10-second review: Teach students labeled “reluctant,” “alienated,” “disadvantaged,” etc. to learn how to learn.
Source: LR Johannessen. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy (May 2004), 638-647. A publication of the International Reading Association (IRA).
Comment: In general, students labeled “reluctant,” “alienated” and “disadvantaged” have no interest in reading or learning. The idea of teaching them how to learn means using independent study. They pick a question to which they really want the answer. They prepare a plan of action, including a variety of resources to find their answers, especially people in the real world who are involved in the topic. You’ll need to teach them how to conduct an interview, use e-mail, the Internet, but also books and magazines. They will need to plan both written and creative methods of presenting their findings. From this project and others, students should learn how to learn whatever they want or need to learn. If possible, show them how to apply this newfound knowledge of “how to learn” to the classroom. RayS.
Friday, November 28, 2008
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Topic: Six Levels of Thought
10-second review: A useful chart of levels of thought: knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation.
Summary: lowest—recall facts (knowledge); summarize, explain (comprehension); relate to real life (application); compare/contrast (analysis); create something new (synthesis); give an opinion (evaluation).
Example of using levels of thinking. Knowledge: draw and label the parts of the human heart; comprehension: describe the functions of each part of the heart; application: write a paragraph describing the things you do to keep your heart healthy; analysis: compare and contrast the lifestyles of a person with a healthy heart to a person with heart disease; synthesis: describe the journey of a blood cell through the arteries of an unhealthy heart; evaluation: evaluate a friend or relative’s lifestyle related to what you know about maintaining a healthy heart and make any recommendations for improvement.
Source: A Paziotopoulos & M Krull. The Reading Teacher (April 2004), 673. A publication of the International Reading Association (IRA).
Comment: Useful in teaching students how to think. Useful in preparing questions; students should learn and apply these levels of thought. RayS.
Summary: lowest—recall facts (knowledge); summarize, explain (comprehension); relate to real life (application); compare/contrast (analysis); create something new (synthesis); give an opinion (evaluation).
Example of using levels of thinking. Knowledge: draw and label the parts of the human heart; comprehension: describe the functions of each part of the heart; application: write a paragraph describing the things you do to keep your heart healthy; analysis: compare and contrast the lifestyles of a person with a healthy heart to a person with heart disease; synthesis: describe the journey of a blood cell through the arteries of an unhealthy heart; evaluation: evaluate a friend or relative’s lifestyle related to what you know about maintaining a healthy heart and make any recommendations for improvement.
Source: A Paziotopoulos & M Krull. The Reading Teacher (April 2004), 673. A publication of the International Reading Association (IRA).
Comment: Useful in teaching students how to think. Useful in preparing questions; students should learn and apply these levels of thought. RayS.
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Topic: Questions
10-second review: What type of question do you ask?
Summary: “There are really two different reasons for asking questions of a class: to find out if each individual has done his work...and to expose the difficulties they have found...in preparing the work; the former is a method of making them learn, the latter helps them to learn.”
Source: Highet, The Art of Teaching, p. 125. Highet’s book gives common-sense advice on how to teach effectively. Emphasizes lecture, but there are good lecturers and lecturers who put their students to sleep. Highet tells the reader how to be a good lecturer. Victims of boring lecturers will appreciate his advice.
Comment: Highet’s types of questions are about catching the students in not doing their work vs. finding out the difficulties in completing the work and helping them complete the work successfully.
For me, there are two other types of questions. The first type of question is to elicit from the students the answers given to them by the teacher. There’s a correct answer and the game is whether students have memorized what the teacher has taught them. Such questions are a bore.
With the second type of question, both teacher and student do not know the answer and must figure out how to find the answer. That type of question is honest inquiry, involves students actively in seeking the answer and helps students learn how to learn. RayS.
Summary: “There are really two different reasons for asking questions of a class: to find out if each individual has done his work...and to expose the difficulties they have found...in preparing the work; the former is a method of making them learn, the latter helps them to learn.”
Source: Highet, The Art of Teaching, p. 125. Highet’s book gives common-sense advice on how to teach effectively. Emphasizes lecture, but there are good lecturers and lecturers who put their students to sleep. Highet tells the reader how to be a good lecturer. Victims of boring lecturers will appreciate his advice.
Comment: Highet’s types of questions are about catching the students in not doing their work vs. finding out the difficulties in completing the work and helping them complete the work successfully.
For me, there are two other types of questions. The first type of question is to elicit from the students the answers given to them by the teacher. There’s a correct answer and the game is whether students have memorized what the teacher has taught them. Such questions are a bore.
With the second type of question, both teacher and student do not know the answer and must figure out how to find the answer. That type of question is honest inquiry, involves students actively in seeking the answer and helps students learn how to learn. RayS.
Monday, November 24, 2008
Topic: Planning
10-second review: Demonstrate planning by sharing with students the teacher’s plans.
Summary: “The best way to demonstrate the value of long-term planning is to plan all the work which the class will do, to explain the plan to them, to make sure that they keep it in mind, and after the work has been completed to look back over it and sum it up; the young have very little ability to make long-term plans; they live from day to day, or at least from one Saturday to another.”
Source: Highet, The Art of Teaching, p. 69. Highet’s book gives common-sense advice on how to teach effectively. Emphasizes lecture, but there are good lecturers and lecturers who put their students to sleep. Highet tells the reader how to be a good lecturer. Victims of boring lecturers will appreciate his advice.
Comment: Highet’s approach to teaching students long-term planning is called “modeling” in today’s educational lingo, demonstrating the skill by using it with the class.
The most significant question that students ask themselves every day in class is “Why am I learning this?” Purpose for learning needs to be an important part of lesson planning.
But Highet is also right. Teachers need to help students plan long-term projects. I remember being assigned long-term projects like term papers, but was never taught how to plan for them. RayS.
Summary: “The best way to demonstrate the value of long-term planning is to plan all the work which the class will do, to explain the plan to them, to make sure that they keep it in mind, and after the work has been completed to look back over it and sum it up; the young have very little ability to make long-term plans; they live from day to day, or at least from one Saturday to another.”
Source: Highet, The Art of Teaching, p. 69. Highet’s book gives common-sense advice on how to teach effectively. Emphasizes lecture, but there are good lecturers and lecturers who put their students to sleep. Highet tells the reader how to be a good lecturer. Victims of boring lecturers will appreciate his advice.
Comment: Highet’s approach to teaching students long-term planning is called “modeling” in today’s educational lingo, demonstrating the skill by using it with the class.
The most significant question that students ask themselves every day in class is “Why am I learning this?” Purpose for learning needs to be an important part of lesson planning.
But Highet is also right. Teachers need to help students plan long-term projects. I remember being assigned long-term projects like term papers, but was never taught how to plan for them. RayS.
Friday, November 21, 2008
Topic: Punishments and Rewards
10-second review: Too much in teaching focuses on punishment for not doing things; why not focus on rewards?
Summary: “There is too much emphasis in the world on trying to get people to do things by threatening them with punishment rather than by offering them positive rewards. That’s true in all spheres, including government education and child rearing.”
Source: BF Skinner. U.S. News and World Report (November 3, 1980), 79.
Comment: The message of Walden Two. The best reward in teaching is to show students that they can develop and master the skills you are teaching. When students realize that they can read and they can write, that they encounter and understand the words they have covered in vocabulary, that people enjoy reading what they have written, that they have gained new ideas in reading and can discuss them intelligently, that they can stand in front of a room and deliver a tightly organized formal speech, students will feel the glow of achievement. The best way to teach them these things is to show them how and watch them succeed. Punishment means failure. RayS.
Summary: “There is too much emphasis in the world on trying to get people to do things by threatening them with punishment rather than by offering them positive rewards. That’s true in all spheres, including government education and child rearing.”
Source: BF Skinner. U.S. News and World Report (November 3, 1980), 79.
Comment: The message of Walden Two. The best reward in teaching is to show students that they can develop and master the skills you are teaching. When students realize that they can read and they can write, that they encounter and understand the words they have covered in vocabulary, that people enjoy reading what they have written, that they have gained new ideas in reading and can discuss them intelligently, that they can stand in front of a room and deliver a tightly organized formal speech, students will feel the glow of achievement. The best way to teach them these things is to show them how and watch them succeed. Punishment means failure. RayS.
Thursday, November 20, 2008
Topic: High School Reading
10-second review: A first-year high school teacher discovers that her students could not read literature independently.
Summary: “Ellen explained that she had been rudely awakened during her first year of teaching when she discovered her students could not read well. She had assumed that students in high school classes would be independent readers. ‘Well, first I assumed that everyone in my class could read, which is not the case…. Well, they could read but not the level of literature that we were reading. They could read the words but they couldn’t comprehend them.’ ”
Source: FL Hamel. Research in the Teaching of English (August 2003), 66. A publication of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE).
Comment: Where to begin? I am assuming that the teachers will provide an introduction, including why the poem, novel or short story was chosen for reading. They will help the students build up background information on the piece of literature. They will pre-teach unfamiliar vocabulary and either set a purpose for reading or have the students develop their own purposes as in the following:
Poetry: The teacher reads the poem while the students read it silently. The students read the poem silently a second time. They underline or write any words and phrases about which they have questions. The class discusses the answers to those questions. After the discussion, students read the poem silently a third time and summarize the meaning of the poem and reactions to it.
Novel: Students read for five minutes near the beginning, half way through, three-fourths through and near the end. After each reading the students together summarize what they have read and raise questions to which they want the answers. Teacher records the questions and summarizes them in key words on the board. After this preview, teacher and students divide the questions into questions of fact that can be answered from the text, interpretation (why?) and criticism (style, etc.). Students read to answer the questions. Suggest to the students that if they become bored, they should read a paragraph a page until they are back to reading everything.
Short Story: Students read a single sentence in each column or on each page, tell what they have learned and raise questions about what they have learned. Students read a paragraph in each column or on each page and again summarize what they have learned and raise questions to which they would like the answers. They read to answer the questions and the class discusses those answers.
The key to helping students read these types of literature is their purpose for reading which comes from the questions they have raised. There are a number of ways to help students get ready to read literature. I will discuss those other techniques in other blogs on a similar topic. These, however, are basic methods for helping students read literature that is too difficult for them to read independently. RayS.
Summary: “Ellen explained that she had been rudely awakened during her first year of teaching when she discovered her students could not read well. She had assumed that students in high school classes would be independent readers. ‘Well, first I assumed that everyone in my class could read, which is not the case…. Well, they could read but not the level of literature that we were reading. They could read the words but they couldn’t comprehend them.’ ”
Source: FL Hamel. Research in the Teaching of English (August 2003), 66. A publication of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE).
Comment: Where to begin? I am assuming that the teachers will provide an introduction, including why the poem, novel or short story was chosen for reading. They will help the students build up background information on the piece of literature. They will pre-teach unfamiliar vocabulary and either set a purpose for reading or have the students develop their own purposes as in the following:
Poetry: The teacher reads the poem while the students read it silently. The students read the poem silently a second time. They underline or write any words and phrases about which they have questions. The class discusses the answers to those questions. After the discussion, students read the poem silently a third time and summarize the meaning of the poem and reactions to it.
Novel: Students read for five minutes near the beginning, half way through, three-fourths through and near the end. After each reading the students together summarize what they have read and raise questions to which they want the answers. Teacher records the questions and summarizes them in key words on the board. After this preview, teacher and students divide the questions into questions of fact that can be answered from the text, interpretation (why?) and criticism (style, etc.). Students read to answer the questions. Suggest to the students that if they become bored, they should read a paragraph a page until they are back to reading everything.
Short Story: Students read a single sentence in each column or on each page, tell what they have learned and raise questions about what they have learned. Students read a paragraph in each column or on each page and again summarize what they have learned and raise questions to which they would like the answers. They read to answer the questions and the class discusses those answers.
The key to helping students read these types of literature is their purpose for reading which comes from the questions they have raised. There are a number of ways to help students get ready to read literature. I will discuss those other techniques in other blogs on a similar topic. These, however, are basic methods for helping students read literature that is too difficult for them to read independently. RayS.
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Topic: Educational Research
10-second review: When someone uses the words “Research says….” as proof for a certain educational practice, buyer beware.
Summary: “As education policy becomes a hot topic among those campaigning for local, state and national office, that well-worn phrase ‘all the research shows’ is cropping up with new abandon. We believe that research can indeed provide important insights to guide practice and policy—but given the complexity of school settings and students’ diverse needs, the research record seldom yields simple solutions that will do everywhere and for all.”
Source: A DiPardo & M Sperling, eds. Research in the Teaching of English (May 2004), 349. A publication of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE).
Comment: Nothing makes me more upset than the statement, “Research says….” in education. I read a lot of educational research and gain many interesting ideas from it, but proof positive I don’t find in conclusions that say “indicates” and “suggests,” which are usually found in most educational research conclusions. As teachers, we are supposed to be critical readers, but, at least in the journals I read, even the best educated offer blanket statements from an educational research that has been termed “poorly designed” in general. The questions are good and the conclusions are helpful and they deserve thinking about, but they do not provide proof positive for the “best” educational practices. As the quote above says, education is too complex to apply to every situation. RayS.
Summary: “As education policy becomes a hot topic among those campaigning for local, state and national office, that well-worn phrase ‘all the research shows’ is cropping up with new abandon. We believe that research can indeed provide important insights to guide practice and policy—but given the complexity of school settings and students’ diverse needs, the research record seldom yields simple solutions that will do everywhere and for all.”
Source: A DiPardo & M Sperling, eds. Research in the Teaching of English (May 2004), 349. A publication of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE).
Comment: Nothing makes me more upset than the statement, “Research says….” in education. I read a lot of educational research and gain many interesting ideas from it, but proof positive I don’t find in conclusions that say “indicates” and “suggests,” which are usually found in most educational research conclusions. As teachers, we are supposed to be critical readers, but, at least in the journals I read, even the best educated offer blanket statements from an educational research that has been termed “poorly designed” in general. The questions are good and the conclusions are helpful and they deserve thinking about, but they do not provide proof positive for the “best” educational practices. As the quote above says, education is too complex to apply to every situation. RayS.
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
Topic: Comprehension
10-second review: “Interest and background knowledge are two factors that enable students to read beyond what is considered their normal reading level.”
Source: K Ganske, et al. Reading Teacher (October 2003), 121. A publication of the International Reading Association (IRA).
Comment: The more students know about a topic, the more they comprehend. Building background knowledge about the topic that is the subject of the students’ reading assignment really helps them to read beyond their so-called reading level. Add a purpose for reading and their chances of completing the assignment successfully increase measurably.
In my book, Teaching English, How To…. I spent a lot of time on the directed reading assignment, important activities of which are building background knowledge and setting purpose for reading. Pre-teaching unfamiliar vocabulary to be found in the assignment is another big help to the struggling reader as is having the students apply or extend what they have learned from reading after they have completed the assignment. Much better than “Open your books to page 35, read and answer the questions at the end of the chapter.”
The worst teacher I ever encountered was a high school biology teacher who gave a group of struggling readers the same textbook she was using with honors students, assigned them chapters to read and, without providing any assistance, tested them on what they could not understand. For her, it was the students’ fault that they could not read difficult material. Blah! What’s a teacher for? RayS.
Source: K Ganske, et al. Reading Teacher (October 2003), 121. A publication of the International Reading Association (IRA).
Comment: The more students know about a topic, the more they comprehend. Building background knowledge about the topic that is the subject of the students’ reading assignment really helps them to read beyond their so-called reading level. Add a purpose for reading and their chances of completing the assignment successfully increase measurably.
In my book, Teaching English, How To…. I spent a lot of time on the directed reading assignment, important activities of which are building background knowledge and setting purpose for reading. Pre-teaching unfamiliar vocabulary to be found in the assignment is another big help to the struggling reader as is having the students apply or extend what they have learned from reading after they have completed the assignment. Much better than “Open your books to page 35, read and answer the questions at the end of the chapter.”
The worst teacher I ever encountered was a high school biology teacher who gave a group of struggling readers the same textbook she was using with honors students, assigned them chapters to read and, without providing any assistance, tested them on what they could not understand. For her, it was the students’ fault that they could not read difficult material. Blah! What’s a teacher for? RayS.
Monday, November 17, 2008
Topic: Improving Teaching
10-second review: Keep a journal reflecting on the process of your teaching, noting problems, questions, possible answers, etc.
Source: D. Gorman. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy (March 1998), 434-442. A publication of the International Reading Association (IRA).
Comment: I think this technique would have been the quickest way for me to improve my teaching. Of course, I was young and, like most professionals carrying out their daily tasks, I didn’t take the time to reflect in writing on what I was doing. RayS.
Source: D. Gorman. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy (March 1998), 434-442. A publication of the International Reading Association (IRA).
Comment: I think this technique would have been the quickest way for me to improve my teaching. Of course, I was young and, like most professionals carrying out their daily tasks, I didn’t take the time to reflect in writing on what I was doing. RayS.
Friday, November 14, 2008
Ideas from Professional Journals on Teaching English
From ideas in books, I now shift to interesting ideas that I have recorded from professional publications on the teaching of English like the following:
1. English Journal, 2. Language Arts (elementary, middle school), 3. College English, 4. College Composition and Communication, 5. Classroom Notes Plus, 6. Research in the Teaching of English, 7. Teaching English in the Two-Year College (publications of the National Council of Teachers of English. NCTE), 8. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy (middle school and beyond), 9. The Reading Teacher, 10. Reading Research Quarterly (publications of the International Reading Association, IRA) and 11. The Writer, a magazine by writers for writers.
If you have been reading this blog, you are aware that it is based on my book, Teaching English, How To.... The ideas from professional publications in teaching English that I will discuss in some ways are related to the ideas I have published in my book. All of the ideas come from recent and not-so-recent publications. It is my intent that these ideas should make you pause to think about teaching English and its many complex parts, reading, writing, speaking, vocabulary, literature and teaching English as a second language. An example of an entry follows:
Topic: Improving Reading Comprehension
Summary: George Spache: “Students who can set strong purposes for their reading comprehend significantly better than those who set vague purposes” (or read with no purpose at all, RayS). C Cox. Language Arts (Sept. 75), 771.
Comment: When I was in school, no one ever mentioned purpose for reading. It was just, "Open your books to page 35, start reading and answer the questions at the end of the chapter." The idea of specifying a purpose never occurred to me. I read everything as if if it had to be memorized, a tremendous waste of time and a bore. Identifying a purpose for reading, a question to answer, the three causes of X War, etc. turns the passive reader into an active reader. I am a big believer in setting purpose for reading--and teaching students how to do it. RayS.
1. English Journal, 2. Language Arts (elementary, middle school), 3. College English, 4. College Composition and Communication, 5. Classroom Notes Plus, 6. Research in the Teaching of English, 7. Teaching English in the Two-Year College (publications of the National Council of Teachers of English. NCTE), 8. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy (middle school and beyond), 9. The Reading Teacher, 10. Reading Research Quarterly (publications of the International Reading Association, IRA) and 11. The Writer, a magazine by writers for writers.
If you have been reading this blog, you are aware that it is based on my book, Teaching English, How To.... The ideas from professional publications in teaching English that I will discuss in some ways are related to the ideas I have published in my book. All of the ideas come from recent and not-so-recent publications. It is my intent that these ideas should make you pause to think about teaching English and its many complex parts, reading, writing, speaking, vocabulary, literature and teaching English as a second language. An example of an entry follows:
Topic: Improving Reading Comprehension
Summary: George Spache: “Students who can set strong purposes for their reading comprehend significantly better than those who set vague purposes” (or read with no purpose at all, RayS). C Cox. Language Arts (Sept. 75), 771.
Comment: When I was in school, no one ever mentioned purpose for reading. It was just, "Open your books to page 35, start reading and answer the questions at the end of the chapter." The idea of specifying a purpose never occurred to me. I read everything as if if it had to be memorized, a tremendous waste of time and a bore. Identifying a purpose for reading, a question to answer, the three causes of X War, etc. turns the passive reader into an active reader. I am a big believer in setting purpose for reading--and teaching students how to do it. RayS.
Thursday, November 13, 2008
Reading, Books and Ideas
People do not have much time for reading anymore. Their time is taken up with working, household repairs, TV, radio, computers, e-mail, video games, the Internet, DVD’s cell phones, texting, shopping and sleeping.
Newspapers are becoming obsolete. My most recent morning edition of the Philadelphia Inquirer had more advertising space than news, a kind of newspaper infomercial. TV and the Internet present the news almost instantaneously along with video recording and streaming video. The cell phone has made talking and texting almost a 24-hour continuous activity.
TV and movies provide the entertainment that novels and short stories used to supply.
So why read? Ideas! Words, sentences, paragraphs, chapters and books produce ideas. Ideas result in reflection and understanding. The visual electronic media do not give the viewer time to reflect. Reflection enriches lives.
People will read if they are immersed in what they read. The purpose of this section of Teaching English, How To.... is to tell people how to become immersed in reading.
The books and ideas listed in the last part of this section on reading give some samples of the ideas that I have found in books over the years—books in which I became immersed because of the techniques I have experimented with and learned and shared with my readers. For me, ideas are the treasure to be found in books. Ideas have enriched my life. They have raised and answered my questions. They have helped me think about and understand the world around me. They have especially helped me understand me.
I hope these techniques and ideas will help you to become readers again.
Newspapers are becoming obsolete. My most recent morning edition of the Philadelphia Inquirer had more advertising space than news, a kind of newspaper infomercial. TV and the Internet present the news almost instantaneously along with video recording and streaming video. The cell phone has made talking and texting almost a 24-hour continuous activity.
TV and movies provide the entertainment that novels and short stories used to supply.
So why read? Ideas! Words, sentences, paragraphs, chapters and books produce ideas. Ideas result in reflection and understanding. The visual electronic media do not give the viewer time to reflect. Reflection enriches lives.
People will read if they are immersed in what they read. The purpose of this section of Teaching English, How To.... is to tell people how to become immersed in reading.
The books and ideas listed in the last part of this section on reading give some samples of the ideas that I have found in books over the years—books in which I became immersed because of the techniques I have experimented with and learned and shared with my readers. For me, ideas are the treasure to be found in books. Ideas have enriched my life. They have raised and answered my questions. They have helped me think about and understand the world around me. They have especially helped me understand me.
I hope these techniques and ideas will help you to become readers again.
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
Books and Ideas (43)
I read for ideas. Here are some of the ideas I have found in books.
Best American Essays of the [20th] Century. Editors: Oates and Atwan.
Edward Hoagland. “Heaven and Nature.” 1988. Reflections on committing suicide.
Stephen Jay Gould. “The Creation Myths of Cooperstown.” 1989. The author believes that people prefer “creation myths” to the reality that most phenomena evolve. Baseball is an example. It was not started by Abner Doubleday, a man who didn’t “know a baseball from a kumquat.” It evolved from primitive stick-and-ball games played by working people even before America became a British colony.
Gerald Early. “Life with Daughters: Watching the Miss America Pageant.” 1990. An African-American man watches the Miss America Pageant with his daughter. Confronts the unspoken belief that white women are the image of the perfect American woman.
John Updike. “The Disposable Rocket.” 1993. The author reflects on the male body and in the process contrasts it with the female’s. The man’s role in reproduction is like the rockets that propel the space capsule into space then fall away into the ocean. An interesting metaphor.
Saul Bellow. “Graven Images.” 1997. The author reflects on the process of being photographed. He thinks that photographers try to help the public see you as you really are, as opposed to how you want to be viewed. When you are being photographed as a public figure, the battle is on between the “photographee” and the photographer for how you will be immortalized in public. The photographer tries to reduce the public figure to the confines of a paper or a frame that makes the public figure look like everyone else.
The end of “Books and Ideas.” To be continued at another time.
Best American Essays of the [20th] Century. Editors: Oates and Atwan.
Edward Hoagland. “Heaven and Nature.” 1988. Reflections on committing suicide.
Stephen Jay Gould. “The Creation Myths of Cooperstown.” 1989. The author believes that people prefer “creation myths” to the reality that most phenomena evolve. Baseball is an example. It was not started by Abner Doubleday, a man who didn’t “know a baseball from a kumquat.” It evolved from primitive stick-and-ball games played by working people even before America became a British colony.
Gerald Early. “Life with Daughters: Watching the Miss America Pageant.” 1990. An African-American man watches the Miss America Pageant with his daughter. Confronts the unspoken belief that white women are the image of the perfect American woman.
John Updike. “The Disposable Rocket.” 1993. The author reflects on the male body and in the process contrasts it with the female’s. The man’s role in reproduction is like the rockets that propel the space capsule into space then fall away into the ocean. An interesting metaphor.
Saul Bellow. “Graven Images.” 1997. The author reflects on the process of being photographed. He thinks that photographers try to help the public see you as you really are, as opposed to how you want to be viewed. When you are being photographed as a public figure, the battle is on between the “photographee” and the photographer for how you will be immortalized in public. The photographer tries to reduce the public figure to the confines of a paper or a frame that makes the public figure look like everyone else.
The end of “Books and Ideas.” To be continued at another time.
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Books and Ideas (42)
I read for ideas. Here are some of the ideas I have found in books.
Best American Essays of the [20th] Century. Editors: Oates and Atwan.
Alice Walker. “Looking for Zora.” 1975. In looking for the place where Zora Neale Hurston was buried in Florida, the author meets a number of people who knew her. Their stories sometimes contradicted each other. But Zora’s personality, her ability to look at life as it is, without tears, and her independent thinking, seem to have separated her from her family, from her husband, and from the majority of other blacks. “She was not a teary sort of person.” And she was a great writer and collector of African-American folklore, who died in poverty.
Adrienne Rich. “Women and Honor: Some Notes on Lying.” 1977. Using the technique of Pascal’s Pensées and Eric Hoffer’s The True Believer, the author jots down random thoughts on the phenomenon of women and lying, which most often occurs in order to survive in a male-dominated world.
Joan Didion. “The White Album.” 1979. The author tells about and reflects on her experiences in 1968, experiences with the Black Panthers and college takeovers. She summarizes by saying that another author had said he put his experiences in writing so he could find meaning in them, but she has put these experiences in writing and still finds no meaning in them. Reflects the mood of the time.
Richard Rodriguez. “Aria: A Memoir of a Bilingual Childhood.” 1980. The author noticed that the sounds, not the words, of his native Spanish communicated intimacy with his family, that the public language, English, did not convey that intimacy. It’s not the words, but the spirit behind the words that conveys intimacy among the family. It’s not the language, per se, that communicates intimacy, but the sounds and the spirit communicated through those sounds that enclosed the world of his family.
Gretel Ehrilich. “The Solace of Open Spaces.” 1981. Living in Wyoming required the author to adjust to the wide open spaces, the laconic conversations and the feeling of being sealed in by isolation. In general, space is a good thing, enabling people to welcome all kinds of ideas, whereas we in the East build obstructions against space by filling up our spaces with the things we can buy.
Annie Dillard. “Total Eclipse.” 1982. Impressions of the world as it looks during a total eclipse of the sun. The world no longer looks ordinary, setting off reflections on that changed world. A dead world. The world when the sun burns out. But then the eclipse is over and people hurry back to the now familiar world of their daily lives.
Cynthia Ozick. “A Drugstore in Winter.” 1982. The author tells how she became a writer—through reading. Beginning with a lending library in her father’s drug store, all kinds of people either gave her or loaned her books and she consumed all of them.
William Manchester. “Okinawa: The Bloodiest Battle of All.” 1987. Manchester vividly describes the conditions under which his company of marines fought on Okinawa, the island from which, if there had been no atomic bombs, the invasion of mainland Japan would have been launched. The statistics of loss are staggering, more than Hiroshima, more Americans than at Gettysburg.
He pleads for Americans to remember those who died in war on Memorial Day. And he makes it clear that he has not forgiven the Japanese for what they did to his friends and fellow marines and to him personally. I think this essay should be read aloud at Memorial Day ceremonies. Americans need to understand the realities of war. They need to appreciate the conditions under which those who gave their lives—and those who survived—fought.
Best American Essays of the [20th] Century. Editors: Oates and Atwan.
Alice Walker. “Looking for Zora.” 1975. In looking for the place where Zora Neale Hurston was buried in Florida, the author meets a number of people who knew her. Their stories sometimes contradicted each other. But Zora’s personality, her ability to look at life as it is, without tears, and her independent thinking, seem to have separated her from her family, from her husband, and from the majority of other blacks. “She was not a teary sort of person.” And she was a great writer and collector of African-American folklore, who died in poverty.
Adrienne Rich. “Women and Honor: Some Notes on Lying.” 1977. Using the technique of Pascal’s Pensées and Eric Hoffer’s The True Believer, the author jots down random thoughts on the phenomenon of women and lying, which most often occurs in order to survive in a male-dominated world.
Joan Didion. “The White Album.” 1979. The author tells about and reflects on her experiences in 1968, experiences with the Black Panthers and college takeovers. She summarizes by saying that another author had said he put his experiences in writing so he could find meaning in them, but she has put these experiences in writing and still finds no meaning in them. Reflects the mood of the time.
Richard Rodriguez. “Aria: A Memoir of a Bilingual Childhood.” 1980. The author noticed that the sounds, not the words, of his native Spanish communicated intimacy with his family, that the public language, English, did not convey that intimacy. It’s not the words, but the spirit behind the words that conveys intimacy among the family. It’s not the language, per se, that communicates intimacy, but the sounds and the spirit communicated through those sounds that enclosed the world of his family.
Gretel Ehrilich. “The Solace of Open Spaces.” 1981. Living in Wyoming required the author to adjust to the wide open spaces, the laconic conversations and the feeling of being sealed in by isolation. In general, space is a good thing, enabling people to welcome all kinds of ideas, whereas we in the East build obstructions against space by filling up our spaces with the things we can buy.
Annie Dillard. “Total Eclipse.” 1982. Impressions of the world as it looks during a total eclipse of the sun. The world no longer looks ordinary, setting off reflections on that changed world. A dead world. The world when the sun burns out. But then the eclipse is over and people hurry back to the now familiar world of their daily lives.
Cynthia Ozick. “A Drugstore in Winter.” 1982. The author tells how she became a writer—through reading. Beginning with a lending library in her father’s drug store, all kinds of people either gave her or loaned her books and she consumed all of them.
William Manchester. “Okinawa: The Bloodiest Battle of All.” 1987. Manchester vividly describes the conditions under which his company of marines fought on Okinawa, the island from which, if there had been no atomic bombs, the invasion of mainland Japan would have been launched. The statistics of loss are staggering, more than Hiroshima, more Americans than at Gettysburg.
He pleads for Americans to remember those who died in war on Memorial Day. And he makes it clear that he has not forgiven the Japanese for what they did to his friends and fellow marines and to him personally. I think this essay should be read aloud at Memorial Day ceremonies. Americans need to understand the realities of war. They need to appreciate the conditions under which those who gave their lives—and those who survived—fought.
Monday, November 10, 2008
Books and Ideas (41)
I read for ideas. Here are some of the ideas I have found in books.
Best American Essays of the [20th] Century. Editors: Oates and Atwan.
Martin Luther King, Jr.. “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” 1963. In a letter that I think is as eloquent as anything I have ever read, King responds to white clergymen who criticize him for engaging in nonviolent peaceful protest that results in violence and who urge black people to wait patiently while white society adjusts to accept them. King quotes Aquinas and Martin Buber. He uses scathing logic. He uses plain statement of the treatment of blacks by whites. His message is, Why are not you, the white religious Christians, joining us in the march to justice in behalf of your black brothers to fulfill the Constitutional guarantees for its citizen? Unforgettable.
Tom Wolfe. “Putting Daddy On.” 1964. Father visits his college-dropout son, living like a hippie, to try to talk sense into him, but his language, almost unintelligible in its use of metaphors, is incapable of being understood by his son whose point of view is completely different from his dad’s. The two see the world differently, summarized by the father’s final comment to the narrator as they leave the son’s “pad” to take a taxi: “You tell me,” he says. “What could I say to him? I couldn’t say anything to him. I threw out everything I had. I couldn’t make anything skip across the pond. None of them. Not one.” That is, not one of his reasons for wanting his son to return to respectable middle-class life made sense to his son.
Susan Sontag. “Notes on ‘Camp.’ ” 1964. The best summary of “Camp” is in the last sentence: “It’s good because it’s awful.”
Vladimir Nabokov. “Perfect Past.” 1966. Reflections on the themes that emerged through writing his autobiography.
M. Scott Momaday. “The Way to Rainy Mountain.” 1967. As an adult, the author reflects on his Kiowa Indian culture as he experienced it through his grandmother in his youth. The love of the sun and of nature stands out.
Elizabeth Hardwick. “The Apotheosis of Martin Luther King.” 1968. The author reflects on the meaning of the death of Martin Luther King. She suggests that the Christian religion will no longer play a part in the battle for civil rights.
Michael Herr. “Illumination Rounds.” 1969. Interviews and incidents in the Vietnam War. They add up to the incomprehensibility to the men who fought it. “The intel[ligence] report lay closed on the green field table and someone had scrawled, ‘What does it all mean?’ across the cover sheet.”
Maya Angelou. “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.” 1970. Growing up in Stamps, Ark., the author as a young girl suffers both indignities herself and the indignity of watching her relatives as they are threatened or taunted by whites. Her mother always sang hymns to help her endure existence and to dream of relief from that existence in God. That’s why the “caged bird” sings.
Lewis Thomas. “The Lives of a Cell.” 1971. The single cell with its complexity…. “…with too many working parts lacking visible connections….” is like the complexity of the earth and the earth is most like the single cell.
John McPhee. “The Search for Marvin Gardens.” 1973. Contrasts Monopoly, the game, with the real world of the sordid streets and places in Atlantic City.
William H. Gass. “The Doomed in Their Sinking.” 1973. Thoughts on the subject of suicide.
Best American Essays of the [20th] Century. Editors: Oates and Atwan.
Martin Luther King, Jr.. “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” 1963. In a letter that I think is as eloquent as anything I have ever read, King responds to white clergymen who criticize him for engaging in nonviolent peaceful protest that results in violence and who urge black people to wait patiently while white society adjusts to accept them. King quotes Aquinas and Martin Buber. He uses scathing logic. He uses plain statement of the treatment of blacks by whites. His message is, Why are not you, the white religious Christians, joining us in the march to justice in behalf of your black brothers to fulfill the Constitutional guarantees for its citizen? Unforgettable.
Tom Wolfe. “Putting Daddy On.” 1964. Father visits his college-dropout son, living like a hippie, to try to talk sense into him, but his language, almost unintelligible in its use of metaphors, is incapable of being understood by his son whose point of view is completely different from his dad’s. The two see the world differently, summarized by the father’s final comment to the narrator as they leave the son’s “pad” to take a taxi: “You tell me,” he says. “What could I say to him? I couldn’t say anything to him. I threw out everything I had. I couldn’t make anything skip across the pond. None of them. Not one.” That is, not one of his reasons for wanting his son to return to respectable middle-class life made sense to his son.
Susan Sontag. “Notes on ‘Camp.’ ” 1964. The best summary of “Camp” is in the last sentence: “It’s good because it’s awful.”
Vladimir Nabokov. “Perfect Past.” 1966. Reflections on the themes that emerged through writing his autobiography.
M. Scott Momaday. “The Way to Rainy Mountain.” 1967. As an adult, the author reflects on his Kiowa Indian culture as he experienced it through his grandmother in his youth. The love of the sun and of nature stands out.
Elizabeth Hardwick. “The Apotheosis of Martin Luther King.” 1968. The author reflects on the meaning of the death of Martin Luther King. She suggests that the Christian religion will no longer play a part in the battle for civil rights.
Michael Herr. “Illumination Rounds.” 1969. Interviews and incidents in the Vietnam War. They add up to the incomprehensibility to the men who fought it. “The intel[ligence] report lay closed on the green field table and someone had scrawled, ‘What does it all mean?’ across the cover sheet.”
Maya Angelou. “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.” 1970. Growing up in Stamps, Ark., the author as a young girl suffers both indignities herself and the indignity of watching her relatives as they are threatened or taunted by whites. Her mother always sang hymns to help her endure existence and to dream of relief from that existence in God. That’s why the “caged bird” sings.
Lewis Thomas. “The Lives of a Cell.” 1971. The single cell with its complexity…. “…with too many working parts lacking visible connections….” is like the complexity of the earth and the earth is most like the single cell.
John McPhee. “The Search for Marvin Gardens.” 1973. Contrasts Monopoly, the game, with the real world of the sordid streets and places in Atlantic City.
William H. Gass. “The Doomed in Their Sinking.” 1973. Thoughts on the subject of suicide.
Friday, November 7, 2008
Books and Ideas (40)
I read for ideas. Here are some of the ideas I have found in books.
Best American Essays of the [20th] Century. Ed. Oates and Atwan (Continued).
S. J. Perelman. “Insert Flap ‘A’ and Throw Away.” 1944. “One stifling summer afternoon last August, in the attic of a tiny stone house in Pennsylvania, I made a most interesting discovery: the shortest, cheapest method of inducing a nervous breakdown ever perfected. In this technique, the subject is placed in a sharply sloping attic heated to 340 degrees F., and given a mothproof closet known as the Jiffy-Cloz to assemble. The Jiffy-Cloz, procurable at any department store or neighborhood insane asylum, consists of half a dozen gigantic sheets of red cardboard, two plywood doors, a clothes rack and a pack of staples. With these is included a set of instructions mimeographed in pale-violet ink, fruity with phrases like ‘Pass section F through slot AA, taking care not to fold tabs behind washer (see Fig. 9).’ The cardboard is so processed that as the subject struggles convulsively to force the staple through, it suddenly buckles, plunging the staple deep into his thumb.”
Katherine Anne Porter. “The Future Is Now.” 1950. An assessment of where we human beings are in the history of our existence in the world, with the atomic bomb, the symbol of humanity’s willful desire for self-destruction. But it may not be a world competed and, in the future, we could make a world in which its fragmented nature of today will be put together with some sense of meaning.
Mary McCarthy. “Artists in Uniform.” 1953. The author tells how she reluctantly becomes engaged in a conversation about Jews with a prejudiced military man. He thinks because of her Irish name that he can safely say whatever he wants about Jews. He doesn’t like them. The author waits until the colonel is about to depart again on the train to tell him that she is married to a Jew. A case study of a prejudiced mind and the futility of trying to change it with arguments based on logic.
Rachel Carson. “The Marginal World.” 1955. The shore brings land and sea together. The author reflects on the interaction of the two.
James Baldwin. “Notes of a Native Son.” 1955. Baldwin struggles with his hatred of whites. He recognizes that hatred is self-destructive, and concludes that he must accept life and people as they are, without rancor. But he is resolute that he will not stop fighting injustice.
Loren Eiseley. “The Brown Wasps.” 1956. People and animals cling to habits even though places have since changed—a department store replaces a field that once was tenanted by insects, birds, rodents and rabbits. The elevated goes underground and pigeons who used to be fed at its stations find the food they counted on gone. People and animals cling to the memories of what once was.
Eudora Welty. “A Sweet Devouring.” 1957. Author writes about her love of reading series books. She discovers that the volumes that follow are not as good as the first. Then she discovered 24 volumes of mark Twain, each book different. She had outgrown formulas for writing.
Donald Hall. “A Hundred Thousand Straightened Nails.” 1961. The author reflects on the life of Washington Woodward who could do anything on his farm, but whose life was wasted on moving rocks and saving old, used nails and talking about every minute detail of his experience. The author seems to conclude that the activities of Washington Woodward’s life had no value to anyone. It was a full life, but it had no social significance. Seems to suggest that the traditional New Hampshire way of life was no longer relevant in the modern world.
Best American Essays of the [20th] Century. Ed. Oates and Atwan (Continued).
S. J. Perelman. “Insert Flap ‘A’ and Throw Away.” 1944. “One stifling summer afternoon last August, in the attic of a tiny stone house in Pennsylvania, I made a most interesting discovery: the shortest, cheapest method of inducing a nervous breakdown ever perfected. In this technique, the subject is placed in a sharply sloping attic heated to 340 degrees F., and given a mothproof closet known as the Jiffy-Cloz to assemble. The Jiffy-Cloz, procurable at any department store or neighborhood insane asylum, consists of half a dozen gigantic sheets of red cardboard, two plywood doors, a clothes rack and a pack of staples. With these is included a set of instructions mimeographed in pale-violet ink, fruity with phrases like ‘Pass section F through slot AA, taking care not to fold tabs behind washer (see Fig. 9).’ The cardboard is so processed that as the subject struggles convulsively to force the staple through, it suddenly buckles, plunging the staple deep into his thumb.”
Katherine Anne Porter. “The Future Is Now.” 1950. An assessment of where we human beings are in the history of our existence in the world, with the atomic bomb, the symbol of humanity’s willful desire for self-destruction. But it may not be a world competed and, in the future, we could make a world in which its fragmented nature of today will be put together with some sense of meaning.
Mary McCarthy. “Artists in Uniform.” 1953. The author tells how she reluctantly becomes engaged in a conversation about Jews with a prejudiced military man. He thinks because of her Irish name that he can safely say whatever he wants about Jews. He doesn’t like them. The author waits until the colonel is about to depart again on the train to tell him that she is married to a Jew. A case study of a prejudiced mind and the futility of trying to change it with arguments based on logic.
Rachel Carson. “The Marginal World.” 1955. The shore brings land and sea together. The author reflects on the interaction of the two.
James Baldwin. “Notes of a Native Son.” 1955. Baldwin struggles with his hatred of whites. He recognizes that hatred is self-destructive, and concludes that he must accept life and people as they are, without rancor. But he is resolute that he will not stop fighting injustice.
Loren Eiseley. “The Brown Wasps.” 1956. People and animals cling to habits even though places have since changed—a department store replaces a field that once was tenanted by insects, birds, rodents and rabbits. The elevated goes underground and pigeons who used to be fed at its stations find the food they counted on gone. People and animals cling to the memories of what once was.
Eudora Welty. “A Sweet Devouring.” 1957. Author writes about her love of reading series books. She discovers that the volumes that follow are not as good as the first. Then she discovered 24 volumes of mark Twain, each book different. She had outgrown formulas for writing.
Donald Hall. “A Hundred Thousand Straightened Nails.” 1961. The author reflects on the life of Washington Woodward who could do anything on his farm, but whose life was wasted on moving rocks and saving old, used nails and talking about every minute detail of his experience. The author seems to conclude that the activities of Washington Woodward’s life had no value to anyone. It was a full life, but it had no social significance. Seems to suggest that the traditional New Hampshire way of life was no longer relevant in the modern world.
Thursday, November 6, 2008
Books and Ideas (39)
I read for ideas. Here are some of the ideas I have found in books.
Best American Essays of the [20th] Century. Ed. Oates and Atwan. (continued)
T.S. Eliot. “Tradition and the Individual Talent.” 1919. Several ideas merge in this essay. The poetry of the past lives although the poet is dead. The poet’s craftsmanship puts emotion in the poem; it is not the emotion of the poet himself. The individual poet in the present must be aware of what lives in past work so that he can produce poetry that lives now and in the future as part of that past. Eliot is laying the groundwork for the “New Critics,” who emphasized studying the work of art, not the poet, and certainly not, as Rosenblatt contends, to encourage readers to interpret the work of art with their personal experience.
Ernest Hemingway. “Pamplona in July.” 1923. Hemingway reports on the bullfights at Pamplona in Spain.
H.L. Mencken. “The Hills of Zion.” 1925. Mencken went to Dayton, Tennessee, to cover the Scopes monkey trial. While there, he observed a religious ritual of fundamentalist Christians who went into convulsions, howling hosannas.
Zora Neale Hurston. “How It Feels To Be Colored Me.” 1928. The title is the best summary.
Edmund Wilson. “The Old Stone House.” 1932. A trip back to the town of his youth and a mood of depression as it reveals to him a way of life that he would never want to experience again.
Gertrude Stein. “What Are Masterpieces and Why Are There So Few of Them?” 1935. Now I understand “A rose is a rose is a rose.” Convoluted sentences. Erratic punctuation. Her idea about masterpieces is almost like TS Eliot’s effacement of the author’s personality in creating a work of poetry. Stein says if you remember you are you, you cannot create a masterpiece. You are limited by your personality and identity. If you efface your identity, you can create a masterpiece. Automatic writing? Sensible ideas are occasionally thrown into what appears to be a random collection of thoughts in stream of consciousness. But the piece is well organized. She moves from defining a masterpiece to explaining why there are so few masterpieces—most writers remember themselves and their identities and therefore cannot produce anything truly original. I guess.
F. Scott Fitzgerald. “The Crack-Up.” 1936. Reflections on what he now realizes was a nervous breakdown. Maybe it was only depression. Youth and life end in unhappiness.
James Thurber. “Sex ex Machina.” 1937. Man vs. technology.
Richard Wright. “The Ethics of Living Jim Crow.” 1937. Learning to live in a white man’s world, a world of unspeakable cruelty. No wonder Richard Wright and other blacks who endured this cruelty were bitter. His story is raw and inspires hatred for the Southern whites.
Robert Frost. “The Figure a Poem Makes.” 1939. Frost reflects on the response he has to poems. His most memorable line: “It begins in delight and ends in wisdom.”
E.B. White. “Once More to the Lake.” 1941. On his return to the Maine lake where he spent his summers as a child. As an adult with his children, the author feels the years slipping away. Everything is the same as when he was a child. Almost. Outboard motors are an irritant. And as he watches his young son, he has a premonition of his own death.
Langston Hughes. “Bop.” 1949. The origin of Bop, from the noise a cop’s nightstick makes on a Negro’s head because he’s black. Whites cannot understand Bop since they haven’t been beaten about the head because they are white.
Best American Essays of the [20th] Century. Ed. Oates and Atwan. (continued)
T.S. Eliot. “Tradition and the Individual Talent.” 1919. Several ideas merge in this essay. The poetry of the past lives although the poet is dead. The poet’s craftsmanship puts emotion in the poem; it is not the emotion of the poet himself. The individual poet in the present must be aware of what lives in past work so that he can produce poetry that lives now and in the future as part of that past. Eliot is laying the groundwork for the “New Critics,” who emphasized studying the work of art, not the poet, and certainly not, as Rosenblatt contends, to encourage readers to interpret the work of art with their personal experience.
Ernest Hemingway. “Pamplona in July.” 1923. Hemingway reports on the bullfights at Pamplona in Spain.
H.L. Mencken. “The Hills of Zion.” 1925. Mencken went to Dayton, Tennessee, to cover the Scopes monkey trial. While there, he observed a religious ritual of fundamentalist Christians who went into convulsions, howling hosannas.
Zora Neale Hurston. “How It Feels To Be Colored Me.” 1928. The title is the best summary.
Edmund Wilson. “The Old Stone House.” 1932. A trip back to the town of his youth and a mood of depression as it reveals to him a way of life that he would never want to experience again.
Gertrude Stein. “What Are Masterpieces and Why Are There So Few of Them?” 1935. Now I understand “A rose is a rose is a rose.” Convoluted sentences. Erratic punctuation. Her idea about masterpieces is almost like TS Eliot’s effacement of the author’s personality in creating a work of poetry. Stein says if you remember you are you, you cannot create a masterpiece. You are limited by your personality and identity. If you efface your identity, you can create a masterpiece. Automatic writing? Sensible ideas are occasionally thrown into what appears to be a random collection of thoughts in stream of consciousness. But the piece is well organized. She moves from defining a masterpiece to explaining why there are so few masterpieces—most writers remember themselves and their identities and therefore cannot produce anything truly original. I guess.
F. Scott Fitzgerald. “The Crack-Up.” 1936. Reflections on what he now realizes was a nervous breakdown. Maybe it was only depression. Youth and life end in unhappiness.
James Thurber. “Sex ex Machina.” 1937. Man vs. technology.
Richard Wright. “The Ethics of Living Jim Crow.” 1937. Learning to live in a white man’s world, a world of unspeakable cruelty. No wonder Richard Wright and other blacks who endured this cruelty were bitter. His story is raw and inspires hatred for the Southern whites.
Robert Frost. “The Figure a Poem Makes.” 1939. Frost reflects on the response he has to poems. His most memorable line: “It begins in delight and ends in wisdom.”
E.B. White. “Once More to the Lake.” 1941. On his return to the Maine lake where he spent his summers as a child. As an adult with his children, the author feels the years slipping away. Everything is the same as when he was a child. Almost. Outboard motors are an irritant. And as he watches his young son, he has a premonition of his own death.
Langston Hughes. “Bop.” 1949. The origin of Bop, from the noise a cop’s nightstick makes on a Negro’s head because he’s black. Whites cannot understand Bop since they haven’t been beaten about the head because they are white.
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
Books and Ideas (38)
I read for ideas. Here are some of the ideas I have found in books.
Best American Essays of the [20th] Century. Editors: Oates and Atwan.
Why read it? The essays are in chronological order, from Mark Twain’s “Corn-Pone Opinions,” 1901, to Saul Bellow’s “Graven Images” in 1997. If you expect these essays to be pleasant, comforting and fun to read, you are mistaken. Joyce Carol Oates, one of the editors of the book, says, “My belief is that art should not be comforting; for comfort, we have mass entertainment, and one another. Art should provoke, disturb, arouse our emotions, expand our sympathies in directions we may not anticipate and may not even wish.” Most of these essays provoke. [Many of these essays I had never read before, but they paint a mostly disturbing portrait of the twentieth century. RayS.]
With the following summaries of the essays in this book, I bring to a conclusion my review of some of some books and ideas that I have read. Books produce ideas. Pictures present images. An idea in a book is worth a thousand images. Ideas and images appeal to different parts of the human personality. Ideas appeal to the mind. Images appeal to the emotions. Ideas can appeal to emotions. Images can appeal to the mind. Both can lead to action. Both can lead to contemplation. Both enrich the human experience.
Mark Twain. “Corn-Pone Opinions.” 1901. The source of most men’s ideas is in imitation of others’ ideas.
W.E.B. DuBois: “Of the Coming of John.” 1903. John, a young black man, has been educated at college to think and to question. When he returns home to the South from college, he is met by the stone wall of prejudice. The white people want nothing to do with thinking and questioning the status quo. [A touching drama of the black experience in America. RayS.]
Henry Adams. “A Law of Acceleration.” 1906. The complexity of the modern world as bombs and knowledge double in power and ideas every ten years, leading to unresolvable contradictions. [A “classical” Future Shock (by Alvin Toffler). RayS.]
William James. “The Moral Equivalent of War.” 1910. William James suggests that the “moral equivalent of war” would be universal service for young people in the country’s behalf. Young people would be “drafted” to be trained to work in mines, on highways, etc. Thus the military virtues—the conceptions of order and discipline, the tradition of service and devotion, of physical fitness, unstinted exertion, and universal responsibility, which universal military duty is now teaching—would be preserved without war. [Did this essay influence John F. Kennedy when he suggested the Peace Corps? Harry S. Truman suggested universal service after WWII. Couldn’t get it through Congress. RayS.]
Randolph Bourne. “The Handicapped.” 1911. The inner thoughts of a disabled person. He analyzes his condition, the responses of others to him, and understands that his disability has advantages as well as disadvantages. He insists especially on developing and recognizing his individuality as opposed to the stereotyped beliefs of those whom he encounters that disabled people do not have the potential for success as do the healthy. [A remarkably contemporary essay. RayS.]
John Jay Chapman. “Coatesville.” 1912. Expresses his horror and rage at the burning of a black man in Coatesville, Pennsylvania, while hundreds of white onlookers did nothing. [I live less than five miles from Coatesville. I had never heard of this incident. I’m shocked. RayS.]
Jane Addams. “The Devil Baby at Hull-House.” 1916. A rumor that a devil baby is at Hull House brings many women to see what they believe to be retribution for some domestic sin committed by a man against a woman or child The stories of most of these women are of unrelieved suffering at the hands of their husbands. The problem of the rights of women in a man’s world pre-dates the later Civil Rights movement of the treatment of African Americans in a white world.
Best American Essays of the [20th] Century. Editors: Oates and Atwan.
Why read it? The essays are in chronological order, from Mark Twain’s “Corn-Pone Opinions,” 1901, to Saul Bellow’s “Graven Images” in 1997. If you expect these essays to be pleasant, comforting and fun to read, you are mistaken. Joyce Carol Oates, one of the editors of the book, says, “My belief is that art should not be comforting; for comfort, we have mass entertainment, and one another. Art should provoke, disturb, arouse our emotions, expand our sympathies in directions we may not anticipate and may not even wish.” Most of these essays provoke. [Many of these essays I had never read before, but they paint a mostly disturbing portrait of the twentieth century. RayS.]
With the following summaries of the essays in this book, I bring to a conclusion my review of some of some books and ideas that I have read. Books produce ideas. Pictures present images. An idea in a book is worth a thousand images. Ideas and images appeal to different parts of the human personality. Ideas appeal to the mind. Images appeal to the emotions. Ideas can appeal to emotions. Images can appeal to the mind. Both can lead to action. Both can lead to contemplation. Both enrich the human experience.
Mark Twain. “Corn-Pone Opinions.” 1901. The source of most men’s ideas is in imitation of others’ ideas.
W.E.B. DuBois: “Of the Coming of John.” 1903. John, a young black man, has been educated at college to think and to question. When he returns home to the South from college, he is met by the stone wall of prejudice. The white people want nothing to do with thinking and questioning the status quo. [A touching drama of the black experience in America. RayS.]
Henry Adams. “A Law of Acceleration.” 1906. The complexity of the modern world as bombs and knowledge double in power and ideas every ten years, leading to unresolvable contradictions. [A “classical” Future Shock (by Alvin Toffler). RayS.]
William James. “The Moral Equivalent of War.” 1910. William James suggests that the “moral equivalent of war” would be universal service for young people in the country’s behalf. Young people would be “drafted” to be trained to work in mines, on highways, etc. Thus the military virtues—the conceptions of order and discipline, the tradition of service and devotion, of physical fitness, unstinted exertion, and universal responsibility, which universal military duty is now teaching—would be preserved without war. [Did this essay influence John F. Kennedy when he suggested the Peace Corps? Harry S. Truman suggested universal service after WWII. Couldn’t get it through Congress. RayS.]
Randolph Bourne. “The Handicapped.” 1911. The inner thoughts of a disabled person. He analyzes his condition, the responses of others to him, and understands that his disability has advantages as well as disadvantages. He insists especially on developing and recognizing his individuality as opposed to the stereotyped beliefs of those whom he encounters that disabled people do not have the potential for success as do the healthy. [A remarkably contemporary essay. RayS.]
John Jay Chapman. “Coatesville.” 1912. Expresses his horror and rage at the burning of a black man in Coatesville, Pennsylvania, while hundreds of white onlookers did nothing. [I live less than five miles from Coatesville. I had never heard of this incident. I’m shocked. RayS.]
Jane Addams. “The Devil Baby at Hull-House.” 1916. A rumor that a devil baby is at Hull House brings many women to see what they believe to be retribution for some domestic sin committed by a man against a woman or child The stories of most of these women are of unrelieved suffering at the hands of their husbands. The problem of the rights of women in a man’s world pre-dates the later Civil Rights movement of the treatment of African Americans in a white world.
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
Books and Ideas (37)
I read for ideas. Here are some of the ideas I have found in books.
Yankee from Olympus: Oliver Wendell Holmes. Catherine Drinker Bowen.
Why read it? Although this book concerns primarily Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., i.e., Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, the author, Catherine Drinker Bowen, spends time in the first quarter of the book describing in colorful detail the grandfather, called Abiel, and Junior’s father, called Oliver or Dr. Holmes. The grandfather, Abiel, was a lawyer and Junior’s father, Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, of Autocrat at the Breakfast Table fame, a physician.
It is a good thing that Catherine Drinker Bowen wrote this book. If the book had been written by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., its contents would have been as obscure as his legal opinions and dissents.
Although Justice Holmes was a student of law, he was also a student of life. He thought deeply about it and his words are often memorable.
I think my overall impression of Holmes’s life is that of his sense of purpose throughout his life. He appears not to have intentionally wasted a single day.
Quote. Holmes’s attitude toward death: "At the grave of a hero, we end, not with sorrow at the inevitable loss, but with the contagion of his courage; and with a kind of desperate joy we go back to the fight.”
Quote: “Time, events, history itself, would prove his dissents. One by one they became law.”
Quote: “There was indeed a great contagion in this courage—a courage not born with Holmes but handed down with all the accumulated force, the deep spiritual persuasion, of the generations behind him."
Soldier’s Heart: Reading Literature Through Peace and War at West Point. Elizabeth D. Samet. Why read it? The title of the book, Soldier’s Heart, refers to the symptoms of heart disease that appear in soldiers with post-traumatic disorders. They do not have physical heart disease. They do have a disease of the feeling human heart. The author, a female English teacher at West Point, who obviously has a close relationship with the institution and its students, reveals much of what it is like to attend West Point—the rituals, the language, the culture of the military. Many of these details make fascinating reading.
Her subject, English, is out of keeping with the rest of the military training that makes up the cadets’ day. But the cadets’ interaction with the literature and the films to which she exposes them, is thoughtful, relating their lives and careers to the ideas of what they read and view. And it is a wide and varied range of literature and film that she uses.
In the last chapter she reflects on how young the cadets are and the contrast with what waits for them after they graduate. But she has helped them to think about life and war through her reading literature with them.
Quote: “My ongoing conversations with students, some of which began when men and women who are now lieutenants and captains were plebes, reveal the ways in which literature helps them to understand their own increasingly complicated lives.”
Travels with Charley (In Search of America). John Steinbeck.
Why read it? I found out when I read the novel East of Eden, that John Steinbeck likes to philosophize and he does it well. He does it by the sentence. Brief. Concise. To the point. That makes Travels with Charley, a travelogue, the perfect vehicle for Steinbeck who can cross America and comment on what he finds: the people, the speech, the unforgettable characters and scenes. I thought of some other “travelogues” as I was reading it: Lolita (a novel by Nabokov) and On the Road (Kerouac). Both of those books conveyed impressions of Americans and American culture at a particular time.
For three-fourths of the book, I enjoyed the narrative of Steinbeck’s experience, his impressions and reflections. But it ends with the South—and then the book turns nasty. It’s the South I discovered when I made a trip across the country at approximately the same time as Steinbeck (1962), in 1960, the South that hates blacks with a vehemence and rage that stunned me and stunned Steinbeck, too.
Steinbeck offers a few ideas that are thought-provoking. Otherwise, the narrative isn’t deep. But it is entertaining—until he reaches the South. He says he is not drawing conclusions about the nature of the people in the South. But it is hard not to. A very disturbing finish to an otherwise idyllic trip across America.
Quote: “A journey is like marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it.”
Yankee from Olympus: Oliver Wendell Holmes. Catherine Drinker Bowen.
Why read it? Although this book concerns primarily Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., i.e., Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, the author, Catherine Drinker Bowen, spends time in the first quarter of the book describing in colorful detail the grandfather, called Abiel, and Junior’s father, called Oliver or Dr. Holmes. The grandfather, Abiel, was a lawyer and Junior’s father, Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, of Autocrat at the Breakfast Table fame, a physician.
It is a good thing that Catherine Drinker Bowen wrote this book. If the book had been written by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., its contents would have been as obscure as his legal opinions and dissents.
Although Justice Holmes was a student of law, he was also a student of life. He thought deeply about it and his words are often memorable.
I think my overall impression of Holmes’s life is that of his sense of purpose throughout his life. He appears not to have intentionally wasted a single day.
Quote. Holmes’s attitude toward death: "At the grave of a hero, we end, not with sorrow at the inevitable loss, but with the contagion of his courage; and with a kind of desperate joy we go back to the fight.”
Quote: “Time, events, history itself, would prove his dissents. One by one they became law.”
Quote: “There was indeed a great contagion in this courage—a courage not born with Holmes but handed down with all the accumulated force, the deep spiritual persuasion, of the generations behind him."
Soldier’s Heart: Reading Literature Through Peace and War at West Point. Elizabeth D. Samet. Why read it? The title of the book, Soldier’s Heart, refers to the symptoms of heart disease that appear in soldiers with post-traumatic disorders. They do not have physical heart disease. They do have a disease of the feeling human heart. The author, a female English teacher at West Point, who obviously has a close relationship with the institution and its students, reveals much of what it is like to attend West Point—the rituals, the language, the culture of the military. Many of these details make fascinating reading.
Her subject, English, is out of keeping with the rest of the military training that makes up the cadets’ day. But the cadets’ interaction with the literature and the films to which she exposes them, is thoughtful, relating their lives and careers to the ideas of what they read and view. And it is a wide and varied range of literature and film that she uses.
In the last chapter she reflects on how young the cadets are and the contrast with what waits for them after they graduate. But she has helped them to think about life and war through her reading literature with them.
Quote: “My ongoing conversations with students, some of which began when men and women who are now lieutenants and captains were plebes, reveal the ways in which literature helps them to understand their own increasingly complicated lives.”
Travels with Charley (In Search of America). John Steinbeck.
Why read it? I found out when I read the novel East of Eden, that John Steinbeck likes to philosophize and he does it well. He does it by the sentence. Brief. Concise. To the point. That makes Travels with Charley, a travelogue, the perfect vehicle for Steinbeck who can cross America and comment on what he finds: the people, the speech, the unforgettable characters and scenes. I thought of some other “travelogues” as I was reading it: Lolita (a novel by Nabokov) and On the Road (Kerouac). Both of those books conveyed impressions of Americans and American culture at a particular time.
For three-fourths of the book, I enjoyed the narrative of Steinbeck’s experience, his impressions and reflections. But it ends with the South—and then the book turns nasty. It’s the South I discovered when I made a trip across the country at approximately the same time as Steinbeck (1962), in 1960, the South that hates blacks with a vehemence and rage that stunned me and stunned Steinbeck, too.
Steinbeck offers a few ideas that are thought-provoking. Otherwise, the narrative isn’t deep. But it is entertaining—until he reaches the South. He says he is not drawing conclusions about the nature of the people in the South. But it is hard not to. A very disturbing finish to an otherwise idyllic trip across America.
Quote: “A journey is like marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it.”
Monday, November 3, 2008
Books and Ideas (36)
I read for ideas. Here are some of the ideas I have found in books.
The God That Failed. Andre Gide, Richard Wright, Ignazio Silone, Stephen Spender, Arthur Koestler, Louis Fischer.
Why read it? The accounts in this book are by idealists who thought Communism would create a classless society to replace a capitalist society built on social class, greed and competition, a society that created poverty, inhumanity and injustice for the lowest class, the proletariat, the poorest people in society. Some of these men joined the Communist Party. Others were considering it. All were disillusioned by the actual experience in the Communist Party and in the Soviet Union.
Three topics addressed by these writers were the Communist theory of “truth,” the Communist theory of art, and the Communists’ primary method of achieving their ends by using any means necessary.
The classless society would have an interregnum called the “Dictatorship of the Proletariat” that would “wither away” to produce a classless society. The men in this book concluded that such a dictatorship would never wither away because, as Stephen Spender, one of the six authors in the book said, the Communist dictatorship in Russia and in the Communist Party consisted of too much power in the hands of too few people. People like Stalin do not ”wither away.”
The writers in this book were too accustomed to freedom, the freedom to interpret reality as they saw it and the freedom to criticize. The Communist Party wanted nothing to do with criticism.
Quote: “The highest mark of culture is the ability to live in peace with persons who are different from ourselves.”
Quote: “Although I never have agreed with the views of such as Aldous Huxley that all power corrupts, I think that power is only saved from corruption if it is humanized with humility. Without humility, power is turned to persecutions and executions….”
Quote: “The freedom of art speaks to the individuality of each human being.”
Buddenbrooks. Thomas Mann.
Why read it? Novel. The study of how a middle-class prosperous family of businessmen declines in prosperity: the origin, causes and progression of decadence in the family, a transformation of the male heirs from the hard-headed spirit of business and reality to the spirit of escape from the world into beauty through art.
Thomas Buddenbrook’s career is the history of everyman, from youthful energy, to hard-working businessman, to community servant, to enervated, dejected, dispirited, conscious of failure in life, old age. The code of the Buddenbrooks is to do one’s duty to the family and to sacrifice one’s individual happiness to the prosperity of the family.
Quote. Nietzsche: “Every good book that is written against life is still an enticement to life.”
Quote: “…a study of the psychology of decadence.”
Quote: “But a man chooses to rest beside the wide simplicity of external things [the ocean] because he is weary from the chaos within.”
Quote: “God strike me, but sometimes I doubt there is any justice, any goodness. I doubt it all. Life, you see, crushes things deep inside us, it shatters our faith.”
Watch and Ward. Henry James.
Why read it? Novel. Why read Henry James? For many reasons. His subtle expression of the intricacies of relationships is revealing of how people think and feel in relation to others. His character studies reveal the complexity of personality. He throws off ideas and memorable words almost as afterthoughts. One will find many a mot juste in his novels. And he works mainly with the relationships of unsubtle, honest and straightforward Americans against the subtle devious, cultured Europeans. However, Watch and Ward deals only with America and is an early novel.
The idea behind the novel is bizarre. Roger Lawrence adopts a little girl and brings her up to be his perfect wife. Only he doesn’t tell her that that has been his reason until she is fully grown and then she rebels. Two young men who have courted her turn out to be complete jerks and she finally realizes that Roger is the only man she knows who has a heart and, it is assumed, she marries him.
The God That Failed. Andre Gide, Richard Wright, Ignazio Silone, Stephen Spender, Arthur Koestler, Louis Fischer.
Why read it? The accounts in this book are by idealists who thought Communism would create a classless society to replace a capitalist society built on social class, greed and competition, a society that created poverty, inhumanity and injustice for the lowest class, the proletariat, the poorest people in society. Some of these men joined the Communist Party. Others were considering it. All were disillusioned by the actual experience in the Communist Party and in the Soviet Union.
Three topics addressed by these writers were the Communist theory of “truth,” the Communist theory of art, and the Communists’ primary method of achieving their ends by using any means necessary.
The classless society would have an interregnum called the “Dictatorship of the Proletariat” that would “wither away” to produce a classless society. The men in this book concluded that such a dictatorship would never wither away because, as Stephen Spender, one of the six authors in the book said, the Communist dictatorship in Russia and in the Communist Party consisted of too much power in the hands of too few people. People like Stalin do not ”wither away.”
The writers in this book were too accustomed to freedom, the freedom to interpret reality as they saw it and the freedom to criticize. The Communist Party wanted nothing to do with criticism.
Quote: “The highest mark of culture is the ability to live in peace with persons who are different from ourselves.”
Quote: “Although I never have agreed with the views of such as Aldous Huxley that all power corrupts, I think that power is only saved from corruption if it is humanized with humility. Without humility, power is turned to persecutions and executions….”
Quote: “The freedom of art speaks to the individuality of each human being.”
Buddenbrooks. Thomas Mann.
Why read it? Novel. The study of how a middle-class prosperous family of businessmen declines in prosperity: the origin, causes and progression of decadence in the family, a transformation of the male heirs from the hard-headed spirit of business and reality to the spirit of escape from the world into beauty through art.
Thomas Buddenbrook’s career is the history of everyman, from youthful energy, to hard-working businessman, to community servant, to enervated, dejected, dispirited, conscious of failure in life, old age. The code of the Buddenbrooks is to do one’s duty to the family and to sacrifice one’s individual happiness to the prosperity of the family.
Quote. Nietzsche: “Every good book that is written against life is still an enticement to life.”
Quote: “…a study of the psychology of decadence.”
Quote: “But a man chooses to rest beside the wide simplicity of external things [the ocean] because he is weary from the chaos within.”
Quote: “God strike me, but sometimes I doubt there is any justice, any goodness. I doubt it all. Life, you see, crushes things deep inside us, it shatters our faith.”
Watch and Ward. Henry James.
Why read it? Novel. Why read Henry James? For many reasons. His subtle expression of the intricacies of relationships is revealing of how people think and feel in relation to others. His character studies reveal the complexity of personality. He throws off ideas and memorable words almost as afterthoughts. One will find many a mot juste in his novels. And he works mainly with the relationships of unsubtle, honest and straightforward Americans against the subtle devious, cultured Europeans. However, Watch and Ward deals only with America and is an early novel.
The idea behind the novel is bizarre. Roger Lawrence adopts a little girl and brings her up to be his perfect wife. Only he doesn’t tell her that that has been his reason until she is fully grown and then she rebels. Two young men who have courted her turn out to be complete jerks and she finally realizes that Roger is the only man she knows who has a heart and, it is assumed, she marries him.
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