Writing as discovery
When Jill Lepore receives an assignment, she rarely ever follows it. This may seem off for a Harvard professor who routinely doles out assignments to students. But Lepore, an accomplished author of several books and a writer for The New Yorker, explained that she doesn’t simply disregard the assignment, it’s just that her natural curiosity and research expertise often leads her in other directions. “No matter what I am asked to write about, I try to find an original story to tell that hasn’t been told before, and that involves, for me, the fun of archival discovery,” said Lepore. “And it is also kind of a point of professional pride, thinking that there has to be something in there that no one has ever found before.” Lepore spoke to a packed house in the Widener Library rotunda, delivering the third and final installment in Harvard College Dean Evelynn M. Hammonds’ Book Talk...