Crash Course in Literacy: Part 2

By on January 3, 2011 ·

I’m not sure why but when I made my five book reading list for my barely literate young man, I had a specific order in mind for the books.  Fahrenheit 451 was first because it’s fairly short and straightforward making for an accessible and enjoyable read with the ‘big ideas’ right there to grasp.  The next book is Call of The Wild by Jack London.  It’s longer yet still a pretty straightforward adventure story but has some more subtle things going for it.  It also has some fond personal memories so maybe I’ll go at it from that angle.

I don’t know about these days but there was a time when this novel was considered a classic ‘boy’s book’ like Old Yeller or The Yearling.  Perhaps it’s the adventure aspect which gets it cast as juvenile literature but it’s actually pretty dark and melancholy with some pretty intense scenes of violence and survival.  I couldn’t have been more than ten when I read it which, in retrospect, might have been a little young.  Not because a boy can’t handle the dark tone but because the underlying theme of Buck finding his way back to his wild and wolfish roots and the artful way London lays it out, might be lost on a young boy.

Buck, if you haven’t read it, is a dog.  A big and content domesticated dog in a respectable and comfortable California house.  The gardener of the household steals Buck and sells him and the dog is sent to Alaska.  The story takes place during the Klondike Gold Rush so sled dogs and their importance is a big deal.  Buck is taken on by a pair of French Canadians who train him for that kind of work.  Eventually he learns the ways of the pack well enough to challenge the lead dog.  Buck wins that fight and the loser is killed by the rest of the pack.

It was this fight and the aftermath where I started to get the idea that there was more going on here.  Even though Buck is the protagonist it’s not from his point of view.  We don’t hear his thoughts in English or anything like that.  We simply see what he does and the reactions of the humans around him and the reader has to determine what that really means.  In the case of the fight, the sledders are less concerned with the loss of one dog and instead admire Buck and his refusal to pull until he’s given his rightful place at the head of the pack.  He’s now a competent and valuable sled dog and he’s sold again to a family of greenhorns who are woefully ill prepared for life in the Klondike.  It was at this point that the book takes a big place in my personal memories.

My dad saw I was reading it and started to ask me what I thought.  My dad read a lot but usually military histories of the twentieth century and non-fiction books about the Old West.  Over the years though he would occasionally surprise me with some more ‘bookish’ literary knowledge.  This was the first of those times.  He had read it when he was a boy and now we shared that as father and son.  He never lectured me, just asked me where I was in the story and what I thought about what was happening.

In this manner I was able to realize that London wanted me to be disgusted with the greenhorns’ incompetence.  Buck eventually takes up with Thornton, a man who is much more in tune with Buck’s indomitable spirit.  Buck isn’t Thornton’s property but rather his companion and when Buck starts to hear that Call, Thornton doesn’t stop him.  Again, if you haven’t read it I won’t spoil the exact manner of the ending.  But Buck finally heeds the call and runs off into the Wild.  It was a deeply affecting book for a young boy made personal by sharing it with my father.  Since my young friend hasn’t read it I hope the same effect would make him hungry for more books with the same power.

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Crash Course in Literacy

By on December 27, 2010 ·
Jan van Eyck 059

My last post, Read a Book You Idiot, got some great responses so thank you all for reading.  As promised I came up with a five book list for my young friend.  It was actually a little easier than I expected since I had a specific person in mind and a specific goal for the books.  I jotted down eight off the top of my head and picked the five I thought best suited to the purpose.  First the list and I’ll talk about each in turn.  And keep the comments coming especially your own book lists.  I’m always interested in what others feel are must-reads and why.  Besides, Santa just got me a Kindle and it’s a good way to get new book suggestions.

My List:

  • Fahrenheit 451
  • Call of the Wild
  • Watership Down
  • Lord of the Flies
  • No Country for Old Men

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

I went back and forth between this one and Nineteen Eighty-Four.  Both are  typically cast as Sci-Fi and both are dystopian futures.  Both were cautionary tales that turned out to be eerily prophetic but I went with Bradbury for a few reasons.

It’s a tad more accessible for one.  1984 is a good book but it’s dense.  451 has a tight pace with a lot more of an ‘action movie’ flair complete with killer robot chase scenes.  Montag is also more of an active protagonist than Winston Smith and easier to get behind and really root for.

The big reason though is that Fahrenheit 451 has an great element of discovery for a new reader.  Most people who haven’t read the book have at least heard of it and think it’s about censorship in the early stages of the Cold War.  That’s pretty much what I thought until I read it.  By the time I did read it most of the things that Bradbury was making up were in full swing.  Constant and mind numbing entertainment, overmedication, obsession with television shows and participating in them, personal communication that kept people ‘plugged in’ to the network while they ignored the person right next to them.  It’s pretty recognizable as our society right now.

The big idea and discovery though is that it’s not really about censorship which is simply some government or authority trying to control what you read (and think).  The Firemen are acting for the government of course but it’s the society’s and the individual’s willing complicity that’s the point.  These people have chosen to be mindless consumers simply because it’s easier than thinking.  A bit on the nose perhaps if you’re trying to get a young fella to read a book instead of texting his idiot friends.  Still, it’s a good book and a quick read and a decidedly more hopeful ending than 1984.

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Storytelling and Literary Fiction

By on December 22, 2010 ·
Freytag's Pyramid, which illustrates dramatic ...
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I once heard someone jokingly define literary fiction as: “A type of book where nothing really happens, but you still feel sad at the end anyway.” While this may be something of an exaggeration (albeit a slight one), much of what today’s literati label as “moving” or “evocative” is often devoid of what most readers inwardly hope for when they crack open the pages of a critically-acclaimed novel—a good story. This is not to say that for a book to be engaging it must be exclusively plot-driven. It’s just that many of today’s novelists, in an effort to be taken seriously as writers, focus primarily on developing “style” rather than crafting engaging characters or storylines.

Apparently, I’m not the only one who has noticed this trend in modern fiction. In the introduction to his recent memoir entitled My Reading Life, the novelist Pat Conroy notes:

“The most powerful words in English are ‘Tell me a story,’ words that are intimately related to the complexity of history, the origins of language, the continuity of the species, the taproot of our humanity, our singularity, and art itself. I was born into the century in which novels lost their stories, poems their rhymes, paintings their form, and music its beauty, but that does not mean I had to like that trend or go along with it. I fight against these movements with every book I write.”

While there’s truth in Leo Tolstoy’s assertion that each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way (and certainly, Conroy makes ample use of dysfunctional families in his own writing—i.e., Prince of Tides, Lords of Discipline), not every unhappy family is a worthy subject for a novel. Unfortunately, many of today’s writers miss this point, and instead of crafting stories that truly have something insightful to say, they focus too much on trying to sound “original.” But as we all know, originality is no guarantee for success. (Take Finnegan’s Wake or the film Ishtar, for example). Without engaging characters and a solid story to cling to, even the best-wrought phrases are in danger of falling away into the abyss of literary oblivion. And as Conroy states, “The writers who scoff at the idea of primacy of stories either are idiots or cannot write them.”

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Read a Book You Idiot

By on December 20, 2010 ·
Banned Books #4
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I work with a kid who just turned twenty-one and he’s an idiot. Don’t get me wrong, he’s a sweet kid, just an idiot.  I’m a long way out from twenty-one and I understand that old guys are always going to think young guys are stupid. This is the way of things.  But this kid claims he’s never read anything by Shakespeare. I’m not a literary snob who thinks you should only read the classics, but how can you get to twenty-one without reading anything by Shakespeare? I thought everybody who had a high school diploma would have to at least read Romeo and Juliet.

I made a joke about Doublespeak and he had no idea what I was talking about. Not only had he not been taught any Shakespeare but he hadn’t been taught 1984. Had never even heard of it or George Orwell for that matter. Again, I don’t think everything you read has to be ‘important’, but in my opinion 1984 is a top contender for most important novel of the twentieth century. Plus it’s just a good book.

If this kid is to be believed, he hasn’t been taught any books of any kind in school. That’s hard to buy, but even if true it’s not the real issue for me. That’s a failure of the public school system but it’s not a failure you have to live with. Just read a damn book.  I don’t get how people can’t grasp the concept of reading on your own and this kid is not the only person I’ve met with this problem. I won’t take any excuses on the matter. I don’t care if you weren’t taught any books in school. I don’t care if you had a teacher who hated you or who was criminally boring or who made you read a book you hated. Now’s the time to read what you want.

You should definitely be reading for pleasure, maybe even guilty pleasure. You should also be reading books that move you and deal with important issues. You should occassionally read books that are challenging or above your head. Just because someone is smarter than you doesn’t make you stupid. Stupider than the author maybe but drop your ego and you might learn something. Reading books that fulfill more than one of these functions is one of life’s true joys.

I talked about this with a friend of mine who teaches English (and contributes to this blog)  and he said he started giving students booklists. But which books?  What books would you put on a list for a person who claims he’s never read anything? They would have to be books that have some of the big ideas going on. Literature in other words but it would also have to be an engaging read. It would need to be a good story that you can’t put down and may feel the need to read more than once. It would help if the book was infectious. One of those books you make excuses to quote or talk about and feel like you have to pass along.

And how long a list? My friends are all readers and I’m sure each of us could come up with a list of fifty ‘must reads’ without trying hard. That number may be too daunting for a novice reader though. In fact I think a top ten list is too many. I think five is a good number and I think I’m gonna make a five book reading list. I’ll ponder it for a bit and make that my next post. I am of course open to suggestions in the comments.

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A Night at the Opera

By on November 23, 2010 ·

Up until now I’ve avoided opera—not out of malice or a disdain for the music (my dad had a large collection of classical LPs he used to play when I was a kid which included a number of opera scores, and I remember enjoying them), but simply because I didn’t feel qualified to give an intelligent appraisal of the art. So when I was invited to join some friends for an operatic performance of Carmen, I thought it my duty to experience this centuries-old art form for myself.

You see, pretty much everything I know about opera I learned from Gilligan’s Island and certain Warner Brothers cartoons. (Who can forget Elmer Fudd dressed as a Valkyrie singing “Kill da Wabbit!” or Bugs Bunny performing a Barber of Seville-style haircut?) I enjoy most types of music, and as a musician, I’ve played in a variety of settings over the years, from orchestras and jazz ensembles to rock bands and Irish pub groups. But in my three decades of playing music, I had yet to see a classical opera. I must say my experience watching Carmen was certainly illuminating.

I’m a firm believer that, in the world of the arts (as in most areas of life), nothing equals the experience of being in the presence of people who are masters of their crafts. Whether it’s Yo Yo Ma coaxing notes from his cello, Paddy Maloney churning out jigs and reels on his uilleann pipes with The Chieftains, or Randy Johnson throwing a perfectly placed fastball or slider (yes, I do consider top-level athletes to be just as much artists as dancers or singers), I’ve always been enamored by people who are really good at what they do.

Without a doubt, the cast members of Carmen were indeed superb, and my hat goes off to people who dedicate their lives to such a demanding art. In addition to the singing and the dancing, these performers must be able to play their parts convincingly in a show that runs nearly three hours in length. To all of these talented individuals, I say, “Bravo!”

This is not to say that I am now an ardent devotee of the operatic arts. As in many of life’s endeavors, some tastes are acquired (like coffee or beer). For an opera novice like myself, there are several hurdles to be overcome, such as the communication gap.

For those of us plebeians in the audience whose college major was something other than Romance Languages, the company provided subtitled lyrics which were projected onto a narrow screen above the stage. While this was certainly helpful (for non-French speakers, it was essential—although even for a native Frenchman, it would have been difficult to decipher the singers’ lines through all the operatic warbling), it also created a sort of paradox; I realized as the words were flashed before me that it seemed to take an eternity for the singers to say whatever it was they were trying to communicate. There was one character in particular who spent ten minutes trying to relay four lines of dialogue to her boyfriend. (And every time she took the stage, she said the same thing: “Here’s a message from your mother.”) About two hours into the show, I started glancing down at my wristwatch, and there were a couple of moments when I would’ve sworn I saw the date change.

Of course, much of my problem with the time factor could be attributed to my own limited attention span. We moderns are used to two-hour movies and thirty-minute sitcoms. Elizabethans, by contrast, thought a preacher was just getting warmed up when his sermon reached the three-hour mark. Oh, how times have changed.

According to the historical information printed in the Carmen playbill, the 16th century composers who helped introduced the world to opera believed that the “current state of dramatic and musical expression was inadequate to convey the complexity of human emotion.” I don’t know about that. Sophocles used music and poetry to tell stories pretty effectively. And of course, there’s always Shakespeare. I think his narratives came out alright—even without the song-and-dance numbers and the ten minute arias. But hey, what do I know? I’m just an amateur who likes cartoons that feature speech-impaired hunters chasing rabbits around with spears.

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