Assignment Iowa Classics; Paul Engle, Hauling Nieh Engle; 104

We are. I was City home of the University of Iowa a cultural center for people from all over the world is also home for two of I was most fascinating individuals. Paul Engle is a distinguished I was a poet a world renown founder of the writer's workshop at the university. Many feel he has done more for poetry and writing in general than anyone else in America. Wilding Yeah angle is a well-known author professor of Chinese and translator working together at the University of Iowa. They co-founded the international writing program a unique project which is helping to bring the countries of the world closer through the written word. Tonight we'll find out how these gifted people feel about each other their marriage their work in Iowa and why they wish there were eight days in every week.

My. Assignment. I was with Mary Jane O'Dell. Tonight. My conversation with Paul Daniels. Rolling. Mendo. Paul As founder of the writer's workshop here at the University of Iowa and also the international writing program co-founder with with your wife. You've been described as a paid patron saint of writers. Do you feel like a patron Saint Mary Jane I feel like a patron but not to say I've been here. Well let me ask you first of all before we get into some more personal things what what you really hope to achieve over over the years with your Writers Workshop and this other program you know I grew up more or less isn't quite finished yet and I'm still growing

in a very interesting time. I was one of the Depression kids you know and here I was a first member of my family ever all the way back to the Black Forest in Germany ever. To go to college and one of the two ever to finish high school. So getting aware was a terribly important thing for me. My father's business was breaking horses training horses buying selling and I grew up in that atmosphere I loved and still love horses you know. But for me to get out of high school was a great achievement. Then to get out of college. Unbelievable. So I had some help from people a schoolteacher without my knowing it secretly sent $50 a month to call college to help me. And I never knew she had died. I helped.

I was helped to go to England for a summer by people in Cedar Rapids who felt well Paul's writing poetry they write poetry in England why didn't you go to things. And gradually so many people help me. An elderly Jewish Inza live in Cedar Rapids alone gave me a new burger who gave me the clothes I wore when I walked into Oxford University when I was a background like that. You must feel. Help somebody else and so I came back to this country after three years of Europe and came to University of Iowa and discovered there was a way. It wasn't being done but the University of Iowa let me have enough room and about 90 percent of the people hope that I would help him but I must believe it. And so I've helped all of these young writers. I could bring here at the White hauling and I together

now bring the foreign writers here. You do you feel that having been born in and raised in Ireland going to school a lot and I would say that that has fitted you. But you mentioned your your parents and your grandparents were in the army. Yes they're actually broke. Yes. Time your Marian do you feel that that in some way has fitted you in some extraordinary way to do the kind of work you were doing because I have always had a feeling that Iowans are more in touch with reality than perhaps other people. You know that's the point. Growing up when I was makes you a practical person. But it doesn't mean you can't also be a visionary person. So I discovered that growing up you know I was a very good background for living in a college in England founded in the middle of the 13th century for living in Munich later for living very

deeply into the lives of Tokyo Hong Kong of Calcutta and the drama I was perfect home there. And there is a great natural strength in not believing that the life of the brass or Tokyo or Paris is necessarily reality. There's a sense of reality here in our world and we just combined it with the rest of the world. Is what I've been talking about something about that you perceive in Paul that attracted you to him. Right away. Well I think you. Meant to say is attracted to me. Course he had trapped to me first awful as a human being. I think that that's. Seemed to me to be so well dirty so very down to earth in addition to being a visionary. So as he said you know. Practical a

man of the soil time that that combined with the imagination that you have your of so is he a director of the writing program associate professor of Chinese here at the university. How did that come about. You have Paul and I always thought you know how I came here as a former addict I always started in the national Reich and there was a moment before then I must tell you excuse me but I must tell the truth about this. I went to a party which was given for me in Taipei in Taiwan when I was in Asia. Now I should tell her. That I'll get both versions head. Well they might be very different. I went to this party and there were a lot of people there mostly Chinese writers and. Very late in fact so late I thought it was really quite rude. This young woman walks in and I saw a car coming 15 minutes before the end of the park and I thought you were ruled because when I got to talking there I was standing behind him waiting to be introduced Dean. Someone

else was standing by to produce me but he talk talk talk talk. He didn't stop. First time I've ever talked. So I was going nowhere. It turned out wrong. What I saw she was living there I said Look the time has come. But so you but you really talked wiling into coming here as a as a writer. Yes and I like it. I can't do it. I can the next day before I cam up published 11 books and stories and a translation. She was the Chinese translator of William Faulkner Hemingway Henry James in the brass a good writer will look after. So she knew a lot about American writing much more than most people did know. Well that had been pressure a bit and that impressed me very much the fact that she didn't know me as a writer would be pressed. So I knew does if I were under the party all day I didn't feel well. I I was told by a. Common friend that Paul

Engle was coming to Taiwan at that time I was in Taiwan. So he said you must see this man he is a very interesting and exciting. So I went to the party given you an hour for him and for him to see the townies writers write you about your your background in China. I know you were living there and in 1948. Well I was born and educated and brought up there and our spry named land China. Yes in China yes the private school babe audience and really there. And. Then I was you know chunky on the wall. I mean you know we've had many wars this is don't war but a recall against the Japanese and my father was killed about a common is law macho Imus said that things in China. Were. Or and this you know you you were killed too. You didn't know why.

If you go down to her school you don't know why my father was killed by companies there to send me here was he as a official working for the Nationalist government although he had to just to work at 8 months of National his government and he had to me a critique against John a shake. Oh he had yeah. So there were many groups in China you know they fought each other. Then they made a compromise and his gone he said OK I'll give you a job so I had a job. You worked on it eight months where you were was killed about a calmness that it was a mess. Did you and the rest of your family feel that you were in personal danger then of being killed or imprisoned. My. Grand father was a landlord and about my father he was working for the Nationalist government at the time. Nobody was sure about anything. What was not sure about and is it says of uncertain take does why do we head.

So you fled to Taiwan. We went to Taiwan and I became the editor of the magazine. It was court free China a fortnight away and it too was full of the towns and the pearl liberals liberal intellectuals all over the world and it was a very youthful Asian magazine and then it advocated all visitation. Part his does what. At a magazine was closed down but a nationalist government. So then you were interim trouble politically and I won. Yes yes the editors a magazine was imprisoned for 10 years for only saying let's have elections for obligations are so complicated that when you think of the word politics applied to Iowa there's that what I was saying then I was in danger anyway. And so now that you find yourself you know and you're collaborating with your husband in the international writing program and also in translations I still have to ask you this. It isn't difficult I'm asking this of

you first of all and it's not difficult to to work with your husband. Does this present difficulties in your married life because you know who's the boss. Both offer us up process but on a say but we have a lot in common you know because we're writers people almost you know the most of times have the same. Attitudes and feelings. And also he he is an American writer he's writing English I'm writing Chinese so we cannot compete. And here you know America of course but in China he's the husband of Neil Hollings. We accept all that is not true and that doesn't find a thought of program. Anyway I I look more or less. At the same and the problems from. The point of view of a foreign writer and I still owed on our consideration but I did well on

Chinese and he looked at problems and the sayings from the local point of view. This helps in fact. We help each other in other moments when you wish that your wife were not involved in the same projects that you were the only moments I have are those in which I think it would be impossible to do all of this if you were not involved. You know for example we never quarrelled. The only couple I know of were never quarrels. One reason is of course that temperamentally or just enough alike and enough different so that there aren't any problems and no rivalries. There isn't any chance for bitterness. Also during this program together is a total absorption. If I may say so. We are people who work seven days a week. We wish there were an 8 and we wish tonight didn't have to happen. Why do people have to sleep when there's work to get up

and go. Also where women come from us you know in anything you do. I mean there is a life and you have to compromise. You know I mean I wonder get compromised. I only want Chinese food at home and. I say you know. Many compromises for instance the Chinese idea of the family the Chinese family and very close. I could have bring over 20 members have my family into the Engel family. And he accepted that very difficult to say anything I just had no choice. I happen to like her sister very much more than I should really. You know. They're wonderful people are nice bright people. Her brother works with the Nobel Prize winning physicist in Theoretical Physics University New York Stony Brook. And it's a pleasure to be with such people and she has two beautiful daughters. I like it. There's no problem. You know I was in your home which is also very in here. And the first thing that confront

you as you open the front door is a sign which says ask me about my grandchild. Oh that's a gift from a friend of mine I had a my grandchild he has three. I have one but we don't have a sign saying ask me about my grandchildren years but I have three shows one and they get along very well. You know this is changing the subject drastically but both of you are so vital and you have so much energy and the cost of mind what I read in a in A Look magazine article some years back that they called you quote the Kay Casey Stengel of tax. Remember that. Casey Stengel was a baseball player and of the manager who broke up the English language. No no I I'm sorry to say I don't have the eloquence the Casey Stengel had in using the English language. But. He always had a very funny

comment about everything and always a new kind of English phrase. Isn't that true. Yes. Always something new unexpected. I think you know that away. And I just ask the whiling about this to. Another quote which I read see I did do some research there and I went back and read a lot of articles about your husband won and said he is not a poet but an eagle orator a tub thumping Fourth of July. Congressman. Were you insulted by that. Well I didn't regard it as an insult in any way. I feel sorry for the narrow mindedness which produced such a narrow minded remark. However. I have written some poems in which I indicated that I like the United States. I like living in the United States and I feel there are flexibilities in our life that are not present or you know sometimes aren't. Sometimes

is to a nationalistic for me maybe RIGHT NOW YOU SEE MY PROBLEM. In all my time with borrowed a wasp I will translate the pawns of doom while we can kill porno. Well there was kind of conflict of ideas about Chinese culture and then we argued and he accused me of being. Nationalistic as Chinese and I accused him of being America's chauvinist. Notice she didn't say mail. Yeah yeah. Chauvinist you know whiling you write mostly you have said about the human tragedy of the Chinese. Right about yes about. What it is to be Chinese. The Chinese province and in my recent novel non-reading defy Nope rules off the novel. Is called to we must China it is out this Chinese situation since the end of word or

two how do you feel about the Chinese situation now. I mean in China that they know the Chinese situation I must say as a Chinese I'm very proud of the how it has been done. And a movie for people like me is not a very pleasant for I mean people. You know need a collage of old china. But I think the present situation is a very good afloat of my gyrate up to Chinese people it is. I'm going to back to you for a moment Paul because I gave some of the quotes that the things that people said about you and I know about the programs here you always say that one of the big problems is for poor person to be critical of himself. You said that we knock or persuade or terrify the felt tenderness toward his own work out of a beginning writer. How did you feel when you first started to be published and the critics came down on you a little harder. Somebody said you overstated things for instance.

My guess is that I did overstate things that I always have and that I always will. Yes and when I go to though those great gates you know I'm going to enter with an overstatement because this is my temperament I got it from my father of the one you break horses it takes a certain amount of belief in yourself that a certain amount of firmness of being criticized is an interesting thing. And not everyone in the course of his life is publicly criticized. You publish a book and one day in the mail there comes a collection of criticism of what you did. You did it with your whole self you know and here are some total strangers 3000 miles away. That's the thing I know about the poetry of this creep Ingle. Well you roll with the punches here. You watch is hands like a boxer. Did you say that a writer is a monster with character.

It sounds like he doesn't have it. Had you at all. To a great extent it's true because of the. To be a writer you have to be extremely introspective. You concentrate on that Tero terrifying monster. The Eagle. On the other hand to be a good. Writer you have to control it and shape it. And not let it get in too much. Exactly when holding writes a novel. It's not about herself it's about the interplay of men and women children dog society what you do for relaxation and recreation you jump on the trampoline. We have a tramp line you know and we jump on it. We talk to each other which is not always relaxing. We have a little boat and we go up to call the reservoir and Reed and I swim and poured us some gardening.

And then we find. That. Working together on this program is in a way what other husbands and wives do. In the evening. I mean he goes away to work or she goes away to work or she works at home. And they're not together all day long they're separated whereas most of the day we are together and that can only have one of two possible results. Mutual suicide. Which we rejected a lot of the guys already getting along together quite perfectly. I mean there's nothing in between. There are no compromises so you have to do it terribly well or not at all. You know. I'm sure that you must have many many restorations because all writers do. Are you personally frustrated about anything. That is going on that is happening to our country today.

You depressed about anything. I'm going nature a cheerful man in the face of of all the facts I still think it'll work out. You say So that's the general thing. The second thing is that naturally. I look at American society with the background of many years in other societies Asian European. I lived in Germany in the Hitler years I lived with the family I knew what was going on. I've stepped over the bodies in the gutter. I was in the Soviet Union during the big treason trials in 1936. So I look at American society quite objectively while being immersed subjectively inside it. Naturally I'm concerned as a person who's lived here a long time. Sixty seven years is the fact that the country survives not by

arms they survive by character. You don't have the right character the arms are meaningless and therefore what happens to the character of this country is a matter of the most intense concern to me and I find an increasing indifference. I find a willingness to escape from that feeling. Well don't commit yourself man. Plenty of cool man stay outside. Don't get involved. The lady who was beaten and raped in a New York elevator and crawled in the elevator door to an apartment building this week and knocked on the door and the woman open the door and slammed it on her hand. The hell happens excuse me to a country for that kind of lack of character is possible. That's one reason I like living in it isn't all that bad. Do you feel that your work the work that you're doing in any way together he is is he is helping to. Form. A

different kind of society is helping to say come back some of these things that you're. Concerned about. In the international right. I think here we're more concerned with the writing writer situation than with any societal likeness but we're not. The foreign writer very much in his views of American society. Yeah because you must remember the press of the world. Day after day is not praising the United States. Most of it is attacking the United States. So they come here and they live in I was city and they find no it is not true that there's daily violence in the streets of I was city it isn't true that the society here is freaked out. It's a better place than I thought it would be which is another reason for having the international writing program the novel. And I'm convinced all sold This is one reason that the businessman foundations and individuals of good will contribute the money that makes this program possible. They also think probably we are accomplishing something.

Do you all wish to stay and I want both of you. I hope you do you lot are you. I like I love that notch on the set here at home. Yeah. That is an invasive answer. Do you have to stand. I would like to mention the month of February. I think. That having survived 60 years of February's I think I probably can still survive. Nevertheless like Sean the new ones I think salt water if warm enough is the greatest thing in the world and I want to go and jump in and let her walk on it as the case may be. Did. You hear. About it. You asked me how about living time. Beautiful time just what any writer needs. People call up in the evening.

I would to say I have a belly ache. A call comes from the West Coast. I've got any money left. They get me a writer. Some are writers yes. And you know it's like making house calls which was very hard to get done today. But another thing you know is you are writing poetry as I have done ever since I was in the eighth grade in Cedar Rapids Iowa where I was born. Beautiful city if you're born in them to grow up in. I have been trying to put how life looks to me into language that will make other people understand how life looks to me. No. May I just ask you Would you give me that book. And I want to show you one line of poetry only rather relevant to what you've said because in writing this thing that you try to do is to show the recklessness of

human life under control. And someone who says a woman speaking to a man and saying I have such a likeness. When you hold my hand or I will blow right all of this wind wreckless earth. And it's just human communication that writing's all about in the international writing program is all about. And so I think you know what your relationship is all about here. That's. What I would really want to ask you this question what may sound silly to you but what would be your idea of. How to spend a perfect evening. What would it be. One evening only you know why do you think this is the last evening of my life and if not necessarily what would be a fairly easy thing. You know.

I would like some fresh ocean fish cooked in the Chinese manner to begin the evening. I would like some you know. People bean sprouts and cook the way she cooks them that you wash dishes. That's what I hope. That's her hope. That you as my you can is not my home. And then we talk a little as we do every night about what's happened during the day and what we're going to do next day. And then she goes to her study and I go to mine in our house and I write something better than I've ever written before. And so does she. And the evening ends by my showing her that I did write something better than I've ever written before. And she tells me she wrote something better than ever before but it's in Chinese and I can't read it. And

then. A small refresh put together and that's to me a great evening overlooking our river. OK rising and fall and go I want to say that you are absolutely two of the most delightful and interesting people certainly in the state of Iowa and possibly in the entire country or the entire world and I thank you very much for being our guest here.