We started out as the show that invited scholars, makers, and professionals to brunch for informal conversations about their work—but last season, we needed to record remotely. This year we’re excited to be able to bring back in-person interviews while still taking advantage of the flexibility afforded by our remote setup.
Patrick Parr is the author of two books of nonfiction, both with Chicago Review Press. His first, The Seminarian: Martin Luther King Jr. Comes of Age, was published in 2018 and described by The Wall Street Journal as “original, much-needed and even stirring.”
Patrick joined host Ted Fox via Zoom to talk about book No. 2, which was released earlier this year. Titled One Week in America: The 1968 Notre Dame Literary Festival and a Changing Nation, its appeal to us, a podcast produced at the university, was immediate. But Patrick doesn’t just chronicle what took place on the Notre Dame campus from Sunday, March 31, through Saturday, April 6, 1968, a story that features an almost unimaginably star-studded lineup of literary and political figures—brought to campus by a group of students, no less—and that included a red-carpet movie premiere in the most unlikely of venues.
No, the book doesn’t stop there because the festival didn’t exist in a vacuum, and during this particular week in America, that truth became evident in ways prominent and painful.
Patrick’s own story of how he came to research the 1968 Notre Dame Literary Festival starts where a lot of good writing does: with a question that comes to you in the middle of the night.
LINKS
We started out as the show that invited scholars, makers, and professionals to brunch for informal conversations about their work—but last season, we needed to record remotely. This year we’re excited to be able to bring back in-person interviews while still taking advantage of the flexibility afforded by our remote setup.
Patrick Parr is the author of two books of nonfiction, both with Chicago Review Press. His first, The Seminarian: Martin Luther King Jr. Comes of Age, was published in 2018 and described by The Wall Street Journal as “original, much-needed and even stirring.”
Patrick joined host Ted Fox via Zoom to talk about book No. 2, which was released earlier this year. Titled One Week in America: The 1968 Notre Dame Literary Festival and a Changing Nation, its appeal to us, a podcast produced at the university, was immediate. But Patrick doesn’t just chronicle what took place on the Notre Dame campus from Sunday, March 31, through Saturday, April 6, 1968, a story that features an almost unimaginably star-studded lineup of literary and political figures—brought to campus by a group of students, no less—and that included a red-carpet movie premiere in the most unlikely of venues.
No, the book doesn’t stop there because the festival didn’t exist in a vacuum, and during this particular week in America, that truth became evident in ways prominent and painful.
Patrick’s own story of how he came to research the 1968 Notre Dame Literary Festival starts where a lot of good writing does: with a question that comes to you in the middle of the night.
LINKS
Ted Fox 0:00
(voiceover) From the University of Notre Dame, this is With a Side of Knowledge. I'm your host, Ted Fox. We started out as the show that invited scholars, makers and professionals to brunch for informal conversations about their work. But last season, we needed to record remotely. This year, we're excited to be able to bring back in-person interviews, while still taking advantage of the flexibility afforded by our remote setup. But whether we're literally sitting down with a guest, or talking with them virtually from that trusty old walk-in closet, we hope you'll find that you're glad you stopped by. Thanks for listening.
Patrick Parr is the author of two books of nonfiction, both with Chicago Review Press. His first, "The Seminarian: Martin Luther King Jr. Comes of Age," was published in 2018, and described by The Wall Street Journal as: "original, much needed, and even stirring." Patrick joined me via Zoom to talk about book number two, which was released earlier this year. Titled "One Week in America: The 1968 Notre Dame Literary Festival and a Changing Nation," its appeal to us--a podcast produced at the University--was immediate. But Patrick doesn't just chronicle what took place on the Notre Dame campus from Sunday, March 31st through Saturday, April 6th, 1968, a story that features an almost unimaginably star-studded lineup of literary and political figures--brought to campus by a group of students, no less--and that included a red carpet movie premiere in the most unlikely of venues. No, the book doesn't stop there because the festival didn't exist in a vacuum. And during this particular week in America, that truth became evident in ways prominent and painful. Patrick's own story of how he came to research the 1968 Notre Dame Literary Festival starts where a lot of good writing does: with a question that comes to you in the middle of the night. (end voiceover)
Patrick Parr, welcome to With a Side of Knowledge.
Patrick Parr 2:12
Hey, thank you for having me. Yeah, it's great to be here.
Ted Fox 2:17
So--the 1968 Notre Dame Literary Festival, it's a student-organized event, and it sprang from very humble beginnings to become something that was really extraordinary. And I have to say, even after spending almost my entire adult life on this campus and loving books, as anyone who has listened to this show knows, I had at most a passing awareness that some of the figures who animated that week had visited Notre Dame kind of once upon a time. How did you first learn about this festival that took place over 50 years ago now?
Patrick Parr 2:52
Great question. I would say--I, of course, also had no idea about the literary festival. And it was only until I decided to kind of collide the two figures of my past who I've admired greatly, but I thought that they had had no real connection. And it was Martin Luther King and Kurt Vonnegut. And I was, I was up one night, and I was tired. It was probably two o'clock AM, just right around that. And I thought of this one weird idea: Hey, had they ever met? Had Vonnegut and King ever met? And that is where it started. Like, it started to cascade kind of into this literary festival that I had known nothing about because--maybe I'll connect the dots really quickly here, but...
Ted Fox 3:52
Of course
Patrick Parr 3:53
So when I looked that up, I was led to an interview that Kurt gave with Joseph Heller for Playboy magazine. I think Carole Mallory was the interviewer. And they--he talked about how they first met, and they said, Oh, yeah, it was at this Notre Dame Literary Festival. And I said, okay, that's weird, they first met there. And then Kurt talks about, Oh, that's also the same week that Martin Luther King was shot, and I was a bit taken aback. And then he--you know how Vonnegut is, he always finds, no matter how dark and how sad and how tragic the situation is, he always seems to find a way to get you to levitate somewhat above it and to see the light, lightness--and he said, Yeah, and I remember, Joe--Joseph Heller--you went up to the microphone, and you had no idea that it'd happened. And it turns out his zinger was not really that accurate, but it was what led me to the start of the research of this book.
Ted Fox 5:08
Well, and that's what--I mean, we're gonna, we'll run through the festival lineup here in a minute, but part of the thing that I mean is really an incredible confluence of circumstances. The book is called "One Week in America," and that's fitting because a literary festival on a college campus in Indiana was definitely not the only thing going on. I mean, you talked about, you know, I think it was the Thursday of the festival, Martin Luther King Jr. is assassinated, which is one of the most significant moments in American history. And earlier in that week--I mean, this thing that it ends up kind of, you know, completely overshadowing, but there's a huge political story the first day, on the Sunday of the festival.
Patrick Parr 5:55
That's right, yes. Well, it's a story that I didn't expect to be as big as it became. And the more I went into that week, the more you start to see how these events rolled into this seven-day span. And I guess it was just one of those things where you're, you know, you're a miner going for gold--looking for gold or something like that--and you just keep finding enough to keep going. And then you find even more. Gold not in a--from a storytelling standpoint.
Ted Fox 6:26
Right, right.
Patrick Parr 6:27
So I guess for me, when I realized, Oh, I could actually tell a narrative of Lyndon Johnson in March, on March 31st, announcing that he would not be seeking reelection, and then fold that in with King being assassinated several days later, and then also even the emergence of the Black Panther Party, which is near the end of the book, and the tragedy of Bobby Hutton. It's all just such a pivot. It's such a turning point in American history, especially in 1968, which, many books have been written about that year. So I was surprised I could actually have a unique "in" with that year.
Ted Fox 7:08
And not to mention, too--and I mean, this obviously plays hugely with Lyndon Johnson's decision. But it comes up so often when you're talking about--I mean, Notre Dame at that point was not a co-ed institution, it was all men, and the Vietnam War, of course, is raging on, and the draft as well in the background. And this is something that's also on everyone's mind as all these other things are happening, and all these huge literary figures are coming to campus.
Patrick Parr 7:35
Right, yeah. And that all came like an avalanche to me when I was interviewing many of the Notre Dame students who were there--former students--at the time. And they were members of the sophomore committee, and all of them just, they helped me understand the draft, the fears of Vietnam. And of course, John Mroz, who's kind of the star of the book. His wife--oh, my goodness, I can't even put into words how important she was in the making of this book. The materials she was able to so kindly give me, to help me show Notre Dame. Also, I gotta be honest right now, Ted--I'm a little nervous because I'm not a Notre Dame expert, as you are. (Ted laughing) So even though you mentioned earlier in the show how you knew all this about Notre Dame, but you didn't know the festival. Well, I'm on the opposite side of that sentence. (both laugh) So I don't know, I guess I'm a bit nervous about pronouncing certain proper nouns that are on the campus and things like that.
Ted Fox 8:48
You're doing great. (both laugh) No worries, you're doing great.
Patrick Parr 8:51
I just know there's gonna be someone out there who, they're like, Oh, he pronounced that wrong; he calls himself an expert.
Ted Fox 8:59
You're doing great. If anyone has a problem with any pronunciations, they can email me directly, and that will be-- that will be fine. So, I alluded to it, you talked about a couple of the figures that were there. But I just thought we could kind of give people an overview of who was there, and I'll throw out the name to you, and you can kind of, you know, give the brief synopsis of--I mean, a lot of these names will be familiar to people, but just kind of what made them a big deal or whatever else in literary terms. So the first one you talked about the most so far, Kurt Vonnegut.
Patrick Parr 9:33
Yes. Kurt Vonnegut was one of the early writers who accepted John Mroz's invitation. And it turns out, very fortunate for Mroz, he lived close to Vonnegut at the time and they--that kind of personal nature, I think Vonnegut would have accepted anyway because "Slaughterhouse Five" actually was not out yet. So he was, you could say a semi-famous author, but more like he had his own following. He hadn't really exploded out into the mainstream yet.
Ted Fox 9:50
And we have Norman Mailer.
Patrick Parr 10:12
Norman Mailer, yes. Well, of course, you have to--if you know Norman Mailer at all, you would know that he loves attention, right? (Ted laughs) He did love attention, and it's only fitting that he would take two days of this festival. So he was there on April 1st and April 2nd, and April 2nd is what was the real big headliner because he made his, quote, "world premiere" for "Beyond the Law," this film that was shown to about 4,000 students and--sorry, I'm going too long on him. As he would want me to, so ... (both laugh)
Ted Fox 10:57
Well, they had, I mean, and they had a red carpet for that and everything right?
Patrick Parr 11:00
That's right.
Ted Fox 11:01
Which was in--speaking of Notre Dame people listening to this--which was in Stepan Center, which is probably the least glitzy place. I mean, it's--if you don't know it, its claim to fame, I believe, is the first geodesic dome in the United States. And so it is still standing, it is still there. But it has a, we'll say it has a unique place in the Notre Dame lore. It's not the place you would think of like, Wow, big-time premiere. So it is kind of a fun image of the red carpet going into Stepan Center for that.
Patrick Parr 11:34
Yeah, and it's another thing that was--because I saw this dome, I went to the Stepan Center once when I gave a talk at the bookstore. And I looked around the Stepan Center, and I said, Here? (laughs) I said, Really? Okay, alright.
Ted Fox 11:51
Yeah. (laughs)
Patrick Parr 11:52
And I actually even interviewed one, a Notre Dame graduate, Edward Suzuki. And he told me all about the problems that there would be giving a film premiere inside a geodesic dome, because of the acoustics. So anyway.
Ted Fox 12:12
Well, we gave Norman Mailer his due there; he would be very happy.
Patrick Parr 12:15
We did. (both laugh)
Ted Fox 12:16
How about Ralph Ellison?
Patrick Parr 12:17
Ralph Ellison was very hard to get. And he--Mroz found a way to talk to Ellison by going to his door, knocking on it, and getting him to say yes, even though he had said no by letter and no by phone. And Ellison at the time was a very popular speaker going around the country. He was probably more pro-Lyndon Johnson than most people remember. And he was someone very torn about his second novel at the time.
Ted Fox 12:56
The first being "The Invisible Man," which is a huge, huge deal.
Patrick Parr 13:01
And after "The Invisible Man," he had--well, people call it writer's block. But you know, he still wrote incredible books of essays and so forth. But it was more, he just wasn't satisfied with it. And I think he was hundreds and hundreds of pages into his book when his house burned down November 1967. And so he was in a bit of a crisis period in his life when the literary festival came around, but he was a big part of it.
Ted Fox 13:33
And you mentioned the friendship between Vonnegut and Joseph Heller, which started at the literary festival.
Patrick Parr 13:39
Yes, Joseph Heller was someone, was probably the whole reason this happened because he was such a big name at the time, and he was the first to say yes, and a big part of that had to do with--and I always love how clever this was by John Mroz--to bring in, I believe, Father Charles Sheedy to help him kind of recruit Heller in a way. And that really legitimized John Mroz from being this freshman who's like, Hey, let's get this festival going. You know, instead he ends up becoming a real deal to the administration of Notre Dame. They're like, Oh, Mroz got Joseph Heller. Okay, well, let's fund this.
Ted Fox 14:27
Right, right. William F. Buckley Jr.
Patrick Parr 14:31
Yes. Somebody who Mroz did not go after but kind of came into the festival at a time when they were really leaning left at the time. They had all, you know, Eugene McCarthy supporters, and John Mroz wanted to really--he wanted to balance it a little bit. So another organization on campus at Notre Dame was already bringing in Buckley. Maybe they wanted a little help with the fee that Buckley was asking. (Ted laughs) And I think so they probably chopped it in half 50/50, and Buckley comes in, and he gets to be part of this literary festival.
Ted Fox 15:15
Right. And our last author--then there's two other folks I want to mention after it, but our last author, and I might have this ... No, actually, this list is so long it goes onto two pages. (laughs) So I think I still have two more literary figures, then two other folks. But I'll get out of my own way here. Wright Morris.
Patrick Parr 15:32
Ahh, yes! Thank you for mentioning Wright Morris. Oh, let's keep him alive. He's an incredible, he's the writer, more than all the others--because I had already known Vonnegut, I was already very familiar with his work--but Wright Morris just cast a spell on me. And I read as much as I could about him. And what can I say about Wright? Well, he won the National Book Award for "The Field of Vision," and that's a book that probably very few if anyone listening has read; if you have, you should email me because I'd love to talk about Wright Morris to somebody. (Ted laughs) He's been probably pegged as a Midwestern writer. But he kind of--he taught more in San Francisco, but he's just somebody that you have to really read to experience.
Ted Fox 16:30
And then, don't know if I'm remembering this right, if this person was connected to Wright Morris or not, but kind of this really--I mean, we think about trying to gain attention for things in the social media era. Something that was really smart that the student organizers of this festival did, they invited Granville Hicks, who was a literary critic at the time, thinking, Well, maybe he'll write about this festival that we're having.
Patrick Parr 16:57
Right. Well, it is such a brilliant move by John Mroz to really, to bring in Granville Hicks. Granville Hicks's Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram all put together for this festival (Ted laughs). And I would say Granville was enamored by Mroz's efforts in putting this together. And also he gave the keynote, the opening speech. Granville Hicks was a literary critic who really was the kingmaker of book awards. And there was probably some tension between Hicks and Mailer because Hicks really didn't like one of Mailer's books in the past. And because of that, Mailer didn't win an award, which ruffled his feathers a bit. So Hicks is very respected. But I don't believe he's widely read anymore. Just more more of a helpful source back then.
Ted Fox 17:59
So that gives everyone the sense of kind of the literary clout of this festival. And if that weren't enough, we talked about Lyndon Johnson saying that he was not going to run, seek reelection. At the same time, there's also--I know Bobby Kennedy actually spoke during the literary festival; Eugene McCarthy, who was a senator also seeking the Democratic nomination, who was the candidate of choice of a lot of the people speaking at the literary festival, they were also in town during this week, as well. Can you give us a sense, I think maybe just kind of the state of the campaigns at that point, especially in the wake of Lyndon Johnson saying, Yes, I'm not going to seek reelection.
Patrick Parr 18:47
Yes, yes. Such an intersection, right? An intersection of insanity going--of political insanity. So once LBJ--we'll cut it short, I hope that's okay, but...
Ted Fox 19:01
(both laugh) That's totally, totally fine.
Patrick Parr 19:04
Once LBJ said that he would no longer be seeking reelection, that really de-legitimized McCarthy's Wisconsin primary victory because it kind of made it empty. And so, McCarthy is coming in to this festival this week, early April 1968, and he's still technically the favorite on paper, but Bobby Kennedy is really kind of rolling in like a slow thunderstorm, kind of really gaining the popularity that he's already had, but now the support of the younger generation who's hoping to avoid the Vietnam War, but more importantly, needing someone who is closer to their voice. And I think a lot of people wanted Kennedy that way. But McCarthy was also speaking toward them as well; it's just that he wasn't as dynamic. He didn't have the name. But he did have the support of several of the writers at the festival, such as Kurt Vonnegut and Joseph Heller, who were both campaigning and fundraising for him. So at that time, you have Kennedy, McCarthy, and then you have Nixon, who was just kind of rolling around the country saying the same message, letting the Democrats kind of fight themselves. Sounds kinda familiar, actually. (both laugh) But that's another story.
Ted Fox 20:42
Like I said, I wanted to run through all that just to give people--so we, I mean, we've talked about the historical context of the week, the players who were on campus. One thing that I was interested in, in thinking about reading the book--obviously, neither you or I were there to see these speakers, and lectures and speaking engagements, they weren't preserved then like they are now, where you can say, Oh, I'm just going to go on YouTube and watch Kurt Vonnegut's lecture from that week or whatever. But, in doing your research, was there a speaker or a moment during that week that stood out to you in particular that, if you were to have a time machine, and say you could go back and experience one piece of it, that you would say, That would be the time that week that I would go to?'
Patrick Parr 21:28
What a great question, yes. Well, I guess I have to say--I have to say Vonnegut's lecture, because--not just because I admire his writing so much, but more so the way the people I interviewed reacted to his presentation. There were so many different reactions. It wasn't like everybody said, Oh, I laughed, I laughed at it--because that's how it goes down in history, is that everybody was rolling on the floor laughing after feeling so numb from the tragedy the night before, of Dr. King being assassinated. So, I wanted to see more how Vonnegut is able to wade these difficult waters and get through to these students in a way that allows him to be himself, yet honor the moment, yet get everyone to feel a little bit better about it. And so I guess that moment is still striking to me in how complex it is. I still don't--I must have rewritten that section dozens of times because I was really trying to get the varied reactions. I had one interviewer who said, or one interviewee, who said, "Was he drunk?" And then I--there was another guy who thought he was being disrespectful. And a few others who just said, I laughed at everything he said because of his delivery, the way he said it, so. But I guess, yeah.
Ted Fox 23:05
And I thought it was, I mean, just thinking about a mind like his, the way it worked and the way it would have, you know, in some ways, you know, fashioned as the modern-day Mark Twain or the successor to Mark Twain. And I think you had in there that he made a comment of exactly what you were talking about, of everyone being so numb and not knowing what to think after the assassination that he said there was almost--anyone would have been able to get a laugh out of that crowd because there was so much tension to be released. But I think that's very self-effacing, because talking about an unenviable position to be in. Because you want to be respectful of the moment, but still trying to get through to the people that are sitting there, and, Where do I come down in all this? I can't--I can't imagine trying to strike that balance in that moment. But like you said, it struck me, too, that it definitely seemed to have an impact on the people that were there to listen to that talk.
Patrick Parr 24:06
I think what made it even better is that, yeah, I think in that pressured situation, you're right, anybody would laugh, but it's more about how you feel after that, right? I mean, you may feel, Oh, wow, that was cheap, you know, or that felt false, or why did I laugh at that? The audience members, they weren't feeling that at all. They--they felt relief, and release in a way that was helpful to them, in order to process this incredibly turbulent time. And at that time, even while Vonnegut was talking, we have to broaden the scope here and remember that, you know, Chicago was on fire at that time, and there were cities all across the country that were dealing with riots and protests, so ...
Ted Fox 25:00
And he's been asked to talk about writing.
Patrick Parr 25:02
That's right, that's right! And there he is, talking about writing in a small lounge area.
Ted Fox 25:07
Right. So, what--this was interesting to me as someone who's worked in communications for a long time at Notre Dame, because anyone who's worked in communications here would tell you that it's an ongoing challenge to have Notre Dame be known for things beyond football. And we love our football team--my own decision to go to school here, many years ago now, involved Notre Dame football to an alarming degree! (laughs) We don't need to revisit that. But, it struck me how much these students, in the late 60s, felt Notre Dame needed to be known for something else. I mean, they weren't brand ambassadors or whatever the 1960s equivalent of that would have been. And yet, the festival's organizer, John Mroz, said he quote "wanted to show the school off in an academic way." In doing the research for the book, where do you think that motivation came from, from these students that, we want our school--I mean, it just, I don't know, I feel like this is something I could see a 45-year-old marketing director saying, Hey, we need the school to be known for something other than football. But here's these 19- and 20-year-old kids saying, We really want to be known for the academic piece of what we do here.
Patrick Parr 26:18
Yes, yeah. One thing to keep in mind is that they were most definitely in the minority at that time. Their opinion to do this, they didn't have more than 20% of the support of the campus. It was more--I guess now, in hindsight, you'd call it a countercultural response to the times, right? And they thought of Notre Dame football and ROTC as kind of a unified force that, at that time, they needed to push back on a little bit. And they loved Notre Dame still, but they wanted Notre Dame to be multi-dimensional, and to not be so one-sided, and on that front, I think they succeeded. But, one person I interviewed--George Ovid, who graduated Notre Dame--he really put this in excellent perspective, and he's in the book. He talked about how they, in themselves--that group, that sophomore committee--they really were kind of an outlying force. But as the festival gained attention and names and approval from other departments, it really became an event that everybody on campus wanted to see. So in that way, yeah, I guess that's where it came from. They wanted to make a difference where nobody else was trying.
Ted Fox 27:46
Your book prompted me to read Vonnegut for the first time in my life. Maybe it's a demerit on me that it took me this long, but I'm currently immersed in "Slaughterhouse Five," and, right at the end of "One Week in America," you talk about something you've talked about here today--that he and Heller became friends for the rest of their lives following the festival. And, it was obvious, as we've chronicled here, it was a notable week for the collection of figures it brought to and around the Notre Dame campus. But it seemed to me, anyway, that it also really--that week had a lasting impact on the people who participated in it. And I was wondering if--that was my sense, as a reader--if you agree with that as the author and the researcher of the book, and if so, what was it that led to kind of this indelible impact? I don't know if maybe the mix of this kind of literary utopia with all this real-world trauma coming together, or what it might be, but it really seemed like--it really was one week that really stuck with the people who were there.
Patrick Parr 28:47
Yes, yes, I--well, as somebody who studies a lot of the history of post-World War II and on, I can't say that one week would have that huge of an impact for them going forward. I think it's something that through time and through success for all the authors involved, I think they looked back on it, and they--it sort of becomes something that they can appreciate. But '68, early April, this is a time where I think, anyone who is living at that time, who's, you know, between the ages of 15 and 40 or so or whatever--I mean, just during those times when you're really feeling that torment in you, and you're feeling, you're feeling as if the world is falling apart. And I think for them, when Johnson announces he's not seeking reelection, and then when King is killed, I think for them, they start to feel as if this sort of optimism in their country is beginning to fade, or whatever optimism there was at that time. And then of course, it really starts to decline after Kennedy in June is assassinated. So I think for them, '68--especially for Vonnegut and Heller--they bond over this time where they felt they could really create change. But they didn't. But it was--it was an exciting pulse point in American history for them to go through. And also first time, right? It was the first time that they had really gotten to know each other, and they bonded through politics, they bonded through literature, and of course, that night of April 4th, when Joseph Heller was up, standing and having to deal with a crowd that was just completely stunned by the news. And he had to find a way to deliver 40 minutes about his book, when nobody else is thinking about "Catch-22" at that time.
Ted Fox 31:04
Right. So, you have written a biography of Martin Luther King Jr. during his years as a seminarian. If you could write the biography of one author from the '68 Notre Dame Literary Festival, who would it be and why?
Patrick Parr 31:18
Who would I choose? I'm going to avoid saying Vonnegut because there is a great biography by Charles Shields, "And So It Goes," which was phenomenal, and there hasn't been enough time to go by for me to think that I could really make an impact in that field. So I gotta say Wright Morris--but Jackson Benson also wrote a great biography of him, so I don't want to step on his toes. But let's just--can I have this as a safe answer? Maybe--if you asked me that question in 2035 and everybody has forgotten Wright Morris, truly--not just a niche audience, everyone has forgotten him--I want to write about Wright Morris. Absolutely.
Ted Fox 32:13
(both laughing) Maybe we'll revisit it in 2035, I like that idea. So, for everyone listening, too, if you're curious about kind of the broader arc of what would become the Sophomore Literary Festival, there's also--it's a quick read, but in Notre Dame Magazine, by Kerry Temple, about the larger history of what it would go on to become. I have a personal connection to it--my wife, when she worked in Student Activities at Notre Dame when the festival was still going, she was the advisor to the group; we have a shelf in our little home library of all the authors when she was working on the Sophomore Literary Festival, the authors who came to campus during her time. So it really was a tremendous thing that went on for, I want to say around 40 years or so. But here, the book is "One Week in America: The 1968 Notre Dame Literary Festival and a Changing Nation." Patrick Parr, thank you so much for making time to talk with me about it. I really--I can't tell you how much I enjoyed this and enjoyed reading the book.
Patrick Parr 33:15
Oh, thank you so much. And I really appreciate you enduring my long meandering monologues about writers forgotten and remembered.
Ted Fox 33:27
I--I will endure long monologues about writers any day of the week. So I knew we would--when I said, Hey, would you want to come on and talk about this? I knew we would get along well, so it was all very well-received on this end.
Patrick Parr 33:39
Thank you.
Ted Fox 33:40
(voiceover) With a Side of Knowledge is a production of the Office of the Provost at the University of Notre Dame. Our website is withasideofpod.nd.edu.