All the Ms: Mallette to Mallone

Gloria Mallette: Distant Lover starts with a clearly characterized protagonist. Lots of family problems, so I didn’t keep going, but I did, I confess, skip to the end, and the end pleasantly surprised me! 

G.M. Malliet has written a number of mystery books. Death and the Alma Mater begins with a humorous account of college in-fighting in Cambridge over an alumni fundraising weekend. The tone reminded me of the Home Improvement episode where Tim Taylor–like Tim Allen–is awarded a degree by his alma mater. The woman who greets him at the ceremony makes it clear that he was selected for his potential construction-building contacts. Others at the college wanted to give the degree to "an award-winning poet--like he could help us raise a dime!" 

Allan Mallinson: A Regimental Affair takes place in the early 1800s and seems to be in the Hornblower tradition. It begins at the House Guards, which reminded me of one of my favorite books A Minor Inconvenience by Sarah Granger, which tackles romance and spying during the wars against Napoleon. 

Thomas Mallone: Fictionalized recountings of historical events are quite common. I’m not a huge fan–though I did read The Agony and the Ecstasy–since I would rather just read the history. That is, I enjoy stories set in history but stories about actual people and events seem to be better handled by documented non-fiction. 

Thomas Mallone wrote Watergate. I read the beginning and could see the attraction, the idea of being in on the action, a fly on the wall of a seminal event. I still didn’t continue…

Thoughts on First-Person in Fiction and Essays

A unique Bones episode told from

the point of view of a dead boy.

I have mixed feelings about first-person in fiction. It is ubiquitous; these days, I read far more of it than I used to. But I'm always somewhat wary of it. Like with fiction based on letters, I can't drop the sneaky suspicion that it is too easy. Oh, just write a memoir already. 

Additionally, I have formed the uneasy impression in the last few years--I read a great many small press books on my Kindle, and I enjoy many of them--that first-person is a kind of fall-back position for being able to quickly establish character, except it doesn't always work. I sometimes develop less feel for the characters than I do with third-person texts. Everything is being discussed out of the perspective of a single mind, but I can't see the person or sense how that person interacts with others: what makes that person unique. The stream-of-consciousness stuff begins to blend together.  

I think good first-person is so difficult because it requires enormous control. As someone once remarked to me about The Curious Incident of the Boy in the Nighttime, "By the time the book was over, I wanted to get out of the boy's head." 

And the reader admired the book! For that matter, I consider Blossom Culp, the narrator of Ghosts I Have Been, to have a fantastic voice. 

But. Still. 

I use Terry and Alim as first-person narrators in His in Herland because the original text is in first-person. I used the god of love as a first-person narrator in my take on Northanger Abbey because I didn't trust that I could pull off Austen's omniscient narrator (I did the next best thing). In both cases, I tried to remember that THIS narrator would use particular references and vocabulary. Terry is hard-headed, pragmatic, and little wry. Alim, who is looking back on events, is more philosophical. Ven, the god of love, is "what have I signed up for?!" off-the-cuff-smoking-pot-behind-the-convenience-store guy. 

I thankfully returned to third-person in my other books. 

The one entirely valid reason to use first-person is for the reason listed below: the first-person narrator is able to supply a first-hand account.

* * * 

Re-post from 2008 with tweaks:

From Ohio Northern University

I occasionally get students who believe they should never use first-person in an essay, especially a research essay. Once upon a time, one of their teachers forbade the use of first-person, and the students took it to heart. The reasoning is that by banning first-person, the teacher will prevent students using non-credible evidence. 

Considering the number of my students who use [the equivalent of A.I.] and still fail their essays, the banning of first-person bears no relationship to the ability of students to think critically.

There's a lot of ridiculous non-first-person evidence out there which has no more credibility than a teenage driver claiming, "I never speed." A claim, introduced with an "I" or not, is still a claim, and any claim is disputable (as is all evidence).

I've seen the results of this logical fallacy in my students' writing; they confuse claims with support, thinking any statement without "I" is evidence (there's a huge difference between arguing, "Cats make great pets" and proving that cats make great pets). They also confuse claims with facts, thinking any statement without "I" is a fact: The United States is having a recession. Newsweek says so. I can use this "evidence" in my paper!

All evidence/claims are testable, both personal evidence ("I experienced") and non-personal evidence. Determining credible evidence has nothing to do with first-person and everything to do with the credibility of the speaker/researcher/study/source.

In a well-intention desire to prevent excessive grandstanding, teachers who ban first-person are confusing cause with effect. A superfluity of "I think that..." "I believe that..." "I must be right because..." may be the result of a me-centered culture (and can get annoying), but it has little to nothing to do with whether the speaker can actually be trusted or whether the speaker's evidence is meritorious. I often tell my students, "Personal evidence is the strongest evidence you have; it just isn't enough except to your parents and your friends." 

But to say that personal evidence carries no weight at all is such an obvious untruth that students are liable to follow the teacher's instructions while missing the point. 

Here's a claim: Non-credible arguments in the college environment will not go away until students are forced to be intelligent (but not cynical) about all information. And...[2025 update]...A.I. doesn't help. Or at least, it rather troublingly enforces how gullible students actually can be. The Internet says it (without "I"!) so it must be true.

Thankfully, I can report that there are students out there who get the problem. They do prefer to think for themselves, which, of course, makes them in the long-run, more objective.

Spoofs of Academe in Pamela Tribute, Mr. B Speaks!

Mr. B Speaks! is partly a spoof. Mr. B has to defend his marriage to Pamela against a group of academics, and I used their objections/conversation to spoof a number of silly academic ideas/behaviors I've encountered as both a student and an instructor.

My primary spoof is of "just call me Gary" Gary. Gary is the type of professor who thinks he is edgy and contemporary and prides himself for climbing on the latest political bandwagon. Unfortunately, Gary is not a complete construct (an image of a pompous academe rather than a representative of actual academic members). I've met Gary. The following passage from Mr. B Speaks! summarizes Gary's attitudes:

"The whole novel is nothing but trite and shallow pandering,” Gary declaimed. “What about death, disease, poverty, slavery, racism—all the terrible issues of the eighteenth century? Hmm? I mean women couldn’t even vote! But no, we’re fixated on watching an inconsequential couple tie the knot. People hid their heads in the sand. Just like they do today.”

Deborah said, “That sounds like the end of a lecture,” and Gary reddened.

"I feel like punching them in the face."

--Feminist Mike Baxter, who would

punch Gary for telling Dorothy she

can't do/believe what she wants.

Dorothy is Gary's nemesis. She is a young reviewer of romance novels, and she mirrors the attitude of a number of my students. They are completely blithe about their place/role in society. The young women don't feel put-upon. They take for granted that a woman can do whatever she wants in terms of a career/future. They don't feel the need to back "women's" issues or vote to support only female politicians.

From my point of view, the Dorothys of the world are what feminism is all about! However, someone like Gary--a chauvinist who thinks he isn't because he adopted the right "feminist" attitudes back in the 60's--the Dorothys of the world are a massive, scary threat.

Gary was trying to reprimand the young, romantic girl, Deborah. Personally, Mr. B would try flirting with her, but the man just blathered on about himself.

“So,” Mr. B heard the ridiculous man say, “I guess you’re one of those young ladies who adores authors like Jane Austen.”

“Sure,” Deborah said.

“I will grant, she is an important female writer.”

“Walter Scott believed no author matched Jane Austen at describing ordinary life and personalities.”

“Yes. Well. But won’t you admit that despite her ability and her importance to women’s literature, Austen was mired in middle class values?”

Mr. Shorter, Mr. B's solicitor, leaned over to Mr. B and said, “What kind of gallantry is that man employing?”

“He isn’t,” Mr. B said, rubbing his temples. “He’s Polonius.”

“I like middle class values,” Deborah said.

“Of course you would say that,” the professor said in an irritated voice. Apparently, the professor didn’t like being contradicted.

And Mr. B was against female free-thinkers?

The professor said snippily, “I bet you wish you were Elizabeth, hmm, being chased by that handsome Darcy?”

“Not really,” Deborah said. “A lot of women do read books that way. And men too. Sort of what would I do? But I like to explore the author’s characterizations. Like Mr. B is way more of a homebody than most people picture him. Of course, he served in Parliament, but I think that was just out of a sense of obligation.”

Mr. Shorter snorted, but Mr. B couldn’t disagree. Except that a home without Pamela wasn’t much of a home.

“I’m sure Mr. B is quite conservative in his politics,” the professor said disdainfully.

“You could ask him,” Deborah said.

There was a short silence. Mr. B smiled to himself. The professor was a coward. He probably gravitated to female scholars because they were less trained in rhetoric and therefore easier to bully.

Deborah said, “Or Leslie Quinn. She might know.”

Some female scholars, that is. Mr. B laughed out loud. He glanced over his shoulder.

The professor was crimson. He didn’t look at Mr. B but hunched his shoulders and glared at Deborah, who was trying not to giggle. “I suppose progressive thinking is too much to ask from computer-obsessed students.”

Mr. Shorter muttered, “These Literary Fairness folks aren’t the most tolerant people.”

The "I'm pro-woman--how dare a woman contradict me with her conservative ideas!" attitude is, I'm sorry to say, a real response from both men and women.  

Leslie Quinn and Dr. Matchel (another member of the Committee for Literary Fairness) represent the two sides of Women's Studies, Dr. Matchel representing the negative or more narrow side. I'm actually kinder to her than I am to Gary because, like many disenchanted feminists, I believe that Women Studies started out with good intentions. I even believe there are decent Women Studies scholars out there. (Molly Haskell examines film from a gender studies perspective: she is also a true aficionado of film.)

But the need to have an agenda/political purpose has hurt more than helped that discipline. Dr. Matchel, for example, is the kind of feminist who will support a CAUSE, no matter how very faulty, simply because it is supposedly pro-women. Thus her attitude towards Deborah--

Dr. Matchel cried, “These romance novels have done more to undermine women’s rights than any other type of literature.”

“Oh, that’s old-school,” Deborah said. “Like people who think women should only have supported Hillary in 2008.”

Again, Dr. Matchel is quite real. The above exchange is based on an actual exchange I saw on PBS during the 2008 Democratic convention.

Dr. Matchel is off-set by Leslie Quinn, who has the right academic credentials but writes for the popular rather than academic press (i.e. she actually makes money at her writing). Dr. Matchel and Gary's contempt for "popular" writers is, unfortunately, also quite real as is their discomfort with people who haven't jumped through all the right academic hoops and don't regularly deploy academically approved labels.

In the courtroom, there is also a gruff judge (who prefers murder mysteries and is only sitting in judgment on an eighteenth-century novel because so many eighteenth-century novels are under attack), a therapist (member of the Committee for Literary Fairness who wants to personalize everything), and Lonquist, a librarian. Lonquist is a member of Readers for Authorial Intent. His job is to pose (my) objections to literary revisionism. In the following exchange, the Committee for Literary Fairness wants contemporary--that is, their--standards applied to Pamela.

Gary said sullenly, “I would think some contemporary standards would be accepted as givens—in a civilized courtroom, at least.”

“Which contemporary standards?” Lonquist said. “Based on twenty-first-century Western culture, Mr. B can hardly be faulted for wanting no-strings-attached sex.”

The judge barked, “We will use the standard of customs as established in the eighteenth century. Was lesbianism a discussed topic in the literature of the day?”

Dr. Matchel said, “It was a forbidden topic that nevertheless underscored most women’s writings.”

Leslie Quinn said, “No.”

Dr. Matchel bridled. “Of course, popular non-fiction ignores such crucial subtexts.”

Leslie Quinn said good-humoredly, “Oh, I’m not saying that homosexuality wasn’t an aspect of eighteenth-century England or that people never discussed it. I just don’t think eighteenth-century literature is imbued with hidden messages about the love that dare not speak its name. People do write about other things, you know.”

“They were prejudiced,” Gary said.

“So you’ll use eighteenth-century culture to promote your position, then attack it to defend your position?”

The Committee for Literary Fairness glared at Lonquist.

The judge waved a hand, “I’m not concerned with critical theory relativism. I want to know how Mr. B behaved. Please continue, Mr. B.”

The emboldened lines (my emphasis of, um, my text) summarize my problem with most academic silliness. Dr. Matchel and "just call me Gary" Gary are less about reading--letting the characters speak--and more about promoting a particular agenda; less about falling in love with characters, lines, plots, authors, and more about promoting a particular theory which can be applied to current events. They are less about valuing interesting thoughts and ideas and more about categorizing those thoughts and ideas into appropriate, non-appropriate, acceptable, non-acceptable, profound-according-to-us, incredibly reactionary categories.

Silly academics, in other words, are into, well, themselves before actual books and words. The Literature version of the cartoon is the academic who didn't bother to read the book or see the movie or watch the television show or talk to people who actually like the book/movie/television show, yet nevertheless has an opinion about it based on a theory and is going to spend eternity lecturing the true fan all about what the true fan is supposed to think.

Not every college/university in infected by this attitude and even within departments that are infected, there are always a few hold-outs. But unfortunately, the attitudes are still there to be spoofed.

I'll leave you to guess what happens to Mr. B (taking into account that I am a romantic).

[The above post was written several years ago. Unfortunately, it is still very true today. In fact, I removed a few caveats from this post that implied things were getting better. As Eugene remarks in his tributes to The Major, progressive politics are creating less competent female heroes, just as many college campuses are dragging women and many other people down, not buoying them up.]

The Dark Pasts (and Futures) of Children's Writers, Expanded

The best scene in The Secret Garden is when Mary, infuriated by Colin's tantrum, accuses him of self-martyrdom. Colin, who is truly frightened by the idea of being a hunchback, claims that he "felt a lump." Mary insists on seeing his back and then states, emphatically, "There's not a single lump there! There's not a lump as big as a pin! If you ever say there is again, I shall laugh!"

The narrator continues:

No one but Colin himself knew what effect those crossly spoken childish words had on him...now that an angry unsympathetic little girl insisted obstinately that he was not as ill as he thought he was he actually felt as if she might be speaking the truth.

In this passage, Frances Hodgson Burnett reveals why she deserves her place in the echelon of children's writers. Like E. Nesbit, Burnett knew, or remembered, the quality of child fear—quite different from adult fear--the dull terror that children can live with without fully comprehending why and don't have rationals or experience to combat.

It is this quality that keeps Burnett (more than Nesbit) from descending into the maudlin. In The Little Princess, the true horror of Sarah's loss is captured in her nearly catatonic behavior. In another of Burnett's novels, Little Lord Fauntleroy never experiences anything as horrific but the author does a fine job illustrating his homesickness:

Perhaps he was a trifle tired, as his bed-time was nearing, and perhaps after the excitement of the last few days it was natural he should be tired, so perhaps, too, the feeling of weariness brought to him a vague sense of loneliness in the remembrance that to-night he was not to sleep at home...and the more he thought of [his mother] the less was he inclined to talk, and by the time the dinner was at an end the Earl saw that there was a faint shadow on his face.

It is this ability to capture childhood unhappiness that gives good writers for children such power. It isn't the same as going back and creating a childhood memory. Rather, Burnett and Nesbit had remarkably clear recollections of the fear, terror and uncertainty that children carry with them. (Of the two, Nesbit is somewhat more detached.)

There's a difference between remembering one's childhood emotions and being so haunted by one's childhood that one's entire life becomes an attempt at exorcism. Elizabeth Enright, E.M. Boston, Z. Snyder, Barbara Robinson, J. Spinelli, Edward Eager and Laura Ingalls Wilder belong to the first group. Dahl and Barrie seem to belong to the latter, and I can't say that I have ever cared for their books. (There are, additionally, writers who simply "get" kids: R.L. Stine belongs to the last category.) 

The overall point is that through children's literature, good children's literature, runs a dark thread, a thread that Lemony Snicket exploits quite mischievously. It cannot, however, be recreated as a lesson or set of rules. That is, it isn't about idealizing OR bemoaning OR improving childhood. It's more Calvin & Hobbs than that. 

The dark side of children's literature is often dismissed by people who think that all children's literature is about forming young minds (homilies) and/or who equate subject matter with quality. Which is just foolish. Harry Potter may be as pointless as Harold Bloom contests but it isn't any worse than The Da Vinci Code. In fact, in many ways, it is far superior.

The problem is the same problem that stalks the Academy Awards people every year: how do you honor comedy which, on the surface, just doesn't seem as earth-shattering and profound and deep and all that as, say, American Beauty?

First, I contest, one should acknowledge that comedy is incredibly difficult to make. It's like Olympic gymnastics: sure, it looks easy, but you go try it. Slight tangent: in high school, I had to do a bit of abstract art with oils. I failed miserably. It basically ended up a dirty mess of paint on a board. And not an on-purpose dirty mess of paint. Just dirty. I only passed because the final project was painting from a still life, and I can do still life! So, don't tell me your 3-year old could paint a Pollock. Cause she can't. 

Second, profundity is not only easier than comedy but there's profundity and then there's profundity. Crime & Punishment is profound. Not much else is really. Maybe Moby Dick. There you go. There's your standard. A lot of books come off as profound because people die and have affairs and question their purpose in life and have those kind of endings where people sit around and think about why they have changed (not what they are going to do with the change). I HATE those endings. I think they are lousy. (One reason I believe mysteries are so popular is because the ending IS an ending: bad guy dies or gets arrested or, occasionally, gets let go, but something happens.) 

And for those of you who think art is supposed to imitate life and people do sit around contemplating their navels, fiction is never the same as real life. It can't be. There's no reason it should be. 

Now, there are kids who react well to this kind of profundity, who are drawn to the deaths and divorces and dreary plots of young adult literature. Even I loved The Crucible as a teen--and Sidney Carlton. Kids who retain these likes go on to select the same kinds of things from the adult section. 

I am not trying to argue that such pseudo-profundity doesn't exist in children's literature; I am arguing that lack of profundity doesn't translate into a lack of profoundly good writing. If you accept my earlier claim, that most things aren't really profound anyway, the criteria of what makes something worthwhile to read has to undergo re-evaluation. I personally like the evaluation, It's worthwhile if it's well-written and does what it set out to do. And it's well-written if it keeps your interest (isn't dull), reads smoothly (if it doesn't read smoothly, it reads not-smoothly on purpose), tells a story and isn't stupid.

I don't think my criteria will get me hired on at any universities, but it's a useful standard against which most things can be compared. And a great deal of children's literature compares against it very well indeed.

Fairy Tales: The Real King Arthur, Maybe

Researching King Arthur was the first major research I did on my own as a teen. And it wasn't the clanking armor version that enthralled me--or the musical. 

I had already begun to delve into King Arthur, mostly the clanking armor version and musical, when I ended up in a revival meeting in Southwest England. 

Okay, not really. My mother and I were in England touring the area around Glastonbury Tor. Somehow we ended up in a little room with extremely earnest people telling us how Joseph of Arimathea brought Jesus to England as a lad and then later returned with the Holy Grail. 

Throughout the presentation, my mother became more and more and more rigid--at this late date, I realize that she was nearly busting a gut not to start arguing with the presenters about history and the Bible and so on and so forth. She was also worried that I was "buying into" what was basically a folk story being sold as religious doctrine. 

I wasn't. The idea of Joseph of Arimathea in England was cool but I almost immediately dismissed it. I was never that interested in stories of Jesus as a lad. The Gospels truly don't need that much help. 

What enthralled me was King Arthur--and not the clanking King Arthur but the unavoidable implication that circa 35-70 A.D., a New Testament figure like Joseph of Arimathea wouldn't be handing off a holy grail to anybody in clanking armor. Arthur's time is circa 400 C.E.--and no, still no clanking armor, not the late-medieval kind. 

I don't remember if the evangelists mentioned the sparse research on King Arthur, but they did have books for sale in their gift shop, and I bought Geoffrey Ashe's King Arthur's Avalon: The Story of Glastonbury for 3-1/2 pounds. 

It was my first introduction to the gray areas of history, the half-stories, the pieces that grow into legend. 

A possible Roman-British officer, a recruited Celt, Artos, may possibly have overseen a stockade of some sort on Glastonbury (it is a good vantage point). Artos may possibly have been involved in a series of confrontations, which were likely, frankly, more skirmishes than battles, between Celts and Saxons after the Romans left Britain and the Saxons swept in. A monk named Gildas wrote passionately and rather nuttily about the whole thing. (Just think of Gildas as the first political pundit complaining about immigration.)

I was fascinated--even more so as I came to realize that the stories of King Arthur that show up in Morte d'Arthur by Malory and then find their way into Camelot and T.H. White's The Once and Future King are based on oral tales that crossed the channel. Some of the characters likely originated abroad. Others have clear and deep Welsh/English roots. 

As I reference in my post on Æthelred, it makes a great deal of sense that King Arthur tales took such hold. Times of enormous social change, anticipated or not, tend to throw up folk tales. Think of them as coping mechanisms. 

Although the "historical" King Arthur interested me most, and I tried my hand at a few tales--here is one; a second, based on Gawain and the Green Knight, later published, is also available--the primary result of my foray into the King Arthur legend was a passing familiarity with the tropes. The first C.J. Cherryh I read, Port Eternity, is a fascinating novel about a group of individuals cloned to be Arthurian characters headed on a spaceship to a distant planet. And one of my favorite series growing up, The Dark is Rising series by Susan Cooper, uses Arthurian legends to create a fascinating problem and a great Merlin.

I recommend Over Sea, Under Stone by Cooper first.

Why I'm Not Anti-Disney (Even When I Roll My Eyes)

Re-post from 2017. I will be referencing this post when I start A-Z List 7, Fairy Tales. 

Although I will criticize Disney, I am not in fact an enemy of Disney. [In 2022, this statement is a little less true since I'm tired of corporations with no backbone crawling to mobs, whether they come from the left or the right. Netflix's latest memorandum was a welcome call for true diversity, not bullying "everyone must think like my righteous self" faux diversity. May it continue! However, returning to Disney, I continue to believe that if a company has the right to take a political position, at all, it has the right to shoot itself in the foot.]

Here's why I can't get freaked out by Disney:

1. There is no need to choose only Disney:

The idea that Disney is an overwhelming presence in the lives of children/American culture is similar to an idea that I encountered in my master's programs: "underprivileged" (i.e. poor) people are at the mercy of television commercials.

Except all the "poor" ("poor" in America is an extremely relative term) people I've met (on food stamps, homeless, etc.) barely watch television. The argument appears to be mostly a matter of  transference--a bunch of beleaguered, overly educated middle-class folks insisting that everybody else is as obsessed with the media as they are. [Yes, this point has recently been made multiple times about Twitter--seriously, Twitter-angsters, nobody else cares!]

I grew up in a house without a television (sort of--check out Eugene's "TV Wars"). I also grew up with Disney records, the Wonderful World of Disney (at my friends' houses) and going to see Disney movies. Plus Perrault, Andrew Lang, Cricket Magazine, Lloyd Alexander, Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Beatrix Potter, many many many picture books, and a scary set of Grimm fairy tales (which I never read).

Yes, there are parents who only give their kids Disney but is the alternative truly better? No nothing at all? Should children only read literal, legalistic, non-creative, non-fictional tomes? Only watch approved social documentaries or "fiction" that teaches an appropriate lesson? I know parents who would say, "Yes." Scary people. 

Truthfully, one can have it all.

2. Criticism of Disney brings together the left and the right--rhetorically speaking--which is an unpleasant combination.

As social observers before me [and currently] have remarked, there is a weird and unattractive combo-pack of the political left and religious right in terms of rhetoric and behavior . [See Sarah Haider's point about how "[t]he former Christian fundamentalist, born-again [becomes] a follower of a dogmatic, woke-infested brand of progressivism."]

Complaining that Disney is sexist, for instance, brings together parents who would never be caught near each other at a political rally. Complaining about porn brings together many of the same people: those who want all that salacious nonsense to stop right now! Alongside those who want all that patriarchal, sexist, backwards-thinking to stop right now!

In both cases, "control" is the password.  Underlying it all is fear of non-literal language, which leads me to...

3. People should set aside their fear of communication when dealing with art (and everything else). 

Much of my personal disillusionment regarding the modern world is not the worries of either liberalism or conservatism. It's how people use the fear of language to try to get their way (on both the left and the right). That is, although I get disgusted by the rhetoric itself, I also get disgusted by the "DID YOU HEAR WHAT THE OTHER SIDE SAID?!" overreaction to the rhetoric. Everybody just calm down!

More than anything, I get irritated with the underlying assumption--which nobody ever challenges (okay, I did here)--that we are the victims of communication (language and images) within our environments rather than free agents. [The conflation of language with violence is a related problem here. Students, pundits, and religious folks who think "hearing" a word or label will trigger them into an meltdown and immediately destroy the world as they know it are not prepared for true physical violence when it arrives, either to address it or combat it.]

Decision-making studies indicate that people make choices for reasons that have almost nothing to do with how other people think they are supposed to react. Advertising, for example, is notoriously unreliable. There's a reason advertising firms get paid so much to discover so little about how people actually buy stuff. Humans are not in fact victims of Hollywood insidiousness or socio-geo-politico brainwashing. (I remembered the above commercial but not the product or company.)

Cultures do have their own realities--and perpetuate themselves according to their own time frames. But never make the mistake of thinking that there weren't people in, say, the 1500s, who weren't asking the same questions we do. Maybe those questions didn't use the same rhetoric or have the same cultural significance or catch people's attention in the same way: other worries came to the fore. But that doesn't mean nobody thinks anything until some institution/celebrity gives permission. People were thinking Protestant thoughts before Martin Luther came along.

Language and images reflect us--they do not control us. For some people, this entails a greater degree of responsibility than they wish to accept (see porn debates).  But is denying one's agency really going to help anyone?

In sum, I can appreciate--even if I don't totally support--a parent who decides, "I'm going to monitor what my child watches." I truly admire parents who deliberately expand what their child consumes. But I cannot agree with or admire those parents who decide that this thing is bad and destructive--therefore the whole structure should come crashing down for everyone and how dare anyone think otherwise, you corrupted and corrupting individuals!

Personally, I think Disney sometimes produces garbage. Sometimes, Disney puzzles me. I also think Disney sometimes produces darn good stuff (see Tangled). It is artistry, which means that sometimes it will be great; sometimes not. Artistry also means it is going to reflect our wants and needs and experiences and imaginations as well as the wants and needs and experiences and imaginations of the artists. That's what art does. 

And living in a world with art is good.

Advanced Scrabble Isn't About Words

The words used here are "easy."

I recently found a free version of Scrabble--I play against the computer. I enjoyed Level 1. However, after I started winning most games--and I noted that Level 1 deliberately left me openings--I tried Level 2.

It's a different game.

I don't say that because I can't win. Or even because the game isn't interesting in its own right. But the game changed from being a clever deployment of language/vocabulary to memorizing the best letter combinations that enable a person to win. 

In other words, the game just at Level 2 (there were 3 more levels) is more about math than vocabulary. I find myself focusing on sliding X or Q or B or F into the right place on the board to either block my opponent or gain more points. (Hint: Using "C" in a way that leaves only one other space is a great strategy. Also, the word you use to begin should be short and boring without the possibility of a plural.)

Figuring out where to slide letters is interesting--and there's satisfaction in winning--but is the result really a vocabulary or word game?

I feel the same way I did several years ago when I started playing crosswords. The more I played, the better I got, not because my knowledge of the world increased but because I rapidly learned all the two and three-letter words that are customarily used to fill in blanks. I reached the point where I didn't even need to know the answer to a question--I simply knew what had to go in the blanks. 

Likewise, with the online Scrabble game, my familiarity with certain endings and beginnings and combinations has come in handy--I throw XXX-MENT on the board and what do you know?! It's a word! 

But the letters could be anything, such as numbers or the black and white pebbles from Go. All that matters is the combination. In fact, one of the smartest ways to win at Scrabble is to create words alongside another word: QI, EN, OR, PI. It keeps you from setting up openings for the opponent and you can collect a tremendous number of points. 

But it isn't the same as the fun and cleverness of rearranging one's tiles until they form a long word. In fact, I often lose just because I can't help myself: I know I'm creating openings but I put down a cleverly unscrambled word anyway.

It reminded me when I was a kid and played Scrabble with a friend who was always playing words not in the dictionary, which meant we spent more time looking up words and arguing than putting words on the board. Honestly, what is the fun in PHFIQ being a word if it simply allows one to toss away letters? (It isn't.)

The entire experience has made me wonder: Is there a version of Scrabble out there that uses "common language"? Granted, what constitutes "common language" varies between people but since I have rarely heard or seen or spoken the word, "FOEHNS" or "CRWTHS" (and, seriously, if the latter isn't cheating, I don't know what is--even if it is an instrument), I'm sure that a list could be compiled.  

Maybe the best approach would be a specialized game: Scrabble for readers of nineteenth-century literature...

Interview with the Translator: High School in Manga

Literature can provide insights into the culture and historical time period in which that literature was produced. 

Years ago, my mother told me that during an exam on the nineteenth century, she realized, rather to her surprise, how much she already knew due to reading Jane Austen, one of her favorite authors. She didn’t set out to learn the information. It arrived unconsciously as part of her preferred form of entertainment. 

These kinds of insights can be taken too far, of course, mostly when theorists insist on reading backwards into a piece of literature their personal pet ideologies. 

For those readers who, as C.S. Lewis would say, prefer to “receive” rather than “use,” diving into a genre can expose readers and viewers to an entire lifestyle and way of thinking that seems entirely familiar while offering the rewards of new and different experiences.

To paraphrase Lewis, we “become a thousand men and yet remain [ourselves].” The following Conversations with a Translator began several years ago when I began my first major exploration of manga series.

The posts range from 2013 to 2021 (they are not strictly chronological, so a single post may reference manga and anime selections from 2013 and 2021). The posts will delve into various aspects of Japanese culture, starting with Japanese high schools. Surviving high school is a popular motif in all literature. Are these high schools a distillation of concepts/experiences? How universal are they? How individual?

Kate: I’m reading the manga series Mars, a 15-volume set written by Fuyumi Soryo. The series is your basic high school romance set in Japan. The houses/businesses/etc. are all Japanese in style as are the names.

Yet I’ve started to ponder the series’ realism. For one, the teen characters have an amazing amount of freedom. American novels would present this circumstance as utterly unrealistic. Teens must be monitored! How realistic is this lack of supervision?

Eugene: One plot device that is plausible in Japan but not common in the U.S. has the father getting transferred, the mother going with him, and the teenager staying behind. Parents who have gotten their child into a decent school dare not risk pulling him out. High schools often take borders for this reason.

That’s why the transfer student who shows up halfway through the school year is such a big deal. It suggests a complex chain of unfortunate circumstances. High schools in Japan operate under an open enrollment system. A student can matriculate at any school in the country if there’s an open spot and they can pass the entrance exam. Good Morning Call (Netflix) begins when Nao moves to Tokyo to attend high school and “accidentally” ends up sharing an apartment with Hisashi, the most popular guy in school.

Many of the teen characters in Durarara!! (Netflix Funimation) are transplants from outside Tokyo who live on their own while attending high school. That does make it easier for them to get caught up in the crazy goings-on in Ikebukuro.

In Super Cub (Funimation), Beyond the Boundary (HIDIVE), and March Comes in like a Lion (Netflix Crunchyroll), the main characters live alone in their own apartments. In their cases, they would probably be classified as emancipated minors.

There is also more self-government and more student-directed activities in Japanese high schools.

On the other hand, the lack of an omnipresent testing regime and fewer constraints outside of high school can make the American teenage experience seem like a wonderland of freedom. Most Japanese won’t get a driver’s license until their twenties (if at all).

Anne-Gilbert!

Kate: Rei has his own apartment in Mars! It is due to unfortunate circumstances, but not considered unusual by others.

Plots vary a great deal in high school manga. The plot of Mars is relatively realistic in that it involves neither a conspiracy (Denegeki Daisy) nor a girl-in-disguise in a school full of boys (Hana-Kimi). It also doesn’t have a supernatural component, as in Black Bird. And it is lacking the dog-eat-dog underlying tone of Caste Heaven.

Yet for a contemporary plot, Mars contains little talk of drugs though lots of talk about dating. At one point, Kira is pressured to sleep with Rei. (She eventually decides to.) So, on the one hand, Mars is not much like American plots. On the other hand, it is very much like them! What are “typical” plots for high school manga?

Eugene: In story terms, there’s always the need for conflict. In the typical Japanese high school, drug use isn’t widespread. The teenage pregnancy rate is close to zero. In O Maidens in Your Savage Season (HIDIVE), exactly one girl in the school gets pregnant and it is a huge deal (she drops out, gets married, and appears happy with her life).

Bullying is a chronic problem. Incompetent teachers just putting in the time aren’t unheard of either. Which is why most students who want to get into a “good” university spend hours every day at cram schools, no matter how smart they are.

A popular genre of teen romantic comedy has a poor student winning a scholarship to an exclusive high school populated by rich snobs, and winning the heart of BMOC. The live-action television series The Story of Yamada Taro cleverly turns this formula upside down: the poor girl falls for the young prince, who turns out to be poorer than she is.

Another plot complication that crops up is English, the bane of every student in Japan. Given the demands of the test-dependent “escalator” system, doing true study abroad is a near impossibility. Being able to spend enough time abroad in order to master English and not fall off that escalator is a sure sign of privilege (or indifference).

A funny twist on this in Strawberry Marshmallow (HIDIVE) has a girl from England desperately trying to hide the fact that she grew up in Japan and can’t speak English any better than her classmates.

 

Kate: Stumbles over language are always potentially humorous! I encountered a scene in Hana-Kimi (above) where the Japanese-American student who gets herself accepted to a Japanese boys’ school (without her parents finding out!) does poorly on English exams. All that grammar!

In all honesty, I expected more such plot points in Mars. I was a little taken aback by how recognizable I found many classroom scenes. The teachers behaved exactly the same way as American teachers (one of them throws chalk!).

And I had to wonder, are high schools in manga “true” Japanese high schools? Or are they a crystallization of everyone’s idea of high school? Is Japanese culture not exactly the way it is portrayed in Salon.com articles (students bowing when the teacher enters the room)?

Eugene: The custom of kiritsu and rei (stand and bow) at the beginning of class is still very much a thing through high school (though not college). The class president usually barks out the commands like a drill sergeant.

Rich kids in manga invariably live in gigantic mansions (with butlers and maids) that don’t exist anywhere in Japan. Okay, I’m sure there are mansions in Japan, and perhaps some of them have butlers and maids. But I’d expect most mansions, like the most exclusive, private schools, to be managed quite conservatively.

The flip side of this genre has a rich kid (or teacher) ending up at a reform school at the bottom end of the scale, no more realistically depicted (i.e., in dystopian terms) than the exclusive schools at the top of the scale. A good example is Gokusen, that has Kumiko, the granddaughter of a yakuza kingpin, becoming a teacher at such a school.

She has to keep the school board from finding out she’s a yakuza princess while not letting on she can be tougher and meaner than any of her students. She also has a bad habit of cussing like a yakuza when she’s stressed out.

The reality-unreality of Buffy.

Kate: So high schools in manga are like high schools in most American television shows—a fictionalized “other world” similar to Shakespeare’s approach: set an Ancient Roman story in the middle of Renaissance Europe or plant a bunch of Italian characters (who have English habits) in the middle of a Danish court because, hey, what did he care?

Eugene: I think the high school setting can be compared to the cop show setting. Imagine a Japanese audience trying to deconstruct the American legal system by watching American TV shows.

CSI: Las Vegas, for example, sorta, kinda tried to stay pinned to reality, though it still takes great dramatic license; CSI: Miami was pure, eye-rolling fantasy. NCIS somewhat approximates the real world; NCIS: Los Angeles is literally and figuratively in La La Land.

This pretty much has nothing to do with the entertainment value (though as with CSI: Miami, the lack of verisimilitude can stretch suspension of disbelief to the breaking point).

Kate: The comparison of crime shows to high school dramas makes a lot of sense. I think my “huh?” response is rooted in my perception of Japanese high schools as more “other” and interesting than American high schools—why not take advantage of that?! But of course, that perception is easily reversed!

Assumptions & Theories about History: The Dawn of Conscience & Current Theorists

As preparation for discussing Isis (the goddess), I read The Dawn of Conscience by James Breasted. 

The book was written in 1935 (I actually learned about it from Agatha Christie's autobiography) and is one of those older books that I quite like to read simply for the clear language. The style falls into the same category as that used by writers like Durant and Gibbons. Erudite without being unreadable.

However, the book rests on a premise with which I disagree and for the same reason that I disagree with much critical theory. That is, although many current critical theorists would be offended by Breasted calling people of the past "primitive" and "barbaric," their theories still rest on the same supposition: ideas evolve based on the impact of leaders and environment. "Advancement" (technology/civil institutions) comes first, then the idea.

That is, Breasted is arguing that the Egyptians started out by worshiping in one way (with pyramids) and then "advanced" to worshiping a different way. He makes the correct--and fascinating--point that the pyramids were ancient to the ancient Egyptians. (He also makes the large mistake of arguing that the pyramids must have been built at the cost of human life; in fact, humans of the past were quite capable at building huge monuments out of cooperation.) 

Many critical theorists would get upset at the use of the term "advanced," but they would agree: the Ancient Egyptians were moving or progressing or changing in one particular direction in their beliefs. 

Breasted and the theorists fail to understand one crucial point:

There is a difference between culture/technology changing or advancing and beliefs changing or advancing. 

That is, what historians learn when they research the past is how beliefs/circumstances were communicated in particular settings. 

That certain ideas appear in pyramid texts only indicates that the pyramid texts were used to convey certain ideas. It does not indicate that those were the only ideas in existence at the time or that other ideas weren't floating about.

"We are contemplating a sense of emergence of moral responsibility as it was gradually assuming an increasing mandatory power over human conduct," Breasted proclaims. I love the language, but his idea is, frankly, kind of silly. It's what Stephen Pinker attempts to address in his books about language: the falsehood that people don't think or imagine something until a word comes along for it (that is, until someone gives them permission to think/imagine). 

That's simply not how language and brains and humans work.

Breasted gets closer, later, to the relationship between art and moral thought when he states, "The power of personality...[was] now beginning to find expression...in the art of the time" (my emphasis).

In fact, Breasted, by necessity, continually contradicts himself. At one point, he contends that Osirian beliefs "evolved" to replace or to mingle with Sun-God beliefs, but how exactly does Breasted think beliefs "evolve"? He then argues that Osirian beliefs were popular--okay, so couldn't Osirian beliefs be forerunners to the Sun-God beliefs? After all, the Sun-God beliefs were held by an intellectual minority (who happened to pay for the pyramids and employed people who could write).

At another point, Breasted claims that the "story of the Misanthrope" (an early version of the story of Job, which is recognized as a kind of folk-story) indicates "the long development of self-consciousness, the slow process which culminated in the emergence of the individual as a moral force, an individual aware of conscience." Sounds great (I mean, it really does sound great!) but Breasted has already acknowledged that the tale was copied from an "older original." Like Beowulf (and the Book of Job itself) it may originally have been an oral tale or play that indicates a full awareness of conscience at some earlier date. 

When Breasted states ponderously, "[F]or the first time in history men were awakened to a deep sense of the moral unworthiness of society," I love the language but I start giggling. Seriously? I'm sure there were hunters and gatherers who snarked to each other about the moral unworthiness of their current leader or how bad things had gotten since someone invented new tools. "I remember back in the day...."

Because a bunch of people all decide to write about something in a particular decade does not mean that the something was never written about/discussed before. 

To me, a self-proclaimed geek, the real question is, How much influence does technology have in spreading ideas? 

Imagine if one went online and (1) went to mostly political sites; (2) read the comments. One would deduce that the human race was miserable and divisive and kind of lacking in moral sense. 

And yet there are plenty of people off the Internet who go about their business and believe in kindliness and try to make sense of day-to-day life and use commonsense morality to judge situations  and teach the same approach to their kids. 

Erasmus: forerunner to Luther

I think there is some merit to arguing that certain ideas/theories/stories/views find more support at certain times than others. A lot of Protestant ideas were floating around Christendom before Martin Luther appeared on the scene. On the other hand, he did draw out those people and thoughts. And the printing press was available to circulate what they were all saying to each other.

But those ideas/theories/stories/views already existed, ready to be communicated. Just because certain groups only discuss certain topics doesn't mean the other topics have disappeared. Just because a bunch of stone texts (in part paid for by bureaucrats) emphasize service to the state over individual moral self-awareness doesn't mean individuals of the same time period didn't indulge in moral self-awareness. 

The only reason to give the "streamlined" version of top-down history credence is because it is easier to track. Tracking everyday, ordinary people's beliefs and actions is incredibly difficult and much of it is lost to assumptions by theorists. Rodney Stark points out that when universities did religious surveys many years ago, the survey creators removed all questions about supernatural influences because "people don't believe that way anymore." The survey takers then reported, Americans don't believe in the supernatural anymore!

His group put the questions back in. Guess what, Americans believe in angels and dreams and visions and talking to God!

Breasted's "great man" approach to history comes under a lot of fire in contemporary culture. But it isn't all that different from the supposedly edgy critical theories that float about now. Both approaches insist that time works like an arrow: a bunch of (carefully selected) evidence proves that a (good or bad) single mindset has given way to another (good or bad) single mindset. At least Breasted is less obnoxious about his assumptions than current theorists. One gets the impression that he is operating within a relatively new field, not trying to bully others into submission. Consequently, Breasted is easier to take.

The Cluelessness of Literary Writers: Oprah & Franzen

Re-post from 2006.

* * *

I'm in the midst of reading a book Reading With Oprah by Kathleen Rooney (March 2006). She has a chapter on "Jonathan Franzen versus Oprah Winfrey." The entire book is a fascinating study of the Oprah Book Club and why it engendered such controversy (amongst certain groups).

Basically, Franzen is a literary writer who, before Oprah came along, was selling in the 50,000-100,000 range. This isn't a lot, granted, but it's more than I've ever sold so my sympathy meter regarding Franzen's publishing woes registers somewhere in the nil category. Like many poor but struggling writers of literary ilk, Franzen bemoaned his lack of popularity, putting it down to a national lack of good taste (once upon a time Americans were educated and listened to their parents and had good taste).

Then, Oprah read one of Franzen's books. Oprah's tastes don't run anything close to mine; with the exception of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's A Thousand Years of Solitude, I've read hardly any of the books on her list. However, Rooney's very good point is that within her particular genre--realism--Oprah is fairly eclectic and her taste is no worse--and often  better--than the average high culture critic. Franzen was scheduled to be on Oprah. His book sales immediately shot up (Rooney estimates that Franzen made $1.2 million off of Oprah's decision).

But, and here's the rub, being on Oprah hurt Franzen's image (or self-image) as a poor, struggling, misunderstood literary writer. Franzen proceeded to make a number of remarks critical of Oprah's Book Club in various interviews. Upon which, Oprah dis-invited him. Upon which, Franzen issued a number of sincere (and puzzled) apologies.

Rooney thinks that Franzen was being somewhat disingenuous. (Although she agrees that his apologies were sincere.) Being quite young, she evidently has a higher opinion of the savvy of literary greats than I do. Just because Franzen can write intelligently and insightfully about life, doesn't mean he has a clue how the real world works. I think Franzen really didn't see Oprah's dis-invitation coming. And I think that Franzen really didn't make the connection between "my publishers promoting me and putting me on book tours and wishing I would sell more" and "Oprah promoting me." Some kinds of advertisement are okay. Other kinds are not. It's like people who think that Natural Health Food stores aren't out to make a buck--or at least, not in the same way that, shock shock, CHAIN grocery stores are.

To put it simply, Franzen, who isn't as horrible a guy as some of the pundits painted him, was self-conscious, like a teenage boy at a dance. He was cool; now he isn't cool (according to the people he likes). How does he get his coolness back? He disses the other clique. And because he is basically a well-meaning soul, he is surprised when the other clique gets offended. So, now he isn't cool to anyone (hint to teenagers [and woke types]: this will inevitably happen).

Not only does Rooney think Franzen was disingenuous in his surprised protests, she thinks Oprah could have handled the issue better. Franzen may have behaved in a silly way, but his attitude is not atypical amongst the kinds of authors that Oprah tends to pick. Why not, Rooney asked, have the guy on her show? Why not air his grievances and discuss them?

I could answer that. Oprah doesn't like that kind of controversy. And she's probably wise. Look what happened when she defended Million Little Pieces guy. [She did invite Frey back and tackled him about his deceit.]

Rooney wishes that Oprah had addressed Franzen's self-consciousness because Rooney believes that the high brow/low brow split is an issue. Rooney has just finished her MFA. The high brow/low brow split is an issue to people who think they are arbiters of literary taste (or should be) and to the people who know the aforementioned "arbiters." Nobody else cares.

To do Rooney justice, I think she was willing for someone to go on Oprah and say that: Nobody cares. People read whatever they want. People don't listen to the academic world or to literary critics. But I'm not sure that Oprah would willingly take on the academic world. Like many intelligent people who are not academic, I'm betting that Oprah is a little awed by academic hoity-toityness. She doesn't need to be: it's just bluster. But, to an extent, one has to speak the language before one figures that out.