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So today I'm pleased to welcome Mark Oppenheimer He's with us today to speak on his book wisenheimer a childhood subject to debate. The saying children should be seen and not heard probably would have felt like a death sentence to a young Mr. Oppenheimer a child who we learned had an incredible passion for the spoken word. In this memoir wisenheimer we are privy to the strange and unintentionally hilarious world of competitive forensics a review from booklist asserts in this wise witty shout out to geek culture. Oppenheimer relays his evolution from problem child to world class debater. Part of which makes what makes this memoir so special is the author's openness about the frustration and isolation he met with as a precocious kid his deaf reading narratives of various competitions contain the same suspense and thrills as the best sports books. While his astute analysis of teammates coaches and competitors really like the best kind of psychology. Mark Oppenheimer is a regular writer for The New York Times magazine Slate. The New York Times Book Review the Boston Globe and the forward his journalism has also appeared in The Wall Street Journal Harper's details and Travel and Leisure days have

appeared in the ville lever the American scholar and Yale review. He's the author of two books a founding editor of The New Haven Review and an occasional commenter on NPR's All Things Considered and day to day. We are thrilled to have him here at Harvard bookstore please. So please join me in welcoming Mark Oppenheimer. Thank you. It's really good to be here. I dressed in my old debate where for you. In fact I picked up this jacket in Scotland at a debate tournament in 1991. It is it has P.C. for it as they say in Scotland. It is deeply weird to see all of you here because there is no place where I read where I get as many people for the third time in a Harvard bookstore and I just want to thank Harvard bookstore because they had me here when I published my dissertation. And for those of you have written boring dissertations you really don't expect you know important independent bookstores to have you to read for them and they did and so this was

2003 and they turned out a lot of people none of whom I'd ever seen before and I remain in awe of the community around Harvard Book Store who come out for author events just because they trust that a Harvard bookstore books some they must have something interesting to say. And so this is the only bookstore that I'm reading at for the third time they've had a year for each book and I'm really honored and really really grateful. But it's deeply weird to be here for two reasons one because when you grow up in Western Massachusetts to be broadcast on WGBH from Boston is this sort of is like a an honor like no other I mean it's it's bigger than the Nobel. Because you know Western masses the ends of the earth and. But second of all because there are people here knew me when I was. I mean besides my parents who've known me a long time there are people here who knew me when I was two three four years old and people who knew me in elementary school high school college I mean just and on words. So I there's nowhere where I read to the cross-section of people who can catch

all of the fabrications and errors that I've made throughout this book. The way the people here can so let me here as no other place I have to offer the disclaimer right that a memoir is my best attempt at recapturing the truth but often falls short. I did however for this memoir do a lot of fact checking and one of the great pleasures of writing this book was tracking down all of these people whom I hadn't seen for 5 10 20 years and saying hey do you mind if I write about you and would you read what I wrote about you and tell me if it's right. And I mean I was actually deeply touched by the people who were willing to read things that were you know mostly flattering but in some cases uncomfortable and correct me and offer suggestions and put me in touch with other people it was it was really incredibly moving and in some ways it made me gladder than ever to be a writer. It was just very very touching. So. This book is this book began as it was going to be a scholarly book about the

history of American rhetoric and public speaking. I know that's a book you want to turn out for. And I wrote it so I don't have about a year's worth of research. And then I sat down to start writing and I thought well start with the introduction right because that will be kind of personal and I'll talk about why I wanted to write this book. And the introduction kind of just grew and grew and grew until I had 50 or 75 pages about me and my love of public speaking and oratory. And I'm sort of not the first person to recognize that my favorite topic is me and a bunch of friends said to me you know why don't why don't you just keep going with that you're halfway there already. And I realized that the book I wanted to write if it was going to be about public speaking and oratory. The book that I was going to write was going to be about me. This is one topic that for me is incredibly personal and and to pretend that it was otherwise was probably going to result in a book that would have brought none of you here today. So I just kept going and it turned into a book

about my childhood as a talkative youngster. And then the discovery in junior high of competitive debate as a as an outlet for that loquaciousness and then continuing in high school with high school debate and in college and it really ends. At the very end of college so I'm going to read three brief sections from this book and that should take you know maybe 15 or 20 minutes and then I would love to entertain your questions about about the book. The first section I'm going to read picks up when I'm 9 or 10 years old with with school from the beginning. I had a hard time with teachers and they had a hard time with me. In kindergarten at Sumner Avenue School I asked Mrs. Sessions what her first name was. She told me it was Jean but she wasn't happy about it in first grade I had Mrs.

Sylvester whom I liked better but in the middle of winter with the whole class watching she slipped on a patch of ice. She stood up and she looked fine but she had broken her back. And after that day we never saw her again. And a string of indifferent substitutes finished out the year. I spent the remaining months at Sumner Avenue School Leaving class with the substitutes permission to go upstairs to the library. There I would stretch my 10 minute passes into 20 or 30 minutes reading books from the shelves and trying not to return until class was almost over. For second grade my parents enroll me in Pioneer Valley Montessori school a small well-meaning place on Parker Street five miles from where we lived. It was the kind of progressive school that would have stopped some of the more adventurous some young adult authors such as Judy Blume or Robert Cormier. If books had been part of the curriculum but like teachers that a lot of supposedly student centered schools the teachers there were deeply suspicious of students who wanted to read for these teachers good elementary school ing was about physicality movement using one's hands and feet.

Reading was for later. The math and science curricula were splendidly thought through filled with the individual AI's detention and the touching and feeling and hands on learning in that public schools did not offer. But our reading was limited to excerpts from the junior great books and felt the G's short volumes comprising redacted selections from Beatrix Potter and Aesop and the like. I read through the entire junior grade books one and Junior Great Books two volumes in the first few months of third grade. I don't remember what qualified as language instruction in the second grade and for the last year and a half of my Montessori education I was encouraged to take what I could from the lone bookshelf that constituted the school's library. Nobody paid much attention. It wasn't just that the school's theoretical matrix encouraged this neglect of verbal kids but also that the teachers had no interest in teaching language arts. They had not become Montessori pedagogues because they enjoyed grammar or penmanship. The features that made the school special the metal pies segments

used to teach fractions the trips into the woods behind the school to learn the taxonomies of shrubs and trees were related to math and science instruction. That's what put the hands in hands on. Sitting in a corner and reading which would have which would have made the unstructured open classroom blissful for me was not exactly the kind of learning by doing that got these teachers up in the morning. The math and science kids thrived. One of them the redoubtable UI brand used the school's freedom to start simple algebra when he was eight. He is now a Google software engineer. My gift however seems to be held against me. The school sold itself as a place where students could be individuals. But my endless quarrelling my hunger to Tao challenge my teachers wasn't seen as a good urge that needed proper channeling. Rather it was treated as a rebellion against the harmony that the school was supposed to embody. It was one thing for you itis for all on the floor chewing on his pencil as he did math problems well beyond beyond his years. That was the glory of a Montessori education.

But a student who approached the teacher and asked why there weren't desks on a blackboard as there had been at his old school and wondered why we called teachers by their first names here and was curious what Montessori meant. Anyway I was just a trouble maker at a school so proud of its progressive ways. I struck the teachers as somehow reactionary. My first year when I was seven and in second grade went well enough it wasn't as boring as first grade in public school had been. And Gail the head teacher in grades 1 through 3 had a sort of exasperated patience for me. But the next year when the school added a fourth grade and I moved into the 3 and 4 classroom Lisa a new teacher presiding over her first class room couldn't stand me. I should say here that nothing got the Simon and Schuster lawyers angrier than my portrayal of Lisa deeply worried deeply worried as they were about slander and liable so her last name is by request only. She was young and she looked good with glasses and a short dark boy's haircut and she was noticeably in mature with some very odd ideas. The first week of school she asked

all 10 of us in the third and fourth grades to sit in a circle on the floor then passed out short fat white candles. She lit her own candle with a match and said these candles represent our unity as a classroom. I'll light crags candle and Craig will light the candle the person to his left and will go around to all the candles are lit which we did 10 children ages 8 through 10. Most of us holding fire for the first time when all the candles were lit Lisa said that this would be our class tradition a way to make our sharing time sacred and we would do it throughout the year. That night I told my parents that the new teacher was some sort of crazy person bringing religion into the school. My father called to complain and fire sharing time was never held again. Lisa never forgave me for ratting her out. We moved immediately into mutual antagonism and for all the third and fourth grades I had the peculiar experience of being despised by my teacher who drew on the deep well of loathing that most teachers have only for miscreants

at 8 years old. I somehow had her number even though I didn't want to have it. Every young child wants a teacher to like him but for our two years together every comment I made every question I asked drove lease it's a distraction. Like a high frequency only she could hear. At first I antagonized her unintentionally. But after a certain point when it was obvious that Lisa would never like me I decided though I could not have articulated the decision at the time that it was self-esteem suicide to keep trying for her approval. In a class of only 10 students spread over two grades I couldn't slouch down in a desk in the back row even if there'd been desks. So my response was to defy Lisa by championing myself. I began to write my name as Mark the graves in the upper right corners of my papers knowing that she found me uppity. I got even uppity are redoubling my use of large words and further complicated my syntax. I was trying to remind myself that I was worthy and I was

also fighting back the tension between us became a thing like a family feud or a gang rivalry. Everyone just knew that we hated each other. We're still my classmates were at an age where they followed the teacher's lead rather than rebelling against it. So being on the outs with the teacher which would have made me cool in high school made me an uncool kid and even less cool in the third and fourth grades. The one friend I had at the beginning of third grade Hawkeye Thompson who I should add recently friended me on Facebook. A shaggy haired blond kid whose parents were liberal lawyers like my dad dropped me by the end of the year choosing to hang out instead with Marcus Jackson who among other virtues got MTV at his house. The other boy I wanted to be friends with Josh Greenberg turned on me to join in Hawkeye and Marcus in an alliance. In fourth grade the only person who wanted to be my friend was Katie Risley a fun smart impossibly kind girl who one time invited me over to her house to play board games. I reciprocated once but

feeling weird about having a girl for a friend found an excuse to turn down her next invitation. More than 10 years later the week after graduating from college I came downstairs to breakfast at my parents house and my mother handed me Katie's obituary in the union news. She'd been killed in a boating accident. Her neck snapped. I went to her funeral and afterwards afterward told her father that there had been a year of my life when the only person who was nice to me at school was Katie. It's hard to know whose cruelty took license from whose My classmates were encouraged in their meanness by Lisa's example. But I also think that their distaste for me made Lisa feel justified in her own. After all she figured if my classmates didn't like me they must have their reasons. Whatever her reasons Lisa abandoned moral moral stewardship of that classroom. When for a math activity we all had to take surveys of our classmates turn the most popular answers into percentages and then make polygraphs. Lisa didn't stop one student from taking a survey of best

friends when two out of 10 students responded that Hawkeye was their best friend. He got the biggest pie slice 20 percent. The whole survey was mounted on a wall where it was easy to see whom nobody had claimed as a best friend. Incredibly this was not the most dysfunctional survey of the year. That honor would go to a survey by Lisa who one day after I said something she took as rude something that admittedly may have been rude but she decided to put me in my place. Her eyes narrowing as she leaned toward me and said in a low voice. You think you're so great mark. You think you're great. Let's see who thinks you're great. And then she stood up from the table where we were seated looked around at the students scattered across the carpeted room working on their projects science experiments maps being drawn long unschooled paper for history timelines piles of beads representing the multiplication of numbers and called for their attention. Hey everybody. She said loudly.

Could I have your attention. I have a question. Who here thinks Mark Oppenheimer is so great. Who here likes Mark. My classmates looked at her with a kind of wise disbelief as if though too young to know exactly why their teacher's behavior was wrong. They felt a certainty beyond their years that it was. Nobody said anything. Lisa looked at me and arched her eyebrows as if to say See. So that was elementary school. Which I should say and a much happier note I went to a terrific fifth and sixth grade score I had a grand time about back in public school and then went on to a junior high school right. Just great opportunities and great friends and it was a seven through 12 a grade seven through 12 school so I in seventh grade I was able to join the high school debate team which was just great which was a lot of fun and a lot of the book is about the characters I met

in seventh and eighth grade debating against high schoolers in western Massachusetts and that was a that was a nifty scene and they were awfully nice to me considering all things considered. And that was just a great time. So but I'll The second of three sections I'll read you very briefly is when I get to high school and join the debate team at the Loomis Chafee school in Windsor Connecticut. They had a very very strong debate program and a wonderful wonderful coach and a lot of the book is also spent talking about Mr. Robison to whom the book is dedicated to my wife's chagrin. She said when when do I get a book. And he was he was just wonderful. And I spent a lot of the book talking about the debate coaches who I think are in some ways just unsung heroes. They certainly didn't get the credit at my school that the lacrosse coach got it but he was just great so let me read you a brief passage about the

coaches. Although Mr. Robison was in the estimation of many at Loomis an eccentric genius he looked hopelessly normal compared to his fellow debate coaches. If adults seem to children like a whole other genus no species of adult was stranger than homo red ecologists. The debate coach. And in England I would learn that the coaches strangeness obtained regardless of their country. The English and Canadian coaches were every bit as marvelously queer as their counterparts in New England. They were an extraordinary collection of pleasing oddities the kind of men and they were almost all men whom it was impossible to imagine settled in civilian society. Indeed they seemed unemployed well anywhere off prep school grounds. They were too deficient in hygiene too prolific in opinions too prolix too absent minded too prurience minded too slovenly too festive Yes too loud or too soft to move well in polite company. But they were smart and dedicated and utterly concerned with the life of the

mind. I miss them. I remember only three female coaches the rather formal Jeanne Bergere coached the girls of Windsor school in Boston. The more exuberant. Julie Hill who for a short time was the Exeter coach was pleasantly plain her first year of coaching and returned the following year with newly frosted hair and a thick layer of makeup. Finally there was the grand Linda Martin who coached at Balmoral hall a girls school in Winnipeg Manitoba that sent teams to the same Canadian and English tournaments that Lewis attended. She was an aristocrat of the Canadian plains. Her father had been a Tory chief judge of Manitoba and a close political ally of Prime Minister John Diefenbaker and Linda was made short of a powerful debate clam. Her sons Campbell jock and cow were all champion debaters at St John's Ravenscourt the brother school to Balmoral hall in Winnipeg. Mrs. Martin's favorite topics were her son's glory her father's last glory and the inflated reputation of former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau. She decanted on all three matters with perfect diction and in a

flat Canadian accent. But the great majority of coaches were men and I remember their guild comprising two kinds bearded and stout among the bearded Mr Robison Geoff Birger of the foreman school and Joe Paul under a legal librarian and former collegiate champion who assisted with judging at large tournament's in the Boston area. And then there were the stout the Lawrence Katz and back the third of St. Paul's School a man of truly authoritative girth. Phil Hanson of Roxbury Latin School who possessed a slight paunch the kind that I always thought would look good festooned with Spender's suspenders. And Bob Coogan's of kings would Oxford school reputedly a fearsome collegiate athlete in his time now gone soft. I often wondered at the limitless possibilities of a hypothetical debate coach who was both your suit and fat. Had such a man existed his teams would have been unstoppable. These looks were tributes to the men's greatest perhaps inseparable from it. At most New England

prep schools where the ideal master is both fit and wholesomely clean shaven an unruly beard like Mr Robinson's was the mark of a free spirit and a nice paunch was the sign that its bearer did not take the athletic fields too seriously. These were not coaches who happens to be fat or bearded. They were coaches for the same reasons that they were fat and bearded. For all the tuition we paid very few of our teachers were eccentrics gadflies or original thinkers. Those who were often coached debate. So Mr. Robinson coached us to all sorts of glory in New England in Canada in England in Scotland. And you know high school experience that was just filled with extraordinary good times and and wonderful people. The debate trips were just part of it. They were interesting and they were fun and I met people from other schools and I met people who have recurred in my life ever since in college and

since college. And and you know I I wouldn't trade them for anything they certainly weren't all of my life but they. But but but my life is unimaginable without them. And then I got to college and in my first month at college I failed to make the debate team at Yale which was devastating for me because the debate to me it was filled with people whom I had crushed in high school people two and three years ahead of me had gone who you know might just simply flattened I mean just just absolutely obliterated. And then they graduated went off to college and they were on the team. And I always nursed a theory that the reason I didn't get on is because I had simply humiliated too many people who were already on on the team. You may notice that that's a rather self-serving theory and. I should say that the truth may be that I simply gave a bad audition and afterwards I is you know people approach me over the course here and said You should really try out next year you know. We know that you're going to be in high school we'd love to have you. You know people are unbelievably generous in spirit about about it but it was it was tough

and and a good push the book is given over as well to my coping after I didn't make the team. It was in fact one of the best. It's a cliche but it was one of the best things that could have happened to me because had I made the team I just I would have become one of those debate guys in college and tournaments in college were Friday through Sunday so you were gone from campus for several days and it impacted your your ability to be part of the social life of the college. And I'm very glad that I had a year in which I wasn't on the team to realize that there was a there were a lot of great things going on and people whom I wanted to know and activities I wanted to be part of outside the team. So when I did make the team sophomore year I had it in perspective and didn't end up allowing it to take over my life. The the end game though is that my senior year of college having been a relatively indifferent debater for four for three years. I got to go to the world champion the World University Championships in at University College Cork

in Ireland. This was a big surprise because again I've been a relatively indifferent debater I'd only been on the team for three years and there were lots of people with more seniority than I had who would get to go you know got to every university got to send three teams of two. So you got to send six people and there were a dozen debaters in my class most of whom had priority over me. But one got food poisoning and another one had a family emergency and another one felt that she had to stay on campus to work on her senior essay. You know one by one people fell off until he said Hey Mark can you go. And so I said. I said short. And my partner was the great Judge Sugarman now professor at Harvard Law School who I believe couldn't be here today but he was my partner in the world championships and we ended up being the top finishing American team. We didn't by any means win but we we outlasted all the other American teams the winners were Australia and of course the Austrians are very very good debaters.

And you don't want to get into an argument in a dark alley with an Australian or a Scot. That's my. If you take any wisdom from today's reading that's. That's you know that's the wisdom if you have to talk your way out of a beating don't make the argument against an Australian or a Scot. But but the tornado was just immense fun and I'm just going to read you a very. To conclude I'll read you a very short passage about our arriving at the tournament. It was my fondness for this gang by which I mean my my classmates on the team in the class of 96 that drew me to my last international tournament. The world universities debating championship was to be held during Christmas vacation at University College Cork in Ireland. The university world was a more prestigious championship tournament than all the world or international championships in high school because it was truly a unified belt. There was only one English speaking university worlds. But as Yalies we tended to take worlds less seriously than say the Harvard or Princeton tournament primarily because it seems so awfully hard to

win worlds. Only two American teams had ever won Yale in 1090 and Harvard in 1903 and many of our best debaters had fared miserably. Many judges in foreign countries had an anti-American bias to be sure but the bigger problem was that after years of debating in our league even the best American speakers couldn't switch to a more truly parliamentary style in which clever swirling was no substitute for wit charm and bombast. Whether or not my Parliamentary knives had gone rusty it was unlikely I'd get to Cork ya could send only three two person teams. And having debated less frequently in college than all the other seniors I lacked seniority. Jerry and John who'd been the most successful members of my class were going as our A-team and the B and C teams would be some mix of Jedda least Farzana Christy Krista Andy and Gary and possibly even Jeff Carney who had joined the team our junior year and was notable for being the only member of the Yale debate Association also to hold membership in Delta Kappa Epsilon Deek the most

beery borish and proudly troglodytic of Yale's fraternities. Dick pledge week required of all its bottles or pledges that they live together in one dorm room and refrain from showering for seven days. He was not a typical debater. As it turned out several of the debaters ahead of me in the queue had other plans for Christmas break. After Gary Christopher as Donna and Jeff took a pass I was offered a spot on the six person delegation. I met up with the other Yale debaters at JFK Airport on December 26 1995. The Harvard and Princeton delegations were there too along with debaters from several other schools in our league. Every school was allowed three two person teams but not every school is bringing that many. It tended to be the team's richest in talent or money who sent a full complement of six. The other Yale debaters had been much more active on the circuit and they each recognized a dozen or so debaters from other schools hanging around at the gate at the airport. But I knew only three. There was David Latt a hilariously outrageous Harvard debater short with naturally

spiky hair who had graduated from New York's Regis High School the free highly selective school for Catholic boys that graduated many of the best Ivy League debaters of my era. Years later lat would become briefly famous after he revealed to New Yorker writer Jeffrey Toobin that he was the anonymous author of underneath their ropes a dishy legal blog. Lot then resigned from his job at the U.S. attorney's office and soon became editor of Wonkette. The even more scurrilous D.C. gossip website The Lapps partner for worlds was Erik saw of a dashing well-tailored tailored fellow whose full name he told us over drinks in Ireland was ever solved. Which seemed oddly fitting a perfect objective Corella tive for Eric's self-aware pomposity. He okayed this by the way. The only other debater I knew on that flight to Ireland was my old nemesis who had gone to Andover Doug Kern who it was reassuring to discover had not changed one bit. He had the same pleasant Orville

Redenbacher Midwestern earthiness the same intense intelligent gaze the same jumpy way of constantly looking around as if wondering when his reinforcements were going to arrive. I don't remember much of the flight. There was free alcohol on Aer Lingus and I remember quite foggily being drunk but unable to sleep. I've always been adrenaline racked on internet intercontinental flights excited by the sense of being neither here nor there. All the old commitments thousands of miles behind me and a foreign land lying ahead. Having so many fellow collegians on one flight all of us bound for a week of debate. It reminded me of high school. Nobody stayed in his seat except for Jed who had spilled his third Guinness on his pants and. And had a large dark spot on his crotch. The rest of us patrol the aisles switching seats looking for familiar faces and when I didn't find any familiar faces I just introduced myself to anyone who looked debate or late parent said of me I should say the jet was the one who reminded me that he spilled a beer on his crotch I had entirely forgotten that he's a good sport. By the time we landed the next

morning in Ireland we were exhausted. The bus that was supposed to meet us at Shannon Airport was not there when we arrived so all the debaters with our whisky breath with smudged makeup on the girls and six a.m. the shadows on the boys settled into a small coffee shop in the cork terminal. This was before the Irish economic boom. The Irish tiger and the airport had a second world seediness dirty carpets cigarette smoke deep in the fabric of everything. We ordered coffee and waited. Too tired to talk. Just craving hot showers. Finally two women about our age walked in announced that they were from University College Cork and said they were here to pick us up. It took me a moment to realize they meant in the van. They they seemed like one of those inseparable duos I find so annoying. They probably describe themselves chirpily as best girlfriends or partners in crime and they lead with their breasts. As they rounded us up and brought us to the bus outside one of the debaters asked about their skimpy clothes how do you

get by wearing so little in the cold. He said. One of the women glanced over her shoulder with a come hither look exhaled a coil of cigarette smoke and said. We don't just get by we get on. I had no idea what that meant but it sounded. But it sounded dirty and I was completely grossed out. The boss left all the American debaters at Jurys hotel a Holiday Inn style place at the center of Cork. There were no debate rounds until the next day so we could have gone to sleep but we decided to fight through our fatigue and stay awake until night time hoping to lick jetlag. The six of us from Yale went looking for some food and ended up at a small pub near the hotel where we ordered Plowman's lunches and in the spirit of the trip pints of Murphy's Irish stout. All of us that is except for Jed who somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean had lost his voice entirely. He ordered a tea with honey. The barmaid who brought our drinks nodded to a table across the room and said drinks were on them. Our benefactors whom we

beckoned over to join us were four debaters from the University of Alaska. We had never met them before but they had heard us speaking recognize that we were fellow Americans abroad and reached out in friendship. It was a generous move and I wish I could say that we were delighted to make their acquaintance but we were very very tired and they were deeply unsettling really weird. The Alaskan debater I remember best was named Mark. He was about 30 years old a junior in college wore thick glasses had a very Eight is Enough bowl cut of brown hair had served in the Marines and was putting himself through school by selling Amway products on the side. A lot of people think Amway is some sort of cult he told me. As I as I drank the beer he had generously bought for us. But that's not it at all. It's just that it's all about loyalty and Amway just the way the military is. And I'll tell you they appreciate the military a damn way. They play the fight song of each branch of the armed forces at every Amway

convention. They recite the Pledge of Allegiance Amalie honors its veterans and that means a lot to me and I'll tell you something else Amway is the only place I've ever seen the kind of loyalty I saw in the Marines you're up line with the man who brought you into Amway. He is 100 percent loyal to you because he only makes money if you down lines make money. He wants me to succeed. He would do anything for me to succeed. And how many of that and how many of us can say that about our bosses. Can you say that about your boss. I could not say that about my boss. And I'm a sponsor of the up line for three other guys who are my down lines and I am intensely totally loyal to them. Their success is my success and it is my sponsors success. So all all up and down the line there is loyalty at Amway. You see what I mean. Look he said to me I'm a veteran. I'm a university student. I am a Jew. I'm an Amway entrepreneur. I'm a debater that is who I am. And it's really a pleasure to meet you guys. Thank you very

much. Thank you. Oh my dissertation when I was a religious studies writers did my dissertation was on American religion in the 1980s. It's called Knocking On Heaven's Door religion in the age of counterculture. And I just got my statement from Yale University Press it sold seven copies last year. So if we could top that today I'd be I would be charmed. Oh she asked me what was the hardest thing for me to decide to have to include. Well that would be a toss up. I certainly write about times in my childhood when I was unhappy and I think I definitely feared as I wrote it that it would give people the impression that my childhood was only unhappy because you know a memoir has to be selective. Right I mean one can't include everything so inevitably you end up focusing on certain things rather than other things. And it would be a mistake for people to think that I had an unhappy childhood. I think I've had a really happy childhood but my relationship to language was fraught because some people didn't like talkative or articulate kids.

And so that was tough to negotiate because I don't want people to think that I had a really painful childhood more so than the usual one. I don't want people to think that overall I had bad teaching or bad parenting or bad siblings I mean I had good teaching and good parenting and wonderful siblings and so. So it was but it was tough to present that because I knew that in being selective I would perhaps give some people the wrong impression. On that note I should just say one of the themes of the book is that American society has figured out all sorts of ways to go to challenge its children who are gifted in math or science and in athletics of course but we're not so good at challenging kids who are just really talky. And I wasn't even a particularly good reader. I mean I read you know and I liked reading but I wasn't one of those super voracious readers. I was a talker. And you know take a moment and ask yourself what's the activity you'd send your kids to if if he or she were nine and was a big talker. You know what do you do I mean you can send a library go get yelled at for talking

right so it's it's actually a kind of it's a dilemma. And that's what a lot of the book is is about so that was difficult but I said it was a toss up and there was a good deal in here about my high school girlfriend who was just unbelievably decent in reading the whole thing and saying yeah you can just write it all I'm flattered and you know she's married and has her own life and it's like she was just such a class act about that but it was certainly nervous. It was nerve wracking sending it to her and if she asked me to take it out I mean I would have had to and the book would have been much poorer for it. So Professor Dr Sauk asked if there was ever a time when I had found a community of people. Yeah I mean first of all at the tournaments in high school that was that was just great but when I got to college it was amazing because I was bumping into so many of these people again and we were I mean we were fairly mainstream at Yale. It's not that every you know he was talkie but it certainly wasn't weird to

be you know if anything you know college is the collection of people who were the first to raise their hands in their high school classes. So in that sense it was very very liberating and when I talk to people about. You know now if I occasionally interact with teenagers where should I go to college. Occasionally I'll meet someone whom I think has to go to a school like that not because there aren't very very good public universities or small colleges but because I realize this is a kid who needs to be surrounded by 5000 people who are also who also raise their hands in class and also like to talk. And so yeah college I mean high school was one stage in that because I went to high school that really valued its its talky kids and it smart kids. But then college was that it was almost as if I could finally exhale which was really nice. So so so Ryan Carnegie asked if if you took some resistance to refrain from pummeling the reader with the words in my writing you will thank you. I mean I you know my feeling my feeling about big words in writing is you you

always want to use the simplest word that is apt. And that's appropriate right so I hope that my writing is fairly easy to read and fairly simple I like to think I'm one of those writers who actually doesn't tax the reader too much. Once in a while you have to use a word that might be a bit obscure because it's the right word and at those times I get very very prissy about it and throw tantrums with my editors and say but it's the right word. Actually with with my editor and free press I didn't have that problem too much. Maybe because they figure that in a whole book there's room for a few $10 words and you know people will look them up or just move along. I recently did have an experience I was writing an article for The New York Times magazine and my editor called me and said you've used two words that stymied all of us and we want to know what they mean and if you know do you really think we need to use them. One was stable and the other was the other was elevenses. So those of you who have gone to your Shiva and spent time studying in England know both of them

but a Shiba is a small prayer room it's a it's a storefront synagogue essentially. And elevenses is the 11 a.m. snack in England. It's sort of you know biscuits and tea at 11 which here was the thing was I was reading about the Lower East Side I mean it was an article that involved discussion of the Lower East Side which had stables and it also involved one of the. One of my sources asked me to meet her at the Crosby Street Hotel downtown in SoHo at 11:00 a.m. for you know cookies and tea. That's elevenses. So I said to my editor Well I'm talking about steeples and elevenses. So I regret to say that neither of neither of those words made it in. But once in a while I do have these fights yes. So two questions one when you ask for permission I'm repeating it because WGBH is taping I've been told to repeat it because the microphones here one when you ask people for permission was it was I being nice or was it by law. And did anyone say no. So the answer the first one is yes and yes I was being nice

but also the lawyers at Simon and Schuster say is this person ok with this. And they in fact by the way the law the lawyers are great because what they give you is kind of a copyedit. I mean they every time you say something that's potentially untrue or libelous or that they sense it might be just from your memory they call you on it and say Are you sure about this because we have to be truthful or if not we have to have disclaimers or things like that. And so it's actually this other layer of editing that your editor doesn't even think about. And so it's both. I mean I was think of it to be nice but they also pointed me to certain people whom I should call for legal reasons and one person did say you know he he may be apparent to those of you who I went to high school with and who read the book. He in fact when I wrote to him and said Could I interview you so that I can be extra accurate. He wrote back and CCD. I can only assume his lawyer and said No you may not interview me and if I'm anywhere in this I will sue you.

And this is going to be like a pretty good friend of mine. So I kind of thought well that's not nice at all. And I ended up having to change a name and leave out certain things I mean everything that's in the book is true but there are certain. Extra juicy facts that are not in the book. But that if you hang out with me after this reading I'll tell you what I do as an adult to keep honing those skills. Well in the epilogue I say that it's interesting. I never really knew why it was that I went and went to grad school religious studies and it was in writing this book that I realized that one of the things that interested me about religious studies was the oral component to it was that I really enjoyed hearing sermons and that I really enjoyed thinking about the spoken word and that I enjoyed reading texts that originally were transcripts of oral arguments back and forth. And so I think I stay involved with it that way in writing about religion. But

I mean it's you know it's interesting I think in some ways. I mean I don't like it obviously I like to talk right. But it's I feel kind of like the reform's talk I mean I'm much more just hearing my kids talk now it's much more exciting to me now to hear one of my children add an additional word to her 15 word vocabulary than to use another one of my own so. And I like writing a lot. So I think I talk a lot less than I used to if you can imagine. Yeah I mean I think it doesn't fall into a life of right like debaters. They go on to be lawyers by and large and I have no interest in being a lawyer I mean my dad was a lawyer never looked fun it looked like it. I mean right it was not fun Dad was it. No you don't know that much but I mean. So a little funny. I mean my dad's a retired lawyer and my wife's a retired lawyer at the age of 33 I mean they no one stays in the law. And no I mean it you know it seems like a lot of late nights with yellow legal pads at the dining room table so I had no interest in being a lawyer so

what do you go and do and for me it was really around junior year of college that I took a writing class with Robert Stone the novelist and that I thought oh this is really interesting and I always liked writing but I thought oh this and there's a whole world here there's a whole there's a new challenge I wasn't a particularly good writer. When I look back and read that stuff. I mean I tell people honestly and I'm not being unduly modest in a class of 15 I was about the sixth the best. So I was like I was pretty good. But I was not one of the people who you would think would go on to be writing for a living in that class junior year of college. So but I kind of redirected my energies and thought well I should i should work hard at that. So I think it's more writing than anything. Yeah I think. Yeah I think all writers write and you don't really know what you think until you've written down. Yeah. I try to be a little more circumspect about the talking. I try to. I try to think you know what I think before I talk but I think writing is very much more a process of discovery. And that's why although I tend to be a lot I'm not so into technology I don't have an iPhone and and whatnot. I think

word processors are great because I think that the the deleting part of it you know the saying oh that's not what I think let's start over I'm getting close you know writing for me is sort of edging ever closer to what I really think. So yes it's that's that's one of the joys of it is that it is this process of arriving at you know oh I thought I thought this but in fact I really think that. So why did I make fun of the Amway guy partly for a cheap laugh partly because he was bizarre. Are you an Amway distributor self I should. Yeah I mean knowing. So I wrote this but it's a fair question I wrote this book now knowing certain things about him way that once one actually studies in religion because there are people who think when they study kind of religion broadly or or cults that mean Amway gets written about in the world of religion scholarship as a potentially cultic activity. I don't know enough about it to go there but he is looking back perhaps and reading into his after then a sort of single minded cult like obsession with

Amway. Certainly the fact that he started talking to me about it in singing its praises on first meeting me seemed odd but I should say that I don't think that it was snobbery toward his being from the University of Alaska I mean they were great people and one in fact one of the really nice things about Worlds was I met people from your last at Willamette University in Oregon ended up doing extremely well. The University of Laverne from L.A. which is just a small commuter college was one of the top finishers I mean it's in some ways it's a very kind of democratic experience the world to be tournament. The topic. Well there are top new topics in every round the top of the last topic was and perhaps maybe one or two questions after this and then I should let people get about their day. But the topic that in our last round was resolved that we should rebuild the Berlin Wall. And this was actually very interesting because there is a there is a question as to how metaphorical these resolutions are in the in the American parliamentary debate

Association resolutions are treated very metaphorically. So you're never actually supposed to argue the resolution you're supposed to squirrel it you're supposed to say Oh well I guess what they mean to say is you know the Berlin Wall is was made of bricks and you know Yankee Stadium is made of bricks so maybe we should really be debating is we should build a new Yankee Stadium. I mean note no joke that you know that's that's par for the course in in the American parliamentary debate Association. Well in Europe their tradition is much more that you would debate a relative closer version of the topic so we were trying to be European which I think is better by the way. So we debated something about how we thought that Europe that the EU should impose protective tariffs against American culture. And we said look the Berlin one of the virtues of the real Berlin Wall was it kept out McDonald's and our crappy movies. And now that the Berlin Wall has fallen they're just being Americanized. And isn't that just sort of bad for everyone concerned. So

that ended up being the topic. And you know as you can read about the book we thought we did fairly well with it I don't know if that was taking it too far afield we didn't move on to the next to the finals but but that was the topic and you know what's going on in your head is it's this incredibly intense rush that I imagine anyone who has to speak off the cuff knows whether it's preachers or lawyers or teachers which is thinking how am I going to organize this in a fairly coherent way that makes it sound as if I know what I'm talking about. And there was a there when Jed and I got back and went back to school in January after vacation. There was a funny article in the Yale Daily News in which someone interviewed John Cohen another member of our team and said Why did Mark inject work so well as a team together. And John famously said well the thing is Judge really smart and Mark is really funny. So so you know we always we to this day we sort of joke like I guess he came up with all the ideas that I was just like making wise ass remarks or something.

So you know he was the idea guy and I just sort of winked at the girls or something I don't know what I did but oh the title. So wisenheimer Thank you. It's almost as if I planted him there but I didn't. Wisenheimer is really a word and it's in the dictionary. It means kind of. It's of the era the people of the generation that who know the word whippersnapper for example or elevens is perhaps no Wisenheimer. It means a wiseacre or smart alec and in fact the cover of my book draws on the the Random House College Dictionary definition of wisenheimer noun a wiseacre or smart alec abstracted from names of German origin such as Oppenheimer like No kidding. Our name is actually in the in the Random House definition. So you know what choice did we have but to go for it and I will tell you that. The thing I'm proudest of with this book. I'm kind of a jacket design junkie and I have no artistic ability whatsoever but I'm actually pretty good at looking at jackets and saying I think that was a Peter

Mandelson or that was a chip Kidder that was you know Henry your whatever like I really know Jackie design. And so I kind of I'm sort of I'm sort of annoying to the people that publishers because I always want to do their business and they were having a really hard time coming up with a jacket design for a book about debate and find they said look the title is Wisenheimer. It's an interesting word it'll catch people's attention. Why don't you just put the dictionary definition on the cover. I said I think the audience youre going for will will appreciate that like sure to alienate some people who want sort of a bodice ripping like you know. Werman You know supine cover but the crowd who might buy this book will actually enjoy that as a cover. And and so they did and then they put a little a little lectern beneath it and that was the cover so I was actually excited about that. I was excited about the title and glad that it all worked out that way. Right well America. Its a good question what's the what's the state of oratory in America today.

It's bad and there are a couple things to be said about this. One is that other countries take Canada for example I don't think of Canadians as the most interesting people. Right their reputation is not that like them. They're a good time but they actually are very very wry interesting public speakers and very much in the English tradition or the Scottish tradition and they are total powerhouses on the international debate circuit. And in fact when Canadians take the the the bar exam in American become American lawyers they're very good. I mean there are our faculties have Canadians on them are law school faculties our bars are filled with them they're really really good at what they do and a lot of schools there have public speaking programs that start in seventh grade. That's not uncommon to find fifth or sixth or seventh graders having a class much as at some schools. If you do newspaper that's your home room. You know there are home rooms in Winnipeg that you oratory. And the fact that then five years later those boys

and girls are 16 or 17 years old and winning high school championships. It's not accidental I mean you know it's partly it's talent always helps but the fact that they have a tradition of it and teach it is very very good. We have nothing like that in generally until you get to high school. So you know we we have the fruits of that indifference in our society. And the other thing to be said I think is that we have moved from a country that 50 or 60 years ago valued eloquence and that admired politicians who didn't sound like normal people but in fact sounded more articulate than normal people to being a country that values and valorized inarticulateness and seeming like the common person so that you know George W. Bush is seen as a better model for how to win votes than then John Kerry and and there are people are very skeptical of Barack Obama's ability to win votes with his eloquence because some people thought it would be off putting so occasionally we have a politician like Reagan or Obama whose charisma and eloquence is sufficient to win people over. But if you're not quite at that level if you're just reasonably articulate you can too easily get painted as highfalutin or uppity

and and then you you know you're John Kerry. So it's it's a it's a dilemma and it comes out of a good American democratic impulse which is that we like to think that we're all equal and all equally good at all sorts of things. But as as a result we end up sadly devaluing oratory. So let me stop there and and invite you to read more. Thanks so much. Thank you.