A man finds his life changed – against his wishes – by someone else’s dreams.
Beauty is truth and truth is beauty, and that’s all you need to know. Until you drop and break it, when you get the bill for truth and beauty, plus the twenty-two per cent revolving interest charge, and a free speeding ticket.
Sitting in Buffalo Bill’s Fabulous Family Burgers (Buffalo, NY - in case they thought some of their customers might miss the predictability), wondering what she was going to do after she walked back to the booth, I thought about beauty and truth, life and death, breaking things and being found. I peered out the window to the parking lot for the third time. Yup. Truck was still there. Nice and tidy, angled neatly between the yellow lines. If you were an ordinary observer, you could believe Old Marsh was anybody’s truck, filled with cardboard boxes which were probably filled with deliveries. Donuts. Yeah.
I settled my back solidly against the seat cushion and watched her silent, sneaker-footed, grey-eyed advance.
“Listen, uh.”
“It’s Ran,” she said slowly.
“Ran. Right.”
“Ran. As in ‘Run, Ran, Have Run.’”
“Is ‘Ran’ short for something?”
“Yeah. It’s short for, ‘Start talking if you want me to keep listening.’”
I didn’t want her to listen at all, but she wasn’t going to give up. So what was a clean cut guy with dark circles under his eyes, an average looking jacket, size 12 nondescript sneakers, and fingertips drumming the tabletop wanting to get out of there going to do?
Ran: the woman who had been following me across the country finally had a name. Or half of one. She also looked familiar. My mind rummaged inside my brain, opening and closing file cabinets, trying to remember where I had seen here before. Flowers: she reminded me of flowers – which was pretty incongruous, since she was staring at me like someone gauging the distance from home plate to the outfield fence. I stared at her. She looked back at me. I lifted my coffee cup and gave a half-shrug.
I considered what I should say, what I could say without jeopardizing Fritz’s plan, and what would make her go away. I gave Ran a glance. She was still staring back.
I wondered how much of this was well founded suspicion, and how much was my desire to not get caught again before I finally reached where I was going, and how much was Fritz’s insistence on covering every aspect of the situation. Fritz believed that paranoia could be healthy. Fritz.
Sitting in the restaurant, my back feeling grateful for a booth instead of a truck seat, our past broke over me like an explosion of colored glass. I set down my coffee cup, looked at Ran who must have fit into this some way, and started talking.
Sunday, September 28, 2008
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Nobody Ever Died of Terminal Weirdness - excerpt
Nobody Ever Died of Terminal Weirdness is the narration by a high school student of the year he decided to become normal (just like everyone else in his high school class). Normal meant avoiding tangles with the vice principal and the track coach, but mostly normal meant having a girlfriend.
I decided that by the end of the week, the end of the year, or the end of my life - whichever came first - I would have a steady girlfriend, and be considered normal. What made this only more difficult was no one in my family believed I needed changing.
I figured they were not the best ones to judge normal.
"You don't need to worry about impressing girls at your age," my mother said. "Just be yourself."
"I can't afford a big date on a social security check, and with the help you give me, that's about when it's going to happen."
"I didn't date at your age."
"Listen," I said as kindly as I could, "Growing up to be like my mother is not my top priority." I left my mother talking to the back to school shopping list, and looked up my brother, the football team captain, Honor Society president, and Boyfriend. Since he managed to avoid the family curse and actually acquire a girlfriend, I thought I could get some pointers. "This is the year," I said, standing in his doorway, "I'm going to get a girlfriend. Also get on a sports team, win over the vice principal, and be normal. Do you think you can help me out?"
"Are you still combing your hair once a year on Christmas Eve?" he asked. "You could start there."
"I hoped to make some progress before December," I answered. "But thanks anyway." My brother unfortunately considered himself a solo operator.
My father was watching the twentieth rerun of the Ice Bowl, but he swiveled from the tv to my question. "Just remember most things are a plot, and you can't really trust women to tell you if your fly is open," he admonished. "Also that you can't always get points when you need them, and sometimes neither can the other team." Since I wanted to find a female I could trust with more than basic neatness or football strategy concerns, I thanked my father and trotted back to my room.
After I locked the door, I began to plan.
I decided that by the end of the week, the end of the year, or the end of my life - whichever came first - I would have a steady girlfriend, and be considered normal. What made this only more difficult was no one in my family believed I needed changing.
I figured they were not the best ones to judge normal.
"You don't need to worry about impressing girls at your age," my mother said. "Just be yourself."
"I can't afford a big date on a social security check, and with the help you give me, that's about when it's going to happen."
"I didn't date at your age."
"Listen," I said as kindly as I could, "Growing up to be like my mother is not my top priority." I left my mother talking to the back to school shopping list, and looked up my brother, the football team captain, Honor Society president, and Boyfriend. Since he managed to avoid the family curse and actually acquire a girlfriend, I thought I could get some pointers. "This is the year," I said, standing in his doorway, "I'm going to get a girlfriend. Also get on a sports team, win over the vice principal, and be normal. Do you think you can help me out?"
"Are you still combing your hair once a year on Christmas Eve?" he asked. "You could start there."
"I hoped to make some progress before December," I answered. "But thanks anyway." My brother unfortunately considered himself a solo operator.
My father was watching the twentieth rerun of the Ice Bowl, but he swiveled from the tv to my question. "Just remember most things are a plot, and you can't really trust women to tell you if your fly is open," he admonished. "Also that you can't always get points when you need them, and sometimes neither can the other team." Since I wanted to find a female I could trust with more than basic neatness or football strategy concerns, I thanked my father and trotted back to my room.
After I locked the door, I began to plan.
Sunday, September 21, 2008
About (of course) books
Amazon, Borders, Barnes & Noble, and Powells send me regular emails. Half Price Books keeps me informed of sales with their coupon cards. Polite staff at The Book Seller, housed in the main library, sell me their withdrawn books. When I need books that I didn’t know I needed – for reference and for reading - I visit Tina’s Paperback Book Exchange.
Tina knows books. She’s known books since grade school, or before. She sits at the counter looking over the cover of the book she is currently reading, to answer my questions, to direct me to books, to suggest that the book I don’t know I am looking for might be the third one down on the second shelf, to talk books.
Tina finds books I didn’t know existed. Amazon might have alerted me about them once I bought something similar, but Tina has the ability to synthesize all the parts of my interests. She’s a reading book-seller, able to anticipate what I would like and what aspect of a book is going to be important in what I’m writing.
A few months ago, as I began developing a manuscript about an astro physicist, I was at Paperback Book Exchange browsing the shelves. “I need an old book about the stars,” I said, “something that would have been kept in the attic, read by a kid years ago. A good book.”
“What about this one?” The illustrations were vaguely Art Deco, the paper thick, the dust jacket slightly chipped at the bottom of the spine, the smell of old paper, dry attics, and time. The Young Folk’s Book of the Heavens. Published in 1925. It was perfect. Up to date astronomy information I could find on the Internet. What I needed and Tina found was period information for my story’s plot and character development.
Books reach Tina in the usual ways and in some not so usual. Customers trade in their have-reads to be applied toward the price of to-be-read finds. Stock keeps changing, augmented by sources only Tina knows about. In addition to an exhaustive knowledge of what’s in the store, Tina has the ability to find what someone is looking for. “I need a book on quantum physics that I can understand,” I tell her, acknowledging that I’m requesting a specialized item geared toward a non-science bent mind. She will find it.
Tina remembers. “I’m looking for all the books Margot Benary-Isbert or Alexandra Raife or Joseph Altsheler have written,” I say. One by one, she finds them. She sets aside other books for me to look at on my next visit, books that she has unearthed at rummage sales, found in tag bins, discards, results of her regular route of discovery.
A few times I’ve accompanied Tina on book scouting expeditions. I will quickly scan the titles on the shelves and be ready to move on. She will reach to the shelf; pull out a book, and say, “Is this the one you were hunting for?” Tina found The Forsytes by Suleika Dawson, a contemporary continuation of the family story. She also found John Fisher’s The World of the Forsytes, a book about the society and customs of Galsworthy’s original Forsyte saga family. Books come to her. Books like her.
There’s a box of Free to Good Home books at the back door of the Paperback Book Exchange, but there’s a hundred thousand or more books for sale inside the store: paperback and hardcover, familiar and hard to find, all arranged by category. What’s there? Tina knows. “Do you have any mysteries by Agatha Christie?” asks a customer. “In the mystery section right around the corner in the next room, on the third shelf,” Tina answers.
Today I have time to browse: I let my hands and eyes look over who has appeared on the shelves since my last visit. A book about psychology, mentioned in something else I read. A biography of Victoria Woodhull (Notorious Victoria), the first woman to run for president, the first female Wall Street broker, one of the first women to advocate Free Love (a term Henry Thoreau coined long before the 1960s movement). Books of poetry, travel, adventure, escape, romance, mystery, philosophy, and war.
Paperback Book Exchange is more than a bookstore. There’s time to stand and talk; there’s time to ponder the character, the plot, the plausibility of what happened in a bestseller or a much loved classic. Surrounding us are thousands of books. The smell of paper and ink, turned pages and book memories fill the store. It’s better than a library, because once I buy a book, I don’t need to take it back. I can simply go there again, for talk about books and stories, and more books.
As Tina would say, “Imagine that: about books.”
Paperback Book Exchange – Neenah, WI
Tina knows books. She’s known books since grade school, or before. She sits at the counter looking over the cover of the book she is currently reading, to answer my questions, to direct me to books, to suggest that the book I don’t know I am looking for might be the third one down on the second shelf, to talk books.
Tina finds books I didn’t know existed. Amazon might have alerted me about them once I bought something similar, but Tina has the ability to synthesize all the parts of my interests. She’s a reading book-seller, able to anticipate what I would like and what aspect of a book is going to be important in what I’m writing.
A few months ago, as I began developing a manuscript about an astro physicist, I was at Paperback Book Exchange browsing the shelves. “I need an old book about the stars,” I said, “something that would have been kept in the attic, read by a kid years ago. A good book.”
“What about this one?” The illustrations were vaguely Art Deco, the paper thick, the dust jacket slightly chipped at the bottom of the spine, the smell of old paper, dry attics, and time. The Young Folk’s Book of the Heavens. Published in 1925. It was perfect. Up to date astronomy information I could find on the Internet. What I needed and Tina found was period information for my story’s plot and character development.
Books reach Tina in the usual ways and in some not so usual. Customers trade in their have-reads to be applied toward the price of to-be-read finds. Stock keeps changing, augmented by sources only Tina knows about. In addition to an exhaustive knowledge of what’s in the store, Tina has the ability to find what someone is looking for. “I need a book on quantum physics that I can understand,” I tell her, acknowledging that I’m requesting a specialized item geared toward a non-science bent mind. She will find it.
Tina remembers. “I’m looking for all the books Margot Benary-Isbert or Alexandra Raife or Joseph Altsheler have written,” I say. One by one, she finds them. She sets aside other books for me to look at on my next visit, books that she has unearthed at rummage sales, found in tag bins, discards, results of her regular route of discovery.
A few times I’ve accompanied Tina on book scouting expeditions. I will quickly scan the titles on the shelves and be ready to move on. She will reach to the shelf; pull out a book, and say, “Is this the one you were hunting for?” Tina found The Forsytes by Suleika Dawson, a contemporary continuation of the family story. She also found John Fisher’s The World of the Forsytes, a book about the society and customs of Galsworthy’s original Forsyte saga family. Books come to her. Books like her.
There’s a box of Free to Good Home books at the back door of the Paperback Book Exchange, but there’s a hundred thousand or more books for sale inside the store: paperback and hardcover, familiar and hard to find, all arranged by category. What’s there? Tina knows. “Do you have any mysteries by Agatha Christie?” asks a customer. “In the mystery section right around the corner in the next room, on the third shelf,” Tina answers.
Today I have time to browse: I let my hands and eyes look over who has appeared on the shelves since my last visit. A book about psychology, mentioned in something else I read. A biography of Victoria Woodhull (Notorious Victoria), the first woman to run for president, the first female Wall Street broker, one of the first women to advocate Free Love (a term Henry Thoreau coined long before the 1960s movement). Books of poetry, travel, adventure, escape, romance, mystery, philosophy, and war.
Paperback Book Exchange is more than a bookstore. There’s time to stand and talk; there’s time to ponder the character, the plot, the plausibility of what happened in a bestseller or a much loved classic. Surrounding us are thousands of books. The smell of paper and ink, turned pages and book memories fill the store. It’s better than a library, because once I buy a book, I don’t need to take it back. I can simply go there again, for talk about books and stories, and more books.
As Tina would say, “Imagine that: about books.”
Paperback Book Exchange – Neenah, WI
Saturday, September 13, 2008
Excerpt from a story I am writing
He could see the beginning of day: pink streaking the black sky. Far up, miles into the horizon, were blue splotches with dark grey clouds among them, a reflection of day curving from the other side of the earth.
He didn’t need to pretend any more.
A little after 5 a.m. he crested the rise and came swiftly down into the town. Convenience store lights picked out a yellow and white pattern, bright stones on dark concrete. Signs told him where he could get a drink, come opening time; where he could sleep, come night; where he could shop, if there was anything he wanted to shop for. Behind it all lay the mountains like heavy clouds holding down the horizon.
He didn’t need anything. He was back. And he was looking for whoever it was, he had to meet.
He didn’t need to pretend any more.
A little after 5 a.m. he crested the rise and came swiftly down into the town. Convenience store lights picked out a yellow and white pattern, bright stones on dark concrete. Signs told him where he could get a drink, come opening time; where he could sleep, come night; where he could shop, if there was anything he wanted to shop for. Behind it all lay the mountains like heavy clouds holding down the horizon.
He didn’t need anything. He was back. And he was looking for whoever it was, he had to meet.
Sunday, September 7, 2008
Weather as a Literary Phenomenon
Today is sunny and warm. I took a break from commenting on students’ essays to sit in the sun. It’s seasonably warm (for the frozen Tundra). Even without looking at the calendar, though, I can feel fall. The quality of the sunshine is different, and so is the air.
In spring, there’s an underlying coolness to the air. We’re opening up doors, uncovering ourselves from the winter cold, emerging from blankets and layers of clothing. We’re like sheep free of their heavy wool. The ground is boggy and anything that’s growing is fighting fiercely for its bit of earth. The insects are frenzied as they lay their millions of eggs. We’re frenzied as we spray poison, plan the good weather projects, and calculate how many days of sunshine we are entitled to. In fall, there’s an underlying warmth to the air. The insects have done their work, the plants are figuring that they managed the program (leaf-bloom-seed) and can rest. The green and white plates of Queen Anne’s lace have curled into brown bird nests. We’re either still frenzied (How much squash am I supposed to make into zucchini bread?) or we’re thinking back over the summer. The air has a golden clearness, like white grape juice, or white wine.
Season, to be obvious, plays such an important part in stories. It’s much easier to send a prowler through the yards in October (dark by 6 p.m.) than in June (dark around 9:30 or so). Night to day’s ratio has increased. I can sift snow over my characters and then, if they are not showing enough fortitude or misery, ship them into January and slip a couple degrees out of the thermometer. We can feel sorry for the homeless much more easily when it’s cold, than in June when we must meet curfew and they are free to the starry nights. On the local highways and byways, we say there are two seasons: winter and road construction. Those also lend themselves to story telling.
My mom used to say that she hated fall because “everything dies.” It rests. Some of it goes underground for a while, some of it turns its face elsewhere as the planets and stars revolve above us. And some of the vegetation begins plotting its revenge of next year.
One of the things I think about doing “someday” is making a list of memorable literary events, in the seasons they occur, and considering the season-life relationship. Not every character dies in fall, though the drawing to the end of the growing season offers obvious parallels to human life spans. Not every baby is born in spring, and not every happy marriage takes place in June. [That cliché: “If you’re married in June, you’ll always be a bride. Who wants to always be a bride?] Every season offers something to the writer. No better words in the English language, Henry James commented, than summer afternoon. Maybe he was considering the warm afternoons free of visitors, free to him as he dictated his stories; maybe he was thinking of the tea table.
In spring, there’s an underlying coolness to the air. We’re opening up doors, uncovering ourselves from the winter cold, emerging from blankets and layers of clothing. We’re like sheep free of their heavy wool. The ground is boggy and anything that’s growing is fighting fiercely for its bit of earth. The insects are frenzied as they lay their millions of eggs. We’re frenzied as we spray poison, plan the good weather projects, and calculate how many days of sunshine we are entitled to. In fall, there’s an underlying warmth to the air. The insects have done their work, the plants are figuring that they managed the program (leaf-bloom-seed) and can rest. The green and white plates of Queen Anne’s lace have curled into brown bird nests. We’re either still frenzied (How much squash am I supposed to make into zucchini bread?) or we’re thinking back over the summer. The air has a golden clearness, like white grape juice, or white wine.
Season, to be obvious, plays such an important part in stories. It’s much easier to send a prowler through the yards in October (dark by 6 p.m.) than in June (dark around 9:30 or so). Night to day’s ratio has increased. I can sift snow over my characters and then, if they are not showing enough fortitude or misery, ship them into January and slip a couple degrees out of the thermometer. We can feel sorry for the homeless much more easily when it’s cold, than in June when we must meet curfew and they are free to the starry nights. On the local highways and byways, we say there are two seasons: winter and road construction. Those also lend themselves to story telling.
My mom used to say that she hated fall because “everything dies.” It rests. Some of it goes underground for a while, some of it turns its face elsewhere as the planets and stars revolve above us. And some of the vegetation begins plotting its revenge of next year.
One of the things I think about doing “someday” is making a list of memorable literary events, in the seasons they occur, and considering the season-life relationship. Not every character dies in fall, though the drawing to the end of the growing season offers obvious parallels to human life spans. Not every baby is born in spring, and not every happy marriage takes place in June. [That cliché: “If you’re married in June, you’ll always be a bride. Who wants to always be a bride?] Every season offers something to the writer. No better words in the English language, Henry James commented, than summer afternoon. Maybe he was considering the warm afternoons free of visitors, free to him as he dictated his stories; maybe he was thinking of the tea table.
Different
He brushes with Crest; I use Tom’s of Maine. When the thermometer hits 70, he’s pulling on a t shirt, sweatshirt, jeans and thick socks; I speed-dress in t shirt and shorts so my knees can breathe. I look forward to the swaths of tiny bright blue scilla blooming amid our spring grass; he asks when he can get out the lawnmower and guillotine them. My favorite physical presents have involved books or wood or clocks or colored glass, while his might be the 14 cu ft freezer in which he can count resources. (“We have three packages of ground chuck which I got at 30% off, one loaf of white bread, and two sirloin steaks.”) No ice cream, I comment to myself (flavor doesn’t matter, so long as it’s ice cream).
However, last fall, he was the one with the second shovel, lifting divots of lawn so we could slip 200 scilla bulbs (25 for $6 at Jung’s Plants; plant with the pointed end up) into their earth envelope, and a few days ago I was the one saying, “If you want to get another package of meat, go ahead.”
Given the opportunity to do so, I can obscure the details in the large picture (“It’s a gorgeous day”) while he keeps the details intact (“There’s a forty per cent chance of rain this afternoon, so take along your raincoat”) that maintain sanity in our lives. Weather is a system of chaos, I tell him; there’s an enormous uncertainty factor. One shift in the wind, and everything changes. “But if you have your raincoat, you’re okay,” he will answer. He’s right. I can choose to get wet, or I can pull on the raincoat and put up the hood.
Different could have become a series of antagonisms, a point of ridicule, or a set of skirmishes. Thanks to time and the financial ability to purchase two different brands of toothpaste on the same shopping trip, different is an enriching part of our lives.
However, last fall, he was the one with the second shovel, lifting divots of lawn so we could slip 200 scilla bulbs (25 for $6 at Jung’s Plants; plant with the pointed end up) into their earth envelope, and a few days ago I was the one saying, “If you want to get another package of meat, go ahead.”
Given the opportunity to do so, I can obscure the details in the large picture (“It’s a gorgeous day”) while he keeps the details intact (“There’s a forty per cent chance of rain this afternoon, so take along your raincoat”) that maintain sanity in our lives. Weather is a system of chaos, I tell him; there’s an enormous uncertainty factor. One shift in the wind, and everything changes. “But if you have your raincoat, you’re okay,” he will answer. He’s right. I can choose to get wet, or I can pull on the raincoat and put up the hood.
Different could have become a series of antagonisms, a point of ridicule, or a set of skirmishes. Thanks to time and the financial ability to purchase two different brands of toothpaste on the same shopping trip, different is an enriching part of our lives.
Wednesday, September 3, 2008
Books
Enough of a title in itself, some of us would argue.
I have had a long fascination with books. My son would call it a mania, as he pointed out, laughing uproariously as he read aloud the quiz from the book Bibliomania. “Are books the first thing people notice when they walk into your house?” He answered for me, “No. They are the only thing.”
For a childhood birthday party, my mom suggested to someone that she get me a copy of King of the Wind, Marguerite Henry’s story of the Godolphin Arabian, because for months my name had been the only one on the library’s check out card (back when books in the library had check out cards). And there, at the party, holding in my hands a copy of the book that I did not need to give back when its borrowing time was up, I entered the world of owning books.
That was not the only book I could call mine; I had many childhood books, the Little Golden Books, story books passed on from my mom’s childhood. But to have a book that was something I wanted to read, a book that did not reflect the interests of someone else in the family: that was new. I was hooked into books (paraphrasing the title of another book).
I can justify book ownership. Some of them I need for teaching: reference books, books about the writers we discuss in class, books illustrating how people dressed to make the descriptions in a story clearer. Some of them are reading books for winter nights, or summer afternoons, or when I need to enter a world that’s less frantic than 200 cable channels available through a series of remote-clicks. Some of them tell me how I should do things like repair a piece of furniture, and my mind thinks it understands even if my hands do not have the skills to follow the directions. Those are the books that I could validate to my son and anyone commenting that I certainly have a lot of books. (Over the years there have been a few people of that opinion.)
There’s something to be argued, though, for simply having books. Turn the page of an old library book, and your fingers feel the difference on the page where hundreds of fingers have worn the piece of paper thinner. How many people had the time, made the time, to go through the book. I will likely never meet them, but we have enjoyed the same book.
Books give us space. I enjoy the Internet. I like having quick communication. Sometimes, though, it’s nice to sit down with something that doesn’t want me to engage in noise, except for the turning of pages. And the interrupting of others when I read aloud a particularly good passage in the book. My son claims I have forever ruined one of his horror stories because at the same time I was reading Gerald Durrell’s My Family and Other Animals, and insisted on sharing the hilarious sections.
Books offer solace. Sometimes I already know how the story turns out; in rereading I can appreciate the technical aspects of story development, I can attend to the background characters, I can observe the symbolism. I can simply enjoy reading a story I have read many times before: spending time with a good friend. How many times have I reread The Forsyte Saga since the summer afternoon I sat in a lawn chair, turning the pages of a library copy? I don’t know, but now (just like that birthday present book) I have a copy of my own. Opening it and reading John Galsworthy’s dedication [“To My Wife I dedicate the Forsyte Saga in its entirety, believing it to be of all my work the least unworthy of one without whose encouragement, sympathy and criticism I could never have become even such a writer as I am”], I think, Wow. I think about Galsworthy’s life, and the parallel examples of literary love (the Brownings for example, and Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s “How do I Love Thee”). I think about how The Forsyte Saga grew into quite a few books about that society, as it changed from Victorian into Edwardian times and beyond. Galsworthy’s character Soames Forsyte received an obituary [not a book review notice] in London’s newspaper, when Galsworthy sent Soames into the literary great beyond.
Books tell us about the people who wrote them. One of the things I ponder is: What’s this writer’s message? If I could condense a writer’s message into one or two sentences, what would all his/her books be about? Society forms people; or You can/can’t go home again; or Give your all and you will succeed; or good will eventually triumph. I wonder if the books we write change their message over our writing careers, or if our characters change; but our core message, no matter how the plots change and the characters vary, remains the same.
There's not much to dislike about books.
I have had a long fascination with books. My son would call it a mania, as he pointed out, laughing uproariously as he read aloud the quiz from the book Bibliomania. “Are books the first thing people notice when they walk into your house?” He answered for me, “No. They are the only thing.”
For a childhood birthday party, my mom suggested to someone that she get me a copy of King of the Wind, Marguerite Henry’s story of the Godolphin Arabian, because for months my name had been the only one on the library’s check out card (back when books in the library had check out cards). And there, at the party, holding in my hands a copy of the book that I did not need to give back when its borrowing time was up, I entered the world of owning books.
That was not the only book I could call mine; I had many childhood books, the Little Golden Books, story books passed on from my mom’s childhood. But to have a book that was something I wanted to read, a book that did not reflect the interests of someone else in the family: that was new. I was hooked into books (paraphrasing the title of another book).
I can justify book ownership. Some of them I need for teaching: reference books, books about the writers we discuss in class, books illustrating how people dressed to make the descriptions in a story clearer. Some of them are reading books for winter nights, or summer afternoons, or when I need to enter a world that’s less frantic than 200 cable channels available through a series of remote-clicks. Some of them tell me how I should do things like repair a piece of furniture, and my mind thinks it understands even if my hands do not have the skills to follow the directions. Those are the books that I could validate to my son and anyone commenting that I certainly have a lot of books. (Over the years there have been a few people of that opinion.)
There’s something to be argued, though, for simply having books. Turn the page of an old library book, and your fingers feel the difference on the page where hundreds of fingers have worn the piece of paper thinner. How many people had the time, made the time, to go through the book. I will likely never meet them, but we have enjoyed the same book.
Books give us space. I enjoy the Internet. I like having quick communication. Sometimes, though, it’s nice to sit down with something that doesn’t want me to engage in noise, except for the turning of pages. And the interrupting of others when I read aloud a particularly good passage in the book. My son claims I have forever ruined one of his horror stories because at the same time I was reading Gerald Durrell’s My Family and Other Animals, and insisted on sharing the hilarious sections.
Books offer solace. Sometimes I already know how the story turns out; in rereading I can appreciate the technical aspects of story development, I can attend to the background characters, I can observe the symbolism. I can simply enjoy reading a story I have read many times before: spending time with a good friend. How many times have I reread The Forsyte Saga since the summer afternoon I sat in a lawn chair, turning the pages of a library copy? I don’t know, but now (just like that birthday present book) I have a copy of my own. Opening it and reading John Galsworthy’s dedication [“To My Wife I dedicate the Forsyte Saga in its entirety, believing it to be of all my work the least unworthy of one without whose encouragement, sympathy and criticism I could never have become even such a writer as I am”], I think, Wow. I think about Galsworthy’s life, and the parallel examples of literary love (the Brownings for example, and Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s “How do I Love Thee”). I think about how The Forsyte Saga grew into quite a few books about that society, as it changed from Victorian into Edwardian times and beyond. Galsworthy’s character Soames Forsyte received an obituary [not a book review notice] in London’s newspaper, when Galsworthy sent Soames into the literary great beyond.
Books tell us about the people who wrote them. One of the things I ponder is: What’s this writer’s message? If I could condense a writer’s message into one or two sentences, what would all his/her books be about? Society forms people; or You can/can’t go home again; or Give your all and you will succeed; or good will eventually triumph. I wonder if the books we write change their message over our writing careers, or if our characters change; but our core message, no matter how the plots change and the characters vary, remains the same.
There's not much to dislike about books.
Monday, September 1, 2008
Long Term Consequences
Just as Capstar works with fleas, searching the Internet for matching word patterns detects plagiarism. Both treat the immediate condition. Neither eradicates the source or prevents its recurrence.
Sometimes fleas are picturesque: the novelistic portrayals, or “flea bites,” those tiny dings in use-worn marbles. Mostly, fleas and plagiarism are less than ideal.
They’re a parasite on the host: the dog or the Internet;
They have a tendency to spread effects to the unsuspecting: members of the family, and students who did their own work;
They are socially unacceptable in certain circles and the norm in others;
One culture encourages the infestation while another wants to fumigate it out of existence, and supports an industry designed to do just that.
Even the usually revered Founding Fathers paraphrased their sources, someone could argue. Ah, but the Founding Fathers believed in working for a cause, education, and thinking.
Some of my students spend hours writing, thinking, writing, researching, and laboring over their final copy. They didn't enjoy devoting nights and weekends to the project. They committed the time because the essay was a class assignment, because they believed my comments ("With each writing you do, you will become a better writer"). They don't see the long term result yet, but they appreciate the short term satisfaction of completing an assignment and receiving positive comments when it comes back to them. They also deeply resent the people who economized on time and improved hand coordination by copy/pasting a response posted elsewhere, written by someone else. As an instructor, I've spent hours before I hand out the assignment, trying to create directions that will encourage students to do their own work, their own thinking, their own writing. I've shared rough drafts of the assignment with others, asking "How can I make it better?" Collectively, we (the students and I) resent copying: they because they want everyone to be equal, I think. I because I want everyone to think and write.
The plagiarists, confronted with "their" essay as it appeared elsewhere under someone else's name have reacted with nonchalance. They have shrugged. They have said their roommate/friend/parent was the one responsible for copying. They have said that the online source copied from them. I give my "It's about thinking" response. Sometimes they nod their heads to indicate they have heard me (or so I stop explaining). Plagiarism is being untrue to yourself as well as others. That’s one perspective I tell myself, as I return to reading a stack of essays.
We finished sealing the cedar gazebo. For weeks, our garage smelled of cedar, that wood more aromatic than pine or redwood. Cedar is less expensive than some of the other choices, it's somewhat weather-resistant even without sealing the wood, and it's beautiful. Knots and grain in the boards make each piece of wood unique.
For weeks, I would open the door, and draw a deep breath. Board by board over the summer, we moved materials from storage to construction, figuring out how the cross pieces fit into the frame, how the roof could be attached. To protect the wood more than its natural resistance offered, we wanted to waterproof it, and did. Which led eventually to my idea of decorating the patio.
“I can tell where you painted,” Bob said, pointing. “Everywhere you worked on it, you left a mess underneath. Bob is right: I am a Messy Painter.
I have a Painting Outfit: oversize t shirt with souvenirs of each project (dark green, blue, white, cream, yellow, teal, and a splotch large as a handprint on one shoulder where I thoughtlessly rested a paint-covered hand), and somewhat less paint-decorated shorts. “Everyone has specific talents,” I tell my students. “Some of you are great at Finding Jobs, or Getting a Boyfriend, or Cooking.” One of my talents is Messy Painter.
I can wash the shirt and shorts, but it’s going to be a little more difficult to remove sealant splotches from the concrete. “What if we make it artistic?” I ask. “I can drop paint of all different colors around there, and it will look nice.”
“I think it would look weird,” he says.
But maybe if I practice on an unsuspecting surface…? Random spots of color, wherever they happen to fall from the brush…play to my talent of Messy Painter?
Sometimes fleas are picturesque: the novelistic portrayals, or “flea bites,” those tiny dings in use-worn marbles. Mostly, fleas and plagiarism are less than ideal.
They’re a parasite on the host: the dog or the Internet;
They have a tendency to spread effects to the unsuspecting: members of the family, and students who did their own work;
They are socially unacceptable in certain circles and the norm in others;
One culture encourages the infestation while another wants to fumigate it out of existence, and supports an industry designed to do just that.
Even the usually revered Founding Fathers paraphrased their sources, someone could argue. Ah, but the Founding Fathers believed in working for a cause, education, and thinking.
Some of my students spend hours writing, thinking, writing, researching, and laboring over their final copy. They didn't enjoy devoting nights and weekends to the project. They committed the time because the essay was a class assignment, because they believed my comments ("With each writing you do, you will become a better writer"). They don't see the long term result yet, but they appreciate the short term satisfaction of completing an assignment and receiving positive comments when it comes back to them. They also deeply resent the people who economized on time and improved hand coordination by copy/pasting a response posted elsewhere, written by someone else. As an instructor, I've spent hours before I hand out the assignment, trying to create directions that will encourage students to do their own work, their own thinking, their own writing. I've shared rough drafts of the assignment with others, asking "How can I make it better?" Collectively, we (the students and I) resent copying: they because they want everyone to be equal, I think. I because I want everyone to think and write.
The plagiarists, confronted with "their" essay as it appeared elsewhere under someone else's name have reacted with nonchalance. They have shrugged. They have said their roommate/friend/parent was the one responsible for copying. They have said that the online source copied from them. I give my "It's about thinking" response. Sometimes they nod their heads to indicate they have heard me (or so I stop explaining). Plagiarism is being untrue to yourself as well as others. That’s one perspective I tell myself, as I return to reading a stack of essays.
We finished sealing the cedar gazebo. For weeks, our garage smelled of cedar, that wood more aromatic than pine or redwood. Cedar is less expensive than some of the other choices, it's somewhat weather-resistant even without sealing the wood, and it's beautiful. Knots and grain in the boards make each piece of wood unique.
For weeks, I would open the door, and draw a deep breath. Board by board over the summer, we moved materials from storage to construction, figuring out how the cross pieces fit into the frame, how the roof could be attached. To protect the wood more than its natural resistance offered, we wanted to waterproof it, and did. Which led eventually to my idea of decorating the patio.
“I can tell where you painted,” Bob said, pointing. “Everywhere you worked on it, you left a mess underneath. Bob is right: I am a Messy Painter.
I have a Painting Outfit: oversize t shirt with souvenirs of each project (dark green, blue, white, cream, yellow, teal, and a splotch large as a handprint on one shoulder where I thoughtlessly rested a paint-covered hand), and somewhat less paint-decorated shorts. “Everyone has specific talents,” I tell my students. “Some of you are great at Finding Jobs, or Getting a Boyfriend, or Cooking.” One of my talents is Messy Painter.
I can wash the shirt and shorts, but it’s going to be a little more difficult to remove sealant splotches from the concrete. “What if we make it artistic?” I ask. “I can drop paint of all different colors around there, and it will look nice.”
“I think it would look weird,” he says.
But maybe if I practice on an unsuspecting surface…? Random spots of color, wherever they happen to fall from the brush…play to my talent of Messy Painter?
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