JAMES LILLIN
Staff Writer
From April 7-9, Fredonia’s alumni-in-residence series “Writers@Work” continued its successful run with award-winning Syracuse Post-Standard columnist Sean Kirst visiting a number of classes and hosting three events for students, faculty and interested community members.
“This man has been a journalist for a very long time,” said English graduate student Naomi Lynch. “And when he talks, it’s literally a story within a story within a story.”
His first event on April 7, “A Story Becomes a Story Becomes a Story,” took Kirst’s unique and laudatory view on the power of language and brought it into practice, as he wove together different anecdotes from his time at the Post-Standard to express, what he named, a “river” of stories.
“History is a dead word; it’s a tired word,” Kirst said. “We’ve part of a moving, fluid river. The past rushes us along into the present, which pushes us along into the future, and we can’t stop it.”
Kirst’s unique way of blending teaching and performing continued on April 8 with “Seeing the Stories Around You,” an interactive workshop exclusively for students.
His trademark storytelling skill was showcased all throughout the workshop, as he recited story after story in his booming, jocular voice, gesticulating wildly to his rapt and attentive audience.
“I tell this to journalists seeking advice all the time,” Kirst said, “one of the best things you can do as a journalist is to just stop and do something else for a while.”
Kirst explained that life experience and simplicity were the key to effective storytelling.
“If you can drop something into simple language and make the people reading it shudder in their shoulders,” Kirst said “well, that’s great writing!”
“It was a workshop … kinda,” Lynch said, breaking off into laughter, “in the sense [that] he’s giving you his work, so that you can apply that ‘shop’ part to your own writing.”
Still, Kirst did offer concrete advice about how to create brief and concise journalistic portraits of a community, encouraging students to focus on honesty and not on “flashy adjectives.”
“The way he was talking about applying all this information into things was really fantastic,” said senior English major Tish Albro.”All that advice was really helpful.”
His final event on April 9, “Local History: How Dunkirk/Fredonia Changed Mark Twain’s Life,” was a showstopper, detailing how Fredonia was a site of great joy in Twain’s life, but also great tragedy.
Growing out of an article that Kirst had first written for The Dunkirk Evening Observer (now called The Observer), he told the audience, “Fredonia is the village that broke Mark Twain’s heart,” before giving the audience a snapshot of Twain’s “33-year pivotal personal history” with the town.
Kirst explained that Twain fell in love with the town after speaking for the first time at the Fredonia Opera House, at which point Twain chose to move his sister and mother to Fredonia.
“The first book Twain ever published was with Charles L. Webster, [Twain’s business manager], a guy from Fredonia,” Kirst said.
It was with Webster that Twain’s relationship with Fredonia went awry, however. Between multiple family deaths and the bankrupting of their shared publishing company, Twain began to resent and blame Webster for nearly every ill he experienced.
This hatred reached a boiling point when Twain was overseas for a speaking tour and was handed a telegram detailing the sudden death of his most beloved child, Susy Clemens.
“Through a series of dubious mental gymnastics, Twain actually blamed Webster for Susy’s death,” said Kirst.
Twain would later write about Webster: “I have never hated anyone with a hundred-thousandth fraction of the hatred I bear that human louse.”
Twain was so broken over the thought of Fredonia that he refused even to acknowledge it in his autobiographies, writing as if his family visits had been spent in Dunkirk instead.
Even with the dark subject matter, Kirst consistently was able to lighten the mood through both humor and a unique view on the beauty of Fredonia.
“It has been so unbelievably, miraculously fantastic to be back here,” said Kirst.
The audience was so taken in by Kirst’s lecture that he was forced to stop and wait nearly a dozen times for the booming laughter to subside, and earned deafening applause at the conclusion of the event. The students in the audience seemed to be completely won over, as well.
“I’ve seen him every day since he’s come here, and as soon as he introduced himself he was like, ‘Hi, I’m Sean Kirst. I’m going to hug you,’” said Lynch. “He’s just super nice.”
She concluded with a sentiment that seemed to echo throughout the audience:
“You want to get to know him, you want to talk to him, you just wanna move closer to him and learn more about everything he has to say.”