Other worlds

My reading the past week and a half has pulled me out of my life in two very different directions. 

Kazuo Ishiguro's The Buried Giant has drawn me back to the time of King Arthur, where Axel and Beatrice, an elderly couple, are making a journey to their son's village, where they are "eagerly awaited" - at least that's what they say, but in fact their son hasn't heard from them and doesn't expect them. They meet knights, warriors, monks, kings' emissaries, children destined for greatness, and dragons on the way. 

What strikes me most as a reader is the level of chivalry practiced among folks in the story. Their manner of conversing is so fairytale-like. "Come, friends! Let's proceed with courage!" and the like. I find myself quite seduced by this romanticized portrayal of our medieval ancestors. I'm very happy to think of people in the dark ages being so courteous to one another, and holding up such a high level of honor. 

However, now that I think about it, the courtesy makes the story feel very brittle, as if the least bit of conflict will rock the boat intolerably. Indeed, when the characters allow even the slightest edge into their voices (or when the narrator implies it - I'm listening to an audiobook) I feel upset, and want things to return to a dull, polite equilibrium. 

There is so much about this world which remains in shadows, which I suppose fits the time setting, since the people who lived then didn't know much about their own world. One mystery which has been threaded through the story is what Axel and Beatrice refer to as the "mist" which seems to have clouded people's memories. Even the events of a few days ago are foggy, if not entirely forgotten. Axel and Beatrice find they cannot remember their son at all, and this concerns them. They also cannot remember a woman who visited the village a few weeks ago and cause quite a commotion. 

The knight they meet says that the she-dragon in the land is the source of this forgetfulness, but I think it's something else. One woman Beatrice asked about it said that God had begun to forget humans, so humans could hardly be expected to remember anything themselves. I must say I'm more intrigued with that explanation than with the dragon. 


The other book is The Joy Luck Club, by Amy Tan, which has drawn me into the extended social circle of the members of the Club, mothers and daughters, who tell their tales. It's remarkable how much easier it is to read the tales of the 20-something and 30-something daughters who have grown up in America, than of their 50- and 60-something mothers who speak of their lives growing up in China. 

Not only are the tales of China full of hardship and infuriating oppression of women, they are told in terms of names, places, traditions, suspicions, foods, and names that are foreign to me. This must be somewhat how people feel who are introduced to the Western Canon without any grounding in the Western cultural tradition. So much harder to stick with, and make sense of. 

I have to remember that when I teach George Orwell next semester. My students come at this text from so many points. In some ways we have both the Chinese-American daughters and the Chinese mothers in the class - students who have adopted American culture because they have either tried to, or they have been here long enough to do so naturally, and students who still manifest their home cultures, again either by choice or because they arrived in the US recently. 

Here is a passage which included an unusual (for the narrator) moment of anthropological meditation on the differences between East and West: (Start with the mother saying "It's my fault...")

James Baldwin, If Beale Street Could Talk

Two great books I'm enjoying right now:

Angela's Ashes, by Frank McCourt


McCourt reads the audiobook version I have from the library, and I was immediately drawn into the Irish story-telling atmosphere he creates. The book is a memoir, but McCourt doesn't tell tell the whole story as if looking back. He writes with a child's voice when he talks about his childhood in Limerick. As he grows, so does the maturity of the narrative perspective.

I think my favorite kind of story is family drama, and this one ticks all the boxes, with hilarious anecdotes, rich characters colorfully drawn, and poignancy and universality evoked in every chapter.






If Beale Street Could Talk, by James Baldwin

This book review by a blogging teacher I admire put this Baldwin title on my To-Read list. I finally picked it up this weekend and was drawn immediately into the same family drama portraits that draw me to Angela's Ashes.


Baldwin tells a story with such tenderness, even when the details are anything but glamorous. He paints the characters in such hues as to make the reader painfully aware of how obvious we are in all our insecurities.


Like McCourt, he is also dryly funny in his descriptions of characters. This is such a talent - describing people in all their ridiculousness without lapsing into criticism.


Here is one description of Mrs. Hunt, the mother of the main character's boyfriend:

Aside from the humor, there are wonderful descriptions of things we don't expect would show up on our faces, that do. Transformations in our features which reflect inner evolutions. I feel these evolutions happening all the time. Do the people close to me see those changes on my face, like this? (From "All of a sudden" to "beginning to see".

I have to fight the feeling that everything I read must be related to school and applicable to students. There is time for young adult lit, classroom texts, and personal stuff.

Rachmaninov, Elgar, Ember Part II, Chekhov and Ibsen

Sunrise and sunset from my western-facing window last Saturday. No filters were used!

Last night the Utah Symphony played Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini. I have a hard time believing that this was the first time I'd heard this piece live, but it certainly felt like it. I had a great seat to the left of the orchestra section, and the seat to my right and the four seats in front of my were empty, (people must have been scared away by the snowy mix falling).

The performance featured Jon Kimura Parker, who, in a Oscar-Peterson style encore, emphasized that Rachmaninov had been inspired not only by Paganini but by the jazz piano clubs of Beverly Hills. It was a grand performance.

In the second act, the massive symphony (two  harps!) played Symphony number 1 by Edward Elgar. Also, hadn't seen this, and also was blown away. Especially under the tight and exceptionally comfortable conductorship of Mark Wigglesworth (none of the instruments wiggled under his baton - everyone seemed to know exactly where to do what, and they did it). The end was explosive, and explode the audience did. The theater was almost full, which is impressive given the size of Abravanel Hall.

On the way to and from the concert, I continued to listen to Part II of the Ember in the Ashes Trilogy, which is called A Torch Against The Night. This one is... just as good as the last. In my last post I said I was going to wait until Thanksgiving break, but nay, it was not to be, because I tried three other audiobooks that left me feeling like I was drinking watered down iced tea on a cold winter day. It's probably not fair to name them after that comment, but I will:

Bad Boy, by Walter Dean Meyers

Everything, Everything, by Nicola Yoon

and worst of all, another fantasy book called The Young Elites by Marie Lu, which was poorly written, using words incorrectly and including phrases that made me grimace at their inaccuracy or clumsiness.

Even Salt to the Sea, a historical fiction book I had begun with gusto the week before, by Ruta Sepetys, turned to ash on my tongue this week, and I'll finish it simply for the sake of finishing it.

This morning I decided I'd better read something other than YA lit, and returned to the collection of Chekhov shorts that I read for book club last month. The meeting has come and gone, but I didn't read all the stories, and I am not exactly chomping at the bit to read Robinson Crusoe, the pick for December. The narrator has already put me off with his white arrogance in the preface where in a breath he says that in these pages his "story is told with modesty and seriousness," and declares that in publishing his life's tale he does the reader "a great service". I'm sure you do, my man. I'm just not prepared to listen to your account of dominating other cultures.

So I read the short story "The Darling" in which Chekhov continued to impress with his attention to the plight of women. Olenka is widowed twice and fears abandonment, for she has so little control over her life when not attached to a man. Well, also when she is attached to a man, come to think of it. The part that stuck out to me was the way people reacted to her when she was young. She was appealing and attractive and, it seems, charming and demur.

"Looking at her plump pink cheeks, at her soft white neck with its dark birthmark, at the kind, naive smile her face bore when she listened to something pleasant, men thought: "Yes, not bad at all..." and also smiled, and lady visitors could not refrain from seizing her hand in the middle of the conversation and saying, in a burst of pleasure: "You darling!"

Maybe it's only because I now have Robinson Crusoe on the mind, but is it not a sense of an easily controlled and conquered person that gives us that urge to grasp a hand and say "You darling!" When someone appears "naive" and domesticable, is it not some relief within us that this person would be an easy win? That they will pose to problems to our own sense of worth? That we can always feel faintly superior because we are not as naive as her, and her pleasant appearance can be a source of gratification for the eyes, without being so striking that it threatens our pride?

For the men, the sense of conquering is more straight forward and more expected, because it carries sexual undertones, but for the women, it's a stranger thing. We want to remain the more powerful female, and seizing someone else's hand in patronizing rapture is not so dissimilar from seizing hard capital from a group of people one wants to establish as inferior. If I can seize your hand, you cannot threaten me.

This short story reminded me of A Doll's House, which has also been on my mind this week as I consider what to read next with the 11/12 graders. Nora is certainly considered to be "Not bad at all" by Torvald, and she leans into this trope of demur woman to get her way from a man who will never see her as having or deserving agency. I'm sure her hand has been seized by many women in her day.

This week we spoke a great deal about music in class. Students listened to and read an excerpt from A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah in which he talks about his introduction to rap music. They then wrote about their own connections to music. As part of the brainstorming process, period four created this "Chalk Talk" mural which includes many translations of music-inspired terms into students' home languages.

Synchronicity of sound and story

I finished An Ember in the Ashes today. How many hours of this audiobook did I listen to over the weekend?? It ends on a cliffhanger and I am not allowing myself to download the second book until Thanksgiving break. For now, the next thing in the cue is Bad Boy, a memoir by Walter Dean Myers.

The intensity and majesty of An Ember in the Ashes was matched last night by a concert performance of music by Ola Gjeilo, a Polish composer whose choral music is cinematic in scale and intensity. When you read Ember, you'll understand the synchronicity between it and this piece, which was utterly breathtaking live:

Praxis Practice

I love reading and writing tests. Well, at least I love practicing for them. The time pressure makes the test itself stressful. When I was studying for the LSAT, I loved the reading comprehension passages and the accompanying questions. It's a good thing I don't assume that my students share my penchant. 

Here are my two practice mini essays, 15 minutes each, on passages that were on the practice test. 

Passage one: Literature analysis

The idiosyncrasy of this town is smoke. It rolls sullenly in slow folds from the great chimneys of the iron- foundries, and settles down in black, slimy pools on the muddy streets. Smoke on the wharves, smoke
on the dingy boats, on the yellow river—clinging in a coating of greasy soot to the house-front, the two faded poplars, the faces of the passers-by. The long train of mules, dragging masses of pig-iron through the narrow street, have a foul vapor hanging to their reeking sides. Here, inside, is a little broken figure of an angel pointing upward from the mantel-shelf; but even its wings are covered with smoke, clotted and black. Smoke everywhere! A dirty canary chirps desolately in a cage beside me. Its dream of green fields and sunshine is a very old dream—almost worn out, I think.
                                                                                        Rebecca Harding Davis, Life in the Iron-Mills (1861) 

My response: 


Smoke in Rebecca Harding Davis' "Life in the Iron Mills" is a relentless and ever-present aspect of life in a town whose pre-industrial state of happiness has been shrouded by the factory work which is as lifeless and invasive as the smoke. Harding Davis describes the smoke "roll[ing] sullenly in slow folds," emanating from the factories and spilling in "slimy, black pools" on the town's streets. The image is not only visual: the "foul vapor" clings to the animals who pull the factory's products through the streets. Like smells, the smoke is pervasive. Even an image as celestial and immaculate as an "angel pointing upward" is overtaken: "its wings are covered with smoke, clotted and black". Harding Davis repeats the word smoke several times, lastly in a simple lament "Smoke everywhere!" At the end of the passage, a canary seems to sound the alarm, as if from the mine shaft: the dream of life and happiness is "almost worn out". 

Passage two: analysis of rhetoric

Essay excerpt by George Orwell: 

In our time it is broadly true that political writing is bad writing. Where it is not true, it will generally be found that the writer is some kind of rebel, expressing his private opinions and not a “party line.” Orthodoxy, of whatever color, seems to demand a lifeless, imitative style. The political dialects to be found in pamphlets, leading articles, manifestos, White Papers, and the speeches of undersecretaries do, of course, vary from party to party, but they are all alike in that one almost never finds in them a fresh, vivid, home-made turn of speech. When one watches some tired hack on the platform mechanically repeating the familiar phrases—bestial atrocities, iron heel, bloodstained tyranny, free peoples of the world, stand shoulder to shoulder—one often has a curious feeling that one is not watching a live human being but some kind of dummy; a feeling which suddenly becomes stronger at moments when the light catches the speaker’s spectacles and turns them
into blank discs which seem to have no eyes behind them. 

My response: 

In this essay excerpt, George Orwell criticizes political writing for being “bad writing”. He blames “orthodoxy” for inspiring a “lifeless, imitative” style in its adherents. He seems to implicitly suggest that dull political writing does not the humanity of the people whose lives and liberties it discusses. Orwell makes this point using language which is aggressive, vivid, and casual, and by contrasting it with the interesting writing of rebels.

Orwell chooses diction which leaves his reader in no doubt of his disdain for establishment politicians. The writing is “lifeless,” just like the “tired hack on the platform” who “mechanically repeat[s]” canned phrases. Orwell compares this figure to a dummy, or worse, some sort of machine with discs for eyes, presumably controlled by some higher up. His evident disgust for politicians suggests disillusionment with the political process, which appears here populated with “dummies” who have nothing “fresh” or “homemade” to say.

A notable exception to dull political writing, Orwell notes, is the writing of rebels, who argue against the “party line” and whose writing has voice and significance. By creating this contrast Orwell strengthens the feeling that politicians are not inferior to the rebels and others who think for themselves and write in their own voice. 

Orwell himself makes sure throughout that he fits into the latter category, of people who speak only in “vivid” terms and use “home-made” turns of speech. His casual and critical tone make his own writing conversational and individual. This tone is conveyed through his lack of reverence for these ostensibly powerful figures, and his unconcerned deployment of all the politicians’ high impact phrases: “bestial atrocities, iron heel,” et cetera. Without openly saying so, Orwell paints himself as one of the good writers in politics, that is, “some kind of rebel”. 

An Ember in the Ashes

A day of activities in the atrium of the library.

This is a bleak weekend. The public libraries - all of them - are closed in observance of Veteran's Day. Thank heaven for the University library, which stays open as a stalwart of study in an otherwise barren landscape of non-literary activity. 

Actually, I shouldn't limit the library to literary activity. It's culture in action. Culture is created at the library. Kids explore, people read, discuss, try out, create. It's bloody marvelous. 

Forgive my British-ism. It's a symptom of the two British voices I've been listening to all week, those that narrate the enthralling YA book I have on audio fromAn Ember in the Ashes by Sabaa Tahir. It's one of the titles made available to my students through a Donor's Choose grant which paid for a few dozen books with main characters of color. 
aforementioned magnificent library. It's called

If someone had told me a year ago that I'd be neglecting other tasks, people, and activities in order to listen to fantasy teen fiction, I think I would have pursued the oracle at Delphi to find out if it were true. Well, folks, the truth stands. The book is the first in a series of three. Set in a world with rigid castes - "scholars" on the bottom, "martials" at the top, and several subdivisions in between - there is a contest to determine who the next emperor will be. Two of the four "aspirants" to the position, Helene and Elias, are best friends and fight to save each others' lives as they face trials which make my stomach clench as I listen. 

An intertwining story, told by Laia, a "scholar" slave, involves her work as a spy against for The Resistance which is trying to empower the scholar class. Her brother has been taken captive and she serves in the house of the demonic headmistress of the most revered Martial school in the land. She holds significant power, but Laia finds out she's also working for someone even more powerful. Laia must stay under the radar while she sleuths for valuable information, and siphon it to The Resistance, in return for which they pledge to save her brother from death at the hands of the Martials, who suspect him of treason...

Thrilling stuff. 

In classroom news, students wrote about their home cultures and the meals they prepare with their families this week. We read Amy Tan's Fish Cheeks, and talked about what makes forays into foreign cultures so interesting. I'm already thinking of one hundred things I would do differently if I did these lessons again. Next week we're looking at rap lyrics as a form of narrative, using this song by The Coup to ground our conversation. 

Zadie Smith at the U of U

The joys of non-homeownership! This morning intermittent gusts of wind are sending colonies of leaves past my windows in hasty deployments. They must see what I saw yesterday - that hoards of their brothers in arms have been swept off the battlefield and gathered into plastic bags where their natural powers are rendered impotent. These are the reinforcements, tumbling bravely and blindly into the fray. 

In another leaf metaphor, in Shelley's Ode to the West Wind, leaves are "pestilence-stricken multitudes," which seem "like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing". The movement of fall!

At 7:02 this giant sat down right in front of me. Luckily I could see Smith, and not Chabon.

Last night at the U there was a conversation on stage between Zadie Smith and Michael Chabon. I went because I was familiar with Zadie Smith's fiction in the New Yorker, though I haven't read any of her books. I'd never heard of him. 

I was at first surprised when the women next to me turned out to be a former English teacher at the high school level. What are the chances? I thought. Then I realized I was at the Tanner Humanities Lecture on Human Values. Probably 60% of the people in that room have been English teachers at one time or another.


Ms. Smith was great to listen to. Chabon had little of value to add, it seemed, but she brought the conversation to new points, kept it on track, and said things that were worth writing down. I didn't write any of them, but people around me took copious notes. 

Now that I've thought about what was said, and the audience questions that were asked ("How do you deal with anger in fiction writing? Does the anger poison the object?" "How has this political moment influenced your work?" "Tell us about the virtues of being a night-owl.") I'm thinking about the format of the evening. They just spoke off the cuff - there was no moderator, and the questions they received were written on cards then submitted to them. It was very informal, and it was up to them to choose the direction of the conversation. Thank goodness for Ms. Smith, because she kept the conversation worth having, and thank goodness for Mr. Chabon, because he kept people smiling and the atmosphere light-hearted. 

This balancing act - between humor and profundity, must be foremost in the minds of even organizers. The first talk like this that I went to like this was at the Italian House on Columbia's campus in 2009. The female author was Jhumpa Lahiri, and the male was Gary Shteyngart. The exact same thing happened - she was the one who kept the conversation literary and worthy of an audience. He was the one who wove humor through the evening and seemed responsible for group moral. 

In both cases, the woman (of color) did not hesitate to question what the man was saying or to build fearlessly on his idea. Last night Ms. Smith frequently said "Yes, but it's not just that," or "But I don't think we can see it in terms of left and right / white black," and continued to make points which essentially pointed out the limitations of her interlocutor's statements. It is very satisfying to see women do this so unabashedly. These women writers know what they're talking about. They have written and thought and talked about what they're saying, which doesn't always seem to be the case when you hear from the men, who seem to be saying things they haven't necessarily thought of before. Sometimes the evident spontaneity of what they're saying is the source of its humor. 

Chabon spoke, for example, about the stories he loved as a child about the boyhoods of the founding fathers. "And it turns out they're all fabricated. Yes, 'Young Thomas Jefferson played with the indians in the woods, and they made ice cream out of snow!' I wanted to make ice cream out of snow like Thomas Jefferson." Now, perhaps he's told this story a million times before on stage, but it came off as if he hadn't, and that sense of improvisation is an important element of this kind of public performance. 

But Smith kept us grounded on the other end of the spectrum, speaking about how characters in novels are so much more reflective of our lack of center, our lack of actual consistent or coherent substance as people, than what we read about people in the news or even in plays. A novel can show us as falling apart, as having no whole, as entities on the brink of non-existence, in a way that more concrete forms can't. When she spoke on this point one had the sense that she has spoken and though (and written) a great deal about this. Which was just as important to me as an audience member as the idea that Chabon was saying things he's never thought of before.

What a strange format though, really. For all 700 of us to come and watch them talk with each other. At one point they spoke about the fonts they use, and the computer programs, and the hours that they write. I was of two minds. At first I thought "I don't care about this. Why do I need to know that you write in Georgia?" On the other hand, I was enthralled, because the writer's practices are so hidden, and I was secretly thrilled to hear that Chabon uses Georgia and Smith uses something similar, because I write using Georgia when I'm doing my private writing on the computer. 

At any rate, parts of the conversation felt very voyeuristic, as if we were looking in on someone else's conversation that we were decidedly not a part of. But in fact, if conversation is an important part of the life and practice of the humanities, perhaps watching people do it who do it well is exactly what we should be doing. I learned about how to carry a conversation last night, about the importance of spontaneity and humor (my weakest points by far!) and about the benefits of brevity (the conversation was 1:15). Also about the role that benign subjects can take in a conversation. It doesn't have to be 100% groundbreaking all the time. I suppose I knew these things, but it's good to be reminded of them and see them played out on stage by people (or at least one person) I admire. Here is what the Alexandra Schwartz of the New Yorker said about Smith's most recent book.

Chekhofee (thoughts on reading Chekhov while drinking coffee at 5 am)

I can never sleep on nights when I don't have school the next day. I discovered this during my first semester teaching English A in Ramallah when I woke up in that big airy room to read Macbeth in order to keep ahead of my students.

The late early mornings I've been reading short stories by Anton Chekhov. They are intoxicatingly incisive. There is something about short stories, something terrifyingly courageous in its searchingness and thoroughness. Nothing escapes the attention of the writer, which is both cavalier and murderous. The exacting examination is so unrelenting, so threatening to me as a reader, that I'm sure a novel in this style would be too much to take, although I find most types of literature are more easily digested in the wee hours, when real life seems to be on hold and the warmth of a hot mug through my pajamas provides assurance: the discomfort of reading will fade as surely as the heat fades.

I shouldn't exaggerate. There are purely glorious moments in the stories too, which cause no pain and indeed bring joy in great measure. Near the beginning of "A Boring Story" the narrator begins receiving letters from a young woman acquaintance of his. Listen to the way this women is introduced!

"Eighteen years ago my oculist colleague died, leaving a seventeen-year-old daughter, Katya, and sixty thousand roubles."

Often in this story the man furnishes his own indictment. He is old, crotchety, unfeeling, selfish, temperamental and rather spineless. I love that a short story writer need not editorialize, indeed cannot, when the story is in first person. The narrator does all the work by presenting himself as exactly who he is, and he is greatly flawed.

Anyway, the wonderful part about Katya comes later, when she starts writing letters (I'm putting two translations because I find the differences between translations absolutely fascinating):

1. Her first letters from the road were extraordinary. I read them and was simply amazed that those small pages could contain so much youth, inner purity, holy innocence, together with subtle, sensible opinions that would have done credit to a sound male mind. The Volga, nature, the towns she visited, her comrades, her successes and failures -- she did not so much describe as sing them; every line breathed the trustfulness I was accustomed to seeing in her face -- and with all that, a mass of grammatical errors and an almost total lack of punctuation.


2. Her first letters on the journey were marvellous. I read them, and was simply amazed that those small sheets of paper could contain so much youth, purity of spirit, holy innocence, and at the same time subtle and apt judgments which would have done credit to a fine masculine intellect. It was more like a rapturous paean of praise she sent me than a mere description of the Volga, the country, the towns she visited, her companions, her failures and successes; every sentence was fragrant with that confiding trustfulness I was accustomed to read in her face -- and at the same time there were a great many grammatical mistakes, and there was scarcely any punctuation at all.


(The rest of the story)

This is precisely the kind of writing I want to inspire in students! How to do it! How to provide that invaluable entity which Katya and I were lucky enough to have in our early writerly stages: an audience.

The City of Kharov, c. 1900, 12 years after "A Boring Story" was written.

Yesterday I dreamt up a plan to have students blog next quarter. Once a week they could choose one of several options for posting on their blogs: responding to the whole-class text, connecting the text to their independent reading book, connecting one of their texts (independent or class) to their own lives, writing a poem, taking a picture during the week, uploading it and writing about it. I'm trying to think of ways to differentiate for students who will all need to be able to type and write, and for whom one writing assignment rarely suffices, at least that I've been able to create thus far.

Back to Chekhov:

The narrator of "A Boring Story" is wholly unsatisfied with his own prominence in the field. At one point he describes how unpleasant dinner with his wife and daughter have become. "I look at the two of them, and only now, at dinner, does it become perfectly clear to me that their inner life escaped my observation long ago." Agh! You see how swiftly and unremorsefully his blow falls not so much on himself but on the reader!

The problem with the family is that the women are caving under pressures. "Maybe the whole trouble is that God gave my wife and daughter less strength than he gave me. Since childhood I've been accustomed to standing up to eternal circumstances, and I've become rather seasoned ; such catastrophes in life as renown, the rank of general, the change from well-being to living beyond one's means, acquaintance with the nobility, and so on, have barely touched me, and I've remained safe and sound; but on my weak, unseasoned wife and Liza it all fell like a big block of snow, and crushed them."

I suppose I'm still enough of a Marxist to drink in these blows to hierarchy and capitalism like warm chicken broth. But, I mean, he's right. None of these things provides him any comfort in this, the late stage of his life. I'm particularly moved by the shift from well-being to living beyond one's means. I wonder what the Russian original for "well-being" was. The other translation speaks of the transition from comfort to living beyond our means. I like the well-being part because it implies that beyond a certain level of material wealth, we actually are impeded from feeling whole. I agree.

There's another great moment where he degrades his own position for its worthlessness. This is in a moment quite close to his death (or so he thinks at least - he is still alive at the end of the story):

The naivete with which, in my youth, I exaggerated the importance of renown and the exclusive position celebrities supposedly enjoy, strikes me as ridiculous. I'm well known, my name is spoken with awe, my portrait has been published in Nive and World Illustrated, I've even read my own biography in a certain German magazine -- and what of it? I'm sitting all alone in a strange town, on a strange bed, rubbing my aching cheek with my palm ... Family squabbles, merciless creditors, rude railway workers, the inconvenience of the passport system, expensive and unwholesome food in the buffets, universal ignorance and rudeness of behavior -- all that and many other things it would take too long to enumerate, concern me no less than any tradesman known only in the lane where he lives.


This reminds me of a true learning moment when I lived in New York and was working early one Thursday morning at the farmer's market at 116th and Broadway. While we unpacked boxes of apples and squash, one apple crate served as compost. Rotten pears and strands from carrot tops accumulated in the battered box. At one point during set up a very well dressed businessman stepped out of a privately-driven black sedan, apparently headed onto Columbia's campus. He was obliged to step directly over the compost box and among the other farmy detritus which populated the sidewalk and the space between our truck and the cars on the street. I stared at him and thought, "It doesn't matter how much money you make, you cannot avoid that compost box. No amount of income can insulate you in this city from certain realities, among them this morning, rotting fruit."

I found this immensely satisfying and my admiration for New York grew to even greater volume.

Chekhov and satire

Yesterday I was impressed when students identified sarcasm. We were looking at quotes from the final act of 12 Angry Men, which we haven't read yet. They know the characters well now, and had to make a prediction of who was speaking based on their knowledge of the jurors so far. In one period someone noticed that a speaker was being sarcastic, and Juror No. 7 has been sarcastic in the past. Thus he supported his prediction in discussion. 

Sarcasm is the tip of the Irony Iceberg, a difficult teaching topic because it can be so subtle, and it feels so difficult (at least to me) to define. Generally, we say that it's when what someone says is not what she means. My favorite example comes from the first line of Pride and Prejudice. When I studied that book at Columbia with a Lit Hum professor, the first few minutes of his lecture on this book boosted my opinion of him as a teacher, and of Austen as a writer. We were 20 unenthused freshman. He was a 78-year-old Russian Lit expert whose continued passion for the works he had been teaching since 1954 baffled us. 

Professor: "Look at the first sentence. Irony.
It is a fact universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a large fortune must be in want of a wife.

This is a fact universally acknowledged, but we know at least one person doesn't believe it. Who doesn't believe it?"

[Blank stares from the class. Well, maybe mine wasn't blank. I was racing through the characters of the film version - Lizzie, Jane, Charlotte, Darcy... who the heck is he thinking of? Who doesn't believe this?]

Professor: "The author doesn't believe it." 

This blew my mind. Why would the author of the book state as universally acknowledged truth something that she herself doesn't believe? 

Enter the narrator who acts less like a trusty servant of the story and of truth, and more like the clever, insightful and witty people we love to talk to. 

This makes me wonder, actually, about an opening line of a book that has baffled me. Tolstoy starts Anna Karenina with this truism: 

“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

Does he believe this? His family was not happy - I learned that on an interesting documentary about Tolstoy and his shifting ideology. 

Do I believe this? I don't think so. It also depends on whether he is being ironic when he says "happy". If he means a certain outer appearance of happiness, I would be inclined to agree. The statement is then a way of saying that happiness is a cookie cutter state. But I don't think he's being ironic. I actually don't think the beginning of the sentence matters much. The point is that unhappy families are unhappy in their own way. Now, do I believe that? No. It seems to me there is too much shared experience between families, especially unhappy ones. Yes, minor details change, but so many families are unhappy because of poverty, or domineering fathers, or alcoholism, or mania of some sort, or conflicts over inheritance. 

Talking about irony is tough with high schoolers, but even tougher when many in the class are not yet comfortable with English to understand the straightforward meaning of a sentence, let alone what lies beneath. 

My irony radar has been on high alert since reading Catch-22 last month for the book club. I didn't like the degree of irony in Heller's writing, which delved deeply into angry cynicism. It seemed appropriate for the setting and the content, but it was not pleasant to read. Which, again, I think is part of the point of the book.

Now we're reading short stories by Anton Chekhov, and the level of irony is much more suited to my taste.  He observes the ridiculousness of society the way Heller and Austen do, but he doesn't belabor his critique. It's slightly funny, but mostly sad because the people who are on the losing end of every situation are the marginalized, powerless ones. The woman who is simply an object and has no autonomy over her body in "Anyuta"; the woman missing her careless husband in "The Huntsman"; the "puny, exceedingly scrawny little peasant in a calico shirt and patched trousers" who is distrusted by the magistrate and sent to prison in "The Malefactor". These stories break the heart while tingling the funny bone. The delicacy of the craft is so much more interesting than Heller's blunt and angry hammer. 

Attitude

A sunset after a terrible day for our country.

The other week at professional development the teachers looked at data which showed student test scores on a specific test over a number of years. One of the columns we were interested in was the degree of improvement over past performance. Some were surprised that some confident and generally high-ability students had low rates of improvement from year to year. 

But I noticed that the students who fell into this category - capable but not improvement enormously - had a similar attitude toward school work. These were the students who seem very afraid of failure. They are confident when they feel they know the answer, and very defensive when someone else implies that what they have said is lacking or incomplete or even wrong. 

That person can be me or another student. When it's me, the student is sassy in a low-key way. When it's another student, the response can be like a smack, as if to say with a comment or a kiss of the teeth "Don't you dare comment on what I'm saying. Like you could say any better!" 

It's about attitude. Students with this degree of fear of failure will not learn very much because they won't take many risks. How does one get to the point of feeling positively about the possibility of progress? How much of that is a teacher, how much parents, how much genes? How do we get to the point where we feel the way this letter writer in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, feels: 

While my companion contemplated with a serious and satisfied spirit the magnificent appearances of things, I delighted in investigating their causes. The world was to me a secret which I desired to divine. Curiosity, earnest research to learn the hidden laws of nature, gladness akin to rapture, as they were unfolded to me, are among the earliest sensations I can remember. 

What a glorious thing is that gladness akin to rapture that we experience as we move through the world and learn about it? This gladness extends into adulthood, I can attest. Oh my goodness how badly I want to provide that rapture for students! And yet, they have work to do. 

Today LM worked hard to pronounce the word "insignificant" - a challenging word even for native speakers. She worked at it for over a minute, saying it properly several times to get it right in her mind. I praised her for the class, because she had stuck with it. That attitude will get her very, very far, and I think it comes from many sources other than me.

I'm trying to think about what short novels to read with my 11th and 12th graders this year. There are lots of teachers who blog about doing contemporary works with them, but I must say I'm wary. Especially contemporary works that deal with race, since that's an area where I am learning so much myself. 

Speaking of which, for white people who want to be allies and are educating themselves about inequality in our country and the magnitude of racial injustice, Between the World and Me should be considered essential reading. I'm so grateful that black writers and thinkers have not abandoned the struggle even confronted as they are by evidence of America's intransigence. 

I'm grateful there are those who tell it straight, like Ta-Nehisi Coates, and those who express the ideas in fits and bursts, like the poetry of Evie Shockley and Danez Smith. 

Evie Shockley

Here is a piece by Shockley which speaks of universal experience and black experience in a way which says to me that while whites and blacks inhabit the same physical space, the mental and emotional space is different. 

on new year’s eve

BY EVIE SHOCKLEY

       we make midnight a maquette of the year:

frostlight glinting off snow to solemnize

       the vows we offer to ourselves in near

silence: the competition shimmerwise

       of champagne and chandeliers to attract

laughter and cheers: the glow from the fireplace

       reflecting the burning intra-red pact

between beloveds: we cosset the space

       of a fey hour, anxious gods molding our

hoped-for adams with this temporal clay:

       each of us edacious for shining or

rash enough to think sacrifice will stay

       this fugacious time: while stillness suspends

vitality in balance, as passions

       struggle with passions for sway, the mind wends

towards what’s to come: a callithump of fashions,

       ersatz smiles, crowded days: a bloodless cut

that severs soul from bone: a long aching

       quiet in which we will hear nothing but

the clean crack of our promises breaking.

Below is the first section of a poem by Smith called "summer, somewhere." I wonder what it would be like to read or listen to these lines in a world in which there was not a war going on against black people. Or rather more realistically, what it would be like to have read these ten years ago before I was aware of much racial injustice. The hurt, the shadow of degradation that lurks behind all these lines might have passed me by without my shiver. But today when I read this, I shiver because the sunlight of justice is so clearly blocked by something massive.

Danez Smith

From “summer, somewhere” 

BY DANEZ SMITH

somewhere, a sun. below, boys brown

as rye play the dozens & ball, jump

in the air & stay there. boys become new

moons, gum-dark on all sides, beg bruise

-blue water to fly, at least tide, at least 

spit back a father or two. I won’t get started.

history is what it is. it knows what it did.

bad dog. bad blood. bad day to be a boy

color of a July well spent. but here, not earth

not heaven, boys can’t recall their white shirt

turned a ruby gown. here, there is no language

for officer or law, no color to call white.

if snow fell, it’d fall black. please, don’t call

us dead, call us alive someplace better.

we say our own names when we pray.

we go out for sweets & come back.

Weekend Arts

I think I forgot when I lived in Lourdes, in Palestine, and in Richmond what a joy it is to be in a place where there are neat things going on all the time. It's a thrill. 


This weekend Kate MacLeod, a member of the Quaker Meeting, had a concert celebrating the release of her latest CD, which is called Deep in the Sound of Terra. She got fabulous coverage in Salt Lake's Catalyst magazine - last week's cover showed her album's cover artwork, which is a fabulous representation of her playing the fiddle. 

The concert was terrific, and she was a great performer, connecting nicely with the audience, being funny, informal, and of course terrifically talented. Fiddle music is so fun. I'm listening to the CD as I write this.

Today's arts began in literature. First was the next 50 pages of Catch-22, which will be discussed in the book club tomorrow. Two interesting articles, here and here, were posted by someone in the group, and they have helped me gain appreciation for this book even if I still don't like it. The next month's reading is short stories by Anton Chekhov, and I am greatly looking forward to that! 

Yesterday I finished Burned by Ellen Hopkins, a YA book that took an unexpected turn at the end. It's the story of a Mormon girl in Carson City, NV who is in her Junior year of high school. Her father drinks and abuses her mother, and Pattyn becomes increasingly disillusioned with Church doctrine and leadership. When she starts acting out at school, her parents send her away to her aunt's ranch in the desert of Nevada where she learns to drive, ride a horse, and or course, falls for a hunky cowboy who is home on summer break from UC Davis (where apparently none of the Californians have lassoed him). 

The book's themes of dark secrets within LDC families has distracted me as I live my life in Salt Lake this weekend. I was actually thinking about the book as I biked through downtown today; I was reflecting that in religions we need to focus on the important things like justice and equality, and forget about the silly things like dress, appearance, food and drink, and other elements of behavior we focus so much on that don't have anything to do with the kind of work Jesus and other justice-oriented people have done. 

As I rode, I found myself amid a mob of pedestrians in skirts and suits, and I realized I was on West Temple and this is Conference Weekend, so the LDS conference center was swarming with mormons of all ages. I felt a little guilty about the way I looked at them after reading this book!

Once done with Burned, I have started Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates. I have it on audio, and the author reads his books, which is in the format of an address from him to his son. He's explaining the reality of being black in this society, and in doing so speaks a great deal about his own past and process of learning how to live in a black body and keep it safe. 

Coates refers to the black body constantly, emphasizing that the black experience is a physical one, based on a physical trait that poses an enormous liability to his safety. He speaks also of those "who think they're white," referring to how no one doesn't have blackness in them, and how whiteness is a social construction as much as any other race is. It's been powerful to listen to. I can tell I'm going to want to listen to it more than once. 

This afternoon at the Marmalade Branch library, there was an event dedicated to Rumi poetry. I didn't really know anything about Rumi before this, and it was good to hear some of his work and others' reflections on it. 

Close to the end of the event, a woman took the stage and immediately her presence and dignity changed the energy in the auditorium. She moved with grace and gravitas, and she read the following poem like it was something that really mattered. 

Jesus On The Lean Donkey
by Rumi 

Jesus on the lean donkey,
this is an emblem of how the rational intellect
should control the animal-soul.

Let your spirit be strong like Jesus.
If that part becomes weak,
then the worn-our donkey grows to a dragon

Be grateful when what seems unkind
comes from a wise person.

Once, a holy man,
riding his donkey, saw a snake crawling into
a sleeping man’s mouth! He hurried, but he couldn’t
prevent it. He hit the man several blows with his club.

The man woke terrified and ran beneath an apple tree
With many rotten apples on the ground.
Eat! You miserable wretch! Eat.
Why are you doing this to me?
Eat more, you fool.
I’ve never seen you before!
Who are you? Do you have some inner quarrel with my soul?

The wise man kept forcing him to eat, and then he ran him.
For hours he whipped the poor man and made him run.
Finally, at nightfall, full of rotten apples,
fatigued, bleeding, he fell
and vomited everything,
the good and the bad, the apples and the snake.
When he saw that ugly snake
Come out of himself, he fell on his knees
before his assailant.
Are you Gabriel? Are you God?
I bless the moment you first noticed me. I was dead 
and didn’t know it. You’ve given me a new life.
Everything I’ve said to you was stupid!
I didn’t know
If I had explained what I was doing,
you might have panicked and died of fear.

Muhammad said,
If I described the enemy that lives
Inside men, even the most courageous would be paralyzed. No one
would go out, or do any work. No one would pray or fast,
and all power to change would fade
from human beings

so I kept quiet
while I was beating you, that like David
I might shape iron, so that, impossibly,
I might put feathers back into a bird’s wing.
God’s silence is necessary, because of humankind’s
faintheartedness. If I had told you about the snake, 
you wouldn’t have been able to eat, and if
you hadn’t eaten, you wouldn’t have vomited.

I saw your condition and drove my donkey hard
into the middle of it, saying always under my breath,
Lord, make it easy on him. I wasn’t permitted
to tell you, and I wasn’t permitted to stop beating you!

The healed man, still kneeling,
I have no way to thank you for the quickness
of your wisdom and the strength of your guidance.

God will thank you.

What occurred to me as she read was that this "Jesus" figure is every neighbor who feels compelled to act on behalf of compassion. Jesus was not unique in history. There are thousands of people who would do and do do "What Jesus would do" in this and other situations. Why do Christians insist on the singularity of Jesus? Well, I suppose they do in order to be able to distinguish an "us" from a "them" - those who are saved by this specific Jesus and those who aren't. What a ridiculous boundary to draw around goodness and righteousness. 

This performance reminded me that how poetry is read has utmost importance. It is not powerful if it is not read powerfully. At least, that's the impression I had. 

The other person who spoke very well was an 83-year-old man who has retired from 25 years of teaching English at East High School and now teaches poetry classes for senior citizens. I'm not sure why, but he read the opening to a T.S. Eliot poem (actually, I do know why. He had been asked to talk about the importance of poetry, and he used some poetry which had been important to his own experience in his answer). The Eliot poem is called "The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock". Here's the opening stanza: 

Let us go then, you and I,

When the evening is spread out against the sky

Like a patient etherized upon a table;

Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,

The muttering retreats

Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels

And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:

Streets that follow like a tedious argument

Of insidious intent

To lead you to an overwhelming question ...

Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”

Let us go and make our visit.

I recognized the poem when he read it as one I had read this past summer in the poetry class at Bread Loaf, but I couldn't remember the poet. And I didn't have many feelings about the poem itself. This experience helped remind me that poetry sticks in my mind when someone tells me it's important, and talks about what they get out of it. This man said this poem helped him know what to expect from life, when he read it in his early 20's. 

Rumi