When I Finish this Chapter

2012-01-30T13:32:00.001-05:00

John Stewart, Antarctica: An Encyclopedia (second edition). Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2011.

Antarctica is an impressive work, building on the 1990 edition with another four and a half years’ study of national gazetteers that brings the number of entries to over 30,000—covering every person, geographic feature, voyage, animal, and idea South of sixty degrees South.

The books are solid, of a good, readable off-white paper and seem well bound. They stay open to a page without difficulty and use suitably-sized, clean type and good white space for easy reading, and the entries can be both excruciatingly- thorough and surprisingly engaging. The story told by a whaling ship’s seasonal catches, or behind a place name, makes it easy to keep reading after checking an entry, and opening to any page will provide some pleasing tidbit.

Antarctica is, nonetheless, a very specific, and expensive, reference work which will be welcome in large research collections and out of scope for most others.

2012-01-17T15:59:00.002-05:00

2011 reading list: October - December

Robert Whiting, You Gotta Have Wa. New York: 1990, Vantage.
An introductory history of baseball in Japan, which goes back to the 1870s.

David Levithan, A Lover's Dictionary. New York: 2011, Farrar, Straus & Giroux.
A relationship chronicled in the fragments associated with arbitrarily meaningful words.

Simon Max Hill & Shannon Wheeler, Grandpa Won't Wake Up. Los Angeles: 2011, Boom!Town.
The kids try everything, but grandpa won't wake up. Not to spoil it, but (spoiler alert!) it's because grandpa is dead.

John Thorn, Baseball in the Garden of Eden. New York: 2011, Simon & Schuster.
A "secret history of the early game" by the Official Historian of Major League Baseball, which debunks the story of invention in Cooperstown by Abner Doubleday through a look at the politics behind the creation myth.

Shel Silverstein, Falling Up. New York: 1996, Haper Collins.
More Uncle Shelby? We're down on our knees
But do make it quick, we're not saying "please"!

Clifton Blue Parker, Bucketfoot Al: The Baseball Life of Al Simmons. Jefferson, NC: 2011, McFarland.
See full review here

2012-01-09T11:14:00.002-05:00

Clifton Blue Parker, Bucketfoot Al: The Baseball Life of Al Simmons. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2011.

Al Simmons, the cleanup hitter for Connie Mack’s great Athletics clubs of the early 1930s, may be most analogous to more contemporary stars like Dick Allen or Albert Belle: a ferocious hitting talent who achieved greatness—but less of it than expected. In Simmons’ case this is because injuries only let him play as many as 140 games in one season during the second half of his career, though afterwards Simmons admitted that he could have played more and, given how close he got to 3,000 hits, wished that he had.

Parker’s biography is well-documented and easy to read, with a total focus on Simmons as ballplayer. Major personal and world events such as marriage, divorce, and war are mentioned, but mostly to provide context. This emphasis shows us how Simmons was viewed in his era (as the best center fielder in the game) and how he got there, but leaves a much weaker impression of him as a person than last year’s portrait of another Pole in the Hall of Fame, Stan Musial: An American Life. To be fair, though, Simmons died before he was sixty, and Parker give us a solid picture of a worthy and under-appreciated subject as well as a welcome light on an A’s team that, with Jimmie Foxx, Mickey Cochrane, and Lefty Grove, may have been better than Babe Ruth’s Yankees.

2011-12-29T15:26:00.003-05:00

2011 reading list: books that fell off the list

I was excited enough about each of these to think I might read it "next", and even started some, but they didn't take. Maybe another time....

Yann Martel, Life of Pi. New York: 2001, Harcourt.
A Booker Prize winner, with tiger! Picked it up, enjoyed a few chapters, but didn't pick it up again.

The Essential Rumi, translated by Coleman Banks. New York: 1986, Quality Paperback Book Club.
Ecstatic 13th Century Sufi poet deserved much more than my idle flipping though the book and forgetting it.

A.S. Byatt, The Biographer's Tale. New York: 2001, Alfred A. Knopf.
A Booker Prize winner writing about a man writing about a man writing about a man sounds like I will love it, if I ever get to reading it.

Alastair Reynolds, Chasm City. New York: 2002, Ace.
A follow-up to Revelation Space that explores the Melding Plague, it finally went back to its owner after months of false starts.

2011-10-04T11:43:00.006-04:00

2011 reading list: April - September

A. Bartlett Giamatti, Take Time for Paradise. NY: Bloomsbury USA, 2011. See full review here.

Franz Kafka, The Castle: A new translation based on the restored text. Tel Aviv, Schocken, 1998. A primer on how not to behave upon moving to a new city to look for work.

Charles Yu, How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe. Short answer? Become unstuck in time. And the key to time travel is understanding that you're already doing it--everything else follows naturally.

George Vecsey, Stan Musial: An American Life. New York: ESPN, 2011. See full review here.

Robert Coover, The Universal Baseball Association, Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop. New York: Plume, 1971. A warning that Strat-o-Matic is a game best played with friends.

Craig Robinson, Flip Flop Fly Ball: An Infographic Baseball Adventure. New York: Bloomsbury USA, 2011. See full review here.

Alastair Reynolds, Revelation Space. NY: ACE Books, 2000. A grand space opera in three voices: archaeologist, assassin, and astronaut, who together face an alien doomsday device.

Thomas Williams, The Hair of Harold Roux. NY: Bloomsday USA, 2011. This re-issued 1975 National Book Award winning novel about writing a novel about a would-be novelist's hairpiece is a brilliantly-faceted portrait of an academic writer. It is also far too subtle to compete with summer; it requires the time and attention for wonder, and would be best enjoyed when longer nights allow leisurely lingering.

Jessie Sheidlower, The F-Word (3rd edition). NY: Oxford UP, 2009. "This book contains every sense of fuck, and every compound word or phrase of which fuck is a part, that the editor believes has ever had broad currency in English (xxxvi)."

Walter Mosley, The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey. NY: Riverhead, 2010. "If you were twenty years older and I was fifty years younger..." the titular 91-year-old tells the teenage beauty who comes to care for him after his nephew is shot as she helps him fulfill the promises left unkept at life's end.

2011-07-18T15:01:00.003-04:00

Craig Robinson, Flip Flop Fly Ball. 2011, Bloomsbury USA, New York.

Flip Flop Fly Ball is the story of one man’s baseball fandom. Usually, that would not be very interesting (e.g. discovers baseball card trading in schoolyard: 1983. attends first MLB game, hometown team wins world series: 1984. chasing the dragon ever since). But Robinson isn’t a usual fan. An English artist, he first noticed baseball in 2000, upon moving to Germany. Robinson describes the experience in straightforward, enjoyable essays detailing his discovering the sport and his trip Stateside to experience it, including stops in Seattle and Toronto. The bulk of the book, however, is devoted to the infographics that first made Flip Flop Fly Ball an internet sensation.

Hailed as a “mat[ing of] Edward Tufte and Bill James" by Deadspin, Robinson’s twofold gift is asking interesting questions from an outside perspective and showing us their answers in simple, often brilliant, amusing graphical form. The cover, for instance, illustrates the percentage of baseball books (among Amazon’s top 100 results for the term on a given date) which have a baseball on the cover—by turning the pitcher’s mound into a pie chart.

And while Robinson is a Yankees fan, that comes across less as something to hate than as inevitable—he also counted, and charted, the number of different caps encountered in British and German towns during his travel from mid-2009 through 2010. The Yankees had 328. The Dodgers ran second—at 37. If a European is going to follow a team, exposure dictates it will be New York. Don’t hold it against him; be glad, instead, that he has discovered the game and given us this delightful book.

2011-05-25T15:42:00.003-04:00

George Vecsey, Stan Musial: An American Life. New York: Ballantine, 2011.

Stan Musial is easy to overlook. Easy-going, unassuming, and terribly consistent, Musial put together a first-ballot Hall of Fame career over twenty-two years with the St. Louis Cardinals and held seventeen major league records when he retired. But on his special day, a nationally-televised tribute at the 2009 All-Star game in St. Louis, he was over-shadowed by the President, who had come to throw out the first pitch, just as he had been over-shadowed by the flashier greatness of Joe DiMaggio and Ted Williams while they were playing.

President Obama made amends, though, by awarding Musial the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2011, making him just the third ballplayer so honored. George Vecsey, the long-time New York Times sports writer, takes another step toward restoring Musial’s prominence with this thoroughly researched and documented official biography, which finally provides Musial a similar literary treatment to his peers.

Almost conversationally readable, Vecsey presents Musial in short, episodic vignettes relating key moments, propelled by an undercurrent of the respect, even awe, for Musial Vecsey developed as a young Dodgers’ fan watching Musial regularly beat his hometown team. Easily readable, this biography is appropriate for readers of any age and stands beside Musial’s memoir The Man’s Own Story as essential reading on one of baseball’s great gentlemen.

2011-05-03T14:29:00.002-04:00

A. Bartlett Giamatti, Take Time for Paradise. New York: Bloomsbury USA, 2011.

Bart Giamatti was baseball’s philosopher-king, a professor of English and then President of Yale University before serving as National League President (in spite of being a Red Sox fan) and then Commissioner before his death in 1989. Paradise, based on his Cook Lectures at the University of Michigan Law School, is his final work, published just days after his death, and it provides a fitting epitaph.

Drawing heavily on the work of Allen Guttman and Michael O’Laughlin, Giamatti begins by explicating the concept of leisure. He then argues that “Sports represent a shared vision of how we continue, as individual, team, or community, to experience a happiness or absence of care so intense, so rare, and so fleeting that we associate their experience with experience otherwise described as religious....” Finally, he deconstructs the elements of baseball to reveal its fundamental underlying epic narrative: the universal desire to go home.

Giamatti delivers these meditations in a lyrical prose that conveys both baseball’s leisurely pace and exacting precision, with subtle insights that will stop a thoughtful reader for minutes. For instance, Charlie Sheen could benefit from this definition: “Winning” for player or spectator is not simply outscoring; it is a way of talking about betterment, about making one-self, one’s fellows, one’s city, one’s adherents, more noble because of a temporary engagement of a higher human plane of existence.” By this definition, Paradise is certainly a winner.

2011-04-16T14:36:00.003-04:00

2011 reading list: January - March

Larry Dierker, This Ain't Brain Surgery: Bison Books, 2005. Long-time Houston Astros player, broadcaster and manager tells his story

Dirk Hayhurst, The Bullpen Gospels. See full review here

Eric Schlosser, Reefer Madness: Mariner Books, 2004. Fast Food Nation muck-racker looks at the underground economy

Richard Russo, Straight Man: Vintage, 1998. Academic potty humor from a Pulitzer Prize winner compares well to Smiley's Moo and DeLillo's White Noise

John H Briant, Adirondack Detective: Chalet Publishing, 2006. Prose as closely observant and stiff ans the title's retired policeman makes a good story hard to read

Jonah Keri, The Extra 2%: ESPN, 2011. See full review here

Kurt Vonnegut, God Bless You, Mr Rosewater: Dial Press, 1988. The most profound piece of moral philosophy in Twentith-Century American literature: damnit, you've got to be kind

David Czuchlewski, The Muse Asylum: Penguin, 2002. Undergraduate love triangle reunites in search of a reclusive author, from which no good can come

Neil Postman and Charles Weingartner, Teaching as a Subversive Activity: Delta, 1971. A new educator must be centrally concerned with the hearts and minds of learners: teach them how to ask, and answer, questions they find important

Seth Grahame-Smith, Abraham Lincoln-Vampire Hunter: Grand Central, 2011. While lacking the scope of Sandburg, Grahame-Smith exposes a previously unknown side of the President

Lawrence D Hogan, Shades of Glory: National Geographic, 2007. The Hall of Fame undertook the first comprehensive accounting of Negro Leagues statistics for this history of apartheid baseball, and should now make them public

2011-02-17T15:31:00.005-05:00

Jonah Keri, The Extra 2%. New York: Ballantine, 2011.

Neal Huntington, Chris Antonetti, and Dayton Moore can safely ignore this book. It will not tell them how to turn around their teams, no matter what the title says. In fact, The Extra 2% says almost nothing about the actual Wall Street analytic strategies employed by the Rays in their rise from worst to first; while the new management group responsible for the move has a financial, rather than baseball, background, that is their only significant difference from many other well-run franchises.

The most obvious comparable title is Michael Lewis's now-classic Moneyball, about the Oakland Athletics. That book is, in essence, a lesson in contrarian investing, or purchase of undervalued assets--in the A's case, on-base percentage--even though it is generally seen as an endorsement of advanced statistical analysis. The Extra 2%, on the other hand, has at its core a description of relentless arbitrage, or chruning assets in hopes of extracting surplus value from the transactions. This is especially apparent in the small-budget Rays's standard practice of trading star players for prospects as the stars become expensive: the Rays invest time in a player's development, enjoy his early years of price-controlled service, and begin again with another talented kid while someone else pays the big money for a star's decline phase.

Another baseball book, though? No, Keri, a former financial reporter who has also applied his analytic skills to baseball for numberous websites, ESPN and the Wall Street Journal, has instead written a primer on managing cultural change. Based on interviews with over 150 current and former Tampa players, past and current management, and other experts on baseball or economics, he provides a conversational, non-scholarly book which is easy to read and reinforces the notion that brains can, at least sometimes, be more important than money.

2011-01-13T14:21:00.002-05:00

Dirk Hayhurst, The Bullpen Gospels. New York: Citadel Press, 2010.

Dirk Hayhurst is a Major League pitcher--because, like the President, once one attains the title 'Major Leaguer', it sticks no matter what may follow. Hayhurst was drafted out of Kent State University by the San Diego Padres, and this book is his memoir of one season in the Padres' minor league development system.

This is not, however, a book about baseball; as Hayhurst notes, "for all the great things baseball is, there are some things it is absolutely not. And that is what this story is all about." That may be counter-intuitive, since Hayhurst writes about learning to play the game and about some of the games he played, but the story really isn't about becomeing a ballplayer. Honus Wagner, Hall of Fame shortstop for the Pittsburgh Pirates, said "There ain't much to being a ballplayer, if you're a ballplayer"; Hayhurst, who can throw a ball near ninety miles an hour, is already a ballplayer when the story opens. But he is also a recent college graduate, single, living on an air mattress at his grandmother's house and doubting his prospects. This story isn't about becoming a ballplayer; it is about becoming a man.

Every story needs a setting, though, and the trials of a minor-league season provide Hayhurst innumerable opprotunities for fun. While names have been changed and some characters are composites, everything is based on real incidents, allowing reader entry into a heavily-guarded world many have wished to experience. It isn't an expose or game-by-game recap, but Hayhurst does share some locker-room discussions (if terrorists put a gun to your head, which team-mate(s) would you sleep with?), bus-trip high-jinks (Midnight Express might not be a good entertainment choice), and the general anxiety of young men who have never really felt failure but now struggle against great odds. It is very enjoyable, a quick and engaging read appropriate for any post-adolecent audience (it IS full of locker-room language), and an especially good choice for high-school boys.

2010-07-22T11:02:00.001-04:00

J. Stanton, The Gnoll Credo. 2010: 100 Watt Press, Zepher Cove NV.

The Gnoll Credo starts with a fantastic assumption: Gnolls, intelligent humanoids descended from hyenas, live somewhere across the Ghamor Desert. Rumor is that one has even learned to read and write. Aidan O’Rourke, a scholar specializing in Alpha predators, sets out to verify the stories.

Upon reaching the frontier, O’Rourke is met by Gryka, who seems to be waiting for him. She tells him that Gnolls do not have a written philosophy, but if he waits, she will write it for him. Gryka and O’Rourke spend the rest of the summer translating the document she produces; this is the Gnoll Credo.

Building a story around an ethnographic document and using episodic character excavation rather than a traditional plot makes The Gnoll Credo seem more a political treatise, like Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward or a Platonic dialogue, than the usual fiction. Stanton’s over-arching premise is that adopting agriculture was a mistake, that humans are hunters at heart and denying this has caused most of our collective misery. While we may disagree with this, Gryka is such a compelling representation of what is wild that it is easy to be swept along without considering the underlying argument and simply accept this alternative way of being. The end result is a hard to describe little book, but one that continues to demand thoughtful attention long after the final pages.

2010-06-09T16:20:00.002-04:00

Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft. NY: Scribner, 2000.

Stephen King, the master of contemporary horror with over 350 million copies of his books in print, is one of the best-selling authors in the world. As such, he clearly has much to say about how to write, right?

But, as the subtitle suggests, On Writing is a memoir, not a how-to book. In fact, only about a third of the book actually discusses the craft of writing, and much of that is standard advice: read a lot and write a lot; don't show off the work until after a second draft; write for a specific, personal audience; a second draft should equal the first draft less ten percent; pay attention to Strunk & White's Elements of Style. All of the advice is good, but none of it is new or unique. King readily admits as much.

No, what makes On Writing interesting is the personal history King shares. By allowing us to see some of the early influences on his life, King helps us understand his motivations and the sources of his creativity. We also see the long, demanding developmental arch from high-school scribbler to best-seller; the effort King made in pursuit of his career is daunting, but ultimately provides hope. While he states that it is impossible to make a competent writer from a bad one, or a great writer from a good one, he believes it is possible for a competent writer to become good. King's book won't help much with this, but it does offer inspiration and encouragement for those trying to break into the field.

2010-04-09T15:09:00.001-04:00

Tim Green, Baseball Great. NY: HarperCollins Children's Books, 2009.

Josh LeBlanc is twelve years old and getting ready for his school team tryouts when his father's minor league baseball career ends unexpectedly. But when his father takes a sales job for the coach of a local travel team, Josh joins that squad instead.

His dream is to do what his father couldn't: get to the big leagues and be a baseball great. He has the talent, but he needs to get stronger to compete against older boys. One of his teammates offers him some gym candy to help him through their weightlifting workouts. With friendships and his future on the line, what will Josh do?

This well-paced, exciting story, targeted at eight to twelve year olds, will have even recalcitrant readers anxiously turning pages to find out what happens next.

2009-12-19T18:38:00.002-05:00

Heather Webber, Truly, Madly. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2010.

“There comes a time in every girl’s life when she realizes her father isn’t perfect.”

Even if the father is Oscar Valentine, whose blood carries Cupid’s Curse, a hereditary ability to make matches for others, but not oneself; an ability to read psychic auras. His daughter Lucy had it, but lost it in an electrical accident, so taking over the family match-making business doesn’t much appeal to her. Duty calls, though, so she does her best to pair people using the power she has instead: the ability to find lost objects.

But her first client is still in love with the fiancee he’d lost six years earlier, so Lucy’s talents do come into play. She ends up uncovering, then solving, a murder, rescuing a lost little boy, and falling in love herself as well as laying groundwork for the series to continue. And Truly, Madly is a good start, but Webb is trying too hard. She has a fun premise and enjoyable characters--and a three-book contract; she doesn’t need to give time to dressing her sets with name-brand props. This seductive shorthand of naming, rather than describing, is all too common in the airport-shop fluff genre. While it may be an attempt at realism, it is more likely intended to convey a sense of the privileged environment inhabited by the characters and to which the reader is presumed to aspire. Unfortunately, all it achieves is an impermanence: an Audi A3 is a sleek, sporty roadster, but unless one knows that, the reference is meaningless. This is why writers are told “show, don’t tell”.

But this is a minor point, a failing of the entire type of book; as one of that type, Webb can’t be faulted for following the genre’s convention and, in fact, seems to largely overcome it by the end of the book. Truly, Madly is a lot of fun; not straight romance, not R-rated, not hard-boiled mystery, not just a coming of age acceptance story, and not hung up on its outlandish underlying assumption. Psychic abilities may be unusual, but it’s not hard to see a promising future for Ms. Valentine, the match-making detective, and her new Lost Loves service.

2009-11-09T20:32:00.002-05:00

Nelson Mandela Foundation with Umlando Wezithombe, Nelson Mandela: The Authorized Comic Book. New York: W.W. Norton &Co, 2009.

Wow.

This is a beautiful book. Full-size pages of glossy stock give it serious heft, and at over 190 pages, it contains what was originally an eight-volume comic series. These were published by Umlando Wezithombe in South Africa, from 2005 - 2007, to make Nelson Mandela’s story accessible to a new generation.

Mandela’s story should be familiar, and it is worthy of super hero treatment. This book, which focuses on themes of tradition, community, and story, is a wonderful introduction to the South African struggle for freedom. And, as Mandela notes in his introductory comments, you are really famous when “you discover that you have become a comic character”. Drawing on many published and archival resources to show us not only Mandela’s role in the South Africans’ fight for equality, more than twenty years in prison, his jubilant release and election as President soon after, the comic also presents key events and relationships throughout his life that help us understand “why”. While not a deeply penetrating biography, we do see Mandela’s life as a whole, not simply a political thing, and can see glimpses of faults which make him appear that much more human. We see it in beautiful pictures with richly muted color.

Mostly, though, we see a strong and gifted man of great pride who refuses to accept an injustice and, in so doing, persuades the world to stand with him against it. We see a hero, triumphant. What better subject for a comic book?

2009-10-06T14:12:00.003-04:00

Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Philadelphia: 2009, Quirk Books.

Jane Austen, know for her light comedies of manners, saw her literary oeuvre cut short, with only a handful of published titles. While this may have saved her from becoming an early Victoria Holt, rumors had long persisted that something--something else was being hidden. Finally, thanks to the efforts of Grahame-Smith, we know what that is.

Austen's abbreviated output reflects her tragically truncated time, as she was struck down at forty-one by a here-to-fore unknown illness. Grahame-Smith, however, has uncovered the truth. Austen, having been bitten by a manky dreadful during one of her contemplative garden walks, soon became undead. Between frenzied feasts on baronial brains, she did what she had always done: she wrote.

Austen's literary executors knew this, of course, and had successfully suppressed her "later work" for years, because it may as well have been gibberish. It was, in fact, regarded as nothing else until Grahame-Smith, a Zombie researcher working on an entirely different project, stumbled onto a few pages in an American archives. Recognizing the tortured sounds as Zombie and the style as distinctly Austen, he immediately made queries after more. Finally receiving permission to sit down with the originals led to a multi-year translation project, of which Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is the first volume.

Like all of Austen's prior work, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies deals with the romantic travails of British girls. The plot is largely lifted from her earlier Pride and Prejudice, but this version gives much more attention to the hordes of Zombies roaming England during warmer seasons--understandable, given Austen's new perspective. The story is full of memorable scenes, such as Elizabeth's visits with Lady Catherine, Lady Catherine's visit to the Bennett's, or the tender moment Elizabeth shares with Mr. Darcy at the Zombie pyre.

Like all works by the undead, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies does have its slow moments. Much time is devoted to dances and chasing after husbands, not so much to Zombie ethnography; one would have hoped that Austen's keen social observation might have survived to provide insight into the Zombie mind. But overall, and thanks largely to Grahame-Smith's able, dedicated translation efforts, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is a worthy contribution to Austen's canon and the literature of the undead.

2009-10-02T10:36:00.002-04:00

Neil Gaiman, The Graveyard Book. New York: HarperCollins, 2008.

Who is Nobody Owens, and why does The Man Jack want to kill him?

Nobody Owens is the child who lives in the graveyard. He is not a ghost, but his adopted parents and most of his friends are--and they have taught him many of their tricks for escaping human detection.

Nobody came to the graveyard as a toddler, having left his home via the door The Man Jack forgot to close when entering. The Man Jack murdered Nobody's family and was after him as well, but after when the child snuck into the graveyard, his newly-dead mother availed upon the ghosts to protect him. So Nobody grows up in the graveyard, learning his letters from former teachers. He makes a human friend and eventually even goes to school, growing with the adventures of each chapter.

Why The Man Jack wants him dead in the first place, however, isn't clear until nearly the end, when The Man Jack finally gets another chance at Nobody.

Gaiman, who has also given us The Sandman and Coraline, won the Newbery Medal for this delightful book, which he says took him twenty years to translate from idea to text. In spite of the supernatural setting and somewhat disturbing plot, there is really nothing either scary or objectionable about the book, which is enjoyable for children of all ages.

2009-07-18T19:48:00.008-04:00

Philip K. Dick, Voices from the Street. New York: TOR, 2007.

Voices from the Street is a previously unpublished novel from Philip K. Dick, the sci-fi icon behind Total Recall, AI, A Scanner Darkly, Blade Runner, and Minority Report. According to the publisher, it is the last of his novels to be published--only twenty-five years after his death.

Visions is clearly an early book. Set in 1950s Southern California, it chronicles the disintegration of Stuart Hadley, a handsome young television salesman. The prose is clean and measured, never reaching the frantic fever of later works like Valis, in spite of a sometimes brilliant mirroring of style and scene--the prose of someone consciously writing well, rather than confidently writing. It is very good, but not identifiable as Dick.

What is immediately identifiable, however, is the ever-recurrent conflict between perception and reality--what some call metaphysical exploration and other, paranoid schizophrenia. Hadley is a young man, with a new son and a good job, but all his good fortunes are nothing compared to his dreams and inarticulatable ambitions.

First Hadley turns to religion for answers, joining the Society of the Watchmen of Jesus. He is inspired by their leader, who speaks of prophecy:

"Even exceptional insight cannot give us exact information, the day, the month, the year. Do you understand what the prophets were? They were men gifted with this exceptional insight, this special sense, an ability to perceive future occurrences, to remember them as we remember events of the past. The impact of great things yet to come impinged on their minds. Everything they saw will come about; but these events were of such foreign and awesome nature that only by rendering them in elaborate poetic imagery could they translate them into the diction of the times, and represent the events to themselves."

But the speaker is not a prophet, only a charismatic speaker, and Hadley is quickly disillusioned. Renewed focus on work leads to promotion, but this, too, proves hollow, leading to a final break with reality from which Hadley never recovers.

The final result is a book that, while far from the science-fiction for which he is known, shows Dick to be a fully-competent, character-driven novelist already exploring some of the complex themes of his finest material. Publication may have been delayed by some occasional profanity--much less acceptable in the 50s than today--but availability now completely the work of an important writer and provides further insight to his artistic development.

2009-01-31T11:30:00.003-05:00

James Hynes, The Lecturer’s Tale. New York: Picador, 2001.

A literary work, Nelson Humbolt’s doctoral advisor said, is any imaginative writing that is inherently more interesting than anything that could be said about it, and The Lecturer’s Tale qualifies. The torments of academic life--departmental infighting, the struggle for tenure, and the like--have been well documented in American fiction, particularly by Don DeLillo’s White Noise and Jane Smiley’s Moo. Yes, academics offer an easy target for satire--the leisurely life of learning inspires envy; the disheveled forgetfulness, disdain. In truth, however, this world is highly competitive, even combative. James Hynes's The Lecturer’s Tale is a joyfully bleak look at the life of Humbolt, a mediocre literary scholar, as he falls from post-doctoral stardom at an elite public university to adjunct composition instructor, then, magically, finds his way not only to tenure, but the department chair--only to learn, in the end, that cash is better than tenure.

The story relies completely on our suspension of disbelief: an accident on the quad leave Humbot with an ability to bend others to his will, one of his colleagues is a vampire, and an alien shows up briefly at the end. Nonetheless, it captures well the atmosphere of academia--a place where, as the vampire tells, Humbolt, “Gender as subversive parodic performance doesn’t work if you don’t tell anyone”--and such a statement is clearly understood. A place where a job candidate’s lecture on the symbolism of a non-existent Elvis movie is considered genius, never mind that the movie is only in his head. This wordsmithing is a sort of magic; Hynes simply asks us to accept a bit more. This is easy enough until part three, the denouement.

In the final section, however, Hynes goes overboard. All loose ends are tied off, but in such a fantastical way as to defy even the most gracious sense of credulity. While the final results are appropriately satisfying, the alien and the vampire--which might have worked, as manifestations of Humbolt’s delusions--are instead played as real, rather than metaphorical, thus inserting an element of unreality that is out of place with Hyne’s otherwise brilliant display of departmental dysfunction. This is a highly literate book, featuring literature and literary theory as much as the characters. Tightly plotted, with elegant prose and lively dialogue, it is sure to appeal to all post-graduate literary scholars. The rest of us might get a few good laughs from it, too.

2008-07-06T18:56:00.003-04:00

Kurt Vonnegut, Armageddon in Retrospect. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 2008.

Armageddon in Retrospect could be seen as a shout from the grave, a humanist’s last call from the afterlife, if Vonnegut hadn’t already played out that trope in God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian by doing interviews with the dead for his local NPR station. Instead, it is merely another installment in his long line of story collections. And from Welcome to the Monkey House and Wampeters, Foma and Granfalloons through the recently-collected magazine stories in Bagombo Snuffbox, Vonnegut’s short work has been consistent in its quality.

Unlike all of Vonnegut’s prior collections, though, these stories have never been published before. As noted above, they all exhibit Vonnegut’s careful high polish, so perhaps their common theme is what kept them in his desk drawer.

As the title suggests, these pieces are all about the end of the world. For Vonnegut, this was World War II, in which he fought, and during which he survived the Allied fire-bombing of Dresden. He struggled with what he saw for years, until finally decanting it as Slaughterhouse-5, but we never really saw this struggle in print until now.

The pieces in Armageddon are undated, except for Vonnegut’s letter home from a Red Cross camp once the war ended and the speech he was preparing when he died, so we can’t attribute them to a particular period in his career. “Guns before Butter” and The Commandant’s Desk”, however, stand up well with the best of his previously published short pieces-- this is not simply mining the files of a dead icon for easy money, but a unified collection of highly personal material. And as his son Mark says in the introduction, “(e)ven if the content of any given piece isn’t interesting to you, look at the structure and rhythm and choices of words. If you can’t learn about reading and writing from Kurt, maybe you should be doing something else.”

As an added bonus, the book is illustrated with prints from Vonnegut’s post-novelist career as a graphic artist.

2008-06-18T22:20:00.001-04:00

Michael Hodges, AK-47: The Story of the People’s Gun. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2007.

Mikhail Kalashnikov must have been the model for Tony stark in Iron Man. Both were young weapons geniuses who built something to protect their soldiers, only to see it turned against them--by their own side.

Hodges’ thesis is that the gun has taken on a life of its own, becoming a global brand like Coca-Cola, but without a board of directors. We have, he says, “seen the AK become more than a gun. In Iraq, as in Vietnam, the AK operates as a symbol of resistance to the United States, although in Iraq the symbolism of the AK seems to be of superior importance to its mechanical abilities.”

This book tries to show us what the Revolutionary Rifle has wrought through a series of portraits, related only by their common exposure to the ubiquitous AK. From the Sudanese child soldier to the Pakistani peasant and the current conflict in Iraq, we hear over and over how an automatic weapon with eight parts, simple and sturdy enough for a child, changes--and destroys--society.

We see a sanitized glimpse of this Kalashnikov culture in Iron Man. Like that movie, AK-47 is well-paced and highly enjoyable, with a disturbing undercurrent of violent truth that we have otherwise learned to put out of mind.

2008-05-08T19:43:00.001-04:00

Percy M. Hughes academic magnet school wishes you a happy Book-Men Day.

2008-04-23T20:56:00.000-04:00

Walter M. Miller, Jr. A Canticle for Leibowitz. New York: Bantam, 1988.

Current scientific theory suggests that, while the universe has been expanding since the “Big Bang”, it will eventually run out of steam and begin contracting. As matter collapses into black holes, becoming denser and denser, it will finally be reduced to a single, infinitely compact and unsustainable point--leading to another “Big Bang”, when it starts all over again.

Miller’s tale, originally published by Lippincott in 1959, applys this same cyclic principle to humanity. It is the story of a Catholic sect, founded by a penitent scientist after the Flame Deluge--present-day man’s first nuclear war--to preserve what was left of historical knowledge from the backlash against learning that followed. its three sections show man’s progress, from the struggle to legitimize learning around 2800 A.D., to its embrase by secular society in 3200, through the inevitable repetition of history which, once again, brings down Lucifer’s fire to destroy a technologically advanced but morally corrupt society in 3700.

This is a book of complex ideas and theological questions, such as man’s responsibility for the use of knowledge and the meaning of hope, but it is neatly summarized in these lines:
How shall you “know” good and evil until you shall have sampled a little? Taste and be as Gods. But neither infinite power nor infinite wisdom could bestow godhood upon men. For that there would have to be infinite love as well.

Infinite love does return to the world, briefly, as the second holocaust descends, to show that hope, like history, moves in cycles.

2008-04-15T09:04:00.003-04:00

National Library Week: April 13-19
Celebrate with a Book!

In other news, J.K. Rowling demonstrates that, while she is a fine writer, she does not understand copyright law. Her suit, claiming that Steven Vander Ark's Harry Potter Lexicon infringes on her right to use her characters to create her own encyclopedia of the fictional world they inhabit, shows that the concept of 'fair use'--which allows new, derivative creations based on published material, is still widely misunderstood.

Rowling is not alone is her confusion: music labels, movie studios, and (especially) the Disney Corporation all want us to believe that once they 'produce' something, it is theirs forever. It's not, even though Congress has tried very hard to support that view (the copyright term, originally 14 years, now extents 70 years past the author's death). No, we still have rights. We can, legally, make a copy of an item. We can create a parody of it or, as Vander Ark has done, compile, organize, and arrange material in a new and useful fashion. That Vander Ark's work is useful should be obvious from the fact that Rowling herself called him to consult while producing her later Harry Potter books.

While Ms. Rowling's desire to produce her own encyclopedia is understandable and her intention of donating the proceeds to charity is worthy, she does not have exclusive rights to use the material just because she originally created it. Here's hoping the judge understands both letter and intent of the law better than she does and dismisses this suit immediately.

2007-11-20T19:57:00.000-05:00

Philip Roth, The Ghost Writer. NY: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1979.

At the end of Anne Frank’s diary, we learn that the girl died in a concentration camp not long before the end of World War II. But a diary is not a strictly factual account, and the story requires an ending that can’t, independently, be verified as true. What if Anne Frank had actually lived?

Throughout his long and distinguished career, Roth has been willing to take on controversy [Portnoy’s Complaint is about masturbation; The Breast is about, well…a man who becomes a mammary gland] and make grand claims, like naming his baseball book The Great American Novel. The Ghost Writer, though, seems like a deeply personal meditation, devoid of provocation, at first blush.

Adhering to strict Aristotelian formal requirements of time and place, The Ghost Writer is a middle-aged writer’s recounting of, and reflection upon, a long-ago meeting with his literary hero. The action is confined to the rural estate of Lonoff, an established short story artist who has invited the young, aspiring author Nathan for a chat. While the winter weather is frightful, things go very well for Nathan—until he sees the young woman sorting through Lonoff’s papers on the floor in the next room.

Tension immediately begins to build as Nathan tries to learn who she is. What he discovers during the long, sleepless night stays with him for twenty years and provides a loose frame for this entirely predictable, but utterly engaging, little book.

2007-11-13T16:43:00.001-05:00

Anne Fine, Return of the Killer Cat. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2003

Fat orange tabby cats always seem to get into trouble: the adventures of Heathcliff and Garfield have been staples of the funny pages for years. Tuffy is another cat in this vein—Return is his second book, following Diary of a Killer Cat. This time, Tuffy’s family is going on vacation and recruits the local minister to cat-sit. Reverend Barnham, though, doesn’t appreciate Tuffy’s dietary needs, or his extra-curricular activities. Meanwhile, the neighbor is desperate for a pet “just like Tuffy”—and offering fresh cream and tuna, three times a day.

So Tuffy does what any cat would do, even though it means abandoning his gang and dressing up as “Janet”. Trouble, naturally, ensues in this delightful tale for young children reading short chapter-books.

2007-10-22T17:45:00.000-04:00

Joe Posnanski, The Soul of Baseball: A Road Trip through Buck O’Neil’s America. NY: Wm. Morrow, 2007.

Buck O’Neil was the most graceful man I’ve ever met. Not physically, mind you—it’s hard for a ninety-year old man, even a professional athlete, to move gracefully. No, O’Neil’s grace was internal, a peace, an all-encompassing agape love that let this man, denied so much—a chance to play, or to manage, in the Major Leagues—because of his ‘beautiful tan’, nonetheless call his autobiography I Was Right on Time. “Don’t feel sorry for us,” he said in it. “We had a great time”. That book tells of America’s impact on Buck O’Neil, longtime first baseman and manager of the Negro National League, founder of the Negro Leagues Museum, and star of Ken Burn’s miniseries Baseball. The Soul of Baseball is something else.

In this book, Kansas City sportswriter Posnanski chronicles a year of traveling with O’Neil as he moves across the country telling stories and keeping memories of the Negro Leagues alive during a year when the Hall of Fame held a special election and inducted seventeen neglected players from the Negro Leagues—but not O’Neil [O'Neil was later honored by the HoF when they created a Lifetime Achievement award bearing his name]. This isn’t a biography, though we learn plenty about O’Neil. It isn’t what O’Neil asked for, either, when he approached Posnanski looking for someone to “tell it like it was”. Instead, it is a deeply personal account in which Posnanski is able to capture—or at least reflect—some of the joy that seemed to radiate from O’Neil, some of the stories that otherwise would have been lost. We see an old man refusing to be bitter, spreading an infectious love. O’Neil makes it clear that baseball was great in his day—and is still great, in spite of millionaires, steroids, and the rest of the game’s ills: “The game hasn’t changed,” he would say, “We have”. Like baseball, O’Neil never changed; America did. Calling Buck O’Neil the Soul of Baseball is an incredible complement, but it may still be understated. As presented by Posnanski, O’Neil represented not just the best of baseball, but of all humanity.

2007-09-30T12:54:00.000-04:00

Celebrate Banned Books Week (29 Sept.- 6 Oct. 2007) by reading.

Some of my favorite books make these lists--maybe not this year, but much too often. These include Harry Potter, Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five and Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. My favorite from this year's Top Ten is Beloved, by Toni Morrison.

2007-09-25T10:46:00.000-04:00

Tristam Foxe knew that history goes in cycles, and that he was simply unfortunate enough to be caught between the Pelagian and Augustinian phases, between the belief that people are good and will regulate themselves, and the belief that people are bad and must be controlled. Tristam knew this because he used to teach history (fifth form) a the South London (Channel) Unitary School (Boys) Division Four.

Tristam knows that some sort of normalcy will be restored soon. This interphase, though, is a long way from any kind of normal. The crisis has come because an over-populated world, led by human example, has stopped reproducing. In a world where China's 'One Child' law has long been in effect, nothing grows.

All of nature finally rebels, and Tristam ends up in the army working to restore order and a food supply. When his men go into battle, Tristam learns exactly what the government is doing about the crisis—the central horror of this book that, once accepted, allows us to see the humor, and the similarities to our own situation, in this deep dark black comedic gem.

2007-09-25T10:36:00.000-04:00

Marcus Zusak, The Book Thief. 2006, New York: Knopf.

A friend asked why I read children's books. I answered, glibly, "because they can hold more truth." This was before I read The Book Thief.

The Book Thief is a title. It belongs to an adopted German girl during World War II, and later to her story as related to us by Death, who is somehow always nearby. (Incidentally, Death is an informative, entertaining, and completely trustworthy narrator.) She earns the title, but wears it well: she steals books from the mayor's wife, but reads them aloud to get her neighbors through air raids.

But the Book Thief is more than an avid reader. She is also fiercely compassionate and stunningly brave, traits learned from the man she calls Papa, who calms her nightmares, teaches her to read, and hides a Jew in his basement even as others wearing the yellow star are paraded down the street toward Dachau. She must be strong, to survive this story told by Death.

While told from the child's perspective, this is not really a children's book, any more than Anne Frank's diaries are for children. No, The Book Thief is a good book, and maybe an important one; and like any other good book, it is suitable for anyone who wants to keep reading. It holds an awful lot of truth.

2007-08-20T09:25:00.000-04:00

J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and…(series). NY: Scholastic, 1998- 2007.

J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter and… series is one of the most challenged titles in America. Some people are scared of these books because the characters use magic, but they are wholly misguided. While her books feature witches and wizards, they are far from glorifying Satan; in fact, Rowling is singing the same song as John Lennon and Jesus Christ: all you need is love.

This point is made clearly during a conversation between Potter and his headmaster at Hogwarts School for Wizards near the end of …Half-Blood Prince.
"But I haven't got uncommon skill and power," said Harry, before he could stop himself.
"Yes, you have," said Dumbledore firmly. "You have a power that Voldemort [the Dark Wizard] has never had. You can—"
"I know!" said Harry impatiently. "I can love!...
"So, when the prophecy says that I'll have 'power the Dark Lord knows not,' it just means—love?" asked Harry, feeling a little let down.
"Yes—just love," said Dumbledore.

Far from glorifying evil—or even magic, which is part of the setting, not a focus of the story—Rowling is pushing a world-view that stresses tolerance, cooperation, and love. That she does so in a fabulously-paced series of high adventures with a well-developed, ever-evolving cast of lovable, recognizably eccentric characters is tribute to her great skill. These books certainly do not deserve banishment: they should, instead, be recommended reading for all ages.

2007-08-09T14:27:00.000-04:00

Poul Anderson, The Star Fox. NY: Signet, 1966.
Kurt Vonnegut, The Sirens of Titan. NY: Dell, 1959.

Ah, the Space Opera—the individual versus the infinite. From Buck Rogers to Star Wars, putting a cowboy in a spaceship has been incredibly popular. Gunner Heim, captain of Anderson's spaceship Star Fox, is one such cowboy. He has much in common with Winston Niles Rumfoord, Vonnegut's aristocratic explorer in Sirens of Titan. Both of these characters are strong businessmen on Earth who buy private spaceships to take on tasks that their governments will not attempt, to make space safe for humanity. Both succeed. Yet the hope for humanity implied by these successes could not be more different.

The difference is free will.

Vonnegut, while a self-proclaimed humanist, is nonetheless a serious determinist. In his work, characters are acted upon; they react, but they do not choose: we do, as Bokonon teaches in Cat's Cradle, "what we must, muddily must, muddily must". So when Rumsfoord hurls himself gallantly into the unknown and inaugurates a new space age, it isn't because he wants glory, or even for discovery. It is because he must: this act is required to reach the goal of a power beyond his own. While this goal is eventually met, providing a successful conclusion to human development, this success leave us with a very bleak view of humanity's purpose.

Heim, though, is a Navy man—and command implies choice. Heim is no one's tool, fighting a private war to save a planet, and his success is far from certain. But the thrill of freedom, and the danger of choice, make Anderson's future much more attractive than Vonnegut's version. While both authors provide fast-paced, easy reads, The Star Fox is really nothing more than a ripping good yarn. Vonnegut, on the other hand, forces readers to confront uncomfortable philosophical issues. This could be why, while Anderson is recognized as a Sci-Fi giant, Vonnegut has become part of the literary canon.

2007-03-14T20:18:00.000-04:00

Neil Gaiman, The Sandman: Fables and Reflections (The Collected Sandman, vol. 6). New York: D.C. Comics, 1993.

The Sandman series is a re-imagining of our mythical heritage, akin to Robert Graves' I, Claudius or John Garner's Grendel in its co-opting of familiar characters to re-develop a traditional storyline from a new perspective.

This is serious fiction. Gaiman creates well-plotted stories, which develop over several issues, and fills them with well-developed, achingly-human characters. Some of these are monsters, some human, and some gods, but each is necessary, and believable, in his role.

In Fables and Reflections, the sixth volume of collected Sandman stories, we see Dream interact with Caesar Augustus, Marco Polo, and the great caliph of Baghdad Haroun Al Raschid, as well as what happens when a dream-world collapses. These stories, however, take a back seat to Gaiman's stunning rendition of the tale of Orpheus, the son of Dream and Calliope who descends into hell seeking his lost love Eurydice.

In spite of many changes in Sandman's art production team over the issues, Gaiman gives him a consistent voice across the collected volumes. Using inspiration from all eras of history and a deep knowledge of mythology, Gaiman has, in the Sandman, created a character even the most academically-inclined can enjoy.

Even better, it's a comic book.

2007-02-19T11:30:00.000-05:00

Philip Lowry, Green Cathedrals: The Ultimate Celebration of Major League and Negro League Ballparks. 2^nd edition. New York: Walker, 2006.

Philip Lowry is a professor in Minnesota and member of the Society of American Baseball Researchers, so he knows what Rogers Hornsby meant when asked about what a ballplayer does during the winter: stare out the window and wait for spring. That is, sadly, also a fan's fate. Yet during those winter months, Lowry has put together a second edition of his classic baseball stadium reference, Green Cathedrals. The first edition, from 1986, collected information on every major league ballpark: when they were built, the architects, their playing field dimensions, occupancy, ownership, current uses, and more.

In the second edition, Lowry expands his subject to include every field to host a major league regular-season or post-season game as well as all stadiums used by teams in the Federal League, Players League, and Negro Leagues—over 400, in all. Entries are arranged alphabetically by city, then chronologically by use within each city. Thus Detroit, for instance, is represented first by Recreation Park, where the 1887 World Champion Detroit Wolverines played, followed by the Bennett Park, Briggs Stadium, and Tiger Stadium incarnations as Michigan and Trumbell. This structure is followed by entries for Mack Park, De Quindre Park, and Sportsman's Park, which hosted Negro League games between 1920 and 1961. Finally, we find today's home of the Tigers, Comerica Park.

While it is difficult to generate excitement for a reference book, this is an extremely interesting way to spend an hour or so—and an invaluable resource for research-minded baseball fans. Understanding the field of play shows why some parks produce teams with unique styles; a small park, for instance, favors power hitters, while a big outfield gives an advantage to fast runners. Lowry makes the book even more interesting by providing tidbits of history for many of these stadia. In fact, the only obvious improvement to this book would be inclusion of a running header, to facilitate navigation to individual items in it.

2007-02-05T18:23:00.000-05:00

Please follow this link to my first review for academic publication:
John Thompson, Books in the Digital Age. Malden, MA: Polity, 2005

2007-01-13T11:49:00.000-05:00

Carl Sandburg, Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years (2 volumes, 1926) and The War Years (4 volumes, 1939). New York, Harcourt, Brace & Co.

Abraham Lincoln is dead.

After seven years and countless hours of leisurely reading, the six volumes of Carl Sandberg's biography have come to a close. The end is no surprise, but no less painful for its familiarity. Abraham Lincoln, who felt more deeply than most that all men are created equal and, by sheer force of will established this as fact throughout a divided nation, was shot once behind the left ear while attending the theatre on Good Friday and expired at 7.22 the next morning, 15 April 1865, only days after seeing his cause victorious in the worst struggle this country has yet know.

While Sandburg's work is no longer regarded as the definitive Lincoln biography, it is nonetheless an amazing achievement, with two volumes covering Lincoln's childhood and early career in the Army and U.S. House of Representatives, then four devoted to his truncated two-term Presidency. Drawing heavily on primary sources, such as journals kept by members of the Cabinet, speeches, and published materials of the day, Sandburg constructs a detailed picture of the world, and people, Lincoln knew. We see the petty squabbles of cabinet members, the battle plans of generals North and South, the thoughts of Horace Greeley, Walt Whitman, and Henry Ward Beecher, among others, in their own words. Images, both photographs and reproduced documents, add a further sense of concrete reality to a time which, while only about 150 years past, seems utterly foreign.

Abraham Lincoln is dead; now he belongs to the ages. Sandburg very nearly brings his character to life, but in the end, Lincoln is still dead. Reading six somewhat dry volumes does nothing to change this, but it makes real the man who would not let government of the people, by the people, for the people, perish from the face of this earth.

2006-12-02T14:52:00.000-05:00

David Vise and Mark Malseed, The Google Story. New York: Bantam Dell, 2005.

The Google Story reads like a Hollywood screenplay, with dashing heroes Serge Bren and Larry Page brashly leading a grad-school project from start-up to Microsoft-challenging media monster. Vice and Malseed, who both write for the Washington Post, did over 150 interviews with Google employees, investors, and others who knew the wonder twins. While they have tried to be fair and address all points of view, examine all records, and cover all bases, in the end they have missed a wonderful opportunity. With access like this, good investigative reporters should uncover something interesting about the search engine/ advertising behemoth. Instead, Vice and Malseed give us exactly what Google itself gives us: an aggregation of publicity material. Even the great key to the company, the PageRank algorithm that leads to Google's search results, is reduced to its minimum: "sites with the most links pointing to them, quite simply, were more important than sites with fewer links". While this is the essence of PageRank, rather than examining how or why this is better than its predecessors, much less the other elements of the algorithm, the authors move on to how the wonder twins had to scrounge hardware on the Stanford loading docks for their servers. The massive Google Books project, and the legal questions about scanning millions of copyrighted volumes, is likewise quickly glossed over.

In short, this is a human interest story about a popular company, and as such, it has broad appeal. It does not, however, provide insight into the ways and whys of the ad giant, and is of limited value to professionals. In spite of a final chapter exploring future projects, including investments in alternative energy and genetics research, the authors present no conclusion: no lessons learned, final thoughts, or insights. Can't wait for the movie!

2006-12-02T14:31:00.000-05:00

Gregory Maguire, Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister. New York: HarperCollins, 1999.

"Beauty is no end in itself, but if it makes our lives less miserable so that we might be more kind—well, then, let's have beauty, painted on our porcelain, hanging on our walls, ringing through our stories. We are a sorry tribe of beasts. We need all the help we can get." Thus concludes Cinderella's stepsister, reflecting on their story.

Maguire, also the author of Wicked and Son of a Witch, tells this story from the inside. The action follows Iris, younger of two sisters who flee England with their mother under suspicious circumstances. Mother rapidly rises from a painter's housekeeper to wife of a tulip broker in her Dutch hometown, but disaster follows this family and even their most triumphant moments end badly. Sylvia Plath did something similar in her Transformations, reaching inside the psyche of storybook characters to unmask their motivations, but Maguire goes much further by creating a world where it is possible for ordinary stories of ambition, greed and betrayal to become myth within a single lifetime.

2006-11-15T18:08:00.000-05:00

Eugena Pilek, Cooperstown. New York: Touchstone, 2005.

Set in America's Most Perfect Village in 1979, the year Willie Mays was inducted, Cooperstown is about the people who work in and around the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum. The main characters include a set of friends who had attended the first induction, with Babe Ruth and Ty Cobb in 1939, the best ballplayer ever to come from the home of baseball, and the Baseball librarian.

Our characters are bound by a secret document, discovered in 1957 by the friend who went on to oversee collections at the Hall of Fame, which the librarian will try unsuccessfully to reveal. This is what comes of not having a trained archivist as curator! While the secret could destroy the village, events only come to a head when a psychiatrist sharing the surname of a famous umpire moves to town. Even as the townfolk come together to fight against a proposed baseball theme park, they are also coming, one by one, for help with the problems their secret has caused. As we might hope, everyone experiences personal growth and the town is not destroyed—even though the theme park wins.

2006-11-02T19:09:00.000-05:00

Walter Mosley, The Man in My Basement. New York: Little, Brown 2004.

I've enjoyed Mosley's Easy Rawlins mysteries ever since Devil in a Blue Dress, so when I saw a new book of his while browsing, I knew it would be a smart, well-crafted piece. And tagging along on a case with Easy is always a good time.

The Man in My Basement is smart and well-crafted, but is otherwise unlike anything else I'd read from Mosley. Except for that nagging question, "who IS that man in the basement", this is a straight novel—no hint that Mosley is associated with mysteries. Given over to close character study, it is almost like a drawing-room novel from Austin or Wharton. Mosley focuses on an artificial, self-imposed relationship entered for personal gain, almost totally excludes the outside world, and deep insights result in profound personal changes for the characters. Mosley plays with ideas of good and evil by sending Anniston Bennett to live in a nine-by-nine cage in Charles Blakey's basement. Blakey dislikes the idea, but needs the money Bennett offers. He cleans out the basement, which brings him into contact with his heritage and starts a romantic sub-plot. Thus, Blakey becomes jailor, confessor, and student of his strange guest. And, unlike those Easy Rawlins stories, this is more than just a fun bit of reading. We do eventually learn who Bennett is, but The Man in My Basement forces us to consider big questions like freedom and truth without providing the sort of answers we really want.

2006-09-21T21:29:00.000-04:00

Arthur Flowers, Another Good Loving Blues. New York: Ballantine, 1993.

“The blues is about a lot of things…. The blues about accepting life for what it is, good and bad. Its about making folks feel what you feel. And its mostly about people and life and stories. You know any stories?”

Arthur Flowers knows some stories; he knows some magic, too. In Another Good Loving Blues he gives us “a fine old delta tale about a mad blues piano player and a Arkansas conjure woman on a hoodoo mission.” Set in the years when Southern blacks began the great migration north, it follows Lucas Bodeen and Melvira Dupree from the moment he first sees her in the spring of 1918 until the moment, nearly six years later, when he says “I don’t ever want to lose you again.” In between are a lot of pain, a lot of music, and enough magic to make it all work out, told in a rich, muddy voice that brings the South roiling up out of the pages as viscerally as the mighty Mississippi in full flood.

2006-09-19T19:04:00.000-04:00

John Burdett, Bangkok 8. New York: Vintage, 2004.

Some concepts are universal. For instance, when a policeman’s partner is killed, he must be avenged, whether it is in New York City or Thailand. As the title suggests, this time it happens in Thailand. The location complicates things a bit.

First complication: the murder, well, wasn’t murder. The officer was killed by a poisonous snake. The snake was inside a locked car, where it had, presumably, been instrumental in killing the dead man inside; that it killed the cop who opened dthe car to investigate is incidental.

Second complication: the dead cop’s partner is a Buddhist, which means he is as conflicted as Hamlet by the thought of seeking revenge.

Third complication: the intended victim is a U.S. Marine—so the U.S. government gets involved. That always causes problems. In this case, one of these problems is an attractive FBI agent to further distract our Buddhist cop.

Burdett mixes these ingredients with a healthy dose of local Thai flavor—weather, corruption, gridlock, jade, drugs, prostitution, and bureaucracy—to stir up a spicy little thriller.

2006-09-14T20:25:00.000-04:00

Roger Schonfeld, JSTOR: A History. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003.
Elizabeth Yakel, Starting an Archives. Lanham, MA: Scarecrow Press, 1994.

Disclaimer: I have a personal connection to each of these books. I worked at JSTOR for a time, doing quality control, and Dr. Yakel was one of my instructors at the School of Information. Being so close to them, I forget that JSTOR requires an introduction to explain this pairing.

JSTOR is an online archive of scholarly journals. Now, in the age of Google Books and Google Scholar, this seems pretty passé. Everything is supposed to be online, right? But it isn’t, and what is certainly wasn’t always there; JSTOR was one of the pioneers, with work on these collections beginning in 1994.

Schonfeld makes use of complete access to papers and people in this authorized biography of a new-born business. We see everything from the Mellon Foundation board meeting at which it is conceived to an initial, successful release and subsequent growth, through the actors’ eyes. It is a fascinating look at how a group dedicated to saving shelf space in academic libraries crafted a clientele, a collection, and a new kind of company—the profitable non-profit.

Profit, however, is the wrong word. JSTOR is building an archives; the plan is to insure the survival of knowledge, as well as speed its dissemination. Great care is taken to acquire and safely store multiple physical copies of all digitized titles, protecting them in perpetuity. This takes money, which JSTOR raises. No one gets rich (trust me, no one is getting rich on this), the journals are cared for even if JSTOR goes under or the electronic world goes kaplouie, and we get a wonderful access tool for some of our most important periodic literature: titles like Science, Philosophical Transactions, English Journal, or Child Development. This electronic access, available to many libraries which could never otherwise afford subscriptions to all of the titles or acquire complete backruns, is worth much more than JSTOR charges.

Yakel’s book, then, is an obvious companion. Published for the Society of American Archivists, it is an introduction to the process for those “thinking about beginning a historical records program in their organization[s]”. Using case studies to illustrate each step and providing a bibliographic essay, list of archival associations, and sample documents, it presents enough background for an administrator to understand both what should be happening and why an expert is needed. Watching JSTOR develop against this view of the idealized process makes clear what a remarkable job they have done in balancing a responsibility to their archival mission with the competing interest of the publishers, librarians, and end users who are their constituents.

2006-09-14T10:32:00.000-04:00

Chuck Palahniuk, Choke. New York: Doubleday, 2001

You can’t say he doesn’t warn you. The very first sentence goes, “If you’re going to read this, don’t bother.” Why not? “What you’re getting here is a stupid story about a stupid little boy,” and “There has to be something better on television.”

Well, that last part probably isn’t true; otherwise, it’s a fair warning. Palahniuk, best known as the author of what became the movie Fight Club, gives us a disturbing look at that stupid little boy’s later life: he is a sexaholic who makes money by pretending to choke on his dinner in a new restaurant each night.

Yet Palahniuk’s work, while full of the disgusting and seemingly senseless distruction, is ultimately about redemption—he’s a cynic, he sees the grotesque, and he finds a way for his characters to overcome it. This isn’t a pretty story, but underneath it all, this is a beautiful story.

2006-09-14T10:31:00.000-04:00

Art Spiegelman, In the Shadow of No Towers. New York: Random House, 2004

Art Spiegelman is one of my favorite cartoonists because he never flinches. The man developed a comic book about the Holocaust, and Maus became a cultural icon by helping children understand the horror we can inflict upon one another. So who better to commemorate our generation’s defining act of terror, the attacks of September 11, 2001?

No Towers is a tortured book, reflecting Spiegelman’s own struggle to accept and understand these events. It is a personal essay in pictures, recounting his thoughts and actions on and after 9/11. This means the story is about Spiegelman, as much as 9/11, and to help us understand him, Spiegelman includes a short history of the funny papers as an appendix. Still, the levity this provides does not completely counter the crushing weight of loss No Towers conveys. As we reach the fifth anniversary of these horrible events, In the Shadow of No Towers is a powerful memorial and reminder of what we have lost.

2006-09-07T18:57:00.000-04:00

Stephen King, The Colorado Kid. NY: Hard Case Crime, 2005

Hard Case Crime is a new publisher working in an old field: their books are designed to revive the dark detective stories of 1940s pulp fiction, like Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler. So far—and The Colorado Kid is only the thirteenth title—they have done this well. The books are cheap, with flashy cover art, and include new novels from original masters, a choice republication or two, and work from new artists in the old style.

Stephen King doesn’t fit any of these categories, but the world’s best selling fiction writer is no stranger to the mass market format—or to murder. What makes his contribution special, however, is that The Colorado Kid is a brand-new piece, first published here in a niche paperback: King usually gets the royal hardcover treatment for new books. Otherwise, this is pretty much what you expect from him: a compelling story told very well. It is a frame story, told to an intern at a small-town newspaper on a slow summer afternoon, and describes events long past but as yet unexplained. This detachment keeps it from being scary, but still manages to provide plenty of suspense: it’s a mystery, not horror, and it is a quick, fun read.

2006-08-29T16:41:00.000-04:00

Shari Thurow, Search Engine Visibility. Berkeley, CA: New Riders, 2003.

Admit it, by now you've Googled yourself (If you haven't, go to Google and run a search on your name. I'll wait.). It's interesting to see how the world sees us: is the top result you? Are you even on the first page?

Do you want to be? Sheri Thurow is a search engine marketer, and she can help. Her book Search Engine Visibility is straight-forward, crisp, and practical. In it, she provides enough basic theory for context, so one need never ask 'why'. From her five rules of web design to her search engine and directory submission checklists, her advice is clear and easy to follow. Thurow covers improving site visibility at two points: building new pages, and improving existant ones. Along the way she provides examples from her own portfolio as illustrations, and clear explanation of both the techniques to use and the reasons behind them. Her list of website resources is also very nice.

To sum up, the key to a good search engine ranking is building a good website. Design with the user in mind, providing quality content and simple navigation, and the spiders wil reward you. As Thurow says, "building a site for your target audience and following search engine best practices is one of the most cost-effective components of a search engine marketing campaign".

2006-07-18T18:59:00.000-04:00

Armstrong, Nancy. Desire and Domestic Fiction: A Political History of the Novel. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987.

Armstrong follows Foucault in noting a change in sexuality coincidental with the rise of the bourgeois. She, however, feels that this change created a new, feminine form of power: women were responsible for ordering private life, which included everything not business or politics. Sex was not 'repressed,' but 'domesticated'; Armstrong reads the h[er]story of women(not business or politics) in novels by, for, and about women, and claims that this history of sexuality has as much relevance and influence as the more familiar patriarchal economic history. The middle-class woman, as arbiter of social standards, wielded a vast but unrecognized power.

2006-07-18T18:58:00.000-04:00

Brower, Reuben A. "From the Iliad to Jane Austen, via The Rape of the Lock." Jane Austen: Bicentenary Essays. ed John Halperin. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975.

This article may provide nothing more than a footnote: it draws an explicit connection between Austen and the Greeks by showing stylistic and thematic similarities between Austen and Pope, who translated the Homeric epics and provided England with its last great does of Greek ideology. While such a connection is fortunate, it is not the connection I seek.

2006-07-18T18:17:00.000-04:00

Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality. trans Robert Hurley. New York: Random House, 1978.

In volume one, Foucault states that his aim "is to examine the case of a society which has been loudly castigating itself for its hypocrisy for more than a century, which speaks verbosely of its own silence, takes great pains to relate in detail the things it does not say, denounces its power, and promises to liberate itself from the very laws that have made it function"(8). His subject is sex, and its relation to power; he links sexual repression to the rise of capitalism (and thus to the rise of the novel).

Volume one lays out his hypotheses (that sex was driven outside the realm of accepted discourse, thus becoming a much-discussed subject, and that 'perversion'--deviation from the marriage bed--became 'unnatural,' and thus fascinating) and a method for establishing free discourse on the subject.

The coincidence of a rising bourgeoisie repressing sexuality, however, immediately lends credence to the notion of a new value system for novels to represent.

2006-07-18T18:03:00.000-04:00

The Persian Gulf War as Economic Imperialism

There were many justifications and rationalizations for the United States–led action against Iraq in 1991, including the moral imperative not to allow aggression. However, I would like to argue that it was essentially an act of economic imperialism. Imperialism is the acquisition of territory and suppression of its inhabitants(23 Oct), generally for economic purposes. Decolonization after World War II has ended this direct control, but there are still indirect means of exploitation. A theoretical assessment of the period following decolonization defines Neo–Imperialism as any relationship of effective domination or control, political or economic, direct or indirect, of one state over another(26 Oct). The fundamental issue here is power: the ability of one state to make another do what the first wills it to(26 Oct). In this case, oil can be equated with power, as the forming of OPEC in 1973 demonstrated. If Iraq had been successful in annexing Kuwait, it would have controlled approximately one fifth of the world's available oil resources. This would give Iraq an enormous amount of economic power; a petro–chemically dependant world would, eventually, have to meet any demands Iraq might make.

One of the assumptions Neo–Imperialists make is that the interests of business and government are closely related in Neo–Imperialistic states. If it is true in this case that both have an interest in a secure oil supply, both would also apparently have an interest in the stability of the Middle–East. While the Middle–East has traditionally been a hotbed of conflict, until 1990 the power seemed to be relatively balanced. Had the Iraqi annexation of Kuwait been successful, however, it would have greatly increased Saddam Hussein's standing, both economically and politically. His successful occupation would have not only demonstrated his willingness and his ability to do as he pleased in the region, but would also have given Arabs a leader to rally under in their conflict with Israel. These factors would have greatly increased Hussein's power in the region, perhaps enough to not only change the balance of power but even to create an Iraqi hegemony. This hegemony could have, in turn, been detrimental to the oil supply: it might have decreased the region's stability, and thus it's oil-producing capabilities, or it could have given Iraq virtual control of the entire region and allowed them to control production, however and for whatever reasons it chose.

I will begin my analysis at some point before Iraq actually moves to annex Kuwait, while this hegemony is still only a possibility. Yet this possibility would be threatening to the interests of oil–dependant first world states, which need a steady supply of inexpensive petroleum. Since Iraq, before the invasion, had the forth largest standing army in the world while Kuwait was poorly defended, if Iraq chose to make such a move it was sure to be successful. There was also a somewhat legitimate border dispute between the two countries, which increased the likelihood of an Iraqi invasion. If a Neo–Imperialist society sees such a threat, it seems reasonable that it will take steps to avoid losing control of its resources. The problem, then, becomes one of logistics: how can the Neo–Imperialists achieve the secure oil supply they need without making their intentions of interference obvious? It seems possible that the United States, acting in Neo–Imperialist fashion, saw this possibility and took steps to protect its interests by setting Iraq up to invade Kuwait, so it could be knocked down and eliminated as a threat. The border dispute provided an opportunity: the infamous state department communication that, "We don't get involved in border disputes", seemed to give Iraq a green light for their invasion. Once Iraq took that action, however, the United States led an international outcry against the violation of Kuwaiti sovereignty. This violation, which had occurred with what seems like not only full knowledge, but the blessing, of the United States, was then used as justification for United Nations sanctions and the United Nations–approved use of force against Iraq.

To call this an economically motivated act of Neo–Imperialism is to say that the United States was re–establishing its dominance in its relationship with Iraq, for the purpose of securing economic interests. That the United States proved itself dominant in this relationship is obvious from the conflict's result; that the economic goals were achieved can be surmised from the fall in gasoline prices since the conflict's end. Yet to call it an act of Neo–Imperialism, the connection between business and government interests should be made. This is a fundamental assumption of the Neo–Imperialist framework, and if it does not hold true, it is inappropriate to apply that framework. That George Bush's personal fortune was made in oil may or may not be relevant here; that United States automakers have successfully lobbied against increased mileage requirements; that the government has been unenthusiastic at best about exploring other energy options, such as hemp, corn, solar, wind, and hydro-electric power––these factors seem relevant. They seem to fit Lenin's economic perspective of Imperialism(23 Oct), which focuses on monopoly capitalism. The petro–chemical energy system, while not monopolized itself, has a monopoly on the energy market. To keep this monopoly intact, they need access to petroleum. Thus they would have a great interest in maintaining the security of Mid–Eastern resources.

This war may have occurred without such capitalistic influences, but it seems likely that if the United States had adopted Jimmy Carter's energy program, thus reducing its dependence on petroleum, they would not have developed such a close relationship, presumably designed to protect petroleum interests, with Iraq in the first place. Instead, they built its military base during other conflicts and gave Hussein the strength to become a threat. Realizing too late what it had done, the United States had no choice but to destroy that threat, or lose its power over the oil supply. Losing that power would not only hurt the United States economically, it would bring into question its political power and thus its international standing.

2006-07-16T14:56:00.000-04:00

Garis, Robert. "Learning Experience and Change." Critical Essays on Jane Austen. ed. B.C. Southam. London" Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1968.

The learning experience--character development--drives Austen's novels: when heroines grow, novels work. Key is 'sense'--seeing and behaving well. When heroines see well, behavior follows, and the emphasis is on seeing self and others as the really are and ought to be. The remainder of the paper demonstrates this theory is Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Emma, and Persuasion, as well as showing Austen's own growth as an author. The term sense, as Garis uses it, is nicely paralleled to my notion of being, from the Greek.

2006-07-16T14:54:00.000-04:00

Looser, Devoney. "(Re)Making History and Philosophy: Austen's Northanger Abbey. European Romantic Review. vol 4.1(summer 1993). 34-55.

This article deconstructs the terms "history," "philosophy," and "novel" in an attempt to understand how Austen used, and related to, these concepts in her work. This provides insight into what Austen thought young women ought to study, and thus on her very hidden political agenda. Looser also presents the novel, as opposed to the conduct book, vying for readers, and offering them something accepted as a special kind of truth: truth, rather than fiction, fact, or conjecture, and deserving respect on its own terms.

2006-07-16T14:53:00.000-04:00

Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Birth of Tragedy. trans. Francis Golffing. New York: Doubleday, 1956.

Nietzsche seems to have two major themes in this book-- that Greek tragedy was a result of the conflict between opposing ideologies, and that its decline began with the ascendance of one over the other. I think there are several connections/parallels between his description of Greek tragedy and the rise of the novel.

Nietzsche tells of the Dionysian ritual, with its use of music, and makes the claim that tragedy began with this. The music was provided by the chorus, which sang the story. The rituals of Dionysis, we are told, brought about a state like intoxication, in which the sense of individual was lost in the larger community of being; the chorus was the whole audience, and acting out the play provided an intuitive glimpse of the metaphysical belief system. Plays, at this level, were probably no more than current responsive reading rituals.

This changed with the Apollonian influence, which was the power of dream, not intoxication; the power to see clearly, as embodied in the epic, and in sculpture, and to notice, rather than lose, the individual particulars, described, rather than participated in, reality. Dionysis symbolized process, Apollo, the ideal as manifested in forms.

The blending of these two cultures brought mythology to the stage. Instead of just having a drunken camp-fire songfest, as Dionysis would, Apollo told the stories of great beings, who had lived up to the ideal despite great consequences. These stories, however, only held the stage for two generations before losing contact with the orgiastic Dionysian spirit of music which had spawned them. Apollo took over when Socrates denied that Dionysis could provide true wisdom, but suggested that, through the knowledge of particulars, Apollo could. I agree with Nietzsche and Blake, that Socrates was mistaken, as does an entire sect of Hinduism.

2006-07-16T14:51:00.000-04:00

Reddy, T. Vasudeva. Jane Austen: The Dialectics of Self-Actualizationin Her Novels. New Delhi: Sterling Publishers Private Limited, 1987.

This book studies Austen's heroines in terms of the choices they make and the development that results from them. Austen's heroines are doing what the Greeks did, trying to realize self-fulfillment in spite of opposition from their social situations, by becoming increasingly self-aware. I think Vasudeva stole my thesis.

2006-07-16T14:47:00.000-04:00

Todd, Janet. "Jane Austen, Politics, and Sensibility." Feminist Criticism. ed. Susan Sellers. Buffalo: University of Toronto Press, 1991.

Todd examines Austen's use of sensibility as a political too. The sensibility Austen uses is tempered by reality; her heroines learn and grow, rather than stagnantly screaming. She did not like sensibility, and used her work both to show its negative effects(e.g. Catherine Moreland) and how they could be overcome. Sentimental literature not only reinforced conservative norms of aristocracy and airheadedness, it also, in many instances, enforced the emotions which did this upon the reader involuntarily, through its narrative techniques.

Austen detested sensibility, so her work, when it does show political colors, lines up against this "feminine" notion--thus making her appear more conservative than she may in fact have been. it also mirrors reality--a patriarchal reality--well, so her heroines do marry(only Emma, I understand, makes it on her own).

2006-07-16T14:42:00.000-04:00

The Uberdog on Animal Farm
Jack London calls forth a two-sided critical response. He is acknowledged as an admitted socialist, yet his work is also often commented upon for its fierce strain of individualism. While London's portrayal of nature in a realistic manner can be seen as something organically American, it has intellectual roots in the European philosophy of Nietzsche and Spencer.

My intention is to, using London's own work, explore the implications of these two contradictory strains in his work. Call of the Wild will serve as a basis for examining the individualism he derived from his reading; his socialistic pamphlettering provides material for examining the society he thought men should build.

These two strains of thought seem bound to clash. In a communal society, the needs of the individual are subordinate to the needs of society as a whole. This does not preclude outstanding achievement by the most gifted, but in spite of taking from each according to ability, it only rewards according to need. The individualist can no longer obey the law of club and fang, taking what is desired because the taking is possible. While such brutal measures may be necessary on the way to a Socialist state, what is then to become of them?

If Call of the Wild is read as an allegory, as it often is, we can see what happens when the superior individual, Buck, is turned loose on society. London provides two contrasting societies for Buck: the sled teams, and the wolf pack. This paper will examine how London's individualism plays out in these two setting, which correspond to capitolistic and socialistic societies. Thus, the book will provide evidence of London's sense of the individual, and of his interpretation of the individual in society.

2006-07-16T14:37:00.000-04:00

Richard Wright's Bigger Thomas is, unquestionably, a product of his environment. He grows up in almost exactly the same neighborhood as Studs Lonigan did; we already know that the environment here is not fully nurturing. By cramming a whole family into Studs' bedroom, giving them less money and less opportunity, marking them with a social stigma even worse than being Irish, and filling the boy with a burning rage against society, Wright all but guarantees that his protagonist will end up in worse shape than Studs. The only question is how.

Bigger Thomas is a product of his environment; he does not act of his own free will. He doesn't even discover free will until after he acts. No, he doesn't plan anything--everything he does is a response. If he wants to rob a store, it is because he is bored and needs cash; if he gets into a fight with his partners that makes them miss the hold-up, it is because he is scared. Likewise, he takes a job because his family will starve if he doesn't. He kills in the same guttural way--smothering the fear of discovery and accusations with a pillow. Remember, Bigger has been trying to do his job, trying to put Mary to bed because she was too drunk to do it herself. When blind Mrs. Dalton stops by the room, he panics at the thought she might accuse him of raping Mary and stifles her voice. He is too busy worrying about Mrs. Dalton to notice when Mary stops struggling. But once Mrs. Dalton is gone and Bigger realizes what he has done, he realizes his power over the world.

Bigger Thomas is a product of his environment. When the environment presents him an opportunity to make $10,000.00, he tries to cash in. He has been taught that Communists are bad, so he tries to blame them. He thinks that Besse will get him caught, so he kills her. Now Bigger is thinking. This is slightly better than the pure reactionary responses; Bigger is aware of his power, at least. He is now aware of his ability to influence the outside world. But Bigger is still not acting of free will.

Bigger Thomas is a product of his environment. He only comes into this realization as his story ends; his conversations with Mr. Max trigger the self-reflection which is necessary for free will. Without this awareness of how he has been controlled by his environment, Bigger would never be able to act in a way other than that indicated by those influences. Yet if he did not make this realization, he would have been drawn to the pleas of his mother and the minister; he would have been terrified by the burning cross outside of the courtroom. "But sometimes," Bigger tells Max, "I wish you hadn't asked me them questions. . . . They made me think and thinking's made me scared a little"(495).

But Bigger Thomas is a product of his environment. Even thinking doesn't change that. Bigger has been bred to hate by forces he cannot control. While he has no desire to kill, he accepts that he has killed and does what he consequently must. That he knows his actions are wrong is not enough to counter the forces of rage burning in his belly. This fire has been stoked by years of squalor, over-crowding, opportunities denied, and dreams deferred. While Bigger does realize that he can act otherwise, by then it is too late; the fire has already broken free, and is now just burning itself out.

2006-07-16T14:29:00.000-04:00

Steinbeck's In Dubious Battle is not a book ripe with imagery. The text relies heavily on dialogue; I can't count what the characters say is imagery, since imagery is an expository device. Imagery is used to describe, to provide a picture of what is being discussed. When Steinbeck writes "Lisa looked in, with bird-like interest," he is using the image of a bird to describe the girl. We can picture quick, jerky head movement, hesitating half-steps, and a rustling flutter as she sits. This is an effective use of imagery; it reinforces our idea of Lisa as a timid, cautious girl.

The characters in this book are fruit tramps. They work in orchards; they talk about their work. Much of the novel's exposition is given to describing the settings through which they move, which necessitates detailed description of the out-of-doors. The rest simply reports what they are actually doing. A paragraph from chapter 15 will work as an example of what Steinbeck does with his exposition:

Through the trees they could see Anderson's little white house, and its picket fence, and the burning geraniums in the yard. "No one around," said Jim.

We have four adjectives in this paragraph: little, white, picket, and burning. The whole scene creates a precise image, but there is nothing I would latch onto as imagery, per se, in it except the description of the flowers as aflame.

The most effective imagery, as a rule, is drawn from characters themselves: it rises naturally from what they say, what they do, and where they are. An author who can draw on these areas to create images, to make scenes clear without resorting to set-piece description, blesses his readers. That is what Steinbeck does. He uses food to explain, or stand in place of, the attitudes of the strikers; he uses the over-flowing orchards as symbols for the crimes capitol commits unthinkingly; he lets dialogue do the dirty work of setting tone throughout the book. He writes with great economy, not wasting words on narration when they can be spoken by a character. This gives his characters more depth and believability; it gives his readers a story that moves quickly from page to page; and it makes imagery difficult to discover.

The images we do find are almost all related to the earth: to the soil, vegetation, and animals. When Mac opens Anderson's gate, for instance, the hinges "growled": real imagery, even. More often, the images come from the characters, in dialogue: London calls Mills bombs "pineapples"; Lisa and Jim talk about cats; Mac tells Jim he stands out "like a cow on a side-hill."

Steinbeck's use of imagery, then, is subtle and atypical. By allowing his characters the freedom to speak, without the imposition of a heavy-handed narrative voice, Steinbeck shows us the images they see. This not only makes the story more vivid, as imagery ought, but it also strengthens the characters and keeps the plot moving without the distraction of set-piece description.

2006-07-16T14:27:00.000-04:00

Inductivism was the school that thought science began with observations and once a sufficient number of varied samples had been made, if none of them falsified the theory, a universal law could be derived from them–– that is, from observing nature, the way nature behaved could be understood. As the name implies, this view of science stood on induction, the making of generalizations. But as we have all found in everyday life, sometimes the generalizations don' hold true. Maybe your alarm clock has gone off every morning since you bought it. From this, you could inductively conclude that your alarm clock goes off every morning and will continue to do so. But if the power goes out one night and your clock stops, it won't go off the next morning. When you finally wake up, you will learn that your law has been falsified. While you Ümay believe that your alarm will go off in the morning, you can never know that it will until it does. So the big problem Inductivism faced was not falsification–– which merely proved that a theory was wrong–– but the chance of future falsification. Inductivism was relying on the past to predict the future, when there was really no reason to believe that the future would be anything like the past. An inductive argument can never prove something conclusively, it can only show what is likely to happen.

Falsification was meant to be a better–– more accurate–– view of how science really works. For the Inductivist, anything involving a sufficient number of varied observations which don't falsify the generalizations, and which makes predictions that are either proven or disproved by the observations, is a science. But this leads to calling some really pointless data–gathering exercises "sciences," and that didn't seem right. Yet the criteria were also too narrow, because no number of observations could prove a generalization. So a new demarkation for science was sought–– new criteria for qualification as a "science," and these guys decided that if a statement was scientific, we must be able to state which observations would prove it false. If a statement is unfalsifible–– if the results it predicts are unobservable, or will be true no matter what happens, or if it resorts to ad–hoc defenses in staving off falsification–– then it isn't scientific. And this seemed like a logical enough solution. After all, once an observation came up to falsify a theory under either view, that theory was kaputz. Falsifications were death blows for any theory: they proved it wrong under both Inductivism and Falsificationism. But unlike Inductivists, who always had to worry that this might happen and spoil their pretty laws, a Falsificationist wasn't making a law. They had abandoned induction–– and supposedly, all the problems that went with it–– for the idea that one can't make laws that explain the universe, but only try to explain the universe, so lets get on with trying. It was the antithesis of Inductivism: since one observation can prove a theory false while infinitely many can't prove it true, stop trying to prove it and try to prove it false. If, after all efforts, it still hasn't been falsified–– hey, it might be true. We don't know–– and never will–– but we'll assume it is anyway and go on.

Falsificationism does this by following standard scientific procedure–– the scientific method we learn in junior high school. They notice a problem, formulate a theory, and set about testing the hypothesis through experiment and observation. If the results falsify their original hypothesis, it is rejected; if it is supported–– corroborated–– further efforts are made to falsify it. If all attempts to falsify the theory instead corroborate it, it is conditionally accepted, as a fairly accurate description or description–– provisionally accepted, not as fact or as something true, but as the best description currently available. But it must be remembered that corroboration does not equal proof; a theory may be falsified at any time. Karl Popper was the chief spokesman for falsificationism, and he maintained that it requires a critical attitude of scientists–– a willingness to subject even their pet theories to strenuous examination, and a willingness to let them go when falsified. The critical attitude is much like the examined life Socrates advocated: a questioning, a seeking for new truth, open–mindedness in listening to criticism, as willingness to be wrong, and the resilience to try again. Without this attitude a scientist would cling blindly to her theory in the face of all evidence to the contrary, no truth would be found, and no progress would be made. Popper, though, calls on scientists to be good sports.

Now, an Inductivist would look at this in wide–eyed wonder, because while it is supposed to get around the problem of induction–– the fact that we can't base the future on the past because we can't conclusively prove that it will happen again–– it is, in essence, doing just that. It seems to say that because we have never proven this doesn't work, it will keep working. However, the Falsificationist will quickly point out that while he accepts a tenet for practical reasons, like a foundation for further work, this doesn't make it true, doesn't claim it as true, and doesn't rule out change. "In fact," he might say, "we expect to do away with this, eventually–– but right now it's the best we have." See, falsificationism doesn't try to justify its conclusion; it doesn't even claim that they will continue to work. It uses induction, yes, but doesn't count on it. Sidestepping the problem of proof through induction is one advantage of falsificationism, but there are others. It also allows for the "theory–ladeness" of observation, which was a criticism of the Inductivist's actual method, not her theoretical merit. In falsification, one is looking for specific things that are relative to her theory. Inductivists, on the other hand, are required to observe all things, pertinent or not–– because they aren't supposed to know what is pertinent until after seeing it all–– and base their conclusions on an unbiased assessment of everything observed. This was shown to be quite impossible, in practicality–– every scientist studied has gone into experiments with an idea of what to look for. Falsificationism allows for the importance of theory in experimentation, and is in fact based on it(doing experiments which try to falsify, remember? Looking for things that don't jive with the theory...). Finally, Falsificationists don't work in the historical vacuum of an Inductivist. They build on what has gone before, even while admitting that what they are building on may crumble under a new falsification any time, thus bringing down their work, too. Meanwhile, the Inductivist has to start from observations, always, and each new Inductivist has to make her own observation before she can make a generalization. Falsificationism is much closer to what scientists really do.

If more than one theory is competing to explain the same phenomena, Falsificationists have criteria for choosing the better one: the degree of falsifiability–– because the easier it is to falsify a theory, the easier it will be to prove that it isn't the best one if it isn't–– and its generality. The falsifiability of a hypothesis depends both on its clarity and its precision. If a theory is vague, it may fall into the error of claiming universal confirmation, like astrology–– claiming that the results support its conclusion, no matter what those results are. If it is imprecise in its predictions, the results will be unobservable and thus unfalsifible. Generality is desirable because a more general theory will explain more things. It offers an explanation for more occurrences, and also has more chances to be falsified. For example, if I have a theory about why roses are red, but Gregor Mendle has a theory that explains why roses are red, violets are blue, and the colors of all other flowers, too, his theory would be preferred. Not only would it explain much more than mine if it was right, but many more things could falsify it. Only roses could falsify mine, but roses, bluebells, hollyhocks, belladonna, jack in the pulpit, or any other flower could falsify Mendle's. Finally, a theory will be rejected if the modifications it makes to avoid falsification are ad–hoc–– that is, if the consequences of the modifications aren't testable, or are no more testable than the original theory. Legitimate modifications are testable...

2006-07-16T14:16:00.000-04:00

Utopia, the introduction to my copy tells me, means 'nowhere'. Apparently, Thomas More wrote it to give us an example of good government: We made no inquires, however, about monsters, which are common enough. Scyllas, ravenous harpies, and cannibals are easy to find anywhere, but it is not so easy to find states that are 'well and wisely governed'(p.4). This is a frame story. An ambassador from Henry VIII of England, named More, meets a traveler and invites him to dinner. Before the meal, they talk about his adventures, and focus on Utopia because it is the best-governed state he has seen. Before they do this, though, More asks why he doesn't work for a prince, like Machavelli did. With his store of wisdom and experience, he could be a great help. The visitor responds with a bitterly accurate assessment of why he wouldn't: courtiers are after power. To keep their power, they would ridicule his good but different ideas(like not invading another country, since running one is more than job enough), and he would end up achieving nothing while being miserable. As it is, he is happy and the princes can read Machavelli if they really want sound advice.

I have trouble reading this as satire; I realize that criticism was at least a large part of the intent, and I definitely see the humor in More's names when I check the footnotes. I also see the criticism, especially in Book One. But perhaps I am too far removed from the system he is criticizing to really appreciate it.

Book One is the more enjoyable part of 'Utopia'. The dialogue gives it some feeling of interaction, unlike the cataloguing in Book Two. The dialogue also provides greater opening for humor. Also, while Book Two's demonstration of good government shows how the English system had gone wrong, I think that the direct discussion of it in Book One provides more effective criticism. Book Two describes More's fantasy, while in Book One he deals directly with the problems he sees in the current system.

I was drawn to 'Utopia' in an odd way: Abbie Hoffman's 'Revolution for the Hell of It' crystallized a discontent in me when I was eighteen, and that lead me to look for, or at, alternatives. A book called 'Utopia', since the word has become synonymous with 'ideal society', seemed like an obvious place to start.

While Book One is more fun, it is in Book Two, where More directly relates what the traveler has told him, that is really of interest. In this part, he simply describes everything about Utopia and its inhabitants, from their agriculture to marriage customs and moral philosophy. I agree with much, if not most, of what he says. He presents a truly communist society. In it, everyone works, and everyone takes what she needs. This is possible because the Utopians do take only what they need: they are not at all materialistic; their only greed is for knowledge and intellectual stimulation. They do not even really have a concept of money. Gold and silver are used for toilets and bondsmen's chains, and only spent on military expenses(which are only defensive). This moneyless society perfectly meshes with the ideals Hoffman gave me, and makes Utopia a place I really want to see before I die, like Paris and Rome and Alaska.

I do, however, disagree with several specifics within this wonderful system. For starters, they keep criminals as bondsmen. It isn't even particularly hard labor they're set to; conditions are infinitely better than the gulags. But they are sentenced for life whenever sentenced. Any crime(that isn't a capitol offense, like adultery) gets you life on the golden chain–gain. This is just extreme. I realize how generous this is when compared to hanging by the neck until dead, dead, dead, and I know that the Utopians occasionally release bondsmen for good behavior, patience, and repentance, but it seems that they should weigh the sentences to reflect the severity of the crime. Eliminating crimes of property does eliminate many petty offenses, but some things are still worse than others.

My other major complaint involves religion, so it essentially undermines the entire book. More give his Utopians religious freedom, but makes them gravitate by force of reason to the acceptance of one supreme(Judeo–Christian) being, and has them converting to Catholicism in droves, as soon as the traveler exposes them to it This, of course, reflects More's religious views, just as 'Island' most likely incorporates Auldous Huxley's views into his utopia. I happen to disagree with More's views. It doesn't seem possible to me, looking at Western history, to embrace the dualistic thinking of the Church and live in a perfect society at the same time. I say this because Christianity is a religion of oppression: saying, 'Those who are last shall be first' makes being last bearable; it lets the oppressed feel that they will be vindicated for their suffering, once they are dead.

The Utopians are virtuous, yes. They liberate other countries from tyrants. But they subscribe to a world–view that makes oppression possible, and has lead to much oppression. I do not think that their world-view is compatible with the idea Utopia has come to imply. Still, I love this book. It speaks of one person's vision of a better world, a world we could live in, if we only gave up one thing. Getting rid of money is, I think, the first step to a true utopia: it would immediately make everyone equal in one respect: It would force a re–evaluation of needs and priorities. It would make people into ends, rather than means. This book gives me hope.

2006-07-16T14:09:00.000-04:00

In the previous two novels, we have seen Studs Lonigan go from a boyhood full of potential to a manhood wasted on booze. Now, in his final book, we see the end to which this leads. To make his moralizing more effective, however, Farrell needs to make Studs more representative of America that the drunken Irish stereotype he has drawn thus far. He does this by confronting three subjects which are experienced by all: death, love, and money.

The book opens with Studs returning to Chicago from a drinking buddy's funeral in Terre Haute, and it closes with him lying dead. It seems fairly obvious that all Americans will go through experiences like these--while we might not all have friends, we will all die.

On this opening trip back, though, we learn of Catherine--a new character. Catherine loves Studs. She, when he asks her, agrees to marry him; she gives her body to him, and is carrying his child when he dies. Of course, this relationship isn't always rosy, but how many are? The engagement is even broken for a while. But when they are together, they do typically American things, like go to the movies, the World's Fair, and even a dance marathon.

Yet Studs becomes a representative American not through something he does, like dying or falling in love, but through what happens to him: the Great Depression. Because of this, he suffers. His father goes bankrupt; he loses his job. He loses money on the market. He even tries to get a sleazy job selling sanitary drinking cups. He can't afford to get married. Life is hard, as it was for most people during the Depression.

While these experience don't change the fact that Studs has become a very limited character, they do make him into someone who can be identified with by more than just the Chicago Irish community. In this regard, Judgment Day is the best novel of the Studs Lonigan trilogy.

2006-07-16T14:06:00.000-04:00

I consider the statement "Life is worth living" to be prima facia true. Perhaps that is why asking if life is meaningful gives me so much trouble. It is not a question of "is life worth living" or of what gives meaning to life, but of what makes life meaningful: what makes an individual life meaningful, and to whom. A meaningful life is not one that has meaning to the person living it, or one that is worth living, or one that is good, necessarily. It may be any or all of these, but it is also something beyond that. It is a life that touches others, a life that is somewhat universally and historically significant, as if we were looking down, counting all the lives and going "Yup, that one's important––" it must have an effect on others to be meaningful(and perhaps obviously, the greater the effect, either or both in number of people effected and magnitude of individual effect, the more meaningful the life). This is the only way we can tell if it is meaningful, objectively: through its effect on others.

Perhaps I should now distinguish between a meaningful life(one which has meaning to others) and a life that has meaning. Any life can have meaning: meaning may come from a sense of purpose, or a passionate involvement, or from looking for meaning in life. Meaning is objective, yes: it is derived from a nameable something; a life is, however, only meaningful hyper–objectively. Any number of things can give meaning to a person's life; none of this necessarily makes it(hyper–objectively) meaningful. Some may object to this, saying that because they think or feel that their lives have meaning, they 'do' have meaning, and/or are meaningful. However, this claim is entirely subjective; to 'have' meaning, one must have objective somethings giving life meaning, not just a feeling that it has meaning.

To clarify this, let me explain what I mean by a life touching others(a meaningful life), by saying that most people don't matter to me. This sounds harsh, but I would not be effected by the death of most individuals currently alive(nor was I effected by most people who have already died)––simply because they have had no part in or impact on my life. In fact, only a small number of persons throughout history have individually changed my life: Shakespeare, Stalin, Beethoven, Christ, and Abbie Hoffman come quickly to mind. Of course, this is not including persons I know, or my family. Let us now consider them. Aside from my parents, who would have influenced my genetics even if they had not raised me, how may of these people would have effected me if I had never met them? Of course, they 'did' effect me, because I did meet them, and thus they have been meaningful to my life. But you can see how few people are actually meaningful to me. It is the same for everyone, I am sure, including myself. Except for personal contact, I doubt I have effected anyone. And even among those I have been in contact with, and thus effected to some extent, only a few would flinch upon hearing of my death, and undoubtedly none of them would have had a much different life if someone else had been born in my place. While of course my life seems meaningful to me(I am the most important person in my world, meaning that I am the one I consider first and foremost), that is a biased and subjective judgment. Take me away from my life, and who does it matter to, now that it no longer matters to me? My life then, except to a very few, has not been meaningful. It has made no impression on, or required any response from, the lives of others. It can have meaning to me, but to be meaningful, it must be meaningful to someone else. It is even conceivable that a life could be devoid of any meaning(an infant, for instance), and yet still be somewhat meaningful(to the parents). The two are not necessarily related. Yet for an autonomous life to actually be meaningful, it seems that it must effect more people than those who would be effected by its passive existence(parents and nurses, for example). I say autonomous because some persons have not yet met this criteria(children, or some of the mentally handicapped), and I do not want to dismiss their obvious meaningfulness to those close to them. I do, however, include those who have lost, or given away, autonomy(the aged, those in coma, or the heroin junkie): their lives may have been meaningful, but that doesn't make them meaningful now––which is not to say that they no longer have meaning. They may. This stance comes from a belief that life is not necessarily meaningful, yet life is a good thing to have and thus worth living(this is not to say that other factors may not outweigh this intrinsic value, and has nothing to do with my position on euthanasia, suicide, or abortion and infanticide). This conflict made me question not only what gives a life meaning, but what makes it meaningful. While looking for an objective standard of meaningfulness, I realized what my criteria was(effecting others), and found that most lives have the opportunity to be meaningful: the lives of parents are generally meaningful to their children and visa versa, as are those of friends, and teachers to students, et cetera, because of the influence each one has on another individual. Yet this means that regardless of how full of meaning a life is, it can only be(hyper– objectively) meaningful in the context of others. Something which gives meaning to my life does not necessarily make it meaningful to others. For example, if I were marooned alone on a desert island, I could find meaning for my life in the creative process of writing poetry(more on this below). But unless my work reached other people, it would not have any effect. My work, while being intrinsically valuable and giving me satisfaction(and giving my life meaning), would be meaningless.

Of course, life's being meaningful only in the context of others is contingent upon some value or meaning 'in' the lives of others. After all, if my life is meaningless without influencing others, but others are meaningless, I have no basis for being meaningful. Meaninglessness compounded upon meaninglessness does not create a meaningful anything, but only multiplies the meaninglessness. However, this does not really pose a problem. Because they are alive, most people are to some extent meaningful(whither or not their lives have meaning), as I have explained. But even if I am living my meaningless island life, Shakespeare is still meaningful to me, because I can derive meaning from reading and studying his work. Thus I have meaning, and Shakespeare has someone to be meaningful to.

Or perhaps this is really a question of whither or not humanity is meaningful. Allow me a return question: How would I be effected if there were no species homeo sapiens? The belief that life is not necessarily meaningful was crystallized upon reading Richard Taylor's 'The Meaning of Human Existence'. Taylor's main argument is that lives which have no purpose are meaningless, and ultimately, human lives are no different than those of animals: we repeat a pointless cycle of actions, achieving nothing but our own continuation and the continuation of our species and driven only by instinctive desires, for life's entire duration. Even higher goals, like artistic creation or athletic feats, he says, are no more than a peacock's preening before a hen: a method of making ourselves attractive to the opposite sex. This is quite bleak, and if correct, life does seem rather meaningless. Yet Taylor says that some lives can have meaning, if they have an over–riding purpose: striving toward a particular, realistic or attainable goal of the person's own choosing and design. In other words, he says that creative and intellectual work can give life meaning. Thus, according to Taylor, choosing to write poetry in my isolation would give my life meaning(even though it is no more than preening before an imaginary mate, by Taylor's own account). However, these standards still leave little hope that most people can lead lives which have meaning; most of us are not able to devote our lives to such pursuits.

While part of me agrees with this assessment(the part which makes a distinction between life having meaning for the one living it and actually being meaningful), another part of me was very glad to see Thomas Nagel's chapter, 'The Absurd', argue that some goals(or "pointless cycles") are intrinsically valuable or self–justifying, and that not even the highest of purposes(or one that is attainable, and both chosen and designed by an individual) is ultimately justifiable. One can, after all, ask why one is doing that which is most worthy of being done: what makes that the best thing to do? This satisfies my other belief: that even a meaningless life is worth living. The process of living is intrinsically valuable––or at least parts of it are. In another chapter, 'Death', Nagel expands on this by arguing that if death is an evil, it is only because it deprives us of life––thus ending "all the goods that life contains." These goods, or components of life, such things as thought, perception, and desire, are "widely regarded as formidable benefits in themselves;" they allow us to do and experience things. It is this ability to experience and do, he indicates, that makes life worthwhile even if what is being experienced is more unpleasant than pleasant: experience is worthwhile, regardless of its content. Life is good, then, because it gives us the opportunity to do things and thus experience things.

So life is worth living: it provides an opportunity for experience. But does what we experience have(or give us) meaning? Not necessarily. Meaning is like the bluebird of happiness: you can only catch a glimpse of it from the corner of your eye. It is not something you can simply 'have' or 'get', it is derived from something else: active participation in or pursuit of something else gives life meaning. Thus it is that Taylor can argue that creative acts can give life meaning, while Jonathan Glover proposes that some forms of work can, and Peter Singer puts forward the pursuit of a moral life as a source of meaning. All these, and many other(love, or pursuing an education, for example) activities can give life meaning––they are all active approaches to life. They all require doing something––and thus, also provide opportunity, not only for life to have meaning, but for it to effect others and thus be meaningful. The secret, my friend, is involvement. But what would be a life without meaning? It would be a life of utter passivity; a life spent(or squandered) on the pursuit of nothing. Even a person who spends all her time avoiding challenges or activity does something: she avoids. A life without meaning would be spent in a natural stupor, a coma perhaps. I really don't know. Getting high or drunk gives an addict meaning(though not an admirable one); they at least do something actively, and they experience something. The meaning of life? There is no meaning of life. Life is a process; life simply is (so proceed). It can have meaning––you can find meaning in something other than life, by doing something which will give meaning to life––but there is no meaning of life, native to it. Meaning must be sought elsewhere, and may not always be found: not all lives will necessarily have meaning(though they may be enjoyed, and indeed, people may feel that they have meaning nonetheless), and likewise, not all lives will be meaningful. However, by pursuing something other than life, we are not only much more likely to find meaning in life, but to make our lives meaningful.

2006-07-16T14:04:00.000-04:00

British theater had its heyday between 1580-1630, when Marlow, Shakespeare, and Johnson were all writing for the stage. While the plays Dr. Faustus, Henry IV, and Volpone are all serious, they each incorporate comedy as a means to their desired ends.

Marlow brought major innovations to the stage by resurrecting tragedy and introducing blank verse, yet Dr. Faustus can be read as a basic morality play. The plot is simple: Faustus gives his soul to Lucifer in exchange for twenty-four years of unlimited power. The tragedy is Faustus' struggle with accepting damnation; the moral is a warning against pride and the lust for power. The rest of the play is composed of humorous scenes. Many seem like filler; the low comedy of Robin, Dick, and their adventures adds little to the plot. They are, however, significant. Act I.iv is the most important of these. This scene parodies the action of Faustus. Wagner, imitating his master, uses magic to acquire his own slave. Having agreed, under pressure from the devils Wagner calls forth, the clown says, 'I will, sir. But hark you, master, will you teach me this conjuring occupation?' 'Aye, sirrah, I'll teach thee to turn thyself to a dog, or a cat, or a mouse, or a rat, or anything.' 'A dog, or a cat, or a mouse, or a rat! O brave Wagner!' (ll.37û43) Their dialogue shows the absurdity of using magic, and foreshadows the sophomoronic pranks Faustus later plays on the pope, Robin, and Dick. This approach to a morality play is a reductio ad absurdum argument. Marlow not only shows us the torment Faustus suffers from his choice, but uses these scenes to show us how little he really gains from it. For all his power and all his suffering, Faustus acts like a fool.

Shakespeare's Falstaff is also a fool, but Shakespeare is using comedy to show character development. Act I.ii shows both Falstaff and Hal in fine form, exchanging wordplay and making jokes about Hal's future. In wondering what kind of reign Hal will have, Falstaff says, Do not thou, when thou art king, hang a thief. No, thou shalt. Shall I? O rare! By the Lord, I'll be a brave judge. Thou judgest false already; I mean thou shalt have the hanging of thieves and thus become a rare hangman.(ll.50û55) Falstaff takes this, too, out of context, turning it into a job for himself, instead of a projected fate. At the end of the scene, however, Hal decides to take his role as prince seriously, and the rest of his humor is spent in an elaborate joke on Falstaff. When the joke is played out, he returns to Henry IV and reforms. Falstaff, on the other hand, continues his heavy drinking and refuses to take anything, including his own death in V.iv, seriously. This provides a foil for Hal, letting us see how much he has changed. When Falstaff, in the battle scene V.iii, tries to engage Hal in the kind of wordplay they had enjoyed earlier, he is cut off with, 'What is it a time to jest and dally now?'(l.51) Hal does retain traces of his wit, finishing Hotspur's dying words with 'For worms.'(V.iv l.87), but unlike Falstaff, who jokes about playing dead and killing Hotspur, his mind is now on other things. Like all of Shakespeare's work, the play is also liberally spiced with puns, like 'herein I will imitate the sun(son of a king),' I.ii l.164. These do not really add to the story, but make the text engaging and thought-provoking.

Johnson's goal in Volpone is quite different: he uses an acidic wit to satirize social trends. Satire relies on comedy to hold an audience which might not otherwise want to hear itself criticized. Volpone might, because of its message about greed, be construed as another morality play, but unlike Dr. Faustus, where comedy provides a second line of argument, in this case comedy is the vehicle itself. Volpone is a wealthy man who gets money from people (Vulture, Kite,/ Raven, and Crow)(I.ii ll.87-88) trying to buy their way into his will. He 'glory[s]/ More in the cunning purchase of [his] wealth/ Than in the glad possession'(I.i ll.30-32), a comment on ill-gotten gains, and lives frivolously, keeping a eunuch, a dwarf, and a hermaphrodite. Yet this play is not funny if one accepts the fictional premises. If we do not see something very wrong about Volpone's lifestyle, it is actually tragic. He dies. If one does, however, keep an idea of how the world ought to work in mind, the situation is hilariously wrong. One particularly bitter incident involves Volpone and Celia, the wife of a gold-digger. When Volpone hears of her beauty, he dresses as a street-hawker and goes to her house for a look(II.ii). She throws down a kerchief full of coins for his potion and her husband flies into a jealous rage. Yet when, in II.vi, he hears that Volpone wants her to nurse him, he is anxious to prostitute her so he can gain favor. Johnson relies on ironies like this to build the play, giving him a base of subtle humor. He is more direct in dialogue: Volpone is mercilessly funny in describing his suitors as carrion eaters in I.ii; Lady and Sir Politic Would-Be continually spout embarrassingly silly lines, and the judges in acts IV and V sound like stupid old fools, repeating each other and asking what the laws are, instead of trying to discover truth. When they finally do pass judgment, in V.xii, it is only after Volpone has made such a fool of himself trying to regain his fortune, and Mosca a fool of himself trying to keep it, that guilt must show through their conflicting statements.

So it is that each of these great playwrights uses humor differently, yet effectively, in achieving their dramatic purpose. This may be a tribute to their genius, or perhaps it is due to the versatility of the comic device. If the former, we must simply stand in awe; the latter gives us some hope for the future of literature, as well.

2006-07-16T13:56:00.000-04:00

Chapter two, "The Rise of the Novel," in Terry Lovell's Consuming Fiction, grounds the book in critical debate. This chapter addresses Ian Watt's book of the same name. By beginning with an assessment of what Lovell feels is the primary work in her field, Lovell establishes both her authority in the field and the basic assumptions from which she will work. Lovell sets forth, and tries to set right, what can be seen as flaws in Watt's book--attacks designed to expose and correct weaknesses which could otherwise tumble Watt's thesis, which she explains is that "the primary parenting of the novel. . . was performed by capitalism."(45)

Lovell begins by delineating the assumptions of Watt's thesis that the novel is a bourgeois form. These are, she says, that it was developed by, and for, the new middle class; that this development occurred simultaneously with the rise of a faceless audience; that it served the ideological needs of the bourgeoisie; and that the formal realism it displayed accurately reflected that general bourgeois outlook.

Lovell then defines Watt's central term, formal realism. This style developed from the philosophical belief that reality consists of particulars, rather than existing in abstract forms. This was demonstrated by characteristics which serve to define the new novel for Watt. First, plots were new--created by the author, rather than recycled from earlier literature, and they mirrored the lives of real people. Real "people" were the characters, too: novels didn't rely on stock characters, but tried to create three-dimensional persons, and gave them real names instead of simple type-names. Thirdly, the laws of cause and effect became the primary advancers of plot. Perhaps most noticeably, however, the action occurred in real places, and language was used to convey information about those places, so readers could be credible of the story. Lovell concludes from this that,(22)

Watt's thesis, then, proposed a tight interconnection between three phenomena, all themselves directly or indirectly a function of the development of capitalism: the conventions of formal realism which he found to be characteristic of the early novel; the values and mental attitudes of the rising bourgeoisie which he characterized in terms of Max Weber's spirit of capitalism; and the shift in literary production to the commodity form, produced for an anonymous middle-class readership.

She then proceeds to identify what she calls "Some Problems in the Thesis." The first of these is with the term "Formal Realism," and its use to define the novel as a genre. Using any term described by a set of conventions, she says, will necessarily constrict the criteria for inclusion within a genre. On the other hand, if the definition is not sufficiently narrow, it looses its value as a definition. The problem with Watt is most apparent one the shelf in a bookstore: Frankenstein is on the same rack as Moll Flanders; both are under "Literature." Both are thought of, in general usage, as novels. The conventions of formal realism, however, exclude Shelly's work because it is "gothic."

If Watt were simply drawing literary conclusions, his abiding by literary conventions in choosing formal realism to define the novel would not be out of order. Since, however, Watt is examining the novel's history in a sociological context, he should be compelled to consider what the people of the time actually read. Pulp fiction exists because a market exists; pulp fiction tells us what that market wants to read. That market has never felt constrained by the conventions of formal realism, and formal realism does not accurately describe everything the market of this time demanded. Watt, to demonstrate his thesis fully, would need to expand consideration of what the novel is, to include other types of well-developed prose fiction.

Lovell's next set of criticisms comes under the heading "Spirit of Capitalism." The first of these deals with social class and authorship, because the act of writing for unknown readers makes one the producer of a commodity. The author is, definitionally, a member of the petty bourgeoisie. Yet this economic status is not reflected by social status: authors, even at this time, came from all levels of society, from John Bunyan in a prison cell to Jane Austin, the daughter of a clergyman. In fact, Lovell points out, most of the long fiction published at this time was produced, not by the middle-class as exemplified by DeFoe, but by the remnants of the pre-capitalist aristocracy.

Also, by defining the novel in terms of formal realism, Watt ignores the fact that capitalism has two faces. The shining face capitalism shows the world extols the virtues of thrift, hard work, and persistence, but hidden behind it is the need for spending to feed the system. The tension this paradoxical situation creates is reflected in literature by the literary tension between the respectable art of formal realism and the exotic escapism of the gothic and other "romance"-type novels. Both are expressions of, and reactions to, the development of capitalism; to ignore one because it lacks respectability is foolish. It not only excludes from consideration a major portion of what the market demanded, but also categorically ignores the readers that market represents.

Lovell addresses this in her final section, "Women as Intellectuals." First, she asserts that women comprised a significant sector of the reading public. This became possible as the middle-class was, because of surplus earnings, increasingly able to divide life into public and private life, thus removing wives not only from the workplace as workers, but also moving their homes. Women were then delegated the task of consuming the surplus, while the men went on creating it. The novel provided an easy entertainment; it was not too expensive, and could be enjoyed in pieces which fit nicely around other duties and activities.

And women also had the leisure to write. Not only were most writers from the gentry, but, in a fact which Watt brushes aside, most were female: "daughters of the middle class, aristocracy, and professions"(90). These women had the education to write, but were excluded from other intellectual activities, such as politics, and unlike men, were not pressured for immediate financial success. These factors allowed much to be written; to categorically deny that this work has value is an injustice.

Yet Watt's thesis that capitalism and the novel are undeniably linked is of value. His greatest problem is inconsistency: while his criteria for selecting the works to be studied are literary, his explanations are sociological. Lovell simply hopes to point out that a conflict does exist between these two modes. "His literary criterion of value is certainly open to question for its sexist bias." Lovell says, "But his sociological criteria should have compelled him to pay attention to the women writers he ignores"(44-5).

2006-07-16T13:48:00.000-04:00

The Young Manhood of Studs Lonigan continues the misadventures of our young hooligan as he continues to grow up in his Chicago neighborhood. However, unlike the first book of this trilogy, we are not limited to a helmet-cam view of the world through Studs's eyes. In the first novel, all but two chapters are told from Studs's perspective: the second, which is given to his father, and the second to last, which focuses on Davey Cohen. The entire novel is placed in, and limited to, a small section of Chicago, and almost no reference is made to a world outside this neighborhood. YMSL, on the other hand, opens with an italicized chapter told from Lee Cole's perspective, and introduces World War I. Both are drastic deviations from the pattern previously established.

Of course, Studs is still the focus of this novel, and most of it is told from his point of view. That Studs is aware of, and interested in, something as important as the war is only natural; as a sixteen year old, he even tries to join the army. This may just be indicative of his discontent with his current situation; it may, on the other hand, show that Studs is growing as a human being, becoming aware of the larger world around him.

The italicized sections, however, are the more blatant attempt to expand the novel's scope. In these, we follow runaway Davey Cohen as he visits gutters around the country; we see race riots; we see the plight of a blacklisted union man as he worries what will become of his family. In these chapters, we see a different America. This is not the middle-class youth of America gone slumming; this is the low end of cut-throat capitalism's food chain. This is Davey Cohen, "so unhappy that he envied a dog"; this is Joe Lonigan making great sacrifices to send Tommy to high school, then having to borrow money from Studs's father to pay back someone Tommy had robbed. This is a black bank being blown up to get the 'nigger' out of a white neighborhood.

We get chapters, now, from Red Kelly's perspective; from Loretta Lonigan's, and even from that of the new St. Patrick's Church. If this isn't going beyond Studs's perspective, I don't know what would be. We know more, because we know what people other than Studs are thinking; still, we are in keeping with the expectations raised by the first novel, in that most of the book is told from his point of view. Farrell could have given this up, could have switched to an author-omniscient perspective for this book. But that would have violated reader expectations, and not necessarily expanded the novel's scope. What he has done seems a successful compromise, for the most part, between the desire to grow and the need to remain focused. While it is disconcerting to break the narrative, Farrell's technique forces attention away from Studs, and also provides a neat segue between disjointed episodes.

The best part of this technique, however, is that it allows Farrell to end the book with Stephen Lewis kicking a can down 58th Street, exactly as so many other kids do. That a boy can play in Studs's old neighborhood is only fitting, and shows how things continue as they always have, with the sole difference being his color. This irony would be lost on Studs, but almost makes me cry.

2006-07-16T13:45:00.000-04:00

This paper demands a bit of imagination, because the issue under discussion is not yet an issue at all. It is the debate over what constitutes personhood, and whether or not created beings, that is, machines, can ever be considered as such. Stop for a moment and imagine these futuristic scenes: The bridge of the Starship USS Enterprise, on "Star Trek: the Next Generation". A bald man sits in the Captain's chair; at his right, a bearded man, and a woman on his left. A pale, clean–cut man is at the helm. Or the final scene in the movie "Blade Runner". A man and his lover, a pale woman, are driving North out of Los Angeles. The helmsman in the first scene is Lieutenant Commander Data; Rachael is the name of the woman in the second. They look, think, and act like people; as far as we can tell, or are led to believe, they are persons. Yet they are not humans, or even naturally occurring life forms. They are machines: Data is an android, Rachael, a replican. For Data and Rachael, this is very much an issue. In one episode, Data, after twenty–six years of exemplary service, was given temporary command of the Starcruiser Sutherland. His human first officer refused to acknowledge his authority because he was not a biological life form. Replicans, on the other hand, were created as a source of inexpensive (slave) labor; when the replicans rebelled, their "retirement" was contracted for, although the very act of rebellion would seem to prove their personhood, thus making extermination, murder. Of course, "Blade Runner" is set in 2021, and "Star Trek" in the twenty–fourth century. No machines currently approach this level of sophistication. However, if we may assume that the field of Artificial Intelligence will continue to advance, it is quite conceivable that one day they may.

Since the integration of the diverse branches of Artificial Intelligence, which either stressed reasoning, learning, and symbolic processing systems, or perception and reaction, researchers have been trying to build mechanical creatures that could function and survive in the real world, thus incorporating mechanical perception, automated reasoning, natural language understanding, planning, and knowledge representation in various combinations (Wallich, pp.125–126). As of yet, no one has built a machine that will survive on its own for more than a few hours, or with even the intelligence of a mayfly (Wallich, p.126), but several machines have resulted that are worthy of note. Thomas Dean has designed systems that show second order intentionality, beliefs about beliefs, by planning how much time should be spent planning an action (Wallich, p.130), while SOAR uses a techniques called chunkng to learn how to solve problems. SOAR also has natural–language capabilities and sensory modules. Ultimately, these will be incorporated into a robot that can take, and answer, English commands and carry out the orders (Wallich, pp.130–131).

Another interesting project is Cyc, a machine full of facts which will soon turn to finding information on its own. It is designed to have the kind of knowledge that an intelligent agent would need to preform its tasks; it, however, is little more than a gigantic database. And while it knows that there is a thing called Cyc, and that Cyc is a computer program, it does not have self–consciousness: Cyc does not know that "it" is Cyc (Wallich, pp.132–134). While these machines are not things we would intuitively grant personhood, they show that Artificial Intelligence is moving in that direction.

A breakthrough may occur when researchers refine parallel distributive processing. This form of information processing is modelled after the human brain, and could possibly allow for faster processing in computers: instead of running a number of calculations through the same series of circuits to arrive at an answer, many different calculations could be performed simultaneously by interconnected circuits, thus allowing a quicker response than waiting for them all to go through the same circuits would provide (Churchland, pp.156–165). This might provide just the boost that systems based on reaction to the environment need: by considering many factors at once, instead of individually, reaction time would decrease, and their chances for survival (that is, not being stumped by the situation) would increase.

Yet there may be some who would object that, no matter how much like a person machines may be, they can never be persons because they are machines. Aside from begging the question, this response implies that machines cannot be persons because they are programmed: they are not free, as we are, to choose what they will do. Instead, they must respond the way they were designed to, even though, in the "Star Trek" episode mentioned above, Data displayed insubordination by acting on his own assessment of the situation rather than obeying the Captain's orders, which is what all officers are supposed to––are "programmed" to––do. This is not, however, a valid point for objection: Searle demonstrates that we (humans) are not "free," either––yet we do not doubt ourselves to be persons. His argument is that radical freedom, which allows the mind to play a role in changing the course of events as they would otherwise happen, is incompatible with the deterministic physical world science has exposed; nonetheless, he admits, we "experience" freedom (pp.86–88). We know, from personal experience, that when we voluntarily act in a certain way, other options were open to us. We were not compelled to act in that way; we chose it freely. The basis of this sense of freedom comes from conscious action: to act consciously, and not experience freedom, would be impossible. In the Penfeild experiment, for instance, one is conscious and aware of what is happening, but is not free: electrical stimulation causes the action. We are not free at this point because we have no control; we could not do otherwise. Yet this passivity is not experienced in voluntary actions: the feeling of freedom is an innate part of acting; otherwise, we would not be acting, but acted through (pp.94–95). This argument is, however, an appeal to ignorance. Just because an act was not coerced or did not have observable causes does not mean that it was free. It merely means that the causes were not recognized. And indeed, as rational beings, it is the case that some of these causes are our thoughts. We must simple recognize that these, too, are in turn caused, not independent (Dennett, p.247).

Yet, says Searle, we cannot give up this mistaken view of ourselves as free, the way we gave up the idea that the sun rises after Copernicus showed that this perception is caused by the Earth's rotation, because the notion of determinism––that everything we do is caused––does not adequately describe the experience we have in acting out these causes, as explained above. Reality is that we are completely determined, but we, perhaps as a result of an evolutionary development of the very structure of our consciousness, perceive ourselves as free (pp.95–97).

This lack of freedom, though, of course does not mean that we are not persons; Dennett makes this clear with his treatment of stances: design, physical, intentional, and personal. Each of these is a way of responding to some other thing; a way of predicting and explaining its behavior, save for the personal stance, which implies moral considerations and presupposes the intentional stance. The first three can each be applied, to some extent, to everything: the design stance explains in terms of what X is designed to do(a chair is supposed to hold a person), the physical stance explains in terms of what state it is actually in(the clock is unplugged), and the intentional in terms of beliefs, desires, and other "mental states(she wanted the alarm to go off)." We should use the stance which is most effective for each X: if X is a tree or a chair, the design stance will work perfectly well; if X is a soda machine, car, or clock, the physical stance is probably best, and if X is a human or a chess–playing computer, the intentional is most likely needed. This shows that just because everything can be explained and predicted in terms of design, or the physical causes leading to a result, does not mean that this is necessarily the best way: for computers and humans, it would be heinously cumbersome. Indeed, whenever the intentional stance is the most effective for explaining and object, that object is an intentional system, regardless of whether it actually has beliefs and desires or can be explained in another way (pp.233–238).

The personal stance and its moral consideration presupposes the intentional stance: the intentional stance incorporates the first three conditions of personhood (in a metaphysical sense. Personhood in a moral sense is dependant upon personhood in the metaphysical sense, and thus the personal stance should only be adopted towards persons in the metaphysical sense), which are that a person is a rational being, intentional predicates (beliefs, desires, and so on) can be ascribed to it, and it is treated as such: that is, the intentional stance is adopted toward it. Thus, the personal stance presupposes the intentional. The forth condition, though, is not met by all intentional systems: the object of the intentional stance must be capable of reciprocating, or considering and treating the system taking an intentional stance toward it as intentional. The fifth condition is that it be capable of verbal communication, and finally, it must be, in some way, self–conscious. Each of these requirements is necessary, but not of itself sufficient, for personhood (pp.268–270).

Many, if not all, things can meet these first three conditions: we can say that a sunflower turns because it wants light, or that a car stalls because it doesn't like, and thus doesn't want to, climb steep hills. However, the number of systems that meet the forth requirement, that of having beliefs and desires about beliefs and desires, or about another system having beliefs and desires, is much smaller (pp.273–276). Perhaps, among non–humans, only Dean's program that works out how much time to spend planning a response currently has these second–order intentions (although perhaps some animals do, too): it(behaves as though it) believes that it should spend an appropriate time deciding how much time it believes is appropriate for solving a problem, rather than just solving the problem. And even this machine does not take the intentional stance toward others. It acts as if it has beliefs about its own beliefs, but does not attribute beliefs to others.

However, by making verbal communication an additional requirement of persons; by requiring that the speaker intend the hearer understand that the speaker intends for the hearer to understand what is said, we necessitate third–order intentions and remove any beings that do not use language from the list of persons (which is, so far as we know, all but humans). This is not simply an arbitrary move to keep from considering other beings as persons; third–order intentions of this nature are needed for a communication encounter to have meaning (unless I understand that you mean for me to understand, I do not understand). Without this meaning, one cannot give or listen to reasons, and without reasons one cannot be argued into or out of an action or attitude, thus exhibiting a distinct lack of the rationality attributed to all intentional systems. And if a system is not intentional, it is not a candidate for personhood (pp.277–283).

Finally, the requirement of self–consciousness does not only mean that the system is aware of itself as the system, but can apply the communication of condition five reflexively. A person, then, is able to engage in conscious dialogue with itself, rationalize with itself, and persuade itself to do things, develop desires, adopt attitudes, and hold beliefs (pp.284–285).

Admittedly, there seems to be nothing, either biological or mechanical, outside of humans, that currently meets all of these conditions. But consider Data and Rachael. Data wants to be more human; he obviously meets the sixth condition by being able to convince himself that he wants something. Rachael did not even know until halfway through the movie that she was a replican, and she cried when she learned this, so she, in the same way as Data, also meets the sixth condition. Of course, these are fictional examples, but it is conceivable that we will eventually produce such mechanical beings, and the question remains as to what we should, and in actuality will, do if and when that time comes. It seems obvious that we will have to adopt the personal stance toward such beings; in fact, there is no choice. They will demand it.

2006-07-16T13:42:00.000-04:00

Larkin, Philip. 'Collected Poems'. A. Thwaite, ed. London, 1988, Marvell Press & Faber & Faber.

Thomas, Dylan. 'Collected Poems, 1934–1952'. London, 1966, J.M. Dent & Sons.

Albert Camus has said that the only philosophical question of any importance is that of suicide: deciding whether or not life is worth living. This makes one's attitudes towards death very important, since death is the only choice one rejecting life has. It is not surprising, then, that death is a major theme in poetry: poets often make public their ideas about fundamental question, by confronting these questions in their work. With this in mind, we shall now examine the treatment of death by two modern English poets, and see what this tells us about life.

Philip Larkin's deceptively easy style and sometimes crude humour made his work very accessible, and have helped to make him extremely popular. Yet death lurks in Larkin's poetry. In spite of his comic pieces, death seems all–pervasive: just around the corner, or just across the page; 'just on the edge of vision'(Aubade, l.31). And in reading the serious poems, one feels that it is, indeed, ever present in Larkin's mind. Not that he seems morbidly obsessed with death, but Larkin's poems show a constant awareness, and fear, of it. Death, understandably, terrifies him. Trying to cope, and live, with this ever–present terror of inevitable nothingness is subject of several poems, yet Larkin never seems to overcome it. Instead, he accepts it; he resigns himself to the terrible nothingness of death. Larkin sees death as covering us, weighing us down('Going'), and closing in on us('Traumerei')––or is it that he sees the awareness of death closing in on us? Death––oblivion––will come for us all, but some, like the miners in 'The Explosion', may escape this knowledge and the resultant terror. For it is the knowledge of death, rather than death itself, which most seems to haunt Larkin: death is 'only oblivion'('The Old Fools', l.15). Knowing that we are alive, and won't be––knowing what we will lose when we die––that is terror. That is what makes 'The Building' so frightening: in hospital, 'All know/they are going to die'(l.57). This is what his old fools are mercifully no longer aware of; this is what haunts the speaker in 'Aubade', when 'realization of it rages out/ In furnace fear when we are caught without/ People or drink'(ll.35–7). While 'Most things never happen: this one will'(l.34), we 'Know that we can't escape,/ Yet can't accept'(ll.43–4). Still, in lines such as 'Post men like doctors go from house to house'(50), Larkin seems to resign himself to death. While in asking 'Why aren't they screaming'(l.12) of the old fools, he indicates that they should resent this approaching death, that resentment melts into resignation by the final lines: 'Well/ We shall find out'. If death is inevitable, and as he says in 'Aubade', 'no different whined at than withstood'(l.40), we really have no choice but to die. Larkin's conception of death itself, of what dying is, comes out especially clearly in 'The Old Fools'. It is nothingness, 'oblivion'(l.15); he describes it this way: 'At death, you break up: the bits that were you/ Start speeding away from each other for ever/ With no one to see'(ll.13–5). The nothingness of death is the mountain of time we will not experience; his old fools are too close to the slope to see where they will soon be, and have a second childhood to shield them from the fear. But we have a better perspective, and are terrified by its vastness. Larkin('It's only oblivion, true,/ We had it before'(ll.15–6)) notes the irony of this fear, but explains it in 'Aubade' when answering the argument that 'No rational being/ Can fear a thing it will not feel'(ll.25–6). 'This is what we fear,' he says, 'No sight, no sound, no touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with,/ Nothing to love or link with,/ The anaesthetic from which none come round'(ll.27–30). Before life, he says of oblivion in 'The Old Fools', 'it was going to end,/ And was all the time merging with a unique endeavour/ To bring to bloom the million–petalled flower/ Of being here. Next time you can't pretend/ There'll be anything else'(ll.16–20). This is a special way of being afraid, he says in 'Aubade', 'No trick dispels. Religion used to try,/ That vast moth–eaten musical brocade/ Created to pretend we never die'(ll.21–4). 'But superstition, like belief, must die', he says in 'Church going', 'And what remains when disbelief has gone?'(ll.34–5) Larkin can't believe in Heaven, and this leaves nothing but nothingness after death. Yet Larkin dwells too much on this nothing. Only in 'At the chiming of light upon sleep' does he even ask, 'Have I been wrong, to think the breath/ That sharpens life is life itself, not death?/ Never to see, if death were killed,/ No desperation, perpetually unfulfilled,/ Would ever go fracturing down in ecstasy?'(ll.16–20) But it is death that gives life urgency, and the ability to sense and feel, which we lose in death, that makes life different than death, that proves to us we are alive, and makes being alive better than not being born. By concentrating on the fact that death will take these away, rather than the value that they give life––by resigning himself to death, however resentfully, instead of throwing himself vigorously back into life with a renewed sense of urgency––he devalues the very thing he mourns. Larkin seems almost to resent life for letting him experience this 'Intricate rented world'('Aubade', l.47), because it is only rented, and he will have to let it go when the lease is up.

Dylan Thomas's poetry, on the whole, has a dark feel. This may partially arise from the density and complexity of his language and imagery, but it is also likely that any poem, randomly selected, will have some reference to death, and this spectre undoubtedly contributes greatly to the sense of almost uncomfortable darkness a cursory reading of his work will give. Yet a closer reading of certain poems give a very different, and, it seems, more accurate understanding of Thomas's attitudes towards death. The sense of nature, and natural, organic process, that comes out of these poems is very strong. 'The Force That Through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower', for instance, is about decomposition in the grave––and a returning to nature: a renewal, in another form; death as a part of the life cycle, the process of living. 'The force that through the green fuse drives the flower', the speaker says, 'Drives my green age'(ll.1–2). The same force that drives all things, drives us. And while, in death, 'I am dumb to tell the crooked rose'(or hanging man, or weather's wind(l.4,14,19)) that we are like them, nonetheless, we are like them. This primal feel of natural process comes out in 'After the Funeral',('Ann,/ Whose hooded, fountain heart once fell in puddles/ Round the parched worlds of Wales'(ll.12–4)), and 'A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in London': 'After the first death, there is no other'(l.24). But perhaps it is most clear in 'Poem on His Birthday'. While the speaker mourns his thirty–fifth birthday, and being that much closer to death, he observes nature. He sees 'flounders, gulls, on their cold, dying trails'(l.11), 'finches fly(ing)/ In the claw tracks of hawks'(l.20–1), and 'The rippled seals streak down/ To kill'(ll.34–5). This death is all part of living––the last part we are aware of, but not the final part: our bodies are still part of life's process. As 'And Death Shall Have No Dominion' says, 'Dead men naked they shall be one/ With the man in the wind and the west moon;/ When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone,/ They shall have stars at elbow and foot'(ll.2–5). Man continues, in death, to be exactly what he was in life––a part of nature. Yet Thomas, while seeing the naturalness of death, and not fearing it, does his most to affirm this life of 'four elements and five/ Senses, and a man a spirit in love'('Poem on His Birthday', ll.82–3). Not being afraid of death is not the same as wanting to die, or even waiting to die. No, the awareness of death is only another reason to live, and to live as much, as fully, and as long as we can, just as the speaker in 'Poem on His Birthday' finds life more intense as he approaches death. 'Do Not go Gentle into that Good Night', however, is the best example of Thomas's affirmation of life. While the night––death––is specifically called good, it is still something to be fought. 'Old age should burn and rave at close of day'(l.2), even 'Though wise men at their end know dark is right'(l.4). Another, more obviously buoyant factor in Thomas's poetry is religious faith. If, as in 'After the Funeral', 'I know her scrubbed and sour humble hands/ Lie with religion in their cramp'(ll.30–1), there is no need to mourn Ann's fate, nor any need for her to have been afraid. If there is a god, and one is on proper terms with that god, life is only keeping one from Heaven. Thomas seems to acknowledge this hope for others, while unsure of it himself: in 'Elegy', he mourns that his father 'died/ Hating his God'(ll.22–3) and says 'that He and he will never go out of my mind'(19–20). Yet in 'Poem on His Birthday', 'he goes lost/ In the unknown, famous light of great/ And fabulous, dear God'(ll.46–8); lost, thinking of 'Heaven that never was/ Nor will be ever is always true'(ll.50–1). Yet in lines sixty–five and six, he prays. This seems to be a conflict between rational scepticism and faith, giving faith a new strength, and the poem a sense of hope. This sense of hope, arising from belief in something beyond death, coupled with the naturalness and rightness of dying, makes Thomas's work optimistic. In accepting death as the natural consequence of life, and celebrating life itself all the more because it will end, he makes death itself into something that gives life value. Even if we cannot accept his religious faith, we can still take heart in this.

And So What

Larkin affirms the absurdity of life by resigning himself to death, yet he never takes the next step. Camus does take this step, by granting that life is absurd, but maintaining that it has whatever value and meaning we choose to give it. There is nothing outside of the self, this life––and nothing beyond it to give it meaning. But the self is free to assign it value and meaning, just the same. Thomas does grant life this value. By seeing life as process, he grants it an intrinsic value, and thus never comes to the question of absurdity. He acknowledges the intrinsic value of sensation, and tells us to live, because only in life will we have sensation. Thomas's view comes out of a much more traditional approach to life, one which comes from dependence on the cycles of nature and life and death for survival––the farm. Larkin's, on the other hand, is urban and industrial; a no–god–and–science–can't–save–us view, which captures the way many of us, raised in the city and not in the church, react when confronted with death. Having no god to give them meaning externally, and acutely aware of their own meaninglessness, these lives are naturally more pessimistic. Not being grounded in natural processes, they are likewise much more afraid of these processes. In this sense, Larkin's view is more modern than Thomas's, and in this case, the change has not been for the better.

2006-07-16T13:36:00.000-04:00

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert Persig's cult classic, is not a writing text, per se. It does, however, provide valuable insights into writing, as well as the self. The book is, on the surface, the story of a man and his son on a cross-country motorcycle trip. Along the way, the man discusses "Quality," an idea which has driven him to insanity. The man had, before his breakdown, been a teacher of rhetoric. His applications of "Quality' to his classes are what make the book especially appealing.

Since it is not a writing text, the book does not include activities or assignments. The material on writing that it does contain is buried, and mostly used as illustration to make philosophical arguments more concrete.

Making the abstract more concrete is, however, what this book offers as a writing text. Persig uses each of the modes effectively, thus providing ready examples of what is to be accomplished with each assignment. For instance, he shows the brainstorming invention strategy, in a letter-writing context, on pages 248-250; the Church of Reason lecture on pages 131-134 is a definition essay; the book is filled with examples of description; the process of the scientific method is analysed on pages 92-97; other examples of these, and the other modes, are both clear and easy to find. Since these examples all appear within the context of a story, pointing them out to students will produce a greater awareness of how often and easily these modes are used.

Since this is a novel, not a textbook, students should have no difficulty with the reading. It is not, in spite of the philosophical content, a difficult book to read. It is only when one stops to think about it that the book becomes difficult; if students do this, wonderful. That is not my focus, but it is a secondary benefit or painful side-effect, depending on one's perspective. I want students to read it, yes, for exposure to the ideas it contains; I want to use it as a basis for discussion of the various modes it employs, and if doing that makes the question, "What is Quality," an agenda, it is an agenda I am proud to support.

I realize that using Zen as a text for freshman composition is out of the ordinary. It will be possible to avoid the literature-teacher problem, however, by ignoring the book. If it is not treated as literature, but only as a source of examples for the modes, no conflict will arise. It will be assigned at the beginning of the term; a series of simple content quizzes may be used to establish that it is being read; the only other references will come when students turn to a particular page to examine the passage as an example of writing. And if the book is only providing examples, which are divorced from context, the quizzes are not even necessary. Whether students read the entire book or not is, in effect, immaterial. Hopefully, they would take an interest in it, as the source of so many examples; if not, all they miss is an explanation of the agenda it sets for the class.

This agenda promotes independent learning. By this, I do not mean the abdicate my role as an instructor; I mean that the students are the only ones who can improve their writing. I can teach them the conventions which demonstrate competency and the tricks others have found effective; they, however, must decide how to apply them. And they, ultimately, are the judges of their work: they decide whether a piece is good enough to turn in. I can only show them how to improve.

2006-07-16T13:29:00.000-04:00

The Financier, Theodore Dreiser

"This was his hour. Like a wolf prowling under glittering, bitter stars in the night, he was looking down into the humble folds of simple men and seeing what their ignorance and their unsophistication would cost them"(441).

These lines describe Frank Cowperwood upon his hearing that Jay Cooke and Co. have failed. They show him, and by extrapolation all of his kind, as a predatory animal. Yet these lines are applied to a thirty-six year old man, a veteran of the stock exchange, and one who has learned how ruthless the world of finance can be. It would not be fair, based solely on this image, to call Cowperwood an animal. Unfortunately, imagery throughout the book does lead us to exactly such a conclusion. Even at age ten Frank demonstrates animalistic qualities. after watching a captive lobster catch and devour a squid, he guesses "That's the way it had to be and trots home(8).

Nor is Cowperwood the only financier described animalistically. Steemberger, a beef speculator, has a face "something like that of a pig"(12); brokers on the exchange "were like certain fish waiting for a certain bait"(40); Edward Butler, the trashman-turned contractor-turned political insider who is so abused by Cowperwood, on the other hand, is "hale and strong like seasoned hickory"(67). These illustrations refer to men of power in general, though, and our concern is specifically with Cowperwood. Even in his first financial transaction, the purchase and resale of Castille soap, Frank is "like a young hound on the scent of game"(19). Later, during the stock crisis caused by the Chicago fire, he is described as a snake watching a bird(180).

These examples of the imagery used to describe Cowperwood should convincingly show that, from the narrator's perspective at least, he is nothing but a hungry, wild animal, grasping for profit the way a wolf tears into a lamb. As such, he is in no way worthy of admiration, in spite of his civilized demeanor and presentation of himself. Instead, he should be seen as dangerous, something to be avoided, if not shot on sight. Yes, like the lion, Cowperwood is a fine and glorious beast, powerful and handsome. But the placid demeanor demonstrated while sitting in the shade only masks the passionate power of the creature, and should not fool anyone into coming within its reach.

2006-07-16T13:26:00.000-04:00

Our first image of Studs Lonigan is of him sneaking a smoke in the bathroom before going to his middle-school graduation. The first impression is one of a little reprobate and not much is done to change that, making redeeming qualities, much less endearing ones, hard to find. Still, Studs does have moments that made me believe something more was possible.

The most obvious of these is his afternoon in the park with Lucy Scanlin. As they sit in the tree, whistling, I can picture a future for them. It has them going to high school as sweethearts, getting married, and assuming Father Lonigan's successful painting business. They go on.

Of course, that doesn't happen--but at that moment, it was possible.

There was also a football game. Afterwards, Studs imagined going on to play in high school, then at college, and maybe even professionally. At the time, that was one possible outcome for his story.

But this was all before he dropped out of school, which neatly trimmed his chances. Still, even after that foolish decision, one more spot of hope shown for Studs.

That opportunity was the family business, which Studs joined upon retiring from formal education. His plan, and his father's, was for him to learn the trade from the paintbrush end, and take over the business when his father wanted out. Since the business had made enough for investments in stock and real estate, this seemed like a good chance for Studs to have a future.

These three incidents showcase good points in Studs' character. We see tenderness, talent, and a willingness to work. If not distracted from developing these qualities, Studs could have made something more of his life. It is not necessarily fair, however, to blame this unfulfilled potential on the environment in which Studs was raised.

Admittedly, the environment in which Studs grew up was not ideal. But both his sisters managed to go to high school; they both managed to sustain significant relationships; and they both managed moving out of their father's house. Studs never really did any of those things. Same environment, different results.

For Studs to have achieved his potential, he would have needed a boarding-school environment: an environment with fast discipline and no opportunities for temptation. While such an environment would be wonderful for young Lonigan, it is not one into which I could reasonably imagine him being placed. And so, I fear, he is doomed, the victim of his own weaknesses.

2006-07-16T13:16:00.000-04:00

Lovell, Terry. Consuming Fiction. London: Verso, 1987.

Thompson, James. "Jane Austen and History."

Watt, Ian. The Rise of the Novel. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1964.

The issues I intend to explore stem largely from Ian Watt's The Rise of the Novel. In this book, Watt's approach is Marxist, in that he interprets literature using social criteria: he posits that the novel's becoming an accepted literary genre resulted from and reflected the development of a mercantile middle class(Lovell 22). His definition of the novel through the conventions of formal realism, however, does not do justice to what we now naturally group under the heading of novel; Watt limits himself to the then(1950s)-accepted literary cannon and ignores the fact that "The majority of eighteenth century novels were actually written by women"(Lovell 39).

Watt does this, not because he felt that women were not writing fiction, but because what women wrote was not canonized. Women apparently wrote fictional romances, not literature; I will call this work domestic fiction, because it was produced by, and for, a domestic, rather than "literary," audience, and will include the "gothic" and "courtship" novels under this heading. Jane Austen, "having reached the stage enjoyed or endured for a long time now in Shakespeare, Milton, Joyce, and Faulkner studies"(Thompson 22), is the acknowledged mistress of domestic fiction's great house, and will provide a focus for my exploration.

My primary position is identical to Watt's: the novel, as he defines it, resulted from and reflected the values of the new middle-class(including the lower gentry who might accept marriage into mercantile wealth). This, however, implies that the values were new, were replacing another set of values. Through the eighteenth century, even to Fielding, classical Greek values had been accepted as the dominant ethical(and literary) paradigm. The values of the novel, as defined by Watt, came into sharp contrast with these; as the novel gained respect as literature, the values of the novel replaced those of classicism. Since, however, not everything now acknowledged as a novel was then accepted as literature, only the changing values of politically empowered men are reflected in what was called "literature"; Mary Poovey, on the other hand, seems to thinks that "Eighteenth-century woment's fiction as a whole, and especially sentimental fiction with its stress on appropriately feminine feeling, is a conservative institution, replicating and recommending idealized models of behavior"(Thompson 28). My contention is that these new values did not accurately reflect the views of society as a whole, which were more accurately portrayed in domestic fiction, that held classical values.

"The epic's false code of honour, like that of heroic tragedy," writes Watt, "was masculine, bellicose, aristocratic and pagan." What replaced it, in the novel as literature, was "a radically different one in which honour is internal, spiritual, and available without distinction of class or sex to all who had the will to act morally"(240). I object to this claim on two specific points: "The Antigone," as an example of heroic tragedy, meets the novel's new criterion, while Watt's example of Pamela makes the issue of honor both external and public, and of epic importance.

Watt is, I believe, misrepresenting the diffuse attitudes of ancient Greece, which Plato tried to formulaicly encapsulate and thus distorted. Yes, the issue of honor was paramount; honor, however, is most closely related to self-actualization, to overcoming a situation by realizing and accepting what the situation is and calls for, and acting accordingly.

While I have not yet seen T. Vasudeva Reddy's Jane Austen: The Dialectics of Self-Actualization, and thus cannot comment on what would appear to support my position, the characters of both Elizabeth and Darcy, in Pride and Prejudice, realize their happiness by overcoming the faults which title the book. This realization brings happiness, while in surviving Greek literature it generally causes pain; however, the pain of Greek tragedy is that of the liberation knowledge brings, as is the joy in domestic fiction.

Exploring this ideas within the context assigned may be impossible. The literary critic best known for work with the concept of overcoming is Nietzsche, who has not written anything in the last five years(although I understand he is now into deconstruction). As a major commentator on Greek tragedy(The Birth of Tragedy is his first book), and the principle of overcoming which permeates both that and domestic fiction, however, he is necessary to my argument that while the novel, as defined by Watt, strove to incorporate and present the ideology of the ascendant merchant class and thus also to obliterate the barbaric notions of "honor" coming down from the Greeks, domestic fiction, while working within the moralistic framework of the dominant paradigm, adapted these very notions to its own ends. I will not go on to make the next logical conclusion, however, since it would be that excluding domestic fiction from the cannon caused the fall of Western culture. This, no matter what I believe, truly would be impossible to prove in twenty pages--if it can be proven at all.

2006-07-16T13:10:00.000-04:00

Haas, Mary R. "The Application of Linguistics to Language Teaching." Anthropology Today. ed A.L. Kroeber. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1954. 807-818.

This was a disappointing article, in that it was history rather than theory. Haas begins with the distinction between language learning, description, and teaching, then notes that these came together in the work of Boas, a linguist who learned languages and taught others the analytical skills he used. He also mentions Sapir and Bloomfield.

These ideas, however, weren't applied to teaching languages until, oh, World War II, when their use of spoken native speech became the basis for the Army method.

Specific recommendations made by Bloomfield at the same time toward the improvement of language teaching are also worthy of note. The prerequisites of the teacher are: (1) that he should know the language he is teaching--in other words, he should have "a knowledge comparable to that of an educated native speaker"--and (2) that he should also know how to teach the language; being simply an educated native or the equivalent thereof is not enough. Recommendations for improving procedure in instruction include: (1) drill in correct pronunciation (accompanied by instruction in the phonetics of the language contrasted with the phonetics of the students' own language) should be instituted at the very beginning of the study of the language and continued until mastery is achieved; (2) "the first phonetic examples should be characteristic words and phrases" of useful and usable content; (3) material chosen for concentrated work should be drilled into the student "until every phrase of it has been thoroughly assimilated"; and (4) since the constant supervision of the teacher is necessary for such thoroughgoing assimilation, "the work must be done almost entirely in the classroom" and "eight hours a week of class-work are not too much in the first year or two" (810).

These recommendations, she tells us, under the Intensive Language Program of the American Council of Learned Societies, became following list of emphasized points (812):

(1) the actual teaching must be done by a trained linguist, (2) informants were to serve as drillmasters for small sections of students (not more than ten per section), (3) the number of class hours per week should be around fifteen to eighteen, (4) the ultimate goal of the student was to acquire accurate pronunciation, a good speaking knowledge, and good auditory comprehension of the language.

Still, she notes after describing teaching materials to result from this, "the principle contribution that linguistics has to make is the preparation of complete scientific descriptions of English and of each and every foreign language to be taught" (818). This, of course, allows the development of better teaching materials, but this doesn't help me--we're got these materials now.

2006-07-12T19:06:00.000-04:00

Chris Van Allsburg is not a prolific author/ illustrator of children's books, but he is among the very best. His career started with a Caldecott Honor award in 1980, for The Garden of Abdul Gasazi, which was followed with a Caldecott Medal in 1982 for his second book, Jumanji. Four years later, he won again with The Polar Express. Now the author of fifteen picture books, Van Allsburg has a distinctive style which blends magic and reality in everyday events. Whether working in color or black and white, his work shows characteristics of his training as a sculptor, with strong, solid forms that withstand a variety of viewing perspectives. While the architectural qualities of his drawing are technically interesting, Van Allsburg's experiments keep his work constantly fresh.

Van Allsburg's early work is simple, even crudely drawn, in black and white. The Garden of Abdul Gasazi is very pointillistic; objects have a three-dimensional solidity, but looking too closely at the dots which make up each figure induces the feeling that nothing is solid, even the line separating a clean edge. This causes a haziness and sense of un-reality which is characteristic to Van Allsburg's work. While he quickly added color to his available tools, using sepia tones for The Widow's Broom and full color for Wreck of the Zephyr before producing the richly-colored The Polar Express, it does take until the fifth book for color to appear. Van Allsburg explains the development in his art on his website:

I did not study painting or drawing when I was in college learning about art. . . . When I was 29 years old and wrote my first book, making pictures with a charcoal pencil was all I really knew how to do. I didn't feel bad that my pictures were not in color because I like black and white pictures, as well as black and white photographs and movies.
As time went by, I became more interested in picture making and taught myself to use different material to make color pictures. Materials like dry and oil pastels, craypas, crayons, colored pencils, and paint. Now I decide if a book should be black and white or color as a result of a how I imagine the story while I am thinking about it.

Even now, his work is still almost perfectly divided between books in black and white and in color. Yet it takes only a moment with a book to recognize that it is Van Allsburg, whatever the media.

Van Allsburg's style has three outstanding characteristics; first among them is the hazy sense of fantasy or dreaminess his images evoke. Yet all of his wild tales are set in the context of a very normal, recognizable world. As he tells Silvey, "I think fantasy is more provocative when it happens in the context of ordinariness, or things that you recognize." His evocation of magic in the everyday world often leads him to shorten the depth of field in his images, as a photographer would, to focus on a nearby subject. This leaves his backgrounds hazy, creating a dream-like quality that matches his subject. In another, undated interview, he says, "the style I use allows me to make a drawing that has a little mystery to it, even if the actual things I am drawing are not strange or mysterious. To get this effect, I rely on certain artistic strategies. I use perspective, light and point of view to give the drawing a kind of portentous quality".

Van Allsburg's second outstanding marker is the architectural quality of the strongly solid, three-dimensional forms he creates. This aspect of his work probably results from the close study of objects, from all angles, that sculpture requires. From his earliest work, Van Allsburg has drawn with depth, using shadow, light, and perspective not only to elicit amazement and wonder, but also to demonstrate the reality of his world. In Ben's Dream, for example, Ben sees several of the world's great monuments. They are all mostly under water and none is presented in photo-realism, but each is easily recognizable in spite of the perceptual strains the strange circumstances cause. Van Allsburg tells how he makes the pictures so realistic on his website: "I do this by using real people as models of the characters in my books and by using the laws of perspective and lighting to make the places shown in the pictures appear as if they really exist". Shadows fall as they always do; buildings take up space and block light; noses stick out—especially Monsieur Bibot's nose in The Sweetest Fig. Even when it does not feel solid, Van Allsburg's world feels real.

The final visually identifiable element of Van Allsburg's work is his use of unusual perspectives. In Ben's Dream, as noted above, many of the world's monuments are largely submerged. He sees the Statue of Liberty, Mount Rushmore, and the Sphinx from eye level, while floating past. In The Widow's Broom, Earth is seen from a falling witch's perspective as the broom gives out, and in Zathura it is seen from outer space. This might arise from Van Allsburg's method of story development, as he explains in his 1986 Caldecott Medal acceptance speech: "I see the story unfold as if it were on film, the challenge is deciding precisely which moment should be illustrated and from which point of view." This vision, combined with his sculptural sense of space, allows him to explore interesting angles and present the view of his scene that best creates the desired impact. Visual characteristics are not the only identifiable element of Van Allsburg's work, though. He returns, in book after book, to a handful of recurring themes: the environment, dreams, and magic. Ben's Dream and Just a Dream demonstrate both the importance of environmental issues and dreams in Van Allsburg's work, while The Polar Express, The Widow's Broom, Jumanji, Zathura, The Garden of Abdul Gasazi, and Wreck of the Zepher all rely on other forms of magic or, as he puts it, "fantasy. . . in the context of ordinariness". Additionally, each story has a moral element. As he states in an interview, "a good story must contain a psychological, emotional, or moral premise. I never set out to establish this when I begin a story, but it's always there when I end". Personal responsibility, as seen in Just a Dream; kindness to others, illustrated in The Stranger and by Bibot's mistreatment of Marcel in The Sweetest Fig; and faith or belief are very important themes across Van Allsburg's writing. As he notes, "The Polar Express is about faith, and the power of imagination to sustain faith. It's also about the desire to reside in a world where magic can happen, the kind of world we all believed in as children, but one that disappears as we grow older". The magic and mystery of Van Allsburg's art simply reflects themes that he returns to repeatedly.

A different aspect of this repetition can be seen in recurring motifs within the illustrations across books. The most obvious example of this is the bull terrier dog that first appears as Fritz in The Garden of Abdul Gasazi. Fritz was modeled on Van Allsburg's brother-in-law's dog. When the dog died, Van Allsburg decided to memorialize him in each future book. Sometimes the dog is a character, as in The Garden or The Sweetest Fig; in The Polar Express, however, the dog is a puppet on the boy's bedpost, while in Ben's Dream he is in a picture on the wall and Just a Dream only shows him as a hood ornament. Van Allsburg may not have been entirely consistent in this, as The Wretched Stone and The Stranger do not seem to include the little white dog at all. Another example of recurring motif is his occasional illustration of people without faces. In Wreck of the Zephyr, for instance, we never see either character's face. When Walter's face, in Just a Dream, is exposed to focus, it is still partially obscured either by position or by haze and distance. It is not that Van Allsburg cannot draw a convincing, realistic face; rather, this reflects reality: people do not worry about facing a camera when busy going about their lives. Van Allsburg often presents a view from behind his characters, or over the shoulder, which obscures the face but shares what the character sees and thus better illuminates the text than a view of the character's facial features could. These experiments with perspective are part of what makes his work so interesting.

Experimentation is a constant in Van Allsburg's work. Not only did his move from black and white into color require teaching himself to use new materials, but his use of color also depends upon the mood or tone of the work at hand. The Widow's Broom, for instance, uses deep autumnal sepia tones, rather than simple black and white, to convey the fullness of harvest time and the mystery of the Halloween season. Wreck of the Zephyr uses bright, primary colors and relies on changes in cloud color to convey a sense of danger to the reader, while the dark, muted colors of The Polar Express make it feel like a gloomy winter outside, yet snug and cozy in the indoor scenes.

Likewise, Van Allsburg does not limit himself to a single style. While all of his illustrations are representational, he creates them using a variety of techniques. From the early pointillism of The Garden of Abdul Gasazi, which reappears in The Polar Express, The Sweetest Fig and Zathura, to the smooth, painterly stroke of The Wretched Stone and The Stranger, no two books look exactly the same. Ben's Dream even looks like a scratchboard or woodcut, though they are still simple pen-and-ink images.

Framing is another device Van Allsburg uses to achieve different effects. He has no discernable pattern across books, using a full spread with text boxes for some books, text and facing images for others, and often sizing images to indicate their importance in the story. The Wretched Stone, for instance, makes use of the full page spread for each image—yet the image is split into two panels, one on each side of the gutter and both framed in white, with the text always appearing in a box centered on the left side. The Sweetest Fig, on the other hand, uses full-color cross-gutter images framed in white, with text confined to a small box in a corner of the image; while The Polar Express borders text and image in black framed with white, using a cross-gutter image that consumes most of the spread and a column for text. The most striking use of image size to advance the story occurs in Just a Dream, which uses a full-size image over text on each page when Walter is awake, a small picture facing text when his dream is changing location, and full-spread cross-gutter illustrations of what he dreams.

Whatever the experiment, Van Allsburg's work retains his distinctive sense of mystery, 3-D solidity, and odd perspectives. These can challenge the reader, but also makes the work engaging. Add to this the fact that he writes stories with pictures, rather than stories for children, as he states: "I do create books for adults. My books are picture books, so they are thought of as books for children. But when I make them, I think of the books for everybody—for all ages". Van Allsburg's work not only delights children, but also captivates adult readers. This has garnered him great critical acclaim, and will keep his outstanding work in print for a very long time.

2006-07-12T18:58:00.000-04:00

Jack London's "Call of the Wild" is a book I remember; I read it near the same time was read The Red Badge of Courage and all the Marguerite Henry books I could find. It was one of the books available to me, so I read it and enjoyed it. Reading it again, I can see why some people might think it inappropriate for middle-school children, but it still seems like a reasonable choice to me.

"Call of the Wild" is a good choice, actually. London has a strong, brisk prose style, tells an entertaining story, and has a protagonist that almost everyone can relate to equally: a dog. London's prose provides an excellent example for older children, in that it simply and clearly conveys information. It is always, when not used in dialogue, "proper," yet it is not obtusely complex--and it is compelling. Part of the work's compellingness is, however, due to the adventures Buck, our dognapped hero, encounters on his way toward realizing his true nature. The story is straight-forward and well paced; the book is short; the hero wins in the end. What more does a young reader want?

I understand that some people might think that impressionable young people ought not read anything which shows theft, cruelty to animals, or gambling going unpunished. And they may be right. I don't think, on the other hand, that a bit of historical accuracy in a novel will much influence the attitudes of today's media-savvy youth. If the crimes of "Call of the Wild" are going to corrupt our children, they will have to take a number.

I agree that the physical exploitation and abuse of animals rampant in this story is reprehensible, but it happened. Trying to hide that is foolish; that is simply a historical period. Better, is it not, to let children be appalled by it themselves, so they can see how awful it was and thus learn not to do such things.

The greed which pervades "Call of the Wild", on the other hand, is harder to justify. Not only does the book begin with Buck's being stolen into slavery for easy money, but it closes with him establishing territory around a cache of lost gold. Allowing this to go without comment reinforces the robber-barronistic tendencies the book portrays and lets children think of these attitudes as correct, since they are still being exposed, rather than realizing that they are what led to Buck's whole problem.

Still, people all, eventually, encounter greed. That it underpins a story is really not a good reason for not reading that story. Again, the book offers a closed environment for encountering the subject, and an opportunity to discuss it in a specific context. I see these problems, consequently, as good, as items counting in the book's favor for young readers.

2006-07-12T18:57:00.000-04:00

In 'Shakespeare and the Goddess of Complete Being', Ted Hughes tries to establish a mythological pattern which he sees driving Shakespeare's work, in the way a hack writes to a formula. It is the most basic myth, he argues, that Shakespeare strips down and utilizes, which is first recorded by the Babylonians: the myth of Tiamat, the Great Mother. According to this myth, Tiamat was the first being. She is mother of the gods; the gods try to overthrow her. She appoints one of her sons to defend her; he is defeated by another son who then cuts Tiamat into Earth and Sky and becomes the chief god. This myth then mutates. Tiamat as Sky becomes goddess of Love and Fertility; Tiamat as Earth becomes goddess of the Underworld. Sky and Earth both fall in love with the figure which was in earlier versions her defender. Sky keeps him until he is poisoned by Earth; Sky then reclaims him in the form of flowers and they afterwards share him according to the seasons. It is this dual aspect of Tiamat as Sky and Earth that Hughes sees developing in the Dark Lady sonnets. The Dark Lady, Hughes says, is two women within a single body: The beautiful woman Shakespeare's persona loves with complete abandon, and the evil of which her blackness is symbolic. It is the perception of both aspects that drives these poems, as he(the persona) tries to separate them in his own mind.

This seems like a very Jungian reading of Shakespeare, but that statement cuts five–hundred pages out of Hughes' book. It makes more sense to say that Shakespeare subconsciously tapped into the archetypes of collective unconsciousness than to say that a twenty–two year old, only fairly educated playwright was aware of and making use of such a wide range of myth in such an elaborate way. It has taken Hughes many years to piece his theory together; Shakespeare was too busy writing, I imagine, to do all the research and theorizing necessary to come up with such a scheme.

Don't talk about the purpose behind the sonnets, though. Focus on the pieces themselves. Looking at the structural and thematic unities of a particular poem gives us an insight that makes appreciating that poem, and all poetry, much easier. It helps us learn what to look for. The most interesting part of these poems is the possibility of dual readings––particularly sexual innuendo. Such innuendo is not necessarily inappropriate in tender poetry. It is a part of life, and something often either shared with or desired of the object of such poetry. It may, however, happen that such a reading was completely unintended by Shakespeare. Which is not to say that, if it was unintended, it is illegitimate(which is a perfect example of what I'm trying to say). Because of the tender nature of the poem, Shakespeare may have chosen certain words without realizing, or considering, other readings that could rise(did it again!) from their very nature as tender words.

2006-07-12T18:45:00.000-04:00

Eliminative Materialism, as described by Paul Churchland, is a rather simple theory of mind. It has two basic premises: 1)that a completed neuroscience will be able to explain all mental events and activities in strictly neurological terms, and 2)that the way we currently describe mental events and activities is part of another, unwitting, theory of mind––folk psychology(FP)––which ought to be discarded in favor of this completed neuroscience. This completed neuroscience, he grants, is quite a distance in the future, but based on the rapid progress the field has made since its inception, he sees no reason that it should not eventually be able to map all neural activity in the brain, explain all behavior with reference to it, and predict future behavior from it.

Given these conditions, we will know all that there is to know about the "mind," and we will know it within a framework that makes no reference to mind, but only to the structure and activity of the brain. Yet while Churchland is probably correct about both of these premises, his conclusion does not necessarily follow. While it may not be the best theory for describing the "mind," to discard FP would be a terrible mistake. Questions need to be raised as to whether we can, and should, replace folk psychology, and about the consequences such a move would have.

Churchland calls the way we currently describe mental events and predict or explain behavior––in terms of beliefs, desires, feelings, and other mental states––a theory of mind, and names it folk psychology. It is a theory, no matter how fundamental it may seem, precisely because it plays an explanatory and predictive role, and because it posits the existence of theoretical entities(in this case, beliefs, desires, feelings, and other mental states) to explain and predict. These two things are what all theories do: they try to explain things or make predictions, and they identify theoretical entities to explain what they find. Folk psychology is, however, according to Churchland a poor theory, and he gives solid reasons for rejecting it. The first is that while it has been somewhat successful as a theory of mind, it has also had many failures. He agrees that it has been a predictive theory of human nature, but points to the many things a successful theory of mind would explain which FP fails to: mental illness, creativity, the functions of sleep or memory, for example. These faults do not prove FP false, but make it worthwhile to consider the possibility of other, more powerful, theories.

The history of folk psychology lends credibility to this possibility: it has not changed or grown in the recent past and shows little promise of future growth. FP used to include inanimate objects as intentional beings, or beings that could refer to or think about other things; only post–Socratic philosophy has limited this status to higher animals. Yet even since this limitation has been assumed, FP has neither made progress in explaining the things it originally could not, nor shown that it will be able to explain them in the future. If FP were a perfect theory, it might not need to evolve; yet with the mysteries mentioned above, this stagnation is unacceptable. Since FP is to be considered a theory, it must be categorized as a degenerating one. It is because FP fails to mesh with more recent and more accurate knowledge of how the world works that it holds no promise. Theories in overlapping domains, such as biology, chemistry, and physiology are well established and accepted as providing an accurate picture of development, and can already explain some things in the mental field better than FP. These theories are also part of a growing and dynamic physical explanation of the world. FP stands apart from them, and cannot be reduced to them, because it explains things in terms of the mental, not the physical(which, however, assumes the falsity of FP: mental terms may refer to the physical; he has not shown this to be false). It is being left behind, Churchland says, and needs to be replaced by a strictly neurological system of reference.

This is his case for regarding folk psychology––and thus the way we look at the world––as a theory of mind, and not an especially good one. This assessment is highly contested; we will, however, assume it to be accurate, and grant Churchland his main argument. We will also grant that neuroscience will advance to the point where it is as accurate and efficient as Churchland predicts it will become. We will grant that, as Churchland says, folk psychology, as a theory of mind, should be replaced. The next question is whether it can be replaced. The neurological work needed to make neuro–speak(Churchland's Eliminativist language) available, will take many years, and what are we to do in the mean time? We may "realize" that our mental terms are part of an inaccurate system––though only those subscribing to Eliminative Materialism will admit this––but what other terms do we have to describe "mental events" until neuroscience reaches that stage? And if even Eliminativists are forced to use mental terminology until that point, how can they expect those who don't subscribe to Eliminativism to make such a jump when it can justifiably be made? Folk psychology is, after all, a working theory, one which has worked well enough for the past few thousand years. How would we be convinced, even if the language of a completed neuroscience were an option, to give it up? But these are just rhetorical questions. Churchland would probably say that no paradigm shift comes easily, but many of them have come. Previous shifts, however, have involved the way we view the world, the objective, physical world, while this one asks us to change the way we see ourselves. This kind of shift is very different from earlier ones. Yet we must ask if the paradigm shift Churchland advocates––from the belief/ desire/ feelings explanatory–predictive framework of FP to a neurological one, making no reference of "mental states"––can take place. This does not seem likely. Not only can it not take place because the basis for such a framework is not available, in terms of our understanding of neurology, but because the human brain is not capable of the activity it would require. Granting that the root of what we perceive as mental activity is actually neurological brain action, which it almost certainly is, when we introspect we do not see neurological activity. We see, instead, the results of that activity: thoughts, thought patterns, and sensations. Our brain is not able to make distinctions at such a fine level; the neurological level is simply too minute or too fundamental to be noticed. It is questionable whether we even have the sensory mechanisms this would require. So instead of direct observation of neuronal activity, we have a perceptual dualism: brain activity is seen and understood as "mental" activity, as learned from folk psychology. If we thus lack the mechanisms to make neuro–speak possible, it is impossible to adopt neuro–speak. Churchland, however, seems to feel that we do, indeed, have the ability to notice our own neuronal action––yet gives no indication of what the mechanism that would allow this observation is; perhaps it is merely our great mental adaptability. Yet he may still insist that our increased knowledge of the physical world will change our perception of it. Which is reasonable. Yes, Eliminativism could even conceivably succeed to a point at which instead of learning the folk psychology framework, we learn that what is now called a certain feeling is activity in such–and–such an area of the brain, and so on, from the moment of birth: we never hear mental vocabulary, and grow up using the neurological framework Eliminativism suggests. This is possible, in spite of the earlier objection about introspection: we cannot currently see the brain activity that causes our behavior, yet we ascribe(inaccurate?) causes to it; under a neurological framework, we still will not be able to see the brain activity, but will know that brain activity(and approximately what brain activity) is the cause. This could conceivably happen: Eliminativism, and consequently neuro–speak, may become possible in this form. Even if this were to become possible, however, it would have undesirable, and unacceptable, consequences. An Eliminativist would probably ask what makes this world view of folk psychology so special, except the fact that it is our world view. To this, we must respond that that is precisely what makes it so special, and bite the bullet.

Folk psychology is a world view we have spend our entire evolutionary existence using, and everything we have done has been a part of it. Jerry Fodor, in 'Psychosemantics: The Problem of Meaning in the Philosophy of Mind', even wonders if giving up FP is a "biologically viable option." The completed neuroscience may give us more accurate understanding of our physical selves, but it would render much of our language, and thus our literary culture, nonsensical. Mental language and the resultant literary tradition are too entrenched in our culture; aside from being very much a part of what human beings do everyday, they are the basis of our social structure, and it would be impractical, if not impossible, to replace them with a cold, but accurate, neurological language. Even if we could live with the cold linguistic consequences of a neurological framework("Darling, you stimulate this particular section of my brain"), as Rorty's Antipodeans do, instead of FP, though, it would be a mistake to adopt it, because it would, at one fell swoop, do away with the entire literary cultural heritage of the human race, by making it inaccessible to all in the new, neurological, framework. If there are no mental states in their conceptual schemes, how could they possibly relate to works about mental states? And humanity has worked too long building this cultural tradition, based on exploring and explaining our inadequacies, to throw it away for something that replaces one of these inadequacies with the ability to make ourselves perfectly understood. We are a race of imperfect beings; our history shows this, and to deny it or limit access to documentation of it by making it obsolete, would be foolish: it may even lead us to make the same mistakes(using neuro–speak) again. Even if our knowledge of neurology were perfect, it would be more representative of humanity to let us keep the inaccurate language we grew up with.

Perhaps, however, the choice will not be ours to make. Perhaps the completed neuroscience will come, bringing with it the neuro–speak Churchland advocates and proving the language of mental states and folk psychology inaccurate. But its being available does not mean that we must use it––only that we must recognize its availability. Yet it may be that once available, neuro–speak begins to trickle down from the sciences where it will be developed and used, into educated conversation, everyday life, and finally replace the folk psychology framework altogether. If this happens, though, it will be a gradual process instead of the drastic and immediate change Churchland seems to advocate. There is no reason, except accuracy, that we should abandon the language we now use, as long as we use it knowing that it is not truly accurate––yet there may be no way to avoid doing away with it. While it seems that the language of neuroscience would not be needed in most situations––it would seem most important in the medical and psychological fields, where true understanding of the brain would be useful and applicable to helping people, and the rest of us need nothing more than a general understanding that "mental" activity is neurological––the trickle–down theory might actually work in this case: could a language based on something other than the best knowledge available(in this case, FP) have any power, or would it merely be a formality, taken seriously only by scholars? However, given the problems inherent in Churchland's position at each stage of its progression toward this, it does not seem likely that neuro–speak will reach this stage. If this were the case, though, language and literature would not simply be discarded, but would make less and less sense to readers, who could relate less and less to the world view held by the authors––much the way Dante's nine circles of hell or Hilton's Shangri–La require us to suspend belief, instead of accepting them as part of the way the world is. Were this to happen, creativity would certainly find an outlet in the new framework, making use of the best knowledge available as authors are wont to do, and resigning the current culture, along with Spencer and Milton, to academia for unless one is willing to adopt and take seriously another framework or world view, one cannot experience literature in its full power, and if the Eliminativist world view came to be accepted, the power of our literature would be lost. If this happens, there is probably nothing we can do to stop it. This does not mean, however, that we should encourage it as Churchland does. The tradition is too valuable a store of knowledge about humanity, her development, and her problems to go gentle into that good night.

2006-07-12T17:46:00.000-04:00

Egger, Robert, with Howard Yoon. "Begging for change: the dollars and sense of making nonprofits responsive, efficient, and rewarding for all". New York: HarperCollins, 2004. All references to this item.

Robert Egger began his career in the nightclub entertainment industry and entered hunger relief by founding D.C. Central Kitchen, after realizing that hungry people don't need a breadline as much as a way to escape the breadline (31-32). He developed a model that provides training and support to clients, as well as preparing and distributing food, and has tried to take the model to scale by starting the Kitchens, INC support structure for other community-based training kitchens. He has also served as interim director of the United Way National Capitol Area, so he must be fairly well respected in his local nonprofit community.

Begging for Change was a nice little book, but it does suffer from Egger's ego. While we get plenty of examples from model organizations, most of the text relates to Egger, his organization, and his attitude. It's a pity; he says some good things, but they might be lost because his antagonistic tone grates on readers and costs him credibility. For instance, when he says "This is not about building cathedrals" on page xix of the introduction, Egger takes a direct poke at Bill Shore, founder and director of Share Our Strength and author of The Cathedral Within. This is petty; Shore and Egger could be seen as direct competitors, as both run hunger-relief organizations based in Washington, D.C. and both have recently put out books on revitalizing the nonprofit community. While this may be part of Egger's iconoclastic persona, which stresses his message of paradigmatic change, it also suggests that Egger either does not recognize the need for, or does not have the skills to, cooperate with partners. This is immediately countered in the text by examples of his relationship-building skills, particularly while starting D.C. Central Kitchen and during his term as President of the D.C. United Way. By then, however, the damage has been done. Egger, with his stories of nightlife and conflict, does not come across as one who should be trusted completely.

Egger suggests that to energize the nonprofit community and effectively respond to social problems, we need to focus efforts more effectively by weeding out a large percentage of organizations that overlap efforts, compete for funding, and work at cross-purposes, in favor of a few effective groups whose efforts are taken to scale nationally to address problems.

This duplication is not always apparent. However, health and human service agencies do seem to spring up wherever a need exists, and new ones suggest that the need has not been met. These needs probably could be better served by a single, appropriately organized and scaled program. Arts and education programs, on the other hand, are already so hurt for funds that only the most capable are surviving. Additionally, duplication in arts and education provides more options, with different foci addressing different needs and reaching different clients and audiences. For instance, a community theatre and a professional theatre, while both trying to attract the theatre-loving audience, will put on different shows and provide variety, while also providing outlets for two different levels of talent. In this arena, overlap and duplication is a very good thing.

Egger's purpose is to help us improve our organizations, though, not complain about their present state. First, he describes the problem of random giving with "the starfish story" (69-70). In it, a man confronts a beach covered in starfish left by the tide. When told that his throwing them back one at a time does not really improve things, he responds "it made a difference to that one". Egger thinks this describes much of our nonprofit giving—and that fundraising efforts often promote such random action giving, rather than a planned, consistent approach.

From the business perspective, it would obviously be better to have reliable income. However, complaining about the very generosity that makes our work possible is foolish. While it would be better for organizations to have steady, reliable income that could be used as needed instead of sporadic gifts with strings attached to them, it is up to organizations to educate the giver and change behavior. Likewise, it would be better to have resource coordination for emergencies—but again, work with what you can get. The moral of this for an organization, however, is clear: go after long-term, regular, and unrestricted funding. To advancing this end, Egger next discusses giving to umbrella groups such as United Way.

As he explains, umbrellas equate to saving starfish en masse (78-79). They do this by providing a steady check, weeding out organizations that are not well managed, and not putting restrictions on funds. The last point is especially important, as it allows organizations to pay for infrastructure development and administrative expenses. Ultimately, he feels, donors get better value for money by letting an umbrella distribute it across the community's needs than by supporting a favorite group directly.

For organizations, Egger then delineates his four priorities of doing good (88-89): cause, clients, community, and constituencies. First, he provides a definition, saying "The cause is about creating systems that enable people" (88). Doing this well will address client's needs. This, in turn, fills a community need. The final component is taking care of staff and donors because they are valuable and hard to replace.
The next piece of advice is to make service easy (103). To succeed in recruiting volunteers, make service easy and fulfilling. Opportunities should be where people work, live, and play, so it is convenient, both for transportation and for scheduling. Utilize their skills and fit their needs instead of making them find and fit us. This will also help produce a tangible link between volunteers and the cause. A "tangible link" (115) is a bond between donors and recipients, a connection between effort and purpose. This is what breaks down conceptual walls between workers and clients, making the problem real and stirring engagement. With it, a volunteer is hooked; without it, a volunteer is soon gone.

This is all good advice. Unfortunately, the most valuable part of the book is directory he compiles in appendix and "Robert's Rules" (177-184), which pithily sum up the salient points of his preceding text. While the advice is good, being able to get it without suffering Egger's ego makes buying the book just to skip to the end a fair proposition. Better yet, borrow a copy and Xerox the last few pages that are useful: if Egger can brag about accepting a lower salary than executives at comparable organizations, he can live without the few pennies of royalties this costs him.

2006-07-12T17:36:00.000-04:00

Frank Norris defines Romanticism, in part, through contrast with Realism. He does this in response to critics who deem Naturalism as "a sort of inner circle of realism. . . a kind of diametric opposite of romanticism, a theory of fiction wherein things are represented 'as they really are'. To him, realism is based on close observation of the ordinary: its subjects are boring everyday people and situations, and we do not qualify as such "if things commence to happen to us, if we kill a man or two, or get mixed up in a tragic affair, or do something on a large scale, such as the amassing of great wealth". Romanticism, on the other hand, "is the kind of fiction that takes cognizance of variations from the type of normal life". This romance "go[es] straight through the clothes and tissues and wrappings of flesh down deep into the red, living heart of things". If accuracy, he says, is realism, romanticism is truth.
So how does his own work, McTeague, fit with his definition? The characters seem ordinary enough: Trina is a pretty little thing, the daughter of immigrants; McTeague is an unlicensed dentist; Marcus is a brash, impatient young man; they live in the residential district of San Francisco, surrounded by other fairly ordinary people. So far, it seems to be the stuff of realism. Ah, but then something extraordinary happens--Trina hits the lottery, winning five thousand dollars.
Now begins the real story: the story of how greed, jealousy, and despair change the lives of three otherwise happy people. Although Marcus had been planning to marry Trina, he deferred to McTeague because McTeague felt more strongly about having her. However, when Trina wins the five thousand dollars, he feels cheated. As the McTeagues prosper, his jealousy grows. Trina, meanwhile, has also been changed by her winnings: she has become obsessed with money. She starts to save, at any expense, and refuses to touch her wisely invested winnings. McTeague begins to resent the scrimping.
Finally, Marcus's jealousy reaches a head and he tells the authorities that McTeague does not have the credentials requisite for practicing his profession. McTeague loses his job, and life becomes progressively miserable for the young couple. Still Trina scrimps and hoards. McTeague finally takes her little stash and leaves her.
He returns, having spent the small stash; he learns that she has withdrawn her five thousand dollars; he asks her to share it, and when she refuses, kills her and takes off with the money. Marcus goes after him. Marcus finally catches McTeague in Death Valley. They have no water. McTeague is a wanted man; Marcus wants the gold. They fight, and McTeague kills Marcus--but the book ends with him handcuffed to the dead body.
This is romance, under Norris's definition, because it digs into what at first appear to be normal, happy lives, and digs up great secrets and tragedy. It goes beyond the everyday; it searches the soul. By basking in the darker emotions, Norris brings his subjects to a boil; when they explode, as they surely must under such circumstances, they lose all resemblance to the drawing-room characters he claims are typical of realism. So, if realism is defined by what it is not, and McTeague is not those things, McTeague is thus not realism. Ergo, it falls onto the other side of the dichotomy he offers: it is romanticism.

2006-07-11T22:41:00.000-04:00

Maggie, Crane's girl of the streets, and Lily, of Edith Wharton's House of Mirth, are very similar. Both are pretty young women with aggressive social agendas; the only significant difference is one of class. Maggie, we know, is from the slums. She is a pretty girl with a rotten home, and wants something better. Consequently, she takes up with Pete, who shows her a glitzy time, then takes advantage of her innocence and abandons her. She dies not long thereafter, having been unable to reconcile with her mother and return to the only home she knows.

Lily, likewise, wants something better. Lily is a pretty girl from the upper middle class, and she wants something better. Her intention is to use her looks to make a rich match; she uses them to join a group she can't afford to play with, and ends up in debt. Rather than sacrifice her virtue to pay the debt, she quits that crowd--but too late. Because of the debt, she is all but disinherited. She goes to work, as Maggie had done, in a sewing shop, and dies a short time later, immediately after writing the check to pay her debt.

That the only real difference between these girls is class should be obvious, as should the fact that all other differences spring from the difference in status. Even the fall of the heroine reflects this distinction. While Maggie pays for her good times with her body, Lily has another choice: $10,000. Since she always has the prospect of that much from the estate that was originally to be hers entirely, she is not compelled to do anything but pay her bill and not run up more debt. This can be done by leaving the expensive set and returning to a dull life, which she does. Maggie, on the other hand, was only grasping toward a dull life, and had nothing but her back to fall back on.

So the similarities are simple, and the difference is complex: the difference is one of circumstance. The characters are otherwise virtually identical. Perhaps Zola would see this as an example of the novel as experiment: what happens if a girl like Maggie and Lily goes on a date with William Kennedy Smith? What if she comes from the Vanderbilt family, and wants to see the captain of the football team: A character can be placed into many different settings; the author's choice of circumstances for the character then determines the story's outcome. At least, that's how it seems to work in naturalism.

2006-07-11T22:36:00.000-04:00

I will be performing a crucial experiment this weekend. I will be traveling to the North Pole with a 10,000,000 watt electromagnet to test a theory of my late uncle's. A crucial experiment is one that tests a "novel prediction" and can, if the results turn out differently than predicted, immediately falsify the "bold conjecture," or new theory, that lead to it. A novel prediction is one that very probably won't come true if what we currently believe is accurate, but can come true if the new theory is; while a bold conjecture simply gives a novel prediction: it claims that something will happen which background knowledge says is very unlikely.

My uncle believed that the present understanding of magnetic currents and attractions in the Earth itself is wrong. His bold conjecture was that the Earth should behave just like any other magnet: the North pole should be attracted to a Southern charge, and repelled by another North, just like all other magnets. His novel prediction, based on this theory, is that if a Northern current of sufficient wattage is applied to the magnetic North pole, the Earth will spin its axis, just like any other magnet, to line up a Southern current with the Northern one. It is novel because it doesn't fit into what we believe about magnetics or the Earth. So far, there is no reason(other than his theory) to believe that this will really happen. If the world actually does shift its axis over the weekend, that will offer pretty strong corroboration for Unc's theory–– I mean, the world hasn't shifted its axis for quite a while, and there is no reason to expect it to now except the one he describes. By strong corroboration, I mean that this experiment, if these results occur, will convince most people that I am right. It is much more convincing than, say, watching two little bar magnets spin when they are introduced to opposite poles: we already know that this happens, but don't believe that the Earth will respond in the same way. If my experiment goes as planned, there should be no doubt that the Earth also spins in response to magnetic charges. And one spin should be enough to convince them: the shift will be very dramatic and its effects should be both widespread and pronounced.

Yet the degree of corroboration this will provide is inversely proportionate to the probability of its occurrence. If other experiments that I don't know about have been done and Unc's theory isn't really new, then I'm just playing with the Earth, not contributing to science.

2006-07-11T22:30:00.000-04:00

"A Courtship", by William Faulkner, is about the competition a young Indian and a river-boat pilot engage in over Herman Basket's sister. Ikkemotubbe, who is also called Doom, is the finest of the Indian braves, while David Hogganbeck is a dashing fiddle player. The story begins when Ikkemotubbe returns to his people after an unexplained two year absence. He is smitten with Herman Basket's sister. He begins showing off for her; his displays are interrupted by the arrival of David Hogganbeck with the supply shipment. Hogganbeck also takes a shine to the girl, and an intense rivallery between the two springs up. As they try to decide who deserves the girl, they go through drinking, dancing, and eating contests; finally, having proven equal to one another, they undertake a death mission. They race 130 miles to The Cave, where the winner will fire a pistol shot that could cause a cave-in. If it does not, he will win the girl; if he dies, the other wins by forfeit. After helping each other through the race, they reach the cave almost simultaneously. As Ikkemotubbe fires his pistol, Hogganbeck rushes in. The falling rocks, which would have crushed Ikkemotubbe, catch him instead. Ikkemotubbe escapes, then pulls him out. The two agree on a winner, but ironically, learn on the way home that Herman Basket's sister has married, or will marry, Log in the Creek, who never did anything but play harmonica, instead.

This twist makes Log in the Creek and Herman Basket's sister, two minor characters, the story's most interesting. Very little is said about either of them. The girl is amazingly beautiful, and spoiled. Log in the Creek is written off immediately: he can not drink much, and is unimpressive in the other ways Hogganbeck and Ikkemotubbe consider important. All he does is hang around and play his harmonica. Yet they must be characters of some depth to reach the decision they do.

Throughout the story, which is told by a narrator sympathetic to Ikkemotubbe, Herman Basket's sister is treated as an object, and nothing more. This is presumably the attitude of the competitors, as well, who seem to see her as a prize to be won. It seems reasonable that while Ikkemotubbe and Hogganbeck are concentrating on one another, she is spending time getting to know and growing to love Log in the Creek. We are not told about their interactions, because they are not relevant to the competition. Indeed, the title itself must be seen as ironic, given the connotations courtship carries. One thinks of Othello and Desdemona, or Carl and Alexandra in O Pioneers! when one thinks of courtship. But instead of becoming acquainted with their intended, Hogganbeck and Ikkemotubbe concentrate on each other. She is simply the prize, the reason for their struggle.

Perhaps this can be read as a feminist fable, with the obvious moral that treating women as objects instead of as people is not wise. It should also be noted that such treatment is acceptable in the society Ikkemotubbe and Hogganbeck represent. Herman Basket's sister, while from the description given deserving of objectification, nonetheless asserts her personhood by rebelling against this system and choosing to marry the man who treats her as human. This act not only marks her as far from the object Hogganbeck and Ikkemotubbe conceive of her as, but even as a feminist herself. The same can be said for Log in the Creek, who does not buy into the objectification and ends up marrying the person others saw as a prize.

2006-07-11T22:28:00.000-04:00

Palatino, Sabini and Silver, in their book Moralities of Everyday Life, set out to examine issues that are not usually addressed by social psychologists: the table of contents includes Envy, A Plea for Gossip, and Procrastination. Taking the chapter Flirtation and Ambiguity (pp.107–123) as an example of the work they are doing, I will attempt to analyze the validity and value of this book.

The chapter begins with a discussion of the concepts we will need to discuss flirtation. The first of these falls under the heading Purposes. This is followed by sections entitled Recognizing a Flirtation When We See One: Lists, Rules, and Points; Pleasures, Point, and Ambiguities of Purpose; and Collective Collusion. Sabini and Silver begin by establishing that flirtation is an intentional act: that it is not something that happens to us. Yet while acts can be intentional, the purpose of an intentional act can be clear or ambiguous. While the purpose of flirtation seems to be, obviously, sex, people often flirt without intending to have sex. This raises the question of what flirtation is. A list of behaviors which will lead us to say that a person is flirting if and only if she engages in some number of them will not suffice for this, they determine, because, the creativity of the species and the flexibility of our concepts guarantee that any list must be too short. But will a list of abstract types of behavior do this for us? This question requires a further clarification of concepts. The model of a chess match is introduced to explain the term constitutive rules, the rules that define possible behaviors in a situation. These rules make no judgment about the prudence of acts, but only whether or not they are valid acts. There are no such rules for flirtation, because again, any act could be part of a flirtation. They return to the model of chess, and determine that there is something else that leads us to identifying certain behaviors within a set of constitutive rules as chess, while other behaviors which also follow the rules are not called chess: working toward the end intended by calling chess, chess. The point of the game is to mate(an appropriate pun, given the reason for their digression, which began to determine if the purpose of flirtation was the same); players will not necessarily have this purpose when playing, but to say "they are playing chess" is to claim that their actions are directed to this end. So it seems that sex is not necessarily(though it certainly may be) the purpose of flirtation, but flirtation is necessarily behavior organized by the goal of stimulating(acknowledged) sexual interest. Yet each of the behaviors that may be so organized(for whatever purpose they may be so organized) for the purpose of flirtation may be preformed for some other purpose. Thus does ambiguity make her entrance.

Behaviors which could be part of a pattern of flirtation may not be intended as such by the actor; if they are, the purpose of the flirtations are still uncertain. A concept like flirtation, Sabini and Silver tell us, allows us to call attention to the way a particular action is, was, or might be related to a particular goal, without committing ourselves to claiming that the actor intended, or even was aware of, the way the action leads, led, or might lead to the goal.

Still, one feature of flirtation seems obvious: it involves interaction between two people, one or both of which is fitting behaviors to the other's. But beyond the ambiguities inherent in this interaction is the possibility that there may be reasons for trying to keep the interaction ambiguous, even if it is intended as flirtation. Making one's intent apparent forces the issue of your partner's cooperation, and this may not be wise for a variety of reasons. This takes us back to the seemingly improbably possibility that someone may not be aware that she is flirting. It is often unwise to declare intentions; therefore, since you don't have to announce you are flirting you don't have to fully intend to; you don't even have to think about it seriously. Also following from not forcing the issue is the possibility that one could intend to make the flirtation ambiguous: indeed, once intentions are clear, flirtation is over, although its fruit may still remain to be enjoyed.

So Sabini and Silver conclude that ambiguity is the key to flirtation. In the second half of the chapter, they set out to examine the ways behavior can be ambiguous to determine some senses in which actions can 'mean' things. They begin by noting that there can be three reasons for an occurrence: action, reaction, or coincidence. Action is intentional, reaction is caused, and coincidence is an unexpected result of either an action or reaction. Any act could be cause by any of these; that is the ambiguity. An act such as making eye contact may be intended, or it may be coincidental. In flirtation, this ambiguity can be used to disguise intentions, and so is useful. Likewise, the blurred distinction between intended actions and reactions is useful. Announcing intentions has two consequences: it lets others predict our behavior, and leaves us open to sanctions if we do not follow through on them. Thus, by making an intentional act seem like reaction, we can create the basis for prediction without taking up a commitment to follow through: we have the excuse that it was unintended.

Knowing that an action is intended or reactionary may not solve the problem, however. If it is a reaction, there can still be uncertainty about what was reacted to. Even if the action was intended, there can be many different possible motives for it. But even the obviously intentional act of speech carries further ambiguities of language: topics may reflect interests or pretended interests; there may be more than one reason for saying a particular thing; words can have multiple meanings. Compliments and insults may be intended either sincerely or otherwise, for form or to express a claim to intimacy. Another ambiguity surrounding meaning is the word 'meaning' itself, which may refer to a definitional meaning('si' means 'yes'), or an inferred meaning(ending this paper means I have nothing more to say). Even this ambiguity can come into play in the final stages of flirtation, when it might not be clear exactly what a particular statement was intended to convey.

And all of this leads Sabini and Silver to see ambiguity as a resource, rather than a defect in the concept of purpose. What kind of psychology is this, concluding that ambiguity is a resource? Sabini and Silver arrived, claiming to be students of interactions, only to fly off into an epistimological discussion of intentions. Moreover, these essays are completely dependant upon natural language philosophy for their conclusions, and while they are interesting philosophical exercises in and of themselves, they(like most natural language philosophers) seem to have no purpose beyond that of a good lexicographer. While a thorough discussion of exactly what certain elements of our folk psychology mean does help us better understand that folk psychology, it does not add anything to it beyond clarity. If they would, on the other hand, follow the epistomological leads they come to in these discussions, bringing their insights as psychologists into the philosophic discussion instead of taking their philosophical bend into the study of interactions, I would be very interested in what they have to say. I have learned, however, in the process of writing this paper for the process of writing the paper, instead of the ideas it carries, that I am a student of ideas, not a student of people and interactions, and while these ideas about people interest me, other ideas interest me more.

2006-07-11T22:16:00.000-04:00

Chomsky, Noam. "Review of Verbal Behavior,(1957) B.F. Skinner. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts. Language. #35 (1) 1959 Linguistic Society of America. 26-58.

In his review, Chomsky sets out to demonstrate Skinner's explanation of language acquisition as absurd. Doing this will eliminate the most visible, and respected, behaviorist view, leaving Chomsky's own view with fewer viable critics and thus bringing it that much closet to acceptance.

Skinner, in his book, attempts 'to provide a way to predict and control verbal behavior by observing and manipulating the physical environment of the speaker"(26). As a proponent of behaviorism, the idea that all behavioral responses are conditioned and so any behavioral responses can be conditioned, Skinner made great advances in the laboratory. In Verbal Behavior, he tries to extrapolate from the laboratory, to human behavior. his argument is diagrammed below.

Chomsky makes short work of Skinner, who's slipshod scholarship makes refutation appear easy. Chomsky seems more familiar with Skinner's work than Skinner himself, and uses this knowledge to point out the many inconsistencies in term usage, as well as the absurd results that follow from these inconsistencies.

While admitting that reinforcement is an important factor in language acquisition, Chomsky denies that it must be the only factor--and presents the thought that a child's "remarkable capacity. . . to generalize, hypothesize, and process information. . . may be largely innate"(43). What is needed, he claims, is research, not theory dogmatically extracted from abstract experimental agendas.

Upon this framework, however, Skinner proceeds to build a system to describe verbal behavior; behavior reinforced through the medium of other persons, as Skinner defines it. Chomsky points out that this definition would include a rat, pressing the bar in a Skinner-box and being reinforced when given a food pellet. This sets the tone for Chomsky's discussion of the terms "mand," "tact," and "autoclites," Skinner's three components of verbal response. Each of these extremely complex notions, it seems, actually carries less descriptive value than the words it replaces, and no provides insight into the way language is used, constructed, or understood.

Since Skinner does nothing of real value, Chomsky chides him about the purpose of science, then suggests a research program which can be carried out, and would provide information we do not currently have about innate language capacities.

2006-07-11T22:08:00.000-04:00

Naturalism, as I defined it, is a literary movement in which authors tried to demonstrate the effects of determinism by showing all the links in a particular chain of causes. I also gave these authors credit for a moral decision, in that their choice of chains to follow--their choice of subject--could show the results of particular actions to those people in a position to make decisions about performing such acts. Maggie, a Girl of the Streets, seems to meet these low expectations.

Crane named his book for a young , presumably Irish woman growing up in the tenement district, but his subject was Maggie's family, not just her. We see very little of Maggie's thoughts: the piece is written from an author-omniscient perspective, but the voice is one of reportage, rather than psychological insight. This choice compels Crane to describe physical detail, which he does: we see and hear every scene clearly. The pieces are placed in order for us; Crane only leaves us to see the connection.

Crane does not, however, force the connection onto us. There are wide gaps in the story: several months pass between Maggie being banished from her mother's home and her death, and we know nothing of what happened in those months. She might have joined a convent and been killed by a falling crucifix, for all we know. I don't, however, see this as a weakness. The gap forces a reader to consider Maggie's situation and draw some sort of conclusion, and the story is structured so as to steer readers' thoughts toward a particular vision of Maggie's end, one which is inevitable, given her starting situations.

Maggie also meets my didactic criterion: Maggie concludes as it does because of a choice made by a character with power. Even if that power is only the ability to dazzle an innocent girl, it gives Pete the power to ruin her life and hasten her death. This is a power many people have, and Crane could have counted on at least a few people with that power coming across his story. I assume Crane's purpose was greater than producing a pamphlet for the abstinence crusade, but if his only intention was to show tomcatting teenagers that their actions did have consequences, he executed it masterfully. Maggie is a vivid book, easy and enjoyable to read, and more than fulfills my expectations of naturalism. Then again, when you don't expect much, it's harder to be disappointed.

2006-07-11T22:05:00.000-04:00

Naturalism is a literary approach which seeks to examine and understand man's place in, and role as a part of, the existent physical world. It attempted the application of scientific principles to literature; its practitioners emphasized close observation of the physical world and the laws of cause and effect.

This approach to writing sprung from a growing understanding of the world, and humanity as a part of that world, as a closed system, controlled by inviolate physical laws. If, following this premise, each act is the necessary result of a prior act or set of conditions, the conclusion is inevitable. Such an approach is astonishingly similar to Aristotle's description of tragedy, in which the awful endings also become inescapable. This may account, to some extent, for the noticeable lack of happy endings in works falling under this rubric.

The scarcity of happy endings may, on the other hand, simply be a result of subject matter. While naturalism's tenets of determinism would make equally possible the following of a rich character through a "happy" and "productive" life, authors at this time were increasingly concerned with the condition of those falling outside the boundaries of success. Perhaps this was because new scientific theories pointed mankind toward a higher sphere, one which these people did not seem to be reaching; perhaps this was simply because misery is more interesting than success; or perhaps this was because the authors believed that showing how the downtrodden were trapped by circumstances which they could not control would lead those who could control such things to do so. Since the American naturalistic movement began in a time of relative economic prosperity and continued through the Great Depression, ascribing this optimistic motive to the authors of such dismal works seems both kind and justified.

Therefore, I will describe naturalism as that movement in literature which sought, by showing how little control one actually has over one's own life, to encourage the cautious and prudent exercise of power by those who did have some control over the situations of others. Furthermore, it attempted to portray the effects and implications of the new scientific revolution in an objective, rational manner, one modeled upon that very new science itself.

2006-07-11T22:01:00.000-04:00

Shore, Bill. Cathedral Within. New York: Random, 2001.

Bill Shore's Cathedral Within is an inspirational instruction to make a difference. Shore, founder and executive director of the national anti-hunger organization Share Our Strength, uses the cathedral as a central metaphor for groups trying to change the world: both efforts take many years, many skills, and many people who believe that the end is worthwhile, even if they never see it. He appeals to those who feel that service can provide a missing purpose for their lives, but do not know how to begin.

Cathedral Within is inspirational, and somewhat instructive, because Shore uses a series of exemplars to demonstrate the entrepreneurial approach of truly effective, dynamic nonprofit organizations. By pulling lessons from his own work at Share Our Strength in Washington D.C., as well as the stories of City Year in Boston, the Chicago Children's Choir, Pioneer Human Services in Seattle, and others. As Shore puts it, "This is a book about. . . the new ideas and new leadership of extraordinary people who are expanding the range of what is possible" (10).

Through their examples, we see that solving social problems really is up to us and that short-term programs do not work. Not-for-profits must go beyond current standard practices to create their own wealth and build a lasting legacy. Doing so requires passion, and those who are successful ought find ways to share what they learn from the process. Shore's most impressive examples show how Nancy Carstedt is able to advance social justice in Chicago through the Children's Choir and how Gary Mulhair of Pioneer Human Services taps into the private sector by going directly into competition with it.

Each year, more than 3,000 children from forty schools take part in Chicago Children's Choir programs, and Carstedt's singers have performed at the White House and in South Africa, Russia, Italy, and Japan (79-80). She has a very real, positive impact on these young lives. The Choir offers caring relationships with adults, guidance, a peer group and develops self-worth. It helps children become socially competent, explore, believe in a positive future, and find ways to help others (94). Why are there not more programs like this?

The problem is two-fold: making a program work is very difficult, and replicating success is even harder. Shore notes three indisputable facts about nonprofit organizations: across the country, many community-based, locally supported programs exist to provide services. The quality of these programs is uneven, but they fill a serious gap in social support, and all of them, no matter how successful, are underfunded and unreplicated (88). Carstedt believes that the Choir should be able to support itself, however, and has explored ideas from building a recording studio to corporate licensing agreements and sponsorship for tours.

Pioneer Human Services is another example of this paradigm shift toward making nonprofits self-sufficient. What began as a halfway house in 1962 now employs nearly 700 people and reaches more than 5,000 at-risk individuals (129) by integrating jobs, training, housing, and support services (126). The employment is in Pioneer's own non-profit factories and shops, which through sales and contracts provide approximately 75% of the operating budget (131). Pioneer's steadily-expanding collection of businesses includes a light-metal fabrication shop, which has ISO 9002 certification and an exclusive contract with Boeing; a real-estate group; a café at the Starbucks corporate headquarters; a downtown hotel; a print-and-mailing shop; and a food-bank distribution program. According to Mulhair, this is part of a long-term vision "to create a self-supporting, outcome-driven, wealth-creating, entrepreneurial nonprofit organization" (133).

The unifying feature of businesses Pioneer enters is their numerous entry-level jobs. These jobs provide opportunities for Pioneer clients to learn the work and social skills necessary to be successful citizens. "Instead of giving us money," Mulhair says, "give us work. We'll convert that into jobs and hire the people you won't hire" (133). He sees his real task as providing jobs for those who need them most, and a contract for services does more to this end than a cash donation.

Shore suggests that all nonprofit agencies need to become self-sufficient in order to establish permanent, institutional organizations, and offers the following advice (213-24). First, nonprofits need to redefine partnership with the business community. Instead of simply asking for money, show how the relationship benefits both giver and receiver. If, as in Pioneer's case, a corporate partner truly gains by the exchange, it is likely to last. Secondly, make use of the assets on hand, whatever they may be, and actively search out those not previously considered or recognized. Shore defines assets as anything, physical or ethereal, that can be leveraged to create community wealth. Mailing lists and community goodwill both have value that can attract revenue. Finding ways to take advantage of hidden assets can not only increase revenues, but may also increase community exposure and organizational reach. The goal, after all, is to solve a problem and take that solution to scale, as the YMCA, Big Brothers and Big Sisters, the Red Cross, or the Boys and Girls Club have done.

A third key to success is avoiding mission creep. Identify the core values and activities, focus on these, and avoid expanding into other, unrelated areas while doing the very best work possible in the core area. Finally, get whatever help is necessary to succeed. Hiring management professionals, as staff or as consultants, is eventually necessary for all growing organizations.

Returning to the cathedral metaphor, Shore derives five basic "principles that can give meaning and purpose to our lives, help our work endure, and make our communities stronger" (19-20). Knowing that a task cannot be completed need not diminish effort and dedication. Efforts must be shared by the entire community, and will build upon earlier efforts. They must generate their own support to succeed, and finally, they must share their stories. These principles are true for any community development project, whether constructing a house of worship or a single better life.

2006-07-11T21:44:00.000-04:00

Thayer, C.G. 'Ben Jonson: Studies in the Plays'. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1963

Thayer presents 'Volpone' in his section 'Middle Comedies.' His discussion focuses on exactly what kind of play it is: granting it is a great play, is it really comedy? Some critics, he says, argue that it is not, but they are mistaken. He begins his argument with the prologue. 'All gall, and coppress, from his inke, he drayneth,/ Onely, a little salt remayneth;/ Wherewith, he'll rub your cheeks, til/ They shall looke fresh, a weeke after.(p. 33–36). This, he says, is a straightforward statement of Jonson's intention. The play is supposed to be funny enough to give you rosy cheeks for a week after seeing it.

Given this, he examines reasons for a tragic reading, beginning with Jonson's seeming violation of comic principles in Act II, when Corvino is willing to prostitute Celia for Volpone's inheritance, and Act III, when Volpone proves his wickedness by trying to rape her. Yet Thayer says that this, however disturbing it may be, is legitimate comedy in that Mosca creates this will in him by playing on his faults. In Act II, scene 3, Corvino shows insane jealousy, yet in scene 7, he is chiding her chastity. Other elements of this incident that contribute to the humor, he says, include the character of Celia, who is actually a homely, empty–headed fluff who cannot even appreciate the way Volpone woos her. Bonario's frustration of the rape, as well, is just silly melodrama.

The sentence passed against Volpone and Mosca is another reason some critics have called the play tragic: both protagonists are sent off to die, Mosca in a galley–ship, and Volpone in stocks that will make his as sick as he pretended to be, which seems much too harsh to be funny and far out of proportion with their crimes. Thayer, however, describes them as part of an elaborate comic pattern which focuses on the judges's stupidity. Readers who see this ending as nearly tragic, he then says, should remember that Volpone is really no Lear or Othello (54). The problem with this ending is not in its harshness, he claims, but in Jonson's skill as a playwright. While vile, Volpone is also witty and engaging, so that he almost seems to be a real person. It is this person we empathize with and pity when Volpone is sentenced, which may be what makes it so disturbing.

Thayer goes on to say that Jonsonian comedy is a systematic perversion of basic social principles. This would, it seems, make him a satirist, criticizing the principles he sees as perverse in his own society. This distortion begins in Volpone's opening soliloquy, in which he declares gold to be sacred and its possessor to be all things good. We also see that Volpone is special because he gets his gold without working, which makes him morally superior to those who do.

This is where I must disagree with Thayer. His assertion that Jonson's comedy is based on distortion of social principles is meaningless to me; it violates a fundamental premise of fiction. Fiction, and drama must be considered as fiction because it tells a story that is not completely true, relies on the setting aside of disbelief and accepting of an author's premises for its effect. If we are not willing to enter the world Jonson gives us, we cannot appreciate his creation. If we do accept it, 'Volpone' becomes a tragedy.

Actually, the play could be divided into two parts. The first four acts are comic; Volpone capers through them and makes fools of everyone. Yet these acts are merely prologue, to develop his character and set the situation for the twelve scenes of Act V. In this act, Volpone makes his tragic decision: he will play one more trick on the world, by pretending to be dead. He will sign all his property over to Mosca in a 'fake' will, then hide so he can watch the reactions this causes. The fatal flaw Volpone demonstrates is, like Othello, faith in his chief companion. He believes that Mosca will go along with the prank, then give everything back to him. Mosca, on the other hand, has been hoping for just such a windfall, and once the estate is legally his, has no intentions of giving it back. Yet he seems to play along, helping Volpone run around pestering his disappointed suitors in scenes five and six. It is the jealousy of these suitors that finally brings Volpone and Mosca down. Outraged that a servant should inherit the fortune and become like a gentleman, they take him to court. It is in court, where each tries to prove guilt in the other and to establish a case for being the heir, without exposing his own guilt, that the truth somehow manages to come out. Yet Mosca is not sentenced for his trickery, but for impersonating a gentleman; Volpone is not convicted of a crime, but only made to become like what he seemed to be. This does not, however, detract from the tragedy. Volpone makes a decision, the decision leads inevitably to his death. That is tragedy.

2006-06-21T20:52:00.000-04:00

The five-paragraph theme has long been a staple of the composition curriculum. This can be credited to several factors: it is simple, makes its case clearly, and is easy for the reader to understand. It is also versatile--the form can be applied to almost any subject. Most important to students, however, is its simplicity.

A five-paragraph theme begins with an introduction. This paragraph is designed to catch the reader's attention, state the subject, and limit it to the single topic which will be discussed. This may be done with a funnel, bringing the reader from a broad opening topic to the limited thesis; an interesting or startling quote which is pertinent to the subject; or a brief anecdote. The most important part of this paragraph is the thesis, which is usually its final sentence. This sentence states the writer's position on the topic.

Once a thesis is stated, it must be developed. This occurs in the paper's body paragraphs. When there are three major points supporting the thesis, each will be given a body paragraph. This is what usually happens, because unless the writer has at least three points, she probably doesn't have enough support to justify holding the position her thesis presents. In developing the thesis, examples are often helpful in clarifying exactly what is intended. This clarity is important, because these are the paragraphs which explain the writer's argument.

After evidence in support of the thesis has been presented, most of the writer's work is done. All that remains is to let the reader know that the paper is finished. This requires a conclusion. The most common method of conclusion is the summary, which briefly recaps the evidence and restates the thesis.

And this results in a five-paragraph theme. By following the simple format of introduction, development, and conclusion, anyone can write a paper on almost anything. What remains is to revise the paper, if time allows, and put it into the required manuscript form. This done, the writer may turn it in knowing that, while it may not be the most exciting paper in the world, it will present her argument clearly and competently.

2006-06-21T20:37:00.000-04:00

Brown, Dan. Angels and Demons. 2000: Atria Books, New York

By now you’ve heard of The DaVinci Code. Maybe you’re planning to see The DaVinci Code. Maybe you’ve even read The DaVinci Code. If you have read it, you have probably also read Angels and Demons, Dan Brown’s first book about Harvard professor of religious symbolism, Robert Langdon.

This page-turner starts when Langdon is recruited by the Conseil Europeen pour la Recheche Nucleaire to investigate a murder. Who died? The inventor of a process to produce commercial quantities of anti-matter. Even worse, the anti-matter is missing. Why call Langdon? The evidence points to an ancient, long-defunct group, the sworn enemy of the Catholic Church and the subject of Langdon’s most recent book: the Illuminati.

Langdon has twenty-four hours before the anti-matter containment system collapses. It is hidden somewhere in the Vatican, where the Cardinals have gathered to elect the next Pope. Langdon’s knowledge of Renaissance art (and a lot of help from the Vatican archives) allows him to locate and follow the Illuminati road to enlightenment, chasing one step behind the killer. He doesn’t make it, though, and the explosion is beautiful. Yet The DaVinci Code follows this story. Read Angels and Demons yourself to see how.

2006-06-21T20:04:00.000-04:00

Culler, Jonathan. Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions). New York: Oxford University Press, 1977/2000.

What do Marxists, Freudians, Structuralists, New Critics, Post-Colonialists, Feminists, and Deconstructionists have in common? “I don’t know” is not a correct response—but “I can’t understand them” is. The other right answer is that they all apply unique analytical frameworks to the study of literature in an effort to understand “what it means”. But most of us would say “I don’t know.”

Part of the confusion comes from all those different schools of criticism—I couldn’t keep them straight as a graduate student, either. Culler solves this problem by approaching the subject through the common underlying questions that any critic is trying to answer. The book fits eight chapter and an appendix into 133 pages, with each question getting a chapter; Culler only addresses various schools in the appendix. This makes it very easy to follow his clear, concise discussion of the philosophical issues that inspire both literature and the ways of studying it.

Literary Theory is part of an Oxford series that runs from Ancient Philosophy through Empire, Engles, and Ethics to Molecules, Music, Nietzsche and The Twentieth Century: there were about 150 titles in 2000. Each is written by an acknowledged expert on the subject (Culler teaches at Cornell and has published several books). They are designed to provide “stimulating ways in to new subjects,” or a high-level over-view. They are ideal for getting the “big picture” before starting a distributive requirement class because they will help you understand, quickly, both why it is important and how interesting it really it—to someone.

2006-06-21T20:02:00.000-04:00

We've watched Jeff Daniels use the Purple Rose Theatre Company as a personal launching pad for his career as a playwright for years and accepted this as the price of theatre in Chelsea. We should have seen it, instead, as practice, because Daniels has finally gotten it right.

He has gotten close before. Escanaba in da Moonlight, Norma and Wanda, and Across the Way were all good in more ways than not. But Guest Artist is not just a funny play—something we expect, because Daniels does comedy well. It is not just a well-crafted play, nor interesting as a concept. Each of these plays showed an artist coming to grasp with voice, concept, and craft. With Guest Artist, Daniels has matured. His craft is evident in the plotting and pacing, the use of repetition and so many other tricks writers use to reinforce message, surprise, and entertain. His love of the art for its own sake has never been more apparent, nor his idea of art's, and the artist's, role.

Yet what makes this an important play is not its technical competency—this is only a necessary foundation, and building it is a skill now thoroughly mastered. What makes it important, even worth all those years of practice, is in both what it says and how it is said.

'How' first. The piece is set in a bus station in Steubenville, Ohio, where a young theatre apprentice is to meet Jim Harris, a playwright commissioned to provide the local troupe's next offering. The relationship that develops between the two seems to be based on Daniels' own with Lanford Wilson, adding an emotional depth to the work. The two never leave the bus station (read it as Sartre's hell), using it instead as a platform for the power struggle that is Guest Artist's 'what'.

Harris, as noted above, owes the Steubenville Players a new play, and has come to be part of its production. He doesn't want to deliver. This is where the years of practice come into play: the construction of this interplay is flawless, almost effortless, leaving us with a pair of perfectly realized characters in an entirely believable situation.

This combination, in turn, drives the 'what'—and allows Guest Artist to become important. This is not a philosophical vehical, but Harris lets Daniels share his views on the playwright's role, theatre's role, and the writing process in contemporary society. The political, emotional, and artistic are not 'subjects' or 'themes', but passionately held beliefs, fears, and personal insights from Harris and the apprentice as they struggle to make sense of themselves, their world, and their work. Here, at last, Daniels has moved from using the theatre as springboard, metaphor, or representation to presenting theatre as life, and in so doing announces himself as an important new playwright, even if he isn't really new.

2006-06-21T20:00:00.000-04:00

Paige, LeRoy (Satchel). Maybe I’ll Pitch Forever. 1962: Doubleday, Garden City, NY.

In 2006, the National Baseball Hall of Fame wrapped up a special research effort into the Negro Leagues’ history. They collected box scores from almost every game, and they have finally tabulated statistics for these nearly-forgotten players. They celebrated by electing seventeen new members to the Hall, including former Detroit Stars first-baseman Mule Suttles. A large part of the research has now been released in the new book Shades of Glory: The Negro Leagues and the Story of African-American Baseball by Lawrence D. Hogan.

I’m sure that Shades of Glory is a fine book, but I’m reading Maybe I’ll Pitch Forever instead. An autobiography from Satchel Paige, crafted from interviews with David Lipman (who also wrote biographies of Bob Gibson and Branch Rickey), it provides a first-hand look at the Negro Leagues. Paige’s distinctively colorful voice carries a joy we are to assume infected these players, in spite of the harsh circumstances of their professional and personal lives. Yet Satch starts his story several games into his first major league season, when he was forty-one, so we know it all worked out for the man many thought should have broken baseball’s color barrier before Jackie Robinson ever finished college.

2006-06-21T19:54:00.000-04:00

That's "flea," not "slea": The Argument for Modern Typefaces

John Donne's Poetry. Arthur L. Clements, ed. 2nd. ed. New York: Norton, 1992.
Donne's Poetical Works. H.J.C. Grierson, ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1912.

Donne's collected poetry was first published in 1633, two years after he died. Since Donne didn't prepare his work for the press, controversy over his intended meanings seems inevitable. These two critical editions, however, agree that the first record of a poem the one least likely to have been corrupted; both use the 1633 edition as their base of authority. Poems not published in 1633 take authoritative readings from either the first published edition or the manuscripts.

Which means that both editions present, generally, the same text. Now listen: Donne's collected poetry was first published in 1633, two years after he died. These lines are more than 350 years old. While they are good, and are important in the development of English poetry, enough is enough.

The Norton Critical Edition is enough. In a single paper-back volume, it presents the greatest bulk of Donne's work, with selected criticism to help focus study and to place him in a historical context, an extensive selected bibliography to guide further study, an introduction explaining the textual concerns, and notes, at the back, listing major deviations from the text as printed and their sources.

Grierson's two-volume tome, on the other hand, is too much for all but the most hardened scholars. It not only sorts, classifies, and notes all versions of all the poems attributed to Donne, it also delineates the sorting, classifying, and noting process. The introduction and commentary are extensive; they require an entire second volume. The poems, printed in volume one, are done in their original fashion: no spelling--or even symbol--changes have been made to accommodate the reader, meaning 's' can be read as 'f,' or 'u' as 'v,' if one does not already know how the lines run. Notes on textual differences, however, are instantly accessible at the bottom of each page.

The Grierson edition is for someone who already knows Donne well. For those already acquainted with him, it makes intimate conversation possible. For those just trying to meet him, though--even for those who don't mind close friendship, but don't need to know every secret--the Norton will serve as well, and will cost much less.

2006-06-21T19:51:00.000-04:00

Leprecons, trolls, and fairies, an unsupervised twelve-year-old, and criminal ambitions. Sound like a good combination? Well, it's not Harry Potter—much less involved, both in terms of plotting and character development, and meant for a slightly younger audience. It's not even Lemony Snicket, which aims for an even young crowd—but Artemis Fowl, by Eoin Colfer, delivers the same sort of fun. In the first, eponymous adventure, Fowl seeks out the fairy-folk in order to steal their gold and right his family's fortunes. This happens at the expense of Holly Short, the first female fairly member of the Lower Elements Police Reconnaissance unit, whom he kidnaps. The LEPrecon rescue efforts include a tunneling dwarf, a troll, and temporarily stopping time, but are still no match for Fowl's genius.

This series, which began in 2001, has been extremely popular with tweens. I read it in an afternoon, with lots of lazy napping between chapters, and now I need to find book two in the series.

2006-06-21T18:54:00.000-04:00

Haroun and the Sea of Stories is the most accessible of Salman Rushdie’s novels, and this little book is almost perfect. No, seriously—in the way that The Great Gatsby, The Old Man and the Sea, or A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich is perfect: a brilliantly cut, brightly polished little gem, with well-drawn, believable characters working through a well-paced, reasonable (given the magical realism of the circumstances) plot.

Set in an imaginary Kashmir, in a fictional now, Rushdie’s masterwork (and I say this knowing full well what a truly magnificent book Midnight’s Children is—but it, like Moby Dick, is a wonderfully, humanly flawed work, of such scope and complexity that perfection is unthinkable) is appropriate for children, in spite of the adult themes which spark the plot. Haroun, himself a child, undertakes to save his father’s career (and marriage) by traveling with a water genie to Earth’s second moon. Here, he must intervene in a war and reverse an intentional environmental disaster to save the Sea of Stories, from which his father draws the stories he tells for a living.

Of course, it all works out in the end and Haroun learns the value of stories. Read it as an environmental metaphor, as an allegory for contemporary degradation of our humanity, or simply for fun—but read it.