Correspondence

Happy Thanksgiving!

Several of you, who will be off influencing young minds this week, requested that I let you know what you'd be missing in the intervening days, so here goes. You will ostensibly have finished reading To Kill a Mockingbird, and enjoyed it, I hope. In class, we will be discussing some of the major themes of the book, and particularly focusing our conversation toward three potential persuasive essay topics.

Rather than clutter the minds of those of you who will be working with youngsters this week, I'll take the liberty of assigning you an essay topic, with the completed essay to be submitted upon your return to civilization. You won't, unfortunately, benefit from class discussion, but I know in my heart that you're all capable of giving me something grand on your own. So here it is:

Writing Situation: In April of 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King was arrested and jailed for his role in civil rights demonstrations in Birmingham, Alabama. In a thinly-veiled reference to the "outsider" King's activities in the city, eight Christian and Jewish Alabama church leaders published A Call for Unity in a local newspaper, encouraging blacks to allow civil rights matters to be solved in court, rather than on the streets. In reply, King wrote his famous Letter from Birmingham Jail, condemning Southern Whites who supported his cause in word, but not in deed. He suggested that such "moderate whites" would rather have peace than justice.

Some people have said that Atticus Finch is the type of person King was condemning. In Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, Atticus is shown to be a reluctant hero whose preference is to avoid conflict if at all possible. Instead of being an active agent working for good in his community, Atticus is a reserved and quiet man who wants peace, not justice.

Writing Directions: Write a multi-paragraph essay in which you disagree or agree with this statement. Use supporting evidence from To Kill a Mockingbird as well as the documents linked above.

A Veritable Who's Who

Remember how when you read Of Mice and Men last year you had all that trouble juggling a dozen or so characters over the course of a couple hundred pages?

Welcome to Maycomb County, and the first four chapters of To Kill a Mockingbird. You'll be expected to identify (and compile a list of) the following individuals: Scout (Jean Louise) Finch, Jem (Jeremy Atticus) Finch, Dill (Charles Baker) Harris, Boo (Arthur) Radley, Atticus Finch, Alexandra Finch, John Hale Finch, Calpurnia, Mrs. Henry Lafayette Dubose, Miss Rachel Haverford, Mr. Radley, Mr. Conner, Miss Stephanie Crawford, Mr. Nathan Radley, Miss Caroline Fisher, Miss Maudie Atkinson, Walter Cunningham, Mr. Walter Cunningham, Miss Blount, Little Chuck Little, and Burris Ewell. You'll also need to be aware of the Haverford, Cunningham, and Ewell families as a whole.

I love and miss you all, and wish I was there with you. Be nice to Julio.

Obviously, that person is a baby.

This week's episode of My So-Called Life, "Guns and Gossip," begins with Angela Chase, in history class, expressing envy toward people who can tell her exactly where they were when John F. Kennedy was assassinated. The adults around her have painted the 1960's, a decade she missed by a good nine or ten years, as "a better time, [when] people knew what they were supposed to do and how to make the world better." She is disappointed in her own existence and that of her classmates, who, "instead of changing the world [...], sit in class and write notes about other people."

It's one of a handful of MSCL moments that, for me, makes perfectly obvious the fact that there are adult writers behind every line of adolescent dialogue, because (in addition to shoehorning in a measure of Baby Boomer, "Weren't the sixties a magical time?" smugness) it undermines the central conceit of the show: that the notes people write about other people, the awkward first kisses, the fall-outs with best friends- those things are important. They are world changing. They are potentially devastating in the immediate world of the protagonist- much more so than the thought of guns or assassinations or... suitcase bombs. The episode regains its footing as it progresses, and as the "Gossip" half of the episode's title all but takes over, but that opening monologue almost shatters the illusion of a teenage narrator for me.

My fifth period class delayed watching the episode until today, because we had the opportunity on Monday to listen to Dr. Robert Fuller speak in the theatre, and while I think the experience was, overall, a valuable one, I've also got to say that there were moments when, despite the best of intentions, the good doctor pushed a few of my buttons.

Well, one button, mainly: I get wary of adults- and I've particularly seen it among those of the so-called "Woodstock Generation," though I'm sure my own peers are equally guilty- speaking to young people about the "task(s) of this generation," as if their age group, having fought the good fight for half a century, has earned the right to assign its "important issues" to the underage interns. As I recall, no revolution has ever been fought by interns, at the behest of the white-haired gentlemen in the corner- it's hard to really call it a revolution when you're holding up someone else's banner. If a generation is going to take up a cause (and I for one think it's slightly silly to speak of billions of people as if they'll all move with one mind), it must come to that decision independent of its predecessors. In fact, I'd put good money on the idea that a glowing endorsement from an elder statesman like Dr. Fuller may just be the kiss of death for a worthy cause. Social change, after all, implies that we are moving against what came before.

Which is not to say that I don't agree wholeheartedly with Dr. Fuller's theories or his admonition against holding ourselves above others- I do. It's just that I'd like to hear that- and more- from someone in the movement- in this movement, in this present- rather than someone on his way out, looking to pass a torch. I understand that, as they say, past is prologue, and vital to our understanding of the present, but I'm eager for the 00's to be presented as more than just the long-awaited sequel to the 60's. And yes, some incredible things happened in the sixties. Yes, significant attention was brought to societal ills which had been previously overlooked by much of the population. But I'd wager that most people had little to do with it. Most people weren't sure what they were supposed to do or how to make the world better. I'm still not sure what I'm supposed do- if there is such a thing- but I have a handful of ideas for how to make my little corner of the world better.

I'm sure you do too, and I'd like to hear them.

Oh, and by the by: here is the quote from "Guns and Gossip" I said I was going to write about:

“Don’t you remember? There’d be like this one person who had, like, perfect hair or perfect breasts, or they were just so funny... and you just wanted to eat them up- just live in their bed and just be them. It was like everybody else was in black and white and that person was in color.” (Amber Vallon, “Guns and Gossip”)

Here is the quote I actually wrote about:

"Grownups like to tell you where they were when President Kennedy was shot, which they all know to the exact second- which makes me almost jealous, like I should have something important enough to know where I was when it happened- but I don’t yet. And the fact that it was a better time then, and people knew what they were supposed to do and how to make the world better... now nobody knows anything. We know who’s popular, or that social studies is boring, or that Bryan always has stomach trouble, but nobody knows anything important. Instead of changing the world, people sit in class and write notes about other people." (Angela Chase, "Guns and Gossip")

And here, if you're interested, is the bibliographical information:

“Guns and Gossip.” My So-Called Life: The Complete Series. Writ. Justin Tanner. Dir. Marshall Herskovitz. ABC. 8 Sept. 1995. DVD. Shout! Factory. 2007.

I can always sleep standing up...

Liana's off at an American Studies conference in Albuquerque this weekend, which leaves me alone with the puppies, Linus and Mathilda. I slept in longer than I have in weeks this morning, and called her when I woke up. She didn't answer, so I pulled up the covers again and cuddled with Mathilda, who thinks the entire bed belongs to her. I thought of letting myself doze off, but I wanted to talk to Liana when she eventually called back, so I cradled Phoebus Apollo, my cell phone, in my hand as I lay there.

See, I keep Phoebus Apollo on vibrate because Linus is a very neurotic dog, and gets excessively anxious when it goes off- on any ring tone. But I hate having to lay with my hand wrapped around an electronic device, even if it is the only way I'll get to speak to my best friend today. A cell phone isn't like a teddy bear, or a puppy or a kitten- even when you go to the trouble of naming it, it's still cold and hard and impersonal, and the joy-buzzer vibration it emits to signal the receipt of a call is among the least pleasant ways of being awakened. Then I had an idea- and it wasn't like I was going to get to sleep again at this point, so I slid out of bed and pulled the sewing box out of the closet.

I've been sewing pillow covers for the new furniture in our living room- everyday ones and ridiculous patriotic ones for the election night party we're having two weeks from Tuesday- and I had a bevy of scraps left over from those and other projects. It took longer than I'd first envisioned in my moment of Edison-like inspiration, but I was able to stitch together enough patchwork for a small project, and I used a ukulele as the pattern for my piece (because it was the closest thing on hand). I built in a pocket just big enough for Phoebus Apollo, stitched the two uke sides together, and filled the form with polyester fiber (the trick is to stitch the bottom of the pocket last so it acts a sort of umbilical cord for filling the body of the pillow, and then the hem is hidden inside).

The result is a sort of "cell phone cozy"- I can comfortably wrap my arms around it while resting, and the vibration is sufficiently dampened so that an incoming call is reminiscent of a purring cat. The idea's probably been patented, and I could probably march over to Target and choose from a whole aisle full of cell phone cozies- some that look like teddy bears, or puppies, or presidential candidates, but for now I'll rest in the knowledge that I've managed, in a few hours' work, to solve one of life's minor problems. When I wake up, I'll move on to global warming.

Going the Distance

If I could figure out how to comment on Marissa's blog, I'd tell her she writes some of the most lovely run-on sentences I've ever encountered.

I've been engaged with the text for so long, we're practically married.

Liana catches me as she looks out the kitchen window; I'm pulling into the driveway. You'd think in the seven years she's known me that she'd at least have had suspicions before now, but somehow it's evaded her notice. Maybe she's just persuaded herself that it wasn't happening, pushed the obvious truth to the back of her mind.

"So who is it with?" she asks.

"I don't know. Anybody. Nobody. Myself."

"And you go through the whole thing?"

"Just my side of it."

"And how often are you doing it?"

"You know, whenever."

"Whenever I'm not around?"

"I guess. Yeah."

"It's not normal."

I admit it: I talk to myself- little half-spoken soliloquies, throughout the day- in the shower, in the car, in the neighborhood on a dog walk, in my classroom before school... I replay the previous day's conversation and preview the next day's. I rehearse witty replies to future biographers and radio talk show hosts. I try on different phrases with every possible inflection; I'm constantly revising, but the final drafts of these conversations never quite reflect the hours of effort I put into crafting them.

It's why I find comfort in blogging. I get to sit down and try my thoughts out before they stream out of my mouth and call everyone's attention to the fact that I've no idea what I'm talking about.

It's been a week since Matt S. asked us all what the point of blogging is, and you've all given me- and your peers, I hope- plenty of food for thought. I've seen insights, revelations, anecdotes, poetry, rants, and eloquent observations of the relationships that make up our lives. Admittedly, the teacher in me had visions of a lot more engagement with texts- but I feel like I've gotten so much out of reading what you've been willing to share here that I'm okay with letting some of that go.

But then I remember that the beauty of this project is that you are engaging with text, because each of us is a text, to be read and pondered and responded to, and then the teacher in me is sated.

Why We Blog

Oh, this is lovely. I spent a rather relaxing, paper-free hour last night perusing the new blogs, most of which- authored by the bloggers whose handwriting I could read from the spiral notebook- are now listed on the right-hand side of your screen; take a few minutes to open a new window in your browser, navigate to each blog in your class, and cut and paste the url into your link list.





The title box actually refers to the name of the list itself- name it something that will remind you that it includes members of the accelerated class (I've named my fifth and sixth periods, respectively, "the skinny pedal" and "the gas"- get it?). In the New Site Name box, type the name of the person whose blog you're linking. Do this with every member of your class and, if you choose, the other accelerated class.

I'm glad most of you are picking this up fairly easily. There are of course, a few of you who are still a little unsure. Matt S., struggles with the existential crisis of why we blog in the first place:

I've never blogged before and I don't really know why people do it. The phone was made for a reason, so we can talk to each other freely, well at least most of the time. What's the big deal about it? Why do people do it? And what makes it so special?

I have my own answers to these questions, but I'd like you to comment on Matt's blog with your ideas first, if you've got them.
I love you. Blog on.

Go Ask Alice Siebold

I am so excited about being back in school I can barely contain myself. I got a chance today to go off topic with my 6th period, basing much of what I said on an email exchange I had with Raechel over the summer. Raechel was stuck on her essay comparing the anonymous Go Ask Alice with Alice Siebold's The Lovely Bones, and I shot some ideas her way. For those of you still wondering what kind of connections I'm looking for, I'm posting part of my response email here:

You may have noticed that the title of Go Ask Alice is an allusion to lyrics of the song "White Rabbit" by Grace Slick (of the '60's psychedelic rock band Jefferson Airplane). Here are a few of the lyrics to the song:

One pill makes you larger
And one pill makes you small
And the ones that mother gives you
Don't do anything at all
Go ask Alice
When she's ten feet tall

"White Rabbit," in turn, is an allusion to Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland. You'll also find that the narrator of Go Ask Alice herself refers to Carroll's creation in the entry dated July 14: "I feel like Alice in Wonderland. Maybe Lewis G. Carroll was on drugs too." What does this all mean? If you've seen the Disney version of Alice in Wonderland, you may recall that the action begins when Alice chases the white rabbit into a hole which takes her to a fantastical version of reality. The narrator of Go Ask Alice likewise enters a sort of metaphorical rabbit hole when she experiences drugs for the first time at her friend Jill's party. The rest of the book, like Alice in Wonderland, chronicles her efforts to crawl back out of the hole.

In The Lovely Bones, Susie, like Alice, enters a literal hole in the ground in the first chapter- and as with the narrator of Go Ask Alice, Susie will not leave the hole alive. These "rabbit holes" serve as tangible versions of a common device in young adult literature: the rite of passage. What is unique about these books (as opposed to, say, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, in which the Pevensie kids are able to come and go from the land of Narnia via the wardrobe) is that once the characters enter they don't ever come out. Both books are narrated by a girl from beyond the grave, and both leave us to wonder what their lives would have been like if they could have pulled themselves out.

Innocent Not Guilty

I finished reading Monster, by Walter Dean Myers, this morning before I dragged myself out of bed. It's the story of a 16-year-old kid accused of taking part in the murder of a drugstore owner. Myers tells the story from the point of view of Steve Harmon, the accused boy, but Steve manages to distance himself from his own story by presenting most of it in the form of a movie screenplay. "I think to get used to [prison] I will have to give up what I think is real and take up something else," he writes in the beginning, "I wish I could make sense of it. Maybe I could make my own movie" (4).

It's innovative storytelling; it allows Steve to describe the action in terms of impersonal camera angles and abbreviated courtroom scenes. He reserves his own feelings for handwritten notes in between scenes, but even in these moments he seems unsure of his emotions, his expectations, and even the degree of his involvement in the crime for which he stands accused. Steve is a classic example of an unreliable narrator; his own involvement in the story gets in the way of his ability to tell us the whole truth. Because the prosecution rules that anything Steve might have done to assist in the robbery of the drugstore qualifies him for felony murder, he deliberately fudges some of the facts of that day, and is forced to wrestle with his conscience over innocence, guilt, and all of the ambiguous territory in between. Meanwhile, the stories of other inmates parallel Steve's struggle. One man, a failed jewelry store robber who managed to lock himself into the store he was robbing, claims total innocence:

He waited for two hours while people came and tried to get into the store before he called the police. He said he wasn't guilty because he hadn't taken anything out of the store. He didn't even have a gun, just his hand in his pocket like he had a gun. (142)

If a person intends to commit a crime, or assist in a crime, but they are unable to pull it off as expected, are they still guilty of the crime? I run into this ambiguity all the time as a teacher. Say a student looks at a text message during a major test. The message may have nothing to do with the test he or she is taking- in fact, I've read the kind of texts that get sent, and it's not likely that the message has anything important to say at all- but I can't be sure of that. Using a cell phone in any class is a violation of a campus-wide rule, but in the context of a test, whether intentional or not, the violation becomes not only improper use of an electronic device but cheating on top of it, and punishable by a grade of zero.

The student will likely protest, and say that I can't prove that they were cheating- they may have been just checking the time on their phone- but like almost everything in this world, the act of cheating cannot be clearly defined in terms of "black and white," you did or you didn't; there may be varying degrees of the crime, but there is a single consequence (Unfair? Clearly, but also rather effective). Likewise, in Steve's case, while he may not have wittingly involved himself in the murder of the shopkeeper, it seems likely to all of the adults around him that he was, to some degree, involved in the robbery that ultimately ended a man's life. And if the prosecution can convince the jury of that, Steve stands to spend much of the rest of his life behind bars.

Monster ends on an ambiguous note- it isn't all wrapped up in a pretty bow, and even Steve seems unsure of who he is, of his innocence or guilt (there's a reason why defendants are pronounced either "guilty" or "not guilty"- who of us is really innocent?). "I want to know who I am," he says, "I want to look at myself a thousand times to look for one true image" (281). For those of you looking for a quick read among the summer reading options, Monster certainly qualifies- but be prepared for the questions it leaves you with to haunt you long after you've closed the book.

Heroes with Static Faces

I was hoping to get back on track with blogging last week after being incommunicado for most of the beginning of July, but then my computer stopped working on Wednesday. Its hard drive crashed, and my laptop was in the shop for the rest of the week. I'm trying to distract myself from thinking about all the files I lost, so I'll continue today with an entry about Orson Scott Card''s Ender's Game, as promised.

I wrote a lot in my last entry about how the most successful science fiction authors, in my opinion, don't forget that their characters are human, and therefore as vastly complex as the shiny chrome machines and futuristic societies that receive the focus of traditional sci-fi. To really capture my attention, a novel-whether sci-fi or fantasy or western or "realistic"- must make me care about its characters. Ender's Game, sadly, falls short of that mark for me, but I'm not sure it was for lack of trying.

The novel is told from a slightly modified third person limited point of view; that is, the narrator is outside of the story, but can tell the thoughts of one character (Ender Wiggin, in this case), for the most part. Occasionally, the narration floats into the inner thoughts of other characters, or reports on conversations and events in which the main character does not take part. I'm not sure why Card chose to float around like this; the things that happen outside of Ender's experience don't seem particularly vital to the telling of his story; it may have been more effective to settle into a traditional third person limited point of view, or even the first person, with Ender telling his own story. As it's written, a lot of potential suspense in the story is left out because we know what's being done to Ender long before he figures it out.

When Ender does finally reach certain conclusions, it's anticlimactic and not surprising in the least, not only because we've seen it coming from every other angle, but because Ender's character has hardly changed at all over the course of the novel. The Ender who says the following words to his sister on page 238 is little different (though perhaps slightly more self-aware) from the Ender who defeats an elementary school bully 231 pages earlier:

I've been thinking about myself...Trying to understand why I hate myself so badly...It took me a long time to realize that I did. Do. And it came down to this: in the moment when I truly understand my enemy, understand him well enough to defeat him, then in that very moment I also love him...And then, in that very moment when I love them...I destroy them.

Ender's basic story, the understand-defeat-love-destroy cycle he refers to, repeats itself at least four times over the course of the plot, and it's an engaging dilemma- not unlike Gene's love/hate/ultimately-destructive relationship with Finny in A Separate Peace- but after the second time it gets rather predictable. It's boring when the protagonist always wins; and it's irritating when he beats himself up for how he wins, but never thinks to change the way he deals with a challenge.

That said, the final chapter, "Speaker for the Dead," with its tonal shift, takes a step toward redeeming the novel for me (though whether I would have made it to the final chapter if I didn't feel like I had to is up for debate). It remains to be see whether it piqued my curiosity enough to seek out the book's sequels.

Despite some shortcomings, I think Ender's Game deserves its place in the speculative fiction canon, if not for its literary merits then for its legions of (often superior) imitators. With its focus on a gifted child hero destined to save the universe, it's hard to read the book's war game scenes without recalling the quidditch matches of J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series, or even the pod race of Star Wars Episode I (to be fair, all of the above owe a great debt to Joseph Campbell's monomyth, as defined in his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces).

Additionally, as so-called "hard science fiction," Ender's Game does its job: Card's vision of a future in which population restriction laws are strictly enforced (Ender shouldn't technically exist, as he is a third child in a society where two is the limit) and the human race is reeling from two wars with an alien enemy gives readers a speculative lens with which to view the present in a new light. Over the course of the novel, Card addresses ethical dilemmas as diverse as overpopulation, competitive education, and preemptive war; and while to my mind he rarely arrives at satisfactory conclusions (Ender's tactical victories could serve as a defense treatise for any number of offensive wars, and according to Wikipedia the novel has been used as a textbook at the Marine Corps University in Quantico, Virginia), I appreciate his willingness to examine them.

Next up: Monster, by Walter Dean Myers.

The Sounds of Science

One of the fun things about this project, for me, is giving myself the opportunity to go back and pick up novels I missed the first time I was in high school. With most of the books I've read so far this summer, this hasn't been an issue; King Dork, Speak, and The Lovely Bones all came out after I'd graduated (1996, for those of you who are counting); but Ender's Game, published as a short story in 1977 and expanded as a novel in 1985, was one that, for years, had just skirted the edge of my interest.

In high school I shied away from the science fiction and fantasy genres because, lets face it, I didn't need to be seen as a bigger dork than I already was. I'd grown up reading the Chronicles of Narnia and had flirted with the sort of "sword and sorcery" brand of fantasy (beginning with my dad's dog-eared copies of the Lord of the Rings trilogy) in late elementary and early middle school, but had put those aside in favor of so-called "realistic fiction" by the time I was a freshman, and sci-fi and fantasy fans were all grouped together in one Dungeons-and-Dragons-playing, comic-book-buying untouchable lunch table. This was before the general public caught onto the literary merits of comic books, when collections like Frank Miller's Dark Knight and Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' The Watchmen were just beginning to be called "graphic novels."

In short, in high school society and the world at large, science fiction was considered a few rungs below serious literature, and so I had little need for it. Ironically, by far my favorite author in high school and well after was one who dabbled in sci-fi conventions in almost everything he wrote: the recently departed Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Somehow, despite his penchant for the fantastic and futuristic, Vonnegut was never labeled with the particularly sticky sci-fi tag. You will not find his books alongside the Saturn's rings and space station chrome of Isaac Asimov's or Robert A. Heinlein's work. I think a part of that had to do with the time when he was writing, when most "genre fiction" put a lot of its emphasis on form: westerns were about shootouts, fantasy was about magic, and sci-fi was about whirring and buzzing and blinking machinery, at the expense of fully realized characters with internal struggles and dynamic character arcs. Vonnegut's characters, ordinary human beings in extraordinary circumstances, were the focus.

Much of today's speculative fiction (a supergenre that includes both sci-fi and fantasy) seems to have taken a cue from Vonnegut in this department. And former literature snobs like me have embraced the shift. Witness my media consumption of late: high on my Netflix cue is the second season of Battlestar Galactica, a show that develops its characters better than almost anything on television; I spent Monday afternoon at a matinee of the Fresh Prince's refreshing and challenging Hancock, then stopped by a corporate bookstore to leaf through the first volume of Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 8 (for my money, BtVS remains one of the top five best-written shows ever to appear on American television); and I finally got around to reading Orson Scott Card's Hugo and Nebula Award-winning novel, Ender's Game.

But I've already gone on far too long today. I'll let you know how I think Ender's Game measures on the "characterometer" tomorrow. But tell me: am I right about this? In the battle between plot and character, which should take priority? Are so-called "novels of ideas" just as worthy of praise as character-driven novels? Also, I'm still fairly unschooled in the world of modern speculative fiction (though I do have a soft spot for Ursula K. Le Guin); does anyone have a good fantasy, sci-fi or graphic novel to recommend?

Ocean Eyes

I’m back from a lovely two week road trip through the American Southwest. Actually, I’ve been back for a few days, but it’s taken some effort to get back on board with writing. Not that I’ve slowed in my summer reading adventures; I finished A Separate Peace while staying at my brother-in-law’s house in El Paso, and I’m about three quarters of the way through Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game. We also listened to about twenty hours of Middlesex, by Jeffrey Eugenides, on audio as we drove cross country- plus I’m midway through the second season of HBO’s The Wire, and I'm listening to the new Mates of State album over and over. All of this input has made it difficult for me to go back and say what I liked about The Lovely Bones.

Here: I liked all of it. Loved it. I’m engaged to it, and we’ve set the wedding for sometime in the Fall.

Most of all, I was struck by the time that Sebold took to fully develop almost all of her characters- male and female. In an interesting twist of convention, the dead narrator of The Lovely Bones is able, from her perch in a personalized Heaven, to see into the hearts and minds of everyone she left behind on Earth, making the point of view a sort of mix between first person and third person omniscient: first person omniscient. Usually, with first person narration, we get a complete picture of the narrator- maybe, if we’re lucky, another larger-than-life character (I think of Finny in A Separate Peace, or Dean Moriarty in On The Road). But Susie, the narrator of Bones, invites us not only into her own world, but that of her surviving family, her friends, and the man responsible for her death. As the novel progresses, the story become less about her murder and more about how those around her go on with their lives.

Most powerful for me are the descriptions of Susie’s mother, Abigail, a woman trapped- even before Susie’s death- in a life she never meant for herself. Early in the novel, Susie recalls a photograph she took of her mother once when she wasn’t looking:

When the roll came back from the Kodak plant in a special heavy envelope, I could see the difference immediately. There was only one picture in which my mother was Abigail. It was that first one, the one taken of her unawares, the one captured before the click startled her into the mother of the birthday girl, owner of the happy dog, wife to the loving man, and mother again to another girl and a cherished boy. Homemaker. Gardener. Sunny neighbor. My mother’s eyes were oceans, and inside them there was loss. I thought I had my whole life to understand them, but that was the only day I had. Once upon earth I saw her as Abigail, and then I let it slip effortlessly back- my fascination held in check by wanting her to be that mother and envelop me as that mother (43).

I've had revelations like this about my own mother- it comes up more now that I'm an adult; I see a longing in her eyes when she talks about her life before the responsibilities of marriage and motherhood, and I wonder if she's thinking of that loss, of the infinite other ways her life could have turned out. I don't know what the specific dream may have been that she turned her back on in order to build a family, and like Susie, my need for her to be my mother overshadows any real desire to find out. In Abigail's case, the dream is of furthering her education, of teaching literature at the the college level- all of which she abandons with the unexpected arrival of a third child:

If I had paid attention, I would have noticed signs. Now I see the shifting, how the stack of books on my parents’ bedside table changed from catalogs for local colleges, encyclopedias of mythology, novels by James, Eliot, and Dickens, to the works of Dr. Spock. Then came gardening books and cookbooks until for her birthday two months before I died, I thought the perfect gift was Better Homes and Gardens Guide to Entertaining. When she realized she was pregnant the third time, she sealed the more mysterious mother off. (151)

Good characterization, to me, makes you think of someone you know: the punk rock boys in King Dork were familiar and real; I could see half a dozen of my freshman girls in Melinda's lack of expression in Speak. Great characterization makes you think about yourself. Reading the part of Abigail, I found myself examining the domestic trap she'd wandered into and wondering if I helped construct such traps in my own life. In my role as a son, as a brother, as a husband, as a teacher, how do I facilitate the dreams of the people close to me? Am I an opener or a closer of doors? Even if my mom's only dream ever was to be a mom, do I at least validate that? Or do I take it for granted? This final passage, in particular, made me more conscious of how I pitch in around the house:

She had become aware of what she did. She cut carrots and celery into edible lengths. She washed out thermoses and lunchboxes, and when Lindsey decided she was too old for a lunchbox, my mother caught herself actually happy when she found wax-lined bags that would keep her daughter’s lunch from seeping through and staining her clothes. Which she washed. Which she folded. Which she ironed when necessary and which she straightened on hangers. Which she picked up from the floor or retrieved from the car or untangled from the wet towel left on the bed that she made every morning, tucking the corners in, and fluffing the pillows, and propping up stuffed animals, and opening the blinds to let the light in. (158)

It's so easy, even in what I consider a fairly progressive marriage, to fall into the gender-specific patterns of household labor that have dominated for centuries: he mows the lawn and comes in to watch baseball, she cooks dinner and serves it to him on the couch, picks up his dishes, rinses them, puts them in the dishwasher, cleans the kitchen and unloads the dishwasher...

It's rare that I feel this convicted while reading a novel- it also happened a few times while I was reading Speak: how many times during the 2007-2008 school year did I simply pass by students who didn't speak up during class? How much did I miss out on by not taking time to ask a few simple questions? Great literature (and film, and television, and music) strives not only to entertain us, but to promt us to somehow improve ourselves. Keep reading.

Easy Conversation

Friday I wrote about what I perceived as a lack of "round" female characters in young adult fiction, with the assumption that I'd counter that post with examples from my recent reading of female-oriented novels, including Speak and The Lovely Bones. But having completed Bones over the weekend, and with its poetic language still echoing around in my head, it looks like Speak will take a back seat in a follow-up entry.

But first I should acknowledge the rather obvious common thread in both Anderson's and Sebold's novels (and this isn't, I think, a spoiler for anyone who has heard anything about either book): they both are told from the point of view of a protagonist who has been raped. Sebold, in a 2002 interview with powells.com stated that one of her goals in writing both The Lovely Bones and Lucky, a memoir of her own experience with rape, was for the word rape "to be used easily in conversation." Often the issue seems to be swept under the rug, or not deemed appropriate for polite conversation. But for the two young women who give their voices to these novels, it is both a defining moment in their lives and their initiation into sexuality. Themes in both Speak and The Lovely Bones address the issues of how to acknowledge what happened and how to "pick up the pieces," particularly when it comes to sexuality and trusting the men that surround them. When Susie, the murdered narrator of The Lovely Bones, looks down on her sister's first sexual experience, she says, "In the walls of my sex there was horror and blood, in the walls of hers there were windows" (125).

Susie and Melinda (the narrator of Speak), it should be said, have vastly different stories- surely no two stories of sexual violence are identical. They're also written for slightly different audiences: Speak is specifically written for young adults (though not only for young women!), and The Lovely Bones, though told by a fourteen-year-old narrator, is decidedly not a young adult novel; if any of you are put off by graphic imagery, you may want to stick to something a little lighter. But read together, they begin to form a picture of not only the experience of sexual violation, but of its lasting effects.

The Virgin and the Barbie Doll

I may have said this before, but one thing I regret about my first go-around with young adult literature is that, with rare exceptions (To Kill a Mockingbird being the first that springs to mind), the books I read were from a decidedly male point of view. Even Mockingbird, with its ambiguously-named author (Harper Lee) and its tomboy protagonist, seemed hesitant to express a feminine perspective. The male authors I read generally seemed unconcerned with developing three-dimensional characters that were young women (I'm not counting mothers, aunts, or other adults). Their portrayal of teenage females tended to fall into one of three categories: objects of affection and/or obsession, underdeveloped sidekicks, or ghosts.

I imagine that the "object of affection" category was a pretty safe bet from a commercial standpoint; for a good percentage of boys- particularly the kind that tended to have their noses in books- this is exactly what girls were: fantasy. Unapproachable. Objects. Sometimes, as in William Wharton's Birdy, the narrator doesn't even bother to give the girls names- just "the cheerleader" or "so-and-so's girlfriend." Frank Portman gives his girls names in King Dork, but they still more or less function as sex objects, and the narrator's "groups of three" theory about female friendships is rather cartoonish. On one hand, I can't blame a male author- particularly when his narrator is supposed to be a teenage boy- for sticking to what he knows- but on the other, it seems to me that one goal of an author ought to be to expose the reader to something he or she doesn't know or hasn't thought about. Birdy and King Dork succeed as novels for other reasons, but certainly not for their enlightening portrayal of women.

One of many Catcher in the Rye elements King Dork borrows- and his narrator all but confesses to the parallel- is the character of Holden Caulfield's precocious little sister, Phoebe- though he insists that "she's nothing like [his] sister, Amanda" (94). Nevertheless, Amanda seems to pop in to Tom's story in moments where he needs wisdom or encouragement, or simply a slap on the back of the head to remind him of who he is. Otherwise, she's absent, presumably waiting offstage for her cue to enter again. We don't get a whole lot of insight into what makes Amanda Amanda, but then again, this is Tom's story. She's sort of a second-tier sidekick, with just enough character- a comment here, a gesture there- to make her lovable. When I first read Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, I feared that Hermione would be stuck in a similar role for the whole series, but was pleasantly surprised to find her character arc as dynamic as Harry's or Ron's over the course of seven books. I think Ginny Weasely eventually filled that part. But here's the thing: I find myself loving those sort of idealized little sister characters- Phoebe and Amanda and Ginny, as unrealistic as they may be, and I think that's the point; just as boys want to read about inaccessible dreamgirl types, they also long for an unthreatening, pure, and approachable symbol of femininity. It's like a literary version of what Freudian psychoanalysts call the Madonna/whore complex (I tried to find a good link for you on this, but the best my searches came up with was this article about Miley Cyrus and the Jonas Brothers, which is perhaps telling, but not entirely pertinent).

The most extreme case of an author avoiding three dimensional depictions of young women occurs when the author simply constructs a world devoid of females altogether. William Golding's Lord of the Flies comes to mind as the most striking version of this, with its plot centered around a group of British schoolboys whose plane crashes on a desert island during World War II. Ta-da! No girls. Much less fantastical is a book like A Separate Peace, which takes place at an all-boys' school and so has little use for female characters, other than occasional mothers or faculty wives. I'm okay with this- particularly because, with sex objects and angelic little sister types out of the way, it opens up the possibility of a more emotionally nuanced portrayal of boys. When Phineas admits for the first time to Gene that he is his "best pal," Gene struggles for an appropriately masculine response:

It was a courageous thing to say. Exposing a sincere emotion nakedly like that at the Devon school was the next thing to suicide. I should have told him then that he was my best friend also and rounded out what he had said. I started to; I nearly did. But something held me back.

It could be argued that, by eliminating girls from the equation, authors like Golding and John Knowles are playing it safe, not risking the inadvertent creation of two dimensional female characters. But it seems that sometimes, as in A Separate Peace, the absence of half-formed girls allows for more fully-formed boys.

I'll try to talk more about the female characters I've discovered in Speak and The Lovely Bones, both written by female authors, when I'm back here on Monday. But tell me: have I missed some well developed young ladies in books written by men? Is my characterization of the girls in the books I've discussed unfair? Give me some feedback.

From a Distance

Last night I made a listmania! version of the summer reading list; it is the inaugural link in the "places to go" section at the bottom of the page. I also stayed up far too late reading The Lovely Bones. Alice Sebold pulls off an interesting trick: she begins the book with what most people would read as the climax: "I was fourteen when I was murdered on December 6, 1973" (5). My first thought was Great. Is she now going to subject me to 323 pages of resolution? But in spite of myself, I couldn't help but continue reading. I'm through chapter seven and I'm struck by the realization that I should have known all along, having just wrapped up the ninth grade study of Romeo and Juliet: what compels me to read The Lovely Bones is nothing more than dramatic irony- I know who killed the narrator, Susie Salmon, and where and how he did it; the suspense comes in watching as the truth is slowly revealed to the living characters.

I'm concurrently re-reading John Knowles' 1959 classic A Separate Peace, in which the adult narrator, Gene, tells of one dramatic summer in his career as a student at Devon Preparatory School (modeled after Philps Exeter Academy, in New Hampshire).

Looking back now across fifteen years, I could see with great clarity the fear I had lived in, which must mean that in the interval I had succeeded in a very important undertaking: I had made my escape from it. (2)

It wasn't my intention, but this current pair of novels contrasts well with King Dork and Speak in the category of what I'll call "narrative proximity." While both Tom and Melinda narrate their stories relatively soon after they've occurred, Gene (of A Separate Peace) and Susie (of The Lovely Bones) speak from a distance- Gene from adulthood and Susie from beyond the grave (which is not the same thing, thank you). How does this affect the validity of what they have to say? Should we put more stock in an account told years after the fact, with time allowed for reflection, or should we favor in-the-moment renditions from narrators still under the immediate influence of the events they're detailing?

The Most Retarded Character Arc Anyone Ever Heard of

So I've finished both King Dork and Speak. I'm sure this isn't the last I'll say about them, but here are some thoughts as I move on to reading The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold and re-reading A Separate Peace by John Knowles:

I found that Anderson's choice of having her narrator speak in the present tense was quite effective, and made the climax scene all the more suspenseful- we're not reading it from a "safe place," knowing the narrator will survive because she's the one telling the story. One of the most haunting lines, for me, was "Maybe I'll be an artist if I grow up" (78). That if killed me, and compelled me to keep reading.

Portman, on the other hand, has Tom narrate King Dork in the past tense, from a more or less conventional viewpoint. As we follow him through the first semester of his sophomore year at Hillmont High, we receive constant reminders, like this one, that he is safe and sound in the present:

I'm regretting how sloppy I've been with my notebooks, now that I'm trying to go back and remember exactly when everything happened. I mean, I write down all of our band names, which ends up being a kind of record of events, but I hardly ever put any dates in there, and even though it was only a few months ago, the timeline seems a little fuzzy.

The past tense, first person narrative is a tried and true device in young adult ficiton- off the top of my head I come up with The Outsiders, To Kill a Mockingbird, Catcher in the Rye (again), and A Separate Peace- but I like the way Portman plays with this and other conventions. Along with giving periodic shout-outs to classic coming of age novels (including Catcher and A Separate Peace), the narrator claims to have "the most retarded character arc anyone ever heard of" (302), and essentially refuses to offer much of a resolution at all.

This last part, I have to admit, frustrates me. Maybe it's just because Liana bought me the New Annotated Sherlock Holmes for my birthday, but it's difficult for me to walk away from a novel that, since the first page, has been presented as a mystery with none of my questions satisfactorily answered. On the other hand, I get what Portman's trying to say about how sometimes things just happen, and they can't be linked together and explained in a 100 page denouement at the end of a Harry Potter novel.

Some might say the structure of Speak is too neat- how it begins and ends with the school year, how the rising action builds to its necessary climax at just the right moment, how the tree symbolism (more on this later) is woven delicately through the story and ties it all up in the end- but it's good storytelling, in my book. But so is King Dork, despite its hesitance to conform to the conventions of "good storytelling."

The Anti-Cheerleader Clan

I started reading Speak, by Laurie Halse Anderson, when I was a little over halfway through King Dork. It takes some added concentration, but I think reading a couple books (or more) at once enhances the effect of all of the material- it leads you to insights that you'd surely miss if you were just following along the path provided by one author. It's a little like clicking on hyperlinks on the internet, or like the state of consciousness right before sleeping, when your mind hops from one idea to the next to the next with such speed that you have to backtrack in order to remember what you were first thinking about.

I've occasionally lost track of what's happening in each book- is "Hairwoman" Tom's English teacher or Melanie's? Who's in the Bay Area and who's in upstate New York? And I confuse their sarcastic-loner-Holden-Caulfield-influenced voices here and there. Witness, from page 30 of Speak:

When the pep rally ends, I am accidentally knocked down three rows of bleachers. If I ever form my own clan, we'll be the Anti-Cheerleaders. We will not sit in the bleachers. We will wander underneath them and commit mild acts of mayhem.

Their feelings about the vast majority of their peers- "normal people," as Tom would call them- are nearly identical. The dead giveaway in this passage, of course, is that Tom would never bother attending a pep rally, and would opt instead for stealing audio equipment from the band room. When I allow myself to see that these details don't matter so much, that the two novels can serve as sort of funhouse mirror images of each other, when I find myself playing literary matchmaker and setting up Tom and Melinda on an exploratory burgers-and-milkshake date, I am able to relax and enjoy the parallels- what we English teachers call Universal Themes.

As in a lot of bildungsroman, or coming of age novels, the major themes of Speak and King Dork say something about conformity, and both reach their climax at moments when their protagonists decide strongly against conforming (I'm being purposely vague here, if you hadn't noticed, because I'm trying not to reveal specific plot points). Is this decision surprising for either of the protagonists, or have we seen signs leading up to it all along? What are the consequences of their nonconformity?

Another parallel, and one they share with a number of novels on the list: both books take as their templates the so-called "school story" of Victorian England: they take place over the course of the school year, and most of the action occurs at the school itself. Both King Dork and Speak begin on the first day of school; King Dork occurs over a semester, ending in December, while Speak ends on the last day of school. The Harry Potter series is another example of a school story, with each of the seven novels representing a school year.

So why is this model so appealing to writers of young adult fiction? Why not have a story take place in the middle school year, or the middle of the summer? I have my own ideas about what the answers might be to those questions, but I'd like to hear what you have to say. Comment or something.

What is Lit Crush?

First things first: the epigraph at the top of this page- the one about wishing an author was a "terrific friend of yours"- is the sentiment of one Holden Caulfield, the teenage narrator of The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger. I was reminded of that particular quotation while reading a blog entry by one of my favorite online writers, Noel Murray of the A.V. Club. Murray confesses that, upon first reading Catcher, he, like thousands of disaffected adolescents before and after him (including me), considered Salinger to be this potential terrific friend, until he learned of the author's "prickly reclusiveness" (Salinger has lived the life of a hermit in New Hampshire since the 1951 publication of Catcher, publishing his last short story in 1965).

In day-to-day life, there's a word for this sense of intimate identification with a person who knows little or nothing of your existence: it's called a crush. I've taken to calling that yearning for a terrific author friend (or, alternately, a terrific fictional character friend) a literary crush or- here it is- a lit crush. A (by no means exhaustive) list of my past and present lit crushes: J.D. Salinger, Kurt Vonnegut, Flannery O'Connor, Joseph Heller, Alan Moore, Ursula Le Guin, Gabriel García Marquez, John Steinbeck, Jack Kerouac, David Sedaris, J.K. Rowling, William Faulkner, Graham Greene, Miguel de Unamuno, Shushaku Endo, Annie Dillard, Philip Pullman, and Italo Calvino.

During freshman final exams last week, I looked up from my last minute grading to see Carman engrossed in her copy of The Catcher in the Rye. I smiled, and when I got her attention I think I gave her a thumbs up sign or something. I was so proud. Then, having been reminded of the sophomore accelerated reading list, I pulled Frank Portman's King Dork from the top of the stack of reading list books that I'd yet to read. Page twelve made me sink a little in my swivel chair; the narrator, Tom Henderson, called me out- it may as well have been by name.

I should mention that The Catcher in the Rye is this book from the fifties. It is every teacher's favorite book. the main guy is a kind of misfit kid superhero named Holden Caulfield. For teachers, he is the ultimate guy, a real dreamboat. They love him to pieces. They all want to have sex with him, and with the book's author, too, and they'd probably even try to do it with the book itself if they could figure out a way to go about it. It changed their lives when they were young. As kids, they carried it with them everywhere they went. They solemnly resolved that, when they grew up, they would dedicate their lives to spreading The Word.

It's kind of like a cult.

They live for making you read it. When you do read it you can feel them all standing behind you in a semicircle wearing black robes with hoods, holding candles. They're chanting "Holden, Holden, Holden..." And they're looking over your shoulder with these expectant smiles, wishing they were the ones discovering the earth-shattering joys of The Catcher in the Rye for the very first time.

I hung my head in shame, and showed the passage to Carman. But it should be pointed out that Tom's aversion to Catcher is more than a little ironic- not least because his narrative voice (albeit with updated swear words and more explicit sex and drug references) is nearly identical to that of Holden Caulfield. He wears his influences like a merit badge.

I like King Dork so far. I've added Portman to my lit crush list. I set up imaginary scenarios where I'm sitting on the BART on my way to the airport (Portman lives in the Bay Area) and an oddly familiar stranger notices that I'm carrying around a battered, broken-spined copy of King Dork. He introduces himself and asks how I like it. And I tell him that I'm enjoying it so far, especially all the, you know, irony and allusions to canonical coming of age literature- and I mention that I'm a sophomore accelerated English teacher. We laugh about his not-so-sympathetic portrayal of teachers in the book. I tell him that, just like Tom, I count Graham Greene's Brighton Rock among my favorite novels. He admits that that part of the character was autobiographical. We talk about getting matching Brighton Rock tattoos.

I tell him about how I was in a band in high school that was heavily influenced by his band, The Mr. T. Experience, and how I owned all of their records (This is only a white lie: my best friends Chris and Matthew were in a band called Nickel Foods that sounded an awful lot like the pop-punk of MTX; I was in a one-man-band that changed names every week and opened for them at house shows, and sounded more like Woody Guthrie. Chris and Matthew owned all of the MTX albums). He says he'd love to hear my stuff, maybe collaborate on some tunes one day. I say that'd be cool.

These days, I suppose one could perpetuate the fantasy of a literary crush (or musical crush, or cinematic crush) via the magic of myspace ("friend me, famous person!!!"), but I don't bother with that racket. Maybe one day I'll go into a long-winded explanation of the evils of myspace. But for now, this is where I'll talk about what I'm reading over the summer, and hopefully get some feedback from a few of you as you're delving into the list as well. Feel free to comment- particularly if you've got a literary crush of your own.

I've had a request to post the list, so here it is- along with each book's current status within my own attempt at summer reading.

Alvarez, Julia. How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents. 1992. I've only read pieces of this one- I imagine I'll get to it later this summer.

Anaya, Rudolfo. Bless Me, Ultima. 1972. Again, not yet. But I'll be in New Mexico, where this one takes place, later this month, so it might be a good thematic read.

Anderson, Laurie Halse. Speak. 1999. I just bought this one, and I've begun reading it while I'm reading King Dork.

Angelou, Maya. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. 1969. I'm borrowing my wife's copy for this one. I've only read Maya Angelou's poetry.

Anonymous. Go Ask Alice. 1971. I bought this a long time ago at a used book sale and never got around to reading it. I think it might match up well with Speak, from what I've heard.

Card, Orson Scott. Ender's Game. 1985. This is a re-read. I first discovered it when I was a scifi-obsessed middle schooler.

Chbosky, Steven. The Perks of Being a Wallflower. 1999. I'm buying this one today, if I can find it at the used book store.

Cormier, Robert. The Chocolate War. 1974. This one's a classic I missed out on because I was snobby about the books I chose to read, and refused to pick up anything that was actually aimed at "young adults." I'll look for it today.

Haddon, Mark. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. 2003. I read this a couple of years ago, when everyone was telling me I had to, since I was working with developmentally disabled adults. If I remember correctly, it was a pretty quick read, so I'll pick it up when I'm feeling too exhausted for something longer.

Kidd, Sue Monk. The Secret Life of Bees. 2002. Mrs. Quinn says this one is phenomenal. I haven't gotten to it yet.

Kincaid, Jamaica. Annie John. 1985. I "read" this one in college- which means that I may have missed much of the joy of it because I was too busy trying to craft the perfect English essay out of it.

Knowles, John. A Separate Peace. 1959. Sophomore year, 1993-1994, required reading. I still have trouble spelling separate.

Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. 1970. I've only read Morrison's short stories, but they knock me out.

Myers, Walter Dean. Monster. 1999. Again, haven't read it, but will. Soon.

Peet, Mal. The Keeper. 2003. I started this one, then lent it to a student who never brought it back. Commander Adama on Battlestar Galactica says to never loan a book; it's always a gift. I'll find another copy before summer's over.

Portman, Frank. King Dork. 2006. See blog entry above. I'm almost finished.

Potok, Chaim. The Chosen. 1967. I've read this twice, in high school and college. Classic.

Salinger, J.D. The Catcher in the Rye. 1951. Every teacher's favorite book. I've lost count of the number of times I've re-read it.

Satrapi, Marjane. Persepolis. 2003. I've read this one once, and seen the movie (which is quite faithful). I'll probably read it again and rent the film for fun.

Sebold, Alice. The Lovely Bones. 2002. Looking forward to this one- I've heard only good things.

Wharton, William. Birdy. 1978. My dad got really angry at me for reading this in high school. It holds a special place in my heart just for that.

Happy reading, and come back soon.