refusal to understand they voted in the mechanisms that have allowed these things to happen. and in conversation with robin wheeler and for woody guthrie and int intimate life. this is st. louis is independent bookstore sel salivating 51 yeas this life and we would like to thank our supporters which has been an incredible and overwhelming amount the past couple of weeks so thank you all so much for joining us thank

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for thinking about giftgiving as well. i'm the event coordinator with a fantastic team in st. louis we will be taking questions from the audience at the end of the event be sure to follow us on facebook to be notified about all of our fantastic virtual events. this dismantles the woody guthrie we have been taught the rough and ready rambling man the artist who discovered how intimacy is crucial for the political struggle. woody guthrie is also mythologized as the classic american rambling man a real hero for the working-class interest and inspired bob dylan.

biographers and fans frame him and focus on his politically charged folks songs. the what is not examined is how most is unpublished or little was known and delves into the importance of intimacy and the personal and political life. featuring an insert with a personal photo of his family and previously unknown paintings, what he guthrie and intimate life is a fresh and come temporary necontemporarynes ovef context reality and disability on the art and find of an american icon. part biography, part history of the left woody guthrie offers a stunning revelation about america's quintessential legend who serves as a guiding light for the leftist movements today and he has a close relationship with marjorie. guthrie discovered a restorative way of thinking about the body that provided a way forward for

his childhood and the slowly debilitating huntington's disease projecting shame and embracing the power of sexuality, he came to lead intimacy with the political struggle. by closely connecting with others, the society could combat the customary emotional state of capitalist cultures and isolation. using it as one's weapon guthrie hthought we could fight fascism and the progressive magazine says what he guthrie and intimate life as powerfully to the understanding a man who could never shy from the personal and political and the activist says he helps wha woody guthrie down from his pedestal as a dustbowl icon and helps us to see the three dimensional character he was. the author of woody guthrie and intimate life that came out from

beacon press recently and troubling lines from the university of minnesota press. his writing on music, literature and politics have appeared in public books, al jazeera, social text and many other venues. he teaches in the english department and lives in the philadelphia area. tonight we are so happy to have robin wheeler, st. louis-based writer wh who's been a regular contributor to the st. louis magazine and the work appears in the anthologies and st. louis anthology and woody guthrie poet 2019. currently working on a memoir chasing woody guthrie. you can find rejected writings at robin wheeler.com and now without further ado i'm happy and proud to welcome stadler and robin williams to left bank

books and everybody please give a round of applause as i welcome them to the screen. hello. ... >> and with that homecoming feeling and then to have five through seven minutes.

and then we can just shoot the shipped and then to take away from the mess that is going on out there in a positive way but yes. so that the for the book is in the most famous part of woody guthrie's life was the boxcar in his work in california and that's like the late thirties or so and become known as a political folksinger. and that we can be interested

in and then meets a woman named marjorie from the martha graham company. and then other ways to engage. in america is just getting involved in the war so many people associate those views of personal behavior and personal expression with the hippie generation into the radical left particularly the gender roles such personal concerns the public sphere of the male-dominated role with

that racial justice to be maintained with that economist tradition that if they are false idols women to step the time and energy of people with a dominant economic structure to overturn the ruling class. and then to sacrifice the commitment to a larger cause that run counter to that masculine struggle for resolution. guthrie's letters show a committed left us thinking along very different lines one in particular to make a relationship between lovers historically and politically and to the extent with a shift in revolution and more

middle-class than female and more radical left that correspondence make it clear with a watering down of the left fork in the summer of 1942 turned into autumn woody guthrie thought his bond with marjorie realize are not only attracted to each other but with a political commitment. been a way to discover to make sense of the world to be consequential and that magnetic pull shows not only to them but history at large. now to skip a couple pages. i forgot to mention one thing. one important detail as they were both married to other people at the time. although marjorie was married

to a man in philadelphia who was commuting back and forth from new york and had acknowledged her relationship. it had come out in the open so then in december 19429 months later after seven months going back and forth about marjorie's has been joe, there was a space of their new relationship and marjorie would describe at a low point that i really feel like a tortured person. the correspondence with that opportunity with our relationship on a global scale. and i wish i could hold you until the tears run out

discusses the conversation comparing their lives to a sidewalk cleaner that it would be like oil or grease on a machinery and gas we want to go. and then describe the wars purpose. was slavery and thievery and loneliness. kind of like a big school where you go to learn sometimes about these three things and you can taste them in your mouth and se see. >> and that sadness out loud

and then the loneliness of the knowledge knowing it will help you fight it in with everyone struggle and a single argument and others in the early period of the relationship is this the vulnerability to hurt and shame intimacy produces is not simply analogous to the same vulnerability. and then described as antifascist and the misery and hate and fear in the cause of fear and crime and the cause of crime and nervousness because they are one and the

same thing in a hundred million disguises. so those that have been seduced by sentimental moody and loving and kind fascism relates to all the world's troubles are your own personal fault for you to hang your head to get so mixed up in your thinking you walk into your own church looking for personal salvation. and to discuss fascism not as a principle governing state but in emotional state or nearly emotional imbalance purpose and not only those led by a fascist government but it is a mood existing in smaller pockets everywhere manifesting that everyone encountered every day carelessness denigration of self and others

fascism will worked like vulnerability anybody could fall into it and that's where i will stop. >> i don't have to tell you that that is my favorite chapter and with the way that you wrote it and also i am not unbiased because that grouping of letters is where my research stemmed from 1943 through 1942 when he and marjorie were separated geographically and by the way she is pregnant. and the idea of intimacy along with anti- fascism was one of the things in my research in the archives they gave me a

different worldview. but you have a whole book we need to discuss beyond that because there is so much and so many great ideas going on. i will jump off from the point with marjorie being a dancer with martha graham and had her own dance studio. that was her career and her life. and then this one part where you have an excerpt from one of these journals about the condition dancers are in the create this physical art but they are perused and banged up and i had a thought while i was reading that this is the

hiding that dancers do that they create this beautiful physical art when they are bleeding in their toe shoes at the same time. so tie that into overcoming the shame that comes from being a rural oklahoma person at that time and the situation with his family and we see where the succumbing to that at times on page 144. and the part where he tried to hide huntington's disease

trying to carry around the liquor bottles of people think he is drunk and are suffering from huntington's. and blaming capitalism michael 90 percent of mental illness. and then with that point of the role of shame that plays. >> definitely. it is such a visible part of his world. however many months and throughout his life to be shamed with that risk of being shamed and it all goes back in a small town in oklahoma and

his mother who suffered from huntington's disease although it's not clear they knew exactly what it was. if you don't know it is extremely debilitating condition that has both physiological and cognitive effects and comes on very gradually and is genetically transmitted you lose the ability to control your limbs slowly is like a trimmer and becomes quite violent but the movements are quite drastic often associated with dementia and mood disorders so is a very small child he saw that happened to his mother.

they had a very strong bond may be stronger than his other siblings and his mother were taken to the movie theater all afternoon so they wouldn't be visible to anybody and watch charlie chaplin in the dark and he's also a great artist with the body and that's how i started to see his attraction to marjorie and to dance. this random thing happened where this other dancer offended and really liked woody's music and said why don't they do something with that? and then tried to persuade them and it seems to me that

she was attracted to exactly what you are talking about. the physicality, but the damage of the defense and the persistence through the damage that you talk about and he writes to articles about his experience working on this production that the article really focused on the strength he acknowledges the pain and damage that they go through but nevertheless they processed.

>> and it's interesting to me that early in his life that at age 29 or 30 that in those year years, he is able to see that but with his own illness we don't know immediately but how he goes back to that shame and it comes and goes. >> i think it is pretty consistent but he's finding better and worse ways to cope and obviously it's getting harder he is getting sick and he doesn't know what's happening to him. >> he sounded very therapeutic

and a very productive way to cope that in this relationship with marjorie that continued until the end of his life even though they divorced before he entered a hospital permanently for the last ten years of his life marjorie continued to be his companion. >> but he did remarry also. >> and then got divorced. >> that's a perfect move into what i want to talk about but i get asked all the time, especially by wome women, wasn't he a womanizing scoundrel? i have to explain you have to look at the time.

compared to now with different social mores and things change. but also looking at this relationship with marjorie within an intense long-distance courtship, both married, and then he was gone in the merchant marines and got married while deployed , and then divorced as the symptoms of huntington's came on before he was diagnosed in both remarried. she was his companion to the end of the photo with them the department of interior award i think one of the last photos of him when the corner of his mouth is just down at one of

the things and examining their relationship has me think just how they completely obliterated the idea of a nuclear family about to become the norm as their marriage was ending. and he wasn't just a scoundrel. i think they were ahead of their time as relationships were changing. >> so i know were talking about his sex life and that's where we are going. at the beginning of the chapter that you make a point of pointing out huntington's is not necessarily responsible for the writings that followed

in the years he was married to marjorie. >> and then comparing nazi -ism to sexual repression and the institute disciplining sexual profession, lost my train of thought on that but you know what i'm talking about i will let you talk about that. [laughter] >> so if you look at a lot of commentary on woody guthrie that has come before it concentrates on the earlier times and that's before he gets to new york so in

biographies the later years tend to be treated as years he were controlled by the illness and everything he did was damaged by this encroaching illness is impossible to say when they emerged but it was a convenient way to write off certain parts of his work like erotic writing the modern avant-garde it's more focused not just focused on politics and literally like that i get out of jail free card like that was just the huntington's acting up.

and then i really want her to counter that and investigate the presumptions underlying that which and those that were making art under those conditions which are super interesting and makes for interesting art but there is a problem and just think the only reason he was worried about sex was because he had huntington's and was uninhibited or something like that. it was more of a poetic interest and also he had this really intense relationship to walt whitman's writing that was also long-standing

remember grandpa walton if you are old enough and he was gay actually and they bonded over walt whitman. and in a way although he wasn't gay, and he different didn't explicit we treat them as a poet but treated him like he was perverse of every person everything.

>> and if he writes letters to women about that stuff which actually lands him in jail. but yes a lot of those cultural trends that we associate with the post cold war era and even with his family relationshi relationship, for a time he became the main caretaker of the daughter of marjorie and she was working at the studio and he was a musician. >> and then he started to write down the things that she would say in the poems she

would write and then you have this wonderful reference of children's. >> and it is the best baby gift. >> so in some ways like a conventional nuclear family form but inside the way it operated it was pretty interesting and pretty unusual. >> and with those stories of being a little older than toddler age and having a babysitter to ramble jack elliott. the stories of putting run into the kids want shoes so

they would go to sleep and talking about huntington's and sexualit sexuality, we talked about this yesterday i love the fact with the end of the book you use the term unruly the bodies because that's used at length in her writing and when she uses it meets with her large black female body and how unacceptable that is in our society and i found that you used it also true the end where you talk at length about some of his last work before he lost his ability to use a pen or a pencil with his

drawings and are very abstract images. and specifically to go to the archives that are entitled look away to where he goes into graphic detail in his art about such and how that ties into the unruliness and the depiction of black people and this is how whites retain ownership of bodies. we have incredibly thoughtful things to say about that. >> my sense of this leader before he enters the hospital for good, the last four year

years, when he is diagnosed with huntington's, and he spends a summer in a mental hospital. until the final hospitalization. the reason why i think the term unruly body came up for me because he was losing control of his body and was being subjected to those treatments and methods to control the body to normalize his body.

yes he ended up having shock treatment. and to realize he was always looking for political collectiv collective. and to do that in the hospital so how can we start to think of ourselves politically in and empowering way? how can we save our shame? but thinking in those political terms in terms of class or something like that. he starts to think about race pretty early on.

so with that collectivity could emerge and learning a lot about anti- blackness and had a really good friend in florida to go undercover in the clan and was committed anti- black activist. and he learned a lot and was also tied to the most radical figures in the communist party. so the increases his consciousness.

he went to this concert in 1949 and the police took part in the attack that the worst thing he'd ever seen and i have seen a lot. >> and miraculously nobody was killed yes it's unreal that nobody was killed. >> it is really changing to become more critical or sophisticated and then he

starts to think about his own path with a continuation of the confederacy. his daughter is a vocal white supremacist and then also with a notorious lynching through his hometown and a mother and a child and bill in the image and we chose not to reproduce for the book and a teenage boy hanging from a bridge a huge chunk of the town closing with this civic monument.

>> so with the areas of lynching that are different and chaotic and the book you are talking about it is called southern white because they are uncovered on every page of the book regardless of what is on the page but then all this racial violence it is a striking document. it is the major work of his late career.

>> of the same people ask about now and this was a couple of years after that and he does off for evidence that is a couple of things but the whiteness set that off looking around his apartment that these are all white people. or something happened to a black person even in my elderly liberal innovation notices how white her retirement home is.

and with the revelation. >> i have the witty the three artwork and i went back through that reading that chapter in the book and there were quite a few pieces i wish everybody looks to see what we are talking about and shane has some things to say. [laughter] >> so at the very end it is very interesting but i thought

it was really interesting that he was passing the torch to ginsburg and as we picked up for walt whitman and i view witty as a writer even though i am a music lover. >> i love the made that connection. >> because they were tuned into the way the institution was shape for sexuality. and to the degree that what he

has any relationship with clearness it is at the a p-letter on - - at the peak of sexuality. >> and he had no homes about having friendships with your men and that was not necessarily a common thing or an open thing. >> people agree not to talk about things i don't know if people ever know but next to marjorie that was the most powerful relationship of his life. >> okay. >> that got my heart going.

>> if you are watching and have a question you can put it in the comment section and we will get to those and we will start with a question from susie q. [laughter] she says i would love to hear guests talk about the experience and the archives at the guthrie center and the favorite thing that you found in their. >>. >> you had a wonderful experience in the archives those that have not been good

and those that protect their goal and that's not the case. i think nora, woody's daughter set up an atmosphere that encourages people to dig and it doesn't censor. that which could be compromised maybe they have stuff at home and nobody knows about it's not huge but it's not tiny. like his journals are works of art. it when i first went to the archives i thought it had very

little to do with the three necessarily but i saw these beautiful pages of writing and with the creativity and the compulsive relationship i got this strong feeling i get it was a real sensual experience for him those that are the most magical thing and with that nora said 15 years ago and that's a beautiful book with high quality art

reproduction and those journals that are in their nicely produced. so sometimes people ask me on the flip side of the question so what i realized is that i had the thought immediately but i was really shocked to see that his doctors were informing on the fbi. they were giving the fbi information about his condition.

he was never officially blacklisted or with harassment for instance but they were prepared to do that and were keeping tabs on him. eventually i guess the last line and that he's too sick to care about anymore. but that shocked me and i guess i shouldn't have been shocked with guantánamo and all of that. >> i tried to look up and see if the guthrie artworks are still available and it doesn't look like it. >> that has been out for a couple of years. >> marie is stealing my question and wording it much better. how did both of their plans

lead to those wonderful writings how did you get to witty? >>. >> i think someone that my father admired a lot he was a liberal and culturally and admired the work and i have to say not listening to guthrie but to be set together like basically they needed to have that but i admire him. and i think i got interested

in i decided to read a biography and what drew me and actually was my academic work on the history of sexuality and this anecdote that i had never heard before of them brought up on charges because of a letter unsolicited erotic letter he wrote to a woman. he was put in a treatment center for obedience that it was one of the quakers but this was 80 percent gay men are men picked up on the

streets and parks or in subway bathrooms so was fed into this homophobic medical psychiatric system and is on a continuum i just wanted to know more about the center and then it was exposed at the writing there wasn't a lot but everything else hit me and in that context in that clear spac space. >> i'm glad this is asked because i almost mentioned as a way of introduction to hang out in total saw and i was

drawn to him because it is a lot of people that you describe even in the academic realm and he is the one other person who came to work is how i did it. i do not become a bob dylan fan until i was well into the initial research on my book i didn't get bob until i got witty. i came to witty by this land is your land. from what we learned in elementary school then realizing eight years ago that my favorite musician the mermaid albums the clash they

were also heavily influenced by witty. and i thought it's the new year i should learn more about woody so i started a little research writing project just for fun and just got sucked into everything. everything is there. and it was all right there in the words of the song. that's how i came to it. >> that people don't realize the stage name was woody. there is a whole tradition

that was influenced by witty that has nothing to do with the full curve i'm on - - bible and the thread of protest music as the basis of clock. >> and asking questions. >> i need to learn that. >> do you get a lot of into a lot of reading? because you continue the story into today? >> mine does yes. a good chunk of mine is about woody's influence now.

>> it when your book comes out it would be the perfect companion. >> and that was my favorite chapter because it is the area i did the most research on and put everything together in my brain. and from that time in woody's life can be applied directly to right now and one of the things i was going to mention that on the last page of guthrie's book there is a line of politics and if that does not resonate with you today.

you are on mission have had everything turned off because that is where we are as americans. we are feeling this directly these are things woody was writing. >> i think that was in the background and it's interesting the reasons we vote the way we do or get caught up like a platform or a physician is not something as dumb as a colt of personality but there's something about particular candidates the represent that orientation to

the world and they are better or worse and inspiring those feelings and trump was great at that and obama just hoped the post- racial era and with that feelin feeling. >> but those are emotional things that really drive electoral politics. i don't think they are simple. i think they are very real and need to be thought about more and like you said in the

excerpt that's not where politics started but the offshoot of the political issue. >> we have one more question that might take a little bit more time if you are okay with that. with his closest influence would and to send you talk about him in the book? >> i don't. i have this ongoing argument and discussion with myself whether i would try to interview him and nora i know because of her involvement in

the archives and she is a very nice person. and open and down to earth but they were really young when their father was still alive and most of the time he was very sick. and i just felt much older topics i just didn't want to reanimate that time for them and then just to get some understandably and answers that they have so the trauma of that time. >> he does a little bit as a child because you do write

about as huntington started to degenerate his physicality and the effect on how he treated his family. it is heartbreaking. >> that's when marjorie said it's time to go. so memories of marlowe's childhood they are there. >> thank you so much for doing this event and think the audience for coming out tonight and to remind everyone there are copies available and

we can mail them anywhere in the country. you can pick them up if you are in st. louis and we are happy to be able to provide them to you for potential guest for the holiday season. thank you everybody for coming. >> thank you for inviting me. >> it has been a blast. >> thank you. >> i love you guys. >> have a good night and we will see you next time

>> we have that technology that keeps creating monopolies and keeps creating the biggest businesses in the world the biggest companies now are tech companies. so how come on the internet that they will equalize as the connectors and with really powerful individuals? >> without donald trump and that white house, all bets are off. there is no way that anyone should dismiss what is

happening in the party of hate , the democratic party. it is simply rhetoric. not a political squabble. it is a battle for the soul of the nation. it is a battle for the direction of the nation. and indeed, for who we will be as a people. and i don't mean that to be melodramatic in any way. it is just the fact. talk about puerto rico and dc are states that changes who we are and what we are because now that means the democratic party has sufficient power to pack the court. to insist you might as well simply go straight to totalitarian because that is what the left wants.

they don't want to be bothered by little things like law or a constitution or history or heritage were consistent and constant and virtuous values. the idea of political party can threaten death and destruction on the streets of america and still be regarded as a political party to me, is nauseating. to see what the democratic party has become. now my colleagues in media for the most part don't care to talk that directly about it, but i do. because i believe that is exactly what we are staring at. and it's a very ugly face indeed with american politics right now. the choices are tough. they really are tough. that we have to make over the next several years.

this president is tough and strong and smart as hell they don't want to acknowledge how smart he is they always say he is great instincts. i love that idea. he is a great leader. he is smart. and cares about this country. . . . . foundation senior vice e

president and women's health policy director. "after words" is a weekly program with relevant guest hosts interviewing top nonfiction authors about their latest work. all "after words" programs are available as podcasts. >> host: hello it's so great to be here today. i have to say it's nice to meet you although i feel like i almost know you or a lot about you. when i got the invitation to do this interview, i felt like i couldn't turn it down. i spent the better part of my career following issues important to women everything from abortion to long-term care and everything in between. your list has reflected in your