Clifford Thompson Visits Susquehanna
By: Lily Papendick
In the fourth installment of the Seavey Reading Series, Susquehanna University hosted visiting author Clifford Thompson on Feb. 4 in Isaac’s Auditorium.
Clifford Thompson is an essayist, novelist, illustrator and painter whose work often focuses on a mixture of race, identity and culture, with many of his pieces drawn from his own experiences as a black man growing up in America. Thompson is the author of five books, including “What It Is: Race, Family, and One Thinking Black Man’s Blues,” which was chosen as one of Time magazine’s most anticipated books of Fall 2019, and the more recent graphic novel “Big Man and the Little Men,” of which Thompson is both the author and illustrator. In addition, Thompson received a Whiting Writer’s Award for nonfiction for his essay collection “Love for Sale and Other Essays,” and his essay “La Bohème” was selected for the 2024 Pushcart Prize Anthology.
Thompson holds a BA in English and creative writing from Oberlin College. He has published over one hundred essays and other nonfiction works in The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Threepenny Review, The Iowa Review, Commonweal, Cineaste, The Times Literary Supplement, and The Best American Essays, amongst other publications. Thompson has taught creative nonfiction at the Bennington Writing Seminars, New York University, Sarah Lawrence College, Columbia University, and Queens College. Along with publishing his own writing, Thompson served as the editor of Current Biography for over a dozen years and is a member of Blue Mountain Gallery in New York City, where his first solo show was held in the spring of 2023.
Lexie Kauffman, a junior creative writing and publishing and editing double major with minors in honors and professional and civic writing introduced Clifford Thompson. She stated how much of his work “mixes facts, opinions and empathy into a perfect blend.”
Thompson began by reading the title piece from his upcoming book “Jazz June: A Self-Portrait in Essays,” which will be published by the University of Georgia Press later this year. In this piece, Thompson discussed his infatuation with a girl a year older than him named June back when he was in eighth grade, reflecting on how his crush was more about the feeling of yearning rather than June herself. Thompson expands this feeling to the month of June, describing it as a time filled with so much “freedom” yet also “unfulfilled promise,” a time that symbolizes both the hope and disappointment of what’s left unachieved.
Later in the piece, Thompson contrasts these concepts with his reflections on jazz music, specifically works by Sonny Rollins and Julian ‘Cannonball’Adderley, two musicians who had an enormous influence on the entire jazz scene. Thompson reflects upon Rollins’ album “The Bridge,” which is an acknowledgement to the days when Rollins took a break from performing and recording and instead practiced his horn on the Brooklyn Bridge. Thompson notes how the tempo of the title track ebbs and flows, perhaps mimicking Rollins’ ever-changing environment between Brooklyn and Manhattan. He uses this reference to highlight the emotional depth of striving toward something that is ultimately unattainable. The piece ultimately suggests that the pursuit of something, even if it doesn’t lead to success, can sometimes be as meaningful as achieving the goal itself.
Thompson’s second and final reading of the night was from his essay “La Bohème,” originally published in The ThreePenny Review in Spring of 2022. It chronicles Thompson’s brief friendship with Elizabeth ‘Liz’ Swados, starting at a coffee shop in 1988 when she asked what he was writing. Thompson delves into Liz’s extraordinary life as a talented playwright, composer and author, although these things were unbeknownst to him at the time, and how his encounters with her, though limited, have stuck with him for decades. Their interactions helped him examine his own youthful insecurities, ambitions, and approach to relationships.
Though age was a considerable factor in why Thompson and Liz never became involved romantically, Thompson mentions that race never was, a fact that now “impresses [him] in retrospect.” In particular, Thompson deliberates on an evening he spent with Liz discussing age, and how her words about some people walking around as if they are “already dead” have continued to ring in his mind these past few decades, causing him to question whether he has truly lived, and what that means regarding his writing.
Clifford Thompson’s visit to Susquehanna provided an insightful exploration of his work, both old and new, and offered a profound look at the way we define identity, art, culture and life itself. For those who missed the reading, be sure to attend the next event and hear someone just as fabulous read from their work.