{"id":160,"date":"2017-05-18T18:51:28","date_gmt":"2017-05-18T18:51:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.eckerd.space\/wiesel\/?p=160"},"modified":"2017-05-18T18:51:28","modified_gmt":"2017-05-18T18:51:28","slug":"sue-s-94","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.eckerd.edu\/wiesel\/2017\/05\/18\/sue-s-94\/","title":{"rendered":"Jay Nicorvo \u201999"},"content":{"rendered":"[vc_row type=”in_container” full_screen_row_position=”middle” scene_position=”center” text_color=”dark” text_align=”left” overlay_strength=”0.3″][vc_column column_padding=”no-extra-padding” column_padding_position=”all” background_color_opacity=”1″ background_hover_color_opacity=”1″ column_shadow=”none” width=”1\/1″ tablet_text_alignment=”default” phone_text_alignment=”default” column_border_width=”none” column_border_style=”solid”][vc_column_text]In 1999, I was a senior at Eckerd College, and in Winter Term I took a World Lit class, with maybe 16 other students, taught by Dr. Carolyn Johnston and Dr. Elie Wiesel. We met every day, four days a week, for three weeks. Can you imagine? There aren\u2019t many places in the world where young people receive the privilege\u2014though it should be treated like the most necessary obligation\u2014of exchanging ideas and intimacies with emissaries arisen out of the terrible, beautiful annals of human history.<\/p>\n

My peers and I shared 20-some days in close company with Dr. Wiesel, and he talked not just to<\/em> us but with<\/em> us, and in his French-inflected Romanian accent, about his life and his writing and other writers he admired. My notes from that class are filled with snippets pulled from his conversations: \u201cA story of despair does not need to be a message of despair. \u2026 The best writers don\u2019t write to be read. They write to be reread. \u2026 War is history\u2019s madness.\u201d<\/p>\n

In my memory of that class, we were all moved to tears on a daily basis. Toward the end of the three weeks, I had the gall to ask Dr. Wiesel if he\u2019d write me a recommendation for graduate school\u2014I was applying to BU, where he taught regularly along with another Nobel Laureate, Saul Bellow\u2014and he said he\u2019d consider it, but first he wanted to get to know me better. Could I visit him in his office?<\/p>\n

During our sit-down, he only wanted to know about me. Did I have a job? I did; I waited tables at a fondue restaurant, The Melting Pot. Did I want to be a writer? I did; I\u2019d started a novel for my senior thesis and hoped to one day publish it. What is a book? When I smiled and shrugged, he raised a finger, knobby and bent, and said, \u201cA voice.\u201d<\/p>\n

I had countless questions and I couldn\u2019t get in one. He asked where I lived and grew up. When I told him I lived with my mom and brothers in Sarasota and commuted an hour and a half to school every day. He told me I should listen to books on tape. \u201cIt is hard to understand when you are young,\u201d he said, \u201cbut it is important for you to make the utmost of your time.\u201d<\/p>\n

He wound up writing me that recommendation, and I got waitlisted at BU. On a visit to Boston, I went to talk to the director of the BU master\u2019s program, Leslie Epstein. I told him I wasn\u2019t a fan of it\u2019s-who-you-know, and that I was impressed by a school where a candidate with a recommendation from a Nobel Prize winner wasn\u2019t a shoo-in. Epstein said, \u201cElie won the Peace Prize. Now had your recommendation come from Saul, who won for literature, you would\u2019ve gotten in.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wherever Elie Wiesel is now, he surely isn\u2019t resting, in peace or otherwise. He\u2019s making the utmost of his time, even if his time is no longer ours. I wish I could say I took Dr. Wiesel\u2019s advice, but selling a novel, finding a voice, has taken me nearly 20 years\u2014St. Martin\u2019s Press just published my debut, The Standard Grand<\/em>, in April 2017. The novel is set largely in the Catskills, at an old Borscht Belt resort, and one of the characters, the old owner of the resort, Nehemiah \u201cChema\u201d Teplitsky, is partly inspired by Dr. Wiesel. Some of Chema\u2019s dialogue is cribbed verbatim from my notes of that class with Dr. Wiesel.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m sorry I took so long. I wish Dr. Wiesel were still around. I\u2019d love to send him a copy. I\u2019d include a note that reads, \u201cDear Dr. Wiesel, My apologies. My time hasn\u2019t always been well spent, but thanks to you and your example, I\u2019ve tried to make the utmost of what time I\u2019ve been given … and even some time that I\u2019ve stolen. You helped to teach me that when a person makes the utmost of his time, he\u2019s really working to make the most of our<\/em> time.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2014Jay Nicorvo \u201999 <\/strong><\/p>\n[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row type=”in_container” full_screen_row_position=”middle” scene_position=”center” text_color=”dark” text_align=”left” overlay_strength=”0.3″][vc_column column_padding=”no-extra-padding” column_padding_position=”all” background_color_opacity=”1″ background_hover_color_opacity=”1″ column_shadow=”none” width=”1\/1″ tablet_text_alignment=”default” phone_text_alignment=”default” column_border_width=”none” column_border_style=”solid”][vc_column_text][\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row type=”in_container” full_screen_row_position=”middle” scene_position=”center” text_color=”dark” text_align=”left” overlay_strength=”0.3″][vc_column column_padding=”no-extra-padding” column_padding_position=”all” background_color_opacity=”1″ background_hover_color_opacity=”1″ column_shadow=”none” width=”1\/1″ tablet_text_alignment=”default” phone_text_alignment=”default” column_border_width=”none” column_border_style=”solid”][vc_column_text][\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row type=”in_container” full_screen_row_position=”middle” scene_position=”center” text_color=”dark” text_align=”left” overlay_strength=”0.3″][vc_column column_padding=”no-extra-padding” column_padding_position=”all” background_color_opacity=”1″ background_hover_color_opacity=”1″ column_shadow=”none” width=”1\/1″ tablet_text_alignment=”default” phone_text_alignment=”default” column_border_width=”none” column_border_style=”solid”][vc_column_text][\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][\/vc_row]\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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