{"id":651,"date":"2010-10-22T11:19:55","date_gmt":"2010-10-22T15:19:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.wabash.edu\/fyi\/?p=651"},"modified":"2010-10-22T11:19:55","modified_gmt":"2010-10-22T15:19:55","slug":"what-i-was-meant-to-do","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/2010\/10\/22\/what-i-was-meant-to-do\/","title":{"rendered":"“What I Was Meant to Do”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Steve Charles<\/em>\u2014After writer and filmmaker David Bezmozgis captivated listeners with passages from his upcoming novel The<\/em> Free World,<\/em> a student asked, \u201cWhat was your inspiration for this?\u201d<\/p>\n

The answer he offered made me realize why more students\u2014 not only aspiring writers and English majors\u2014should meet visiting writers like David Bezmozgis.<\/p>\n

In this \u201csneak peak and Indiana debut\u201d of a novel that won\u2019t be available until April, Bezmozgis had been introducing us to the world of Soviet Jewish emigres of the late 1970s\u2014a world as foreign to most of us as the rings of Saturn yet inhabited by people with very familiar urges, longings, even daydreams.<\/p>\n

This Bezmozgis novel and his earlier short story collection Natasha<\/em> focus on the lives of a family of Soviet Jews during their emigration from Russia and their new life in Canada. It\u2019s a life he knows well\u2014born in Latvia, he emigrated from the Soviet Union with his family in 1980 at the age of six.<\/p>\n

Yet it’s also a world, he realized, that students knew little about. \u201cMost of you were born around the same year the Soviet Union collapsed. This must seem like ancient history to you.\u201d<\/p>\n

So he provided an introduction: \u201cImagine that you are a Soviet citizen never allowed outside the borders of your country. You\u2019ve lived your entire life in a country you could never leave. And if you could leave, you can never come back. You\u2019ll be branded a traitor. You can never go home. If someone in your family gets sick you can’t return to visit them. If they die you can’t return for the funeral.\u201d<\/p>\n

They left that country behind for an unimaginable future, and Bezmozgis tells their story from the heart outward with honesty, humor, and the hallmarks of his writing\u2014clarity, verity, and brevity.<\/p>\n

So why do you do it, the student asked. \u201cWhat was your inspiration?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a world I know, and a world I feel very strong emotions about,\u201d the writer answered. \u201cI grew up hearing these stories in an \u00e9migr\u00e9 community. I was surrounded by these stories. I can\u2019t think of a stretch of history that\u2019s so extreme as the 100 years experienced by Soviet Jews. That was always fascinating to me, and I\u2019ve never seen it written about in North American literature. I thought if I could do a good job of it, that\u2019s what I wanted to do.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo that\u2019s my purpose in the world. How am I going to spend my time here without feeling I\u2019ve wasted my time? What are you going to do with your life? At what point do you decide what\u2019s valuable, what sacrifices you\u2019re willing to make, and what you\u2019re willing to dedicate yourself to?<\/p>\n

\u201cFor me, telling the stories of this community is the thing I think I should do. In other words, it is what I was meant to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

Vocation. As the late Bill Placher \u201970 (and editor of the book Callings<\/em>) once wrote, \u201cThe best way we show our love to the world is to love with a particular passion some little part of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Many of our visiting speakers have callings. The difference is that writers literally have to come to terms with theirs. Their passion for that calling is revealed in the very works they read to us. And if a student asks, \u201cWhy do you do this?\u201d generous writers like Bezmozgis will tell them.<\/p>\n

Earlier over dinner, he told us that he knows he\u2019s ready to write about something when it strikes an emotional spark in him. That\u2019s where it starts for David Bezmozgis, whose calling is to tell us about a world that must be remembered for our own sake, and whose gift and finely-honed skills can take us there.<\/p>\n

Read more about David Bezmozgis’ work here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Steve Charles\u2014After writer and filmmaker David Bezmozgis captivated listeners with passages from his upcoming novel The Free World, a student asked, \u201cWhat was your inspiration for this?\u201d The answer he offered made […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-651","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"w_featured_image_url":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2010\/10\/david5lores.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/651","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=651"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/651\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=651"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=651"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/fyi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=651"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}