Save the Humanities -- I

Stanley Fish, writing in The New York Times, exhorts college presidents to fight for the humanities. He is prompted by the recent cutting of programs in the humanities at SUNY Albany (programs like French, for goodness sake), and he points out what all of us who work in the Humanities already know: that this tragic assault on knowledge in NY is not new.

Since I began teaching English literature in the mid-90s, I have had to explain to students why they should major in English, and/or what arguments they can use to persuade their parents that majoring in English is not a waste of time, money and intellect. Frankly, despite the alarming frequency of this conversation, I am always somewhat flummoxed by the question: Why WOULDN'T a person study the humanities?

I don't have a magic answer, certainly not one that can save what has been lost at SUNY Albany and other universities like it, but I will fumble through an answer here and try to fumble toward a better one in time.

So, why should a person study the humanities? Because we live in a world with other people, and to do our jobs and to have relationships and to live in this world, we must be able to communicate with these other people. Communicating does not mean forming nice sentences with subjects and verbs, though this is important and is a skill those who study the humanities generally perform quite easily; communicating means having a common vocabulary with which we observe, understand, and discuss what happens in our lives and in the world. That common vocabulary includes words well put together, but it also includes images, metaphors, allusions, what is known, in short, as cultural literacy. A person who studies the humanities is culturally literate.

I want to stress, however, that I am not talking about the version of cultural literacy best demonstrated at cocktail parties where a person might drop a line from a classic work of literature and thus appear erudite. No, we can all say "it was the best of times, it was the worst of times" in a knowing way. What matters is knowing where the sentence comes from, what it's original context was and what it's relevance is to a particular moment. To go farther, it's knowing how Dickens's representation of the French Revolution, almost a hundred years after it happened, has a certain nostalgia to it, and when quoting the opening phrase of A Tale of Two Cities, meaning to evoke that nostalgia along with complex meanings of "best" and "worst." And when a person evokes all that meaning, she communicates more profoundly about her own moment, whether a private, personal moment or a public, national moment.

And, of course, I'm just using here the example of quoting a sentence. A person who studies the humanities can do so much more, can communicate with such richness, can understand depths of personal and cultural experience, and can articulate with such nuance and clarity what she understands that whether she's a banker or a baker, her life will be richer and her job better done.

Stay tuned for how the humanities don't offer only a common vocabulary, but how they also give us the tools to value difference.

The Jane Austen Workout

I haven't posted to this blog in a long time. I've spent the summer traveling and am now settled in Barcelona for my sabbatical. I spend my days working on some scholarly articles and thinking about my second novel. It's a good life!

Along with reading and writing (and the occasional delectable meal out--who can live in Barcelona and not make eating a high priority?), I am also getting into a regular gym routine. And I think I have finally stumbled into a workout that may actually work for me. I'm calling it the Jane Austen Workout.

While most people are motivated by Lady Gaga or Cyndi Lauper while they bounce to the beat on the stair stepper, I have always gotten bored with my techno playlists after one or two workouts. I don't like to watch TV at the gym, especially when the only channel is BarcaTV, a channel entirely devoted to the Barcelona futbol team (I'm a fan, but really?), and I can't read without my glasses, don't like to wear my glasses while I exercise, blah blah blah. So all this aural and visual finickiness leaves me bored and uninspired at the gym.

I've also tried listening to assorted podcasts, and this has been somewhat more successful. However, I need to be listening to something that really holds my attention or else my mind wanders and then I'm wondering why Melvyn Brag is chortling about Boadicea (In Our Time) or which Middle Eastern pottery shard (History of the World in 100 Objects) we're learning about now.

So, what really holds my attention? A good book! If it's a book I haven't read before, then I don't have the patience for an audiobook because I want to tear through it quickly. If it's a book I know really well, then I have the mind wandering problem again. Taking all of this into consideration, I settled on the Jane Austen novels that I don't know very well.

Of course, English PhD that I am, I have read all of Austen's novels, but Pride and Prejudice and Emma are the ones I teach and thus read over and over again. I haven't read the others more than once and not for a long time. I know what happens, so I don't need to hurry through the books like I do with first reads, but I don't remember the details, so I enjoy savoring them in the slow format of the audiobook. Plus, these books are in the public domain, so I have found free audio versions through Booksshouldbefree.com. I'm listening to Persuasion first and finding myself, for the first time in a long time, quite happy to go to the gym.

I could go on about an aging heroine and an aging exerciser, but that would be unflattering to both Anne Elliot and myself, so I'll just say that I'm thrilled and surprised to have discovered that after all these years of resisting exercise, it was Jane Austen who would help me get in shape!

Reader, I Married Him

Many of my readers will recognize the title of this post as a key line from Jane Eyre, a novel famously written in the first person. I am at the very beginning of a second novel, which, unlike my first novel, is written in the first person. I am struck by how much easier it is to convey voice and character with first person but how much harder tense is.

Tense may seem like syntax 101, but in narrative, tense locates the voice in time vis-a-vis the action of the novel. Jane narrates in the first person from a time several years after the events of the novel, so she has knowledge that she chooses to keep from the reader and to dole out as she (or really as Charlotte Bronte) sees fit. The narrating Jane knew all along that she married "him," but she keeps the reader in suspense. The past tense in the sentence that titles this post reminds the reader that the narrator knew this key event would occur.

In my novel, the character is caught up in a mystery that he doesn't yet understand, so while I am firmly committed to the first person for this narrative, I have to make a really important decision about tense.

Does my protagonist narrate in the present tense? "I walk in the room, and I see a dragon." With a present tense first person the reader and the narrator are pretty much equals in terms of access to information about the events of the story. This has merits, but you lose the ability to allow the narrator to frame the events. I can pretty readily rule out present tense.

The real choice is between a past tense that puts the narrator in medias res and a past tense that puts the narrator at a time after the events of the story (like Jane). To put the narrator in medias res might mean that my character is narrating from a point midway through the story: the narrative would be in the past tense to a point and then shift into present tense. This can be exciting, but I'm not exactly writing an adventure story.

I do want some reflective framing on the part of the narrator, so I think it does make the most sense to follow Bronte and have my narrator temporally based after the events of the story. Thus, he can write about himself and what happened to him in the past tense while using the narrative to guide the reader's understanding and feeling about the story. For example, "I didn't expect to see anything out of the ordinary when I walked in the room, but the dragon was evidently expecting me." This is a much more interesting sentence than the present tense version above.

Yet, some readers are annoyed by Jane's vantage point outside the action and, in a way, above the reader. They find her manipulative, but maybe she is, and maybe that's part of her character's complexity and Bronte's genius. I don't want my readers to find my character manipulative, but I'd like them to find him smart and self-aware, characteristics I may be able to convey with the narrative voice.

When I commit to a past tense first person narrative in which the narrator is beyond the events in the novel, I have to think about why the narrator wants to tell the story, what he thinks about it after the fact, what he learned along the way, and what all that distance means for the tone he will take, the words he will choose, and the ways in which he will place emphasis. The narrative voice, thus, not only tells the story, but tells the reader what impact the story had on the main character. And it must tell this meta-story without spoiling the plot, so when whatever my "Reader, I married him" sentence comes along, my reader is at once pleasantly surprised and really knew it all along.

Lost: The End

Apologies to the readers of this blog who don't watch "Lost," and SPOILER ALERT to those who do but haven't yet watched the series finale. These are my thoughts on the final episode of the show I watched loyally from the very beginning.

I liked a lot about the finale. For one thing, I thought it was exceptionally well written. The echoes of conversations past were moving and well done. In particular, I found Kate's redelivery of Aaron to be lovely. I also quite liked that Jack passed the island torch to Hurley (which I anticipated BTW), though I would have really enjoyed even just one scene showing Hurley stepping into that role. Maybe we get that a little bit when he asks Ben to be his second in command. I also really liked that moment: all Ben has wanted is to be wanted, and he's been such a rich and complex character all along, I was happy to see him get what he wants. I also thought there was a sweetness to him happily accepting second-in-command. I thought all the scenes of remembering were good, and it's not easy to dramatize remembering. These scenes served the dual purpose of reminding the characters of their other life (nice echoes of "I'll see you in another life, Brother."), and allowing the viewers to savor key moments past.

I did not like the end. Let me say first how I interpret the end (and I will concede that I DO like that they left us with things to interpret). I do not think they all died in the plane crash. I base my assertion on (a) the fact that if they all died in the original crash, then the whole show is a cipher, and I can't accept that and don't think the creators would want to leave us with that, and (b) Christian Shepard's comment that some of these people died before Jack and some long after. I think it's pretty clear that Christian is meant to be the voice of authority at the end, and so I think we can believe what he says. Thus, I conclude that some characters died in ways we know about (like Boone, Shannon, Libby, Locke, etc.) and others died later in life. Kate and Sawyer, for instance, got off the island and lived lives of one kind or another until they died later on of causes unrelated to the island (presumably). Jack died on the island, killed by Smokey, having "fixed" everything one last time, his eye closing on his life and on the series. A really lovely (if expected) final image.

OK, so I don't think they all died in the crash. I believe Christian. The primary reason I found the end of the series so unsatisfying is because the show ultimately failed to reconcile science and faith. All along this reason/faith conundrum has been a major theme, running most notably through the character arcs of Jack and Locke. And the show has, in my opinion, consistently done reason (read: science) better than faith, which is by definition slippery. Case in point: one of the best episodes of the series was "The Constant," in which we get insight into Daniel's theoretical physics and learn that Desmond is a constant when it comes to a form of time travel. In the finale, Desmond's constancy became much more amorphous and angel-like, rather than plausibly interwoven into something like real physics. The fact that Daniel really had no role to play in the denouement (other than the piano!) and didn't get to go to church with the rest of the lostaways signifies how the creators had moved away from the scientific themes.

Did Oceanic 815 crash because Jacob brought broken people to the island to replace him, or did it crash because Desmond failed to push the button and thus released an enormous amount of energy? I would have really liked the final answer to be both, but the creators ultimately shoved Desmond's action under the carpet and left us with Jacob. Similarly, and worse, was the sideways world an alternate reality created by the strategic detonation of a hydrogen bomb, or a purgatory that doesn't really exist in any sort of reality? Again, why couldn't it have been both? I'm fine with them leaving Sideways behind (with the massive exception of Jack who has a son and a much better life in Sideways than he ever had in reality), but did the show need to so completely obliterate the reality of sideways?

Finally, I find it sad that so many characters didn't go on to have better or more meaningful lives than they had on the island. (Sayid is the saddest of all: OK, he never gets Nadia, but he never gets to do better than Shannon, either?). Again, if we believe Christian, all these folks who lived lives of varying lengths (Hurley, for instance, may have lived a couple thousand years a la Jacob) never experienced anything more important than the time they were on the island? I appreciate that the show's creators wanted to leave the viewers with a sort of happy ending, but we've been so invested in these people getting better lives for themselves that to learn they never, ever did is a horrible blow.

I would much rather have been left with a flash forward montage of Kate and Claire cheering on Aaron at a soccer game; of Rose and Bernard placing flowers on Jack's grave, while Hurley benignly commands a group of latter day Others who are much more functional than their predecessors; and of Sawyer shedding his assumed name and the many ghosts of his past.

"Lost" was a great show, game changing in many ways, and the last ten minutes of the finale don't undo six years of amazing television, but I wish they could have lived up to their own potential in THE END.

It's All About Stupid, Stupid

I'm enjoying my first critique session (is it a session if it's virtual?) with a fellow middle-grade writer I met at SCBWI, and I want to take this opportunity to wax poetic about the value of critique. I've had lots of people read my book--some friends and family and some English-professor colleagues--and all have been helpful, but now what I can benefit from the most is someone who is as embroiled in the genre as I am. And someone who is able and willing to read at a level of detail that I simply can't see anymore.

For instance, it turns out that about the only adjective one of my characters uses is "stupid." I knew I was overusing the word, but it took my critique partner highlighting again and again for me to realize that I need to vary my word choice. In my latest revision, I think I actually got better at describing this particular character's attitude in select moments, but I need to sustain that in all moments and take my red pen (or my delete key) like a weapon into the land of all those stupids.

Perhaps more important than overuse of a pretty lame adjective, my reader is also showing me places where she is confused. Of course, I am never confused because I always understand what's going on in the narrative, so I can be pretty blind to places that create confusion for my reader. Realizing I need to explain or clarify in certain scenes is invaluable.

And finally, as I always tell my students, I am also getting a lot out of the experience of reading my partner's chapters. She does some things a lot better than I do, and I might learn a thing or two from her about voice and pace. And when I find myself occasionally confused by her text, it helps me to think more clearly about the challenges all writers (including myself) face in balancing mystery against confusion.

So, in sum, all readers are good readers in one way or another, but an extra big, enthusiastic yay for critique partners!

Meter Tag

On Friday, I visited my son's 4th grade class to teach the kids about poetic meter. I used an activity that I actually use at Bucknell where the students invent movements to go along with each metric foot (like a skip for an iamb -- an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed one) and then have relay races to see which metric form is fastest. On Friday, dactyls won the race. It was highly entertaining, and showing kids that poetry can be fun is pretty awesome.

Today, I got a packet of thank-you notes, many with pictures of the kids leaping around and some with poems they wrote. They thanked me for teaching them about meter, and many of them wrote about meter in ways they showed they really understood it. One kid wrote, "Thanks for showing us how to dance to poetry," and another wrote, "I learned more about meter and poetry than I will ever learn." Reading their notes has completely filled me with joy!

In my novel, the main characters attend a poetry camp, and I feel a renewed sense of commitment to that part of the novel. Poetry is accessible and interesting and entertaining to children! Maybe I can find a way to get some of the joy from meter tag and from the thank you notes into my book.

Why Homework is a Good Thing

This post is not about the homework I ask my students to do, though obviously that is also a good thing. Rather, this is about the homework I was asked to do for a workshop on writing historical fiction that I will attend next week at the Eastern PA SCBWI conference. We were asked to write the first paragraphs of three different novels set in three different times and places. I suppose if I'd ever taken a creative writing class, I might be jaded about this sort of exercise, but I am hungry for prompts, and I really enjoyed writing my paragraphs.

Not only did I have fun, I also tumbled into my next book. I've had an idea for awhile, bumping around in the back of my brain. It was the opening of a novel, a fabulous, surprising series of events, but it ended with a dramatically unfinished "and then..." My homework helped me to finish the sentence: the paragraph met up with the story fragment in my imagination, and now I have a whole plot. Actually, I also had an important conversation in the middle of all of this with my nine year old who has turned into an outstanding sounding board. So the process was (1) idea, (2) homework and epiphany, and (3) conversation to talk through kinks. Of course, the process isn't over either.

I'm pasting in the paragraph. I don't think it will actually be part of the book, but it led me to the story, so it deserves to be "published" here:

Xavi leaned against the gas stove, holding his book away from the heat of the flame and absently stirring custard in the pot, his eyes fixed on the page. He didn’t know how long he had been stirring, but during that time the hero Ramon had fled the marauding bandits and was about to tell his great love Christina where he’d hidden the jewels. Xavi dropped the spoon to turn the page, but before he read a word, the book was knocked out of his hand. “Que faix?” the housekeeper screamed at him in Catalan. Xavi knew she was angry because they weren’t supposed to speak in Catalan anymore. He looked at the pot and realized he’d scalded the custard. It would have been their first desert in nearly six months.

Since this was homework (and since I wax poetic in my classes about peer review), I do welcome any feedback. Thus the process goes on.