Author Carol Goodman delivered the Winslow Lecture at Hamilton College on September 17, the first in a series of lectures to be given by people who majored in Classics studies in college and went onto very interesting, rewarding, and successful careers.
Goodman is the author of two novels, The Seduction of Water and The Lake of Dead Languages. Another novel, titled The Drowning Tree, will be released soon. Her writing has appeared in such journals as The Greensboro Review, Literal Latté, The Midwest Quarterly, and Other Voices. After graduating from Vassar College, where she majored in Latin, she taught Latin for several years in Austin, Texas. She then received an M.F.A. in fiction from the New School University. Goodman currently teaches writing and works as a writer-in-residence for Teachers & Writers.
Goodman began her lighthearted lecture by reading an excerpt from her critically acclaimed book, The Lake of Dead Languages, and telling how her experience as a school teacher inspired her to write the book. Backtracking slightly to her childhood and adolescence, Goodman claimed that she always had a love for writing and poetry, even if the expressive poetry of her youth was not of the same caliber of her writing today. She began studying Latin because of her strong interest in writing and poetry, which she claimed "led to an appreciation and frustration with the slipperiness of language." She loved to read, translate and think about language; by studying Latin in college, Goodman was able to do all three, all the time, she claimed. She loved to study and ponder each individual word while reading great Greek texts, and as she explained, the hours spent in the Vassar College Library was not a chore to her; rather, she enjoyed picking apart the language and reveled in the beautiful words Latin produced. She was able to stop and savor the language she was reading, and she discovered later that by learning to study and appreciate Latin, she could appreciate all language and literature.
Although she temporarily gave up writing in college, she quickly picked it back up again after graduation. Goodman took a job in the world of publishing. She thought at first that this would in fact help her writing; however, she quickly learned that it did not, recalling humorous stories about working on celebrity exercise books and videos. She wrote short stories, and submitted them to very respectable publications, such as The New Yorker; however, she was not published. She gave up writing once again and turned to teaching junior high-school level Latin. She found great joy in her work, and actually re-inspired herself to pick up her true love, writing, once again. She claimed that by telling her students not to give up on their dreams, she reminded herself not to the same.
This story was written by Emily Lemanczyk '05.
