Sir is either God, the president of the United States or everyone's father. At first, these almost Aesopian reporters begin with matters of the state but soon make it clear that what they really want to know is the meaning of life. Irwin, a former editor of The Georgia Review, edits the fiction and poetry series at Johns Hopkins and was chairman of the university's Writing Seminars for nearly 20 years. His most recent critical work is The Mystery to a Solution, which won Phi Beta Kappa's Christian Gauss Prize for the best book in the humanities in 1994 and the Modern Language Association's Scaglione Prize for the best scholarly book in comparative literature. This reading is part of the Wednesday Noon Series presented by the Johns Hopkins Office of Special Events .
Admission is free.