I do not Tweet, chiefly because I cannot square it with my guiding tenet question, “What Would Abraham Lincoln Do?” While the Gettysburg Address contains about two hundred eighty words, by one hundred forty characters we have not yet reached “equality.” In fact, we haven’t even noticed the War.
At the same time, though, I’m attracted to the idea of word limits. I have a tendency to go on, particularly when I have nothing to say. I suppose I keep thinking I’ll find something. The discipline imposed by a solid ceiling has its attractions, and the G.A. shows the power that can be generated by just ten sentences.
Thus today’s exercise, the first episode of Succinct Rebuttal Theater. The idea is to propose a claim (not patently absurd, for the sake of fairness) and then to craft a solid and meaningful rebuttal in the space of fewer than two hundred words. Who knows? Development of skills for the task might eventually prove useful on message boards, at picket lines, or in church.
Topic: Evolution
Claim: “Human life is too complex to have evolved by chance. How could everything about Earth and biology just happen to be so perfect for us?”
Succinct Rebuttal: Think about your family tree: generation after generation of people meeting, mating, and raising children to do the same in their turn, all of it leading to you. Take away just one of those people and your unique particularity disappears. One accident, one missed acquaintance, one worse disease, one misplaced sperm in umpteen thousand years and your place in genealogy would be occupied by somebody else. It stands to reason, then, that every choice and action made by all those countless ancestors must have involved not chance or choice but predetermined intelligent design. Otherwise, the odds against you existing at all are simply astronomical.
But of course it isn’t that way, is it? You exist at the foot of your family tree by chance, not choice. You’re what came of those events and possibilities, just as human life is what resulted from the mutations, selections, and behaviors of a billion years. Given what we know of the robustness of life, the likelihood of humanity occurring (or something like humanity, which we would call humanity if we were it) is actually rather good. The universe is very large. The odds are astronomical, but only because there burn so many stars.
Markings and Corrections from Your English Teacher
Because You Need Serious Correction
You’ll see comments of various kinds on most writing that you get back from me. The purpose of each is to improve your writing. This document is a guide to interpreting those corrections and using them to your advantage. Also, somebody has to know these things. “affect”/“effect”
These two words sound a lot alike but mean different things. This is one of the tricks played by language on people who don’t read enough. I think it does this on purpose.
“Affect” is a verb: The plight of the soulful, suffering English teacher affected her strongly.
“Effect” is a noun: The main effect of alcohol is senior prom.
(Note that there is an uncommon noun use of “affect” and an even rarer verb use of “effect,” but you will never need them unless you go to graduate school. Do you really want to do that?)
agreement
A clause’s subject and verb must agree in number: The doglikes cheese. Dogs like cheese.
Pronouns should also agree with their antecedents:
Incorrect: A person needs their enemies. (This is a very common mistake.)
Correct: A person needs her enemies.
Other than that, nobody really has to agree about anything. If they did, we wouldn’t have literature.
analysis
(See “A Few Notes on Literary Analysis” in your coursepack. Then write a five-page essay exploring only arbitrarily chosen and extremely picky details from that article out of context. )
awkward (or awk.)
A sentence is awkward when something about its structure isn’t right. Maybe you have piled up too many prepositional phrases, or have strung together too many “because” clauses, or have created a clunky phrase, or something else. Maybe you’re just at a certain age where your body does uncomfortable things, and you have feelings that scare you and that you don’t understand. In any case, an awkward sentence is difficult to follow for reasons of grammar or clarity. It should be rewritten, usually in a simpler form. Also, try not to embarrass yourself in front of your peers.
block quotations
When a certain passage would take more than three lines to quote, format it as a block quotation.
A block quotation is single-spaced even when the rest of your writing is double-spaced, which means you have to consider whether the quotation is really going as far as you think it is towards filling the page. The whole block is indented half an inch on both sides (not just the left), so that’s a plus. Block quotations don’t need quotation marks, and they look stupid in italics. Employment of a block quotation implies that you have read the passage.
character description (see also summary)
See analysis above. If you are only describing characters and their behavior, you are not writing an academic argument. You are merely doing literature.
citation
When you make use of an outside source, you must cite that source in your work. This will deflect blame away from yourself. The most basic citation format is to list all works cited at the end of your essay while referring to the source and the page number using parenthetical citation. For example:
It has been argued that Shakespeare’s critique of power in Measure for Measure implies a sort of Foucauldian archaeology of power avant-la-lettre (Ernie 134). Others say, “Meh” (Bert 12).
Having introduced your reader to these sources, you may walk away with clean hands, confident that the issue is no longer your problem.
clause (see also phrase)
A full grammar lesson on clauses is beyond the reach of this handout. (You’re welcome.) In brief, a clause is a group of words containing a verb and its subject. In this sense, all clauses are equal. Some sentences contain more than one clause, and some of these may be dependent (or subordinate) to other clauses. Thus, some clauses are more equal than others.
cliché
A cliché is a phrase, idea, or set of words that have been overused to the point of meaninglessness. Use of clichés will make you sound like a television.
Some common clichés: grow as a person, across the board, think outside the box, accept herself for who she is, be proactive, fair and balanced.
comma usage
The comma is a bitch-goddess beholden only to its own laws.
Commas are used between independent clauses (before the coordinating conjunction):
The day passes slowly under a hot sun,and at night the weasels come.
I had never seen such a huge mob,but I was impressed with their manners.
Commas are used after introductory clauses and phrases:
When the shit hits the fan, act surprised. (Introductory clause)
Happily, there was really no reason to be in class at all. (Introductory adverb)
During the day, we never seem to worry about the undead. (Introductory phrase)
Commas separate items in a series:
Larry’s voice was high, reedy, and despondent.
Commas are used to set off non-essential clauses (see “which”/“that”/“who” below).
Unnecessary commas:
Do not put a comma between a subject and verb or a verb and its object.
Incorrect: The boys on the bus[,] always make such a noise.
Do not put a comma between the elements of a compound subject or compound verb:
Incorrect: The flag bearer[,] and the sergeant both went down in cannon smoke.
Incorrect: We ran as fast as we could[,] and sidestepped the controversy.
comma splice (or splice or c.s.)
A comma splice is an error that occurs when you try to join two independent clauses using only a comma. Who do you think you are, Marcel Proust? A comma splice is like botched plastic surgery.
The soldiers raised their rifles, they uttered a fearful cry.
There are several ways to correct this kind of error:
Make it two sentences. The soldiers raised their rifles. They uttered a (etc.).
Use a semicolon: The soldiers raised their rifles; they uttered a fearful (etc).
Choose a conjunction: The soldiers raised their rifles, and they uttered a (etc.).
The soldiers raised their rifles, but they uttered a fearful (etc.).
The soldiers uttered a fearful cry as they raised their rifles.
coordinating conjunctions
Coordinating conjunctions are the small words that can join independent clauses together, producing a compound sentence. The coordinating conjunctions are For, And, Nor, But, Or, Yet, So,and WTF.
double-space
If you submit work that is single-spaced, your instructor will not have room to make comments or corrections. Think about that for a minute.
fragment (or sentence fragment or frag.)
A fragment occurs when a sentence is incomplete as written. This usually means that it lacks a core independent clause. It’s like you’re not even trying.
Whenever I feel afraid. Because that’s the way I like it. Like rain on your wedding day.
Sometimes it is just one clause that is fragmentary (e.g. if it lacks a subject or verb).
literary present tense
When discussing literature, you should base your discussion in present tense. The temptation is to use past tense since you are pretending that you have read the book, but this causes confusion in certain cases. Literary present reminds you that the book will still be around long after you are gone and forgotten.
Incorrect: Romeo almost found Juliet in time, but he was too late.
Correct: Romeo almost finds Juliet in time, but he is too late.
numbers
You should spell out any number than can be expressed in a word or two (e.g. “sixteen,” “ninety-seven,” “twelve million”). All numbers are actually words. Algebra is grammar. Geometry is like type-setting or something.
passive voice (or passive)
Passive voice sentence construction obscures agency; that is, it hides the true agent of the action described. Without practice, passive voice sounds stilted and dishonest. Done well, it can deflect responsibility even under oath.
Mistakes were made. (Who made them?) The car was wrecked. (Who wrecked it?)
The girls were being taught to do anything that made them look good. (By whom?)
The opposite of passive voice is active voice, which foregrounds a clearly-discernible subject. This should usually be someone else.
plot summary
If you must summarize plot in your essay, be sure to do the reading first.
pronoun antecedent
There’s nobody in the whole damn world who can’t be replaced by a pronoun.
quotation usage
A quotation included within one’s own writing is called an embedded quotation. A quotation long enough to take more than three lines should be set off as a block quotation. Never quote unless you have something to say not just about what the passage says but also about how it says it.
The great thing about quotations is that someone has already said something interesting about what you’re talking about. The not-so-great thing is that it wasn’t you.
(See also citation.)
repetition
Repetition is like redundancy, but more obnoxious and less subtle. It is the Frat Boy of errors.
run-on
A run-on sentence is an error that occurs when two otherwise complete and unattached sentences are not properly set off by the condom of punctuation.
Incorrect: The open sea is my best friend without it I would be lost on land.
Correct: The open sea is my best friend; without it I would be lost on land.
Correct: The open sea is my best friend, for without it I would be lost on land.
“shall”/“will”
According to Garner, the will/shall distinction is both pretentious and illusory. It is unnecessary in American English. Thus, one says "I will crush this puny planet," and never "I shall crush this puny planet."
“thee”
Even worse than the subjunctive. Don’t go there unless you’re a Quaker. It also works for sonnets, but only if you’re dead.
“their”/“there”/“they’re”
“Their” is possessive. The bears dragged their hapless victim away into the murk.
“There” is an adverb referring to “that location” (as opposed to “here,” which refers to “this location.”)
Put it there and never bring it here again.
“They’re” is a contraction of “they are.” “They’re at it again,” she said ruefully.
Mixing these up tells your reader that you don’t care enough to read your own writing. I’m sorry I even assigned it.
theme
Literary authors generally return to certain key issues, problems, conflicts, or other matters in their work. Often this is because they can’t afford therapy. Whenever you identify such a main concern in a text, you have identified a theme. Most analytical writing about literature focuses on themes, but not just their identification. Equally important is how the author explores the theme in the work.
When asked about theme, think this way: what is the author asking us to see or think about differently in this work, how are they doing it, and why does it matter? Answer this question, and then subordinate that issue to whatever particular axe it is that you have to grind.
thesis and thesis statement
Your thesis is what you are trying to prove, argue, or otherwise explore in your writing. A thesis statement is a single, clear, distinctive sentence that states what this thesis is. It usually occurs in your introduction paragraph, often (but not always) as the last sentence of that paragraph.
The plural of thesis is theses, which rhymes with feces.
titles (of your essay)
Imagine that you pick up a magazine article with no title or a book with no cover. Like, say, you picked it out of the dumpster behind a bookstore. Have you ever done this? I have done this.
titles (of books, etc.)
Titles of books, movies, magazines, albums, and other objects published on their own are underlined or italicized (but never both): Gone with the Wind, Romeo and Juliet, Europe Central, Newsweek.
Titles of stories, poems, essays, songs, and anything published within something larger get quotation marks: “The Hollow Men,” “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” “How To Tell a True War Story,” “Hey Jude.” Sometimes books out of a dumpster don’t have visible titles, but I think I’ve mentioned this already.
transition
Writing must flow logically. When one sentence follows another with no apparent connection to what was just being discussed, there is a problem with transitions. Marking a transition can be as simple as including an appropriate phrase (e.g. thus, however, therefore, on the other hand, etc.) or as complex as alluding to a point made much earlier in the writing. One way to describe writing that lacks good transitions is to say that it is “jumpy.” Another way is to say that it is “awful.”
unnecessary
It’s always tempting to include intensifiers, personal anecdotes, and even small amounts of cash folded into your writing, but these are seldom appropriate to straightforward argument and analysis. When I mark something as unnecessary, try to rewrite the sentence without it. The following example sentences are all stronger with the bracketed portions simply removed.
[I have argued in this essay that] Shakespeare’s women are often crippled by words.
No one [that I know of] has ever said that Shakespeare’s women are simple.
(Even better:) Shakespeare’s women are not simple.
[We have to ask ourselves,] what does it mean to be a strong female character?
Sometimes whole sentences will be marked “unnecessary.” This is often a nice way of saying that they are “boring.”
vague
I mark words as vague when they are so general or universally applicable as to say almost nothing. Common problem words here include interesting, unique, special, and such. Absolutely everything is “unique” when you think about it. Instead of saying that something is “interesting,” come right out and tell us what is so interesting about it. The opposite of vague is precise. In writing, precision is a twin to clarity, while vagueness is the mutant Siamese doppelganger of bullshit.
verb tense
Jumping around with verb tense is confusing. Keep it consistent. One day at a time. Or, er, yesterday.
“who”/“whom”
“Who” is for subjects, just as “he” and “she” are for subjects.
“Whom” is for objects,” just as “him” and “her” are for objects.
Who wrote the letter? (She wrote the letter?)
You gave the book to whom? (You gave the book to her?)
We gave a party last year, and who came to it?
Whom do you love?
“Whom” is also for people who want to sound like English teachers or certain British movie stars. William Shakespeare used it. He also coined the word “pedant.”
That’s all right—I didn’t like the last one. I thought he was a Doofus who disgraced the office by his lack of qualifications, his know-nothing approach to complex issues, and the Rovian nastiness with which his administration governed. I disagreed with most (not all) of his policies. Also, as a lover of the English language and of clear argument, I felt like tearing my ears off every time he opened his mouth.
I did not, however, pretend that he was not the President. I did not pretend that he was part of a conspiracy to replace America with a dictatorship. I never believed that that he was—merely by virtue of not being of my political persuasion—somehow allied with forces of Cosmic Evil. I understood that, while he was wrong on all counts, he believed that he was right, and that he was working sincerely by the light of his convictions. I disliked him, but I did not demonize him. I understood that democracy means having to be in the opposition party from time to time.
I gather that the situation is not analogous on your side of the aisle.
I love American democracy more than anything. I love that we can disagree vociferously without killing each other or getting hauled away by the secret police. What disturbs me these days, though, is the paranoid unreality of the fantasies that come up again and again in conservative opposition to Obama. Correct me if I’m wrong, but these are some of the ludicrous positions that seem to be getting pretty close to mainstream on your side:
1) Barack Obama is not a real American, having been born in Kenya and falsified his birth records, believing (as a young black man in the 1970s) that he had an excellent chance of thereby becoming President.
2) Obama is a terrorist, raised in Moscow or Cairo or some secret Viet Minh training camp later leased to Al Qaeda as part of the Global Anti-American Conspiracy
3) Obama has broken the theology barrier and is somehow simultaneously a radical Muslim AND a militant atheist.
4) Obama is an ignorant street kid who parlayed a job as a community organizer (whatever that is) into political capital. The scary part is how he so effectively disguised his lack of real political knowledge by becoming a state legislator, U.S. Senator, and Professor of Constitutional Law at the University of Chicago.
5) Obama is a Marxist-Leninist-Stalinist-Maoist, whose every policy initiative is part of a diabolical scheme to replace American capitalism with Central Planning and Workers’ Soviets before November of 2010. And now he wants all these "Czars," just like the Bolsheviks.
6) Obama is a murderer, planning to kill elderly, flu-ridden Americans in order to, I don’t know, produce more Soylent Green or make voodoo bowls from their skulls or something.
7) Obama is a racist, burning with hatred of everything and everyone white. Of course he was raised by a loving white mother and grandparents, and most of his administration is about as pasty as I am, but The Blacks are ungrateful that way.
8) Obama is a demagogue, relishing every chance to stage Nuremberg-style rallies for his bloodthirsty minions (who routinely attend these rallies armed to the teeth, calling for the impeachment and punishment of Republican politicians and their supporters). No President in U.S. history has ever gone so far as to insist on press conferences, addresses to Congress, or videos advising students to stay in school.
9) Obama is a fascist, cleverly disguising the usual warning signs of fascism (such as extreme militarism and jingoistic identification of a minority enemy) behind an elaborate smokescreen of traditional pluralism, Great Society rhetoric, social liberalism, and business as usual D.C. deal-making. He was even legally elected, just like Hitler!
10) When, in a centuries-long functioning democracy, one’s own political party passes for a time into a minority role, the best and most reasonable response is secession.
Perhaps I exaggerate a little, but the alterations are meant to keep things light. Taken straight, the implications of belief in these positions is just too embarrassing to contemplate. They remind me of the Limbaugh-inspired allegations of a few years back that American liberals (what with their Civil/Gay/Women's Rights and their Darwin-toting secularism) ultimately long for a world governed by Wahhabist Sharia Law. These fantasies have a serious purpose, however, which is to imaginatively delegitimize the Obama presidency—not just to oppose it politically, but to insist that it is not real.
So my central question is this: what kind of politics requires such elaborate fantasies or conspiracy and persecution? What’s so hard about simply admitting that the other party won, and that, while you hate their policies, they pursue those policies out of a sincere desire for the good rather than out of some diabolical commitment to Evil for the sake of Evil? What's so hard about getting down to the business of politics without encouraging your angriest fringe towards patriotic assassination?
And what, by the way, is so scary about attending a town hall meeting without bringing a rifle? Are you afraid that you’re going to be Socialized right there in the parking lot?
I won’t belabor each of these points in detail, but let me address at least one of them: the “Birther” complaint that Obama isn’t even an American citizen.
The facts are right there: the Hawaii birth certificate, numerous corroborating documents, everything. Every reporter, politician, and grad student in America has seen them, and they didn’t even have to travel to Hawaii: American universities have a habit of keeping microfilm copies of every newspaper they can get their hands on, including Honolulu’s major papers, both of which ran routine birth announcements for Obama in 1961. Those microfilms have been getting a good dust-off lately, I’m sure. The dust itself suggests that, if this be conspiracy, you’ve got to give it credit for getting a very early and prescient start.
But I think there’s an even better argument to be made against the birther fantasy: the fact that no candidate gets far along towards political success without all parties (political and otherwise) vetting that candidate’s background to the utmost degree. Consider this: the birther rumors got started as early as 2007. Do you believe that the GOP didn’t put every effort into uncovering whatever evidence might have derailed an Obama candidacy at the first possible moment? For that matter, do you think the Bush-Cheney Justice Department didn’t perform routine and not-so-routine background checks on Obama as early as possible? Is it plausible that the FBI missed the signs of the Kenyan conspiracy, and that we had to wait for the intrepid guesswork geniuses of the internet to bring us the truth only after the election?
Perhaps I am wrong, and the positions I’ve listed above aren’t really in the mainstream of GOP thought. Indeed, I hope I am wrong. But it’s very disturbing to see a Republican congressman afraid to admit on the record, for fear of offending his base, that he believes Barack Obama is legally an American citizen. (Just such a spectacle was the prompt for this writing, in fact.)
Even more distressing is the Republican Party's response to the violence and hatred that spills out at the edges of the anti-Obama movement. Where is the decency that should lead office-holding conservative politicians, at least, to call shame on supporters urging the murder of the President? Why the GOP embrace of Assassination Chic?
Let’s make a deal: if (after you rise up and stop Obama’s Red Army when it finally tries to put white Christians in FEMA concentration camps) it is shown that Obama really was the deep-mole sleeper-agent foreign element that you present him to be, or even if he is just shown to be a genuine full-on America-hater, I will own up to my mistake. I will vote for your heroes. I will attend to whatever pundits you like, and I will gladly embrace my re-education. After all, if Obama is really that evil, I can only thank you for stopping him and saving my country.
If, however, Obama finishes out his term without trying to destroy America through Marxist-Fascist-Racist insurrection, will you promise to think twice before demonizing the opposition in terms that make working democracy impossible? Will you promise to try admitting that, while liberals may be wrong, they are not actually sworn agents of Hitler, Stalin, or Satan? Will you promise to take your political opponents seriously as, at least, fellow Americans?
A Rhetorical Exercise in Memory of David Foster Wallace[1]
(Written for Students)
“…and you are filled with a hard, aching love for how the world could be and always should be, but now is not.”
-Tim O’Brien, The Things They Carried
O’Brien’s words stick with me, and it hasn’t been but a few months since one of my favorite writers, D.F. Wallace, took his own life in response to how the world (for him) was not. Since this will be my last issue of the Pub, it seems like a good time to consider the question of why people write and read and teach serious literature.
It’s tempting to think of novels, poems, stories, and the rest of it as merely ornamental: just decoration, just snob amusement, “just art.” By this view, what matters instead is work, emotions, the stuff of Real Life. Why waste time on stories when reality is so much more important, urgent, and unavoidable? Why study literature when one’s personal tastes run more to competition, concerts, fashion, fishing, or whatever you please?
This latter question would make sense if literature amounted only to entertainment. It’s true, of course, that some genres tend that way—lots of stories are just for fun, and there is no reason to insist on that kind of fun more than on any other. A thrilling novel is no more inherently valuable than the thrill you get from watching football or playing video games, if that’s your thing.[2] There really is no accounting for taste, nor should there be.
But some writing offers more than (only) entertainment, amusement, and diversion; we call these stories “literature” to mark the difference. Yes, the term is a value judgment. Arguing the criteria for this judgment is beyond the scope of this essay; it’s enough, here, to recognize that there is such a distinction and that some stories rise to the faith of its expectations.[3]
So what is literature for, and how does it justify the time it seems to take away from life and life’s urgent concerns? For an answer I’ll offer two apparently technical but really very human terms: subjectivity and representation.
Subjectivity is the sad fact of human boundaries. As human beings we are limited by perspective and by time: we live as ourselves and only as ourselves, in our own place and period, and with each breath the self comes a step closer to the point at which no more experience is possible.[4] Remarkably, though, and almost miraculously, literature realizes at least a partial escape from these boundary limits. Whatever else it does, literature communicates the experience of human life as other selves and in other places and times. Nothing else offers such a direct glimpse of what it means to be[5] a person other than oneself. No other human creation is so fully concerned with representing the subjective experience of being alive and engaged with times and places other than the one at which we sit reading.[6]
“Representing the subjective experience of others;” that’s the key to this whole thing. Literature has two sides: from the reader’s position, it is the art of active engagement with other selves. That self may be the writer, writing in her personal voice, or it may be any variety of characters, selves existing only as language and through reading. Aside from the diary or the memoir, there is no writing that addressed to the self from the self; there is always an Other involved.[7] To read literature is necessarily to get beyond the boundaries of one’s own subjectivity. It’s a way around what there’s no way out of.
Literature’s other side is the writer’s work, the creation of this experience of other life. This is representation—that is, a presentation again, a version in language of something that, although it may be entirely new (just as every child born to the world is entirely new) nevertheless partakes (just as every child etc.) of what we share, what we know, and where we all reside.
Of course all art presents or represents: a photograph or a film shows what something looks like or how some people might act; a painting or a sculpture gives an interpreted vision; music produces new feelings in the moment of listening and remembering.[8] All of this is invaluable. My special plea for literature is this: that it requires a reader’s engagement with the thoughts and feelings of others in language, and language has the peculiar quality of creating its meaning not through the senses but through imagination and reason. Words themselves are sense-neutral. We experience stories not as something apprehended by the eye or ear, but as meaning unfolding inside of us.[9]
You can think of representation as a kind of simulation.[10] We twenty-first-century types are familiar with simulation almost from childhood. Science experiments, meteorology, computer games—these are all instances where something real or potentially real (operations of nature, tornadoes, battles between orcs and elves) are played out by rules and models intended to explain how and why things happen as they do (or would). The point is to understand, and we judge any simulation by how it helps us do so. We come to ignore the Ouija Board and trust the weatherman. [11] We learn about the methods, and we judge.
Literature is the same, but what it simulates is human experience.[12] Where a science experiment uses laws of chemistry and physics, where a computer game uses maps and mathematics, a poem or a story uses language. Every literary word is a choice made to represent what it means to be a particular person in a particular situation.[13] While other modes of simulation (lab work, weather reports, Halo 3) crunch out objective results, or at least results presented as objective, literature depends on the ability of a reader to experience the representation through the lens of her own relationship to language. The best that any literature can do is always limited by that relationship.[14] A science experiment produces information about the world. Literature offers a new relationship to it. Indeed, it insists on it.
Of course it is possible to ignore all of this. Why bother? This is the question where we started. So I have offered two points: subjectivity and representation. But even given these two heavy-duty ideas, why put time into the reading of stories, a practice that requires quite a bit of mental effort in addition to falling pretty low on the sexy whiz-bang technology scale? Why not just drive and shop and anything-but-read? Why not settle for what’s in front of you?
My answer is that literature offers you the gift of wider life. Every day (as I keep dolefully reminding you here) reminds us of the sad fact of human limitation.[15] Literature sidesteps the limitations of perspective. In a peculiar way, it provides you with experience of life that you don’t have and—no matter how far you travel, how much you spend, how well you are connected—can never have. In literature there is a plenitude of this. Stories are artificial; they concern what’s real. The writer meets the reader, and then something transcends both. Provisionally, yes; partially, yes. But there it is, and nowhere else.
If that sounds too airy, think of it this way: literature shows life as it might be, and as it should or (with a mission here) shouldn’t be. O’Brien’s words stick with me. He’s talking about the paradoxical beauty of war, but he is also talking about stories, and about stories as the only medium available to try to communicate that “hard, aching love” which so elevates and frustrates him. This is literature. It comes to teach about the life you live, but also to awaken you to lives that others live, or could. (Is there a better definition of love?) It comes simply to say (they that have ears, let them hear) that you might have more life, and have it more abundantly. And isn’t that enough?
[1] (1962-2008, R.I.P., a lot of people’s favorite writer.)
[2] I play computer games myself, if you’re wondering. Some of them are awesome, but they’re just not literature yet (although some stuff from Bioware may be getting close).
[3] Currently it is fashionable to eschew value judgments as somehow unfair or distasteful. This attitude proceeds from an inability to differentiate judgment from prejudice. Prejudice is the particular form of stupidity that fails to recognize appropriate criteria for evaluation, but judgment—informed judgment—has always and rightly been considered the highest human faculty. You have read Pride and Prejudice. (Haven’t you?)
It must be added that rejection of value judgments is itself a value judgment, albeit a wrong one.
[4] I’m not trying to be a downer here, but there it is.
[5] That is, to be subjectively, not just to look at or listen to another but to feel and think as another feels and thinks.
[6] This paragraph calls for consideration of story-media beyond traditional written literature: movies, for instance. As much as the present author love good movies, the argument must be made that film is (usually) limited by two elements: time and the visual. The visual medium appeals to the eye in a way that language does not, and for the most part the eye is naively biased towards the beautiful and the exceptional. Also, few people have the patience for movies running more than two or three hours, limiting what can be said and shown. Finally, the economics of movie production and distribution work against anything that isn’t popular and pleasing, two qualities that truth often lacks, alas.
[7]In fact, it has been argued that the act of writing produces its own Other, the reader, and that (therefore) even a diary writer is not writing to himself. However personal, the self who writes is never identical with the self who reads.
[8] Here I’m talking about the reception side of all these arts. Listening to music or watching dance (e.g.) are not the same as playing music or doing dancing. The creation of those arts lies beyond the scope of this essay, just as they lie beyond my competence.
[9] Think of this way: we look at a picture, and it may show us many things; we look through language, and to some degree must show things to ourselves. The corollary is that it is possible to passively watch, but it is not possible to passively read.
[10] Or vice-versa, really, but that doesn’t matter here.
[11] Just as we come to trust some authors more than others.
[12] No doubt there is some good reason for the root shared by experience and experiment. Look it up.
[13] And this representation, by the way, doesn’t depend on realism—it can just as fanciful as any computer game, so long as the aim is to involve the reader in subjective experience in some fully human way (as opposed to involving the player in, say, merely the tactics of spellcasting). (This is the difference between Tolkien and World of Warcraft.)
[14] This, by the way is the point of English classes. The true topic (I could say subject, but that is obviously a freighted word at this point) of English class is not literature per se, or even language, but the student’s relationship to these. It’s impossible to “learn” the “content” of an English class in the way you can learn, say, Physics. If a student refuses to read well and to try to write well, it’s not that the content didn’t get learned. Rather, the content (the student’s relationship to language and literature) simply never came into existence at all. An unopened book is hollow.
[15] Unless, of course, you’re not paying attention, in which case, go play! You won’t have long.
I'm not sure I agree with the argument I make below. Take this as a writing exercise. I wanted to see if I could articulate this stance and whether doing so would clarify my thinking. I don't know that it has. I do know that the writing is a little stiff.
But if it *is* true that the use of the bombs saved many hundreds of thousands of other lives in the months that followed, this seems like a valid line of thinking. The real problem (one not addressed here at all) is this: how do we understand (even forgive) the horrors of the past without giving license to the future?
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A few thoughts on the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, a propos of a recent personal discussion. Obviously, bombing civilians is an awful thing and should not be done. This principle should guide us as we act in the present and plan for the future. But we do wrong by the past when we look at the atomic bombings and judge them purely in hindsight. It's far from clear that Imperial Japan was ready to surrender. The "tottering Empire" myth shaped most condemnations of the bomb from the sixties until recently, but it has begun to give way. (The Soviets were fond of this line, but they had their own reasons.) Richard Frank's Downfall: the End of the Imperial Japanese Empire makes a strong case that Japan was far from finished, and I think most historians have taken his view as a necessary correction. More to the point, Truman and company had no reason to *believe* that Japan was getting close to surrender. At the end of the war in Europe, Germany was in worse economic and military shape than Japan a few weeks later, and it still took fighting in the streets of Berlin before the Germans gave up. The Japanese were still fiercely loyal to the Emperor, with little popular resentment or expression of war weariness. (In Germany there was visible civilian cynicism about Hitler as early as 1944, but there seems not to have been any such cynicism in Japan.) The Japanese government put out no feelers of surrender, and were in fact accelerating their brutality towards POWs and conquered civilians--hardly the behavior of a country that expected to be negotiating as the losers any time soon. The Americans in the summer of 1945 looked at Japan and knew that an invasion would be necessary in order to eliminate and replace (rather than merely contain and humiliate) the Japanese regime. They knew that invasion would be insanely costly in terms of American lives (not to mention Japanese lives, but of course no one did). The spectacle of an all-but-defeated Germany resisting the Russians at tremendous cost was really the only model at hand. No one welcomes the hated invader, even when defeat is inevitable. In short, after four years of grinding slaughter in the Pacific, Truman faced the choice: he could launch a months-long invasion in which hundreds of thousands of American boys would die or be maimed, or he could use the new super-weapons and possibly end the war in a few days at the cost of no American lives. We can criticize the nature of the targets, but civilian targets were an established feature of the war as a whole to this point, not of the atom bombs particularly. (We had already been routinely fire-bombing Axis cities at higher civilian cost than Hiroshima and Nagasaki. By the end of the war, such attacks were routine. They would have continued for months as the invasion approached.) Ultimately the bombs saved more lives (on both sides) than they cost. Hirohito later said (unless this is myth--it's not my specialty) that the spectacle of the bombs was the only thing that allowed him to plausibly surrender, and that he could not have capitulated simply in the face of invasion. It can be argued, too, that the actual employment of the only two nuclear weapons in existence gave the world a view of horror that is responsible for preventing employment of the thousands of weapons that followed. Without Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Korean war (or Cuba or Vietnam) would almost certainly have gone atomic, and there were many more bombs available then. Obviously we should take the case of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, viewed in hindsight, into all of our thinking about choices we make now and in the future. But we shouldn't (as Walser, whom I really respect, unfortunately does, and as Rawls apparently does too) mistake our ethical calculus for a comprehensive understanding and judgment of historical choices. Real experience is too messy and too fraught for that. I believe that Truman and the allies opted for the lesser of necessary evils as they understood them. I suspect that not a few of my friends disagree here, particularly those leaning farthest left. But I think the fault line is not essentially about the use of force, but about the use of historical experience, of hindsight. To understand the use of the A-bombs in the circumstances of 1945 is not to condone the use of WMDs in the present or the future. It's difficult to imagine how a leader today might come to face precisely the same choice that Truman did at that time. Were they to do so, however, it is difficult to imagine how they could make a different choice.
Two people I love most now attend an independent Evangelical church that is modern and highly polished in most respects. The crowd is mixed in age and contains a smattering of non-whites, the rock 'n roll gospel music is talented without dominating the service, the preacher is poised and presents himself as with-it and modern (or at least be-soul-patched). They are not charismatic in the technical sense, and most of the lessons I've heard (or heard of) are focused on morality, salvation, and modern life, not crazy demon stories.
I’ve been listening to some of the claims about “Death Panels” and such in the current debate over health care reform. I know we don't have a great track record when it comes to controversial political issues, and I don't want to start a fight. But I have to say that you're falling for some pretty blatant propaganda when it comes to the idea that the Democratic reforms would mean some kind of euthanasia nightmare.
I've done my homework. The basis for the “euthanasia panic” appears to be the requirement that Medicare cover consultations between patients and doctors over end-of-life questions (which, as you know, deal with things like living wills and the patient’s intentions about comatose life support). End-of-life is a real medical issue—when it is possible for a machine to keep your lungs breathing for a decade after your brain has died, you need to think about whether that’s what you want for yourself. The inclusion of support for such discussions is itself non-controversial; numerous Republicans have supported similar moves in the past.
To draw some connection between coverage for those discussions and some sort of forced euthanasia is plainly ridiculous. I know you hate (on principle) the idea of Big Government authority, but making a leap from “support for end of life counseling” to “being put to death by the government” is about as valid as a leap from “support for childhood literacy” to “Matrix-style mind-control.” It’s like declaring that “support for public parks” leads to “the seizure of all private property.” It is logically false, it is groundless, and it is nothing more than a political scare tactic.
The facts are there: nothing in the bill goes anywhere near making someone choose death over life. (Or even choose to choose—end-of life counseling is no more mandatory than rhinoplasty.) But the best test for the truth of the euthanasia claim is this: what possible motive would the Democratic Party have for supporting a policy like that? Would any American group (beyond crazy KKK’ers) have any reason at all to want to kill other Americans for any reason? Is it simply that liberals are evil and enjoy doing evil things? Do liberals secretly long for the chance to impose a 1984-style totalitarianism because all they really crave is power?
You know me personally. I’m a liberal and I voted for Obama. We may disagree about reform of the employer-based health insurance system (which is all that this debate is really about), but do you really think that I am evil? Do you think I hate life or freedom or American ideals? If you know me, you know that I believe America is the best country the world has ever known.
Some people on the right do believe ridiculous things about people on the left, I’m sure, and the loss of the White House in 2008 has clearly been too much for them to handle. But you are way too smart for simple-minded extremism. Besides, it would put you in terrible company: the fear that Democrats want euthanasia is the same mania that drove some nutty leftists to believe that George Bush planned to suspend the Constitution or that Dick Cheney perpetrated 9/11 to get more power. It’s the same knee-jerk reaction that, on the left, equates any and all Christian cultural criticism with the world of The Handmaid’s Tale.
When I hear the argument that Obama’s healthcare proposals would lead to euthanasia, I’m reminded of the arguments about Obama's citizenship or his plans to suspend democracy and institute Islamic rule. Such claims make good radio, and they are probably a lot of fun, but they fail the reality test: what Americans of any political stripe would want something so offensively stupid as Islamic fundamentalism, a police state, or a world where the government decides who lives and who dies? Where would the Democratic Party find career politicians willing to commit *political* suicide for such a cause?
My point is this: the euthanasia panic isn’t about health care reform at all. It’s about how (at present) the right, but generally the left as well, chooses to demonize the political opposition. It’s about how we don’t even see the other side as fellow citizens.
I’m posting this message for my own purposes. That’s it. I just wish the present political climate didn’t make us so uncomfortable with each other.
