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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ## Video: Joyce Carol Oates Speaks at NCCC Commencement 2015 [Watch (HLS stream): Joyce Carol Oates Speaks at NCCC Commencement 2015](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/SVZDC95h.m3u8) (19:30)  _Published 2015-05-21. Joyce Carol Oates Speaks at NCCC Commencement 2015_ --- Jul 27, 2023 6:18 PM UTC --- ## More From This Series [All Videos](https://time.com/video/) [Ed Helms Speaks at UVA Commencement 2015](/video/tmCJbbY6/) ### Ed Helms Speaks at UVA Commencement 2015 [Ken Burns Speaks at WUSTL Commencement 2015](/video/yOOzfLJA/) ### Ken Burns Speaks at WUSTL Commencement 2015 [Mellody Hobson Speaks at USC Commencement 2015](/video/RHSUoAiu/) ### Mellody Hobson Speaks at USC Commencement 2015 --- ## Transcript [ APPLAUSE ] And now I invite Matt to introduce this year's commencement speaker. Thank you Trustee Ward. This year we are very please to welcome National Book Award winning novelist Poet, playwrite and Lockport Native, Joyce Carol Oates, as today's honored speaker. Professor Oates grew up in Miller's Port in a two story farm house that her grandparents owned. She has stated that farm children tend to grow up with empathy for animals, a love of the outdoors and a strong work ethic. Professor Oates has authored more than 50 books and more than 40 of those have ended up on New York's Times list of notable books of the year. In addition, until she just recently retired, she was the Roger S. Berlind Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at Princeton University. And since 1978, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Yes professor Oates, I'd say you have the strong work ethic. Professor Oates is best known for her fiction. Her novels include Them, which won the national book award, The Falls, which won Francis [ UNKNOWN ]. The grave digger's daughter, and little Berta [ UNKNOWN ], which are both set in upstate New York. She also wrote, We were the Molvanees, which became a best seller after being selected by Oprah's book club. This year she was a Pulitzer prize finalist for her collection of stories. Lovely, dark, deep She writes about life, the juxtapositions of horror and beauty, tension and hope. As a fellow western New Yorker, it is my pleasure to introduce to the class of 2015 our keynote speaker, Professor Joyce Carol Oats. [ APPLAUSE ] Thank you for the gracious introduction. Greetings, and congratulations to the class of 2015 of Niagara County Community College on this festive commencement morning. And to President Klyczek Trustees, administrators, and faculty of the college. And to the parents, families, and friends of the graduates. This is a luminous occasion which you will long remember with that bitter sweet tinge of emotion that's called nostalgia. The recollection of something memorable and important that happened to you. Usually in the company of persons whom you love and revere. It's particularly memorable and important to me to be honored here today, since I was born in Larkport a while ago and grew up on a small farm in Millersport. I attended public schools in Larkport, [ UNKNOWN ] school, elementary school And North Park Junior High School. And I have from the start of my life as a writer set most of my novels and short stories in places virtually identical with the places of my childhood. And much of my writing's a sort of signature canal that runs through it which really links me to The Erie. Erie Canal and I also have a predilection for rivers and creeks. Like the Tonawanda Creek. I grew up on the banks of that. When I was invited back to Lockport in November 2009, some 50 years after I have left, I gave a talk titled, quote, My Kind of Town, Lockport, New York. Which was subsequently published in Smithsonian Magazine. And I spoke at the Palace Theater. I could not resist telling the audience that I hoped this would become a custom and I will be invited back again to Lockport in another 50 years. In any case,, at the conclusion of my presentation, there were questions from the audience. Most of them quite reasonable and answerable, but two questions stopped me in my tracks. The first was quote, Do you think that there's a theological purpose to the universe? And, do you think there is an afterlife? Given that these are the most profound questions in the history of philosophy, it did not seem likely that they would be answered that evening, on the stage of the Palace theater in Lockport, New York. Then the second was, do you think that you would be the writer you are today, if you had had a middle class or wealthy background? And without [ UNKNOWN ] and Lockport in your life. Of this profound question left me groping for words. For the answer is, of course I would not be the writer I am or the person I am without my background. It's not an exaggeration to say that quote I owe everything To this specific background, and can not imagine a different life as rich with material, as warmly supportive and stimulating. Family, teachers, friends, and community, and especially in my case, was very close to my heart, the Lockport Public Library, that was a place of refuge for me and the ways of civility and a treasure trove For a girl who grew up in a rural household in which there were virtually no books. As I was the first person in my family to attend school beyond eighth grade, still more to graduate from high school, the role of this beautiful welcoming library in my life could not be overstated. For this reason I urge you the class of 2015, to consider the cultural heritage that has helped to shape you. As graduates of NCCC you might re- visit the collage when you can. Check in with you former instructors, perhaps take or audit courses here. Those exciting courses, perhaps in the arts, you could not fit into your schedule when you were a student. And if you can contribute to the college, no matter how modestly, it will be appreciated. You are not isolated, singular individuals, but members of a community united by a common goal. Your instructors, like your parents and families, are the wellsprings of your career. Don't hesitate to express your gratitude. On this celebratory occasion it's well to consider that you, the class of 2015, share with your contemporaries across the country Who are also graduating this spring. A common experience of coming of age in a morally schizoid time. By schizoid, I mean that there is a distinct break between the public and the private life for many or most of us. If we are American citizens, we can be politically defined by others who are not Americans. Especially when we travel abroad, yet most of us don't actually feel that we are, in fact, politically defined and many of us don't feel that we exercise much power in our democracy. Those of us who are teachers expect our students to be unfailing honest in their work. Never to plagiarize or cheat. Yet virtually every day we see how so many of our fellow Americans often are presumed leaders, for instance, are being exposed as dishonest, guilty of fraud, embezzlement, bribe taking, [ UNKNOWN ] retirement companies. And [ UNKNOWN ] the environment. Yet, there is a hope that a younger generation has an opportunity to redeem the short sightedness of their elders, and will have the strength and idealism to do so. It was a Princeton student of mine who spoke of this being a [ UNKNOWN ] time. A senior English and Philosophy major, he said quote, we're signing up for interviews, writing letters, applying for jobs and graduate school with the war on terror, global warming, political crisis, a precarious economy. It seems so trivial, and yet it's our lives. This seemed to me eloquently and aptly stated, quote it's our lives, for this is the great adventure before you, establishing a personal, moral, intellectual, and spiritual life, in a morally schizoid time. Seeking your place in the world in a so called job market or in graduate of professional schools is one of the great adventures. Placing yourself requires stoical qualities. A sense of humor is definitely a good idea. Writers quickly learn that the most hideous experiences in actual life can make the most entertaining anecdotes And as members have discovered can be spun to epic lengths. The sense of proportion is recommended. We can't all be first. Conversely, it's an optimistic observation. We can't all be last either. Graduating classes contain numerous individuals who for one reason or another really did not fulfill their promise and potential. There's a small, quirky category of individual, who though rewarded at least reasonably, still don't feel that they have really worked hard enough, and their potential has not been realised. Very few writers of distinction, for instance, were outstanding as under graduates. William Faulkner, our Nobel prize winner, received a D in freshman English. And that's at the University of Mississippi. [ LAUGH ] Cormac McCarthy was asked the University of Tennessee, because his grades were so poor. John Cheever was expelled from the Thayer Academy, and spent years writing in poverty. Before he began to be published in The New Yorker. We need to know that others may be having as difficult a time we are, in fact, it may be heartening to know that somewhere someone's having a worse time than we are. America is a wonderful country, but it's media focus upon winners, stars, celebrities, and champions Does not prepare us for the real world. Several years ago I learned that a writer friend of mine, who has since won a Pulitzer Prize and other distinctions had been severally disheartened as a young man in his twenties by a very famous New York city editor, rejecting his novel. That he'd been working on for years with, this is the rejection, quote you're wasting your life, he was told. But Richard kept on working out of stubbornness and defiance, revising and submitting elsewhere till finally it was accepted. And it turned out to be the very novel that [ UNKNOWN ] was first to claim, and the next novel in that sequence won the Pulitzer Prize. I won't say what Richard's last name is, but he's an old friend of mine. And does Richard remember this rejection? You can be sure he does. And has he forgiven the people who rejected him? Never. [ LAUGH ] Is much of success life, luck? I think it must be, granted some talent, motivation, and willingness to keep trying. Stephen King, an American prodigy, whom you have all read, is now one of the great bestsellers in our history, perhaps in the history of the universe. You might be surprised to know however, that in his early 20s, Stephen Kind was a struggling high school teacher in Maine. He was humiliated because he didn't make enough money to support his family. He had to work at very menial and unpleasant jobs, a slaughter house for instance, But fortunately, for Stephen King, such gruesome occupations made great material. Stephen King had written more that sixty short stories that were rejected by all the magazines that there were at that time. He had written four novels and they were all rejected. This fourth novel, Carrie, he actually threw out in the trash in a fit of despair and it sounds like a fairy tale situation. He's married to a woman named Tabitha King. Who when they were both students in Maine, they were in a writing class together, and she was the star writer. Tabitha King. Stephen was very smart to marry her. [ LAUGH ] So Tabitha King saw that he had thrown out the manuscripts. She retrieved it from the trash, And the rest is history because she sent it out to them. There must have been one more publisher left. And it was accepted. So that's Carrie. It was very ethic. It was Double Day. It was very auspiciously published. If you saw an N at that time there were a number of their spring publications and all, very small print. And one of them was Stephen King. Carrie, it was his first novel. But immediately people started reading it and talking about it, it was optioned for a movie and it was made into a very successful movie that seems always to be on television. Unless Dirty Dancing is on television- [ LAUGH ] Carrie is always on. So I always think of how what if Steven King had been kind of a normal, reasonable, sane person who would have given up after 60 novels and 60 stories, and 3 novels rejected? We wouldn't have him. Similarly, my friend Eleanor Bergstein Who wrote a film script based largely on her own adolescence titled Dirty Dancing. That was also rejected for years as film script. I knew Eleanor before, and I knew, everybody, her friends all knew she had written the screenplay. Of course, we didn't think anything would come of that because it was just Eleanor's screenplay, you know. But she was rejected by everyone in a male dominated Hollywood film industry. She persevered for years until finally, at last, somehow she got a contract with somebody for a very small budget film made of her script, she directed it also. So I suppose she didn't get any money at all since she directed it. She was given almost no support by the male producers until they were so surprised the first audiences actually liked the movie, and then they were so surprised when audiences, let's face it, mostly women audiences just kept coming back to the movie weekend after weekend. They couldn't believe it. And then Dirty Dancing has become this iconic film that is always as I said on television, except when Carrie is on television. [ LAUGH ] Now I went to the opening and I do remember that it seemed really exciting, but who would have anticipated this would turn into this fantastic historic. Event, there are people who claim to have seen Dirty Dancing as many as [ LAUGH ] I think the world's record is 300 times. Three- hundred times. I've taught creative writing and literature at Princeton University since 1978, and as a teacher I'm often asked Did you recognize your talented students immediately and what is it like to work with, here they name students who did senior theses with me and other graduates of our program who have gone on and become quite famous. I won't mention their names, but one of them is still a fairly young woman writer. She's not only a perennial best seller, I'm sure you've all read her, but in some book stores her books have their own display cases. But the answer that I give is unexpected I think. It's that I don't focus my teacherly attentions on the talented students particularly. I work with all my students equally. As a teacher, I think that part of my role is to provide for the student possibly a little less talented, a way in which he or she might actually be revealed as talented. By this, I mean I rarely try to strengthen a writing student's weaknesses. We all have weaknesses. We all have areas in which we can't begin to compete. this includes great writers like Hemingway, Jane Austin, even Shakespeare. They all have weaknesses, we just don't know about them because their strengths are so extraordinary. What you do well, you must learn to do better. And when you do this better, learn to do it even better. That's the way, the only way to excel at anything. Individuals who are writers and artists are confronted with the question, should I continue if I am rejected? How long should I continue? Should I give up ever? Teachers work now until often it happens that a student who wasn't perhaps the most brilliant or most forceful or prominent in a class Will turn out years later to be the most successful. Too often it has happened in my own experience at Princeton that quite talented students just sort of faded from sight. They must have tried but then they were rejected and then they gave up. Why did they give up and others not give up? It would be astonishing to anyone in the publishing world to know that the woman student I mentioned a minute ago, whose books are at every book store around the world, she was not an obvious gifted undergraduate. Though she was diligent. A male writer, a colleague of mine, also very famous I won't say who he is. He actually wanted to fail her on her senior thesis because the theme was about women's subjects. He wanted to fail her. Which, he had to be dissuaded from that. And I always think, what an embarrassment for him it must be to see that young woman writer whom he wanted to fail. Whose books are on every best seller lists, and displayed in book stores, which I must say an experience he hasn't even had himself, and he isn't teaching any longer at Princeton either. So in conclusion, energy, industry, refusal to be discouraged, a prevailing sense of humor, these are essential. An attitude that goes beyond ambition, into the realm of the spiritual, the unchartable. What in boxing and perhaps in other sports is called heart, the indefinable core of an individual that declares, I will not give up. I will persevere. Without heart, an athlete cannot be a great champion. The brightest students of mine have gone on to be truly successful. Were individuals who worked, worked and worked, and did not allow rejections to dissuade them of their inner worth. This stubborn optimism, this heartfelt idealism, this predilection for trying one more time I bequeath to the graduates of the class of 2015, in fact, to us all. Thank you. 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