While I agree with George that close reading helps us to understand whether to accept or reject the ideas in a story, I’d like to comment on this post as a high school librarian. For over two decades, I worked as a teacher librarian (e.g., certified in the subject area). There was nothing like Moms for Liberty then (a national campaign feeding the ‘dangerous’ titles to their followers). But we had various book challenges. George is right that people object to the idea and not the book--they, generally, haven’t read the book and may have seen a scene they don’t like. This is why most school districts have a ‘must-read’ policy before filing an objection. States like Florida have done away with this, and we see the result. The censors select their titles simply by using the library catalog. Books are cataloged by various subject area. So the user can look up “LGBTQ” and get hundreds of results. And then asked to have all those (completely unknown) books removed. Normally, to avoid removing every book on the shelf, school libraries have challenge policies, but they also have mission statements that align with the mission of the school. Does the book align with the mission? It’s easy for a librarian to decide this on her own when weeding out nonfiction books. Some examples from my experience are books by people claiming to have been the Romanov Princess Anastasia (that issue was finally settled); books by and about Lance Armstrong on being the best person you could be using Armstrong as a model for teens. Working with fiction is much harder. Someone doesn’t want Huckleberry Finn in the library because it contains racists and uses the n-word. Are these racists in the book made to be models? The problem with Moms for Liberty is that their mission is to remove any discussion of LGBTQ people and any discussion of the history of people of color, particularly Black Americans, that is uncomfortable. Their mission is to make sure kids never hear about these things and aren’t made uncomfortable. But is that the mission of the school and its library? I recently wrote an article about my experience with removing a book. In 22 years, it was the only book that I decided to remove from the collection although school administrators removed others. A student--who had read the entire novel--told me she thought it didn’t belong. I had to take it home and read it because there is not time to do that during working hours despite stereotypes of librarianship. I decided to remove it. (Long story--that’s what the article is about.) But two things that are important to remember here: the student continued to use the library often and was not harmed by the book. And it was quite a process for me to make that decision including looking back at professional reviews. What the Moms for Liberty is doing is ‘pre-removing’ books. Then the librarian and a committee are supposed to read them and evaluate them and argue for their reinstatement. This is impossible--there’s not time for such nonsense. So, yes, the thing to do with library books is to read and then discuss. Sorry, so long. Close to my heart!
Victoria this is a fine portrait of your work in the real world of school libraries, the struggle for a rational approach to books and reading. People are so frightened these days. Thank you very much.
Having spent the majority of my life encased within the ivory halls of academia, I often bristled when told I could not possibly understand X, because I was a Y (kind of person) and couldn't possible understand what a Z (kind of person) could feel like or had experienced because of my Y-privilege, etc. But it was always at that point when my entire being screamed out, that through reading, I (we) can understand (an)other! I will never live the experiences of Z, but through reading and the empathetic way of understanding experience through a text, I can most definitely understand, or at least get extremely close to understanding Z-person. If that weren't possible, why would anyone ever expend energy in reading?
I encountered this often when I was a grad student, most notably when I'd written a narrative nonfiction piece about a Puerto Rican drag queen I'd interviewed. Because I was a white, non-Puerto Rican, straight male, one of the participants in a writing workshop told me, I had no right to write this piece, even though every word in it was from a series of recorded interviews I'd done.
The trouble with identity is it separates people between us and them. As the German-Jewish philosopher Martin Buber pointed out, when I objectify another, I immediately become an object.
Well, yes. The trouble with a belief in a "self" that's independent of everyone and everything else, anyway. And yet that's what we do. I'd naively (still!) hoped that the pandemic might drive home how interconnected everything all is, but nope, it's had the opposite effect, it seems.
In difficult times (when isn't?) people look to their family, tribe or cultural identity for belonging, safety and to reaffirm their emotions. Not belonging feels as dangerous, if not more so than death. The self-concept has a functional biological purpose to support survival, it just isn't who I am. The belief in identity supports the sense of being seen and belonging, but also causes strife. When I close my heart to another, objectify anyone, I throw away my power to be who I truly am beyond identity. The heart is either open or closed. There is no in-between, in my experience.
I still remember the same reactions to Wm Styron's The Confessions of Nat Turner, when it came out in 1967. I just returned from a history trip to Richmond VA--as a white writer, what am I to do with ideas for fiction that include Black characters--for example, having seen an 1830 plantation, I'm suddenly imagining a coffle of enslaved people approaching the house for the first time--what is that like, having to come to grips with your entrapment, considering suicide, or determined to live even though life is going to be devastating? Is 'presumptuous' the right word for this attempt? I know this is an old debate, but I like George's idea of the skilled reader taking time and space to consider, maybe to set rage and fear aside and ask, could this be accurate? What do I learn from this?
Hemingway isn’t my favorite writer, but I like him okay. I liked the simplicity and clarity of Old Man and the Sea, but I did find it over-the-top macho. So before I even opened Farewell to Arms, I was already rolling my eyes, going “here goes papa Hemingway with his big, manly war book.”
Except it wasn’t? If you haven’t read it, or haven’t read it recently, Farewell to Arms is about an ambulance driver who spends a third of the book in the hospital, a third running away from his own soldiers, and a third tending to his pregnant wife. The love dynamic between the two main characters is actually pretty sappy, even cute. The whole crux of the climax, spoilers, is a birth scene. A birth scene which is, to me, about how the common experiences of many women far outstrips the horrors of war.
I don’t really like put myself in the position of apologizing for Hemingway, but since reading the book, I don’t have as much patience for people who simply waive their hand and declare “sexist.” I find the the loudest critics of Hemingway, Tolstoy, DFW, are people who haven't read them.
I’m guilty of dodging Hemingway because of what (I think) I know about his personality. Sure he’s a great writer, by reputation, but there are lots of other great writers out there and life’s too short -- and one’s reading life is particularly short in terms of all the great writers put there -- to bother reading someone whose personality you find unpleasant and which you assume will infiltrate his writing.
But you’ve made me reassess my attitude. Thank you. He’s now back on my (endlessly scrolling) reading list!
But certainly having a personal, life-is-too-short reason not to read a certain author or book is different from then suggesting it should be banned and no one should read that author.
Having known the family, I can tell you that he was a man’s man and favored the same outdoor pursuits and alcohol as my father, which is prolly why they got on so well in Sun Valley.
re DFW: i actually have infinite jest tattooed on the bottom sides of my fingers on my write...right* hand (when i was 19 years old)
people after asking what it is have sometimes groaned—i always ask what they didn't like about the book (or, if feisty, summarize the plot!) and never once has The Groaner known what the book is "about" even
Thank you! My sentiments exactly! I can separate the writer from her/his work--and in this case, I love so much of Hemingway's work--"The Sun Also Rises" is such a brilliant account of that "lost generation." And his sentences, ooh-la-la, his sentences--they stand alone! Was he sexist? Ok, maybe he was (though in truth, I've watched a documentary of him and wasn't bowled over by his supposed "sexist" ways...?). He has some short stories that are also superb, and it's because of his ability to put words together to form sentences that are pure and genuine and, I'd say, true. A woman in my book group didn't want to read Hemingway because of all those accusations about his personal life--oh well, she'll miss out on some good stuff!
Papa most definitely made himself difficult to love. After watching the Ken Burns series on Him (and ALL of the lead-up promotional pieces), I wrote an essay "Could We Please, Please, Please, Please, Please, Please Stop Talking About This Jackass?". and then, when I am supersaturated with examples of his backstabbing and other less than charming personal attributes, guess what happens?
George starts Story Club with a Hemingway piece. Oy!
So, this is a brilliant example of that level of acuity and sublime equanimity as readers which are the particular aims of Story Club as George reminds us in this week's Office Hours.
I’ve been thinking a lot about this post this morning and in particular how people often give groups they disagree with (Moms of Liberty, Pro-Lifers, BLM, whatever) only a cursory chance to explain their position before they decide to categorize them as a villain. I definitely do this. And even when I *do* allow them to explain themselves, I’ve often already slotted them firmly into the “bad” category and have already translated their words into a form that fits neatly with our own worldview. Us vs Them. Right vs Wrong. Good vs Evil. Etc.
Let me be clear: I’m not saying you’re doing that, George. And I’m not here to defend Mom’s For Liberty. I’m not actually trying to make a political statement at all. But the deeper I get into my writing practice the more I feel it’s my obligation to really inhabit ever characters experience. Even the villains. And the more I do this the more I find it bleeds into my daily life. As a result, when a group like Mom’s For Liberty (or Black Lives Matter) is so universally hated by one particular side of the spectrum, I start to wonder: What’s it truly like to *be* a member of that group? What’s it *truly *like to be a member of the opposing group? Is it possible to put my politics aside and truly inhabit the other person’s perspective? How far can this practice of extreme empathy extend? Is it always useful? Is any group or person undeserving of my attempt at understanding? If so, why?
Maybe this is getting too philosophical. But I have been thinking about this idea a lot lately as I’ve been struggling to really nail the villain in my novel which is (wouldn’t you know it) based on a very really villain from my own messy life. I’ve come to realize there is a certain part of me that doesn’t want to understand them. “Person X = bad” is just easier. But in my quest to be a just God on the page, I don’t feel it’s enough.
All of this to say, this is why story is so important. And this is why, in my opinion, banning books is such an awful idea. It disallows us to really inhabit someone’s experience. Which seems important. Even if we ultimately decide that that person is a dick.
I completely agree with this idea of trying to understand someone with whom we disagree from the inside - that is really what fiction does best. For me, part of this is being able to "do" that person's voice - which is very much related to trying to see where the argument goes off, or gets false.
Things tend to make sense to the person doing them - I don't buy into the "Cruella DeVille" model of villainy - in which the person knows she's bad and doesn't care and even likes it.
Understanding is so important and inhabiting our "enemy" is a great path in that direction.
Thanks John for your responses to what I have written in Story Club. I like villains that are as interesting as the protagonists. As an artist (writer, musician, person) inhabiting my own direct experience is really all I have to offer. I can be as full of shit as anyone, but when I stay in contact with head, heart and body I have the best chance of good results. And yeah, and if it is boring...
You are welcome. Maybe we identify too much with the hero, in case his/her story might describe a yearned-for path to our own salvation, whereas the villain implicitly cannot? Maybe the story can only be as good as is our portrayal of the villain?
If I can't embrace my own inner villain and smirk at my inner hero I won't be able to inhabit my characters and the story will get, may I say it? boring...
Working with this right now -- inside the head of a neo-nazi assassin (real life character in a documentary I am editing set in 1968). It is a very uncomfortable place to be. It would be much easier to let him remain the cartoon villain which I have done on previous drafts. But I found myself thinking of 'Where is This Voice Coming From?' written from inside the head of the killer of Megar Evers by Eudora Welty back in 1963 -- and published in the New Yorker. To my mind it is a great example of what you all are talking about.
Ah! Villains! In my earlier life as an actor the rule I followed was that in playing a villain, I'd have to find a way to love him. Or if the character were one who seemed to hate himself, I'd have to find a way to believe in the honest reality of his self-hatred. I suspect that the book banners are close to being self-hating villains. Their basic problem is a failure to embrace the inevitably vast spectrum that is reality of life on earth. Closing oneself off, fearing openness and being selectively intolerant - these traits are more damaging than they are protective, and certainly do not promote "liberty."
Samuel Beckett on farts: "...One day I counted them. Three hundred and fifteen farts in nineteen hours, or an average of over sixteen farts an hour. After all it's not excessive. Four farts every fifteen minutes. It's nothing. Not even one fart every four minutes. It's unbelievable. Damn it, I hardly fart at all, I should never have mentioned it.” (Molloy)
Just when you thought middle school was, um, behind you, there it is. Yet again. You have a lot of power, more than most, George, regarding this issue--hope you don't waste too much of it on fart jokes.
Wow, I would love to live in a world where such care was taken with ideas. I love that you see the world in this way, George, and that you come with a ready solution. Reading this piece was hypnotic, like a meditation. You slow things down and invite us to do the same. A small part of me has resisted your highly technical approach to reading until I read this piece. Before, it felt superfluous or overwrought to me, but I see now the power of allowing ourselves that bit of distance from the text we're consuming. It allows space to think, not just react. Thank you for this.
Ben: You write: "I see now the power of allowing ourselves that bit of distance from the text we're consuming. It allows space to think, not just react." This is really well put. It's also a sort of life lesson. We'd all be better people if did this in all situations--think before reacting.
It helps to have a very smart and independent five year old as a housemate. Not to mention a spouse training to be a chaplain! I am learning, ever so slowly….
Honestly, David, this substack gives me some good practice! There have been times when I've wanted to immediately respond to some comment that bothered me for whatever reason, and every now and then there is a comment aimed at me in an unkind fashion, but I've been training myself to take a pause before replying. One hundred percent of the time, thinking before reacting has been the right move around here. And I mean really thinking on all levels--my part, their part, their background, my literalness, the inability to sometimes grasp another person's tone here, and on and on. Usually, the best response in cases that truly get under my skin has turned out to be no response. So, yay for that pause between stimulus and reaction! With any luck, I'll learn how to transfer such a skill to my other life--the one that isn't here on Substack.
There are a couple of things here that are in tension for me. One is that there are some moral positions that, when read, will have me toss the book straight into the trash. Second is the idea that reading closely will give us all tools to understand how to see that position, the writing that makes the position clear, or the sloppy writing that gave the impression that the writer may or may not have meant.
I'm in a writing group with someone whose work always (well the three I've read so far) have women in subordinate roles or torture women characters. It's mainly off the page, but it's there. Reading to figure out how this is conveyed and figuring out how to communicate with them around it is exhausting work, and to be honest, I'm not sure that the effort is worth it. Sometimes it feels as though life is too short.
Right - you (we) definitely have to preserve the right to say, "This is garbage and I'd rather not" - Or, you know: "This problem is not mine, but the writer's."
I guess my thought though is that if (IF) we can diagnose, it leaves US in a more powerful state, maybe?
You know what has sometimes worked for me in this type of situation, is to kind of naively and enthusiastically say something like, "Wow, this is really something. It's interesting to me, how all the women are in subordinate roles or are being tortured."
The person will often just sit there, brow furrowed and (I hope) go home and think about that.
It's somehow the tone - not accusatory but very precise, neutral - that seems to do it.
I used to ask my university students to read like students of writing rather than consumers. A consumer has the luxury to toss a book aside after a few pages and say "not for me," but a student of writing has to be attuned to those things that George talks about above: get beyond the "what" of a text into the how and why it works or fails.
I wish I had this fine ammunition when I was teaching.
Yes, it’s the tone - how to be curious, respectfully insistent, avoid making generalizations… so hard to do when the tone of what you’re responding to is inflammatory.
I enjoyed a great number of years staying close to my mother while she slowly succumbed to dementia.
One day, I said to her, "Mom, you know you taught me this wonderful thing. You always used to say to me that you could say anything to anybody as long as you said it with a smile."
Instantly, her face contorted and was engulfed in a look of disgust, which I took to mean, "What, I said something that cheesy, so like a Hallmark card?"
I left her that day perplexed, uncertain of what were the actual words of the life-lesson she had repeated to her son.
Weeks later I came back to her with an apology, played back the whole episode to her and said, "But mom, you didn't say that, "you said you could say anything to anybody as long as you say it without rage".
Aren’t there two different issues here? One how an individual reader approaches a given “problematic” text and two: the urge to enforce your tastes and informed or Ill-informed ethical concerns on others. First pretty harmless and only affects the individual the second a more dangerous proposition.
Have you tried just being blunt and saying: I find it uncomfortable (or whatever is true for you) that your stories seem always to have ... just as you wrote it here ... and I wonder if you’re aware of that? They might not be, and find it interesting to have it pointed out, or they might bristle and get defensive-macho (I’m assuming the writer is male: not many women write this way) in which case you’ll just have to accept that’s who they are and stick to commenting in their structure, or whatever un-loaded aspect of their writing you helpfully can. But by pointing it out, straight, you’d at least offer them the chance to think about this aspect of their writing. ‘Woman as victim’ is such a common, if offensive, trope in popular culture that he may not even be conscious of using it.
Tortured , subordinate women are real -- they exist in the world we occupy.
As writers telling stories about what is real, even if we don’t like it, approve of it -- etc. showing the reality of relationships, status, class, race, gender --
That’s our job, right?
What if the writer, even when this is pointed out to him, using the neutral curious George tone doesn’t have anything to say for himself, does that make him a person we don’t read? Does an artist need insight to be good -- can they report without full understanding of inequality? Or even more messy, say he’s a man who likes women to be uncomfortable and dominated by men , does this mean we don’t read his work IF his work is showing a fundamental truth in a recognizable honest way?
Picasso wasn’t a feminist but he painted slave girls telling us a story of the time.
Hemingway treated women poorly, had a strange relationship with his mother and wrote stunning prose about relationships.
The context and time a piece is written in, if it’s telling a truth however uncomfortable.
That said maybe the guy is making you all uncomfortable and the work is somehow a way for him to assert his dominance to a captive audience. You will surely figure it out. I not suggesting subjecting ourselves to sadists -- just a vote for curiosity, context, staying with the uncomfortable and sharing the dirty to find a better way
I think you've got this right. We're uncomfortable in our own time, getting this close to a character who treats women with such disrespect. But the writer is being truthful. He doesn't apologize for his character's crimes against humanity, he is just the storyteller with a yarn to tell about a character who went crazy and did a bad, bad thing. And in doing so, I think he gives us a time capsule into another time and place with different social and sexual mores than we have today. This late 1800's time period was the definitely the cusp of big changes for the way women are perceived and so it's not big surprise that it shows up in art and literature. And, as you say, despite how far we've come, women are still victimized and objectified in the world today.
How he treats women in his life is sort of unknowable for me, as it should be. What I want is that if this is on the page, there needs to be a reason for it, a narrative reason for it, otherwise it's not an art that rewards reading.
So far, I'm not seeing fundamental truths and, honestly, the writing feels dishonest, lazy, and facile.
If you were to write about this person in your group as if her were a character, how could you make him compelling? What was his relationship like with his grandfather William, the one who had come back broken from the war, but never talked about it? Is he really writing about that shame which is now inside himself that he is not strong enough to own? Is he trying to sidle up to the same self-horror his grandpa William felt like a pressure sore on his heart these last sixty years since he brutalized that woman ekeing out a life in the village along the river?
If I were going to write him as a character, I probably wouldn't do a backstory like this. I would be more likely to write about how he felt being misunderstood by this group of strangers, not thinking about the content, but how it feels to try something, maybe something you've secretly cared about and being completely misunderstood.
It is only my thinking. You will of course have a completely different style that will work for you. For many years I worked with inherited trauma related patterns, so I immediately feel the backstory, even if not described. I simply wanted the person in your group to be more multidimensional. Thanks for responding.
I like the old valley girl expression, "What's your damage?" since it's delivered in the hyper-superficial manner of valley girl speech, but seems to me to allude to the profundity of "inherited trauma".
One of the ironies is that the battle against censorship (of the governmental kind) frequently involves expression that most of us would want to throw in the trash--the offensive, ugly, and provocative. And yet the protection of that expression is the very thing that allows us to sit down and explore unbidden thoughts and controversial subject matter without fearing we might be prosecuted for what we write.
(That's not to say you should give Mr. Misogynist a pass. I engaged in a go-round in a classroom years ago about someone's portrayal of strippers, of all things, with a similarly unsatisfactory outcome to that of your workshop.)
The problem isn't the ugliness of the idea here. It's the world that it suggests. This is a little tricky to explain, so I hope this makes sense. I am fine with works that look at the ugly or the terrible. However, I want it to do the jobs of making me understand why I'm looking at it. I want it to work within the context of the piece, to look maybe at something that we take for granted and do some work with it.
In the one case I'm thinking about, a woman is trapped in a room (this is sf) and is being mind probed, which is analogized to rape. The problem is not the idea, it's that he used a shorthand for violation rather than doing the writing work of showing what the violation could have felt like. It's not content. It's handling. What is being done with this idea? How do you serve it narratively effectively, without leaning on easy crutches.
When I see the word "liberty" in any group name or "democracy," or any other buzz word, I know to watch out. Those Moms (I have come to hate that word) are not for liberty, except their liberty to decide what children may read.
When I was a high school senior (in the far-distant years of 1968-1969), I took several AP classes, among them History. My teacher, Betty Summers, used the AP designation to essentially roll her own version of the curriculum. She appeared to be so mild and non-threatening that she was able to get away with what would have been seen as subversive behavior in the conservative school I attended, had they understood it.
Her idea of reading was very much like what George expresses here, and it has served me well all my life.
We read Supreme Court decisions, statements by esteemed politicians, our textbook, essays by people of widely varied persuasions, an assortment of speeches, news articles, and many other types of nonfiction. (I don't think we read any fiction; she wasn't _that_ radical). She wanted us to read for the information, sure, because we would be tested on it eventually, but mainly we were taught to look for what seemed false, what seemed true, what was omitted, and then from this to try to discern the conscious and unconscious biases of the authors.
By the end of the year, I got pretty proficient at reading this way, not only documents but also people. I think of it as having acquired x-ray vision.
One specific application was psychotherapy (I'm a retired psychotherapist). This method enabled me, when talking with my clients, to get a sense of what made them tick, and it often led to deepening our sessions and to helping them get to, then through, places where they were wounded, stuck, or hampered by mistaken beliefs about themselves and the world.
Where I disagree with George, in a way, is in feeling that this ability to read (things, people, governments, behavior) removes the fear of certain ideas, texts, or practices. I don't fear the ideas themselves, but I am afraid of the many, many people who don't read fully and who respond like the Moms for Liberty folk, the Trumpers, and the pantheon of bigots and manipulators who came before them; people who hold prejudicial beliefs and count on most people failing to use their own x-ray vision to suss out the whole picture and make their own decisions. We seem to live in a time when the majority of people, at least in the U.S., are not customers for reading for truth. And that's scary now, and has been for as long as I've been around.
Hi David. Yes, I agree that there are limits to this method - there are people who are not, as you so nicely put it, "customers for reading for truth." My feeling is that we each can go as far into that breach as we want to and feel comfortable doing - but sometimes, for sure, we may have to bail. For our own peace of mind and also so as not to be taken advantage of. Thanks for this.
What to do about all of that is something I've struggled with all my adult life. It's what led me to work to stop the Vietnam War, write about protest music and street people, study Carl Rogers, become a psychotherapist, and also to Thich Nhat Hanh's flavor of engaged Buddhism.
The downside of seeing beneath the biases in myself and others is frustration with what to do about it, when most efforts to change things for the better in lasting ways seem like, as an old blacklisted friend from Oklahoma used to say about her own efforts, "pissing up a rope."
In terms of control and changing things, I can change my relationship to things. The only control I have is that I can resist reality and make things worse. And I can stop making it worse. Then there is the chance of meeting reality as it is and listening to the guidance of the heart. (Former therapist and draft-dodger)
Thank you for this post, David. I've come to think of those who don't make any effort to uncover the truth in the same vein as your therapy clients who prefer being stuck and wounded to facing something uncomfortable about themselves. It's always easier to blame others than to take responsibility for your own part in the picture.
I think it is worth saying that anyone can be guilty of quick judgments and the refusal to meaningfully engage and I think fear based reactions are across the board. It's just that no one is really listening to one another, labels are put on everything and everyone as weapons in culture wars and it is easier than it has ever been in the history of the world to enclose yourself in an echo chamber confirming your own unexamined beliefs.
And I wish that becoming a better reader would help with that but I am not convinced it would.
That is, I think becoming a better reader is probably a natural and then conscious progression of a process that begins with starting from a place of trust and openness, i.e. tolerance. Books are places where tolerance is allowed and so no wonder there is an urge to control what is read especially what children read in school.
But how you turn people to or back to a place of tolerance, I do not know. I think it is probably something to do with exposure and that is one of the saddest parts of book banning, removing exposure or trying to.
I continue to be shocked and outraged by the perversion in meaning of the words "liberty" and freedom" by groups of people who stand for the absolute opposite of those words. Moms for Liberty and the Faith and Freedom coalition want to control what we read, what we believe, who we love -- the list is long. And in my opinion the correct noun is Fascism, not Liberty or Freedom.
1. I am/was a child of very religious and extreme parents. For some reason they never censored my reading. Which upon reflection was either because they were oblivious or because they were lazy. We were never allow to watch TV, listen to the radio or receive a newspaper in the house due to corrupting nature of those medias.
The one time I ever consulted my mother about a book I was 6 years old ( I was a very preconscious reader). I had found the book very troubling as it gave me nightmares. When I asked my mother to read the book, she complied, despite being burred under the work of a subsistence farm, and nine children. Later she came back to me. She discussed with me why the subject was troubling and gave me clarity. It gave me the courage to feel I could discuss things if I wanted to. Oddly enough, I never did, and she never questioned me about anything I ever read, and I read many things that were way outside the realms of the doctrine they were daily preaching. It made me a more observant reader, and better at discerning what made sense to me as an individual.
2. So, I don't believe in banning books. I believe that all books have something to say that allows the reader to make more informed thoughts on what they truly accept and reject. I also think it allows for better and deeper discussions between various points of view.
PS I am an Illinoisan and have faced much prejudice from my Wisconsin cousins just for my place of residence my entire life. Go figure, I always thought it was about the individual.
Whoa! Just when I thought George (and we SC'ers) couldn't get more insightful, more profound, WHAM! He does it again! Gratitude for this post! Reminds me of a piece I heard on the radio today, about books, in their pre-full-publication form (forget the technical term) can get totally panned by readers who have read the text--or maybe not. For example (an example the radio piece provided), Elizabeth Gilbert's new book was totally panned on GoodReads (owned, by the way, by Amazon--who is also a contributor to the radio station I was listening to) because it seemed, from what they could ascertain (some had read the pre-publication text, some hadn't), that she was "too generous" towards Russia, all things considered today. Thing is, her book is set in mid-20-th century Russia, long before the current conflict. Because of the response her GoodReads fans presented, Gilbert has decided to stop publication, or at least delay. A commentator (for GR, maybe Amazon?) explained that if one person feels a certain way, that feedback is not so helpful to an author; but when an entire group of people feel that way, then the group-think response is more legitimate. And I thought, oh, so as long as it's a group who bans a book, that's ok, just as long as it's not individuals. Wait, whaaat? Why not allow an author to publish and readers to determine a response? Very frightening to me when, out of the "left" (which can be as fundamentalist as the "right"), there's an explanation and rationalization for censorship--and it's based on exactly what George says here, not on a specific section of text or sentence but based more on ideology. Scary stuff! Let's keep reading, fellow readers, and use our BRAINS and not our ideologies to appreciate, as George says, ideas that conflict with our own. And let's be curious about such conflicts--instead of wanting to blow someone's head off because they have diametrically opposing ideas to our own, let's be curious, let's extend the decency of allowing for something other than our OWN ideas, and welcome someone else's perspective. Of course, we all know there are limits in terms of harm (a major Buddhist precept is "Do no harm"--which seems beyond the bounds of Buddhism, extending to what maybe all humans should be aiming for)--but not just harm to our own ideas and perspectives because someone else holds something different (I think we all get the point here). Anyways, thanks, George--I think we're all become more human and better humans by engaging in this reading and sharing and thinking exercise that you've so generously provided for us!
I really appreciate George's comments about truth-telling in fiction (or in writing, generally), and identifying why something offends or rings false. Years ago I was editing a novel that included a brief passage that trashed a widely admired historical leader. I remember my initial reaction was to take offense, but I couldn't just tell the author he was wrong, that so-and-so was great, and therefore he should cut the passage. As I thought about it, I could see that the specific thing he was saying had some truth to it. But it was also such an oversimplification of a complex history that to be fair would have required a much longer discussion. Which is what I ended up telling him. He cut the passage, and I trust that he felt like I was hearing him and that the specific issue was not whether I or other readers would agree with him, but that the assertion wouldn't ring true because it left out so much. (It probably also helped that it was an aside that did nothing to move the story along.) But it was a good exercise in trying to understand specifically why something felt false, beyond just not liking someone of my political persuasion being criticized.
However, I have to say that, as a lifelong Illinoisan, the farting-in-cars thing is a real problem.
While I agree with George that close reading helps us to understand whether to accept or reject the ideas in a story, I’d like to comment on this post as a high school librarian. For over two decades, I worked as a teacher librarian (e.g., certified in the subject area). There was nothing like Moms for Liberty then (a national campaign feeding the ‘dangerous’ titles to their followers). But we had various book challenges. George is right that people object to the idea and not the book--they, generally, haven’t read the book and may have seen a scene they don’t like. This is why most school districts have a ‘must-read’ policy before filing an objection. States like Florida have done away with this, and we see the result. The censors select their titles simply by using the library catalog. Books are cataloged by various subject area. So the user can look up “LGBTQ” and get hundreds of results. And then asked to have all those (completely unknown) books removed. Normally, to avoid removing every book on the shelf, school libraries have challenge policies, but they also have mission statements that align with the mission of the school. Does the book align with the mission? It’s easy for a librarian to decide this on her own when weeding out nonfiction books. Some examples from my experience are books by people claiming to have been the Romanov Princess Anastasia (that issue was finally settled); books by and about Lance Armstrong on being the best person you could be using Armstrong as a model for teens. Working with fiction is much harder. Someone doesn’t want Huckleberry Finn in the library because it contains racists and uses the n-word. Are these racists in the book made to be models? The problem with Moms for Liberty is that their mission is to remove any discussion of LGBTQ people and any discussion of the history of people of color, particularly Black Americans, that is uncomfortable. Their mission is to make sure kids never hear about these things and aren’t made uncomfortable. But is that the mission of the school and its library? I recently wrote an article about my experience with removing a book. In 22 years, it was the only book that I decided to remove from the collection although school administrators removed others. A student--who had read the entire novel--told me she thought it didn’t belong. I had to take it home and read it because there is not time to do that during working hours despite stereotypes of librarianship. I decided to remove it. (Long story--that’s what the article is about.) But two things that are important to remember here: the student continued to use the library often and was not harmed by the book. And it was quite a process for me to make that decision including looking back at professional reviews. What the Moms for Liberty is doing is ‘pre-removing’ books. Then the librarian and a committee are supposed to read them and evaluate them and argue for their reinstatement. This is impossible--there’s not time for such nonsense. So, yes, the thing to do with library books is to read and then discuss. Sorry, so long. Close to my heart!
Thank you so much for this, Victoria - a perfect example of the value of the specific.
Perfect length.
Victoria this is a fine portrait of your work in the real world of school libraries, the struggle for a rational approach to books and reading. People are so frightened these days. Thank you very much.
Thanks!
Having spent the majority of my life encased within the ivory halls of academia, I often bristled when told I could not possibly understand X, because I was a Y (kind of person) and couldn't possible understand what a Z (kind of person) could feel like or had experienced because of my Y-privilege, etc. But it was always at that point when my entire being screamed out, that through reading, I (we) can understand (an)other! I will never live the experiences of Z, but through reading and the empathetic way of understanding experience through a text, I can most definitely understand, or at least get extremely close to understanding Z-person. If that weren't possible, why would anyone ever expend energy in reading?
I encountered this often when I was a grad student, most notably when I'd written a narrative nonfiction piece about a Puerto Rican drag queen I'd interviewed. Because I was a white, non-Puerto Rican, straight male, one of the participants in a writing workshop told me, I had no right to write this piece, even though every word in it was from a series of recorded interviews I'd done.
The trouble with identity is it separates people between us and them. As the German-Jewish philosopher Martin Buber pointed out, when I objectify another, I immediately become an object.
Well, yes. The trouble with a belief in a "self" that's independent of everyone and everything else, anyway. And yet that's what we do. I'd naively (still!) hoped that the pandemic might drive home how interconnected everything all is, but nope, it's had the opposite effect, it seems.
In difficult times (when isn't?) people look to their family, tribe or cultural identity for belonging, safety and to reaffirm their emotions. Not belonging feels as dangerous, if not more so than death. The self-concept has a functional biological purpose to support survival, it just isn't who I am. The belief in identity supports the sense of being seen and belonging, but also causes strife. When I close my heart to another, objectify anyone, I throw away my power to be who I truly am beyond identity. The heart is either open or closed. There is no in-between, in my experience.
I still remember the same reactions to Wm Styron's The Confessions of Nat Turner, when it came out in 1967. I just returned from a history trip to Richmond VA--as a white writer, what am I to do with ideas for fiction that include Black characters--for example, having seen an 1830 plantation, I'm suddenly imagining a coffle of enslaved people approaching the house for the first time--what is that like, having to come to grips with your entrapment, considering suicide, or determined to live even though life is going to be devastating? Is 'presumptuous' the right word for this attempt? I know this is an old debate, but I like George's idea of the skilled reader taking time and space to consider, maybe to set rage and fear aside and ask, could this be accurate? What do I learn from this?
love this
Excellent^^
Hemingway isn’t my favorite writer, but I like him okay. I liked the simplicity and clarity of Old Man and the Sea, but I did find it over-the-top macho. So before I even opened Farewell to Arms, I was already rolling my eyes, going “here goes papa Hemingway with his big, manly war book.”
Except it wasn’t? If you haven’t read it, or haven’t read it recently, Farewell to Arms is about an ambulance driver who spends a third of the book in the hospital, a third running away from his own soldiers, and a third tending to his pregnant wife. The love dynamic between the two main characters is actually pretty sappy, even cute. The whole crux of the climax, spoilers, is a birth scene. A birth scene which is, to me, about how the common experiences of many women far outstrips the horrors of war.
I don’t really like put myself in the position of apologizing for Hemingway, but since reading the book, I don’t have as much patience for people who simply waive their hand and declare “sexist.” I find the the loudest critics of Hemingway, Tolstoy, DFW, are people who haven't read them.
I’m guilty of dodging Hemingway because of what (I think) I know about his personality. Sure he’s a great writer, by reputation, but there are lots of other great writers out there and life’s too short -- and one’s reading life is particularly short in terms of all the great writers put there -- to bother reading someone whose personality you find unpleasant and which you assume will infiltrate his writing.
But you’ve made me reassess my attitude. Thank you. He’s now back on my (endlessly scrolling) reading list!
But certainly having a personal, life-is-too-short reason not to read a certain author or book is different from then suggesting it should be banned and no one should read that author.
He loved cats...He gets a thumbs up from me^^
Oh totally. I don't get the feeling I would enjoy sitting down to lunch with the guy. Maybe he'd make a good hiking buddy or something.
Having known the family, I can tell you that he was a man’s man and favored the same outdoor pursuits and alcohol as my father, which is prolly why they got on so well in Sun Valley.
Go hunting with him or fishing then you will not have a problem^^
Woof, too close to my childhood. I think if I'm shushed one more time by an older man who's afraid I'll scare away the fish, I'll die on the spot.
Know the feeling :-).
re DFW: i actually have infinite jest tattooed on the bottom sides of my fingers on my write...right* hand (when i was 19 years old)
people after asking what it is have sometimes groaned—i always ask what they didn't like about the book (or, if feisty, summarize the plot!) and never once has The Groaner known what the book is "about" even
like not able to furnish a single sentence
;)
Thank you! My sentiments exactly! I can separate the writer from her/his work--and in this case, I love so much of Hemingway's work--"The Sun Also Rises" is such a brilliant account of that "lost generation." And his sentences, ooh-la-la, his sentences--they stand alone! Was he sexist? Ok, maybe he was (though in truth, I've watched a documentary of him and wasn't bowled over by his supposed "sexist" ways...?). He has some short stories that are also superb, and it's because of his ability to put words together to form sentences that are pure and genuine and, I'd say, true. A woman in my book group didn't want to read Hemingway because of all those accusations about his personal life--oh well, she'll miss out on some good stuff!
Hi, Brad.
Equanimity, a writer's best friend!
Papa most definitely made himself difficult to love. After watching the Ken Burns series on Him (and ALL of the lead-up promotional pieces), I wrote an essay "Could We Please, Please, Please, Please, Please, Please Stop Talking About This Jackass?". and then, when I am supersaturated with examples of his backstabbing and other less than charming personal attributes, guess what happens?
George starts Story Club with a Hemingway piece. Oy!
So, this is a brilliant example of that level of acuity and sublime equanimity as readers which are the particular aims of Story Club as George reminds us in this week's Office Hours.
It is inspiring.
John
I’ve been thinking a lot about this post this morning and in particular how people often give groups they disagree with (Moms of Liberty, Pro-Lifers, BLM, whatever) only a cursory chance to explain their position before they decide to categorize them as a villain. I definitely do this. And even when I *do* allow them to explain themselves, I’ve often already slotted them firmly into the “bad” category and have already translated their words into a form that fits neatly with our own worldview. Us vs Them. Right vs Wrong. Good vs Evil. Etc.
Let me be clear: I’m not saying you’re doing that, George. And I’m not here to defend Mom’s For Liberty. I’m not actually trying to make a political statement at all. But the deeper I get into my writing practice the more I feel it’s my obligation to really inhabit ever characters experience. Even the villains. And the more I do this the more I find it bleeds into my daily life. As a result, when a group like Mom’s For Liberty (or Black Lives Matter) is so universally hated by one particular side of the spectrum, I start to wonder: What’s it truly like to *be* a member of that group? What’s it *truly *like to be a member of the opposing group? Is it possible to put my politics aside and truly inhabit the other person’s perspective? How far can this practice of extreme empathy extend? Is it always useful? Is any group or person undeserving of my attempt at understanding? If so, why?
Maybe this is getting too philosophical. But I have been thinking about this idea a lot lately as I’ve been struggling to really nail the villain in my novel which is (wouldn’t you know it) based on a very really villain from my own messy life. I’ve come to realize there is a certain part of me that doesn’t want to understand them. “Person X = bad” is just easier. But in my quest to be a just God on the page, I don’t feel it’s enough.
All of this to say, this is why story is so important. And this is why, in my opinion, banning books is such an awful idea. It disallows us to really inhabit someone’s experience. Which seems important. Even if we ultimately decide that that person is a dick.
I completely agree with this idea of trying to understand someone with whom we disagree from the inside - that is really what fiction does best. For me, part of this is being able to "do" that person's voice - which is very much related to trying to see where the argument goes off, or gets false.
Things tend to make sense to the person doing them - I don't buy into the "Cruella DeVille" model of villainy - in which the person knows she's bad and doesn't care and even likes it.
Understanding is so important and inhabiting our "enemy" is a great path in that direction.
One dimensional villains are boring. They have little chance for transformation. Inhabiting myself I have choice.
Now there's a superior brand of censorship! Is it boring? Inhabiting onesself was how Tolstoy's wrote "The Devil", I think.
Thanks John for your responses to what I have written in Story Club. I like villains that are as interesting as the protagonists. As an artist (writer, musician, person) inhabiting my own direct experience is really all I have to offer. I can be as full of shit as anyone, but when I stay in contact with head, heart and body I have the best chance of good results. And yeah, and if it is boring...
You are welcome. Maybe we identify too much with the hero, in case his/her story might describe a yearned-for path to our own salvation, whereas the villain implicitly cannot? Maybe the story can only be as good as is our portrayal of the villain?
If I can't embrace my own inner villain and smirk at my inner hero I won't be able to inhabit my characters and the story will get, may I say it? boring...
Working with this right now -- inside the head of a neo-nazi assassin (real life character in a documentary I am editing set in 1968). It is a very uncomfortable place to be. It would be much easier to let him remain the cartoon villain which I have done on previous drafts. But I found myself thinking of 'Where is This Voice Coming From?' written from inside the head of the killer of Megar Evers by Eudora Welty back in 1963 -- and published in the New Yorker. To my mind it is a great example of what you all are talking about.
Ah! Villains! In my earlier life as an actor the rule I followed was that in playing a villain, I'd have to find a way to love him. Or if the character were one who seemed to hate himself, I'd have to find a way to believe in the honest reality of his self-hatred. I suspect that the book banners are close to being self-hating villains. Their basic problem is a failure to embrace the inevitably vast spectrum that is reality of life on earth. Closing oneself off, fearing openness and being selectively intolerant - these traits are more damaging than they are protective, and certainly do not promote "liberty."
So, show the villain, possibly Ernest himself, saving a cat?
I like this Tim. The inevitably vast spectrum that is reality. Closing my heart to reality is exactly as you say, more damaging, not protective. Yeah!
Very, very difficult to not cut a fart joke here.
Go ahead, cut one.
Samuel Beckett on farts: "...One day I counted them. Three hundred and fifteen farts in nineteen hours, or an average of over sixteen farts an hour. After all it's not excessive. Four farts every fifteen minutes. It's nothing. Not even one fart every four minutes. It's unbelievable. Damn it, I hardly fart at all, I should never have mentioned it.” (Molloy)
Getting windy in here.
She did!
Just when you thought middle school was, um, behind you, there it is. Yet again. You have a lot of power, more than most, George, regarding this issue--hope you don't waste too much of it on fart jokes.
It is not possible to waste too much time on fart jokes, provided that the jokes pass the sniff test, i.e., that they are humorous.
Drink some fresh apple cider..that will elevate your gas content^^
If you don't have a sense of humor, it just isn't funny.
- Wavy Gravy
ha! Can't get much truer than that.
Hi, Mary
I'm from Illinois. We don't cut them over here. However, our neighbors in Wisconsin have been known to cut the cheese.
John
Thank you, Will. It's a lot of pressure to be a truth-teller, but I do my best.
This is my favorite part of Story Club.
This cuts no ice for me^^
Wow, I would love to live in a world where such care was taken with ideas. I love that you see the world in this way, George, and that you come with a ready solution. Reading this piece was hypnotic, like a meditation. You slow things down and invite us to do the same. A small part of me has resisted your highly technical approach to reading until I read this piece. Before, it felt superfluous or overwrought to me, but I see now the power of allowing ourselves that bit of distance from the text we're consuming. It allows space to think, not just react. Thank you for this.
I think it's a bit of a fake-it-until-I-make-it kind of thing. :)
You’re faking it really well! 😉
Ben: You write: "I see now the power of allowing ourselves that bit of distance from the text we're consuming. It allows space to think, not just react." This is really well put. It's also a sort of life lesson. We'd all be better people if did this in all situations--think before reacting.
Brings to mind my neighbor's Dachshund, who will eat anything and only afterwards ask "was that food?".
Right. But it’s not immediately easy to do.
Very, very hard.
It helps to have a very smart and independent five year old as a housemate. Not to mention a spouse training to be a chaplain! I am learning, ever so slowly….
Honestly, David, this substack gives me some good practice! There have been times when I've wanted to immediately respond to some comment that bothered me for whatever reason, and every now and then there is a comment aimed at me in an unkind fashion, but I've been training myself to take a pause before replying. One hundred percent of the time, thinking before reacting has been the right move around here. And I mean really thinking on all levels--my part, their part, their background, my literalness, the inability to sometimes grasp another person's tone here, and on and on. Usually, the best response in cases that truly get under my skin has turned out to be no response. So, yay for that pause between stimulus and reaction! With any luck, I'll learn how to transfer such a skill to my other life--the one that isn't here on Substack.
It is quite interesting to pause, think, feel, ponder, consider, in order to respond instead of merely reacting.
"Slow things down" is key! I find myself too frequently in the ironic position of thinking "I can't slow down fast enough."
There are a couple of things here that are in tension for me. One is that there are some moral positions that, when read, will have me toss the book straight into the trash. Second is the idea that reading closely will give us all tools to understand how to see that position, the writing that makes the position clear, or the sloppy writing that gave the impression that the writer may or may not have meant.
I'm in a writing group with someone whose work always (well the three I've read so far) have women in subordinate roles or torture women characters. It's mainly off the page, but it's there. Reading to figure out how this is conveyed and figuring out how to communicate with them around it is exhausting work, and to be honest, I'm not sure that the effort is worth it. Sometimes it feels as though life is too short.
Right - you (we) definitely have to preserve the right to say, "This is garbage and I'd rather not" - Or, you know: "This problem is not mine, but the writer's."
I guess my thought though is that if (IF) we can diagnose, it leaves US in a more powerful state, maybe?
You know what has sometimes worked for me in this type of situation, is to kind of naively and enthusiastically say something like, "Wow, this is really something. It's interesting to me, how all the women are in subordinate roles or are being tortured."
The person will often just sit there, brow furrowed and (I hope) go home and think about that.
It's somehow the tone - not accusatory but very precise, neutral - that seems to do it.
I used to ask my university students to read like students of writing rather than consumers. A consumer has the luxury to toss a book aside after a few pages and say "not for me," but a student of writing has to be attuned to those things that George talks about above: get beyond the "what" of a text into the how and why it works or fails.
I wish I had this fine ammunition when I was teaching.
Yes, it’s the tone - how to be curious, respectfully insistent, avoid making generalizations… so hard to do when the tone of what you’re responding to is inflammatory.
I'll be on the lookout for how you use the word "interesting" in the future.😉
I enjoyed a great number of years staying close to my mother while she slowly succumbed to dementia.
One day, I said to her, "Mom, you know you taught me this wonderful thing. You always used to say to me that you could say anything to anybody as long as you said it with a smile."
Instantly, her face contorted and was engulfed in a look of disgust, which I took to mean, "What, I said something that cheesy, so like a Hallmark card?"
I left her that day perplexed, uncertain of what were the actual words of the life-lesson she had repeated to her son.
Weeks later I came back to her with an apology, played back the whole episode to her and said, "But mom, you didn't say that, "you said you could say anything to anybody as long as you say it without rage".
And her face didn't crinkle up that time.
Aren’t there two different issues here? One how an individual reader approaches a given “problematic” text and two: the urge to enforce your tastes and informed or Ill-informed ethical concerns on others. First pretty harmless and only affects the individual the second a more dangerous proposition.
Have you tried just being blunt and saying: I find it uncomfortable (or whatever is true for you) that your stories seem always to have ... just as you wrote it here ... and I wonder if you’re aware of that? They might not be, and find it interesting to have it pointed out, or they might bristle and get defensive-macho (I’m assuming the writer is male: not many women write this way) in which case you’ll just have to accept that’s who they are and stick to commenting in their structure, or whatever un-loaded aspect of their writing you helpfully can. But by pointing it out, straight, you’d at least offer them the chance to think about this aspect of their writing. ‘Woman as victim’ is such a common, if offensive, trope in popular culture that he may not even be conscious of using it.
I haven't, but someone in the group did last Sunday (why this is still on my mind) and he did not take it well at all.
We're at a wait and see until next month to see if he's going to do it again and if so, there's going to be a very uncomfortable conversation.
Tortured , subordinate women are real -- they exist in the world we occupy.
As writers telling stories about what is real, even if we don’t like it, approve of it -- etc. showing the reality of relationships, status, class, race, gender --
That’s our job, right?
What if the writer, even when this is pointed out to him, using the neutral curious George tone doesn’t have anything to say for himself, does that make him a person we don’t read? Does an artist need insight to be good -- can they report without full understanding of inequality? Or even more messy, say he’s a man who likes women to be uncomfortable and dominated by men , does this mean we don’t read his work IF his work is showing a fundamental truth in a recognizable honest way?
Picasso wasn’t a feminist but he painted slave girls telling us a story of the time.
Hemingway treated women poorly, had a strange relationship with his mother and wrote stunning prose about relationships.
The context and time a piece is written in, if it’s telling a truth however uncomfortable.
That said maybe the guy is making you all uncomfortable and the work is somehow a way for him to assert his dominance to a captive audience. You will surely figure it out. I not suggesting subjecting ourselves to sadists -- just a vote for curiosity, context, staying with the uncomfortable and sharing the dirty to find a better way
I think you've got this right. We're uncomfortable in our own time, getting this close to a character who treats women with such disrespect. But the writer is being truthful. He doesn't apologize for his character's crimes against humanity, he is just the storyteller with a yarn to tell about a character who went crazy and did a bad, bad thing. And in doing so, I think he gives us a time capsule into another time and place with different social and sexual mores than we have today. This late 1800's time period was the definitely the cusp of big changes for the way women are perceived and so it's not big surprise that it shows up in art and literature. And, as you say, despite how far we've come, women are still victimized and objectified in the world today.
How he treats women in his life is sort of unknowable for me, as it should be. What I want is that if this is on the page, there needs to be a reason for it, a narrative reason for it, otherwise it's not an art that rewards reading.
So far, I'm not seeing fundamental truths and, honestly, the writing feels dishonest, lazy, and facile.
that’s your answer — dishonest isn’t shaking down anything worthwhile. thanks for indulging my internal debate
If you were to write about this person in your group as if her were a character, how could you make him compelling? What was his relationship like with his grandfather William, the one who had come back broken from the war, but never talked about it? Is he really writing about that shame which is now inside himself that he is not strong enough to own? Is he trying to sidle up to the same self-horror his grandpa William felt like a pressure sore on his heart these last sixty years since he brutalized that woman ekeing out a life in the village along the river?
If I were going to write him as a character, I probably wouldn't do a backstory like this. I would be more likely to write about how he felt being misunderstood by this group of strangers, not thinking about the content, but how it feels to try something, maybe something you've secretly cared about and being completely misunderstood.
It is only my thinking. You will of course have a completely different style that will work for you. For many years I worked with inherited trauma related patterns, so I immediately feel the backstory, even if not described. I simply wanted the person in your group to be more multidimensional. Thanks for responding.
I like the old valley girl expression, "What's your damage?" since it's delivered in the hyper-superficial manner of valley girl speech, but seems to me to allude to the profundity of "inherited trauma".
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=what%27s%20your%20damage%3F
One of the ironies is that the battle against censorship (of the governmental kind) frequently involves expression that most of us would want to throw in the trash--the offensive, ugly, and provocative. And yet the protection of that expression is the very thing that allows us to sit down and explore unbidden thoughts and controversial subject matter without fearing we might be prosecuted for what we write.
(That's not to say you should give Mr. Misogynist a pass. I engaged in a go-round in a classroom years ago about someone's portrayal of strippers, of all things, with a similarly unsatisfactory outcome to that of your workshop.)
The problem isn't the ugliness of the idea here. It's the world that it suggests. This is a little tricky to explain, so I hope this makes sense. I am fine with works that look at the ugly or the terrible. However, I want it to do the jobs of making me understand why I'm looking at it. I want it to work within the context of the piece, to look maybe at something that we take for granted and do some work with it.
In the one case I'm thinking about, a woman is trapped in a room (this is sf) and is being mind probed, which is analogized to rape. The problem is not the idea, it's that he used a shorthand for violation rather than doing the writing work of showing what the violation could have felt like. It's not content. It's handling. What is being done with this idea? How do you serve it narratively effectively, without leaning on easy crutches.
Yes. Bad writing. A missed opportunity to go beneath the surface. I responded above before I read your piece here.
The Moms for Liberty. What a name. Also, if you apply their rules, the Bible wouldn't be permitted.
When I see the word "liberty" in any group name or "democracy," or any other buzz word, I know to watch out. Those Moms (I have come to hate that word) are not for liberty, except their liberty to decide what children may read.
Totally. Same with “The Clean Forest Act” and dozens of other titles that mislead.
Groups with the word "freedom" are another one to watch out for.
Same. And any group that has the word “family” in their name.
Hold on the Group has been renamed Moms for the Moronic^^
It's not, actually, at least in Utah, of all places.
Utah? That is a surprise!
Wacky, but true.
I think it's now been reinstated after an appeal. So--no longer banned. (It was temporarily removed from some school shelves.)
Relieved. This meant as irony, of course.
When I was a high school senior (in the far-distant years of 1968-1969), I took several AP classes, among them History. My teacher, Betty Summers, used the AP designation to essentially roll her own version of the curriculum. She appeared to be so mild and non-threatening that she was able to get away with what would have been seen as subversive behavior in the conservative school I attended, had they understood it.
Her idea of reading was very much like what George expresses here, and it has served me well all my life.
We read Supreme Court decisions, statements by esteemed politicians, our textbook, essays by people of widely varied persuasions, an assortment of speeches, news articles, and many other types of nonfiction. (I don't think we read any fiction; she wasn't _that_ radical). She wanted us to read for the information, sure, because we would be tested on it eventually, but mainly we were taught to look for what seemed false, what seemed true, what was omitted, and then from this to try to discern the conscious and unconscious biases of the authors.
By the end of the year, I got pretty proficient at reading this way, not only documents but also people. I think of it as having acquired x-ray vision.
One specific application was psychotherapy (I'm a retired psychotherapist). This method enabled me, when talking with my clients, to get a sense of what made them tick, and it often led to deepening our sessions and to helping them get to, then through, places where they were wounded, stuck, or hampered by mistaken beliefs about themselves and the world.
Where I disagree with George, in a way, is in feeling that this ability to read (things, people, governments, behavior) removes the fear of certain ideas, texts, or practices. I don't fear the ideas themselves, but I am afraid of the many, many people who don't read fully and who respond like the Moms for Liberty folk, the Trumpers, and the pantheon of bigots and manipulators who came before them; people who hold prejudicial beliefs and count on most people failing to use their own x-ray vision to suss out the whole picture and make their own decisions. We seem to live in a time when the majority of people, at least in the U.S., are not customers for reading for truth. And that's scary now, and has been for as long as I've been around.
Hi David. Yes, I agree that there are limits to this method - there are people who are not, as you so nicely put it, "customers for reading for truth." My feeling is that we each can go as far into that breach as we want to and feel comfortable doing - but sometimes, for sure, we may have to bail. For our own peace of mind and also so as not to be taken advantage of. Thanks for this.
What to do about all of that is something I've struggled with all my adult life. It's what led me to work to stop the Vietnam War, write about protest music and street people, study Carl Rogers, become a psychotherapist, and also to Thich Nhat Hanh's flavor of engaged Buddhism.
The downside of seeing beneath the biases in myself and others is frustration with what to do about it, when most efforts to change things for the better in lasting ways seem like, as an old blacklisted friend from Oklahoma used to say about her own efforts, "pissing up a rope."
In terms of control and changing things, I can change my relationship to things. The only control I have is that I can resist reality and make things worse. And I can stop making it worse. Then there is the chance of meeting reality as it is and listening to the guidance of the heart. (Former therapist and draft-dodger)
Thank you for this post, David. I've come to think of those who don't make any effort to uncover the truth in the same vein as your therapy clients who prefer being stuck and wounded to facing something uncomfortable about themselves. It's always easier to blame others than to take responsibility for your own part in the picture.
I am still learning to read.
Jack and Jill went up the hill...you know the end of this story and what happened to the pale of water^^
I think it is worth saying that anyone can be guilty of quick judgments and the refusal to meaningfully engage and I think fear based reactions are across the board. It's just that no one is really listening to one another, labels are put on everything and everyone as weapons in culture wars and it is easier than it has ever been in the history of the world to enclose yourself in an echo chamber confirming your own unexamined beliefs.
And I wish that becoming a better reader would help with that but I am not convinced it would.
That is, I think becoming a better reader is probably a natural and then conscious progression of a process that begins with starting from a place of trust and openness, i.e. tolerance. Books are places where tolerance is allowed and so no wonder there is an urge to control what is read especially what children read in school.
But how you turn people to or back to a place of tolerance, I do not know. I think it is probably something to do with exposure and that is one of the saddest parts of book banning, removing exposure or trying to.
WE should apply reasoning and leave the judging to heavenly perfection^^
I continue to be shocked and outraged by the perversion in meaning of the words "liberty" and freedom" by groups of people who stand for the absolute opposite of those words. Moms for Liberty and the Faith and Freedom coalition want to control what we read, what we believe, who we love -- the list is long. And in my opinion the correct noun is Fascism, not Liberty or Freedom.
Creeping, crawling, suffocating fascism, the libation of the fearful.
This is so inspiring to me, as a writer and as a citizen trying to navigate these terrifying times.
I have tow responses.
1. I am/was a child of very religious and extreme parents. For some reason they never censored my reading. Which upon reflection was either because they were oblivious or because they were lazy. We were never allow to watch TV, listen to the radio or receive a newspaper in the house due to corrupting nature of those medias.
The one time I ever consulted my mother about a book I was 6 years old ( I was a very preconscious reader). I had found the book very troubling as it gave me nightmares. When I asked my mother to read the book, she complied, despite being burred under the work of a subsistence farm, and nine children. Later she came back to me. She discussed with me why the subject was troubling and gave me clarity. It gave me the courage to feel I could discuss things if I wanted to. Oddly enough, I never did, and she never questioned me about anything I ever read, and I read many things that were way outside the realms of the doctrine they were daily preaching. It made me a more observant reader, and better at discerning what made sense to me as an individual.
2. So, I don't believe in banning books. I believe that all books have something to say that allows the reader to make more informed thoughts on what they truly accept and reject. I also think it allows for better and deeper discussions between various points of view.
PS I am an Illinoisan and have faced much prejudice from my Wisconsin cousins just for my place of residence my entire life. Go figure, I always thought it was about the individual.
That prejudice? It's all about flatlanders and oleomargarine.
cheeseheads was one I have often heard.
Whoa! Just when I thought George (and we SC'ers) couldn't get more insightful, more profound, WHAM! He does it again! Gratitude for this post! Reminds me of a piece I heard on the radio today, about books, in their pre-full-publication form (forget the technical term) can get totally panned by readers who have read the text--or maybe not. For example (an example the radio piece provided), Elizabeth Gilbert's new book was totally panned on GoodReads (owned, by the way, by Amazon--who is also a contributor to the radio station I was listening to) because it seemed, from what they could ascertain (some had read the pre-publication text, some hadn't), that she was "too generous" towards Russia, all things considered today. Thing is, her book is set in mid-20-th century Russia, long before the current conflict. Because of the response her GoodReads fans presented, Gilbert has decided to stop publication, or at least delay. A commentator (for GR, maybe Amazon?) explained that if one person feels a certain way, that feedback is not so helpful to an author; but when an entire group of people feel that way, then the group-think response is more legitimate. And I thought, oh, so as long as it's a group who bans a book, that's ok, just as long as it's not individuals. Wait, whaaat? Why not allow an author to publish and readers to determine a response? Very frightening to me when, out of the "left" (which can be as fundamentalist as the "right"), there's an explanation and rationalization for censorship--and it's based on exactly what George says here, not on a specific section of text or sentence but based more on ideology. Scary stuff! Let's keep reading, fellow readers, and use our BRAINS and not our ideologies to appreciate, as George says, ideas that conflict with our own. And let's be curious about such conflicts--instead of wanting to blow someone's head off because they have diametrically opposing ideas to our own, let's be curious, let's extend the decency of allowing for something other than our OWN ideas, and welcome someone else's perspective. Of course, we all know there are limits in terms of harm (a major Buddhist precept is "Do no harm"--which seems beyond the bounds of Buddhism, extending to what maybe all humans should be aiming for)--but not just harm to our own ideas and perspectives because someone else holds something different (I think we all get the point here). Anyways, thanks, George--I think we're all become more human and better humans by engaging in this reading and sharing and thinking exercise that you've so generously provided for us!
Love this: thank you so much!
I really appreciate George's comments about truth-telling in fiction (or in writing, generally), and identifying why something offends or rings false. Years ago I was editing a novel that included a brief passage that trashed a widely admired historical leader. I remember my initial reaction was to take offense, but I couldn't just tell the author he was wrong, that so-and-so was great, and therefore he should cut the passage. As I thought about it, I could see that the specific thing he was saying had some truth to it. But it was also such an oversimplification of a complex history that to be fair would have required a much longer discussion. Which is what I ended up telling him. He cut the passage, and I trust that he felt like I was hearing him and that the specific issue was not whether I or other readers would agree with him, but that the assertion wouldn't ring true because it left out so much. (It probably also helped that it was an aside that did nothing to move the story along.) But it was a good exercise in trying to understand specifically why something felt false, beyond just not liking someone of my political persuasion being criticized.
However, I have to say that, as a lifelong Illinoisan, the farting-in-cars thing is a real problem.
There goes the first truth^^