Back in February I read a novel, "The Mistress," by Phillipe Tapon. I liked it a lot, which is why I picked up his first novel, "A Parisian From Kansas." Let's just say, it's rather different from "The Mistress." (See my February blog for a fuller discussion.)
"Parisian" is what the author/narrator calls a self-referent novel, self-referent in that the author talks about writing the novel even as the plot progresses. It is not an AIDS novel, we are assured, yet the main character, Darren, is dying of AIDS. When "Phillipe Tapon" meets Darren at a party in Paris, he is entranced by this thin, unique, unrestrained young man. When Darren discovers that Phillipe has ambitions to write a novel, Darren immediately seizes on him to write the story of his, Darren's, life--and death. The two men begin a relationship that is sometimes a friendship, sometimes a collaboration, sometimes a searing conflict. You could say it is about a philosophy of life, a meditation upon death, a story of friendships made and tested, but mostly you could say it is a novel about love. And sex.
One reason I like fiction so much is that I am fascinated by human relationships. If the relationship is interesting, I don't care if it's between a cab driver and a runaway teenager, an artist and his model, a couple falling in love, or a homosexual and his best friend. I like knowing what makes people tick, how they find meaning, how they cope with loss and pain, what they do with whatever fortune deals them. Sex is obviously part of the human experience, but in literature it's not usually the most interesting part, to me at least. What is interesting about Othello and Desdemona is not just their sexual relationship, though that certainly plays a big part; what fascinates are the jealousy, the insecurity of a strong man, devotion in the face of fear, the machinations of a selfish schemer. We don't need to know the secrets of the bedroom; we can infer that. Most of "Parisian" is interesting, though it drags a bit and is repetitious. For a novel that talks so much about editing, this one could have used a bit more red pencil. Quite frankly, the infamous Chapter 11 is one I could have done without, not because I found it offensive. I just found it irrelevant. I would recommend this novel, with reservations. In my view, "The Mistress" is a far better book.
Monday, May 9, 2011
We Are All Cowards
My good and dear friend L. asked me this morning what courage is. The question has led me to think about not only a definition but also the presence or absence of courage in our daily lives. Who is brave? Does it matter?
We read about freedom fighters who willingly risk death for a cause or a country. We watch as mountain climbers scale impossible heights. We applaud a little girl who sacrifices her own life to save her sister from drowning. These are all brave people. We would all like to believe we could be like them should circumstances warrant, but I very much doubt that the vast majority of us are brave at all. To me, courage is pursuing an action or course that is filled with danger beyond the normal risks we all take when we drive a car or fly across the country. To me, bravery is not absence of fear; it is, as Hemingway put it, "grace under pressure."
There are all kinds of fear, but the one I want to consider here is the fear of speaking one's mind, the fear of ruffling feathers. Let me be specific. I have spent over 30 years as a teacher, first in high schools, then in universities. For most of that time I was quite happy with the way things were organized and managed. When I taught high school back in the '70s, I was lucky enough to have a principal who had, well, principles. He was fair and reliable. He did not suffer fools gladly but he could listen to his faculty and change course if they wanted to try something new. He thought for himself and allowed us to do the same.
Years later, when I was teaching at a state university, I began to hear rumblings from the public schools about increased paperwork, demands for more and more "assessment," teaching to the test, and being forced through a narrow curricular chute. Thank goodness I'm not teaching in the public schools, I thought. That could never happen in higher education. Professors are too independent; the ethos is completely different. By the time I retired higher education too was in the grip of a bureaucracy of micro-managers who thought education was best served by increasing the number of buzzwords associated with it--outcome-based, goals and strategies, uniform syllabi, student-centered, critical thinking (as demonstrated by quantifiable data)--rather than by a recognition of and a reliance on the ability of a teacher to get her students thinking for themselves and, if not loving the subject at hand, at least deepening their appreciation of it.
There are two fields where personal relationships matter a great deal: education and medicine. Students learn from teachers they love, and patients recover more calmly and quickly when they are comforted as well as cured by their physicians. Both medicine and education have been highjacked by pencil-pushers intent on removing the human factor and replacing it with protocols, rubrics, data, and documentation. "Oversight" is the watchword, as if good teachers and doctors couldn't be trusted to know what they are doing. We have lost trust in those we should most revere, perhaps because we have lost trust period. When reading my student evaluations at the end of each semester, it was the comments I looked at, not the circled numbers or checked boxes. But when student responses were tallied, it was only the numbers that counted and were kept. There is a proliferation of paperwork that drains time out of a teacher's or a doctor's day and creates so much redundancy that when you provide your doctor with your address and phone number you have to put the same information on a dozen sheets of paper, and the nurse at check-out asks you for it again.
All of this bureaucratic glut and nit-picking is not the only thing that troubles me, however. What amazes me is the alacrity with which otherwise intelligent, competent professionals cave in to the demands to follow all the rules, without deviation. Standardization is meant to assure quality, but, I suggest, it too often flattens everything into the same pancake. If there is a good reason for doing something, then I am all for doing it. But does it really matter if every professor's syllabus looks exactly the same? Isn't "what are your goals for your class" a terribly silly question? Does relentless testing promote learning and make it more enjoyable, or is it just an obstacle to real growth?
My question is this: why don't more people just say no? Why can't a senior professor simply say, "I've been teaching this course for 20 years. My classes are always full, and my former students come back to visit long after they have graduated. Everyone knows who the good teachers are on this campus. Give me one good reason why I should fill out this silly form and answer your silly questions? Who benefits from my wasting time in this way?"
What I have noticed is that younger faculty go along with the system without question. They shrug their shoulders and say, "Just do what the Office of Assessment wants and get it over with." They have been brought up in this new world and don't know any other. But I have watched the morale of older professors wither and die. It is a fact that universities are becoming more and more top-heavy with administrators. That's where the real money is, and the power too. Because research has become the be-all and end-all of academia, professors whose research is less than stellar often opt for administration, where the research requirement disappears. Those may be the best teachers on campus, but administration offers an attractive refuge. In addition, many of the new administrators who proliferate like rabbits (layers and layers of vice-chancellors, vice-provosts, associate deans, directors of various services, such as student life, multicultural affairs, sustainability, etc. etc.) have never been inside a classroom as anything other than a student themselves. Their take on the university is quite different from their faculties'. Productivity, retention, cost-cutting, grant-winning--in short, a bottom-line mentality. Education is becoming a business with customers rather than students. Slick advertising entices students with spas, athletics, and luxury dorms, as though a university were a resort with an academic component.
I am trying hard not to become an old curmudgeon, pining for the good old days when professors smoked pipes and had leather patches on their elbows, but it's not easy. I know this will never happen; the current system is too entrenched, but I wish our higher education could be divided into teaching institutions and research institutes, each with a clear mandate. Just as some doctors choose to work in a lab rather than a clinic, so too some academics would prefer to do research rather than teach undergraduates. The way things are now, if a young faculty member wants to devote his life to teaching, if he feels a calling to teach and can't imagine doing anything else, he is pulled away from his primary passion by research requirements that sap his time and his energy. It's a mistake too many people make when they think young professors have it easy. Nothing could be further from the truth. Teaching--at any level--is one of the most demanding, exhausting professions going. Let anyone who doubts it spend a week in front of a classroom.
Over the course of my career, I have watched students slide down the list of public universities' priorities. Revenue, retention, growth--these are what come first. Welcome to the university as corporation. I'm not saying anything new in the ongoing debate over the future of our educational system, but I can at least encourage those who are still in the game to ask for a timeout. We need to rethink where we are going and why; we need to re-read Cardinal Newman's "The Idea of the University." We need to learn to say, No.
We read about freedom fighters who willingly risk death for a cause or a country. We watch as mountain climbers scale impossible heights. We applaud a little girl who sacrifices her own life to save her sister from drowning. These are all brave people. We would all like to believe we could be like them should circumstances warrant, but I very much doubt that the vast majority of us are brave at all. To me, courage is pursuing an action or course that is filled with danger beyond the normal risks we all take when we drive a car or fly across the country. To me, bravery is not absence of fear; it is, as Hemingway put it, "grace under pressure."
There are all kinds of fear, but the one I want to consider here is the fear of speaking one's mind, the fear of ruffling feathers. Let me be specific. I have spent over 30 years as a teacher, first in high schools, then in universities. For most of that time I was quite happy with the way things were organized and managed. When I taught high school back in the '70s, I was lucky enough to have a principal who had, well, principles. He was fair and reliable. He did not suffer fools gladly but he could listen to his faculty and change course if they wanted to try something new. He thought for himself and allowed us to do the same.
Years later, when I was teaching at a state university, I began to hear rumblings from the public schools about increased paperwork, demands for more and more "assessment," teaching to the test, and being forced through a narrow curricular chute. Thank goodness I'm not teaching in the public schools, I thought. That could never happen in higher education. Professors are too independent; the ethos is completely different. By the time I retired higher education too was in the grip of a bureaucracy of micro-managers who thought education was best served by increasing the number of buzzwords associated with it--outcome-based, goals and strategies, uniform syllabi, student-centered, critical thinking (as demonstrated by quantifiable data)--rather than by a recognition of and a reliance on the ability of a teacher to get her students thinking for themselves and, if not loving the subject at hand, at least deepening their appreciation of it.
There are two fields where personal relationships matter a great deal: education and medicine. Students learn from teachers they love, and patients recover more calmly and quickly when they are comforted as well as cured by their physicians. Both medicine and education have been highjacked by pencil-pushers intent on removing the human factor and replacing it with protocols, rubrics, data, and documentation. "Oversight" is the watchword, as if good teachers and doctors couldn't be trusted to know what they are doing. We have lost trust in those we should most revere, perhaps because we have lost trust period. When reading my student evaluations at the end of each semester, it was the comments I looked at, not the circled numbers or checked boxes. But when student responses were tallied, it was only the numbers that counted and were kept. There is a proliferation of paperwork that drains time out of a teacher's or a doctor's day and creates so much redundancy that when you provide your doctor with your address and phone number you have to put the same information on a dozen sheets of paper, and the nurse at check-out asks you for it again.
All of this bureaucratic glut and nit-picking is not the only thing that troubles me, however. What amazes me is the alacrity with which otherwise intelligent, competent professionals cave in to the demands to follow all the rules, without deviation. Standardization is meant to assure quality, but, I suggest, it too often flattens everything into the same pancake. If there is a good reason for doing something, then I am all for doing it. But does it really matter if every professor's syllabus looks exactly the same? Isn't "what are your goals for your class" a terribly silly question? Does relentless testing promote learning and make it more enjoyable, or is it just an obstacle to real growth?
My question is this: why don't more people just say no? Why can't a senior professor simply say, "I've been teaching this course for 20 years. My classes are always full, and my former students come back to visit long after they have graduated. Everyone knows who the good teachers are on this campus. Give me one good reason why I should fill out this silly form and answer your silly questions? Who benefits from my wasting time in this way?"
What I have noticed is that younger faculty go along with the system without question. They shrug their shoulders and say, "Just do what the Office of Assessment wants and get it over with." They have been brought up in this new world and don't know any other. But I have watched the morale of older professors wither and die. It is a fact that universities are becoming more and more top-heavy with administrators. That's where the real money is, and the power too. Because research has become the be-all and end-all of academia, professors whose research is less than stellar often opt for administration, where the research requirement disappears. Those may be the best teachers on campus, but administration offers an attractive refuge. In addition, many of the new administrators who proliferate like rabbits (layers and layers of vice-chancellors, vice-provosts, associate deans, directors of various services, such as student life, multicultural affairs, sustainability, etc. etc.) have never been inside a classroom as anything other than a student themselves. Their take on the university is quite different from their faculties'. Productivity, retention, cost-cutting, grant-winning--in short, a bottom-line mentality. Education is becoming a business with customers rather than students. Slick advertising entices students with spas, athletics, and luxury dorms, as though a university were a resort with an academic component.
I am trying hard not to become an old curmudgeon, pining for the good old days when professors smoked pipes and had leather patches on their elbows, but it's not easy. I know this will never happen; the current system is too entrenched, but I wish our higher education could be divided into teaching institutions and research institutes, each with a clear mandate. Just as some doctors choose to work in a lab rather than a clinic, so too some academics would prefer to do research rather than teach undergraduates. The way things are now, if a young faculty member wants to devote his life to teaching, if he feels a calling to teach and can't imagine doing anything else, he is pulled away from his primary passion by research requirements that sap his time and his energy. It's a mistake too many people make when they think young professors have it easy. Nothing could be further from the truth. Teaching--at any level--is one of the most demanding, exhausting professions going. Let anyone who doubts it spend a week in front of a classroom.
Over the course of my career, I have watched students slide down the list of public universities' priorities. Revenue, retention, growth--these are what come first. Welcome to the university as corporation. I'm not saying anything new in the ongoing debate over the future of our educational system, but I can at least encourage those who are still in the game to ask for a timeout. We need to rethink where we are going and why; we need to re-read Cardinal Newman's "The Idea of the University." We need to learn to say, No.
Thursday, May 5, 2011
"Finding Nouf" by Zoe Ferraris
I have not finished reading "Finding Nouf" but I feel compelled to comment not so much on the novel, which so far I am enjoying, as on the cultural milieu it presents. Zoe Ferraris was at one time married to a Saudi-Palestinian-Bedouin and lived in Saudi Arabia with her husband's extended family. I am relieved to read on the book jacket that she now lives in San Francisco, no longer with said husband.
What this book gives is a stark picture of how women in Saudi Arabia are forced to live. This may be the 21st century, but so far as Saudi women are concerned it might as well be the fourteenth. Here are just some of the things a good Muslim woman in Saudi Arabia may not do: leave her home unescorted by a male relative, show her face to men outside her family, vote, drive, enter a government building by the same entrance as the men, have sex outside marriage, leave the country without her father's or husband's written permission. If a man has completed his ablutions before praying but sees a woman before he actually begins to pray, he must do his ablutions again, as he has seen something unclean.
Forcing women to follow these strict rules, often on pain of death, is more than just wrong; it is abominable. The Arab world needs a women's liberation movement. I am a student of the Victorian age, and part of its fascination for me lies in the roles played by women, from prostitutes in the Haymarket to pampered aristocrats without rights to property or their own children. Girls today have, I believe, little notion what generations of women before them had to fight to overcome. In my own girlhood I remember being told by my mother that I shouldn't necessarily make good grades, or if I did to keep quiet about it for fear of putting the boys off. There were so many things girls couldn't do that boys could. They may seem trivial, but to a young woman with an independent spirit the restrictions seemed arbitrary, unfair, and demeaning. When I was in college, we had a dress code: no pants or shorts to be worn to class or in the library; a 10:30 curfew on weekdays, 12:00 on weekends; no leaving campus overnight without parental permission. I was not allowed to phone a boy or visit him in his home, with rare exceptions. In college, men were not allowed above the first floor of the dorm and its public rooms. It amuses me to recall that because there was no privacy, couples kissed and groped each other in full view of whoever was around. We were used to ignoring the semi-orgy that occurred each night on the porch before the doors were locked.
Obviously, these restrictions were designed to prevent unsanctioned sex, and where very young girls are involved such restrictions are, of course, acceptable. But when grown women are discouraged from getting a full education, have their husbands chosen for them, or are restricted in their movements, something is very wrong. Cultural differences can be charming and should be celebrated. The Japanese tea ceremony is lovely; Native American dancing can be exciting; French cuisine is rightly celebrated. Customs, diet, dress, music and art--differences here make the world a more colorful place. Making virtual slaves of half the population is not colorful; it is cruel. When I was a child, my beloved grandmother explained to me that American slaves in the South were happy with their lot. We are all aware of the cognitive dissonance of, say, Thomas Jefferson, who believed in individual freedom and owned slaves simultaneously. My rather Victorian mother wanted to protect me and shelter me from possible unpleasantness. She certainly meant me no harm, even when she goaded me about my support for the Equal Rights Amendment. I have no doubt that many, if not most, Arab men love their wives and daughters. Many things throughout the course of human history have been undertaken because they were deemed "for your own good."
I can understand that it is easier--and safer--to go along with family and societal demands if you live in a traditional culture. Often it is women themselves who exercise vigilance when it comes to other women's behavior. How much easier it is when slaves themselves guard other slaves. It is no accident that it is educated women who make the most noise about rights. The fact that some Arab women want to cover themselves from head to foot in voluminous black cloaks when the temperature is 100 degrees is no argument.
I feel sorry for those women who are forbidden to have male friendships. I have always enjoyed the company of men and not just physically. One of the most significant friendships between a man and a woman occurs in George Eliot's "Middlemarch" when Dorothea and Lydgate join forces to help their community and each other. Their relationship is not sexual but is based on mutual respect and shared interests. Had they been denied each other's company, much would have been lost. To assume that the overriding current between men and women is necessarily sexual is to pervert human possibility. How can it be right for men to devise the rules for women to follow? How infantilizing it is to render women impotent!
It is so hard to live in a state of constant anger. I can understand how women in difficult circumstances are able to convince themselves that being submissive is being womanly, but it is certainly not natural, nor is it mandated by some supernatural power whose very nature is problematic. Religion has always been used to trump dissenting argument. When God himself declares something to be so, who are we flawed humans to quibble? I realize that I will not convince religious people to abandon their beliefs, but I do wish people would recognize how equivocal those beliefs are. Whatever gets you through the night, is my view, so long as you don't find your own comfort in another's loss of autonomy.
The Islamic, or indeed the Christian, fetish for virginity strikes me as more than a little creepy. What is it they say, "Who thinks more about sex than a monk or a fourteen-year old boy?" An entire culture that is preoccupied with the sexual behavior of its members strikes me as perverse, if not perverted. Yes, I am a product of my own culture that values women (to a fair degree) and has come a long way toward granting them the freedom of action that any adult human being deserves, but I am still capable of making moral discriminations on my own. I know that if any preacher, mullah, or shaman tried to tell me what to do, I would be mad as hell.
What this book gives is a stark picture of how women in Saudi Arabia are forced to live. This may be the 21st century, but so far as Saudi women are concerned it might as well be the fourteenth. Here are just some of the things a good Muslim woman in Saudi Arabia may not do: leave her home unescorted by a male relative, show her face to men outside her family, vote, drive, enter a government building by the same entrance as the men, have sex outside marriage, leave the country without her father's or husband's written permission. If a man has completed his ablutions before praying but sees a woman before he actually begins to pray, he must do his ablutions again, as he has seen something unclean.
Forcing women to follow these strict rules, often on pain of death, is more than just wrong; it is abominable. The Arab world needs a women's liberation movement. I am a student of the Victorian age, and part of its fascination for me lies in the roles played by women, from prostitutes in the Haymarket to pampered aristocrats without rights to property or their own children. Girls today have, I believe, little notion what generations of women before them had to fight to overcome. In my own girlhood I remember being told by my mother that I shouldn't necessarily make good grades, or if I did to keep quiet about it for fear of putting the boys off. There were so many things girls couldn't do that boys could. They may seem trivial, but to a young woman with an independent spirit the restrictions seemed arbitrary, unfair, and demeaning. When I was in college, we had a dress code: no pants or shorts to be worn to class or in the library; a 10:30 curfew on weekdays, 12:00 on weekends; no leaving campus overnight without parental permission. I was not allowed to phone a boy or visit him in his home, with rare exceptions. In college, men were not allowed above the first floor of the dorm and its public rooms. It amuses me to recall that because there was no privacy, couples kissed and groped each other in full view of whoever was around. We were used to ignoring the semi-orgy that occurred each night on the porch before the doors were locked.
Obviously, these restrictions were designed to prevent unsanctioned sex, and where very young girls are involved such restrictions are, of course, acceptable. But when grown women are discouraged from getting a full education, have their husbands chosen for them, or are restricted in their movements, something is very wrong. Cultural differences can be charming and should be celebrated. The Japanese tea ceremony is lovely; Native American dancing can be exciting; French cuisine is rightly celebrated. Customs, diet, dress, music and art--differences here make the world a more colorful place. Making virtual slaves of half the population is not colorful; it is cruel. When I was a child, my beloved grandmother explained to me that American slaves in the South were happy with their lot. We are all aware of the cognitive dissonance of, say, Thomas Jefferson, who believed in individual freedom and owned slaves simultaneously. My rather Victorian mother wanted to protect me and shelter me from possible unpleasantness. She certainly meant me no harm, even when she goaded me about my support for the Equal Rights Amendment. I have no doubt that many, if not most, Arab men love their wives and daughters. Many things throughout the course of human history have been undertaken because they were deemed "for your own good."
I can understand that it is easier--and safer--to go along with family and societal demands if you live in a traditional culture. Often it is women themselves who exercise vigilance when it comes to other women's behavior. How much easier it is when slaves themselves guard other slaves. It is no accident that it is educated women who make the most noise about rights. The fact that some Arab women want to cover themselves from head to foot in voluminous black cloaks when the temperature is 100 degrees is no argument.
I feel sorry for those women who are forbidden to have male friendships. I have always enjoyed the company of men and not just physically. One of the most significant friendships between a man and a woman occurs in George Eliot's "Middlemarch" when Dorothea and Lydgate join forces to help their community and each other. Their relationship is not sexual but is based on mutual respect and shared interests. Had they been denied each other's company, much would have been lost. To assume that the overriding current between men and women is necessarily sexual is to pervert human possibility. How can it be right for men to devise the rules for women to follow? How infantilizing it is to render women impotent!
It is so hard to live in a state of constant anger. I can understand how women in difficult circumstances are able to convince themselves that being submissive is being womanly, but it is certainly not natural, nor is it mandated by some supernatural power whose very nature is problematic. Religion has always been used to trump dissenting argument. When God himself declares something to be so, who are we flawed humans to quibble? I realize that I will not convince religious people to abandon their beliefs, but I do wish people would recognize how equivocal those beliefs are. Whatever gets you through the night, is my view, so long as you don't find your own comfort in another's loss of autonomy.
The Islamic, or indeed the Christian, fetish for virginity strikes me as more than a little creepy. What is it they say, "Who thinks more about sex than a monk or a fourteen-year old boy?" An entire culture that is preoccupied with the sexual behavior of its members strikes me as perverse, if not perverted. Yes, I am a product of my own culture that values women (to a fair degree) and has come a long way toward granting them the freedom of action that any adult human being deserves, but I am still capable of making moral discriminations on my own. I know that if any preacher, mullah, or shaman tried to tell me what to do, I would be mad as hell.
Sunday, May 1, 2011
"The Northern Clemency" by Philip Hensher
Henry James said that the novel is a loose, baggy monster. His novels may be baggy, but they are not loose. Like an infinitely intricate puzzle, all the pieces of his novels fit together precisely. There are just so many pieces! Philip Hensher's "The Northern Clemency" is indeed a loose, baggy monster; unfortunately not all the pieces fit, despite the first line reappearing in the last paragraph like a cinch around the neck of a sack.
I often choose novels that are short-listed for the Booker Prize, as this one was, because they are almost always a good read, as this one is. While Hensher's style is not distinctive, it is accomplished and moves along without unnecessary flourishes yet is not simplistic. His attention to physical detail is precise and abundant, without devolving into gratuitous description for its own sake. Hensher is a good writer, and I have no doubt we shall see more of him, but I have one quibble. As a method actor might ask, what's the motivation? Morton Densher wants to marry the dying Millie Theale so he can inherit her fortune and marry the penniless woman he loves. Isabel Archer marries the odious Gilbert Osmond because she wants to rescue his motherless daughter. "Clemency" is filled with compelling set-pieces that rise and fall from the surface of the novel like a spotlight searching out one actor after another, but to my mind these stories within the story do not connect organically. I fail to perceive any cause and effect in what the characters do. It is possible to read this novel with interest yet finish it with no clear idea why it went where it did. Why does Timothy keep snakes? Why does Sandra/Alex move to Australia, never to return? Is it only her stroke that makes Alice believe her husband Bernie made a suicide pact with her, or is there some deeper undercurrent in their relationship that remains unexplored? Why does Malcolm leave Katherine? Why does he return? Why is Francis so gormless and disconnected?
I am tempted to compare Hensher to Jonathan Franzen, who has been criticized for the shallowness of his characters and the banality of their lives. Hensher's characters are certainly shallow, their lives indistinguishable from others like them in their Sheffield neighborhood. It is a photograph without shadows, where Franzen's shadows contain ideas and observations that provoke thought and ring true. James said there are two kinds of knowledge: discovery and recognition. A novel has the potential to discover novelty, but it doesn't have to in order to have weight. What I look for in a novel is recognition--of a truth newly brought to light, of a human motive that I share or can imagine sharing, of an idea worth contemplating. The dark tides of a marriage, a father's love for an impossible son, the temptation to do good by committing a crime--these scenarios promise an examination of human nature, not just the surfaces of behavior but the causes that underlie them.
Ultimately, a novel is not like real life; it is an artifact, a simulacrum, a composed observation of the things real life contains. We read novels--at least I do--in order to have questions about personality as well as action answered. It may be that by their acts you shall know characters, but it is by getting inside them that you will achieve enlightenment.
I often choose novels that are short-listed for the Booker Prize, as this one was, because they are almost always a good read, as this one is. While Hensher's style is not distinctive, it is accomplished and moves along without unnecessary flourishes yet is not simplistic. His attention to physical detail is precise and abundant, without devolving into gratuitous description for its own sake. Hensher is a good writer, and I have no doubt we shall see more of him, but I have one quibble. As a method actor might ask, what's the motivation? Morton Densher wants to marry the dying Millie Theale so he can inherit her fortune and marry the penniless woman he loves. Isabel Archer marries the odious Gilbert Osmond because she wants to rescue his motherless daughter. "Clemency" is filled with compelling set-pieces that rise and fall from the surface of the novel like a spotlight searching out one actor after another, but to my mind these stories within the story do not connect organically. I fail to perceive any cause and effect in what the characters do. It is possible to read this novel with interest yet finish it with no clear idea why it went where it did. Why does Timothy keep snakes? Why does Sandra/Alex move to Australia, never to return? Is it only her stroke that makes Alice believe her husband Bernie made a suicide pact with her, or is there some deeper undercurrent in their relationship that remains unexplored? Why does Malcolm leave Katherine? Why does he return? Why is Francis so gormless and disconnected?
I am tempted to compare Hensher to Jonathan Franzen, who has been criticized for the shallowness of his characters and the banality of their lives. Hensher's characters are certainly shallow, their lives indistinguishable from others like them in their Sheffield neighborhood. It is a photograph without shadows, where Franzen's shadows contain ideas and observations that provoke thought and ring true. James said there are two kinds of knowledge: discovery and recognition. A novel has the potential to discover novelty, but it doesn't have to in order to have weight. What I look for in a novel is recognition--of a truth newly brought to light, of a human motive that I share or can imagine sharing, of an idea worth contemplating. The dark tides of a marriage, a father's love for an impossible son, the temptation to do good by committing a crime--these scenarios promise an examination of human nature, not just the surfaces of behavior but the causes that underlie them.
Ultimately, a novel is not like real life; it is an artifact, a simulacrum, a composed observation of the things real life contains. We read novels--at least I do--in order to have questions about personality as well as action answered. It may be that by their acts you shall know characters, but it is by getting inside them that you will achieve enlightenment.
Thursday, April 21, 2011
"The Troubled Man" by Henning Mankell
It seems the spy business hasn't closed down with the end of the Cold War. In Mankell's final Wallander novel, the aging detective solves his last case before sliding into early-onset dementia. The plot moves along at a lively pace and involves Wallander's daughter Linda, also a police officer. Actually, it is her partner's parents who are the nexus of the plot, which involves spy networks dating back decades. But interesting as the action of the novel is, it is Wallander's own state of being that most concerns this reader. Kurt is an old 60, who fears the approach of old age and death. He is not reconciled with any of the important people in his life, except for his daughter, and their relationship remains prickly. If there is anything heroic about him, it is his persistence. Even when he feels unwell and is supposedly on vacation, he travels wherever the case leads him and follows it to its bloody conclusion.
We like our heroes to be human in this day and age. The braggadocio of an Achilles or a Hector, when seen in a contemporary light, is more often taken as a sign of mental disorder. Kurt Wallander is, as we say, married to his job, but he lacks confidence and always wonders if he's missing something. He has few friends, drinks too much, lives in an isolated farmhouse, and is closest to his dog Jussi. I picture his world in shades of grey, with a cold rain on a bad day. The melancholy atmosphere suits the story and the people in it, yet it is not oppressive. Perhaps it's knowing that the world I live in is more brightly colored than Kurt's that allows me to contemplate his bleak canvas with equanimity.
We like our heroes to be human in this day and age. The braggadocio of an Achilles or a Hector, when seen in a contemporary light, is more often taken as a sign of mental disorder. Kurt Wallander is, as we say, married to his job, but he lacks confidence and always wonders if he's missing something. He has few friends, drinks too much, lives in an isolated farmhouse, and is closest to his dog Jussi. I picture his world in shades of grey, with a cold rain on a bad day. The melancholy atmosphere suits the story and the people in it, yet it is not oppressive. Perhaps it's knowing that the world I live in is more brightly colored than Kurt's that allows me to contemplate his bleak canvas with equanimity.
Sunday, April 17, 2011
It May Not Be the Way You Think It Was
Yesterday I read an essay by Nicholson Baker (in Harper's) wherein he explains why he is a pacifist. His argument is not one I had heard before. He talks about the "good war" that obviously has to be fought and points to World War II as America's default good war. We HAD to fight Hitler, didn't we? Neville Chamberlain was wrong, wasn't he? Civilization itself was at stake. Or maybe not.
In an argument that is carefully constructed and amply supported by data, Baker blames the wholesale massacre of European Jews at least partly on America's war policy. Hitler virtually held the Jewish population hostage in order to keep America out of the war. Once we entered the field of battle, he immediately ordered mass extermination. The Jews no longer had any value. This may sound far-fetched, but Baker's argument makes sense. The most important thing, he says, is the preservation of life. Nothing else compares to that. The desire for revenge, while understandable, leads only to more death. Rather than bombing Dresden, America and the Jews would have been better served by getting as many Jews out of Germany as possible, but as we all remember, Jews weren't always welcome, even in the United States, and boatloads of Jews were turned away from our ports. Could we have "bought" the Jews through trade agreements or at least have shepherded them to safety by stalling for time? Hitler had Parkinson's disease. Might we simply have waited for him to die, maneuvering furiously behind the scenes to support the resistance? As we have seen time and again, when the leader of a cult dies, the cult dissolves.
In recent days I have also read about Russians who still consider Stalin one of the four greatest Soviet heroes and Chinese who believe Americans have never heard of Marx, and I wonder if in this information age we inhabit we aren't ironically as misinformed and misguided as those hapless Russians. We congratulate ourselves on our free press, our open access to information, our ability to speak truth to power, yet everywhere I look I see evidence of misdirection and obfuscation. More than ever, I appreciate Pope's observation that "a little learning is a dangerous thing." We are so awash in "news" that headlines substitute for history. The demands of contemporary life eliminate time for serious reflection, and our educational system is obsessed with teaching skills and measuring outcomes. Our children are too often as busy as we are, as distracted by entertaining glitter, as likely to avoid boredom by the easiest means. It is a facile and perhaps gratuitous comparison, but like the Japanese we are hit by a tsunami--a tsunami of work, consumption, and an unconsidered race for material success.
If this were not so, why then did so many of our brightest young minds choose Wall Street and wealth rather than service to the public good? Education is supposed to raise all boats, but this lie is borne out every time the gap between the very rich and the struggling majority widens. Difference of opinion presents itself as self-righteousness, and changing one's mind in response to circumstances or new information is seen as lack of character. Of course, changing one's words to fit the moment is just as often a cynical ploy to be on the popular side du jour. Reasoned argument, reliance on evidence, the ability to be skeptical about even one's own cherished beliefs are so far removed from our public discourse as to be practically invisible. I may be my own best example. I have never questioned the necessity of our entrance into World War II. I honor those who sacrificed and endured and were brave. But yesterday I questioned for the first time the interpretation of the war that I have been taught since the cradle. I was reminded that the most important thing is life itself and that our ways of protecting it too often fall short. I was reminded that an open mind is essential to mental freedom.
In an argument that is carefully constructed and amply supported by data, Baker blames the wholesale massacre of European Jews at least partly on America's war policy. Hitler virtually held the Jewish population hostage in order to keep America out of the war. Once we entered the field of battle, he immediately ordered mass extermination. The Jews no longer had any value. This may sound far-fetched, but Baker's argument makes sense. The most important thing, he says, is the preservation of life. Nothing else compares to that. The desire for revenge, while understandable, leads only to more death. Rather than bombing Dresden, America and the Jews would have been better served by getting as many Jews out of Germany as possible, but as we all remember, Jews weren't always welcome, even in the United States, and boatloads of Jews were turned away from our ports. Could we have "bought" the Jews through trade agreements or at least have shepherded them to safety by stalling for time? Hitler had Parkinson's disease. Might we simply have waited for him to die, maneuvering furiously behind the scenes to support the resistance? As we have seen time and again, when the leader of a cult dies, the cult dissolves.
In recent days I have also read about Russians who still consider Stalin one of the four greatest Soviet heroes and Chinese who believe Americans have never heard of Marx, and I wonder if in this information age we inhabit we aren't ironically as misinformed and misguided as those hapless Russians. We congratulate ourselves on our free press, our open access to information, our ability to speak truth to power, yet everywhere I look I see evidence of misdirection and obfuscation. More than ever, I appreciate Pope's observation that "a little learning is a dangerous thing." We are so awash in "news" that headlines substitute for history. The demands of contemporary life eliminate time for serious reflection, and our educational system is obsessed with teaching skills and measuring outcomes. Our children are too often as busy as we are, as distracted by entertaining glitter, as likely to avoid boredom by the easiest means. It is a facile and perhaps gratuitous comparison, but like the Japanese we are hit by a tsunami--a tsunami of work, consumption, and an unconsidered race for material success.
If this were not so, why then did so many of our brightest young minds choose Wall Street and wealth rather than service to the public good? Education is supposed to raise all boats, but this lie is borne out every time the gap between the very rich and the struggling majority widens. Difference of opinion presents itself as self-righteousness, and changing one's mind in response to circumstances or new information is seen as lack of character. Of course, changing one's words to fit the moment is just as often a cynical ploy to be on the popular side du jour. Reasoned argument, reliance on evidence, the ability to be skeptical about even one's own cherished beliefs are so far removed from our public discourse as to be practically invisible. I may be my own best example. I have never questioned the necessity of our entrance into World War II. I honor those who sacrificed and endured and were brave. But yesterday I questioned for the first time the interpretation of the war that I have been taught since the cradle. I was reminded that the most important thing is life itself and that our ways of protecting it too often fall short. I was reminded that an open mind is essential to mental freedom.
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
The Loveliness of a Spring Evening
I wish I could capture in words the evanescent beauty of this spring evening. The air is refreshed by a light rain, the light is muted, and the white wisteria and dogwood glow in the muted air. Everything is saturated with green, and the wisteria's scent hovers above the uncut grass. A mourning dove coos somewhere in the distance, reminding me of my grandmother's house, where as a child I listened to the doves' mournful cries and felt drawn to distant, unknown destinations. Is it time or distance I wish to step into? The most beautiful things are those glimpsed out of the corner of the eye, gone before grasped, lost but remembered. Is this what age brings in its wake: the perception of all those transcendent moments that could not be held, could not endure? Is there an aged memory that gathers up the white petals that have fallen like a benediction? The light fades, the white blooms retreat into dark shadows, where they wait for eternity.
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