if you want
(40:37):
to learn about those folks justread Shakespeare's plays, or
better yet go see them, we needthat we need them those people
in our lives again, and I thinkAC knows that.
Yes, and it feels that AC oftenhas very significant statements
to make and questions. So forexample, he says to Justin
(41:03):
directly "Art is the force thatdrives the universe, did you
know that?" He's actively askingJustin to consider that and of
course, Justin, who has been apriest, is surrounding himself
with spiritual, philosophical,theological questions and now
(41:24):
AC is focusing him on thesignificance of art, or in this
case, Renaissance art, theimportance of revival of
rebirth, as you were saying,of being able to talk back if
you like to answer back to whathas gone before and to encourage
(41:44):
openness. Whereas AI, is askingus to continually transfer our
own skills and our own authorityto artificial intelligence. Yes,
absolutely. It's taking thethinking power away from us.
That quote, you read,incidentally, I was listening to
(42:07):
it, it may reflect somethingthat Albert Einstein said, of
course, Einstein was a scientistand brilliant, brilliant man.
But he said this, and this isn'tthe exact quote, but he said, The
imagination leads the way forall human progress, the
imagination leads the way forall human progress. He wasn't
discounting knowledge orsaying that the imagination is
(42:30):
all we need. But he was saying,it leads the way. And if we
discount the imagination, andcreative and imaginative
thinking, which is what'shappening in our universities in
this country, and I thinkelsewhere as well, then you are
not going to have real progress,or at least you will have the
wrong kind of progress. I thinkat some point, the technology
(42:55):
which has done some things, Idon't want to go back to typing
on a typewriter, for example.But at some point, it reached
the arc of dysfunctionalism,and it starts to create the very
problems that it set out to, tosolve. And I think we're way
past that point. We need toencourage students, not only to
(43:16):
do their own thinking, but to douse their own imaginations, to
push ahead and determine theirown lives and their their own
futures. You know, even HenryDavid Thoreau, and in Walden
Pond, which, of course, is theultimate
expression of living a creativelife. Chapter Two is on economy
(43:39):
economics, and he's admits, youknow, we've got to make a living
sure, but beyond that we have tolive and as we live and use our
imaginations, we, I think,developed the human race in a
much, much more positive waythan it is right now. Right now
we're in trouble. We're in aturning point, whether we're
gonna go the right direction inthe wrong direction. I'm not
sure. Hopefully, it'd be in theright direction. Yeah. But as
(44:02):
you say, it's a very, verycritical time. And the article
you referred to, which, forlisteners, you can also find in
Psychology Today, dysfunctional-ism, Is Dusfunctionalism the
New Norm in Modern Life? and youraise really significant points
in terms of the bombardment offast technology, the social
(44:26):
media world, fragmentedinformation, information we
don't know if we can trust, allof that seems to almost function
in a strategic way as adeliberate distraction. And I
feel that one of the importantthings your books are doing or
specifically within thistrilogy, is you're reminding us
(44:50):
of the importance of art andalso the art of curiosity.
I think so
and I'm seeing a little bitof a backlash and in a good
way I think. I just picked up aUniversity of Southern
California brochure. And they'redoing a Shakespeare
(45:14):
program to examine Shakespearesrelevance to the world we live
in right now. And I thought goodfor you. That's exactly what we
should be doing. I'm finding mystudents, especially in
business, are starting to feelthat they're not getting the
kind of education that theyshould be getting. And I don't
(45:36):
even call it business education.I may be a little hard there, I
don't know. But I think it'smore business training, they're
being trained to fit into acertain cog in a
corporate machine.
They're starting to think veryseriously about what they need
to do to fill themselves out ashuman beings. And now they're
not all quite where I am, I'msure they can't be expected to
(45:58):
be. But they're starting to getthat little feeling inside of
them, I need to have somethingmore. And I think that's
something more is to fill outtheir humanity. So I'm kind of
encouraged a little bit by that.Yeah, that's really interesting,
because I was curious spanningyour career within teaching
(46:20):
what you may be most concernedabout in terms of what you saw,
in your students at the start ofyour career, who wouldn't have
been as bombarded as we aretoday through technology,
compared of course, to thestudents you encounter now?
(46:42):
Well, there's a huge differencetoday, for example in some
ways, I think we've been reducedto cell phone monitors. And
there have been a number ofstudies and the New York Times
just published one about twoweeks ago, that indicated that
the
attention deficit issues thattoday's students have, are
(47:05):
almost catastrophic, I use theword catastrophic. And we see
this all the time in theclassroom, they struggle, it's
an addiction, that's it, it isan addiction, and they can't put
them down. So we have to somehowbreak them out of that. So I'm
trying to find every kind ofcreative way I can think of in
the classroom, to get them tosee that a lot of the kind of
(47:29):
learning they're getting, whichis I think, pretty, you know,
the type that I'm kind ofparodying on my T shirt is not
real learning. Real learning iscreative learning it's creative
teaching. And they're reacting very well to it.
I'm doing different filmversions of Shakespeare's plays,
for example, and we talk aboutthem and they can see
(47:49):
the art, the creativity, theycan see the kind of people that
Shakespeare warned us to avoidin our society, which we're
seeing all around us, you know,various levels. I think there's
hope I do. And I hope I'm right.Yeah, that's really interesting,
because, of course, in terms ofthe trilogy, you have said that
(48:13):
it originally felt like you werewriting about a dystopian
future. And it could be thecollapse, if you like, of the
natural world and the climatecrisis, you you make specific
references to bees, thesignificance of bees within the
(48:36):
Accountant's Apprentice, it's areminder of potential collapse.
We could talk about the collapseof Arts and Humanities in the
education system.
But you also said it actuallyfelt more like a chronicle of
our times. Yeah, it did.Actually. I thought when I first
(48:58):
was start started the thetrilogy with the Accountant's
Apprentice, I thought I wasextending things into the future
aways. And the homelesssituation as it kept growing and
growing and growing, seemed likeI was living in a dystopian
world in the dystopian present.And that kind of grew over time.
(49:22):
And then I saw the breakdown inour educational system, I saw AI
come out and do not just writingfor us, but the thinking for us.
I mean, that's just incrediblethat we would ever allow
something like that to happen.
So you know, Aldous Huxley, inBrave New World, for example,
creates you know, somefuturistic world in which you
(49:46):
have a one world government youhave selective breeding you have
all kinds of ways to create amaster class but then the
everybody else is kind of, youknow, less educated and less
capable of doing serious
things. And suddenly I'm in themiddle of this, this is where I
am. And that's kind of I thinkwhere we are. And we have to now
(50:08):
claw our way back out.
Yeah. And I felt this was reallyinteresting in terms of how you
embrace prophecy, if you like inin these stories and again,
within this trilogy, it feelslike, again, the significance of
(50:30):
how you embrace the arts aspart of this story world is a
way of, as you said earlier,actually checking the past and
checking the future. But are youalso trying to encourage readers
to consider not only the idea ofprophecy, but perhaps the
(50:51):
prophecy of their own lives, theownership of their own lives and
their own minds? Oh, I think so.And in the Fifth
Horseman,
pardon me, Justin becomes evenmore fascinated by different
(51:12):
prophecies. One is the prophecyof Edgar Casey, the Sleeping
Prophet, who seems to have beenright in so many of his
prophecies, and he
prophesized that the human race,I think he said, there's five
stages we go through, we startedout as a purely spiritual
entity, went through anexcessively materialistic
(51:33):
entity, and now we're going backto the spiritual maybe he's right.
Nostradamus, of course,predicted the two of our
megalomaniacs, Napoleon andHitler and predicted that there
was another one that we'll beseeing in the early part of this
century. They're actually inthis decade. And I think there's
(51:54):
ample evidence that they're outthere. So there is that yes. I
think that it's important.
I had a
professor David Mill, Universityof Minnesota, he used to say,
just look for the patterns ofhistory, don't just think of
history as something that is alittle something that happens at
(52:17):
this time, in this time, in thistime, look for the patterns in
the past, and use them todevelop your own view of life.
And if we have more people whodo that, I don't think they will
fall victim to the falseprophets, that we see all around
(52:37):
us today. So I think it startswith kind of renewing and
reinvesting in your own sense oflife and how you interpret the
events around you. And it kindof works outward, and then it is
resonated in our institutions,in our educational systems. We
need more of that, and of theliberal arts and the humanities
(52:59):
so that that's why I am sostrongly in favor of them. Yeah,
absolutely. And it feels to methat your writing is helping,
helping us to focus on howhumanity is broken. And one
example of that, of course, isif we look at the neglect of
(53:23):
people who are affected byhomelessness, or perhaps child
neglect, for example.
And at the same time, you'realso working with the arts,
perhaps as a positive reminderthat there is a space and there
(53:43):
is a way to cultivate adifferent and better, kinder,
equal, happier humanity. So forexample, AC
is a gifted artist, and I reallylike how early on in the first
novel, the Accountant'sApprentice, we notice AC draw
(54:09):
homeless people that heencounters, and it's a very
meditative opportunity, as he'sreflecting on those people or
perhaps the condition of theirlives and the skills involved in
his drawing ability also feelslike he's returning and
affording some respect to thosepeople. Would you say that you
(54:36):
are encouraging people to thinkagain, about the Arts as a new
space, meditative space, to tryand recover the world that we
wish we lived in?
Absolutely, I think you know,everybody should have a creative
(54:57):
life, in addition to whateverthey have to do to make a living
But I also think just the act ofcreating art, watching art, it
pulls us into the deepest partof ourselves, that pulls us into
the deepest part of ourhumanity. It pulls us into a
place where we can empathizewith people that we otherwise
(55:18):
would not even recognize asbeing on the same species as we
are. It really stands as a, Ithink, a barrier of sorts to
well, not a barrier, but it'sit's a way of taking all the
technology that's coming at us,and putting that human element
back into it. And we need thatwe desperately need that. And
(55:42):
both on the personal level andthe professional level than what
we're doing right now talkingabout it, all of those things.
Yes, which, of course, is such agreat example of why the Arts
are important, and literature isimportant. You've created an
experience that createsconversations, and we now have
(56:04):
someone in the UK talking tosomeone in the USA, it's an
incredible connection, it'stestimony to the power of that
connection, and that willingnessto be open to each other to
explore these different ideas.And of course,
another favorite statement ofmine that AC makes in the first
(56:28):
novel is "the imagination leadsthe way for all human progress,"
is that what we might witness inthe third book, in the third
novel of the trilogy, once it'swritten? Yes, and I guess I can
give a little bit away, thisgirl has young girl and her
(56:50):
mother, who are on the streetsand come to the shelter, and
Justin decides to take them in,
at least for a time, and
he leaves his Rubik's cube with the girl. And he goes back and
does some work. And later on atnight, he comes back, and he
(57:11):
finds that, in fact, it's beensolved.
And we also see some of herdrawings. And there's a
realization there that
this girl is an artistic savantof some kind. So through the
course of the next
part of the trilogy, as I saidearlier, the homeless take even
(57:34):
a deeper sense in the story. Andthis young girl comes of age,
and tries to use her artisticskills to, to really show their
humanity. And she puts her
little crayon drawings on thewall, and they come and stare at
them and look at them and wonderif
(57:55):
this is what they might havebeen if things have gone a
little differently. So there's,she becomes kind of the center
of the story in a way. And
the last one, which we'reworking on right now should
be done, I think about June orJuly, hopefully,
(58:15):
she's
I'll give you just a little bitabout it, she's starting to take
a little bit of an interest inShakespeare. And the connections
between Shakespeare andMichelangelo and the other
Renaissance folks that
have been pushed off theuniversity educational charts.
(58:38):
And so she becomes I think, overtime, a bit of the new spirit
that may and hopefully willemerge, that recognizes the
importance of all the humanitiesfor that matter. And I'm hoping
that we can get the folks thatwho
run our schools, provide fundingfor our schools, start to
(59:00):
reconsider the importance ofthese things. So
I started to draw out to write avery different kind of story,
but it's kind of taking on alife of itself, I think. Yeah
which must, of course, always bepart of the pleasure and pain
perhaps of being a writer.
And of course, that feeds intothe series question, as,
(59:23):
unfortunately, we've racedthrough our hour. But how would
you respond Dennis to theseries question, Can Art
Uave us? I think it has to saveus. I believe that the future
that we're looking at right nowthat we're almost in the middle
of is more of the one thatBrecht, Huxley and others like
(59:45):
them saw coming and unless weallow art, to have a stronger
role, and to put up kind of aprotective barrier against less
admirable parts
of technology and science,I think the future will be
virtual unlivable. So art, Ibelieve, kind of creates a
(01:00:10):
spirit, a spirit that needs tobe infused into everything
that's going on, in ourclassrooms, on the streets, all
of that. If it's not, I think wewill be in deep trouble. But I'm
hoping that the spirit that's Ifeel coming alive, again,
(01:00:33):
expressed earlier. I'm hopingthat continues, especially in
our classrooms, but elsewhere aswell.
Yes, absolutely. And I justthink it's incredibly admirable
what you're doing both as ateacher, an educator and a
writer, that you're encouragingpeople through your work, to
(01:00:57):
perhaps discover for the firsttime or rediscover why the Arts
and humanities are so important.And through the journeys your
characters take and undertake,the struggles that they have to
survive and negotiate. You'reoffering a very interesting
(01:01:18):
perspective in terms of how theArts and humanities help us
navigate our lives, and in waysthat are happier and fairer for
all of us. I will be signing onyour episode page, I'll signpost
for the listeners where they canfind more of your work and
hopefully they can explore yourwriting for themselves. But I
(01:01:40):
would like to say a very, verybig thank you to you, Dennis,
for your generosity and yourtime for joining me today. Thank
you. I really enjoyed theconversation your questions were
wonderful. Thank you so much.I'm pleased to hear it. I have
to admit, I was very concerned.I might feel like a very
inadequate student after allyour years in teaching. Oh, no.
(01:02:04):
Oh, no, no, they were perfect.They were wonderful. Thank you
so much. And really we arekindred spirits. I sensed that
right away too so I'm hopingthere are people who can learn
from this and, you know, maybemake some changes. Yeah,
absolutely. And hopefully ourpaths will perhaps even crossed
one day because as I said in myintroduction, if ever myself or
(01:02:27):
Can Art Save Us was to be twinnedwith an author, then I
definitely think this is it.
Yeah. Thank you again, Dennis. You're more than welcome.
Welcome to this podcastseries asking the question Can
art save us? I'm starting thefirst national and international
conversation about courage andcuriosity. What do these
qualities really mean? And whydoes it make a big difference to
our mental, societal anddemocratic health? I talk to
award winning and diverseartists across the arts to
(00:24):
explore these qualities in theirlives and work, both to inspire
and for us all to learn. I'mexploring why we need these
qualities to help change theglobal epidemic of mental
illness, loneliness,polarization of our communities,
and even global conflicts. Ifthe arts cultivate courage and
curiosity, I'm asking thequestion, Can art save us?
(00:50):
Dennis Clausen is a professor ofAmerican literature and
screenwriting at the Universityof San Diego in the USA. He's a
highly respected award winningauthor of many works of fiction
that reflect his livedexperience and special interest
in American small towns. He'salso written Storytelling as Art
(01:10):
and Craftsmanship, offeringpractical strategies for
screenwriters and creativewriters. The emphasis on
storytelling as art and craft iscritical. Dennis also writes
regularly about the threats ofartificial intelligence and
technology to our thinkingskills, neurological
development, mental fitness orimagination, having an authentic
(01:33):
voice and questioning whose soulwill be in literature. I first
discovered Dennis Clausen viathe magazine Psychology Today,
his article posed the questionAre the Humanities in a War for
Survival? Dennis was speakingdirectly to questions I also
raise in this series, thesurvival of arts and humanities,
(01:55):
from cuts and subjugation totechnology is critical,
especially when we understandtheir role in cultural identity,
representation, social cohesion,democracy wellbeing and more.
When I invited Dennis to thepodcast, I was delighted that he
replied, saying, "to say we're onthe same page is somewhat of an
(02:17):
understatement. Your titlecan art save us is the defining
message in the Accountant'sApprentice and the Return of the
Fifth Horseman, in my plannedtrilogy, the same theme will be
extended into the Untitled thirdnovel." I've since read the
Accountant's Apprentice, apsychological thriller with
unexplained murders, and aprotagonist filled with loss of
(02:40):
face and vulnerability. Butthere's more to it. Art is
critical to his search foranswers about truth, purpose and
human existence and it'sreviewed as "a screaming success."
I even share the same surname asthe lead character, Justin
Moore, if ever Can Art Save Uswas to twin with an author than
(03:05):
I think this is very definitelyit. Hello, Dennis, and welcome
to Can Art Save Us? Thank you forinviting me.
It's lovely to have your timetoday. And I know how busy you
are. So thank you again. Dennis.I wondered in order to set the
conversation up for listenerswho may not yet be familiar with
(03:27):
your work if you could share thestory outline of the Accountant's
Apprentice, the first novel inthe trilogy, and also the
struggle you had with it to findwhat you call the inner spirit
of the story? Yes, absolutely.
It kind of starts out a verypersonal experience or
(03:50):
experiences. I had a friend, acolleague at the University
where I teach. He was aRenaissance scholar, and
Renaissance actor. He came downwith Parkinson's disease and had
to retire and he moved up toOregon to be with his daughter.
And a couple of years later, Igot a call from her and she
(04:12):
asked me if he came down if shecould get him down to San Diego.
Would he would I be willing todrive him around. So you could
see some of the old places thathe and I used to go to together
and things he loved places heloved to be. And she added that
I think it's probably the lasttime he will be able to to make
(04:33):
that trip. So of course I toldher I would. So she got him down
to San Diego and I put hiswheelchair in the back of my car
and drove him to a variety ofplaces. And along the way, a
couple of things started to cometogether for me. So this is just
really strange. This is a fellowthat I knew very well. We talked
(04:54):
about everything for many years,probably 20 plus years.
And I can't talk to him becausehe struggles to communicate. So
as I'm pushing the wheelchairaround, I'm just thinking
there's something here somethingI might be able to work on.
And then the other thing Inoticed, too, that I hadn't seen
in my car when I drove throughthese areas and that was the
(05:16):
burgeoning, growing homelesspopulation in those areas. I
started to kind of work on thestory a little bit.
And I tried a number ofdifferent ways of dealing with
the, the experience and pullingthings together. And it wasn't
really quite coming together.But I heard of a place called
(05:37):
the Evergreen Cemetery, which isour version of a potter's field
where the homeless are buried.And I decided to go out there
and take a look and see what itwas. So I drove out to that
area, one of the poor areas ofSan Diego.
And I was passing still morehomeless people on I realized
(06:00):
the population was growing. WhenI got to the Evergreen Cemetery,
I noticed that there to myright, there was this beautiful
cemetery, big stones faces onthe stones, balloons, flowers,
family members, all around thatarea, a little bit farther. And
(06:21):
to my left, there were two rowsof cypress trees for their
branches had been tied verytightly, almost a symbol of what
I was going to see, which islives that could never unfold
and become anything
really meaningful. So I got outmy car and walked over there and
looked out over what is a weed field, nothing but a weed field.
(06:44):
And I decided to walk out intothe middle of it. And when I got
in the middle, I did see a onesmall cemetery stone and it said,
Never Forgotten.
And I realized I was standing inthe middle of those 10 acres, of
weeds, no cemetery markers, manyof the coffins were piled two
(07:05):
three deep. And I realized thatwas a fundamental question that
I need to answer in the story.And that is to bring all this
together with the spirit of thisplace, and I felt this is where
I found the inner spirit. Thisis going to be a story about the
(07:26):
homeless population.
So when I started writing, andmore and more seriously, the
Accountant's Apprentice,
I chose a narrator who wasdeeply troubled by something he
was living in isolation, and asmall studio apartment in
downtown San Diego close todowntown. And he spent most of
(07:48):
his time while reading andtwisting and turning a Rubik's
Cube.
We sense that he is a verytroubled man troubled by
something that happened in hispast. We don't know what it was
something he did or didn't do.
And he's, he's trying to get hislife back together. So he
(08:12):
answers an ad because he needsmoney to sustain his rather
meager lifestyle. He sees a notein the foyer of his apartment.
And it's a note that from anelderly man who is in a
wheelchair and needs a driver
to take him around San Diego.
And the places he takes him tohe asks him to drive him to seem
(08:36):
to be just disparate elements ofthings. Some are old warehouses
and appear to have drugactivities outside. And then he
also takes them to the Museum ofArt. And he seems to be
extremely knowledgeable aboutart, and about things and
historical occurrences that goall the way back to the
(08:57):
Renaissance.
And then Justin starts to thinkwell, maybe this fellow is
an art thief of some kind. Soall of these possibilities go
through his mind. And hestruggles struggles to
understand this guy and who heis or why he came into his life.
(09:18):
And over time even begins toquestion whether AC comes
from the biblical past, orperhaps the historical past, and
he's here on some kind of amission. So a big part of the
mystery here is Who is this guy?Why, why did he come into
(09:39):
Justin's life? And he also kindof gets Justin to see the
homeless situation thatsurrounds them in a very
different way than Justin had
seen them previously. That's areally good way of
(10:00):
setting the context and theposition of the leads. Because
as you mentioned, with theRubik's cube, this is very much
a philosophical puzzle. Therethere are many, many questions
that we can ask ourselves. And Ithink your writing encourages us
(10:20):
to ask ourselves,
it's, it's very significant, Ithink that you wanted to
consistently include thehomeless community, in this town
in this story, because it'sreally picking up on important
(10:42):
themes around loss, aroundbelonging, around having place,
and even not having a place. Sowould you say that your main
concern is how you want to tryand bring these disparate
(11:02):
elements together to find somesort of sense or cohesion as we
try to do with our own lives?
I think that's absolutely true.And I think it's one of these
projects that I've been involvedwith writing projects where the
minor characters, the homeless,gradually kind of come to the
(11:24):
surface and become almost thestory. Now, all of that was
happening concurrently withthings that were going on in
San Diego. There were some verybrutal beatings of some homeless
people. One was lit on fire.
One had railroad spikes driven into him.
(11:45):
And you wonder, why, what isthis?
I also read
some articles about the cause ofhomelessness, and I read a
article in Time magazine, 2020.And
they wrote that over fourdecades
(12:08):
$50 trillion dollars
was transferred from the from working Americans to
multimillionaires over fourdecades, $50 trillion dollars.
And another statistic I came upwith, or found was,
in 2022,
the Global Wealth Data Bankindicated that in America, over
(12:33):
one decade, the wealth grew by$80 trillion $80 trillion
dollars, 60 trillion of thosedollars, went into the hands of
the coffers of the top 10%, 60trillion out of 80 trillion. So
I started looking around alittle bit more because I
thought this is, the book is astory, it's not an economic or
(12:56):
sociological treatise but allof this, I think, is involved.
And I look back in time and tryto ask the question very
quickly,
when was the last time thatwe had such income inequality in
America? And then the year cameup very quickly 1928. We all
(13:20):
know what happened in 1929. Thatwas a stock market crash,
followed by the GreatDepression.
And of course, that lasted forabout 10 years. So I felt that
what was going on had happenedbefore. And it's probably
starting to happen again. And Istarted going out and actually
(13:44):
meeting with the homeless folksand talking to them.
And I discovered, it's incomeinequality.
The, you know, some of thepeople who are not aware of
this, tend to see it as acharacter flaw or, you know, our
desire to live like that. Orperhaps it's drug addictions.
(14:07):
And
all that comes in after they'vebeen out the streets for a while
they're trying to survive,that's when the drugs tend to
move into it. So I realized thatthis book has to somehow bring
these folks to the, to theattention of the people who who
read it. I became so taken bythis issue, that I I went out
(14:31):
and talked to them and got to meetthem, bought one fellow a guitar
and a ukulele. Turns out, he wasa musician who just had to
go to the streets because hecouldn't afford to live and pay
the rent. Yeah, and as you weresaying, this is a deep and stark
reality. And it certainly seemsto only deepen and worsen. And I
(14:55):
noticed that one of yourarticles for Psychology Today
was also about courage and thehomeless, you had an article
that was called How Someone Whois Homeless Can Teach Others the
Meaning of Courage. And Iwondered if you'd like to
comment on that, because ofcourse, this also relates to the
(15:17):
story world that you've created.I think you recognize courage
and I think you also attempt toafford respect back to people
who are affected byhomelessness. Yeah, I would
like to comment on that. Becauseagain, one of the things I
wanted to do was to try to
(15:40):
overcome all of the stereotypesthat people have of the
homeless, and to see them ashuman beings who are struggling
for reasons that are way, waybeyond their control. This
fellow, frankly, was aninspiration to me. This was
during the COVID epidemic, and Iwould drive from my home to
school, the university, it'sabout a half hour drive, and I
(16:03):
get to this one area, one Park,on the way. And I would always
see him I'll just use his first name is Michael
dressed in this kind ofponcho is a heavyset fellow. And
he was always sitting on thesmall wall
and he was playing a littlegreen ukele. And
(16:29):
people would gather otherhomeless would gather below him,
and they would listen to him,play the ukulele, he was out
there, found a little shelter,and a bus stop with an overhang
when it was raining.
And I got to where he wouldbuild up my spirits during the
COVID epidemic because Ithought, if you can do this,
(16:53):
under the conditions you'reliving, I certainly have to feel
that I can do what I what I'mgoing through is nothing
compared to what you're goingthrough here. One night, it was
raining, I'll never forget this.And I left my home and I just
went for a drive to school and Ithought I'm gonna check in on
him.
And I drove past the area wherehe usually would be sitting, and
(17:17):
he wasn't there.
And I drove by a couple moretimes, and I still didn't see
him and I thought well, a gooddecent shelter somewhere.
But then, I noticed this kind ofcolorful, something underneath a
bus stop
area where there was a roof, alittle plastic roof overhead.
(17:37):
And I drove by and I looked inand there he was, he was, his
cartload of clothing, his water bottles hanging off the
side. He was sitting thereplaying the ukulele in the
middle of the rain while therain is dripping down on all
sides of him.
And I'll never forget thatbecause I think that to me, it
was the ultimate strength ofsomeone to live like that and to
(18:01):
still
play his music. Very, verytouching, deeply movie. Yeah.
And the courage to survive, andespecially when you may well
feel abandoned, certainly in myexperience of volunteer work in
emergency homelessness shelters.I think it's a lesson that needs
(18:27):
to be more widely understoodthat homelessness is not
actually very far away from mostof us. Whether that's economic
difficulty there is a phrase weoften hear over here in the UK,
at least that most people are introuble if there's just a one
(18:47):
month paycheck that's suddenlymissing. Obviously, we see
displacement through wars, wehave climate change threat and
further displacement. I thinkhomelessness is something that
isn't far away from many of usand I certainly encountered
people that had had professionalcareers, mental health or
(19:11):
clinical mental health issueshad destroyed military careers.
Careers in the police it even leadto abandonment from families, or
even young women running fromarranged marriages, for example.
So I think I'm picking up onwhat you're saying that there is
(19:32):
a terrible dominant stereotypearound people who are affected
with homelessness as though itis just a kind of careless
serves you right scenario. I'vehad only one experience that
even comes close to that kind oflifestyle and that was when I was
(19:54):
quite young. We were quite poor.We lived in old farmhouse that
had been hauled out of
town and put on some concreteblocks. And I remember my mother
saying periodically that wemight not be able to pay the
rent next month, then as a boy,I thought, I was terrified. But
where do we go? What do we do?
(20:15):
That just kind of, I neverforgot that. And that's nothing
compared to what these folkshave to do day after day after
day, and the strength and thecourage to do that. And I don't
think people realize either howcold it is to be outside, even
in San Diego, which is a verynice area to live in, you know,
(20:37):
I have only had one experiencelike that. And that was when I
camped outside this was with my little boy too, and didn't
bring enough proper equipment.And I was just frozen that
night. And I thought to myself,I was watching Michael and
the others trying to trying toprotect themselves, how
unbelievably difficult that isand that's that became
(21:01):
the story. That actually becameeven more of the story in the
second one the Return of theFifth Horseman. Yeah. And I was
interested, Dennis, in also moreof your personal story, as you
just mentioned, in terms of yourexperiences growing up, and also
the significance of yourfather's experience, which of
(21:22):
course,
is is particularly
important in your book, PrairieSon. And earlier when you were
talking about income inequalityand the Great Depression, I
understand this is aparticularly powerful story
because your father was in factadopted, but to be a farmhand
(21:48):
rather than a son. And I thinkthis was probably a very harsh
experience. And I felt thatreally spoke again to issues of
place, having a place not havinga place, belonging, having a
sense of belonging, or nothaving a sense of belonging. I
(22:09):
wondered, when you became awareof that story, whether that
further informed how you grappleif you like, with the idea of
place in your writing?
Oh, yes. You know, yes, that'skind of a long story. But when I
was a boy, my parents weredivorced, it was kind of
(22:31):
kind of a complicated thing. Mymother
came down with skin,tuberculosis as a child. So she
was, one leg was two inchesshorter than the other one
hip was basically destroyed. Myfather was
trying to make a living in thatsmall town and couldn't do it.
(22:51):
So he had to go to another town.Minneapolis actually tried to
make a living with that. So hewas kind of in and out of my
life, a little bit of a
mystery to me.
What happened when I wasprobably about nine or 10 years
old, I guess, for the firsttime, someone stopped me in the
streets and asked how my fatherwas doing. And I told him, You
(23:14):
know, I hear from over thetelephone, he calls and
he writes, I see himoccasionally and everything. And
he said, I don't, they almostalways add. I don't know if you
know what your father's lifewas, like, on that farm, or he
was raised, but he was treatedjust terribly, just terribly.
(23:36):
One fellow who owned a littlegas station convenience store,
every time I went in there,would pull me aside and start
telling me about how my fatherwas treated on that farm.
Turns out he was friends with mydad when they were young. And so
he knew a lot. He had a lot ofinside information.
(23:58):
I, when I got older,
I started to take an interest inthis story. My father was very
ill he came down with cancer. Iwas out to visit him and him and
Houston, trying to help him outas best I could in the
remaining months of his life.More of what happened to him in
(24:21):
his youth came out and Irealized they'd kept him away
from school. If he went toschool, his adoptive father
would come and pull him out.After a couple hours and bring
him back to the farm to work. Ilearned that
if they were going fishing, hewould have to stay home and work
(24:42):
on the farm.
And there were so many of thesekinds of things I learned about
him.
And suddenly the mystery of myfather was becoming I think I
see now who he is and I spent 30years it's
a very long story, 30 yearsreally trying to figure out who
(25:03):
he is and his life and had somehelp from another adopted child
in that area, who turned out tobe his very best friend who
contacted me and said, you haveto write that story. So it's a
long story. And it's kind of awonderful story in a way because
I kind of completed his journeyand connected with his birth
(25:24):
parents on both sides, and stillcommunicate with a half sister
he has who must be close to100 years old, she invited me
into her family. And she told methey were putting my father's
name in
the book that they were puttingtogether compiling of all of the
(25:47):
Mosing descendants, ancestorsgoing back with several
generations. So it's been a veryfulfilling kind of journey than
is still going on. Yeah, it's sosignificant, and the importance
of how we all understand our,our own identities, our cultural
(26:07):
identities, family heritage, theimportance of roots. And as
we've been saying, throughoutthis conversation, the
importance of place, and clearlyyour father showed immense
courage in his life in order tosurvive that. And I'm equally
interested because of your livedexperience and emphasis on small
(26:29):
towns, and also, as you grew up,seeing small towns disappear,
there's perhaps a kind ofinsecurity or vulnerability that
comes with that. And I wonderedwhether you felt that
(26:49):
you are effectively honoring theimportance of heritage. So as
these small towns disappear aspeople disappear, you're also
honoring the importance ofheritage.
You know, I'm not sure I thoughtof it in those terms. I think it
(27:10):
is true. I just kind of gotpulled into the story. And once
I got pulled into it, I couldn'tstop. My hometown was very
fortunate. It was a town of only4000 some people when I was
there, but the University ofMinnesota put a branch of the
University of Minnesota right onthe edge of town where there was
(27:32):
a Native American school thathad kind of gone out of
existence. So it became kind ofa college town. However, my
father lived on a farm six milesabout six
miles away in a town calledAlberta. That was probably 200
people. My grandmother, mymother lived in a town about 200
(27:52):
people. And so I'm reallyaccustomed to small towns, and
my wife and I, whenever we droveback to Minnesota, we would get
off the main freeway and takeall of the state highways and
county roads wherever we couldgo through the small towns. And
what we would see everywhere onMain Street was half the shops
(28:15):
closed.
And it became a very kind ofhaunting experience to see this.
And to wonder how many of themare even going to survive for
the next 10 years? So yeah, itwas, it was sad, very sad. But
that sense of
time that's passing, I thinkworked itself into a number of
(28:38):
things that I wrote. I wrote abook for our Bantam
Books called well,
the title is the return, the Search for Judd McCarthy.
And another one was The Sins ofRachel Simms, they're all set in
small towns, and I wanted to getinto those towns and bring those
people to life, kind of the wayI did with with the trilogy in
(29:02):
this case, that case it wasthe homeless populations. But
the other cases it was the smalltown characters and how they're
struggling to create some kindof a life for themselves, even
as they see the town,disappearing right in front of
them. I lovewriting about small towns. Yeah,
(29:22):
it's really significant how,
you know, it's such a strongsetting of course, throughout
your work. And I also wascurious whether it meant that
when you yourself decided tomove on, if you like from a from
a small town via studying, forexample, whether that might have
(29:47):
been seen as a radical act, wasthat in some way disruptive for
the small community in the smalltown, where you had been growing
up?
Well,
one of the things that came tomind when you were just
describing that is, I made thedecision when I
(30:10):
left my small town, that I wouldnever look back. And I looked
out my side, the side mirror ofmy car, as I was leaving, and
I thought I'm done.
And then all I ended up doingwas looking back in writing all
of these things.
I think that
(30:32):
the people in my father's storyanyhow, were so good to him.
So good. And many of them triedto intercede in his situation,
they knew what he was goingthrough. And they told his
adoptive parents, you have totreat this boy better, you have
(30:53):
to get him to a dentist, you'dhave to let him go to school.
That he, he felt so littleaffection in his life that even
a little pat on the back made adifference. It's such a
terrible story of child crueltyand neglect that he had to
(31:13):
survive. And there's one storyI'll tell you about that I took
I was on a book tour and almost every stop and 12
cities back there, when Istarted talking about this,
there was someone who would turnto a friend and said that could be
my father's story, or that can bemy mother's story. It was very,
(31:34):
very common, much more than Ithought it was to adopt children
and turn them into farmlaborers. In fact, I learned
later that there's a thingcalled the Orphans train. I
don't know if you've ever heard of what happened. New Jersey orphanages
and some New York, basicallytried to empty out their
orphanages by sending thechildren out west, they thought
(31:57):
they were giving them a betterlife. As it turns out, in some
cases, that was true. But therewere between 1859 and 1929 and
it was 350,000 children weresent out west to have the better
life. And it turns out about 1/3of them ended up in the same
kind of situation as my father,maybe not quite as bad.
(32:20):
But it is so absolutelyshocking. And of course, this
all speaks to in other ways,your concerns around the
homeless communities you'vewitnessed, there's a terrible
sense of neglect, there's aterrible sense of abandonment
and being forgotten. And soyou're really drawing on such
(32:45):
deep personal experiences inyour family and stories, as well
as you as well as what youwitness in a contemporary
setting. You know, the socialcontext of escalating poverty
and homelessness, for example. Ithink, also, it's in a tradition
(33:07):
that I really, really appreciatein American literature.
And that is, and I think part ofthe defense of the
humanities, I believe, as agroup, we tend to be far more
sympathetic towards people whoare disadvantaged, who are
marginalized,
(33:28):
one writer that comes to mindimmediately not a very
household name, StephenCrane, who wrote the Red Badge
of Courage, but he saw how thepeople in New York were living
in the slums. He decided to movein with them, and to write about
them and to bring to the surface,what their lives were like, and
(33:49):
what does income disparity wasdoing. And he died at the age of
29 from tuberculosis fromliving in that kind of squalor.
You know, you have JohnSteinbeck, the Great Depression,
everybody identifies with him,he went out and spent time and
lived with the Okies, who arecoming up to California from
(34:10):
Oklahoma and told their story.So, you know, I'm just one
person doing this. But I thinkone of the great advantages of
the humanities and why we can'tlet them push us out of the
universities, is we tend, Ithink, to tell the stories of
those kind of people. And thosestories need to be told to
overcome some terrible injusticesthat are, you know, in almost
(34:34):
every community, I suppose everycountry. Yeah, absolutely. And
this, of course, is somethingelse you do brilliantly well,
particularly in this trilogy.
You're
work around how you include artor the arts versus if you like,
(34:59):
controlled
patterns in themodern world, it's very much
about reminding us as readershow the arts can be vital door
openers, door openers that speaktruth, for example, or door
openers on to otherperspectives, other realities in
(35:22):
the world. How would youdescribe the importance of the
relationship AC has with theArts throughout that journey in
the Accountant's Apprentice thatsets this whole trilogy up?
Well, I think there's a quote byBertolt Brecht, that kind of
(35:48):
tells me everything. When I sawthis, I don't have the exact
words but he basically said in1847, he said that, first
they come after the culture,then they come after the people.
He was referring to fascism inhis time. But he was also I
think, referring to the moreuniversal sense of
(36:10):
authoritarianism. And what itdoes, in other words, once they
remove the arts, then the peopleare vulnerable. I think AC is a
character, of course, he's kindof shrouded in mystery and
ambiguity, which I think hehas to be. But he's trying to
(36:31):
get Justin to recognize, pardonme, that art has a very crucial
role in society. In manyrespects, it keeps the forces of
authoritarianism at bay for atime by teaching us to look at
life and in ways that theauthoritarians never look at it.
(36:52):
Everybody's disposable to them.And
AC, as the title suggests, andit seems that he is setting up
Justin as the Accountant'sApprentice. And then there is
another possibility, and that iswith a young girl and her mother
who come in off the streets andlive in a rescue shelter. And
(37:18):
this little girl seems to havesuch artistic talents, that she
seemed almost to be connected insome way to the Renaissance and
the great Renaissance artists.And I think those artists told
us or tried to tell us throughtheir paintings, and AC tries
to tell us, that we have toreexamine the human form, every
(37:43):
so often, we have to askourselves, who are we? Where are
we? What are we doing here? AndI think in many respects, we're
at that kind of a turning pointagain, right now.
I think with all of thetechnology coming our way, and
what it's kind of doing to us,taking over our lives, and in
many respects, taking over ourthinking. I think AC ultimately
(38:08):
is a character who
almost sees the whole of humanhistory and sees the artistic
traditions that go way back andtries to bring them into the
future, and to allow them tohelp us see the future ourselves.
(38:28):
Yeah, yeah. And also, I thinkit's worth looking at your
particular choice, of course ofRenaissance art. And so
in the first novel, there's thatparticular emphasis from AC
to go to the museum, he wants tosee the Renaissance art
exhibition. And of course, therenascence is concerned with
(38:50):
revival,
Rebirth for example. It was atime where Arts and Sciences, or
the great artists likeMichelangelo, Leonardo Da Vinci
would equally embrace Arts andScience, whereas today's context
(39:12):
feels very, very divisive. Wouldyou think that's fair to say?
Yes, I do. I think that thereis, you know, almost been a war
on art. Our universities, forexample, have been pushing the
humanities out the doors.There, there's a dwindling
number of students who aremajoring in any form of art,
(39:34):
music, literature,
what have you and are, you know,majoring in Business and
Technology one kind or another.We have
in our classrooms we have thetech people taking over
everything we're dealing with AIwriting, which is not AI is also
(39:54):
AI thinking.
We have cell phones that becomeaddictive.
We have all of these things. Andmany of they're telling us how
to teach our courses, you know,to pull down menus, I just think
that we are at a place where wehave to somehow get back. And
I'm not opposed to all allscience and all technology not
(40:16):
in any way. I mean, open heartsurgery, I know I'm glad to have
that for saving my wife's lifebut I think we have to look at
the past artistic traditions,and see how they stood up
really, to the oligarchs, and tothe,
you know, the monarchs of theirtime. And of course, if you want
(40:37):
to learn about those folks justread Shakespeare's plays, or
better yet go see them, we needthat we need them those people
in our lives again, and I thinkAC knows that.
Yes, and it feels that AC oftenhas very significant statements
to make and questions. So forexample, he says to Justin
(41:03):
directly "Art is the force thatdrives the universe, did you
know that?" He's actively askingJustin to consider that and of
course, Justin, who has been apriest, is surrounding himself
with spiritual, philosophical,theological questions and now
(41:24):
AC is focusing him on thesignificance of art, or in this
case, Renaissance art, theimportance of revival of
rebirth, as you were saying,of being able to talk back if
you like to answer back to whathas gone before and to encourage
(41:44):
openness. Whereas AI, is askingus to continually transfer our
own skills and our own authorityto artificial intelligence. Yes,
absolutely. It's taking thethinking power away from us.
That quote, you read,incidentally, I was listening to
(42:07):
it, it may reflect somethingthat Albert Einstein said, of
course, Einstein was a scientistand brilliant, brilliant man.
But he said this, and this isn'tthe exact quote, but he said, The
imagination leads the way forall human progress, the
imagination leads the way forall human progress. He wasn't
discounting knowledge orsaying that the imagination is
(42:30):
all we need. But he was saying,it leads the way. And if we
discount the imagination, andcreative and imaginative
thinking, which is what'shappening in our universities in
this country, and I thinkelsewhere as well, then you are
not going to have real progress,or at least you will have the
wrong kind of progress. I thinkat some point, the technology
(42:55):
which has done some things, Idon't want to go back to typing
on a typewriter, for example.But at some point, it reached
the arc of dysfunctionalism,and it starts to create the very
problems that it set out to, tosolve. And I think we're way
past that point. We need toencourage students, not only to
(43:16):
do their own thinking, but to douse their own imaginations, to
push ahead and determine theirown lives and their their own
futures. You know, even HenryDavid Thoreau, and in Walden
Pond, which, of course, is theultimate
expression of living a creativelife. Chapter Two is on economy
(43:39):
economics, and he's admits, youknow, we've got to make a living
sure, but beyond that we have tolive and as we live and use our
imaginations, we, I think,developed the human race in a
much, much more positive waythan it is right now. Right now
we're in trouble. We're in aturning point, whether we're
gonna go the right direction inthe wrong direction. I'm not
sure. Hopefully, it'd be in theright direction. Yeah. But as
(44:02):
you say, it's a very, verycritical time. And the article
you referred to, which, forlisteners, you can also find in
Psychology Today, dysfunctional-ism, Is Dusfunctionalism the
New Norm in Modern Life? and youraise really significant points
in terms of the bombardment offast technology, the social
(44:26):
media world, fragmentedinformation, information we
don't know if we can trust, allof that seems to almost function
in a strategic way as adeliberate distraction. And I
feel that one of the importantthings your books are doing or
specifically within thistrilogy, is you're reminding us
(44:50):
of the importance of art andalso the art of curiosity.
I think so
and I'm seeing a little bitof a backlash and in a good
way I think. I just picked up aUniversity of Southern
California brochure. And they'redoing a Shakespeare
(45:14):
program to examine Shakespearesrelevance to the world we live
in right now. And I thought goodfor you. That's exactly what we
should be doing. I'm finding mystudents, especially in
business, are starting to feelthat they're not getting the
kind of education that theyshould be getting. And I don't
(45:36):
even call it business education.I may be a little hard there, I
don't know. But I think it'smore business training, they're
being trained to fit into acertain cog in a
corporate machine.
They're starting to think veryseriously about what they need
to do to fill themselves out ashuman beings. And now they're
not all quite where I am, I'msure they can't be expected to
(45:58):
be. But they're starting to getthat little feeling inside of
them, I need to have somethingmore. And I think that's
something more is to fill outtheir humanity. So I'm kind of
encouraged a little bit by that.Yeah, that's really interesting,
because I was curious spanningyour career within teaching
(46:20):
what you may be most concernedabout in terms of what you saw,
in your students at the start ofyour career, who wouldn't have
been as bombarded as we aretoday through technology,
compared of course, to thestudents you encounter now?
(46:42):
Well, there's a huge differencetoday, for example in some
ways, I think we've been reducedto cell phone monitors. And
there have been a number ofstudies and the New York Times
just published one about twoweeks ago, that indicated that
the
attention deficit issues thattoday's students have, are
(47:05):
almost catastrophic, I use theword catastrophic. And we see
this all the time in theclassroom, they struggle, it's
an addiction, that's it, it isan addiction, and they can't put
them down. So we have to somehowbreak them out of that. So I'm
trying to find every kind ofcreative way I can think of in
the classroom, to get them tosee that a lot of the kind of
(47:29):
learning they're getting, whichis I think, pretty, you know,
the type that I'm kind ofparodying on my T shirt is not
real learning. Real learning iscreative learning it's creative
teaching. And they're reacting very well to it.
I'm doing different filmversions of Shakespeare's plays,
for example, and we talk aboutthem and they can see
(47:49):
the art, the creativity, theycan see the kind of people that
Shakespeare warned us to avoidin our society, which we're
seeing all around us, you know,various levels. I think there's
hope I do. And I hope I'm right.Yeah, that's really interesting,
because, of course, in terms ofthe trilogy, you have said that
(48:13):
it originally felt like you werewriting about a dystopian
future. And it could be thecollapse, if you like, of the
natural world and the climatecrisis, you you make specific
references to bees, thesignificance of bees within the
(48:36):
Accountant's Apprentice, it's areminder of potential collapse.
We could talk about the collapseof Arts and Humanities in the
education system.
But you also said it actuallyfelt more like a chronicle of
our times. Yeah, it did.Actually. I thought when I first
(48:58):
was start started the thetrilogy with the Accountant's
Apprentice, I thought I wasextending things into the future
aways. And the homelesssituation as it kept growing and
growing and growing, seemed likeI was living in a dystopian
world in the dystopian present.And that kind of grew over time.
(49:22):
And then I saw the breakdown inour educational system, I saw AI
come out and do not just writingfor us, but the thinking for us.
I mean, that's just incrediblethat we would ever allow
something like that to happen.
So you know, Aldous Huxley, inBrave New World, for example,
creates you know, somefuturistic world in which you
(49:46):
have a one world government youhave selective breeding you have
all kinds of ways to create amaster class but then the
everybody else is kind of, youknow, less educated and less
capable of doing serious
things. And suddenly I'm in themiddle of this, this is where I
am. And that's kind of I thinkwhere we are. And we have to now
(50:08):
claw our way back out.
Yeah. And I felt this was reallyinteresting in terms of how you
embrace prophecy, if you like inin these stories and again,
within this trilogy, it feelslike, again, the significance of
(50:30):
how you embrace the arts aspart of this story world is a
way of, as you said earlier,actually checking the past and
checking the future. But are youalso trying to encourage readers
to consider not only the idea ofprophecy, but perhaps the
(50:51):
prophecy of their own lives, theownership of their own lives and
their own minds? Oh, I think so.And in the Fifth
Horseman,
pardon me, Justin becomes evenmore fascinated by different
(51:12):
prophecies. One is the prophecyof Edgar Casey, the Sleeping
Prophet, who seems to have beenright in so many of his
prophecies, and he
prophesized that the human race,I think he said, there's five
stages we go through, we startedout as a purely spiritual
entity, went through anexcessively materialistic
(51:33):
entity, and now we're going backto the spiritual maybe he's right.
Nostradamus, of course,predicted the two of our
megalomaniacs, Napoleon andHitler and predicted that there
was another one that we'll beseeing in the early part of this
century. They're actually inthis decade. And I think there's
(51:54):
ample evidence that they're outthere. So there is that yes. I
think that it's important.
I had a
professor David Mill, Universityof Minnesota, he used to say,
just look for the patterns ofhistory, don't just think of
history as something that is alittle something that happens at
(52:17):
this time, in this time, in thistime, look for the patterns in
the past, and use them todevelop your own view of life.
And if we have more people whodo that, I don't think they will
fall victim to the falseprophets, that we see all around
(52:37):
us today. So I think it startswith kind of renewing and
reinvesting in your own sense oflife and how you interpret the
events around you. And it kindof works outward, and then it is
resonated in our institutions,in our educational systems. We
need more of that, and of theliberal arts and the humanities
(52:59):
so that that's why I am sostrongly in favor of them. Yeah,
absolutely. And it feels to methat your writing is helping,
helping us to focus on howhumanity is broken. And one
example of that, of course, isif we look at the neglect of
(53:23):
people who are affected byhomelessness, or perhaps child
neglect, for example.
And at the same time, you'realso working with the arts,
perhaps as a positive reminderthat there is a space and there
(53:43):
is a way to cultivate adifferent and better, kinder,
equal, happier humanity. So forexample, AC
is a gifted artist, and I reallylike how early on in the first
novel, the Accountant'sApprentice, we notice AC draw
(54:09):
homeless people that heencounters, and it's a very
meditative opportunity, as he'sreflecting on those people or
perhaps the condition of theirlives and the skills involved in
his drawing ability also feelslike he's returning and
affording some respect to thosepeople. Would you say that you
(54:36):
are encouraging people to thinkagain, about the Arts as a new
space, meditative space, to tryand recover the world that we
wish we lived in?
Absolutely, I think you know,everybody should have a creative
(54:57):
life, in addition to whateverthey have to do to make a living
But I also think just the act ofcreating art, watching art, it
pulls us into the deepest partof ourselves, that pulls us into
the deepest part of ourhumanity. It pulls us into a
place where we can empathizewith people that we otherwise
(55:18):
would not even recognize asbeing on the same species as we
are. It really stands as a, Ithink, a barrier of sorts to
well, not a barrier, but it'sit's a way of taking all the
technology that's coming at us,and putting that human element
back into it. And we need thatwe desperately need that. And
(55:42):
both on the personal level andthe professional level than what
we're doing right now talkingabout it, all of those things.
Yes, which, of course, is such agreat example of why the Arts
are important, and literature isimportant. You've created an
experience that createsconversations, and we now have
(56:04):
someone in the UK talking tosomeone in the USA, it's an
incredible connection, it'stestimony to the power of that
connection, and that willingnessto be open to each other to
explore these different ideas.And of course,
another favorite statement ofmine that AC makes in the first
(56:28):
novel is "the imagination leadsthe way for all human progress,"
is that what we might witness inthe third book, in the third
novel of the trilogy, once it'swritten? Yes, and I guess I can
give a little bit away, thisgirl has young girl and her
(56:50):
mother, who are on the streetsand come to the shelter, and
Justin decides to take them in,
at least for a time, and
he leaves his Rubik's cube with the girl. And he goes back and
does some work. And later on atnight, he comes back, and he
(57:11):
finds that, in fact, it's beensolved.
And we also see some of herdrawings. And there's a
realization there that
this girl is an artistic savantof some kind. So through the
course of the next
part of the trilogy, as I saidearlier, the homeless take even
(57:34):
a deeper sense in the story. Andthis young girl comes of age,
and tries to use her artisticskills to, to really show their
humanity. And she puts her
little crayon drawings on thewall, and they come and stare at
them and look at them and wonderif
(57:55):
this is what they might havebeen if things have gone a
little differently. So there's,she becomes kind of the center
of the story in a way. And
the last one, which we'reworking on right now should
be done, I think about June orJuly, hopefully,
(58:15):
she's
I'll give you just a little bitabout it, she's starting to take
a little bit of an interest inShakespeare. And the connections
between Shakespeare andMichelangelo and the other
Renaissance folks that
have been pushed off theuniversity educational charts.
(58:38):
And so she becomes I think, overtime, a bit of the new spirit
that may and hopefully willemerge, that recognizes the
importance of all the humanitiesfor that matter. And I'm hoping
that we can get the folks thatwho
run our schools, provide fundingfor our schools, start to
(59:00):
reconsider the importance ofthese things. So
I started to draw out to write avery different kind of story,
but it's kind of taking on alife of itself, I think. Yeah
which must, of course, always bepart of the pleasure and pain
perhaps of being a writer.
And of course, that feeds intothe series question, as,
(59:23):
unfortunately, we've racedthrough our hour. But how would
you respond Dennis to theseries question, Can Art
Uave us? I think it has to saveus. I believe that the future
that we're looking at right nowthat we're almost in the middle
of is more of the one thatBrecht, Huxley and others like
(59:45):
them saw coming and unless weallow art, to have a stronger
role, and to put up kind of aprotective barrier against less
admirable parts
of technology and science,I think the future will be
virtual unlivable. So art, Ibelieve, kind of creates a
(01:00:10):
spirit, a spirit that needs tobe infused into everything
that's going on, in ourclassrooms, on the streets, all
of that. If it's not, I think wewill be in deep trouble. But I'm
hoping that the spirit that's Ifeel coming alive, again,
(01:00:33):
expressed earlier. I'm hopingthat continues, especially in
our classrooms, but elsewhere aswell.
Yes, absolutely. And I justthink it's incredibly admirable
what you're doing both as ateacher, an educator and a
writer, that you're encouragingpeople through your work, to
(01:00:57):
perhaps discover for the firsttime or rediscover why the Arts
and humanities are so important.And through the journeys your
characters take and undertake,the struggles that they have to
survive and negotiate. You'reoffering a very interesting
(01:01:18):
perspective in terms of how theArts and humanities help us
navigate our lives, and in waysthat are happier and fairer for
all of us. I will be signing onyour episode page, I'll signpost
for the listeners where they canfind more of your work and
hopefully they can explore yourwriting for themselves. But I
(01:01:40):
would like to say a very, verybig thank you to you, Dennis,
for your generosity and yourtime for joining me today. Thank
you. I really enjoyed theconversation your questions were
wonderful. Thank you so much.I'm pleased to hear it. I have
to admit, I was very concerned.I might feel like a very
inadequate student after allyour years in teaching. Oh, no.
(01:02:04):
Oh, no, no, they were perfect.They were wonderful. Thank you
so much. And really we arekindred spirits. I sensed that
right away too so I'm hopingthere are people who can learn
from this and, you know, maybemake some changes. Yeah,
absolutely. And hopefully ourpaths will perhaps even crossed
one day because as I said in myintroduction, if ever myself or
(01:02:27):
Can Art Save Us was to be twinnedwith an author, then I
definitely think this is it.
Yeah. Thank you again, Dennis. You're more than welcome.
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