Saturday, October 24, 2009

The End of Books

I just finished reading an article by Urusula Le Guin in Harpers about the precipitous decline of book reading over the past few years. Le Guin, herself a novelist, is not particularly worried about the decline of book reading. (She notes, for example, that the polls surveying people's reading only accepted "literary" works as valid. Non-fiction books apparently don't count as books.) After, all, people have only really read novels regularly for a few hundred years, at best. Rather, she's concerned that the corporate mentaility of booksellers and publishers compromises the quality of the books that are published.

Like Le Guin, I'm weary of the doomsayers who claim that the decline of book reading is a sign of the apocalypse. There are ample sources claiming that literacy and reading comprehension are declining, but in my experience, the people writing those sources generally define reading, literacy, and decline in really limited ways. The polls that Le Guin's critiques which don't accept anything but "literature" as books are a great example. Another of my favorite examples comes from Mark Bauerlein, who argues that young people are "the dumbest generation" because they don't engage information as their forbears did. Bauerlein denies that social networking is literate work because it's self-involved and lazy. His evidence? Kids don't pass standardized tests the way the once did. The list of doomsayers is long with polemicists.

What seems always to be ignored by doomsayers, though, is that literacy as the ability to read and write is higher than it's ever been. For the majority of human history, the majority of humans couldn't read or write anything. Less than 200 years ago, Americans were actively preventing slaves and many women from learning to read or write. And as Le Guin points out, literacy has always been rationed by the ruling classes as a way to maintain class privilege. In 2009, more people read and write more kinds of language than our "brilliant" forbears could have even imagined 30 years ago. For example, the Senate passed a resolution designating October 20 the "National Day on Writing" in recognition of the way writing shapes our world, and the National Council of Teachers of English sponsored the National Gallery of Writing to showcase a small fraction of the important (and not-so-important) writing that people are doing--people including all those dumb, illiterate young kids that worry Bauerlein and his friends.

I'm not going to claim that all the things people read and write today are better or worse than anything written or read in the past, but in a country that continues to support arguments about everything from health care to drinking water on the twin pillars of choice and competition, it seems a little silly to think that everyone needs to read The Brothers Karamazov to be considered intelligent people, much less contributing citizens. The landscape of new literacies in our digitized, globalized world gives people lots of choices and gives books lots of competition. And people are choosing. They're reading (this blog, hopefully), and they're writing (not this blog, hopefully). Books, contrary to popular belief, are no more moral than any of the choices competing with them for people's literate attentions. To sum up, boo to doomsayers, yay to Le Guin, and three cheers to rampant reading and writing, even if it isn't in the form of language accepted by the doomsayers as valuable.

Sunday, August 16, 2009

Up from Gum

As someone who is professionally interested in language, I’m always on the look-out for ways to reconceive of or update old clichés. A common, and now much overused, cliché that I think could use a good revival is also the title of Tupac Shakur’s 1999 book of poetry: The Rose that Grew from Concrete. A rose from concrete is a direct descendent of the once popular (and sometimes still popular), “up by your bootstraps” theme. Recently, I was walking from my car to my office, and I wandered across a chance to update this oldie-but-goodie.

On my commute, I almost stepped on a sprout that was growing in the cracks of the pavement. This industrious little weed fought through the concrete, as weeds are wont to do, but it had also grown up through a piece of chewing gum that had been idly discarded to melt into the sidewalk crack. Lots of weeds grow out of the concrete cracks, no matter how successfully we think we’ve tamed nature with infrastructure, but to grow through gum seems to me a real accomplishment. Taking nutrients from the sticky, abandoned confection, this assiduously deciduous sproutling overcame all odds to rise out of the dirt, through the concrete, and finally—in what is sure to become a widely adopted analogy for succeeding against seemingly insurmountable odds—up from gum.

Friday, July 24, 2009

How Shakespeare and His Ilk Are Ruining Kids Today

Mark Bauerlein thinks technology is responsible for making today's youth the "dumbest generation" because social media only gets kids to talk to one another. Although there is some irony (and narcissism) in an grown-up academic arguing in a book to other grown-ups about the blight of kids talking only to one another, I think we can take his critique to fun extremes.

When literature scholars, one of which Bauerlein considers himself, talk about "The Classics," The Odyssey, The Iliad, Shakespeare's plays, and Chaucer's Canterbury Tales immediately come to mind. These texts are, by all accounts, great. But they have something else in common. Homer wrote The Odyssey and The Iliad in dactylic hexameter. Shakespeare's plays were in iambic pentameter. Chaucer's Canterbury Tales was heroic couplets (an ancestor of iambic pentameter).

In other words, "The Classics" all conform to some form of poetic meter. Know what else does? Popular music. That's right. A detailed historical analysis of meter would no doubt reveal a direct line from "Hamlet" to Brit-brit's "Baby Hit Me One More Time." For shame, Mr. Shakespeare. Without your insidious influence, our kids would be smarter and better able to focus on other literary texts that aren't constrainted by meter.

Oh, but it gets worse. Dactylic hexameter, iambic pentameter, trimeter, and heroic couplets all have another thing in common. Users are forced by the constraints of meter to limit what they say to a predetermined number of syllables. Sure, you can write several heroic couplets and string them together, but in order to conform to the heroic form, two lines of various meter must be self-contained. No matter what meter you use, you have to say all you need to say in an abbreviated amount of words and syllables.

If you're with me at this point, you know that poetic meter must be the direct ancestor of the single most dangerous phenomenon for our children: Twitter. Twitter, as we all know, and as Bauerlein is wont to tell us, stunts kids intellectual development and makes them dumb. Twitter and other technological "developments" undermine children's ability to concentrate and focus. They undermine children's ability to appreciate important works of literature and philosophical thought. In short, poetic meter (pioneered by Homer, refined by Chaucer, and perfected by Shakespeare) are directly responsible for dumbing down America's current generation of students.

The only solution as I see it is this: we must go back...back before Homer had the opportunity to stupify countless generations of Western civilization. Back to rudimentary shelters and mammoth hunts. Back to cave drawings, glacial melts, and land bridges. Only by delivering ourselves and our children to a time before poetic meter can we hope for a smarter generation.

Saturday, July 11, 2009

Food Allergies

Over the past few weeks, I’ve followed the story of my friend’s daughter who has childhood schizophrenia. Janie is six, intermittently violent, and at least until recently, largely ignored in the medical community. She has invisible friends who bite and scratch her if she tries to refuse their demands which include attacking people who call her by her full name, January. On June 29th, the Los Angeles Times put Jani’s story on the front cover, above the fold, and in the subsequent couple weeks, her story has been picked up by ABCNews, NPR, and news outlets across the country. I’ve found myself regularly reflecting on Jani’s situation over the past few weeks and hoping that she and her parents are at least getting some of the help they need.

Until two days ago, Jani’s story has been, for me, a reminder of how very lucky I am. My daughter, Sophia, is healthy, smart, and, with the exception of the standard two-year-old kid stuff, she’s really well behaved. Of course, Sophia is not without her own issues. She has had eczema since she was born which requires a daily regimen of lotions, oils, topical medications that do little to stop the flaking, cracking, and itching she endures with little complaint. She’s also, at two and a half, already had bronchitis four times, which her doctor informs us indicates a strong likelihood that she’ll develop asthma. We own our own nebulizer, and Sophia knows that a certain type of cough coupled with labored breathing means she has to use her special medicine. And, as a child who spends a fair amount of time in daycare, she’s come home with a smorgasbord of childhood illnesses.

Although Sophia has gotten to know her doctor better than we wish she had at this point in her life, for the most part, her health issues have been relatively minor. She hasn’t had any debilitating diseases or conditions, she hasn’t been in any real mortal danger (or at least, not any more than your average curious child), and she hasn’t been forced to live with treatments/accommodations that seriously encumber her daily life.

If you’ve read this far, however, you must be wondering when I’m finally going to reveal that, in fact, some new piece of information has been revealed that has irrevocably changed Sophia’s life. Well, your patience has paid off. On Wednesday, Sophia ate half of a peanut. Within minutes, her voice was raspy, her lips were swollen, and she said, “Daddy, I need the breathing medicine.” Three hours later, we left the emergency room with a sleeping baby (the mixture of excitement and Benadryl finally overwhelmed her energizing curiosity) and guidance to see our primary care physician. In an ironic twist, we had been in to see our doctor a couple weeks prior for a cough, and she ordered a round of allergy tests. On Thursday, just one day after our outing to the E.R., the results came in: Sophia is “severely allergic” to peanuts. She is also severely allergic to shellfish and shrimp and mildly allergic to cow’s milk, wheat, soy, egg whites, cats, dogs, dust mites, and cockroaches.

In essence, between the beginning of Wednesday and the end of Thursday, my wife and I learned that our daughter could be killed by a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, a cup of lobster bisque, or a Snickers bar. We now have to carry around an EpiPen, which is a nice way of saying we have to tote around a pen shaped device filled with epinephrine to jam into our child’s leg in the event she inadvertently ingests peanuts or shellfish and her throat closes up so quickly that an ambulance might not be able to reach her before she suffocates on her own swollen tongue. As the E.R. doctor told us, “this is a life changer.”

We’ve already begun to feel the shift. Our diets have changed overnight. I bought a candy bar this afternoon, and when Sophia asked for a bite, I dutifully made sure there were no peanuts involved in its manufacture. The good news: no nuts; the bad news: chocolate covered marshmallow has soy lecithin, egg whites, and cow’s milk. Other revelations: the first ingredient in sourdough bread is wheat flour; goat’s milk yogurt costs nearly 4 times more than cow’s milk yogurt; rice milk has a bold warning to consult a doctor before serving it to anyone younger than 5 years old; and nougat is made with almond extract (which she may or may not be allergic to. When we asked her doctor if a peanut allergy would mean she’s allergic to all nuts, she laughed. “I wouldn’t take a chance.”). The E.R. doctor wasn’t kidding.

I woke up this morning from a dream in which I had to administer an epinephrine shot to my dying child. In my dream, she didn’t understand why I was stabbing her in the leg, and she alternated between suffocating and pleading for me to stop hurting her. Needless to say, it wasn’t a great way to wake up, and it got me thinking about how different things may need to be moving forward.

I have been trying to rationalize my fears about Sophia’s allergies, and I know that she is no different today than she was before we knew about her allergies. We’ve managed to avoid any serious reactions for almost three years (save Wednesday night’s fiasco), and the foods to which she has minor allergies haven’t done any significant damage to her thus far, so if we aren’t quite as diligent as we need to be with ferreting out the hidden properties of marshmallow confections, she should be okay. And it’s not as if peanut allergies are rare or unfamiliar to most people. Restaurants, schools, and doctors are often very sensitive to the needs of people with various allergies. Still, while I know that Sophia is capable of living a long and satisfying life in spite of her allergies, I have spent a lot of time worrying about her over the past few days as if she’s transformed into a fragile, defenseless invalid.

Sophia’s allergies will no doubt have many unexpected consequences. For example, we’ll no doubt become dietary experts, at least as far as our child is concerned. Another unexpected outcome of Sophia’s newfound “condition” that I’ve been thinking about today is that I feel a new sense of empathy for Jani’s parents. This morning I was reading most recent blog post about Jani, and it is clear that her parents are struggling with the choices that they have to make about her care and her future. I know that what we’re going through doesn’t begin to compare to what they are facing every second of every day. (I’ll sleep comfortably most nights, if occasionally I have disturbing dreams in which I have to stab my child.) By the same token, Sophia’s mom and I have a small sense of the lack of control that Jani’s parents must feel, and I hope that we can take a lesson from them and learn to better appreciate the times we have with each other.

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Summer Writing

This summer session is the first extended period of time I've had free from teaching or taking classes since the summer of 2007. During that summer, I graduated from my masters program, moved my family from California to Arizona, and had a three-week teacher training session to attend. Realistically, this is the first extended period of time I have had in better than three years to simply focus on my own research and writing, and it has been eye opening.

The major problem, a not uncommon one for most people faced with unending "free time," is that I have been having real trouble motivating myself to work. It's not that my time has been unproductive, exactly, but my production has been otherwise directed. I read a novel for two days straight, then wrote a 4-page, single-spaced review of it. I've completely rebuilt my website. I have establish a new blog (thank you very much). I also set up profiles at LinkedIn, Flickr, Twitter, WordPress, and some other ones I can't think of right now. I've been reading every day, so that's a check in the positive column, but I haven't been reading the books on my comprehensives list. So, reading academic literature? Yes. Reading academic literature I'm going to be tested on in the next 6 months? Not so much.

Of course, I know that the main reason I can't focus is a distinct lack of responsibility. That is, no one is expecting me to be to work every morning. No one is expecting work from me. That's kind of the idea behind self-directed time, right? But without the structure of classes to teach, meetings to attend, and coursework to complete, I'm finding it's much easier to take the intellectual break I've convinced myself I really need to get my batteries recharged (actually I'm not really convinced, but as when my wife overlooks some mindless indiscretion on my part because she loves me, I'm pretending to buy my own line out of pity and love).

Now that I've managed to waste yet another small chunk of my day writing this post, back to some other mundane, unproductive task that I'll scold myself for later when I rise from my desk and wonder where the day went.

Friday, June 19, 2009

Want to Write? Write

In response to:

EDUCATION; Want to write? Read; [HOME EDITION] Michael Skube. Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles, Calif.: Aug 27, 2006. pg. M.3

A few years back, in preparation for hordes of students flooding the halls of elementary, secondary, and postsecondary schools alike, Michael Skube sent out a familiar (read: prototypical) call-to-arms, decrying the declining state of young peoples’ ability to write in America today. Skube, though more measured than some people discussing literacy issues, quickly betrayed his seething revulsion for American youths who are incapable of producing anything more substantial than puerile text messages or IMs, messages he deems not even written in “‘real’ English,” but in “expedient baby-talk.” Skube goes on to illuminate for those of us who read his piece the ways in which he believes students to be failures as writers, either cranking out “creative” tripe absent the standard rules of English grammar or awkwardly producing “leaden language” and “sentences stiff as starched shirts” at the behest of teachers and professors who relish the overly complicated flounderings of their inept students. Skube paints for readers a picture which many of them recognize: an incompetent group of young people, mesmerized by technological advance to the detriment of “real” language; lazy; unread; and ushered into mediocrity by a group of Pied Piper-esque educators who themselves have no respect for the educational standards once emblazoned on students’ minds.

Sadly, many Americans, including thousands of educators, agree with Skube. As one instructor I recently spoke with complained, “They [students] don’t read anything. How are they supposed to write anything substantive if they don’t care enough to read?” And, while there are many responses to the claim that “they don’t read anything,” few answers are deemed satisfactory by critics of student literacy, and truthfully, by the general public. In fact, I’m quite certain that many of the folks who happened across Skube’s article shook their heads knowingly as he advocated the sober, straightforward language exhibited in the E.B. White article Skube provides his students to help remedy their poor writing skills.

In fact, Skube’s vision of American education is ubiquitous, finding purchase in forums from dinner table discussions to the Los Angeles Times to the Department of Education (ask recently replaced Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings what state she believes students’ writing capabilities to be in). Certainly in schools across the nation the discussion about declining student literacy is taking place. Many teachers and professors in institutions across the country (and abroad) claim to experience the ineptitude of student writers, calling for English instructors to pull their noses out of esoteric tomes of postmodern theory and “teach our kids something useful!” In response, English departments, sitting presumably at the nexus of students’ needs and possible educational responses, are on every level torn by arguments about where “grammar” and “standards” belong: grade school, high school, freshman composition, all of them? Often, the standard complaint is that whatever previous level students came from failed to adequately prepare them for the current level: so high schools failed to prepare students for college, and middle schools dropped the ball in preparing students for high school, and on down the line. And of course, many Americans feel good about being proactive in casting blame for students’ declining writing skills. Say the Michael Skubes of the world, “let them read; only then will they write.”

But, Skube’s vision of America, however evident it may at first seem, is grossly misleading in its simplicity. For example, Skube calls for reading as an antidote to poor writing. And, while there are few, if any, literacy or writing experts who would disagree with Skube’s assertion that reading helps to improve writing, I believe it’s safe to say that most literacy and writing experts would agree that one must also practice writing to improve writing.

Practice writing to improve writing? What a novel idea, no pun intended. It seems a reasonable request, for, as one might argue, practicing to write by reading E.B. White’s article is somewhat akin to practicing to compose an aria by listening to Beethoven’s “Ah Perfido.” However, practicing to write is not exactly a satisfactory solution for some, either. Skube, himself, notes that students have long been importuned by teachers to “scribble away in journals, write skits and sketches, labor over sentences littered with misspelled words and faulty grammar.” Obviously, in Skube’s experience, practicing in a journal is not easily transferable to “highly accomplished writing,” especially because, as he claims, “the aim is not competency in the plain carpentry of prose but self-expression and creativity.” (Might we assume that Skube cares not a whit about what his students have to say, as long as they punctuate correctly and compose correctly?) And God save us if our students decide to practice their writing skills on a blog or MySpace page. It seems, practicing writing isn’t a sufficient remedy for poor writing skills any more than reading is.

But, sarcasm aside, Skube is not completely misled. If he has students read White, he may reasonably expect them to begin to write like White…eventually. Similarly, if he wants them to write like journalists, he might consider having his students read examples of journalism. But, here’s the catch: if Skube wants his students to write “well,” he’s likely to be disappointed with the lasting effects of White’s essay on his students. Actually, White’s writing from Skube’s example is potentially poor writing, depending on what is expected of the writing. I have to admit as an instructor of composition, any student who turns a paper in to me in which they expound upon a subject’s “bedraggled appearance” would draw a curious look. In spite of what Skube may believe and may teach, White’s charming prose is not at all appropriate for most of the work students are expected to do at the college level. That is, “writing well” isn’t as simple as it seems.

Truth be told, a student who writes spectacular vignettes in White’s careful prose could conceivably do worse in my classroom that one who writes in “forced and hollow” language. First and foremost, my students are expected to write academic arguments which demand a certain level of academic formality not present in White’s introduction. In academia, excessive physical detail often overwhelms the argumentative aspects of a student text, and a description that informs White’s reader might be distracting to a reader in another context. What do you suppose Skube would make of a news story written in White’s detailed manner? Or, even an email? The truth is that different types of situations demand different types of writing, and in spite of what Skube may advocate, White’s style doesn’t satisfy them all. So, when my students struggle with “forced and hollow” language, I choose to see them practicing a new form of writing as opposed to failing as writers on the whole.

But, through all my standing objections to Skube’s characterization of students, what I find most interesting (and most curious) is his unspoken assumption that students are somehow contaminated because of how poorly he judges them to write. Some writing historians might point Skube to over 120 years of similar complaints lodged by academics in which they claim, as A.S. Hill of Harvard did in the late 1800’s, educators should “[take] models from the traditional sources of literacy and [attempt] to impart grace, clarity, and correctness to students who otherwise would not know how to recognize it.” Some historians might point out to Skube that, in fact, when he was in school, his professors were complaining about his and his classmates’ inability to write to the standards of grammar and “real” English to which previous generations were held. I, however, won’t do that. What I will do is claim here, as I do to all those who would listen, that students today are no more or less capable than they have ever been. Students are not contaminated, but they are coming to us to help them understand what writing does and why. We may choose, as Skube does, to believe them incompetent and hopeless; or we may choose to see them as novices attempting new levels of development.

In the end, of course, it will always be possible to defend a claim that students aren’t writing to the levels of E.B. White or Pulitzer Prize winner Michael Skube; but most students (in any period in human history) also haven’t spent the time and effort on their writing that White or Skube have. Skube may be right that “younger students have an even better head start;” but he also might be encouraged to recognize that White, well into his 50’s, wrote his “expert” elegy after he watched his wife pass away. Given time, and given the interest that people like Skube might be in a position to promote, today’s students may very well find themselves writing like White as they mourn their loved ones who’ve passed, even as they may also (probably inappropriately) mourn the writing skills of the students in times to come.

Review of The Shack by William Paul Young

The Shack, by William Paul Young, was gifted to me by my mother a few months ago, along with an inspiring internet story about how it was rejected by mainstream publishers, only to be self-published and promoted by word of mouth. It went on to sell millions of copies and change millions of lives—to say nothing of the boon it has been for self-publishers around the globe. Truly, The Shack is an inspiration.

At the beginning of The Shack, Mackenzie (Mack) Phillips, takes three of his children on a weekend camping trip, leaving his wife and two grown children behind. On the last day of the trip, Mack’s two eldest children flip their canoe in a lake, and when Mack goes to rescue them, his youngest daughter, Missy, is kidnapped. The police track the kidnapper and Missy to a shack in the woods where it is made clear that Missy has been brutally murdered. Needless to say, Mack and his family are devastated. After a few years of attempting unsuccessfully to cope with his loss, Mack gets a note inviting him back to the shack for a weekend with the proposition that the note’s author is none other than God.

Reluctantly, but inevitably, Mack returns to the shack to meet and confront God for taking his daughter, only to learn that his judgments against God have been misguided. Over the course of his weekend, and through the loving guidance of God (“Papa”), Jesus, and the Holy Spirit (“Sarayu”), Mack is inspired to love through and with God and to accept that the loss of his child does not mean that God’s love is limited.

Inspiring, sure. Good, no. I see why no one would publish The Shack, and it has nothing to do with the religious content of the book. As a piece of “literature,” it is terrible. The characters are inconsistent and trite, the narrative is littered with clichés and unchecked blabber, and after about the first 100 pages (if that), you can sense the author is trying to fill enough space to make it book-length. Had I not agreed to discuss the book with my mother, I would have put it down early on and never picked it back up.

While some reviewers have taken issue with The Shack’s theological point of view, it seems that most readers have found the novel interesting, even compelling. I have no real qualms with the theology, not being knowledgeable enough to take issue with Young’s brand of spirituality, but I do take issue with the narrative quality of this book, so much so that I had to put it down at several points because I was exasperated by the dismal story-telling.

Up to and including Mack’s first encounter with God, Young does a good job of drawing readers along. The prose is engaging, and the story moves quickly through the tragedy of Missy’s abduction. As a dramatic introduction to the novel, the first third of the book, while not likely to win any awards, is equal to the beginning of any Dean Koontz novel. Young also does a respectable job of drawing out and exploring Mack’s emotional state as he wallows in his despair and considers returning to the shack. As a reader, I was with Mack as he drove out to the shack, approached it hesitantly, and wept over his daughter’s blood stain on the living room floor.

When Mack finally met God, however, the tone and quality of the book shift noticeably, and not in a good way. The Shack transformed from the touching, heartbreaking journey of a grieving father into a sermonizing, condescending harangue thinly veiled in an illuminating spiritual encounter.

What I found most irritating about The Shack is the preachy quality of Mack’s interactions with the Holy Trinity. It seems that every time Jesus or Papa or Sarayu explains a concept, Mack follows it with a comment like “So what you’re saying is…” or “I guess what you mean for me to learn is…” (e.g., “I don’t understand,” Mack hesitated. “Are you saying that we can respond to one another in colors?”). Mack translates nearly every point of God’s message for readers, the obvious implication being that readers are a little too daft to understand it on their own. Mack’s interpretations quickly turn from irritating to insulting, particularly because they are so blatant.

Young’s unashamed preaching seriously undermines the role of his narrative. For this type of story, one goal of an author is to show what happened as if the readers aren’t there. This is one of the successes of the first part of the book. But, Mack’s conversations with God, in God’s multiple forms, are so completely unnatural that readers are left with the distinct feeling that they are being moralized at. The Mack from the first third of the book has important questions about his daughter’s murder that demand direct answers. The Mack in the second two-thirds is all too willing to avoid asking real questions, instead contentedly translating whatever God says. He devolves from a well-developed character into a religious cipher. He learns all sorts of lessons from God so readers don't have to.

Since Mack is the book’s protagonist, when his character starts to break down, the whole novel begins to crumble. For example, we are told that Mack holds God responsible for the death of his daughter. Yet, when he meets God, he can’t even think of confronting God about his anguish. I cannot believe that he could be in God’s presence for as long as he is (nearly 36 hours) without directly asking the questions that could help him to understand Missy’s murder. Mack’s willingness to play along with God’s agenda, no matter how abstract, signals to readers that he isn’t interested in answers to his questions or in understanding the loss of his daughter: he only wants readers to learn what God wants them to learn—a decidedly irksome authorial ploy.

Indeed, as a character, Mack is so contradictory that he completely undermines the force of Young’s theory/theology. Mack’s contributions to the discussions are childish. (“Papa?” “Yes, honey?” “I’m so sorry that you, that Jesus, had to die.”) He moves seemingly without reason and with the slightest provocation between anger, guilt, embarrassment, understanding, and childlike wonder, leaving readers wondering if he has any sense of why he went to the shack to begin with. Mack takes everything God says for granted, unless it infuriates him and he turns into a petulant little boy. And he is willfully simple-minded, in spite of his supposed seminary training (deep thinking about philosophy and theology, my eye). There is no point in the entire book where Mack tries to understand God’s proclamations from the point of view of someone who has thought seriously about theology; instead, he is an angry weekend worshipper who just goes about religion as a habit—easily confused and easily contained. To me, those are two very different ways of thinking about religion, and there is no evidence that he thinks at all in a sophisticated or complicated way. As a reader, I was left wondering if Young ever thought about the consistency of Mack’s character. I am inclined to think he had another goal in mind.

It seems fairly obvious, in fact, that Mack is nothing more than a barely disguised pawn for the author’s spiritual message. Mack is not really a character—he is a hostage. He does whatever the author needs him to do at any given time. For example, in the introduction, Mack is a serious, quiet man who does not talk unless someone asks him a direct question. He is deep and contemplative and has a disquieting effect on others—someone readers can trust not to fawn over every snake oil salesman that blows into town. But when Mack meets God, he morphs into a jibber-jabbering idiot. He’s quick to interrupt, he’s slow to process, and he talks incessantly like a toddler talking for the pleasure of hearing the sounds instead of with the goal of making meaning. Mack does what the book needs him to do at any given moment, not what a person would actually do if they were placed in God’s presence with a pressing concern.

To take another example, Mack spent three years or more blaming God for the death of his daughter. The brutal kidnapping and killing, and God knows what else, of his six-year-old engulfed his family, plagued his every thought and action, and unalterably diminished his life. But still, more than 120 pages after he meets God, Mack has not asked the one question he must have been thinking since Missy disappeared: Why did God let her die, and why that way? As a father, that would be the one question I would demand an answer to. I can’t imagine being content with the answers that put Mack at ease. Even when he does demand answers, a loving rebuke from the Holy Trinity calms him. He’s satisfied with whatever answer God gives him (which usually has nothing to do with the injustice of Missy’s death). As a reader, I was appalled and insulted by Young’s tactic of denying Mack the chance to ask real questions in order to convey the other messages he wants me to have. The method is obvious and condescending—Young holds off on giving readers dessert (the answers to the important questions) until after they have their vegetables (lessons on God’s love).

In addition to the pedantic sermonizing and inconsistent literary conceits, there is another fundamental contradiction in The Shack’s main message: redemption is only possible through God’s love. Papa/Jesus/Sarayu relentlessly reiterate that Mack can only truly live in and with and through God’s love. This is the major theme of the book. Every action is designed to demonstrate God’s love. He has to choose to deliver himself to God's love. Nevertheless, the enduring sub-plot of the book is that God knows best, and therefore, Mack’s need/desire to understand his daughter’s death is interminably delayed, if not exactly ignored. Throughout the novel, God, Jesus, and Sarayu keep constant company with Mack even as they seem to largely ignore his reason for being at the shack. They ignore his anger; they ignore his need to hear a direct answer, no matter how infuriating; and they ignore his confusion, always putting off his main concern until a later time with placating abstractions.

By delaying Mack’s legitimate distress, God does not demonstrate the love that Young would have readers witness—rather, God demonstrates a power play, which Young’s God claims love is free of. The message is, Mack does not need closure until God determines he needs it. I recognize some people will find this quibble flawed—it is not for man to judge God’s will—but God tells Mack repeatedly that Mack has free will, that he needs to trust God, and that he needs to be open to God’s love. His free will should have driven him to ask tough questions and expect tough answers. Instead, he’s baited and placated until God deems him fit enough for the tough conversation. Maybe God has a celestial plan that Young understands better than I, but I had a hard time stomaching this book, built as it is on the paternalistic, patronizing, God-the-Father-knows-best definition of “love”.

Call it a human flaw, but as a reader, I found both Mack’s and God’s passivity about Mack’s journey exasperating. To my mind, the pretty shack scrubbed of any trace of Missy’s death, (but replete with freshly-baked pies and compliant blue jays, long walks on the water with Jesus, and gardening expeditions in Mack’s soul with the Holy Spirit) demonstrates a fundamental disregard for the explanation that Mack came to find. The paradise where Mack spends the weekend with God is window dressing, not love, and as a reader, I was continually drawn back to a question of my own: how can God expect Mack’s trust when God refuses to be honest and upfront about Mack’s reasons for going to the shack in the first place? Of course, Mack eventually finds the answer he needs, but it must be cajoled and bargained out of God—-not, to my mind, a ripe opportunity for the kind of relationship-building Young’s God trumpets.

Finally, though perhaps a minor point, I’ll end this review by noting my sadness over the cliché of multiculturalism that permeates the book. Mack is a white patriarch, God is a black mother, Jesus is a Middle-eastern carpenter, Sarayu is an Asian gardener, Sophia is God’s Hispanic assistant (maid? tying up God’s loose ends? A stretch, perhaps, but not a leap). Everyone is represented and included—we’re all in the kingdom of Heaven, and we’re all integral parts of God’s all-encompassing nature. The message is nauseatingly evident.

While I certainly appreciate Young’s goal to be broadly representative, the inclusion of “one of every kind” feels like a ploy, especially because each character is so unbearably clichéd. God comments to Mack that she didn’t appear to him as a white man with a long beard because she wanted to unsettle Mack’s religious expectations of what God should be like, but appearing as a different kind of stereotype does not exactly clear things up. Young would have done better to avoid racial stereotypes altogether rather than including one of each. When God eventually turns into a white man, it hammers home the tedium of racial representation in The Shack.

There are broad themes in The Shack with which I agreed in spite of the dreadful narrative: religion and religion’s rules tend to facilitate sanctimony rather than compassion; if people better accepted their social/collective roles and let go of individual notions of power, the world might be a better place; and love is harder to foster where lies and self-righteous judgment are present. But ultimately, the literary blunders and patronizing tone that plague this book completely overshadow any potential messages I might have discovered in a less homiletic story. Perhaps the literary gaffes that stood out to me are less offensive to the people who have flocked to this book by the millions, but for this skeptic, The Shack is just one more ineffectual sermon, the inspiration of which is lost in the conscientious attempt to inspire.

Productive Procrastination

This is my first foray into blogging, and it has arisen out of an unwillingness to actually do the work that is waiting for me. I have several projects I should be working on, but I find that I am having a little trouble maintaining my focus right now. It's not that I don't want to be doing my projects, but summers are very disruptive for me. I really appreciate the self-driven schedule, but I find that it is harder for me to produce when I don't have any schedule other than my own.

As a result, I've redesigned my website; founded this blog; and established accounts with Twitter, Flickr, WordPress, and Schlemiel/Schlimazel (ok, I made that last one up, but it's not far off, I assure you)

Depending on how much time I find I need to fill in order to avoid all the other things I need to do, I may be back often. I'll resist forcasting what may show up here. It could turn into anything!

Thursday, June 18, 2009

Notes on a Name: Dissoi Topoi

Dear Readers,

A note on the title of this blog:

Dissoi logoi is an ancient Greek concept traditionally translated as "different words." It is generally understood as the practice of arguing both sides of an issue in order to better understand your opponent's point of view on a given topic. A related definition is "making the worse case the better" with the same goal--to figure out the strengths and weaknesses of an argument. Other people, however, have argued that dissoi logoi can be better understood as taking a contrary position. That is, a practitioner of dissoi logoi does not take a stand on an issue and then attempt to understand their opponent's position. Rather, dissoi logoi is the practice of opposing any position as a way of sparking deeper thought, multiple reconsiderations, and different ways of thinking about a given issue. In the first sense, dissoi logoi is an argumentative tool; in the second, it includes an inventive aspect somewhat lacking in the traditional conception.

Topoi, on the other hand, are inventive categories. Ancient orators relied on topoi, literally "places to find things," (though some people disagree with this translation) to help them discover the available arguments to make about any given issue. Aristotle treated the topoi at length, dividing them into categories for students to memorize and access when they needed to consider the available means of a given argument.

So, dissoi topoi is a phrase I coined (I think) to play on these two ancient concepts. This is a blog of opposition meant to generate (my own) deeper thinking, to help (me) invent new ways to think about old issues, and to build a place (for me) to go for arguments. Hopefully it will help readers with some of the same things.

(Oh, and let's be realistic--I thought it made me sound smart. I mean, c'mon.)

Welcome

Dear Reader,

No doubt you've wandered here accidentally, and I am happy to have you stop by, if only for a minute to browse and scurry. Chances are that you're looking for something witty and urbane to fill the void in your life left empty by the discontinuation of "The Jack Benny Show." Given enough time searching here, no doubt you'll come across something fitting that description (1000 monkeys on 1000 typewriters, and all that), but by and large you'll find the haplessly and helplessly self-absorbed verbal meanderings of a prose addict. I'm no Jack Benny, I'm afraid.

That said, the content of this blog is likely to be relatively clean, occasionally polemical, and often self-consciously self-conscious. I'm sure to spend some of my musings on writing, graduate school, parenting, marriage, teaching, and politics. If any or all of those fit your needs or wants, I invite you to meander by periodically. Baring some unforeseen causatum befitting a Chicken Little-esque hysteria, I'll be here.