Annotations for "Conference Introductory Remarks"

Item Time Annotation Layer
August 3, Evening Part One 3:11 APPLAUSE
Audience
August 3, Evening Part One 0:00 - 5:04 Conference Introductory Remarks
Program
August 3, Evening Part One 3:24 The plan of these three nights is a fairly simple one. There will be two talks of approximately a half an hour each, each night, followed by a commentator who will discuss the two talks, and we hope further entangle the two speakers and arguments with each other. Then we hope to have sort of rebuttals and general conversation from the group on the stage, followed by questions from the audience.
Carvel Collins
August 3, Evening Part One 4:02 This evening, I would like to run through the-- right now, the three evenings, the program. The first speaker this evening will be Mr. Stanley Hyman. The second speaker, Mr. Frank O'Connor. And Mr. Anthony West will comment on their two speeches.
Carvel Collins
August 3, Evening Part One 4:19 Tomorrow night, the first speaker will be Mr. Simenon. And the second speaker will be Mr. Ellison. And Professor Frohock will comment on their two papers.
Carvel Collins
August 3, Evening Part One 4:33 On the third evening, we will have two publishers-- one publisher of hardback books, Mr. William Sloan, and another publisher of paperback books, this being one of the issues in literature in our time, Ms. Hilda Livingston. And then the group here, these authors, will have a chance to discuss things with the publisher in a more general way than perhaps they've been accustomed to.
Carvel Collins
August 3, Evening Part One 5:04 And since presumably these are publishers who are operating off the record and outside the business, I hope that there can be some genuine disagreement, which is, of course, of interest to all of us. The program this evening is to deal with the how and why of the modern novel, and perhaps, the question, more than that of the question of should certain things be going on in the modern novel. From conversation with the two first speakers, I believe that we are in for an evening of the kind of disagreement that, as I said before, is very important and interesting to all of us.
Carvel Collins
August 3, Evening Part One 0:18 I'm very happy that such a nice audience on a nice evening should welcome the beginning of the Conference on the Contemporary Novel. On our Conference on Poetry some years ago, it was said that the conference was a nest of singing birds. On the Conference on Literary Criticism last year, if it were birds, it might have been crows. They live on each other's bones, these critics.
William Yandell Elliott
August 3, Evening Part One 0:51 I shan't attempt before the conference to describe the Conference on the Novel because here we have novelists and critics together. That isn't my duty after all. As Director of the Summer Session, it's my privilege to introduce the gentleman who will preside over these meetings and to whom, in large part, the distinguished roster of participants is due. He has persuaded them to come.
William Yandell Elliott
August 3, Evening Part One 1:17 Professor Carvel Collins, a professor of English literature at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is one well known to those who follow American literature, alas he has not been able to produce his own particular hero. He is the biographer of Faulkner. I gather that the only way to produce Faulkner is to have his daughter graduate at an exercise and all the colleges in the country are trying to get Ms. Faulkner to come and be a graduate of those colleges. I'm sure that when she gets to a college, there will be no doubt about her graduating from that college.
William Yandell Elliott
August 3, Evening Part One 1:56 Mr. Collins has just come back from a trip trying to persuade Faulkner to violate his sacred principle and come up here. And alas, Penn Warren, who was to have come has just had a child. And being his first, he takes it very seriously and isn't likely to depart.
William Yandell Elliott
August 3, Evening Part One 2:17 Mr. Collins is one of these students of American literature who is interested in the roots of things, and particularly in the period just before the Civil War. His book on the American sporting gallery has, I think, given some of the best grassroots history of that period. And if he doesn't start singing "On the road to California, oh, it's a long and a tedious journey far across the Rocky Mountains," he'll be out of character tonight.
William Yandell Elliott
August 3, Evening Part One 2:49 His articles and published portions of his book on Faulkner's fiction show his interest in American folklore. And he will have an ample opportunity, I think, in presiding at these meetings to relate American folklore and the characters of American fiction to some of the most distinguished novelists and critics of our times. It's with great pleasure that I turn the meeting over to Mr. Carvel Collins.
William Yandell Elliott