UCSB Interdisciplinary Humanities Center (IHC) Event: Vivian Gornick

“I sometimes think I was born reading. I can’t remember the time when I didn’t have a book in my hands, my head lost to the world around me.”

What Vivian Gornick did not say when she wrote these sentences was how often the book in her hands was one she had read a number of times before. It became her habit as life went on to re-read the books that had repeatedly seemed important to her, in order to see whether or how much they had changed—as she had changed. In other words, for Gornick, re-reading is one of the great and primary ways in which we capture the meaning of our own accumulated experience. In this talk, she will take the listener along on her own journey of self-discovery through some of the re-readings that have meant the most to her.

Vivian Gornick is a writer and critic whose works include Fierce Attachments: A Memoir (1987), Approaching Eye Level (1996), The End of the Novel of Love (1997), The Situation and the Story: The Art of Personal Narrative (2001), The Men in My Life (2008), The Odd Woman and the City (2015), and Unfinished Business: Notes of a Chronic Re-reader (2020). The New York Times selected Fierce Attachments as the #1 Best Memoir of the Past 50 Years.

The talk will be followed by audience Q&A, a reception, and book signing. Copies of Gornick’s books will be available for purchase, courtesy of Chaucer’s Books.

Sponsored by the IHC’s Regeneration series and the Hester and Cedric Crowell Endowment

Free to attend; visit the IHC event page for more information: bit.ly/Gornick-IHC