You Say, I Say: Staying Alive with Literature, Language, and Friendship

In September, 1962, two 18-year-old freshmen at Brown University named Bob Waxler and David Beckman first crossed paths. They quickly discovered they had a lot in common, especially an abiding fascination with language, literature, and the life of art. Four years later, as college seniors, they collaborated on a small book of poems, which brought them a flurry of attention, then faded into memory as the two friends began separate life journeys—Bob becoming a professor of literature at a Massachusetts college, David working as an advertising and promotion writer in New York with sidelines as a poet, playwright, and actor.

In 2014, an article in the Brown alumni journal rekindled their connection. It sparked an exchange of emails that gradually blossomed into this book-an extended dialogue between two old friends on poetry, life, the passage of time, and the power of the written word.

In You Say, I Say, Waxler and Beckman trade observations, opinions, questions, and arguments about the ways in which literature transforms, challenges, disturbs, and inspires us. Spurred by lifetimes largely dedicated to "deep reading," they debate the meaning and value of works ranging from Dante's Inferno and Shakespeare's King Lear to Tolstoy's Death of Ivan Ilych; the poems of Wordsworth, Blake, Coleridge, and Keats; and the works of T.S. Eliot, Kafka, Beckett and Joyce. They often uncover new and surprising facets of classic works in the glare of post-modern experience. And they even exchange a couple of new poems—their own work—triggering reflections on the creative process and its many unexpected twists.

Along the way, Waxler and Beckman delve into questions that have haunted generations of readers and critics. And they reveal, directly and indirectly, how encounters with literature have shaped their intellects and their lives.

In a world increasingly dominated by visual and electronic noise, You Say, I Say captures the enduring power of literature—not to resolve the great questions of human existence, but to help us explore those questions in ways that are eye-opening, life-changing, and profound.

Robert P. Waxler graduated with a B.A. from Brown University, an M.A. from Boston College, and a Ph.D. from Stony Brook University. He is a Professor Emeritus at University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, where he also served as Chairman of the English Department, Associate Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, and Dean of Continuing Education and Summer Programs.Professor Waxler is cofounder of the Center for Jewish Culture at UMass Dartmouth and served as the Center's codirector for fifteen years. He also cofounded Changing Lives Through Literature, an internationally celebrated alternative sentencing program for criminal offenders, which has continued its work for over thirty years. Waxler has authored/co-authored several books, including The Risk of Reading (Bloomsbury), Why Reading Books Still Matters (Routledge), Finding a Voice (University of Michigan), Losing Jonathan (Spinner), Changing Lives Through Literature (Notre Dame), Transforming Literacy (Brill), and Courage to Walk (Spinner).He has also published numerous articles about literature, language and communication in a variety of scholarly journals, essay collections, magazines and newspapers. The author and his work have been featured in Parade Magazine, Le Novel Observateur, the New York Times, and on National Public Radio.He lives with his wife Linda Lassoff Waxler, a retired math teacher, in Dartmouth, Massachusetts, where they have enjoyed married life together for fifty-six years.Robert Waxler can be contacted at rwaxler@umassd.edu.

David Beckman graduated cum laude with honors from Brown and holds a Diploma in English Studies from the University of Edinburgh, Scotland. His poetry chapbooks include Language Factory of the Mind (Finishing Line Press), Phantasia, (mgv2/publishing, France), and Times Three, poems from New York and California. His poems have appeared in many anthologies, most recently in America We Call Your Name from Sixteen Rivers Press. He has been nominated twice for the Pushcart Poetry Prize. His plays have been produced in New York, Santa Monica, Santa Cruz, Dallas and in a number of theaters in Northern California.His prose includes To Walk in Paris, travel vignettes written with Sharon Kuroki Beckman (McCaa Books), and his novel Under Pegasus (Derrynane Press, New York.)In his parallel life, David worked as a promotion writer in New York City from 1977 to 2003, in ad agencies and for Time Inc. He was a senior writer in Time's magazine group, then Promotion Director of Discover magazine. David and his wife, Sharon lived in New York for 35 years before they moved to Santa Rosa, California, in 2003. He currently volunteers for the World Affairs Council of Sonoma County, plays golf, disc golf, and billiards, and writes poetry and plays. He and his wife enjoy volunteer work, family, friends, reading, yoga, and travel.