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1) “Cold Turkey” by Kurt Vonnegut
from
http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/cold_
turkey/
Many years ago, I was so innocent I still
considered it possible that we could become
the humane and reasonable America so
many members of my generation used to
dream of. We dreamed of such an America
during the Great Depression, when there
were no jobs. And then we fought and often
died for that dream during the Second World
War, when there was no peace.
But I know now that there is not a chance in
hell of America’s becoming humane and
reasonable. Because power corrupts us, and
absolute power corrupts absolutely. Human
beings are chimpanzees who get crazy drunk
on power. By saying that our leaders are
power-drunk chimpanzees, am I in danger of
wrecking the morale of our soldiers fighting
and dying in the Middle East? Their morale,
like so many bodies, is already shot to
pieces. They are being treated, as I never
was, like toys a rich kid got for Christmas.
————————————When you get to my age, if you get to my
age, which is 81, and if you have
reproduced, you will find yourself asking
your own children, who are themselves
middle-aged, what life is all about. I have
seven kids, four of them adopted.
Many of you reading this are probably the
same age as my grandchildren. They, like
you, are being royally shafted and lied to by
our Baby Boomer corporations and
government.
I put my big question about life to my
biological son Mark. Mark is a pediatrician,
and author of a memoir, The Eden Express.
It is about his crackup, straightjacket and
padded cell stuff, from which he recovered
sufficiently to graduate from Harvard
Medical School.
Dr. Vonnegut said this to his doddering old
dad: “Father, we are here to help each other
get through this thing, whatever it is.” So I
pass that on to you. Write it down, and put it
in your computer, so you can forget it.
I have to say that’s a pretty good sound bite,
almost as good as, “Do unto others as you
would have them do unto you.” A lot of
people think Jesus said that, because it is so
much the sort of thing Jesus liked to say. But
it was actually said by Confucius, a Chinese
philosopher, 500 years before there was that
greatest and most humane of human beings,
named Jesus Christ.
The Chinese also gave us, via Marco Polo,
pasta and the formula for gunpowder. The
Chinese were so dumb they only used
gunpowder for fireworks. And everybody
was so dumb back then that nobody in either
hemisphere even knew that there was
another one.
But back to people, like Confucius and Jesus
and my son the doctor, Mark, who’ve said
how we could behave more humanely, and
maybe make the world a less painful place.
One of my favorites is Eugene Debs, from
Terre Haute in my native state of Indiana.
Get a load of this:
Eugene Debs, who died back in 1926, when
I was only 4, ran 5 times as the Socialist
Party candidate for president, winning
900,000 votes, 6 percent of the popular vote,
in 1912, if you can imagine such a ballot. He
had this to say while campaigning:
As long as there is a lower class, I am in it.
As long as there is a criminal element, I’m
of it.
As long as there is a soul in prison, I am not
free.
But, when you stop to think about it, only a
nut case would want to be a human being, if
he or she had a choice. Such treacherous,
untrustworthy, lying and greedy animals we
are!
Doesn’t anything socialistic make you want
to throw up? Like great public schools or
health insurance for all?
Blessed are the merciful, for they shall
obtain mercy.
I was born a human being in 1922 A.D.
What does “A.D.” signify? That
commemorates an inmate of this lunatic
asylum we call Earth who was nailed to a
wooden cross by a bunch of other inmates.
With him still conscious, they hammered
spikes through his wrists and insteps, and
into the wood. Then they set the cross
upright, so he dangled up there where even
the shortest person in the crowd could see
him writhing this way and that.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall
be called the children of God. …
Can you imagine people doing such a thing
to a person?
And so on.
No problem. That’s entertainment. Ask the
devout Roman Catholic Mel Gibson, who,
as an act of piety, has just made a fortune
with a movie about how Jesus was tortured.
Never mind what Jesus said.
How about Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, the
Beatitudes?
Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit
the Earth.
Not exactly planks in a Republican platform.
Not exactly Donald Rumsfeld or Dick
Cheney stuff.
For some reason, the most vocal Christians
among us never mention the Beatitudes. But,
often with tears in their eyes, they demand
that the Ten Commandments be posted in
public buildings. And of course that’s
Moses, not Jesus. I haven’t heard one of
them demand that the Sermon on the Mount,
the Beatitudes, be posted anywhere.
During the reign of King Henry the Eighth,
founder of the Church of England, he had a
counterfeiter boiled alive in public. Show
biz again.
“Blessed are the merciful” in a courtroom?
“Blessed are the peacemakers” in the
Pentagon? Give me a break!
One of the few good things about modern
times: If you die horribly on television, you
will not have died in vain. You will have
entertained us.
————————————-
Mel Gibson’s next movie should be The
Counterfeiter. Box office records will again
be broken.
————————————There is a tragic flaw in our precious
Constitution, and I don’t know what can be
done to fix it. This is it: Only nut cases want
to be president.
And what did the great British historian
Edward Gibbon, 1737-1794 A.D., have to
say about the human record so far? He said,
“History is indeed little more than the
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register of the crimes, follies and
misfortunes of mankind.”
The same can be said about this morning’s
edition of the New York Times.
The French-Algerian writer Albert Camus,
who won a Nobel Prize for Literature in
1957, wrote, “There is but one truly serious
philosophical problem, and that is suicide.”
So there’s another barrel of laughs from
literature. Camus died in an automobile
accident. His dates? 1913-1960 A.D.
I often think it’s comical
How nature always does contrive
That every boy and every gal
That’s born into the world alive
Is either a little Liberal
Or else a little Conservative.
Which one are you in this country? It’s
practically a law of life that you have to be
one or the other? If you aren’t one or the
other, you might as well be a doughnut.
If some of you still haven’t decided, I’ll
make it easy for you.
Listen. All great literature is about what a
bummer it is to be a human being: Moby
Dick, Huckleberry Finn, The Red Badge of
Courage, the Iliad and the Odyssey, Crime
and Punishment, the Bible and The Charge
of the Light Brigade.
If you want to take my guns away from me,
and you’re all for murdering fetuses, and
love it when homosexuals marry each other,
and want to give them kitchen appliances at
their showers, and you’re for the poor,
you’re a liberal.
But I have to say this in defense of
humankind: No matter in what era in
history, including the Garden of Eden,
everybody just got there. And, except for the
Garden of Eden, there were already all these
crazy games going on, which could make
you act crazy, even if you weren’t crazy to
begin with. Some of the games that were
already going on when you got here were
love and hate, liberalism and conservatism,
automobiles and credit cards, golf and girls’
basketball.
If you are against those perversions and for
the rich, you’re a conservative.
Even crazier than golf, though, is modern
American politics, where, thanks to TV and
for the convenience of TV, you can only be
one of two kinds of human beings, either a
liberal or a conservative.
Actually, this same sort of thing happened to
the people of England generations ago, and
Sir William Gilbert, of the radical team of
Gilbert and Sullivan, wrote these words for a
song about it back then:
What could be simpler?
My government’s got a war on drugs. But
get this: The two most widely abused and
addictive and destructive of all substances
are both perfectly legal.
One, of course, is ethyl alcohol. And
President George W. Bush, no less, and by
his own admission, was smashed or tiddleypoo or four sheets to the wind a good deal of
the time from when he was 16 until he was
41. When he was 41, he says, Jesus
appeared to him and made him knock off the
sauce, stop gargling nose paint.
Other drunks have seen pink elephants.
And do you know why I think he is so
pissed off at Arabs? They invented algebra.
Arabs also invented the numbers we use,
including a symbol for nothing, which
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nobody else had ever had before. You think
Arabs are dumb? Try doing long division
with Roman numerals.
We’re spreading democracy, are we? Same
way European explorers brought
Christianity to the Indians, what we now call
“Native Americans.”
How ungrateful they were! How ungrateful
are the people of Baghdad today.
So let’s give another big tax cut to the superrich. That’ll teach bin Laden a lesson he
won’t soon forget. Hail to the Chief.
That chief and his cohorts have as little to do
with Democracy as the Europeans had to do
with Christianity. We the people have
absolutely no say in whatever they choose to
do next. In case you haven’t noticed, they’ve
already cleaned out the treasury, passing it
out to pals in the war and national security
rackets, leaving your generation and the next
one with a perfectly enormous debt that
you’ll be asked to repay.
Nobody let out a peep when they did that to
you, because they have disconnected every
burglar alarm in the Constitution: The
House, the Senate, the Supreme Court, the
FBI, the free press (which, having been
embedded, has forsaken the First
Amendment) and We the People.
About my own history of foreign substance
abuse. I’ve been a coward about heroin and
cocaine and LSD and so on, afraid they
might put me over the edge. I did smoke a
joint of marijuana one time with Jerry
Garcia and the Grateful Dead, just to be
sociable. It didn’t seem to do anything to
me, one way or the other, so I never did it
again. And by the grace of God, or
whatever, I am not an alcoholic, largely a
matter of genes. I take a couple of drinks
now and then, and will do it again tonight.
But two is my limit. No problem.
I am of course notoriously hooked on
cigarettes. I keep hoping the things will kill
me. A fire at one end and a fool at the other.
But I’ll tell you one thing: I once had a high
that not even crack cocaine could match.
That was when I got my first driver’s
license! Look out, world, here comes Kurt
Vonnegut.
And my car back then, a Studebaker, as I
recall, was powered, as are almost all means
of transportation and other machinery today,
and electric power plants and furnaces, by
the most abused and addictive and
destructive drugs of all: fossil fuels.
When you got here, even when I got here,
the industrialized world was already
hopelessly hooked on fossil fuels, and very
soon now there won’t be any more of those.
Cold turkey.
Can I tell you the truth? I mean this isn’t like
TV news, is it?
Here’s what I think the truth is: We are all
addicts of fossil fuels in a state of denial,
about to face cold turkey.
And like so many addicts about to face cold
turkey, our leaders are now committing
violent crimes to get what little is left of
what we’re hooked on.
Kurt Vonnegut is a legendary author, WWII
veteran, humanist, artist, smoker and In
These Times senior editor. His classic works
include Slaughterhouse-Five, Breakfast of
Champions, Cat's Cradle, among many
others. His most recent book, A Man
Without a Country, collects many of the
articles written for this magazine.
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____________________________________
2) From from "Sex Is Politics" January
1979 by Gore Vidal
The sexual attitudes of any given society are
the result of political decisions.
…..
Although our notions about what constitutes
correct sexual behavior are usually based on
religious texts, those texts are invariably
interpreted by the rulers in order to keep
control over the ruled. Any sexual or
intellectual or recreational or political
activity that might decrease the amount of
coal mined, the number of pyramids built,
the quantity of junk food confected will be
proscribed through laws that, in turn, are
based on divine revelations handed down by
whatever god or gods happen to be in
fashion at the moment. Religions are
manipulated in order to serve those who
govern society and not the other way
around. This is a brand-new thought to most
Americans, whether once or twice or never
bathed in the Blood of the Lamb.
…..
At any given moment in a society's life,
there are certain hot buttons that a politician
can push in order to get a predictably hot
response…. It is good politics to talk against
sin-and don't worry about non sequiturs. In
fact, it is positively un-American…to
discuss a real issue such as unemployment
or who is stealing all that money at the
Pentagon.
To divert the electorate, the unscrupulous
American politician will go after those
groups not regarded benignly by Old or New
Testament.
…..
In desperation, the nation's ownership has
now gone back to the tried-and-true hot
buttons: save our children, out fetuses, our
ladies' rooms from the godless enemy. As
usual, the sex buttons have proved
satisfyingly hot.
…..
Today Americans are in a state of terminal
hysteria on the subject of sex in general and
of homosexuality in particular because the
owners of the country (buttressed by a
religion that they have shrewdly adapted to
their own ends) regard the family as their
last means of control over those who work
and consume….
In the Symposium, Plato defined the
problem: "In Ionia and other places, and
generally in countries which are subject to
the barbarians [Plato is referring to the
Persians, who were the masters of the Jews
at the time Leviticus was written], the
custom [homosexuality] is held to be
dishonorable; loves of youths share the evil
repute in which philosophy and gymnastics
are held, because they are inimical to
tyranny; the interests of the rulers require
that their subjects should be poor in spirit
and that there should be no strong bond of
friendship or society among them, which
love, above all other motives, it likely to
inspire, as out Athenian tyrants learned by
experience; for the love or Aristogeiton and
the constancy of Harmodius had a strength
which undid their power." This last refers to
a pair of lovers who helped overthrow the
tyrants at Athens.
________________________________
3) “What Really Makes Us Free” by Elie
Wiesel Published: December 27, 1987 by
Parade Magazine
Does there exist a nobler inspiration than the
desire to be free? It is by his freedom that a
man knows himself, by his sovereignty over
his own life that a man measures himself. To
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violate that freedom, to flout that
sovereignty, is to deny man the right to live
his life, to take responsibility for himself
with dignity.
Man, who was created in God's image,
wants to be free as God is free: free to
choose between good and evil, love and
vengeance, life and death. All the great
religions proclaim this. The first law after
the Ten Commandments had to do with
slavery: It prohibited not only owning slaves
but also entering into slavery voluntarily.
One who gave up his freedom was punished.
To put it another way: Every man was free,
but no man was free to give up his freedom.
To strip a man of his freedom is not to
believe in man. The dictator does not believe
in man. Man's freedom frightens
him. Imprisoned as much by his ambition as
by his terror, the dictator defines his own
freedom in relation to the lack of freedom of
others. He feels free only because, and
when, other people—his subjects, his
victims—are not free. The happiness of
others prevents him from being happy
himself. Every free man is his adversary,
every independent thought renders him
impotent.
Caligula felt sure of his own intelligence
only when faced with his counselors'
stupidity; Stalin derived morbid pleasure
from the humiliations he inflicted on his
ministers; Hitler liked to insult his generals.
Every dictator sees others as potential
prisoners or victims—and every dictator
ends by being his own prisoner and his own
victim. For anyone who claims the right to
deprive others of their right to freedom and
happiness deprives himself of both. By
putting his adversaries in prison, his entire
country will be one vast jail. And the jailer
is no more free than his prisoners.
In fact, it is often the prisoner who is truly
free. In a police state, the hunted man
represents the ideal of freedom; the
condemned man honors it. As Jean-Paul
Sartre said, in occupied France, the only free
people were those in prison. These men and
women rejected the comfort of submission
and chose to resist the forces of oppression.
When they were put in prison, they no
longer had anything to fear. They knew they
were lost.
When the great French humorist Tristan
Bernard was arrested by the Germans after
months in hiding, his fellow prisoners were
surprised by his smiling face. "How can you
smile?" they asked. "Until now, I have lived
in fear," he said. "From now on, I will live
in hope."
For the free man is open to hope, whereas
the dictator is a man without hope. It is
because his victims cling to hope that he
persecutes them. It is because they believe in
freedom as much as they do in life itself that
he is determined to deprive them of
both. Sometimes he succeeds, but more
often he fails. For, in dying, the free man
reaffirms the value of life and freedom.
We find many examples in the tales told
about all revolutionary movements, in the
histories of every struggle for national
independence. Heroes and martyrs became
the pride of their people by fighting with a
weapon in their hand or a prayer on their
lips. In a thousand different ways, each
proclaimed that freedom alone gives
meaning to the life of an individual or a
people.
For a people—that is, for a social, ethnic or
religious group—the problem and its
solution are both simple. When a people
loses its freedom, it has a right, a duty, to
6
employ every possible means to win it back.
The same is true of the individual—with one
difference: An individual's resistance can be
expressed in more than one way.
The Jews who lived in the ghettos under the
Nazi occupation showed their independence
by leading an organized clandestine
life. The teacher who taught the starving
children was a free man. The nurse who
secretly cared for the wounded, the ill and
the dying was a free woman. The rabbi who
prayed, the disciple who studied, the father
who gave his bread to his children, the
children who risked their lives by leaving
the ghetto at night in order to bring back to
their parents a piece of bread or a few
potatoes, the man who consoled his
orphaned friend, the orphan who wept with a
stranger for a stranger—these were human
beings filled with an unquenchable thirst for
freedom and dignity. The young people who
dreamed of armed insurrection, the lovers
who, a moment before they were separated,
talked about their bright future together, the
insane who wrote poems, the chroniclers
who wrote down the day's events by the
light of their flickering candles—all of them
were free in the noblest sense of the word,
though their prison walls seemed impassable
and their executioners invincible.
It was the same even in the death camps.
Defeated and downcast, overcome by
fatigue and anguish, tormented and tortured
day after day, hour after hour, even in their
sleep, condemned to a slow but certain
death, the prisoners nevertheless managed to
carve out a patch of freedom for themselves.
Every memory became a protest against the
system; every smile was a call to resist;
every human act turned into a struggle
against the torturer's philosophy.
Do not misunderstand me: I am in no way
trying to minimize the Nazis' maleficent
power. I am not saying that all prisoners
succeeded in opposing them by their will to
be free. On the contrary, locked with a
suffering and solitude unlike any other, the
prisoners generally could only adapt to their
condition—and either be submerged by it or
carried along by time. The apparatus of
murder was too perfect not to crush people
weakened by hunger, forced labor and
punishment. But I am saying that the
executioner did not always triumph. Among
his victims were some who placed freedom
above what constituted their lives. Some
managed to escape and alert the public in the
free world. Others organized a solidarity
movement within the inferno itself. One
companion of mine in the camps gave the
man next to him a spoonful of soup every
day at work. Another would try to amuse us
with stories. Yet another would urge us not
to forget our names—one way, among many
other, of saying "no" to the enemy, of
showing that we were free, freer than the
enemy.
"Even in a climate of oppression, men are
capable of inventing their own freedom.
What if they are a minority? Even if only
one free individual is left, he is proof that
the dictator is powerless against freedom."
Without trying to compare different periods
or regimes—one has no right to compare
anything to Auschwitz—I want to tell about
a struggle for freedom that still is going on
in our world today, mainly in the Soviet
Union. I cannot write a meditation on
freedom without referring to it. Ever since I
learned about this struggle in 1965, I have
participated in it with all my heart and soul.
In 1965, at the time of my first trip to
Moscow, I met thousands of young Jews
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who had gathered before the city's largest
synagogue on the evening of Simchat Torah
(the celebration of the Law) to dance and
sing their faith—which they freely
proclaimed—in the Jewish people. They
were the first Soviet citizens to free
themselves from the police terror. I never
will forget our meeting. I made their fight
my own. Their love, their passion for
freedom, inspires my own.
For the Soviet Jews, writing, translating,
reading and studying are free and liberating
acts. By passing the word on, as by living
the faith, they are integrated into an ancient
collective experience and memory.
Suddenly they are less alone, less
vulnerable. Thus we have the bravery of
people like Prof. Alexander Lerner and Dr.
Alexander Ioffe—people who have been
waiting 17 years for visas that would allow
them to live an authentic Jewish life among
their own people in the land of Israel.
Each of these modern heroes, the
"Refuseniks," already has paid a high price
for his or her desire to abandon everything
and start over again far away. How can one
help admiring them? During the many years
they have lived as outsiders, spurned by
their old neighbors or colleagues, how have
they managed not to lose their courage?
How do all these courageous Jews, as well
as the non-Jewish political dissidents,
manage to preserve their faith, not to speak
of their sanity? More simply, how do they
manage to remain human?
For they are, all of them, human. Their
humanity is moving, even staggering, their
solidarity exemplary. The ways in which
they help one another have to be seen. If a
man is arrested, the others immediately
organize an action in his support. If a
woman is in pain, they rush to her side.
They are always there for one another. And
here again their act, their being there, is a
free act.
The truth is that even in a climate of
oppression, men are capable of inventing
their own freedom, of creating their own
ideal of sovereignty. What if they are a
minority? It does not matter. Even if only
one free individual is left, he will be proof
that the dictator is powerless against
freedom. But a free man is never alone; the
dictator is alone. The free man is the one
who, even in prison, gives to the other
prisoners their thirst for, their memory of,
freedom.
I went to the Soviet Union for the fourth
time last October. In a private apartment
somewhere in Moscow, in a crowd of 100 or
so Refuseniks, a man still young addressed
me shyly: "A few years ago," he said, "I
decided to translate your first three books in
samizdat [the illicit publication of banned
literature in the USSR]. Friends and I
distributed thousands of copies, but I knew I
would meet you someday, so I kept the first
copy. Here it is." Blushing, he held it out to
me, and I felt like embracing him in thanks
for both his courage and his devotion. An
hour later, in the same apartment but in a
different room, an older man came up to me:
"I have something for you," he said,
smiling. "A few years ago, I translated your
first three books. I kept one copy. I knew I
would meet you someday." I took him by
the arm and introduced him to the first
translator. They fell into each other's arms,
crying. Yes—joy makes people weep.
Freedom does too.
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4) “Thanksgiving Day, Nov. 28, 1986” by
William S. Burroughs
For John Dillinger
In hope he is still alive
From
http://realitystudio.org/texts/thanksgiving
-prayer/
_________________________________
Thanks for the wild turkey and the
Passenger Pigeons, destined to be shit out
through wholesome American guts —thanks
for a Continent to despoil and poison
thanks for Indians to provide a modicum of
challenge and danger —
thanks for vast herds of bison to kill and
skin, leaving the carcass to rot —
thanks for bounties on wolves and coyotes
—
thanks for the AMERICAN DREAM to
vulgarize and falsify until the bare lies shine
through —
thanks for the KKK, for nigger-killing
lawmen feeling their notches, for decent
church-going women with their mean,
pinched, bitter, evil faces —
thanks for "Kill a Queer for Christ" stickers
—
thanks for laboratory AIDS —
thanks for Prohibition and the War Against
Drugs —
thanks for a country where nobody is
allowed to mind his own business —
thanks for a nation of finks — yes,
thanks for all the memories... all right, let's
see your arms... you always were a headache
and you always were a bore —
thanks for the last and greatest betrayal of
the last and greatest of human dreams.
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5) “Harrison Bergeron” by Kurt
Vonnegut from
http://www.tnellen.com/westside/harrison
.pdf
THE YEAR WAS 2081, and everybody was
finally equal. They weren’t only equal
before God and the law. They were equal
every which way. Nobody was smarter than
anybody else. Nobody was better looking
than anybody else. Nobody was stronger or
quicker than anybody else. All this equality
was due to the 211th, 212th, and 213th
Amendments to the Constitution, and to the
unceasing vigilance of agents of the United
States Handicapper General.
Some things about living still weren’t quite
right, though. April, for instance, still drove
people crazy by not being springtime. And it
was in that clammy month that the H-G men
took George and Hazel Bergeron’s fourteenyear-old son, Harrison, away.
It was tragic, all right, but George and Hazel
couldn’t think about it very hard. Hazel had
a perfectly average intelligence, which
meant she couldn’t think about anything
except in short bursts. And George, while
his intelligence was way above normal, had
a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He
was required by law to wear it at all times. It
was tuned to a government transmitter.
Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter
would send out some sharp noise to keep
people like George from taking unfair
advantage of their brains.
George and Hazel were watching television.
There were tears on Hazel’s cheeks, but
she’d forgotten for the moment what they
were about.
On the television screen were ballerinas.
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A buzzer sounded in George’s head. His
thoughts fled in panic, like bandits from a
burglar alarm.
“That was a real pretty dance, that dance
they just did,” said Hazel.
“Huh?” said George.
“That dance – it was nice,” said Hazel.
“Yup,” said George. He tried to think a little
about the ballerinas. They weren’t really
very good – no better than anybody else
would have been, anyway. They were
burdened with sashweights and bags of
birdshot, and their faces were masked, so
that no one, seeing a free and graceful
gesture or a pretty face, would feel like
something the cat drug in. George was
toying with the vague notion that maybe
dancers shouldn’t be handicapped. But he
didn’t get very far with it before another
noise in his ear radio scattered his thoughts.
George winced. So did two out of the eight
ballerinas.
Hazel saw him wince. Having no mental
handicap herself she had to ask George what
the latest sound had been.
“Sounded like somebody hitting a milk
bottle with a ball peen hammer,” said
George.
“I’d think it would be real interesting,
hearing all the different sounds,” said Hazel,
a little envious. “All the things they think
up.”
“Um,” said George.
“Only, if I was Handicapper General, you
know what I would do?” said Hazel. Hazel,
as a matter of fact, bore a strong
resemblance to the Handicapper General, a
woman named Diana Moon Glampers. “If I
was Diana Moon Glampers,” said Hazel,
“I’d have chimes on Sunday – just chimes.
Kind of in honor of religion.”
“I could think, if it was just chimes,” said
George.
“Well – maybe make ‘em real loud,” said
Hazel. “I think I’d make a good
Handicapper General.”
“Good as anybody else,” said George.
“Who knows better’n I do what normal is?”
said Hazel.
“Right,” said George. He began to think
glimmeringly about his abnormal son who
was now in jail, about Harrison, but a
twenty-one-gun salute in his head stopped
that.
“Boy!” said Hazel, “that was a doozy,
wasn’t it?”
It was such a doozy that George was white
and trembling and tears stood on the rims of
his red eyes. Two of the eight ballerinas had
collapsed to the studio floor, were holding
their temples.
“All of a sudden you look so tired,” said
Hazel. “Why don’t you stretch out on the
sofa, so’s you can rest your handicap bag on
the pillows, honeybunch.” She was referring
to the forty-seven pounds of birdshot in
canvas bag, which was padlocked around
George’s neck. “Go on and rest the bag for a
little while,” she said. “I don’t care if you’re
not equal to me for a while.”
George weighed the bag with his hands. “I
don’t mind it,” he said. “I don’t notice it any
more. It’s just a part of me.
11
“You been so tired lately – kind of wore
out,” said Hazel. “If there was just some
way we could make a little hole in the
bottom of the bag, and just take out a few of
them lead balls. Just a few.”
a state of high excitement, the announcer
tried to say, “Ladies and gentlemen – ”
“Two years in prison and two thousand
dollars fine for every ball I took out,” said
George. “I don’t call that a bargain.”
“That’s all right –” Hazel said of the
announcer, “he tried. That’s the big thing.
He tried to do the best he could with what
God gave him. He should get a nice raise for
trying so hard.”
“If you could just take a few out when you
came home from work,” said Hazel. “I mean
– you don’t compete with anybody around
here. You just set around.”
“If I tried to get away with it,” said George,
“then other people’d get away with it and
pretty soon we’d be right back to the dark
ages again, with everybody competing
against everybody else. You wouldn’t like
that, would you?”
“I’d hate it,” said Hazel.
“There you are,” said George. “The minute
people start cheating on laws, what do you
think happens to society?”
If Hazel hadn’t been able to come up with
an answer to this question, George couldn’t
have supplied one. A siren was going off in
his head.
“Reckon it’d fall all apart,” said Hazel.
“What would?” said George blankly.
“Society,” said Hazel uncertainly. “Wasn’t
that what you just said?”
“Who knows?” said George.
The television program was suddenly
interrupted for a news bulletin. It wasn’t
clear at first as to what the bulletin was
about, since the announcer, like all
announcers, had a serious speech
impediment. For about half a minute, and in
He finally gave up, handed the bulletin to a
ballerina to read.
“Ladies and gentlemen” said the ballerina,
reading the bulletin. She must have been
extraordinarily beautiful, because the mask
she wore was hideous. And it was easy to
see that she was the strongest and most
graceful of all the dancers, for her handicap
bags were as big as those worn by twohundred-pound men.
And she had to apologize at once for her
voice, which was a very unfair voice for a
woman to use. Her voice was a warm,
luminous, timeless melody. “Excuse me – ”
she said, and she began again, making her
voice absolutely uncompetitive.
“Harrison Bergeron, age fourteen,” she said
in a grackle squawk, “has just escaped from
jail, where he was held on suspicion of
plotting to overthrow the government. He is
a genius and an athlete, is under–
handicapped, and should be regarded as
extremely dangerous.”
A police photograph of Harrison Bergeron
was flashed on the screen – upside down,
then sideways, upside down again, then right
side up. The picture showed the full length
of Harrison against a background calibrated
in feet and inches. He was exactly seven feet
tall.
The rest of Harrison’s appearance was
Halloween and hardware. Nobody had ever
12
worn heavier handicaps. He had outgrown
hindrances faster than the H–G men could
think them up. Instead of a little ear radio for
a mental handicap, he wore a tremendous
pair of earphones, and spectacles with thick
wavy lenses. The spectacles were intended
to make him not only half blind, but to give
him whanging headaches besides.
Scrap metal was hung all over him.
Ordinarily, there was a certain symmetry, a
military neatness to the handicaps issued to
strong people, but Harrison looked like a
walking junkyard. In the race of life,
Harrison carried three hundred pounds.
And to offset his good looks, the H–G men
required that he wear at all times a red
rubber ball for a nose, keep his eyebrows
shaved off, and cover his even white teeth
with black caps at snaggle–tooth random.
“If you see this boy,” said the ballerina, “do
not – I repeat, do not – try to reason with
him.”
There was the shriek of a door being torn
from its hinges.
Screams and barking cries of consternation
came from the television set. The
photograph of Harrison Bergeron on the
screen jumped again and again, as though
dancing to the tune of an earthquake.
George Bergeron correctly identified the
earthquake, and well he might have – for
many was the time his own home had
danced to the same crashing tune. “My God
–” said George, “that must be Harrison!”
The realization was blasted from his mind
instantly by the sound of an automobile
collision in his head.
When George could open his eyes again, the
photograph of Harrison was gone. A living,
breathing Harrison filled the screen.
Clanking, clownish, and huge, Harrison
stood in the center of the studio. The knob of
the uprooted studio door was still in his
hand. Ballerinas, technicians, musicians, and
announcers cowered on their knees before
him, expecting to die.
“I am the Emperor!” cried Harrison. “Do
you hear? I am the Emperor! Everybody
must do what I say at once!” He stamped his
foot and the studio shook.
“Even as I stand here –” he bellowed,
“crippled, hobbled, sickened – I am a greater
ruler than any man who ever lived! Now
watch me become what I can become!”
Harrison tore the straps of his handicap
harness like wet tissue paper, tore straps
guaranteed to support five thousand pounds.
Harrison’s scrap–iron handicaps crashed to
the floor.
Harrison thrust his thumbs under the bar of
the padlock that secured his head harness.
The bar snapped like celery. Harrison
smashed his headphones and spectacles
against the wall.
He flung away his rubber–ball nose,
revealed a man that would have awed Thor,
the god of thunder.
“I shall now select my Empress!” he said,
looking down on the cowering people. “Let
the first woman who dares rise to her feet
claim her mate and her throne!”
A moment passed, and then a ballerina
arose, swaying like a willow.
13
Harrison plucked the mental handicap from
her ear, snapped off her physical handicaps
with marvelous delicacy. Last of all, he
removed her mask.
She was blindingly beautiful.
“Now” said Harrison, taking her hand, “shall
we show the people the meaning of the word
dance? Music!” he commanded.
The musicians scrambled back into their
chairs, and Harrison stripped them of their
handicaps, too. “Play your best,” he told
them, “and I’ll make you barons and dukes
and earls.”
The music began. It was normal at first –
cheap, silly, false. But Harrison snatched
two musicians from their chairs, waved
them like batons as he sang the music as he
wanted it played. He slammed them back
into their chairs.
The music began again and was much
improved.
Harrison and his Empress merely listened to
the music for a while – listened gravely, as
though synchronizing their heartbeats with
it.
They shifted their weights to their toes.
They leaped like deer on the moon.
The studio ceiling was thirty feet high, but
each leap brought the dancers nearer to it. It
became their obvious intention to kiss the
ceiling.
They kissed it.
And then, neutralizing gravity with love and
pure will, they remained suspended in air
inches below the ceiling, and they kissed
each other for a long, long time.
It was then that Diana Moon Glampers, the
Handicapper General, came into the studio
with a double-barreled ten-gauge shotgun.
She fired twice, and the Emperor and the
Empress were dead before they hit the floor.
Diana Moon Glampers loaded the gun again.
She aimed it at the musicians and told them
they had ten seconds to get their handicaps
back on.
It was then that the Bergerons’ television
tube burned out.
Hazel turned to comment about the blackout
to George.
But George had gone out into the kitchen for
a can of beer.
Harrison placed his big hands on the girl’s
tiny waist, letting her sense the
weightlessness that would soon be hers.
George came back in with the beer, paused
while a handicap signal shook him up. And
then he sat down again. “You been crying?”
he said to Hazel.
And then, in an explosion of joy and grace,
into the air they sprang!
“Yup,” she said,
Not only were the laws of the land
abandoned, but the law of gravity and the
laws of motion as well.
They reeled, whirled, swiveled, flounced,
capered, gamboled, and spun.
“What about?” he said.
“I forget,” she said. “Something real sad on
television.”
“What was it?” he said.
14
“It’s all kind of mixed up in my mind,” said
Hazel.
“Forget sad things,” said George.
“I always do,” said Hazel.
“That’s my girl,” said George. He winced.
There was the sound of a riveting gun in his
head.
“Gee – I could tell that one was a doozy,”
said Hazel.
“You can say that again,” said George.
“Gee –” said Hazel, “I could tell that one
was a doozy.”
_________________________________
6) Paul Graham’s
February 2003 from
http://www.paulgraham.com/
When we were in junior high school, my
friend Rich and I made a map of the school
lunch tables according to popularity. This
was easy to do, because kids only ate lunch
with others of about the same popularity.
We graded them from A to E. A tables were
full of football players and cheerleaders and
so on. E tables contained the kids with mild
cases of Down's Syndrome, what in the
language of the time we called "retards."
We sat at a D table, as low as you could get
without looking physically different. We
were not being especially candid to grade
ourselves as D. It would have taken a
deliberate lie to say otherwise. Everyone in
the school knew exactly how popular
everyone else was, including us.
My stock gradually rose during high school.
Puberty finally arrived; I became a decent
soccer player; I started a scandalous
underground newspaper. So I've seen a good
part of the popularity landscape.
I know a lot of people who were nerds in
school, and they all tell the same story: there
is a strong correlation between being smart
and being a nerd, and an even stronger
inverse correlation between being a nerd
and being popular. Being smart seems to
make you unpopular.
Why? To someone in school now, that may
seem an odd question to ask. The mere fact
is so overwhelming that it may seem strange
to imagine that it could be any other way.
But it could. Being smart doesn't make you
an outcast in elementary school. Nor does it
harm you in the real world. Nor, as far as I
can tell, is the problem so bad in most other
countries. But in a typical American
secondary school, being smart is likely to
make your life difficult. Why?
The key to this mystery is to rephrase the
question slightly. Why don't smart kids
make themselves popular? If they're so
smart, why don't they figure out how
popularity works and beat the system, just
as they do for standardized tests?
One argument says that this would be
impossible, that the smart kids are
unpopular because the other kids envy them
for being smart, and nothing they could do
could make them popular. I wish. If the
other kids in junior high school envied me,
they did a great job of concealing it. And in
any case, if being smart were really an
enviable quality, the girls would have
broken ranks. The guys that guys envy, girls
like.
15
In the schools I went to, being smart just
didn't matter much. Kids didn't admire it or
despise it. All other things being equal, they
would have preferred to be on the smart side
of average rather than the dumb side, but
intelligence counted far less than, say,
physical appearance, charisma, or athletic
ability.
So if intelligence in itself is not a factor in
popularity, why are smart kids so
consistently unpopular? The answer, I think,
is that they don't really want to be popular.
If someone had told me that at the time, I
would have laughed at him. Being
unpopular in school makes kids miserable,
some of them so miserable that they commit
suicide. Telling me that I didn't want to be
popular would have seemed like telling
someone dying of thirst in a desert that he
didn't want a glass of water. Of course I
wanted to be popular.
But in fact I didn't, not enough. There was
something else I wanted more: to be smart.
Not simply to do well in school, though that
counted for something, but to design
beautiful rockets, or to write well, or to
understand how to program computers. In
general, to make great things.
At the time I never tried to separate my
wants and weigh them against one another.
If I had, I would have seen that being smart
was more important. If someone had offered
me the chance to be the most popular kid in
school, but only at the price of being of
average intelligence (humor me here), I
wouldn't have taken it.
Much as they suffer from their unpopularity,
I don't think many nerds would. To them the
thought of average intelligence is
unbearable. But most kids would take that
deal. For half of them, it would be a step up.
Even for someone in the eightieth percentile
(assuming, as everyone seemed to then, that
intelligence is a scalar), who wouldn't drop
thirty points in exchange for being loved
and admired by everyone?
And that, I think, is the root of the problem.
Nerds serve two masters. They want to be
popular, certainly, but they want even more
to be smart. And popularity is not
something you can do in your spare time,
not in the fiercely competitive environment
of an American secondary school.
Alberti, arguably the archetype of the
Renaissance Man, writes that "no art,
however minor, demands less than total
dedication if you want to excel in it." I
wonder if anyone in the world works harder
at anything than American school kids work
at popularity. Navy SEALs and
neurosurgery residents seem slackers by
comparison. They occasionally take
vacations; some even have hobbies. An
American teenager may work at being
popular every waking hour, 365 days a year.
I don't mean to suggest they do this
consciously. Some of them truly are little
Machiavellis, but what I really mean here is
that teenagers are always on duty as
conformists.
For example, teenage kids pay a great deal
of attention to clothes. They don't
consciously dress to be popular. They dress
to look good. But to who? To the other kids.
Other kids' opinions become their definition
of right, not just for clothes, but for almost
everything they do, right down to the way
they walk. And so every effort they make to
do things "right" is also, consciously or not,
16
an effort to be more popular.
Nerds don't realize this. They don't realize
that it takes work to be popular. In general,
people outside some very demanding field
don't realize the extent to which success
depends on constant (though often
unconscious) effort. For example, most
people seem to consider the ability to draw
as some kind of innate quality, like being
tall. In fact, most people who "can draw"
like drawing, and have spent many hours
doing it; that's why they're good at it.
Likewise, popular isn't just something you
are or you aren't, but something you make
yourself.
The main reason nerds are unpopular is that
they have other things to think about. Their
attention is drawn to books or the natural
world, not fashions and parties. They're like
someone trying to play soccer while
balancing a glass of water on his head.
Other players who can focus their whole
attention on the game beat them effortlessly,
and wonder why they seem so incapable.
Even if nerds cared as much as other kids
about popularity, being popular would be
more work for them. The popular kids
learned to be popular, and to want to be
popular, the same way the nerds learned to
be smart, and to want to be smart: from their
parents. While the nerds were being trained
to get the right answers, the popular kids
were being trained to please.
So far I've been finessing the relationship
between smart and nerd, using them as if
they were interchangeable. In fact it's only
the context that makes them so. A nerd is
someone who isn't socially adept enough.
But "enough" depends on where you are. In
a typical American school, standards for
coolness are so high (or at least, so specific)
that you don't have to be especially
awkward to look awkward by comparison.
Few smart kids can spare the attention that
popularity requires. Unless they also happen
to be good-looking, natural athletes, or
siblings of popular kids, they'll tend to
become nerds. And that's why smart
people's lives are worst between, say, the
ages of eleven and seventeen. Life at that
age revolves far more around popularity
than before or after.
Before that, kids' lives are dominated by
their parents, not by other kids. Kids do care
what their peers think in elementary school,
but this isn't their whole life, as it later
becomes.
Around the age of eleven, though, kids seem
to start treating their family as a day job.
They create a new world among themselves,
and standing in this world is what matters,
not standing in their family. Indeed, being in
trouble in their family can win them points
in the world they care about.
The problem is, the world these kids create
for themselves is at first a very crude one. If
you leave a bunch of eleven-year-olds to
their own devices, what you get is Lord of
the Flies. Like a lot of American kids, I read
this book in school. Presumably it was not a
coincidence. Presumably someone wanted
to point out to us that we were savages, and
that we had made ourselves a cruel and
stupid world. This was too subtle for me.
While the book seemed entirely believable,
I didn't get the additional message. I wish
they had just told us outright that we were
savages and our world was stupid.
Nerds would find their unpopularity more
bearable if it merely caused them to be
17
ignored. Unfortunately, to be unpopular in
school is to be actively persecuted.
Why? Once again, anyone currently in
school might think this a strange question to
ask. How could things be any other way?
But they could be. Adults don't normally
persecute nerds. Why do teenage kids do it?
Partly because teenagers are still half
children, and many children are just
intrinsically cruel. Some torture nerds for
the same reason they pull the legs off
spiders. Before you develop a conscience,
torture is amusing.
Another reason kids persecute nerds is to
make themselves feel better. When you
tread water, you lift yourself up by pushing
water down. Likewise, in any social
hierarchy, people unsure of their own
position will try to emphasize it by
maltreating those they think rank below. I've
read that this is why poor whites in the
United States are the group most hostile to
blacks.
But I think the main reason other kids
persecute nerds is that it's part of the
mechanism of popularity. Popularity is only
partially about individual attractiveness. It's
much more about alliances. To become
more popular, you need to be constantly
doing things that bring you close to other
popular people, and nothing brings people
closer than a common enemy.
Like a politician who wants to distract
voters from bad times at home, you can
create an enemy if there isn't a real one. By
singling out and persecuting a nerd, a group
of kids from higher in the hierarchy create
bonds between themselves. Attacking an
outsider makes them all insiders. This is
why the worst cases of bullying happen with
groups. Ask any nerd: you get much worse
treatment from a group of kids than from
any individual bully, however sadistic.
If it's any consolation to the nerds, it's
nothing personal. The group of kids who
band together to pick on you are doing the
same thing, and for the same reason, as a
bunch of guys who get together to go
hunting. They don't actually hate you. They
just need something to chase.
Because they're at the bottom of the scale,
nerds are a safe target for the entire school.
If I remember correctly, the most popular
kids don't persecute nerds; they don't need
to stoop to such things. Most of the
persecution comes from kids lower down,
the nervous middle classes.
The trouble is, there are a lot of them. The
distribution of popularity is not a pyramid,
but tapers at the bottom like a pear. The
least popular group is quite small. (I believe
we were the only D table in our cafeteria
map.) So there are more people who want to
pick on nerds than there are nerds.
As well as gaining points by distancing
oneself from unpopular kids, one loses
points by being close to them. A woman I
know says that in high school she liked
nerds, but was afraid to be seen talking to
them because the other girls would make
fun of her. Unpopularity is a communicable
disease; kids too nice to pick on nerds will
still ostracize them in self-defense.
It's no wonder, then, that smart kids tend to
be unhappy in middle school and high
school. Their other interests leave them little
attention to spare for popularity, and since
popularity resembles a zero-sum game, this
in turn makes them targets for the whole
18
school. And the strange thing is, this
nightmare scenario happens without any
conscious malice, merely because of the
shape of the situation.
For me the worst stretch was junior high,
when kid culture was new and harsh, and
the specialization that would later gradually
separate the smarter kids had barely begun.
Nearly everyone I've talked to agrees: the
nadir is somewhere between eleven and
fourteen.
In our school it was eighth grade, which was
ages twelve and thirteen for me. There was
a brief sensation that year when one of our
teachers overheard a group of girls waiting
for the school bus, and was so shocked that
the next day she devoted the whole class to
an eloquent plea not to be so cruel to one
another.
It didn't have any noticeable effect. What
struck me at the time was that she was
surprised. You mean she doesn't know the
kind of things they say to one another? You
mean this isn't normal?
It's important to realize that, no, the adults
don't know what the kids are doing to one
another. They know, in the abstract, that
kids are monstrously cruel to one another,
just as we know in the abstract that people
get tortured in poorer countries. But, like us,
they don't like to dwell on this depressing
fact, and they don't see evidence of specific
abuses unless they go looking for it.
Public school teachers are in much the same
position as prison wardens. Wardens' main
concern is to keep the prisoners on the
premises. They also need to keep them fed,
and as far as possible prevent them from
killing one another. Beyond that, they want
to have as little to do with the prisoners as
possible, so they leave them to create
whatever social organization they want.
From what I've read, the society that the
prisoners create is warped, savage, and
pervasive, and it is no fun to be at the
bottom of it.
In outline, it was the same at the schools I
went to. The most important thing was to
stay on the premises. While there, the
authorities fed you, prevented overt
violence, and made some effort to teach you
something. But beyond that they didn't want
to have too much to do with the kids. Like
prison wardens, the teachers mostly left us
to ourselves. And, like prisoners, the culture
we created was barbaric.
Why is the real world more hospitable to
nerds? It might seem that the answer is
simply that it's populated by adults, who are
too mature to pick on one another. But I
don't think this is true. Adults in prison
certainly pick on one another. And so,
apparently, do society wives; in some parts
of Manhattan, life for women sounds like a
continuation of high school, with all the
same petty intrigues.
I think the important thing about the real
world is not that it's populated by adults, but
that it's very large, and the things you do
have real effects. That's what school, prison,
and ladies-who-lunch all lack. The
inhabitants of all those worlds are trapped in
little bubbles where nothing they do can
have more than a local effect. Naturally
these societies degenerate into savagery.
They have no function for their form to
follow.
When the things you do have real effects,
it's no longer enough just to be pleasing. It
starts to be important to get the right
answers, and that's where nerds show to
19
advantage. Bill Gates will of course come to
mind. Though notoriously lacking in social
skills, he gets the right answers, at least as
measured in revenue.
The other thing that's different about the real
world is that it's much larger. In a large
enough pool, even the smallest minorities
can achieve a critical mass if they clump
together. Out in the real world, nerds collect
in certain places and form their own
societies where intelligence is the most
important thing. Sometimes the current even
starts to flow in the other direction:
sometimes, particularly in university math
and science departments, nerds deliberately
exaggerate their awkwardness in order to
seem smarter. John Nash so admired
Norbert Wiener that he adopted his habit of
touching the wall as he walked down a
corridor.
As a thirteen-year-old kid, I didn't have
much more experience of the world than
what I saw immediately around me. The
warped little world we lived in was, I
thought, the world. The world seemed cruel
and boring, and I'm not sure which was
worse.
Because I didn't fit into this world, I thought
that something must be wrong with me. I
didn't realize that the reason we nerds didn't
fit in was that in some ways we were a step
ahead. We were already thinking about the
kind of things that matter in the real world,
instead of spending all our time playing an
exacting but mostly pointless game like the
others.
We were a bit like an adult would be if he
were thrust back into middle school. He
wouldn't know the right clothes to wear, the
right music to like, the right slang to use.
He'd seem to the kids a complete alien. The
thing is, he'd know enough not to care what
they thought. We had no such confidence.
A lot of people seem to think it's good for
smart kids to be thrown together with
"normal" kids at this stage of their lives.
Perhaps. But in at least some cases the
reason the nerds don't fit in really is that
everyone else is crazy. I remember sitting in
the audience at a "pep rally" at my high
school, watching as the cheerleaders threw
an effigy of an opposing player into the
audience to be torn to pieces. I felt like an
explorer witnessing some bizarre tribal
ritual.
If I could go back and give my thirteen year
old self some advice, the main thing I'd tell
him would be to stick his head up and look
around. I didn't really grasp it at the time,
but the whole world we lived in was as fake
as a Twinkie. Not just school, but the entire
town. Why do people move to suburbia? To
have kids! So no wonder it seemed boring
and sterile. The whole place was a giant
nursery, an artificial town created explicitly
for the purpose of breeding children.
Where I grew up, it felt as if there was
nowhere to go, and nothing to do. This was
no accident. Suburbs are deliberately
designed to exclude the outside world,
because it contains things that could
endanger children.
And as for the schools, they were just
holding pens within this fake world.
Officially the purpose of schools is to teach
kids. In fact their primary purpose is to keep
kids locked up in one place for a big chunk
of the day so adults can get things done.
And I have no problem with this: in a
specialized industrial society, it would be a
disaster to have kids running around loose.
What bothers me is not that the kids are kept
20
in prisons, but that (a) they aren't told about
it, and (b) the prisons are run mostly by the
inmates. Kids are sent off to spend six years
memorizing meaningless facts in a world
ruled by a caste of giants who run after an
oblong brown ball, as if this were the most
natural thing in the world. And if they balk
at this surreal cocktail, they're called misfits.
Life in this twisted world is stressful for the
kids. And not just for the nerds. Like any
war, it's damaging even to the winners.
Adults can't avoid seeing that teenage kids
are tormented. So why don't they do
something about it? Because they blame it
on puberty. The reason kids are so unhappy,
adults tell themselves, is that monstrous new
chemicals, hormones, are now coursing
through their bloodstream and messing up
everything. There's nothing wrong with the
system; it's just inevitable that kids will be
miserable at that age.
This idea is so pervasive that even the kids
believe it, which probably doesn't help.
Someone who thinks his feet naturally hurt
is not going to stop to consider the
possibility that he is wearing the wrong size
shoes.
I'm suspicious of this theory that thirteenyear-old kids are intrinsically messed up. If
it's physiological, it should be universal. Are
Mongol nomads all nihilists at thirteen? I've
read a lot of history, and I have not seen a
single reference to this supposedly universal
fact before the twentieth century. Teenage
apprentices in the Renaissance seem to have
been cheerful and eager. They got in fights
and played tricks on one another of course
(Michelangelo had his nose broken by a
bully), but they weren't crazy.
As far as I can tell, the concept of the
hormone-crazed teenager is coeval with
suburbia. I don't think this is a coincidence.
I think teenagers are driven crazy by the life
they're made to lead. Teenage apprentices in
the Renaissance were working dogs.
Teenagers now are neurotic lapdogs. Their
craziness is the craziness of the idle
everywhere.
When I was in school, suicide was a
constant topic among the smarter kids. No
one I knew did it, but several planned to,
and some may have tried. Mostly this was
just a pose. Like other teenagers, we loved
the dramatic, and suicide seemed very
dramatic. But partly it was because our lives
were at times genuinely miserable.
Bullying was only part of the problem.
Another problem, and possibly an even
worse one, was that we never had anything
real to work on. Humans like to work; in
most of the world, your work is your
identity. And all the work we did was
pointless, or seemed so at the time.
At best it was practice for real work we
might do far in the future, so far that we
didn't even know at the time what we were
practicing for. More often it was just an
arbitrary series of hoops to jump through,
words without content designed mainly for
testability. (The three main causes of the
Civil War were.... Test: List the three main
causes of the Civil War.)
And there was no way to opt out. The adults
had agreed among themselves that this was
to be the route to college. The only way to
escape this empty life was to submit to it.
Teenage kids used to have a more active
role in society. In pre-industrial times, they
21
were all apprentices of one sort or another,
whether in shops or on farms or even on
warships. They weren't left to create their
own societies. They were junior members of
adult societies.
Teenagers seem to have respected adults
more then, because the adults were the
visible experts in the skills they were trying
to learn. Now most kids have little idea
what their parents do in their distant offices,
and see no connection (indeed, there is
precious little) between schoolwork and the
work they'll do as adults.
And if teenagers respected adults more,
adults also had more use for teenagers.
After a couple years' training, an apprentice
could be a real help. Even the newest
apprentice could be made to carry messages
or sweep the workshop.
Now adults have no immediate use for
teenagers. They would be in the way in an
office. So they drop them off at school on
their way to work, much as they might drop
the dog off at a kennel if they were going
away for the weekend.
What happened? We're up against a hard
one here. The cause of this problem is the
same as the cause of so many present ills:
specialization. As jobs become more
specialized, we have to train longer for
them. Kids in pre-industrial times started
working at about 14 at the latest; kids on
farms, where most people lived, began far
earlier. Now kids who go to college don't
start working full-time till 21 or 22. With
some degrees, like MDs and PhDs, you may
not finish your training till 30.
Teenagers now are useless, except as cheap
labor in industries like fast food, which
evolved to exploit precisely this fact. In
almost any other kind of work, they'd be a
net loss. But they're also too young to be left
unsupervised. Someone has to watch over
them, and the most efficient way to do this
is to collect them together in one place.
Then a few adults can watch all of them.
If you stop there, what you're describing is
literally a prison, albeit a part-time one. The
problem is, many schools practically do stop
there. The stated purpose of schools is to
educate the kids. But there is no external
pressure to do this well. And so most
schools do such a bad job of teaching that
the kids don't really take it seriously-- not
even the smart kids. Much of the time we
were all, students and teachers both, just
going through the motions.
In my high school French class we were
supposed to read Hugo's Les Miserables. I
don't think any of us knew French well
enough to make our way through this
enormous book. Like the rest of the class, I
just skimmed the Cliff's Notes. When we
were given a test on the book, I noticed that
the questions sounded odd. They were full
of long words that our teacher wouldn't have
used. Where had these questions come
from? From the Cliff's Notes, it turned out.
The teacher was using them too. We were
all just pretending.
There are certainly great public school
teachers. The energy and imagination of my
fourth grade teacher, Mr. Mihalko, made
that year something his students still talk
about, thirty years later. But teachers like
him were individuals swimming upstream.
They couldn't fix the system.
In almost any group of people you'll find
hierarchy. When groups of adults form in
22
the real world, it's generally for some
common purpose, and the leaders end up
being those who are best at it. The problem
with most schools is, they have no purpose.
But hierarchy there must be. And so the kids
make one out of nothing.
We have a phrase to describe what happens
when rankings have to be created without
any meaningful criteria. We say that the
situation degenerates into a popularity
contest. And that's exactly what happens in
most American schools. Instead of
depending on some real test, one's rank
depends mostly on one's ability to increase
one's rank. It's like the court of Louis XIV.
There is no external opponent, so the kids
become one another's opponents.
When there is some real external test of
skill, it isn't painful to be at the bottom of
the hierarchy. A rookie on a football team
doesn't resent the skill of the veteran; he
hopes to be like him one day and is happy to
have the chance to learn from him. The
veteran may in turn feel a sense of noblesse
oblige. And most importantly, their status
depends on how well they do against
opponents, not on whether they can push the
other down.
Court hierarchies are another thing entirely.
This type of society debases anyone who
enters it. There is neither admiration at the
bottom, nor noblesse oblige at the top. It's
kill or be killed.
This is the sort of society that gets created in
American secondary schools. And it
happens because these schools have no real
purpose beyond keeping the kids all in one
place for a certain number of hours each
day. What I didn't realize at the time, and in
fact didn't realize till very recently, is that
the twin horrors of school life, the cruelty
and the boredom, both have the same cause.
The mediocrity of American public schools
has worse consequences than just making
kids unhappy for six years. It breeds a
rebelliousness that actively drives kids away
from the things they're supposed to be
learning.
Like many nerds, probably, it was years
after high school before I could bring
myself to read anything we'd been assigned
then. And I lost more than books. I
mistrusted words like "character" and
"integrity" because they had been so
debased by adults. As they were used then,
these words all seemed to mean the same
thing: obedience. The kids who got praised
for these qualities tended to be at best dullwitted prize bulls, and at worst facile
schmoozers. If that was what character and
integrity were, I wanted no part of them.
The word I most misunderstood was "tact."
As used by adults, it seemed to mean
keeping your mouth shut. I assumed it was
derived from the same root as "tacit" and
"taciturn," and that it literally meant being
quiet. I vowed that I would never be tactful;
they were never going to shut me up. In
fact, it's derived from the same root as
"tactile," and what it means is to have a deft
touch. Tactful is the opposite of clumsy. I
don't think I learned this until college.
Nerds aren't the only losers in the popularity
rat race. Nerds are unpopular because
they're distracted. There are other kids who
deliberately opt out because they're so
disgusted with the whole process.
Teenage kids, even rebels, don't like to be
alone, so when kids opt out of the system,
they tend to do it as a group. At the schools
I went to, the focus of rebellion was drug
use, specifically marijuana. The kids in this
23
tribe wore black concert t-shirts and were
called "freaks."
Freaks and nerds were allies, and there was
a good deal of overlap between them.
Freaks were on the whole smarter than other
kids, though never studying (or at least
never appearing to) was an important tribal
value. I was more in the nerd camp, but I
was friends with a lot of freaks.
They used drugs, at least at first, for the
social bonds they created. It was something
to do together, and because the drugs were
illegal, it was a shared badge of rebellion.
I'm not claiming that bad schools are the
whole reason kids get into trouble with
drugs. After a while, drugs have their own
momentum. No doubt some of the freaks
ultimately used drugs to escape from other
problems-- trouble at home, for example.
But, in my school at least, the reason most
kids started using drugs was rebellion.
Fourteen-year-olds didn't start smoking pot
because they'd heard it would help them
forget their problems. They started because
they wanted to join a different tribe.
Misrule breeds rebellion; this is not a new
idea. And yet the authorities still for the
most part act as if drugs were themselves
the cause of the problem.
The real problem is the emptiness of school
life. We won't see solutions till adults
realize that. The adults who may realize it
first are the ones who were themselves
nerds in school. Do you want your kids to
be as unhappy in eighth grade as you were?
I wouldn't. Well, then, is there anything we
can do to fix things? Almost certainly.
There is nothing inevitable about the current
system. It has come about mostly by default.
Adults, though, are busy. Showing up for
school plays is one thing. Taking on the
educational bureaucracy is another. Perhaps
a few will have the energy to try to change
things. I suspect the hardest part is realizing
that you can.
Nerds still in school should not hold their
breath. Maybe one day a heavily armed
force of adults will show up in helicopters
to rescue you, but they probably won't be
coming this month. Any immediate
improvement in nerds' lives is probably
going to have to come from the nerds
themselves.
Merely understanding the situation they're
in should make it less painful. Nerds aren't
losers. They're just playing a different game,
and a game much closer to the one played in
the real world. Adults know this. It's hard to
find successful adults now who don't claim
to have been nerds in high school.
It's important for nerds to realize, too, that
school is not life. School is a strange,
artificial thing, half sterile and half feral. It's
all-encompassing, like life, but it isn't the
real thing. It's only temporary, and if you
look, you can see beyond it even while
you're still in it.
If life seems awful to kids, it's neither
because hormones are turning you all into
monsters (as your parents believe), nor
because life actually is awful (as you
believe). It's because the adults, who no
longer have any economic use for you, have
abandoned you to spend years cooped up
together with nothing real to do. Any
society of that type is awful to live in. You
don't have to look any further to explain
why teenage kids are unhappy.
24
I've said some harsh things in this essay, but
really the thesis is an optimistic one-- that
several problems we take for granted are in
fact not insoluble after all. Teenage kids are
not inherently unhappy monsters. That
should be encouraging news to kids and
adults both.
_____________________________
7) The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored
Man
[James Weldon Johnson] Boston:
Sherman, French & Company, 1912
CHAPTER I
not mention the name of the town, because
there are people still living there who could
be connected with this narrative. I have only
a faint recollection of the place of my birth.
At times I can close my eyes, and call up in
a dream-like way things that seem to have
happened ages ago in some other world. I
can see in this half vision a little house,--I
am quite sure it was not a large one;--I can
remember that flowers grew in the front
yard, and that around each bed of flowers
was a hedge of vari-colored glass bottles
stuck in the ground neck down. I remember
that once, while playing around in the sand,
I became curious to know whether or not the
bottles grew as the flowers did, and I
proceeded to dig them up to find out; the
investigation brought me a terrific spanking
which indelibly fixed the incident in my
mind. I can remember, too, that behind the
house was a shed under which stood two or
three wooden wash-tubs. These tubs were
the earliest aversion of my life, for regularly
on certain evenings I was plunged into one
of them, and scrubbed until my skin ached. I
can remember to this day the pain caused by
the strong, rank soap getting into my eyes.
I know that in writing the following pages I
am divulging the great secret of my life, the
secret which for some years I have guarded
far more carefully than any of my earthly
possessions; and it is a curious study to me
to analyze the motives which prompt me to
do it. I feel that I am led by the same
impulse which forces the unfound-out
criminal to take somebody into his
confidence, although he knows that the act is
liable, even almost certain, to lead to his
undoing. I know that I am playing with fire,
and I feel the thrill which accompanies that
most fascinating pastime; and, back of it all,
I think I find a sort of savage and diabolical
desire to gather up all the little tragedies of
my life, and turn them into a practical joke
on society.
And, too, I suffer a vague feeling of
unsatisfaction, of regret, of almost remorse
from which I am seeking relief, and of
which I shall speak in the last paragraph of
this account.
I was born in a little town of Georgia a few
years after the close of the Civil War. I shall
25
Back from the house a vegetable garden ran,
perhaps, seventy-five or one hundred feet;
but to my childish fancy it was an endless
territory. I can still recall the thrill of joy,
excitement and wonder it gave me to go on
an exploring expedition through it, to find
the blackberries, both ripe and green, that
grew along the edge of the fence.
I remember with what pleasure I used to
arrive at, and stand before, a little enclosure
in which stood a patient cow chewing her
cud, how I would occasionally offer her
through the bars a piece of my bread and
molasses, and how I would jerk back my
hand in half fright if she made any motion to
accept my offer.
I have a dim recollection of several people
who moved in and about this little house,
but I have a distinct mental image of only
two; one, my mother, and the other, a tall
man with a small, dark mustache. I
remember that his shoes or boots were
always shiny, and that he wore a gold chain
and a great gold watch with which he was
always willing to let me play. My
admiration was almost equally divided
between the watch and chain and the shoes.
He used to come to the house evenings,
perhaps two or three times a week; and it
became my appointed duty whenever he
came to bring him a pair of slippers, and to
put the shiny shoes in a particular corner; he
often gave me in return for this service a
bright coin which my mother taught me to
promptly drop in a little tin bank. I
remember distinctly the last time this tall
man came to the little house in Georgia; that
evening before I went to bed he took me up
in his arms, and squeezed me very tightly;
my mother stood behind his chair wiping
tears from her eyes. I remember how I sat
upon his knee, and watched him laboriously
drill a hole through a ten-dollar gold piece,
and then tie the coin around my neck with a
string. I have worn that gold piece around
my neck the greater part of my life, and still
possess it, but more than once I have wished
that some other way had been found of
attaching it to me besides putting a hole
through it.
On the day after the coin was put around my
neck my mother and I started on what
seemed to me an endless journey. I knelt on
the seat and watched through the train
window the corn and cotton fields pass
swiftly by until I fell asleep. When I fully
awoke we were being driven through the
streets of a large city--Savannah. I sat up
and blinked at the bright lights. At Savannah
we boarded a steamer which finally landed
us in New York. From New York we went
to a town in Connecticut, which became the
home of my boyhood.
My mother and I lived together in a little
cottage which seemed to me to be fitted up
almost luxuriously; there were horse-hair
covered chairs in the parlor, and a little
square piano; there was a stairway with red
carpet on it leading to a half second story;
there were pictures on the walls, and a few
books in a glass-doored case. My mother
dressed me very neatly, and I developed that
pride which well-dressed boys generally
have. She was careful about my associates,
and I myself was quite particular. As I look
back now I can see that I was a perfect little
aristocrat. My mother rarely went to
anyone's house, but she did sewing, and
there were a great many ladies coming to
our cottage. If I were around they would
generally call me, and ask me my name and
age and tell my mother what a pretty boy I
was. Some of them would pat me on the
head and kiss me.
26
My mother was kept very busy with her
sewing; sometimes she would have another
woman helping her. I think she must have
derived a fair income from her work. I
know, too, that at least once each month she
received a letter; I used to watch for the
postman, get the letter, and run to her with
it; whether she was busy or not she would
take it and instantly thrust it into her bosom.
I never saw her read one of them. I knew
later that these letters contained money and,
what was to her, more than money. As busy
as she generally was she, however, found
time to teach me my letters and figures and
how to spell a number of easy words.
Always on Sunday evenings she opened the
little square piano, and picked out hymns. I
can recall now that whenever she played
hymns from the book her tempos were
always decidedly largo. Sometimes on other
evenings when she was not sewing she
would play simple accompaniments to some
old southern songs which she sang. In these
songs she was freer, because she played
them by ear. Those evenings on which she
opened the little piano were the happiest
hours of my childhood. Whenever she
started toward the instrument I used to
follow her with all the interest and
irrepressible joy that a pampered pet dog
shows when a package is opened in which
he knows there is a sweet bit for him. I used
to stand by her side, and often interrupt and
annoy her by chiming in with strange
harmonies which I found either on the high
keys of the treble or low keys of the bass. I
remember that I had a particular fondness
for the black keys. Always on such
evenings, when the music was over, my
mother would sit with me in her arms often
for a very long time. She would hold me
close, softly crooning some old melody
without words, all the while gently stroking
her face against my head; many and many a
night I thus fell asleep. I can see her now,
her great dark eyes looking into the fire, to
where? No one knew but she. The memory
of that picture has more than once kept me
from straying too far from the place of
purity and safety in which her arms held me.
At a very early age I began to thump on the
piano alone, and it was not long before I was
able to pick out a few tunes. When I was
seven years old I could play by ear all of the
hymns and songs that my mother knew. I
had also learned the names of the notes in
both clefs, but I preferred not to be
hampered by notes. About this time several
ladies for whom my mother sewed heard me
play, and they persuaded her that I should at
once be put under a teacher; so
arrangements were made for me to study the
piano with a lady who was a fairly good
musician; at the same time arrangements
were made for me to study my books with
this lady's daughter. My music teacher had
no small difficulty at first in pinning me
down to the notes. If she played my lesson
over for me I invariably attempted to
reproduce the required sounds without the
slightest recourse to the written characters.
Her daughter, my other teacher, also had her
worries. She found that, in reading,
whenever I came to words that were difficult
or unfamiliar I was prone to bring my
imagination to the rescue and read from the
picture. She has laughingly told me, since
then, that I would sometimes substitute
whole sentences and even paragraphs from
what meaning I thought the illustrations
conveyed. She said she sometimes was not
only amused at the fresh treatment I would
give an author's subject, but that when I
gave some new and sudden turn to the plot
of the story she often grew interested and
even excited in listening to hear what kind
of a denouement I would bring about. But I
27
am sure this was not due to dullness, for I
made rapid progress in both my music and
my books.
And so, for a couple of years my life was
divided between my music and my school
books. Music took up the greater part of my
time. I had no playmates, but amused myself
with games--some of them my own
invention--which could be played alone. I
knew a few boys whom I had met at the
church which I attended with my mother,
but I had formed no close friendships with
any of them. Then, when I was nine years
old, my mother decided to enter me in the
public school, so all at once I found myself
thrown among a crowd of boys of all sizes
and kinds; some of them seemed to me like
savages. I shall never forget the
bewilderment, the pain, the heart-sickness of
that first day at school. I seemed to be the
only stranger in the place; every other boy
seemed to know every other boy. I was
fortunate enough, however, to be assigned to
a teacher who knew me; my mother made
her dresses. She was one of the ladies who
used to pat me on the head and kiss me. She
had the tact to address a few words directly
to me; this gave me a certain sort of standing
in the class, and put me somewhat at ease.
Within a few days I had made one staunch
friend, and was on fairly good terms with
most of the boys. I was shy of the girls, and
remained so; even now, a word or look from
a pretty woman sets me all a-tremble. This
friend I bound to me with hooks of steel in a
very simple way. He was a big awkward boy
with a face full of freckles and a head full of
very red hair. He was perhaps fourteen years
of age; that is, four or five years older than
any other boy in the class. This seniority
was due to the fact that he had spent twice
the required amount of time in several of the
preceding classes. I had not been at school
many hours before I felt that "Red Head"--as
I involuntarily called him--and I were to be
friends. I do not doubt that this feeling was
strengthened by the fact that I had been
quick enough to see that a big, strong boy
was a friend to be desired at a public school;
and, perhaps, in spite of his dullness, "Red
Head" had been able to discern that I could
be of service to him. At any rate there was a
simultaneous mutual attraction.
The teacher had strung the class
promiscuously round the walls of the room
for a sort of trial heat for places of rank;
when the line was straightened out I found
that by skillful maneuvering I had placed
myself third, and had piloted "Red Head" to
the place next to me. The teacher began by
giving us to spell the words corresponding
to our order in the line. "Spell first." "Spell
second." "Spell third." I rattled off, "t-h-i-rd, third," in a way which said, "Why don't
you give us something hard?" As the words
went down the line I could see how lucky I
had been to get a good place together with
an easy word. As young as I was I felt
impressed with the unfairness of the whole
proceeding when I saw the tailenders going
down before "twelfth" and "twentieth," and I
felt sorry for those who had to spell such
words in order to hold a low position. "Spell
fourth." "Red Head," with his hands
clutched tightly behind his back, began
bravely, "f-o-r-t-h." Like a flash a score of
hands went up, and the teacher began
saying, "No snapping of fingers, no
snapping of fingers." This was the first word
missed, and it seemed to me that some of the
scholars were about to lose their senses;
some were dancing up and down on one foot
with a hand above their heads, the fingers
working furiously, and joy beaming all over
their faces; others stood still, their hands
raised not so high, their fingers working less
28
rapidly, and their faces expressing not quite
so much happiness; there were still others
who did not move nor raise their hands, but
stood with great wrinkles on their foreheads,
looking very thoughtful.
The whole thing was new to me, and I did
not raise my hand, but slyly whispered the
letter "u" to "Red Head" several times.
"Second chance," said the teacher. The
hands went down and the class became
quiet. "Red Head," his face now red, after
looking beseechingly at the ceiling, then
pitiably at the floor, began very haltingly, "fu-." Immediately an impulse to raise hands
went through the class, but the teacher
checked it, and poor "Red Head," though he
knew that each letter he added only took him
farther out of the way, went doggedly on
and finished, "r-t-h." The hand raising was
now repeated with more hubbub and
excitement than at first. Those who before
had not moved a finger were now waving
their hands above their heads. "Red Head"
felt that he was lost. He looked very big and
foolish, and some of the scholars began to
snicker. His helpless condition went straight
to my heart, and gripped my sympathies. I
felt that if he failed it would in some way be
my failure. I raised my hand, and under
cover of the excitement and the teacher's
attempts to regain order, I hurriedly shot up
into his ear twice, quite distinctly, "f-o-u-r-th," "f-o-u-r-t-h." The teacher tapped on her
desk and said, "Third and last chance." The
hands came down, the silence became
oppressive. "Red Head" began, "f"-- Since
that day I have waited anxiously for many a
turn of the wheel of fortune, but never under
greater tension than I watched for the order
in which those letters would fall from
"Red's" lips--"o-u-r-t-h." A sigh of relief and
disappointment went up from the class.
Afterwards, through all our school days,
"Red Head" shared my wit and quickness
and I benefited by his strength and dogged
faithfulness.
There were some black and brown boys and
girls in the school, and several of them were
in my class. One of the boys strongly
attracted my attention from the first day I
saw him. His face was as black as night, but
shone as though it was polished; he had
sparkling eyes, and when he opened his
mouth he displayed glistening white teeth. It
struck me at once as appropriate to call him
"Shiny face," or "Shiny eyes," or "Shiny
teeth," and I spoke of him often by one of
these names to the other boys. These terms
were finally merged into "Shiny," and to that
name he answered good naturedly during the
balance of his public school days.
"Shiny" was considered without question to
be the best speller, the best reader, the best
penman, in a word, the best scholar, in the
class. He was very quick to catch anything;
but, nevertheless, studied hard; thus he
possessed two powers very rarely combined
in one boy. I saw him year after year, on up
into the high school, win the majority of the
prizes for punctuality, deportment, essay
writing and declamation. Yet it did not take
me long to discover that, in spite of his
standing as a scholar, he was in some way
looked down upon.
The other black boys and girls were still
more looked down upon. Some of the boys
often spoke of them as "niggers."
Sometimes on the way home from school a
crowd would walk behind them repeating:
"Nigger, nigger, never die,
Black face and shiny eye."
On one such afternoon one of the black boys
turned suddenly on his tormentors, and
hurled a slate; it struck one of the white boys
29
in the mouth, cutting a slight gash in his lip.
At sight of the blood the boy who had
thrown the slate ran, and his companions
quickly followed. We ran after them pelting
them with stones until they separated in
several directions. I was very much wrought
up over the affair, and went home and told
my mother how one of the "niggers" had
struck a boy with a slate. I shall never forget
how she turned on me. "Don't you ever use
that word again," she said, "and don't you
ever bother the colored children at school.
You ought to be ashamed of yourself." I did
hang my head in shame, but not because she
had convinced me that I had done wrong,
but because I was hurt by the first sharp
word she had ever given me.
My school days ran along very pleasantly. I
stood well in my studies, not always so well
with regard to my behavior. I was never
guilty of any serious misconduct, but my
love of fun sometimes got me into trouble. I
remember, however, that my sense of humor
was so sly that most of the trouble usually
fell on the head of the other fellow. My
ability to play on the piano at school
exercises was looked upon as little short of
marvelous in a boy of my age. I was not
chummy with many of my mates, but, on the
whole, was about as popular as it is good for
a boy to be.
One day near the end of my second term at
school the principal came into our room, and
after talking to the teacher, for some reason
said, "I wish all of the white scholars to
stand for a moment." I rose with the others.
The teacher looked at me, and calling my
name said, "You sit down for the present,
and rise with the others." I did not quite
understand her, and questioned, "Ma'm?"
She repeated with a softer tone in her voice,
"You sit down now, and rise with the
others." I sat down dazed. I saw and heard
nothing. When the others were asked to rise
I did not know it. When school was
dismissed I went out in a kind of stupor. A
few of the white boys jeered me, saying,
"Oh, you're a nigger too." I heard some
black children say, "We knew he was
colored." "Shiny" said to them, "Come
along, don't tease him," and thereby won my
undying gratitude.
I hurried on as fast as I could, and had gone
some distance before I perceived that "Red
Head" was walking by my side. After a
while he said to me, "Le' me carry your
books." I gave him my strap without being
able to answer. When we got to my gate he
said as he handed me my books, "Say, you
know my big red agate? I can't shoot with it
any more. I'm going to bring it to school for
you to-morrow." I took my books and ran
into the house. As I passed through the
hallway I saw that my mother was busy with
one of her customers; I rushed up into my
own little room, shut the door, and went
quickly to where my looking-glass hung on
the wall. For an instant I was afraid to look,
but when I did I looked long and earnestly. I
had often heard people say to my mother,
"What a pretty boy you have." I was
accustomed to hear remarks about my
beauty; but, now, for the first time, I became
conscious of it, and recognized it. I noticed
the ivory whiteness of my skin, the beauty
of my mouth, the size and liquid darkness of
my eyes, and how the long black lashes that
fringed and shaded them produced an effect
that was strangely fascinating even to me. I
noticed the softness and glossiness of my
dark hair that fell in waves over my temples,
making my forehead appear whiter than it
really was. How long I stood there gazing at
my image I do not know. When I came out
and reached the head of the stairs, I heard
the lady who had been with my mother
30
going out. I ran downstairs, and rushed to
where my mother was sitting with a piece of
work in her hands. I buried my head in her
lap and blurted out, "Mother, mother, tell
me, am I a nigger?" I could not see her face,
but I knew the piece of work dropped to the
floor, and I felt her hands on my head. I
looked up into her face and repeated, "Tell
me, mother, am I a nigger?" There were
tears in her eyes, and I could see that she
was suffering for me. And then it was that I
looked at her critically for the first time. I
had thought of her in a childish way only as
the most beautiful woman in the world; now
I looked at her searching for defects. I could
see that her skin was almost brown, that her
hair was not so soft as mine, and that she did
differ in some way from the other ladies
who came to the house; yet, even so, I could
see that she was very beautiful, more
beautiful than any of them. She must have
felt that I was examining her, for she hid her
face in my hair, and said with difficulty,
"No, my darling, you are not a nigger." She
went on, "You are as good as anybody; if
anyone calls you a nigger don't notice
them." But the more she talked the less was
I reassured, and I stopped her by asking,
"Well, mother, am I white? Are you white?"
She answered tremblingly, "No, I am not
white, but you--your father is one of the
greatest men in the country--the best blood
of the South is in you--" This suddenly
opened up in my heart a fresh chasm of
misgiving and fear, and I almost fiercely
demanded, "Who is my father? Where is
he?" She stroked my hair and said, "I'll tell
you about him some day." I sobbed, "I want
to know now." She answered, "No, not
now."
Perhaps it had to he done, but I have never
forgiven the woman who did it so cruelly. It
may be that she never knew that she gave
me a sword-thrust that day in school which
was years in healing.
31
8) Somebody Blew Up America
They say its some terrorist,
some barbaric
A Rab,
in Afghanistan
It wasn't our American terrorists
It wasn't the Klan or the Skin heads
Or the them that blows up nigger
Churches, or reincarnates us on Death Row
It wasn't Trent Lott
Or David Duke or Giuliani
Or Schundler, Helms retiring
It wasn't
The gonorrhea in costume
The white sheet diseases
That have murdered black people
Terrorized reason and sanity
Most of humanity, as they pleases
They say (who say?)
Who do the saying
Who is them paying
Who tell the lies
Who in disguise
Who had the slaves
Who got the bux out the Bucks
Who got fat from plantations
Who genocided Indians
Tried to waste the Black nation
Who live on Wall Street
The first plantation
Who cut your nuts off
Who rape your ma
Who lynched your pa
Who got the tar, who got the feathers
Who had the match, who set the fires
Who killed and hired
Who say they God & still be the Devil
Who the biggest only
Who the most goodest
Who do Jesus resemble
Who created everything
Who the smartest
Who the greatest
Who the richest
Who say you ugly and they the
goodlookingest
Who define art
Who define science
Who made the bombs
Who made the guns
Who bought the slaves, who sold them
Who called you them names
Who say Dahmer wasn't insane
Who? Who? Who?
Who stole Puerto Rico
Who stole the Indies, the Philipines,
Manhattan
Australia & The Hebrides
Who forced opium on the Chinese
Who own them buildings
Who got the money
Who think you funny
Who locked you up
Who own the papers
Who owned the slave ship
Who run the army
Who the fake president
Who the ruler
Who the banker
Who? Who? Who?
32
Who own the mine
Who twist your mind
Who got bread
Who need peace
Who you think need war
Who own the oil
Who do no toil
Who own the soil
Who is not a nigger
Who is so great ain't nobody bigger
Who own this city
Who own the air
Who own the water
Who own the owners that ain't the real
owners
Who own the suburbs
Who suck the cities
Who make the laws
Who made Bush president
Who believe the confederate flag need to be
flying
Who talk about democracy and be lying
Who the Beast in Revelations
Who 666
Who know who decide
Jesus get crucified
Who own your crib
Who rob and steal and cheat and murder
and make lies the truth
Who call you uncouth
Who the Devil on the real side
Who got rich from Armenian genocide
Who live in the biggest house
Who do the biggest crime
Who go on vacation anytime
Who the biggest terrorist
Who change the bible
Who killed the most people
Who do the most evil
Who don't worry about survival
Who killed the most niggers
Who killed the most Jews
Who killed the most Italians
Who killed the most Irish
Who killed the most Africans
Who killed the most Japanese
Who killed the most Latinos
Who have the colonies
Who stole the most land
Who rule the world
Who say they good but only do evil
Who the biggest executioner
Who? Who? Who?
Who? Who? Who?
Who own the ocean
Who own the airplanes
Who own the malls
Who own television
Who own radio
Who own what ain't even known to be
owned
Who own the oil
Who want more oil
Who told you what you think that later you
find out a lie
Who? Who? Who?
Who found Bin Laden, maybe they Satan
Who pay the CIA,
Who knew the bomb was gonna blow
33
Who know why the terrorists
Learned to fly in Florida, San Diego
Who know why Five Israelis was filming
the explosion
And cracking they sides at the notion
Who need fossil fuel when the sun ain't goin'
nowhere
Who make the credit cards
Who get the biggest tax cut
Who walked out of the Conference
Against Racism
Who killed Malcolm, Kennedy & his
Brother
Who killed Dr King, Who would want such
a thing?
Are they linked to the murder of Lincoln?
Who invaded Grenada
Who made money from apartheid
Who keep the Irish a colony
Who overthrow Chile and Nicaragua later
Who killed David Sibeko, Chris Hani,
the same ones who killed Biko, Cabral,
Neruda, Allende, Che Guevara, Sandino,
Who killed Kabila, the ones who wasted
Lumumba, Mondlane,
Betty Shabazz, Die, Princess Di, Ralph
Featherstone,
Little Bobby
Who locked up Mandela, Dhoruba,
Geronimo,
Assata, Mumia, Garvey, Dashiell Hammett,
Alphaeus Hutton
Who killed Huey Newton, Fred Hampton,
Medgar Evers, Mikey Smith, Walter
Rodney,
Was it the ones who tried to poison Fidel
Who tried to keep the Vietnamese
Oppressed
Who put a price on Lenin's head
Who put the Jews in ovens,
and who helped them do it
Who said "America First"
and ok'd the yellow stars
Who killed Rosa Luxembourg, Liebneckt
Who murdered the Rosenbergs
And all the good people iced,
tortured, assassinated, vanished
Who got rich from Algeria, Libya, Haiti,
Iran, Iraq, Saudi, Kuwait, Lebanon,
Syria, Egypt, Jordan, Palestine,
Who cut off peoples hands in the Congo
Who invented Aids
Who put the germs
In the Indians' blankets
Who thought up "The Trail of Tears"
Who blew up the Maine
& started the Spanish American War
Who got Sharon back in Power
Who backed Batista, Hitler, Bilbo,
Chiang kai Chek
Who decided Affirmative Action had to go
Reconstruction, The New Deal,
The New Frontier, The Great Society,
Who do Tom Ass Clarence Work for
Who doo doo come out the Colon's mouth
Who know what kind of Skeeza is a
Condoleeza
Who pay Connelly to be a wooden negro
Who give Genius Awards to Homo Locus
Subsidere
Who overthrew Nkrumah, Bishop,
Who poison Robeson,
who try to put DuBois in Jail
Who frame Rap Jamil al Amin, Who frame
34
the Rosenbergs,
Garvey,
The Scottsboro Boys,
The Hollywood Ten
Who set the Reichstag Fire
Who knew the World Trade Center was
gonna get bombed
Who told 4000 Israeli workers at the Twin
Towers
To stay home that day
Why did Sharon stay away?
Who? Who? Who?
Explosion of Owl the newspaper say
The devil face cd be seen
Who make money from war
Who make dough from fear and lies
Who want the world like it is
Who want the world to be ruled by
imperialism and national
oppression and terror violence, and hunger
and poverty.
Who is the ruler of Hell?
Who is the most powerful
Who you know ever
Seen God?
But everybody seen
The Devil
Like an Owl exploding
In your life in your brain in your self
Like an Owl who know the devil
All night, all day if you listen, Like an Owl
Exploding in fire. We hear the questions rise
In terrible flame like the whistle of a crazy
dog
Like the acid vomit of the fire of Hell
Who and Who and WHO who who
Whoooo and Whooooooooooooooooooooo!
Copyright (c) 2001 Amiri Baraka. All
Rights Reserved.
____________________________________
9) "California Plum"
for Nathan Trujillo, discovered frozen to
death in a
public restroom in Boulder. Feb. 3, 1992,
and
identified only as "a derelict."
I suppose I was a derelict.
I was a derelict's kid. I succumbed
to man and minotaurs were
a thing of the past not
in my vocabulary. I knew the trees,
the fruit, the sweet, the fences
in my neighborhood to get me there
where dogs and men can't reach.
I beat the boys and joined
their clubs. No initiation
could deter me. Oh yeah,
I know where the tracks go,
how to catch it going South,
what to carry, who to talk to,
what size jar of instant coffee
will get you into camp-how to walk like a child
of a maid, go inside the Inns,
at 10am the leftovers line
the galleys: ham and omelet,
waffle, cutlet, biscuit, gravy....
I filled my skirt with jam and ate
through noon. I judged my troops
by the content of their refrigerator
(only ones with working moms
could pass). And oh, my literate
acquaintances! My bums and
babblers banging in the stacks!
I suppose I'm just like they are,
dry inside at last, pumping
35
the poems of Pushkin, Poe and
papers by the racks. I sat in there
most every day, whoring working
hours away. I know the open places, graves,
the cemetery gate -- the only one we're
allowed
to pass without eviction. Idle tears
will get you anywhere, said Tennyson.
You can read it in our clothes, the rips
we care to camouflage, bunker, in clunky
shoes and hand-me-nots, the stabs, the odds
of ever reaching our normality. I'd say I was
a derelict -- I was a derelict's kid.
from
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/foolingwithwords/
Pcervantes_poem2.html
____________________________________
10) “A Question of Class” by Dorothy
Allison from
http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon
1/skinall.html
The first time I heard, "They're different
than us, don't value human life the way we
do," I was in high school in Central Florida.
The man speaking was an army recruiter
talking to a bunch of boys, telling them what
the army was really like, what they could
expect overseas. A cold angry feeling swept
over me. I had heard the word they
pronounced in that same callous tone before.
They, those people over there, those people
who are not us, they die so easily, kill each
other so casually. They are different. We, I
thought. Me.
When I was six or eight back in
Greenville, South Carolina, I had heard that
same matter-of-fact tone of dismissal
applied to me. "Don't you play with her. I
don't want you talking to them." Me and my
family, we had always been they. 'Who am
I? I wondered, listening to that recruiter.
'Who are my people? We die so easily,
disappear so completely—we/they, the poor
and the queer. I pressed my bony white trash
fists to my stubborn lesbian mouth. The rage
was a good feeling, stronger and purer than
the shame that followed it, the fear and the
sudden urge to run and hide, to deny, to
pretend I did not know who I was and what
the world would do to me.
My people were not remarkable. We
were ordinary, but even so we were
mythical. We were the they everyone talks
about—the un-grateful poor. I grew up
trying to run away from the fate that
destroyed so many of the people I loved, and
having learned the habit of hiding, I found I
had also learned to hide from myself. I did
not know who I was, only that I did not want
to be they, the ones who are destroyed or
dismissed to make the "real" people, the
important people, feel safer. By the time I
understood that I was queer, that habit of
hiding was deeply set in me, so deeply that it
was not a choice but an instinct. Hide, hide
to survive, I thought, knowing that if I told
the truth about my life, my family, my
sexual desire, my history, I would move
over into that unknown territory, the land of
they, would never have the chance to name
my own life, to understand it or claim it.
Why are you so afraid? my lovers and
friends have asked me the many times I have
suddenly seemed a stranger, someone who
would not speak to them, would not do the
things they believed I should do, simple
things like applying for a job, or a grant, or
some award they were sure I could acquire
easily. Entitlement, I have told them, is a
matter of feeling like we rather than they.
You think you have a right to things, a place
in the world, and it is so intrinsically a part
of you that you cannot imagine people like
me, people who seem to live in your world,
who don't have it. I have explained what I
36
know over and over, in every way I can, but
I have never been able to make clear the
degree of my fear, the extent to which I feel
myself denied: not only that I am queer in a
world that hates queers, but that I was born
poor into a world that despises the poor. The
need to make my world believable to people
who have never experienced it is part of why
I write fiction. I know that some things must
be felt to be understood, that despair, for
example, can never be adequately analyzed;
it must be lived. But if I can write a story
that so draws the reader in that she imagines
herself like my characters, feels their sense
of fear and uncertainty, their hopes and
terrors, then I have come closer to knowing
myself as real, important as the very people
I have always watched with awe.
I have known I was a lesbian since I
was a teenager, and I have spent a good
twenty years making peace with the effects
of incest and physical abuse. But what may
be the central fact of my life is that I was
born in 1949 in Greenville, South Carolina,
the bastard daughter of a white woman from
a desperately poor family, a girl who had
left the seventh grade the year before,
worked as a waitress, and was just a month
past fifteen when she had me. That fact, the
inescapable impact of being born in a
condition of poverty that this society finds
shameful, contemptible, and somehow
deserved, has had dominion over me to such
an extent that I have spent my life trying to
overcome or deny it. I have learned with
great difficulty that the vast majority of
people believe that poverty is a voluntary
condition.
I have loved my family so stubbornly
that every impulse to hold them in contempt
has sparked in me a countersurge of pride—
complicated and undercut by an urge to fit
us into the acceptable myths and theories of
both mainstream society and a lesbianfeminist reinterpretation. The choice
becomes Steven Spielberg movies or
Erskine Caldwell novels, the one valorizing
and the other caricaturing, or the patriarchy
as villain, trivializing the choices the men
and women of my family have made. I have
had to fight broad generalizations from
every theoretical viewpoint.
Traditional feminist theory has had a
limited understanding of class differences
and of how sexuality and self are shaped by
both desire and denial. The ideology implies
that we are all sisters who should only turn
our anger and suspicion on the world outside
the lesbian community. It is easy to say that
the patriarchy did it, that poverty and social
contempt are products of the world of the
fathers, and often I felt a need to collapse
my sexual history into what I was willing to
share of my class background, to pretend
that my life both as a lesbian and as a
working-class escapee was constructed by
the patriarchy. Or conversely, to ignore how
much my life was shaped by growing up
poor and talk only about what incest did to
my identity as a woman and as a lesbian.
The difficulty is that I can't ascribe
everything that has been problematic about
my life simply and easily to the patriarchy,
or to incest, or even to the invisible and
much-denied class structure of our society.
In my lesbian-feminist collective we
had long conversations about the mind/body
split, the way we compartmentalize our lives
to survive. For years I thought that that
concept referred to the way I had separated
my activist life from the passionate secret
life in which I acted on my sexual desires. I
was convinced that the fracture was fairly
simple, that it would be healed when there
was time and clarity to do so—at about the
same point when I might begin to
understand sex. I never imagined that it was
37
not a split but a splintering, and I passed
whole portions of my life—days, months,
years—in pure directed progress, getting up
every morning and setting to work, working
so hard and so continually that I avoided
examining in any way what I knew about
my life. Busywork became a trance slate. I
ignored who I really was and how I became
that person, continued in that daily progress,
became an automaton who was what she
did. I tried to become one with the lesbianfeminist community so as to feel real and
valuable. I did not know that I was hiding,
blending in for safety just as I had done in
high school, in college. I did not recognize
the impulse to forget. I believed that all
those things I did not talk about, or even let
myself think too much about, were not
important, that none of them defined me. I
had constructed a life, an identity in which I
took pride, an alternative lesbian family in
which I felt safe, and I did not realize that
the fundamental me had almost disappeared.
It is surprising how easy it was to live
that life. Everyone and everything
cooperated with the process. Everything in
our culture—books, television, movies,
school, fashion—is presented as if it is being
seen by one pair of eyes, shaped by one set
of hands, heard by one pair of ears. Even if
you know you are not part of that imaginary
creature—if you like country music not
symphonies, read books cynically, listen to
the news unbelievingly, are lesbian not
heterosexual, and surround yourself with
your own small deviant community—you
are still shaped by that hegemony, or your
resistance to it. The only way I found to
resist that homogenized view of the world
was to make myself part of something larger
than myself. As a feminist and a radical
lesbian organizer, and later as a sex radical
(which eventually became the term, along
with pro-sex feminist, for those who were
not anti-pornography but anti-censorship,
those of us aguing for sexual diversity), the
need to belong, to feel safe, was just as
important for me as for any heterosexual,
nonpolitical citizen, and sometimes even
more important because the rest of my life
was so embattled.
The first time I read the Jewish lesbian
Irena Klepfisz's poems1 I experienced a
frisson of recognition. It was not that my
people had been "burned off the map'' or
murdered as hers had. No, we had been
encouraged to destroy ourselves, made
invisible because we did not fit the myths of
the noble poor generated by the middle
class. Even now, past forty and stubbornly
proud of my family, I feel the draw of that
mythology, that romanticized, edited version
of the poor. I find myself looking back and
wondering what was real, what was true.
Within my family, so much was lied about,
joked about, denied, or told with deliberate
indirection, an undercurrent of humiliation
or a brief pursed grimace that belied
everything that had been said. What was
real? The poverty depicted in books and
movies was romantic, a backdrop for the
story of how it was escaped.
The poverty portrayed by left-wing
intellectuals was just as romantic, a platform
for assailing the upper and middle classes,
and from their perspective, the workingclass hero was invariably male, righteously
indignant, and inhumanly noble. The reality
of self-hatred and violence was either absent
or caricatured. The poverty I knew was
dreary, deadening, shameful, the women
powerful in ways not generally seen as
heroic by the world outside the family.
My family's lives were not on
television, not in books, not even comic
books. There was a myth of the poor in this
country, but it did not include us. no matter
38
how hard I tried to squeeze us in. There was
an idea of the good poor—hard-working,
ragged but clean, and intrinsically
honorable. I understood that we were the
bad poor: men who drank and couldn't keep
a job; women, invariably pregnant before
marriage, who quickly became worn, fat,
and old from working too many hours and
bearing too many children; and children
with runny noses, watery eyes, and the
wrong attitudes. My cousins quit school,
stole cars, used drugs, and took dead-end
jobs pumping gas or waiting tables. We
were not noble, not grateful, not even
hopeful. We knew ourselves despised. My
family was ashamed of being poor, of
feeling hopeless. What was there to work
for, to save money for, to fight for or
struggle against? We had generations before
us to teach us that nothing ever changed, and
that those who did try to escape failed.
My mama had eleven brothers and
sisters, of whom I can name only six. No
one is left alive to tell me the names of the
others. It was my grandmother who told me
about my real daddy, a shiftless pretty man
who was supposed to have married, had six
children, and sold cut-rate life insurance to
poor Black people. My mama married when
I was a year old, but her husband died just
after my little sister was born a year later.
When I was five, Mama married the
man she lived with until she died. Within the
first year of their marriage Mama
miscarried, and while we waited out in the
hospital parking lot, my stepfather molested
me for the first time, something he
continued to do until I was past thirteen.
When I was eight or so, Mama took us away
to a motel after my stepfather beat me so
badly it caused a family scandal, but we
returned after two weeks. Mama told me that
she really had no choice: she could not
support us alone. When I was eleven I told
one of my cousins that my stepfather was
molesting me. Mama packed up my sisters
and me and took us away for a few days, but
again, my stepfather swore be would stop,
and again we went back after a few weeks. I
stopped talking for a while, and I have only
vague memories of the next two years.
My stepfather worked as a route
salesman, my mama as a waitress, laundry
worker, cook, or fruit packer. I could never
understand, since they both worked so hard
and such long hours, how we never had
enough money, but it was also true of my
mama's brothers and sisters who worked
hard in the mills or the furnace industry. In
fact, my parents did better than anyone else
in the family. But eventually my stepfather
was fired and we hit bottom—nightmarish
months of marshals at the door, repossessed
furniture, and rubber checks. My parents
worked out a scheme so that it appeared my
stepfather had abandoned us, but instead he
went down to Florida, got a new job, and
rented us a house. He returned with a UHaul trailer in the dead of night, packed us
up, and moved us south.
The night we left South Carolina for
Florida, my mama leaned over the backseat
of her old Pontiac and promised us girls,
"It'll be better there." I don't know if we
believed her, but I remember crossing
Georgia in the early morning, watching the
red clay hills and swaying grey blankets of
moss recede through the back window. I
kept looking at the trailer behind us,
ridiculously small to contain everything we
owned. Mama had packed nothing that
wasn't fully paid off, which meant she had
only two things of worth: her washing and
sewing machines, both of them tied securely
to the trailer walls. Throughout the trip I
fantasized an accident that would burst that
trailer, scattering old clothes and cracked
39
dishes on the tarmac.
I was only thirteen. I wanted us to start
over completely, to begin again as new
people with nothing of the past left over. I
wanted to run away from who we had been
seen to be, who we had been. That desire is
one I have seen in other members of my
family. It is the first thing I think of when
trouble comes—the geographic solution.
Change your name, leave town, disappear,
make yourself over. What hides behind that
impulse is the conviction that the life you
have lived, the person you are, is valueless,
better off abandoned, that running away is
easier than trying to change things, that
change itself is not possible. Sometimes I
think it is this conviction—more seductive
than alcohol or violence, more subtle than
sexual hatred or gender injustice—that has
dominated my life and made real change so
painful and difficult.
Moving to Central Florida did not fix
our lives. It did not stop my stepfather's
violence, heal my shame, or make my
mother happy. Once there, our lives became
controlled by my mother's illness and
medical bills. She had a hysterectomy when
I was about eight and endured a series of
hospitalizations for ulcers and a chronic
back problem. Through most of my
adolescence she superstitiously refused to
allow anyone to mention the word cancer.
When she was not sick, Mama and my
stepfather went on working, struggling to
pay off what seemed an insurmountable load
of debts.
By the time I was fourteen, my sisters
and I had found ways to discourage most of
our stepfather's sexual advances. We were
not close, but we united against him. Our
efforts were helped along when he was
referred to a psychotherapist after he lost his
temper at work, and was prescribed drugs
that made him sullen but less violent. We
were growing up quickly, my sisters moving
toward dropping out of school while I got
good grades and took every scholarship
exam I could find. I was the first person in
my family to graduate from high school, and
the fact that I went on to college was
nothing short of astonishing.
We all imagine our lives are normal,
and I did not know my life was not
everyone's. It was in Central Florida that I
began to realize just how different we were.
The people we met there had not been
shaped by the rigid class structure that
dominated the South Carolina Piedmont.
The first time I looked around my junior
high classroom and realized I did not know
who those people were—not only as
individuals but as categories, who their
people were and how they saw themselves—
I also realized that they did not know me. In
Greenville, everyone knew my family, knew
we were trash, and that meant we were
supposed to be poor, supposed to have grim
low-paid jobs, have babies in our teens, and
never finish school. But Central Florida in
the 1960s was full of runaways and
immigrants, and our mostly white workingclass suburban school sorted us out not by
income and family background but by
intelligence and aptitude tests. Suddenly I
was boosted into the college-bound track,
and while there was plenty of contempt for
my inept social skills, pitiful wardrobe, and
slow drawling accent, there was also
something I had never experienced before: a
protective anonymity, and a kind of
grudging respect and curiosity about who I
might become. Because they did not see
poverty and hopelessness as a foregone
conclusion for my life, I could begin to
imagine other futures for myself.
In that new country, we were unknown.
The myth of the poor settled over us and
40
glamorized us. I saw it in the eyes of my
teachers, the Lion's Club representative who
paid for my new glasses, and the lady from
the Junior League who told me about the
scholarship I had won. Better, far better, to
be one of the mythical poor than to be part
of the they I had known before. I also
experienced a new level of feat, a fear of
losing what had never before been
imaginable. Don't let me lose this chance, I
prayed, and lived in terror that I might
suddenly be seen again as what I knew
myself to be.
As an adolescent I thought that my
family's escape from South Carolina played
like a bad movie. We fled the way runaway
serfs might have done, with the sheriff who
would have arrested my stepfather the
imagined border guard. I am certain that if
we had remained in South Carolina, I would
have been trapped by my family's heritage
of poverty, jail, and illegitimate children—
that even being smart, stubborn, and a
lesbian would have made no difference.
My grandmother died when I was
twenty, and after Mama went home for the
funeral, I had a series of dreams in which we
still lived up in Greenville, just down the
road from where Granny died. In the dreams
I had two children and only one eye, lived in
a trailer, and worked at the textile mill. Most
of my time was taken up with deciding when
I would finally kill my children and myself.
The dreams were so vivid, I became
convinced they were about the life I was
meant to have had, and I began to work even
harder to put as much distance as I could
between my family and me. I copied the
dress, mannerisms, attitudes, and ambitions
of the girls I met in college, changing or
hiding my own tastes, interests, and desires,
I kept my lesbianism a secret, forming a
relationship with an effeminate male friend
that served to shelter and disguise us both. I
explained to friends that I went home so
rarely because my stepfather and I fought
too much for me to be comfortable in his
house. But that was only part of the reason I
avoided home, the easiest reason. The truth
was that I feared the person I might become
in my mama's house, the woman of my
dreams—hateful, violent, and hopeless.
It is hard to explain how deliberately
and thoroughly I ran away from my own
life. I did not forget where I came from, but
I gritted my teeth and hid it. When I could
not get enough scholarship money to pay for
graduate school, I spent a year of rage
working as a salad girl, substitute teacher,
and maid. I finally managed to find a job by
agreeing to take any city assignment where
the Social Security Administration needed a
clerk. Once I had a job and my own place
far away from anyone in my family, I
became sexually and politically active,
joining the Women's Center support staff
and falling in love with a series of middleclass women who thought my accent and
stories thoroughly charming. The stories I
told about my family, about South Carolina,
about being poor itself, were all lies,
carefully edited to seem droll or funny. I
knew damn well that no one would want to
hear the truth about poverty, the
hopelessness and fear, the feeling that
nothing I did would ever make any
difference and the raging resentment that
burned beneath my jokes. Even when my
lovers and I formed an alternative lesbian
family, sharing what we could of our
resources, I kept the truth about my
background and who I knew myself to be a
carefully obscured mystery. I worked as
hard as I could to make myself a new
person, an emotionally healthy radical
lesbian activist, and I believed completely
that by remaking myself I was helping to
remake the world.
41
For a decade, I did not go home for
more than a few days at a time. When in the
1980s I ran into the concept of feminist
sexuality, I genuinely did not know what it
meant. Though I was, and am, a feminist,
and committed to claiming the right to act
on my sexual desires without tailoring my
lust to a sex-fearing society, demands that I
explain or justify my sexual fantasies have
left me at a loss. How does anyone explain
sexual need?
The Sex Wars are over, I've been told,
and it always makes me want to ask who
won. But my sense of humor may be a little
obscure to women who have never felt
threatened by the way most lesbians use and
mean the words pervert and queer. I use the
word queer to mean more than lesbian.
Since I first used it in 1980 I have always
meant it to imply that I am not only a lesbian
but a transgressive lesbian-femme,
masochistic, as sexually aggressive as the
women I seek out, and as pornographic in
my imagination and sexual activities as the
heterosexual hegemony has ever believed.
My aunt Dot used to joke, "There are
two or three things I know for sure, but
never the same things and I'm never as sure
as I'd like." What I know for sure is that
class, gender, sexual preference, and
prejudice—racial, ethnic, and religious—
form an intricate lattice that restricts and
shapes our lives, and that resistance to
hatred is not a simple act. Claiming your
identity in the cauldron of hatred and
resistance to hatred is infinitely complicated,
and worse, almost unexplainable.
I know that I have been hated as a
lesbian both by "society" and by the intimate
world of my extended family, but I have
also been hated or held in contempt (which
is in some ways more debilitating and
slippery than hatred) by lesbians for
behavior and sexual practices shaped in
large part by class. My sexual identity is
intimately constructed by my class and
regional background, and much of the hatred
directed at my sexual preferences is class
hatred—however much people, feminists in
particular, like to pretend this is not a factor.
The kind of woman I am attracted to is
invariably the kind of woman who
embarrasses respectably middle-class,
politically aware lesbian feminists. My
sexual ideal is butch, exhibitionistic,
physically aggressive, smarter than she
wants you to know, and proud of being
called a pervert. Most often she is working
class, with an aura of danger and an ironic
sense of humor. There is a lot of
contemporary lip service paid to sexual
tolerance, but the fact that my sexuality is
constructed within, and by, a butch/femme
and leather fetishism is widely viewed with
distaste or outright hatred.
For most of my life I have been
presumed to be misguided, damaged by
incest and childhood physical abuse, or
deliberately indulging in hateful and
retrograde sexual practices out of a selfish
concentration on my own sexual
satisfaction. I have been expected to
abandon my desires, to become the
normalized woman who flirts with
fetishization, who plays with gender roles
and treats the historical categories of deviant
desire with humor or gentle contempt but
never takes any of it so seriously as to claim
a sexual identity based on these categories.
It was hard enough for me to shake off
demands when they were made by straight
society. It was appalling when I found the
same demands made by other lesbians.
One of the strengths I derive from my
class background is that I am accustomed to
contempt. I know that I have no chance of
becoming what my detractors expect of me,
and I believe that even the attempt to please
42
them will only further engage their
contempt, and my own self-contempt as
well. Nonetheless, the relationship between
the life I have lived and the way that life is
seen by strangers has constantly invited a
kind of self-mythologizing fantasy. It has
always been tempting for me to play off of
the stereotypes and misconceptions of
mainstream culture, rather than describe a
difficult and sometimes painful reality.
I am trying to understand how we
internalize the myths of our society even as
we resist them. I have felt a powerful
temptation to write about my family as a
kind of morality tale, with us as the heroes
and middle and upper classes as the villains.
It would be within the romantic myth, for
example, to pretend that we were the kind of
noble Southern whites portrayed in the
movies, mill workers for generations until
driven out by alcoholism and a family
propensity for rebellion and union talk. But
that would be a lie. The truth is that no one
in my family ever joined a union.
Taken to its limits, the myth of the poor
would make my family over into union
organizers or people broken by the failure of
the unions. As far as my family was
concerned union organizers, like preachers,
were of a different class, suspect and hated
however much they might be admired for
what they were supposed to be trying to
achieve. Nominally Southern Baptist, no one
in my family actually paid much attention to
preachers, and only little children went to
Sunday school. Serious belief in anything—
any political ideology, any religious system,
or any theory of life's meaning and
purpose—was seen as unrealistic. It was an
attitude that bothered me a lot when I started
reading the socially conscious novels I
found in the paperback racks when I was
eleven or so. I particularly loved Sinclair
Lewis's novels and wanted to imagine my
own family as part of the working man's
struggle.
"We were not joiners," my aunt Dot told
me with a grin when I asked her about the
union. My cousin Butch laughed at that, told
me the union charged dues, and said, "Hell,
we can't even be persuaded to toss money in
the collection plate. An't gonna give it to no
union man." It shamed me that the only
thing my family whole-heartedly believed in
was luck and the waywardness of fate. They
held the dogged conviction that the
admirable and wise thing to do was keep a
sense of humor, never whine or cower, and
trust that luck might someday turn as good
as it had been bad—and with just as much
reason. Becoming a political activist with an
almost religious fervor was the thing I did
that most outraged my family and the
Southern working-class community they
were part of.
Similarly, it was not my sexuality, my
lesbianism, that my family saw as most
rebellious; for most of my life, no one but
my mama took my sexual preference very
seriously. It was the way I thought about
work, ambition, and self-respect. They were
waitresses, laundry workers, counter girls. I
was the one who went to work as a maid,
something I never told any of them. They
would have been angry if they had known.
Work was just work for them, necessary.
You did what you had to do to survive. They
did not so much believe in taking pride in
doing your job as in stubbornly enduring
hard work and hard times. At the same time,
they held that there were some forms of
work, including maid's work, that were only
for Black people, not white, and while I did
not share that belief, I knew how intrinsic it
was to the way my family saw the world.
Sometimes I felt as if I straddled cultures
and belonged on neither side. I would grind
43
my teeth at what I knew was my family's
unquestioning racism while continuing to
respect their pragmatic endurance. But more
and more as I grew older, what I felt was a
deep estrangement from their view of the
world, and gradually a sense of shame that
would have been completely
incomprehensible to them.
"Long as there's lunch counters, you can
always find work," I was told by my mother
and my aunts. Then they'd add, "I can get
me a little extra with a smile." It was
obvious there was supposed to be nothing
shameful about it, that needy smile across a
lunch counter, that rueful grin when you
didn't have rent, or the half-provocative,
half-pleading way my mama could cajole
the man at the store to give her a little credit.
But I hated it, hated the need for it and the
shame that would follow every time I did it
myself. It was begging, as far as I was
concerned, a quasi-prostitution that I
despised even while I continued to rely on it.
After all, I needed the money.
"Just use that smile" my girl cousins
used to joke, and I hated what I knew they
meant. After college, when I began to
support myself and study feminist theory, I
became more contemptuous rather than
more understanding of the women in my
family. I told myself that prostitution is a
skilled profession and my cousins were
never more than amateurs. There was a
certain truth in this, though like all cruel
judgments rendered from the outside, it
ignored the conditions that made it true. The
women in my family, my mother included,
had sugar daddies, not Johns, men who
slipped them money because they needed it
so badly. From their point of view they were
nice to those men because the men were nice
to them, and it was never so direct or crass
an arrangement that they would set a price
on their favors. Nor would they have
described what they did as prostitution.
Nothing made them angrier than the
suggestion that the men who helped them
out did it just for their favors. They worked
for a living, they swore, but this was
different.
I always wondered if my mother hated
her sugar daddy, or if not him then her need
for what he offered her, but it did not seem
to me in memory that she had. He was an
old man, half-crippled, hesitant and needy,
and he treated my mama with enormous
consideration and, yes, respect. The
relationship between them was painful, and
since she and my stepfather could not earn
enough to support the family, Mama could
not refuse her sugar daddy's money. At the
same time the man made no assumptions
about that money buying anything Mama
was not already offering. The truth was, I
think, that she genuinely liked him, and only
partly because he treated her so well.
Even now, I am not sure whether there
was a sexual exchange between them, Mama
was a pretty woman, and she was kind to
him, a kindness he obviously did not get
from anyone else in his life. Moreover, he
took extreme care not to cause her any
problems with my stepfather. As a teenager,
with a teenager's contempt for moral failings
and sexual complexity of any kind, I had
been convinced that Mama's relationship
with that old man was contemptible. Also,
that I would never do such a thing. But the
first time a lover of mine gave me money
and I took it, everything in my head shifted.
The amount was not much to her, but it was
a lot to me and I needed it. While I could not
refuse it, I hated myself for taking it and I
hated her for giving it. Worse, she had much
less grace about my need than my mama's
sugar daddy had displayed toward her. All
that bitter contempt I felt for my needy
cousins and aunts raged through me and
44
burned out the love. I ended the relationship
quickly, unable to forgive myself for selling
what I believed should only be offered
freely—not sex but love itself.
When the women in my family talked
about how hard they worked, the men would
spit to the side and shake their heads. Men
took real jobs—harsh, dangerous, physically
daunting work. They went to jail, not just
the cold-eyed, careless boys who scared me
with their brutal hands, but their gentler,
softer brothers. It was another family thing,
what people expected of my mama's people,
mine. "His daddy's that one was sent off to
jail in Georgia, and his uncle's an=other.
Like as not, he's just the same," you'd hear
people say of boys so young they still had
their milk teeth. We were always driving
down to the county farm to see somebody,
some uncle, cousin, or nameless male
relation. Shaven-headed, sullen, and
stunned, they wept on Mama's shoulder or
begged my aunts to help. "I didn't do
nothing, Mama," they'd say, and it might
have been true, but if even we didn't believe
them, who would? No one told the truth, not
even about how their lives were destroyed.
One of my favorite cousins went to jail
when I was eight years old, for breaking into
pay phones with another boy. The other boy
was returned to the custody of his parents.
My cousin was sent to the boys' facility at
the county farm. After three months, my
mama took us down there to visit, carrying a
big basket of fried chicken, cold cornbread,
and potato salad. Along with a hundred
others we sat out on the lawn with my
cousin and watched him eat like he hadn't
had a fall meal in the whole three months. I
stared at his near-bald head and his ears
marked with fine blue scars from the
carelessly handled razor. People were
laughing, music was playing, and a tall,
lazy, uniformed man walked past us
chewing on toothpicks and watching us all
closely. My cousin kept his head down, his
face hard with hatred, only looking back at
the guard when he turned away.
'Sons-a-bitches," he whispered, and my
mama shushed him. We all sat still when the
guard turned back to us. There was a long
moment of quiet, and then that man let his
face relax into a big wide grin.
"Uh-huh," he said. That was all he said.
Then he turned and walked away. None of
us spoke. None of us ate. He went back
inside soon after, and we left. When we got
back to the car, my mama sat there for a
while crying quietly. The next week my
cousin was reported for fighting and had his
stay extended by six months.
My cousin was fifteen. He never went
back to school, and after jail he couldn't join
the army. When he finally did come home
we never talked, never had to. I knew
without asking that the guard had had his
little revenge, knew too that my cousin
would break into another phone booth as
soon as he could, but do it sober and not get
caught. I knew without asking the source of
his rage, the way he felt about clean, welldressed, contemptuous people who looked at
him like his life wasn't as important as a
dog's. I knew because I felt it too. That
guard had looked at me and Mama with the
same expression he used on my cousin. We
were trash. We were the ones they built the
county farm to house and break. The boy
who was sent home was the son of a deacon
in the church, the man who managed the
hardware store.
As much as I hated that man, and his
boy, there was a way in which I also hated
my cousin. He should have known better, I
told myself, should have known the risk he
ran. He should have been more careful. As I
grew older and started living on my own, it
45
was a litany I used against myself even more
angrily than I used it against my cousin. I
knew who I was, knew that the most
important thing I had to do was protect
myself and hide my despised identity, blend
into the myth of both the good poor and the
reasonable lesbian. When I became a
feminist activist, that litany went on
reverberating in my head, but by then it had
become a groundnote, something so deep
and omnipresent I no longer heard it, even
when everything I did was set to its cadence.
By 1975 1 was earning a meager living
as a photographer's assistant in Tallahassee,
Florida. But the real work of my life was my
lesbian-feminist activism, the work I did
with the local women's center and the
committee to found a women's studies
program at Florida State University. Part of
my role, as I saw it, was to be a kind of
evangelical lesbian feminist, and to help
develop a political analysis of this womanhating society. I did not talk about class,
except to give lip service to how we all
needed to think about it, the same way I
thought we all needed to think about racism.
I was a determined person, living in a
lesbian collective—all of us young and
white and serious—studying each new book
that purported to address feminist issues,
driven by what I saw as a need to
revolutionize the world.
Years later it's difficult to convey just
how reasonable my life seemed to me at that
time. I was not flippant, not consciously
condescending, not casual about how tough
a struggle remaking social relations would
be, but like so many women of my
generation, I believed absolutely that I could
make a difference with my life, and I was
willing to give my life for the chance to
make that difference. I expected hard times,
long slow periods of self-sacrifice and
grinding work, expected to be hated and
attached in public, to have to set aside
personal desire, lovers, and family in order
to be part of something greater and more
important than my individual concerns. At
the same time, I was working ferociously to
take my desires, my sexuality, my needs as a
woman and a lesbian more seriously. I
believed I was making the personal political
revolution with my life every moment,
whether I was scrubbing the floor of the
childcare center, setting up a new budget for
the women's lecture series at the university,
editing the local feminist magazine, or
starting a women's bookstore. That I was
constantly exhausted and had no health
insurance, did hours of dreary unpaid work
and still sneaked out of the collective to date
butch women my housemates thought
retrograde and sexist never interfered with
my sense of total commitment to the
feminist revolution. I was not living in a
closet: I had compartmentalized my own
mind to such an extent that I never
questioned why I did what I did. And I never
admitted what lay behind all my feminist
convictions—a class-constructed distrust of
change, a secret fear that someday I would
be found out for who I really was, found out
and thrown out. If I had not been raised to
give my life away, would I have made such
an effective, self-sacrificing revolutionary?
The narrowly focused concentration of a
revolutionary shifted only when I began to
write again. The idea of writing stories
seemed frivolous when there was so much
work to be done, but everything-changed
when I found myself confronting emotions
and ideas that could not be explained away
or postponed until after the revolution. The
way it happened was simple and
unexpected. One week I was asked to speak
to two completely different groups: an
Episcopalian Sunday school class and a
46
juvenile detention center. The Episcopalians
were all white, well-dressed, highly
articulate, nominally polite, and obsessed
with getting me to tell them (without their
having to ask directly) just what it was that
two women did together in bed. The
delinquents were all women, 80 percent
Black and Hispanic, wearing green uniform
dresses or blue jeans and workshirts,
profane, rude, fearless, witty, and just as
determined to get me to talk about what it
was that two women did together in bed.
I tried to have fun with the
Episcopalians, teasing them about their fears
and insecurities, and being as bluntly honest
as I could about my sexual practices. The
Sunday school teacher, a man who had
assured me of his liberal inclinations, kept
blushing and stammering as the questions
about my growing up and coming out
became more detailed. I stepped out into the
sunshine when the meeting was over, angry
at the contemptuous attitude implied by all
their questioning, and though I did not know
why, so deeply depressed I couldn't even
cry.
The delinquents were another story.
Shameless, they had me blushing within the
first few minutes, yelling out questions that
were part curiosity and partly a way of
boasting about what they already knew.
"You butch or femme?" "You ever fuck
boys?" "You ever want to?" "You want to
have children?" "What's your girlfriend
like?" I finally broke up when one very tall,
confident girl leaned way over and called
out, "Hey, girlfriend! I'm getting out of here
next weekend. What you doing that night?" I
laughed so hard I almost choked. I laughed
until we were all howling and giggling
together. Even getting frisked as I left didn't
ruin my mood. I was still grinning when I
climbed into the waterbed with my lover
that night, grinning right up to the moment
when she wrapped her arms around me and I
burst into tears.
That night I understood, suddenly,
everything that had happened to my cousins
and me, understood it from a wholly new
and agonizing perspective, one that made
clear how brutal I had been to both my
family and myself. I grasped all over again
bow we had been robbed and dismissed, and
why I had worked so hard not to think about
it. I had learned as a child that what could
not be changed had to go unspoken, and
worse, that those who cannot change their
own lives have every reason to be ashamed
of that fact and to hide it. I had accepted that
shame and believed in it, but why? What
had I or my cousins done to deserve the
contempt directed at us? Why had I always
believed us contemptible by nature? I
wanted to talk to someone about all the
things I was thinking that night, but I could
not. Among the women I knew there was no
one who would have understood what I was
thinking, no other working-class woman in
the women's collective where I was living. I
began to suspect that we shared no common
language to speak those bitter truths.
In the days that followed I found myself
remembering that afternoon long ago at the
county farm, that feeling of being the animal
in the zoo, the thing looked at and laughed at
and used by the real people who watched us.
For all his liberal convictions, that Sunday
school teacher had looked at me with the
eyes of my cousin's long-ago guard. I felt
thrown back into my childhood, into all the
fears I had tried to escape. Once again I felt
myself at the mercy of the important people
who knew how to dress and talk, and would
always be given the benefit of the doubt,
while my family and I would not.
I experienced an outrage so old I could
not have traced all the ways it shaped my
47
life. I realized again that some are given no
quarter, no chance, that all their courage,
humor, and love for each other is just a joke
to the ones who make the rules, and I hated
the rule-makers. Finally, I recognized that
part of my grief came from the fact that I no
longer knew who I was or where I belonged.
I had run away from my family, refused to
go home to visit, and tried in every way to
make myself a new person. How could I be
working class with a college degree? As a
lesbian activist? I thought about the guards
at the detention center. They had not stared
at me with the same picture-window
emptiness they turned on the girls who came
to hear me, girls who were closer to the life I
had been meant to live than I could hear to
examine. The contempt in their eyes was
contempt for me as a lesbian, different and
the same, but still contempt.
While I raged, my girlfriend held me
and comforted me and tried to get me to
explain what was hurting me so bad, but I
could not. She had told me so often about
her awkward relationship with her own
family, the father who ran his own business
and still sent her checks every other month.
She knew almost nothing about my family,
only the jokes and careful stories I had given
her. I felt so alone and at risk lying in her
arms that I could not have explained
anything at all. I thought about those girls in
the detention center and the stories they told
in brutal shorthand about their sisters,
brothers, cousins, and lovers. I thought
about their one-note references to those they
had lost, never mentioning the loss of their
own hopes, their own futures, the bent and
painful shape of their lives when they would
finally get free. Cried-out and dry-eyed, I
lay watching my sleeping girlfriend and
thinking about what I had not been able to
say to her. After a few hours I got up and
made some notes for a poem I wanted to
write, a bare, painful litany of loss shaped as
a conversation between two women, one
who cannot understand the other, and one
who cannot tell all she knows.
It took me a long time to take that poem
from a raw lyric of outrage and grief to a
piece of fiction that explained to me
something I had never let myself see up
close before—the whole process of running
away, of closing up inside yourself, of
hiding. It has taken me most of my life to
understand that, to see how and why those
of us who are born poor and different are so
driven to give ourselves away or lose
ourselves, but most of all, simply to
disappear as the people we really are. By the
time that poem became the story "River of
Names,"2 I had made the decision to reverse
that process: to claim my family, my true
history, and to tell the truth not only about
who I was but about the temptation to lie.
By the time I taught myself the basics of
storytelling on the page, I knew there was
only one story that would haunt me until I
understood how to tell it—the complicated,
painful story of how my mama had, and had
not, saved me as a girl. Writing Bastard Out
of Carolina3 became, ultimately, the way to
claim my family's pride and tragedy, and the
embattled sexuality I had fashioned on a
base of violence and abuse.
The compartmentalized life I had
created burst open in the late 1970s after I
began to write what I really thought about
my family. I lost patience with my fear of
what the women I worked with, mostly
lesbians, thought of who I slept with and
what we did together. When schisms
developed within my community; when I
was no longer able to hide within the regular
dyke network; when I could not continue to
justify my life by constant political activism
or distract myself by sleeping around; when
48
my sexual promiscuity, butch/femme
orientation, and exploration of
sadomasochistic sex became part of what
was driving me out of my community of
choice—I went home again. I went home to
my mother and my sisters, to visit, talk,
argue, and begin to understand.
Once home I saw that as far as my
family was concerned, lesbians were
lesbians whether they wore suitcoats or
leather jackets. Moreover, in all that time
when I had not made peace with myself, my
family had managed to make a kind of peace
with me. My girlfriends were treated like
slightly odd versions of my sisters'
husbands, while I was simply the daughter
who had always been difficult but was still a
part of their lives. The result was that I
started trying to confront what had made me
unable really to talk to my sisters for so
many years. I discovered that they no longer
knew who I was either, and it took time and
lots of listening to each other to rediscover
my sense of family, and my love for them.
It is only as the child of my class and
my unique family background that I have
been able to put together what is for me a
meaningful politics, to regain a sense of why
I believe in activism, why self-revelation is
so important for lesbians. There is no allpurpose feminist analysis that explains the
complicated ways our sexuality and core
identity are shaped, the way we see
ourselves as parts of both our birth families
and the extended family of friends and
lovers we invariably create within the
lesbian community. For me, the bottom line
has simply become the need to resist that
omnipresent fear. that urge to hide and
disappear, to disguise my life, my desires,
and the truth about how little any of us
understand—even as we try to make the
world a more just and human place. Most of
all, I have tried to understand the politics of
they, why human beings fear and stigmatize
the different while secretly dreading that
they might be one of the different
themselves. Class, race, sexuality, gender—
and all the other categories by which we
categorize and dismiss each other—need to
be excavated from the inside.
The horror of class stratification,
racism, and prejudice is that some people
begin to believe that the security of their
families and communities depends on the
oppression of others, that for some to have
good lives there must be others whose lives
are truncated and brutal. It is a belief that
dominates this culture. It is what makes the
poor whites of the South so determinedly
racist and the middle class so contemptuous
of the poor. It is a myth that allows some to
imagine that they build their lives on the
ruin of others, a secret core of shame for the
middle class, a goad and a spur to the
marginal working class, and cause enough
for the homeless and poor to feel no
constraints on hatred or violence. The power
of the myth is made even more apparent
when we examine how, within the lesbian
and feminist communities where we have
addressed considerable attention to the
politics of marginalization, there is still so
much exclusion and fear, so many of us who
do not feel safe.
I grew up poor, hated, the victim of
physical, emotional, and sexual violence,
and I know that suffering does not ennoble.
It destroys. To resist destruction, self-hatred,
or lifelong hopelessness, we have to throw
off the conditioning of being despised, the
fear of becoming the they that is talked
about so dismissively, to refuse lying myths
and easy moralities, to see ourselves as
human, flawed, and extraordinary. All of
us—extraordinary.
49
1 A Few Words in the Mother Tongue:
Poems, Selected and New (Eighth Mountain
Press: Portland, Oregon, 1990)
2 Trash (Firebrand Books: Ithaca, New
York, 1988)
3 Dutton New York, 1992
50
11) “A Piece of Advice From an Old Fart,
in the Form of a Thought Experiment” by
George Saunders from Take my advice:
letters to the next generation from people
who know a thing or two. New York:
Simon & Schuster. 2002.
Imagine the following scenario:
Two babies are born at precisely the same
moment. Baby One is healthy, with a great
IQ and all its limbs and two kind, intelligent,
non-dysfunctional parents. Baby Two is
sickly, not very bright, is missing a limb or
two, and is the child of two self-absorbed
and stupid losers, one of whom has not been
seen around lately, the other of whom is a
heroin addict.
Now imagine this scenario enacted a million
times.
Now imagine those two million babies
leaving the hospital and beginning to live
their lives.
Statistically, the Baby Ones are going to
have a better time of it than the Baby Twos.
Whatever random bad luck befalls the
Babies, the Baby Ones will have more
resources with which to engineer a rebound.
If a particular Baby One turns out to be, say,
schizophrenic, he or she will get better
treatment than the corresponding Baby Two,
will be generally safer and better-cared-for,
will more likely have a stable home to return
to. Having all his limbs, he can go where he
needs to go faster and easier. Ditto if Baby
One is depressed, or slow-witted, or wants
to be an artist, or dreams of having a family
and supporting that family with dignity.
A fortunate birth, in other words, is a shock
absorber.
Now we might ask ourselves: What did
Baby One do to deserve this fortunate birth?
Or, conversely, what did Baby Two do to
deserve the unfortunate birth? Imagine the
instant before birth. Even then, the die is
cast. Baby Two has done nothing, exerted
no will, and yet the missing limb is already
missing, the slow brain already slow, the
undesirable parents already undesirable.
Now think back four months before birth. Is
the baby any more culpable? Six months
before birth? At the moment of conception?
Is it possible to locate the moment when
Baby Two’s “culpability” begins?
Now consider a baby born with the
particular neurologic condition that will
eventually cause him to manifest that suite
of behaviors we call “paranoia.” His life will
be hell. Suspicious of everyone and
everything, deeply anxious, he will have
little pleasure, be able to forge no deep
relationships. Now here is that baby fifteen
seconds after conception. All the seeds of
his future condition are present (otherwise,
from what would it develop?) Is he “to
blame?” What did he do, what choices did
he make, that caused this condition in
himself? Clearly, he “did” nothing to
“deserve” his paranoia. If thirty years later,
suspecting that his neighbor is spying on
him, he trashes the neighbor’s apartment and
kills the neighbor’s cat with a phone book, is
he “to blame?” If so, at what point in his
long life was he supposed to magically
overcome/transcend his condition, and how?
Here, on the other hand, is a baby born with
the particular neurologic condition which
will eventually cause him to manifest that
suite of behaviors we call “being incredibly
happy.” His life will be heaven. Everything
he touches will turn to gold. What doesn’t
turn to gold, he will use as fodder for
contemplation, and will be the better for it.
51
He will be able to love and trust people and
get true pleasure from them. He is capable
and self-assured, and acquires a huge
fortune and performs a long list of truly
good deeds. Now here is that baby fifteen
seconds after conception. All the seeds of
his condition are present (otherwise, from
what would it develop?) Can he, justifiably
(at fifteen seconds old), “take credit”for
himself? What did he do, what choices did
he make, that caused this condition of future
happiness to manifest? Where was the
moment of the exertion of will? Where was
the decision? There was no exertion of will
and no decision. There was only fulfillment
of a pattern that began long before his
conception. So if, thirty years later, in the
company of his beautiful wife, whom he
loves deeply, Baby One accepts the Nobel
Prize, then drives away in his Porsche,
listening to Mozart, towards his gorgeous
home, where his beloved children wait,
thinking loving thoughts of him, can he
justifiably “take credit” for any of this?
I think not.
You would not blame a banana for being the
banana that it is. You would not expect it to
have autocorrected its bent stem or willed
itself into a brighter shade of yellow. Why is
it, then, so natural for us to blame a person
for being the person she is, to expect her to
autocorrect her shrillness, say, or to will
herself into a perkier, more efficient person?
I now hear a voice from the gallery, crying:
“But I am not a banana! I have made myself
what I am! What about tenacity and selfimprovement and persisting in our efforts
until our noble cause is won?” I contend that
not only is our innate level of pluck, say,
hardwired at birth, but also our ability to
improve our level of pluck, as well as our
ability to improve our ability to improve our
level of pluck. All of these are ceded to us at
the moment that sperm meets egg. Our life,
colored by the particulars of our experience,
scrolls out from there. Otherwise, what is it,
exactly, that causes Person A, at age forty,
to be plucky and Person B, also forty, to be
decidedly non-plucky? Is it some failure of
intention? And at what point, precisely, did
that failure occur?
The upshot of all of this is not a passive
moral relativism that finds itself incapable of
action in the world. If you repeatedly come
to my house and drive your truck over my
chickens, I had better get you arrested or
have your truck taken away or somehow
ironclad or elevate my chickens. But I would
contend that my ability to protect my
chickens actually improves as I realize that
your desire to flatten my chickens is organic
and comes out of somewhere and is not
unmotivated or even objectively evil — it is
as undeniable to who you are, at that instant,
as is your hair color. Which is not to say that
it cannot be changed. It can be changed. It
must be changed. But dropping the idea that
your actions are Evil, and that you are
Monstrous, I enter a new moral space, in
which the emphasis is on seeing with clarity,
rather than judging; on acting in the most
effective way (that is, the way that most
radically and permanently protects my
chickens), rather than on constructing and
punishing a Monster.
So this is my advice: think about the above.
See if it makes any sense to you. Then, at
the moment when someone cuts you off in
traffic or breaks your heart or begins
bombing your ancestral village, take action
from this position, and I think you will find
that, in the end, you will less often sully
yourself with judgementalism and anger and
hatred, and be more able to live your life
fully and compassionately, which, after all,
52
is really the point.
____________________________________
12) “Buddhism and Democracy”
Washington, D.C., April 1993
Dalai Lama
had a responsibility to contemplate and plan
for a future Tibet. Over the years, therefore,
we have tried through various means to
achieve a model of true democracy. The
familiarity of all Tibetan exiles with the
word 'democracy' shows this.
1. For thousands of years people have been
led to believe that only an authoritarian
organization employing rigid disciplinary
methods could govern human society.
However, because people have an innate
desire for freedom, the forces of liberty and
oppression have been in continuous conflict
throughout history. Today, it is clear which
is winning. The emergence of peoples'
power movements, overthrowing
dictatorships of left and right, has shown
indisputably that the human race can neither
tolerate nor function properly under tyranny.
4. I have long looked forward to the time
when we could devise a political system,
suited both to our traditions and to the
demands of the modern world. A democracy
that has nonviolence and peace at its roots.
We have recently embarked on changes that
will further democratize and strengthen our
administration in exile. For many reasons, I
have decided that I will not be the head of,
or play any role in the government when
Tibet becomes independent. The future head
of the Tibetan Government must be
someone popularly elected by the people.
There are many advantages to such a step
and it will enable us to become a true and
complete democracy. I hope that these
moves will allow the people of Tibet to have
a clear say in determining the future of their
country.
2. Although none of our Buddhist societies
developed anything like democracy in their
systems of government, I personally have
great admiration for secular democracy.
When Tibet was still free, we cultivated our
natural isolation, mistakenly thinking that
we could prolong our peace and security that
way. Consequently, we paid little attention
to the changes taking place in the world
outside. We hardly noticed when India, one
of our closest neighbours, having peacefully
won her independence, became the largest
democracy in the world. Later, we learned
the hard way that in the international arena,
as well as at home, freedom is something to
be shared and enjoyed in the company of
others, not kept to yourself.
3. Although the Tibetans outside Tibet have
been reduced to the status of refugees, we
have the freedom to exercise our rights. Our
brothers and sisters in Tibet, despite being in
their own country do not even have the right
to life. Therefore, those of us in exile have
5. Our democratization has reached out to
Tibetans all over the world. I believe that
future generations will consider these
changes among the most important
achievements of our experience in exile. Just
as the introduction of Buddhism to Tibet
cemented our nation, I am confident that the
democratization of our society will add to
the vitality of the Tibetan people and enable
our decision-making institutions to reflect
their heartfelt needs and aspirations.
6. The idea that people can live together
freely as individuals, equal in principle and
therefore responsible for each other,
essentially agrees with the Buddhist
disposition. As Buddhists, we Tibetans
revere human life as the most precious gift
53
and regard the Buddha's philosophy and
teaching as a path to the highest kind of
freedom. A goal to be attained by men and
women alike.
7. The Buddha saw that life's very purpose is
happiness. He also saw that while ignorance
binds beings in endless frustration and
suffering, wisdom is liberating. Modern
democracy is based on the principle that all
human beings are essentially equal, that
each of us has an equal right to life, liberty,
and happiness. Buddhism too recognises that
human beings are entitled to dignity, that all
members of the human family have an equal
and inalienable right to liberty, not just in
terms of political freedom, but also at the
fundamental level of freedom from fear and
want. Irrespective of whether we are rich or
poor, educated or uneducated, belonging to
one nation or another, to one religion or
another, adhering to this ideology or that,
each of us is just a human being like
everyone else. Not only do we all desire
happiness and seek to avoid suffering, but
each of us has an equal right to pursue these
goals.
8. The institution the Buddha established
was the Sangha or monastic community,
which functioned on largely democratic
lines. Within this fraternity, individuals were
equal, whatever their social class or caste
origins. The only slight difference in status
depended on seniority of ordination.
Individual freedom, exemplified by
liberation or enlightenment, was the primary
focus of the entire community and was
achieved by cultivating the mind in
meditation. Nevertheless, day to day
relations were conducted on the basis of
generosity, consideration, and gentleness
towards others. By pursuing the homeless
life, monks detached themselves from the
concerns of property. However, they did not
live in total isolation. Their custom of
begging for alms only served to strengthen
their awareness of their dependence on other
people. Within the community decisions
were taken by vote and differences were
settled by consensus. Thus, the Sangha
served as a model for social equality,
sharing of resources and democratic process.
9. Buddhism is essentially a practical
doctrine. In addressing the fundamental
problem of human suffering, it does not
insist on a single solution. Recognising that
human beings differ widely in their needs,
dispositions and abilities, it acknowledges
that the paths to peace and happiness are
many. As a spiritual community its cohesion
has sprung from a unifying sense of
brotherhood and sisterhood. Without any
apparent centralized authority Buddhism
has endured for more than two thousand five
hundred years. It has flourished in a
diversity of forms, while repeatedly
renewing, through study and practice, its
roots in the teachings of the Buddha. This
kind of pluralistic approach, in which
individuals themselves are responsible, is
very much in accord with a democratic
outlook.
10. We all desire freedom, but what
distinguishes human beings is their
intelligence. As free human beings we can
use our unique intelligence to try to
understand ourselves and our world. The
Buddha made it clear that his followers were
not to take even what he said at face value,
but were to examine and test it as a
goldsmith tests the quality of gold. But if we
are prevented from using our discrimination
and creativity, we lose one of the basic
characteristics of a human being. Therefore,
the political, social and cultural freedom that
democracy entails is of immense value and
importance.
54
11. No system of government is perfect, but
democracy is closest to our essential human
nature. It is also the only stable foundation
upon which a just and free global political
structure can be built. So it is in all our
interests that those of us who already enjoy
democracy should actively support
everybody's right to do so.
12. Although communism espoused many
noble ideals, including altruism, the attempt
by its governing elites to dictate their views
proved disastrous. These governments went
to tremendous lengths to control their
societies and to induce their citizens to work
for the common good. Rigid organisation
may have been necessary at first to
overcome previously oppressive regimes.
Once that goal was fulfilled, however, such
rigidity had very little to contribute to
building a truly cooperative society.
Communism failed utterly because it relied
on force to promote its beliefs. Ultimately,
human nature was unable to sustain the
suffering it produced.
13. Brute force, no matter how strongly
applied, can never subdue the basic human
desire for freedom. The hundreds of
thousands of people who marched in the
cities of Eastern Europe proved this. They
simply expressed the human need for
freedom and democracy. Their demands had
nothing to do with some new ideology; they
were simply expressing their heartfelt desire
for freedom. It is not enough, as communist
systems have assumed, merely to provide
people with food, shelter and clothing. Our
deeper nature requires that we breathe the
precious air of liberty.
14. The peaceful revolutions in the former
Soviet Union and Eastern Europe have
taught us many great lessons. One is the
value of truth. People do not like to be
bullied, cheated or lied to by either an
individual or a system. Such acts are
contrary to the essential human spirit.
Therefore, those who practice deception and
use force may achieve considerable shortterm success, but eventually they will be
overthrown.
15. Truth is the best guarantor and the real
foundation of freedom and democracy. It
does not matter whether you are weak or
strong or whether your cause has many or
few adherents, truth will still prevail.
Recently, many successful freedom
movements have been based on the true
expression of people's most basic feelings.
This is a valuable reminder that truth itself is
still seriously lacking in much of our
political life. Especially in the conduct of
international relations we pay very little
respect to truth. Inevitably, weaker nations
are manipulated and oppressed by stronger
ones, just as the weaker sections of most
societies suffer at the hands of the more
affluent and powerful. In the past, the simple
expression of truth has usually been
dismissed as unrealistic, but these last few
years have proved that it is an immense
force in the human mind, and, as a result, in
the shaping of history.
16. As we approach the end of the twentieth
century, we find that the world has grown
smaller and the world's people have become
almost one community. We are also being
drawn together by the grave problems we
face: overpopulation, dwindling natural
resources, and an environmental crisis that
threaten the very foundation of existence on
this small planet we share. I believe that to
meet the challenge of our times, human
beings will have to develop a greater sense
of universal responsibility. Each of us must
learn to work not just for his or her own self,
family or nation, but for the benefit of all
55
humankind. Universal responsibility is the
real key to human survival. It is the best
foundation for world peace, the equitable
use of natural resources, and the proper care
of the environment.
17. This urgent need for cooperation can
only strengthen mankind, because it helps us
recognize that the most secure foundation
for the new world order is not simply
broader political and economic alliances, but
each individual's genuine practice of love
and compassion. These qualities are the
ultimate source of human happiness, and our
need for them lies at the very core of our
being. The practice of compassion is not just
a symptom of unrealistic idealism, but the
most effective way to pursue the best
interests of others as well our own. The
more we - as nations or as individuals depend upon others, the more it is in our
own best interests to ensure their well-being.
18. Despite the rapid advances made by
civilization in this century, I believe that the
most immediate cause of our present
dilemma is our undue emphasis solely on
material development. We have become so
engrossed in its pursuit that, without even
knowing it, we have neglected to foster the
most basic human needs of love, kindness,
cooperation and caring. If we do not know
someone or do not feel connected to a
particular individual or group, we simply
overlook their needs. And yet the
development of human society is based
entirely on people helping each other. Once
we have lost the essential humanity that is
our foundation, what is the point of pursuing
only material improvement?
19. In the present circumstances, no one can
afford to assume that someone else will
solve our problems. Every individual has a
responsibility to help guide our global
family in the right direction and we must
each assume that responsibility. What we
have to aim at is the common cause of our
society. If society as a whole is well off,
every individual or association within it will
naturally gain from it. They will naturally be
happy. However, if society as a whole
collapses, then where can we turn to fight
for and demand our rights?
20. I, for one, truly believe that individuals
can make a difference in society. As a
Buddhist monk, I try to develop compassion
myself - not just from a religious point of
view, but from a humanitarian one as well.
To encourage myself in this altruistic
attitude, I sometimes find it helpful to
imagine myself, a single individual, on one
side and on the other a huge gathering of all
other human beings. Then I ask myself,
'Whose interests are more important?' To me
it is then quite clear that, however important
I may feel, I am only one, while others form
the majority.
____________________________________
13) The Dumbest Generation? Don’t Be
Dumb.
George Santayana, too, despaired of a
generation's ignorance, warning that
'those who cannot remember the past are
condemned to repeat it.' That was 1905.
Sharon Begley and Jeneen Interlandi
NEWSWEEK
Updated: 11:16 AM ET May 24, 2008
Really, don't we all know by now that
finding examples of teens' and
twentysomethings' ignorance is like
shooting fish in a barrel? If you want to
exercise your eye-rolling or hand-wringing
muscles, take your pick. Two thirds of high-
56
school seniors in 2006 couldn't explain an
old photo of a sign over a theater door
reading COLORED ENTRANCE. In 2001,
52 percent identified Germany, Japan or
Italy, not the Soviet Union, as America's
World War II ally. One quarter of 18- to 24year-olds in a 2004 survey drew a blank on
Dick Cheney, and 28 percent didn't know
William Rehnquist. The world's most
heavily defended border? Mexico's with the
United States, according to 30 percent of the
same age group. We doubt that the 30
percent were boastful or delusional
Minutemen.
Like professors shocked to encounter
students who respond with a blank-eyed
"huh?" to casual mentions of fireside chats
or Antietam or even Pearl Harbor, and like
parents appalled that their AP-amassing
darling doesn't know Chaucer from Chopin,
Mark Bauerlein sees in such ignorance an
intellectual, economic and civic disaster in
the making. In his provocative new book
"The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital
Age Stupefies Young Americans and
Jeopardizes Our Future (Or, Don't Trust
Anyone Under 30)," the Emory University
professor of English offers the usual
indicators, grand and slight. From evidence
such as a decline in adult literacy (40
percent of high-school grads had it in 1992;
only 31 percent did in 2003) and a rise in
geographic cluelessness (47 percent of the
grads in 1950 could name the largest lake in
North America, compared with 38 percent in
2002), for instance, Bauerlein concludes that
"no cohort in human history has opened
such a fissure between its material
conditions and its intellectual attainments."
He is a little late to this party, of course. The
old have been wringing their hands about
the young's cultural wastelands and
ignorance of history at least since admirers
of Sophocles and Aeschylus bemoaned the
popularity of Aristophanes ("The Frogs," for
Zeussakes?!) as leading to the end of
(Greek) civilization as they knew it. The
Civil War generation was aghast at the lurid
dime novels of the late 1800s. Victorian
scholars considered Dickens, that plotloving, sentimental ("A Christmas Carol")
favorite, a lightweight compared with other
authors of the time. Civilization, and culture
high and low, survived it all. Can it survive
a generation's ignorance of history? For
those born from 1980 to 1997, Bauerlein
lamented to us, "there is no memory of the
past, just like when the Khmer Rouge said
'this is day zero.' Historical memory is
essential to a free people. If you don't know
which rights are protected in the First
Amendment, how can you think critically
about rights in the U.S.?" Fair enough, but
we suspect that if young people don't know
the Bill of Rights or the import of old
COLORED ENTRANCE signs—and they
absolutely should—it reflects not stupidity
but a failure of the school system and of
society (which is run by grown-ups) to
require them to know it. Drawing on our
own historical memory also compels us to
note that philosopher George Santayana,
too, despaired of a generation's historical
ignorance, warning that "those who cannot
remember the past are condemned to repeat
it." That was in 1905.
A more fundamental problem is what
Bauerlein has in mind by "dumbest." If it
means "holding the least knowledge," then
he has a case. Gen Y cares less about
knowing information than knowing where to
find information. (If you are reading this
online, a few keystrokes would easily bring
you, for the questions so far, vice president,
former chief justice of the Supreme Court,
North and South Korea, Lake Superior.)
57
And it is a travesty that employers are
spending $1.3 billion a year to teach basic
writing skills, as a 2003 survey of managers
found. But if dumb means lacking such
fundamental cognitive capacities as the
ability to think critically and logically, to
analyze an argument, to learn and
remember, to see analogies, to distinguish
fact from opinion … well, here Bauerlein is
on shakier ground.
First, IQ scores in every country that
measures them, including the United States,
have been rising since the 1930s. Since the
tests measure not knowledge but pure
thinking capacity—what cognitive scientists
call fluid intelligence, in that it can be
applied to problems in any domain—then
Gen Y's ignorance of facts (or of facts that
older people think are important) reflects not
dumbness but choice. And who's to say they
are dumb because fewer of them than of
their grandparents' generation care who
wrote the oratorio "Messiah" (which 35
percent of college seniors knew in 2002,
compared with 56 percent in 1955)?
Similarly, we suspect that the decline in the
percentage of college freshmen who say it's
important to keep up with political affairs,
from 60 percent in 1966 to 36 percent in
2005, reflects at least in part the fact that in
1966 politics determined whether you were
going to get drafted and shipped to Vietnam.
The apathy of 2005 is more a reflection of
the world outside Gen-Yers' heads than
inside, and one that we bet has changed tack
with the historic candidacy of Barack
Obama. Alienation is not dumbness.
Bauerlein is not the first scholar to pin the
blame for a younger generation's intellectual
shortcomings on new technology (television,
anyone?), in this case indicting "the digital
age." But there is no empirical evidence that
being immersed in instant messaging,
texting, iPods, videogames and all things
online impairs thinking ability. "The jury is
still out on whether these technologies are
positive or negative" for cognition, says Ken
Kosik of the University of California, Santa
Barbara, codirector of the Neuroscience
Research Institute there. "But they're
definitely changing how people's brains
process information." In fact, basic
principles of neuroscience offer reasons to
be optimistic. "We are gradually changing
from a nation of callused hands to a nation
of agile brains," says cognitive scientist
Marcel Just of Carnegie Mellon University.
"Insofar as new information technology
exercises our minds and provides more
information, it has to be improving thinking
ability."
We think that even English professors
should respect the difference between
correlation and causation: just because
ignorance of big lakes and oratorios got
worse when the digital age dawned doesn't
mean that the latter caused the former. To
establish that, you need data. Alas, there
isn't much. The ideal experiment is hard to
pull off: to study the effect of digital
technology on cognitive processing in a
rigorous way, you must randomly assign
groups of young people to use it a lot, a little
or not at all, then follow them for years. As
one 19-year-old of our acquaintance said
about the chances of getting teens to
volunteer for the "not at all" group, "Are you
out of your [deleted] mind?"
What we do know about is multitasking: it
impairs performance in the moment. If, say,
you talk on a cell phone while driving, you
have more trouble keeping your car within
its lane and reacting to threats, Just reported
earlier this year. "Multitasking forces the
brain to share processing resources," he
says, "so even if the tasks don't use the same
58
regions [talking and driving do not], there is
some shared infrastructure that gets
overloaded." Chronic multitasking —texting
and listening to your iPod and updating your
Facebook page while studying for your
exam on the Italian Renaissance—might
also impair learning, as a 2006 study
suggested. Scientists at UCLA led by
Russell Poldrack scanned the brains of
adults ages 18 to 45 while they learned to
interpret symbols on flashcards either in
silence or while also counting high-pitched
beeps they heard. The volunteers learned to
interpret the cards even with the distracting
beeps, but when they were asked about the
cards afterward, the multitaskers did worse.
"Multitasking adversely affects how you
learn," Poldrack said at the time. "Even if
you learn while multitasking, that learning is
less flexible and more specialized, so you
cannot retrieve the information as easily."
Difficult tasks, such as learning calculus or
reading "War and Peace," will be
particularly adversely affected by
multitasking, says psychologist David
Meyer of the University of Michigan:
"When the tasks are at all challenging, there
is a big drop in performance with
multitasking. What kids are doing is
learning to be skillful at a superficial level."
A lab experiment with cards and beeps is not
real life, however. Some scientists suspect
that the brain can be trained to multitask,
just as it can learn to hit a fastball or
memorize the Aeneid. In an unpublished
study, Clifford Nass of Stanford and his
student Eyal Ophir find that multitaskers do
let in a great deal more information, which
is otherwise distracting and attentiondepleting. But avid multitaskers "seem able
to hold more information in short-term
memory, and keep it neatly separated into
what they need and what they don't," says
Nass. "The high multitaskers don't ignore
[all the incoming signals], but are able to
immediately throw out the irrelevant stuff."
They have some kind of compensatory
mechanism to override the distractions and
process the relevant information effectively.
Even videogames might have cognitive
benefits, beyond the hand-eye coordination
and spatial skills some foster. In his 2005
book "Everything Bad Is Good for You,"
Steven Johnson argued that fantasy roleplaying games such as Dungeons & Dragons
are cognitively demanding, requiring players
to build "elaborate fantasy narratives—all by
rolling twenty-sided dice and consulting
bewildering charts that accounted for a
staggering number of variables." Players
must calculate the effect of various
combinations of weapon, opponent and
allies "that would leave most kids weeping if
you put the same charts on a math quiz,"
Johnson wrote. They must use deductive
reasoning to infer rules as they go, such as
the use of various implements, what you
need to do to level-up, intermediary goals,
who's friend and who's foe. The games
challenge you to identify cause and effect—
Johnson describes how SimCity taught his
7-year-old nephew that high tax rates in a
city's industrial zone can deter
manufacturers from relocating there—and to
figure out nested goals, such as the need to
find the tool to get the weapon to beat the
enemy to cross the moat to reach the castle
to (phew) save the princess. This is nothing
if not hypothesis testing and problem
solving, and games such as Final Fantasy
exercise it no less than figuring out where
cars traveling toward one another from 450
miles apart, one at 50mph and one at 60mph,
will meet.
No one knows what kids will do with the
cognitive skills they hone rescuing the
59
princess. If they just save more princesses,
Bauerlein will be proved right: Gen Y will
turn out to be not just the dumbest but also
the most self-absorbed and selfish. (It really
aggravates him that many Gen-Yers are
unapologetic about their ignorance,
dismissing the idea that they should have
more facts in their heads as a pre-Google
and pre-wiki anachronism.) But maybe
they'll deploy their minds to engineer an
affordable 100mpg car, to discover the
difference in the genetic fingerprints of
cancers that spread and those that do not, to
identify the causes and cures of intolerance
and hate. Oddly, Bauerlein acknowledges
that "kids these days are just as smart and
motivated as ever." If they're also "the
dumbest" because they have "more
diversions" and because "screen activity
trumps old-fashioned reading materials"—
well, choices can change, with maturity,
with different reward structures, with
changes in the world their elders make.
Writing off any generation before it's 30 is
what's dumb.
URL:
http://www.newsweek.com/id/138536
© 2008
____________________________________
14) Young, Gay and Murdered
Kids are coming out younger, but are
schools ready to handle the complex
issues of identity and sexuality? For
Larry King, the question had tragic
implications.
Ramin Setoodeh
NEWSWEEK
Updated: 1:56 PM ET Jul 19, 2008
At 15, Lawrence King was small—5 feet 1
inch—but very hard to miss. In January, he
started to show up for class at Oxnard,
Calif.'s E. O. Green Junior High School
decked out in women's accessories. On some
days, he would slick up his curly hair in a
Prince-like bouffant. Sometimes he'd paint
his fingernails hot pink and dab glitter or
white foundation on his cheeks. "He wore
makeup better than I did," says Marissa
Moreno, 13, one of his classmates. He
bought a pair of stilettos at Target, and he
couldn't have been prouder if he had on a
varsity football jersey. He thought nothing
of chasing the boys around the school in
them, teetering as he ran.
But on the morning of Feb. 12, Larry left his
glitter and his heels at home. He came to
school dressed like any other boy: tennis
shoes, baggy pants, a loose sweater over a
collared shirt. He seemed unhappy about
something. He hadn't slept much the night
before, and he told one school employee that
he threw up his breakfast that morning,
which he sometimes did because he
obsessed over his weight. But this was
different. One student noticed that as Larry
walked across the quad, he kept looking
back nervously over his shoulder before he
slipped into his first-period English class.
The teacher, Dawn Boldrin, told the students
to collect their belongings, and then
marched them to a nearby computer lab, so
they could type out their papers on World
War II. Larry found a seat in the middle of
the room. Behind him, Brandon McInerney
pulled up a chair.
Brandon, 14, wasn't working on his paper,
because he told Mrs. Boldrin he'd finished it.
Instead, he opened a history book and
started to read. Or at least he pretended to.
"He kept looking over at Larry," says a
student who was in the class that morning.
60
"He'd look at the book and look at Larry,
and look at the book and look at Larry." At
8:30 a.m., a half hour into class, Brandon
quietly stood up. Then, without anyone's
noticing, he removed a handgun that he had
somehow sneaked to school, aimed it at
Larry's head, and fired a single shot.
Boldrin, who was across the room looking at
another student's work, spun around.
"Brandon, what the hell are you doing!" she
screamed. Brandon fired at Larry a second
time, tossed the gun on the ground and
calmly walked through the classroom door.
Police arrested him within seven minutes, a
few blocks from school. Larry was rushed to
the hospital, where he died two days later of
brain injuries.
The Larry King shooting became the most
prominent gay-bias crime since the murder
of Matthew Shepard 10 years ago. But
despite all the attention and outrage, the
reason Larry died isn't as clear-cut as many
people think. California's Supreme Court
has just legalized gay marriage. There are
gay characters on popular TV shows such as
"Gossip Girl" and "Ugly Betty," and no one
seems to notice. Kids like Larry are so
comfortable with the concept of being
openly gay that they are coming out younger
and younger. One study found that the
average age when kids self-identify as gay
has tumbled to 13.4; their parents usually
find out a year later.
What you might call "the shrinking closet"
is arguably a major factor in Larry's death.
Even as homosexuality has become more
accepted, the prospect of being openly gay
in middle school raises a troubling set of
issues. Kids may want to express who they
are, but they are playing grown-up without
fully knowing what that means. At the same
time, teachers and parents are often
uncomfortable dealing with sexual issues in
children so young. Schools are caught in
between. How do you protect legitimate,
personal expression while preventing
inappropriate, sometimes harmful, behavior?
Larry King was, admittedly, a problematical
test case: he was a troubled child who
flaunted his sexuality and wielded it like a
weapon—it was often his first line of
defense. But his story sheds light on the
difficulty of defining the limits of tolerance.
As E. O. Green found, finding that balance
presents an enormous challenge.
Larry's life was hard from the beginning.
His biological mother was a drug user; his
father wasn't in the picture. When Greg and
Dawn King took him in at age 2, the family
was told he wasn't being fed regularly. Early
on, a speech impediment made Larry
difficult to understand, and he repeated first
grade because he had trouble reading. He
was a gentle child who loved nature and
crocheting, but he also acted out from an
early age. "We couldn't take him to the
grocery store without him shoplifting," Greg
says. "We couldn't get him to clean up his
room. We sent him upstairs—he'd get a
screwdriver and poke holes in the walls." He
was prescribed ADHD medication, and Greg
says Larry was diagnosed with reactive
attachment disorder, a rare condition in
which children never fully bond with their
caregivers or parents.
Kids started whispering about Larry when
he was in third grade at Hathaway
Elementary School. "In a school of 700
students, you'd know Larry," says Sarah
Ranjbar, one of Larry's principals. "He was
slightly effeminate but very sure of his
personality." Finally, his best friend, Averi
Laskey, pulled him aside one day at the end
of class. "I said, 'Larry, are you gay?' He
said, 'Yeah, why?' " He was 10. Averi
remembers telling Larry she didn't care
61
either way, but Larry started telling other
students, and they did. They called him slurs
and avoided him at recess. One Halloween,
someone threw a smoke bomb into his
house, almost killing the family's Jack
Russell terrier. In the sixth grade, a girl
started a "Burn Book"—an allusion to a
book in the movie "Mean Girls," where
bullies scribble nasty rumors about the
people they hate—about Larry. The Larry
book talked about how he was gay and
falsely asserted that he dressed in Goth and
drag. And it ended with a threat: "I hate
Larry King. I wish he was dead," according
to one parent's memory of the book. "The
principal called my wife on the phone and
she was crying," Greg says. "She found the
book, and said we needed to do something
to help protect Larry." His parents
transferred him to another elementary
school, hoping he could get a fresh start
before he started junior high.
E. O. Green is a white slab of concrete in a
neighborhood of pink and yellow homes. In
the afternoons, SUVs roll down the street
like gumballs, the sound of hip-hop music
thumping. Once the students leave the
campus, two blue gates seal it shut, and
teachers are told not to return to school after
dark, because of gang violence. Outside,
there's a worn blue sign that greets visitors:
this was a California distinguished school in
1994. The school is under a different
administration now.
E. O. Green was a comfortable place for
Larry when he arrived as a seventh grader.
He hung out with a group of girls who,
unlike in elementary school, didn't judge
him. But that didn't mean he was entirely
accepted. In gym class, some of his friends
say that the boys would shove him around in
the locker room. After he started dressing
up, he was ridiculed even more. He lost a
high heel once and the boys tossed it around
at lunch like a football. "Random people
would come up to him and start laughing,"
Moreno says. "I thought that was very rude."
One day, in science class, he was singing
"Somewhere Over the Rainbow" to himself.
Kids nearby taunted him for being gay. "He
said to me, 'It's OK'," says Vanessa Castillo,
a classmate. " 'One day, they'll regret it. One
day, I'll be famous'."
Larry's home life wasn't getting any better.
At 12, he was put on probation for
vandalizing a tractor with a razor blade, and
he entered a counseling program, according
to his father. One therapist said Larry might
be autistic. At 14, Larry told Greg he
thought he was bisexual. "It wouldn't matter
either way to me," Greg says. "I thought
maybe some of the problems would go away
if we supported him." But the therapist told
Greg he thought that Larry was just trying to
get attention and might not understand what
it meant to be gay. Larry began telling his
teachers that his father was hitting him. Greg
says he never harmed Larry; still, the
authorities removed Larry from his home in
November 2007. He moved to Casa
Pacifica, a group home and treatment center
in Camarillo, five miles away from Oxnard.
Larry seemed to like Casa Pacifica—
"peaceful home" in Spanish. The 23-acre
facility—more like a giant campground,
with wooden cottages, a basketball court and
a swimming pool—has 45 beds for crisis
kids who need temporary shelter. Every day
a driver would take Larry to school, and
some weeks he went to nearby Ventura,
where he attended gay youth-group
meetings. "I heard this was the happiest time
of his life," says Vicki Murphy, the center's
director of operations. For Christmas, the
home gave Larry a $75 gift card for Target.
He spent it on a pair of brown stiletto shoes.
62
In January, after a few months at Casa
Pacifica, Larry decided to dress like a girl.
He went to school accessorized to the max,
and his already colorful personality got
louder. He accused a girl to her face of
having breast implants. Another girl told
him she didn't like his shoes. "I don't like
your necklace," Larry snapped back. Larry
called his mom from Casa Pacifica to tell
her that he wanted to get a sex-change
operation. And he told a teacher that he
wanted to be called Leticia, since no one at
school knew he was half African-American.
The teacher said firmly, "Larry, I'm not
calling you Leticia." He dropped the idea
without an argument.
The staff at E. O. Green was clearly
struggling with the Larry situation—how to
balance his right to self-expression while
preventing it from disrupting others.
Legally, they couldn't stop him from
wearing girls' clothes, according to the
California Attorney General's Office,
because of a state hate-crime law that
prevents gender discrimination. Larry, being
Larry, pushed his rights as far as he could.
During lunch, he'd sidle up to the popular
boys' table and say in a high-pitched voice,
"Mind if I sit here?" In the locker room,
where he was often ridiculed, he got even by
telling the boys, "You look hot," while they
were changing, according to the mother of a
student.
Larry was eventually moved out of the P.E.
class, though the school didn't seem to know
the extent to which he was clashing with
other boys. One teacher describes the gym
transfer as more of a "preventative
measure," since Larry complained that one
student wouldn't stop looking at him. In
other classes, teachers were baffled that
Larry was allowed to draw so much
attention to himself. "All the teachers were
complaining, because it was disruptive,"
says one of them. "Dress code is a huge
issue at our school. We fight [over] it every
day." Some teachers thought Larry was
clearly in violation of the code, which
prevents students from wearing articles of
clothing considered distracting. When Larry
wore lipstick and eyeliner to school for the
first time, a teacher told him to wash it off,
and he did. But the next day, he was back
wearing even more. Larry told the teacher he
could wear makeup if he wanted to. He said
that Ms. Epstein told him that was his right.
Joy Epstein was one of the school's three
assistant principals, and as Larry became
less inhibited, Epstein became more a source
of some teachers' confusion and anger.
Epstein, a calm, brown-haired woman with
bifocals, was openly gay to her colleagues,
and although she was generally not out to
her students, she kept a picture of her
partner on her desk that some students saw.
While her job was to oversee the seventh
graders, she formed a special bond with
Larry, who was in the eighth grade. He
dropped by her office regularly, either for
counseling or just to talk—she won't say
exactly. "There was no reason why I
specifically started working with Larry,"
Epstein says. "He came to me." Some
teachers believe that she was encouraging
Larry's flamboyance, to help further an
"agenda," as some put it. One teacher
complains that by being openly gay and
discussing her girlfriend (presumably, no
one would have complained if she had
talked about a husband), Epstein brought the
subject of sex into school. Epstein won't
elaborate on what exactly she said to Larry
because she expects to be called to testify at
Brandon's trial, but it's certain to become
one of the key issues. William Quest,
Brandon's public defender, hasn't disclosed
63
his defense strategy, but he has accused the
school of failing to intercede as the tension
rose between Larry and Brandon. Quest
calls Epstein "a lesbian vice principal with a
political agenda." Larry's father also blames
Epstein. He's hired an attorney and says he
is seriously contemplating a wrongful-death
lawsuit. "She started to confuse her role as a
junior-high principal," Greg King says. "I
think that she was asserting her beliefs for
gay rights." In a tragedy such as this, the
natural impulse is to try to understand why it
happened and to look for someone to blame.
Epstein won't discuss the case in detail and,
until she testifies in court, it's impossible to
know what role—if any—she played in the
events leading to Larry's death.
Whatever Epstein said to Larry, it's clear
that his coming out proved to be a fraught
process, as it can often be. For tweens,
talking about being gay isn't really about
sex. They may be aware of their own sexual
attraction by the time they're 10, according
to Caitlin Ryan, a researcher at San
Francisco State University, but those
feelings are too vague and unfamiliar to be
their primary motivation. (In fact, Larry told
a teacher that he'd never kissed anyone,
male or female.) These kids are actually
concerned with exploring their identity.
"When you're a baby, you cry when you're
hungry because you don't know the word for
it," says Allan Acevedo, 19, of San Diego,
who came out when he was in eighth grade.
"Part of the reason why people are coming
out earlier is they have the word 'gay,' and
they know it explains the feeling." Like
older teenagers, tweens tend to tell their
friends first, because they think they'll be
more accepting. But kids that age often
aren't equipped to deal with highly personal
information, and middle-school staffs are
almost never trained in handling kids who
question their sexuality. More than 3,600
high schools sponsor gay-straight alliances
designed to foster acceptance of gay
students, but only 110 middle schools have
them. Often the entire school finds out
before either the student or the faculty is
prepared for the attention and the backlash.
"My name became a punch line very fast,"
says Grady Keefe, 19, of Branford, Conn.,
who came out in the eighth grade. "The
guidance counselors told me I should not
have come out because I was being hurt."
The staff at E. O. Green tried to help as
Larry experimented with his identity, but he
liked to talk in a roar. One teacher asked him
why he taunted the boys in the halls, and
Larry replied, "It's fun to watch them
squirm." But Brandon McInerney was
different. Larry really liked Brandon. One
student remembered that Larry would often
walk up close to Brandon and stare at him.
Larry had studied Brandon so well, he once
knew when he had a scratch on his arm—
Larry even claimed that he had given it to
Brandon by mistake, when the two were
together. Larry told one of his close friends
that he and Brandon had dated but had
broken up. He also said that he'd threatened
to tell the entire school about them, if
Brandon wasn't nicer to him. Quest,
Brandon's defense attorney, says there was
no relationship between Larry and Brandon,
and one of Larry's teachers says that Larry
was probably lying to get attention.
Like Larry, Brandon had his share of
troubles. His parents, Kendra and Bill
McInerney, had a difficult, tempestuous
relationship. In 1993, Kendra alleged that
Bill pointed a .45 handgun at her during a
drunken evening and shot her in the arm,
according to court records. She and Bill split
in 2000, when Brandon was 6. One
September morning, a fight broke out after
64
Kendra accused her husband of stealing the
ADHD medication prescribed to one of her
older sons from her first marriage. Bill
"grabbed Kendra by the hair," and "began
choking her until she was almost
unconscious," according to Kendra's version
of the events filed in court documents. He
pleaded no contest to corporal injury to a
spouse and was sentenced to 10 days in jail.
In a December 2001 court filing for a
restraining order against Kendra, he claimed
that she had turned her home into a "drug
house." "I was very functional," Kendra later
explained to a local newspaper, in a story
about meth addiction. By 2004, she had
entered a rehab program, and Brandon went
to live with his father. But he spent years
caught in the middle of a war.
While his life did seem to become more
routine living with his dad, Brandon's
troubles resurfaced in the eighth grade. His
father was working in a town more than 60
miles away, and he was alone a lot. He
began hanging out with a group of misfits on
the beach. Although he was smart, he didn't
seem to have much interest in school.
Except for Hitler—Brandon knew all about
the Nuremberg trials and all the names of
Hitler's deputies. (When other kids asked
him how he knew so much, he replied
casually, "Don't you watch the History
Channel?" Brandon's father says his son was
interested in World War II, but not
inappropriately.) By the end of the first
semester, as his overall GPA tumbled from a
3.3 to a 1.9, he was kicked out of his English
honors class for not doing his work and
causing disruptions. He was transferred to
Boldrin's English class, where he joined
Larry.
Larry's grades were also dropping—he went
from having a 1.71 GPA in November to a
1.0 in February, his father says. But he was
too busy reveling in the spotlight to care.
"He was like Britney Spears," says one
teacher who knew Larry. "Everyone wanted
to know what's the next thing he's going to
do." Girls would take photos of him on their
camera phones and discuss him with their
friends. "My class was in a frenzy every day
with Larry stories," says a humanities
teacher who didn't have Larry as one of her
students. He wore a Playboy-bunny
necklace, which one of his teachers told him
to remove because it was offensive to
women. But those brown Target stilettos
wobbled on.
The commotion over Larry's appearance
finally forced the school office to take
formal action. On Jan. 29, every teacher
received an e-mail with the subject line
STUDENT RIGHTS. It was written by Sue
Parsons, the eighth-grade assistant principal.
"We have a student on campus who has
chosen to express his sexuality by wearing
make-up," the e-mail said without
mentioning Larry by name. "It is his right to
do so. Some kids are finding it amusing,
others are bothered by it. As long as it does
not cause classroom disruptions he is within
his rights. We are asking that you talk to
your students about being civil and nonjudgmental. They don't have to like it but
they need to give him his space. We are also
asking you to watch for possible problems.
If you wish to talk further about it please see
me or Ms. Epstein."
Jerry Dannenberg, the superintendent, says
the front office received no complaints about
Larry, but according to several faculty
members, at least two teachers tried to
formally protest what was going on. The
first was the same teacher who told Larry to
scrub the makeup off his face. She was
approached by several boys in her class who
said that Larry had started taunting them in
65
the halls—"I know you want me," he'd
say—and their friends were calling them
gay. The teacher told some of her colleagues
that when she went to the office to file a
complaint, Epstein said she would take it.
"It's about Larry," the teacher said. "There's
nothing we can do about that," Epstein
replied. (Epstein denies she was ever
approached.) A few days later another
teacher claims to have gone to the school
principal, Joel Lovstedt. The teacher says
she told him that she was concerned about
Larry and she thought he was a danger to
himself—she worried that he might fall in
his three-inch stilettos and injure himself.
Lovstedt told the teacher that he had
directions, though he wouldn't say from
where, that they couldn't intervene with
Larry's sexual expression. (Lovstedt denied
NEWSWEEK's request for an interview.)
There was an unusual student complaint,
too. Larry's younger brother, Rocky, 12, also
attended E. O. Green, and the kids started
picking on him the day in January when
Larry showed up in hot pink knee-length
boots. Rocky says he went to several school
officials for help, including Epstein. "I went
up to her at lunchtime," he says. "I said, 'Ms.
Epstein, can you stop Larry from dressing
like a girl? The kids are saying since Larry
is gay, I must be gay, too, because I'm his
brother'."
As you talk to the teachers, many of them
say they tried to support Larry, but they
didn't always know how. In blue-collar,
immigrant Oxnard, there is no gay
community to speak of and generally very
little public discussion of gay issues, at least
until Larry's murder happened. One teacher
was very protective of Larry, his English
teacher, Mrs. Boldrin. To help Larry feel
better about moving to Casa Pacifica, she
brought Larry a present: a green evening
dress that once belonged to her own
daughter. Before school started, Larry ran to
the bathroom to try it on. Then he showed it
to some of his friends, telling them that he
was going to wear it at graduation.
And then there was Valentine's Day. A day
or two before the shooting, the school was
buzzing with the story about a game Larry
was playing with a group of his girlfriends
in the outdoor quad. The idea was, you had
to go up to your crush and ask them to be
your Valentine. Several girls named boys
they liked, then marched off to complete the
mission. When it was Larry's turn, he named
Brandon, who happened to be playing
basketball nearby. Larry walked right on to
the court in the middle of the game and
asked Brandon to be his Valentine.
Brandon's friends were there and started
joking that he and Larry were going to make
"gay babies" together. At the end of lunch,
Brandon passed by one of Larry's friends in
the hall. She says he told her to say goodbye
to Larry, because she would never see him
again.
The friend didn't tell Larry about the
threat—she thought Brandon was just
kidding. There are many rumors of another
confrontation between Larry and Brandon,
on Feb. 11, the day before the shooting.
Several students and teachers said they had
heard about a fight between the two but they
hadn't actually witnessed it themselves. The
next morning a counselor at Casa Pacifica
asked Larry what was wrong, and he said,
vaguely, "I've had enough." When he got to
school, his friends quizzed him about his
noticeably unfabulous appearance. He said
that he ran out of makeup and hair gel
(which wasn't true) and that he had a blister
on his ankle (this was true—he'd just bought
a new pair of boots). Larry walked alongside
Boldrin to the computer class and sat in
66
front of a computer. A few minutes later, a
counselor summoned him to her office. She
told him that his grades were so low, he was
at risk of not graduating from the eighth
grade. He went back to his computer. He
had written his name on his paper as Leticia
King. Most of the campus heard the
gunshots. Some described it like a door
slammed shut very hard.
On March 7, the school held a memorial
service for Larry. Epstein stood at the
podium with students who read from
notecards about what they liked best about
Larry: he was nice, he was unique, he was
brave. The band played "Amazing Grace,"
and two dozen doves were released into the
sky. Averi read a poem about how her friend
was like a garden seed that grew, and died;
Larry's mom wept in the front row. Deep in
the audience, an eighth grader turned to one
of Brandon's friends and whispered, "That's
so gay."
The obvious question now is whether
Larry's death could have been prevented.
"Absolutely," says Dannenberg. "Why do
we have youngsters that have access to
guns? Why don't we have adequate funding
to pay for social workers at the school to
make sure students have resources? We have
societal issues." Many teachers and parents
aren't content with that answer. For them,
the issue isn't whether Larry was gay or
straight—his father still isn't convinced his
son was gay—but whether he was allowed
to push the boundaries so far that he put
himself and others in danger. They're not
blaming Larry for his own death—as if
anything could justify his murder—but their
attitude toward his assailant is not
unsympathetic. "We failed Brandon," a
teacher says. "We didn't know the bullying
was coming from the other side—Larry was
pushing as hard as he could, because he
liked the attention."
Greg King doesn't feel sympathy for
Brandon, but he does believe his son
sexually harassed him. He's resentful that
the gay community has appropriated his
son's murder as part of a larger cause. "I
think the gay-rights people want it to be a
gay-rights issue, because it makes a poster
child out of my son," King says. "That
bothered me. I'm not anti-gay. I have a lot of
co-workers and friends who are gay." That
anger was made worse when he heard this
summer that Epstein would be promoted to
principal of an elementary school. "This is a
slap in the face of my family," Greg says.
Many teachers wonder if the district moved
her because she had become a lightning rod
for criticism after Larry's death.
Dannenberg, the superintendent, says that
she was the most qualified person for the
new principal job.
The school has conducted its own
investigation, though its lawyer won't make
it public. But it will likely be brought up
when Brandon goes to trial. He is charged
with first-degree murder and a hate crime,
and is scheduled to be arraigned this week.
Hundreds of his classmates have signed a
petition asking that he be tried in juvenile
court. The district attorney wants him tried
as an adult, which could result in a prison
sentence of 51 years to life. "Brandon was
being terrorized," says Bill, who has set up a
public defense fund in his son's name. "He
was being stalked almost, to the degree of
the school should have never let this
happen." What happened to Larry and
Brandon was certainly extreme, but it has
implications for schools across the country.
"If we're going to be absolutely sure this
isn't going to happen again," says Elaine
Garber, 81, who has served on the school's
67
board for 48 years, "this has got to be
discussed some more."
As if anyone has stopped talking—and
arguing—about Larry King. He had an
entire page devoted to him in the E. O.
Green yearbook. On the Internet, he's
become a gay martyr, and this year's
National Day of Silence, an annual event
created to raise awareness of homophobia,
was dedicated to Larry. And in Averi
Laskey's bedroom, she still keeps a
handmade purple get-well card she made for
Larry on the day after he was shot. At the
time, there was still hope he would pull
through. He had survived the night, which
the doctors said was a good sign. Averi
rounded up dozens of teachers and friends
between classes to sign messages of
encouragement. "Larry, I miss you. Get
better," Boldrin wrote in blue ink. "Keep up
your spirit. A lot of people are rooting for
you to get better," the principal wrote. Some
of Larry's classmates apologized for how he
had been treated. A few even left their
phone numbers, so he could call them if he
ever needed to talk to someone. But when
Averi got home that day, she learned that
Larry had suffered a fatal stroke. Larry was
pronounced brain-dead that afternoon, and
the family decided to donate his organs. The
following day, Feb. 14, doctors harvested
his pancreas, liver, lungs and the most
important organ of all, which now beats
inside the chest of a 10-year-old girl. On
Valentine's Day, Larry King gave away his
heart, but not in the way he thought he
would.
In the five months NEWSWEEK spent
examining Larry King's death, we spoke
with several dozen people, including faculty,
students and parents. All students named
were interviewed with their parents'
permission. Some of our sources would
speak only anonymously; the school's staff
was instructed not to speak to the media
because of the criminal proceedings and the
possibility of civil litigation. While they
agreed to be interviewed on the record,
Jerry Dannenberg, the district
superintendent, and Joy Epstein, E. O.
Green's former assistant principal, were
limited in what they could say for the same
reasons.
URL:
http://www.newsweek.com/id/147790
© 2008
____________________________________
15) Fashion Police: Flint Cracks Down on
Sagging
Some people call it a fad. But for the city
of Flint, Mich., that urban style known as
'sagging' is now a criminal offense.
Jessica Bennett and Mary Chapman
NEWSWEEK WEB EXCLUSIVE
Updated: 9:16 AM ET Jul 18, 2008
68
It's 90 degrees in downtown Flint, Mich.,
and Jayson Miguel is shirtless, in a pair of
gray sweatpants. He's hanging out, minding
his own business—and breaking the law. It's
not that he's loitering (he's on his way to
meet a friend). It's his pants: they're hanging
off his hips, below his butt to reveal a pair of
gray boxer shorts. "I've been sagging since
the fourth grade," the 28-year-old says. "I'll
be sagging when I'm old and gray."
Young people call this unkempt look a
fashion choice. But for David Dicks, Flint's
new police chief, it's a national nuisance.
Dicks has ordered his officers to start
arresting "saggers," as some aficionados of
this sartorial style call themselves, on sight,
threatening them with jail time and hefty
fines for a fad he calls "immoral self
expression." He later told a local paper the
style could give officers probable cause to
search saggers.
It's a move other municipalities have tried
before on a style that's been around for
decades. But Dicks, who took over the
department on an interim basis last month,
has employed a particularly harsh
approach—one that some critics are calling
downright illegal. So far, Dicks has only
issued warnings to saggers, but he's made it
clear that anyone with pants below the
butt—whether or not they've got boxers
underneath—is violating the city's
disorderly conduct code, punishable by 93
days to a year in jail and fines of up to $500.
"Everybody's talking about it," says Tonio
Watkins, 18, a local high-school student. "I
don't like what they're doing. I've been
dressing like this my whole life."
The local chapter of the American Civil
Liberties Union doesn't like it, either—and
has given Dicks an ultimatum: stop the
policy or face a court battle. They say Dicks
is taking the law into his own hands, and
violating citizens' freedom of expression in
the process. Sagging to show boxer shorts
doesn't even violate the city's conduct
policy, they say—which states a person
must have "open exposure" of the "genitals,
pubic area [or] buttocks" to be considered
disorderly. "Under no stretch of the
imagination does wearing saggy pants that
reveal the top of one's boxer shorts violate
the Flint disorderly conduct ordinance," says
attorney Greg Gibbs, the president of the
Flint chapter of the ACLU. "This man has
basically taken his personal dislike of a style
of dress and made it a violation of criminal
law." Gibbs says the chapter will act after
Monday if Dicks doesn't change the policy.
The police chief declined an interview
request from NEWSWEEK.
In the meantime, residents like Miguel—
who, at 6-foot-3, wears a size 3XL in
sweatpants—are just plain confused.
Sagging has been around for decades. Why
outlaw it now? "I think it's an opportunity to
harass, to be honest," says Miguel. The
ACLU worries about that, too: it's no secret
sagging is a style long popular with men of
color. Last week, a Flint police officer called
into a local radio station to say that officers
were already using the policy as a way to
profile minorities. (Chief Dicks is himself
African-American.)
Critics also say the Flint police department
has bigger issues to worry about. A 2007
report by Congressional Quarterly ranked
the city (population 120,000) the third most
dangerous in America. It recently laid off 48
officers and closed the city jail because of
budget constraints. With a climate like that,
why allocate resources to a bunch of kids
who have an aversion to belts? "Clearly
there are more important things going on in
Flint," says Todd Boyd, a cultural critic at
69
the University of Southern California in Los
Angeles.
The origins of sagging may be what's
motivating Dicks. Long popular with the
hip-hop set, sagging is in part a relic of
prison culture: inmates sagged because they
weren't allowed belts. To some, the style
references a gangster lifestyle—a symbol of
disrespect for authority. "I don't understand
why parents let their kids out of their sight
like that," said 81-year-old Minnie Boyd (no
relation to Todd Boyd), shaking her head as
she exited a Flint hair salon. "Who in the
world wants to see a butt in public?"
But sagging's origins came partly out of
practicality, too. In the 1980s, long before
labels like Sean Jean and Rocawear catered
to black men, the jeans of popular designers
like Tommy Hilfiger were made too narrow
for the black male body, says Professor
Boyd of USC. So people started buying
jeans two or three sizes too big, and—
voila!—a style was born. Even Miguel says
his sagging was a product of necessity: his
mom couldn't always afford new clothes, so
he'd inherit oversize hand-me-downs from
his older brother. "Of course they were too
big," he says.
Today, Miguel sags because it's "cool,
hip"—but insists it's not a commentary on
his way of life. "Hip-hop has been around
for a long time now, and there are some
things about the culture that have just
become commonplace," says professor
Boyd. "You're not making a big statement
by sagging." As Miguel puts it: "It's just a
style, man." And hopefully not a criminal
offense.
URL:
http://www.newsweek.com/id/146803
© 2008
____________________________________
16) “How the Poor Die” by George
Orwell from Now, November 1946
IN the year 1929 I spent several weeks in
the Hôpital X, in the fifteenth
arrondissement of Paris. The clerks put me
through the usual third-degree at the
reception desk, and indeed I was kept
answering questions for some twenty
minutes before they would let me in. If you
have ever had to fill up forms in a Latin
country you will know the kind of questions
I mean. For some days past I had been
unequal to translating Réaumur into
Fahrenheit, but I know that my temperature
was round about 103, and by the end of the
interview I had some difficulty in standing
on my feet. At my back a resigned little knot
of patients, carrying bundles done up in
coloured handkerchiefs, waited their turn to
be questioned.
After the questioning came the bath—a
compulsory routine for all newcomers,
apparently, just as in prison or the
workhouse. My clothes were taken away
from me, and after I had sat shivering for
some minutes in five inches of warm water I
was given a linen nightshirt and a short blue
flannel dressing-gown—no slippers, they
had none big enough for me, they said—and
led out into the open air. This was a night in
February and I was suffering from
pneumonia. The ward we were going to was
200 yards away and it seemed that to get to
it you had to cross the hospital grounds.
Someone stumbled in front of me with a
lantern. The gravel path was frosty
underfoot, and the wind whipped the
nightshirt round my bare calves. When we
got into the ward I was aware of a strange
feeling of familiarity whose origin I did not
succeed in pinning down till later in the
night. It was a long, rather low, ill-lit room,
70
full of murmuring voices and with three
rows of beds surprisingly close together.
There was a foul smell, faecal and yet
sweetish. As I lay down I saw on a bed
nearly opposite me a small, roundshouldered, sandy-haired man sitting half
naked while a doctor and a student
performed some strange operation on him.
First the doctor produced from his black bag
a dozen small glasses like wine glasses, then
the student burned a match inside each glass
to exhaust the air, then the glass was popped
on to the man’s back or chest and the
vacuum drew up a huge yellow blister. Only
after some moments did I realize what they
were doing to him. It was something called
cupping, a treatment which you can read
about in old medical text-books but which
till then I had vaguely thought of as one of
those things they do to horses.
The cold air outside had probably lowered
my temperature, and I watched this
barbarous remedy with detachment and even
a certain amount of amusement. The next
moment, however, the doctor and the
student came across to my bed, hoisted me
upright and without a word began applying
the same set of glasses, which had not been
sterilized in any way. A few feeble protests
that I uttered got no more response than if I
had been an animal. I was very much
impressed by the impersonal way in which
the two men started on me. I had never been
in the public ward of a hospital before, and it
was my first experience of doctors who
handle you without speaking to you or, in a
human sense, taking any notice of you. They
only put on six glasses in my case, but after
doing so they scarified the blisters and
applied the glasses again. Each glass now
drew about a dessert-spoonful of darkcoloured blood. As I lay down again,
humiliated, disgusted and frightened by the
thing that had been done to me, I reflected
that now at least they would leave me alone.
But no, not a bit of it. There was another
treatment. coming, the mustard poultice,
seemingly a matter of routine like the hot
bath. Two slatternly nurses had already got
the poultice ready, and they lashed it round
my chest as tight as a strait-jacket while
some men who were wandering about the
ward in shirt and trousers began to collect
round my bed with half-sympathetic grins. I
learned later that watching a patient have a
mustard poultice was a favourite pastime in
the ward. These things are normally applied
for a quarter of an hour and certainly they
are funny enough if you don’t happen to be
the person inside. For the first five minutes
the pain is severe, but you believe you can
bear it. During the second five minutes this
belief evaporates, but the poultice is buckled
at the back and you can’t get it off. This is
the period the onlookers enjoy most. During
the last five minutes, I noted, a sort of
numbness supervenes. After the poultice had
been removed a waterproof pillow packed
with ice was thrust beneath my head and I
was left alone. I did not sleep, and to the
best of my knowledge this was the only
night of my life—I mean the only night
spent in bed—in which I have not slept at
all, not even a minute.
During my first hour in the Hopital X I had
had a whole series of different and
contradictory treatments, but this was
misleading, for in general you got very little
treatment at all, either good or bad, unless
you were ill in some interesting and
instructive way. At five in the morning the
nurses came round, woke the patients and
took their temperatures, but did not wash
them. If you were well enough you washed
yourself, otherwise you depended on the
kindness of some walking patient. It was
71
generally patients, too, who carried the
bedbottles and the grim bedpan, nicknamed
la casserole. At eight breakfast arrived,
called army-fashion la soupe. It was soup,
too, a thin vegetable soup with slimy hunks
of bread floating about in it. Later in the day
the tall, solemn, black-bearded doctor made
his rounds, with an interne and a troop of
students following at his heels, but there
were about sixty of us in the ward and it was
evident that he had other wards to attend to
as well. There were many beds past which
he walked day after day, sometimes
followed by imploring cries. On the other
hand if you had some disease with which the
students wanted to familiarize themselves
you got plenty of attention of a kind. I
myself, with an exceptionally fine specimen
of a bronchial rattle, sometimes had as many
as a dozen students queuing up to listen to
my chest. It was a very queer feeling—
queer, I mean, because of their intense
interest in learning their job, together with a
seeming lack of any perception that the
patients were human beings. It is strange to
relate, but sometimes as some young student
stepped forward to take his turn at
manipulating you he would be actually
tremulous with excitement, like a boy who
has at last got his hands on some expensive
piece of machinery. And then ear after ear—
ears of young men, of girls, of negroes—
pressed against your back, relays of fingers
solemnly but clumsily tapping, and not from
any one of them did you get a word of
conversation or a look direct in your face.
As a non-paying patient, in the uniform
nightshirt, you were primarily a specimen, a
thing I did not resent but could never quite
get used to.
After some days I grew well enough to sit
up and study the surrounding patients. The
stuffy room, with its narrow beds so close
together that you could easily touch your
neighbour’s hand, had every sort of disease
in it except, I suppose, acutely infectious
cases. My right-hand neighbour was a little
red-haired cobbler with one leg shorter than
the other, who used to announce the death of
any other patient (this happened a number of
times, and my neighbour was always the
first to hear of it) by whistling to me,
exclaiming “Numéro 43!” (or whatever it
was) and flinging his arms above his head.
This man had not much wrong with him, but
in most of the other beds within my angle of
vision some squalid tragedy or some plain
horror was being enacted. In the bed that
was foot to foot with mine there lay, until he
died (I didn’t see him die—they moved him
to another bed), a little weazened man who
was suffering from I do not know what
disease, but something that made his whole
body so intensely sensitive that any
movement from side to side, sometimes
even the weight of the bedclothes, would
make him shout out with pain. His worst
suffering was when he urinated, which he
did with the greatest difficulty. A nurse
would bring him the bedbottle and then for a
long time stand beside his bed, whistling, as
grooms are said to do with horses, until at
last with an agonized shriek of “Je Pisse!”
he would get started. In the bed next to him
the sandy-haired man whom I had seen
being cupped used to cough up bloodstreaked mucus at all hours. My left-hand
neighbour was a tall, flaccid-looking young
man who used periodically to have a tube
inserted into his back and astonishing
quantities of frothy liquid drawn off from
some part of his body. In the bed beyond
that a veteran of the war of 1870 was dying,
a handsome old man with a white imperial,
round whose bed, at all hours when visiting
was allowed, four elderly female relatives
dressed all in black sat exactly like crows,
72
obviously scheming for some pitiful legacy.
In the bed opposite me in the farther row
was an old bald-headed man with drooping
moustaches and greatly swollen face and
body, who was suffering from some disease
that made him urinate almost incessantly. A
huge glass receptacle stood always beside
his bed. One day his wife and daughter came
to visit him. At sight of them the old man’s
bloated face lit up with a smile of surprising
sweetness, and as his daughter, a pretty girl
of about twenty, approached the bed I saw
that his hand was slowly working its way
from under the bedclothes. I seemed to see
in advance the gesture that was coming—the
girl kneeling beside the bed, the old man’s
hand laid on her head in his dying blessing.
But no, he merely handed her the bedbottle,
which she promptly took from him and
emptied into the receptacle.
About a dozen beds away from me was
Numéro 57—I think that was his number—a
cirrhosis of the liver case. Everyone in the
ward knew him by sight because he was
sometimes the subject of a medical lecture.
On two afternoons a week the tall, grave
doctor would lecture in the ward to a party
of students, and on more than one occasion
old Numéro 57 was wheeled in on a sort of
trolley into the middle of the ward, where
the doctor would roll back his nightshirt,
dilate with his fingers a huge flabby
protruberance on the man’s belly—the
diseased liver, I suppose—and explain
solemnly that this was a disease attributable
to alcoholism, commoner in the winedrinking countries. As usual he neither
spoke to his patient nor gave him a smile, a
nod or any kind of recognition. While he
talked, very grave and upright, he would
hold the wasted body beneath his two hands,
sometimes giving it a gentle roll to and fro,
in just the attitude of a woman handling a
rolling-pin. Not that Numéro 57 minded this
kind of thing. Obviously he was an old
hospital inmate, a regular exhibit at lectures,
his liver long since marked down for a bottle
in some pathological museum. Utterly
uninterested in what was said about him, he
would lie with his colourless eyes gazing at
nothing, while the doctor showed him off
like a piece of antique china. He was a man
of about sixty, astonishingly shrunken. His
face, pale as vellum, had shrunken away till
it seemed no bigger than a doll’s.
One morning my cobbler neighbour woke
me up plucking at my pillow before the
nurses arrived. “Numéro 57!”—he flung his
arms above his head. There was a light in
the ward, enough to see by. I could see old
Numéro 57 lying crumpled up on his side,
his face sticking out over the side of the bed,
and towards me. He had died some time
during the night, nobody knew when. When
the nurses came they received the news of
his death indifferendy and went about their
work. After a long time, an hour or more,
two other nurses marched in abreast like
soldiers, with a great clumping of sabots,
and knotted the corpse up in the sheets, but
it was not removed till some time later.
Meanwhile, in the better light, I had had
time for a good look at Numéro 57. Indeed I
lay on my side to look at him. Curiously
enough he was the first dead European I had
seen. I had seen dead men before, but
always Asiatics and usually people who had
died violent deaths. Numéro 57’s eyes were
still open, his mouth also open, his small
face contorted into an expression of agony.
What most impressed me, however, was the
whiteness of his face. It had been pale
before, but now it was little darker than the
sheets. As I gazed at the tiny, screwed-up
face it struck me that this disgusting piece of
refuse, waiting to be carted away and
73
dumped on a slab in the dissecting room,
was an example of “natural” death, one of
the things you pray for in the Litany. There
you are, then, I thought, that’s what is
waiting for you, twenty, thirty, forty years
hence: that is how the lucky ones die, the
ones who live to be old. One wants to live,
of course, indeed one only stays alive by
virtue of the fear of death, but I think now,
as I thought then, that it’s better to die
violently and not too old. People talk about
the horrors of war, but what weapon has
man invented that even approaches in
cruelty some of the commoner diseases?
“Natural” death, almost by definition, means
something slow, smelly and painful. Even at
that, it makes a difference if you can achieve
it in your own home and not in a public
institution. This poor old wretch who had
just flickered out like a candle-end was not
even important enough to have anyone
watching by his deathbed. He was merely a
number, then a “subject” for the students’
scalpels. And the sordid publicity of dying
in such a place! In the Hopital X the beds
were very close together and there were no
screens. Fancy, for instance, dying like the
little man whose bed was for a while foot to
foot with mine, the one who cried out when
the bedclothes touched him! I dare say “Je
Pisse!” were his last recorded words.
Perhaps the dying don’t bother about such
things—that at least would be the standard
answer: nevertheless dying people are often
more or less normal in their minds till within
a day or so of the end.
saw in the Hopital X. This business of
people just dying like animals, for instance,
with nobody standing by, nobody interested,
the death not even noticed till the morning—
this happened more than once. You certainly
would not see that in England, and still less
would you see a corpse left exposed to the
view of the other patients. I remember that
once in a cottage hospital in England a man
died while we were at tea, and though there
were only six of us in the ward the nurses
managed things so adroitly that the man was
dead and his body removed without our
even hearing about it till tea was over. A
thing we perhaps underrate in England is the
advantage we enjoy in having large numbers
of well-trained and rigidly-disciplined
nurses. No doubt English nurses are dumb
enough, they may tell fortunes with tealeaves, wear Union Jack badges and keep
photographs of the Queen on their
mantelpieces, but at least they don’t let you
lie unwashed and constipated on an unmade
bed, out of sheer laziness. The nurses at the
Hopital X still had a tinge of Mrs Gamp
about them, and later, in the military
hospitals of Republican Spain, I was to see
nurses almost too ignorant to take a
temperature. You wouldn’t, either, see in
England such dirt as existed in the Hopital
X. Later on, when I was well enough to
wash myself in the bathroom, I found that
there was kept there a huge packing case
into which the scraps of food and dirty
dressings from the ward were flung, and the
wainscotings were infested by crickets.
In the public wards of a hospital you see
horrors that you don’t seem to meet with
among people who manage to die in their
own homes, as though certain diseases only
attacked people at the lower income levels.
But it is a fact that you would not in any
English hospitals see some of the things I
When I had got back my clothes and grown
strong on my legs I fled from the Hopital X,
before my time was up and without waiting
for a medical discharge. It was not the only
hospital I have fled from, but its gloom and
bareness, its sickly smell and, above all,
something in its mental atmosphere stand
74
out in my memory as exceptional. I had
been taken there because it was the hospital
belonging to my arrondissement, and I did
not learn till after I was in it that it bore a
bad reputation. A year or two later the
celebrated swindler, Madame Hanaud, who
was ill while on remand, was taken to the
Hopital X, and after a few days of it she
managed to elude her guards, took a taxi and
drove back to the prison, explaining that she
was more comfortable there. I have no doubt
that the Hopital X was quite untypical of
French hospitals even at that date. But the
patients, nearly all of them working men,
were surprisingly resigned. Some of them
seemed to find the conditions almost
comfortable, for at least two were destitute
malingerers who found this a good way of
getting through the winter. The nurses
connived because the malingerers made
themselves useful by doing odd jobs. But the
attitude of the majority was: of course this is
a lousy place, but what else do you expect?
It did not seem strange to them that you
should be woken at five and then wait three
hours before starting the day on watery
soup, or that people should die with no one
at their bedside, or even that your chance of
getting medical attention should depend on
catching the doctor’s eye as he went past.
According to their traditions that was what
hospitals were like. If you are seriously ill
and if you are too poor to be treated in your
own home, then you must go into hospital,
and once there you must put up with
harshness and discomfort, just as you would
in the army. But on top of this I was
interested to find a lingering belief in the old
stories that have now almost faded from
memory in England—stories, for instance,
about doctors cutting you open out of sheer
curiosity or thinking it funny to start
operating before you were properly “under”.
There were dark tales about a little
operating-room said to be situated just
beyond the bathroom. Dreadful screams
were said to issue from this room. I saw
nothing to confirm these stories and no
doubt they were all nonsense, though I did
see two students kill a sixteen-year-old boy,
or nearly kill him (he appeared to be dying
when I left the hospital, but he may have
recovered later) by a mischievous
experiment which they probably could not
have tried on a paying patient. Well within
living memory it used to be believed in
London that in some of the big hospitals
patients were killed off to get dissection
subjects. I didn’t hear this tale repeated at
the Hopital X, but I should think some of the
men there would have found it credible. For
it was a hospital in which not the methods,
perhaps, but something of the atmosphere of
the nineteenth century had managed to
survive, and therein lay its peculiar interest.
During the past fifty years or so there has
been a great change in the relationship
between doctor and patient. If you look at
almost any literature before the later part of
the nineteenth century, you find that a
hospital is popularly regarded as much the
same thing as a prison, and an oldfashioned, dungeon-like prison at that. A
hospital is a place of filth, torture and death,
a sort of antechamber to the tomb. No one
who was not more or less destitute would
have thought of going into such a place for
treatment. And especially in the early part of
the last century, when medical science had
grown bolder than before without being any
more successful, the whole business of
doctoring was looked on with horror and
dread by ordinary people. Surgery, in
particular, was believed to be no more than a
peculiarly gruesome form of sadism, and
dissection, possible only with the aid of
bodysnatchers, was even confused with
75
necromancy. From the nineteenth century
you could collect a large horror-literature
connected with doctors and hospitals. Think
of poor old George III, in his dotage,
shrieking for mercy as he sees his surgeons
approaching to “bleed him till he faints”!
Think of the conversations of Bob Sawyer
and Benjamin Alien, which no doubt are
hardly parodies, or the field hospitals in La
Débacle and War and Peace, or that
shocking description of an amputation in
Melville’s Whitejacket! Even the names
given to doctors in nineteenth-century
English fiction, Slasher, Carver, Sawyer,
Fillgrave and so on, and the generic
nickname “sawbones”, are about as grim as
they are comic. The anti-surgery tradition is
perhaps best expressed in Tennyson’s poem,
The Children’s Hospital, which is
essentially a pre-chloroform document
though it seems to have been written as late
as 1880. Moreover, the outlook which
Tennyson records in this poem had a lot to
be said for it. When you consider what an
operation without anaesthetics must have
been like, what it notoriously was like, it is
difficult not to suspect the motives of people
who would undertake such things. For these
bloody horrors which the students so eagerly
looked forward to (“A magnificent sight if
Slasher does it!”) were admittedly more or
less useless: the patient who did not die of
shock usually died of gangrene, a result
which was taken for granted. Even now
doctors can be found whose motives are
questionable. Anyone who has had much
illness, or who has listened to medical
students talking, will know what I mean. But
anaesthetics were a turning point, and
disinfectants were another. Nowhere in the
world, probably would you now see the kind
of scene described by Axel Munthe in The
Story of San Michele, when the sinister
surgeon in top hat and frock coat, his
starched shirtfront spattered with blood and
pus, carves up patient after patient with the
same knife and flings the severed limbs into
a pile beside the table. Moreover, the
national health insurance has partly done
away with the idea that a working-class
patient is a pauper who deserves little
consideration. Well into this century it was
usual for “free” patients at the big hospitals
to have their teeth extracted with no
anaesthetic. They didn’t pay, so why should
they have an anaesthetic—that was the
attitude. That too has changed.
And yet every institution will always bear
upon it some lingering memory of its past. A
barrack-room is still haunted by the ghost of
Kipling, and it is difficult to enter a
workhouse without being reminded of
Oliver Twist. Hospitals began as a kind of
casual ward for lepers and the like to die in,
and they continued as places where medical
students learned their art on the bodies of the
poor. You can still catch a faint suggestion
of their history in their characteristically
gloomy architecture. I would be far from
complaining about the treatment I have
received in any English hospital, but I do
know that it is a sound instinct that warns
people to keep out of hospitals if possible,
and especially out of the public wards.
Whatever the legal position may be, it is
unquestionable that you have far less control
over your own treatment, far less certainty
that frivolous experiments will not be tried
on you, when it is a case of “accept the
discipline or get out”. And it is a great thing
to die in your own bed, though it is better
still to die in your boots. However great the
kindness and the efficiency, in every
hospital death there will be some cruel,
squalid detail, something perhaps too small
to be told but leaving terribly painful
memories behind, arising out of the haste,
76
the crowding, the impersonality of a place
where every day people are dying among
strangers.
The dread of hospitals probably still
survives among the very poor, and in all of
us it has only recently disappeared. It is a
dark patch not far beneath the surface of our
minds. I have said earlier that when I
entered the ward at the Hopital X I was
conscious of a strange feeling of familiarity.
What the scene reminded me of, of course,
was the reeking, pain-filled hospitals of the
nineteenth century, which I had never seen
but of which I had a traditional knowledge.
And something, perhaps the black-clad
doctor with his frowsy black bag, or perhaps
only the sickly smell, played the queer trick
of unearthing from my memory that poem of
Tennyson’s, The Children’s Hospital, which
I had not thought of for twenty years. It
happened that as a child I had had it read
aloud to me by a sick-nurse whose own
working life might have stretched back to
the time when Tennyson wrote the poem.
The horrors and sufferings of the old-style
hospitals were a vivid memory to her. We
had shuddered over the poem together, and
then seemingly I had forgotten it. Even its
name would probably have recalled nothing
to me. But the first glimpse of the ill-lit
murmurous room, with the beds so close
together, suddenly roused the train of
thought to which it belonged, and in the
night that followed I found myself
remembering the whole story and
atmosphere of the poem, with many of its
lines complete.
17) “Politics vs. Literature: An
Examination of Gulliver’s Travels”
by George Orwell
Polemic, September/October 1946
IN Gulliver’s Travels humanity is attacked,
or criticized, from at least three different
angles, and the implied character of Gulliver
himself necessarily changes somewhat in the
process. In Part I he is the typical
eighteenth-century voyager, bold, practical
and unromantic, his homely outlook
skilfully impressed on the reader by the
biographical details at the beginning, by his
age (he is a man of forty, with two children,
when his adventures start), and by the
inventory of the things in his pockets,
especially his spectacles, which make
several appearances. In Part II he has in
general the same character, but at moments
when the story demands it he has a tendency
to develop into an imbecile who is capable
of boasting of “our noble Country, the
Mistress of Arts and Arms, the Scourge of
France”, etc., etc., and at the same time of
betraying every available scandalous fact
about the country which he professes to
love. In Part III he is much as he was in Part
I, though, as he is consorting chiefly with
courtiers and men of learning, one has the
impression that he has risen in the social
scale. In Part IV he conceives a horror of the
human race which is not apparent, or only
intermittently apparent, in the earlier books,
and changes into a sort of unreligious
anchorite whose one desire is to live in some
desolate spot where he can devote himself to
meditating on the goodness of the
Houyhnhnms. However, these
inconsistencies are forced upon Swift by the
fact that Gulliver is there chiefly to provide
a contrast. It is necessary, for instance, that
he should appear sensible in Part I and at
77
least intermittently silly in Part II because in
both books the essential manoeuvre is the
same, i.e. to make the human being look
ridiculous by imagining him as a creature
six inches high. Whenever Gulliver is not
acting as a stooge there is a sort of
continuity in his character, which comes out
especially in his resourcefulness and his
observation of physical detail. He is much
the same kind of person, with the same
prose style, when he bears off the warships
of Blefuscu, when he rips open the belly of
the monstrous rat, and when he sails away
upon the ocean in his frail coracle made
from. the skins of Yahoos. Moreover, it is
difficult not to feel that in his shrewder
moments Gulliver is simply Swift himself,
and there is at least one incident in which
Swift seems to be venting his private
grievance against contemporary Society. It
will be remembered that when the Emperor
of Lilliput’s palace catches fire, Gulliver
puts it out by urinating on it. Instead of
being congratulated on his presence of mind,
he finds that he has committed a capital
offence by making water in the precincts of
the palace, and
“I was privately assured, that the
Empress, conceiving the greatest
Abhorrence of what I had done,
removed to the most distant Side
of the Court, firmly resolved that
those buildings should never be
repaired for her Use; and, in the
Presence of her chief Confidents,
could not forbear vowing
Revenge.”
According to Professor G. M. Trevelyan
(England Under Queen Anne), part of the
reason for Swift’s failure to get preferment
was that the Queen was scandalized by the
Tale of a Tub—a pamphlet in which Swift
probably felt that he had done a great service
to the English Crown, since it scarifies the
Dissenters and still more the Catholics while
leaving the Established Church alone. In any
case no one would deny that Gulliver’s
Travels is a rancorous as well as a
pessimistic book, and that especially in Parts
I and III it often descends into political
partisanship of a narrow kind. Pettiness and
magnanimity, republicanism and
authoritarianism, love of reason and lack of
curiosity, are all mixed up in it. The hatred
of the human body with which Swift is
especially associated is only dominant in
Part IV, but somehow this new
preoccupation does not come as a surprise.
One feels that all these adventures, and all
these changes of mood, could have
happened to the same person, and the interconnection between Swift’s political
loyalties and his ultimate despair is one of
the most interesting features of the book.
Politically, Swift was one of those people
who are driven into a sort of perverse
Toryism by the follies of the progressive
party of the moment. Part I of Gulliver’s
Travels, ostensibly a satire on human
greatness, can be seen, if one looks a little
deeper, to be simply an attack on England,
on the dominant Whig Party, and on the war
with France, which—however bad the
motives of the Allies may have been—did
save Europe from being tyrannized over by
a single reactionary power. Swift was not a
Jacobite nor strictly speaking a Tory, and his
declared aim in the war was merely a
moderate peace treaty and not the outright
defeat of England. Nevertheless there is a
tinge of quislingism in his attitude, which
comes out in the ending of Part I and
slightly interferes with the allegory. When
Gulliver flees from Lilliput (England) to
Blefuscu (France) the assumption that a
78
human being six inches high is inherently
contemptible seems to be dropped. Whereas
the people of Lilliput have behaved towards
Gulliver with the utmost treachery and
meanness, those of Blefuscu behave
generously and straightforwardly, and
indeed this section of the book ends on a
different note from the all-round
disillusionment of the earlier chapters.
Evidently Swift’s animus is, in the first
place, against England. It is “your Natives”
(i.e. Gulliver’s fellow-countrymen) whom
the King of Brobdingnag considers to be
“the most pernicious Race of little odious
vermin that Nature ever suffered to crawl
upon the surface of the Earth”, and the long
passage at the end, denouncing colonization
and foreign conquest, is plainly aimed at
England, although the contrary is elaborately
stated. The Dutch, England’s allies and
target of one of Swift’s most famous
pamphlets, are also more or less wantonly
attacked in Part III. There is even what
sounds like a personal note in the passage in
which Gulliver records his satisfaction that
the various countries he has discovered
cannot be made colonies of the British
Crown:
“The Houyhnhnms, indeed,
appear not to be so well prepared
for War, a Science to which they
are perfect Strangers, and
especially against missive
Weapons. However, supposing
myself to be a Minister of State,
I could never give my advice for
invading them. . . . Imagine
twenty thousand of them
breaking into the midst of an
European army, confounding the
Ranks, overturning the
Carriages, battering the
Warriors’ Faces into Mummy,
by terrible Yerks from their
hinder hoofs. . .”
Considering that Swift does not waste
words, that phrase, “battering the warriors’
faces into mummy”, probably indicates a
secret wish to see the invincible armies of
the Duke of Marlborough treated in a like
manner. There are similar touches
elsewhere. Even the country mentioned in
Part III, where “the Bulk of the People
consist, in a Manner, wholly of Discoverers,
Witnesses, Informers, Accusers,
Prosecutors, Evidences, Swearers, together
with their several subservient and subaltern
Instruments, all under the Colours, the
Conduct, and Pay of Ministers of State”, is
called Langdon, which is within one letter of
being an anagram of England. (As the early
editions of the book contain misprints, it
may perhaps have been intended as a
complete anagram.) Swift’s physical
repulsion from humanity is certainly real
enough, but one has the feeling that his
debunking of human grandeur, his diatribes
against lords, politicians, court favourites,
etc., has mainly a local application and
springs from the fact that he belonged to the
unsuccessful party. He denounces injustice
and oppression, but he gives no evidence of
liking democracy. In spite of his enormously
greater powers, his implied position is very
similar to that of the innumerable sillyclever Conservatives of our own day—
people like Sir Alan Herbert, Professor G.
M. Young, Lord Eiton, the Tory Reform
Committee or the long line of Catholic
apologists from W. H. Mallock onwards:
people who specialize in cracking neat jokes
at the expense of whatever is “modern” and
“progressive”, and whose opinions are often
all the more extreme because they know that
they cannot influence the actual drift of
events. After all, such a pamphlet as An
79
Argument to Prove that the Abolishing of
Christianity, etc., is very like “Timothy
Shy” having a bit of clean fun with the
Brains Trust, or Father Ronald Knox
exposing the errors of Bertrand Russell. And
the ease with which Swift has been
forgiven—and forgiven, sometimes, by
devout believers—for the blasphemies of a
Tale of a Tub demonstrates clearly enough
the feebleness of religious sentiments as
compared with political ones.
However, the reactionary cast of Swift’s
mind does not show itself chiefly in his
political affiliations. The important thing is
his attitude towards Science, and, more
broadly, towards intellectual curiosity. The
famous Academy of Lagado, described in
Part III of Gulliver’s Travels, is no doubt a
justified satire on most of the so-called
scientists of Swift’s own day. Significantly,
the people at work in it are described as
“Projectors”, that is, people not engaged in
disinterested research but merely on the
look-out for gadgets which will save labour
and bring in money. But there is no sign—
indeed, all through the book there are many
signs to the contrary—that “pure” science
would have struck Swift as a worth-while
activity. The more serious kind of scientist
has already had a kick in the pants in Part II,
when the “Scholars” patronized by the King
of Brobdingnag try to account for Gulliver’s
small stature:
“After much Debate, they
concluded unanimously that I
was only Relplum Scalcath,
which is interpreted literally,
Lusus Naturae, a Determination
exactly agreeable to the modern
philosophy of Europe, whose
Professors, disdaining the old
Evasion of Occult Causes,
whereby the followers of
Aristotle endeavoured in vain to
disguise their Ignorance, have
invented this wonderful solution
of All Difficulties, to the
unspeakable Advancement of
human Knowledge.”
If this stood by itself one might assume that
Swift is merely the enemy of sham science.
In a number of places, however, he goes out
of his way to proclaim the uselessness of all
learning or speculation not directed towards
some practical end:
“The learning of (the
Brobdingnaglans) is very
defective, consisting only in
Morality, History, Poetry, and
Mathematics, wherein they must
be allowed to excel. But, the last
of these is wholly applied to
what may be useful in Life, to
the improvement of Agriculture,
and all mechanical Arts so that
among us it would be little
esteemed. And as to Ideas,
Entities, Abstractions, and
Transcendentals, I could never
drive the least Conception into
their Heads.”
The Houyhnhnms, Swift’s ideal beings, are
backward even in a mechanical sense. They
are unacquainted with metals, have never
heard of boats, do not, properly speaking,
practise agriculture (we are told that the oats
which they live upon “grow naturally”), and
appear not to have invented wheels.1 They
have no alphabet, and evidently have not
much curiosity about the physical world.
They do not believe that any inhabited
country exists beside their own, and though
they understand the motions of the sun and
80
moon, and the nature of eclipses, “this is the
utmost progress of their Astronomy”. By
contrast, the philosophers of the flying
island of Laputa are so continuously
absorbed in mathematical speculations that
before speaking to them one has to attract
their attention by napping them on the ear
with a bladder. They have catalogued ten
thousand fixed stars, have settled the periods
of ninety-three comets, and have discovered,
in advance of the astronomers of Europe,
that Mars has two moons—all of which
information Swift evidently regards as
ridiculous, useless and uninteresting. As one
might expect, he believes that the scientist’s
place, if he has a place, is in the laboratory,
and that scientific knowledge has no bearing
on political matters:
“What I . . . thought altogether
unaccountable, was the strong
Disposition I observed in them
towards News and Politics,
perpetually enquiring into Public
Affairs, giving their judgements
in Matters of State, and
passionately disputing every inch
of a Party Opinion. I have,
indeed, observed the same
Disposition among most of the
Mathematicians I have known in
Europe, though I could never
discover the least Analogy
between the two Sciences; unless
those people suppose, that,
because the smallest Circle hath
as many Degrees as the largest,
therefore the Regulation and
Management of the World
require no more Abilities, than
the Handling and Turning of a
Globe.”
Is there not something familiar in that phrase
“I could never discover the least analogy
between the two sciences”? It has precisely
the note of the popular Catholic apologists
who profess to be astonished when a
scientist utters an opinion on such questions
as the existence of God or the immortality of
the soul. The scientist, we are told, is an
expert only in one restricted field: why
should his opinions be of value in any other?
The implication is that theology is just as
much an exact science as, for instance,
chemistry, and that the priest is also an
expert whose conclusions on certain subjects
must be accepted. Swift in effect makes the
same claim for the politician, but he goes
one better in that he will not allow the
scientist—either the “pure” scientist or the
ad hoc investigator—to be a useful person in
his own line. Even if he had not written Part
III of Gulliver’s Travels, one could infer
from the rest of the book that, like Tolstoy
and like Blake, he hates the very idea of
studying the processes of Nature. The
“Reason” which he so admires in the
Houyhnhnms does not primarily mean the
power of drawing logical inferences from
observed facts. Although he never defines it,
it appears in most contexts to mean either
common sense—i.e. acceptance of the
obvious and contempt for quibbles and
abstractions—or absence of passion and
superstition. In general he assumes that we
know all that we need to know already, and
merely use our knowledge incorrectly.
Medicine, for instance, is a useless science,
because if we lived in a more natural way,
there would be no diseases. Swift, however,
is not a simple-lifer or an admirer of the
Noble Savage. He is in favour of civilization
and the arts of civilization. Not only does he
see the value of good manners, good
conversation, and even learning of a literary
and historical kind, he also sees that
81
agriculture, navigation and architecture need
to be studied and could with advantages be
improved. But his implied aim is a static,
incurious civilization—the world of his own
day, a little cleaner, a little saner, with no
radical change and no poking into the
unknowable. More than one would expect in
anyone so free from accepted fallacies, he
reveres the past, especially classical
antiquity, and believes that modern man has
degenerated sharply during the past hundred
years.2 In the island of sorcerers, where the
spirits of the dead can be called up at will:
Conversation with Brutus, and
was told, that his Ancestors
Junius, Socrates, Epaminondas,
Cato the younger, Sir Thomas
More, and himself, were
perpetually together: a
Sextumvirate, to which all the
Ages of the World cannot add a
seventh.”
Although Swift uses this section of Part III
to attack the truthfulness of recorded history,
his critical spirit deserts him as soon as he is
dealing with Greeks and Romans. He
remarks, of course, upon the corruption of
imperial Rome, but he has an almost
unreasoning admiration for some of the
leading figures of the ancient world:
It will be noticed that of these six people,
only one is a Christian. This is an important
point. If one adds together Swift’s
pessimism, his reverence for the past, his
incuriosity and his horror of the human
body, one arrives at an attitude common
among religious reactionaries—that is,
people who defend an unjust order of
Society by claiming that this world cannot
be substantially improved and only the “next
world” matters. However, Swift shows no
sign of having any religious beliefs, at least
in any ordinary sense of the words. He does
not appear to believe seriously in life after
death, and his idea of goodness is bound up
with republicanism, love of liberty, courage,
“benevolence” (meaning in effect public
spirit), “reason” and other pagan qualities.
This reminds one that there is another strain
in Swift, not quite congruous with his
disbelief in progress and his general hatred
of humanity.
“I was struck with profound
Veneration at the sight of Brutus,
and could easily discover the
most consummate Virtue, the
greatest Intrepidity and Firmness
of Mind, the truest Love of his
Country, and general
Benevolence for Mankind, in
every Lineament of his
Countenance. . . . I had the
honour to have much
To begin with, he has moments when he is
“constructive” and even “advanced”. To be
occasionally inconsistent is almost a mark of
vitality in Utopia books, and Swift
sometimes inserts a word of praise into a
passage that ought to be purely satirical.
Thus, his ideas about the education of the
young are fathered on to the Lilliputians,
who have much the same views on this
subject as the Houyhnhnms. The Lilliputians
also have various social and legal
“I desired that the Senate of
Rome might appear before me in
one large chamber, and a modern
Representative in Counterview,
in another. The first seemed to
be an Assembly of Heroes and
Demy-Gods, the other a Knot of
Pedlars, Pick-pockets,
Highwaymen and Bullies.”
82
institutions (for instance, there are old age
pensions, and people are rewarded for
keeping the law as well as punished for
breaking it) which Swift would have liked to
see prevailing in his own country. In the
middle of this passage Swift remembers his
satirical intention and adds, “In relating
these and the following Laws, I would only
be understood to mean the original
Institutions, and not the most scandalous
Corruptions into which these people are
fallen by the degenerate Nature of Man” but
as Lilliput is supposed to represent England,
and the laws he is speaking of have never
had their parallel in England, it is clear that
the impulse to make constructive
suggestions has been too much for him. But
Swift’s greatest contribution to political
thought in the narrower sense of the words,
is his attack, especially in Part III, on what
would now be called totalitarianism. He has
an extraordinarily clear prevision of the spyhaunted “police State”, with its endless
heresy-hunts and treason trials, all really
designed to neutralize popular discontent by
changing it into war hysteria. And one must
remember that Swift is here inferring the
whole from a quite small part, for the feeble
governments of his own day did not give
him illustrations ready-made. For example,
there is the professor at the School of
Political Projectors who “shewed me a large
Paper of Instructions for discovering Plots
and Conspiracies”, and who claimed that
one can find people’s secret thoughts by
examining their excrement:
“Because Men are never so
serious, thoughtful, and intent, as
when they are at Stool, which he
found by frequent Experiment:
for in such Conjunctures, when
he used meerly as a trial to
consider what was the best Way
of murdering the King, his
Ordure would have a tincture of
Green; but quite different when
he thought only of raising an
Insurrection, or burning the
Metropolis.”
The professor and his theory are said to have
been suggested to Swift by the—from our
point of view—not particularly astonishing
or disgusting fact that in a recent State trial
some letters found in somebody’s privy had
been put in evidence. Later in the same
chapter we seem to be positively in the
middle of the Russian purges:
“In the Kingdom of Tribnia, by
the Natives called
Langdon. . . the Bulk of the
People consist, in a Manner,
wholly of Discoverers,
Witnesses, Informers, Accusers,
Prosecutors, Evidences,
Swearers. . . It is first agreed,
and settled among them, what
suspected Persons shall be
accused of a Plot: Then, effectual
Care is taken to secure all their
Letters and Papers, and put the
Owners in Chains. These papers
are delivered to a Sett of Artists,
very dexterous in finding out the
mysterious Meanings of Words,
Syllables, and Letters. . . . Where
this method fails, they have two
others more effectual, which the
Learned among them call
Acrostics and Anagrams. First,
they can decypher all initial
Letters into political Meanings:
Thus: N shall signify a Plot, B a
Regiment of Horse, L a Fleet at
Sea: Or, Secondly, by
transposing the Letters of the
83
Alphabet in any suspected Paper,
they can lay open the deepest
Designs of a discontented Party.
So, for Example if I should say
in a Letter to a Friend, Our
Brother Tom has just got the
Piles, a skilful Decypherer
would discover that the same
Letters, which compose that
Sentence, may be analysed in the
following Words: Resist—a Plot
is brought Home—The Tour3.
And this is the anagrammatic
method.”
Other professors at the same school invent
simplified languages, write books by
machinery, educate their pupils by
inscribing the lesson on a wafer and causing
them to swallow it, or propose to abolish
individuality altogether by cutting off part of
the brain of one man and grafting it on to the
head of another. There is something queerly
familiar in the atmosphere of these chapters,
because, mixed up with much fooling, there
is a perception that one of the aims of
totalitarianism is not merely to make sure
that people will think the right thoughts, but
actually to make them less conscious. Then,
again, Swift’s account of the Leader who is
usually to be found ruling over a tribe of
Yahoos, and of the “favourite” who acts first
as a dirty-worker and later as a scapegoat,
fits remarkably well into the pattern of our
own times. But are we to infer from all this
that Swift was first and foremost an enemy
of tyranny and a champion of the free
intelligence? No: his own views, so far as
one can discern them, are not markedly
liberal. No doubt he hates lords, kings,
bishops, generals, ladies of fashion, orders,
titles and flummery generally, but he does
not seem to think better of the common
people than of their rulers, or to be in favour
of increased social equality, or to be
enthusiastic about representative institutions.
The Houyhnhnms are organized upon a sort
of caste system which is racial in character,
the horses which do the menial work being
of different colours from their masters and
not interbreeding with them. The
educational system which Swift admires in
the Lilliputians takes hereditary class
distinctions for granted, and the children of
the poorest classes do not go to school,
because “their Business being only to till
and cultivate the Earth. . . therefore their
Education is of little Consequence to the
Public”. Nor does he seem to have been
strongly in favour of freedom of speech and
the Press, in spite of the toleration which his
own writings enjoyed. The King of
Brobdingnag is astonished at the multiplicity
of religious and political sects in England,
and considers that those who hold “opinions
prejudicial to the public” (in the context this
seems to mean simply heretical opinions),
though they need not be obliged to change
them, ought to be obliged to conceal them:
for “as it was Tyranny in any Government to
require the first, so it was weakness not to
enforce the second”. There is a subtler
indication of Swift’s own attitude in the
manner in which Gulliver leaves the land of
the Houyhnhnms. Intermittently, at least.
Swift was a kind of anarchist, and Part IV of
Gulliver’s Travels is a picture of an
anarchistic Society, not governed by law in
the ordinary sense, but by the dictates of
“Reason”, which are voluntarily accepted by
everyone. The General Assembly of the
Houyhnhnms “exhorts” Gulliver’s master to
get rid of him, and his neighbours put
pressure on him to make him comply. Two
reasons are given. One is that the presence
of this unusual Yahoo may unsettle the rest
of the tribe, and the other is that a friendly
relationship between a Houyhnhnm and a
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Yahoo is “not agreeable to Reason or
Nature, or a Thing ever heard of before
among them”. Gulliver’s master is
somewhat unwilling to obey, but the
“exhortation” (a Houyhnhnm, we are told, is
never compelled to do anything, he is merely
“exhorted” or “advised”) cannot be
disregarded. This illustrates very well the
totalitarian tendency which is explicit in the
anarchist or pacifist vision of Society. In a
Society in which there is no law, and in
theory no compulsion, the only arbiter of
behaviour is public opinion. But public
opinion, because of the tremendous urge to
conformity in gregarious animals, is less
tolerant than any system of law. When
human beings are governed by “thou shalt
not”, the individual can practise a certain
amount of eccentricity: when they are
supposedly governed by “love” or “reason”,
he is under continuous pressure to make him
behave and think in exactly the same way as
everyone else. The Houyhnhnms, we are
told, were unanimous on almost all subjects.
The only question they ever discussed was
how to deal with the Yahoos. Otherwise
there was no room for disagreement among
them, because the truth is always either selfevident, or else it is undiscoverable and
unimportant. They had apparently no word
for “opinion” in their language, and in their
conversations there was no “difference of
sentiments”. They had reached, in fact, the
highest stage of totalitarian organization, the
stage when conformity has become so
general that there is no need for a police
force. Swift approves of this kind of thing
because among his many gifts neither
curiosity nor good-nature was included.
Disagreement would always seem to him
sheer perversity. “Reason,” among the
Houyhnhnms, he says, “is not a Point
Problematical, as with us, where men can
argue with Plausibility on both Sides of a
Question; but strikes you with immediate
Conviction; as it must needs do, where it is
not mingled, obscured, or discoloured by
Passion and Interest.” In other words, we
know everything already, so why should
dissident opinions be tolerated? The
totalitarian Society of the Houyhnhnms,
where there can be no freedom and no
development, follows naturally from this.
We are right to think of Swift as a rebel and
iconoclast, but except in certain secondary
matters, such as his insistence that women
should receive the same education as men,
he cannot be labelled “Left”. He is a Tory
anarchist, despising authority while
disbelieving in liberty, and preserving the
aristocratic outlook while seeing clearly that
the existing aristocracy is degenerate and
contemptible. When Swift utters one of his
characteristic diatribes against the rich and
powerful, one must probably, as I said
earlier, write off something for the fact that
he himself belonged to the less successful
party, and was personally disappointed. The
“outs”, for obvious reasons, are always more
radical than the “ins”.4 But the most
essential thing in Swift is his inability to
believe that life—ordinary life on the solid
earth, and not some rationalized, deodorized
version of it—could be made worth living.
Of course, no honest person claims that
happiness is now a normal condition among
adult human beings; but perhaps it could be
made normal, and it is upon this question
that all serious political controversy really
turns. Swift has much in common—more, I
believe, than has been noticed—with
Tolstoy, another disbeliever in the
possibility of happiness. In both men you
have the same anarchistic outlook covering
an authoritarian cast of mind; in both a
similar hostility to Science, the same
impatience with opponents, the same
85
inability to see the importance of any
question not interesting to themselves; and
in both cases a sort of horror of the actual
process of life, though in Tolstoy’s case it
was arrived at later and in a different way.
The sexual unhappiness of the two men was
not of the same kind, but there was this in
common, that in both of them a sincere
loathing was mixed up with a morbid
fascination. Tolstoy was a reformed rake
who ended by preaching complete celibacy,
while continuing to practise the opposite
into extreme old age. Swift was presumably
impotent, and had an exaggerated horror of
human dung: he also thought about it
incessantly, as is evident throughout his
works. Such people are not likely to enjoy
even the small amount of happiness that
falls to most human beings, and, from
obvious motives, are not likely to admit that
earthly life is capable of much improvement.
Their incuriosity, and hence their
intolerance, spring from the same root.
Swift’s disgust, rancour and pessimism
would make sense against the background of
a “next world” to which this one is the
prelude. As he does not appear to believe
seriously in any such thing, it becomes
necessary to construct a paradise supposedly
existing on the surface of the earth, but
something quite different from anything we
know, with all that he disapproves of—lies,
folly, change, enthusiasm, pleasure, love and
dirt—eliminated from it. As his ideal being
he chooses the horse, an animal whose
excrement is not offensive. The
Houyhnhnms are dreary beasts—this is so
generally admitted that the point is not
worth labouring. Swift’s genius can make
them credible, but there can have been very
few readers in whom they have excited any
feeling beyond dislike. And this is not from
wounded vanity at seeing animals preferred
to men; for, of the two, the Houyhnhnms are
much liker to human beings than are the
Yahoos, and Gulliver’s horror of the
Yahoos, together with his recognition that
they are the same kind of creature as
himself, contains a logical absurdity. This
horror comes upon him at his very first sight
of them. “I never beheld,” he says, “in all
my Travels, so disagreeable an Animal, nor
one against which I naturally conceived so
strong an Antipathy.” But in comparison
with what are the Yahoos disgusting? Not
with the Houyhnhnms, because at this time
Gulliver has not seen a Houyhnhnm. It can
only be in comparison with himself, i.e. with
a human being. Later, however, we are to be
told that the Yahoos are human beings, and
human society becomes insupportable to
Gulliver because all men are Yahoos. In that
case why did he not conceive his disgust of
humanity earlier? In effect we are told that
the Yahoos are fantastically different from
men, and yet are the same. Swift has overreached himself in his fury, and is shouting
at his fellow-creatures, “You are filthier than
you are!” However, it is impossible to feel
much sympathy with the Yahoos, and it is
not because they oppress the Yahoos that the
Houyhnhnms are unattractive. They are
unattractive because the “Reason” by which
they are governed is really a desire for
death. They are exempt from love,
friendship, curiosity, fear, sorrow and—
except in their feelings towards the Yahoos,
who occupy rather the same place in their
community as the Jews in Nazi Germany—
anger and hatred. “They have no Fondness
for their Colts or Foles, but the Care they
take, in educating them, proceeds entirely
from the Dictates of Reason.” They lay store
by “Friendship” and “Benevolence”, but
“these are not confined to particular Objects,
but universal to the whole Race”. They also
value conversation, but in their
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conversations there are no differences of
opinion, and “nothing passed but what was
useful, expressed in the fewest and most
significant Words”. They practise strict birth
control, each couple producing two
offspring and thereafter abstaining from
sexual intercourse. Their marriages are
arranged for them by their elders, on eugenic
principles, and their language contains no
word for “love”, in the sexual sense. When
somebody dies they carry on exactly as
before, without feeling any grief. It will be
seen that their aim is to be as like a corpse as
is possible while retaining physical life. One
or two of their characteristics, it is true, do
not seem to be strictly “reasonable” in their
own usage of the word. Thus, they place a
great value not only on physical hardihood
but on athleticism, and they are devoted to
poetry. But these exceptions may be less
arbitrary than they seem. Swift probably
emphasizes the physical strength of the
Houyhnhnms in order to make clear that
they could never be conquered by the hated
human race, while a taste for poetry may
figure among their qualities because poetry
appeared to Swift as the antithesis of
Science, from his point of view the most
useless of all pursuits. In Part III he names
“Imagination, Fancy, and Invention” as
desirable faculties in which the Laputan
mathematicians (in spite of their love of
music) were wholly lacking. One must
remember that although Swift was an
admirable writer of comic verse, the kind of
poetry he thought valuable would probably
be didactic poetry. The poetry of the
Houyhnhnms, he says—
“must be allowed to excel (that
of) all other Mortals; wherein the
Justness of their Similes, and the
Minuteness, as well as exactness,
of their Descriptions, are, indeed,
inimitable. Their Verses abound
very much in both of these; and
usually contain either some
exalted Notions of Friendship
and Benevolence, or the Praises
of those who were Victors in
Races, and other bodily
Exercises.”
Alas, not even the genius of Swift was equal
to producing a specimen by which we could
judge the poetry of the Houyhnhnms. But it
sounds as though it were chilly stuff (in
heroic couplets, presumably), and not
seriously in conflict with the principles of
“Reason”.
Happiness is notoriously difficult to
describe, and pictures of a just and wellordered Society are seldom either attractive
or convincing. Most creators of “favourable”
Utopias, however, are concerned to show
what life could be like if it were lived more
fully. Swift advocates a simple refusal of
life, justifying this by the claim that
“Reason” consists in thwarting your
instincts. The Houyhnhnms, creatures
without a history, continue for generation
after generation to live prudently,
maintaining their population at exactly the
same level, avoiding all passion, suffering
from no diseases, meeting death
indifferently, training up their young in the
same principles—and all for what? In order
that the same process may continue
indefinitely. The notions that life here and
now is worth living, or that it could be made
worth living, or that it must be sacrificed for
some future good, are all absent. The dreary
world of the Houyhnhnms was about as
good a Utopia as Swift could construct,
granting that he neither believed in a “next
world” nor could get any pleasure out of
certain normal activities. But it is not really
87
set up as something desirable in itself, but as
the justification for another attack on
humanity. The aim, as usual, is to humiliate
Man by reminding him that he is weak and
ridiculous, and above all that he stinks; and
the ultimate motive, probably, is a kind of
envy, the envy of the ghost for the living, of
the man who knows he cannot be happy for
the others who—so he fears—may be a little
happier than himself. The political
expression of such an outlook must be either
reactionary or nihilistic, because the person
who holds it will want to prevent Society
from developing in some direction in which
his pessimism may be cheated. One can do
this either by blowing everything to pieces,
or by averting social change. Swift
ultimately blew everything to pieces in the
only way that was feasible before the atomic
bomb—that is, he went mad—but, as I have
tried to show, his political aims were on the
whole reactionary ones.
From what I have written it may have
seemed that I am against Swift, and that my
object is to refute him and even to belittle
him. In a political and moral sense I am
against him, so far as I understand him. Yet
curiously enough he is one of the writers I
admire with least reserve, and Gulliver’s
Travels, in particular, is a book which it
seems impossible for me to grow tired of. I
read it first when I was, eight—one day
short of eight, to be exact, for I stole and
furtively read the copy which was to be
given me next day on my eighth birthday—
and I have certainly not read it less than half
a dozen times since. Its fascination seems
inexhaustible. If I had to make a list of six
books which were to be preserved when all
others were destroyed, I would certainly put
Gulliver’s Travels among them. This raises
the question: what is the relationship
between agreement with a writer’s opinions,
and enjoyment of his work?
If one is capable of intellectual detachment,
one can perceive merit in a writer whom one
deeply disagrees with, but enjoyment is a
different matter. Supposing that there is such
a thing as good or bad art, then the goodness
or badness must reside in the work of art
itself—not independently of the observer,
indeed, but independently of the mood of the
observer. In one sense, therefore, it cannot
be true that a poem is good on Monday and
bad on Tuesday. But if one judges the poem
by the appreciation it arouses, then it can
certainly be true, because appreciation, or
enjoyment, is a subjective condition which
cannot be commanded. For a great deal of
his waking life, even the most cultivated
person has no aesthetic feelings whatever,
and the power to have aesthetic feelings is
very easily destroyed. When you are
frightened, or hungry, or are suffering from
toothache or sea-sickness, King Lear is no
better from your point of view than Peter
Pan. You may know in an intellectual sense
that it is better, but that is simply a fact
which you remember: you will not feel the
merit of King Lear until you are normal
again. And aesthetic judgement can be upset
just as disastrously—more disastrously,
because the cause is less readily
recognized—by political or moral
disagreement. If a book angers, wounds or
alarms you, then you will not enjoy it,
whatever its merits may be. If it seems to
you a really pernicious book, likely to
influence other people in some undesirable
way, then you will probably construct an
aesthetic theory to show that it has no
merits. Current literary criticism consists
quite largely of this kind of dodging to and
fro between two sets of standards. And yet
the opposite process can also happen:
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enjoyment can overwhelm disapproval, even
though one clearly recognizes that one is
enjoying something inimical. Swift, whose
world-view is so peculiarly unacceptable,
but who is nevertheless an extremely
popular writer, is a good instance of this.
Why is it that we don’t mind being called
Yahoos, although firmly convinced that we
are not Yahoos?
It is not enough to make the usual answer
that of course Swift was wrong, in fact he
was insane, but he was “a good writer”. It is
true that the literary quality of a book is to
some small extent separable from its
subject-matter. Some people have a native
gift for using words, as some people have a
naturally “good eye” at games. It is largely a
question of timing and of instinctively
knowing how much emphasis to use. As an
example near at hand, look back at the
passage I quoted earlier, starting “In the
Kingdom of Tribnia, by the Natives called
Langdon”. It derives much of its force from
the final sentence: “And this is the anagrammade Method.” Strictly speaking this
sentence is unnecessary, for we have already
seen the anagram decyphered, but the mocksolemn repetition, in which one seems to
hear Swift’s own voice uttering the words,
drives home the idiocy of the activities
described, like the final tap to a nail. But not
all the power and simplicity of Swift’s
prose, nor the imaginative effort that has
been able to make not one but a whole series
of impossible worlds more credible than the
majority of history books—none of this
would enable us to enjoy Swift if his worldview were truly wounding or shocking.
Millions of people, in many countries, must
have enjoyed Gulliver’s Travels while more
or less seeing its anti-human implications:
and even the child who accepts Parts I and II
as a simple story gets a sense of absurdity
from thinking of human beings six inches
high. The explanation must be that Swift’s
world-view is felt to be not altogether
false—or it would probably be more
accurate to say, not false all the time. Swift
is a diseased writer. He remains permanently
in a depressed mood which in most people is
only intermittent, rather as though someone
suffering from jaundice or the after-effects
of influenza should have the energy to write
books. But we all know that mood, and
something in us responds to the expression
of it. Take, for instance, one of his most
characteristic works, The Lady’s Dressing
Room: one might add the kindred poem,
Upon a Beautiful Young Nymph Going to
Bed. Which is truer, the viewpoint expressed
in these poems, or the viewpoint implied in
Blake’s phrase, “The naked female human
form divine”? No doubt Blake is nearer the
truth, and yet who can fail to feel a sort of
pleasure in seeing that fraud, feminine
delicacy, exploded for once? Swift falsifies
his picture of the world by refusing to see
anything in human life except dirt, folly and
wickedness, but the part which he abstracts
from the whole does exist, and it is
something which we all know about while
shrinking from mentioning it. Part of our
minds—in any normal person it is the
dominant part—believes that man is a noble
animal and life is worth living: but there is
also a sort of inner self which at least
intermittently stands aghast at the horror of
existence. In the queerest way, pleasure and
disgust are linked together. The human body
is beautiful: it is also repulsive and
ridiculous, a fact which can be verified at
any swimming pool. The sexual organs are
objects of desire and also of loathing, so
much so that in many languages, if not in all
languages, their names are used as words of
abuse. Meat is delicious, but a butcher’s
shop makes one feel sick: and indeed all our
89
food springs ultimately from dung and dead
bodies, the two things which of all others
seem to us the most horrible. A child, when
it is past the infantile stage but still looking
at the world with fresh eyes, is moved by
horror almost as often as by wonder—horror
of snot and spittle, of the dogs’ excrement
on the pavement, the dying toad full of
maggots, the sweaty smell of grown-ups, the
hideousness of old men, with their bald
heads and bulbous noses. In his endless
harping on disease, dirt and deformity, Swift
is not actually inventing anything, he is
merely leaving something out. Human
behaviour, too, especially in politics, is as he
describes it, although it contains other more
important factors which he refuses to admit.
So far as we can see, both horror and pain
are necessary to the continuance of life on
this planet, and it is therefore open to
pessimists like Swift to say: “If horror and
pain must always be with us, how can life be
significantly improved?” His attitude is in
effect the Christian attitude, minus the bribe
of a “next world”—which, however,
probably has less hold upon the minds of
believers than the conviction that this world
is a vale of tears and the grave is a place of
rest. It is, I am certain, a wrong attitude, and
one which could have harmful effects upon
behaviour; but something in us responds to
it, as it responds to the gloomy words of the
burial service and the sweetish smell of
corpses in a country church.
It is often argued, at least by people who
admit the importance of subject-matter, that
a book cannot be “good” if it expresses a
palpably false view of life. We are told that
in our own age, for instance, any book that
has genuine literary merit will also be more
or less “progressive” in tendency. This
ignores the fact that throughout history a
similar struggle between progress and
reaction has been raging, and that the best
books of any one age have always been
written from several different viewpoints,
some of them palpably more false than
others. In so far as a writer is a propagandist,
the most one can ask of him is that he shall
genuinely believe in what he is saying, and
that it shall not be something blazingly silly.
To-day, for example, one can imagine a
good book being written by a Catholic, a
Communist, a Fascist, pacifist, an anarchist,
perhaps by an old-style Liberal or an
ordinary Conservative: one cannot imagine a
good book being written by a spiritualist, a
Buchmanite or a member of the Ku-KluxKIan. The views that a writer holds must be
compatible with sanity, in the medical sense,
and with the power of continuous thought:
beyond that what we ask of him is talent,
which is probably another name for
conviction. Swift did not possess ordinary
wisdom, but he did possess a terrible
intensity of vision, capable of picking out a
single hidden truth and then magnifying it
and distorting it. The durability of Gulliver’s
Travels goes to show that, if the force of
belief is behind it, a world-view which only
just passes the test of sanity is sufficient to
produce a great work of art.
1. Houyhnhnms too old to walk
are described as being carried on
“sledges” or in “a kind of
vehicle, drawn like a sledge”.
Presumably these had no
wheels.
2. The physical decadence which
Swift claims to have observed
may have been a reality at that
date. He attributes it to syphilis,
which was a new disease in
Europe and may have been more
virulent than it is now. Distilled
90
liquors, also, were a novelty in
the seventeenth century and must
have led at first to a great
increase in drunkenness.
3. tower
4. At the end of the book, as
typical specimens of human folly
and viciousness, Swift names “a
Lawyer, a Pickpocket, a Colonel,
a Fool, a Lord, a Gamester, a
Politician, a Whore-master, a
Physician, an Evidence, a
Suborner, an Attorney, a Traitor,
or the like”. One sees here the
irresponsible violence of the
powerless. The list lumps
together those who break the
conventional code, and those
who keep it. For instance, if you
automatically condemn a
colonel, as such, on what
grounds do you condemn a
traitor? Or again, if you want to
suppress pickpockets, you must
have laws, which means that you
must have lawyers. But the
whole closing passage, in which
the hatred is so authentic, and the
reason given for it so inadequate,
is somehow unconvincing. One
has the feeling that personal
animosity is at work.
____________________________________
18) “Why I Write” by George Orwell
Gangrel, Summer 1946
FROM a very early age, perhaps the age of
five or six, I knew that when I grew up I
should be a writer. Between the ages of
about seventeen and twenty-four I tried to
abandon this idea, but I did so with the
consciousness that I was outraging my true
nature and that sooner or later I should have
to settle down and write books.
I was the middle child of three, but there
was a gap of five years on either side, and I
barely saw my father before I was eight. For
this and other reasons I was somewhat
lonely, and I soon developed disagreeable
mannerisms which made me unpopular
throughout my schooldays. I had the lonely
child’s habit of making up stories and
holding conversations with imaginary
persons, and I think from the very start my
literary ambitions were mixed up with the
feeling of being isolated and undervalued. I
knew that I had a facility with words and a
power of facing unpleasant facts, and I felt
that this created a sort of private world in
which I could get my own back for my
failure in everyday life. Nevertheless the
volume of serious—i.e. seriously intended—
writing which I produced all through my
childhood and boyhood would not amount to
half a dozen pages. I wrote my first poem at
the age of four or five, my mother taking it
down to dictation. I cannot remember
anything about it except that it was about a
tiger and the tiger had ‘chair-like teeth’—a
good enough phrase, but I fancy the poem
was a plagiarism of Blake’s ‘Tiger, Tiger’.
At eleven, when the war or 1914-18 broke
out, I wrote a patriotic poem which was
printed in the local newspaper, as was
another, two years later, on the death of
Kitchener. From time to time, when I was a
bit older, I wrote bad and usually unfinished
‘nature poems’ in the Georgian style. I also
attempted a short story which was a ghastly
failure. That was the total of the would-be
serious work that I actually set down on
paper during all those years.
However, throughout this time I did in a
sense engage in literary activities. To begin
with there was the made-to-order stuff
91
which I produced quickly, easily and
without much pleasure to myself. Apart
from school work, I wrote vers d’occasion,
semi-comic poems which I could turn out at
what now seems to me astonishing speed—
at fourteen I wrote a whole rhyming play, in
imitation of Aristophanes, in about a
week—and helped to edit a school
magazines, both printed and in manuscript.
These magazines were the most pitiful
burlesque stuff that you could imagine, and I
took far less trouble with them than I now
would with the cheapest journalism. But
side by side with all this, for fifteen years or
more, I was carrying out a literary exercise
of a quite different kind: this was the making
up of a continuous ‘story’ about myself, a
sort of diary existing only in the mind. I
believe this is a common habit of children
and adolescents. As a very small child I used
to imagine that I was, say, Robin Hood, and
picture myself as the hero of thrilling
adventures, but quite soon my ‘story’ ceased
to be narcissistic in a crude way and became
more and more a mere description of what I
was doing and the things I saw. For minutes
at a time this kind of thing would be running
through my head: ‘He pushed the door open
and entered the room. A yellow beam of
sunlight, filtering through the muslin
curtains, slanted on to the table, where a
match-box, half-open, lay beside the inkpot.
With his right hand in his pocket he moved
across to the window. Down in the street a
tortoiseshell cat was chasing a dead leaf’,
etc. etc. This habit continued until I was
about twenty-five, right through my nonliterary years. Although I had to search, and
did search, for the right words, I seemed to
be making this descriptive effort almost
against my will, under a kind of compulsion
from outside. The ‘story’ must, I suppose,
have reflected the styles of the various
writers I admired at different ages, but so far
as I remember it always had the same
meticulous descriptive quality.
When I was about sixteen I suddenly
discovered the joy of mere words, i.e. the
sounds and associations of words. The lines
from Paradise Lost—
So hee with difficulty and labour hard
Moved on: with difficulty and labour hee.
which do not now seem to me so very
wonderful, sent shivers down my backbone;
and the spelling ‘hee’ for ‘he’ was an added
pleasure. As for the need to describe things,
I knew all about it already. So it is clear
what kind of books I wanted to write, in so
far as I could be said to want to write books
at that time. I wanted to write enormous
naturalistic novels with unhappy endings,
full of detailed descriptions and arresting
similes, and also full of purple passages in
which words were used partly for the sake of
their own sound. And in fact my first
completed novel, Burmese Days, which I
wrote when I was thirty but projected much
earlier, is rather that kind of book.
I give all this background information
because I do not think one can assess a
writer’s motives without knowing something
of his early development. His subject matter
will be determined by the age he lives in—at
least this is true in tumultuous, revolutionary
ages like our own—but before he ever
begins to write he will have acquired an
emotional attitude from which he will never
completely escape. It is his job, no doubt, to
discipline his temperament and avoid getting
stuck at some immature stage, in some
perverse mood; but if he escapes from his
early influences altogether, he will have
killed his impulse to write. Putting aside the
need to earn a living, I think there are four
great motives for writing, at any rate for
92
writing prose. They exist in different
degrees in every writer, and in any one
writer the proportions will vary from time to
time, according to the atmosphere in which
he is living. They are:
Sheer egoism. Desire to seem clever, to be
talked about, to be remembered after death,
to get your own back on the grown-ups who
snubbed you in childhood, etc., etc. It is
humbug to pretend this is not a motive, and
a strong one. Writers share this
characteristic with scientists, artists,
politicians, lawyers, soldiers, successful
businessmen—in short, with the whole top
crust of humanity. The great mass of human
beings are not acutely selfish. After the age
of about thirty they almost abandon the
sense of being individuals at all—and live
chiefly for others, or are simply smothered
under drudgery. But there is also the
minority of gifted, willful people who are
determined to live their own lives to the end,
and writers belong in this class. Serious
writers, I should say, are on the whole more
vain and self-centered than journalists,
though less interested in money.
Æsthetic enthusiasm. Perception of beauty
in the external world, or, on the other hand,
in words and their right arrangement.
Pleasure in the impact of one sound on
another, in the firmness of good prose or the
rhythm of a good story. Desire to share an
experience which one feels is valuable and
ought not to be missed. The aesthetic motive
is very feeble in a lot of writers, but even a
pamphleteer or writer of textbooks will have
pet words and phrases which appeal to him
for non-utilitarian reasons; or he may feel
strongly about typography, width of
margins, etc. Above the level of a railway
guide, no book is quite free from aesthetic
considerations.
Historical impulse. Desire to see things as
they are, to find out true facts and store them
up for the use of posterity.
Political purpose.—Using the word
‘political’ in the widest possible sense.
Desire to push the world in a certain
direction, to alter other peoples’ idea of the
kind of society that they should strive after.
Once again, no book is genuinely free from
political bias. The opinion that art should
have nothing to do with politics is itself a
political attitude.
It can be seen how these various impulses
must war against one another, and how they
must fluctuate from person to person and
from time to time. By nature—taking your
‘nature’ to be the state you have attained
when you are first adult—I am a person in
whom the first three motives would
outweigh the fourth. In a peaceful age I
might have written ornate or merely
descriptive books, and might have remained
almost unaware of my political loyalties. As
it is I have been forced into becoming a sort
of pamphleteer. First I spent five years in an
unsuitable profession (the Indian Imperial
Police, in Burma), and then I underwent
poverty and the sense of failure. This
increased my natural hatred of authority and
made me for the first time fully aware of the
existence of the working classes, and the job
in Burma had given me some understanding
of the nature of imperialism: but these
experiences were not enough to give me an
accurate political orientation. Then came
Hitler, the Spanish Civil War, etc. By the
end of 1935 I had still failed to reach a firm
decision. I remember a little poem that I
wrote at that date, expressing my dilemma:
A happy vicar I might have been
Two hundred years ago
To preach upon eternal doom
93
And watch my walnuts grow;
But born, alas, in an evil time,
I missed that pleasant haven,
For the hair has grown on my upper lip
And the clergy are all clean-shaven.
And later still the times were good,
We were so easy to please,
We rocked our troubled thoughts to sleep
On the bosoms of the trees.
All ignorant we dared to own
The joys we now dissemble;
The greenfinch on the apple bough
Could make my enemies tremble.
But girl’s bellies and apricots,
Roach in a shaded stream,
Horses, ducks in flight at dawn,
All these are a dream.
It is forbidden to dream again;
We maim our joys or hide them:
Horses are made of chromium steel
And little fat men shall ride them.
I am the worm who never turned,
The eunuch without a harem;
Between the priest and the commissar
I walk like Eugene Aram;
And the commissar is telling my fortune
While the radio plays,
But the priest has promised an Austin Seven,
For Duggie always pays.
I dreamt I dwelt in marble halls,
And woke to find it true;
I wasn’t born for an age like this;
Was Smith? Was Jones? Were you?
The Spanish war and other events in 193637 turned the scale and thereafter I knew
where I stood. Every line of serious work
that I have written since 1936 has been
written, directly or indirectly, against
totalitarianism and for democratic socialism,
as I understand it. It seems to me nonsense,
in a period like our own, to think that one
can avoid writing of such subjects. Everyone
writes of them in one guise or another. It is
simply a question of which side one takes
and what approach one follows. And the
more one is conscious of one’s political bias,
the more chance one has of acting politically
without sacrificing one’s aesthetic and
intellectual integrity.
What I have most wanted to do throughout
the past ten years is to make political writing
into an art. My starting point is always a
feeling of partisanship, a sense of injustice.
When I sit down to write a book, I do not
say to myself, ‘I am going to produce a work
of art’. I write it because there is some lie
that I want to expose, some fact to which I
want to draw attention, and my initial
concern is to get a hearing. But I could not
do the work of writing a book, or even a
long magazine article, if it were not also an
aesthetic experience. Anyone who cares to
examine my work will see that even when it
is downright propaganda it contains much
that a full-time politician would consider
irrelevant. I am not able, and do not want,
completely to abandon the world view that I
acquired in childhood. So long as I remain
alive and well I shall continue to feel
strongly about prose style, to love the
surface of the earth, and to take a pleasure in
solid objects and scraps of useless
information. It is no use trying to suppress
that side of myself. The job is to reconcile
my ingrained likes and dislikes with the
essentially public, non-individual activities
that this age forces on all of us.
It is not easy. It raises problems of
construction and of language, and it raises in
a new way the problem of truthfulness. Let
me give just one example of the cruder kind
94
of difficulty that arises. My book about the
Spanish civil war, Homage to Catalonia, is
of course a frankly political book, but in the
main it is written with a certain detachment
and regard for form. I did try very hard in it
to tell the whole truth without violating my
literary instincts. But among other things it
contains a long chapter, full of newspaper
quotations and the like, defending the
Trotskyists who were accused of plotting
with Franco. Clearly such a chapter, which
after a year or two would lose its interest for
any ordinary reader, must ruin the book. A
critic whom I respect read me a lecture
about it. ‘Why did you put in all that stuff?’
he said. ‘You’ve turned what might have
been a good book into journalism.’ What he
said was true, but I could not have done
otherwise. I happened to know, what very
few people in England had been allowed to
know, that innocent men were being falsely
accused. If I had not been angry about that I
should never have written the book.
In one form or another this problem comes
up again. The problem of language is subtler
and would take too long to discuss. I will
only say that of late years I have tried to
write less picturesquely and more exactly. In
any case I find that by the time you have
perfected any style of writing, you have
always outgrown it. Animal Farm was the
first book in which I tried, with full
consciousness of what I was doing, to fuse
political purpose and artistic purpose into
one whole. I have not written a novel for
seven years, but I hope to write another
fairly soon. It is bound to be a failure, every
book is a failure, but I do know with some
clarity what kind of book I want to write.
Looking back through the last page or two, I
see that I have made it appear as though my
motives in writing were wholly publicspirited. I don’t want to leave that as the
final impression. All writers are vain,
selfish, and lazy, and at the very bottom of
their motives there lies a mystery. Writing a
book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like
a long bout of some painful illness. One
would never undertake such a thing if one
were not driven on by some demon whom
one can neither resist nor understand. For all
one knows that demon is simply the same
instinct that makes a baby squall for
attention. And yet it is also true that one can
write nothing readable unless one constantly
struggles to efface one’s own personality.
Good prose is like a windowpane. I cannot
say with certainty which of my motives are
the strongest, but I know which of them
deserve to be followed. And looking back
through my work, I see that it is invariably
where I lacked a political purpose that I
wrote lifeless books and was betrayed into
purple passages, sentences without meaning,
decorative adjectives and humbug generally.
____________________________________
19) Time in partnership with CNN
Monday, Mar. 20, 1972
Where She Is and Where She's Going
There is a tide in the affairs of women,
Which, taken at the flood, leads —God
knows where.
—Byron, Don Juan
BY all rights, the American woman today
should be the happiest in history. She is
healthier than U.S. women have ever been,
better educated, more affluent, better
dressed, more comfortable, wooed by
advertisers, pampered by gadgets. But there
is a worm in the apple. She is restless in her
familiar familial role, no longer quite
content with the homemaker-wife-mother
95
part in which her society has cast her. Round
the land, in rap session and kaffeeklatsch, in
the radical-chic salons of Manhattan and the
ladies auxiliaries of Red Oak, Iowa, women
are trying to define the New Feminism. The
vast majority of American women stop far
short of activist roles in the feminist
movement, but they are affected by it. Many
of them are in search of a new role that is
more independent, less restricted to the
traditional triangle of Kinder, Küche, Kirche
(children, kitchen, church).
The most lordly male chauvinist and all but
the staunchest advocate of Women's
Liberation agree that woman's place is
different from man's. But for the
increasingly uncomfortable American
woman, it is easier to say what that place is
not than what it is.
Most reject the Barbie-doll stereotypical
model of woman as staple-naveled Playmate
or smiling airline stewardess. Marilyn
Goldstein of the Miami Herald caught the
feeling well when she wrote about the
National Airlines' celebrated "Fly me"
advertising campaign: "If God meant men to
'Fly Cheryl,' he would have given her four
engines and a baggage compartment."
The New Feminism includes equality with
men in the job market and in clubs, though it
is not restricted to that. Already, women
have invaded countless dens once reserved
exclusively for the lion: there are women at
McSorley's Old Ale House in New York,
women in soapbox derbies and stock car
races, women cadets in the Pennsylvania
state police. Women have come to protest
what seems to them to be the male
chauvinism of rock music. An all-female
group in Chicago belts out:
Rock is Mick Jagger singing
'Under my thumb, it's all right'
No, Mick Jagger, it's not all right
And it's never gonna be
All right again.
The New Feminism has increasingly
influenced young women to stay single, and
it has transformed—and sometimes
wrecked—marriages by ending once
automatic assumptions about woman's place.
In the first issue of Ms., New Feminist
Gloria Steinem's magazine for the liberated
woman, Jane O'Reilly writes of
experiencing "a blinding click," a moment
of truth that shows men's preemption of a
superior role. An O'Reilly example: "In New
York last fall, my neighbors—named
Jones—had a couple named Smith over for
dinner. Mr. Smith kept telling his wife to get
up and help Mrs. Jones. Click! Click! Two
women radicalized at once." The term Ms.
itself, devised as a female honorific that, like
Mr., does not reveal marital status, is
winning wider acceptance: for example, the
Republican National Committee and the
federal Equal Employment Opportunity
Commission now use it.
American men and women are looking at
each other in new ways —and not always
liking what they see. Reactions are
ambivalent. Men feel threatened; yet
sometimes, by marginal amounts, they
appear more favorable than women do
toward strengthening women's status in
society. A Louis Harris poll taken for
Virginia Slims cigarettes ("You've come a
long way, baby") indicates that men favor
women's rights organizations 44% to 39%,
whereas women narrowly oppose them
(42% to 40%). But unquestionably,
consciousness has been raised all around,
particularly among the more liberal and
96
better educated. Psychology Today got
almost 20,000 replies to a questionnaire that
sampled men, women not associated with a
women's group and women who were. Of
the men, 51% agreed that "U.S. society
exploits women as much as blacks."
Nongroup women agreed by 63%, group
women by 78%.
Second-Class. The New Feminism has
touched off a debate that darkens the air
with flying rolling pins and crockery. Even
Psychology's relatively liberated readers are
not exempt. Male letter writer: "As far as
Women's Lib is concerned, I think they are
all a bunch of lesbians, and I am a male
chauvinist and proud of it." Female: "It's
better to let them think they're king of the
castle, lean and depend on them, and
continue to control and manipulate them as
we always have."
Activist Kate Millett's scorching Sexual
Politics (TIME, Aug. 31, 1970) drew a
frenetic reply in Norman Mailer's celebrated
Harper's article, "The Prisoner of Sex,"
which excoriated many of Millett's
arguments but concluded in grudging
capitulation: "Women must have their rights
to a life which would allow them to look for
a mate. And there would be no free search
until they were liberated." Arthur Burns,
chairman of the Federal Reserve Board,
complained last month: "Now we have
women marching in the streets! If only
things would quiet down!" Washington Post
Co. President Kay Graham left a recent
party at the house of an old friend,
Columnist Joseph Alsop, because her host
insisted upon keeping to the custom of
segregating the ladies after dinner. Other
social habits are in doubt. A card circulating
in one Manhattan singles bar reads: IF
YOU'RE GONNA SAY NO, SAY IT NOW
BEFORE I SPEND ALL OF MY
GODDAM MONEY ON YOU.
Many currents of social change have
converged to make the New Feminism an
idea whose time has come. Mechanization
and automation have made brawn less
important in the marketplace. Better
education has broadened women's view
beyond home and hearth, heightening their
awareness of possibilities—and their sense
of frustration when those possibilities are
not realized. As Toynbee had noted earlier,
middle-class woman acquired education and
a chance at a career at the very time she lost
her domestic servants and the unpaid
household help of relatives living in the old,
large family; she had to become either a
"household drudge" or "carry the intolerably
heavy load of two simultaneous full-time
jobs."
A declining birth rate and the fact that
women are living increasingly longer—and
also longer than men —has meant that a
smaller part of women's lives is devoted to
bearing and rearing children. The Pill has
relieved women of anxiety about unwanted
pregnancies.
All of this helped ensure a profound impact
for Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique,
published in 1963. In it, she argued that
women lose their identities by submerging
themselves in a world of house, spouse and
children. The book came just at the height of
the civil rights movement in the South; the
pressures to give blacks a full place in
society inevitably produced a new
preoccupation with other second-class
citizens. The Viet Nam War also led to farreaching questions about traditional
American assumptions and institutions, to a
new awareness of injustice.
97
First in Wyoming. The 1960s were not the
first time in American history that civil
rights and feminism were linked. Early
American woman was conventionally seen,
and conventionally saw herself, as the
frontiersman's helpmeet in building the new
nation —wife and mother of pioneers. It was
the Abolitionist movement before the Civil
War that helped get American feminism
under way. In working against slavery,
women emerged as a political force. The
1848 Women's Rights Convention at Seneca
Falls, N.Y., was the first of several to
demand the vote, equal opportunity in jobs
and education and an end to legal
discrimination based on sex.
The 14th Amendment in 1868 enfranchised
blacks, but not women. In 1913 some 5,000
women, many of them bloomer-clad,
marched down Washington's Pennsylvania
Avenue carrying placards addressed to
Woodrow Wilson: MR. PRESIDENT!
HOW
LONG MUST WOMEN WAIT FOR
LIBERTY? About 200 women were
roughed up by unsympathetic bystanders,
and 169 were arrested for obstructing traffic
in front of the White House. Anger over the
shabby treatment of the demonstrators, plus
the momentum of state women's suffrage
movements—Wyoming in 1890 was the
first to enfranchise women—finally got
women the vote throughout the U.S. with
ratification of the 19th Amendment in 1920.
"The golden psychological moment for
women, the moment at which their hopes
were highest, was in the 1920s and 1930s,
when they won the vote and began to go to
college in considerable numbers, with the
expectation of entering the professions,"
says Clare Boothe Luce, politician, diplomat
and author. "Women then believed that the
battle had been won. They made a brave
start, going out and getting jobs." World
War II made Rosie the Riveter a figure of
folklore, and many women never before in
the work force found that they liked the
independence gained by working. The
postwar reaction was the "togetherness"
syndrome of the Eisenhower era, a doomed
attempt to confer on suburban motherhood
something of the esteem that pioneer women
once enjoyed. From the affluent housewife's
suicidal despair in J.D. Salinger's "Uncle
Wiggly in Connecticut," it was not far to
The Feminine Mystique.
Oddly, women characters have never had a
particularly important place in American
literature; as a rule they have had smaller
roles than in English, Russian or French
fiction. In Love and Death in the American
Novel, Critic Leslie Fiedler argues that U.S.
writers are fascinated by the almost
mythological figures of the Fair Maiden and
the Dark Lady, but "such complex fullblooded passionate females as those who
inhabit French fiction from La Princesse de
Clèves through the novels of Flaubert and
beyond are almost unknown in the works of
our novelists." There are memorable figures,
of course: Hawthorne's Hester Prynne, John
O'Hara's Grace Caldwell Tate and Gloria
Wandrous, Fitzgerald's Daisy Buchanan,
Dreiser's Sister Carrie, Steinbeck's Ma Joad,
Margaret Mitchell's Scarlett O'Hara,
Nabokov's Lolita, Roth's Sophie Portnoy.
Still, Fiedler finds American writers
displaying at least covert hostility to women.
Probably none has matched in misogynist
invective Philip Wylie's diatribe in
Generation of Vipers (1942): "I give you
mom. I give you the destroying mother ... I
give you the woman in pants, and the new
religion: she-popery. I give you Pandora. I
give you Proserpine, the Queen of Hell. The
98
five-and-ten-cent-store Lilith, the mother of
Cain, the black widow who is poisonous and
eats her mate, and I designate at the bottom
of your program the grand finale of all soap
operas: the mother of America's Cinderella."
It is a mark of the wondrous sea change of
public attitudes that in a scant three decades
Wylie's castrating bitch has become, in
much popular mythology if not in fact, part
of the wretched of the earth.
Twenty Years Older. Just where is
American woman today? In a statistical
overview, she is nearly 106 million strong,
at the median age 30 and with a bit more
than a twelfth-grade education. She is likely
to be married (61.5%). She makes up more
than a third of the national work force, but
according to a Department of Labor survey,
she generally has a lower-skilled, lowerpaying job than a man does. In many jobs
she does not get equal pay for equal work.
(Her median earnings have actually declined
relative to men.) In a recession she is, like
blacks, the first to be fired. Because of the
instability of marriage and a growing
divorce rate, women head more and more
households; 20 million people live in
households depending solely on women for
support.
As Patrick Moynihan pointed out in his
controversial report on black family life,
black women tend to be the center of
households more often than white women.
Black women, interestingly, are more likely
to go to college than black men are.
According to Christopher Jencks and David
Riesman in The Academic Revolution,
"Among other things this reflects the fact
that at least until recently they have had a
better chance than their brothers of getting a
professional job once they earned a degree."
Early in 1964, Lyndon Johnson sent out a
presidential directive pushing for more
women in Government. Only in 1967 did the
federal civil services start making full-scale
reports on the numbers of women at the
upper civil service levels of the U.S.
Government. In the top grades, at salary
levels beginning at $28,000 a year, 1.6% of
the jobs were held by women in 1966 v.
1.5% four years later. Midway in his present
term, President Nixon promised to appoint
more women, and to that end he created a
brand-new position on the White House staff
for a full-time recruiter of women. She is
Barbara Franklin, 32, a Harvard Business
School graduate who was an assistant vice
president of New York's First National City
Bank. She claims to have more than doubled
the number of women in top Government
jobs within a year.
But women in Washington seldom scale the
highest reaches of power like the National
Security Council. There has never been a
woman Supreme Court Justice, though both
Pat Nixon and Martha Mitchell lobbied for
one before Nixon wound up nominating
William Rehnquist and Lewis Powell. Only
two women have ever sat in the Cabinet:
Frances Perkins under F.D.R. and Oveta
Culp Hobby under Eisenhower. Ten years
ago, there were two women in the U.S.
Senate and 18 women Representatives; now
there are only Senator Margaret Chase
Smith and eleven women in the House. The
first woman in Congress, Jeannette Rankin,
elected from a Montana constituency in
1916 and still starchy at 91, ventured
recently that if she had it to do all over again
she would, with just one change: "I'd be
nastier."
At the state and local levels, women have
yet to make much impression on
government. New York is the only state that
99
has a special women's advisory unit
reporting to the Governor, but its head, a
black ex-newspaperwoman named Evelyn
Cunningham, readily confesses: "We're a
token agency." There are 63 separate
agencies in the New York State government,
she notes, and only 13 of them have women
in jobs above the rank of secretary. Round
the U.S. there are a few women mayors—
among them Anna Latteri in Clifton, N.J.,
Patience Latting in Oklahoma City, Barbara
Ackerman in Cambridge, Mass.
The last female state Governor was Lurleen
Wallace in Alabama, a stand-in for her
husband George, forbidden by the state
constitution to succeed himself. (The first:
Nellie Tayloe Ross was elected Governor of
Wyoming in 1924.) The legislatures of the
50 states have a total membership of more
than 7,000—including only 340 women.
Few of these women have much influence,
though there are stirring exceptions: New
York Assembly Member Constance Cook,
for example, represents a small upstate
county, but led a successful fight for
liberalizing the state's abortion law in 1970.
In a man's world, women still have only a
ritualized place: they are received regularly
and warmly only in woman-centered trades
like fashion or in acting. As Clare Luce puts
it, "Power, money and sex are the three great
American values today, and women have
almost no access to power except through
their husbands. They can get money mostly
through sex—either legitimate sex, in the
form of marriage, or nonmarried sex."
Sexual freedom is not enough; "what leads
to money and power is education and the
ability to make money apart from sex."
It is not an easy goal to achieve.
Many women fear it; they want to have their
cigarettes lit and their car doors opened for
them. Far more seriously, they are afraid
that, as working mothers, they simply would
not be able to give their children the
necessary personal care and attention. Ann
Richardson Roiphe, a novelist with five
children, worries about the de-emphasis of
the family. She has written: "These days I
feel a cultural pressure not to be absorbed in
my child. Am I a Mrs. Portnoy sitting on the
head of her little Alex? I am made to feel my
curiosity about the growth of my babies is
somehow counterrevolutionary. The new
tolerance should ultimately respect the lady
who wants to make pies, as well as the one
who majors in higher mathematics."
Utopian. In a sense, if the feminist
revolution simply wanted to exchange one
ruling class for another, if it aimed at
outright female domination (a situation that
has occurred in science fiction and other
fantasies), the goal would be easier to
visualize. The demand for equality, not
domination, is immensely complicated. True
equality between autonomous partners is
hard to achieve even if both partners are of
the same sex. The careful balancing of roles
and obligations and privileges, without the
traditional patterns to fall back on,
sometimes seems like an almost Utopian
vision.
While nearly everyone favors some of the
basic goals of the New Feminism —equal
pay for equal work, equal job opportunity,
equal treatment by the law—satisfying even
those minimum demands could require more
wrenching change than many casual
sympathizers with the women's cause have
seriously considered. Should women be
drafted? Ought protective legislation about
women's hours and working conditions be
repealed?
100
Still, American women cannot be forced
back into the Doll's House. More and more,
American women will be free to broaden
their lives beyond domesticity by a fuller
use of their abilities; there will be fewer
diapers and more Dante. Anatomy is
destiny, the Freudians say. It is an
observation that can hardly be dismissed as
mere male chauvinist propaganda, but it is
simply no longer sufficient. The destiny of
women and, indeed, of men, is broader,
more difficult than that—and also more
promising.
____________________________________
20) Time in partnership with CNN
Wednesday, Oct. 14, 2009
What Women Want Now
By Nancy Gibbs
If you were a woman reading this magazine
40 years ago, the odds were good that your
husband provided the money to buy it. That
you voted the same way he did. That if you
got breast cancer, he might be asked to sign
the form authorizing a mastectomy. That
your son was heading to college but not your
daughter. That your boss, if you had a job,
could explain that he was paying you less
because, after all, you were probably
working just for pocket money.
It's funny how things change slowly, until
the day we realize they've changed
completely. It's expected that by the end of
the year, for the first time in history the
majority of workers in the U.S. will be
women — largely because the downturn has
hit men so hard. This is an extraordinary
change in a single generation, and it is
gathering speed: the growth prospects,
according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics,
are in typically female jobs like nursing,
retail and customer service. More and more
women are the primary breadwinner in their
household (almost 40%) or are providing
essential income for the family's bottom
line. Their buying power has never been
greater — and their choices have seldom
been harder.
It is in this context that the Rockefeller
Foundation, in collaboration with TIME,
conducted a landmark survey of gender
issues to assess how individual Americans
are reacting. Is the battle of the sexes really
over, and if so, did anyone win? How do
men now view female power? How much
resentment or confusion or gratitude is there
for the forces that have rearranged family
life, rewired the economy and reinvented
gender roles? And what, if anything, does
everyone agree needs to happen to make all
this work? The study found that men and
women were in broad agreement about what
matters most to them; gone is the notion that
women's rise comes at men's expense. As
the Old Economy dissolves and pressures on
working parents grow, they share their fears
about what this means for their children and
their frustration with institutions that refuse
to admit how much has changed. In the new
age, the battles we fight together are the
ones that define us.
A Quiet Revolution
In the spring of 1972, TIME devoted a
special issue of the magazine to assessing
the status of women in the throes of
"women's lib." At a time when American
society was racing through change like a
reckless teenager, feminism had sputtered
and stalled. Women's average wages had
actually fallen relative to men's; there were
fewer women in the top ranks of civil
service (under 2%) than there were four
years before. No woman had served in the
Cabinet since the Eisenhower
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Administration; there were no female FBI
agents or network-news anchors or Supreme
Court Justices. The nation's campuses were
busy hosting a social revolt, yet Harvard's
tenured faculty of 421 included only six
women. Of the Museum of Modern Art's
1,000 one-man shows over the previous 40
years, five were by women. Headhunters
lamented that it was easier to put a man on
the moon than a woman in a corner office.
"There is no movement," complained an
activist who resigned her leadership position
in the National Organization for Women two
years after it was founded. "Movement
means 'going someplace,' and the movement
is not going anywhere. It hasn't
accomplished anything."
That was cranky exaggeration; many
changes were felt more than seen, a shift in
hopes and expectations that cracked the
foundations of patriarchy. "In terms of real
power — economic and political — we are
still just beginning," Gloria Steinem
admitted. "But the consciousness, the
awareness — that will never be the same."
So it's worth stopping to look at what
happened while we were busy ending the
Cold War and building a multicultural
society and enjoying the longest economic
expansion in history. In the slow-motion
fumblings of family life, it was easy just to
keep going along, mark the milestones,
measure the kids on the kitchen door and
miss the movement. In 1972 only 7% of
students playing high school sports were
girls; now the number is six times as high.
The female dropout rate has fallen in half.
College campuses used to be almost 60-40
male; now the ratio has reversed, and close
to half of law and medical degrees go to
women, up from fewer than 10% in 1970.
Half the Ivy League presidents are women,
and two of the three network anchors soon
will be; three of the four most recent
Secretaries of State have been women.
There are more than 145 foundations
designed to empower women around the
world, in the belief that this is the greatest
possible weapon against poverty and
disease; there was only one major
foundation (the Ms. Foundation) for women
in 1972. For the first time, five women have
won Nobel Prizes in the same year (for
Medicine, Chemistry, Economics and
Literature). We just came through an
election year in which Hillary Clinton, Sarah
Palin, Tina Fey and Katie Couric were lead
players, not the supporting cast. And the
President of the United States was raised by
a single mother and married a lawyer who
outranked and outearned him.
It is still true that boardrooms and faculty
clubs and legislatures and whole swaths of
professions like, say, hedge-fund
management remain predominantly male;
women are about 10% of civil engineers and
a third of physicians and surgeons but 98%
of kindergarten teachers and dental
assistants, and they still earn 77 cents on the
dollar compared with men. They are charged
higher premiums for health insurance yet
still have greater out-of-pocket expenses for
things as basic as contraception and
maternity care. At times it seems as if the
only women effortlessly balancing their
jobs, kids, husbands and homes are the ones
on TV.
See TIME's covers on women.
See more about women.
Now the recession raises the stakes and
shuffles the deck. Poll after poll finds
women even more anxious than men about
their family's financial security. While most
workers have seen their wages stall or drop,
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women's earnings fell 2% in 2008, twice as
much as men's. Women are 32% more likely
than men to have subprime mortgages,
leaving them more vulnerable in the housing
crisis. The Guttmacher Institute found that
the downturn has affected the most basic
decisions in family life. Nearly half of
women surveyed in households earning less
than $75,000 want to delay pregnancy or
limit the number of children they have. At
the same time, women are poised to emerge
from the downturn with even greater relative
economic power as the wage gap narrows. A
new survey by GfK Roper for NBC
Universal gives a whole new meaning to the
power of the purse: 65% of women reported
being their family's chief financial planner,
and 71% called themselves the family
accountant. According to a Mediamark
Research & Intelligence survey, they make
75% of the buying decisions in American
homes. Together, women control more
wealth than ever in history.
Progress is seldom simple; it comes with
costs and casualties, even challenges about
whether a change represents an advance or a
retreat. The TIME survey provides evidence
of both. At the most basic level, the
argument over where women belong is over;
the battle of the sexes becomes a costume
drama, like Middlemarch or Mad Men.
Large majorities, across ages and incomes
and ideologies, view women's growing role
in the workforce as good for both the
economy and society in general. More than
8 in 10 say mothers are just as productive at
work as fathers or childless workers are.
Even more, some 84% affirm that husbands
and wives negotiate the rules, relationships
and responsibilities more than those of
earlier generations did; roughly 7 in 10 men
say they are more comfortable than their
fathers were with women working outside
the home, while women say they are less
financially dependent on their spouse than
their mother was.
This is not to say there's nothing left to
argue about. More than two-thirds of women
still think men resent powerful women, yet
women are more likely than men to say
female bosses are harder to work for than
male ones. Men are much more likely to say
there are no longer any barriers to female
advancement, while a majority of women
say men still have it better in life. People are
evenly split over whether the "mommy
wars" between working and nonworking
mothers are finally over.
But just as striking is how much men and
women agree on issues that divided them a
generation ago. "It happened so fast," writes
Gail Collins in her new book, When
Everything Changed, "that the revolution
seemed to be over before either side could
really find its way to the barricades." It's as
though sensible people are too busy to
bother bickering about who takes out the
garbage or who deserves the corner office;
many of the deepest conflicts are now ones
that men and women share. Especially in the
absence of social supports, flexible work
arrangements and affordable child care, it's
hardly surprising that a majority of both men
and women still say it is best for children to
have a father working and a mother at home.
Among the most dramatic changes in the
past generation is the detachment of
marriage and motherhood; more men than
women identified marriage as "very
important" to their happiness. Women no
longer view matrimony as a necessary
station on the road to financial security or
parenthood. The percentage of children born
to single women has leaped from 12% to
39%. Whereas a majority of children in the
mid-1970s were raised by a stay-at-home
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parent, the portion is now less than a third,
and nearly two-thirds of people say this has
been a negative for American society.
Among the most confounding changes of all
is the evidence, tracked by numerous
surveys, that as women have gained more
freedom, more education and more
economic power, they have become less
happy. No tidy theory explains the trend,
notes University of Pennsylvania economist
Justin Wolfers, a co-author of The Paradox
of Declining Female Happiness. "We looked
across all sectors — young vs. old, kids or
no kids, married or not married, education,
no education, working or not working —
and it stayed the same," he says of the data.
"But there are a few ways to look at it," he
adds. "As Susan Faludi said, the women's
movement wasn't about happiness." It may
be that women have become more honest
about what ails them. Or that they are now
free to wrestle with the same pressures and
conflicts that once accounted for greater
male unhappiness. Or that modern life in a
global economy is simply more stressful for
everyone but especially for women, who are
working longer hours while playing
quarterback at home. "Some of the other
social changes that have happened over the
last 35 years — changes in family, in the
workplace — may have affected men
differently than women," Wolfers says. "So
maybe we're not learning about changes due
to the women's movement but changes in
society."
All the shapes in the puzzle are shifting. If
there is anything like consensus on an issue
as basic as how we live our lives as men and
women, as lovers, parents, partners, it's that
getting the pieces of modern life to fit
together is hard enough; something has to
bend. Equal numbers of men and women
report frequent stress in daily life, and most
agree that government and businesses have
failed to adjust to the changes in the family.
As the Old Economy dissolves before our
eyes, men and women express remarkably
similar life goals when asked about the
importance of money, health, jobs and
family. If male jobs keep vanishing, if
physical strength loses its workplace value,
if the premium shifts ever more to
education, in which achievement is
increasingly female, then we will soon be
having parallel conversations: What needs to
be done to free American men to realize
their full potential? You can imagine the
whole conversation flipping in a single
generation.
It's no longer a man's world. Nor is it a
woman's nation. It's a cooperative, with
bylaws under constant negotiation and
expectations that profits be equally shared.
— With reporting by Andréa Ford and
Deirdre van Dyk
____________________________________
21) Time in partnership with CNN
Wednesday, Mar. 03, 2010
Titanic vs. Lusitania: How People Behave
in a Disaster
By Jeffrey Kluger
It's hard to remember your manners when
you think you're about to die. The human
species may have developed an elaborate
social and behavioral code, but we drop it
fast when we're scared enough — as any
stampeding mob reveals.
That primal push-pull is at work during
wars, natural disasters and any other time
our hides are on the line. It was perhaps
never more poignantly played out than
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during the two greatest maritime disasters in
history: the sinking of the Titanic and the
Lusitania. A team of behavioral economists
from Switzerland and Australia have
published a new paper in the Proceedings of
the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS)
that takes an imaginative new look at who
survived and who perished aboard the two
ships, and what the demographics of death
say about how well social norms hold up in
a crisis. (See the top 10 scientific discoveries
of 2009.)
The Lusitania and the Titanic are often
thought of as sister vessels; they in fact
belonged to two separate owners, but the
error is understandable. Both ships were
huge: the Titanic was carrying 2,207
passengers and crew on the night it went
down; the Lusitania had 1,949. The
mortality figures were even closer, with a
68.7% death rate aboard the Titanic and
67.3% for the Lusitania. What's more, the
ships sank just three years apart — the
Titanic was claimed by an iceberg on April
14, 1912, and the Lusitania by a German UBoat on May 7, 1915. But on the decks and
in the passageways and all the other places
where people fought for their lives, the
vessels' respective ends played out very
differently.
To study those differences, the authors of
the PNAS paper — Bruno Frey of the
University of Zurich and David Savage and
Benno Torgler of Queensland University —
combed through Titanic and Lusitania data
to gather the age, gender and ticket class for
every passenger aboard, as well as the
number of family members traveling with
them. They also noted who survived and
who didn't. (See a survival guide to
catastrophe.)
With this information in hand, they
separated out one key group: all third-class
passengers age 35 or older who were
traveling with no children. The researchers
figured that these were the people who faced
the greatest likelihood of death because they
were old enough, unfit enough and deep
enough below the decks to have a hard time
making it to a lifeboat. What's more,
traveling without children may have made
them slightly less motivated to struggle for
survival and made other people less likely to
let them pass. This demographic slice then
became the so-called reference group, and
the survival rates of all the other passenger
groups were compared to theirs.
The results told a revealing tale. Aboard the
Titanic, children under 16 years old were
nearly 31% likelier than the reference group
to have survived, but those on the Lusitania
were 0.7% less likely. Males ages 16 to 35
on the Titanic had a 6.5% poorer survival
rate than the reference group but did 7.9%
better on the Lusitania. For females in the
16-to-35 group, the gap was more dramatic:
those on the Titanic enjoyed a whopping
48.3% edge; on the Lusitania it was a
smaller but still significant 10.4%. The most
striking survival disparity — no surprise,
given the era — was determined by class.
The Titanic's first-class passengers had a
43.9% greater chance of making it off the
ship and into a lifeboat than the reference
group; the Lusitania's, remarkably, were
11.5% less likely. (See pictures of the Queen
Elizabeth 2's final voyage.)
There were a lot of factors behind these two
distinct survival profiles — the most
significant being time. Most shipwrecks are
comparatively slow-motion disasters, but
there are varying degrees of slow. The
Lusitania slipped below the waves a scant
18 min. after the German torpedo hit it. The
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Titanic stayed afloat for 2 hr. 40 min. — and
human behavior differed accordingly. On
the Lusitania, the authors of the new paper
wrote, "the short-run flight impulse
dominated behavior. On the slowly sinking
Titanic, there was time for socially
determined behavioral patterns to
reemerge."
That theory fits perfectly with the survival
data, as all of the Lusitania's passengers
were more likely to engage in what's known
as selfish rationality — a behavior that's
every bit as me-centered as it sounds and
that provides an edge to strong, younger
males in particular. On the Titanic, the rules
concerning gender, class and the gentle
treatment of children — in other words,
good manners — had a chance to assert
themselves.
Precisely how long it takes before decorum
reappears is impossible to say, but simple
biology would put it somewhere between the
18-min. and 2-hr. 40-min. windows that the
two ships were accorded. "Biologically,
fight-or-flight behavior has two distinct
stages," the researchers wrote. "The shortterm response [is] a surge in adrenaline
production. This response is limited to a few
minutes, because adrenaline degrades
rapidly. Only after returning to homeostasis
do the higher-order brain functions of the
neocortex begin to override instinctual
responses."
Once that happened aboard the Titanic, there
were officers present to restore a relative
sense of order and to disseminate
information about what had just happened
and what needed to be done next.
Contemporary evacuation experts know that
rapid communication of accurate
information is critical in such emergencies.
Other variables beyond the question of time
played important roles too. The Lusitania's
passengers may have been more prone to
stampede than those aboard the Titanic
because they were traveling in wartime and
were aware that they could come under
attack at any moment. The very nature of the
attack that sank the Lusitania — the sudden
concussion of a torpedo, compared to the
slow grinding of an iceberg — would also
be likelier to spark panic. Finally, there was
the simple fact that everyone aboard the
Lusitania was aware of what had happened
to the Titanic just three years earlier and
thus disabused of the idea that there was any
such thing as a ship that was too grand to
sink — their own included.
The fact that the two vessels did sink is an
unalterable fact of history, and while ship
design and safety protocols have changed,
the powder-keg nature of human behavior is
the same as it ever was. The more scientists
learn about how it played out in disasters of
the past, the more they can help us minimize
loss in the future.
____________________________________
22) America’s War on the Overweight
Anti-fat rhetoric is getting nastier than
ever. Why our overweight nation hates
overweight people.
By Kate Dailey and Abby Ellin |
Newsweek Web Exclusive
Aug 26, 2009 | Updated: 8:08 a.m. ET
Aug 26, 2009
Correction (published Sept. 28, 2009): This
article originally misrepresented activist
MeMe Roth's comments on Jordin Sparks,
and since been corrected. It also stated that
Roth "derided" Jennifer Love Hewitt for
having cellulite, when in fact Roth noted that
106
Hewitt was of a healthy weight and body
size, and caught in an unflattering light.
Practically the minute President Obama
announced Regina M. Benjamin, a zaftig
doctor who also has an M.B.A. and is the
recipient of a MacArthur "genius grant," as a
nominee for the post of Surgeon General,
the criticism started.
The attacks were vicious—Michael
Karolchyk, owner of a Denver "anti-gym,"
told Fox News' Neil Cavuto, "Obesity is the
No. 1 issue facing our country in terms of
the health and wellness, and she has shown
not that she was born this way, not that she
woke up one day and was obese. She has
shown through being lazy, and making poor
food choices, that she's obese."
"This is totally disgusting to have some one
so big to be advocating health," wrote one
YouTube commenter.
The anger about Benjamin wasn't the only
example of vitriol hurled at the overweight.
Cintra Wilson, style columnist for The New
York Times, recently wrote a column so
disdainful of JCPenney's plus-size
mannequins that the Times' ombsbudman
later wrote that he could read "a virtual
sneer" coming through her prose. A
NEWSWEEK post about Glamour’s recent
plus-size model (in fact, a normal-sized
woman with a bit of a belly roll) had several
commenters lashing out at the positive
reaction the model was receiving. "This
model issue is being used as a smoke screen
to justify self-destructive lifestyle that cost
me more money in health care costs," one
wrote. Heath guru MeMe Roth has made a
career crusading against obesity, and made
waves when she suggested that American
Idol contestant Jordin Sparks needed to lose
weight. (That MeMe Roth is considered
something of an extremist doesn't stop the
media attention) Virtually any news article
about weight that is posted online garners a
slew of comments from readers expressing
disgust that people let their weight get so out
of control. The specific target may change,
but the words stay the same: Selfdestructive. Disgusting. Disgraceful.
Shameful. While the debate rages on about
obesity and the best ways to deal with it, the
attitudes Americans have toward those with
extra pounds are only getting nastier. Just
why do Americans hate fat people so much?
Fat bias is nothing new. "Public outrage at
other people's obesity has a lot to do with
America from the turn of the 20th century to
about World War I," says Deborah Levine,
assistant professor of health policy and
management at Providence College. The rise
of fat hatred is often seen as connected to
the changing American workplace; in the
early 20th century, companies began to offer
snacks to employees, white-collar jobs
became more prominent, and fewer people
exercised. As thinness became rarer, says
Peter N. Stearns, author of Fat History:
Bodies and Beauty in the Modern West and
professor of history at George Mason
University, it was more prized, and
conversely, fatness was more maligned.
At the same time, people also paid a lot of
attention to President Taft's girth; while Taft
was large, he wasn't all that much heavier
than earlier presidents. Newspapers
questioned how his weight would affect
diplomacy and solicited the funniest "fat
Taft" joke. "This [period] is also when you
get ready-to-wear clothing," says Levine.
"For the first time, [people were] buying
clothes in a certain size, and that encourages
a comparison amongst other people."
Actuarial tables began to connect weight and
shorter lifespan, and cookbooks published
107
around World War I targeted the
overweight. "There was that idea that people
who were overweight were hoarding
resources needed for the war effort," Levine
says. She adds that early concerns were that
overweight American men would not be
able to compete globally, participate in
international business, or win wars.
Fatness has always been seen as a slight on
the American character. Ours is a nation that
values hard work and discipline, and it's
hard for us to accept that weight could be
not just a struggle of will, even when the
bulk of the research—and often our own
personal experience—shows that the factors
leading to weight gain are much more than
just simple gluttony. "There's this general
perception that weight can be controlled if
you have enough willpower, that it's just
about calories in and calories out," says Dr.
Glen Gaesser, professor of exercise and
wellness at Arizona State University and
author of BigFat Lies: The Truth About Your
Weight and Your Health, and that perception
leads the nonfat to believe that the
overweight are not just unhealthy, but weak
and lazy. Even though research suggests that
there is a genetic propensity for obesity, and
even though some obese people are
technically healthier than their skinnier
counterparts, the perception remains "[that]
it's a failure to control ourselves. It violates
everything we have learned about self
control from a very young age," says
Gaesser.
In a country that still prides itself on its
Puritanical ideals, the fat self is the "bad
self," the epitome of greed, gluttony, and
sloth. "There's a widespread belief that fat is
controllable," says Linda Bacon, author of
Health at Every Size: The Surprising Truth
About Your Weight. "So then it's unlike a
disability where you can have compassion;
now you can blame the individual and
attribute all kinds of mean qualities to them.
Then consider the thinner people that are
always watching what they eat carefully—
fat people are symbols of what they can
become if they weren't so virtuous."
But considering that the U.S. has already
become a size XL nation—66 percent of
adults over 20 are considered overweight or
obese, according to the Centers for Disease
Control—why does the stigma, and the
anger, remain?
Call it a case of self-loathing. "A lot of
people struggle themselves with their
weight, and the same people that tend to get
very angry at themselves for not being able
to manage their weight are more likely to be
biased against the obese," says Marlene
Schwartz, director of the Rudd Center for
Food Policy and Obesity at Yale University.
"I think that some of this is that anger is
confusion between the anger that we have at
ourselves and projecting that out onto other
people." Her research indicates that younger
women, who are under the most pressure to
be thin and who are also the most likely to
be self-critical, are the most likely to feel
negatively toward fat people.
As many women's magazines' cover lines
note, losing the last five pounds can be a
challenge. So why don't we have more
compassion for people struggling to lose the
first 50, 60, or 100? Some of it has to do
with the psychological phenomenon known
as the fundamental attribution error, a basic
belief that whatever problems befall us
personally are the result of difficult
circumstances, while the same problems in
other people are the result of their bad
choices. Miss a goal at work? It's because
the vendor was unreliable, and because your
manager isn't giving you enough support,
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and because the power outage last week cut
into premium sales time. That jerk next to
you? He blew his quota because he's a bad
planner, and because he spent too much time
taking personal calls.
The same can be true of weight: "From
working with so many people struggling
with their weight, I've seen it many times,"
says Andrew Geier, a postdoctoral fellow in
the psychology department at Yale
University. "They believe they're overweight
due to a myriad of circumstances: as soon as
my son goes to college, I'll have time to
cook healthier meals; when my husband's
shifts change at work, I can get to the gym
sooner.…" But other people? They're
overweight because they don't have the
discipline to do the hard work and take off
the weight, and that lack of discipline is an
affront to our own hard work. (Never mind
that weight loss is incredibly difficult to
attain: Geier notes that even the most
rigorous behavioral programs result in at
most about a 12.5 percent decrease in
weight, which would take a 350-pound man
to a slimmer, but not svelte, 306 pounds).
But why do the rest of us care so much?
What is it about fat people that makes us so
mad? As it turns out, we kind of like it.
"People actually enjoy feeling angry," says
Ryan Martin, associate professor of
psychology at the University of Wisconsin,
Green Bay, who cites studies done on
people's emotions. "It makes them feel
powerful, it makes them feel greater control,
and they appreciate it for that reason." And
with fat people designated as acceptable
targets of rage—and with the prevalence of
fat people in our lives, both in the malls and
on the news—it's easy to find a target for
some soul-clearing, ego-boosting ranting.
And it may be, that like those World War Iera cookbook writers, we feel that obese
people are robbing us of resources, whether
it's space in a row of airline seats or our
hard-earned tax dollars. Think of health
care: when president Obama made
reforming health care a priority, it led to an
increased focus on obesity as a contributor
to health-care costs. A recent article in
Health Affairs, a public-policy journal,
reported that obesity costs $147 billion a
year, mainly in insurance premiums and
taxes. At the same time, obesity-related
diseases such as type 2 diabetes have spiked,
and, while diabetes can be treated, treatment
is expensive. So the overweight, some
people argue, are costing all of us money
while refusing to alter the behavior that has
put them in their predicament in the first
place (i.e., overeating and not exercising).
The reality is much more complicated. It's a
fallacy to conflate the unhealthy action—
overeating and not exercising—with the
unhealthy appearance, says Schwartz: some
overweight people run marathons; eat only
organic, vegetarian fare; and have clean bills
of health. Even so, yelling at the overweight
to put down the doughnut is far from
productive. "People are less likely to seek
out healthy behaviors when they're criticized
by friends, family, doctors, and others," says
Schwartz. "If people tell you that you're
disgusting or a slob enough times, you soon
start to believe it." In fact, fat outrage might
actually make health-care costs higher. In a
study published in the 2005 issue of the
Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law,
Abigail Saguy and Brian Riley found that
many overweight people decide not to get
help for medical conditions that are more
treatable and more risky than obesity
because they don't want to deal with their
doctor's harassment about their weight. (For
109
instance, a study from the University of
North Carolina found that obese women are
less likely to receive cervical exams than
their thinner counterparts, in part because
they worry about being embarrassed or
belittled by the doctor because of their
weight.)
The bubbling rage against fat people in
America has put researchers like Levine in a
difficult position. On the one hand, she says,
she wants to ensure that obesity is taken
seriously as a medical problem, and pointing
out the costs associated with obesity-related
illnesses helps illustrate the severity of the
situation. On the other hand, she says, doing
so could increase the animosity people have
toward the overweight, many of whom may
already live healthy lives or may be working
hard to make heathier choices.
"The idea is to fight obesity and not obese
people," she says, and then pauses. "But it's
very hard for many people to disentangle the
two."
Correction: Due to an editing error, this
article originally attributed Andrew Geier
as saying that rigorous behavior-based
weight loss programs result in a 25 percent
decrease in weight, not 12.5 percent. The
statistic, and corresponding example, have
been corrected.
____________________________________
23) Time in partnership with CNN
Friday, Feb. 12, 2010
Orthorexia: Can Healthy Eating Be a
Disorder?
By Bonnie Rochman
Kristie Rutzel was in high school when she
began adhering precisely to the government
food pyramids. As the Virginia native
learned more about healthy eating, she
stopped ingesting anything processed, then
restricted herself to whole foods and
eventually to 100% organic. By college, the
5-ft. 4-in. communications major was on a
strict raw-foods diet, eating little else
besides uncooked broccoli and cauliflower
and tipping the scales at just 68 lb. Rutzel,
now 27, has a name for her eating disorder:
orthorexia, a controversial diagnosis
characterized by an obsession with avoiding
foods perceived to be unhealthy.
As the list of foods to steer clear of (byebye, trans fats and high-fructose corn syrup)
continues to grow, eating-disorder experts
are increasingly confronted with patients
like Rutzel who speak of nervously
shunning foods with artificial flavors, colors
or preservatives and rigidly following a
particular diet, such as vegan or raw foods.
Women may be more prone to this kind of
restrictive consumption than men, keeping
running tabs of verboten foods and
micromanaging food prep. Many opt to go
hungry rather than eat anything less than
wholesome.
Yet when Rutzel first sought help for
anemia and osteopenia, a precursor of
osteoporosis triggered by her avoidance of
calcium, her doctor in upstate New York,
where she attended college, had never heard
of orthorexia. "You should be trying to eat
healthy," she remembers him telling her. He
couldn't quite grasp that he was talking to a
health nut who believed there were few truly
healthy foods she felt were safe to eat. Her
condition was eventually identified as
anorexia, a diagnosis that organizations like
the Washington-based Eating Disorders
Coalition think is a mistake. The group,
which represents more than 35 eatingdisorder organizations in the U.S., wants
orthorexia to have a separate entry in the
110
bible of psychiatric illness, the Diagnostic
and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders
(DSM).
not get the care they need because they're
actually on the slippery slope to anorexia,"
she says.
For the past decade, psychiatrists have been
working on the fifth edition of the DSM —
referred to as DSM-V — to refine the
classifications used by mental-health
professionals to diagnose and research
disorders. Without a listing in the DSM, it's
tough to get treatment covered by insurance.
And for researchers angling for grant
money, a disorder's absence from the DSM
makes it hard to get research funded.
Kathleen MacDonald, who oversees
legislative policy at the Eating Disorders
Coalition, agrees with Bulik that people
should get the care they need. Which is
precisely why she thinks orthorexia should
have its own classification. Although Bulik
and others often use cognitive behavioral
therapy, in which patients like Rutzel are
coached to replace obsessive thoughts with
healthy ones, MacDonald worries there is
not enough known about which treatments
work best for orthorexia. "It's hit-or-miss,"
she says.
On Wednesday, the first draft of DSM-V was
published online, kicking off a three-year
process of public comment and further
revisions that will culminate in a new and
improved version come 2013. Orthorexia is
not listed in this new draft and, despite the
ongoing efforts of various eating-disorder
groups, is unlikely to make its way into the
final edition.
"We're not in a position to say it doesn't
exist or it's not important," says Tim Walsh,
a professor of psychiatry at Columbia
University who led the American
Psychiatric Association's work group that
reviewed eating disorders for inclusion in
DSM-V. "The real issue is significant data."
Getting listed as a separate entry in the DSM
requires extensive scientific knowledge of a
syndrome and broad clinical acceptance,
neither of which orthorexia has.
Most doctors think a separate diagnosis is
unwarranted. Orthorexia might be connected
to an anxiety disorder or it might be a
precursor to a more commonly diagnosed
condition, says Cynthia Bulik, director of
the eating-disorders program at the
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
"We don't want people to be mislabeled and
After seeking help at three different
facilities, Rutzel finally embraced a program
of meal plans that challenged her to
gradually incorporate foods she had
blacklisted. Still slim in a size 2, she is
engaged to a man whose oldest daughter is
9. And Rutzel says she is looking forward to
sharing her experiences with food with her
soon-to-be stepdaughter. "It's O.K. to eat
potato chips and Pop-Tarts," says Rutzel,
"but only every now and then."
24) Time in partnership with CNN
Thursday, Apr. 02, 2009
Why Are Army Recruiters Killing
Themselves?
By MARK THOMPSON
When Army Staff Sergeant Amanda
Henderson ran into Staff Sergeant Larry
Flores in their Texas recruiting station last
August, she was shocked by the dark circles
under his eyes and his ragged appearance.
"Are you O.K.?" she asked the normally
squared-away soldier. "Sergeant Henderson,
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I am just really tired," he replied. "I had
such a bad, long week, it was ridiculous."
The previous Saturday, Flores' commanders
had berated him for poor performance. He
had worked every day since from 6:30 a.m.
to 10 p.m., trying to persuade the youth of
Nacogdoches to wear Army green. "But I'm
O.K.," he told her.
No, he wasn't. Later that night, Flores
hanged himself in his garage with an
extension cord. Henderson and her husband
Patrick, both Army recruiters, were stunned.
"I'll never forget sitting there at Sergeant
Flores' memorial service with my husband
and seeing his wife crying," Amanda recalls.
"I remember looking over at Patrick and
going, 'Why did he do this to her? Why did
he do this to his children?' " Patrick didn't
say anything, and Amanda now says Flores'
suicide "triggered" something in her
husband. Six weeks later, Patrick hanged
himself with a dog chain in their backyard
shed.
The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are now
the longest waged by an all-volunteer force
in U.S. history. Even as soldiers rotate back
into the field for multiple and extended
tours, the Army requires a constant supply
of new recruits. But the patriotic fervor that
led so many to sign up after 9/11 is now
eight years past. That leaves recruiters with
perhaps the toughest, if not the most
dangerous, job in the Army. Last year alone,
the number of recruiters who killed
themselves was triple the overall Army rate.
Like posttraumatic stress disorder and
traumatic brain injury, recruiter suicides are
a hidden cost of the nation's wars.
The Wartime Challenge
Behind the neat desks and patriotic posters
in 1,650 Army recruiting stations on Main
Streets and in strip malls is a work
environment as stressful in its own way as
combat. The hours are long, time off is rare,
and the demand to sign up at least two
recruits a month is unrelenting. Soldiers who
have returned from tours in Iraq and
Afghanistan now constitute 73% of
recruiters, up from 38% in 2005. And for
many of them, the pressure is just too much.
"These kids are coming back from Iraq with
problems," says a former Army officer who
recently worked in the Houston Recruiting
Battalion.
The responsibility for providing troop
replacements falls to the senior
noncommissioned officers who have chosen
to make recruiting their career in the U.S.
Army Recruiting Command (USAREC).
They in turn put pressure on their local
recruiters to "make mission" and generate
the recruits — sometimes by any means
necessary. Lawrence Kagawa retired last
July after more than 20 years in uniform; he
spent the latter half as a highly decorated
recruiter, and his tenure included a stint in
the Houston battalion from 2002 to 2005.
"There's one set of values for the Army, and
when you go to Recruiting Command,
you're basically forced to do things outside
of what would normally be considered to be
moral or ethical," he says.
Because station commanders and their
bosses are rated on how well their
subordinates recruit, there is a strong
incentive to cut corners to bring in enlistees.
If recruiters can't make mission legitimately,
their superiors will tell them to push the
envelope. "You'll be told to call Johnny or
Susan and tell them to lie and say they've
never had asthma like they told you, that
they don't have a juvenile criminal history,"
Kagawa says. "That recruiter is going to
bend the rules and get the lies told and
process the fraudulent paperwork." And if
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the recruiter refuses? The commander, says
Kagawa, is "going to tell you point-blank
that 'we have a loyalty issue here, and if I
give you a "no" for loyalty on your annual
report, your career is over.' "
It's not surprising, then, that some recruiters
ignore red flags to enlist marginal
candidates. "I've seen [recruiters] make kids
drink gallons of water trying to flush
marijuana out of their system before they
take their physicals," one Houston recruiter
says privately. "I've seen them forge
signatures." Sign up a pair of enlistees in a
month and a recruiter is hailed; sign up none
and he can be ordered to monthly Saturday
sessions, where he is verbally pounded for
his failure.
The military isn't known for treating
underperformers with kid gloves. But the
discipline can be harder for recruiters to take
because they are, in most cases, physically
and socially isolated. Unlike most soldiers,
who are assigned to posts where they and
their families receive the Army's full roster
of benefits, 70% of Army recruiters live
more than 50 miles (80 km) from the nearest
military installation. Lacking local support,
recruiters and their spouses turn to Internet
message boards. "I hate to say it, but all the
horror stories are true!" a veteran Army
recruiter advised a rookie online. "It will be
three years of hell on you and your family."
One wife wrote that instead of coming home
at the end of a long workday, her husband
was headed "to Super Wal-Mart to find
prospects because they're open for 24
hours."
Today's active-duty Army recruiting force is
7,600-strong. Soldiers attend school at Fort
Jackson, S.C., for seven weeks before being
sent to one of the 38 recruiting battalions
across the nation. There they spend their
days calling lists of high school seniors and
other prospects and visiting schools and
malls. At night, they visit the homes of
potential recruits to sell them on one of the
Army's 150 different jobs and seal the deal
with hefty enlistment bonuses: up to
$40,000 in cash and as much as $65,000 for
college. The manual issued to recruiting
commanders warns that, unlike war, in
recruiting there will be no victory "until
such time when the United States no longer
requires an Army." Recruiting must
"continue virtually nonstop" and is
"aggressive, persistent and unrelenting."
Lone Star Losses
Nowhere has the pace been more punishing
than inside the Houston Recruiting
Battalion. One of every 10 of the Army's
recruits last year came from Texas — the
highest share of any state — and recruiters
in Harris County enlisted 1,104, just 37 shy
of first-place Phoenix's Maricopa County.
The Houston unit's nearly 300 recruiters are
spread among 49 stations across southeast
Texas. Since 2005, four members recently
back from Iraq or Afghanistan have
committed suicide while struggling, as
recruiters say, to "put 'em in boots." TIME
has obtained a copy of the Army's recently
completed 2-inch-thick (50 mm) report of
the investigation into the Houston suicides.
Its bottom line: recruiters there have toiled
under a "poor command climate" and an
"unhealthy and singular focus on production
at the expense of soldier and family
considerations." Most names have been
deleted; the Army said those who were
blamed by recruiters for the poor work
environment didn't want to comment. While
some recruiters were willing to talk to
TIME, most declined to be named for fear of
risking their careers.
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Captain Rico Robinson, 32, the Houston
battalion's personnel officer, was the first
suicide, shooting himself in January 2005.
But one of his predecessors, Christina
Montalvo, had tried to kill herself a few
years earlier, gulping a handful of
prescription sleeping pills in a suicide
attempt that was thwarted when a co-worker
found her. Montalvo says a boss bullied her
about her weight. And she was shocked by
the abuse that senior sergeants routinely
levied on subordinates. "I'd never been in a
unit before where soldiers publicly
humiliated other soldiers," says Montalvo,
who left the Army in 2002 after 16 years. "If
they don't make mission, they're humiliated
and embarrassed."
Several months after Robinson committed
suicide, Staff Sergeant Nils Aron Andersson
arrived in Houston as a recruiter. Andersson
had served two tours in Iraq with the 82nd
Airborne and had won a Bronze Star for
helping buddies pinned down in a firefight.
"I asked him what he did to get it, and he
just looked right at me and said, 'Doing my
job, Dad, just doing my job,' and that's all he
ever said," says his father Robert of
Springfield, Ore. "He wouldn't talk to me
about Iraq."
Aron, as he was known, had changed in
Iraq. Perhaps it was the September 2003
night he gave up his exposed seat in a Black
Hawk helicopter to a younger soldier who
wanted the thrill of sitting there and who
ended up being the only one killed when the
chopper flipped on takeoff. Or maybe it was
the day Andersson's squad had to destroy a
speeding suicide van headed straight at their
checkpoint, despite the women and children
inside.
Instead of returning for a third tour,
Andersson chose recruiting. He trained at
Fort Jackson, filed for divorce and joined the
Houston battalion in 2005. "They were
working the crap out of him," Robert says.
"I'd get calls from him at 9:30 at night —
11:30 in Houston — and he'd say he was
just leaving the recruiting office and starting
on his 40-minute drive home." His
easygoing son also developed a hair-trigger
temper during his time at the River Oaks and
Rosenberg recruiting stations. "He wasn't
really a salesman," Robert says, "and
recruiters are trying to sell something."
Several months into the job, Aron threatened
suicide in front of a girlfriend. After Army
doctors cleared him, he returned to work.
"For the two years he was in Iraq, I'd turn
down the street and be terrified there'd be a
car with a set of government plates on it
when I got home telling me that he'd been
killed," his father says. "Suicide was the last
scenario I'd ever come up with."
But that was what occurred on March 5,
2007. In the week before his suicide,
Andersson was ordered to write three
separate essays explaining his failure to line
up prospective recruits. A fellow recruiter
later told Army investigators that
commanders "humiliated" this decorated
battlefield soldier during a training session:
"He was under a constant grind —
incredible pressure. He just became numb."
Andersson, 25, stopped by his recruiting
station hours before he died and said he had
gotten married that morning to Cassy
Walton, whom he had recently met. He
seemed in a good mood. "Before leaving, he
played a prank on the station commander
that made everyone laugh," a fellow
recruiter told investigators. But the
newlyweds argued that night, and
Andersson, inside his new Ford pickup, put
the barrel of a Ruger .22-cal. pistol to his
114
right temple and squeezed the trigger. His
widow, suffering from psychiatric problems
of her own, killed herself the next day with a
gun she had just bought.
"That double suicide should have stopped
everything," an officer who was in the
battalion says privately. Instead, he reports,
the leadership in Houston said, "We're just
going to keep rolling the way we've been
rolling."
Inflated Requirements
The way things rolled in Houston, it turns
out, was especially harsh. Until recently, the
Army told prospective recruiters they'd be
expected to sign up two recruits a month.
"All of your training is geared toward
prospecting for and processing at least two
enlistments monthly," the Army said on its
Recruit the Recruiter website until TIME
called to ask about the requirement. Major
General Thomas Bostick, USAREC's top
general, sent out a 2006 letter declaring that
each recruiter "Must Do Two." But if each
recruiter did that, the Army would be
flooded with more than 180,000 recruits a
year instead of the 80,000 it needs. In fact,
the real target per recruiter is closer to one a
month. Yet the constant drumbeat for two
continued.
The Houston battalion's punishing work
hours were also beyond what was expected.
In June 2007, Bostick issued a written order
to the 5th Recruiting Brigade and its
Houston battalion requiring commanders to
clarify the battalion's fuzzy work-hour
policy, which could be read as requiring 13hour workdays. He demanded a new policy
"consistent with law and regulation." The
brigade and battalion commanders ignored
the order.
By mid-2008, a Houston battalion
commander complained to subordinates of
"getting numerous calls on recruiters being
called 'dirtbags' or 'useless' when they do not
accomplish mission each month." He'd
heard that recruiters who had been promised
birthdays or anniversaries off were being
"called back to work on the day of the
anniversary and during the birthday and/or
anniversary party when they already had
family and friends at their homes." To
improve morale, the battalion's leadership
decided to hold a picnic last July 26.
"Family fun is mandatory," read an internal
e-mail.
Crying Like a Child
Staff Sergeant Flores, a married father of
two, who'd looked so haggard last August,
was the station commander overseeing the
pair of recruiting offices in Nacogdoches.
The job required the veteran of both
Afghanistan and Iraq to dial into two daily
conference calls from his office at 7 a.m.
and 10 p.m. "On a regular basis, he would
complain to me that the 15 to 19 hours we
worked daily were too much," a colleague
told Army investigators.
When Flores' station failed to make mission,
his superiors ordered him to attend what the
Army calls "low-production training" in
Houston on Saturday, Aug. 2. "When you're
getting home at 11 and getting up at 4, it's
tough, but it's the dressing down that really
got to him," says a recruiter who worked
alongside Flores. "They had him crying like
a kid in the office, telling him he was no
good and that they were going to pull his
stripes."
Flores, 26, was told his failure as a station
commander meant he'd soon be returning to
a basic recruiter's slot. "He was an emotional
wreck," said a soldier who spoke with him
115
the evening of Aug. 8. "He said he felt he
failed as a station commander," the
colleague told investigators. "He had asked
me for a firearm. I told him I didn't have
one. It actually never crossed my mind that
it might have been for himself." Flores
hanged himself that night. "The leadership is
the major cause for SFC Flores taking his
own life, he was a prideful soldier," a fellow
station commander wrote in a statement,
carefully noting Flores' posthumous
promotion. "I believe this was a snap
decision because SFC Flores stated to me
that he grew up without a father and he
would never do that to his kids."
Amanda Henderson had worked alongside
Flores in Nacogdoches. Her husband,
Sergeant First Class Patrick Henderson, 35,
served at a recruiting office 90 minutes
away in Longview. Patrick met Amanda at
recruiting school after a combat tour in Iraq,
and they married in January 2008. With their
new jobs, though, "there was no time for
family life at all," Amanda says. While
Patrick didn't want the assignment, his
widow says, the Army told him he had no
choice. He masked his disappointment
behind a friendly demeanor and an easy
smile.
But things got worse after Flores' death. "He
just kept saying it was the battalion's fault
because of this big bashing session that had
taken place" six days before Flores killed
himself, Amanda says. "I can't tell you how
mad he got at the Army when Flores
committed suicide." Two weeks later,
Patrick spoke of killing himself and was
embarrassed by the fuss it kicked up. "He
started to get reclusive," Amanda says now.
"He sounded pretty beat up," a fellow
recruiter told investigators later. "He seemed
to be upset about recruiting and didn't want
to be out here." Patrick was taken off
frontline recruiting and assigned to company
headquarters. But it didn't stop his
downward spiral. The day after a squabble
with his wife on Sept. 19, Patrick hanged
himself.
A Senator Demands Answers
It wasn't until reports in the Houston
Chronicle provoked Republican Senator
John Cornyn of Texas to demand answers
that the Army launched an investigation into
the string of suicides. "It's tragic that it took
four deaths to bring this to the attention of a
U.S. Senator and to ask for a formal
investigation," Cornyn says. After Cornyn
began asking questions, the Army ordered
Brigadier General F.D. Turner to
investigate. Recruiters told him that their
task is a "stressful, challenging job that is
driven wholly by production, that is, the
numbers of people put into the Army each
month," Turner disclosed Dec. 23 after a
two-month probe.
The report found that morale was
particularly low in the Houston battalion. Its
top officer and enlisted member — Lieut.
Colonel Toimu Reeves and Command
Sergeant Major Cheryl Broussard — are no
longer with the unit. (He left for another
post in USAREC; she was removed from
her post until an investigation into her role is
finished, and she is working in the San
Antonio Recruiting Battalion.)
In an interview, General Turner would not
discuss the personal lives of the victims, but
his report noted that all four were in "failed
or failing" relationships. Yet he conceded
that "the work environment might have been
relevant in their relationship problems." The
claim of a failing relationship is denied by
Amanda Henderson and by testimony from
fellow recruiters. And an Army crisis-
116
response team dispatched to Houston in
October to look into last summer's two
suicides cited a poor work environment —
not domestic issues — as key.
After Turner's report, Lieut. General
Benjamin Freakley, head of the Army
Accessions Command that oversees
USAREC, asked the Army inspector general
to conduct a nationwide survey of the mood
among Army recruiters. The Army also
ordered a one-day stand-down for all
recruiters in February so it could focus on
proper leadership and suicide prevention.
The worsening economy is already easing
some of the recruiters' burden, as is the
raising of the maximum enlistment age,
from 35 to 42. But with only 3 in 10 young
Americans meeting the mental, moral and
physical requirements to serve, recruiting
challenges will continue.
Amanda Henderson, who lost both her
husband and her boss to suicide last year,
has left that battlefield. "The Army didn't
take care of my husband or Sergeant Flores
the way they needed to," she says. Though
still in the Army, she has quit recruiting and
returned to her former job as a supply
sergeant at Fort Jackson. Because of the
poor economy, she says, she plans to stay in
uniform at least until her current enlistment
is up in 2011. "Some days I say I've just got
to go on," she says. "Other days I'll just sit
and cry all day long."
25) R.I.P. on Facebook
The uses and abuses of virtual grief.
By Lisa Miller | NEWSWEEK
Published Feb 17, 2010
From the magazine issue dated Mar 1,
2010
Minutes after news broke that the British
fashion designer Alexander McQueen was
dead, a suicide at age 40, the prayers and
condolences started pouring in. More than
80,000 people became "fans" of McQueen
on Facebook in the first week. In the first
day, messages (to the man or his memory—
it's hard to know which) were being posted
every second. Brief and wrenching, the
messages are tiny mosaic tiles of grief:
"RIP." "Genius." "It's been 5 days, I actually
miss you as tho I knew you…sleep well."
This is how we collectively mourn:
Globally. Together. Online.
The McQueen phenomenon recalls the piles
of plastic-wrapped flowers laid at the stoop
of John F. Kennedy Jr.'s apartment after his
death, but Facebook hosts the shrines of less
celebrated souls as well. One teenager
started a tribute page for her murdered best
friend: members are invited to write the
dead girl's favorite song lyric—"Keep Breathing"—on their wrist, take a picture,
and post it. In October, Facebook changed
its policy regarding the pages of members
who have passed away. Responding in part
to urging by people at Virginia Tech who
wanted after the 2007 shooting there to
continue to commune with their lost friends
on Facebook, the company now allows a
person's page to remain active in perpetuity.
(Family members may request that a loved
one's page be taken down.) "When someone
117
leaves us, they don't leave our memories or
our social network," the new policy says.
One might imagine such virtual mourning is
shallow, but it's not. Here is a real gathering
place, where friends can grieve together—
and where the deceased continues, in some
sense, to exist. "You're creating something
like a tombstone, but people can visit that
tombstone anytime, anyplace, as long as
they have Internet access," says Brian
McLaren, a leader in the emerging church
movement and author of A New Kind of
Christianity. "That seems to me to be a great
gain."
We live in a disjointed time. Many of us
reside far from our families and have grown
indifferent to the habits of organized
religion. More of us—16 percent—declare
ourselves "unaffiliated" with any religious
denomination. Half of Americans will
choose cremation over burial, and if we are
buried, it will often be in a huge cemetery,
among strangers, far from any place we
would call home.
Yet the desire to connect with each other
around death and with the dead themselves
is older than the Bible. The ancient Hebrews
buried their family members beneath the
floors of their houses, the better to keep and
care for them. The Christian ideal of "the
community of saints," in which the dead rest
peacefully in the churchyard, as much a part
of the congregation as those singing in the
nave, is something any 19th-century
churchgoer would have instinctively
understood. In the absence of that literal
proximity, Facebook "keeps the person in
the communal space—the way a churchyard
would," says Noreen Herzfeld, professor of
science and religion at St. John's University
in Collegeville, Minn.
All of which raises tantalizing questions: the
average Facebook user has aged to 33 years
old. In two generations, will the pages of the
dead outnumber the living? Will our
unchurched children be content to
memorialize us with a quip on a "wall"?
Something is gained, but what is lost in this
evolution from corporeal grief (the rending
of garments) to grief tagged with a virtual
rose?
Grief is a crucible, a physical event—and
death, the loss of a physical body. Thomas
Lynch, the poet, undertaker, and, as author
of The Undertaking, chronicler of American
views of death, mused in a phone call that
folks today don't like to think about
permanence: they are more concerned with
"whether the pipes or the doves or the
balloon release will go off as scheduled."
Facebook memorials are fine, even good, he
agrees. But then he invokes the Wallace
Stevens poem "Not Ideas About the Thing
but the Thing Itself," in which a man, upon
waking, hears the first bird of spring—
something more than a long-held hope. In
"Catch and Release," the first story in his
new collection, Apparition and Late
Fictions, Lynch writes about a fishing
guide's efforts to dispose of the ashes of his
dead father in the rivers of northern
Michigan. The story is dense with physicality—the heaviness of water, the
fatness of fish, the crystalline dryness of
cremated bones. It is hard to imagine
Facebook muting the anguish of this mortal
loss. Facebook is the idea about the thing.
Celebration, desolation—that's the thing
itself.
Lisa Miller is NEWSWEEK's religion editor.
Her book Heaven: Our Enduring Fascination
With the Afterlife is due out from Harper in
March.
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____________________________________
26) “Of Studies” by Francis Bacon from
http://grammar.about.com/od/60essays/a/
studiesessay.htm
Studies serve for delight, for ornament, and
for ability. Their chief use for delight is in
privateness and retiring; for ornament, is in
discourse; and for ability, is in the judgment
and disposition of business. For expert men
can execute, and perhaps judge of
particulars, one by one; but the general
counsels, and the plots and marshalling of
affairs, come best from those that are
learned. To spend too much time in studies
is sloth; to use them too much for ornament,
is affectation; to make judgment wholly by
their rules, is the humor of a scholar. They
perfect nature, and are perfected by
experience: for natural abilities are like
natural plants, that need pruning, by study;
and studies themselves do give forth
directions too much at large, except they be
bounded in by experience. Crafty men
condemn studies, simple men admire them,
and wise men use them; for they teach not
their own use; but that is a wisdom without
them, and above them, won by observation.
Read not to contradict and confute; nor to
believe and take for granted; nor to find talk
and discourse; but to weigh and consider.
Some books are to be tasted, others to be
swallowed, and some few to be chewed and
digested; that is, some books are to be read
only in parts; others to be read, but not
curiously; and some few to be read wholly,
and with diligence and attention. Some
books also may be read by deputy, and
extracts made of them by others; but that
would be only in the less important
arguments, and the meaner sort of books,
else distilled books are like common
distilled waters, flashy things. Reading
maketh a full man; conference a ready man;
and writing an exact man. And therefore, if a
man write little, he had need have a great
memory; if he confer little, he had need have
a present wit: and if he read little, he had
need have much cunning, to seem to know
that he doth not. Histories make men wise;
poets witty; the mathematics subtle; natural
philosophy deep; moral grave; logic and
rhetoric able to contend. Abeunt studia in
mores [Studies pass into and influence
manners]. Nay, there is no stond or
impediment in the wit but may be wrought
out by fit studies; like as diseases of the
body may have appropriate exercises.
Bowling is good for the stone and reins;
shooting for the lungs and breast; gentle
walking for the stomach; riding for the head;
and the like. So if a man’s wit be wandering,
let him study the mathematics; for in
demonstrations, if his wit be called away
never so little, he must begin again. If his
wit be not apt to distinguish or find
differences, let him study the Schoolmen;
for they are cymini sectores [splitters of
hairs]. If he be not apt to beat over matters,
and to call up one thing to prove and
illustrate another, let him study the lawyers’
cases. So every defect of the mind may have
a special receipt. (1625)
____________________________________
27) “The Superstition of School” by G. K.
Chesterton from
http://grammar.about.com/od/classicessay
s/a/supschoolessay.htm
It is an error to suppose that advancing years
bring retrogressing opinions. In other words,
it is not true that men growing old must be
growing reactionary. Some of the difficulties
of recent times have been due to the
obstinate optimism of the old revolutionary.
Magnificent old men like [Russian
revolutionary Peter] Kropotkin and [poet
Walt] Whitman and William Morris went to
119
their graves expecting Utopia if they did not
expect Heaven. But the falsehood, like so
many falsehoods, is a false version of a halftruth. The truth, or half-truth, is not that men
must learn by experience to be reactionaries;
but that they must learn by experience to
expect reactions. And when I say reactions I
mean reactions; I must apologize, in the
world of current culture, for using the word
in its correct sense.
If a boy fires off a gun, whether at a fox, a
landlord or a reigning sovereign, he will be
rebuked according to the relative value of
these objects. But if he fires off a gun for the
first time it is very likely that he will not
expect the recoil, or know what a heavy
knock it can give him. He may go blazing
away through life at these and similar
objects in the landscape; but he will be less
and less surprised by the recoil; that is, by
the reaction. He may even dissuade his little
sister of six from firing off one of the heavy
rifles designed for the destruction of
elephants; and will thus have the appearance
of being himself a reactionary. Very much
the same principle applies to firing off the
big guns of revolution. It is not a man's
ideals that change; it is not his Utopia that is
altered; the cynic who says, "You will forget
all that moonshine of idealism when you are
older," says the exact opposite of the truth.
The doubts that come with age are not about
the ideal, but about the real. And one of the
things that are undoubtedly real is reaction:
that is, the practical probability of some
reversal of direction, and of our partially
succeeding in doing the opposite of what we
mean to do. What experience does teach us
is this: that there is something in the makeup and mechanism of mankind, whereby the
result of action upon it is often unexpected,
and almost always more complicated than
we expect.
These are the snags of sociology; and one of
them is concerned with Education. If you
ask me whether I think the populace,
especially the poor, should be recognized as
citizens who can rule the state, I answer in a
voice of thunder, "Yes." If you ask me
whether I think they ought to have
education, in the sense of a wide culture and
familiarity with the classics of history, I
again answer, "Yes." But there is, in the
achievement of this purpose, a sort of snag
or recoil that can only be discovered by
experience and does not appear in print at
all. It is not allowed for on paper, even so
much as is the recoil of a gun. Yet it is at
this moment an exceedingly practical part of
practical politics; and, while it has been a
political problem for a very long time past, it
is a little more marked (if I may stain these
serene and impartial pages with so political
a suggestion) under recent conditions that
have brought so many highly respectable
Socialists and widely respected Trade Union
officials to the front.
The snag in it is this: that the self-educated
think far too much of education. I might add
that the half-educated always think
everything of education. That is not a fact
that appears on the surface of the social plan
or ideal; it is the sort of thing that can only
be discovered by experience. When I said
that I wanted the popular feeling to find
political expression, I meant the actual and
autochthonous popular feeling as it can be
found in third-class carriages and beanfeasts and bank-holiday crowds; and
especially, of course (for the earnest social
seeker after truth), in public-houses. I
thought, and I still think, that these people
are right on a vast number of things on
which the fashionable leaders are wrong.
The snag is that when one of these people
begins to "improve himself" it is exactly at
120
that moment that I begin to doubt whether it
is an improvement. He seems to me to
collect with remarkable rapidity a number of
superstitions, of which the most blind and
benighted is what may be called the
Superstition of School. He regards School,
not as a normal social institution to be fitted
in to other social institutions, like Home and
Church and State; but as some sort of
entirely supernormal and miraculous moral
factory, in which perfect men and women
are made by magic. To this idolatry of
School he is ready to sacrifice Home and
History and Humanity, with all its instincts
and possibilities, at a moment's notice. To
this idol he will make any sacrifice,
especially human sacrifice. And at the back
of the mind, especially of the best men of
this sort, there is almost always one of two
variants of the same concentrated
conception: either "If I had not been to
School I should not be the great man I am
now," or else "If I had been to school I
should be even greater than I am." Let none
say that I am scoffing at uneducated people;
it is not their uneducation but their education
that I scoff at. Let none mistake this for a
sneer at the half-educated; what I dislike is
the educated half. But I dislike it, not
because I dislike education, but because,
given the modern philosophy or absence of
philosophy, education is turned against
itself, destroying that very sense of variety
and proportion which it is the object of
education to give.
No man who worships education has got the
best out of education; no man who sacrifices
everything to education is even educated. I
need not mention here the many recent
examples of this monomania, rapidly turning
into mad persecution, such as the ludicrous
persecution of the families who live on
barges. What is wrong is a neglect of
principle; and the principle is that without a
gentle contempt for education, no
gentleman's education is complete.
I use the casual phrase casually; for I do not
concern myself with the gentleman but with
the citizen. Nevertheless, there is this
historic half-truth in the case for aristocracy;
that it is sometimes a little easier for the
aristocrat, at his best, to have this last touch
of culture which is a superiority to culture.
Nevertheless, the truth of which I speak has
nothing to do with any special culture of any
special class. It has belonged to any number
of peasants, especially when they were
poets; it is this which gives a sort of natural
distinction to Robert Burns and the peasant
poets of Scotland. The power which
produces it more effectively than any blood
or breed is religion; for religion may be
defined as that which puts the first things
first. Robert Burns was justifiably impatient
with the religion he inherited from Scottish
Calvinism; but he owed something to his
inheritance. His instinctive consideration of
men as men came from an ancestry which
still cared more for religion than education.
The moment men begin to care more for
education than for religion they begin to
care more for ambition than for education. It
is no longer a world in which the souls of all
are equal before heaven, but a world in
which the mind of each is bent on achieving
unequal advantage over the other. There
begins to be a mere vanity in being educated
whether it be self-educated or merely stateeducated. Education ought to be a
searchlight given to a man to explore
everything, but very specially the things
most distant from himself. Education tends
to be a spotlight; which is centered entirely
on himself. Some improvement may be
made by turning equally vivid and perhaps
vulgar spotlights upon a large number of
121
other people as well. But the only final cure
is to turn off the limelight and let him realize
the stars. (1923)
____________________________________
28) The Lower Depths (1925) H.L.
Mencken
Here, in the form of a large flat book, eight
and a half inches wide and eleven inches
tall, is a sight-seeing bus touring the slums
of pedagogy. The author, Dr. Pendleton,
professes the teaching of English (not
English, remember, but the teaching of
English) at the George Peabody College for
Teachers, an eminent seminary at Nashville,
in the Baptist Holy Land, and his object in
the investigation he describes was to find
out what the teachers who teach English
hope to accomplish by teaching it. In other
words, what, precisely, is the improvement
that they propose to achieve in the pupils
exposed to their art and mystery? Do they
believe that the aim of teaching English is to
increase the exact and beautiful use of the
language? Or that it is to inculcate and
augment patriotism? Or that it is to diminish
sorrow in the home? Or that it has some
other end, cultural, economic, or military?
In order to find out, Pendleton, with true
pedagogical diligence, proceeded to list all
the reasons for teaching English that he
could find. Some he got by cross-examining
teachers. Others came from educators of
higher degree and puissance. Yet others he
dug out of the text-books of pedagogy in
common use, and the dreadful professional
journals read by teachers. Finally, he threw
in some from miscellaneous sources, include
his own inner consciousness. In all, he
accumulated 1,581 such reasons, or, as he
calls them, objectives, and then he sat down
and laboriously copied them upon 1,581
very thin 3x5 cards, one to a card. Some of
these cards were buff in color, some were
blue, some were yellow, some were pink,
and some were green. On the blue cards he
copied all the objectives relating to the
employment of English in conversation, on
the yellow cards all those dealing with its
use in literary composition, on the green
cards all those having to do with speechmaking, and so on. Then he shook up the
cards, summoned 80 professional teachers of
English, and asked them to sort out the
objectives in the order of appositeness and
merit. The results of this laborious sorting he
now sets before the learned.
Here is the objective that got the most votes-the champion of the whole 1,581:
The ability to spell correctly without
hesitation all the ordinary words of one's
writing vocabulary.
Here is the runner-up:
The ability to speak, in conversation, in
complete sentences, not in broken phrases.
And here is No. 7:
The ability to capitalize speedily and
accurately in one's writing.
And here is No. 9:
The ability to think quickly in an
emergency.
And here are some more, all within the first
hundred:
The ability to refrain from marking or
marring in any way a borrowed book.
An attitude of democracy rather than
snobbishness within a conversation.
122
Familiarity with the essential stories and
persons of the Bible.
And some from the second hundred:
The ability to sing through--words and
music--the national anthem.
The ability courteously and effectively to
receive orders from a superior.
The avoidance of vulgarity and profanity in
one's public speaking.
The ability to read silently without lip
movements.
The habit of placing the page one is reading
so that there will not be shadows upon it.
The ability to refrain from conversation
under conditions where it is annoying or
disagreeable to others.
The ability to converse intelligently about
municipal and district civic matters.
The ability to comprehend accurately the
meaning of all common abbreviations and
signs one meets with in reading.
The ability, during one's reading, to
distinguish between an author's central
theme and his incidental remarks.
I refrain from any more: all these got enough
votes to put them among the first 200
objectives--200 out of 1,581. Nor do I
choose them unfairly; most of those that I
have not listed were quite as bad as those I
have. But, you may protest, the good
professor handed his cards to a jury of little
girls of eight or nine years, or to the inmates
of a home for the feeble-minded. He did, in
fact, nothing of the kind. His jury was very
carefully selected. It consisted of 80 teachers
of such professional heft and consequence
that they were assembled at the University
of Chicago for postgraduate study. Every
one of them had been through either a
college or a normal school; forty-seven of
them held learned degrees; all of them had
been engaged professionally in teaching
English, some for years. They came from
michigan, Nebraska, Iowa, Missouri,
Wisconsin, Toronto, Leland Stanford,
Chicago and Northwestern Universities;
from Oberlin, De Pauw, Goucher, Beloit and
Drake Colleges; from a dozen lesser
seminaries of the higher learning. They
represented, not the lowest level of teachers
of English in the Republic, but the highest
level. And yet it was their verdict by a
solemn referendum that the principal
objective in teaching English was to make
good spellers, and that after that came the
breeding of good capitalizers.
I present Pendleton's laborious work as
overwhelming proof of a thesis that I have
maintained for years, perhaps sometimes
with undue heat: that pedagogy in the
United States is fast descending to the estate
of a childish necromancy, and that the worst
idiots, even among pedagogues, are the
teachers of English. It is positively dreadful
to think that the young of the American
species are exposed day in and day out to
the contamination of such dark minds. What
can be expected of education that is carried
on in the very sewers of the intellect? How
can morons teach anything that is worth
knowing? Here and there, true enough, a
competent teacher of English is encountered.
I could name at least 20 in the whole
country. But it does not appear that Dr.
Pendleton, among his 80, found even one.
There is not the slightest glimmer of
intelligence in all the appalling tables of
statistics and black, zig-zag graphs that he
has so painfully amassed. Nor any apparent
123
capacity for learning. The sound thing, the
sane thing and the humane thing to do with
his pathetic herd of A.B.'s would be to take
them out in the alley and knock them in the
head.
"The Lower Depths" by H.L. Mencken was
first published in the March 1925 issue of
The American Mercury.
____________________________________
29) from The Idler, Number 23,
September 23, 1758
Samuel Johnson
Life has no pleasure higher or nobler than
that of friendship. It is painful to consider
that this sublime enjoyment may be
impaired or destroyed by innumerable
causes, and that there is no human
possession of which the duration is less
certain.
Many have talked in very exalted language,
of the perpetuity of friendship, of invincible
constancy, and unalienable kindness; and
some examples have been seen of men who
have continued faithful to their earliest
choice, and whose affection has
predominated over changes of fortune, and
contrariety of opinion.
But these instances are memorable, because
they are rare. The friendship which is to be
practiced or expected by common mortals,
must take its rise from mutual pleasure, and
must end when the power ceases of
delighting each other.
Many accidents therefore may happen by
which the ardor of kindness will be abated,
without criminal baseness or contemptible
inconstancy on either part. To give pleasure
is not always in our power; and little does he
know himself who believes that he can be
always able to receive it.
Those who would gladly pass their days
together may be separated by the different
course of their affairs; and friendship, like
love, is destroyed by long absence, though it
may be increased by short intermissions.
What we have missed long enough to want
it, we value more when it is regained; but
that which has been lost till it is forgotten,
will be found at last with little gladness, and
with still less if a substitute has supplied the
place. A man deprived of the companion to
whom he used to open his bosom, and with
whom he shared the hours of leisure and
merriment, feels the day at first hanging
heavy on him; his difficulties oppress, and
his doubts distract him; he sees time come
and go without his wonted gratification, and
all is sadness within, and solitude about him.
But this uneasiness never lasts long;
necessity produces expedients, new
amusements are discovered, and new
conversation is admitted.
No expectation is more frequently
disappointed, than that which naturally
arises in the mind from the prospect of
meeting an old friend after long separation.
We expect the attraction to be revived, and
the coalition to be renewed; no man
considers how much alteration time has
made in himself, and very few inquire what
effect it has had upon others. The first hour
convinces them that the pleasure which they
have formerly enjoyed, is forever at an end;
different scenes have made different
impressions; the opinions of both are
changed; and that similitude of manners and
sentiment is lost which confirmed them both
in the approbation of themselves.
Friendship is often destroyed by opposition
of interest, not only by the ponderous and
124
visible interest which the desire of wealth
and greatness forms and maintains, but by a
thousand secret and slight competitions,
scarcely known to the mind upon which they
operate. There is scarcely any man without
some favorite trifle which he values above
greater attainments, some desire of petty
praise which he cannot patiently suffer to be
frustrated. This minute ambition is
sometimes crossed before it is known, and
sometimes defeated by wanton petulance;
but such attacks are seldom made without
the loss of friendship; for whoever has once
found the vulnerable part will always be
feared, and the resentment will burn on in
secret, of which shame hinders the
discovery.
This, however, is a slow malignity, which a
wise man will obviate as inconsistent with
quiet, and a good man will repress as
contrary to virtue; but human happiness is
sometimes violated by some more sudden
strokes.
A dispute begun in jest upon a subject which
a moment before was on both parts regarded
with careless indifference, is continued by
the desire of conquest, till vanity kindles
into rage, and opposition rankles into
enmity. Against this hasty mischief, I know
not what security can be obtained; men will
be sometimes surprised into quarrels; and
though they might both haste into
reconciliation, as soon as their tumult had
subsided, yet two minds will seldom be
found together, which can at once subdue
their discontent, or immediately enjoy the
sweets of peace without remembering the
wounds of the conflict.
Friendship has other enemies. Suspicion is
always hardening the cautious, and disgust
repelling the delicate. Very slender
differences will sometimes part those whom
long reciprocation of civility or beneficence
has united. Lonelove and Ranger retired into
the country to enjoy the company of each
other, and returned in six weeks, cold and
petulant; Ranger's pleasure was to walk in
the fields, and Lonelove's to sit in a bower;
each had complied with the other in his turn,
and each was angry that compliance had
been exacted.
The most fatal disease of friendship is
gradual decay, or dislike hourly increased by
causes too slender for complaint, and too
numerous for removal. Those who are angry
may be reconciled; those who have been
injured may receive a recompense: but when
the desire of pleasing and willingness to be
pleased is silently diminished, the
renovation of friendship is hopeless; as,
when the vital powers sink into languor,
there is no longer any use of the physician.
____________________________________
30) A Meditation upon a Broomstick by
Jonathan Swift from
http://www.ourcivilisation.com/smartboar
d/shop/swift/brmstck.htm
This single stick, which you now behold
ingloriously lying in that neglected corner, I
once knew in a flourishing state in a forest.
It was full of sap, full of leaves, and full of
boughs, but now in vain does the busy art of
man pretend to vie with nature by tying that
withered bundle of twigs to its sapless trunk.
It is now at best but the reverse of what it
was: a tree turned upside down, the branches
on the earth, and the root in the air. It is now
handled by every dirty wench, condemned
to do her drudgery, and by a capricious kind
of fate destined to make other things clean
and be nasty itself. At length, worn to the
stumps in the service of the maids, it is
either thrown out of doors or condemned to
its last use of kindling a fire. When I beheld
125
this, I sighed and said within myself, surely
mortal man is a broomstick: nature sent him
into the world strong and lusty, in a thriving
condition, wearing his own hair on his head,
the proper branches of this reasoning
vegetable, until the axe of intemperance has
lopped off his green boughs and left him a
withered trunk; he then flies to art, and puts
on a periwig, valuing himself upon an
unnatural bundle of hairs, all covered with
powder, that never grew on his head. But
now should this our broomstick pretend to
enter the scene, proud of those birchen
spoils it never bore, and all covered with
dust, though the sweepings of the finest
lady's chamber, we should be apt to ridicule
and despise its vanity, partial judges that we
are of our own excellencies and other men's
defaults.
But a broomstick, perhaps, you will say, is
an emblem of a tree standing on its head.
And pray, what is man, but a topsy-turvy
creature, his animal faculties perpetually
mounted on his rational, his head where his
heels should be, groveling on the earth? And
yet with all his faults, he sets up to be a
universal reformer and corrector of abuses, a
remover of grievances; rakes into every
slut's corner of nature, bringing hidden
corruption to the light; and raises a mighty
dust where there was none before, sharing
deeply all the while in the very same
pollutions he pretends to sweep away. His
last days are spent in slavery to women, and
generally the least deserving, till, worn out
to the stumps, like his brother bezom, he is
either kicked out of doors, or made use of to
kindle flames for others to warm themselves
by.
31) “My Wood”
E. M. Forster
A few years ago I wrote a book which dealt
in part with the difficulties of the English in
India. Feeling that they would have had no
difficulties in India themselves, the
Americans read the book freely. The more
they read it the better it made them feel, and
a check to the author was the result. I bought
a wood with the check. It is not a large
wood--it contains scarcely any trees, and it
is intersected, blast it, by a public foot-path.
Still, it is the first property that I have
owned, so it is right that other people should
participate in my shame, and should ask
themselves, in accents that will vary in
horror, this very important question: What is
the effect of property upon the character?
Don't let's touch economics; the effect of
private ownership upon the community as a
whole is another question--a more important
question, perhaps, but another one. Let's
keep to psychology. If you own things,
what's their effect on you? What's the effect
on me of my wood?
In the first place, it makes me feel heavy.
Property does have this effect. Property
produces men of weight, and it was a man of
weight who failed to get into the Kingdom
of Heaven. He was not wicked, that
unfortunate millionaire in the parable, he
was only stout; he stuck out in front, not to
mention behind, and as he wedged himself
this way and that in the crystalline entrance
and bruised his well-fed flanks, he saw
beneath him a comparatively slim camel
passing through the eye of a needle and
being woven into the robe of God. The
Gospels all through couple stoutness and
slowness. They point out what is perfectly
obvious, yet seldom realized: that if you
have a lot of things you cannot move about a
lot, that furniture requires dusting, dusters
require servants, servants require insurance
stamps, and the whole tangle of them makes
you think twice before you accept an
invitation to dinner or go for a bathe in the
126
Jordan. Sometimes the Gospels proceed
further and say with Tolstoy that property is
sinful; they approach the difficult ground of
asceticism here, where I cannot follow them.
But as to the immediate effects of property
on people, they just show straightforward
logic. It produces men of weight. Men of
weight cannot, by definition, move like the
lightning from the East unto the West, and
the ascent of a fourteen-stone bishop into a
pulpit is thus the exact antithesis of the
coming of the Son of Man. My wood makes
me feel heavy.
In the second place, it makes me feel it
ought to be larger.
The other day I heard a twig snap in it. I as
annoyed at first, for I thought that someone
was blackberrying, and depreciating the
value of the undergrowth. On coming
nearer, I saw it was not a man who had
trodden on the twig and snapped it, but a
bird, and I felt pleased. My bird. The bird
was not equally pleased. Ignoring the
relation between us, it took flight as soon as
it saw the shape of my face, and flew
straight over the boundary hedge into a field,
the property of Mrs. Henessy, where it sat
down with a loud squawk. It had become
Mrs. Henessy's bird. Something seemed
grossly amiss here, something that would
not have occurred had the wood been larger.
I could not afford to buy Mrs. Henessy out, I
dared not murder her, and limitations of this
sort beset me on every side. Ahab did not
want that vineyard--he only needed it to
round off his property, preparatory to
plotting a new curve--and all the land
around my wood has become necessary to
me in order to round off the wood. A
boundary protects. But--poor little thing--the
boundary ought in its turn to be protected.
Noises on the edge of it. Children throw
stones. A little more, and then a little more,
until we reach the sea. Happy Canute!
Happier Alexander! And after all, why
should even the world be the limit of
possession? A rocket containing a Union
Jack, will, it is hoped, be shortly fired at the
moon. Mars. Sirius. Beyond which . . . But
these immensities ended by saddening me. I
could not suppose that my wood was the
destined nucleus of universal dominion--it is
so small and contains no mineral wealth
beyond the blackberries. Nor was I
comforted when Mrs. Henessy's bird took
alarm for the second time and flew clean
away from us all, under the belief that it
belonged to itself.
In the third place, property makes its owner
feel that he ought to do something to it. Yet
he isn't sure what. A restlessness comes over
him, a vague sense that he has a personality
to express--the same sense which, without
any vagueness, leads the artist to an act of
creation. Sometimes I think I will cut down
such trees as remain in the wood, at other
times I want to fill up the gaps between
them with new trees. Both impulses are
pretentious and empty. They are not honest
movements towards moneymaking or
beauty. They spring from a foolish desire to
express myself and from an inability to
enjoy what I have got. Creation, property,
enjoyment form a sinister trinity in the
human mind. Creation and enjoyment are
both very, very good, yet they are often
unattainable without a material basis, and at
such moments property pushes itself in as a
substitute, saying, "Accept me instead--I'm
good enough for all three." It is not enough.
It is, as Shakespeare said of lust, "The
expense of spirit in a waste of shame": it is
"Before, a joy proposed; behind, a dream."
Yet we don't know how to shun it. It is
forced on us by our economic system as the
alternative to starvation. It is also forced on
127
us by an internal defect in the soul, by the
feeling that in property may lie the germs of
self-development and of exquisite or heroic
deeds. Our life on earth is, and ought to be,
material and carnal. But we have not yet
learned to manage our materialism and
carnality properly; they are still entangled
with the desire for ownership, where (in the
words of Dante "Possession is one with
loss."
And this brings us to our fourth and final
point: the blackberries.
Blackberries are not plentiful in this meager
grove, but they are easily seen from the
public footpath which traverses it, and all
too easily gathered. Foxgloves, too--people
will pull up the foxgloves, and ladies of an
educational tendency even grub for
toadstools to show them on the Monday in
class. Other ladies, less educated, roll down
the bracken in the arms of their gentlemen
friends. There is paper, there are tins. Pray,
does my wood belong to me or doesn't it?
And, if it does, should I not own it best by
allowing no one else to walk there? There is
a wood near Lyme Regis, also cursed by a
public footpath, where the owner has not
hesitated on this point. He has built high
stone walls each side of the path, and has
spanned it by bridges, so that the public
circulate like termites while he gorges on the
blackberries unseen. He really does own his
wood, this able chap. Dives in Hell did
pretty well, but the gulf dividing him from
Lazarus shall come to this in time. I shall
wall in and fence out until I really taste the
sweets of property. Enormously stout,
endlessly avaricious, pseudo-creative,
intensely selfish, I shall weave upon my
forehead the quadruple crown of possession
until those nasty Bolshies come and take it
off again and thrust me aside into the outer
darkness. (1926)
First published in 1926, E.M. Forster's "My
Wood" appears in the collection Abinger
Harvest (1936, reprinted in 1996 by Andre
Deutsch Ltd.).
____________________________________
32) “On the Feeling of Immortality in
Youth”
William Hazlitt
No young man believes he shall ever die. It
was a saying of my brother's, and a fine one.
There is a feeling of Eternity in youth which
makes us amends for every thing. To be
young is to be as one of the Immortals. One
half of time indeed is spent--the other half
remains in store for us with all its countless
treasures, for there is no line drawn and we
see no limit to our hopes and wishes. We
make the coming age our own-"The vast, the unbounded prospect lies
before us."
Death, old age, are words without a
meaning, a dream, a fiction, with which we
have nothing to do. Others may have
undergone, or may still undergo them--we
"bear a charmed life," which laughs to scorn
all such idle fancies. As, in setting out on a
delightful journey, we strain our eager sight
forward,
"Bidding the lovely scenes at distance hail,"
and see no end to prospect after prospect,
new objects presenting themselves as we
advance, so in the outset of life we see no
end to our desires nor to the opportunities of
gratifying them. We have as yet found no
obstacle, no disposition to flag, and it seems
that we can go on so for ever. We look
round in a new world, full of life and
motion, and ceaseless progress, and feel in
ourselves all the vigor and spirit to keep
pace with it, and do not foresee from any
present signs how we shall be left behind in
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the race, decline into old age, and drop into
the grave. It is the simplicity and, as it were,
abstractedness of our feelings in youth that
(so to speak) identifies us with nature and
(our experience being weak and our passions
strong) makes us fancy ourselves immortal
like it. Our short-lived connection with
being, we fondly flatter ourselves, is an
indissoluble and lasting union--a honeymoon that knows neither coldness, jar, nor
separation. As infants smile and sleep, we
are rocked in the cradle of our desires, and
hushed into fancied security by the roar of
the universe around us--we quaff the cup of
life with eager thirst without draining it, and
joy and hope seem ever mantling to the
brim--objects press around us, filling the
mind with their magnitude and with the
throng of desires that wait upon them, so
that there is no room for the thoughts of
death. We are too much dazzled by the
gorgeousness and novelty of the bright
waking dream about us to discern the dim
shadow lingering for us in the distance. Nor
would the hold that life has taken of us
permit us to detach our thoughts that way,
even if we could. We are too much absorbed
in present objects and pursuits. While the
spirit of youth remains unimpaired, ere "the
wine of life is drunk," we are like people
intoxicated or in a fever, who are hurried
away by the violence of their own
sensations: it is only as present objects begin
to pall upon the sense, as we have been
disappointed in our favorite pursuits, cut off
from our closest ties, that we by degrees
become weaned from the world, that passion
loosens its hold upon futurity, and that we
begin to contemplate as in a glass darkly the
possibility of parting with it for good. Till
then, the example of others has no effect
upon us. Casualties we avoid; the slow
approaches of age we play at hide and seek
with. Like the foolish fat scullion in Sterne,
who hears that Master Bobby is dead, our
only reflection is, "So am not I!" The idea of
death, instead of staggering our confidence,
only seems to strengthen and enhance our
sense of the possession and our enjoyment
of life. Others may fall around us like
leaves, or be mowed down by the scythe of
Time like grass: these are but metaphors to
the unreflecting buoyant ears and
overweening presumption of youth. It is not
till we see the flowers of Love, Hope, and
Joy withering around us, that we give up the
flattering delusions that before led us on,
and that the emptiness and dreariness of the
prospect before us reconciles us
hypothetically to the silence of the grave.
Life is indeed a strange gift, and its
privileges are most mysterious. No wonder
when it is first granted to us, that our
gratitude, our admiration, and our delight
should prevent us from reflecting on our
own nothingness, or from thinking it will
ever be recalled. Our first and strongest
impressions are borrowed from the mighty
scene that is opened to us, and we
unconsciously transfer its durability as well
as its splendor to ourselves. So newly found,
we cannot think of parting with it yet, or at
least put off that consideration sine die. Like
a rustic at a fair, we are full of amazement
and rapture, and have no thought of going
home, or that it will soon be night. We know
our existence only by ourselves, and
confound our knowledge with the objects of
it. We and Nature are therefore one.
Otherwise the illusion, the "feast of reason
and the flow of soul," to which we are
invited, is a mockery and a cruel insult. We
do not go from a play till the last act is
ended, and the lights are about to be
extinguished. But the fairy face of nature
still shines on: shall we be called away
before the curtain falls, or ere we have
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scarce had a glimpse of what is going on?
Like children, our step-mother Nature holds
us up to see the raree-show of the universe,
and then, as if we were a burden to her to
support, lets us fall down again. Yet what
brave sublunary things does not this pageant
present, like a ball or fete of the universe!
To see the golden sun, the azure sky, the
outstretched ocean; to walk upon the green
earth, and be lord of a thousand creatures; to
look down yawning precipices or over
distant sunny vales; to see the world spread
out under one's feet on a map; to bring the
stars near; to view the smallest insects
through a microscope; to read history, and
consider the revolutions of empire and the
successions of generations; to hear the glory
of Tyre, of Sidon, of Babylon, and of Susa,
and to say all these were before me and are
now nothing; to say I exist in such a point of
time, and in such a point of space; to be a
spectator and a part of its ever moving
scene; to witness the change of seasons, of
spring and autumn, of winter and summer;
to feel hot and cold, pleasure and pain,
beauty and deformity, right and wrong; to be
sensible to the accidents of nature; to
consider the mighty world of eye and ear; to
listen to the stock-dove's notes amid the
forest deep; to journey over moor and
mountain; to hear the midnight sainted
choir; to visit lighted halls, or the cathedral's
gloom, or sit in crowded theatres and see life
itself mocked; to study the works of art and
refine the sense of beauty to agony; to
worship fame, and to dream of immortality;
to look upon the Vatican, and to read
Shakespeare; to gather up the wisdom of the
ancients, and to pry into the future; to listen
to the trump of war, the shout of victory; to
question history as to the movements of the
human heart; to seek for truth; to plead the
cause of humanity; to overlook the world as
if time and nature poured their treasures at
our feet--to be and to do all this and then in
a moment to be nothing--to have it all
snatched from us as by a juggler's trick, or a
phantasmagoria! There is something in this
transition from all to nothing that shocks us
and damps the enthusiasm of youth new
flushed with hope and pleasure, and we cast
the comfortless thought as far from us as we
can. In the first enjoyment of the estate of
life we discard the fear of debts and duns,
and never think of that final payment of our
great debt to nature. Art we know is long;
life, we flatter ourselves, should be so too.
We see no end of the difficulties and delays
we have to encounter: perfection is slow of
attainment, and we must have time to
accomplish it in. The fame of the great
names we look up to is immortal; and shall
not we who contemplate it imbibe a portion
of the ethereal fire, the divina particula
aura, which nothing can extinguish? A
wrinkle in Rembrandt or in nature takes
whole days to resolve itself into its
component parts, its softenings and its
sharpnesses; we refine upon our perfections,
and unfold the intricacies of nature. What a
prospect for the future! What a task have we
not begun! And shall we be arrested in the
middle of it? We do not count our time thus
employed lost, or our pains thrown away;
we do not flag or grow tired, but gain new
vigor at our endless task. Shall Time, then,
grudge us to finish what we have begun, and
have formed a compact with Nature to do?
Why not fill up the blank that is left us in
this manner? I have looked for hours at a
Rembrandt without being conscious of the
flight of time, but with ever new wonder and
delight, have thought that not only my own
but another existence I could pass in the
same manner. This rarefied, refined
existence seemed to have no end, nor stint,
no principle of decay in it. The print would
130
remain long after I who looked on it had
become the prey of worms. The thing seems
in itself out of all reason: health, strength,
appetite are opposed to the idea of death,
and we are not ready to credit it till we have
found our illusions vanished, and our hopes
grown cold. Objects in youth, from novelty,
etc., are stamped upon the brain with such
force and integrity that one thinks nothing
can remove or obliterate them. They are
riveted there, and appear to us as an element
of our nature. It must be a mere violence that
destroys them, not a natural decay. In the
very strength of this persuasion we seem to
enjoy an age by anticipation. We melt down
years into a single moment of intense
sympathy, and by anticipating the fruits defy
the ravages of time. If, then, a single
moment of our lives is worth years, shall we
set any limits to its total value and extent?
Again, does it not happen that so secure do
we think ourselves of an indefinite period of
existence, that at times, when left to
ourselves, and impatient of novelty, we feel
annoyed at what seems to us the slow and
creeping progress of time, and argue that if
it always moves at this tedious snail's pace it
will never come to an end? How ready are
we to sacrifice any space of time which
separates us from a favorite object, little
thinking that before long we shall find it
move too fast.
For my part I started in life with the French
Revolution, and I have lived, alas! to see the
end of it. But I did not foresee this result.
My sun arose with the first dawn of liberty,
and I did not think how soon both must set.
The new impulse to ardor given to men's
minds imparted a congenial warmth and
glow to mine; we were strong to run a race
together, and I little dreamed that long
before mine was set, the sun of liberty
would turn to blood, or set once more in the
night of despotism. Since then, I confess, I
have no longer felt myself young, for with
that my hopes fell.
I have since turned my thoughts to gathering
up some of the fragments of my early
recollections, and putting them into a form
to which I might occasionally revert. The
future was barred to my progress, and I
turned for consolation and encouragement to
the past. It is thus that while we find our
personal and substantial identity vanishing
for us, we strive to gain a reflected and
vicarious one in our thoughts: we do not like
to perish wholly, and wish to bequeath our
names, at least, to posterity. As long as we
can make our cherished thoughts and nearest
interests live in the minds of others, we do
not appear to have retired altogether from
the stage. We still occupy the breasts of
others, and exert an influence on power over
them, and it is only our bodies that are
reduced to dust and powder. Our favorite
speculations still find encouragement, and
we make as great a figure in the eye of the
world, or perhaps a greater than in our
lifetime. The demands of our self-love are
thus satisfied, and these are the most
imperious and unremitting. Besides, if by
our intellectual superiority we survive
ourselves in this world, by our virtues and
faith we may attain an interest in another,
and a higher state of being, and may thus be
recipients at the same time of men and of
angels.
"E'en from the tomb of the voice of Nature
cries,
E'en in our ashes live their wonted fires."
As we grow old, our sense of the value of
time becomes vivid. Nothing else, indeed,
seems of any consequence. We can never
cease wondering that that which has ever
been should cease to be. We find many
131
things remain the same: why then should
there be change in us? This adds a
convulsive grasp of whatever is, a sense of
fallacious hollowness in all we see. Instead
of the full, pulpy feeling of youth tasting
existence and every object in it, all is flat
and vapid,--a whited sepulchre, fair without
but full of ravening and uncleanness within.
The world is a witch that puts us off with
false shows and appearances. The simplicity
of youth, the confiding expectation, the
boundless raptures, are gone: we only think
of getting out of it as well as we can, and
without any great mischance or annoyance.
The flush of illusion, even the complacent
retrospect of past joys and hopes, is over: if
we can slip out of life without indignity, and
escape with little bodily infirmity, and frame
our minds in the calm and respectable
composure of still-life before we return to
absolute nothingness, it is as much as we
can expect. We do not die wholly at our
deaths: we have mouldered away gradually
long before. Faculty after faculty, interest
after interest, attachment after attachment
disappear: we are torn from ourselves while
living, year after year sees us no longer the
same, and death only consigns the last
fragment of what we were to the grave. That
we should wear out by slow stages, and
dwindle at last into nothing, is not
wonderful, when even in our prime our
strongest impressions leave little trace but
for the moment and we are the creatures of
petty circumstance. How little effect is made
on us in our best days by the books we have
read, the scenes we have witnessed, the
sensations we have gone through! Think
only of the feelings we experience in
reading a fine romance (one of Sir Walter's,
for instance); what beauty, what sublimity,
what interest, what heart-rending emotions!
You would suppose the feelings you then
experience would last for ever, or subdue the
mind to their own harmony and tone: while
we are reading it seems as if nothing could
ever put us out of our way, or trouble us:-the first splash of mud that we get on
entering the street, the first twopence we are
cheated out of, the feeling vanishes clean out
of our minds, and we become the prey of
petty and annoying circumstance. The mind
soars to the lofty: it is at home in the
grovelling, the disagreeable and the little.
And yet we wonder that age should be
feeble and querulous,--that the freshness of
youth should fade away. Both worlds, would
hardly satisfy the extravagance of our
desires and of our presumption.
William Hazlitt's "On The Feeling of
Immortality in Youth" was first published in
the March 1827 issue of Monthly Magazine.
This version of the essay has been reprinted
from the first American edition of Literary
Remains of the Late William Hazlitt
(Saunders and Otley, 1836).
33) ‘Why Are Beggars Despised?” by
George Orwell from
http://grammar.about.com/od/classicessay
s/a/beggarsorwell.htm
It is worth saying something about the social
position of beggars, for when one has
consorted with them, and found that they are
ordinary human beings, one cannot help
being struck by the curious attitude that
society takes towards them. People seem to
feel that there is some essential difference
between beggars and ordinary "working"
men. They are a race apart--outcasts, like
criminals and prostitutes. Working men
"work," beggars do not "work"; they are
parasites, worthless in their very nature. It is
taken for granted that a beggar does not
"earn" his living, as a bricklayer or a literary
critic "earns" his. He is a mere social
132
excrescence, tolerated because we live in a
humane age, but essentially despicable.
Yet if one looks closely one sees that there
is no essential difference between a beggar's
livelihood and that of numberless
respectable people. Beggars do not work, it
is said; but, then, what is work? A navvy
works by swinging a pick. An accountant
works by adding up figures. A beggar works
by standing out of doors in all weathers and
getting varicose veins, chronic bronchitis,
etc. It is a trade like any other; quite useless,
of course--but, then, many reputable trades
are quite useless. And as a social type a
beggar compares well with scores of others.
He is honest compared with the sellers of
most patent medicines, high-minded
compared with a Sunday newspaper
proprietor, amiable compared with a hirepurchase tout--in short, a parasite, but a
fairly harmless parasite. He seldom extracts
more than a bare living from the community,
and, what should justify him according to
our ethical ideas, he pays for it over and
over in suffering. I do not think there is
anything about a beggar that sets him in a
different class from other people, or gives
most modern men the right to despise him.
Then the question arises, Why are beggars
despised?--for they are despised,
universally. I believe it is for the simple
reason that they fail to earn a decent living.
In practice nobody cares whether work is
useful or useless, productive or parasitic; the
sole thing demanded is that it shall be
profitable. In all the modem talk about
energy, efficiency, social service and the rest
of it, what meaning is there except "Get
money, get it legally, and get a lot of it"?
Money has become the grand test of virtue.
By this test beggars fail, and for this they are
despised. If one could earn even ten pounds
a week at begging, it would become a
respectable profession immediately. A
beggar, looked at realistically, is simply a
businessman, getting his living, like other
businessmen, in the way that comes to hand.
He has not, more than most modern people,
sold his honor; he has merely made the
mistake of choosing a trade at which it is
impossible to grow rich. (1933)
____________________________________
34) Battle of the Babies
Agnes Repplier
A warfare has been raging in our midst, the
echoes of which have hardly yet died
sullenly away upon either side of the
Atlantic. It has been a bloodless and unHomeric strife, not without humorous sideissues, as when Pistol and Bardolph and
Fluellen come to cheer our anxious spirits at
the siege of Harfleur. Its first guns were
heard in New York, where a modest
periodical, devoted to the training of parents,
opened fire upon those time-honored
nursery legends which are presumably dear
to the hearts of all rightly constituted babies.
The leader of this gallant foray protested
vehemently against all fairy tales of a
mournful or sanguinary cast, and her
denunciation necessarily included many
stories which have for generations been
familiar to every little child. She rejected
Red Riding Hood, because her own infancy
was haunted and embittered by the evil
behavior of the wolf; she would have none
of Bluebeard, because he was a wholesale
fiend and murderer; she would not even
allow the pretty Babes in the Wood, because
they tell a tale of cold-hearted cruelty and of
helpless suffering; while all fierce narratives
of giants and ogres and magicians were to be
banished ruthlessly from our shelves. Verily,
reading will be but gentle sport in the
virtuous days to come.
133
Now it chanced that this serious protest
against nursery lore fell into the hands of
Mr. Andrew Lang, the most light-hearted
and conservative of critics, and partial
withal to tales of bloodshed and adventure.
How could it be otherwise with one reared
on the bleak border land, and familiar from
infancy with the wild border legends that Sir
Walter knew and loved; with stories of
Thomas the Rhymer, and the plundering
Hardens, and the black witches of Loch
Awe! It was natural that with the echoes of
the old savage strife ringing in his ears, and
with the memories of the dour Scottish
bogies and warlocks lingering in his heart,
Mr. Lang could but indifferently sympathize
with those anxious parents who think the
stories of Bluebeard and Jack the Giant
Killer too shocking for infant ears to hear.
Our grandmothers, he declared, were not
ferocious old ladies, yet they told us these
tales, and many more which were none the
worse for hearing. "Not to know them is to
be sadly ignorant, and to miss that which all
people have relished in all ages." Moreover,
it is apparent to him, and indeed to most of
us, that we cannot take even our earliest
steps in the world of literature, or in the
shaded paths of knowledge, without
encountering suffering and sin in some
shape; while, as we advance a little further,
these grisly forms fly ever on before.
"Cain," remarks Mr. Lang, "killed Abel. The
flood drowned quite a number of persons.
David was not a stainless knight, and Henry
VIII was nearly as bad as Bluebeard. Several
deserving gentlemen were killed at
Marathon. Front de Boeuf came to an end
shocking to sensibility, and to Mr. Ruskin."
The Arabian Nights, Pilgrim’s Progress,
Paul and Virginia--all the dear old nursery
favorites must, under the new dispensation,
be banished from our midst; and the rising
generation of prigs must be nourished
exclusively on Little Lord Fauntleroy, and
other carefully selected specimens of milkand-water diet.
The prospect hardly seems inviting; but as
the English guns rattled merrily away in
behalf of English tradition, they were
promptly met by an answering roar from this
side of the water. A Boston paper rushed
gallantly to the defense of the New York
periodical, and gave Mr. Lang--to use a pet
expression of his own--"his kail through the
reek." American children, it appears, are too
sensitively organized to endure the
unredeemed ferocity of the old fairy stories.
The British child may sleep soundly in its
little cot after hearing about the Babes in the
Wood; the American infant is prematurely
saddened by such unmerited misfortune. "If
a consensus of American mothers could be
taken," says the Boston writer, "our English
critic might be infinitely disgusted to know
in how many nurseries these cruel tales must
be changed, or not told at all to the children
of less savage generations. No mother
nowadays tells them in their unmitigated
brutality."
Is this true, I wonder, and are our
supersensitive babies reared perforce on the
optimistic version of Red Riding Hood,
where the wolf is cut open by the woodman,
and the little girl and her grandmother jump
out, safe and sound? Their New England
champion speaks of the "intolerable
misery"--a very strong phrase--which he
suffered in infancy from having his nurse
tell him of the Babes in the Wood; while the
Scriptural stories were apparently every whit
as unbearable and heart-breaking. "I
remember," he says, "two children, strong,
brave man and woman now, who in
righteous rage plucked the Slaughter of the
Innocents out from the family Bible." This
was a radical measure, to say the least, and
134
if many little boys and girls started in to
expurgate the Scriptures in such liberal
fashion, the holy book would soon present a
sadly mutilated appearance.
He would have at least some dim and
imperfect conception of the spiritual
meaning, the spiritual joy, which underlie
the pain and horror of the story.
Moreover, it seems to me that such an
anecdote, narrated with admirable assurance,
reveals very painfully the lack of a fine and
delicate spirituality in the religious training
of children; of that grace and distinction
which are akin to saintship, and are united
so charmingly in those to whom truth has
been inseparably associated with beauty.
There is a painting by Ghirlandaio hanging
over the altar in the chapel of the Foundling
Asylum in Florence. It represents the
Adoration of the Magi, and kneeling by the
side of the Wise Men is a little group of the
Holy Innocents, their tiny garments stained
with blood, their hands clasped in prayer;
while the Divine Child turns from his
mother’s embraces, and from the kings’ rich
gifts to greet the little companions who have
yielded up their spotless lives for him. Now,
surely those lean, brown Florentine orphans,
who have always before their eyes this
beautiful and tender picture, absorb through
it alone a religious sentiment unfelt by
American children who are familiar only
with the ugly and inane prints of American
Sunday-schools, in which I have known the
line, "My soul doth magnify the Lord," to be
illustrated by a man with a magnifying-glass
in his hand. Possibly our Sunday-school
scholars, being more accurately instructed as
to dates, could inform the little Florentines
that the Innocents were not slaughtered until
after the Magi had returned to the East. But
no child who had looked day after day upon
Ghirlandaio’s lovely picture--more
appealing in its pathos than Holman Hunt’s
brilliant and jocund Triumph of the
Innocents--could desire to pluck "in
righteous rage" that chapter from the Bible.
This reflection will help us in some measure
to come to a decision, when we return to the
vexed problem of nursery tales and legends.
I believe it is as well to cultivate a child’s
emotions as to cultivate his manners or his
morals, and the first step in such a direction
is necessarily taken through the stories told
him in infancy. If a consensus of mothers
would reject the good old fairy tales "in their
unmitigated brutality," a consensus of men
of letters would render a different verdict;
and such men, who have been children in
their time, and who look back with wistful
delight upon the familiar figures who were
their earliest friends, are entitled to an
opinion in the case. How admirable was the
"righteous rage" of Charles Lamb, when he
wanted to buy some of these same brutal
fairy stories for the little Coleridges, and
could find nothing but the correct and
commonplace literature which his whole
soul abhorred! "Mrs. Barbauld’s and Mrs.
Trimmer’s nonsense lay in piles about," he
wrote indignantly to papa Coleridge, "and
have banished all the old classics of the
nursery. Knowledge, insignificant and vapid
as Mrs. Barbauld’s books convey, must, it
seems, come to a child in the shape of
knowledge; and his empty noddle must be
turned with conceit of his own powers when
he has learnt that a horse is an animal, and
that Billy is better than a horse, and such
like; instead of that beautiful interest in wild
tales which made the child a man, while all
the time he suspected himself to be no
bigger than a child."
Just such a wild tale, fantastic rather than
beautiful, haunted Chateaubriand all his life-the story of Count Combourg’s wooden leg,
135
which, three hundred years after its owner’s
death, was seen at night walking solemnly
down the steep turret stairs, attended by a
huge black cat. Not at all the kind of story
we would select to tell a child nowadays. By
no means! Even the little Chateaubriand
heard it from peasant lips. Yet in after years,
when he had fought the battle of life, and
fought it with success; when he had grown
gray, and illustrious, and disillusioned, and
melancholy, what should come back to his
mind, with its old pleasant flavor of terror
and mystery, but the vision of Count
Combourg’s wooden leg taking its midnight
constitutional, with the black cat stepping
softly on before? So he notes it gravely
down in his Memoirs, just as Scott notes in
his diary the pranks of Whippity Stourie, the
Scotch bogie that steals at night into open
nursery windows; and just as Heine, in gay,
sunlit Paris, recalls with joy the dark, sweet,
sombre tales of the witch and fairy haunted
forests of Germany.
These are impressions worth recording, and
they are only a few out of many which may
be gathered from similar sources. That
which is vital in literature or tradition, which
has survived the obscurity and wreckage of
the past, whether as legend, or ballad, or
mere nursery rhyme, has survived in right of
some intrinsic merit of its own, and will not
be snuffed out of existence by any of our
precautionary or hygienic measures. We
could not banish Bluebeard if we would. He
is as immortal as Hamlet, and when
hundreds of years shall have passed over
this uncomfortably enlightened world, the
children of the future--who, thank Heaven,
can never, with all our efforts, be born
grown up--will still tremble at the bloodstained key, and rejoice when the big brave
brothers come galloping up the road.
We could not even rid ourselves of Mother
Goose, though she, too, has her mortal
enemies, who protest periodically against
her cruelty and grossness. We could not
drive Punch and Judy from our midst,
though Mr. Punch’s derelictions have been
the subject of much serious and adverse
criticism. It is not by such barbarous rhymes
or by such brutal spectacles that we teach a
child the lessons of integrity and gentleness,
explain our nursery moralists, and probably
they are correct. Moreover, Bluebeard does
not teach a lesson of conjugal felicity, and
Cinderella is full of the world’s vanities, and
Puss in Boots is one long record of
triumphant effrontery and deception. An
honest and self-respecting lad would have
explained to the king that he was not the
Marquis of Carabas at all; that he had no
desire to profit by his cat’s ingenious
falsehoods, and no weak ambition to
connect himself with the aristocracy. Such a
hero would be a credit to our modern
schoolrooms, and lift a load of care from the
shoulders of our modern critics. Only the
children would have none of him, but would
turn wistfully back to those brave old tales
which are their inheritance from a splendid
past, and of which no hand shall rob them.
"Battle of the Babies" was first published in
Essays in Miniature, by Agnes Repplier
(Charles L. Webster & Co., 1892)
____________________________________
34) The Penalty of Death (1926)
H.L. Mencken
Of the arguments against capital punishment
that issue from uplifters, two are commonly
heard most often, to wit:
That hanging a man (or frying him or
gassing him) is a dreadful business,
136
degrading to those who have to do it and
revolting to those who have to witness it.
That it is useless, for it does not deter others
from the same crime.
The first of these arguments, it seems to me,
is plainly too weak to need serious
refutation. All it says, in brief, is that the
work of the hangman is unpleasant. Granted.
But suppose it is? It may be quite necessary
to society for all that. There are, indeed,
many other jobs that are unpleasant, and yet
no one thinks of abolishing them--that of the
plumber, that of the soldier, that of the
garbage-man, that of the priest hearing
confessions, that of the sand-hog, and so on.
Moreover, what evidence is there that any
actual hangman complains of his work? I
have heard none. On the contrary, I have
known many who delighted in their ancient
art, and practiced it proudly.
In the second argument of the abolitionists
there is rather more force, but even here, I
believe, the ground under them is shaky.
Their fundamental error consists in
assuming that the whole aim of punishing
criminals is to deter other (potential)
criminals--that we hang or electrocute A
simply in order to so alarm B that he will not
kill C. This, I believe, is an assumption
which confuses a part with the whole.
Deterrence, obviously, is one of the aims of
punishment, but it is surely not the only one.
On the contrary, there are at least half a
dozen, and some are probably quite as
important. At least one of them, practically
considered, is more important. Commonly, it
is described as revenge, but revenge is really
not the word for it. I borrow a better term
from the late Aristotle: katharsis. Katharsis,
so used, means a salubrious discharge of
emotions, a healthy letting off of steam. A
school-boy, disliking his teacher, deposits a
tack upon the pedagogical chair; the teacher
jumps and the boy laughs. This is katharsis.
What I contend is that one of the prime
objects of all judicial punishments is to
afford the same grateful relief (a) to the
immediate victims of the criminal punished,
and (b) to the general body of moral and
timorous men.
These persons, and particularly the first
group, are concerned only indirectly with
deterring other criminals. The thing they
crave primarily is the satisfaction of seeing
the criminal actually before them suffer as
he made them suffer. What they want is the
peace of mind that goes with the feeling that
accounts are squared. Until they get that
satisfaction they are in a state of emotional
tension, and hence unhappy. The instant
they get it they are comfortable. I do not
argue that this yearning is noble; I simply
argue that it is almost universal among
human beings. In the face of injuries that are
unimportant and can be borne without
damage it may yield to higher impulses; that
is to say, it may yield to what is called
Christian charity. But when the injury is
serious Christianity is adjourned, and even
saints reach for their sidearms. It is plainly
asking too much of human nature to expect
it to conquer so natural an impulse. A keeps
a store and has a bookkeeper, B. B steals
$700, employs it in playing at dice or bingo,
and is cleaned out. What is A to do? Let B
go? If he does so he will be unable to sleep
at night. The sense of injury, of injustice, of
frustration will haunt him like pruritus. So
he turns B over to the police, and they hustle
B to prison. Thereafter A can sleep. More,
he has pleasant dreams. He pictures B
chained to the wall of a dungeon a hundred
feet underground, devoured by rats and
scorpions. It is so agreeable that it makes
137
him forget his $700. He has got his
katharsis.
The same thing precisely takes place on a
larger scale when there is a crime which
destroys a whole community’s sense of
security. Every law-abiding citizen feels
menaced and frustrated until the criminals
have been struck down--until the communal
capacity to get even with them, and more
than even, has been dramatically
demonstrated. Here, manifestly, the business
of deterring others is no more than an
afterthought. The main thing is to destroy
the concrete scoundrels whose act has
alarmed everyone, and thus made everyone
unhappy. Until they are brought to book that
unhappiness continues; when the law has
been executed upon them there is a sigh of
relief. In other words, there is katharsis.
I know of no public demand for the death
penalty for ordinary crimes, even for
ordinary homicides. Its infliction would
shock all men of normal decency of feeling.
But for crimes involving the deliberate and
inexcusable taking of human life, by men
openly defiant of all civilized order--for
such crimes it seems, to nine men out of ten,
a just and proper punishment. Any lesser
penalty leaves them feeling that the criminal
has got the better of society--that he is free
to add insult to injury by laughing. That
feeling can be dissipated only by a recourse
to katharsis, the invention of the aforesaid
Aristotle. It is more effectively and
economically achieved, as human nature
now is, by wafting the criminal to realms of
bliss.
The real objection to capital punishment
doesn’t lie against the actual extermination
of the condemned, but against our brutal
American habit of putting it off so long.
After all, every one of us must die soon or
late, and a murderer, it must be assumed, is
one who makes that sad fact the cornerstone
of his metaphysic. But it is one thing to die,
and quite another thing to lie for long
months and even years under the shadow of
death. No sane man would choose such a
finish. All of us, despite the Prayer Book,
long for a swift and unexpected end.
Unhappily, a murderer, under the irrational
American system, is tortured for what, to
him, must seem a whole series of eternities.
For months on end he sits in prison while his
lawyers carry on their idiotic buffoonery
with writs, injunctions, mandamuses, and
appeals. In order to get his money (or that of
his friends) they have to feed him with hope.
Now and then, by the imbecility of a judge
or some trick of juridic science, they
actually justify it. But let us say that, his
money all gone, they finally throw up their
hands. Their client is now ready for the rope
or the chair. But he must still wait for
months before it fetches him.
That wait, I believe, is horribly cruel. I have
seen more than one man sitting in the deathhouse, and I don’t want to see any more.
Worse, it is wholly useless. Why should he
wait at all? Why not hang him the day after
the last court dissipates his last hope? Why
torture him as not even cannibals would
torture their victims? The common answer is
that he must have time to make his peace
with God. But how long does that take? It
may be accomplished, I believe, in two
hours quite as comfortably as in two years.
There are, indeed, no temporal limitations
upon God. He could forgive a whole herd of
murderers in a millionth of a second. More,
it has been done.
"The Penalty of Death" was first published
in Prejudices: Fifth Series by H.L. Mencken,
1926.
138
____________________________________
35) THINKERS ANONYMOUS
Do You Think Too Much?
It started out innocently enough. I began to
think at parties now and then to loosen up.
Inevitably though, one thought led to
another, and soon I was more than just a
social thinker.
I began to think alone - "to relax," I told
myself - but I knew it wasn't true. Thinking
became more and more important to me, and
finally I was thinking all the time.
I began to think on the job. I knew that
thinking and employment don't mix, but I
couldn't stop myself.
I began to avoid friends at lunchtime so I
could read Thoreau and Kafka. I would
return to the office dizzied and confused,
asking, "What is it exactly we are doing
here?"
Things weren't going so great at home
either. One evening I had turned off the TV
and asked my wife about the meaning of
life. She spent that night at her mother's.
I soon had a reputation as a heavy thinker.
One day the boss called me in. He said,
"Skippy, I like you, and it hurts me to say
this, but your thinking has become a real
problem. If you don't stop thinking on the
job, you'll have to find another job." This
gave me a lot to think about.
I came home early after my conversation
with the boss. "Honey," I confessed, "I've
been thinking..."
"It is serious," she said, lower lip aquiver.
"You think as much as college professors,
and college professors don't make any
money, so if you keep on thinking we won't
have any money!"
"That's a faulty syllogism," I said
impatiently, and she began to cry. I'd had
enough. "I'm going to the library," I snarled
as I stomped out the door.
I headed for the library, in the mood for
some Nietzsche, with a PBS station on the
radio. I roared into the parking lot and ran
up to the big glass doors... they didn't open.
The library was closed.
To this day, I believe that a Higher Power
was looking out for me that night.
As I sank to the ground clawing at the
unfeeling glass, whimpering for Zarathustra,
a poster caught my eye. "Friend, is heavy
thinking ruining your life?" it asked. You
probably recognize that line. It comes from
the standard Thinker's Anonymous poster.
Which is why I am what I am today: a
recovering thinker. I never miss a TA
meeting. At each meeting we watch a noneducational video; last week it was
"Porky's." Then we share experiences about
how we avoided thinking since the last
meeting.
I still have my job, and things are a lot better
at home. Life just seemed... easier,
somehow, as soon as I stopped thinking.
Unknown Author
[ http://www.thejaywalker.com ]
"I know you've been thinking," she said,
"and I want a divorce!"
"But Honey, surely it's not that serious."
139
36) Gil Scott-Heron's “Revolution Will Not
Be Televised" from
http://www.gilscottheron.com/lyrevol.html
You will not be able to stay home, brother.
You will not be able to plug in, turn on and cop
out.
You will not be able to lose yourself on skag and
skip,
Skip out for beer during commercials,
Because the revolution will not be televised.
The revolution will not be televised.
The revolution will not be brought to you by
Xerox
In 4 parts without commercial interruptions.
The revolution will not show you pictures of
Nixon
blowing a bugle and leading a charge by John
Mitchell, General Abrams and Spiro Agnew to
eat
hog maws confiscated from a Harlem sanctuary.
The revolution will not be televised.
The revolution will not be brought to you by the
Schaefer Award Theatre and will not star Natalie
Woods and Steve McQueen or Bullwinkle and
Julia.
The revolution will not give your mouth sex
appeal.
The revolution will not get rid of the nubs.
The revolution will not make you look five
pounds
thinner, because the revolution will not be
televised, Brother.
There will be no pictures of you and Willie May
pushing that shopping cart down the block on
the dead run,
or trying to slide that color television into a
stolen ambulance.
NBC will not be able predict the winner at 8:32
or report from 29 districts.
The revolution will not be televised.
There will be no pictures of pigs shooting down
brothers in the instant replay.
There will be no pictures of pigs shooting down
brothers in the instant replay.
There will be no pictures of Whitney Young
being
run out of Harlem on a rail with a brand new
process.
There will be no slow motion or still life of Roy
Wilkens strolling through Watts in a Red, Black
and
Green liberation jumpsuit that he had been
saving
For just the proper occasion.
Green Acres, The Beverly Hillbillies, and
Hooterville
Junction will no longer be so damned relevant,
and
women will not care if Dick finally gets down
with
Jane on Search for Tomorrow because Black
people
will be in the street looking for a brighter day.
The revolution will not be televised.
There will be no highlights on the eleven o'clock
news and no pictures of hairy armed women
liberationists and Jackie Onassis blowing her
nose.
The theme song will not be written by Jim
Webb,
Francis Scott Key, nor sung by Glen Campbell,
Tom
Jones, Johnny Cash, Englebert Humperdink, or
the Rare Earth.
The revolution will not be televised. The
revolution will not be right back after a message
bbout a white tornado, white lightning, or white
people.
You will not have to worry about a dove in your
bedroom, a tiger in your tank, or the giant in
your toilet bowl.
The revolution will not go better with Coke.
The revolution will not fight the germs that may
cause bad breath.
The revolution will put you in the driver's seat.
The revolution will not be televised, will not be
televised,
will not be televised, will not be televised.
The revolution will be no re-run brothers;
The revolution will be live.
140
_______________________________________
37) THE WONDERFUL TAR BABY
STORY from
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~ug97/remus/tarbaby.html
"Didn't the fox never catch the rabbit, Uncle
Remus?" asked the little boy the next evening.
"He come mighty nigh it, honey, sho's you born-Brer Fox did. One day atter Brer Rabbit fool 'im
wid dat calamus root, Brer Fox went ter wuk en
got 'im some tar, en mix it wid some turkentime,
en fix up a contrapshun w'at he call a Tar-Baby,
en he tuck dish yer Tar-Baby en he sot 'er in de
big road, en den he lay off in de bushes fer to see
what de news wuz gwine ter be. En he didn't
hatter wait long, nudder, kaze bimeby here come
Brer Rabbit pacin' down de road--lippityclippity, clippity -lippity--dez ez sassy ez a jaybird. Brer Fox, he lay low. Brer Rabbit come
prancin' 'long twel he spy de Tar-Baby, en den
he fotch up on his behime legs like he wuz
'stonished. De Tar Baby, she sot dar, she did, en
Brer Fox, he lay low.
"`Mawnin'!' sez Brer Rabbit, sezee - `nice
wedder dis mawnin',' sezee.
"Tar-Baby ain't sayin' nuthin', en Brer Fox he
lay low.
"`How duz yo' sym'tums seem ter segashuate?'
sez Brer Rabbit, sezee.
"Brer Fox, he wink his eye slow, en lay low, en
de Tar-Baby, she ain't sayin' nuthin'.
"'How you come on, den? Is you deaf?' sez Brer
Rabbit, sezee. 'Kaze if you is, I kin holler
louder,' sezee.
"Tar-Baby stay still, en Brer Fox, he lay low.
"'You er stuck up, dat's w'at you is,' says Brer
Rabbit, sezee, 'en I;m gwine ter kyore you, dat's
w'at I'm a gwine ter do,' sezee.
"Brer Fox, he sorter chuckle in his stummick, he
did, but Tar-Baby ain't sayin' nothin'.
"'I'm gwine ter larn you how ter talk ter
'spectubble folks ef hit's de las' ack,' sez Brer
Rabbit, sezee. 'Ef you don't take off dat hat en
tell me howdy, I'm gwine ter bus' you wide
open,' sezee.
"Tar-Baby stay still, en Brer Fox, he lay low.
"Brer Rabbit keep on axin' 'im, en de Tar-Baby,
she keep on sayin' nothin', twel present'y Brer
Rabbit draw back wid his fis', he did, en blip he
tuck 'er side er de head. Right dar's whar he
broke his merlasses jug. His fis' stuck, en he
can't pull loose. De tar hilt 'im. But Tar-Baby,
she stay still, en Brer Fox, he lay low.
"`Ef you don't lemme loose, I'll knock you agin,'
sez Brer Rabbit, sezee, en wid dat he fotch 'er a
wipe wid de udder han', en dat stuck. Tar-Baby,
she ain'y sayin' nuthin', en Brer Fox, he lay low.
"`Tu'n me loose, fo' I kick de natal stuffin' outen
you,' sez Brer Rabbit, sezee, but de Tar-Baby,
she ain't sayin' nuthin'. She des hilt on, en de
Brer Rabbit lose de use er his feet in de same
way. Brer Fox, he lay low. Den Brer Rabbit
squall out dat ef de Tar-Baby don't tu'n 'im loose
he butt 'er cranksided. En den he butted, en his
head got stuck. Den Brer Fox, he sa'ntered fort',
lookin' dez ez innercent ez wunner yo' mammy's
mockin'-birds.
"`Howdy, Brer Rabbit,' sez Brer Fox, sezee.
`You look sorter stuck up dis mawnin',' sezee, en
den he rolled on de groun', en laft en laft twel he
couldn't laff no mo'. `I speck you'll take dinner
wid me dis time, Brer Rabbit. I done laid in
some calamus root, en I ain't gwineter take no
skuse,' sez Brer Fox, sezee."
Here Uncle Remus paused, and drew a twopound yam out of the ashes.
141
"Did the fox eat the rabbit?" asked the little boy
to whom the story had been told.
say he didn't. I hear Miss Sally callin'. You
better run 'long."
"Dat's all de fur de tale goes," replied the old
man. "He mout, an den agin he moutent. Some
say Judge B'ar come 'long en loosed 'im - some
_______________________________________
142
38) Olbermann: Gay marriage is a question
of love
Everyone deserves the same chance at
permanence and happiness
By Keith Olbermann
msnbc.com updated 9:13 p.m. ET, Mon.,
Nov. 10, 2008
Finally tonight as promised, a Special Comment
on the passage, last week, of Proposition Eight
in California, which rescinded the right of samesex couples to marry, and tilted the balance on
this issue, from coast to coast.
Some parameters, as preface. This isn't about
yelling, and this isn't about politics, and this isn't
really just about Prop-8. And I don't have a
personal investment in this: I'm not gay, I had to
strain to think of one member of even my very
extended family who is, I have no personal
stories of close friends or colleagues fighting the
prejudice that still pervades their lives.
And yet to me this vote is horrible. Horrible.
Because this isn't about yelling, and this isn't
about politics. This is about the human heart,
and if that sounds corny, so be it.
If you voted for this Proposition or support those
who did or the sentiment they expressed, I have
some questions, because, truly, I do not
understand. Why does this matter to you? What
is it to you? In a time of impermanence and flyby-night relationships, these people over here
want the same chance at permanence and
happiness that is your option. They don't want to
deny you yours. They don't want to take
anything away from you. They want what you
want—a chance to be a little less alone in the
world.
Only now you are saying to them—no. You
can't have it on these terms. Maybe something
similar. If they behave. If they don't cause too
much trouble. You'll even give them all the
same legal rights—even as you're taking away
the legal right, which they already had. A world
around them, still anchored in love and
marriage, and you are saying, no, you can't
marry. What if somebody passed a law that said
you couldn't marry?
I keep hearing this term "re-defining" marriage.
If this country hadn't re-defined marriage, black
people still couldn't marry white people. Sixteen
states had laws on the books which made that
illegal in 1967. 1967.
The parents of the President-Elect of the United
States couldn't have married in nearly one third
of the states of the country their son grew up to
lead. But it's worse than that. If this country had
not "re-defined" marriage, some black people
still couldn't marry black people. It is one of the
most overlooked and cruelest parts of our sad
story of slavery. Marriages were not legally
recognized, if the people were slaves. Since
slaves were property, they could not legally be
husband and wife, or mother and child. Their
marriage vows were different: not "Until Death,
Do You Part," but "Until Death or Distance, Do
You Part." Marriages among slaves were not
legally recognized.
You know, just like marriages today in
California are not legally recognized, if the
people are gay.
And uncountable in our history are the number
of men and women, forced by society into
marrying the opposite sex, in sham marriages, or
marriages of convenience, or just marriages of
not knowing, centuries of men and women who
have lived their lives in shame and unhappiness,
and who have, through a lie to themselves or
others, broken countless other lives, of spouses
and children, all because we said a man couldn't
marry another man, or a woman couldn't marry
another woman. The sanctity of marriage.
143
How many marriages like that have there been
and how on earth do they increase the "sanctity"
of marriage rather than render the term,
meaningless?
What is this, to you? Nobody is asking you to
embrace their expression of love. But don't you,
as human beings, have to embrace... that love?
The world is barren enough.
It is stacked against love, and against hope, and
against those very few and precious emotions
that enable us to go forward. Your marriage only
stands a 50-50 chance of lasting, no matter how
much you feel and how hard you work.
And here are people overjoyed at the prospect of
just that chance, and that work, just for the hope
of having that feeling. With so much hate in the
world, with so much meaningless division, and
people pitted against people for no good reason,
this is what your religion tells you to do? With
your experience of life and this world and all its
sadnesses, this is what your conscience tells you
to do?
With your knowledge that life, with endless
vigor, seems to tilt the playing field on which we
all live, in favor of unhappiness and hate... this is
what your heart tells you to do? You want to
sanctify marriage? You want to honor your God
and the universal love you believe he represents?
Then Spread happiness—this tiny, symbolic,
semantical grain of happiness—share it with all
those who seek it. Quote me anything from your
religious leader or book of choice telling you to
stand against this. And then tell me how you can
believe both that statement and another
statement, another one which reads only "do
unto others as you would have them do unto
you."
You are asked now, by your country, and
perhaps by your creator, to stand on one side or
another. You are asked now to stand, not on a
question of politics, not on a question of
religion, not on a question of gay or straight.
You are asked now to stand, on a question of
love. All you need do is stand, and let the tiny
ember of love meet its own fate.
You don't have to help it, you don't have it
applaud it, you don't have to fight for it. Just
don't put it out. Just don't extinguish it. Because
while it may at first look like that love is
between two people you don't know and you
don't understand and maybe you don't even want
to know. It is, in fact, the ember of your love, for
your fellow person just because this is the only
world we have. And the other guy counts, too.
This is the second time in ten days I find myself
concluding by turning to, of all things, the
closing plea for mercy by Clarence Darrow in a
murder trial.
But what he said, fits what is really at the heart
of this:
"I was reading last night of the aspiration of the
old Persian poet, Omar-Khayyam," he told the
judge. It appealed to me as the highest that I can
vision. I wish it was in my heart, and I wish it
was in the hearts of all: So I be written in the
Book of Love; I do not care about that Book
above. Erase my name, or write it as you will,
So I be written in the Book of Love."
144
***
Introduction
By Lawrence W. Reed
39) I, Pencil
By Leonard E. Read
About Leonard E. Read
Introduction by Lawrence W. Reed
Afterword by Milton Friedman
Leonard E. Read (1898–1983) established the Foundation for
Economic Education in 1946. For the next 37 years he served as
FEE’s president and labored tirelessly to promote and advance
liberty. He was a natural leader who, at a crucial moment in
American history, roused the forces defending individual freedom
and private property.
His life is a testament to the power of ideas. As President Ronald
Reagan wrote: “Our nation and her people have been vastly enriched
by his devotion to the cause of freedom, and generations to come
will look to Leonard Read for inspiration.”
Read was the author of 29 books and hundreds of essays. “I, Pencil,”
his most famous essay, was first published in 1958. Although a few
of the manufacturing details and place names have changed, the
principles endure.
This new edition of “I, Pencil” was made possible by the generosity
of John A. Kasch, M.D.
Eloquent. Extraordinary. Timeless. Paradigm-shifting. Classic. Half
a century after it first appeared, Leonard Read’s “I, Pencil” still
evokes such adjectives of praise. Rightfully so, for this little essay
opens eyes and minds among people of all ages. Many first-time
readers never see the world quite the same again.
Ideas are most powerful when they’re wrapped in a compelling
story. Leonard’s main point—economies can hardly be “planned”
when not one soul possesses all the know-how and skills to produce
a simple pencil—unfolds in the enchanting words of a pencil itself.
Leonard could have written “I, Car” or “I, Airplane,” but choosing
those more complex items would have muted the message. No one
person—repeat, no one, no matter how smartor how many degrees
follow his name—could create from scratch a small, everyday
pencil, let alone a car or an airplane.
This is a message that humbles the high and mighty. It pricks the
inflated egos of those who think they know how to mind everybody
else’s business. It explains in plain language why central planning is
an exercise in arrogance and futility, or what Nobel laureate and
Austrian economist
F. A. Hayek aptly termed “the pretence of knowledge.”
Indeed, a major influence on Read’s thinking in this regard was
Hayek’s famous 1945 article, “The Use of Knowledge in Society.”
In demolishing the spurious claims of the socialists of the day,
Hayek wrote,“This is not a dispute about whether planning is to be
done or not. It is a dispute as to whether planning is to be done
centrally, by one authority for the whole economic system, or is to be
divided among many individuals.”
145
Maximilien Robespierre is said to have blessed the horrific French
Revolution with this chilling declaration: “On ne saurait pas faire
une omelette sans casser des oeufs.” Translation: “One can’t expect
to make an omelet without breaking eggs.” A consummate statist
who worked tirelessly to plan the lives of others, he would become
the architect of the Revolution’s bloodiest phase—the Reign of
Terror of 1793–94.
Robespierre and his guillotine broke eggs by the thousands in a vain
effort to impose a utopian society with government planners at the
top and everybody else at the bottom. That French experience is but
one example in a disturbingly familiar pattern. Call them what you
will—socialists, interventionists, collectivists, statists—history is
littered with their presumptuous plans for rearranging society to fit
their vision of the common good, plans that always fail as they kill or
impoverish other people in the process. If socialism ever earns a final
epitaph, it will be this: Here lies a contrivance engineered by knowit-alls who broke eggs with abandon but never, ever created an
omelet.
None of the Robespierres of the world knew how to make a pencil,
yet they wanted to remake entire societies. How utterly preposterous,
and mournfully tragic! But we will miss a large implication of
Leonard Read’s message if we assume it aims only at the tyrants
whose names we all know. The lesson of “I, Pencil” is not that error
begins when the planners plan big. It begins the moment one tosses
humility aside, assumes he knows the unknowable, and employs the
force of the State against peaceful individuals. That’s not just a
national disease. It can be very local indeed.
In our midst are people who think that if only they had government
power on their side, they could pick tomorrow’s winners and losers
in the marketplace, set prices or rents where they ought to be, decide
which forms of energy should power our homes and cars, and choose
which industries should survive and which should die. They should
stop for a few moments and learn a little humility from a lowly
writing implement.
While “I, Pencil” shoots down the baseless expectations for central
planning, it provides a supremely uplifting perspective of the
individual. Guided by Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” of prices,
property, profits, and incentives, free people accomplish economic
miracles of which socialist theoreticians can only dream. As the
interests of countless individuals from around the world converge to
produce pencils without a single “master mind,” so do they also
come together in free markets to feed, clothe, house, educate, and
entertain hundreds of millions of people at ever higher levels. With
great pride, FEE publishes this new edition of “I, Pencil” to mark the
essay’s 50th anniversary. Someday there will be a centennial edition,
maybe even a millennial one. This essay is truly one for the ages.
—Lawrence W. Reed, President
Foundation for Economic Education
***
I, Pencil
By Leonard E. Read
I am a lead pencil—the ordinary wooden pencil familiar to all boys
and girls and adults who can read and write.
Writing is both my vocation and my avocation; that’s all I do.
You may wonder why I should write a genealogy. Well, to begin
with, my story is interesting. And, next, I am a mystery —more so
than a tree or a sunset or even a flash of lightning. But, sadly, I am
taken for granted by those who use me, as if I were a mere incident
and without background. This supercilious attitude relegates me to
the level of the commonplace. This is a species of the grievous error
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in which mankind cannot too long persist without peril. For, the wise
G. K. Chesterton observed, “We are perishing for want of wonder,
not for want of wonders.”
I, Pencil, simple though I appear to be, merit your wonder and awe, a
claim I shall attempt to prove. In fact, if you can understand me—no,
that’s too much to ask of anyone—if you can become aware of the
miraculousness which I symbolize, you can help save the freedom
mankind is so unhappily losing. I have a profound lesson to teach.
And I can teach this lesson better than can an automobile or an
airplane or a mechanical dishwasher because—well, because I am
seemingly so simple.
Simple? Yet, not a single person on the face of this earth knows how
to make me. This sounds fantastic, doesn’t it? Especially when it is
realized that there are about one and one-half billion of my kind
produced in the U.S.A. each year.
Pick me up and look me over. What do you see? Not much meets the
eye—there’s some wood, lacquer, the printed labeling, graphite lead,
a bit of metal, and an eraser.
Innumerable Antecedents
Just as you cannot trace your family tree back very far, so is it
impossible for me to name and explain all my antecedents. But I
would like to suggest enough of them to impress upon you the
richness and complexity of my background.
My family tree begins with what in fact is a tree, a cedar of straight
grain that grows in Northern California and Oregon. Now
contemplate all the saws and trucks and rope and the countless other
gear used in harvesting and carting the cedar logs to the railroad
siding. Think of all the persons and the numberless skills that went
into their fabrication: the mining of ore, the making of steel and its
refinement into saws, axes, motors; the growing of hemp and
bringing it through all the stages to heavy and strong rope; the
logging camps with their beds and mess halls, the cookery and the
raising of all the foods. Why, untold thousands of persons had a hand
in every cup of coffee the loggers drink!
The logs are shipped to a mill in San Leandro, California. Can you
imagine the individuals who make flat cars and rails and railroad
engines and who construct and install the communication systems
incidental thereto? These legions are among my antecedents.
Consider the millwork in San Leandro. The cedar logs are cut into
small, pencil-length slats less than one-fourth of an inch in thickness.
These are kiln dried and then tinted for the same reason women put
rouge on their faces. People prefer that I look pretty, not a pallid
white. The slats are waxed and kiln dried again. How many skills
went into the making of the tint and the kilns, into supplying the
heat, the light and power, the belts, motors, and all the other things a
mill requires? Sweepers in the mill among my ancestors? Yes, and
included are the men who poured the concrete for the dam of a
Pacific Gas & Electric Company hydroplant which supplies the
mill’s power!
Don’t overlook the ancestors present and distant who have a hand in
transporting sixty carloads of slats across the nation.
Once in the pencil factory—$4,000,000 in machinery and building,
all capital accumulated by thrifty and saving parents of mine—each
slat is given eight grooves by a complex machine, after which
another machine lays leads in every other slat, applies glue, and
places another slat atop—a lead sandwich, so to speak. Seven
brothers and I are mechanically carved from this “wood-clinched”
sandwich.
My “lead” itself—it contains no lead at all—is complex. The
graphite is mined in Ceylon [Sri Lanka]. Consider these miners and
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those who make their many tools and the makers of the paper sacks
in which the graphite is shipped and those who make the string that
ties the sacks and those who put them aboard ships and those who
make the ships. Even the lighthouse keepers along the way assisted
in my birth—and the harbor pilots.
The graphite is mixed with clay from Mississippi in which
ammonium hydroxide is used in the refining process. Then wetting
agents are added such as sulfonated tallow—animal fats chemically
reacted with sulfuric acid. After passing through numerous
machines, the mixture finally appears as endless extrusions—as from
a sausage grinder—cut to size, dried, and baked for several hours at
1,850 degrees Fahrenheit. To increase their strength and smoothness
the leads are then treated with a hot mixture which includes
candelilla wax from Mexico, paraffin wax, and hydrogenated natural
fats.
My cedar receives six coats of lacquer. Do you know all the
ingredients of lacquer? Who would think that the growers of castor
beans and the refiners of castor oil are a part of it? They are. Why,
even the processes by which the lacquer is made a beautiful yellow
involve the skills of more persons than one can enumerate!
Observe the labeling. That’s a film formed by applying heat to
carbon black mixed with resins. How do you make resins and what,
pray, is carbon black?
My bit of metal—the ferrule—is brass. Think of all the persons who
mine zinc and copper and those who have the skills to make shiny
sheet brass from these products of nature. Those black rings on my
ferrule are black nickel. What is black nickel and how is it applied?
The complete story of why the center of my ferrule has no black
nickel on it would take pages to explain.
Then there’s my crowning glory, inelegantly referred to in the trade
as “the plug,” the part man uses to erase the errors he makes with
me. An ingredient called “factice” is what does the erasing. It is a
rubber-like product made by reacting rapeseed oil from the Dutch
East Indies [Indonesia] with sulfur chloride. Rubber, contrary to the
common notion, is only for binding purposes. Then, too, there are
numerous vulcanizing and accelerating agents. The pumice comes
from Italy; and the pigment which gives “the plug” its color is
cadmium sulfide.
No One Knows
Does anyone wish to challenge my earlier assertion that no single
person on the face of this earth knows how to make me?
Actually, millions of human beings have had a hand in my creation,
no one of whom even knows more than a very few of the others.
Now, you may say that I go too far in relating the picker of a coffee
berry in far-off Brazil and food growers elsewhere to my creation;
that this is an extreme position. I shall stand by my claim. There isn’t
a single person in all these millions, including the president of the
pencil company, who contributes more than a tiny, infinitesimal bit
of know-how. From the standpoint of know-how the only difference
between the miner of graphite in Ceylon and the logger in Oregon is
in the type of know-how. Neither the miner nor the logger can be
dispensed with, any more than can the chemist at the factory or the
worker in the oil field—paraffin being a by-product of petroleum.
Here is an astounding fact: Neither the worker in the oil field nor the
chemist nor the digger of graphite or clay nor any who mans or
makes the ships or trains or trucks nor the one who runs the machine
that does the knurling on my bit of metal nor the president of the
company performs his singular task because he wants me. Each one
wants me less, perhaps, than does a child in the first grade. Indeed,
there are some among this vast multitude who never saw a pencil nor
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would they know how to use one. Their motivation is other than me.
Perhaps it is something like this: Each of these millions sees that he
can thus exchange his tiny know-how for the goods and services he
needs or wants. I may or may not be among these items.
No Master Mind
There is a fact still more astounding: The absence of a master mind,
of anyone dictating or forcibly directing these countless actions
which bring me into being. No trace of such a person can be found.
Instead, we find the Invisible Hand at work. This is the mystery to
which I earlier referred.
It has been said that “only God can make a tree.” Why do we agree
with this? Isn’t it because we realize that we ourselves could not
make one? Indeed, can we even describe a tree? We cannot, except
in superficial terms. We can say, for instance, that a certain
molecular configuration manifests itself as a tree. But what mind is
there among men that could even record, let alone direct, the
constant changes in molecules that transpire in the life span of a tree?
Such a feat is utterly unthinkable!
I, Pencil, am a complex combination of miracles: a tree, zinc, copper,
graphite, and so on. But to these miracles which manifest themselves
in Nature an even more extraordinary miracle has been added: the
configuration of creative human energies—millions of tiny knowhows configurating naturally and spontaneously in response to
human necessity and desire and in the absence of any human
masterminding! Since only God can make a tree, I insist that only
God could make me. Man can no more direct these millions of
know-hows to bring me into being than he can put molecules
together to create a tree.
The above is what I meant when writing, “If you can become aware
of the miraculousness which I symbolize, you can help save the
freedom mankind is so unhappily losing.” For, if one is aware that
these know-hows will naturally, yes, automatically, arrange
themselves into creative and productive patterns in response to
human necessity and demand— that is, in the absence of
governmental or any other coercive master-minding—then one will
possess an absolutely essential ingredient for freedom: a faith in free
people. Freedom is impossible without this faith.
Once government has had a monopoly of a creative activity such, for
instance, as the delivery of the mails, most individuals will believe
that the mails could not be efficiently delivered by men acting freely.
And here is the reason: Each one acknowledges that he himself
doesn’t know how to do all the things incident to mail delivery. He
also recognizes that no other individual could do it. These
assumptions are correct. No individual possesses enough know-how
to perform a nation’s mail delivery any more than any individual
possesses enough know-how to make a pencil. Now, in the absence
of faith in free people—in the unawareness that millions of tiny
know-hows would naturally and miraculously form and cooperate to
satisfy this necessity—the individual cannot help but reach the
erroneous conclusion that mail can be delivered only by
governmental “masterminding.”
Testimony Galore
If I, Pencil, were the only item that could offer testimony on what
men and women can accomplish when free to try, then those with
little faith would have a fair case. However, there is testimony
galore; it’s all about us and on every hand. Mail delivery is
exceedingly simple when compared, for instance, to the making of
an automobile or a calculating machine or a grain combine or a
milling machine or to tens of thousands of other things. Delivery?
Why, in this area where men have been left free to try, they deliver
the human voice around the world in less than one second; they
deliver an event visually and in motion to any person’s home when it
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is happening; they deliver 150 passengers from Seattle to Baltimore
in less than four hours; they deliver gas from Texas to one’s range or
furnace in New York at unbelievably low rates and without subsidy;
they deliver each four pounds of oil from the Persian Gulf to our
Eastern Seaboard—halfway around the world—for less money than
the government charges for delivering a one-ounce letter across the
street!
The lesson I have to teach is this: Leave all creative energies
uninhibited. Merely organize society to act in harmony with this
lesson. Let society’s legal apparatus remove all obstacles the best it
can. Permit these creative know-hows freely to flow. Have faith that
free men and women will respond to the Invisible Hand. This faith
will be confirmed. I, Pencil, seemingly simple though I am, offer the
miracle of my creation as testimony that this is a practical faith, as
practical as the sun, the rain, a cedar tree, the good earth.
***
Afterword
By Milton Friedman, Nobel Laureate, 1976
Leonard Read’s delightful story, “I, Pencil,” has become a classic,
and deservedly so. I know of no other piece of literature that so
succinctly, persuasively, and effectively illustrates the meaning of
both Adam Smith’s invisible hand—the possibility of cooperation
without coercion—and Friedrich Hayek’s emphasis on the
importance of dispersed knowledge and the role of the price system
in communicating information that “will make the individuals do the
desirable things without anyone having to tell them what to do.”
We used Leonard’s story in our television show, “Free to Choose,”
and in the accompanying book of the same title to illustrate “the
power of the market” (the title of both the first segment of the TV
show and of chapter one of the book). We summarized the story and
then went on to say:
“None of the thousands of persons involved in producing the pencil
performed his task because he wanted a pencil. Some among them
never saw a pencil and would not know what it is for. Each saw his
work as a way to get the goods and services he wanted—goods and
services we produced in order to get the pencil we wanted. Every
time we go to the store and buy a pencil, we are exchanging a little
bit of our services for the infinitesimal amount of services that each
of the thousands contributed toward producing the pencil.
“It is even more astounding that the pencil was ever produced. No
one sitting in a central office gave orders to these thousands of
people. No military police enforced the orders that were not given.
These people live in many lands, speak different languages, practice
different religions, may even hate one another—yet none of these
differences prevented them from cooperating to produce a pencil.
How did it happen? Adam Smith gave us the answer two hundred
years ago.”
“I, Pencil” is a typical Leonard Read product: imaginative, simple
yet subtle, breathing the love of freedom that imbued everything
Leonard wrote or did. As in the rest of his work, he was not trying to
tell people what to do or how to conduct themselves. He was simply
trying to enhance individuals’ understanding of themselves and of
the system they live in.
That was his basic credo and one that he stuck to consistently during
his long period of service to the public—not public service in the
sense of government service. Whatever the pressure, he stuck to his
guns, refusing to compromise his principles. That was why he was so
effective in keeping alive, in the early days, and then spreading the
basic idea that human freedom required private property, free
competition, and severely limited government.
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_______________________________________40)
Paul Graham from
http://www.paulgraham.com/
doing them yet. Most of the work I've done in the last ten years didn't
exist when I was in high school. The world changes fast, and the rate
at which it changes is itself speeding up. In such a world it's not a
good idea to have fixed plans.
January 2005
(I wrote this talk for a high school. I never actually gave it, because
the school authorities vetoed the plan to invite me.)
When I said I was speaking at a high school, my friends were
curious. What will you say to high school students? So I asked them,
what do you wish someone had told you in high school? Their
answers were remarkably similar. So I'm going to tell you what we
all wish someone had told us.
I'll start by telling you something you don't have to know in high
school: what you want to do with your life. People are always asking
you this, so you think you're supposed to have an answer. But adults
ask this mainly as a conversation starter. They want to know what
sort of person you are, and this question is just to get you talking.
They ask it the way you might poke a hermit crab in a tide pool, to
see what it does.
If I were back in high school and someone asked about my plans, I'd
say that my first priority was to learn what the options were. You
don't need to be in a rush to choose your life's work. What you need
to do is discover what you like. You have to work on stuff you like if
you want to be good at what you do.
It might seem that nothing would be easier than deciding what you
like, but it turns out to be hard, partly because it's hard to get an
accurate picture of most jobs. Being a doctor is not the way it's
portrayed on TV. Fortunately you can also watch real doctors, by
volunteering in hospitals. [1]
But there are other jobs you can't learn about, because no one is
And yet every May, speakers all over the country fire up the
Standard Graduation Speech, the theme of which is: don't give up on
your dreams. I know what they mean, but this is a bad way to put it,
because it implies you're supposed to be bound by some plan you
made early on. The computer world has a name for this: premature
optimization. And it is synonymous with disaster. These speakers
would do better to say simply, don't give up.
What they really mean is, don't get demoralized. Don't think that you
can't do what other people can. And I agree you shouldn't
underestimate your potential. People who've done great things tend
to seem as if they were a race apart. And most biographies only
exaggerate this illusion, partly due to the worshipful attitude
biographers inevitably sink into, and partly because, knowing how
the story ends, they can't help streamlining the plot till it seems like
the subject's life was a matter of destiny, the mere unfolding of some
innate genius. In fact I suspect if you had the sixteen year old
Shakespeare or Einstein in school with you, they'd seem impressive,
but not totally unlike your other friends.
Which is an uncomfortable thought. If they were just like us, then
they had to work very hard to do what they did. And that's one
reason we like to believe in genius. It gives us an excuse for being
lazy. If these guys were able to do what they did only because of
some magic Shakespeareness or Einsteinness, then it's not our fault if
we can't do something as good.
I'm not saying there's no such thing as genius. But if you're trying to
choose between two theories and one gives you an excuse for being
151
lazy, the other one is probably right.
So far we've cut the Standard Graduation Speech down from "don't
give up on your dreams" to "what someone else can do, you can do."
But it needs to be cut still further. There is some variation in natural
ability. Most people overestimate its role, but it does exist. If I were
talking to a guy four feet tall whose ambition was to play in the
NBA, I'd feel pretty stupid saying, you can do anything if you really
try. [2]
We need to cut the Standard Graduation Speech down to, "what
someone else with your abilities can do, you can do; and don't
underestimate your abilities." But as so often happens, the closer you
get to the truth, the messier your sentence gets. We've taken a nice,
neat (but wrong) slogan, and churned it up like a mud puddle. It
doesn't make a very good speech anymore. But worse still, it doesn't
tell you what to do anymore. Someone with your abilities? What are
your abilities?
Upwind
I think the solution is to work in the other direction. Instead of
working back from a goal, work forward from promising situations.
This is what most successful people actually do anyway.
In the graduation-speech approach, you decide where you want to be
in twenty years, and then ask: what should I do now to get there? I
propose instead that you don't commit to anything in the future, but
just look at the options available now, and choose those that will
give you the most promising range of options afterward.
It's not so important what you work on, so long as you're not wasting
your time. Work on things that interest you and increase your
options, and worry later about which you'll take.
Suppose you're a college freshman deciding whether to major in
math or economics. Well, math will give you more options: you can
go into almost any field from math. If you major in math it will be
easy to get into grad school in economics, but if you major in
economics it will be hard to get into grad school in math.
Flying a glider is a good metaphor here. Because a glider doesn't
have an engine, you can't fly into the wind without losing a lot of
altitude. If you let yourself get far downwind of good places to land,
your options narrow uncomfortably. As a rule you want to stay
upwind. So I propose that as a replacement for "don't give up on
your dreams." Stay upwind.
How do you do that, though? Even if math is upwind of economics,
how are you supposed to know that as a high school student?
Well, you don't, and that's what you need to find out. Look for smart
people and hard problems. Smart people tend to clump together, and
if you can find such a clump, it's probably worthwhile to join it. But
it's not straightforward to find these, because there is a lot of faking
going on.
To a newly arrived undergraduate, all university departments look
much the same. The professors all seem forbiddingly intellectual and
publish papers unintelligible to outsiders. But while in some fields
the papers are unintelligible because they're full of hard ideas, in
others they're deliberately written in an obscure way to seem as if
they're saying something important. This may seem a scandalous
proposition, but it has been experimentally verified, in the famous
Social Text affair. Suspecting that the papers published by literary
theorists were often just intellectual-sounding nonsense, a physicist
deliberately wrote a paper full of intellectual-sounding nonsense, and
submitted it to a literary theory journal, which published it.
152
The best protection is always to be working on hard problems.
Writing novels is hard. Reading novels isn't. Hard means worry: if
you're not worrying that something you're making will come out
badly, or that you won't be able to understand something you're
studying, then it isn't hard enough. There has to be suspense.
Well, this seems a grim view of the world, you may think. What I'm
telling you is that you should worry? Yes, but it's not as bad as it
sounds. It's exhilarating to overcome worries. You don't see faces
much happier than people winning gold medals. And you know why
they're so happy? Relief.
I'm not saying this is the only way to be happy. Just that some kinds
of worry are not as bad as they sound.
Ambition
In practice, "stay upwind" reduces to "work on hard problems." And
you can start today. I wish I'd grasped that in high school.
Most people like to be good at what they do. In the so-called real
world this need is a powerful force. But high school students rarely
benefit from it, because they're given a fake thing to do. When I was
in high school, I let myself believe that my job was to be a high
school student. And so I let my need to be good at what I did be
satisfied by merely doing well in school.
If you'd asked me in high school what the difference was between
high school kids and adults, I'd have said it was that adults had to
earn a living. Wrong. It's that adults take responsibility for
themselves. Making a living is only a small part of it. Far more
important is to take intellectual responsibility for oneself.
If I had to go through high school again, I'd treat it like a day job. I
don't mean that I'd slack in school. Working at something as a day
job doesn't mean doing it badly. It means not being defined by it. I
mean I wouldn't think of myself as a high school student, just as a
musician with a day job as a waiter doesn't think of himself as a
waiter. [3] And when I wasn't working at my day job I'd start trying
to do real work.
When I ask people what they regret most about high school, they
nearly all say the same thing: that they wasted so much time. If
you're wondering what you're doing now that you'll regret most later,
that's probably it. [4]
Some people say this is inevitable-- that high school students aren't
capable of getting anything done yet. But I don't think this is true.
And the proof is that you're bored. You probably weren't bored when
you were eight. When you're eight it's called "playing" instead of
"hanging out," but it's the same thing. And when I was eight, I was
rarely bored. Give me a back yard and a few other kids and I could
play all day.
The reason this got stale in middle school and high school, I now
realize, is that I was ready for something else. Childhood was getting
old.
I'm not saying you shouldn't hang out with your friends-- that you
should all become humorless little robots who do nothing but work.
Hanging out with friends is like chocolate cake. You enjoy it more if
you eat it occasionally than if you eat nothing but chocolate cake for
every meal. No matter how much you like chocolate cake, you'll be
pretty queasy after the third meal of it. And that's what the malaise
one feels in high school is: mental queasiness. [5]
You may be thinking, we have to do more than get good grades. We
have to have extracurricular activities. But you know perfectly well
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how bogus most of these are. Collecting donations for a charity is an
admirable thing to do, but it's not hard. It's not getting something
done. What I mean by getting something done is learning how to
write well, or how to program computers, or what life was really like
in preindustrial societies, or how to draw the human face from life.
This sort of thing rarely translates into a line item on a college
application.
Corruption
It's dangerous to design your life around getting into college, because
the people you have to impress to get into college are not a very
discerning audience. At most colleges, it's not the professors who
decide whether you get in, but admissions officers, and they are
nowhere near as smart. They're the NCOs of the intellectual world.
They can't tell how smart you are. The mere existence of prep
schools is proof of that.
to us, but I smelled a major rat. And so I just gave up. Obviously the
world sucked, so why bother?
When I discovered that one of our teachers was herself using Cliff's
Notes, it seemed par for the course. Surely it meant nothing to get a
good grade in such a class.
In retrospect this was stupid. It was like someone getting fouled in a
soccer game and saying, hey, you fouled me, that's against the rules,
and walking off the field in indignation. Fouls happen. The thing to
do when you get fouled is not to lose your cool. Just keep playing.
By putting you in this situation, society has fouled you. Yes, as you
suspect, a lot of the stuff you learn in your classes is crap. And yes,
as you suspect, the college admissions process is largely a charade.
But like many fouls, this one was unintentional. [7] So just keep
playing.
Few parents would pay so much for their kids to go to a school that
didn't improve their admissions prospects. Prep schools openly say
this is one of their aims. But what that means, if you stop to think
about it, is that they can hack the admissions process: that they can
take the very same kid and make him seem a more appealing
candidate than he would if he went to the local public school. [6]
Rebellion is almost as stupid as obedience. In either case you let
yourself be defined by what they tell you to do. The best plan, I
think, is to step onto an orthogonal vector. Don't just do what they
tell you, and don't just refuse to. Instead treat school as a day job. As
day jobs go, it's pretty sweet. You're done at 3 o'clock, and you can
even work on your own stuff while you're there.
Right now most of you feel your job in life is to be a promising
college applicant. But that means you're designing your life to satisfy
a process so mindless that there's a whole industry devoted to
subverting it. No wonder you become cynical. The malaise you feel
is the same that a producer of reality TV shows or a tobacco industry
executive feels. And you don't even get paid a lot.
Curiosity
And what's your real job supposed to be? Unless you're Mozart, your
first task is to figure that out. What are the great things to work on?
Where are the imaginative people? And most importantly, what are
you interested in? The word "aptitude" is misleading, because it
implies something innate. The most powerful sort of aptitude is a
consuming interest in some question, and such interests are often
acquired tastes.
So what do you do? What you should not do is rebel. That's what I
did, and it was a mistake. I didn't realize exactly what was happening
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A distorted version of this idea has filtered into popular culture under
the name "passion." I recently saw an ad for waiters saying they
wanted people with a "passion for service." The real thing is not
something one could have for waiting on tables. And passion is a bad
word for it. A better name would be curiosity.
Kids are curious, but the curiosity I mean has a different shape from
kid curiosity. Kid curiosity is broad and shallow; they ask why at
random about everything. In most adults this curiosity dries up
entirely. It has to: you can't get anything done if you're always asking
why about everything. But in ambitious adults, instead of drying up,
curiosity becomes narrow and deep. The mud flat morphs into a
well.
Curiosity turns work into play. For Einstein, relativity wasn't a book
full of hard stuff he had to learn for an exam. It was a mystery he
was trying to solve. So it probably felt like less work to him to invent
it than it would seem to someone now to learn it in a class.
One of the most dangerous illusions you get from school is the idea
that doing great things requires a lot of discipline. Most subjects are
taught in such a boring way that it's only by discipline that you can
flog yourself through them. So I was surprised when, early in
college, I read a quote by Wittgenstein saying that he had no selfdiscipline and had never been able to deny himself anything, not
even a cup of coffee.
Now I know a number of people who do great work, and it's the
same with all of them. They have little discipline. They're all terrible
procrastinators and find it almost impossible to make themselves do
anything they're not interested in. One still hasn't sent out his half of
the thank-you notes from his wedding, four years ago. Another has
26,000 emails in her inbox.
I'm not saying you can get away with zero self-discipline. You
probably need about the amount you need to go running. I'm often
reluctant to go running, but once I do, I enjoy it. And if I don't run
for several days, I feel ill. It's the same with people who do great
things. They know they'll feel bad if they don't work, and they have
enough discipline to get themselves to their desks to start working.
But once they get started, interest takes over, and discipline is no
longer necessary.
Do you think Shakespeare was gritting his teeth and diligently trying
to write Great Literature? Of course not. He was having fun. That's
why he's so good.
If you want to do good work, what you need is a great curiosity
about a promising question. The critical moment for Einstein was
when he looked at Maxwell's equations and said, what the hell is
going on here?
It can take years to zero in on a productive question, because it can
take years to figure out what a subject is really about. To take an
extreme example, consider math. Most people think they hate math,
but the boring stuff you do in school under the name "mathematics"
is not at all like what mathematicians do.
The great mathematician G. H. Hardy said he didn't like math in high
school either. He only took it up because he was better at it than the
other students. Only later did he realize math was interesting-- only
later did he start to ask questions instead of merely answering them
correctly.
When a friend of mine used to grumble because he had to write a
paper for school, his mother would tell him: find a way to make it
interesting. That's what you need to do: find a question that makes
the world interesting. People who do great things look at the same
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world everyone else does, but notice some odd detail that's
compellingly mysterious.
sustaining, and each project generates the next one. (This could take
years.)
And not only in intellectual matters. Henry Ford's great question
was, why do cars have to be a luxury item? What would happen if
you treated them as a commodity? Franz Beckenbauer's was, in
effect, why does everyone have to stay in his position? Why can't
defenders score goals too?
It may be just as well not to do a project "for school," if that will
restrict you or make it seem like work. Involve your friends if you
want, but not too many, and only if they're not flakes. Friends offer
moral support (few startups are started by one person), but secrecy
also has its advantages. There's something pleasing about a secret
project. And you can take more risks, because no one will know if
you fail.
Now
If it takes years to articulate great questions, what do you do now, at
sixteen? Work toward finding one. Great questions don't appear
suddenly. They gradually congeal in your head. And what makes
them congeal is experience. So the way to find great questions is not
to search for them-- not to wander about thinking, what great
discovery shall I make? You can't answer that; if you could, you'd
have made it.
Don't worry if a project doesn't seem to be on the path to some goal
you're supposed to have. Paths can bend a lot more than you think.
So let the path grow out the project. The most important thing is to
be excited about it, because it's by doing that you learn.
The way to get a big idea to appear in your head is not to hunt for big
ideas, but to put in a lot of time on work that interests you, and in the
process keep your mind open enough that a big idea can take roost.
Einstein, Ford, and Beckenbauer all used this recipe. They all knew
their work like a piano player knows the keys. So when something
seemed amiss to them, they had the confidence to notice it.
Don't disregard unseemly motivations. One of the most powerful is
the desire to be better than other people at something. Hardy said
that's what got him started, and I think the only unusual thing about
him is that he admitted it. Another powerful motivator is the desire
to do, or know, things you're not supposed to. Closely related is the
desire to do something audacious. Sixteen year olds aren't supposed
to write novels. So if you try, anything you achieve is on the plus
side of the ledger; if you fail utterly, you're doing no worse than
expectations. [8]
Put in time how and on what? Just pick a project that seems
interesting: to master some chunk of material, or to make something,
or to answer some question. Choose a project that will take less than
a month, and make it something you have the means to finish. Do
something hard enough to stretch you, but only just, especially at
first. If you're deciding between two projects, choose whichever
seems most fun. If one blows up in your face, start another. Repeat
till, like an internal combustion engine, the process becomes self-
Beware of bad models. Especially when they excuse laziness. When
I was in high school I used to write "existentialist" short stories like
ones I'd seen by famous writers. My stories didn't have a lot of plot,
but they were very deep. And they were less work to write than
entertaining ones would have been. I should have known that was a
danger sign. And in fact I found my stories pretty boring; what
excited me was the idea of writing serious, intellectual stuff like the
famous writers.
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Now I have enough experience to realize that those famous writers
actually sucked. Plenty of famous people do; in the short term, the
quality of one's work is only a small component of fame. I should
have been less worried about doing something that seemed cool, and
just done something I liked. That's the actual road to coolness
anyway.
A key ingredient in many projects, almost a project on its own, is to
find good books. Most books are bad. Nearly all textbooks are bad.
[9] So don't assume a subject is to be learned from whatever book on
it happens to be closest. You have to search actively for the tiny
number of good books.
The important thing is to get out there and do stuff. Instead of
waiting to be taught, go out and learn.
Your life doesn't have to be shaped by admissions officers. It could
be shaped by your own curiosity. It is for all ambitious adults. And
you don't have to wait to start. In fact, you don't have to wait to be an
adult. There's no switch inside you that magically flips when you
turn a certain age or graduate from some institution. You start being
an adult when you decide to take responsibility for your life. You
can do that at any age. [10]
This may sound like bullshit. I'm just a minor, you may think, I have
no money, I have to live at home, I have to do what adults tell me all
day long. Well, most adults labor under restrictions just as
cumbersome, and they manage to get things done. If you think it's
restrictive being a kid, imagine having kids.
The only real difference between adults and high school kids is that
adults realize they need to get things done, and high school kids
don't. That realization hits most people around 23. But I'm letting
you in on the secret early. So get to work. Maybe you can be the first
generation whose greatest regret from high school isn't how much
time you wasted.
Notes
[1] A doctor friend warns that even this can give an inaccurate
picture. "Who knew how much time it would take up, how little
autonomy one would have for endless years of training, and how
unbelievably annoying it is to carry a beeper?"
[2] His best bet would probably be to become dictator and intimidate
the NBA into letting him play. So far the closest anyone has come is
Secretary of Labor.
[3] A day job is one you take to pay the bills so you can do what you
really want, like play in a band, or invent relativity.
Treating high school as a day job might actually make it easier for
some students to get good grades. If you treat your classes as a game,
you won't be demoralized if they seem pointless.
However bad your classes, you need to get good grades in them to
get into a decent college. And that is worth doing, because
universities are where a lot of the clumps of smart people are these
days.
[4] The second biggest regret was caring so much about unimportant
things. And especially about what other people thought of them.
I think what they really mean, in the latter case, is caring what
random people thought of them. Adults care just as much what other
people think, but they get to be more selective about the other
people.
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I have about thirty friends whose opinions I care about, and the
opinion of the rest of the world barely affects me. The problem in
high school is that your peers are chosen for you by accidents of age
and geography, rather than by you based on respect for their
judgement.
[5] The key to wasting time is distraction. Without distractions it's
too obvious to your brain that you're not doing anything with it, and
you start to feel uncomfortable. If you want to measure how
dependent you've become on distractions, try this experiment: set
aside a chunk of time on a weekend and sit alone and think. You can
have a notebook to write your thoughts down in, but nothing else: no
friends, TV, music, phone, IM, email, Web, games, books,
newspapers, or magazines. Within an hour most people will feel a
strong craving for distraction.
[6] I don't mean to imply that the only function of prep schools is to
trick admissions officers. They also generally provide a better
education. But try this thought experiment: suppose prep schools
supplied the same superior education but had a tiny (.001) negative
effect on college admissions. How many parents would still send
their kids to them?
It might also be argued that kids who went to prep schools, because
they've learned more, are better college candidates. But this seems
empirically false. What you learn in even the best high school is
rounding error compared to what you learn in college. Public school
kids arrive at college with a slight disadvantage, but they start to pull
ahead in the sophomore year.
(I'm not saying public school kids are smarter than preppies, just that
they are within any given college. That follows necessarily if you
agree prep schools improve kids' admissions prospects.)
[7] Why does society foul you? Indifference, mainly. There are
simply no outside forces pushing high school to be good. The air
traffic control system works because planes would crash otherwise.
Businesses have to deliver because otherwise competitors would take
their customers. But no planes crash if your school sucks, and it has
no competitors. High school isn't evil; it's random; but random is
pretty bad.
[8] And then of course there is money. It's not a big factor in high
school, because you can't do much that anyone wants. But a lot of
great things were created mainly to make money. Samuel Johnson
said "no man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money." (Many
hope he was exaggerating.)
[9] Even college textbooks are bad. When you get to college, you'll
find that (with a few stellar exceptions) the textbooks are not written
by the leading scholars in the field they describe. Writing college
textbooks is unpleasant work, done mostly by people who need the
money. It's unpleasant because the publishers exert so much control,
and there are few things worse than close supervision by someone
who doesn't understand what you're doing. This phenomenon is
apparently even worse in the production of high school textbooks.
[10] Your teachers are always telling you to behave like adults. I
wonder if they'd like it if you did. You may be loud and
disorganized, but you're very docile compared to adults. If you
actually started acting like adults, it would be just as if a bunch of
adults had been transposed into your bodies. Imagine the reaction of
an FBI agent or taxi driver or reporter to being told they had to ask
permission to go the bathroom, and only one person could go at a
time. To say nothing of the things you're taught. If a bunch of actual
adults suddenly found themselves trapped in high school, the first
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thing they'd do is form a union and renegotiate all the rules with the
administration.
Is our time any different? To anyone who has read any amount of
history, the answer is almost certainly no. It would be a remarkable
coincidence if ours were the first era to get everything just right.
_______________________________________41.
Paul Graham from http://www.paulgraham.com/
January 2004
Have you ever seen an old photo of yourself and been embarrassed at
the way you looked? Did we actually dress like that? We did. And
we had no idea how silly we looked. It's the nature of fashion to be
invisible, in the same way the movement of the earth is invisible to
all of us riding on it.
What scares me is that there are moral fashions too. They're just as
arbitrary, and just as invisible to most people. But they're much more
dangerous. Fashion is mistaken for good design; moral fashion is
mistaken for good. Dressing oddly gets you laughed at. Violating
moral fashions can get you fired, ostracized, imprisoned, or even
killed.
If you could travel back in a time machine, one thing would be true
no matter where you went: you'd have to watch what you said.
Opinions we consider harmless could have gotten you in big trouble.
I've already said at least one thing that would have gotten me in big
trouble in most of Europe in the seventeenth century, and did get
Galileo in big trouble when he said it-- that the earth moves. [1]
It seems to be a constant throughout history: In every period, people
believed things that were just ridiculous, and believed them so
strongly that you would have gotten in terrible trouble for saying
otherwise.
It's tantalizing to think we believe things that people in the future
will find ridiculous. What would someone coming back to visit us in
a time machine have to be careful not to say? That's what I want to
study here. But I want to do more than just shock everyone with the
heresy du jour. I want to find general recipes for discovering what
you can't say, in any era.
The Conformist Test
Let's start with a test: Do you have any opinions that you would be
reluctant to express in front of a group of your peers?
If the answer is no, you might want to stop and think about that. If
everything you believe is something you're supposed to believe,
could that possibly be a coincidence? Odds are it isn't. Odds are you
just think whatever you're told.
The other alternative would be that you independently considered
every question and came up with the exact same answers that are
now considered acceptable. That seems unlikely, because you'd also
have to make the same mistakes. Mapmakers deliberately put slight
mistakes in their maps so they can tell when someone copies them. If
another map has the same mistake, that's very convincing evidence.
Like every other era in history, our moral map almost certainly
contains a few mistakes. And anyone who makes the same mistakes
probably didn't do it by accident. It would be like someone claiming
they had independently decided in 1972 that bell-bottom jeans were
a good idea.
If you believe everything you're supposed to now, how can you be
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sure you wouldn't also have believed everything you were supposed
to if you had grown up among the plantation owners of the pre-Civil
War South, or in Germany in the 1930s-- or among the Mongols in
1200, for that matter? Odds are you would have.
A lot of the statements people got in trouble for seem harmless now.
So it's likely that visitors from the future would agree with at least
some of the statements that get people in trouble today. Do we have
no Galileos? Not likely.
Back in the era of terms like "well-adjusted," the idea seemed to be
that there was something wrong with you if you thought things you
didn't dare say out loud. This seems backward. Almost certainly,
there is something wrong with you if you don't think things you don't
dare say out loud.
To find them, keep track of opinions that get people in trouble, and
start asking, could this be true? Ok, it may be heretical (or whatever
modern equivalent), but might it also be true?
Trouble
This won't get us all the answers, though. What if no one happens to
have gotten in trouble for a particular idea yet? What if some idea
would be so radioactively controversial that no one would dare
express it in public? How can we find these too?
Another approach is to follow that word, heresy. In every period of
history, there seem to have been labels that got applied to statements
to shoot them down before anyone had a chance to ask if they were
true or not. "Blasphemy", "sacrilege", and "heresy" were such labels
for a good part of western history, as in more recent times
"indecent", "improper", and "unamerican" have been. By now these
labels have lost their sting. They always do. By now they're mostly
used ironically. But in their time, they had real force.
What can't we say? One way to find these ideas is simply to look at
things people do say, and get in trouble for. [2]
Of course, we're not just looking for things we can't say. We're
looking for things we can't say that are true, or at least have enough
chance of being true that the question should remain open. But many
of the things people get in trouble for saying probably do make it
over this second, lower threshold. No one gets in trouble for saying
that 2 + 2 is 5, or that people in Pittsburgh are ten feet tall. Such
obviously false statements might be treated as jokes, or at worst as
evidence of insanity, but they are not likely to make anyone mad.
The statements that make people mad are the ones they worry might
be believed. I suspect the statements that make people maddest are
those they worry might be true.
If Galileo had said that people in Padua were ten feet tall, he would
have been regarded as a harmless eccentric. Saying the earth orbited
the sun was another matter. The church knew this would set people
thinking.
Certainly, as we look back on the past, this rule of thumb works well.
Heresy
The word "defeatist", for example, has no particular political
connotations now. But in Germany in 1917 it was a weapon, used by
Ludendorff in a purge of those who favored a negotiated peace. At
the start of World War II it was used extensively by Churchill and
his supporters to silence their opponents. In 1940, any argument
against Churchill's aggressive policy was "defeatist". Was it right or
wrong? Ideally, no one got far enough to ask that.
We have such labels today, of course, quite a lot of them, from the
all-purpose "inappropriate" to the dreaded "divisive." In any period,
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it should be easy to figure out what such labels are, simply by
looking at what people call ideas they disagree with besides untrue.
When a politician says his opponent is mistaken, that's a
straightforward criticism, but when he attacks a statement as
"divisive" or "racially insensitive" instead of arguing that it's false,
we should start paying attention.
Changes between the past and the present sometimes do represent
progress. In a field like physics, if we disagree with past generations
it's because we're right and they're wrong. But this becomes rapidly
less true as you move away from the certainty of the hard sciences.
By the time you get to social questions, many changes are just
fashion. The age of consent fluctuates like hemlines.
So another way to figure out which of our taboos future generations
will laugh at is to start with the labels. Take a label-- "sexist", for
example-- and try to think of some ideas that would be called that.
Then for each ask, might this be true?
We may imagine that we are a great deal smarter and more virtuous
than past generations, but the more history you read, the less likely
this seems. People in past times were much like us. Not heroes, not
barbarians. Whatever their ideas were, they were ideas reasonable
people could believe.
So here is another source of interesting heresies. Diff present ideas
against those of various past cultures, and see what you get. [4]
Some will be shocking by present standards. Ok, fine; but which
might also be true?
Just start listing ideas at random? Yes, because they won't really be
random. The ideas that come to mind first will be the most plausible
ones. They'll be things you've already noticed but didn't let yourself
think.
In 1989 some clever researchers tracked the eye movements of
radiologists as they scanned chest images for signs of lung cancer.
[3] They found that even when the radiologists missed a cancerous
lesion, their eyes had usually paused at the site of it. Part of their
brain knew there was something there; it just didn't percolate all the
way up into conscious knowledge. I think many interesting heretical
thoughts are already mostly formed in our minds. If we turn off our
self-censorship temporarily, those will be the first to emerge.
You don't have to look into the past to find big differences. In our
own time, different societies have wildly varying ideas of what's ok
and what isn't. So you can try diffing other cultures' ideas against
ours as well. (The best way to do that is to visit them.)
Time and Space
You might find contradictory taboos. In one culture it might seem
shocking to think x, while in another it was shocking not to. But I
think usually the shock is on one side. In one culture x is ok, and in
another it's considered shocking. My hypothesis is that the side that's
shocked is most likely to be the mistaken one. [5]
If we could look into the future it would be obvious which of our
taboos they'd laugh at. We can't do that, but we can do something
almost as good: we can look into the past. Another way to figure out
what we're getting wrong is to look at what used to be acceptable and
is now unthinkable.
I suspect the only taboos that are more than taboos are the ones that
are universal, or nearly so. Murder for example. But any idea that's
considered harmless in a significant percentage of times and places,
and yet is taboo in ours, is a good candidate for something we're
mistaken about.
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For example, at the high water mark of political correctness in the
early 1990s, Harvard distributed to its faculty and staff a brochure
saying, among other things, that it was inappropriate to compliment a
colleague or student's clothes. No more "nice shirt." I think this
principle is rare among the world's cultures, past or present. There
are probably more where it's considered especially polite to
compliment someone's clothing than where it's considered improper.
So odds are this is, in a mild form, an example of one of the taboos a
visitor from the future would have to be careful to avoid if he
happened to set his time machine for Cambridge, Massachusetts,
1992.
Prigs
Of course, if they have time machines in the future they'll probably
have a separate reference manual just for Cambridge. This has
always been a fussy place, a town of i dotters and t crossers, where
you're liable to get both your grammar and your ideas corrected in
the same conversation. And that suggests another way to find taboos.
Look for prigs, and see what's inside their heads.
Kids' heads are repositories of all our taboos. It seems fitting to us
that kids' ideas should be bright and clean. The picture we give them
of the world is not merely simplified, to suit their developing minds,
but sanitized as well, to suit our ideas of what kids ought to think. [6]
You can see this on a small scale in the matter of dirty words. A lot
of my friends are starting to have children now, and they're all trying
not to use words like "fuck" and "shit" within baby's hearing, lest
baby start using these words too. But these words are part of the
language, and adults use them all the time. So parents are giving
their kids an inaccurate idea of the language by not using them. Why
do they do this? Because they don't think it's fitting that kids should
use the whole language. We like children to seem innocent. [7]
Most adults, likewise, deliberately give kids a misleading view of the
world. One of the most obvious examples is Santa Claus. We think
it's cute for little kids to believe in Santa Claus. I myself think it's
cute for little kids to believe in Santa Claus. But one wonders, do we
tell them this stuff for their sake, or for ours?
I'm not arguing for or against this idea here. It is probably inevitable
that parents should want to dress up their kids' minds in cute little
baby outfits. I'll probably do it myself. The important thing for our
purposes is that, as a result, a well brought-up teenage kid's brain is a
more or less complete collection of all our taboos-- and in mint
condition, because they're untainted by experience. Whatever we
think that will later turn out to be ridiculous, it's almost certainly
inside that head.
How do we get at these ideas? By the following thought experiment.
Imagine a kind of latter-day Conrad character who has worked for a
time as a mercenary in Africa, for a time as a doctor in Nepal, for a
time as the manager of a nightclub in Miami. The specifics don't
matter-- just someone who has seen a lot. Now imagine comparing
what's inside this guy's head with what's inside the head of a wellbehaved sixteen year old girl from the suburbs. What does he think
that would shock her? He knows the world; she knows, or at least
embodies, present taboos. Subtract one from the other, and the result
is what we can't say.
Mechanism
I can think of one more way to figure out what we can't say: to look
at how taboos are created. How do moral fashions arise, and why are
they adopted? If we can understand this mechanism, we may be able
to see it at work in our own time.
Moral fashions don't seem to be created the way ordinary fashions
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are. Ordinary fashions seem to arise by accident when everyone
imitates the whim of some influential person. The fashion for broadtoed shoes in late fifteenth century Europe began because Charles
VIII of France had six toes on one foot. The fashion for the name
Gary began when the actor Frank Cooper adopted the name of a
tough mill town in Indiana. Moral fashions more often seem to be
created deliberately. When there's something we can't say, it's often
because some group doesn't want us to.
The prohibition will be strongest when the group is nervous. The
irony of Galileo's situation was that he got in trouble for repeating
Copernicus's ideas. Copernicus himself didn't. In fact, Copernicus
was a canon of a cathedral, and dedicated his book to the pope. But
by Galileo's time the church was in the throes of the CounterReformation and was much more worried about unorthodox ideas.
To launch a taboo, a group has to be poised halfway between
weakness and power. A confident group doesn't need taboos to
protect it. It's not considered improper to make disparaging remarks
about Americans, or the English. And yet a group has to be powerful
enough to enforce a taboo. Coprophiles, as of this writing, don't
seem to be numerous or energetic enough to have had their interests
promoted to a lifestyle.
I suspect the biggest source of moral taboos will turn out to be power
struggles in which one side only barely has the upper hand. That's
where you'll find a group powerful enough to enforce taboos, but
weak enough to need them.
Most struggles, whatever they're really about, will be cast as
struggles between competing ideas. The English Reformation was at
bottom a struggle for wealth and power, but it ended up being cast as
a struggle to preserve the souls of Englishmen from the corrupting
influence of Rome. It's easier to get people to fight for an idea. And
whichever side wins, their ideas will also be considered to have
triumphed, as if God wanted to signal his agreement by selecting that
side as the victor.
We often like to think of World War II as a triumph of freedom over
totalitarianism. We conveniently forget that the Soviet Union was
also one of the winners.
I'm not saying that struggles are never about ideas, just that they will
always be made to seem to be about ideas, whether they are or not.
And just as there is nothing so unfashionable as the last, discarded
fashion, there is nothing so wrong as the principles of the most
recently defeated opponent. Representational art is only now
recovering from the approval of both Hitler and Stalin. [8]
Although moral fashions tend to arise from different sources than
fashions in clothing, the mechanism of their adoption seems much
the same. The early adopters will be driven by ambition: selfconsciously cool people who want to distinguish themselves from
the common herd. As the fashion becomes established they'll be
joined by a second, much larger group, driven by fear. [9] This
second group adopt the fashion not because they want to stand out
but because they are afraid of standing out.
So if you want to figure out what we can't say, look at the machinery
of fashion and try to predict what it would make unsayable. What
groups are powerful but nervous, and what ideas would they like to
suppress? What ideas were tarnished by association when they ended
up on the losing side of a recent struggle? If a self-consciously cool
person wanted to differentiate himself from preceding fashions (e.g.
from his parents), which of their ideas would he tend to reject? What
are conventional-minded people afraid of saying?
This technique won't find us all the things we can't say. I can think of
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some that aren't the result of any recent struggle. Many of our taboos
are rooted deep in the past. But this approach, combined with the
preceding four, will turn up a good number of unthinkable ideas.
Why
Some would ask, why would one want to do this? Why deliberately
go poking around among nasty, disreputable ideas? Why look under
rocks?
I do it, first of all, for the same reason I did look under rocks as a
kid: plain curiosity. And I'm especially curious about anything that's
forbidden. Let me see and decide for myself.
Second, I do it because I don't like the idea of being mistaken. If, like
other eras, we believe things that will later seem ridiculous, I want to
know what they are so that I, at least, can avoid believing them.
Third, I do it because it's good for the brain. To do good work you
need a brain that can go anywhere. And you especially need a brain
that's in the habit of going where it's not supposed to.
Great work tends to grow out of ideas that others have overlooked,
and no idea is so overlooked as one that's unthinkable. Natural
selection, for example. It's so simple. Why didn't anyone think of it
before? Well, that is all too obvious. Darwin himself was careful to
tiptoe around the implications of his theory. He wanted to spend his
time thinking about biology, not arguing with people who accused
him of being an atheist.
In the sciences, especially, it's a great advantage to be able to
question assumptions. The m.o. of scientists, or at least of the good
ones, is precisely that: look for places where conventional wisdom is
broken, and then try to pry apart the cracks and see what's
underneath. That's where new theories come from.
A good scientist, in other words, does not merely ignore
conventional wisdom, but makes a special effort to break it.
Scientists go looking for trouble. This should be the m.o. of any
scholar, but scientists seem much more willing to look under rocks.
[10]
Why? It could be that the scientists are simply smarter; most
physicists could, if necessary, make it through a PhD program in
French literature, but few professors of French literature could make
it through a PhD program in physics. Or it could be because it's
clearer in the sciences whether theories are true or false, and this
makes scientists bolder. (Or it could be that, because it's clearer in
the sciences whether theories are true or false, you have to be smart
to get jobs as a scientist, rather than just a good politician.)
Whatever the reason, there seems a clear correlation between
intelligence and willingness to consider shocking ideas. This isn't
just because smart people actively work to find holes in conventional
thinking. I think conventions also have less hold over them to start
with. You can see that in the way they dress.
It's not only in the sciences that heresy pays off. In any competitive
field, you can win big by seeing things that others daren't. And in
every field there are probably heresies few dare utter. Within the US
car industry there is a lot of hand-wringing now about declining
market share. Yet the cause is so obvious that any observant outsider
could explain it in a second: they make bad cars. And they have for
so long that by now the US car brands are antibrands-- something
you'd buy a car despite, not because of. Cadillac stopped being the
Cadillac of cars in about 1970. And yet I suspect no one dares say
this. [11] Otherwise these companies would have tried to fix the
problem.
Training yourself to think unthinkable thoughts has advantages
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beyond the thoughts themselves. It's like stretching. When you
stretch before running, you put your body into positions much more
extreme than any it will assume during the run. If you can think
things so outside the box that they'd make people's hair stand on end,
you'll have no trouble with the small trips outside the box that people
call innovative.
Pensieri Stretti
When you find something you can't say, what do you do with it? My
advice is, don't say it. Or at least, pick your battles.
Suppose in the future there is a movement to ban the color yellow.
Proposals to paint anything yellow are denounced as "yellowist", as
is anyone suspected of liking the color. People who like orange are
tolerated but viewed with suspicion. Suppose you realize there is
nothing wrong with yellow. If you go around saying this, you'll be
denounced as a yellowist too, and you'll find yourself having a lot of
arguments with anti-yellowists. If your aim in life is to rehabilitate
the color yellow, that may be what you want. But if you're mostly
interested in other questions, being labelled as a yellowist will just be
a distraction. Argue with idiots, and you become an idiot.
The most important thing is to be able to think what you want, not to
say what you want. And if you feel you have to say everything you
think, it may inhibit you from thinking improper thoughts. I think it's
better to follow the opposite policy. Draw a sharp line between your
thoughts and your speech. Inside your head, anything is allowed.
Within my head I make a point of encouraging the most outrageous
thoughts I can imagine. But, as in a secret society, nothing that
happens within the building should be told to outsiders. The first rule
of Fight Club is, you do not talk about Fight Club.
When Milton was going to visit Italy in the 1630s, Sir Henry
Wootton, who had been ambassador to Venice, told him his motto
should be "i pensieri stretti & il viso sciolto." Closed thoughts and an
open face. Smile at everyone, and don't tell them what you're
thinking. This was wise advice. Milton was an argumentative fellow,
and the Inquisition was a bit restive at that time. But I think the
difference between Milton's situation and ours is only a matter of
degree. Every era has its heresies, and if you don't get imprisoned for
them you will at least get in enough trouble that it becomes a
complete distraction.
I admit it seems cowardly to keep quiet. When I read about the
harassment to which the Scientologists subject their critics [12], or
that pro-Israel groups are "compiling dossiers" on those who speak
out against Israeli human rights abuses [13], or about people being
sued for violating the DMCA [14], part of me wants to say, "All
right, you bastards, bring it on." The problem is, there are so many
things you can't say. If you said them all you'd have no time left for
your real work. You'd have to turn into Noam Chomsky. [15]
The trouble with keeping your thoughts secret, though, is that you
lose the advantages of discussion. Talking about an idea leads to
more ideas. So the optimal plan, if you can manage it, is to have a
few trusted friends you can speak openly to. This is not just a way to
develop ideas; it's also a good rule of thumb for choosing friends.
The people you can say heretical things to without getting jumped on
are also the most interesting to know.
Viso Sciolto?
I don't think we need the viso sciolto so much as the pensieri stretti.
Perhaps the best policy is to make it plain that you don't agree with
whatever zealotry is current in your time, but not to be too specific
about what you disagree with. Zealots will try to draw you out, but
you don't have to answer them. If they try to force you to treat a
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question on their terms by asking "are you with us or against us?"
you can always just answer "neither".
Better still, answer "I haven't decided." That's what Larry Summers
did when a group tried to put him in this position. Explaining himself
later, he said "I don't do litmus tests." [16] A lot of the questions
people get hot about are actually quite complicated. There is no prize
for getting the answer quickly.
If the anti-yellowists seem to be getting out of hand and you want to
fight back, there are ways to do it without getting yourself accused of
being a yellowist. Like skirmishers in an ancient army, you want to
avoid directly engaging the main body of the enemy's troops. Better
to harass them with arrows from a distance.
One way to do this is to ratchet the debate up one level of
abstraction. If you argue against censorship in general, you can avoid
being accused of whatever heresy is contained in the book or film
that someone is trying to censor. You can attack labels with metalabels: labels that refer to the use of labels to prevent discussion. The
spread of the term "political correctness" meant the beginning of the
end of political correctness, because it enabled one to attack the
phenomenon as a whole without being accused of any of the specific
heresies it sought to suppress.
Another way to counterattack is with metaphor. Arthur Miller
undermined the House Un-American Activities Committee by
writing a play, "The Crucible," about the Salem witch trials. He
never referred directly to the committee and so gave them no way to
reply. What could HUAC do, defend the Salem witch trials? And yet
Miller's metaphor stuck so well that to this day the activities of the
committee are often described as a "witch-hunt."
Best of all, probably, is humor. Zealots, whatever their cause,
invariably lack a sense of humor. They can't reply in kind to jokes.
They're as unhappy on the territory of humor as a mounted knight on
a skating rink. Victorian prudishness, for example, seems to have
been defeated mainly by treating it as a joke. Likewise its
reincarnation as political correctness. "I am glad that I managed to
write 'The Crucible,'" Arthur Miller wrote, "but looking back I have
often wished I'd had the temperament to do an absurd comedy,
which is what the situation deserved." [17]
ABQ
A Dutch friend says I should use Holland as an example of a tolerant
society. It's true they have a long tradition of comparative openmindedness. For centuries the low countries were the place to go to
say things you couldn't say anywhere else, and this helped to make
the region a center of scholarship and industry (which have been
closely tied for longer than most people realize). Descartes, though
claimed by the French, did much of his thinking in Holland.
And yet, I wonder. The Dutch seem to live their lives up to their
necks in rules and regulations. There's so much you can't do there; is
there really nothing you can't say?
Certainly the fact that they value open-mindedness is no guarantee.
Who thinks they're not open-minded? Our hypothetical prim miss
from the suburbs thinks she's open-minded. Hasn't she been taught to
be? Ask anyone, and they'll say the same thing: they're pretty openminded, though they draw the line at things that are really wrong.
(Some tribes may avoid "wrong" as judgemental, and may instead
use a more neutral sounding euphemism like "negative" or
"destructive".)
When people are bad at math, they know it, because they get the
wrong answers on tests. But when people are bad at openmindedness they don't know it. In fact they tend to think the
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opposite. Remember, it's the nature of fashion to be invisible. It
wouldn't work otherwise. Fashion doesn't seem like fashion to
someone in the grip of it. It just seems like the right thing to do. It's
only by looking from a distance that we see oscillations in people's
idea of the right thing to do, and can identify them as fashions.
Time gives us such distance for free. Indeed, the arrival of new
fashions makes old fashions easy to see, because they seem so
ridiculous by contrast. From one end of a pendulum's swing, the
other end seems especially far away.
To see fashion in your own time, though, requires a conscious effort.
Without time to give you distance, you have to create distance
yourself. Instead of being part of the mob, stand as far away from it
as you can and watch what it's doing. And pay especially close
attention whenever an idea is being suppressed. Web filters for
children and employees often ban sites containing pornography,
violence, and hate speech. What counts as pornography and
violence? And what, exactly, is "hate speech?" This sounds like a
phrase out of 1984.
Labels like that are probably the biggest external clue. If a statement
is false, that's the worst thing you can say about it. You don't need to
say that it's heretical. And if it isn't false, it shouldn't be suppressed.
So when you see statements being attacked as x-ist or y-ic (substitute
your current values of x and y), whether in 1630 or 2030, that's a
sure sign that something is wrong. When you hear such labels being
used, ask why.
Especially if you hear yourself using them. It's not just the mob you
need to learn to watch from a distance. You need to be able to watch
your own thoughts from a distance. That's not a radical idea, by the
way; it's the main difference between children and adults. When a
child gets angry because he's tired, he doesn't know what's
happening. An adult can distance himself enough from the situation
to say "never mind, I'm just tired." I don't see why one couldn't, by a
similar process, learn to recognize and discount the effects of moral
fashions.
You have to take that extra step if you want to think clearly. But it's
harder, because now you're working against social customs instead
of with them. Everyone encourages you to grow up to the point
where you can discount your own bad moods. Few encourage you to
continue to the point where you can discount society's bad moods.
How can you see the wave, when you're the water? Always be
questioning. That's the only defence. What can't you say? And why?
_______________________________________42)
Paul Graham from http://www.paulgraham.com/
September 2004
Remember the essays you had to write in high school? Topic
sentence, introductory paragraph, supporting paragraphs, conclusion.
The conclusion being, say, that Ahab in Moby Dick was a Christ-like
figure.
Oy. So I'm going to try to give the other side of the story: what an
essay really is, and how you write one. Or at least, how I write one.
Mods
The most obvious difference between real essays and the things one
has to write in school is that real essays are not exclusively about
English literature. Certainly schools should teach students how to
write. But due to a series of historical accidents the teaching of
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writing has gotten mixed together with the study of literature. And so
all over the country students are writing not about how a baseball
team with a small budget might compete with the Yankees, or the
role of color in fashion, or what constitutes a good dessert, but about
symbolism in Dickens.
With the result that writing is made to seem boring and pointless.
Who cares about symbolism in Dickens? Dickens himself would be
more interested in an essay about color or baseball.
How did things get this way? To answer that we have to go back
almost a thousand years. Around 1100, Europe at last began to catch
its breath after centuries of chaos, and once they had the luxury of
curiosity they rediscovered what we call "the classics." The effect
was rather as if we were visited by beings from another solar system.
These earlier civilizations were so much more sophisticated that for
the next several centuries the main work of European scholars, in
almost every field, was to assimilate what they knew.
During this period the study of ancient texts acquired great prestige.
It seemed the essence of what scholars did. As European scholarship
gained momentum it became less and less important; by 1350
someone who wanted to learn about science could find better
teachers than Aristotle in his own era. [1] But schools change slower
than scholarship. In the 19th century the study of ancient texts was
still the backbone of the curriculum.
The time was then ripe for the question: if the study of ancient texts
is a valid field for scholarship, why not modern texts? The answer, of
course, is that the original raison d'etre of classical scholarship was a
kind of intellectual archaeology that does not need to be done in the
case of contemporary authors. But for obvious reasons no one
wanted to give that answer. The archaeological work being mostly
done, it implied that those studying the classics were, if not wasting
their time, at least working on problems of minor importance.
And so began the study of modern literature. There was a good deal
of resistance at first. The first courses in English literature seem to
have been offered by the newer colleges, particularly American ones.
Dartmouth, the University of Vermont, Amherst, and University
College, London taught English literature in the 1820s. But Harvard
didn't have a professor of English literature until 1876, and Oxford
not till 1885. (Oxford had a chair of Chinese before it had one of
English.) [2]
What tipped the scales, at least in the US, seems to have been the
idea that professors should do research as well as teach. This idea
(along with the PhD, the department, and indeed the whole concept
of the modern university) was imported from Germany in the late
19th century. Beginning at Johns Hopkins in 1876, the new model
spread rapidly.
Writing was one of the casualties. Colleges had long taught English
composition. But how do you do research on composition? The
professors who taught math could be required to do original math,
the professors who taught history could be required to write
scholarly articles about history, but what about the professors who
taught rhetoric or composition? What should they do research on?
The closest thing seemed to be English literature. [3]
And so in the late 19th century the teaching of writing was inherited
by English professors. This had two drawbacks: (a) an expert on
literature need not himself be a good writer, any more than an art
historian has to be a good painter, and (b) the subject of writing now
tends to be literature, since that's what the professor is interested in.
High schools imitate universities. The seeds of our miserable high
school experiences were sown in 1892, when the National Education
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Association "formally recommended that literature and composition
be unified in the high school course." [4] The 'riting component of
the 3 Rs then morphed into English, with the bizarre consequence
that high school students now had to write about English literature-to write, without even realizing it, imitations of whatever English
professors had been publishing in their journals a few decades
before.
It's no wonder if this seems to the student a pointless exercise,
because we're now three steps removed from real work: the students
are imitating English professors, who are imitating classical scholars,
who are merely the inheritors of a tradition growing out of what was,
700 years ago, fascinating and urgently needed work.
No Defense
The other big difference between a real essay and the things they
make you write in school is that a real essay doesn't take a position
and then defend it. That principle, like the idea that we ought to be
writing about literature, turns out to be another intellectual hangover
of long forgotten origins.
It's often mistakenly believed that medieval universities were mostly
seminaries. In fact they were more law schools. And at least in our
tradition lawyers are advocates, trained to take either side of an
argument and make as good a case for it as they can. Whether cause
or effect, this spirit pervaded early universities. The study of
rhetoric, the art of arguing persuasively, was a third of the
undergraduate curriculum. [5] And after the lecture the most
common form of discussion was the disputation. This is at least
nominally preserved in our present-day thesis defense: most people
treat the words thesis and dissertation as interchangeable, but
originally, at least, a thesis was a position one took and the
dissertation was the argument by which one defended it.
Defending a position may be a necessary evil in a legal dispute, but
it's not the best way to get at the truth, as I think lawyers would be
the first to admit. It's not just that you miss subtleties this way. The
real problem is that you can't change the question.
And yet this principle is built into the very structure of the things
they teach you to write in high school. The topic sentence is your
thesis, chosen in advance, the supporting paragraphs the blows you
strike in the conflict, and the conclusion-- uh, what is the
conclusion? I was never sure about that in high school. It seemed as
if we were just supposed to restate what we said in the first
paragraph, but in different enough words that no one could tell. Why
bother? But when you understand the origins of this sort of "essay,"
you can see where the conclusion comes from. It's the concluding
remarks to the jury.
Good writing should be convincing, certainly, but it should be
convincing because you got the right answers, not because you did a
good job of arguing. When I give a draft of an essay to friends, there
are two things I want to know: which parts bore them, and which
seem unconvincing. The boring bits can usually be fixed by cutting.
But I don't try to fix the unconvincing bits by arguing more cleverly.
I need to talk the matter over.
At the very least I must have explained something badly. In that
case, in the course of the conversation I'll be forced to come up a
with a clearer explanation, which I can just incorporate in the essay.
More often than not I have to change what I was saying as well. But
the aim is never to be convincing per se. As the reader gets smarter,
convincing and true become identical, so if I can convince smart
readers I must be near the truth.
The sort of writing that attempts to persuade may be a valid (or at
least inevitable) form, but it's historically inaccurate to call it an
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essay. An essay is something else.
questions and then drift off to get a cup of tea.
Trying
Many published essays peter out in the same way. Particularly the
sort written by the staff writers of newsmagazines. Outside writers
tend to supply editorials of the defend-a-position variety, which
make a beeline toward a rousing (and foreordained) conclusion. But
the staff writers feel obliged to write something "balanced." Since
they're writing for a popular magazine, they start with the most
radioactively controversial questions, from which-- because they're
writing for a popular magazine-- they then proceed to recoil in terror.
Abortion, for or against? This group says one thing. That group says
another. One thing is certain: the question is a complex one. (But
don't get mad at us. We didn't draw any conclusions.)
To understand what a real essay is, we have to reach back into
history again, though this time not so far. To Michel de Montaigne,
who in 1580 published a book of what he called "essais." He was
doing something quite different from what lawyers do, and the
difference is embodied in the name. Essayer is the French verb
meaning "to try" and an essai is an attempt. An essay is something
you write to try to figure something out.
Figure out what? You don't know yet. And so you can't begin with a
thesis, because you don't have one, and may never have one. An
essay doesn't begin with a statement, but with a question. In a real
essay, you don't take a position and defend it. You notice a door
that's ajar, and you open it and walk in to see what's inside.
If all you want to do is figure things out, why do you need to write
anything, though? Why not just sit and think? Well, there precisely is
Montaigne's great discovery. Expressing ideas helps to form them.
Indeed, helps is far too weak a word. Most of what ends up in my
essays I only thought of when I sat down to write them. That's why I
write them.
In the things you write in school you are, in theory, merely
explaining yourself to the reader. In a real essay you're writing for
yourself. You're thinking out loud.
But not quite. Just as inviting people over forces you to clean up
your apartment, writing something that other people will read forces
you to think well. So it does matter to have an audience. The things
I've written just for myself are no good. They tend to peter out.
When I run into difficulties, I find I conclude with a few vague
The River
Questions aren't enough. An essay has to come up with answers.
They don't always, of course. Sometimes you start with a promising
question and get nowhere. But those you don't publish. Those are
like experiments that get inconclusive results. An essay you publish
ought to tell the reader something he didn't already know.
But what you tell him doesn't matter, so long as it's interesting. I'm
sometimes accused of meandering. In defend-a-position writing that
would be a flaw. There you're not concerned with truth. You already
know where you're going, and you want to go straight there,
blustering through obstacles, and hand-waving your way across
swampy ground. But that's not what you're trying to do in an essay.
An essay is supposed to be a search for truth. It would be suspicious
if it didn't meander.
The Meander (aka Menderes) is a river in Turkey. As you might
expect, it winds all over the place. But it doesn't do this out of
frivolity. The path it has discovered is the most economical route to
the sea. [6]
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The river's algorithm is simple. At each step, flow down. For the
essayist this translates to: flow interesting. Of all the places to go
next, choose the most interesting. One can't have quite as little
foresight as a river. I always know generally what I want to write
about. But not the specific conclusions I want to reach; from
paragraph to paragraph I let the ideas take their course.
This doesn't always work. Sometimes, like a river, one runs up
against a wall. Then I do the same thing the river does: backtrack. At
one point in this essay I found that after following a certain thread I
ran out of ideas. I had to go back seven paragraphs and start over in
another direction.
Fundamentally an essay is a train of thought-- but a cleaned-up train
of thought, as dialogue is cleaned-up conversation. Real thought, like
real conversation, is full of false starts. It would be exhausting to
read. You need to cut and fill to emphasize the central thread, like an
illustrator inking over a pencil drawing. But don't change so much
that you lose the spontaneity of the original.
Err on the side of the river. An essay is not a reference work. It's not
something you read looking for a specific answer, and feel cheated if
you don't find it. I'd much rather read an essay that went off in an
unexpected but interesting direction than one that plodded dutifully
along a prescribed course.
I was afraid of flying for a long time and could only travel
vicariously. When friends came back from faraway places, it wasn't
just out of politeness that I asked what they saw. I really wanted to
know. And I found the best way to get information out of them was
to ask what surprised them. How was the place different from what
they expected? This is an extremely useful question. You can ask it
of the most unobservant people, and it will extract information they
didn't even know they were recording.
Surprises are things that you not only didn't know, but that contradict
things you thought you knew. And so they're the most valuable sort
of fact you can get. They're like a food that's not merely healthy, but
counteracts the unhealthy effects of things you've already eaten.
How do you find surprises? Well, therein lies half the work of essay
writing. (The other half is expressing yourself well.) The trick is to
use yourself as a proxy for the reader. You should only write about
things you've thought about a lot. And anything you come across that
surprises you, who've thought about the topic a lot, will probably
surprise most readers.
For example, in a recent essay I pointed out that because you can
only judge computer programmers by working with them, no one
knows who the best programmers are overall. I didn't realize this
when I began that essay, and even now I find it kind of weird. That's
what you're looking for.
Surprise
So what's interesting? For me, interesting means surprise. Interfaces,
as Geoffrey James has said, should follow the principle of least
astonishment. A button that looks like it will make a machine stop
should make it stop, not speed up. Essays should do the opposite.
Essays should aim for maximum surprise.
So if you want to write essays, you need two ingredients: a few
topics you've thought about a lot, and some ability to ferret out the
unexpected.
What should you think about? My guess is that it doesn't matter-that anything can be interesting if you get deeply enough into it. One
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possible exception might be things that have deliberately had all the
variation sucked out of them, like working in fast food. In retrospect,
was there anything interesting about working at Baskin-Robbins?
Well, it was interesting how important color was to the customers.
Kids a certain age would point into the case and say that they wanted
yellow. Did they want French Vanilla or Lemon? They would just
look at you blankly. They wanted yellow. And then there was the
mystery of why the perennial favorite Pralines 'n' Cream was so
appealing. (I think now it was the salt.) And the difference in the
way fathers and mothers bought ice cream for their kids: the fathers
like benevolent kings bestowing largesse, the mothers harried, giving
in to pressure. So, yes, there does seem to be some material even in
fast food.
I didn't notice those things at the time, though. At sixteen I was about
as observant as a lump of rock. I can see more now in the fragments
of memory I preserve of that age than I could see at the time from
having it all happening live, right in front of me.
Observation
what is now called France, tribes that flowed in as the Roman empire
collapsed, but Vikings (norman = north man) who arrived four
centuries later in 911. Which makes it easier to remember that
Dublin was also established by Vikings in the 840s. Etc, etc squared.
Collecting surprises is a similar process. The more anomalies you've
seen, the more easily you'll notice new ones. Which means, oddly
enough, that as you grow older, life should become more and more
surprising. When I was a kid, I used to think adults had it all figured
out. I had it backwards. Kids are the ones who have it all figured out.
They're just mistaken.
When it comes to surprises, the rich get richer. But (as with wealth)
there may be habits of mind that will help the process along. It's
good to have a habit of asking questions, especially questions
beginning with Why. But not in the random way that three year olds
ask why. There are an infinite number of questions. How do you find
the fruitful ones?
So the ability to ferret out the unexpected must not merely be an
inborn one. It must be something you can learn. How do you learn
it?
I find it especially useful to ask why about things that seem wrong.
For example, why should there be a connection between humor and
misfortune? Why do we find it funny when a character, even one we
like, slips on a banana peel? There's a whole essay's worth of
surprises there for sure.
To some extent it's like learning history. When you first read history,
it's just a whirl of names and dates. Nothing seems to stick. But the
more you learn, the more hooks you have for new facts to stick onto- which means you accumulate knowledge at what's colloquially
called an exponential rate. Once you remember that Normans
conquered England in 1066, it will catch your attention when you
hear that other Normans conquered southern Italy at about the same
time. Which will make you wonder about Normandy, and take note
when a third book mentions that Normans were not, like most of
If you want to notice things that seem wrong, you'll find a degree of
skepticism helpful. I take it as an axiom that we're only achieving
1% of what we could. This helps counteract the rule that gets beaten
into our heads as children: that things are the way they are because
that is how things have to be. For example, everyone I've talked to
while writing this essay felt the same about English classes-- that the
whole process seemed pointless. But none of us had the balls at the
time to hypothesize that it was, in fact, all a mistake. We all thought
there was just something we weren't getting.
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I have a hunch you want to pay attention not just to things that seem
wrong, but things that seem wrong in a humorous way. I'm always
pleased when I see someone laugh as they read a draft of an essay.
But why should I be? I'm aiming for good ideas. Why should good
ideas be funny? The connection may be surprise. Surprises make us
laugh, and surprises are what one wants to deliver.
I write down things that surprise me in notebooks. I never actually
get around to reading them and using what I've written, but I do tend
to reproduce the same thoughts later. So the main value of notebooks
may be what writing things down leaves in your head.
People trying to be cool will find themselves at a disadvantage when
collecting surprises. To be surprised is to be mistaken. And the
essence of cool, as any fourteen year old could tell you, is nil
admirari. When you're mistaken, don't dwell on it; just act like
nothing's wrong and maybe no one will notice.
One of the keys to coolness is to avoid situations where inexperience
may make you look foolish. If you want to find surprises you should
do the opposite. Study lots of different things, because some of the
most interesting surprises are unexpected connections between
different fields. For example, jam, bacon, pickles, and cheese, which
are among the most pleasing of foods, were all originally intended as
methods of preservation. And so were books and paintings.
Whatever you study, include history-- but social and economic
history, not political history. History seems to me so important that
it's misleading to treat it as a mere field of study. Another way to
describe it is all the data we have so far.
Among other things, studying history gives one confidence that there
are good ideas waiting to be discovered right under our noses.
Swords evolved during the Bronze Age out of daggers, which (like
their flint predecessors) had a hilt separate from the blade. Because
swords are longer the hilts kept breaking off. But it took five
hundred years before someone thought of casting hilt and blade as
one piece.
Disobedience
Above all, make a habit of paying attention to things you're not
supposed to, either because they're "inappropriate," or not important,
or not what you're supposed to be working on. If you're curious
about something, trust your instincts. Follow the threads that attract
your attention. If there's something you're really interested in, you'll
find they have an uncanny way of leading back to it anyway, just as
the conversation of people who are especially proud of something
always tends to lead back to it.
For example, I've always been fascinated by comb-overs, especially
the extreme sort that make a man look as if he's wearing a beret
made of his own hair. Surely this is a lowly sort of thing to be
interested in-- the sort of superficial quizzing best left to teenage
girls. And yet there is something underneath. The key question, I
realized, is how does the comber-over not see how odd he looks?
And the answer is that he got to look that way incrementally. What
began as combing his hair a little carefully over a thin patch has
gradually, over 20 years, grown into a monstrosity. Gradualness is
very powerful. And that power can be used for constructive purposes
too: just as you can trick yourself into looking like a freak, you can
trick yourself into creating something so grand that you would never
have dared to plan such a thing. Indeed, this is just how most good
software gets created. You start by writing a stripped-down kernel
(how hard can it be?) and gradually it grows into a complete
operating system. Hence the next leap: could you do the same thing
in painting, or in a novel?
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See what you can extract from a frivolous question? If there's one
piece of advice I would give about writing essays, it would be: don't
do as you're told. Don't believe what you're supposed to. Don't write
the essay readers expect; one learns nothing from what one expects.
And don't write the way they taught you to in school.
The most important sort of disobedience is to write essays at all.
Fortunately, this sort of disobedience shows signs of becoming
rampant. It used to be that only a tiny number of officially approved
writers were allowed to write essays. Magazines published few of
them, and judged them less by what they said than who wrote them;
a magazine might publish a story by an unknown writer if it was
good enough, but if they published an essay on x it had to be by
someone who was at least forty and whose job title had x in it.
Which is a problem, because there are a lot of things insiders can't
say precisely because they're insiders.
population curve.
[2] Parker, William R. "Where Do College English Departments
Come From?" College English 28 (1966-67), pp. 339-351. Reprinted
in Gray, Donald J. (ed). The Department of English at Indiana
University Bloomington 1868-1970. Indiana University Publications.
Daniels, Robert V. The University of Vermont: The First Two
Hundred Years. University of Vermont, 1991.
Mueller, Friedrich M. Letter to the Pall Mall Gazette. 1886/87.
Reprinted in Bacon, Alan (ed). The Nineteenth-Century History of
English Studies. Ashgate, 1998.
[3] I'm compressing the story a bit. At first literature took a back seat
to philology, which (a) seemed more serious and (b) was popular in
Germany, where many of the leading scholars of that generation had
been trained.
The Internet is changing that. Anyone can publish an essay on the
Web, and it gets judged, as any writing should, by what it says, not
who wrote it. Who are you to write about x? You are whatever you
wrote.
In some cases the writing teachers were transformed in situ into
English professors. Francis James Child, who had been Boylston
Professor of Rhetoric at Harvard since 1851, became in 1876 the
university's first professor of English.
Popular magazines made the period between the spread of literacy
and the arrival of TV the golden age of the short story. The Web may
well make this the golden age of the essay. And that's certainly not
something I realized when I started writing this.
[4] Parker, op. cit., p. 25.
Notes
[1] I'm thinking of Oresme (c. 1323-82). But it's hard to pick a date,
because there was a sudden drop-off in scholarship just as Europeans
finished assimilating classical science. The cause may have been the
plague of 1347; the trend in scientific progress matches the
[5] The undergraduate curriculum or trivium (whence "trivial")
consisted of Latin grammar, rhetoric, and logic. Candidates for
masters' degrees went on to study the quadrivium of arithmetic,
geometry, music, and astronomy. Together these were the seven
liberal arts.
The study of rhetoric was inherited directly from Rome, where it was
considered the most important subject. It would not be far from the
truth to say that education in the classical world meant training
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landowners' sons to speak well enough to defend their interests in
political and legal disputes.
[6] Trevor Blackwell points out that this isn't strictly true, because
the outside edges of curves erode faster.
_______________________________________43)
Paul Graham from http://www.paulgraham.com/
January 2006
To do something well you have to like it. That idea is not exactly
novel. We've got it down to four words: "Do what you love." But it's
not enough just to tell people that. Doing what you love is
complicated.
The very idea is foreign to what most of us learn as kids. When I was
a kid, it seemed as if work and fun were opposites by definition. Life
had two states: some of the time adults were making you do things,
and that was called work; the rest of the time you could do what you
wanted, and that was called playing. Occasionally the things adults
made you do were fun, just as, occasionally, playing wasn't—for
example, if you fell and hurt yourself. But except for these few
anomalous cases, work was pretty much defined as not-fun.
And it did not seem to be an accident. School, it was implied, was
tedious because it was preparation for grownup work.
The world then was divided into two groups, grownups and kids.
Grownups, like some kind of cursed race, had to work. Kids didn't,
but they did have to go to school, which was a dilute version of work
meant to prepare us for the real thing. Much as we disliked school,
the grownups all agreed that grownup work was worse, and that we
had it easy.
Teachers in particular all seemed to believe implicitly that work was
not fun. Which is not surprising: work wasn't fun for most of them.
Why did we have to memorize state capitals instead of playing
dodgeball? For the same reason they had to watch over a bunch of
kids instead of lying on a beach. You couldn't just do what you
wanted.
I'm not saying we should let little kids do whatever they want. They
may have to be made to work on certain things. But if we make kids
work on dull stuff, it might be wise to tell them that tediousness is
not the defining quality of work, and indeed that the reason they
have to work on dull stuff now is so they can work on more
interesting stuff later. [1]
Once, when I was about 9 or 10, my father told me I could be
whatever I wanted when I grew up, so long as I enjoyed it. I
remember that precisely because it seemed so anomalous. It was like
being told to use dry water. Whatever I thought he meant, I didn't
think he meant work could literally be fun—fun like playing. It took
me years to grasp that.
Jobs
By high school, the prospect of an actual job was on the horizon.
Adults would sometimes come to speak to us about their work, or we
would go to see them at work. It was always understood that they
enjoyed what they did. In retrospect I think one may have: the
private jet pilot. But I don't think the bank manager really did.
The main reason they all acted as if they enjoyed their work was
presumably the upper-middle class convention that you're supposed
to. It would not merely be bad for your career to say that you
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despised your job, but a social faux-pas.
Why is it conventional to pretend to like what you do? The first
sentence of this essay explains that. If you have to like something to
do it well, then the most successful people will all like what they do.
That's where the upper-middle class tradition comes from. Just as
houses all over America are full of chairs that are, without the
owners even knowing it, nth-degree imitations of chairs designed
250 years ago for French kings, conventional attitudes about work
are, without the owners even knowing it, nth-degree imitations of the
attitudes of people who've done great things.
What a recipe for alienation. By the time they reach an age to think
about what they'd like to do, most kids have been thoroughly misled
about the idea of loving one's work. School has trained them to
regard work as an unpleasant duty. Having a job is said to be even
more onerous than schoolwork. And yet all the adults claim to like
what they do. You can't blame kids for thinking "I am not like these
people; I am not suited to this world."
Actually they've been told three lies: the stuff they've been taught to
regard as work in school is not real work; grownup work is not
(necessarily) worse than schoolwork; and many of the adults around
them are lying when they say they like what they do.
The most dangerous liars can be the kids' own parents. If you take a
boring job to give your family a high standard of living, as so many
people do, you risk infecting your kids with the idea that work is
boring. [2] Maybe it would be better for kids in this one case if
parents were not so unselfish. A parent who set an example of loving
their work might help their kids more than an expensive house. [3]
It was not till I was in college that the idea of work finally broke free
from the idea of making a living. Then the important question
became not how to make money, but what to work on. Ideally these
coincided, but some spectacular boundary cases (like Einstein in the
patent office) proved they weren't identical.
The definition of work was now to make some original contribution
to the world, and in the process not to starve. But after the habit of so
many years my idea of work still included a large component of
pain. Work still seemed to require discipline, because only hard
problems yielded grand results, and hard problems couldn't literally
be fun. Surely one had to force oneself to work on them.
If you think something's supposed to hurt, you're less likely to notice
if you're doing it wrong. That about sums up my experience of
graduate school.
Bounds
How much are you supposed to like what you do? Unless you know
that, you don't know when to stop searching. And if, like most
people, you underestimate it, you'll tend to stop searching too early.
You'll end up doing something chosen for you by your parents, or
the desire to make money, or prestige—or sheer inertia.
Here's an upper bound: Do what you love doesn't mean, do what you
would like to do most this second. Even Einstein probably had
moments when he wanted to have a cup of coffee, but told himself
he ought to finish what he was working on first.
It used to perplex me when I read about people who liked what they
did so much that there was nothing they'd rather do. There didn't
seem to be any sort of work I liked that much. If I had a choice of (a)
spending the next hour working on something or (b) be teleported to
Rome and spend the next hour wandering about, was there any sort
of work I'd prefer? Honestly, no.
But the fact is, almost anyone would rather, at any given moment,
float about in the Carribbean, or have sex, or eat some delicious
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food, than work on hard problems. The rule about doing what you
love assumes a certain length of time. It doesn't mean, do what will
make you happiest this second, but what will make you happiest over
some longer period, like a week or a month.
Unproductive pleasures pall eventually. After a while you get tired
of lying on the beach. If you want to stay happy, you have to do
something.
As a lower bound, you have to like your work more than any
unproductive pleasure. You have to like what you do enough that the
concept of "spare time" seems mistaken. Which is not to say you
have to spend all your time working. You can only work so much
before you get tired and start to screw up. Then you want to do
something else—even something mindless. But you don't regard this
time as the prize and the time you spend working as the pain you
endure to earn it.
I put the lower bound there for practical reasons. If your work is not
your favorite thing to do, you'll have terrible problems with
procrastination. You'll have to force yourself to work, and when you
resort to that the results are distinctly inferior.
To be happy I think you have to be doing something you not only
enjoy, but admire. You have to be able to say, at the end, wow, that's
pretty cool. This doesn't mean you have to make something. If you
learn how to hang glide, or to speak a foreign language fluently, that
will be enough to make you say, for a while at least, wow, that's
pretty cool. What there has to be is a test.
So one thing that falls just short of the standard, I think, is reading
books. Except for some books in math and the hard sciences, there's
no test of how well you've read a book, and that's why merely
reading books doesn't quite feel like work. You have to do
something with what you've read to feel productive.
I think the best test is one Gino Lee taught me: to try to do things
that would make your friends say wow. But it probably wouldn't
start to work properly till about age 22, because most people haven't
had a big enough sample to pick friends from before then.
Sirens
What you should not do, I think, is worry about the opinion of
anyone beyond your friends. You shouldn't worry about prestige.
Prestige is the opinion of the rest of the world. When you can ask the
opinions of people whose judgement you respect, what does it add to
consider the opinions of people you don't even know? [4]
This is easy advice to give. It's hard to follow, especially when
you're young. [5] Prestige is like a powerful magnet that warps even
your beliefs about what you enjoy. It causes you to work not on what
you like, but what you'd like to like.
That's what leads people to try to write novels, for example. They
like reading novels. They notice that people who write them win
Nobel prizes. What could be more wonderful, they think, than to be a
novelist? But liking the idea of being a novelist is not enough; you
have to like the actual work of novel-writing if you're going to be
good at it; you have to like making up elaborate lies.
Prestige is just fossilized inspiration. If you do anything well
enough, you'll make it prestigious. Plenty of things we now consider
prestigious were anything but at first. Jazz comes to mind—though
almost any established art form would do. So just do what you like,
and let prestige take care of itself.
Prestige is especially dangerous to the ambitious. If you want to
make ambitious people waste their time on errands, the way to do it
177
is to bait the hook with prestige. That's the recipe for getting people
to give talks, write forewords, serve on committees, be department
heads, and so on. It might be a good rule simply to avoid any
prestigious task. If it didn't suck, they wouldn't have had to make it
prestigious.
Similarly, if you admire two kinds of work equally, but one is more
prestigious, you should probably choose the other. Your opinions
about what's admirable are always going to be slightly influenced by
prestige, so if the two seem equal to you, you probably have more
genuine admiration for the less prestigious one.
The other big force leading people astray is money. Money by itself
is not that dangerous. When something pays well but is regarded
with contempt, like telemarketing, or prostitution, or personal injury
litigation, ambitious people aren't tempted by it. That kind of work
ends up being done by people who are "just trying to make a living."
(Tip: avoid any field whose practitioners say this.) The danger is
when money is combined with prestige, as in, say, corporate law, or
medicine. A comparatively safe and prosperous career with some
automatic baseline prestige is dangerously tempting to someone
young, who hasn't thought much about what they really like.
The test of whether people love what they do is whether they'd do it
even if they weren't paid for it—even if they had to work at another
job to make a living. How many corporate lawyers would do their
current work if they had to do it for free, in their spare time, and take
day jobs as waiters to support themselves?
This test is especially helpful in deciding between different kinds of
academic work, because fields vary greatly in this respect. Most
good mathematicians would work on math even if there were no jobs
as math professors, whereas in the departments at the other end of
the spectrum, the availability of teaching jobs is the driver: people
would rather be English professors than work in ad agencies, and
publishing papers is the way you compete for such jobs. Math would
happen without math departments, but it is the existence of English
majors, and therefore jobs teaching them, that calls into being all
those thousands of dreary papers about gender and identity in the
novels of Conrad. No one does that kind of thing for fun.
The advice of parents will tend to err on the side of money. It seems
safe to say there are more undergrads who want to be novelists and
whose parents want them to be doctors than who want to be doctors
and whose parents want them to be novelists. The kids think their
parents are "materialistic." Not necessarily. All parents tend to be
more conservative for their kids than they would for themselves,
simply because, as parents, they share risks more than rewards. If
your eight year old son decides to climb a tall tree, or your teenage
daughter decides to date the local bad boy, you won't get a share in
the excitement, but if your son falls, or your daughter gets pregnant,
you'll have to deal with the consequences.
Discipline
With such powerful forces leading us astray, it's not surprising we
find it so hard to discover what we like to work on. Most people are
doomed in childhood by accepting the axiom that work = pain.
Those who escape this are nearly all lured onto the rocks by prestige
or money. How many even discover something they love to work
on? A few hundred thousand, perhaps, out of billions.
It's hard to find work you love; it must be, if so few do. So don't
underestimate this task. And don't feel bad if you haven't succeeded
yet. In fact, if you admit to yourself that you're discontented, you're a
step ahead of most people, who are still in denial. If you're
surrounded by colleagues who claim to enjoy work that you find
contemptible, odds are they're lying to themselves. Not necessarily,
but probably.
178
Although doing great work takes less discipline than people think—
because the way to do great work is to find something you like so
much that you don't have to force yourself to do it—finding work
you love does usually require discipline. Some people are lucky
enough to know what they want to do when they're 12, and just glide
along as if they were on railroad tracks. But this seems the exception.
More often people who do great things have careers with the
trajectory of a ping-pong ball. They go to school to study A, drop out
and get a job doing B, and then become famous for C after taking it
up on the side.
Sometimes jumping from one sort of work to another is a sign of
energy, and sometimes it's a sign of laziness. Are you dropping out,
or boldly carving a new path? You often can't tell yourself. Plenty of
people who will later do great things seem to be disappointments
early on, when they're trying to find their niche.
Is there some test you can use to keep yourself honest? One is to try
to do a good job at whatever you're doing, even if you don't like it.
Then at least you'll know you're not using dissatisfaction as an
excuse for being lazy. Perhaps more importantly, you'll get into the
habit of doing things well.
Another test you can use is: always produce. For example, if you
have a day job you don't take seriously because you plan to be a
novelist, are you producing? Are you writing pages of fiction,
however bad? As long as you're producing, you'll know you're not
merely using the hazy vision of the grand novel you plan to write
one day as an opiate. The view of it will be obstructed by the all too
palpably flawed one you're actually writing.
"Always produce" is also a heuristic for finding the work you love. If
you subject yourself to that constraint, it will automatically push you
away from things you think you're supposed to work on, toward
things you actually like. "Always produce" will discover your life's
work the way water, with the aid of gravity, finds the hole in your
roof.
Of course, figuring out what you like to work on doesn't mean you
get to work on it. That's a separate question. And if you're ambitious
you have to keep them separate: you have to make a conscious effort
to keep your ideas about what you want from being contaminated by
what seems possible. [6]
It's painful to keep them apart, because it's painful to observe the gap
between them. So most people pre-emptively lower their
expectations. For example, if you asked random people on the street
if they'd like to be able to draw like Leonardo, you'd find most would
say something like "Oh, I can't draw." This is more a statement of
intention than fact; it means, I'm not going to try. Because the fact is,
if you took a random person off the street and somehow got them to
work as hard as they possibly could at drawing for the next twenty
years, they'd get surprisingly far. But it would require a great moral
effort; it would mean staring failure in the eye every day for years.
And so to protect themselves people say "I can't."
Another related line you often hear is that not everyone can do work
they love—that someone has to do the unpleasant jobs. Really? How
do you make them? In the US the only mechanism for forcing people
to do unpleasant jobs is the draft, and that hasn't been invoked for
over 30 years. All we can do is encourage people to do unpleasant
work, with money and prestige.
If there's something people still won't do, it seems as if society just
has to make do without. That's what happened with domestic
servants. For millennia that was the canonical example of a job
"someone had to do." And yet in the mid twentieth century servants
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practically disappeared in rich countries, and the rich have just had to
do without.
So while there may be some things someone has to do, there's a good
chance anyone saying that about any particular job is mistaken. Most
unpleasant jobs would either get automated or go undone if no one
were willing to do them.
The two-job route is less common than the organic route, because it
requires a deliberate choice. It's also more dangerous. Life tends to
get more expensive as you get older, so it's easy to get sucked into
working longer than you expected at the money job. Worse still,
anything you work on changes you. If you work too long on tedious
stuff, it will rot your brain. And the best paying jobs are most
dangerous, because they require your full attention.
Two Routes
There's another sense of "not everyone can do work they love" that's
all too true, however. One has to make a living, and it's hard to get
paid for doing work you love. There are two routes to that
destination:
The organic route: as you become more eminent, gradually to
increase the parts of your job that you like at the expense of those
you don't.
The two-job route: to work at things you don't like to get money to
work on things you do.
The organic route is more common. It happens naturally to anyone
who does good work. A young architect has to take whatever work
he can get, but if he does well he'll gradually be in a position to pick
and choose among projects. The disadvantage of this route is that it's
slow and uncertain. Even tenure is not real freedom.
The two-job route has several variants depending on how long you
work for money at a time. At one extreme is the "day job," where
you work regular hours at one job to make money, and work on what
you love in your spare time. At the other extreme you work at
something till you make enough not to have to work for money
again.
The advantage of the two-job route is that it lets you jump over
obstacles. The landscape of possible jobs isn't flat; there are walls of
varying heights between different kinds of work. [7] The trick of
maximizing the parts of your job that you like can get you from
architecture to product design, but not, probably, to music. If you
make money doing one thing and then work on another, you have
more freedom of choice.
Which route should you take? That depends on how sure you are of
what you want to do, how good you are at taking orders, how much
risk you can stand, and the odds that anyone will pay (in your
lifetime) for what you want to do. If you're sure of the general area
you want to work in and it's something people are likely to pay you
for, then you should probably take the organic route. But if you don't
know what you want to work on, or don't like to take orders, you
may want to take the two-job route, if you can stand the risk.
Don't decide too soon. Kids who know early what they want to do
seem impressive, as if they got the answer to some math question
before the other kids. They have an answer, certainly, but odds are
it's wrong.
A friend of mine who is a quite successful doctor complains
constantly about her job. When people applying to medical school
ask her for advice, she wants to shake them and yell "Don't do it!"
180
(But she never does.) How did she get into this fix? In high school
she already wanted to be a doctor. And she is so ambitious and
determined that she overcame every obstacle along the way—
including, unfortunately, not liking it.
Now she has a life chosen for her by a high-school kid.
When you're young, you're given the impression that you'll get
enough information to make each choice before you need to make it.
But this is certainly not so with work. When you're deciding what to
do, you have to operate on ridiculously incomplete information.
Even in college you get little idea what various types of work are
like. At best you may have a couple internships, but not all jobs offer
internships, and those that do don't teach you much more about the
work than being a batboy teaches you about playing baseball.
In the design of lives, as in the design of most other things, you get
better results if you use flexible media. So unless you're fairly sure
what you want to do, your best bet may be to choose a type of work
that could turn into either an organic or two-job career. That was
probably part of the reason I chose computers. You can be a
professor, or make a lot of money, or morph it into any number of
other kinds of work.
It's also wise, early on, to seek jobs that let you do many different
things, so you can learn faster what various kinds of work are like.
Conversely, the extreme version of the two-job route is dangerous
because it teaches you so little about what you like. If you work hard
at being a bond trader for ten years, thinking that you'll quit and
write novels when you have enough money, what happens when you
quit and then discover that you don't actually like writing novels?
Most people would say, I'd take that problem. Give me a million
dollars and I'll figure out what to do. But it's harder than it looks.
Constraints give your life shape. Remove them and most people have
no idea what to do: look at what happens to those who win lotteries
or inherit money. Much as everyone thinks they want financial
security, the happiest people are not those who have it, but those who
like what they do. So a plan that promises freedom at the expense of
knowing what to do with it may not be as good as it seems.
Whichever route you take, expect a struggle. Finding work you love
is very difficult. Most people fail. Even if you succeed, it's rare to be
free to work on what you want till your thirties or forties. But if you
have the destination in sight you'll be more likely to arrive at it. If
you know you can love work, you're in the home stretch, and if you
know what work you love, you're practically there.
Notes
[1] Currently we do the opposite: when we make kids do boring
work, like arithmetic drills, instead of admitting frankly that it's
boring, we try to disguise it with superficial decorations.
[2] One father told me about a related phenomenon: he found
himself concealing from his family how much he liked his work.
When he wanted to go to work on a saturday, he found it easier to
say that it was because he "had to" for some reason, rather than
admitting he preferred to work than stay home with them.
[3] Something similar happens with suburbs. Parents move to
suburbs to raise their kids in a safe environment, but suburbs are so
dull and artificial that by the time they're fifteen the kids are
convinced the whole world is boring.
[4] I'm not saying friends should be the only audience for your work.
The more people you can help, the better. But friends should be your
compass.
[5] Donald Hall said young would-be poets were mistaken to be so
obsessed with being published. But you can imagine what it would
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do for a 24 year old to get a poem published in The New Yorker.
Now to people he meets at parties he's a real poet. Actually he's no
better or worse than he was before, but to a clueless audience like
that, the approval of an official authority makes all the difference. So
it's a harder problem than Hall realizes. The reason the young care so
much about prestige is that the people they want to impress are not
very discerning.
The result is there's a lot more disagreeing going on, especially
measured by the word. That doesn't mean people are getting angrier.
The structural change in the way we communicate is enough to
account for it. But though it's not anger that's driving the increase in
disagreement, there's a danger that the increase in disagreement will
make people angrier. Particularly online, where it's easy to say things
you'd never say face to face.
[6] This is isomorphic to the principle that you should prevent your
beliefs about how things are from being contaminated by how you
wish they were. Most people let them mix pretty promiscuously. The
continuing popularity of religion is the most visible index of that.
If we're all going to be disagreeing more, we should be careful to do
it well. What does it mean to disagree well? Most readers can tell the
difference between mere name-calling and a carefully reasoned
refutation, but I think it would help to put names on the intermediate
stages. So here's an attempt at a disagreement hierarchy:
[7] A more accurate metaphor would be to say that the graph of jobs
is not very well connected.
_______________________________________44)
DH0. Name-calling.
This is the lowest form of disagreement, and probably also the most
common. We've all seen comments like this:
Paul Graham from http://www.paulgraham.com/
u r a fag!!!!!!!!!!
March 2008
The web is turning writing into a conversation. Twenty years ago,
writers wrote and readers read. The web lets readers respond, and
increasingly they do—in comment threads, on forums, and in their
own blog posts.
Many who respond to something disagree with it. That's to be
expected. Agreeing tends to motivate people less than disagreeing.
And when you agree there's less to say. You could expand on
something the author said, but he has probably already explored the
most interesting implications. When you disagree you're entering
territory he may not have explored.
But it's important to realize that more articulate name-calling has just
as little weight. A comment like
The author is a self-important dilettante.
is really nothing more than a pretentious version of "u r a fag."
DH1. Ad Hominem.
An ad hominem attack is not quite as weak as mere name-calling. It
might actually carry some weight. For example, if a senator wrote an
article saying senators' salaries should be increased, one could
respond:
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Of course he would say that. He's a senator.
This wouldn't refute the author's argument, but it may at least be
relevant to the case. It's still a very weak form of disagreement,
though. If there's something wrong with the senator's argument, you
should say what it is; and if there isn't, what difference does it make
that he's a senator?
Saying that an author lacks the authority to write about a topic is a
variant of ad hominem—and a particularly useless sort, because
good ideas often come from outsiders. The question is whether the
author is correct or not. If his lack of authority caused him to make
mistakes, point those out. And if it didn't, it's not a problem.
In this stage we finally get responses to what was said, rather than
how or by whom. The lowest form of response to an argument is
simply to state the opposing case, with little or no supporting
evidence.
This is often combined with DH2 statements, as in:
I can't believe the author dismisses intelligent design in such a
cavalier fashion. Intelligent design is a legitimate scientific theory.
Contradiction can sometimes have some weight. Sometimes merely
seeing the opposing case stated explicitly is enough to see that it's
right. But usually evidence will help.
DH2. Responding to Tone.
DH4. Counterargument.
The next level up we start to see responses to the writing, rather than
the writer. The lowest form of these is to disagree with the author's
tone. E.g.
I can't believe the author dismisses intelligent design in such a
cavalier fashion.
Though better than attacking the author, this is still a weak form of
disagreement. It matters much more whether the author is wrong or
right than what his tone is. Especially since tone is so hard to judge.
Someone who has a chip on their shoulder about some topic might
be offended by a tone that to other readers seemed neutral.
So if the worst thing you can say about something is to criticize its
tone, you're not saying much. Is the author flippant, but correct?
Better that than grave and wrong. And if the author is incorrect
somewhere, say where.
At level 4 we reach the first form of convincing disagreement:
counterargument. Forms up to this point can usually be ignored as
proving nothing. Counterargument might prove something. The
problem is, it's hard to say exactly what.
Counterargument is contradiction plus reasoning and/or evidence.
When aimed squarely at the original argument, it can be convincing.
But unfortunately it's common for counterarguments to be aimed at
something slightly different. More often than not, two people
arguing passionately about something are actually arguing about two
different things. Sometimes they even agree with one another, but
are so caught up in their squabble they don't realize it.
There could be a legitimate reason for arguing against something
slightly different from what the original author said: when you feel
they missed the heart of the matter. But when you do that, you
should say explicitly you're doing it.
DH3. Contradiction.
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DH5. Refutation.
The most convincing form of disagreement is refutation. It's also the
rarest, because it's the most work. Indeed, the disagreement
hierarchy forms a kind of pyramid, in the sense that the higher you
go the fewer instances you find.
least one of them. And that means one has to commit explicitly to
what the central point is. So a truly effective refutation would look
like:
The author's main point seems to be x. As he says:
<quotation>
But this is wrong for the following reasons...
To refute someone you probably have to quote them. You have to
find a "smoking gun," a passage in whatever you disagree with that
you feel is mistaken, and then explain why it's mistaken. If you can't
find an actual quote to disagree with, you may be arguing with a
straw man.
The quotation you point out as mistaken need not be the actual
statement of the author's main point. It's enough to refute something
it depends upon.
What It Means
While refutation generally entails quoting, quoting doesn't
necessarily imply refutation. Some writers quote parts of things they
disagree with to give the appearance of legitimate refutation, then
follow with a response as low as DH3 or even DH0.
DH6. Refuting the Central Point.
The force of a refutation depends on what you refute. The most
powerful form of disagreement is to refute someone's central point.
Even as high as DH5 we still sometimes see deliberate dishonesty, as
when someone picks out minor points of an argument and refutes
those. Sometimes the spirit in which this is done makes it more of a
sophisticated form of ad hominem than actual refutation. For
example, correcting someone's grammar, or harping on minor
mistakes in names or numbers. Unless the opposing argument
actually depends on such things, the only purpose of correcting them
is to discredit one's opponent.
Now we have a way of classifying forms of disagreement. What
good is it? One thing the disagreement hierarchy doesn't give us is a
way of picking a winner. DH levels merely describe the form of a
statement, not whether it's correct. A DH6 response could still be
completely mistaken.
But while DH levels don't set a lower bound on the convincingness
of a reply, they do set an upper bound. A DH6 response might be
unconvincing, but a DH2 or lower response is always unconvincing.
The most obvious advantage of classifying the forms of
disagreement is that it will help people to evaluate what they read. In
particular, it will help them to see through intellectually dishonest
arguments. An eloquent speaker or writer can give the impression of
vanquishing an opponent merely by using forceful words. In fact that
is probably the defining quality of a demagogue. By giving names to
the different forms of disagreement, we give critical readers a pin for
popping such balloons.
Truly refuting something requires one to refute its central point, or at
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Such labels may help writers too. Most intellectual dishonesty is
unintentional. Someone arguing against the tone of something he
disagrees with may believe he's really saying something. Zooming
out and seeing his current position on the disagreement hierarchy
may inspire him to try moving up to counterargument or refutation.
But the greatest benefit of disagreeing well is not just that it will
make conversations better, but that it will make the people who have
them happier. If you study conversations, you find there is a lot more
meanness down in DH1 than up in DH6. You don't have to be mean
when you have a real point to make. In fact, you don't want to. If you
have something real to say, being mean just gets in the way.
If moving up the disagreement hierarchy makes people less mean,
that will make most of them happier. Most people don't really enjoy
being mean; they do it because they can't help it.
should never do this—just that we should pay attention when we do.
[1]
One of the most remarkable things about the way we lie to kids is
how broad the conspiracy is. All adults know what their culture lies
to kids about: they're the questions you answer "Ask your parents." If
a kid asked who won the World Series in 1982 or what the atomic
weight of carbon was, you could just tell him. But if a kid asks you
"Is there a God?" or "What's a prostitute?" you'll probably say "Ask
your parents."
Since we all agree, kids see few cracks in the view of the world
presented to them. The biggest disagreements are between parents
and schools, but even those are small. Schools are careful what they
say about controversial topics, and if they do contradict what parents
want their kids to believe, parents either pressure the school into
keeping quiet or move their kids to a new school.
_______________________________________45)
Paul Graham from http://www.paulgraham.com/
May 2008
Adults lie constantly to kids. I'm not saying we should stop, but I
think we should at least examine which lies we tell and why.
There may also be a benefit to us. We were all lied to as kids, and
some of the lies we were told still affect us. So by studying the ways
adults lie to kids, we may be able to clear our heads of lies we were
told.
I'm using the word "lie" in a very general sense: not just overt
falsehoods, but also all the more subtle ways we mislead kids.
Though "lie" has negative connotations, I don't mean to suggest we
The conspiracy is so thorough that most kids who discover it do so
only by discovering internal contradictions in what they're told. It
can be traumatic for the ones who wake up during the operation.
Here's what happened to Einstein:
Through the reading of popular scientific books I soon reached the
conviction that much in the stories of the Bible could not be true.
The consequence was a positively fanatic freethinking coupled with
the impression that youth is intentionally being deceived by the state
through lies: it was a crushing impression. [2]
I remember that feeling. By 15 I was convinced the world was
corrupt from end to end. That's why movies like The Matrix have
such resonance. Every kid grows up in a fake world. In a way it
would be easier if the forces behind it were as clearly differentiated
as a bunch of evil machines, and one could make a clean break just
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by taking a pill.
Protection
If you ask adults why they lie to kids, the most common reason they
give is to protect them. And kids do need protecting. The
environment you want to create for a newborn child will be quite
unlike the streets of a big city.
That seems so obvious it seems wrong to call it a lie. It's certainly
not a bad lie to tell, to give a baby the impression the world is quiet
and warm and safe. But this harmless type of lie can turn sour if left
unexamined.
Imagine if you tried to keep someone in as protected an environment
as a newborn till age 18. To mislead someone so grossly about the
world would seem not protection but abuse. That's an extreme
example, of course; when parents do that sort of thing it becomes
national news. But you see the same problem on a smaller scale in
the malaise teenagers feel in suburbia.
The main purpose of suburbia is to provide a protected environment
for children to grow up in. And it seems great for 10 year olds. I
liked living in suburbia when I was 10. I didn't notice how sterile it
was. My whole world was no bigger than a few friends' houses I
bicycled to and some woods I ran around in. On a log scale I was
midway between crib and globe. A suburban street was just the right
size. But as I grew older, suburbia started to feel suffocatingly fake.
Life can be pretty good at 10 or 20, but it's often frustrating at 15.
This is too big a problem to solve here, but certainly one reason life
sucks at 15 is that kids are trapped in a world designed for 10 year
olds.
What do parents hope to protect their children from by raising them
in suburbia? A friend who moved out of Manhattan said merely that
her 3 year old daughter "saw too much." Off the top of my head, that
might include: people who are high or drunk, poverty, madness,
gruesome medical conditions, sexual behavior of various degrees of
oddness, and violent anger.
I think it's the anger that would worry me most if I had a 3 year old. I
was 29 when I moved to New York and I was surprised even then. I
wouldn't want a 3 year old to see some of the disputes I saw. It
would be too frightening. A lot of the things adults conceal from
smaller children, they conceal because they'd be frightening, not
because they want to conceal the existence of such things.
Misleading the child is just a byproduct.
This seems one of the most justifiable types of lying adults do to
kids. But because the lies are indirect we don't keep a very strict
accounting of them. Parents know they've concealed the facts about
sex, and many at some point sit their kids down and explain more.
But few tell their kids about the differences between the real world
and the cocoon they grew up in. Combine this with the confidence
parents try to instill in their kids, and every year you get a new crop
of 18 year olds who think they know how to run the world.
Don't all 18 year olds think they know how to run the world?
Actually this seems to be a recent innovation, no more than about
100 years old. In preindustrial times teenage kids were junior
members of the adult world and comparatively well aware of their
shortcomings. They could see they weren't as strong or skillful as the
village smith. In past times people lied to kids about some things
more than we do now, but the lies implicit in an artificial, protected
environment are a recent invention. Like a lot of new inventions, the
rich got this first. Children of kings and great magnates were the first
to grow up out of touch with the world. Suburbia means half the
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population can live like kings in that respect.
Sex (and Drugs)
I'd have different worries about raising teenage kids in New York. I'd
worry less about what they'd see, and more about what they'd do. I
went to college with a lot of kids who grew up in Manhattan, and as
a rule they seemed pretty jaded. They seemed to have lost their
virginity at an average of about 14 and by college had tried more
drugs than I'd even heard of.
The reasons parents don't want their teenage kids having sex are
complex. There are some obvious dangers: pregnancy and sexually
transmitted diseases. But those aren't the only reasons parents don't
want their kids having sex. The average parents of a 14 year old girl
would hate the idea of her having sex even if there were zero risk of
pregnancy or sexually transmitted diseases.
Kids can probably sense they aren't being told the whole story. After
all, pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases are just as much a
problem for adults, and they have sex.
What really bothers parents about their teenage kids having sex?
Their dislike of the idea is so visceral it's probably inborn. But if it's
inborn it should be universal, and there are plenty of societies where
parents don't mind if their teenage kids have sex—indeed, where it's
normal for 14 year olds to become mothers. So what's going on?
There does seem to be a universal taboo against sex with
prepubescent children. One can imagine evolutionary reasons for
that. And I think this is the main reason parents in industrialized
societies dislike teenage kids having sex. They still think of them as
children, even though biologically they're not, so the taboo against
child sex still has force.
One thing adults conceal about sex they also conceal about drugs:
that it can cause great pleasure. That's what makes sex and drugs so
dangerous. The desire for them can cloud one's judgement—which is
especially frightening when the judgement being clouded is the
already wretched judgement of a teenage kid.
Here parents' desires conflict. Older societies told kids they had bad
judgement, but modern parents want their children to be confident.
This may well be a better plan than the old one of putting them in
their place, but it has the side effect that after having implicitly lied
to kids about how good their judgement is, we then have to lie again
about all the things they might get into trouble with if they believed
us.
If parents told their kids the truth about sex and drugs, it would be:
the reason you should avoid these things is that you have lousy
judgement. People with twice your experience still get burned by
them. But this may be one of those cases where the truth wouldn't be
convincing, because one of the symptoms of bad judgement is
believing you have good judgement. When you're too weak to lift
something, you can tell, but when you're making a decision
impetuously, you're all the more sure of it.
Innocence
Another reason parents don't want their kids having sex is that they
want to keep them innocent. Adults have a certain model of how kids
are supposed to behave, and it's different from what they expect of
other adults.
One of the most obvious differences is the words kids are allowed to
use. Most parents use words when talking to other adults that they
wouldn't want their kids using. They try to hide even the existence of
these words for as long as they can. And this is another of those
conspiracies everyone participates in: everyone knows you're not
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supposed to swear in front of kids.
I've never heard more different explanations for anything parents tell
kids than why they shouldn't swear. Every parent I know forbids
their children to swear, and yet no two of them have the same
justification. It's clear most start with not wanting kids to swear, then
make up the reason afterward.
So my theory about what's going on is that the function of
swearwords is to mark the speaker as an adult. There's no difference
in the meaning of "shit" and "poopoo." So why should one be ok for
kids to say and one forbidden? The only explanation is: by
definition. [3]
Why does it bother adults so much when kids do things reserved for
adults? The idea of a foul-mouthed, cynical 10 year old leaning
against a lamppost with a cigarette hanging out of the corner of his
mouth is very disconcerting. But why?
One reason we want kids to be innocent is that we're programmed to
like certain kinds of helplessness. I've several times heard mothers
say they deliberately refrained from correcting their young children's
mispronunciations because they were so cute. And if you think about
it, cuteness is helplessness. Toys and cartoon characters meant to be
cute always have clueless expressions and stubby, ineffectual limbs.
It's not surprising we'd have an inborn desire to love and protect
helpless creatures, considering human offspring are so helpless for so
long. Without the helplessness that makes kids cute, they'd be very
annoying. They'd merely seem like incompetent adults. But there's
more to it than that. The reason our hypothetical jaded 10 year old
bothers me so much is not just that he'd be annoying, but that he'd
have cut off his prospects for growth so early. To be jaded you have
to think you know how the world works, and any theory a 10 year
old had about that would probably be a pretty narrow one.
Innocence is also open-mindedness. We want kids to be innocent so
they can continue to learn. Paradoxical as it sounds, there are some
kinds of knowledge that get in the way of other kinds of knowledge.
If you're going to learn that the world is a brutal place full of people
trying to take advantage of one another, you're better off learning it
last. Otherwise you won't bother learning much more.
Very smart adults often seem unusually innocent, and I don't think
this is a coincidence. I think they've deliberately avoided learning
about certain things. Certainly I do. I used to think I wanted to know
everything. Now I know I don't.
Death
After sex, death is the topic adults lie most conspicuously about to
kids. Sex I believe they conceal because of deep taboos. But why do
we conceal death from kids? Probably because small children are
particularly horrified by it. They want to feel safe, and death is the
ultimate threat.
One of the most spectacular lies our parents told us was about the
death of our first cat. Over the years, as we asked for more details,
they were compelled to invent more, so the story grew quite
elaborate. The cat had died at the vet's office. Of what? Of the
anaesthesia itself. Why was the cat at the vet's office? To be fixed.
And why had such a routine operation killed it? It wasn't the vet's
fault; the cat had a congenitally weak heart; the anaesthesia was too
much for it; but there was no way anyone could have known this in
advance. It was not till we were in our twenties that the truth came
out: my sister, then about three, had accidentally stepped on the cat
and broken its back.
They didn't feel the need to tell us the cat was now happily in cat
heaven. My parents never claimed that people or animals who died
had "gone to a better place," or that we'd meet them again. It didn't
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seem to harm us.
certain group, that seems nearly impossible to shake.
My grandmother told us an edited version of the death of my
grandfather. She said they'd been sitting reading one day, and when
she said something to him, he didn't answer. He seemed to be asleep,
but when she tried to rouse him, she couldn't. "He was gone."
Having a heart attack sounded like falling asleep. Later I learned it
hadn't been so neat, and the heart attack had taken most of a day to
kill him.
This despite the fact that it can be one of the most premeditated lies
parents tell. When parents are of different religions, they'll often
agree between themselves that their children will be "raised as Xes."
And it works. The kids obligingly grow up considering themselves
as Xes, despite the fact that if their parents had chosen the other way,
they'd have grown up considering themselves as Ys.
Along with such outright lies, there must have been a lot of changing
the subject when death came up. I can't remember that, of course, but
I can infer it from the fact that I didn't really grasp I was going to die
till I was about 19. How could I have missed something so obvious
for so long? Now that I've seen parents managing the subject, I can
see how: questions about death are gently but firmly turned aside.
On this topic, especially, they're met half-way by kids. Kids often
want to be lied to. They want to believe they're living in a
comfortable, safe world as much as their parents want them to
believe it. [4]
Identity
Some parents feel a strong adherence to an ethnic or religious group
and want their kids to feel it too. This usually requires two different
kinds of lying: the first is to tell the child that he or she is an X, and
the second is whatever specific lies Xes differentiate themselves by
believing. [5]
Telling a child they have a particular ethnic or religious identity is
one of the stickiest things you can tell them. Almost anything else
you tell a kid, they can change their mind about later when they start
to think for themselves. But if you tell a kid they're a member of a
One reason this works so well is the second kind of lie involved. The
truth is common property. You can't distinguish your group by doing
things that are rational, and believing things that are true. If you want
to set yourself apart from other people, you have to do things that are
arbitrary, and believe things that are false. And after having spent
their whole lives doing things that are arbitrary and believing things
that are false, and being regarded as odd by "outsiders" on that
account, the cognitive dissonance pushing children to regard
themselves as Xes must be enormous. If they aren't an X, why are
they attached to all these arbitrary beliefs and customs? If they aren't
an X, why do all the non-Xes call them one?
This form of lie is not without its uses. You can use it to carry a
payload of beneficial beliefs, and they will also become part of the
child's identity. You can tell the child that in addition to never
wearing the color yellow, believing the world was created by a giant
rabbit, and always snapping their fingers before eating fish, Xes are
also particularly honest and industrious. Then X children will grow
up feeling it's part of their identity to be honest and industrious.
This probably accounts for a lot of the spread of modern religions,
and explains why their doctrines are a combination of the useful and
the bizarre. The bizarre half is what makes the religion stick, and the
useful half is the payload. [6]
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Authority
One of the least excusable reasons adults lie to kids is to maintain
power over them. Sometimes these lies are truly sinister, like a child
molester telling his victims they'll get in trouble if they tell anyone
what happened to them. Others seem more innocent; it depends how
badly adults lie to maintain their power, and what they use it for.
Most adults make some effort to conceal their flaws from children.
Usually their motives are mixed. For example, a father who has an
affair generally conceals it from his children. His motive is partly
that it would worry them, partly that this would introduce the topic
of sex, and partly (a larger part than he would admit) that he doesn't
want to tarnish himself in their eyes.
If you want to learn what lies are told to kids, read almost any book
written to teach them about "issues." [7] Peter Mayle wrote one
called Why Are We Getting a Divorce? It begins with the three most
important things to remember about divorce, one of which is:
You shouldn't put the blame on one parent, because divorce is never
only one person's fault. [8]
Really? When a man runs off with his secretary, is it always partly
his wife's fault? But I can see why Mayle might have said this.
Maybe it's more important for kids to respect their parents than to
know the truth about them.
But because adults conceal their flaws, and at the same time insist on
high standards of behavior for kids, a lot of kids grow up feeling they
fall hopelessly short. They walk around feeling horribly evil for
having used a swearword, while in fact most of the adults around
them are doing much worse things.
This happens in intellectual as well as moral questions. The more
confident people are, the more willing they seem to be to answer a
question "I don't know." Less confident people feel they have to have
an answer or they'll look bad. My parents were pretty good about
admitting when they didn't know things, but I must have been told a
lot of lies of this type by teachers, because I rarely heard a teacher
say "I don't know" till I got to college. I remember because it was so
surprising to hear someone say that in front of a class.
The first hint I had that teachers weren't omniscient came in sixth
grade, after my father contradicted something I'd learned in school.
When I protested that the teacher had said the opposite, my father
replied that the guy had no idea what he was talking about—that he
was just an elementary school teacher, after all.
Just a teacher? The phrase seemed almost grammatically ill-formed.
Didn't teachers know everything about the subjects they taught? And
if not, why were they the ones teaching us?
The sad fact is, US public school teachers don't generally understand
the stuff they're teaching very well. There are some sterling
exceptions, but as a rule people planning to go into teaching rank
academically near the bottom of the college population. So the fact
that I still thought at age 11 that teachers were infallible shows what
a job the system must have done on my brain.
School
What kids get taught in school is a complex mix of lies. The most
excusable are those told to simplify ideas to make them easy to learn.
The problem is, a lot of propaganda gets slipped into the curriculum
in the name of simplification.
Public school textbooks represent a compromise between what
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various powerful groups want kids to be told. The lies are rarely
overt. Usually they consist either of omissions or of overemphasizing certain topics at the expense of others. The view of
history we got in elementary school was a crude hagiography, with at
least one representative of each powerful group.
Probably the biggest lie told in schools, though, is that the way to
succeed is through following "the rules." In fact most such rules are
just hacks to manage large groups efficiently.
Peace
The famous scientists I remember were Einstein, Marie Curie, and
George Washington Carver. Einstein was a big deal because his
work led to the atom bomb. Marie Curie was involved with X-rays.
But I was mystified about Carver. He seemed to have done stuff with
peanuts.
It's obvious now that he was on the list because he was black (and
for that matter that Marie Curie was on it because she was a woman),
but as a kid I was confused for years about him. I wonder if it
wouldn't have been better just to tell us the truth: that there weren't
any famous black scientists. Ranking George Washington Carver
with Einstein misled us not only about science, but about the
obstacles blacks faced in his time.
As subjects got softer, the lies got more frequent. By the time you
got to politics and recent history, what we were taught was pretty
much pure propaganda. For example, we were taught to regard
political leaders as saints—especially the recently martyred Kennedy
and King. It was astonishing to learn later that they'd both been serial
womanizers, and that Kennedy was a speed freak to boot. (By the
time King's plagiarism emerged, I'd lost the ability to be surprised by
the misdeeds of famous people.)
I doubt you could teach kids recent history without teaching them
lies, because practically everyone who has anything to say about it
has some kind of spin to put on it. Much recent history consists of
spin. It would probably be better just to teach them metafacts like
that.
Of all the reasons we lie to kids, the most powerful is probably the
same mundane reason they lie to us.
Often when we lie to people it's not part of any conscious strategy,
but because they'd react violently to the truth. Kids, almost by
definition, lack self-control. They react violently to things—and so
they get lied to a lot. [9]
A few Thanksgivings ago, a friend of mine found himself in a
situation that perfectly illustrates the complex motives we have when
we lie to kids. As the roast turkey appeared on the table, his
alarmingly perceptive 5 year old son suddenly asked if the turkey
had wanted to die. Foreseeing disaster, my friend and his wife
rapidly improvised: yes, the turkey had wanted to die, and in fact had
lived its whole life with the aim of being their Thanksgiving dinner.
And that (phew) was the end of that.
Whenever we lie to kids to protect them, we're usually also lying to
keep the peace.
One consequence of this sort of calming lie is that we grow up
thinking horrible things are normal. It's hard for us to feel a sense of
urgency as adults over something we've literally been trained not to
worry about. When I was about 10 I saw a documentary on pollution
that put me into a panic. It seemed the planet was being irretrievably
ruined. I went to my mother afterward to ask if this was so. I don't
remember what she said, but she made me feel better, so I stopped
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worrying about it.
That was probably the best way to handle a frightened 10 year old.
But we should understand the price. This sort of lie is one of the
main reasons bad things persist: we're all trained to ignore them.
Detox
A sprinter in a race almost immediately enters a state called "oxygen
debt." His body switches to an emergency source of energy that's
faster than regular aerobic respiration. But this process builds up
waste products that ultimately require extra oxygen to break down,
so at the end of the race he has to stop and pant for a while to
recover.
We arrive at adulthood with a kind of truth debt. We were told a lot
of lies to get us (and our parents) through our childhood. Some may
have been necessary. Some probably weren't. But we all arrive at
adulthood with heads full of lies.
There's never a point where the adults sit you down and explain all
the lies they told you. They've forgotten most of them. So if you're
going to clear these lies out of your head, you're going to have to do
it yourself.
Few do. Most people go through life with bits of packing material
adhering to their minds and never know it. You probably never can
completely undo the effects of lies you were told as a kid, but it's
worth trying. I've found that whenever I've been able to undo a lie I
was told, a lot of other things fell into place.
Fortunately, once you arrive at adulthood you get a valuable new
resource you can use to figure out what lies you were told. You're
now one of the liars. You get to watch behind the scenes as adults
spin the world for the next generation of kids.
The first step in clearing your head is to realize how far you are from
a neutral observer. When I left high school I was, I thought, a
complete skeptic. I'd realized high school was crap. I thought I was
ready to question everything I knew. But among the many other
things I was ignorant of was how much debris there already was in
my head. It's not enough to consider your mind a blank slate. You
have to consciously erase it.
Notes
[1] One reason I stuck with such a brutally simple word is that the
lies we tell kids are probably not quite as harmless as we think. If
you look at what adults told children in the past, it's shocking how
much they lied to them. Like us, they did it with the best intentions.
So if we think we're as open as one could reasonably be with
children, we're probably fooling ourselves. Odds are people in 100
years will be as shocked at some of the lies we tell as we are at some
of the lies people told 100 years ago.
I can't predict which these will be, and I don't want to write an essay
that will seem dumb in 100 years. So instead of using special
euphemisms for lies that seem excusable according to present
fashions, I'm just going to call all our lies lies.
(I have omitted one type: lies told to play games with kids' credulity.
These range from "make-believe," which is not really a lie because
it's told with a wink, to the frightening lies told by older siblings.
There's not much to say about these: I wouldn't want the first type to
go away, and wouldn't expect the second type to.)
[2] Calaprice, Alice (ed.), The Quotable Einstein, Princeton
University Press, 1996.
[3] If you ask parents why kids shouldn't swear, the less educated
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ones usually reply with some question-begging answer like "it's
inappropriate," while the more educated ones come up with elaborate
rationalizations. In fact the less educated parents seem closer to the
truth.
[4] As a friend with small children pointed out, it's easy for small
children to consider themselves immortal, because time seems to
pass so slowly for them. To a 3 year old, a day feels like a month
might to an adult. So 80 years sounds to him like 2400 years would
to us.
[5] I realize I'm going to get endless grief for classifying religion as a
type of lie. Usually people skirt that issue with some equivocation
implying that lies believed for a sufficiently long time by sufficiently
large numbers of people are immune to the usual standards for truth.
But because I can't predict which lies future generations will
consider inexcusable, I can't safely omit any type we tell. Yes, it
seems unlikely that religion will be out of fashion in 100 years, but
no more unlikely than it would have seemed to someone in 1880 that
schoolchildren in 1980 would be taught that masturbation was
perfectly normal and not to feel guilty about it.
[6] Unfortunately the payload can consist of bad customs as well as
good ones. For example, there are certain qualities that some groups
in America consider "acting white." In fact most of them could as
accurately be called "acting Japanese." There's nothing specifically
white about such customs. They're common to all cultures with long
traditions of living in cities. So it is probably a losing bet for a group
to consider behaving the opposite way as part of its identity.
[7] In this context, "issues" basically means "things we're going to lie
to them about." That's why there's a special name for these topics.
[8] Mayle, Peter, Why Are We Getting a Divorce?, Harmony, 1988.
[9] The ironic thing is, this is also the main reason kids lie to adults.
If you freak out when people tell you alarming things, they won't tell
you them. Teenagers don't tell their parents what happened that night
they were supposed to be staying at a friend's house for the same
reason parents don't tell 5 year olds the truth about the Thanksgiving
turkey. They'd freak if they knew.
46) From The Aims of Education and Other Essays, Macmillan
Company, 1929, as reprinted in Education in the Age of Science,
edited by Brand Blanshard, New York, Basic Books, 1959. Here
is the editor’s prefatory note:
In his famous essay called “The Aims of Education,” delivered as his
presidential address to the Mathematical Association of England in
1916, Alfred North Whitehead addressed himself ostensibly to the
teaching of mathematics in the British schools. But, as he explained
in the introduction to a book which includes this essay among others,
his remarks referred to education in general, not only in England but
also in the United States—the general principles apply equally to
both countries.” The essay, republished here in part omitting some
of the specific discussion of mathematics), still speaks so clearly and
wisely on the education problems of our day that it makes a fitting
conclusion to this book.”
The Aims of Education
Alfred North Whitehead
Culture is activity of thought, and receptiveness to beauty and
humane feeling. Scraps of information have nothing to do with it. A
merely well-informed man is the most useless bore on God’s earth.
What we should aim at producing is men who possess both culture
and expert knowledge in some special direction. Their expert
knowledge will give them the ground to start from, and their culture
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will lead them as deep as philosophy and as high as art. We have to
remember that the valuable intellectual development is selfdevelopment, and that it mostly takes place between the ages of
sixteen and thirty. As to training, the most important part is given by
mothers before the age of twelve. A saying due to Archbishop
Temple illustrates my meaning. Surprise was expressed at the
success in after-life of a man, who as a boy at Rugby had been
somewhat undistin-guished. He answered, “It is not what they are at
eighteen, it is what they become afterwards that matters.”
In training a child to activity of thought, above all things we must
beware of what I will call “inert ideas”—that is to say, ideas that are
merely received into the mind without being utilised, or tested, or
thrown into fresh combinations.
In the history of education, the most striking phenomenon is that
schools of learning, which at one epoch are alive with a ferment of
genius, in a succeeding generation exhibit merely pedantry and
routine. The reason is, that they are overladen with inert ideas.
Education with inert ideas is not only useless: it is, above all things,
harmful—Corruptio optimi, pessima. Except at rare intervals of
intellectual ferment, education in the past has been radically infected
with inert ideas. That is the reason why uneducated clever women,
who have seen much of the world, are in middle life so much the
most cultured part of the community. They have been saved from
this horrible burden of inert ideas. Every intellectual revolution
which has ever stirred humanity into greatness has been a passionate
protest against inert ideas. Then, alas, with pathetic ignorance of
human psychology, it has proceeded by some educational scheme to
bind humanity afresh with inert ideas of its own fashioning.
Let us now ask how in our system of education we are to guard
against this mental dry rot. We enunciate two educational
commandments, “Do not teach too many subjects,” and again, “What
you teach, teach thoroughly.”
The result of teaching small parts of a large number of subjects is the
passive reception of disconnected ideas, not illumined with any spark
of vitality. Let the main ideas which are introduced into a child’s
education be few and important, and let them be thrown into every
combination possible. The child should make them his own, and
should understand their application here and now in the
circumstances of his actual life. From the very beginning of his
education, the child should experience the joy of discovery. The
discovery which he has to make, is that general ideas give an
understanding of that stream of events which pours through his life,
which is his life. By understanding I mean more than a mere logical
analysis, though that is included. I mean “understanding’ in the sense
in which it is used in the French proverb, “To understand all, is to
forgive all.” Pedants sneer at an education which is useful. But if
education is not useful, what is it? Is it a talent, to be hidden away in
a napkin? Of course, education should be useful, whatever your aim
in life. It was useful to Saint Augustine and it was useful to
Napoleon. It is useful, because understanding is useful.
I pass lightly over that understanding which should be given by the
literary side of education. Nor do I wish to be supposed to pronounce
on the relative merits of a classical or a modern curriculum. I would
only remark that the understanding which we want is an
understanding of an insistent present. The only use of a knowledge
of the past is to equip us for the present. No more deadly harm can
be done to young minds than by depreciation of the present. The
present contains all that there is. It is holy ground; for it is the past,
and it is the future. At the same time it must be observed that an age
is no less past if it existed two hundred years ago than if it existed
two thousand years ago. Do not be deceived by the pedantry of dates.
The ages of Shakespeare and of Molière are no less past than are the
ages of Sophocles and of Virgil. The communion of saints is a great
and inspiring assemblage, but it has only one possible hall of
meeting, and that is, the present, and the mere lapse of time through
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which any particular group of saints must travel to reach that
meeting-place, makes very little difference.
Passing now to the scientific and logical side of education, we
remember that here also ideas which are not utilised are positively
harmful. By utilising an idea, I mean relating it to that stream,
compounded of sense perceptions, feelings, hopes, desires, and of
mental activities adjusting thought to thought, which forms our life. I
can imagine a set of beings which might fortify their souls by
passively reviewing disconnected ideas. Humanity is not built that
way except perhaps some editors of newspapers.
In scientific training, the first thing to do with an idea is to prove it.
But allow me for one moment to extend the meaning of “prove”; I
mean—to prove its worth. Now an idea is not worth much unless the
propositions in which it is embodied are true. Accordingly an
essential part of the proof of an idea is the proof, either by
experiment or by logic, of the truth of the propositions. But it is not
essential that this proof of the truth should constitute the first
introduction to the idea. After all, its assertion by the authority of
respectable teachers is sufficient evidence to begin with. In our first
contact with a set of propositions, we commence by appreciating
their importance. That is what we all do in after-life. We do not
attempt, in the strict sense, to prove or to disprove anything, unless
its importance makes it worthy of that honour. These two processes
of proof, in the narrow sense, and of appreciation, do not require a
rigid separation in time. Both can be proceeded with nearly
concurrently. But in so far as either process must have the priority, it
should be that of appreciation by use.
Furthermore, we should not endeavour to use propositions in
isolation. Emphatically I do not mean, a neat little set of experiments
to illustrate Proposition I and then the proof of Proposition I, a neat
little set of experiments to illustrate Proposition II and then the proof
of Proposition II, and so on to the end of the book. Nothing could be
more boring. Interrelated truths are utilised en bloc, and the various
propositions are employed in any order, and with any reiteration.
Choose some important applications of your theoretical subject; and
study them concurrently with the systematic theoretical exposition.
Keep the theoretical exposition short and simple, but let it be strict
and rigid so far as it goes. It should not be too long for it to be easily
known with thoroughness and accuracy. The consequences of a
plethora of half-digested theoretical knowledge are deplorable. Also
the theory should not be muddled up with the practice. The child
should have no doubt when it is proving and when it is utilising. My
point is that what is proved should be utilised, and that what is
utilised should—so far, as is practicable—be proved. I am far from
asserting that proof and utilisation are the same thing.
At this point of my discourse, I can most directly carry forward my
argument in the outward form of a digression. We are only just
realising that the art and science of education require a genius and a
study of their own; and that this genius and this science are more
than a bare knowledge of some branch of science or of literature.
This truth was partially perceived in the past generation; and
headmasters, somewhat crudely, were apt to supersede learning in
their colleagues by requiring left-hand bowling and a taste for
football. But culture is more than cricket, and more than football, and
more than extent of knowledge.
Education is the acquisition of the art of the utilisation of knowledge.
This is an art very difficult to impart. Whenever a textbook is written
of real educational worth, you may be quite certain that some
reviewer will say that it will be difficult to teach from it. Of course it
will be difficult to teach from it. If it were easy, the book ought to be
burned; for it cannot be educational. In education, as elsewhere, the
broad primrose path leads to a nasty place. This evil path is
represented by a book or a set of lectures which will practically
enable the student to learn by heart all the questions likely to be
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asked at the next external examination. And I may say in passing that
no educational system is possible unless every question directly
asked of a pupil at any examination is either framed or modified by
the actual teacher of that pupil in that subject. The external assessor
may report on the curriculum or on the performance of the pupils,
but never should be allowed to ask the pupil a question which has
not been strictly supervised by the actual teacher, or at least inspired
by a long conference with him. There are a few exceptions to this
rule, but they are exceptions, and could easily be allowed for under
the general rule.
We now return to my previous point, that theoretical ideas should
always find important applications within the pupil’s curriculum.
This is not an easy doctrine to apply, but a very hard one. It contains
within itself the problem of keeping knowledge alive, of preventing
it from becoming inert, which is the central problem of all education.
The best procedure will depend on several factors, none of which can
be neglected, namely, the genius of the teacher, the intellectual type
of the pupils, their prospects in life, the opportunities offered by the
immediate surroundings of the school and allied factors of this sort.
It is for this reason that the uniform external examination is so
deadly. We do not denounce it because we are cranks, and like
denouncing established things. We are not so childish. Also, of
course, such examinations have their use in testing slackness. Our
reason of dislike is very definite and very practical. It kills the best
part of culture. When you analyse in the light of experience the
central task of education, you find that its successful accomplishment
depends on a delicate adjustment of many variable factors. The
reason is that we are dealing with human minds, and not with dead
matter. The evocation of curiosity, of judgment, of the power of
mastering a complicated tangle of circumstances, the use of theory in
giving foresight in special cases all these powers are not to be
imparted by a set rule embodied in one schedule of examination
subjects.
I appeal to you, as practical teachers. With good discipline, it is
always possible to pump into the minds of a class a certain quantity
of inert knowledge. You take a text-book and make them learn it. So
far, so good. The child then knows how to solve a quadratic
equation. But what is the point of teaching a child to solve a
quadratic equation? There is a traditional answer to this question. It
runs thus: The mind is an instrument, you first sharpen it, and then
use it; the acquisition of the power of solving a quadratic equation is
part of the process of sharpening the mind. Now there is just enough
truth in this answer to have made it live through the ages. But for all
its half-truth, it embodies a radical error which bids fair to stifle the
genius of the modern world. I do not know who was first responsible
for this analogy of the mind to a dead instrument. For aught I know,
it may have been one of the seven wise men of Greece, or a
committee of the whole lot of them. Whoever was the originator,
there can be no doubt of the authority which it has acquired by the
continuous approval bestowed upon it by eminent persons. But
whatever its weight of authority, whatever the high approval which it
can quote, I have no hesitation in denouncing it as one of the most
fatal, erroneous, and dangerous conceptions ever introduced into the
theory of education. The mind is never passive; it is a perpetual
activity, delicate, receptive, responsive to stimulus. You cannot
postpone its life until you have sharpened it. Whatever interest
attaches to your subject-matter must be evoked here and now;
whatever powers you are strengthening in the pupil, must be
exercised here and now; whatever possibilities of mental life your
teaching should impart, must be exhibited here and now. That is the
golden rule of education, and a very difficult rule to follow.
The difficulty is just this: the apprehension of general ideas,
intellectual habits of mind, and pleasurable interest in mental
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achievement can be evoked by no form of words, however
accurately adjusted. All practical teachers know that education is a
patient process of the mastery of details, minute by minute, hour by
hour, day by day. There is no royal road to learning through an airy
path of brilliant generalizations. There is a proverb about the
difficulty of seeing the wood because of the trees. That difficulty is
exactly the point which I am enforcing. The problem of education is
to make the pupil see the wood by means of the trees.
The solution which I am urging, is to eradicate the fatal
disconnection of subjects which kills the vitality of our modern
curriculum. There is only one subject-matter for education, and that
is Life in all its manifestations. Instead of this single unity, we offer
children -- Algebra, from which nothing follows; Geometry, from
which nothing follows; Science, from which nothing follows;
History, from which nothing follows; a Couple of Languages, never
mastered; and lastly, most dreary of all, Literature, represented by
plays of Shakespeare, with philological notes and short analyses of
plot and character to be in substance committed to memory. Can
such a list be said to represent Life, as it is known in the midst of the
living of it? The best that can be said of it is, that it is a rapid table of
contents which a deity might run over in his mind while he was
thinking of creating a world, and has not yet determined how to put it
together.
Let us now return to quadratic equations. We still have on hand the
unanswered question. Why should children be taught their solution?
Unless quadratic equations fit into a connected curriculum, of course
there is no reason to teach anything about them. Furthermore,
extensive as should be the place of mathematics in a complete
culture, I am a little doubtful whether for many types of boys
algebraic solutions of quadratic equations do not lie on the specialist
side of mathematics. I may here remind you that as yet I have not
said anything of the psychology or the content of the specialism,
which is so necessary a part of an ideal education. But all that is an
evasion of our real question, and I merely state it in order to avoid
being misunderstood in my answer.
Quadratic equations are part of algebra, and algebra is the
intellectual instrument which has been created for rendering clear the
quantitative aspects of the world. There is no getting out of it.
Through and through the world is infected with quantity. To talk
sense, is to talk in quantities. It is no use saying that the nation is
large, — How large? It is no use saying that radium is scarce, —
How scarce? You cannot evade quantity. You may fly to poetry and
to music, and quantity and number will face you in your rhythms and
your octaves. Elegant intellects which despise the theory of quantity,
are but half developed. They are more to be pitied than blamed, The
scraps of gibberish, which in their school-days were taught to them
in the name of algebra, deserve some contempt. This question of the
degeneration of algebra into gibberish, both in word and in fact,
affords a pathetic instance of the uselessness of reforming
educational schedules without a clear conception of the attributes
which you wish to evoke in the living minds of the children. A few
years ago there was an outcry that school algebra, was in need of
reform, but there was a general agreement that graphs would put
everything right. So all sorts of things were extruded, and graphs
were introduced. So far as I can see, with no sort of idea behind
them, but just graphs. Now every examination paper has one or two
questions on graphs. Personally I am an enthusiastic adherent of
graphs. But I wonder whether as yet we have gained very much. You
cannot put life into any schedule of general education unless you
succeed in exhibiting its relation to some essential characteristic of
all intelligent or emotional perception. lt is a hard saying, but it is
true; and I do not see how to make it any easier. In making these
little formal alterations you are beaten by the very nature of things.
You are pitted against too skilful an adversary, who will see to it that
the pea is always under the other thimble.
197
Reformation must begin at the other end. First, you must make up
your mind as to those quantitative aspects of the world which are
simple enough to be introduced into general education; then a
schedule of algebra should be framed which will about find its
exemplification in these applications. We need not fear for our pet
graphs, they will be there in plenty when we once begin to treat
algebra as a serious means of studying the world. Some of the
simplest applications will be found in the quantities which occur in
the simplest study of society. The curves of history are more vivid
and more informing than the dry catalogues of names and dates
which comprise the greater part of that arid school study. What
purpose is effected by a catalogue of undistinguished kings and
queens? Tom, Dick, or Harry, they are all dead. General
resurrections are failures, and are better postponed. The quantitative
flux of the forces of modern society is capable of very simple
exhibition. Meanwhile, the idea of the variable, of the function, of
rate of change, of equations and their solution, of elimination, are
being studied as an abstract science for their own sake. Not, of
course, in the pompous phrases with which I am alluding to them
here, but with that iteration of simple special cases proper to
teaching.
If this course be followed. the route from Chaucer to the Black
Death, from the Black Death to modern Labour troubles, will
connect the tales of the mediaeval pilgrims with the abstract science
of algebra, both yielding diverse aspects of that single theme, Life. I
know what most of you are thinking at this point. It is that the exact
course which I have sketched out is not the particular one which you
would have chosen, or even see how to work. I quite agree. I am not
claiming that I could do it myself. But your objection is the precise
reason why a common external examination system is fatal to
education. The process of exhibiting the applications of knowledge
must, for its success, essentially depend on the character of the
pupils and the genius of the teacher. Of course I have left out the
easiest applications with which most of us are more at home. I mean
the quantitative sides of sciences, such as mechanics and physics.
Again, in the same connection we plot the statistics of social
phenomena against the time. We then eliminate the time between
suitable pairs. We can speculate how far we have exhibited a real
causal connection, or how far a mere temporal coincidence. We
notice that we might have plotted against the time one set of statistics
for one country and another set for another country, and thus, with
suitable choice of subjects, have obtained graphs which certainly
exhibited mere coincidence. Also other graphs exhibit obvious
causal connections. We wonder how to discriminate. And so are
drawn on as far as we will.
But in considering this description, I must beg you to remember
what I have been insisting on above. In the first place, one train of
thought will not suit all groups of children. For example, I should
expect that artisan children will want something more concrete and,
in a sense, swifter than I have set down here. Perhaps I am wrong,
but that is what I should guess. In the second place, I am not
contemplating one beautiful lecture stimulating, once and for all, an
admiring class. That is not the way in which education proceeds. No;
all the time the pupils are hard at work solving examples drawing
graphs, and making experiments, until they have a thorough hold on
the whole subject. I am describing the interspersed explanations, the
directions which should be given to their thoughts. The pupils have
got to be made to feel that they are studying something, and are not
merely executing intellectual minuets.
Finally, if you are teaching pupils for some general examination, the
problem of sound teaching is greatly complicated. Have you ever
noticed the zig-zag moulding round a Norman arch? The ancient
work is beautiful, the modern work is hideous. The reason is, that the
modern work is done to exact measure, the ancient work is varied
according to the idiosyncrasy of the workman. Here it is crowded,
198
and there it is expanded. Now the essence of getting pupils through
examinations is to give equal weight to all parts of the schedule. But
mankind is naturally specialist. One man sees a whole subject, where
another can find only a few detached examples. I know that it seems
contradictory to allow for specialism in a curriculum especially
designed for a broad culture. Without contradictions the world would
be simpler, and perhaps duller. But I am certain that in education
wherever you exclude specialism you destroy life.
We now come to the other great branch of a general mathematical
education, namely Geometry. The same principles apply. The
theoretical part should be clear-cut, rigid, short, and important. Every
proposition not absolutely necessary to exhibit the main connection
of ideas should be cut out, but the great fundamental ideas should be
all there. No omission of concepts, such as those of Similarity and
Proportion. We must remember that, owing to the aid rendered by
the visual presence of a figure, Geometry is a field of unequalled
excellence for the exercise of the deductive faculties of reasoning.
Then, of course, there follows Geometrical Drawing, with its training
for the hand and eye.
But, like Algebra, Geometry and Geometrical Drawing must be
extended beyond the mere circle of geometrical ideas. In an
industrial neighbourhood, machinery and workshop practice form the
appropriate extension. For example, in the London Polytechnics this
has been achieved with conspicuous success. For many secondary
schools I suggest that surveying and maps are the natural
applications. In particular, plane-table surveying should lead pupils
to a vivid apprehension of the immediate application of geometric
truths. Simple drawing apparatus, a surveyor’s chain, and a
surveyor’s compass, should enable the pupils to rise from the survey
and mensuration of a field to the construction of the map of a small
district. The best education is to be found in gaining the utmost
information from the simplest apparatus. The provision of elaborate
instruments is greatly to be deprecated. To have constructed the map
of a small district, to have considered its roads, its contours, its
geology, its climate, its relation to other districts, the effects on the
status of its inhabitants, will teach more history and geography than
any knowledge of Perkin Warbeck or of Behren’s Straits. I mean not
a nebulous lecture on the subject, but a serious investigation in which
the real facts are definitely ascertained by the aid of accurate
theoretical knowledge. A typical mathematical problem should be:
Survey such and such a field, draw a plan of it to such and such a
scale, and find the area. It would be quite a good procedure to impart
the necessary geometrical propositions without their proofs. Then,
concurrently in the same term, the proofs of the propositions would
be learnt while the survey was being made.
Fortunately, the specialist side of education presents an easier
problem than does the provision of a general culture. For this there
are many reasons. One is that many of the principles of procedure to
be observed are the same in both cases, and it is unnecessary to
recapitulate. Another reason is that specialist training takes place—
or should take place—at a more advanced stage of the pupil’s course,
and thus there is easier material to work upon. But undoubtedly the
chief reason is that the specialist study is normally a study of
peculiar interest to the student. He is studying it because, for some
reason, he wants to know it. This makes all the difference. The
general culture is designed to foster an activity of mind; the
specialist course utilises this activity. But it does not do to lay too
much stress on these neat antitheses. As we have already seen, in the
general course foci of special interest will arise; and similarly in the
special study, the external connections of the subject drag thought
outwards.
Again, there is not one course of study which merely gives general
cultures and another which gives special knowledge. The subjects
pursued for the sake of a general education are special subjects
199
specially studied; and, on the other hand, one of the ways of
encouraging general mental activity is to foster a special devotion.
You may not divide the seamless coat of learning. What education
has to impart is an intimate sense for the power of ideas, for the
beauty of ideas, and for the structure of ideas, together with a
particular body of knowledge which has peculiar reference to the life
of the being possessing it.
But above style, and above knowledge, there is something, a vague
shape like fate above the Greek gods. That something is Power. Style
is the fashioning of power, the restraining of power. But, after all, the
power of attainment of the desired end is fundamental. The first
thing is to get there. Do not bother about your style, but solve your
problem, justify the ways of God to man, administer your province,
or do whatever else is set before you.
The appreciation of the structure of ideas is that side of a cultured
mind which can only grow under the influence of a special study. I
mean that eye for the whole chess-board, for the bearing of one set of
ideas on another. Nothing but a special study can give any
appreciation for the exact formulation of general ideas, for their
relations when formulated, for their service in the comprehension of
life. A mind so disciplined should be both more abstract and more
concrete. It has been trained in the comprehension of abstract
thought and in the analysis of facts.
Where, then, does style help? In this, with style the end is attained
without side issues, without raising undesirable inflammations. With
style you attain your end and nothing but your end. With style the
effect of your activity is calculable, and foresight is the last gift of
gods to men. With style your power is increased, for your mind is
not distracted with irrelevancies, and you are more likely to attain
your object. Now style is the exclusive privilege of the expert.
Whoever heard of the style of an amateur painter, of the style of an
amateur poet? Style is always the product of specialist study, the
peculiar contribution of specialism to culture.
Finally, there should grow the most austere of all mental qualities; I
mean the sense for style. It is an aesthetic sense, based on admiration
for the direct attainment of a foreseen end, simply and without waste.
Style in art, style in literature, style in science, style in logic, style in
practical execution have fundamentally the same aesthetic qualities,
namely, attainment and restraint. The love of a subject in itself and
for itself, where it is not the sleepy pleasure of pacing a mental
quarter-deck, is the love of style as manifested in that study.
Here we are brought back to the position from which we started, the
utility of education. Style, in its finest sense, is the last acquirement
of the educated mind; it is also the most useful. It pervades the whole
being. The administrator with a sense for style hates waste; the
engineer with a sense for style economises his material; the artisan
with a sense for style prefers good work. Style is the ultimate
morality of mind.
English education in its present phase suffers from a lack of definite
aim, and from an external machinery which kills its vitality. Hitherto
in this address I have been considering the aims which should govern
education. In this respect England halts between two opinions. It has
not decided whether to produce amateurs or experts. The profound
change in the world which the nineteenth century has produced is
that the growth of knowledge has given foresight. The amateur is
essentially a man with appreciation and with immense versatility in
mastering a given routine. But he lacks the foresight which comes
from special knowledge. The object of this address is to suggest how
to produce the expert without loss of the essential virtues of the
amateur. The machinery of our secondary education is rigid where it
should be yielding, and lax where it should be rigid. Every school is
bound on pain of extinction to train its boys for a small set of definite
examinations. No headmaster has a free hand to develop his general
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education or his specialist studies in accordance with the
opportunities of his school, which are created by its staff, its
environment, its class of boys, and its endowments. I suggest that no
system of external tests which aims primarily at examining
individual scholars can result in anything but educational waste.
Primarily it is the schools and not the scholars which should be
inspected. Each school should grant its own leaving certificates,
based on its own curriculum. The standards of these schools should
be sampled and corrected. But the first requisite for educational
reform is the school as a unit, with its approved curriculum based on
its own needs, and evolved by its own staff. If we fail to secure that,
we simply fall from one formalism into another, from one dung hill
of inert ideas into another.
In stating that the school is the true educational unit in any national
system for the safeguarding of efficiency, I have conceived the
alternative system as being the external examination of the
individual scholar. But every Scylla is faced by its Charybdis—or, in
more homely language, there is a ditch on both sides of the road. It
will be equally fatal to education if we fall into the hands of a
supervising department which is under the impression that it can
divide all schools into two or three rigid categories, each type being
forced to adopt a rigid curriculum. When I say that the school is the
educational unit, I mean exactly what I say, no larger unit, no smaller
unit. Each school must have the claim to be considered in relation to
its special circumstances. The classifying of schools for some
purposes is necessary. But no absolutely rigid curriculum, not
modified by its own staff, should be permissible. Exactly the same
principles apply, with the proper modifications, to universities and to
technical colleges. When one considers in its length and in its
breadth the importance of this question of the education of a nation’s
young, the broken lives, the defeated hopes, the national failures,
which result from the frivolous inertia with which it is treated, it is
difficult to restrain within oneself a savage rage. In the conditions of
modern life the rule is absolute, the race which does not value
trained intelligence is doomed. Not all your heroism, not all your
social charm, not all your wit, not all your victories on land or at sea,
can move back the finger of fate. To-day we maintain ourselves. Tomorrow science will have moved forward yet one more step, and
there will be no appeal from the judgment which will then be
pronounced on the uneducated.
We can be content with no less than the old summary of educational
ideal which has been current at any time from the dawn of our
civilization. The essence of education is that it be religious.
Pray, what is religious education?
A religious education is an education which inculcates duty and
reverence. Duty arises from our potential control over the course of
events. Where attainable knowledge could have changed the issue,
ignorance has the guilt of vice. And the foundation of reverence is
this perception, that the present holds within itself the complete sum
of existence, backwards and forwards, that whole amplitude of time,
which is eternity.
47) Jonathan Swift’s “An Essay On Modern Education” from
http://www.ucc.ie/celt/published/E700001-021/index.html
FROM frequently reflecting upon the course and method of
educating youth, in this and a neighbouring kingdom, with the
general success and consequence thereof, I am come to this
determination; that education is always the worse, in proportion to
the wealth and grandeur of the parents; nor do I doubt in the least,
that if the whole world were now under the dominion of one
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monarch (provided I might be allowed to choose where he should fix
the seat of his empire) the only son and heir of that monarch would
be the worst educated mortal that ever was born since the creation;
and I doubt the same proportion will hold through all degrees and
titles, from an emperor downward to the common gentry.
I do not say, that this has been always the case; for in better times it
was directly otherwise, and a scholar may fill half his Greek and
Roman shelves with authors of the noblest birth, as well as highest
virtue: nor do I tax all nations at present with this defect, for I know
there are some to be excepted, and particularly Scotland, under all
the disadvantages of its climate and soil, if that happiness be not
rather owing even to those very disadvantages. What is then to be
done, if this reflection must fix on two countries, which will be most
ready to take offence, and which, of all others, it will be least prudent
or safe to offend?
But there is one circumstance yet more dangerous and lamentable:
for if, according to the postulatum already laid down, the higher
quality any youth is of, he is in greater likelihood to be worse
educated; it behoves me to dread, and keep far from the verge of
scandalm magnatum.
Retracting therefore that hazardous postulatum, I shall venture no
farther at present than to say, that perhaps some additional care in
educating the sons of nobility and principal gentry, might not be ill
employed. If this be not delivered with softness enough, I must for
the future be silent.
In the mean time, let me ask only two questions, which relate to
England. I ask first, how it comes about, that for above sixty years
past the chief conduct of affairs has been generally placed in the
hands of new men, with very few exceptions ? The noblest blood of
England having been shed in the grand rebellion, many great
families became extinct, or were supported only by minors: when the
king was restored, very few of those lords remained who began, or at
least had improved, their education under the reigns of king James,
or king Charles I., of which lords the two principal were the marquis
of Ormond, and the earl of Southampton. The minors had, during the
rebellion and usurpation, either received too much tincture of bad
principles from those fanatick times, or coming to age at the
restoration, fell into the vices of that dissolute reign.
I date from this era the corrupt method of education among us, and,
in consequence thereof, the necessity the crown lay under of
introducing new men into the chief conduct of publick affairs, or to
the office of what we now call prime ministers; men of art,
knowledge, application, and insinuation, merely for want of a supply
among the nobility. They were generally (though not always) of
good birth; sometimes younger brothers, at other times such, who
although inheriting good estates, yet happened to be well educated,
and provided with learning. Such, under that king, were Hyde,
Bridgman, Clifford, Osborn, Godolphin, Ashley, Cooper: few or
none under the short reign of king James II.: under king William,
Somers, Montague, Churchill, Vernon, Boyle, and many others:
under the queen, Harley, St. John, Harcourt, Trevor: who indeed
were persons of the best private families, but unadorned with titles.
So in the following reign, Mr. Robert Walpole was for many years
prime minister, in which post he still happily continues: his brother
Horace is ambassador extraordinary to France. Mr. Addison and Mr.
Craggs, without the least alliance to support them, have been
secretaries of state.
If the facts have been thus for above sixty years past, (whereof I
could with a little farther recollection produce many more instances)
I would ask again, how it has happened, that in a nation plentifully
abounding with nobility, so great share in the most competent parts
of publick management has been for so long a period chiefly
entrusted to commoners; unless some omissions or defects of the
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highest import may be charged upon those to whom the care of
educating our noble youth had been committed ? For, if there be any
difference between human creatures in the point of natural parts, as
we usually call them, it should seem, that the advantage lies on the
side of children born from noble and wealthy parents; the same
traditional sloth and luxury, which render their body weak and
effeminate, perhaps refining and giving a freer motion to the spirits,
beyond what can be expected from the gross, robust issue of meaner
mortals. Add to this the peculiar advantages which all young
noblemen possess by the privileges of their birth. Such as a free
access to courts, and a universal deference paid to their persons.
But as my lord Bacon charges it for a fault on princes, that they are
impatient to compass ends, without giving themselves the trouble of
consulting or executing the means; so perhaps it may be the
disposition of young nobles, either from the indulgence of parents,
tutors, and governors, or their own inactivity, that they expect the
accomplishments of a good education, with out the least expense of
time or study to acquire them.
What I said last, I am ready to retract, for the case is infinitely worse;
and the very maxims set up to direct modern education are enough to
destroy all the seeds of knowledge, honour, wisdom, and virtue
among us. The current opinion prevails, that the study of Greek and
Latin is loss of time; that publick schools, by mingling the sons of
noblemen with those of the vulgar, engage the former in bad
company; that whipping breaks the spirits of lads well born; that
universities make young men pedants; that to dance, fence, speak
French, and know how to behave yourself among great persons of
both sexes, comprehends the whole duty of a gentleman.
I cannot but think, this wise system of education has been much
cultivated among us by those worthies of the army who during the
last war returned from Flanders at the close of each campaign,
became the dictators of behaviour, dress, and politeness to all those
youngsters who frequent chocolate coffee-gaminghouses, drawingrooms, operas, levees, and assemblies: where a colonel by his pay,
perquisites, and plunder, was qualified to outshine many peers of the
realm; and by the influence of an exotick habit and demeanour,
added to other foreign accomplishments, gave the law to the whole
town, and was copied as the standard pattern of whatever was refined
in dress, equipage, conversation, or diversions.
I remember, in those times, an admired original of that vocation,
sitting in a coffeehouse near two gentlemen, whereof one was of the
clergy, who were engaged in some discourse that savoured of
learning. This officer thought fit to interpose, and professing to
deliver the sentiments of his fraternity, as well as his own, (and
probably he did so of too many among them) turned to the clergy
man, and spoke in the following manner, " D__n me, doctor, say
what you will, the army is the only school for gentlemen. Do you
think my lord Marlborough beat the French with Greek and Latin ?
D__n me, a scholar when he comes into good company, what is he
but an ass? D__n me, I would be glad by G_d to see any of your
scholars with his nouns and his verbs, and his philosophy, and
trigonometry, what a figure he would make at a siege, or blockade,
or rencountering---- D__n me," &c. After which he proceeded with a
volley of military terms, less significant, sounding worse, and harder
to be understood, than any that were ever coined by the
commentators upon Aristotle. I would not here be thought to charge
the soldiery with ignorance and contempt of learning, without
allowing exceptions, of which I have known many; but however the
worst example, especially in a great majority, will certainly prevail.
I have heard, that the late earl of Oxford, in the time of his ministry,
never passed by White's chocolatehouse (the common rendezvous of
infamous sharpers and noble cullies) without be stowing a curse
upon that famous academy, as the bane of half the English nobility. I
have likewise been told another passage concerning that great
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minister, which, because it gave a humorous idea of one principal
ingredient in modern education, take as follows. Le Sack, the famous
French dancing master, in great admiration, asked a friend, whether
it were true, that Mr. Harley was made an earl and lord treasurer?
and finding it confirmed said, "Well; I wonder what the devil the
queen could see in him; for I attended him two years, and he was the
greatest dunce that ever I taught."
Another hindrance to good education, and I think the greatest of any,
is that pernicious custom in rich and noble families, of entertaining
French tutors in their houses. These wretched pedagogues are
enjoined by the father, to take special care that the boy shall be
perfect in his French; by the mother, that master must not walk till he
is hot, nor be suffered to play with other boys, nor be wet in his feet,
nor daub his clothes, and to see the dancing master attends
constantly, and does his duty; she farther insists. that the child be not
kept too long poring on his book, because he is subject to sore eyes,
and of a weakly constitution.
By these methods, the young gentleman is, in every article, as fully
accomplished at eight years old, as at eight and twenty, age adding
only to the growth of his person and his vice; so that if you should
look at him in his boyhood through the magnifying end of a
perspective, and in his manhood through the other, it would be
impossible to spy any difference; the same airs, the same strut, the
same cock of his hat, and posture of his sword, (as far as the change
of fashions will allow) the same understanding, the same compass of
knowledge, with the very same absurdity, impudence, and
impertinence of tongue.
He is taught from the nursery, that he must inherit a great estate, and
has no need to mind his book, which is a lesson he never forgets to
the end of his life. His chief solace is to steal down and play at
spanfarthing with the page, or young blackamoor, or little favourite
footboy, one of which is his principal confident and bosom friend.
There is one young lord 1 in this town, who, by an unexampled piece
of good fortune, was miraculously snatched out of the gulf of
ignorance, confined to a publick school for a due term of years, well
whipped when he deserved it, clad no better than his comrades, and
always their playfellow on the same foot, had no precedence in the
school but what was given him by his merit, and lost it whenever he
was negligent. It is well known, how many mutinies were bred at this
unprecedented treatment, what complaints among his relations, and
other great ones of both sexes; that his stockings with silver clocks
were ravished from him; that he wore his own hair; that his dress
was undistinguished; that he was not fit to appear at a ball or
assembly, nor suffered to go to either: and it was with the utmost
difficulty that he became qualified for his present removal, where he
may probably be farther persecuted, and possibly with success, if the
firmness of a very worthy governor and his own good dispositions
will not preserve him. I confess, I cannot but wish he may go on in
the way he began; because I have a curiosity to know by so singular
an experiment, whether truth, honour, justice, temperance, courage,
and good sense, acquired by a school and college education, may not
produce a very tolerable lad, although he should happen to fail in one
or two of those accomplishments, which, in the general vogue, are
held so important to the finishing of a gentleman.
It is true, I have known an academical education to have been
exploded in publick assemblies; and have heard more than one or
two persons of high rank declare, they could learn nothing more at
Oxford and Cambridge, than to drink ale and smoke tobacco;
wherein I firmly believed them, and could have added some hundred
examples from my own observation in one of those universities; but
they all were of young heirs sent thither only for form; either from
schools, where they were not suffered by their careful parents to stay
above three months in the year; or from under the management of
French family tutors, who yet often attended them to their college, to
prevent all possibility of their improvement: but I never yet knew
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any one person of quality, who followed his studies at the university,
and carried away his just proportion of learning, that was not ready
upon all occasions to celebrate and defend that course of education,
and to prove a patron of learned men.
There is one circumstance in a learned education, which ought to
have much weight, even with those who have no learning at all. The
books read at school and college are full of incitements to virtue, and
discouragements from vice, drawn from the wisest reasons, the
strongest motives, and the most influencing examples. Thus young
minds are filled early with an inclination to good, and an abhorrence
of evil, both which increase in them, according to the advances they
make in literature; and although they may be, and too often are,
drawn by the temptations of youth, and the opportunities of a large
fortune, into some irregularities, when they come forward into the
great world, yet it is ever with reluctance and compunction of mind;
because their bias to virtue still continues. They may stray
sometimes, out of infirmity or compliance; but they will soon return
to the right road, and keep it always in view. I speak only of those
excesses, which are too much the attendants of youth and warmer
blood; for as to the points of honour, truth, justice, and other noble
gifts of the mind, wherein the temperature of the body has no
concern, they are ldom or ever known to be wild.
I have engaged myself very unwarily in too copious a subject for so
short a paper. The present scope I would aim at, is, to prove that
some proportion of human knowledge appears requisite to those,
who by their birth or fortune are called to the making of laws, and in
a subordinate way to the execution of them; and that such knowledge
is not to be obtained, without a miracle, under the frequent, corrupt,
and sottish methods of educating those who are born to wealth or
titles. For I would have it remembered, that I do by no means confine
these remarks to young persons of noble birth; the same errours
running through all families, where there is wealth enough to afford,
that their sons (at least the eldest) may be good for nothing. Why
should my son be a scholar, when it is not intended that he should
live by his learning? By this rule, if what is commonly said be true,
that "money answers all things," why should my son be honest,
temperate, just, or charitable, since he has no intention to depend
upon any of these qualities for a maintenance?
When all is done, perhaps, upon the whole, the matter is not so bad
as I would make it; and God, who works good out of evil, acting
only by the ordinary course and rule of nature, permits this continual
circulation of human things, for his own unsearchable ends. The
father grows rich by avarice, injustice, oppression; he is a tyrant in
the neighbourhood over slaves and beggars, whom he calls his
tenants. Why should he desire to have qualities infused into his son,
which himself never possessed, or knew, or found the want of, in the
acquisition of his wealth? The son, bred in sloth and idleness,
becomes a spendthrift, a cully, a profligate, and goes out of the world
a beggar, as his father came in: thus the former is punished for his
own sins, as well as for those of the latter. The dunghill, having
raised a huge mushroom of short duration, is now spread to enrich
other men's lands. It is indeed of worse consequence, where noble
families are gone to decay; because their titles and privileges outlive
their estates: and politicians tell us, that nothing is more dangerous to
the publick, than a numerous nobility without merit or fortune. But
even here God has likewise prescribed some remedy in the order of
nature; so many great families coming to an end, by the sloth,
luxury, and abandoned lusts, which enervated their breed through
every succession, producing gradually a more effeminate race
wholly unfit for propagation.
Notes:
l - Lord Mountcashel, bred at Dr. Sheridan's school. Dr. Sheridan
dedicated to him, in December I728, his Translation of Persius,
205
Source: Gulliver's Travels and Other Works by Jonathan Swift.
Edited by Henry Morley. New York : E.P. Dutton, 1906, p. 363-370.
_______________________________________48) The Lost Tools
of Learning
Dorothy Sayers
That I, whose experience of teaching is extremely limited, should
presume to discuss education is a matter, surely, that calls for no
apology. It is a kind of behavior to which the present climate of
opinion is wholly favorable. Bishops air their opinions about
economics; biologists, about metaphysics; inorganic chemists, about
theology; the most irrelevant people are appointed to highly
technical ministries; and plain, blunt men write to the papers to say
that Epstein and Picasso do not know how to draw. Up to a certain
point, and provided the the criticisms are made with a reasonable
modesty, these activities are commendable. Too much specialization
is not a good thing. There is also one excellent reason why the
veriest amateur may feel entitled to have an opinion about education.
For if we are not all professional teachers, we have all, at some time
or another, been taught. Even if we learnt nothing--perhaps in
particular if we learnt nothing--our contribution to the discussion
may have a potential value.
However, it is in the highest degree improbable that the reforms I
propose will ever be carried into effect. Neither the parents, nor the
training colleges, nor the examination boards, nor the boards of
governors, nor the ministries of education, would countenance them
for a moment. For they amount to this: that if we are to produce a
society of educated people, fitted to preserve their intellectual
freedom amid the complex pressures of our modern society, we must
turn back the wheel of progress some four or five hundred years, to
the point at which education began to lose sight of its true object,
towards the end of the Middle Ages.
Before you dismiss me with the appropriate phrase--reactionary,
romantic, mediaevalist, laudator temporis acti (praiser of times past),
or whatever tag comes first to hand--I will ask you to consider one or
two miscellaneous questions that hang about at the back, perhaps, of
all our minds, and occasionally pop out to worry us.
When we think about the remarkably early age at which the young
men went up to university in, let us say, Tudor times, and thereafter
were held fit to assume responsibility for the conduct of their own
affairs, are we altogether comfortable about that artificial
prolongation of intellectual childhood and adolescence into the years
of physical maturity which is so marked in our own day? To
postpone the acceptance of responsibility to a late date brings with it
a number of psychological complications which, while they may
interest the psychiatrist, are scarcely beneficial either to the
individual or to society. The stock argument in favor of postponing
the school-leaving age and prolonging the period of education
generally is there there is now so much more to learn than there was
in the Middle Ages. This is partly true, but not wholly. The modern
boy and girl are certainly taught more subjects--but does that always
mean that they actually know more?
Has it ever struck you as odd, or unfortunate, that today, when the
proportion of literacy throughout Western Europe is higher than it
has ever been, people should have become susceptible to the
influence of advertisement and mass propaganda to an extent
hitherto unheard of and unimagined? Do you put this down to the
mere mechanical fact that the press and the radio and so on have
made propaganda much easier to distribute over a wide area? Or do
you sometimes have an uneasy suspicion that the product of modern
educational methods is less good than he or she might be at
disentangling fact from opinion and the proven from the plausible?
Have you ever, in listening to a debate among adult and presumably
responsible people, been fretted by the extraordinary inability of the
206
average debater to speak to the question, or to meet and refute the
arguments of speakers on the other side? Or have you ever pondered
upon the extremely high incidence of irrelevant matter which crops
up at committee meetings, and upon the very great rarity of persons
capable of acting as chairmen of committees? And when you think
of this, and think that most of our public affairs are settled by debates
and committees, have you ever felt a certain sinking of the heart?
Have you ever followed a discussion in the newspapers or elsewhere
and noticed how frequently writers fail to define the terms they use?
Or how often, if one man does define his terms, another will assume
in his reply that he was using the terms in precisely the opposite
sense to that in which he has already defined them? Have you ever
been faintly troubled by the amount of slipshod syntax going about?
And, if so, are you troubled because it is inelegant or because it may
lead to dangerous misunderstanding?
Do you ever find that young people, when they have left school, not
only forget most of what they have learnt (that is only to be
expected), but forget also, or betray that they have never really
known, how to tackle a new subject for themselves? Are you often
bothered by coming across grown-up men and women who seem
unable to distinguish between a book that is sound, scholarly, and
properly documented, and one that is, to any trained eye, very
conspicuously none of these things? Or who cannot handle a library
catalogue? Or who, when faced with a book of reference, betray a
curious inability to extract from it the passages relevant to the
particular question which interests them?
Do you often come across people for whom, all their lives, a
"subject" remains a "subject," divided by watertight bulkheads from
all other "subjects," so that they experience very great difficulty in
making an immediate mental connection between let us say, algebra
and detective fiction, sewage disposal and the price of salmon--or,
more generally, between such spheres of knowledge as philosophy
and economics, or chemistry and art?
Are you occasionally perturbed by the things written by adult men
and women for adult men and women to read? We find a wellknown biologist writing in a weekly paper to the effect that: "It is an
argument against the existence of a Creator" (I think he put it more
strongly; but since I have, most unfortunately, mislaid the reference,
I will put his claim at its lowest)--"an argument against the existence
of a Creator that the same kind of variations which are produced by
natural selection can be produced at will by stock breeders." One
might feel tempted to say that it is rather an argument for the
existence of a Creator. Actually, of course, it is neither; all it proves
is that the same material causes (recombination of the chromosomes,
by crossbreeding, and so forth) are sufficient to account for all
observed variations--just as the various combinations of the same
dozen tones are materially sufficient to account for Beethoven's
Moonlight Sonata and the noise the cat makes by walking on the
keys. But the cat's performance neither proves nor disproves the
existence of Beethoven; and all that is proved by the biologist's
argument is that he was unable to distinguish between a material and
a final cause.
Here is a sentence from no less academic a source than a front- page
article in the Times Literary Supplement: "The Frenchman, Alfred
Epinas, pointed out that certain species (e.g., ants and wasps) can
only face the horrors of life and death in association." I do not know
what the Frenchman actually did say; what the Englishman says he
said is patently meaningless. We cannot know whether life holds any
horror for the ant, nor in what sense the isolated wasp which you kill
upon the window-pane can be said to "face" or not to "face" the
horrors of death. The subject of the article is mass behavior in man;
and the human motives have been unobtrusively transferred from the
main proposition to the supporting instance. Thus the argument, in
207
effect, assumes what it set out to prove--a fact which would become
immediately apparent if it were presented in a formal syllogism. This
is only a small and haphazard example of a vice which pervades
whole books--particularly books written by men of science on
metaphysical subjects.
Another quotation from the same issue of the TLS comes in fittingly
here to wind up this random collection of disquieting thoughts--this
time from a review of Sir Richard Livingstone's "Some Tasks for
Education": "More than once the reader is reminded of the value of
an intensive study of at least one subject, so as to learn Tthe meaning
of knowledge' and what precision and persistence is needed to attain
it. Yet there is elsewhere full recognition of the distressing fact that a
man may be master in one field and show no better judgement than
his neighbor anywhere else; he remembers what he has learnt, but
forgets altogether how he learned it."
I would draw your attention particularly to that last sentence, which
offers an explanation of what the writer rightly calls the "distressing
fact" that the intellectual skills bestowed upon us by our education
are not readily transferable to subjects other than those in which we
acquired them: "he remembers what he has learnt, but forgets
altogether how he learned it."
Is not the great defect of our education today--a defect traceable
through all the disquieting symptoms of trouble that I have
mentioned--that although we often succeed in teaching our pupils
"subjects," we fail lamentably on the whole in teaching them how to
think: they learn everything, except the art of learning. It is as though
we had taught a child, mechanically and by rule of thumb, to play
"The Harmonious Blacksmith" upon the piano, but had never taught
him the scale or how to read music; so that, having memorized "The
Harmonious Blacksmith," he still had not the faintest notion how to
proceed from that to tackle "The Last Rose of Summer." Why do I
say, "as though"? In certain of the arts and crafts, we sometimes do
precisely this--requiring a child to "express himself" in paint before
we teach him how to handle the colors and the brush. There is a
school of thought which believes this to be the right way to set about
the job. But observe: it is not the way in which a trained craftsman
will go about to teach himself a new medium. He, having learned by
experience the best way to economize labor and take the thing by the
right end, will start off by doodling about on an odd piece of
material, in order to "give himself the feel of the tool."
Let us now look at the mediaeval scheme of education--the syllabus
of the Schools. It does not matter, for the moment, whether it was
devised for small children or for older students, or how long people
were supposed to take over it. What matters is the light it throws
upon what the men of the Middle Ages supposed to be the object and
the right order of the educative process.
The syllabus was divided into two parts: the Trivium and
Quadrivium. The second part--the Quadrivium--consisted of
"subjects," and need not for the moment concern us. The interesting
thing for us is the composition of the Trivium, which preceded the
Quadrivium and was the preliminary discipline for it. It consisted of
three parts: Grammar, Dialectic, and Rhetoric, in that order.
Now the first thing we notice is that two at any rate of these
"subjects" are not what we should call "subjects" at all: they are only
methods of dealing with subjects. Grammar, indeed, is a "subject" in
the sense that it does mean definitely learning a language--at that
period it meant learning Latin. But language itself is simply the
medium in which thought is expressed. The whole of the Trivium
was, in fact, intended to teach the pupil the proper use of the tools of
learning, before he began to apply them to "subjects" at all. First, he
learned a language; not just how to order a meal in a foreign
language, but the structure of a language, and hence of language
itself--what it was, how it was put together, and how it worked.
Secondly, he learned how to use language; how to define his terms
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and make accurate statements; how to construct an argument and
how to detect fallacies in argument. Dialectic, that is to say,
embraced Logic and Disputation. Thirdly, he learned to express
himself in language-- how to say what he had to say elegantly and
persuasively.
At the end of his course, he was required to compose a thesis upon
some theme set by his masters or chosen by himself, and afterwards
to defend his thesis against the criticism of the faculty. By this time,
he would have learned--or woe betide him-- not merely to write an
essay on paper, but to speak audibly and intelligibly from a platform,
and to use his wits quickly when heckled. There would also be
questions, cogent and shrewd, from those who had already run the
gauntlet of debate.
It is, of course, quite true that bits and pieces of the mediaeval
tradition still linger, or have been revived, in the ordinary school
syllabus of today. Some knowledge of grammar is still required
when learning a foreign language--perhaps I should say, "is again
required," for during my own lifetime, we passed through a phase
when the teaching of declensions and conjugations was considered
rather reprehensible, and it was considered better to pick these things
up as we went along. School debating societies flourish; essays are
written; the necessity for "self- expression" is stressed, and perhaps
even over-stressed. But these activities are cultivated more or less in
detachment, as belonging to the special subjects in which they are
pigeon-holed rather than as forming one coherent scheme of mental
training to which all "subjects"stand in a subordinate relation.
"Grammar" belongs especially to the "subject" of foreign languages,
and essay-writing to the "subject" called "English"; while Dialectic
has become almost entirely divorced from the rest of the curriculum,
and is frequently practiced unsystematically and out of school hours
as a separate exercise, only very loosely related to the main business
of learning. Taken by and large, the great difference of emphasis
between the two conceptions holds good: modern education
concentrates on "teaching subjects," leaving the method of thinking,
arguing, and expressing one's conclusions to be picked up by the
scholar as he goes along' mediaeval education concentrated on first
forging and learning to handle the tools of learning, using whatever
subject came handy as a piece of material on which to doodle until
the use of the tool became second nature.
"Subjects" of some kind there must be, of course. One cannot learn
the theory of grammar without learning an actual language, or learn
to argue and orate without speaking about something in particular.
The debating subjects of the Middle Ages were drawn largely from
theology, or from the ethics and history of antiquity. Often, indeed,
they became stereotyped, especially towards the end of the period,
and the far-fetched and wire-drawn absurdities of Scholastic
argument fretted Milton and provide food for merriment even to this
day. Whether they were in themselves any more hackneyed and
trivial then the usual subjects set nowadays for "essay writing" I
should not like to say: we may ourselves grow a little weary of "A
Day in My Holidays" and all the rest of it. But most of the merriment
is misplaced, because the aim and object of the debating thesis has
by now been lost sight of.
A glib speaker in the Brains Trust once entertained his audience (and
reduced the late Charles Williams to helpless rageb by asserting that
in the Middle Ages it was a matter of faith to know how many
archangels could dance on the point of a needle. I need not say, I
hope, that it never was a "matter of faith"; it was simply a debating
exercise, whose set subject was the nature of angelic substance: were
angels material, and if so, did they occupy space? The answer
usually adjudged correct is, I believe, that angels are pure
intelligences; not material, but limited, so that they may have
location in space but not extension. An analogy might be drawn from
human thought, which is similarly non-material and similarly
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limited. Thus, if your thought is concentrated upon one thing--say,
the point of a needle--it is located there in the sense that it is not
elsewhere; but although it is "there," it occupies no space there, and
there is nothing to prevent an infinite number of different people's
thoughts being concentrated upon the same needle-point at the same
time. The proper subject of the argument is thus seen to be the
distinction between location and extension in space; the matter on
which the argument is exercised happens to be the nature of angels
(although, as we have seen, it might equally well have been
something else; the practical lesson to be drawn from the argument is
not to use words like "there" in a loose and unscientific way, without
specifying whether you mean "located there" or "occupying space
there."
Scorn in plenty has been poured out upon the mediaeval passion for
hair-splitting; but when we look at the shameless abuse made, in
print and on the platform, of controversial expressions with shifting
and ambiguous connotations, we may feel it in our hearts to wish
that every reader and hearer had been so defensively armored by his
education as to be able to cry: "Distinguo."
For we let our young men and women go out unarmed, in a day
when armor was never so necessary. By teaching them all to read,
we have left them at the mercy of the printed word. By the invention
of the film and the radio, we have made certain that no aversion to
reading shall secure them from the incessant battery of words, words,
words. They do not know what the words mean; they do not know
how to ward them off or blunt their edge or fling them back; they are
a prey to words in their emotions instead of being the masters of
them in their intellects. We who were scandalized in 1940 when men
were sent to fight armored tanks with rifles, are not scandalized
when young men and women are sent into the world to fight massed
propaganda with a smattering of "subjects"; and when whole classes
and whole nations become hypnotized by the arts of the spell binder,
we have the impudence to be astonished. We dole out lip-service to
the importance of education--lip- service and, just occasionally, a
little grant of money; we postpone the school-leaving age, and plan
to build bigger and better schools; the teachers slave conscientiously
in and out of school hours; and yet, as I believe, all this devoted
effort is largely frustrated, because we have lost the tools of learning,
and in their absence can only make a botched and piecemeal job of
it.
What, then, are we to do? We cannot go back to the Middle Ages.
That is a cry to which we have become accustomed. We cannot go
back--or can we? Distinguo. I should like every term in that
proposition defined. Does "go back" mean a retrogression in time, or
the revision of an error? The first is clearly impossible per se; the
second is a thing which wise men do every day. "Cannot"-- does this
mean that our behavior is determined irreversibly, or merely that
such an action would be very difficult in view of the opposition it
would provoke? Obviously the twentieth century is not and cannot
be the fourteenth; but if "the Middle Ages" is, in this context, simply
a picturesque phrase denoting a particular educational theory, there
seems to be no a priori reason why we should not "go back" to it-with modifications--as we have already "gone back" with
modifications, to, let us say, the idea of playing Shakespeare's plays
as he wrote them, and not in the "modernized" versions of Cibber
and Garrick, which once seemed to be the latest thing in theatrical
progress.
Let us amuse ourselves by imagining that such progressive
retrogression is possible. Let us make a clean sweep of all
educational authorities, and furnish ourselves with a nice little school
of boys and girls whom we may experimentally equip for the
intellectual conflict along lines chosen by ourselves. We will endow
them with exceptionally docile parents; we will staff our school with
teachers who are themselves perfectly familiar with the aims and
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methods of the Trivium; we will have our building and staff large
enough to allow our classes to be small enough for adequate
handling; and we will postulate a Board of Examiners willing and
qualified to test the products we turn out. Thus prepared, we will
attempt to sketch out a syllabus--a modern Trivium "with
modifications" and we will see where we get to.
and good guidance, it should show the beginnings of creativeness; a
reaching out towards a synthesis of what it already knows, and a
deliberate eagerness to know and do some one thing in preference to
all others. Now it seems to me that the layout of the Trivium adapts
itself with a singular appropriateness to these three ages: Grammar to
the Poll-Parrot, Dialectic to the Pert, and Rhetoric to the Poetic age.
But first: what age shall the children be? Well, if one is to educate
them on novel lines, it will be better that they should have nothing to
unlearn; besides, one cannot begin a good thing too early, and the
Trivium is by its nature not learning, but a preparation for learning.
We will, therefore, "catch 'em young," requiring of our pupils only
that they shall be able to read, write, and cipher.
Let us begin, then, with Grammar. This, in practice, means the
grammar of some language in particular; and it must be an inflected
language. The grammatical structure of an uninflected language is
far too analytical to be tackled by any one without previous practice
in Dialectic. Moreover, the inflected languages interpret the
uninflected, whereas the uninflected are of little use in interpreting
the inflected. I will say at once, quite firmly, that the best grounding
for education is the Latin grammar. I say this, not because Latin is
traditional and mediaeval, but simply because even a rudimentary
knowledge of Latin cuts down the labor and pains of learning almost
any other subject by at least fifty percent. It is the key to the
vocabulary and structure of all the Teutonic languages, as well as to
the technical vocabulary of all the sciences and to the literature of the
entire Mediterranean civilization, together with all its historical
documents.
My views about child psychology are, I admit, neither orthodox nor
enlightened. Looking back upon myself (since I am the child I know
best and the only child I can pretend to know from inside) I
recognize three states of development. These, in a rough-and- ready
fashion, I will call the Poll-Parrot, the Pert, and the Poetic--the latter
coinciding, approximately, with the onset of puberty. The Poll-Parrot
stage is the one in which learning by heart is easy and, on the whole,
pleasurable; whereas reasoning is difficult and, on the whole, little
relished. At this age, one readily memorizes the shapes and
appearances of things; one likes to recite the number-plates of cars;
one rejoices in the chanting of rhymes and the rumble and thunder of
unintelligible polysyllables; one enjoys the mere accumulation of
things. The Pert age, which follows upon this (and, naturally,
overlaps it to some extent), is characterized by contradicting,
answering back, liking to "catch people out" (especially one's
elders); and by the propounding of conundrums. Its nuisance-value is
extremely high. It usually sets in about the Fourth Form. The Poetic
age is popularly known as the "difficult" age. It is self-centered; it
yearns to express itself; it rather specializes in being misunderstood;
it is restless and tries to achieve independence; and, with good luck
Those whose pedantic preference for a living language persuades
them to deprive their pupils of all these advantages might substitute
Russian, whose grammar is still more primitive. Russian is, of
course, helpful with the other Slav dialects. There is something also
to be said for Classical Greek. But my own choice is Latin. Having
thus pleased the Classicists among you, I will proceed to horrify
them by adding that I do not think it either wise or necessary to
cramp the ordinary pupil upon the Procrustean bed of the Augustan
Age, with its highly elaborate and artificial verse forms and oratory.
Post-classical and mediaeval Latin, which was a living language
right down to the end of the Renaissance, is easier and in some ways
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livelier; a study of it helps to dispel the widespread notion that
learning and literature came to a full stop when Christ was born and
only woke up again at the Dissolution of the Monasteries.
provided that they are accompanied by pictures of costumes,
architecture, and other everyday things, so that the mere mention of a
date calls up a very strong visual presentment of the whole period.
Latin should be begun as early as possible--at a time when inflected
speech seems no more astonishing than any other phenomenon in an
astonishing world; and when the chanting of "Amo, amas, amat" is
as ritually agreeable to the feelings as the chanting of "eeny, meeny,
miney, moe."
Geography will similarly be presented in its factual aspect, with
maps, natural features, and visual presentment of customs, costumes,
flora, fauna, and so on; and I believe myself that the discredited and
old-fashioned memorizing of a few capitol cities, rivers, mountain
ranges, etc., does no harm. Stamp collecting may be encouraged.
During this age we must, of course, exercise the mind on other things
besides Latin grammar. Observation and memory are the faculties
most lively at this period; and if we are to learn a contemporary
foreign language we should begin now, before the facial and mental
muscles become rebellious to strange intonations. Spoken French or
German can be practiced alongside the grammatical discipline of the
Latin.
Science, in the Poll-Parrot period, arranges itself naturally and easily
around collections--the identifying and naming of specimens and, in
general, the kind of thing that used to be called "natural philosophy."
To know the name and properties of things is, at this age, a
satisfaction in itself; to recognize a devil's coach-horse at sight, and
assure one's foolish elders, that, in spite of its appearance, it does not
sting; to be able to pick out Cassiopeia and the Pleiades, and perhaps
even to know who Cassiopeia and the Pleiades were; to be aware that
a whale is not a fish, and a bat not a bird--all these things give a
pleasant sensation of superiority; while to know a ring snake from an
adder or a poisonous from an edible toadstool is a kind of knowledge
that also has practical value.
In English, meanwhile, verse and prose can be learned by heart, and
the pupil's memory should be stored with stories of every kind-classical myth, European legend, and so forth. I do not think that the
classical stories and masterpieces of ancient literature should be
made the vile bodies on which to practice the techniques of
Grammar--that was a fault of mediaeval education which we need
not perpetuate. The stories can be enjoyed and remembered in
English, and related to their origin at a subsequent stage. Recitation
aloud should be practiced, individually or in chorus; for we must not
forget that we are laying the groundwork for Disputation and
Rhetoric.
The grammar of History should consist, I think, of dates, events,
anecdotes, and personalities. A set of dates to which one can peg all
later historical knowledge is of enormous help later on in
establishing the perspective of history. It does not greatly matter
which dates: those of the Kings of England will do very nicely,
The grammar of Mathematics begins, of course, with the
multiplication table, which, if not learnt now, will never be learnt
with pleasure; and with the recognition of geometrical shapes and the
grouping of numbers. These exercises lead naturally to the doing of
simple sums in arithmetic. More complicated mathematical
processes may, and perhaps should, be postponed, for the reasons
which will presently appear.
So far (except, of course, for the Latin), our curriculum contains
nothing that departs very far from common practice. The difference
will be felt rather in the attitude of the teachers, who must look upon
all these activities less as "subjects" in themselves than as a
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gathering-together of material for use in the next part of the Trivium.
What that material is, is only of secondary importance; but it is as
well that anything and everything which can be usefully committed
to memory should be memorized at this period, whether it is
immediately intelligible or not. The modern tendency is to try and
force rational explanations on a child's mind at too early an age.
Intelligent questions, spontaneously asked, should, of course, receive
an immediate and rational answer; but it is a great mistake to
suppose that a child cannot readily enjoy and remember things that
are beyond his power to analyze--particularly if those things have a
strong imaginative appeal (as, for example, "Kubla Kahn"), an
attractive jingle (like some of the memory-rhymes for Latin
genders), or an abundance of rich, resounding polysyllables (like the
Quicunque vult).
This reminds me of the grammar of Theology. I shall add it to the
curriculum, because theology is the mistress-science without which
the whole educational structure will necessarily lack its final
synthesis. Those who disagree about this will remain content to leave
their pupil's education still full of loose ends. This will matter rather
less than it might, since by the time that the tools of learning have
been forged the student will be able to tackle theology for himself,
and will probably insist upon doing so and making sense of it. Still,
it is as well to have this matter also handy and ready for the reason to
work upon. At the grammatical age, therefore, we should become
acquainted with the story of God and Man in outline--i.e., the Old
and New Testaments presented as parts of a single narrative of
Creation, Rebellion, and Redemption--and also with the Creed, the
Lord's Prayer, and the Ten Commandments. At this early stage, it
does not matter nearly so much that these things should be fully
understood as that they should be known and remembered.
answer is: so soon as the pupil shows himself disposed to pertness
and interminable argument. For as, in the first part, the master
faculties are Observation and Memory, so, in the second, the master
faculty is the Discursive Reason. In the first, the exercise to which
the rest of the material was, as it were, keyed, was the Latin
grammar; in the second, the key- exercise will be Formal Logic. It is
here that our curriculum shows its first sharp divergence from
modern standards. The disrepute into which Formal Logic has fallen
is entirely unjustified; and its neglect is the root cause of nearly all
those disquieting symptoms which we have noted in the modern
intellectual constitution. Logic has been discredited, partly because
we have come to suppose that we are conditioned almost entirely by
the intuitive and the unconscious. There is no time to argue whether
this is true; I will simply observe that to neglect the proper training
of the reason is the best possible way to make it true. Another cause
for the disfavor into which Logic has fallen is the belief that it is
entirely based upon universal assumptions that are either unprovable
or tautological. This is not true. Not all universal propositions are of
this kind. But even if they were, it would make no difference, since
every syllogism whose major premise is in the form "All A is B" can
be recast in hypothetical form. Logic is the art of arguing correctly:
"If A, then B." The method is not invalidated by the hypothetical
nature of A. Indeed, the practical utility of Formal Logic today lies
not so much in the establishment of positive conclusions as in the
prompt detection and exposure of invalid inference.
Let us now quickly review our material and see how it is to be
related to Dialectic. On the Language side, we shall now have our
vocabulary and morphology at our fingertips; henceforward we can
concentrate on syntax and analysis (i.e., the logical construction of
speech) and the history of language (i.e., how we came to arrange
our speech as we do in order to convey our thoughts).
It is difficult to say at what age, precisely, we should pass from the
first to the second part of the Trivium. Generally speaking, the
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Our Reading will proceed from narrative and lyric to essays,
argument and criticism, and the pupil will learn to try his own hand
at writing this kind of thing. Many lessons--on whatever subject-will take the form of debates; and the place of individual or choral
recitation will be taken by dramatic performances, with special
attention to plays in which an argument is stated in dramatic form.
Mathematics--algebra, geometry, and the more advanced kinds of
arithmetic--will now enter into the syllabus and take its place as what
it really is: not a separate "subject" but a sub- department of Logic. It
is neither more nor less than the rule of the syllogism in its particular
application to number and measurement, and should be taught as
such, instead of being, for some, a dark mystery, and, for others, a
special revelation, neither illuminating nor illuminated by any other
part of knowledge.
History, aided by a simple system of ethics derived from the
grammar of theology, will provide much suitable material for
discussion: Was the behavior of this statesman justified? What was
the effect of such an enactment? What are the arguments for and
against this or that form of government? We shall thus get an
introduction to constitutional history--a subject meaningless to the
young child, but of absorbing interest to those who are prepared to
argue and debate. Theology itself will furnish material for argument
about conduct and morals; and should have its scope extended by a
simplified course of dogmatic theology (i.e., the rational structure of
Christian thought), clarifying the relations between the dogma and
the ethics, and lending itself to that application of ethical principles
in particular instances which is properly called casuistry. Geography
and the Sciences will likewise provide material for Dialectic.
But above all, we must not neglect the material which is so abundant
in the pupils' own daily life.
There is a delightful passage in Leslie Paul's "The Living Hedge"
which tells how a number of small boys enjoyed themselves for days
arguing about an extraordinary shower of rain which had fallen in
their town--a shower so localized that it left one half of the main
street wet and the other dry. Could one, they argued, properly say
that it had rained that day on or over the town or only in the town?
How many drops of water were required to constitute rain? And so
on. Argument about this led on to a host of similar problems about
rest and motion, sleep and waking, est and non est, and the
infinitesimal division of time. The whole passage is an admirable
example of the spontaneous development of the ratiocinative faculty
and the natural and proper thirst of the awakening reason for the
definition of terms and exactness of statement. All events are food
for such an appetite.
An umpire's decision; the degree to which one may transgress the
spirit of a regulation without being trapped by the letter: on such
questions as these, children are born casuists, and their natural
propensity only needs to be developed and trained--and especially,
brought into an intelligible relationship with the events in the grownup world. The newspapers are full of good material for such
exercises: legal decisions, on the one hand, in cases where the cause
at issue is not too abstruse; on the other, fallacious reasoning and
muddleheaded arguments, with which the correspondence columns
of certain papers one could name are abundantly stocked.
Wherever the matter for Dialectic is found, it is, of course, highly
important that attention should be focused upon the beauty and
economy of a fine demonstration or a well-turned argument, lest
veneration should wholly die. Criticism must not be merely
destructive; though at the same time both teacher and pupils must be
ready to detect fallacy, slipshod reasoning, ambiguity, irrelevance,
and redundancy, and to pounce upon them like rats. This is the
moment when precis-writing may be usefully undertaken; together
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with such exercises as the writing of an essay, and the reduction of it,
when written, by 25 or 50 percent.
It will, doubtless, be objected that to encourage young persons at the
Pert age to browbeat, correct, and argue with their elders will render
them perfectly intolerable. My answer is that children of that age are
intolerable anyhow; and that their natural argumentativeness may
just as well be canalized to good purpose as allowed to run away into
the sands. It may, indeed, be rather less obtrusive at home if it is
disciplined in school; and anyhow, elders who have abandoned the
wholesome principle that children should be seen and not heard have
no one to blame but themselves.
Once again, the contents of the syllabus at this stage may be
anything you like. The "subjects" supply material; but they are all to
be regarded as mere grist for the mental mill to work upon. The
pupils should be encouraged to go and forage for their own
information, and so guided towards the proper use of libraries and
books for reference, and shown how to tell which sources are
authoritative and which are not.
Towards the close of this stage, the pupils will probably be
beginning to discover for themselves that their knowledge and
experience are insufficient, and that their trained intelligences need a
great deal more material to chew upon. The imagination-- usually
dormant during the Pert age--will reawaken, and prompt them to
suspect the limitations of logic and reason. This means that they are
passing into the Poetic age and are ready to embark on the study of
Rhetoric. The doors of the storehouse of knowledge should now be
thrown open for them to browse about as they will. The things once
learned by rote will be seen in new contexts; the things once coldly
analyzed can now be brought together to form a new synthesis; here
and there a sudden insight will bring about that most exciting of all
discoveries: the realization that truism is true.
It is difficult to map out any general syllabus for the study of
Rhetoric: a certain freedom is demanded. In literature, appreciation
should be again allowed to take the lead over destructive criticism;
and self-expression in writing can go forward, with its tools now
sharpened to cut clean and observe proportion. Any child who
already shows a disposition to specialize should be given his head:
for, when the use of the tools has been well and truly learned, it is
available for any study whatever. It would be well, I think, that each
pupil should learn to do one, or two, subjects really well, while
taking a few classes in subsidiary subjects so as to keep his mind
open to the inter-relations of all knowledge. Indeed, at this stage, our
difficulty will be to keep "subjects" apart; for Dialectic will have
shown all branches of learning to be inter-related, so Rhetoric will
tend to show that all knowledge is one. To show this, and show why
it is so, is pre-eminently the task of the mistress science. But whether
theology is studied or not, we should at least insist that children who
seem inclined to specialize on the mathematical and scientific side
should be obliged to attend some lessons in the humanities and vice
versa. At this stage, also, the Latin grammar, having done its work,
may be dropped for those who prefer to carry on their language
studies on the modern side; while those who are likely never to have
any great use or aptitude for mathematics might also be allowed to
rest, more or less, upon their oars. Generally speaking, whatsoever is
mere apparatus may now be allowed to fall into the background,
while the trained mind is gradually prepared for specialization in the
"subjects" which, when the Trivium is completed, it should be
perfectly will equipped to tackle on its own. The final synthesis of
the Trivium--the presentation and public defense of the thesis-should be restored in some form; perhaps as a kind of "leaving
examination" during the last term at school.
The scope of Rhetoric depends also on whether the pupil is to be
turned out into the world at the age of 16 or whether he is to proceed
to the university. Since, really, Rhetoric should be taken at about 14,
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the first category of pupil should study Grammar from about 9 to 11,
and Dialectic from 12 to 14; his last two school years would then be
devoted to Rhetoric, which, in this case, would be of a fairly
specialized and vocational kind, suiting him to enter immediately
upon some practical career. A pupil of the second category would
finish his Dialectical course in his preparatory school, and take
Rhetoric during his first two years at his public school. At 16, he
would be ready to start upon those "subjects" which are proposed for
his later study at the university: and this part of his education will
correspond to the mediaeval Quadrivium. What this amounts to is
that the ordinary pupil, whose formal education ends at 16, will take
the Trivium only; whereas scholars will take both the Trivium and
the Quadrivium.
Is the Trivium, then, a sufficient education for life? Properly taught, I
believe that it should be. At the end of the Dialectic, the children will
probably seem to be far behind their coevals brought up on oldfashioned "modern" methods, so far as detailed knowledge of
specific subjects is concerned. But after the age of 14 they should be
able to overhaul the others hand over fist. Indeed, I am not at all sure
that a pupil thoroughly proficient in the Trivium would not be fit to
proceed immediately to the university at the age of 16, thus proving
himself the equal of his mediaeval counterpart, whose precocity
astonished us at the beginning of this discussion. This, to be sure,
would make hay of the English public-school system, and disconcert
the universities very much. It would, for example, make quite a
different thing of the Oxford and Cambridge boat race.
But I am not here to consider the feelings of academic bodies: I am
concerned only with the proper training of the mind to encounter and
deal with the formidable mass of undigested problems presented to it
by the modern world. For the tools of learning are the same, in any
and every subject; and the person who knows how to use them will,
at any age, get the mastery of a new subject in half the time and with
a quarter of the effort expended by the person who has not the tools
at his command. To learn six subjects without remembering how
they were learnt does nothing to ease the approach to a seventh; to
have learnt and remembered the art of learning makes the approach
to every subject an open door.
Before concluding these necessarily very sketchy suggestions, I
ought to say why I think it necessary, in these days, to go back to a
discipline which we had discarded. The truth is that for the last three
hundred years or so we have been living upon our educational
capital. The post-Renaissance world, bewildered and excited by the
profusion of new "subjects" offered to it, broke away from the old
discipline (which had, indeed, become sadly dull and stereotyped in
its practical application) and imagined that henceforward it could, as
it were, disport itself happily in its new and extended Quadrivium
without passing through the Trivium. But the Scholastic tradition,
though broken and maimed, still lingered in the public schools and
universities: Milton, however much he protested against it, was
formed by it--the debate of the Fallen Angels and the disputation of
Abdiel with Satan have the tool-marks of the Schools upon them,
and might, incidentally, profitably figure as set passages for our
Dialectical studies. Right down to the nineteenth century, our public
affairs were mostly managed, and our books and journals were for
the most part written, by people brought up in homes, and trained in
places, where that tradition was still alive in the memory and almost
in the blood. Just so, many people today who are atheist or agnostic
in religion, are governed in their conduct by a code of Christian
ethics which is so rooted that it never occurs to them to question it.
But one cannot live on capital forever. However firmly a tradition is
rooted, if it is never watered, though it dies hard, yet in the end it
dies. And today a great number--perhaps the majority--of the men
and women who handle our affairs, write our books and our
newspapers, carry out our research, present our plays and our films,
216
speak from our platforms and pulpits--yes, and who educate our
young people--have never, even in a lingering traditional memory,
undergone the Scholastic discipline. Less and less do the children
who come to be educated bring any of that tradition with them. We
have lost the tools of learning--the axe and the wedge, the hammer
and the saw, the chisel and the plane-- that were so adaptable to all
tasks. Instead of them, we have merely a set of complicated jigs,
each of which will do but one task and no more, and in using which
eye and hand receive no training, so that no man ever sees the work
as a whole or "looks to the end of the work."
What use is it to pile task on task and prolong the days of labor, if at
the close the chief object is left unattained? It is not the fault of the
teachers--they work only too hard already. The combined folly of a
civilization that has forgotten its own roots is forcing them to shore
up the tottering weight of an educational structure that is built upon
sand. They are doing for their pupils the work which the pupils
themselves ought to do. For the sole true end of education is simply
this: to teach men how to learn for themselves; and whatever
instruction fails to do this is effort spent in vain.
Paul M. Bechtel writes that Dorothy Leigh Sayers (1893-1967)
briefly entered on a teaching career after graduating from Oxford.
She published a long and popular series of detective novels,
translated the "Divine Comedy," wrote a series of radio plays, and a
defense of Christian belief.
During World War II, she lived in Oxford, and was a member of the
group that included C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, J.R.R. Tolkien,
and Owen Barfield. By nature and preference, she was a scholar and
an expert on the Middle Ages.
In this essay, Miss Sayers suggests that we presently teach our
children everything but how to learn. She proposes that we adopt a
suitably modified version of the medieval scholastic curriculum for
methodological reasons.
"The Lost Tools of Learning" was first presented by Miss Sayers at
Oxford in 1947. _______________________________________49)
"The Story of An Hour" by Kate Chopin from
http://www.vcu.edu/engweb/webtexts/hour/
Knowing that Mrs. Mallard was afflicted with a heart trouble, great
care was taken to break to her as gently as possible the news of her
husband's death.
It was her sister Josephine who told her, in broken sentences; veiled
hints that revealed in half concealing. Her husband's friend Richards
was there, too, near her. It was he who had been in the newspaper
office when intelligence of the railroad disaster was received, with
Brently Mallard's name leading the list of "killed." He had only taken
the time to assure himself of its truth by a second telegram, and had
hastened to forestall any less careful, less tender friend in bearing the
sad message.
She did not hear the story as many women have heard the same, with
a paralyzed inability to accept its significance. She wept at once,
with sudden, wild abandonment, in her sister's arms. When the storm
of grief had spent itself she went away to her room alone. She would
have no one follow her.
There stood, facing the open window, a comfortable, roomy
armchair. Into this she sank, pressed down by a physical exhaustion
that haunted her body and seemed to reach into her soul.
She could see in the open square before her house the tops of trees
that were all aquiver with the new spring life. The delicious breath of
rain was in the air. In the street below a peddler was crying his
wares. The notes of a distant song which some one was singing
217
reached her faintly, and countless sparrows were twittering in the
eaves.
There were patches of blue sky showing here and there through the
clouds that had met and piled one above the other in the west facing
her window.
She sat with her head thrown back upon the cushion of the chair,
quite motionless, except when a sob came up into her throat and
shook her, as a child who has cried itself to sleep continues to sob in
its dreams.
She was young, with a fair, calm face, whose lines bespoke
repression and even a certain strength. But now there was a dull stare
in her eyes, whose gaze was fixed away off yonder on one of those
patches of blue sky. It was not a glance of reflection, but rather
indicated a suspension of intelligent thought.
There was something coming to her and she was waiting for it,
fearfully. What was it? She did not know; it was too subtle and
elusive to name. But she felt it, creeping out of the sky, reaching
toward her through the sounds, the scents, the color that filled the air.
Now her bosom rose and fell tumultuously. She was beginning to
recognize this thing that was approaching to possess her, and she was
striving to beat it back with her will--as powerless as her two white
slender hands would have been. When she abandoned herself a little
whispered word escaped her slightly parted lips. She said it over and
over under hte breath: "free, free, free!" The vacant stare and the
look of terror that had followed it went from her eyes. They stayed
keen and bright. Her pulses beat fast, and the coursing blood warmed
and relaxed every inch of her body.
She did not stop to ask if it were or were not a monstrous joy that
held her. A clear and exalted perception enabled her to dismiss the
suggestion as trivial. She knew that she would weep again when she
saw the kind, tender hands folded in death; the face that had never
looked save with love upon her, fixed and gray and dead. But she
saw beyond that bitter moment a long procession of years to come
that owuld belong to her absolutely. And she opened and spread her
arms out to them in welcome.
There would be no one to live for during those coming years; she
would live for herself. There would be no powerful will bending hers
in that blind persistence with which men and women believe they
ahve a right to impose a private will upon a fellow-creature. A kind
intention or a cruel intention made the act seem no less a crime as
she looked upon it in that brief moment of illumination.
And yet she had loved him--sometimes. Often she had not. What did
it matter! What could love, the unsolved mystery, count for in the
face of this possession of self-assertion which she suddenly
recognized as the strongest impulse of her being!
"Free! Body and soul free!" she kept whispering.
Josephine was kneeling before the closed door with her lips to the
keyhold, imploring for admission. "Louise, open the door! I beg;
open the door--you will make yourself ill. What are you doing,
Louise? For heaven's sake open the door."
"Go away. I am not making myself ill." No; she was drinking in a
very elixir of life through that open window.
Her fancy was running riot along those days ahead of her. Spring
days, and summer days, and all sorts of days that would be her own.
She breathed a quick prayer that life might be long. It was only
yesterday she had thought with a shudder that life might be long.
She arose at length and opened the door to her sister's importunities.
There was a feverish triumph in her eyes, and she carried herself
unwittingly like a goddess of Victory. She clasped her sister's waist,
218
and together they descended the stairs. Richards stood waiting for
them at the bottom.
Some one was opening the front door with a latchkey. It was Brently
Mallard who entered, a little travel-stained, composedly carrying his
grip-sack and umbrella. He had been far from the scene of the
accident, and did not even know there had been one. He stood
amazed at Josephine's piercing cry; at Richards' quick motion to
screen him from the view of his wife.
When the doctors came they said she had died of heart disease--of
the joy that kills.
_______________________________________50) “THE
YELLOW WALLPAPER” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman from
http://www.library.csi.cuny.edu/dept/history/lavender/wallpaper
.html
It is very seldom that mere ordinary people like John and myself
secure ancestral halls for the summer.
A colonial mansion, a hereditary estate, I would say a haunted house,
and reach the height of romantic felicity—but that would be asking
too much of fate!
Still I will proudly declare that there is something queer about it.
Else, why should it be let so cheaply? And why have stood so long
untenanted?
John laughs at me, of course, but one expects that in marriage.
John is practical in the extreme. He has no patience with faith, an
intense horror of superstition, and he scoffs openly at any talk of
things not to be felt and seen and put down in figures.
John is a physician, and PERHAPS—(I would not say it to a living
soul, of course, but this is dead paper and a great relief to my
mind)—PERHAPS that is one reason I do not get well faster.
You see he does not believe I am sick!
And what can one do?
If a physician of high standing, and one's own husband, assures
friends and relatives that there is really nothing the matter with one
but temporary nervous depression—a slight hysterical tendency—
what is one to do?
My brother is also a physician, and also of high standing, and he says
the same thing.
So I take phosphates or phosphites—whichever it is, and tonics, and
journeys, and air, and exercise, and am absolutely forbidden to
"work" until I am well again.
Personally, I disagree with their ideas.
Personally, I believe that congenial work, with excitement and
change, would do me good.
But what is one to do?
I did write for a while in spite of them; but it DOES exhaust me a
good deal—having to be so sly about it, or else meet with heavy
opposition.
I sometimes fancy that my condition if I had less opposition and
more society and stimulus—but John says the very worst thing I can
do is to think about my condition, and I confess it always makes me
feel bad.
So I will let it alone and talk about the house.
219
The most beautiful place! It is quite alone, standing well back from
the road, quite three miles from the village. It makes me think of
English places that you read about, for there are hedges and walls
and gates that lock, and lots of separate little houses for the
gardeners and people.
There is a DELICIOUS garden! I never saw such a garden—large
and shady, full of box-bordered paths, and lined with long grapecovered arbors with seats under them.
There were greenhouses, too, but they are all broken now.
There was some legal trouble, I believe, something about the heirs
and coheirs; anyhow, the place has been empty for years.
That spoils my ghostliness, I am afraid, but I don't care—there is
something strange about the house—I can feel it.
I even said so to John one moonlight evening, but he said what I felt
was a DRAUGHT, and shut the window.
I get unreasonably angry with John sometimes. I'm sure I never used
to be so sensitive. I think it is due to this nervous condition.
I have a schedule prescription for each hour in the day; he takes all
care from me, and so I feel basely ungrateful not to value it more.
He said we came here solely on my account, that I was to have
perfect rest and all the air I could get. "Your exercise depends on
your strength, my dear," said he, "and your food somewhat on your
appetite; but air you can absorb all the time." So we took the nursery
at the top of the house.
It is a big, airy room, the whole floor nearly, with windows that look
all ways, and air and sunshine galore. It was nursery first and then
playroom and gymnasium, I should judge; for the windows are
barred for little children, and there are rings and things in the walls.
The paint and paper look as if a boys' school had used it. It is
stripped off—the paper—in great patches all around the head of my
bed, about as far as I can reach, and in a great place on the other side
of the room low down. I never saw a worse paper in my life.
One of those sprawling flamboyant patterns committing every
artistic sin.
But John says if I feel so, I shall neglect proper self-control; so I take
pains to control myself—before him, at least, and that makes me
very tired.
It is dull enough to confuse the eye in following, pronounced enough
to constantly irritate and provoke study, and when you follow the
lame uncertain curves for a little distance they suddenly commit
suicide—plunge off at outrageous angles, destroy themselves in
unheard of contradictions.
I don't like our room a bit. I wanted one downstairs that opened on
the piazza and had roses all over the window, and such pretty oldfashioned chintz hangings! but John would not hear of it.
The color is repellent, almost revolting; a smouldering unclean
yellow, strangely faded by the slow-turning sunlight.
He said there was only one window and not room for two beds, and
no near room for him if he took another.
It is a dull yet lurid orange in some places, a sickly sulphur tint in
others.
He is very careful and loving, and hardly lets me stir without special
direction.
No wonder the children hated it! I should hate it myself if I had to
live in this room long.
220
There comes John, and I must put this away,—he hates to have me
write a word.
We have been here two weeks, and I haven't felt like writing before,
since that first day.
I am sitting by the window now, up in this atrocious nursery, and
there is nothing to hinder my writing as much as I please, save lack
of strength.
John is away all day, and even some nights when his cases are
serious.
At first he meant to repaper the room, but afterwards he said that I
was letting it get the better of me, and that nothing was worse for a
nervous patient than to give way to such fancies.
He said that after the wall-paper was changed it would be the heavy
bedstead, and then the barred windows, and then that gate at the head
of the stairs, and so on.
"You know the place is doing you good," he said, "and really, dear, I
don't care to renovate the house just for a three months' rental."
"Then do let us go downstairs," I said, "there are such pretty rooms
there."
I am glad my case is not serious!
But these nervous troubles are dreadfully depressing.
John does not know how much I really suffer. He knows there is no
REASON to suffer, and that satisfies him.
Of course it is only nervousness. It does weigh on me so not to do
my duty in any way!
I meant to be such a help to John, such a real rest and comfort, and
here I am a comparative burden already!
Nobody would believe what an effort it is to do what little I am
able,—to dress and entertain, and other things.
It is fortunate Mary is so good with the baby. Such a dear baby!
And yet I CANNOT be with him, it makes me so nervous.
I suppose John never was nervous in his life. He laughs at me so
about this wall-paper!
Then he took me in his arms and called me a blessed little goose, and
said he would go down to the cellar, if I wished, and have it
whitewashed into the bargain.
But he is right enough about the beds and windows and things.
It is an airy and comfortable room as any one need wish, and, of
course, I would not be so silly as to make him uncomfortable just for
a whim.
I'm really getting quite fond of the big room, all but that horrid
paper.
Out of one window I can see the garden, those mysterious
deepshaded arbors, the riotous old-fashioned flowers, and bushes and
gnarly trees.
Out of another I get a lovely view of the bay and a little private
wharf belonging to the estate. There is a beautiful shaded lane that
runs down there from the house. I always fancy I see people walking
in these numerous paths and arbors, but John has cautioned me not to
give way to fancy in the least. He says that with my imaginative
power and habit of story-making, a nervous weakness like mine is
221
sure to lead to all manner of excited fancies, and that I ought to use
my will and good sense to check the tendency. So I try.
I used to feel that if any of the other things looked too fierce I could
always hop into that chair and be safe.
I think sometimes that if I were only well enough to write a little it
would relieve the press of ideas and rest me.
The furniture in this room is no worse than inharmonious, however,
for we had to bring it all from downstairs. I suppose when this was
used as a playroom they had to take the nursery things out, and no
wonder! I never saw such ravages as the children have made here.
But I find I get pretty tired when I try.
It is so discouraging not to have any advice and companionship
about my work. When I get really well, John says we will ask Cousin
Henry and Julia down for a long visit; but he says he would as soon
put fireworks in my pillow-case as to let me have those stimulating
people about now.
I wish I could get well faster.
But I must not think about that. This paper looks to me as if it
KNEW what a vicious influence it had!
There is a recurrent spot where the pattern lolls like a broken neck
and two bulbous eyes stare at you upside down.
I get positively angry with the impertinence of it and the
everlastingness. Up and down and sideways they crawl, and those
absurd, unblinking eyes are everywhere. There is one place where
two breadths didn't match, and the eyes go all up and down the line,
one a little higher than the other.
I never saw so much expression in an inanimate thing before, and we
all know how much expression they have! I used to lie awake as a
child and get more entertainment and terror out of blank walls and
plain furniture than most children could find in a toy store.
I remember what a kindly wink the knobs of our big, old bureau used
to have, and there was one chair that always seemed like a strong
friend.
The wall-paper, as I said before, is torn off in spots, and it sticketh
closer than a brother—they must have had perseverance as well as
hatred.
Then the floor is scratched and gouged and splintered, the plaster
itself is dug out here and there, and this great heavy bed which is all
we found in the room, looks as if it had been through the wars.
But I don't mind it a bit—only the paper.
There comes John's sister. Such a dear girl as she is, and so careful
of me! I must not let her find me writing.
She is a perfect and enthusiastic housekeeper, and hopes for no better
profession. I verily believe she thinks it is the writing which made
me sick!
But I can write when she is out, and see her a long way off from
these windows.
There is one that commands the road, a lovely shaded winding road,
and one that just looks off over the country. A lovely country, too,
full of great elms and velvet meadows.
This wall-paper has a kind of sub-pattern in a different shade, a
particularly irritating one, for you can only see it in certain lights,
and not clearly then.
222
But in the places where it isn't faded and where the sun is just so—I
can see a strange, provoking, formless sort of figure, that seems to
skulk about behind that silly and conspicuous front design.
I'm getting really fond of the room in spite of the wall-paper. Perhaps
BECAUSE of the wall-paper.
It dwells in my mind so!
There's sister on the stairs!
Well, the Fourth of July is over! The people are gone and I am tired
out. John thought it might do me good to see a little company, so we
just had mother and Nellie and the children down for a week.
Of course I didn't do a thing. Jennie sees to everything now.
But it tired me all the same.
John says if I don't pick up faster he shall send me to Weir Mitchell
in the fall.
But I don't want to go there at all. I had a friend who was in his
hands once, and she says he is just like John and my brother, only
more so!
Besides, it is such an undertaking to go so far.
I don't feel as if it was worth while to turn my hand over for
anything, and I'm getting dreadfully fretful and querulous.
I cry at nothing, and cry most of the time.
Of course I don't when John is here, or anybody else, but when I am
alone.
And I am alone a good deal just now. John is kept in town very often
by serious cases, and Jennie is good and lets me alone when I want
her to.
So I walk a little in the garden or down that lovely lane, sit on the
porch under the roses, and lie down up here a good deal.
I lie here on this great immovable bed—it is nailed down, I
believe—and follow that pattern about by the hour. It is as good as
gymnastics, I assure you. I start, we'll say, at the bottom, down in the
corner over there where it has not been touched, and I determine for
the thousandth time that I WILL follow that pointless pattern to
some sort of a conclusion.
I know a little of the principle of design, and I know this thing was
not arranged on any laws of radiation, or alternation, or repetition, or
symmetry, or anything else that I ever heard of.
It is repeated, of course, by the breadths, but not otherwise.
Looked at in one way each breadth stands alone, the bloated curves
and flourishes—a kind of "debased Romanesque" with delirium
tremens—go waddling up and down in isolated columns of fatuity.
But, on the other hand, they connect diagonally, and the sprawling
outlines run off in great slanting waves of optic horror, like a lot of
wallowing seaweeds in full chase.
The whole thing goes horizontally, too, at least it seems so, and I
exhaust myself in trying to distinguish the order of its going in that
direction.
They have used a horizontal breadth for a frieze, and that adds
wonderfully to the confusion.
There is one end of the room where it is almost intact, and there,
when the crosslights fade and the low sun shines directly upon it, I
can almost fancy radiation after all,—the interminable grotesques
223
seem to form around a common centre and rush off in headlong
plunges of equal distraction.
He said I was his darling and his comfort and all he had, and that I
must take care of myself for his sake, and keep well.
It makes me tired to follow it. I will take a nap I guess.
He says no one but myself can help me out of it, that I must use my
will and self-control and not let any silly fancies run away with me.
I don't know why I should write this.
I don't want to.
I don't feel able.
And I know John would think it absurd. But I MUST say what I feel
and think in some way—it is such a relief!
But the effort is getting to be greater than the relief.
Half the time now I am awfully lazy, and lie down ever so much.
John says I musn't lose my strength, and has me take cod liver oil
and lots of tonics and things, to say nothing of ale and wine and rare
meat.
Dear John! He loves me very dearly, and hates to have me sick. I
tried to have a real earnest reasonable talk with him the other day,
and tell him how I wish he would let me go and make a visit to
Cousin Henry and Julia.
But he said I wasn't able to go, nor able to stand it after I got there;
and I did not make out a very good case for myself, for I was crying
before I had finished.
It is getting to be a great effort for me to think straight. Just this
nervous weakness I suppose.
There's one comfort, the baby is well and happy, and does not have
to occupy this nursery with the horrid wall-paper.
If we had not used it, that blessed child would have! What a
fortunate escape! Why, I wouldn't have a child of mine, an
impressionable little thing, live in such a room for worlds.
I never thought of it before, but it is lucky that John kept me here
after all, I can stand it so much easier than a baby, you see.
Of course I never mention it to them any more—I am too wise,—but
I keep watch of it all the same.
There are things in that paper that nobody knows but me, or ever
will.
Behind that outside pattern the dim shapes get clearer every day.
It is always the same shape, only very numerous.
And it is like a woman stooping down and creeping about behind
that pattern. I don't like it a bit. I wonder—I begin to think—I wish
John would take me away from here!
It is so hard to talk with John about my case, because he is so wise,
and because he loves me so.
But I tried it last night.
And dear John gathered me up in his arms, and just carried me
upstairs and laid me on the bed, and sat by me and read to me till it
tired my head.
It was moonlight. The moon shines in all around just as the sun does.
224
I hate to see it sometimes, it creeps so slowly, and always comes in
by one window or another.
John was asleep and I hated to waken him, so I kept still and
watched the moonlight on that undulating wall-paper till I felt
creepy.
The faint figure behind seemed to shake the pattern, just as if she
wanted to get out.
I got up softly and went to feel and see if the paper DID move, and
when I came back John was awake.
"What is it, little girl?" he said. "Don't go walking about like that—
you'll get cold."
I though it was a good time to talk, so I told him that I really was not
gaining here, and that I wished he would take me away.
"Why darling!" said he, "our lease will be up in three weeks, and I
can't see how to leave before.
"The repairs are not done at home, and I cannot possibly leave town
just now. Of course if you were in any danger, I could and would,
but you really are better, dear, whether you can see it or not. I am a
doctor, dear, and I know. You are gaining flesh and color, your
appetite is better, I feel really much easier about you."
"I don't weigh a bit more," said I, "nor as much; and my appetite may
be better in the evening when you are here, but it is worse in the
morning when you are away!"
"Why, how can I, dear? It is only three weeks more and then we will
take a nice little trip of a few days while Jennie is getting the house
ready. Really dear you are better!"
"Better in body perhaps—" I began, and stopped short, for he sat up
straight and looked at me with such a stern, reproachful look that I
could not say another word.
"My darling," said he, "I beg of you, for my sake and for our child's
sake, as well as for your own, that you will never for one instant let
that idea enter your mind! There is nothing so dangerous, so
fascinating, to a temperament like yours. It is a false and foolish
fancy. Can you not trust me as a physician when I tell you so?"
So of course I said no more on that score, and we went to sleep
before long. He thought I was asleep first, but I wasn't, and lay there
for hours trying to decide whether that front pattern and the back
pattern really did move together or separately.
On a pattern like this, by daylight, there is a lack of sequence, a
defiance of law, that is a constant irritant to a normal mind.
The color is hideous enough, and unreliable enough, and infuriating
enough, but the pattern is torturing.
You think you have mastered it, but just as you get well underway in
following, it turns a back-somersault and there you are. It slaps you
in the face, knocks you down, and tramples upon you. It is like a bad
dream.
"Bless her little heart!" said he with a big hug, "she shall be as sick
as she pleases! But now let's improve the shining hours by going to
sleep, and talk about it in the morning!"
The outside pattern is a florid arabesque, reminding one of a fungus.
If you can imagine a toadstool in joints, an interminable string of
toadstools, budding and sprouting in endless convolutions—why,
that is something like it.
"And you won't go away?" I asked gloomily.
That is, sometimes!
225
There is one marked peculiarity about this paper, a thing nobody
seems to notice but myself, and that is that it changes as the light
changes.
When the sun shoots in through the east window—I always watch
for that first long, straight ray—it changes so quickly that I never can
quite believe it.
That is why I watch it always.
By moonlight—the moon shines in all night when there is a moon—I
wouldn't know it was the same paper.
At night in any kind of light, in twilight, candle light, lamplight, and
worst of all by moonlight, it becomes bars! The outside pattern I
mean, and the woman behind it is as plain as can be.
I didn't realize for a long time what the thing was that showed
behind, that dim sub-pattern, but now I am quite sure it is a woman.
By daylight she is subdued, quiet. I fancy it is the pattern that keeps
her so still. It is so puzzling. It keeps me quiet by the hour.
I lie down ever so much now. John says it is good for me, and to
sleep all I can.
It strikes me occasionally, just as a scientific hypothesis,—that
perhaps it is the paper!
I have watched John when he did not know I was looking, and come
into the room suddenly on the most innocent excuses, and I've
caught him several times LOOKING AT THE PAPER! And Jennie
too. I caught Jennie with her hand on it once.
She didn't know I was in the room, and when I asked her in a quiet, a
very quiet voice, with the most restrained manner possible, what she
was doing with the paper—she turned around as if she had been
caught stealing, and looked quite angry—asked me why I should
frighten her so!
Then she said that the paper stained everything it touched, that she
had found yellow smooches on all my clothes and John's, and she
wished we would be more careful!
Did not that sound innocent? But I know she was studying that
pattern, and I am determined that nobody shall find it out but myself!
Life is very much more exciting now than it used to be. You see I
have something more to expect, to look forward to, to watch. I really
do eat better, and am more quiet than I was.
Indeed he started the habit by making me lie down for an hour after
each meal.
John is so pleased to see me improve! He laughed a little the other
day, and said I seemed to be flourishing in spite of my wall-paper.
It is a very bad habit I am convinced, for you see I don't sleep.
I turned it off with a laugh. I had no intention of telling him it was
BECAUSE of the wall-paper—he would make fun of me. He might
even want to take me away.
And that cultivates deceit, for I don't tell them I'm awake—O no!
The fact is I am getting a little afraid of John.
I don't want to leave now until I have found it out. There is a week
more, and I think that will be enough.
He seems very queer sometimes, and even Jennie has an inexplicable
look.
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I'm feeling ever so much better! I don't sleep much at night, for it is
so interesting to watch developments; but I sleep a good deal in the
daytime.
In the daytime it is tiresome and perplexing.
There are always new shoots on the fungus, and new shades of
yellow all over it. I cannot keep count of them, though I have tried
conscientiously.
It is the strangest yellow, that wall-paper! It makes me think of all
the yellow things I ever saw—not beautiful ones like buttercups, but
old foul, bad yellow things.
But there is something else about that paper—the smell! I noticed it
the moment we came into the room, but with so much air and sun it
was not bad. Now we have had a week of fog and rain, and whether
the windows are open or not, the smell is here.
It used to disturb me at first. I thought seriously of burning the
house—to reach the smell.
But now I am used to it. The only thing I can think of that it is like is
the COLOR of the paper! A yellow smell.
There is a very funny mark on this wall, low down, near the
mopboard. A streak that runs round the room. It goes behind every
piece of furniture, except the bed, a long, straight, even SMOOCH,
as if it had been rubbed over and over.
I wonder how it was done and who did it, and what they did it for.
Round and round and round—round and round and round—it makes
me dizzy!
I really have discovered something at last.
Through watching so much at night, when it changes so, I have
finally found out.
It creeps all over the house.
I find it hovering in the dining-room, skulking in the parlor, hiding in
the hall, lying in wait for me on the stairs.
It gets into my hair.
Even when I go to ride, if I turn my head suddenly and surprise it—
there is that smell!
Such a peculiar odor, too! I have spent hours in trying to analyze it,
to find what it smelled like.
It is not bad—at first, and very gentle, but quite the subtlest, most
enduring odor I ever met.
In this damp weather it is awful, I wake up in the night and find it
hanging over me.
The front pattern DOES move—and no wonder! The woman behind
shakes it!
Sometimes I think there are a great many women behind, and
sometimes only one, and she crawls around fast, and her crawling
shakes it all over.
Then in the very bright spots she keeps still, and in the very shady
spots she just takes hold of the bars and shakes them hard.
And she is all the time trying to climb through. But nobody could
climb through that pattern—it strangles so; I think that is why it has
so many heads.
They get through, and then the pattern strangles them off and turns
them upside down, and makes their eyes white!
227
If those heads were covered or taken off it would not be half so bad.
I have found out another funny thing, but I shan't tell it this time! It
does not do to trust people too much.
I think that woman gets out in the daytime!
And I'll tell you why—privately—I've seen her!
I can see her out of every one of my windows!
It is the same woman, I know, for she is always creeping, and most
women do not creep by daylight.
I see her on that long road under the trees, creeping along, and when
a carriage comes she hides under the blackberry vines.
I don't blame her a bit. It must be very humiliating to be caught
creeping by daylight!
There are only two more days to get this paper off, and I believe
John is beginning to notice. I don't like the look in his eyes.
And I heard him ask Jennie a lot of professional questions about me.
She had a very good report to give.
She said I slept a good deal in the daytime.
John knows I don't sleep very well at night, for all I'm so quiet!
He asked me all sorts of questions, too, and pretended to be very
loving and kind.
As if I couldn't see through him!
I always lock the door when I creep by daylight. I can't do it at night,
for I know John would suspect something at once.
And John is so queer now, that I don't want to irritate him. I wish he
would take another room! Besides, I don't want anybody to get that
woman out at night but myself.
I often wonder if I could see her out of all the windows at once.
Still, I don't wonder he acts so, sleeping under this paper for three
months.
It only interests me, but I feel sure John and Jennie are secretly
affected by it.
Hurrah! This is the last day, but it is enough. John is to stay in town
over night, and won't be out until this evening.
But, turn as fast as I can, I can only see out of one at a time.
And though I always see her, she MAY be able to creep faster than I
can turn!
Jennie wanted to sleep with me—the sly thing! but I told her I should
undoubtedly rest better for a night all alone.
I have watched her sometimes away off in the open country,
creeping as fast as a cloud shadow in a high wind.
That was clever, for really I wasn't alone a bit! As soon as it was
moonlight and that poor thing began to crawl and shake the pattern, I
got up and ran to help her.
If only that top pattern could be gotten off from the under one! I
mean to try it, little by little.
I pulled and she shook, I shook and she pulled, and before morning
we had peeled off yards of that paper.
A strip about as high as my head and half around the room.
228
And then when the sun came and that awful pattern began to laugh at
me, I declared I would finish it to-day!
I don't want to go out, and I don't want to have anybody come in, till
John comes.
We go away to-morrow, and they are moving all my furniture down
again to leave things as they were before.
I want to astonish him.
Jennie looked at the wall in amazement, but I told her merrily that I
did it out of pure spite at the vicious thing.
I've got a rope up here that even Jennie did not find. If that woman
does get out, and tries to get away, I can tie her!
But I forgot I could not reach far without anything to stand on!
She laughed and said she wouldn't mind doing it herself, but I must
not get tired.
This bed will NOT move!
How she betrayed herself that time!
I tried to lift and push it until I was lame, and then I got so angry I bit
off a little piece at one corner—but it hurt my teeth.
But I am here, and no person touches this paper but me—not
ALIVE!
She tried to get me out of the room—it was too patent! But I said it
was so quiet and empty and clean now that I believed I would lie
down again and sleep all I could; and not to wake me even for
dinner—I would call when I woke.
So now she is gone, and the servants are gone, and the things are
gone, and there is nothing left but that great bedstead nailed down,
with the canvas mattress we found on it.
We shall sleep downstairs to-night, and take the boat home tomorrow.
Then I peeled off all the paper I could reach standing on the floor. It
sticks horribly and the pattern just enjoys it! All those strangled
heads and bulbous eyes and waddling fungus growths just shriek
with derision!
I am getting angry enough to do something desperate. To jump out
of the window would be admirable exercise, but the bars are too
strong even to try.
Besides I wouldn't do it. Of course not. I know well enough that a
step like that is improper and might be misconstrued.
I don't like to LOOK out of the windows even—there are so many of
those creeping women, and they creep so fast.
I quite enjoy the room, now it is bare again.
I wonder if they all come out of that wall-paper as I did?
How those children did tear about here!
This bedstead is fairly gnawed!
But I must get to work.
But I am securely fastened now by my well-hidden rope—you don't
get ME out in the road there!
I suppose I shall have to get back behind the pattern when it comes
night, and that is hard!
I have locked the door and thrown the key down into the front path.
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It is so pleasant to be out in this great room and creep around as I
please!
I kept on creeping just the same, but I looked at him over my
shoulder.
I don't want to go outside. I won't, even if Jennie asks me to.
"I've got out at last," said I, "in spite of you and Jane. And I've pulled
off most of the paper, so you can't put me back!"
For outside you have to creep on the ground, and everything is green
instead of yellow.
But here I can creep smoothly on the floor, and my shoulder just fits
in that long smooch around the wall, so I cannot lose my way.
Now why should that man have fainted? But he did, and right across
my path by the wall, so that I had to creep over him every time!
***Charlotte Perkins Gilman, "Why I Wrote The Yellow Wallpaper"
(1913)
Why there's John at the door!
It is no use, young man, you can't open it!
This article originally appeared in the October 1913 issue of The
Forerunner.
How he does call and pound!
Now he's crying for an axe.
It would be a shame to break down that beautiful door!
"John dear!" said I in the gentlest voice, "the key is down by the
front steps, under a plantain leaf!"
That silenced him for a few moments.
Then he said—very quietly indeed, "Open the door, my darling!"
"I can't," said I. "The key is down by the front door under a plantain
leaf!"
And then I said it again, several times, very gently and slowly, and
said it so often that he had to go and see, and he got it of course, and
came in. He stopped short by the door.
"What is the matter?" he cried. "For God's sake, what are you
doing!"
Many and many a reader has asked that. When the story first came
out, in the New England Magazine about 1891, a Boston physician
made protest in The Transcript. Such a story ought not to be written,
he said; it was enough to drive anyone mad to read it.
Another physician, in Kansas I think, wrote to say that it was
the best description of incipient insanity he had ever seen, and-begging my pardon--had I been there?
Now the story of the story is this:
For many years I suffered from a severe and continuous nervous
breakdown tending to melancholia--and beyond. During about the
third year of this trouble I went, in devout faith and some faint stir of
hope, to a noted specialist in nervous diseases, the best known in the
country. This wise man put me to bed and applied the rest cure, to
which a still-good physique responded so promptly that he
concluded there was nothing much the matter with me, and sent me
home with solemn advice to "live as domestic a life as far as
possible," to "have but two hours' intellectual life a day," and "never
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to touch pen, brush, or pencil again" as long as I lived. This was in
1887.
I went home and obeyed those directions for some three
months, and came so near the borderline of utter mental ruin that I
could see over.
Then, using the remnants of intelligence that remained, and
helped by a wise friend, I cast the noted specialist's advice to the
winds and went to work again--work, the normal life of every human
being; work, in which is joy and growth and service, without which
one is a pauper and a parasite--ultimately recovering some measure
of power.
Being naturally moved to rejoicing by this narrow escape, I
wrote The Yellow Wallpaper, with its embellishments and additions,
to carry out the ideal (I never had hallucinations or objections to my
mural decorations) and sent a copy to the physician who so nearly
drove me mad. He never acknowledged it.
The little book is valued by alienists and as a good specimen of
one kind of literature. It has, to my knowledge, saved one woman
from a similar fate--so terrifying her family that they let her out into
normal activity and she recovered.
But the best result is this. Many years later I was told that the
great specialist had admitted to friends of his that he had altered his
treatment of neurasthenia since reading The Yellow Wallpaper.
It was not intended to drive people crazy, but to save people
from being driven crazy, and it worked.
Prepared by Professor Catherine Lavender for courses in The
Department of History, The College of Staten Island of The City
University of New York. Last modified: Tuesday 8 June 1999.
_______________________________________51) From: Angela
Carter - The Bloody Chamber And Other Stories. New York:
Penguin. 1979.
“The Company of Wolves”
One beast and only one howls in the woods by night.
The wolf is carnivore incarnate and he's as cunning as he is
ferocious; once he's had a taste of flesh then nothing else will do.
At night, the eyes of wolves shine like candle flames, yellowish,
reddish, but that is because the pupils of their eyes fatten on darkness
and catch the light from your lantern to flash it back to you--red for
danger; if a wolf's eyes reflect only moonlight, then they gleam a
cold and unnatural green, a mineral, a piercing colour. If the
benighted traveller spies those luminous, terrible sequins stitched
suddenly on the black thickets, then he knows he must run, if fear
has not struck him stock-still.
But those eyes are all you will be able to glimpse of the forest
assassins as they cluster invisibly round your smell of meat as you
go through the wood unwisely late. They will be like shadows, they
will be like wraiths, grey members of a congregation of nightmare;
hark! his long, wavering howl ... an aria of fear made audible.
The wolfsong is the sound of the rending you will suffer, in itself a
murdering.
It is winter and cold weather. In this region of mountain and forest,
there is now nothing for the wolves to eat. Goats and sheep are
locked up in the byre, the deer departed for the remaining pasturage
on the southern slopes--wolves grow lean and famished. There is so
little flesh on them that you could count the starveling ribs through
their pelts, if they gave you time before they pounced. Those
slavering jaws; the lolling tongue; the rime of saliva on the grizzled
chops--of all the teeming perils of the night and the forest, ghosts,
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hobgoblins, ogres that grill babies upon gridirons, witches that fatten
their captives in cages for cannibal tables, the wolf is worst for he
cannot listen to reason.
You are always in danger in the forest, where no people are. Step
between the portals of the great pines where the shaggy branches
tangle about you, trapping the unwary traveller in nets as if the
vegetation itself were in a plot with the wolves who live there, as
though the wicked trees go fishing on behalf of their friends--step
between the gateposts of the forest with the greatest trepidation and
infinite precautions, for if you stray from the path for one instant, the
wolves will eat you. They are grey as famine, they are as unkind as
plague.
The grave-eyed children of the sparse villages always carry knives
with them when they go out to tend the little flocks of goats that
provide the homesteads with acrid milk and rank, maggoty cheeses.
Their knives are half as big as they are, the blades are sharpened
daily.
But the wolves have ways of arriving at your own hearthside. We try
and try but sometimes we cannot keep them out. There is no winter's
night the cottager does not fear to see a lean, grey, famished snout
questing under the door, and there was a woman once bitten in her
own kitchen as she was straining the macaroni.
Fear and flee the wolf; for, worst of all, the wolf may be more than
he seems.
There was a hunter once, near here, that trapped a wolf in a pit. This
wolf had massacred the sheep and goats; eaten up a mad old man
who used to live by himself in a hut halfway up the mountain and
sing to Jesus all day; pounced on a girl looking after the sheep, but
she made such a commotion that men came with rifles and scared
him away and tried to track him into the forest but he was cunning
and easily gave them the slip. So this hunter dug a pit and put a duck
in it, for bait, all alive-oh; and he covered the pit with straw smeared
with wolf dung. Quack, quack! went the duck and a wolf came
slinking out of the forest, a big one, a heavy one, he weighed as
much as a grown man and the straw gave way beneath him--into the
pit he tumbled. The hunter jumped down after him, slit his throat, cut
off all his paws for a trophy.
And then no wolf at all lay in front of the hunter but the bloody trunk
of a man, headless, footless, dying, dead.
A witch from up the valley once turned an entire wedding party into
wolves because the groom had settled on another girl. She used to
order them to visit her, at night, from spite, and they would sit and
howl around her cottage for her, serenading her with their misery.
Not so very long ago, a young woman in our village married a man
who vanished clean away on her wedding night. The bed was made
with new sheets and the bride lay down in it; the groom said, he was
going out to relieve himself, insisted on it, for the sake of decency,
and she drew the coverlet up to her chin and she lay there. And she
waited and she waited and then she waited again--surely he's been
gone a long time? Until she jumps up in bed and shrieks to hear a
howling, coming on the wind from the forest.
That long-drawn, wavering howl has, for all its fearful resonance,
some inherent sadness in it, as if the beasts would love to be less
beastly if only they knew how and never cease to mourn their own
condition. There is a vast melancholy in the canticles of the wolves,
melancholy infinite as the forest, endless as these long nights of
winter and yet that ghastly sadness, that mourning for their own,
irremediable appetites, can never move the heart for not one phrase
in it hints at the possibility of redemption; grace could not come to
the wolf from its own despair, only through some external mediator,
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so that, sometimes, the beast will look as if he half welcomes the
knife that despatches him.
a wolf for his father and his torso is a man's but his legs and genitals
are a wolf's. And he has a wolf's heart.
The young woman's brothers searched the outhouses and the
haystacks but never found any remains so the sensible girl dried her
eyes and found herself another husband not too shy to piss into a pot
who spent the nights indoors. She gave him a pair of bonny babies
and all went right as a trivet until, one freezing night, the night of the
solstice, the hinge of the year when things do not fit together as well
as they should, the longest night, her first good man came home
again.
Seven years is a werewolf's natural span but if you burn his human
clothing you condemn him to wolfishness for the rest of his life, so
old wives hereabouts think it some protection to throw a hat or an
apron at the werewolf, as if clothes made the man. Yet by the eyes,
those phosphorescent eyes, you know him in all his shapes; the eyes
alone unchanged by metamorphosis.
A great thump on the door announced him as she was stirring the
soup for the father of her children and she knew him the moment she
lifted the latch to him although it was years since she'd worn black
for him and now he was in rags and his hair hung down his back and
never saw a comb, alive with lice.
'Here I am again, missus,' he said.' Get me my bowl of cabbage and
be quick about it.'
Then her second husband came in with wood for the fire and when
the first one saw she'd slept with another man and, worse, clapped
his red eyes on her little children who'd crept into the kitchen to see
what all the din was about, he shouted: 'I wish I were a wolf again, to
teach this whore a lesson!' So a wolf he instantly became and tore off
the eldest boy's left foot before he was chopped up with the hatchet
they used for chopping logs. But when the wolf lay bleeding and
gasping its last, the pelt peeled off again and he was just as he had
been, years ago, when he ran away from his marriage bed, so that she
wept and her second husband beat her.
They say there's an ointment the Devil gives you that turns you into a
wolf the minute you rub it on. Or, that he was born feet first and had
Before he can become a wolf, the lycanthrope strips stark naked. If
you spy a naked man among the pines, you must run as if the Devil
were after you.
It is midwinter and the robin, the friend of man, sits on the handle of
the gardener's spade and sings. It is the worst time in all the year for
wolves but this strong-minded child insists she will go off through
the wood. She is quite sure the wild beasts cannot harm her although,
well-warned, she lays a carving knife in the basket her mother has
packed with cheeses. There is a bottle of harsh liquor distilled from
brambles; a batch of flat oatcakes baked on the hearthstone; a pot or
two of jam. The flaxen-haired girl will take these delicious gifts to a
reclusive grandmother so old the burden of her years is crushing her
to death. Granny lives two hours' trudge through the winter woods;
the child wraps herself up in her thick shawl, draws it over her head.
She steps into her stout wooden shoes; she is dressed and ready and
it is Christmas Eve. The malign door of the solstice still swings upon
its hinges but she has been too much loved ever to feel scared.
Children do not stay young for long in this savage country. There are
no toys for them to play with so they work hard and grow wise but
this one, so pretty and the youngest of her family, a little late-comer,
had been indulged by her mother and the grandmother who'd knitted
her the red shawl that, today, has the ominous if brilliant look of
blood on snow. Her breasts have just begun to swell; her hair is like
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lint, so fair it hardly makes a shadow on her pale forehead; her
cheeks are an emblematic scarlet and white and she has just started
her woman's bleeding, the clock inside her that will strike,
henceforward, once a month.
She stands and moves within the invisible pentacle of her own
virginity. She is an unbroken egg; she is a sealed vessel; she has
inside her a magic space the entrance to which is shut tight with a
plug of membrane; she is a closed system; she does not know how to
shiver. She has her knife and she is afraid of nothing.
Her father might forbid her, if he were home, but he is away in the
forest, gathering wood, and her mother cannot deny her.
The forest closed upon her like a pair of jaws.
There is always something to look at in the forest, even in the middle
of winter--the huddled mounds of birds, succumbed to the lethargy
of the season, heaped on the creaking boughs and too forlorn to sing;
the bright frills of the winter fungi on the blotched trunks of the
trees; the cuneiform slots of rabbits and deer, the herringbone tracks
of the birds, a hare as lean as a rasher of bacon streaking across the
path where the thin sunlight dapples the russet brakes of last year's
bracken.
When she heard the freezing howl of a distant wolf, her practised
hand sprang to the handle of her knife, but she saw no sign of a wolf
at all, nor of a naked man, neither, but then she heard a clattering
among the brushwood and there sprang on to the path a fully clothed
one, a very handsome young one, in the green coat and wideawake
hat of a hunter, laden with carcasses of game birds. She had her hand
on her knife at the first rustle of twigs but he laughed with a flash of
white teeth when he saw her and made her a comic yet flattering
little bow; she'd never seen such a fine fellow before, not among the
rustic clowns of her native village. So on they went together, through
the thickening light of the afternoon.
Soon they were laughing and joking like old friends. When he
offered to carry her basket, she gave it to him although her knife was
in it because he told her his rifle would protect them. As the day
darkened, it began to snow again; she felt the first flakes settle on her
eyelashes but now there was only half a mile to go and there would
be a fire, and hot tea, and a welcome, a warm one, surely, for the
dashing huntsman as well as for herself.
This young man had a remarkable object in his pocket. It was a
compass. She looked at the little round glass face in the palm of his
hand and watched the wavering needle with a vague wonder. He
assured her this compass had taken him safely through the wood on
his hunting trip because the needle always told him with perfect
accuracy where the north was. She did not believe it; she knew she
should never leave the path on the way through the wood or else she
would be lost instantly. He laughed at her again; gleaming trails of
spittle clung to his teeth. He said, if he plunged off the path into the
forest that surrounded them, he could guarantee to arrive at her
grandmother's house a good quarter of an hour before she did,
plotting his way through the undergrowth with his compass, while
she trudged the long way, along the winding path.
I don't believe you. Besides, aren't you afraid of the wolves?
He only tapped the gleaming butt of his rifle and grinned.
Is it a bet? he asked her. Shall we make a game of it? What will you
give me if I get to your grandmother's house before you?
What would you like? she asked disingenuously.
A kiss.
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Commonplaces of a rustic seduction; she lowered her eyes and
blushed.
Lift up the latch and walk in, my darling.
He went through the undergrowth and took her basket with him but
she forgot to be afraid of the beasts, although now the moon was
rising, for she wanted to dawdle on her way to make sure the
handsome gentleman would win his wager.
You can tell them by their eyes, eyes of a beast of prey, nocturnal,
devastating eyes as red as a wound; you can hurl your Bible at him
and your apron after, granny, you thought that was a sure
prophylactic against these infernal vermin ... now call on Christ and
his mother and all the angels in heaven to protect you but it won't do
you any good.
Grandmother's house stood by itself a little way out of the village.
The freshly falling snow blew in eddies about the kitchen garden and
the young man stepped delicately up the snowy path to the door as if
he were reluctant to get his feet wet, swinging his bundle of game
and the girl's basket and humming a little tune to himself.
His feral muzzle is sharp as a knife; he drops his golden burden of
gnawed pheasant on the table and puts down your dear girl's basket,
too. Oh, my God, what have you done with her?
There is a faint trace of blood on his chin; he has been snacking on
his catch.
He rapped upon the panels with his knuckles.
Aged and frail, granny is three-quarters succumbed to the mortality
the ache in her bones promises her and almost ready to give in
entirely. A boy came out from the village to build up her hearth for
the night an hour ago and the kitchen crackles with busy firelight.
She has her Bible for company, she is a pious old woman. She is
propped up on several pillows in the bed set into the wall peasantfashion, wrapped up in the patchwork quilt she made before she was
married, more years ago than she cares to remember. Two china
spaniels with liver-coloured blotches on their coats and black noses
sit on either side of the fireplace. There is a bright rug of woven rags
on the pantiles. The grandfather clock ticks away her eroding time.
We keep the wolves outside by living well.
He rapped upon the panels with his hairy knuckles.
It is your granddaughter, he mimicked in a high soprano:
Off with his disguise, that coat of forest-coloured cloth, the hat with
the feather tucked into the ribbon; his matted hair streams down his
white shirt and she can see the lice moving in it. The sticks in the
hearth shift and hiss; night and the forest has come into the kitchen
with darkness tangled in its hair.
He strips off his shirt. His skin is the colour and texture of vellum. A
crisp stripe of hair runs down his belly, his nipples are ripe and dark
as poison fruit but he's so thin you could count the ribs under his skin
if only he gave you the time. He strips off his trousers and she can
see how hairy his legs are. His genitals, huge. Ah! huge.
The last thing the old lady saw in all this world was a young man,
eyes like cinders, naked as a stone, approaching her bed.
The wolf is carnivore incarnate.
When he had finished with her, he licked his chops and quickly
dressed himself again, until he was just as he had been when he came
through her door. He burned the inedible hair in the fireplace and
wrapped the bones up in a napkin that he hid away under the bed in
the wooden chest in which he found a clean pair of sheets. These he
carefully put on the bed instead of the tell-tale stained ones he
235
stowed away in the laundry basket. He plumped up the pillows and
shook out the patchwork quilt, he picked up the Bible from the floor,
closed it and laid it on the table. All was as it had been before except
that grandmother was gone. The sticks twitched in the grate, the
clock ticked and the young man sat patiently, deceitfully beside the
bed in granny's nightcap.
There's nobody here but we two, my darling.
Rat-a-tap-tap.
Now a great howling rose up all around them, near, very near, as
close as the kitchen garden, the howling of a multitude of wolves;
she knew the worst wolves are hairy on the inside and she shivered,
in spite of the scarlet shawl she pulled more closely round herself as
if it could protect her although it was as red as the blood she must
spill.
Who's there, he quavers in granny's antique falsetto.
Who has come to sing us carols, she said.
Only your granddaughter.
Those are the voices of my brothers, darling; I love the company of
wolves. Look out of the window and you'll see them.
So she came in, bringing with her a flurry of snow that melted in
tears on the tiles, and perhaps she was a little disappointed to see
only her grandmother sitting beside the fire. But then he flung off the
blanket and sprang to the door, pressing his back against it so that
she could not get out again.
The girl looked round the room and saw there was not even the
indentation of a head on the smooth cheek of the pillow and how, for
the first time she'd seen it so, the Bible lay closed on the table. The
tick of the clock cracked like a whip. She wanted her knife from her
basket but she did not dare reach for it because his eyes were fixed
upon her--huge eyes that now seemed to shine with a unique, interior
light, eyes the size of saucers, saucers full of Greek fire, diabolic
phosphorescence.
Snow half-caked the lattice and she opened it to look into the garden.
It was a white night of moon and snow; the blizzard whirled round
the gaunt, grey beasts who squatted on their haunches among the
rows of winter cabbage, pointing their sharp snouts to the moon and
howling as if their hearts would break. Ten wolves; twenty wolves-so many wolves she could not count them, howling in concert as if
demented or deranged. Their eyes reflected the light from the kitchen
and shone like a hundred candles.
It is very cold, poor things, she said; no wonder they howl so.
What big eyes you have.
She closed the window on the wolves' threnody and took off her
scarlet shawl, the colour of poppies, the colour of sacrifices, the
colour of her menses, and, since her fear did her no good, she ceased
to be afraid.
All the better to see you with.
What shall I do with my shawl?
No trace at all of the old woman except for a tuft of white hair that
had caught in the bark of an unburned log. When the girl saw that,
she knew she was in danger of death.
Throw it on the fire, dear one. You won't need it again.
Where is my grandmother?
She bundled up her shawl and threw it on the blaze, which instantly
consumed it. Then she drew her blouse over her head; her small
breasts gleamed as if the snow had invaded the room.
236
What shall I do with my blouse?
Into the fire with it, too, my pet.
The thin muslin went flaring up the chimney like a magic bird and
now off came her skirt, her woollen stockings, her shoes, and on to
the fire they went, too, and were gone for good. The firelight shone
through the edges of her skin; now she was clothed only in her
untouched integument of flesh. This dazzling, naked she combed out
her hair with her fingers; her hair looked white as the snow outside.
Then went directly to the man with red eyes in whose unkempt mane
the lice moved; she stood up on tiptoe and unbuttoned the collar of
his shirt.
She will lay his fearful head on her lap and she will pick out the lice
from his pelt and perhaps she will put the lice into her mouth and eat
them, as he will bid her, as she would do in a savage marriage
ceremony.
The blizzard will die down.
The blizzard died down, leaving the mountains as randomly covered
with snow as if a blind woman had thrown a sheet over them, the
upper branches of the forest pines limed, creaking, swollen with the
fall.
Snowlight, moonlight, a confusion of paw-prints.
What big arms you have.
All silent, all still.
All the better to hug you with.
Midnight; and the clock strikes. It is Christmas Day, the werewolves'
birthday, the door of the solstice stands wide open; let them all sink
through.
Every wolf in the world now howled a prothalamion outside the
window as she freely gave the kiss she owed him.
What big teeth you have!
See! sweet and sound she sleeps in granny's bed, between the paws
of the tender wolf.
She saw how his jaw began to slaver and the room was full of the
clamour of the forest's Liebestod but the wise child never flinched,
even when he answered:
_______________________________________52) From: Angela
Carter - The Bloody Chamber And Other Stories. New York:
Penguin. 1979.
All the better to eat you with.
“Wolf-Alice”
The girl burst out laughing; she knew she was nobody's meat. She
laughed at him full in the face, she ripped off his shirt for him and
flung it into the fire, in the fiery wake of her own discarded clothing.
The flames danced like dead souls on Walpurgisnacht and the old
bones under the bed set up a terrible clattering but she did not pay
them any heed.
Could this ragged girl with brindled lugs have spoken like we do she
would have called herself a wolf, but she cannot speak, although she
howls because she is lonely--yet' howl' is not the right word for it,
since she is young enough to make the noise that pups do, bubbling,
delicious, like that of a panful of fat on the fire. Sometimes the sharp
ears of her foster kindred hear her across the irreparable gulf of
absence; they answer her from faraway pine forest and the bald
mountain rim. Their counterpoint crosses and criss-crosses the night
Carnivore incarnate, only immaculate flesh appeases him.
237
sky; they are trying to talk to her but they cannot do so because she
does not understand their language even if she knows how to use it
for she is not a wolf herself, although suckled by wolves.
Her panting tongue hangs out; her red lips are thick and fresh. Her
legs are long, lean and muscular. Her elbows, hands and knees are
thickly callused because she always runs on all fours. She never
walks; she trots or gallops. Her pace is not our pace.
Two-legs looks, four-legs sniffs. Her long nose is always a-quiver,
sifting every scent it meets. With this useful tool, she lengthily
investigates everything she glimpses. She can net so much more of
the world than we can through the fine, hairy, sensitive filters of her
nostrils that her poor eyesight does not trouble her. Her nose is
sharper by night than' our eyes are by day so it is the night she
prefers, when the cool reflected light of the moon does not make her
eyes smart and draws out the various fragrances from the woodland
where she wanders when she can. But the wolves keep well away
from the peasants' shotguns, now, and she will no longer find them
there.
Wide shoulders, long arms and she sleeps succinctly curled into a
ball as if she were cradling her spine in her tail. Nothing about her is
human except that she is not a wolf; it is as if the fur she thought she
wore had melted into her skin and become part of it, although it does
not exist. Like the wild beasts, she lives without a future. She
inhabits only the present tense, a fugue of the continuous, a world of
sensual immediacy as without hope as it is without despair.
When they found her in the wolf's den beside the bullet-riddled
corpse of her foster mother, she was no more than a little brown
scrap so snarled in her own brown hair they did not, at first, think she
was a child but a cub; she snapped at her would-be saviours with her
spiky canines until they tied her up by force. She spent her first days
amongst us crouched stockstill, staring at the whitewashed wall of
her cell in the convent to which they took her. The nuns poured
water over her, poked her with sticks to rouse her. Then she might
snatch bread from their hands and race with it into a corner to
mumble it with her back towards them; it was a great day among the
novices when she learned to sit up on her hind legs and beg for a
crust.
They found that, if she were treated with a little kindness, she was
not intractable. She learned to recognize her own dish; then, to drink
from a cup. They found that she could quite easily be taught a few,
simple tricks but she did not feel the cold and it took a long time to
wheedle a shift over her head to cover up her bold nakedness. Yet
she always seemed wild, impatient of restraint, capricious in temper;
when the Mother Superior tried to teach her to give thanks for her
recovery from the wolves, she arched her back, pawed the floor,
retreated to a far corner of the chapel, crouched, trembled, urinated,
defecated--reverted entirely, it would seem, to her natural state.
Therefore, without a qualm, this nine days' wonder and continuing
embarrassment of a child was delivered over to the bereft and
unsanctified household of the Duke.
Deposited at the castle, she huffed and snuffed and smelled only a
reek of meat, not the least whiff of sulphur, nor of familiarity. She
settled down on her hunkers with that dog's sigh that is only the
expulsion of breath and does not mean either relief or resignation.
The Duke is sere as old paper; his dry skin rustics against the bedsheets as he throws them back to thrust out his thin legs scabbed with
old scars where thorns scored his pelt. He lives in a gloomy mansion,
all alone but for this child who has as little in common with the rest
of us as he does. His bedroom is painted terracotta, rusted with a
wash of pain, like the interior of an Iberian butcher's shop, but for
himself, nothing can hurt him since he ceased to cast an image in the
mirror.
238
He sleeps in an antlered bed of dull black wrought iron until the
moon, the governess of transformations and overseer of
somnambulists, pokes an imperative finger through the narrow
window and strikes his face: then his eyes start open.
At night, those huge, inconsolable, rapacious eyes of his are eaten up
by swollen, gleaming pupil. His eyes see only appetite. These eyes
open to devour the world in which he sees, nowhere, a reflection of
himself; he passed through the mirror and now, henceforward, lives
as if upon the other side of things.
Spilt, glistering milk of moonlight on the frost-crisped grass; on such
a night, in moony, metamorphic weather, they say you might easily
find him, if you had been foolish enough to venture out late, scuttling
along by the churchyard wall with half a juicy torso slung across his
back. The white light scours the fields and scours them again until
everything gleams and he will leave paw-prints in the hoar-frost
when he runs howling round the graves at night in his lupine fiestas.
By the red early hour of midwinter sunset, all the doors are barred
for miles. The cows low fretfully in the byre when he goes by, the
whimpering dogs sink their noses in their paws. He carries on his
frail shoulders a weird burden of fear; he is cast in the role of the
corpse-eater, the body-snatcher who invades the last privacies of the
dead. He is white as leprosy, with scrabbling fingernails, and nothing
deters him. If you stuff a corpse with garlic, why, he only slavers at
the treat: cadavre provençale. He will use the holy cross as a
scratching post and crouch above the font to thirstily lap up holy
water.
She sleeps in the soft, warm ashes of the hearth; beds are traps, she
will not stay in one. She can perform the few, small tasks to which
the nuns trained her, she sweeps up the hairs, vertebrae and
phalanges that litter his room into a dustpan, she makes up his bed at
sunset, when he leaves it and the grey beasts outside howl, as if they
know his transformation is their parody. Unkind to their prey, to
their own they are tender; had the Duke been a wolf, they would
have angrily expelled him from the pack, he would have had to
lollop along miles behind them, creeping in submission on his belly
up to the kill only after they had eaten and were sleeping, to gnaw
the well-chewed bones and chew the hide. Yet, suckled as she was
by wolves on the high uplands where her mother bore and left her,
only his kitchen maid, who is not wolf or woman, knows no better
than to do his chores for him.
She grew up with wild beasts. If you could transport her, in her filth,
rags and feral disorder, to the Eden of our first beginnings where Eve
and grunting Adam squat on a daisy bank, picking the lice from one
another's pelts, then she might prove to be the wise child who leads
them all and her silence and her howling a language as authentic as
any language of nature. In a world of talking beasts and flowers, she
would be the bud of flesh in the kind lion's mouth: but how can the
bitten apple flesh out its scar again?
Mutilation is her lot; though, now and then, she will emit an
involuntary rustle of sound, as if the unused chords in her throat
were a wind-harp that moved with the random impulses of the air,
her whisper, more obscure than the voices of the dumb.
Familiar desecrations in the village graveyard. The coffin had been
ripped open with the abandon with which a child unwraps a gift on
Christmas morning and, of its contents, not a trace could be found
but for a rag of the bridal veil in which the corpse had been wrapped
that was caught, fluttering, in the brambles at the churchyard gate so
they knew which way he had taken it, towards his gloomy castle.
In the lapse of time, the trance of being of that exiled place, this girl
grew amongst things she could neither name nor perceive. How did
she think, how did she feel, this perennial stranger with her furred
thoughts and her primal sentience that existed in a flux of shifting
239
impressions; there are no words to describe the way she negotiated
the abyss between her dreams, those wakings strange as her
sleepings. The wolves had tended her because they knew she was an
imperfect wolf; we secluded her in animal privacy out of fear of her
imperfection because it showed us what we might have been, and so
time passed, although she scarcely knew it. Then she began to bleed.
Her first blood bewildered her. She did not know what it meant and
the first stirrings of surmise that ever she felt were directed towards
its possible cause. The moon had been shining into the kitchen when
she woke to feel the trickle between her thighs and it seemed to her
that a wolf who, perhaps, was fond of her, as wolves were, and who
lived, perhaps, in the moon? must have nibbled her cunt while she
was sleeping, had subjected her to a series of affectionate nips too
gentle to wake her yet sharp enough to break the skin. The shape of
this theory was blurred yet, out of it, there took root a kind of wild
reasoning, as it might have from a seed dropped in her brain off the
foot of a flying bird.
The flow continued for a few days, which seemed to her an endless
time. She had, as yet, no direct notion of past, or of future, or of
duration, only of a dimensionless, immediate moment. At night, she
prowled the empty house looking for rags to sop the blood up; she
had learned a little elementary hygiene in the convent, enough to
know how to bury her excrement and cleanse herself of her natural
juices, although the nuns had not the means to inform her how it
should be, it was not fastidiousness but shame that made her do so.
She found towels, sheets and pillowcases in closets that had not been
opened since the Duke came shrieking into the world with all his
teeth, to bite his mother's nipple off and weep. She found once-worn
ball dresses in cobwebbed wardrobes, and, heaped in the corners of
his bloody chamber, shrouds, nightdresses and burial clothes that had
wrapped items on the Duke's menus. She tore strips of the most
absorbent fabrics to clumsily diaper herself. In the course of these
prowlings, she bumped against that mirror over whose surface the
Duke passed like a wind on ice.
First, she tried to nuzzle her reflection; then, nosing it industriously,
she soon realized it gave out no smell. She bruised her muzzle on the
cold glass and broke her claws trying to tussle with this stranger. She
saw, with irritation, then amusement, how it mimicked every gesture
of hers when she raised her forepaw to scratch herself or dragged her
bum along the dusty carpet to rid herself of a slight discomfort in her
hindquarters. She rubbed her head against her reflected face, to show
that she felt friendly towards it, and felt a cool, solid, immovable
surface between herself and she--some kind, possibly, of invisible
cage? In spite of this barrier, she was lonely enough to ask this
creature to try to play with her, baring her teeth and grinning; at once
she received a reciprocal invitation. She rejoiced; she began to whirl
round on herself, yapping exultantly, but, when she retreated from
the mirror, she halted in the midst of her ecstasy, puzzled, to see how
her new friend grew less in size.
The moonlight spilled into the Duke's motionless bedroom from
behind a cloud and she saw how pale this wolf, not-wolf who played
with her was. The moon and mirrors have this much in common: you
cannot see behind them. Moonlit and white, Wolf-Alice looked at
herself in the mirror and wondered whether there she saw the beast
who came to bite her in the night. Then her sensitive ears pricked at
the sound of a step in the hall; trotting at once back to her kitchen,
she encountered the Duke with the leg of a man over his shoulder.
Her toenails clicked against the stairs as she padded incuriously past,
she, the serene, inviolable one in her absolute and verminous
innocence.
Soon the flow ceased. She forgot it. The moon vanished; but, little
by little, reappeared. When it again visited her kitchen at full
strength, Wolf-Alice was surprised into bleeding again and so it went
on, with a punctuality that transformed her vague grip on time. She
240
learned to expect these bleedings, to prepare her rags against them,
and afterwards, neatly to bury the dirtied things. Sequence asserted
itself with custom and then she understood the circumambulatory
principle of the clock perfectly, even if all clocks were banished
from the den where she and the Duke inhabited their separate
solitudes, so that you might say she discovered the very action of
time by means of this returning cycle.
When she curled up among the cinders, the colour, texture and
warmth of them brought her foster mother's belly out of the past and
printed it on her flesh; her first conscious memory, painful as the
first time the nuns combed her hair. She howled a little, in a firmer,
deepening trajectory, to obtain the inscrutable consolation of the
wolves' response, for now the world around her was assuming form.
She perceived an essential difference between herself and her
surroundings that you might say she could not put her finger on-only, the trees and grass of the meadows outside no longer seemed
the emanation of her questing nose and erect ears, and yet sufficient
to itself, but a kind of backdrop for her, that waited for her arrivals to
give it meaning. She saw herself upon it and her eyes, with their
sombre clarity, took on a veiled, introspective look.
She would spend hours examining the new skin that had been born,
it seemed to her, of her bleeding. She would lick her soft upholstery
with her long tongue and groom her hair with her fingernails. She
examined her new breasts with curiosity; the white growths
reminded her of nothing so much as the night-sprung puffballs she
had found, sometimes, on evening rambles in the woods, a natural if
disconcerting apparition, but then, to her astonishment, she found a
little diadem of fresh hairs tufting between her thighs. She showed it
to her mirror littermate, who reassured her by showing her she
shared it.
The damned Duke haunts the graveyard; he believes himself to be
both less and more than a man, as if his obscene difference were a
sign of grace. During the day, he sleeps. His mirror faithfully reflects
his bed but never the meagre shape within the disordered covers.
Sometimes, on those white nights when she was left alone in the
house, she dragged out his grandmother's ball dresses and rolled on
suave velvet and abrasive lace because to do so delighted her
adolescent skin. Her intimate in the mirror wound the old clothes
round herself, wrinkling its nose in delight at the ancient yet still
potent scents of musk and civet that woke up in the sleeves and
bodices. This habitual, at last boring, fidelity to her every movement
finally woke her up to the regretful possibility that her companion
was, in fact, no more than a particularly ingenious variety of the
shadow she cast on sunlit grass. Had not she and the rest of the litter
tussled and romped with their shadows long ago? She poked her
agile nose around the back of the mirror; she found only dust, a
spider stuck in his web, a heap of rags. A little moisture leaked from
the corners of her eyes, yet her relation with the mirror was now far
more intimate since she knew she saw herself within it.
She pawed and tumbled the dress the Duke had tucked away behind
the mirror for a while. The dust was soon shaken out of it; she
experimentally inserted her front legs in the sleeves. Although the
dress was torn and crumpled, it was so white and of such a sinuous
texture that she thought, before she put it on, she must thoroughly
wash off her coat of ashes in the water from the pump in the yard,
which she knew how to manipulate with her cunning forepaw. In the
mirror, she saw how this white dress made her shine.
Although she could not run so fast on two legs in petticoats, she
trotted out in her new dress to investigate the odorous October
hedgerows, like a débutante from the castle, delighted with herself
but still, now and then, singing to the wolves with a kind of wistful
triumph, because now she knew how to wear clothes and so had put
on the visible sign of her difference from them.
241
Her footprints on damp earth are beautiful and menacing as those
Man Friday left.
matters into her own hands. They ran screaming from the presence of
a ghostly vengeance on him.
The young husband of the dead bride spent a long time planning his
revenge. He filled the church with an arsenal of bells, books and
candles; a battery of silver bullets; they brought a ten-gallon tub of
holy water in a wagon from the city, where it had been blessed by
the Archbishop himself, to drown the Duke, if the bullets bounced
off him. They gathered in the church to chant a litany and wait for
the one who would visit with the first deaths of winter.
Poor, wounded thing ... locked half and half between such strange
states, an aborted transformation, an incomplete mystery, now he lies
writhing on his black bed in the room like a Mycenaean tomb, howls
like a wolf with his foot in a trap or a woman in labour, and bleeds.
She goes out at night more often now; the landscape assembles itself
about her, she informs it with her presence. She is its significance.
It seemed to her the congregation in the church was ineffectually
attempting to imitate the wolves' chorus. She lent them the assistance
of her own, educated voice for a while, rocking contemplatively on
her haunches by the graveyard gate; then her nostrils twitched to
catch the rank stench of the dead that told her her co-habitor was at
hand; raising her head, who did her new, keen eyes spy but the lord
of cobweb castle intent on performing his cannibal rituals?
And if her nostrils flare suspiciously at the choking reek of incense
and his do not, that is because she is far more sentient than he. She
will, therefore, run, run! when she hears the crack of bullets, because
they killed her foster mother; so, with the self-same lilting lope,
drenched with holy water, will he run, too, until the young widower
fires the silver bullet that bites his shoulder and drags off half his
fictive pelt, so that he must rise up like any common forked biped
and limp distressfully on as best he may.
When they saw the white bride leap out of the tombstones and
scamper off towards the castle with the werewolf stumbling after, the
peasants thought the Duke's dearest victim had come back to take
First, she was fearful when she heard the sound of pain, in case it
hurt her, as it had done before. She prowled round the bed, growling,
snuffing at his wound that does not smell like her wound. Then, she
was pitiful as her gaunt grey mother; she leapt upon his bed to lick,
without hesitation, without disgust, with a quick, tender gravity, the
blood and dirt from his cheeks and forehead.
The lucidity of the moonlight lit the mirror propped against the red
wall; the rational glass, the master of the visible, impartially recorded
the crooning girl.
As she continued her ministrations, this glass, with infinite slowness,
yielded to the reflexive strength of its own material construction.
Little by little, there appeared within it, like the image on
photographic paper that emerges, first, a formless web of tracery, the
prey caught in its own fishing net, then in firmer yet still shadowed
outline until at last as vivid as real life itself, as if brought into being
by her soft, moist, gentle tongue, finally, the face of the Duke.
_______________________________________53) “THERE WAS
ONCE” by MARGARET ATWOOD from
http://www.mississippireview.com/1995/07atwood.html
"There was once a poor girl, as beautiful as she was good, who lived
with her wicked stepmother in a house in the forest."
242
"Forest? Forest is passé, I mean, I've had it with all this wilderness
stuff. It's not a right image of our society, today. Let's have some
urban for a change."
"There was once a poor girl, as beautiful as she was good, who lived
with her wicked stepmother in a house in the suburbs."
"I wasn't making fun! I was just describing-"
"Skip the description. Description oppresses. But you can say what
colour she was."
"What colour?"
"But she was poor!"
"You know. Black, white, red, brown, yellow. Those are the choices.
And I'm telling you right now, I've had enough of white. Dominant
culture this, dominant culture that-"
"Poor is relative. She lived in a house, didn't she?"
"I don't know what colour."
"Yes."
"Well, it would probably be your colour, wouldn't it?"
"Then socio-economically speaking, she was not poor."
"But this isn't about me! It's about this girl-"
"But none of the money was hers! The whole point of the story is
that the wicked stepmother makes her wear old clothes and sleep in
the fireplace-"
"Everything is about you."
"Aha! They had a fireplace! With poor, let me tell you, there's no
fireplace. Come down to the park, come to the subway stations after
dark, come down to where they sleep in cardboard boxes, and I'll
show you poor!"
"Oh well, go on. You could make her ethnic. That might help."
"That's better. But I have to seriously query this word poor."
"There was once a middle-class girl, as beautiful as she was good-"
"Stop right there. I think we can cut the beautiful, don't you? Women
these days have to deal with too many intimidating physical role
models as it is, what with those bimbos in the ads. Can't you make
her, well, more average?"
"There was once a girl who was a little overweight and whose front
teeth stuck out, who-"
"I don't think it's nice to make fun of people's appearances. Plus,
you're encouraging anorexia."
"Sounds to me like you don't want to hear this story at all."
"There was once a girl of indeterminate descent, as average-looking
as she was good, who lived with her wicked-"
"Another thing. Good and wicked. Don't you think you should
transcend those puritanical judgmental moralistic epithets? I mean,
so much of that is conditioning, isn't it?"
"There was once a girl, as average-looking as she was well-adjusted,
who lived with her stepmother, who was not a very open and loving
person because she herself had been abused in childhood."
"Better. But I am so tired of negative female images! And
stepmothers-they always get it in the neck! Change it to stepfather,
why don't you? That would make more sense anyway, considering
the bad behaviour you're about to describe. And throw in some
243
whips and chains. We all know what those twisted, repressed,
middle-aged men are like-"
"Hey, just a minute! I'm a middle-aged-"
"Stuff it, Mister Nosy Parker. Nobody asked you to stick in your oar,
or whatever you want to call that thing. This is between the two of
us. Go on."
"There was once a girl-"
"How old was she?"
"I don't know. She was young."
1.
Everyone gets a turn, and now it's mine. Or so they used to tell us in
kindergarten. It's not really true. Some get more turns than others,
and I've never had a turn, not one! I hardly know how to say I, or
mine; I've been she, her, that one, for so long.
I haven't even been given a name; I was just the ugly sister; put the
stress on ugly. The one the other mothers looked at, then looked
away from and shook their heads gently. Their voices lowered or
ceased altogether when I came into the room, in my pretty dresses,
my face leaden and scowling. They tried to think of something to say
that would redeem the situation-Well, she's certainly strong-but they
knew it was useless. So did I.
"This ends with a marriage, right?"
"Well, not to blow the plot, but-yes."
"Then you can scratch the condescending paternalistic terminology.
It's woman, pal. Woman."
"There was once-"
"What's this was, once? Enough of the dead past. Tell me about
now."
"There-"
"So?"
"So, what?"
"So, why not here?"
_______________________________________54)
“UNPOPULAR GALS” by Margaret Atwood from
http://www.mississippireview.com/1995/07atwood.html.
You think I didn't hate their pity, their forced kindness? And
knowing that no matter what I did, how virtuous I was, or
hardworking, I would never be beautiful. Not like her, the one who
merely had to sit there to be adored. You wonder why I stabbed the
blue eyes of my dolls with pins and pulled their hair out until they
were bald? Life isn't fair. Why should I be?
As for the prince, you think I didn't love him? I loved him more than
she did. I loved him more than anything. Enough to cut off my foot.
Enough to murder. Of course I disguised myself in heavy veils, to
take her place at the altar. Of course I threw her out the window and
pulled the sheets up over my head and pretended to be her. Who
wouldn't, in my position?
But all my love ever came to was a bad end. Red-hot shoes, barrels
studded with nails. That's what it feels like, unrequited love.
She had a baby, too. I was never allowed.
Everything you've ever wanted, I wanted also.
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2.
A libel action, that's what I'm thinking. Put an end to this nonsense.
Just because I'm old and live alone and can't see very well, they
accuse me of all sorts of things. Cooking and eating children, well,
can you imagine? What a fantasy, and even if I did eat just a few,
whose fault was it? Those children were left in the forest by their
parents, who fully intended them to die. Waste not, want not, has
always been my motto.
Anyway, the way I see it, they were an offering. I used to be given
grown-ups, men and women both, stuffed full of seasonal goodies
and handed over to me at seed-time and harvest. The symbolism was
a little crude perhaps, and the events themselves were-some might
say-lacking in taste, but folks' hearts were in the right place. In
return, I made things germinate and grow and swell and ripen.
Then I got hidden away, stuck into the attic, shrunken and parched
and covered up in dusty draperies. Hell, I used to have breasts! Not
just two of them. Lots. Ever wonder why a third tit was the crucial
test, once, for women like me?
Or why I'm so often shown with a garden? A wonderful garden, in
which mouth-watering things grow. Mulberries. Magic cabbages.
Rapunzel, whatever that is. And all those pregnant women trying to
clamber over the wall, by the light of the moon, to munch up my
fecundity, without giving anything in return. Theft, you'd call it, if
you were at all open-minded.
That was never the rule in the old days. Life was a gift then, not
something to be stolen. It was my gift. By earth and sea I bestowed
it, and the people gave me thanks.
It's true, there are never any evil stepfathers. Only a bunch of lilylivered widowers, who let me get away with murder vis-à-vis their
daughters. Where are they when I'm making those girls drudge in the
kitchen, or sending them out into the blizzard in their paper dresses?
Working late at the office. Passing the buck. Men! But if you think
they know nothing about it, you're crazy.
The thing about those good daughters is, they're so good. Obedient
and passive. Sniveling, I might add. No get-up-and-go. What would
become of them if it weren't for me? Nothing, that's what. All they'd
ever do is the housework, which seems to feature largely in these
stories. They'd marry some peasant, have seventeen kids, and get 'A
dutiful wife' engraved on their tombstones, if any. Big deal.
I stir things up, I get things moving. 'Go play in the traffic,' I say to
them. 'Put on this paper dress and look for strawberries in the snow.'
It's perverse, but it works. All they have to do is smile and say hello
and do a little more housework, for some gnomes or nice ladies or
whatever, and bingo, they get the king's son and the palace, and no
more dishpan hands. Whereas all I get is the blame.
God knows all about it. No Devil, no Fall, no Redemption. Grade
Two arithmetic.
You can wipe your feet on me, twist my motives around all you like,
you can dump millstones on my head and drown me in the river, but
you can't get me out of the story. I'm the plot, babe, and don't ever
forget it.
55) THE SQUAW
Bram Stoker
The following story is reprinted from Dracula's Guest. Bram
Stoker. London: Routledge, 1914.
3.
Nurnberg at the time was not so much exploited as it has been since
then. Irving had not been playing Faust, and the very name of the old
245
town was hardly known to the great bulk of the travelling public. My
wife and I being in the second week of our honeymoon, naturally
wanted someone else to join our party, so that when the cheery
stranger, Elias P. Hutcheson, hailing from Isthmian City, Bleeding
Gulch, Maple Tree County, Neb. turned up at the station at
Frankfort, and casually remarked that he was going on to see the
most all-fired old Methuselah of a town in Yurrup, and that he
guessed that so much travelling alone was enough to send an
intelligent, active citizen into the melancholy ward of a daft house,
we took the pretty broad hint and suggested that we should join
forces. We found, on comparing notes afterwards, that we had each
intended to speak with some diffidence or hesitation so as not to
appear too eager, such not being a good compliment to the success of
our married life; but the effect was entirely marred by our both
beginning to speak at the same instant--stopping simultaneously and
then going on together again. Anyhow, no matter how, it was done;
and Elias P. Hutcheson became one of our party. Straightway Amelia
and I found the pleasant benefit; instead of quarrelling, as we had
been doing, we found that the restraining influence of a third party
was such that we now took every opportunity of spooning in odd
corners. Amelia declares that ever since she has, as the result of that
experience, advised all her friends to take a friend on the
honeymoon. Well, we 'did' Nurnberg together, and much enjoyed the
racy remarks of our Transatlantic friend, who, from his quaint speech
and his wonderful stock of adventures, might have stepped out of a
novel. We kept for the last object of interest in the city to be visited
the Burg, and on the day appointed for the visit strolled round the
outer wall of the city by the eastern side.
The Burg is seated on a rock dominating the town and an immensely
deep fosse guards it on the northern side. Nurnberg has been happy
in that it was never sacked; had it been it would certainly not be so
spick and span perfect as it is at present. The ditch has not been used
for centuries, and now its base is spread with tea-gardens and
orchards, of which some of the trees are of quite respectable growth.
As we wandered round the wall, dawdling in the hot July sunshine,
we often paused to admire the views spread before us, and in
especial the great plain covered with towns and villages and bounded
with a blue line of hills, like a landscape of Claude Lorraine. From
this we always turned with new delight to the city itself, with its
myriad of quaint old gables and acre-wide red roofs dotted with
dormer windows, tier upon tier. A little to our right rose the towers
of the Burg, and nearer still, standing grim, the Torture Tower,
which was, and is, perhaps, the most interesting place in the city. For
centuries the tradition of the Iron Virgin of Nurnberg has been
handed down as an instance of the horrors of cruelty of which man is
capable; we had long looked forward to seeing it; and here at last
was its home.
In one of our pauses we leaned over the wall of the moat and looked
down. The garden seemed quite fifty or sixty feet below us, and the
sun pouring into it with an intense, moveless heat like that of an
oven. Beyond rose the grey, grim wall seemingly of endless height,
and losing itself right and left in the angles of bastion and
counterscarp. Trees and bushes crowned the wall, and above again
towered the lofty houses on whose massive beauty Time has only set
the hand of approval. The sun was hot and we were lazy; time was
our own, and we lingered, leaning on the wall. Just below us was a
pretty sight--a great black cat lying stretched in the sun, whilst round
her gambolled prettily a tiny black kitten. The mother would wave
her tail for the kitten to play with, or would raise her feet and push
away the little one as an encouragement to further play. They were
just at the foot of the wall, and Elias P. Hutcheson, in order to help
the play, stooped and took from the walk a moderate sized pebble.
'See!' he said, 'I will drop it near the kitten, and they will both
wonder where it came from.'
'Oh, be careful,' said my wife; 'you might hit the dear little thing!'
246
'Not me, ma'am,' said Elias P. 'Why, I'm as tender as a Maine cherrytree. Lor, bless ye. I wouldn't hurt the poor pooty little critter more'n
I'd scalp a baby. An' you may bet your variegated socks on that! See,
I'll drop it fur away on the outside so's not to go near her!' Thus
saying, he leaned over and held his arm out at full length and
dropped the stone. It may be that there is some attractive force which
draws lesser matters to greater; or more probably that the wall was
not plump but sloped to its base--we not noticing the inclination
from above; but the stone fell with a sickening thud that came up to
us through the hot air, right on the kitten's head, and shattered out its
little brains then and there. The black cat cast a swift upward glance,
and we saw her eyes like green fire fixed an instant on Elias P.
Hutcheson; and then her attention was given to the kitten, which lay
still with just a quiver of her tiny limbs, whilst a thin red stream
trickled from a gaping wound. With a muffled cry, such as a human
being might give, she bent over the kitten licking its wounds and
moaning. Suddenly she seemed to realise that it was dead, and again
threw her eyes up at us. I shall never forget the sight, for she looked
the perfect incarnation of hate. Her green eyes blazed with lurid fire,
and the white, sharp teeth seemed to almost shine through the blood
which dabbled her mouth and whiskers. She gnashed her teeth, and
her claws stood out stark and at full length on every paw. Then she
made a wild rush up the wall as if to reach us, but when the
momentum ended fell back, and further added to her horrible
appearance for she fell on the kitten, and rose with her black fur
smeared with its brains and blood. Amelia turned quite faint, and I
had to lift her back from the wall. There was a seat close by in shade
of a spreading plane-tree, and here I placed her whilst she composed
herself. Then I went back to Hutcheson, who stood without moving,
looking down on the angry cat below.
As I joined him, he said:
'Wall, I guess that air the savagest beast I ever see--'cept once when
an Apache squaw had an edge on a half-breed what they nicknamed
"Splinters" 'cos of the way he fixed up her papoose which he stole on
a raid just to show that he appreciated the way they had given his
mother the fire torture. She got that kinder look so set on her face
that it jest seemed to grow there. She followed Splinters mor'n three
year till at last the braves got him and handed him over to her. They
did say that no man, white or Injun, had ever been so long a-dying
under the tortures of the Apaches. The only time I ever see her smile
was when I wiped her out. I kem on the camp just in time to see
Splinters pass in his checks, and he wasn't sorry to go either. He was
a hard citizen, and though I never could shake with him after that
papoose business--for it was bitter bad, and he should have been a
white man, for he looked like one--I see he had got paid out in full.
Durn me, but I took a piece of his hide from one of his skinnin' posts
an' had it made into a pocket-book. It's here now!' and he slapped the
breast pocket of his coat.
Whilst he was speaking the cat was continuing her frantic efforts to
get up the wall. She would take a run back and then charge up,
sometimes reaching an incredible height. She did not seem to mind
the heavy fall which she get each time but started with renewed
vigour; and at every tumble her appearance became more horrible.
Hutcheson was a kind-hearted man--my wife and I had both noticed
little acts of kindness to animals as well as to persons--and he
seemed concerned at the state of fury to which the cat had wrought
herself.
'Wall, now!' he said, 'I du declare that that poor critter seems quite
desperate. There! there! poor thing, it was all an accident--though
that won't bring back your little one to you. Say! I wouldn't have had
such a thing happen for a thousand! Just shows what a clumsy fool
of a man can do when he tries to play! Seems I'm too darned
slipperhanded to even play with a cat. Say Colonel!' it was a pleasant
247
way he had to bestow titles freely--'I hope your wife don't hold no
grudge against me on account of this unpleasantness? Why, I
wouldn't have had it occur on no account.'
He came over to Amelia and apologised profusely, and she with her
usual kindness of heart hastened to assure him that she quite
understood that it was an accident. Then we all went again to the
wall and looked over.
The cat missing Hutcheson's face had drawn back across the moat,
and was sitting on her haunches as though ready to spring. Indeed,
the very instant she saw him she did spring, and with a blind
unreasoning fury, which would have been grotesque, only that it was
so frightfully real. She did not try to run up the wall, but simply
launched herself at him as though hate and fury could lend her wings
to pass straight through the great distance between them. Amelia,
womanlike, got quite concerned, and said to Elias P. in a warning
voice:
'Oh! you must be very careful. That animal would try to kill you if
she were here; her eyes look like positive murder.'
He laughed out jovially. 'Excuse me, ma'am,' he said, 'but I can't help
laughin'. Fancy a man that has fought grizzlies an' Injuns bein'
careful of bein' murdered by a cat!'
When the cat heard him laugh, her whole demeanour seemed to
change. She no longer tried to jump or run up the wall, but went
quietly over, and sitting again beside the dead kitten began to lick
and fondle it as though it were alive.
'See!' said I, 'the effect of a really strong man. Even that animal in
the midst of her fury recognises the voice of a master, and bows to
him!'
'Like a squaw!' was the only comment of Elias P. Hutcheson, as we
moved on our way round the city fosse. Every now and then we
looked over the wall and each time saw the cat following us. At first
she had kept going back to the dead kitten, and then as the distance
grew greater took it in her mouth and so followed. After a while,
however, she abandoned this, for we saw her following all alone; she
had evidently hidden the body somewhere. Amelia's alarm grew at
the cat's persistence, and more than once she repeated her warning;
but the American always laughed with amusement, till finally, seeing
that she was beginning to be worried, he said:
'I say, ma'am, you needn't be skeered over that cat. I go heeled, I du!'
Here he slapped his pistol pocket at the back of his lumbar region.
'Why sooner'n have you worried, I'll shoot the critter, right here, an'
risk the police interferin' with a citizen of the United States for
carryin' arms contrairy to reg'lations!' As he spoke he looked over
the wall, but the cat on seeing him, retreated, with a growl, into a bed
of tall flowers, and was hidden. He went on: 'Blest if that ar critter
ain't got more sense of what's good for her than most Christians. I
guess we've seen the last of her! You bet, she'll go back now to that
busted kitten and have a private funeral of it, all to herself!'
Amelia did not like to say more, lest he might, in mistaken kindness
to her, fulfil his threat of shooting the cat: and so we went on and
crossed the little wooden bridge leading to the gateway whence ran
the steep paved roadway between the Burg and the pentagonal
Torture Tower. As we crossed the bridge we saw the cat again down
below us. When she saw us her fury seemed to return, and she made
frantic efforts to get up the steep wall. Hutcheson laughed as he
looked down at her, and said:
'Goodbye, old girl. Sorry I injured your feelin's, but you'll get over it
in time! So long!' And then we passed through the long, dim
archway and came to the gate of the Burg.
248
When we came out again after our survey of this most beautiful old
place which not even the well-intentioned efforts of the Gothic
restorers of forty years ago have been able to spoil--though their
restoration was then glaring white--we seemed to have quite
forgotten the unpleasant episode of the morning. The old lime tree
with its great trunk gnarled with the passing of nearly nine centuries,
the deep well cut through the heart of the rock by those captives of
old, and the lovely view from the city wall whence we heard, spread
over almost a full quarter of an hour, the multitudinous chimes of the
city, had all helped to wipe out from our minds the incident of the
slain kitten.
We were the only visitors who had entered the Torture Tower that
morning--so at least said the old custodian--and as we had the place
all to ourselves were able to make a minute and more satisfactory
survey than would have otherwise been possible. The custodian,
looking to us as the sole source of his gains for the day, was willing
to meet our wishes in any way. The Torture Tower is truly a grim
place, even now when many thousands of visitors have sent a stream
of life, and the joy that follows life, into the place; but at the time I
mention it wore its grimmest and most gruesome aspect. The dust of
ages seemed to have settled on it, and the darkness and the horror of
its memories seem to have become sentient in a way that would have
satisfied the Pantheistic souls of Philo or Spinoza. The lower
chamber where we entered was seemingly, in its normal state, filled
with incarnate darkness; even the hot sunlight streaming in through
the door seemed to be lost in the vast thickness of the walls, and only
showed the masonry rough as when the builder's scaffolding had
come down, but coated with dust and marked here and there with
patches of dark stain which, if walls could speak, could have given
their own dread memories of fear and pain. We were glad to pass up
the dusty wooden staircase, the custodian leaving the outer door
open to light us somewhat on our way; for to our eyes the one longwick'd, evil-smelling candle stuck in a sconce on the wall gave an
inadequate light. When we came up through the open trap in the
corner of the chamber overhead, Amelia held on to me so tightly that
I could actually feel her heart beat. I must say for my own part that I
was not surprised at her fear, for this room was even more gruesome
than that below. Here there was certainly more light, but only just
sufficient to realise the horrible surroundings of the place. The
builders of the tower had evidently intended that only they who
should gain the top should have any of the joys of light and prospect.
There, as we had noticed from below, were ranges of windows,
albeit of mediaeval smallness, but elsewhere in the tower were only a
very few narrow slits such as were habitual in places of mediaeval
defence. A few of these only lit the chamber, and these so high up in
the wall that from no part could the sky be seen through the
thickness of the walls. In racks, and leaning in disorder against the
walls, were a number of headsmen's swords, great double-handed
weapons with broad blade and keen edge. Hard by were several
blocks whereon the necks of the victims had lain, with here and there
deep notches where the steel had bitten through the guard of flesh
and shored into the wood. Round the chamber, placed in all sorts of
irregular ways, were many implements of torture which made one's
heart ache to see--chairs full of spikes which gave instant and
excruciating pain; chairs and couches with dull knobs whose torture
was seemingly less, but which, though slower, were equally
efficacious; racks, belts, boots, gloves, collars, all made for
compressing at will; steel baskets in which the head could be slowly
crushed into a pulp if necessary; watchmen's hooks with long handle
and knife that cut at resistance--this a speciality of the old Nurnberg
police system; and many, many other devices for man's injury to
man. Amelia grew quite pale with the horror of the things, but
fortunately did not faint, for being a little overcome she sat down on
a torture chair, but jumped up again with a shriek, all tendency to
faint gone. We both pretended that it was the injury done to her dress
by the dust of the chair, and the rusty spikes which had upset her,
249
and Mr. Hutcheson acquiesced in accepting the explanation with a
kind-hearted laugh.
But the central object in the whole of this chamber of horrors was the
engine known as the Iron Virgin, which stood near the centre of the
room. It was a rudely-shaped figure of a woman, something of the
bell order, or, to make a closer comparison, of the figure of Mrs.
Noah in the children's Ark, but without that slimness of waist and
perfect rondeur of hip which marks the aesthetic type of the Noah
family. One would hardly have recognised it as intended for a human
figure at all had not the founder shaped on the forehead a rude
semblance of a woman's face. This machine was coated with rust
without, and covered with dust; a rope was fastened to a ring in the
front of the figure, about where the waist should have been, and was
drawn through a pulley, fastened on the wooden pillar which
sustained the flooring above. The custodian pulling this rope showed
that a section of the front was hinged like a door at one side; we then
saw that the engine was of considerable thickness, leaving just room
enough inside for a man to be placed. The door was of equal
thickness and of great weight, for it took the custodian all his
strength, aided though he was by the contrivance of the pulley, to
open it. This weight was partly due to the fact that the door was of
manifest purpose hung so as to throw its weight downwards, so that
it might shut of its own accord when the strain was released. The
inside was honeycombed with rust--nay more, the rust alone that
comes through time would hardly have eaten so deep into the iron
walls; the rust of the cruel stains was deep indeed! It was only,
however, when we came to look at the inside of the door that the
diabolical intention was manifest to the full. Here were several long
spikes, square and massive, broad at the base and sharp at the points,
placed in such a position that when the door should close the upper
ones would pierce the eyes of the victim, and the lower ones his
heart and vitals. The sight was too much for poor Amelia, and this
time she fainted dead off, and I had to carry her down the stairs, and
place her on a bench outside till she recovered. That she felt it to the
quick was afterwards shown by the fact that my eldest son bears to
this day a rude birthmark on his breast, which has, by family
consent, been accepted as representing the Nurnberg Virgin.
When we got back to the chamber we found Hutcheson still opposite
the Iron Virgin; he had been evidently philosophising, and now gave
us the benefit of his thought in the shape of a sort of exordium.
'Wall, I guess I've been learnin' somethin' here while madam has
been gettin' over her faint. 'Pears to me that we're a long way behind
the times on our side of the big drink. We uster think out on the
plains that the Injun could give us points in tryin' to make a man
uncomfortable; but I guess your old mediaeval law-and-order party
could raise him every time. Splinters was pretty good in his bluff on
the squaw, but this here young miss held a straight flush all high on
him. The points of them spikes air sharp enough still, though even
the edges air eaten out by what uster be on them. It'd be a good thing
for our Indian section to get some specimens of this here play-toy to
send round to the Reservations jest to knock the stuffin' out of the
bucks, and the squaws too, by showing them as how old civilisation
lays over them at their best. Guess but I'll get in that box a minute
jest to see how it feels!'
'Oh no! no!' said Amelia. 'It is too terrible!'
'Guess, ma'am, nothin's too terrible to the explorin' mind. I've been in
some queer places in my time. Spent a night inside a dead horse
while a prairie fire swept over me in Montana Territory--an' another
time slept inside a dead buffler when the Comanches was on the war
path an' I didn't keer to leave my kyard on them. I've been two days
in a caved-in tunnel in the Billy Broncho gold mine in New Mexico,
an' was one of the four shut up for three parts of a day in the caisson
what slid over on her side when we was settin' the foundations of the
250
Buffalo Bridge. I've not funked an odd experience yet, an' I don't
propose to begin now!'
incipient smile which was habitual to his face blossomed into
actuality as he said:
We saw that he was set on the experiment, so I said: 'Well, hurry up,
old man, and get through it quick!'
'Guess this here Eve was made out of the rib of a dwarf! There ain't
much room for a full-grown citizen of the United States to hustle.
We uster make our coffins more roomier in Idaho territory. Now,
Judge, you jest begin to let this door down, slow, on to me. I want to
feel the same pleasure as the other jays had when those spikes began
to move toward their eyes!'
'All right, General,' said he, 'but I calculate we ain't quite ready yet.
The gentlemen, my predecessors, what stood in that thar canister,
didn't volunteer for the office--not much! And I guess there was
some ornamental tyin' up before the big stroke was made. I want to
go into this thing fair and square, so I must get fixed up proper first. I
dare say this old galoot can rise some string and tie me up accordin'
to sample?'
This was said interrogatively to the old custodian, but the latter, who
understood the drift of his speech, though perhaps not appreciating to
the full the niceties of dialect and imagery, shook his head. His
protest was, however, only formal and made to be overcome. The
American thrust a gold piece into his hand, saying: 'Take it, pard! it's
your pot; and don't be skeer'd. This ain't no necktie party that you're
asked to assist in!' He produced some thin frayed rope and proceeded
to bind our companion with sufficient strictness for the purpose.
When the upper part of his body was bound, Hutcheson said:
'Hold on a moment, Judge. Guess I'm too heavy for you to tote into
the canister. You jest let me walk in, and then you can wash up
regardin' my legs!'
Whilst speaking he had backed himself into the opening which was
just enough to hold him. It was a close fit and no mistake. Amelia
looked on with fear in her eyes, but she evidently did not like to say
anything. Then the custodian completed his task by tying the
American's feet together so that he was now absolutely helpless and
fixed in his voluntary prison. He seemed to really enjoy it, and the
'Oh no! no! no!' broke in Amelia hysterically. 'It is too terrible! I
can't bear to see it!--I can't! I can't!' But the American was obdurate.
'Say, Colonel,' said he, 'why not take Madame for a little promenade?
I wouldn't hurt her feelin's for the world; but now that I am here,
havin' kem eight thousand miles, wouldn't it be too hard to give up
the very experience I've been pinin' an' pantin' fur? A man can't get
to feel like canned goods every time! Me and the Judge here'll fix up
this thing in no time, an' then you'll come back, an' we'll all laugh
together!'
Once more the resolution that is born of curiosity triumphed, and
Amelia stayed holding tight to my arm and shivering whilst the
custodian began to slacken slowly inch by inch the rope that held
back the iron door. Hutcheson's face was positively radiant as his
eyes followed the first movement of the spikes.
'Wall!' he said, 'I guess I've not had enjoyment like this since I left
Noo York. Bar a scrap with a French sailor at Wapping--an' that
warn't much of a picnic neither--I've not had a show fur real pleasure
in this dod-rotted Continent, where there ain't no b'ars nor no Injuns,
an' wheer nary man goes heeled. Slow there, Judge! Don't you rush
this business! I want a show for my money this game--I du!'
The custodian must have had in him some of the blood of his
predecessors in that ghastly tower, for he worked the engine with a
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deliberate and excruciating slowness which after five minutes, in
which the outer edge of the door had not moved half as many inches,
began to overcome Amelia. I saw her lips whiten, and felt her hold
upon my arm relax. I looked around an instant for a place whereon to
lay her, and when I looked at her again found that her eye had
become fixed on the side of the Virgin. Following its direction I saw
the black cat crouching out of sight. Her green eyes shone like
danger lamps in the gloom of the place, and their colour was
heightened by the blood which still smeared her coat and reddened
her mouth. I cried out:
'The cat! look out for the cat!' for even then she sprang out before the
engine. At this moment she looked like a triumphant demon. Her
eyes blazed with ferocity, her hair bristled out till she seemed twice
her normal size, and her tail lashed about as does a tiger's when the
quarry is before it. Elias P. Hutcheson when he saw her was amused,
and his eyes positively sparkled with fun as he said:
'Darned if the squaw hain't got on all her war paint! Jest give her a
shove off if she comes any of her tricks on me, for I'm so fixed
everlastingly by the boss, that durn my skin if I can keep my eyes
from her if she wants them! Easy there, Judge! don't you slack that ar
rope or I'm euchered!'
At this moment Amelia completed her faint, and I had to clutch hold
of her round the waist or she would have fallen to the floor. Whilst
attending to her I saw the black cat crouching for a spring, and
jumped up to turn the creature out.
But at that instant, with a sort of hellish scream, she hurled herself,
not as we expected at Hutcheson, but straight at the face of the
custodian. Her claws seemed to be tearing wildly as one sees in the
Chinese drawings of the dragon rampant, and as I looked I saw one
of them light on the poor man's eye, and actually tear through it and
down his cheek, leaving a wide band of red where the blood seemed
to spurt from every vein.
With a yell of sheer terror which came quicker than even his sense of
pain, the man leaped back, dropping as he did so the rope which held
back the iron door. I jumped for it, but was too late, for the cord ran
like lightning through the pulley-block, and the heavy mass fell
forward from its own weight.
As the door closed I caught a glimpse of our poor companion's face.
He seemed frozen with terror. His eyes stared with a horrible anguish
as if dazed, and no sound came from his lips.
And then the spikes did their work. Happily the end was quick, for
when I wrenched open the door they had pierced so deep that they
had locked in the bones of the skull through which they had crushed,
and actually tore him--it--out of his iron prison till, bound as he was,
he fell at full length with a sickly thud upon the floor, the face
turning upward as he fell.
I rushed to my wife, lifted her up and carried her out, for I feared for
her very reason if she should wake from her faint to such a scene. I
laid her on the bench outside and ran back. Leaning against the
wooden column was the custodian moaning in pain whilst he held
his reddening handkerchief to his eyes. And sitting on the head of the
poor American was the cat, purring loudly as she licked the blood
which trickled through the gashed socket of his eyes.
I think no one will call me cruel because I seized one of the old
executioner's swords and shore her in two as she sat.
56) “FAMILY SUPPER” by KAZUO ISHIGUROA from
Bradbury, Malcolm, ed. The Penguin Book of Modern British
Short Stories. New York: Penguin. 1988
252
Fugu is a fish caught off the Pacific shores of Japan. The fish has
held a special significance for me ever since my mother died through
eating one. The poison resides in the sexual glands of the fish, inside
two fragile bags. When preparing the fish, these bags must be
removed with caution, for any clumsiness will result in the poison
leaking into the veins. Regrettably, it is not easy to tell whether or
not this operation has been carried out successfully. The proof is, as
it were, in the eating.
Fugu poisoning is hideously painful and almost always fatal. If the
fish has been eaten during the evening, the victim is usually
overtaken by pain during his sleep. He rolls about in agony for a few
hours and is dead by morning. The fish became extremely popular in
Japan after the war. Until stricter regulations were imposed, it was
all the rage to perform the hazardous gutting operation in one's own
kitchen, then to invite neighbours and friends round for the feast.
At the time of my mother's death, I was living in California. My
relationship with my parents had become somewhat strained around
that period, and consequently I did not learn of the circumstances
surrounding her death until I returned to Tokyo two years later.
Apparently, my mother had always refused to eat fugu, but on this
particular occasion she had made an exception, having been invited
by an old schoolfriend whom she was anxious not to offend. It was
my father who supplied me with the details as we drove from the
airport to his house in the Kamakura district. When we finally
arrived, it was nearing the end of a sunny autumn day,
'Did you eat on the plane?' my father asked. We were sitting on the
tatami floor of his tea-room.
'They gave me a light snack.'
'You must be hungry. We'll eat as soon as Kikuko arrives.'
My father was a formidable-looking man with a large stony jaw and
furious black eyebrows. I think now in retrospect that he much
resembled Chou En-lai, although he would not have cherished such a
comparison, being particularly proud of the pure samurai blood that
ran in the family. His general presence was not one which
encouraged relaxed conversation; neither were things helped much
by his odd way of stating each remark as if it were the concluding
one. In fact, as I sat opposite him that afternoon, a boyhood memory
came back to me of the time he had struck me several times around
the head for 'chattering like an old woman'. Inevitably, our
conversation since my arrival at the airport had been punctuated by
long pauses.
'I'm sorry to hear about the firm,' I said when neither of us had
spoken for some time. He nodded gravely.
'In fact the story didn't end there,' he said. 'After the firm's collapse,
Watanabe killed himself. He didn't wish to live with the disgrace.'
'I see.'
'We were partners for seventeen years. A man of principle and
honour. I respected him very much.'
'Will you go into business again?' I asked.
'I am - in retirement. I'm too old to involve myself in new ventures
now. Business these days has become so different. Dealing with
foreigners. Doing things their way. I don't understand how we've
come to this. Neither did Watanabe.' He sighed. 'A fine man. A man
of principle.'
The tea-room looked out over the garden. From where I sat I could
make out the ancient well which as a child I had believed haunted. It
was just visible now through the thick foliage. The sun had sunk low
and much of the garden had fallen into shadow.
253
'I'm glad in any case that you've decided to come back,' my father
said. 'More than a short visit, I hope.'
'I'm not sure what my plans will be.'
'I for one am prepared to forget the past. Your mother too was
always ready to welcome you back - upset as she was by your
behaviour.'
'I appreciate your sympathy. As I say, I'm not sure what my plans
are.'
'I've come to believe now that there were no evil intentions in your
mind,' my father continued. 'You were swayed by certain influences. Like so many others.'
My sister relaxed quite visibly once he had left the room. Within a
few minutes, she was chatting freely about her friends in Osaka and
about her classes at university. Then quite suddenly she decided we
should walk in the garden and went striding out onto the veranda.
We put on some straw sandals that had been left along the veranda
rail and stepped out into the garden. The daylight had almost gone.
'I've been dying for a smoke for the last half-hour,' she said, lighting
a cigarette.
'Then why didn't you smoke?'
She made a furtive gesture back towards the house, then grinned
mischievously.
'Oh I see,'I said.
'Perhaps we should forget it, as you suggest.'
'Guess what? I've got a boyfriend now.'
'As you will. More tea?'
'Oh yes?'
Just then a girl's voice came echoing through the house.
'Except I'm wondering what to do. I haven't made up my mind yet.'
'At last.' My father rose to his feet. 'Kikuko has arrived.'
'Quite understandable.'
Despite our difference in years, my sister and I had always been
close. Seeing me again seemed to make her excessively excited and
for a while she did nothing but giggle nervously. But she calmed
down somewhat when my father started to question her about Osaka
and her university. She answered him with short formal replies. She
in turn asked me a few questions, but she seemed inhibited by the
fear that her questions might lead to awkward topics. After a while,
the conversation had become even sparser than prior to Kikuko's
arrival. Then my father stood up, saying: 'I must attend to the supper.
Please excuse me for being burdened down by such matters. Kikuko
will look after you.'
'You see, he's making plans to go to America. He wants me to go
with him as soon as I finish studying.'
'I see. And you want to go to America?'
'If we go, we're going to hitch-hike.' Kikuko waved a thumb in front
of my face. 'People say it's dangerous, but I've done it in Osaka and
it's fine.'
'I see. So what is it you're unsure about?'
254
We were following a narrow path that wound through the shrubs
and finished by the old well. As we walked, Kikuko persisted in
taking unnecessarily theatrical puffs on her cigarette.
'Are you going back to California?'
'Well. I've got lots of friends now in Osaka. I like it there. I'm not
sure I want to leave them all behind just yet. And Suichi - I like him,
but I'm not sure I want to spend so much time with him. Do
you understand?' 'Oh perfectly.'
'What happened to - to her? To Vicki?'
She grinned again, then skipped on ahead of me until she had
reached the well. 'Do you remember,' she said, as I came walking up
to her, 'how you used to say this well was haunted?'
'Yes, I remember.'
We both peered over the side.
'Mother always told me it was the old woman from the vegetable
store you'd seen that night,' she said. 'But I never believed her and
never came out here alone.'
'Mother used to tell me that too. She even told me once the old
woman had confessed to being the ghost. Apparently she'd been
taking a short cut through our garden. I imagine she had some
trouble clambering over these walls.'
Kikuko gave a giggle. She then turned her back to the well, casting
her gaze about the garden.
'I don't know. I'll have to see.'
'That's all finished with,' I said. 'There's nothing much left for me
now in California.'
'Do you think I ought to go there?'
'Why not? I don't know. You'll probably like it.' I glanced towards
the house. 'Perhaps we'd better go in soon. Father might need a hand
with the supper.'
But my sister was once more peering down into the well. 'I can't see
any ghosts,' she said. Her voice echoed a little.
'Is Father very upset about his firm collapsing?'
'Don't know. You can never tell with Father.' Then suddenly she
straightened up and turned to me. 'Did he tell you about old
Watanabe? What he did?'
'I heard he committed suicide.'
'Well, that wasn't all. He took his whole family with him. His wife
and his two little girls.'
'Oh yes?'
'Mother never really blamed you, you know,' she said, in a new
voice. I remained silent. 'She always used to say to me how it was
then-fault, hers and Father's, for not bringing you up correctly. She
used to tell me how much more careful they'd been with me, and
that's why I was so good.' She looked up and the mischievous grin
had returned to her face. 'Poor Mother,' she said.
'Yes. Poor Mother.'
'Those two beautiful little girls. He turned on the gas while they
were all asleep. Then he cut his stomach with a meat knife.'
'Yes, Father was just telling me how Watanabe was a man of
principle.'
'Sick.' My sister turned back to the well.
255
'Careful. You'll fall right in.'
'Father's become quite a chef Since he's had to manage on his own,'
Kikuko said with a laugh. He turned and looked at my sister coldly.
'I can't see any ghost,' she said. 'You were lying to me all that time.'
'Hardly a skill I'm proud of,' he said. 'Kikuko, come here and help.'
'But I never said it lived down the well.'
'Where is it, then?'
We both looked around at the trees and shrubs. The light in the
garden had grown very dim. Eventually I pointed to a small clearing
some ten yards away.
'Just there I saw it. Just there.'
We stared at the spot.
For some moments my sister did not move. Then she stepped
forward and took an apron hanging from a drawer.
'Just these vegetables need cooking now,' he said to her. 'The rest
just needs watching.' Then he looked up and regarded me strangely
for some seconds. 'I expect you want to look around the house,' he
said eventually. He put down the chopsticks he had been holding.
'It's a long time since you've seen it.'
'What did it look like?'
As we left the kitchen I glanced back towards Kikuko, but her back
was turned.
'I couldn't see very well. It was dark.'
'She's a good girl,' my father said quietly.
'But you must have seen something.'
I followed my father from room to room. I had forgotten how large
the house was. A panel would slide open and another room would
appear. But the rooms were all startlingly empty. In one of the rooms
the lights did not come on, and we stared at the stark walls and
tatami in the pale light that came from the windows.
'It was an old woman. She was just standing there, watching me.'
We kept staring at the spot as if mesmerized.
'She was wearing a white kimono,' I said. 'Some of her hair had
come undone. It was blowing around a little.'
Kikuko pushed her elbow against my arm. 'Oh be quiet. You're
trying to frighten me all over again.' She trod on the remains of her
cigarette, then for a brief moment stood regarding it with a perplexed
expression. She kicked some pine needles over it, then once more
displayed her grin. 'Let's see if supper's ready,' she said.
We found my father in the kitchen. He gave us a quick glance, then
carried on with what he was doing.
'This house is too large for a man to live in alone,' my father said. 'I
don't have much use for most of these rooms now.'
But eventually my father opened the door to a room packed full of
books and papers. There were flowers in vases and pictures on the
walls. Then I noticed something on a low table in the corner of the
room. I came nearer and saw it was a plastic model of a battleship,
the kind constructed by children. It had been placed on some
newspaper; scattered around it were assorted pieces of grey plastic.
My father gave a laugh. He came up to the table and picked up the
model.
256
'Since the firm folded,' he said, 'I have a little more time on my
hands.' He laughed again, rather strangely. For a moment his face
looked almost gentle. 'A little more time.'
'That seems odd,' I said. 'You were always so busy.'
'Too busy perhaps.' He looked at me with a small smile. 'Perhaps I
should have been a more attentive father.'
I laughed. He went on contemplating his battleship. Then he looked
up. 'I hadn't meant to tell you this, but perhaps it's best that I do. It's
my belief that your mother's death was no accident. She had many
worries. And some disappointments.'
He cast an eye around the room. 'Supper should be ready by now,'
he said. 'You must be hungry.'
Supper was waiting in a dimly lit room next to the kitchen. The
only source of light was a big lantern that hung over the table,
casting the rest of the room into shadow. We bowed to each other
before starting the meal.
There was little conversation. When I made some polite comment
about the food, Kikuko giggled a little. Her earlier nervousness
seemed to have returned to her. My father did not speak for several
minutes. Finally he said:
'It must feel strange for you, being back in Japan.'
We both gazed at the plastic battleship.
'Yes, it is a little strange.'
'Surely,' I said eventually, 'my mother didn't expect me to live here
forever.'
'Already, perhaps, you regret leaving America.'
'Obviously you don't see. You don't see how it is for some parents.
Not only must they lose their children, they must lose them to things
they don't understand.' He spun the battleship in his fingers. 'These
little gunboats here could have been better glued, don't you think?'
'A little. Not so much. I didn't leave behind much. Just some empty
rooms.'
'Perhaps. I think it looks fine.'
I glanced across the table. My father's face looked stony and
forbidding in the half-light. We ate on in silence.
'I see.'
'During the war I spent some time on a ship rather like this. But my
ambition was always the air force. I figured it like this. If your ship
was struck by the enemy, all you could do was struggle in the water
hoping for a lifeline. But in an aeroplane - well - there was always
the final weapon.' He put the model back onto the table. 'I don't
suppose you believe in war.'
'Not particularly.'
Then my eye caught something at the back of the room. At first I
continued eating, then my hands became still. The others noticed and
looked at me. I went on gazing into the darkness past my father's
shoulder.
'Who is that? In that photograph there?'
'Which photograph?' My father turned slightly, trying to follow my
gaze.
'The lowest one. The old woman in the white kimono.'
257
My father put down his chopsticks. He looked first at the
photograph, then at me.
In amidst soup were strips of fish that had curled almost into balls. I
picked one out and brought it to my bowl.
'Your mother.' His voice had become very hard. 'Can't you
recognize your own mother?'
'Help yourself. There's plenty.'
'My mother. You see, it's dark. I can't see it very well.'
No one spoke for a few seconds, then Kikuko rose to her feet. She
took the photograph down from the wall, came back to the table and
gave it to me.
'Thank you.' I took a little more, then pushed the pot towards my
father. I watched him take several pieces to his bowl. Then we both
watched as Kikuko served herself.
'She looks a lot older,' I said.
My father bowed slightly. 'You must be hungry,' he said again. He
took some fish to his mouth and started to eat. Then I too chose a
piece and put it in my mouth. It felt soft, quite fleshy against my
tongue.
'It was taken shortly before her death,' said my father.
'Very good,' I said. 'What is it?'
'It was the dark. I couldn't see very well.'
'Just fish.'
I looked up and noticed my father holding out a hand. I gave him
the photograph. He looked at it intently, then held it towards Kikuko.
Obediently, my sister rose to her feet once more and returned the
picture to the wall.
'It's very good.'
The three of us ate on in silence. Several minutes went by.
'Some more?'
There was a large pot left unopened at the centre of the table. When
Kikuko had seated herself again, my father reached forward and
lifted the lid. A cloud of steam rose up and curled towards the
lantern. He pushed the pot a little towards me.
'You must be hungry,' he said. One side of his face had fallen into
shadow.
'Thank you.' I reached forward with my chopsticks. The steam was
almost scalding. 'What is it?'
'Fish.'
'Is there enough?'
'There's plenty for all of us.' My father lifted the lid and once more
steam rose up. We all reached forward and helped ourselves.
'Here,' I said to my father, 'you have this last piece.'
'Thank you.'
When we had finished the meal, my father stretched out his arms
and yawned with an air of satisfaction. 'Kikuko,' he said. 'Prepare a
pot of tea, please.'
'It smells very good.'
258
My sister looked at him, then left the room without comment. My
father stood up.
'If you wish to stay here, I mean here in this house, you would be
very welcome. That is, if you don't mind living with an old man.'
'Let's retire to the other room. It's rather warm in here.
'Thank you. I'll have to think about it.'
I got to my feet and followed him into the tea-room. The large
sliding windows had been left open, bringing in a breeze from the
garden. For a while we sat in silence.
I gazed out once more into the darkness.
'But of course,' said my father, 'this house is so dreary now. You'll
no doubt return to America before long.'
'Father,' I said, finally.
'Perhaps. I don't know yet.'
'Yes?'
'No doubt you will.'
'Kikuko tells me Watanabe-San took his whole family with him.'
My father lowered his eyes and nodded. For some moments he
seemed deep in thought. 'Watanabe was very devoted to his work,' he
said at last. 'The collapse of the firm was a great blow to him. I fear
it must have weakened his judgement.'
For some time my father seemed to be studying the back of his
hands. Then he looked up and sighed.
'Kikuko is due to complete her studies next spring,' he said.
'Perhaps she will want to come home then. She's a good girl.'
'You think what he did - it was a mistake?'
'Perhaps she will.'
'Why, of course. Do you see it otherwise?'
'Things will improve then.'
'No, no. Of course not.'
'Yes, I'm sure they will.'
'There are other things besides work.'
We fell silent once more, waiting for Kikuko to bring the tea.
'Yes.'
We fell silent again. The sound of locusts came in from the garden.
I looked out into the darkness. The well was no longer visible.
'What do you think you will do now?' my father asked. 'Will you
stay in Japan for a while?'
'To be honest, I hadn't thought that far ahead.'
_______________________________________57) “BAD
BLOOD”
From: Welsh, Irvine. Trainspotting. New York:
Norton. 1993.
I first meet Alan Venters through the 'HIV and Positive' self–help
group, although he wasn't part of that group for long. Venters didn't
look after himself very well, and soon developed one of the many
opportunistic infections we're prone to. I always find the term
'opportunistic infection' amusing. In our culture, it seems to invoke
some admirable quality. I think of the 'opportunism' of the
259
entrepreneur who spots a gap in the market, or that of the striker in
the penalty box. Tricky buggers, those opportunistic infections. The
members of the group were in a roughly similar medical condition.
We were all anti– body positive, but still largely asymptomatic.
Paranoia was never far from the surface at our meetings; everybody
seemed to be furtively checking out everyone else's lymph glands for
signs of swelling. It was disconcerting to feel people's eyes stray to
the side of your face during conversation. This type of behaviour
added further to the sense of unreality which hung over me at the
time. I really couldn't conceive of what had happened to me. The test
results at first just seemed unbelievable, so incongruous with the
healthy way I felt and looked. Part of me remained convinced that
there had to be a mistake, in spite of taking the test three times. My
self–delusion should have been shattered when Donna refused to see
me, but it was always hanging on in the background with a grim
resolution. We always seem to believe what we want to believe. I
stopped going to the group meetings after they put Alan Venters in
the hospice. It just depressed me and, anyway, I wanted to spend my
time visiting him. Tom, my key worker and one of the group
counsellors, reluctantly accepted my decision. – Look Dave, I think
that you seeing Alan in hospital is really great; for him. I'm more
concerned about you at the moment, though. You're in great health,
and the purpose of the group is to encourage us to make the most of
things. We don't stop living just because we're HIV positive. . . Poor
Tom. His first faux Pas of the day. – Is that the royal 'we' Tom?
When you're HIV positive, tell me aw about it. Tom's healthy, pink
cheeks flushed. He couldn't help it. Years of intensive interpersonal
skills practice had taught him to hide the nervy visual and verbal
giveaways. No shifty eye contact or quavering voice from him in the
face of embarrassment. Not old Tom. Unfortunately, Tom cannae do
a thing about the glowing red smears which rush up the side of his
face on such occasions. – I'm sorry, Tom apologised assertively. He
had the right to make mistakes. He always said that people had that
right. Try telling that to my damaged immune system. – I'm just
concerned that you're choosing to spend your time with Alan.
Watching him wasting away won't be good for you and, besides,
Alan was hardly the most positive member of the group. – He was
certainly the most HIV positive member. Tom chose to ignore my
remark. He had a right not to respond to the negative behaviour of
others. We all had such a right, he told us. I liked Tom; he ploughed
a lonely furrow, always trying to be positive. I thought that my job,
which involved watching slumbering bodies being opened up by the
cruel scalpel of Howison, was depressing and alienating. It’s a
veritable picnic however, compared to watching souls being
wrenched apart. That was what Tom had to put up with at the group
meetings. Most members of 'HIV and Positive' were intravenous
drug–users. They picked up HIV from the shooting galleries which
flourished in the city in the mid–eighties, after the Bread Street
surgical suppliers was shut down. That stopped the flow of fresh
needles and syringes. After that, it was large communal syringes and
share and share alike. I've got a mate called Tommy who started
using smack through hanging around with these guys in Leith. One
of them I know, a guy called Mark Renton, whom I worked with
way back in my chippy days. It's ironic that Mark has been shooting
smack for years, and is, so far as I know, still not infected with HIV,
while I've never touched the stuff in my life. There were, however,
enough smack–heads present in the group to make you realise that he
could be the exception, rather than the rule. Group meetings were
generally tense affairs. The junkies resented the two homosexuals in
the group. They believed that HIV originally spread into the city's
drug–using community through an exploitative buftie landlord, who
fucked his sick junky tenants for the rent. Myself and two women,
one the non– drug–using partner of a junk addict, resented everyone
as we were neither homosexual nor junkies. At first I, like everyone
else, believed that I had been 'innocently' infected. It was all too easy
to blame the smack–heads or the buftie–boys at that time. However,
I had seen the posters and read the leaflets. I remember in the punk
era, the Sex Pistols saying that 'no one is innocent'. Too true. What
260
also has to be said though, is that some are more guilty than others.
This brings me back to Venters. I gave him a chance; a chance to
show repentance. This was a sight more than the bastard deserved.
At a group session, I told the first of several lies, the trail of which
would lead to my grip on the soul of Alan Venters. I told the group
that I had had unprotected, penetrative sex with people, knowing full
well that I was HIV positive, and that I now regretted it. The room
went deathly silent. People shifted nervously in their seats. Then a
woman called Linda began to cry, shaking her head. Tom asked her
if she wanted to leave the meeting. She said no, she would wait and
hear what people had to say, venomously addressing her reply in my
direction. I was largely oblivious to her anger though; I never took
my eyes off Venters. He had that characteristic, perpetually bored
expression on his face. I was sure a faint smile briefly played across
his lips. – That was a very brave thing to say, Davie. I'm sure it took
a lot of courage, Tom said solemnly. Not really you doss prick, it
was a fucking lie. I shrugged.
– I'm sure a terrific burden of guilt has been lifted from you, Tom
continued, raising his brows, inviting me to come in. I accepted the
opportunity this time. – Yes, Tom. Just to be able to share it with you
all. It's terrible . . . I don't expect people to forgive . . . The other
woman in the group, Marjory, directed a sneering insult towards me,
which I didn't quite catch, while Linda continued crying. No reaction
was forthcoming from the cunt who sat in the chair opposite me. His
selfishness and lack of morality sickened me. I wanted to take him
apart with my bare hands, there and then. I fought to control me
senses, savouring the richness of my plan to destroy him. The
disease could have his body; that was its victory, whatever malignant
force it was. Mine would be a greater one, a more crushing one. I
wanted his spirit. I planned to carve mortal wounds into his
supposedly everlasting soul. Ay–men. Tom looked around the circle:
– Does anyone empathise with Davie? How do people feel about
this? After a bout of silence, during which my eyes stayed trained on
the impassive figure of Venters, Wee Goagsie, a junky in the group,
started to croak nervously. Then he blurted out, in a terrible rant,
what I'd been waiting for from Venters.
– Ah'm gled Davie sais that . . . ah did the same. . . ah did the fuckin
same . . . an innocent lassie that nivir did a fuckin thing tae naebody .
. . ah jist hated the world . .. ah mean . . . ah thought, how the fuck
should ah care? What huv ah goat fae life .. . ah'm twenty–three an
ah've hud nothin, no even a fuckin joab . . . why should ah care . . .
whin ah telt the lassie, she jist freaked . . . he sobbed like a child.
Then he looked up at us and produced, through his tears, the most
beautiful smile I have ever seen on any one in my life. – . . . but it
wis awright. She took the test. Three times ower six months. Nuthin.
Shi wisnae infected .. Marjory, who in the same circumstances was
infected, hissed at us. Then it happened. That cunt Venters rolled his
eyes and smiled at me. That did it. That was the moment. The anger
was still there, but it was fused with a great calmness, a powerful
clarity. I smiled back at him, feeling like a semi–submerged
crocodile eyeing a soft, furry animal drinking at the river's edge. –
Naw . . . wee Goagsie whined piteously at Marjory, – it wisnae like
that . . . waitin fir her test results wis worse thin waiting fir ma ain . .
yis dinnae understand . . . ah didnae .. . ah mean ah dinnae . . . it's no
like . . . Tom came to the aid of the quivering, inarticulate mass he
had become. – Let's not forget the tremendous anger, resentment and
bitterness that you all felt when you learned that you were anti–body
positive. This was the cue for one of our customary, on–going series
of arguments to shunt into full gear. Tom saw it as 'dealing with our
anger' by 'confronting reality'. The process was supposed to be
therapeutic, and indeed it seemed to be for many of the group, but I
found it exhausting and depressing. Perhaps this was because, at the
time, my personal agenda was different. Throughout this debate on
personal responsibility, Venters, as was typical on such occasions,
made his customary helpful and enlightening contribution. – Shite,
he exclaimed, whenever someone made a point with passion. Tom
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would ask him, as he always did, why he felt that way. – Jist do,
Venters replied with a shrug. Tom asked if he could explain why. –
It's jist one person's view against the other's. Tom responded by
asking Alan what his view was. Alan either said: Ah'm no bothered,
or: Ah dinnae gie a fuck. I forget his exact words. Tom then asked
him why he was here. Venters said: – Ah'll go then. He left, and the
atmosphere instantly improved. It was as if someone who had done a
vile and odious fart had somehow sucked it back up their arsehole.
He came back though, as he always did, sporting that sneering,
gloating expression. It was as if Venters believed that he alone was
immortal. He enjoyed watching others trying to be positive, then
deflating them. Never blatantly enough to get kicked out of the
group, but enough to significantly lower its morale. The disease
which racked his body was a sweetheart compared to the more
obscure one that possessed his sick mind.
Ironically, Venters saw me as a kindred spirit, unaware that my sole
purpose of attending the meetings was to scrutinise him. I never
spoke in the group, and perfected a cynical look whenever anyone
else did. Such behaviour provided the basis on which I was able to
pal up with Alan Venters. It had been easy to befriend this guy.
Nobody else wanted to know him; I simply became his friend by
default. We started drinking together; him recklessly, me carefully. I
began to learn about his life, accumulating knowledge steadily,
thoroughly and systematically. I had done a degree in Chemistry at
Strathclyde University, but I never approached my studies of that
subject with anything like the rigour or enthusiasm with which I
approached the study of Venters. Venters had got HIV infection, like
most people in Edinburgh, through the sharing of needles while
taking heroin. Ironically, prior to being diagnosed HIV positive, he
had kicked the junk, but was now a hopeless pisshead. The way he
drank indiscriminately, occasionally stuffing a pub roll or toastie into
his face during a marathon drinking bout, meant that his weakened
frame was easy prey to all sorts of potentially killer infections.
During his period of socialising with me, I confidently prophesied
that he would last no time. That was how it turned out; a number of
infections were soon coursing through his body. This made no
difference to him. Venters carried on behaving as he had always
done. He started to attend the hospice, or the unit, as they called it;
first as an outpatient, then with a berth of his very own. It always
seemed to be raining when I made that journey to the hospice; a wet,
freezing, persistent rain, with winds that cut through your layers of
clothing like an X–ray. Chills equal colds and colds can equal death,
but this meant little to me at the time. Now, of course, I look after
myself. Then, however, I had an all– consuming mission: there was
work to be done. The hospice building is not unattractive. They have
faced over the grey blocks with some nice yellow brickwork. There
is no yellow brick approach road to the place, however. Every visit
to Alan Venters brought my last one, and my final revenge, closer to
hand. The point soon came when there was no time left to try and
illicit heartfelt apologies from him. At one stage I thought that I
wanted repentance from Venters more than revenge for myself. If I
got it, I would have died with a belief in the fundamental goodness
of the human spirit. The shrivelled vessel of skin and bone which
contained the life–force of Venters seemed to be an inadequate home
for a spirit of any sorts, let alone one in which to invest your hopes
for humanity. However, a weakened, decaying body was supposed to
bring the spirit closer to the surface, and make it more apparent to we
mortals. That was what Gillian from the hospital where I worked told
me. Gillian is very religious, and it suits her to believe that. We all
see what we want to see. What did I really want? Perhaps it was
always revenge, rather than repentance. Venters could have babbled
for forgiveness like a greetin–faced bairn. It might not have been
enough to stop me from doing what I planned to do. This internal
discoursing; it's a by–product of all that counselling I got from Tom.
He emphasised basic truths: you are not dying yet, you have to live
your life until you are. Underpinning them was the belief that the
grim reality. Of impending death can be talked away by trying to
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invest in the present reality of life. I didn't believe that at the time,
but now I do. By definition, you have to live until you die. Better to
make that life as complete and enjoyable an experience as possible,
in case death is shite, which I suspect it will be. The nurse at the
hospital looked a bit like Gail, a woman I'd once gone out with,
pretty disastrously, as it happens. She wore the same cool expression
on her face. In her case she had good reason, as I recognised it as one
of professional concern. In Gail's case, such detachment was, I feel,
inappropriate. This nurse looked at me in that strained, serious and
patronising way. – Alan's very weak. Please don't stay too long. – I
understand, I smiled, benign and sombre. As she was playing the
caring professional, I thought that I had better play the concerned
friend. I seemed to be playing the part quite well. – He's very
fortunate to have such a good friend, she said, obviously perplexed
that such a bastard abomination could have any friends. I grunted
something noncommittal and moved into the small room. Alan
looked terrible. I was worried sick; gravely concerned that this
bastard might not last the week, that he might escape from the
terrible destiny I'd carved out for him. The timing had to be right. It
had given me great pleasure, at the start, to witness Venters's great
physical agony. I will never let myself get into a state like that when
I get sick; fuck that. I'll leave that engine running in the lock–up
garage. Venters, shite that he is, did not have the guts to leave the gig
of his own accord. He'd hang 'on till the grim end, if only to
maximise the inconvenience to everyone. – Awright Al? I asked him.
A silly question really. Convention always imposes its lunacy on us
at such inappropriate times. – No bad . . . he wheezed. Are you quite
sure, Alan, dear boy? Nothing wrong? You look a bit peaky.
Probably just a touch of this little bug that's doing the rounds.
Straight to bed with a couple of disprins and you'll be as right as rain
tomorrow. – Any pain? I ask hopefully. – Naw . . . they goat drugs . .
. jist ma breathin . . . I held his hand and felt a twinge of amusement
as his pathetic, bony fingers squeezed tightly. I thought I was going
to laugh in his skeletal face as his tired eyes kept shutting. Alas poor
Alan, I knew him Nurse. He was a wanker, an infinite pest. I
watched, stifling smirks, as he groped for breath. – S awright mate.
Ah'm here, I said. – You're a good guy, Davie . . . he spluttered. – . . .
pity we nivir knew each other before this. . . He opened his eyes and
shut them again. – It was a fuckin pity awright you trash–faced little
cunt. . I hissed at his closed eyes. – What? . . . what was that . . . he
was delirious with fatigue and drugs. Lazy cunt. Spends too long in
that scratcher. Should get off his hole for a wee bit of exercise. A
quick jog around the park. Fifty press–ups. Two dozen squat thrusts.
– I said, it's a shame we had to meet under such circumstances. He
groaned contentedly and fell into a sleep. I extracted his scrawny
fingers from my hand. Unpleasant dreams, cunt. The nurse came in
to check on my man. – Most anti–social. Hardly the way to treat a
guest, I smiled, looking down on the slumbering near–corpse that
was Venters. She forced a nervous laugh, probably thinking it's the
black humour of the homosexual or the junky, or the haemophiliac or
whatever she imagines me to be. I don't give a toss about her
perception of me. I see myself as the avenging angel. Killing this
shitebag would only do him a big favour. That was the problem, but
one which I managed to resolve. How do you hurt a man who's
going to die soon, knows it, and doesnae give a toss? Talking, but
more crucially, listening to Venters, I found out how. You hurt them
through the living. through the people they care for. The song says
that 'everybody loves somebody sometime', but Venters seemed to
defy that generalisation. The man just did not like people, and they
more than reciprocated. With other me'n Venters saw himself in an
adversarial role. Past acquaintances were described with bitterness: 'a
rip–off merchant', or derision: 'a fuckin sap'. The description
employed depended on who had abused, exploited or manipulated
whom, on the particular occasion in question. Women fell into two
indistinct categories. They either had 'a fanny like a fish supper', or 'a
fanny like a burst couch'. Venters evidently saw little in a woman
beyond 'the furry hole', as he called it. Even some disparaging
remarks about their tits or arses would have represented a
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considerable broadening of vision. I got despondent. How could this
bastard ever love anybody? I gave it time, however, and patience
reaped its reward. Despicable shite though he was, Venters did care
for one person. There was no mistaking the change in his
conversational tone when he employed the phrase: 'the wee felly'. I
discreetly pumped him for information about the five–year–old son
he had by this woman in Wester Hailes, a 'cow' who would not let
him see the child, named Kevin. Part of me loved this woman
already. The child showed me how Venters could be hurt. In contrast
to his normal bearing, he was stricken with pain and incoherent with
sentiment when he talked about how he'd never see his son grow up,
about how much he loved 'the wee felly'. That was why Venters did
not fear death. He actually believed that he would live on, in some
sense or other, through his son. It hadn't been difficult to insinuate
myself into the life of Frances,' Venters's ex–girlfriend. She hated
Venters with a vitriol which endeared her to me even though I wasn't
attracted to her in any other way. After checking her out, I cruised
her accidentally–on–purpose at a trashy disco, where I played the
role of charming and attentive suitor. Of course, money was no
object. She was soon well into it, obviously having never been
treated decently by a man in her life, and she wasn't used to cash,
living on the breadline with a kid to bring up. The worst part was
when it came to sex. I insisted, of course, on wearing a condom. She
had, prior to us getting to that stage, told me about Venters. I nobly
said that I trusted her and would be prepared to make love without a
condom, but I wanted to remove the element of uncertainty from her
mind, and I had to be honest, I had been with a few different people.
Given her past experience with Venters, such doubts were bound to
be present. When she started to cry, I thought I had blown it. Her
tears were due to gratitude however. – You're a really nice person,
Davie, dae ye ken that? She said. If she knew what I was going to do,
she wouldn’t have held such a lofty opinion. It made me feel bad, but
whenever I thought of Venters, the feeling evaporated. I would go
through with it alright. I timed my courtship of Frances to coincide
with Venter's decline into serious illness and his attendant incapacity
in the hospice. A number of illnesses were in the frame to finish
Venters, the leader of the field being pneumonia. Venters, in
common with a lot of HIV–infected punters who take the junk route,
escaped the horrible skin cancers more prevalent amongst gays. The
main rival to his pneumonia was the prolific thrush which went into
his throat and stomach. Thrush was not the first thing to want to
choke the living shit out of the bastard, but it could be the last unless
I moved quickly. His decline was very rapid, at one stage too rapid
for my liking. I thought that the cunt would cash in his chips before I
could execute my plan. My opportunity came, in the event, at exactly
the right time; in the end it was probably fifty–fifty luck and
planning. Venters was struggling, no more than a wrinkled parcel of
skin and bone. The doctor had said: any day now. I had got Frances
to trust me with the babysitting. I encouraged her to get out with her
friends. She was planning to go out for a curry on the Saturday night,
leaving me alone in her flat with the kid. I would take the
opportunity presented to me. On the Wednesday before the big day, I
decided to visit my parents. I had thought about telling them of my
medical condition, and knew it would probably be my last visit. My
parents' home was a flat in Oxgangs. The place had always seemed
so modern to me when I was a kid. Now it looked strange, a
shantytown relic of a bygone era. The auld girl answered the door.
For a second she looked tentative. Then she realised it was me and
not my younger brother, and therefore the purse could be kept in
mothballs. She welcomed me, her enthusiasm generated by relief. –
Hu–low stranger, she sang, ushering me in with haste. I noted the
reason for the hurry, Coronation Street was on. Mike Baldwin had
apparently reached a point where he had to confront live–in–lover
Alma Sedgewick and tell her that he was really into rich widow
Jackie Ingram. Mike couldn't help it. He was a prisoner of love, a
force external to him, which compelled him to behave the way he
did. I could, as Tom would have put it, empathise. I was a prisoner of
hate, a force which was an equally demanding taskmaster. I sat down
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on the couch. – Hello stranger, ma old man repeated, not looking at
me from behind his Evening News. –What have you been up tae
then? he asked wearily. – Nuthin' much. Nothing really pater. Oh,
did I mention I'm antibody positive? It's very fashionable now. you
know. One simply must have a damaged immune system these days.
– Two million Chinkies. Two million ay the buggers. That's whit
we're gaunnae huv ower here whin Hong Kong goes back tae China.
He let out a long exhalation of breath. – Two million Wee Willie
Winkies, he mused. I said nothing, refusing to rise to the bait. Ever
since I'd gone to university, jacking in what my parents habitually
described as 'a good trade', the auld man had cast himself as hard–
nosed reactionary to my student revolutionary. At first it had been a
joke, but with the passing years I grew out of my role as he began to
embrace his more firmly. – You're a fascist. It's all to do with
inadequate penis size, I told him cheerfully. Coronation Street's
vice–like grip on my Ma's psyche was broken briefly as she turned to
us with a knowing smirk. – Dinnae talk bloody nonsense. Ah've
proved ma manhood son, he belligerently replied, digging at the fact
I'd managed to reach the age of twenty–five without obtaining a wife
or producing children. For a second I even thought that he was going
to pull out his cock to try and prove me wrong. Instead he shrugged
off my remark and returned to his chosen theme. – How'd you like
two million Chinkies in your street? I thought of the term 'Chinky'
and visualised loads of aluminium cartons of half–eaten food lying in
my road. It was an easy image to call to mind, as it was a scene I
observed every Sunday morning. – It sometimes seems like I already
huv, I thought out loud.
– There ye are then, he said, as if I'd conceded a point. –Another two
million ur oan thir way. How'd ye like that? – Presumably the whole
two million won't move into Caledonian Place. I mean, conditions
are cramped enough in the Dairy ghetto as it is. – Laugh if ye like.
Whit aboot joabs? Two million on the dole already. Hooses? Aw
they perr buggers livin in cardboard city. God, was he nipping my
heid. Thankfully, the mighty Ma, guardian of the soap box,
intervened. – Shut up, will yis! Ah'm tryin tae watch the telly! Sorry
mater. I know that it's a trifle self–indulgent of me, your HIV
offspring to crave your attention when Mike Baldwin is making an
important choice which will determine his future. Which grotesque
auld hing–oot will the shrivelled post–menopausal slag want tae
shaft? Stay tuned, I decide not to mention my HIV. My parents don't
have very progressive views on such things. Or maybe they do. Who
knows? At any rate, it just did not feel right. Tom always tells us to
keep in tune with our feelings. My feelings were that my parents
married at eighteen and had produced four screaming brats by the
time they were my age. They think i'm 'queer' already. Bringing
AIDS into the picture will only serve to confirm this suspicion.
Instead I drank a can of Export and quietly talked fitba with the auld
man. He hasn't been to a game since 1970. Colour television had
gone for his legs. Twenty years later, satellite came along and fucked
them up completely. Nonetheless, he still regarded himself as an
expert on the game. The opinions of others were worthless. In any
event, it was a waste of time attempting to venture them. As with
politics, he'd eventually come around to the opposite viewpoint from
the one he'd previously advocated and express it just as stridently.
All you needed to do was put up no hard front for him to argue
against and he'd gradually talk himself around to your way of
thinking. I sat for a while, nodding intently. Then I made some banal
excuse and left. I returned home and checked my toolbox. A former
chippie's collection of various sharp implements. On Saturday, I took
it round to Frances's flat in Wester Hailes. I had a few odd jobs to do.
One of them she knew nothing about. Fran had been looking forward
to the meal out with her pals. She talked incessantly as she got ready.
I tried to respond beyond a series of low groans which sounded like
'aye' and 'right', but my mind was spinning with thoughts of what I
had to do. I sat hunched and tense on the bed, frequently rising to the
window to peer out, as she put her 'face' on. After what seemed like a
lifetime, I heard the sound of a motor rolling into the deserted,
265
shabby car park. I sprang to the window, cheerfully announcing: –
Taxi's here! Frances left me in custody of her sleeping child.
The whole operation went smoothly enough. Afterwards I felt
terrible. Was I any better than Venters? Wee Kevin. We had some
good times together. I'd taken him to the shows at the Meadows
festival, to Kirkcaldy for a League Cup tie, and to the Museum of
Childhood. While it doesn't seem a great deal, it's a sight more than
his auld boy ever did for the poor wee bastard. Frances said as much
to me. Bad as I felt then, it was only a foretaste of the horror that hit
me when I developed the photographs. As the prints formed into
clarity, I shook with fear and remorse. I put them on the dryer and
made myself a coffee, which I used to wash down two Valium. Then
I took the prints and went to the hospice to visit Venters. Physically,
there was not a great deal left of him. I feared the worst when I
looked into his glazed eyes. Some people with AIDS had been
developing pre–senile dementia. The disease could have his body. If
it had also taken his mind, it would deprive me of my revenge.
Thankfully, Venters soon registered my presence, his initial lack of
response probably a side–effect of the medication he was on. His
eyes soon fixed me in their gaze, acquiring the sneaky, furtive look I
associated with him. I could feel his contempt for me oozing through
his sickly smile. He thought he'd found a sappy cunt to indulge him
until the end. I sat with him, holding his hand. I felt like snapping off
his scrawny fingers and sticking them into his orifices. I blamed him
for what I had to do to Kevin, as well as all the other issues. – You're
a good guy Davie. Pity we didnae meet in different circumstances,
he wheezed, repeating that well–worn phrase he used on all my
visits. I tightened my grasp on his hand. He looked at me
uncomprehendingly. Good. The bastard could still feel physical pain.
It wasn't going to be that kind of pain which would hurt him, but it
was a nice extra. I spoke in clear, measured tones. – I told you I got
infected through shooting up, Al. Well, I lied. I lied tae ye aboot tons
ay things. – What's aw this, Davie? – Just listen for a minute, Al. Ah
got infected through this bird ah'd been seein. She didnae ken thit she
wis HIV. She goat infected by a piece ay shite that she met one night
in a pub. She was a bit pished and a bit naive, this wee bird. Ken?
This cunt sais that he had a wee bit ay dope back at his gaff. So she
went wi the cunt. Back tae his flat. The bastard raped her. Ye ken
whit he did, Al? 254 – Davie . . . whit is this . . . – Ah'll fuckin tell
ye. Threatened her wi a fuckin blade. Tied her doon. Fucked her
fanny, fucked her arse, made her go doon oan him. The lassie wis
terrified, as well as being hurt. Does this sound familiar then cunt? –
Ah dinnae . . . ah dinnae ken whit the fuck yir oan aboot Davie . . . –
Di–nnae fah–kin start. You remember Donna. You remember the
Southern Bar. – Ah wis fucked up man . . . – you remember whit you
sais . . – That wis lies. Bullshit. Ah couldnae huv goat a fuckin root
oan if ah knew ah hud that shite in ma come. Ah couldnae huv raised
a fuckin smile. – Wee Goagsie . . . mind ay him? – Shut yir fuckin
mooth. Wee Goagsie took his fuckin chance. You sat thair like it wis
a fuckin pantomime whin you hud yours, I rasped, watching drops of
my gob disseminate into the film of sweat which covered his
shrunken coupon. I composed myself, continuing my story. – The
lassie went through a heavy time. She was strong willed though. It
would huv fucked up a lot ay women, but Donna tried tae shrug it off
Why let one spunk–gobbed cunt ruin your life? Easier said than
done, but she did it. What she didnae ken wis thit the scumbag in
question wis HIV positive. Then she meets this other guy. They hit it
off. He likes her, but he kens that she's goat problems wi men and
sex. Nae fuckin wonder, eh? I wanted to strangle the perverse force
which passed for life out of the cunt's body. Not yet, I told myself.
Not yet, you doss fucker. I drew a heavy breath, and continued my
tale, relivin~ the horror of it. – They worked it oot, this lassie and the
other guy. Things were barry for a bit. Then she discovered that the
rapist fuckbag was HIV. Then she discovered that she was. But what
was worse for this person, a real person, a fuckin moral person, was
when she found out that her new felly was. All because of you, the
rapist cunt. Ah wis the new felly. Me. Big fuckin sap here, I pointed
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to myself. – Davie . . . ah'm sorry man . . . – whit kin ah say? Yiv
been a good mate . . . it's that disease . . . it's a fuckin horrible
disease, Davie. It kills the innocent, Davie . . . it kills the innocent . ..
– It's too late fir that shite now. Ye hud yir chance at the time. Like
Wee Goagsie.
He laughed in my face. It was a deep, wheezing sound. – So what are
ye . . . what are ye gaunnae dae aboot it? . . Kill me? Go ahead .. .
ye'd be daein us a favour . . . ah dinnae gie a fuck. His wizened death
mask seemed to become animated, to fill with a strange, ugly energy.
This was not a human being. Obviously, it suited me to believe that,
made it easier to do what I had to do, but in cold light of day I
believe it still. It was time to play my cards. I calmly produced the
photographs from my inside pocket. – It's not so much what ah'm
gaunnae dae aboot it, mair what ah already have done ahoot it, I
smiled, drinking the expression of perplexed fear which etched onto
his face. – Whit's this . . . whit dae ye mean? I felt wonderful. Shock
waves tripped over him, his scrawny head oscillating as his mind
grappled with his greatest fears. He looked at the photographs in
terror, unable to make them out, wondering what dreadful secrets
they held. – Think of the worst possible thing I could do to make you
pissed off, Al. Then multiply it by one thousand . . and you're not
even fuckin close. I shook my head mournfully. I showed him a
photograph of myself and Frances. We were posing confidently,
casually displaying the arrogance of lovers in their first flush. – What
the fuck, he spluttered, trying pathetically to pull his scrawny frame
up in the bed. I thrust my hand to his chest and effortlessly pushed
him back home. I did this slowly, savouring my power, and his
impotence in that one gorgeous motion. – Relax, Al, relax. Unwind.
Loosen up a little. Take it easy. Remember what the doctors and
nurses say. You need your rest. I flipped the first photo over,
exposing the next picture to him. – That wis Kevin thit took the last
picture. Takes a good photae fir a wee laddie, eh? There he is, the
wee felly. The next photograph showed Kevin, dressed in a Scotland
football strip, on my shoulders. – What have you fuckin done. . . It
was a sound, rather than a voice It seemed to come from an
unspecific part of his decaying body rather than his mouth. The
unearthliness of it stung me, but I made the effort to continue
sounding nonchalant. – Basically this. I produced the third photo. It
showed Kevin, bound to a kitchen chair. His head hung heavily to
one side, and his eyes were closed. Had Venters looked at the detail,
he may have noticed a bluish tint to his son’s eyelids and lips, and
the almost clownish whiteness of his complexion. It's almost certain
that all Venters noticed were the dark wounds on his head, chest, and
knees, and the blood which oozed from them, covering his body, at
first making it hard to note that he was naked. The blood was
everywhere. It covered the lino in a dark puddle underneath Kevin's
chair. Some of it shot outwards across the kitchen floor in squirted
trails. An assortment of power tools, including a Bosch drill and a
Black and Decker sander, in addition to various sharpened knives
and screwdrivers, were laid out at the feet of the upright body. –
Naw . . . naw . . . Kevin . . . for god's sake naw . . . he done nuthin . .
. he hurt naebody . . . naw . . . he moaned on, an ugly, whingey sound
devoid of hope or humanity. I gripped his thin hair crudely, and
wrenched his head up from the pillow. I observed in perverse
fascination as the bony skull seemed to sink to the bottom of the
loose skin. I thrust the picture in his face. – I thought that young Kev
should be just like Daddy. So when I got bored fucking your old
girlfriend, I decided I'd give wee Kev one up his . . . eh . . .
tradesman's entrance. I thought, if HIV's good enough for Daddy it's
good enough for his brat. – Kevin . . . Kevin . . . he groaned on. –
Unfortunately, his arsehole was a bit too tight for me, so I had to
extend it a little with the masonry drill. Sadly, I got a wee bit carried
away and started making holes all over the place. It's just that he
reminded me so much of you, Al. I'd love to say it was painless, but I
cannae. At least it was relatively quick. Quicker than rotting away in
a bed. It took him about twenty minutes to die. Twenty screaming,
miserable minutes. Poor Kev. As you sais, Al, it’s a disease which
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kills the innocent. Tears rolled down his cheeks. He kept saying 'no'
over and over again in low, choking sobs. His head jerked in my
grip. Worried that the nurse would come, I pulled out one of the
pillows from behind him. – The last word wee Kevin sais wis
'Daddy'. That wis yir bairn's last words, Al. Sorry pal. Daddy's away.
That wis whit ah telt him. Daddy's away. I looked straight into his
eyes, all pupils, just a black void of fear and total defeat.
I pushed his head back down, and put the pillow over his face stifling
the sickening moans. I held it firmly down and pressed my head on
it, half–gasping, half–singing the paraphrased words of an old Boney
M song: 'Daddy, Daddy Cool, Daddy, Daddy Cool . . . you been a
fuckin fool, bye bye Daddy Cool . . .' I merrily sang until Venter's
feeble resistance subsided. Keeping the pillow firmly over his face, I
pulled a penthouse magazine off his locker. The bastard would have
been too weak to even turn the pages, let alone raise a wank.
However, his homophobia was so strong that he'd probably kept it on
prominent display to make some absurd statement about his
sexuality. Rotting away, and his greatest concern is that nobody
thinks he's a buftie. I set the magazine on the pillow and thumbed
through it in a leisurely manner before taking Venters's pulse.
Nothing. He'd checked out. More importantly, he'd done it in a state
of tortured, agonised, misery. Taking the pillow off the corpse, I
pulled its ugly frail head forward, then let it fall back. For a few
moments I contemplated what I saw before me. The eyes were open,
as was the mouth. It looked stupid, a sick caricature of a human
being. I suppose that's what corpses are. Mind you, Venters always
was. My searing scorn quickly gave way to a surge of sadness. I
couldn't quite determine why that should have happened. I looked
away from the body. After sitting for another couple of minutes, I
went to tell the nurse that Venters had left the stadium. I attended
Venters's funeral at Seafield Crematorium with Frances. It was an
emotional time for her, and I felt obliged to lend support. It was
never an event destined to break any attendance records. His mother
and sister showed up, as did Tom, with a couple of punters from
'HIV and Positive'. The minister could find little decent to say about
Venters and, to his credit, he didn't bullshit. It was a short and sweet
performance. Alan had made many mistakes in his life, he said.
Nobody was contradicting him. Alan would, like all of us, be judged
by God, who would grant him salvation. It is an interesting notion,
but I feel that the gaffer in the sky has a fair bit of graft ahead of him
if that bastard’s checked in up there. If he has, I think I'll take my
chances in the other place, thank you very much. Outside, I checked
out the wreaths. Venters only had one. 'Alan. Love Mum and Sylvia.'
To my knowledge they had never visited him in the hospice. Very
wise of them. Some people are easier to love when you don't have to
be around them. I pumped the hands of Tom and the others, then
took Fran and Kev for some de luxe ice–cream at Lucas in
Musselburgh. Obviously, I had deceived Venters about the things I
did to Kevin. Unlike him, I'm not a fuckin animal. I'm far from proud
about what I did do. I took great risks with the bairn's well being.
Working in a hospital operating theatre, I know all about the crucial
role of the anaesthetist. They're the punters that keep you alive, not
sadistic fuck–pigs like Howison. After the jab puts you under, you're
kept unconscious by the anaesthetic and put onto a life–support
system. All your vital signs are monitored in highly controlled
conditions. They take care. Chloroform is much more of a blunt
instrument, and very dangerous. I still shudder when I think of the
risk I took with the wee man. Thankfully, Kevin woke up, with only
a sore head and some bad dreams as a remnant of his trip to the
kitchen. The joke shop and Humbrol enamel paints provided the
wounds. I worked wonders with Fran's makeup and talc for Kev’s
death mask. My greatest coup, though, was the three plastic pint bags
of blood I took from the fridge in the path lab at the hospital. I got
paranoid when that fucker Howison gave me the evil eye as I walked
down the corridor past him. He always does though. I think it's
because I once addressed him as 'Doctor' instead of 'Mister'. He's a
funny cunt. Most surgeons are. You'd have to be to do that job. Like
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Tom's job, I suppose. Putting Kevin under turned out to be easy. The
biggest problem I had was setting up and dismantling the entire
scene inside half an hour. The most difficult part involved cleaning
him up before getting him back to bed. I had to use turps as well as
water. I spent the rest of the night cleaning up the kitchen before
Frances got back. It was worth the effort however. The pictures
looked authentic. Authentic enough to fuck up Venters. Since I
helped Al on his way to the great gig in the sky, life has been pretty
good. Frances and I have gone our separate ways. We were never
really compatible. She only really saw me as a babysitter and a
wallet. For me, obviously, the relationship became largely
superfluous after Venters's death. I miss Kev more. It makes me wish
that I had a kid. Now that'll never be. One thing that Fran did say
was that I had revived her faith in men after Venters. Ironically, it
seems as if I found my role in life – cleaning up that prick's
emotional garbage. My health, touch wood, has been good. I'm still
asymptomatic. I fear colds and get obsessive from time to time, but I
take care of myself. Apart from the odd can of beer, I never bevvy. I
watch what I eat, and have a daily programme of light exercises. I
get regular blood checks and pay attention to my T4 count. It's still
way over the crucial 800 mark; in fact it's not gone down at all. I'm
now back with Donna, who inadvertently acted as the conduit for
HIV between me and Venters. We found something that we probably
wouldn't have got from each other in different circumstances. Or
maybe we would. Anyway, we don't analyse it, not having the luxury
of time. However, I must give old Tom at the group his due. He said
that I'd have to work through my anger, and he was right. I took the
quick route though, by sending Venters to oblivion. Now all I get is a
bit of guilt, but I can handle that. I eventually told my parents about
my being HIV positive. My Ma just cried and held me. The auld man
said nothing. The colour had drained from his face as he sat and
watched A Question of sport. When he was pressed by his wailing
wife to speak, he just said: – Well, there's nothin tae say. He kept
repeating that sentence. He never looked me in the eye. That night,
back at my flat, I heard the buzzer go. Assuming it to be Donna, who
had been out, I opened the stair and house doors. A few minutes
later, my auld man stood in the doorway with tears in his eyes. It was
the first time he'd ever been to my flat. He moved over to me and
held me in a crushing grip, sobbing, and repeating: – Ma laddie. It
felt a world or two better than: 'Well, there's nothin tae say.' I cried
loudly and unselfconsciously. As with Donna, so with my family.
We have found an intimacy which may have otherwise eluded us. I
wish I hadn't waited so long to become a human being. Better late
than never though, believe you me. There's some kids playing out in
the back, the strip of grass luminated an electric green by the brilliant
sunlight. The sky is a delicious clear blue. Life is beautiful. I'm going
to enjoy it, and I'm going to have a long life. I'll be what the medical
staff call a long–term survivor. I just know that I will.
_______________________________________
58) “THE BURNING BABY” by Dylan Thomas from Bradbury,
Malcolm, ed. The Penguin Book of Modern British Short Stories.
New York: Penguin. 1988.
They said that Rhys was burning his baby when a gorse bush broke
into fire on the summit of the hill. The bush, burning merrily,
assumed to them the sad white features and the rickety limbs of the
vicar's burning baby. What the wind had not blown away of the
baby's ashes, Rhys Rhys had sealed in a stone jar. With his own dust
lay the baby's dust, and near him the dust of his daughter in a coffin
of white wood.
They heard his son howl in the wind. They saw him walking over the
hill, holding a dead animal up to the light of the stars. They saw Kim
in the valley shadows as he moved, with the motion of a man cutting
wheat, over the brows of the fields. In a sanatorium he coughed his
lung into a basin, stirring his fingers delightedly in the blood. What
269
moved with invisible scythe through the valley was a shadow and a
handful of shadows cast by the grave sun.
The brush burned out, and the face of the baby fell away with the
smoking leaves.
It was, they said, on a fine sabbath morning in the middle of the
summer that Rhys Rhys fell in love with his daughter. The gorse that
morning had burst into flames. Rhys Rhys, in clerical black, had seen
the flames shoot up to the sky, and the bush on the edge of the hill
burn red as God among the paler burning of the grass. He took his
daughter's hand as she lay in the garden hammock, and told her that
he loved her. He told her that she was more beautiful than her dead
mother. Her hair smelt of mice, her teeth came over her lip, and the
lids of her eyes were red and wet. He saw her beauty come out of her
like a stream of sap. The folds of her dress could not hide from him
the shabby nakedness of her body. It was not her bone, nor her flesh,
nor her hair that he found suddenly beautiful. The poor soil shudders
under the sun, he said. He moved his hand up and down her arm.
Only the awkward and the ugly, only the barren bring forth fruit. The
flesh of her arm was red with the smoothing of his hand. He touched
her breast. From the touch of her breast he knew each inch of flesh
upon her. Why do you touch me there? she said.
In the church that morning he spoke of the beauty of the harvest, of
the promise of the standing corn and the promise in the sharp edge of
the scythe as it brings the corn low and whistles through the air
before it cuts into the ripeness. Through the open windows at the end
of the aisles, he saw the yellow fields upon the hillside and the
smudge of heather on the meadow borders. The world was ripe.
The world is ripe for the second coming of the son of man, he said
aloud.
But it was not the ripeness of God that glistened from the hill. It was
the promise and the ripeness of the flesh, the good flesh, the mean
flesh, flesh of his daughter, flesh, flesh, the flesh of the voice of
thunder howling before the death of man.
That night he preached of the sins of the flesh. O God in the image of
our flesh, he prayed.
His daughter sat in the front pew, and stroked her arm. She would
have touched her breast where he had touched it, but the eyes of the
congregation were upon her.
Flesh, flesh, flesh, said the vicar.
His son, scouting in the fields for a mole's hill or the signs of a red
fox, whistling to the birds and patting the calves as they stood at their
mother's sides, came upon a dead rabbit sprawling on a stone. The
rabbit's head was riddled with pellets, the dogs had torn open its
belly, and the marks of a ferret's teeth were upon its throat. He lifted
it gently up, tickling it behind the ears. The blood from its head
dropped on his hand. Through the rip in the belly, its intestines had
dropped out and coiled on the stone. He held the little body close to
his jacket, and ran home through the fields, the rabbit dancing
against his waistcoat. As he reached the gate of the vicarage, the
worshippers dribbled out of church. They shook hands and raised
their hats, smiling at the poor boy with his long green hair, his ass's
ears, and death buttoned under his jacket. He was always the poor
boy to them.
Rhys Rhys sat in his study, the stem of his pipe stuck between his
flybuttons, the bible unopened upon his knees. The day of God was
over, and the sun, like another sabbath, went down behind the hills.
He lit the lamp, but his own oil burned brighter. He drew the
curtains, shutting out the unwelcome night. But he opened his own
heart up, and the bald pulse that beat there was a welcome stranger.
270
He had not felt love like this since the woman who scratched him,
seeing the woman witch in his male eyes, had fallen into his arms
and kissed him, and whispered Welsh words as he took her. She
had been the mother of his daughter and had died in her pains,
stealing, when she was dead, the son of his second love, and leaving
the greenhaired changeling in its place. Merry with desire, Rhys
Rhys cast the Bible on the floor. He reached for another book, and
read, in the lamplit darkness, of the old woman who had deceived the
devil. The devil is poor flesh, said Rhys Rhys.
His son came in, bearing the rabbit in his arms. The lank, redcoated
boy was a flesh out of the past. The skin of the unburied dead
patched to his bones, the smile of the changeling on his mouth, and
the hair of the sea rising from his scalp, he stood before Rhys Rhys.
A ghost of his mother, he held the rabbit gently to his breast, rocking
it to and fro. Cunningly, from under halfclosed lids, he saw his father
shrink away from the vision of death. Be off with you, said Rhys
Rhys. Who was this green stranger to carry in death and rock it, like
a baby under a warm shawl of fur, before him? For a minute the
flesh of the world lay still; the old terror set in; the waters of the
breast dried up; the nipples grew through the sand. Then he drew his
hand over his eyes, and only the rabbit remained, a little sack of
flesh, half empty, swaying in the arms of his son. Be off, he said.
The boy held the rabbit close, and rocked it, and tickled it again.
Changeling, said Rhys Rhys. He is mine, said the boy, I'll peel him
and keep the skull. His room in the attic was crowded with skulls and
dried pelts, and little bones in bottles.
Give it to me.
He is mine.
Rhys Rhys tore die rabbit away, and stuffed it deep in the pockets of
his smoking coat. When his daughter came in, dressed and ready for
bed, with a candle in her hand, Rhys Rhys had death in his pocket.
She was timid, for his touch still ached on her arm and breast but she
bent unblushing over him. Saying goodnight, she kissed him, and he
blew her candle out. She was smiling as he lowered die wick of the
lamp.
Step out of your shift, said he. Shiftless, she stepped towards his
arms.
I want the little skull, said a voice in die dark.
From his room at the top of die house, through the webs on the
windows, and over the furs and the bottles, the boy saw a mile of
green hill running away into the darkness of the first dawn. Summer
storm 58 in the heat of the rain, flooring the grassy mile, had left
some new morning brightness, out of the dead night, in each
reaching root.
Death took hold of his sister's legs as she walked through the calfdeep heather up the hill. He saw the high grass at her thighs. And the
blades of the upgrowing wind, out of the four windsmells of the
manuring dead, might drive through the soles of her feet, up the
veins of the legs and stomach, into her womb and her pulsing heart.
He watched her climb. She stood, gasping for breath, on a hill of the
wider hill, tapping the wall of her bladder, fondling her matted chest
(for the hair grew on her as on a grown man), feeling the heart in her
wrist, loving her coveted thinness. She was to him as ugly as the
sowfaced woman of Llareggub who had taught him the terrors of the
flesh. He remembered the advances of that unlovely woman. She
blew out his candle as he stepped towards her on the night the great
hail had fallen and he had hidden in her rotting house from the
cruelty of the weather. Now half a mile off his sister stood in the
271
morning, and the vermin of the hill might spring upon her as she
stood, uncaring, rounding the angles of her ugliness. He smiled at the
thought of the devouring rats, and looked around the room for a
bottle to hold her heart. Her skull, fixed by a socket to the nail above
his bed, would be a smiling welcome to the first pains of waking.
But he saw Rhys Rhys stride up the hill, and the bowl of his sister's
head, fixed invisibly above his sheets, crumbled away. Standing
straight by the side of a dewy tree, his sister beckoned. Up went
Rhys Rhys through the calf-deep heather, the death in the grass, over
the boulders and up through the reaching ferns, to where she stood.
He'} took her hand. The two shadows linked hands, and climbed
together' to the top of the hill. The boy saw them go, and turned his
face to the wall as they vanished, in one dull shadow, over the edge,
and down the the dingle at the west foot of the lovers' alley.
Later, he remembered the rabbit. He ran downstairs and found it in
the pocket of the smoking coat. He held death against him, tasting a
cough of blood upon his tongue as he climbed, contented, back to I
bright bottles and the wall of heads.
In the first dew of light he saw his father clamber for her white hand.
She who was his sister walked with a swollen belly over the hill. She
touched him between the legs, and he sighed and sprang at her. But
the nerves of her face mixed with the quiver in his thighs, and she
shot from him. Rhys Rhys, over the bouldered rim, led her to terror.
He sighed and sprang at her. She mixed with him in the fourth and
the 59 fifth terrors of the flesh. Said Rhys Rhys, Your mother's
eyes. It was not her eyes that saw him proud before her, nor the eyes
in her thumb. The lashes of her fingers lifted. He saw the ball under
the nail.
It was, they said, on a fine sabbath morning in the early spring that
she bore him a male child. Brought to bed of her father, she
screamed for an anaesthetic as the knocking head burst through. In
her gown of blood she slept until twilight, and a star burst bloody
through each ear. With a scissors and rag, Rhys Rhys attended her,
and, gazing on the shrivelled features and the hands like the hands of
a mole, he gently took the child away, and his daughter's breast cried
out and ran into the mouth of the surrounding shadows. The shadow
pouted for the milk and the binding cottons. The child spat in his
arms, the noise of the running air was blind in its ears, and the deaf
light died from its eyes.
Rhys Rhys, with the dead child held against him, stepped into the
night, hearing the mother moan in her sleep and the deadly shadow,
filled sick with milk, flowing around the house. He turned his face
towards the hills. A shadow walked close to him and, silent in the
shadow of a full tree, the changeling waited. He made an image for
the moon, and the flesh of the moon fell away, leaving a star-eyed
skull. Then with a smile he ran back over the lawns and into the
crying house. Halfway up the stairs, he heard his sister die. Rhys
Rhys Climbed on.
On the top of the hill he laid the baby down, and propped it against
the heather. Death propped the dark flowers. The baby stiffened in
the rigor of the moon. Poor flesh, said Rhys Rhys as he pulled at the
lead heather and furze. Poor angel, he said to the listening mouth of
the baby. The fruit of the flesh falls with the worm from the tree.
Conceiving the worm, the bark crumbles. There lay the poor star of
flesh that had dropped, like the bead of a woman's milk, through the
pies of a wormy tree.
He stacked the torn heathers in a circle. On the head of the purple
stack, he piled the dead grass. A stack of death, the heather grew as
tall as he, and loomed at last over his windy hair.
Behind a boulder moved the accompanying shadow, and the shadow
of the boy was printed under the fiery flank of a tree. The shadow
marked the boy, and the boy marked the bones of the naked baby
272
under their chilly cover, and how the grass scraped on the bald skull,
and where his father picked out a path in the cancerous growths of
the silent circle. He saw Rhys Rhys pick up the baby and place it on
the top of the stack, saw the head of a burning match, and heard the
crackle of the bush, breaking like a baby's arm.
The stack burst into flame. Rhys Rhys, before the red eye of the
creeping fire, stretched out his arms and beckoned the shadow from
the stones. Surrounded by shadows, he prayed before the flaming
stack, and the sparks of the heather blew past his smile. Burn, child,
poor flesh, mean flesh, flesh, flesh, sick sorry flesh, flesh of the foul
womb, burn back to dust, he prayed.
And the baby caught fire. The flames curled round its mouth and
blew upon the shrinking gums. Flames round its red cord lapped its
little belly till the raw flesh fell upon the heather.
A flame touched its tongue. Eeeeeh, cried the burning baby, and the
illuminated hill replied.
59) A FAMILY MAN by V. S. PRITCHETT from Bradbury,
Malcolm, ed. The Penguin Book of Modern British Short Stories.
New York: Penguin. 1988.
Late in the afternoon, when she had given him up arid had even
changed out of her pink dress into her smock and jeans and was
working once more at her bench, the doorbell rang. William had
come, after all. It was in the nature of their love affair that his visits
were fitful: he had a wife and children. To show that she understood
the situation, even found the curious satisfaction of reverie in his
absences that lately had lasted several weeks, Berenice dawdled
yawning to the door. As she slipped off the chain, she called back
into the empty flat, 'It's all right, Father. I'll answer it.'
William had told her to do this because she was a woman living on
her own: the call would show strangers that there was a man there to
defend her. Berenice's voice was mocking, for she thought his idea
possessive and ridiculous; not only that, she had been brought up by
Quakers and thought it wrong to tell or act a lie. Sometimes, when
she opened the door to him, she would say, 'Well! Mr. Cork', to
remind him he was a married man. He had the kind of shadowed
handsome¬ness that easily gleams with guilt, and for her this gave
their affair its piquancy.
But now - when she opened the door - no William, and the yawn, its
hopes and its irony, died on her mouth. A very large woman, taller
than herself, filled the doorway from top to bottom, an enormous
blob of pink jersey and green skirt, the jersey low and loose at the
neck, a face and body inflated to the point of speechlessness. She
even seemed to be asleep with her large blue eyes open.
'Yes?' said Berenice.
The woman woke up and looked unbelievingly at Berenice's feet,
which were bare, for she liked to go about barefoot at home, and
said, 'Is this Miss Foster's place?"
Berenice was offended by the word 'place'. 'This is Miss Foster's
residence. I am she.'
'Ah,' said the woman, babyish no longer but sugary. 'I was given
your address at the College. You teach at the College, I believe? I've
come about the repair.'
'A repair? I make jewellery,' said Berenice. 'I do not do repairs.'
'They told me at the College you were repairing my husband's flute. I
am Mrs. Cork.'
Berenice's heart stopped. Her wrist went weak and her hand drooped
on the door handle, and a spurt of icy air shot up her body to her face
273
and then turned to boiling heat as it shot back again. Her head
suddenly filled with chattering voices saying, Oh, God. How
fright¬ful! William, you didn't tell her? Now, what are you, you, you
going to do. And the word 'Do, do' clattered on in her head. 'Cork?'
said Berenice. 'Flute?'
'Florence Cork,' said the woman firmly, all sleepy sweetness gone.
'Oh, yes. I am sorry. Mrs. Cork. Of course, yes. Oh, do come in. I'm
so sorry. We haven't met, how very nice to meet you. William's - Mr.
Cork's - flute! His flute. Yes, I remember. How d'you do? How is
he? He hasn't been to the College for months. Have you seen him
lately -how silly, of course you have. Did you have a lovely holiday?
Did the children enjoy it? I would have posted it, only I didn't know
your address. Come in, please, come in.'
But Mrs. Cork did not sit down. She gave a sudden lurch towards the
bench, and seeing her husband's flute there propped against the wall,
she grabbed it and swung it above her head as if it were a weapon.
'Yes,' said Berenice, who was thinking, Oh, dear, the woman's drunk,
'I was working on it only this morning. I had never seen a flute 48
like that before. Such a beautiful silver scroll. I gather it's very old, a
German one, a presentation piece given to Mr. Cork's father. I
believe he played in a famous orchestra -where was it? - Bayreuth or
Berlin? You never see a scroll like that in England, not a delicate
silver scroll like that. It seems to have been dropped somewhere or
have had a blow. Mr. Cork told me he had played it in an orchestra
himself once, Govern Garden or somewhere ..."
She watched Mrs. Cork flourish the flute in the air.
'In here?' said Mrs. Cork and marched into the front room where
Berenice worked. Here, in the direct glare of Berenice's working
lamp, Florence Cork looked even larger and even pregnant. She
seemed to occupy the whole of the room as she stood in it,
memorizing everything - the bench, the pots of paintbrushes, the
large designs pinned to the wall, the rolls of paper, the sofa covered
with papers and letters and sewing, the pink dress which Berenice
had thrown over a chair. She seemed to be consuming it all, drinking
all the air.
But here, in the disorder of which she was very vain, which indeed
fascinated her, and represented her talent, her independence, a girl's
right to a life of her own, and above all, being barefooted, helped
Berenice recover her breath.
'It is such a pleasure to meet you. Mr. Cork has often spoken of you
to us at the College. We're quite a family there. Please sit. I'll move
the dress. I was mending it.'
'A blow,' cried Mrs. Cork, now in a rich voice. 'I'll say it did. I threw
it at him.'
And then she lowered her arm and stood swaying on her legs as she
confronted Berenice and said, 'Where is he?'
'Who?' said Berenice in a fright.
'My husband!' Mrs. Cork shouted. 'Don't try and soft-soap me with
all that twaddle. Playing in an orchestra! Is that what he has been
stuffing you up with? I know what you and he are up to. He comes
every Thursday. He's been here since half past two. I know. I have
had this place watched.'
She swung round to the closed door of Berenice's bedroom. 'What's
in there?' she shouted and advanced to it.
'Mrs. Cork,' said Berenice as calmly as she could. 'Please stop
shouting. I know nothing about your husband. I don't know what you
are talking about.' And she placed herself before the door of the
274
room. 'And please stop shouting. That is my father's room.' And,
excited by Mrs. Cork's accusation, she said, 'He is a very old man
and he is not well. He is asleep in there.'
'In there?' said Mrs. Cork.
'Yes, in there.'
'And what about the other rooms? Who lives upstairs?'
'There are no other rooms,' said Berenice. 'I live here with my father.
Upstairs? Some new people have moved in.'
Berenice was astonished by these words of hers, for she was a
truthful young woman and was astonished, even excited, by a lie so
vast. It seemed to glitter in the air as she spoke it.
Mrs. Cork was checked. She flopped down on the chair on which
Berenice had put her dress.
'My dress, if you please,' said Berenice and pulled it away.
'If you don't do it here,' said Mrs. Cork, quietening and with tears in
her eyes, 'you do it somewhere else.'
'I don't know anything about your husband. I only see him at the
College like the other teachers. I don't know anything about him. If
you will give me the flute, I will pack it up for you and I must ask
you to go.'
'You can't deceive me. I know everything. You think because you are
young you can do what you like,' Mrs. Cork muttered to herself and
began rummaging in her handbag.
For Berenice one of the attractions of William was that their
meetings were erratic. The affair was like a game: she liked surprise
above all. In the intervals when he was not there, the game continued
for her. She liked imagining what he and his family were doing. She
saw them as all glued together as if in some enduring and absurd
photograph, perhaps sitting in their suburban garden, or standing
beside a motorcar, always in the sun, but William himself, darkfaced and busy in his gravity, a step or two back from them. 'Is your
wife beautiful?' she asked him once when they were in bed. William
in his slow serious way took a long time to answer. He said at last,
'Very beautiful.'
This had made Berenice feel exceedingly beautiful herself. She saw
his wife as a raven-haired, dark-eyed woman and longed to meet her.
The more she imagined her, the more she felt for her, the more she
saw eye to eye with her in the pleasant busy middle ground of
womanish feelings and moods, for as a woman living alone she felt a
firm loyalty to her sex. During this last summer when the family
were on holiday she had seen them glued together again as they sat
with dozens of other families in the aeroplane that was taking them
abroad, so that it seemed to her that the London sky was rumbling
day after day, night after night, with matrimony thirty thousand feet
above the city, the countryside, the sea and its beaches where she
imagined the legs of their children running across the sand, William
flushed with his responsibilities, his wife turning to brown her back
in the sun. Berenice was often but and about with her many friends,
most of whom were married. She loved the look of harassed
contentment, even the tired faces of the husbands, the alert looks of
their spirited wives. Among the married she felt her singularity. She
listened to their endearments and to their bickerings. She played with
their children, who ran at once to her. She could not bear the young
men ,' who approached her, talking about themselves all the time,
flashing ' with the slapdash egotism of young men trying to bring her
peculiarity to an end. Among families she felt herself to be strange
and necessary- a necessary secret. When William had said his wife
was beautiful, she felt so beautiful herself that her bones seemed to
turn to water.
275
But now the real Florence sat rummaging in her bag before her, this
balloon-like giant, first babyish and then shouting accusations, the
dreamt-of Florence vanished. This real Florence seemed unreal and
incredible. And William himself changed. His good looks began to
look commonplace and shady: his seriousness became furtive, his
praise of her calculating. He was shorter than his wife, his face now
looked hang-dog, and she saw him dragging his feet as obediently he
followed her. She resented that this woman had made her tell a lie,
strangely intoxicating though it was to do so, and had made her feel
as ugly as his wife was. For she must be, if Florence was what he
called 'beautiful'. And not only ugly, but pathetic and without
dignity.
Rosie." What do you mean, who is Bunny?' Mrs. Cork said. 'You
know very well. Bunny is my husband.'
Berenice watched warily as the woman took a letter from her
handbag.
It was strange to be speaking the truth. And it suddenly seemed to
her, as she recited the words, that really William had never been to
her flat, that he had never been her lover, and had never played his
silly flute there, that indeed he was the most boring man at the
College and that a chasm separated her from this woman, whom
jealousy had made so ugly.
Then what is this necklace?' she said, blowing herself out again.
'What necklace is this?' said Berenice.
Berenice turned away and pointed to a small poster that was pinned
to the wall. It contained a photograph of a necklace and three
brooches she had shown at an exhibition in a very fashionable shop
known for selling modern jewellery. At the bottom of the poster,
elegantly printed, were the words
Created by Berenice
Berenice read the words aloud, reciting them as if they were a line
from a poem: 'My name is Berenice,' she said.
'Read it. You wrote it."
Berenice smiled with astonishment: she knew she needed no longer
defend herself. She prided herself on fastidiousness: she had never in
her life written a letter to a lover - it would be like giving something
of herself away, it would be almost an indecency. She certainly felt it
to be very wrong to read anyone else's letters, as Mrs. Cork pushed
the letter at her. Berenice took it in two fingers, glanced and turned it
over to see the name of the writer.
This is not my writing,' she said. The hand was sprawling; her own
was scratchy and small. 'Who is Bunny? Who is Rosie?'
Mrs. Cork snatched the letter and read in a booming voice that made
the words ridiculous:' "I am longing for the necklace. Tell that girl to
hurry up. Do bring it next time. And darling, don't forget the flute!!!
Mrs. Cork was still swelling with unbelief, but as she studied the
poster, despair settled on her face. 'I found it in his pocket,' she said
helplessly.
'We all make mistakes, Mrs. Cork,' Berenice said coldly across the
chasm. And then, to be generous in victory, she said, 'Let me see the
letter again.'
Mrs. Cork gave her the letter and Berenice read it and at the word
'flute' a doubt came into her head. Her hand began to tremble and
quickly she gave the letter back. 'Who gave you my address -1 mean,
at the College?' Berenice accused. There is a rule that no addresses
are given. Or telephone numbers.'
The girl,' said Mrs. Cork, defending herself.
276
'Which girl? At Enquiries?'
the flute that lay on Mrs. Cork's lap and throw it at the wall and
smash it.
'She fetched someone.'
'Who was it?' said Berenice.
'I don't know. It began with a W, I think,' said Mrs. Cork.
'Wheeler?' said Berenice. There is a Mr. Wheeler.'
'No, it wasn't a man. It was a young woman. With a W - Glowitz.'
That begins with a G,' said Berenice.
'No,' said Mrs. Cork out of her muddle, now afraid of Berenice.
'Glowitz was the name.'
'Glowitz,' said Berenice, unbelieving. 'Rosie Glowitz. She's not I
young.'
'I didn't notice,' said Mrs. Cork. 'Is her name Rosie?' Berenice felt
giddy and cold. The chasm between herself and Mrs. I Cork closed
up.
'Yes,' said Berenice and sat on the sofa, pushing letters and papers
away from herself. She felt sick. 'Did you show her the letter?' she
said.
'No,' said Mrs. Cork, looking masterful again for a moment: 'She told
me you were repairing the flute.'
'Please go,' Berenice wanted to say but she could not get her breath
52 to say it. 'You have been deceived. You are accusing the wrong
person. I thought your husband's name was William. He never called
himself Bunny. We all call him William at the College. Rosie
Glowitz wrote this letter.' But that sentence, 'Bring the flute', was too
much -she was suddenly on the side of this angry woman, she
wished she could shout and break out into rage. She wanted to grab
'I apologize, Miss Foster,' said Mrs. Cork in a surly voice. The glister
of tears in her eyes, the dampness on her face, dried. 'I believe you. I
have been worried out of my mind - you will understand.'
Berenice's beauty had drained away. The behaviour of one or two of
her lovers had always seemed self-satisfied to her, but William, the
most unlikely one, was the oddest. He would not stay in bed and
gossip but he was soon out staring at the garden, looking older, as if
he were travelling back into his life: then, hardly saying anything, he
dressed, turning to stare at the garden again as his head came out of
his shirt or he put a leg into his trousers, in a manner that made her
think he had completely forgotten. Then he would go into her front
room, bring back the flute and go out to the garden seat and play it.
She had done a cruel caricature of him once because he looked so
comical, his long lip drawn down at the mouthpiece, his eyes
lowered as the thin high notes, so sad and lascivious, seemed to curl
away like wisps of smoke into the trees. Sometimes she laughed,
sometimes she smiled, sometimes she was touched, sometimes angry
and bewildered. One j proud satisfaction was that the people upstairs
had complained.
She was tempted, now that she and this clumsy woman were at one J
to say to her, 'Aren't men extraordinary! Is this what he does at
home, I does he rush out to your garden, bold as brass, to play that
silly thing?' And then she was scornful. To think of him going round
to Rosie" Glowitz's and half the gardens of London doing this!'
But she could not say this, of course. And so she looked at poor Mrs.
Cork with triumphant sympathy. She longed to break Rosie
Glowitz's neck and to think of some transcendent appeasing lie
which would make Mrs. Cork happy again, but the clumsy woman
went on making everything worse by asking to be forgiven. She said
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'I am truly sorry and 'When I saw your work in the shop I wanted to
meet you. That is really why I came. My husband has often spoken
of it.'
Well, at least, Berenice thought, she can tell a lie too. Suppose I gave
her everything I've got, she thought. Anything to get her to go.
Berenice looked at the drawer of her bench, which was filled with
beads and pieces of polished stone and crystal. She felt like getting
handfuls of it and pouring it all on Mrs. Cork's lap.
'Do you work only in silver?' said Mrs. Cork, dabbing her eyes. 'I
am,' said Berenice, 'working on something now.' And even as she
said it, because of Mrs. Cork's overwhelming presence, the great
appeasing lie carne out of her, before she could stop herself. 'A
present,' she said. 'Actually,' she said, 'we all got together at the
College. A present for Rosie Glowitz. She's getting married again. I
expect that is what the letter is about. Mr. Cork arranged it. He is
very kind and thoughtful.'
find as if with alarming meaning. 'He doesn't say much. He's deep, is
my Bunny!'
'Would you like a cup of tea?' said Berenice politely, hoping she
could say no and go.
'I think I will,' Mrs. Cork said comfortably. 'I'm so glad I came to
you. And,' she added, glancing at the closed door, 'what about your
father? I expect he could do with a cup.'
Mrs. Cork now seemed wide awake and it was Berenice who felt
dazed, drunkish, and sleepy.
'I'll go and see,' she said.
In the kitchen she recovered and came back trying to laugh, saying,
is must have gone for his little walk in the afternoon, on the quiet.'
She heard herself say this with wonder. Her other lies had glittered,
but this one had the beauty of a newly discovered truth.
You have to keep an eye on them at that age,' said Mrs. Cork. They
sat talking and Mrs. Cork said, 'Fancy Mrs. Glowitz getting married
again.' And then absently, 'I cannot understand why she says “Bring
the flute.'"
'You mean Bunny's collecting the money?' said Mrs. Cork.
Well,' said Berenice agreeably, 'he played it at the College party.'
'Yes,' said Berenice.
‘Yes,' said Mrs. Cork. 'But at a wedding, it's a bit pushy. You
wouldn't think it of my Bunny, but he is pushing.'
A great laugh came out of Florence Cork. 'The big spender,' she said,
laughing. 'Collecting other people's money. He hasn't spent a penny
on us for thirty years. And you're all giving this to that woman I
talked to who has been married twice? Two wedding presents!'
Mrs. Cork sighed.
'You fools. Some women get away with it, I don't know why,' said
Mrs. Cork, still laughing. 'But not with my Bunny,' she said proudly
They drank their tea and then Mrs. Cork left. Berenice felt an
enormous kiss on her face and Mrs. Cork said, 'Don't be jealous of
Mrs. Glowitz, dear. You'll get your turn,' as she went.
Berenice put the chain on the door and went to her bedroom and lay
on the bed.
How awful married people are, she thought. So public, sprawling
over everyone and everything, always lying to themselves and
278
forcing you to lie to them. She got up and looked bitterly at the
empty chair under the tree at first and then she laughed at it and went
off to have a bath so as to wash all those lies off her truthful body.
Afterwards she rang up a couple called Brewster who told her to
come round. She loved the Brewsters, so perfectly conceited as they
were, in the burdens they bore. She talked her head off. The children
stared at her.
'She's getting old. She ought to get married,' Mrs. Brewster said. 'I
wish she wouldn't swoosh her hair around like that. She'd look better
if she put it up.'
60) THE LEGEND OF SAINT JULIAN THE HOSPITALLER
by Gustave Flaubert
from http://www.gutenberg.org/files/10458/10458-8.txt
CHAPTER I
THE CURSE
Julian's father and mother dwelt in a castle built on the slope of a
hill, in the heart of the woods.
The towers at its four corners had pointed roofs covered with
leaden tiles, and the foundation rested upon solid rocks, which
descended abruptly to the bottom of the moat.
In the courtyard, the stone flagging was as immaculate as the
floor of a church. Long rain-spouts, representing dragons with
yawning jaws, directed the water towards the cistern, and on each
window-sill of the castle a basil or a heliotrope bush bloomed, in
painted flower-pots.
A second enclosure, surrounded by a fence, comprised a
fruit-orchard, a garden decorated with figures wrought in
bright-hued flowers, an arbour with several bowers, and a mall
for the diversion of the pages. On the other side were the kennel,
the stables, the bakery, the wine-press and the barns. Around
these spread a pasture, also enclosed by a strong hedge.
Peace had reigned so long that the portcullis was never lowered;
the moats were filled with water; swallows built their nests in
the cracks of the battlements, and as soon as the sun shone too
strongly, the archer who all day long paced to and fro on the
curtain, withdrew to the watch-tower and slept soundly.
Inside the castle, the locks on the doors shone brightly; costly
tapestries hung in the apartments to keep out the cold; the
closets overflowed with linen, the cellar was filled with casks of
wine, and the oak chests fairly groaned under the weight of
money-bags.
In the armoury could be seen, between banners and the heads of
wild beasts, weapons of all nations and of all ages, from the
slings of the Amalekites and the javelins of the Garamantes, to
the broad-swords of the Saracens and the coats of mail of the
Normans.
The largest spit in the kitchen could hold an ox; the chapel was
as gorgeous as a king's oratory. There was even a Roman bath in a
secluded part of the castle, though the good lord of the manor
refrained from using it, as he deemed it a heathenish practice.
Wrapped always in a cape made of fox-skins, he wandered about the
castle, rendered justice among his vassals and settled his
neighbours' quarrels. In the winter, he gazed dreamily at the
falling snow, or had stories read aloud to him. But as soon as the
fine weather returned, he would mount his mule and sally forth
into the country roads, edged with ripening wheat, to talk with
the peasants, to whom he distributed advice. After a number of
adventures he took unto himself a wife of high lineage.
She was pale and serious, and a trifle haughty. The horns of her
head-dress touched the top of the doors and the hem of her gown
trailed far behind her. She conducted her household like a
cloister. Every morning she distributed work to the maids,
supervised the making of preserves and unguents, and afterwards
279
passed her time in spinning, or in embroidering altar-cloths. In
response to her fervent prayers, God granted her a son!
Then he stooped to pick up the alms thrown to him, and disappeared
in the tall grass.
Then there was great rejoicing; and they gave a feast which lasted
three days and four nights, with illuminations and soft music.
Chickens as large as sheep, and the rarest spices were served; for
the entertainment of the guests, a dwarf crept out of a pie; and
when the bowls were too few, for the crowd swelled continuously,
the wine was drunk from helmets and hunting-horns.
The lord of the manor looked up and down the road and called as
loudly as he could. But no one answered him! The wind only howled
and the morning mists were fast dissolving.
The young mother did not appear at the feast. She was quietly
resting in bed. One night she awoke, and beheld in a moonbeam that
crept through the window something that looked like a moving
shadow. It was an old man clad in sackcloth, who resembled a
hermit. A rosary dangled at his side and he carried a beggar's
sack on his shoulder. He approached the foot of the bed, and
without opening his lips said: "Rejoice, O mother! Thy son shall
be a saint."
She would have cried out, but the old man, gliding along the
moonbeam, rose through the air and disappeared. The songs of the
banqueters grew louder. She could hear angels' voices, and her
head sank back on the pillow, which was surmounted by the bone of
a martyr, framed in precious stones.
The following day, the servants, upon being questioned, declared,
to a man, that they had seen no hermit. Then, whether dream or
fact, this must certainly have been a communication from heaven;
but she took care not to speak of it, lest she should be accused
of presumption.
The guests departed at daybreak, and Julian's father stood at the
castle gate, where he had just bidden farewell to the last one,
when a beggar suddenly emerged from the mist and confronted him.
He was a gipsy--for he had a braided beard and wore silver
bracelets on each arm. His eyes burned and, in an inspired way, he
muttered some disconnected words: "Ah! Ah! thy son!--great
bloodshed--great glory--happy always--an emperor's family."
He attributed his vision to a dullness of the brain resulting from
too much sleep. "If I should speak of it," quoth he, "people would
laugh at me." Still, the glory that was to be his son's dazzled
him, albeit the meaning of the prophecy was not clear to him, and
he even doubted that he had heard it.
The parents kept their secret from each other. But both cherished
the child with equal devotion, and as they considered him marked
by God, they had great regard for his person. His cradle was lined
with the softest feathers, and lamp representing a dove burned
continually over it; three nurses rocked him night and day, and
with his pink cheeks and blue eyes, brocaded cloak and embroidered
cap he looked like a little Jesus. He cut all his teeth without
even a whimper.
When he was seven years old his mother taught him to sing, and his
father lifted him upon a tall horse, to inspire him with courage.
The child smiled with delight, and soon became familiar with
everything pertaining to chargers. An old and very learned monk
taught him the Gospel, the Arabic numerals, the Latin letters, and
the art of painting delicate designs on vellum. They worked in the
top of a tower, away from all noise and disturbance.
When the lesson was over, they would go down into the garden and
study the flowers.
Sometimes a herd of cattle passed through the valley below, in
charge of a man in Oriental dress. The lord of the manor,
recognising him as a merchant, would despatch a servant after him.
The stranger, becoming confident, would stop on his way and after
being ushered into the castle-hall, would display pieces of velvet
and silk, trinkets and strange objects whose use was unknown in
280
those parts. Then, in due time, he would take leave, without
having been molested and with a handsome profit.
At other times, a band of pilgrims would knock at the door. Their
wet garments would be hung in front of the hearth and after they
had been refreshed by food they would relate their travels, and
discuss the uncertainty of vessels on the high seas, their long
journeys across burning sands, the ferocity of the infidels, the
caves of Syria, the Manger and the Holy Sepulchre. They made
presents to the young heir of beautiful shells, which they carried
in their cloaks.
at the sight of the little, lifeless body. A drop of blood stained
the floor. He wiped it away hastily with his sleeve, and picking
up the mouse, threw it away, without saying a word about it to
anyone.
All sorts of birds pecked at the seeds in the garden. He put some
peas in a hollow reed, and when he heard birds chirping in a tree,
he would approach cautiously, lift the tube and swell his cheeks;
then, when the little creatures dropped about him in multitudes,
he could not refrain from laughing and being delighted with his
own cleverness.
The lord of the manor very often feasted his brothers-at-arms, and
over the wine the old warriors would talk of battles and attacks,
of war-machines and of the frightful wounds they had received, so
that Julian, who was a listener, would scream with excitement;
then his father felt convinced that some day he would be a
conqueror. But in the evening, after the Angelus, when he passed
through the crowd of beggars who clustered about the church-door,
he distributed his alms with so much modesty and nobility that his
mother fully expected to see him become an archbishop in time.
One morning, as he was returning by way of the curtain, he beheld
a fat pigeon sunning itself on the top of the wall. He paused to
gaze at it; where he stood the rampart was cracked and a piece of
stone was near at hand; he gave his arm a jerk and the well-aimed
missile struck the bird squarely, sending it straight into the
moat below.
His seat in the chapel was next to his parents, and no matter how
long the services lasted, he remained kneeling on his _prie-dieu,_
with folded hands and his velvet cap lying close beside him on the
floor.
The pigeon hung with broken wings in the branches of a privet
hedge.
One day, during mass, he raised his head and beheld a little white
mouse crawling out of a hole in the wall. It scrambled to the
first altar-step and then, after a few gambols, ran back in the
same direction. On the following Sunday, the idea of seeing the
mouse again worried him. It returned; and every Sunday after that
he watched for it; and it annoyed him so much that he grew to hate
it and resolved to do away with it.
So, having closed the door and strewn some crumbs on the steps of
the altar, he placed himself in front of the hole with a stick.
After a long while a pink snout appeared, and then whole mouse
crept out. He struck it lightly with his stick and stood stunned
He sprang after it, unmindful of the brambles, and ferreted around
the bushes with the litheness of a young dog.
The persistence of its life irritated the boy. He began to
strangle it, and its convulsions made his heart beat quicker, and
filled him with a wild, tumultuous voluptuousness, the last throb
of its heart making him feel like fainting.
At supper that night, his father declared that at his age a boy
should begin to hunt; and he arose and brought forth an old
writing-book which contained, in questions and answers, everything
pertaining to the pastime. In it, a master showed a supposed pupil
how to train dogs and falcons, lay traps, recognise a stag by its
fumets, and a fox or a wolf by footprints. He also taught the best
way of discovering their tracks, how to start them, where their
refuges are usually to be found, what winds are the most
favourable, and further enumerated the various cries, and the
281
rules of the quarry.
When Julian was able to recite all these things by heart, his
father made up a pack of hounds for him. There were twenty-four
greyhounds of Barbary, speedier than gazelles, but liable to get
out of temper; seventeen couples of Breton dogs, great barkers,
with broad chests and russet coats flecked with white. For
wild-boar hunting and perilous doublings, there were forty
boarhounds as hairy as bears.
The red mastiffs of Tartary, almost as large as donkeys, with
broad backs and straight legs, were destined for the pursuit of
the wild bull. The black coats of the spaniels shone like satin;
the barking of the setters equalled that of the beagles. In a
special enclosure were eight growling bloodhounds that tugged at
their chains and rolled their eyes, and these dogs leaped at men's
throats and were not afraid even of lions.
All ate wheat bread, drank from marble troughs, and had
high-sounding names.
foxes fell into the ditches prepared for them, while wolves caught
their paws in the traps.
But Julian scorned these convenient contrivances; he preferred to
hunt away from the crowd, alone with his steed and his falcon. It
was almost always a large, snow-white, Scythian bird. His leather
hood was ornamented with a plume, and on his blue feet were bells;
and he perched firmly on his master's arm while they galloped
across the plains. Then Julian would suddenly untie his tether and
let him fly, and the bold bird would dart through the air like an
arrow, One might perceive two spots circle around, unite, and then
disappear in the blue heights. Presently the falcon would return
with a mutilated bird, and perch again on his master's gauntlet
with trembling wings.
Julian loved to sound his trumpet and follow his dogs over hills
and streams, into the woods; and when the stag began to moan under
their teeth, he would kill it deftly, and delight in the fury of
the brutes, which would devour the pieces spread out on the warm
hide.
Perhaps the falconry surpassed the pack; for the master of the
castle, by paying great sums of money, had secured Caucasian
hawks, Babylonian sakers, German gerfalcons, and pilgrim falcons
captured on the cliffs edging the cold seas, in distant lands.
They were housed in a thatched shed and were chained to the perch
in the order of size. In front of them was a little grass-plot
where, from time to time, they were allowed to disport themselves.
On foggy days, he would hide in the marshes to watch for wild
geese, otters and wild ducks.
Bag-nets, baits, traps and all sorts of snares were manufactured.
He heeded neither the broiling sun, the rain nor the storm; he
drank spring water and ate wild berries, and when he was tired, he
lay down under a tree; and he would come home at night covered
with earth and blood, with thistles in his hair and smelling of
wild beasts. He grew to be like them. And when his mother kissed
him, he responded coldly to her caress and seemed to be thinking
of deep and serious things.
Often they would take out pointers who would set almost
immediately; then the whippers-in, advancing step by step, would
cautiously spread a huge net over their motionless bodies. At the
command, the dogs would bark and arouse the quails; and the ladies
of the neighbourhood, with their husbands, children and hand-maids,
would fall upon them and capture them with ease.
At other times they used a drum to start hares; and frequently
At daybreak, three equerries waited for him at the foot of the
steps; and though the old monk leaned out of the dormer-window
and
made signs to him to return, Julian would not look around.
He killed bears with a knife, bulls with a hatchet, and wild boars
with a spear; and once, with nothing but a stick, he defended
282
himself against some wolves, which were gnawing corpses at the
foot of a gibbet.
*
*
*
*
*
One winter morning he set out before daybreak, with a bow slung
across his shoulder and a quiver of arrows attached to the pummel
of his saddle. The hoofs of his steed beat the ground with
regularity and his two beagles trotted close behind. The wind was
blowing hard and icicles clung to his cloak. A part of the horizon
cleared, and he beheld some rabbits playing around their burrows.
In an instant, the two dogs were upon them, and seizing as many as
they could, they broke their backs in the twinkling of an eye.
Soon he came to a forest. A woodcock, paralysed by the cold,
perched on a branch, with its head hidden under its wing. Julian,
with a lunge of his sword, cut off its feet, and without stopping
to pick it up, rode away.
Three hours later he found himself on the top of a mountain so
high that the sky seemed almost black. In front of him, a long,
flat rock hung over a precipice, and at the end two wild goats
stood gazing down into the abyss. As he had no arrows (for he had
left his steed behind), he thought he would climb down to where
they stood; and with bare feet and bent back he at last reached
the first goat and thrust his dagger below its ribs. But the
second animal, in its terror, leaped into the precipice. Julian
threw himself forward to strike it, but his right foot slipped,
and he fell, face downward and with outstretched arms, over the
body of the first goat.
After he returned to the plains, he followed a stream bordered by
willows. From time to time, some cranes, flying low, passed over
his head. He killed them with his whip, never missing a bird. He
beheld in the distance the gleam of a lake which appeared to be of
lead, and in the middle of it was an animal he had never seen
before, a beaver with a black muzzle. Notwithstanding the distance
that separated them, an arrow ended its life and Julian only
regretted that he was not able to carry the skin home with him.
Then he entered an avenue of tall trees, the tops of which formed
a triumphal arch to the entrance of a forest. A deer sprang out of
the thicket and a badger crawled out of its hole, a stag appeared
in the road, and a peacock spread its fan-shaped tail on the
grass--and after he had slain them all, other deer, other stags,
other badgers, other peacocks, and jays, blackbirds, foxes,
porcupines, polecats, and lynxes, appeared; in fact, a host of beasts
that grew more and more numerous with every step he took.
Trembling,
and with a look of appeal in their eyes, they gathered around
Julian, but he did not stop slaying them; and so intent was he on
stretching his bow, drawing his sword and whipping out his knife,
that he had little thought for aught else. He knew that he was
hunting in some country since an indefinite time, through the very
fact of his existence, as everything seemed to occur with the ease
one experiences in dreams. But presently an extraordinary sight
made him pause.
He beheld a valley shaped like a circus and filled with stags
which, huddled together, were warming one another with the vapour
of their breaths that mingled with the early mist.
For a few minutes, he almost choked with pleasure at the prospect
of so great a carnage. Then he sprang from his horse, rolled up
his sleeves, and began to aim.
When the first arrow whizzed through the air, the stags turned
their heads simultaneously. They huddled closer, uttered plaintive
cries, and a great agitation seized the whole herd. The edge of
the valley was too high to admit of flight; and the animals ran
around the enclosure in their efforts to escape. Julian aimed,
stretched his bow and his arrows fell as fast and thick as
raindrops in a shower.
Maddened with terror, the stags fought and reared and climbed on
top of one another; their antlers and bodies formed a moving
mountain which tumbled to pieces whenever it displaced itself.
Finally the last one expired. Their bodies lay stretched out on
283
the sand with foam gushing from the nostrils and the bowels
protruding. The heaving of their bellies grew less and less
noticeable, and presently all was still.
immense sadness came over him. Holding his head between his
hands,
he wept for a long time.
Night came, and behind the trees, through the branches, the sky
appeared like a sheet of blood.
His steed had wandered away; his dogs had forsaken him; the
solitude seemed to threaten him with unknown perils. Impelled by a
sense of sickening terror, he ran across the fields, and choosing
a path at random, found himself almost immediately at the gates of
the castle.
Julian leaned against a tree and gazed with dilated eyes at the
enormous slaughter. He was now unable to comprehend how he had
accomplished it.
On the opposite side of the valley, he suddenly beheld a large
stag, with a doe and their fawn. The buck was black and of
enormous size; he had a white beard and carried sixteen antlers.
His mate was the color of dead leaves, and she browsed upon the
grass, while the fawn, clinging to her udder, followed her step by
step.
Again the bow was stretched, and instantly the fawn dropped dead,
and seeing this, its mother raised her head and uttered a
poignant, almost human wail of agony. Exasperated, Julian thrust
his knife into her chest, and felled her to the ground.
The great stag had watched everything and suddenly he sprang
forward. Julian aimed his last arrow at the beast. It struck him
between his antlers and stuck there.
That night he could not rest, for, by the flickering light of the
hanging lamp, he beheld again the huge black stag. He fought
against the obsession of the prediction and kept repeating: "No!
No! No! I cannot slay them!" and then he thought: "Still,
supposing I desired to?--" and he feared that the devil might
inspire him with this desire.
During three months, his distracted mother prayed at his bedside,
and his father paced the halls of the castle in anguish. He
consulted the most celebrated physicians, who prescribed
quantities of medicine. Julian's illness, they declared, was due
to some injurious wind or to amorous desire. But in reply to their
questions, the young man only shook his head. After a time, his
strength returned, and he was able to take a walk in the
courtyard, supported by his father and the old monk.
But after he had completely recovered, he refused to hunt.
The stag did not appear to notice it; leaping over the bodies, he
was coming nearer and nearer with the intention, Julian thought,
of charging at him and ripping him open, and he recoiled with
inexpressible horror. But presently the huge animal halted, and,
with eyes aflame and the solemn air of a patriarch and a judge,
repeated thrice, while a bell tolled in the distance: "Accursed!
Accursed! Accursed! some day, ferocious soul, thou wilt murder thy
father and thy mother!"
His father, hoping to please him, presented him with a large
Saracen sabre. It was placed on a panoply that hung on a pillar,
and a ladder was required to reach it. Julian climbed up to it one
day, but the heavy weapon slipped from his grasp, and in falling
grazed his father and tore his cloak. Julian, believing he had
killed him, fell in a swoon.
Then he sank on his knees, gently closed his lids and expired.
After that, he carefully avoided weapons. The sight of a naked
sword made him grow pale, and this weakness caused great distress
to his family.
At first Julian was stunned, and then a sudden lassitude and an
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In the end, the old monk ordered him in the name of God, and of
his forefathers, once more to indulge in the sport's of a nobleman.
The equerries diverted themselves every day with javelins and
Julian soon excelled in the practice.
He was able to send a javelin into bottles, to break the teeth of
the weather-cocks on the castle and to strike door-nails at a
distance of one hundred feet.
One summer evening, at the hour when dusk renders objects
indistinct, he was in the arbour in the garden, and thought he saw
two white wings in the background hovering around the espalier.
Not for a moment did he doubt that it was a stork, and so he threw
his javelin at it.
A heart-rending scream pierced the air.
He had struck his mother, whose cap and long streams remained
nailed to the wall.
Julian fled from home and never returned.
CHAPTER II
THE CRIME
He joined a horde of adventurers who were passing through the
place.
He learned what it was to suffer hunger, thirst, sickness and
filth. He grew accustomed to the din of battles and to the sight
of dying men. The wind tanned his skin. His limbs became hardened
through contact with armour, and as he was very strong and brave,
temperate and of good counsel, he easily obtained command of a
company.
At the outset of a battle, he would electrify his soldiers by a
motion of his sword. He would climb the walls of a citadel with a
knotted rope, at night, rocked by the storm, while sparks of fire
clung to his cuirass, and molten lead and boiling tar poured from
the battlements.
Often a stone would break his shield. Bridges crowded with men
gave way under him. Once, by turning his mace, he rid himself of
fourteen horsemen. He defeated all those who came forward to fight
him on the field of honour, and more than a score of times it was
believed that he had been killed.
However, thanks to Divine protection, he always escaped, for he
shielded orphans, widows, and aged men. When he caught sight of
one of the latter walking ahead of him, he would call to him to
show his face, as if he feared that he might kill him by mistake.
All sorts of intrepid men gathered under his leadership, fugitive
slaves, peasant rebels, and penniless bastards; he then organized
an army which increased so much that he became famous and was in
great demand.
He succoured in turn the Dauphin of France, the King of England,
the Templars of Jerusalem, the General of the Parths, the Negus of
Abyssinia and the Emperor of Calicut. He fought against
Scandinavians covered with fish-scales, against negroes mounted on
red asses and armed with shields made of hippopotamus hide,
against gold-coloured Indians who wielded great, shining swords
above their heads. He conquered the Troglodytes and the cannibals.
He travelled through regions so torrid that the heat of the sun
would set fire to the hair on one's head; he journeyed through
countries so glacial that one's arms would fall from the body; and
he passed through places where the fogs were so dense that it
seemed like being surrounded by phantoms.
Republics in trouble consulted him; when he conferred with
ambassadors, he always obtained unexpected concessions. Also, if a
monarch behaved badly, he would arrive on the scene and rebuke
him. He freed nations. He rescued queens sequestered in towers. It
was he and no other that killed the serpent of Milan and the
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dragon of Oberbirbach.
courtesies had been exchanged on both sides.
Now, the Emperor of Occitania, having triumphed over the Spanish
Mussulmans, had taken the sister of the Caliph of Cordova as a
concubine, and had had one daughter by her, whom he brought up in
the teachings of Christ. But the Caliph, feigning that he wished
to become converted, made him a visit, and brought with him a
numerous escort. He slaughtered the entire garrison and threw the
Emperor into a dungeon, and treated him with great cruelty in
order to obtain possession of his treasures.
The castle was of Moorish design, in white marble, erected on a
promontory and surrounded by orange-trees.
Terraces of flowers extended to the shell-strewn shores of a
beautiful bay. Behind the castle spread a fan-shaped forest. The
sky was always blue, and the trees were swayed in turn by the
ocean-breeze and by the winds that blew from the mountains that
closed the horizon.
Julian went to his assistance, destroyed the army of infidels,
laid siege to the city, slew the Caliph, chopped off his head and
threw it over the fortifications like a cannon-ball.
As a reward for so great a service, the Emperor presented him with
a large sum of money in baskets; but Julian declined it. Then the
Emperor, thinking that the amount was not sufficiently large,
offered him three quarters of his fortune, and on meeting a second
refusal, proposed to share his kingdom with his benefactor. But
Julian only thanked him for it, and the Emperor felt like weeping
with vexation at not being able to show his gratitude, when he
suddenly tapped his forehead and whispered a few words in the ear
of one of his courtiers; the tapestry curtains parted and a young
girl appeared.
Her large black eyes shone like two soft lights. A charming smile
parted her lips. Her curls were caught in the jewels of her
half-opened bodice, and the grace of her youthful body could be
divined under the transparency of her tunic.
Light entered the apartments through the incrustations of the
walls. High, reed-like columns supported the ceiling of the
cupolas, decorated in imitation of stalactites.
Fountains played in the spacious halls; the courts were inlaid
with mosaic; there were festooned partitions and a great profusion
of architectural fancies; and everywhere reigned a silence so deep
that the swish of a sash or the echo of a sigh could be distinctly
heard.
Julian now had renounced war. Surrounded by a peaceful people, he
remained idle, receiving every day a throng of subjects who came
and knelt before him and kissed his hand in Oriental fashion.
Clad in sumptuous garments, he would gaze out of the window and
think of his past exploits; and wish that he might again run in
the desert in pursuit of ostriches and gazelles, hide among the
bamboos to watch for leopards, ride through forests filled with
rhinoceroses, climb the most inaccessible peaks in order to have a
better aim at the eagles, and fight the polar bears on the
icebergs of the northern sea.
She was small and quite plump, but her waist was slender.
Julian was absolutely dazzled, all the more since he had always
led a chaste life.
So he married the Emperor's daughter, and received at the same
time a castle she had inherited from her mother; and when the
rejoicings were over, he departed with his bride, after many
Sometimes, in his dreams, he fancied himself like Adam in the
midst of Paradise, surrounded by all the beasts; by merely
extending his arm, he was able to kill them; or else they filed
past him, in pairs, by order of size, from the lions and the
elephants to the ermines and the ducks, as on the day they entered
Noah's Ark.
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Hidden in the shadow of a cave, he aimed unerring arrows at them;
then came others and still others, until he awoke, wild-eyed.
Princes, friends of his, invited him to their meets, but he always
refused their invitations, because he thought that by this kind of
penance he might possibly avert the threatened misfortune; it
seemed to him that the fate of his parents depended on his refusal
to slaughter animals. He suffered because he could not see them,
and his other desire was growing well-nigh unbearable.
In order to divert his mind, his wife had dancers and jugglers
come to the castle.
She went abroad with him in an open litter; at other times,
stretched out on the edge of a boat, they watched for hours the
fish disport themselves in the water, which was as clear as the
sky. Often she playfully threw flowers at him or nestling at his
feet, she played melodies on an old mandolin; then, clasping her
hands on his shoulder, she would inquire tremulously: "What
troubles thee, my dear lord?"
His wife appeared astonished.
"I am obeying you," quoth he, "and I shall be back at sunrise."
However, she feared that some calamity would happen. But he
reassured her and departed, surprised at her illogical moods.
A short time afterwards, a page came to announce that two
strangers desired, in the absence of the lord of the castle, to
see its mistress at once.
Soon a stooping old man and an aged woman entered the room; their
coarse garments were covered with dust and each leaned on a stick.
They grew bold enough to say that they brought Julian news of his
parents. She leaned out of the bed to listen to them. But after
glancing at each other, the old people asked her whether he ever
referred to them and if he still loved them.
"Oh! yes!" she said.
He would not reply, or else he would burst into tears; but at
last, one day, he confessed his fearful dread.
Then they exclaimed:
His wife scorned the idea and reasoned wisely with him: probably
his father and mother were dead; and even if he should ever see
them again, through what chance, to what end, would he arrive at
this abomination? Therefore, his fears were groundless, and he
should hunt again.
"We are his parents!" and they sat themselves down, for they were
very tired.
Julian listened to her and smiled, but he could not bring himself
to yield to his desire.
They proved it by describing to her the birthmarks he had on his
body. Then she jumped out of bed, called a page, and ordered that
a repast be served to them.
One August evening when they were in their bed-chamber, she
having
just retired and he being about to kneel in prayer, he heard the
yelping of a fox and light footsteps under the window; and he
thought he saw things in the dark that looked like animals. The
temptation was too strong. He seized his quiver.
But there was nothing to show the young wife that her husband was
their son.
But although they were very hungry, they could scarcely eat, and
she observed surreptitiously how their lean fingers trembled
whenever they lifted their cups.
They asked a hundred questions about their son, and she answered
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each one of them, but she was careful not to refer to the terrible
idea that concerned them.
through the forest, enjoying the velvety softness of the grass and
the balminess of the air.
When he failed to return, they had left their château; and had
wandered for several years, following vague indications but
without losing hope.
The shadow of the trees fell on the earth. Here and there, the
moonlight flecked the glades and Julian feared to advance, because
he mistook the silvery light for water and the tranquil surface of
the pools for grass. A great stillness reigned everywhere, and he
failed to see any of the beasts that only a moment ago were
prowling around the castle. As he walked on, the woods grew
thicker, and the darkness more impenetrable. Warm winds, filled
with enervating perfumes, caressed him; he sank into masses of
dead leaves, and after a while he leaned against an oak-tree to
rest and catch his breath.
So much money had been spent at the tolls of the rivers and in
inns, to satisfy the rights of princes and the demands of
highwaymen, that now their purse was quite empty and they were
obliged to beg. But what did it matter, since they were about to
clasp again their son in their arms? They lauded his happiness in
having such a beautiful wife, and did not tire of looking at her
and kissing her.
The luxuriousness of the apartment astonished them; and the old
man, after examining the walls, inquired why they bore the coat-ofarms
of the Emperor of Occitania.
"He is my father," she replied.
And he marvelled and remembered the prediction of the gipsy, while
his wife meditated upon the words the hermit had spoken to her.
The glory of their son was undoubtedly only the dawn of eternal
splendours, and the old people remained awed while the light from
the candelabra on the table fell on them.
In the heyday of youth, both had been extremely handsome. The
mother had not lost her hair, and bands of snowy whiteness framed
her cheeks; and the father, with his stalwart figure and long
beard, looked like a carved image.
Julian's wife prevailed upon them not to wait for him. She put
them in her bed and closed the curtains; and they both fell
asleep. The day broke and outdoors the little birds began to
chirp.
Meanwhile, Julian had left the castle grounds and walked nervously
Suddenly a body blacker than the surrounding darkness sprang from
behind the tree. It was a wild boar. Julian did not have time to
stretch his bow, and he bewailed the fact as if it were some great
misfortune. Presently, having left the woods, he beheld a wolf
slinking along a hedge.
He aimed an arrow at him. The wolf paused, turned his head and
quietly continued on his way. He trotted along, always keeping at
the same distance, pausing now and then to look around and
resuming his flight as soon as an arrow was aimed in his
direction.
In this way Julian traversed an apparently endless plain, then
sand-hills, and at last found himself on a plateau, that dominated
a great stretch of land. Large flat stones were interspersed among
crumbling vaults; bones and skeletons covered the ground, and here
and there some mouldy crosses stood desolate. But presently,
shapes moved in the darkness of the tombs, and from them came
panting, wild-eyed hyenas. They approached him and smelled him,
grinning hideously and disclosing their gums. He whipped out his
sword, but they scattered in every direction and continuing their
swift, limping gallop, disappeared in a cloud of dust.
Some time afterwards, in a ravine, he encountered a wild bull,
with threatening horns, pawing the sand with his hoofs. Julian
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thrust his lance between his dewlaps. But his weapon snapped as if
the beast were made of bronze; then he closed his eyes in
anticipation of his death. When he opened them again, the bull had
vanished.
Then his soul collapsed with shame. Some supernatural power
destroyed his strength, and he set out for home through the
forest. The woods were a tangle of creeping plants that he had to
cut with his sword, and while he was thus engaged, a weasel slid
between his feet, a panther jumped over his shoulder, and a
serpent wound itself around the ash-tree.
Among its leaves was a monstrous jackdaw that watched Julian
intently, and here and there, between the branches, appeared
great, fiery sparks as if the sky were raining all its stars upon
the forest. But the sparks were the eyes of wild-cats, owls,
squirrels, monkeys and parrots.
Julian aimed his arrows at them, but the feathered weapons lighted
on the leaves of the trees and looked like white butterflies. He
threw stones at them; but the missiles did not strike, and fell to
the ground. Then he cursed himself, and howled imprecations, and
in his rage he could have struck himself.
Then all the beasts he had pursued appeared, and formed a narrow
circle around him. Some sat on their hindquarters, while others
stood at full height. And Julian remained among them, transfixed
with terror and absolutely unable to move. By a supreme effort of
his will-power, he took a step forward; those that perched in the
trees opened their wings, those that trod the earth moved their
limbs, and all accompanied him.
The hyenas strode in front of him, the wolf and the wild boar
brought up the rear. On his right, the bull swung its head and on
his left the serpent crawled through the grass; while the panther,
arching its back, advanced with velvety footfalls and long
strides. Julian walked as slowly as possible, so as not to
irritate them, while in the depth of bushes he could distinguish
porcupines, foxes, vipers, jackals, and bears.
He began to run; the brutes followed him. The serpent hissed, the
malodorous beasts frothed at the mouth, the wild boar rubbed his
tusks against his heels, and the wolf scratched the palms of his
hands with the hairs of his snout. The monkeys pinched him and
made faces, the weasel tolled over his feet. A bear knocked his
cap off with its huge paw, and the panther disdainfully dropped an
arrow it was about to put in its mouth.
Irony seemed to incite their sly actions. As they watched him out
of the corners of their eyes, they seemed to meditate a plan of
revenge, and Julian, who was deafened by the buzzing of the
insects, bruised by the wings and tails of the birds, choked by
the stench of animal breaths, walked with outstretched arms and
closed lids, like a blind man, without even the strength to beg
for mercy.
The crowing of a cock vibrated in the air. Other cocks responded;
it was day; and Julian recognised the top of his palace rising
above the orange-trees.
Then, on the edge of a field, he beheld some red partridges
fluttering around a stubble-field. He unfastened his cloak and
threw it over them like a net. When he lifted it, he found only a
bird that had been dead a long time and was decaying.
This disappointment irritated him more than all the others. The
thirst for carnage stirred afresh within him; animals failing him,
he desired to slaughter men.
He climbed the three terraces and opened the door with a blow of
his fist; but at the foot of the staircase, the memory of his
beloved wife softened his heart. No doubt she was asleep, and he
would go up and surprise her. Having removed his sandals, he
unlocked the door softly and entered.
The stained windows dimmed the pale light of dawn. Julian
stumbled
over some garment's lying on the floor and a little further on, he
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knocked against a table covered with dishes. "She must have
eaten," he thought; so he advanced cautiously towards the bed
which was concealed by the darkness in the back of the room. When
he reached the edge, he leaned over the pillow where the two heads
were resting close together and stooped to kiss his wife. His
mouth encountered a man's beard.
He fell back, thinking he had become crazed; then he approached
the bed again and his searching fingers discovered some hair which
seemed to be very long. In order to convince himself that he was
mistaken, he once more passed his hand slowly over the pillow. But
this time he was sure that it was a beard and that a man was
there! a man lying beside his wife!
Flying into an ungovernable passion, he sprang upon them with his
drawn dagger, foaming, stamping and howling like a wild beast.
After a while he stopped.
The corpses, pierced through the heart, had not even moved. He
listened attentively to the two death-rattles, they were almost
alike, and as they grew fainter, another voice, coming from far
away, seemed to continue them. Uncertain at first, this plaintive
voice came nearer and nearer, grew louder and louder and presently
he recognised, with a feeling of abject terror, the bellowing of
the great black stag.
And as he turned around, he thought he saw the spectre of his wife
standing at the threshold with a light in her hand.
The sound of the murder had aroused her. In one glance she
understood what had happened and fled in horror, letting the
candle drop from her hand. Julian picked it up.
His father and mother lay before him, stretched on their backs,
with gaping wounds in their breasts; and their faces, the
expression of which was full of tender dignity, seemed to hide
what might be an eternal secret.
Splashes and blotches of blood were on their white skin, on the
bed-clothes, on the floor, and on an ivory Christ which hung in
the alcove. The scarlet reflection of the stained window, which
just then was struck by the sun, lighted up the bloody spots and
appeared to scatter them around the whole room. Julian walked
toward the corpses, repeating to himself and trying to believe
that he was mistaken, that it was not possible, that there are
often inexplicable likenesses.
At last he bent over to look closely at the old man and he saw,
between the half-closed lids, a dead pupil that scorched him like
fire. Then he went over to the other side of the bed, where the
other corpse lay, but the face was partly hidden by bands of white
hair. Julian slipped his finger beneath them and raised the head,
holding it at arm's length to study its features, while, with his
other hand he lifted the torch. Drops of blood oozed from the
mattress and fell one by one upon the floor.
At the close of the day, he appeared before his wife, and in a
changed voice commanded her first not to answer him, not to
approach him, not even to look at him, and to obey, under the
penalty of eternal damnation, every one of his orders, which were
irrevocable.
The funeral was to be held in accordance with the written
instructions he had left on a chair in the death-chamber.
He left her his castle, his vassals, all his worldly goods,
without keeping even his clothes or his sandals, which would be
found at the top of the stairs.
She had obeyed the will of God in bringing about his crime, and
accordingly she must pray for his soul, since henceforth he should
cease to exist.
The dead were buried sumptuously in the chapel of a monastery
which it took three days to reach from the castle. A monk wearing
a hood that covered his head followed the procession alone, for
nobody dared to speak to him. And during the mass, he lay flat on
the floor with his face downward and his arms stretched out at his
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sides.
After the burial, he was seen to take the road leading into the
mountains. He looked back several times, and finally passed out of
sight.
CHAPTER III
THE REPARATION
He left the country and begged his daily bread on his way.
He stretched out his hand to the horsemen he met in the roads, and
humbly approached the harvesters in the fields; or else remained
motionless in front of the gates of castles; and his face was so
sad that he was never turned away.
Obeying a spirit of humility, he related his history to all men,
and they would flee from him and cross themselves. In villages
through which he had passed before, the good people bolted the
doors, threatened him, and threw stones at him as soon as they
recognised him. The more charitable ones placed a bowl on the
window-sill and closed the shutters in order to avoid seeing him.
Repelled and shunned by everyone, he avoided his fellow-men and
nourished himself with roots and plants, stray fruits and shells
which he gathered along the shores.
Often, at the bend of a hill, he could perceive a mass of crowded
roofs, stone spires, bridges, towers and narrow streets, from
which arose a continual murmur of activity.
The desire to mingle with men impelled him to enter the city. But
the gross and beastly expression of their faces, the noise of
their industries and the indifference of their remarks, chilled
his very heart. On holidays, when the cathedral bells rang out at
daybreak and filled the people's hearts with gladness, he watched
the inhabitants coming out of their dwellings, the dancers in the
public squares, the fountains of ale, the damask hangings spread
before the houses of princes; and then, when night came, he would
peer through the windows at the long tables where families
gathered and where grandparents held little children on their
knees; then sobs would rise in his throat and he would turn away
and go back to his haunts.
He gazed with yearning at the colts in the pastures, the birds in
their nests, the insects on the flowers; but they all fled from
him at his approach and hid or flew away. So he sought solitude.
But the wind brought to his ears sounds resembling death-rattles;
the tears of the dew reminded him of heavier drops, and every
evening, the sun would spread blood in the sky, and every night,
in his dreams, he lived over his parricide.
He made himself a hair-cloth lined with iron spikes. On his knees,
he ascended every hill that was crowned with a chapel. But the
unrelenting thought spoiled the splendour of the tabernacles and
tortured him in the midst of his penances.
He did not rebel against God, who had inflicted his action, but he
despaired at the thought that he had committed it.
He had such a horror of himself that he took all sorts of risks.
He rescued paralytics from fire and children from waves. But the
ocean scorned him and the flames spared him. Time did not allay
his torment, which became so intolerable that he resolved to die.
One day, while he was stooping over a fountain to judge of its
depth, an old man appeared on the other side. He wore a white
beard and his appearance was so lamentable that Julian could not
keep back his tears. The old man also was weeping. Without
recognising him, Julian remembered confusedly a face that
resembled his. He uttered a cry; for it was his father who stood
before him; and he gave up all thought of taking his own life.
Thus weighted down by his recollections, he travelled through many
countries and arrived at a river which was dangerous, because of
its violence and the slime that covered its shores. Since a long
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time nobody had ventured to cross it.
The bow of an old boat, whose stern was buried in the mud, showed
among the reeds. Julian, on examining it closely, found a pair of
oars and hit upon the idea of devoting his life to the service of
his fellow-men.
He began by establishing on the bank of the river a sort of road
which would enable people to approach the edge of the stream; he
broke his nails in his efforts to lift enormous stones which he
pressed against the pit of his stomach in order to transport them
from one point to another; he slipped in the mud, he sank into it,
and several times was on the very brink of death.
Then he took to repairing the boat with debris of vessels, and
afterwards built himself a hut with putty and trunks of trees.
When it became known that a ferry had been established, passengers
flocked to it. They hailed him from the opposite side by waving
flags, and Julian would jump into the boat and row over. The craft
was very heavy, and the people loaded it with all sorts of
baggage, and beasts of burden, who reared with fright, thereby
adding greatly to the confusion. He asked nothing for his trouble;
some gave him left-over victuals which they took from their sacks
or worn-out garments which they could no longer use.
The brutal ones hurled curses at him, and when he rebuked them
gently they replied with insults, and he was content to bless
them.
A little table, a stool, a bed made of dead leaves and three
earthen bowls were all he possessed. Two holes in the wall served
as windows. On one side, as far as the eye could see, stretched
barren wastes studded here and there with pools of water; and in
front of him flowed the greenish waters of the wide river. In the
spring, a putrid odour arose from the damp sod. Then fierce gales
lifted clouds of dust that blew everywhere, even settling in the
water and in one's mouth. A little later swarms of mosquitoes
appeared, whose buzzing and stinging continued night and day.
After that, came frightful frosts which communicated a stone-like
rigidity to everything and inspired one with an insane desire for
meat. Months passed when Julian never saw a human being. He
often
closed his lids and endeavored to recall his youth;--he beheld the
courtyard of a castle, with greyhounds stretched out on a terrace,
an armoury filled with valets, and under a bower of vines a youth
with blond curls, sitting between an old man wrapped in furs and a
lady with a high cap; presently the corpses rose before him, and
then he would throw himself face downward on his cot and sob:
"Oh! poor father! poor mother! poor mother!" and would drop into a
fitful slumber in which the terrible visions recurred.
One night he thought that some one was calling to him in his
sleep. He listened intently, but could hear nothing save the
roaring of the waters.
But the same voice repeated: "Julian!"
It proceeded from the opposite shore, fact which appeared
extraordinary to him, considering the breadth of the river.
The voice called a third time: "Julian!"
And the high-pitched tones sounded like the ringing of a
church-bell.
Having lighted his lantern, he stepped out of his cabin. A
frightful storm raged. The darkness was complete and was
illuminated here and there only by the white waves leaping and
tumbling.
After a moment's hesitation, he untied the rope. The water
presently grew smooth and the boat glided easily to the opposite
shore, where a man was waiting.
He was wrapped in a torn piece of linen; his face was like a chalk
mask, and his eyes were redder than glowing coals. When Julian
292
held up his lantern he noticed that the stranger was covered with
hideous sores; but notwithstanding this, there was in his attitude
something like the majesty of a king.
As soon as he stepped into the boat, it sank deep into the water,
borne downward by his weight; then it rose again and Julian began
to row.
Julian set before him what he had, a piece of pork and some crusts
of coarse bread.
After he had devoured them, the table, the bowl, and the handle of
the knife bore the same scales that covered his body.
Then he said: "I thirst!"
With each stroke of the oars, the force of the waves raised the
bow of the boat. The water, which was blacker than ink, ran
furiously along the sides. It formed abysses and then mountains,
over which the boat glided, then it fell into yawning depths
where, buffeted by the wind, it whirled around and around.
Julian leaned far forward and, bracing himself with his feet, bent
backwards so as to bring his whole strength into play. Hail-stones
cut his hands, the rain ran down his back, the velocity of the
wind suffocated him. He stopped rowing and let the boat drift with
the tide. But realising that an important matter was at stake, a
command which could not be disregarded, he picked up the oars
again; and the rattling of the tholes mingled with the clamourings
of the storm.
Julian fetched his jug of water and when he lifted it, he smelled
an aroma that dilated his nostrils and filled his heart with
gladness. It was wine; what a boon! but the leper stretched out
his arm and emptied the jug at one draught.
Then he said: "I am cold!"
Julian ignited a bundle of ferns that lay in the middle of the
hut. The leper approached the fire and, resting on his heels,
began to warm himself; his whole frame shook and he was failing
visibly; his eyes grew dull, his sores began to break, and in a
faint voice he whispered:
"Thy bed!"
The little lantern burned in front of him. Sometimes birds
fluttered past it and obscured the light. But he could distinguish
the eyes of the leper who stood at the stern, as motionless as a
column.
And the trip lasted a long, long time.
When they reached the hut, Julian closed the door and saw the man
sit down on the stool. The species of shroud that was wrapped
around him had fallen below his loins, and his shoulders and chest
and lean arms were hidden under blotches of scaly pustules.
Enormous wrinkles crossed his forehead. Like a skeleton, he had a
hole instead of a nose, and from his bluish lips came breath which
was fetid and as thick as mist.
"I am hungry," he said.
Julian helped him gently to it, and even laid the sail of his boat
over him to keep him warm.
The leper tossed and moaned. The corners of his mouth were drawn
up over his teeth; an accelerated death-rattle shook his chest and
with each one of his aspirations, his stomach touched his spine.
At last, he closed his eyes.
"I feel as if ice were in my bones! Lay thyself beside me!" he
commanded. Julian took off his garments; and then, as naked as on
the day he was born, he got into the bed; against his thigh he
could feel the skin of the leper, and it was colder than a serpent
and as rough as a file.
He tried to encourage the leper, but he only whispered:
293
"Oh! I am about to die! Come closer to me and warm me! Not with
thy hands! No! with thy whole body."
So Julian stretched himself out upon the leper, lay on him, lips
to lips, chest to chest.
Then the leper clasped him close and presently his eyes shone like
stars; his hair lengthened into sunbeams; the breath of his
nostrils had the scent of roses; a cloud of incense rose from the
hearth, and the waters began to murmur harmoniously; an abundance
of bliss, a superhuman joy, filled the soul of the swooning
Julian, while he who clasped him to his breast grew and grew until
his head and his feet touched the opposite walls of the cabin. The
roof flew up in the air, disclosing the heavens, and Julian
ascended into infinity face to face with our Lord Jesus Christ,
who bore him straight to heaven.
And this is the story of Saint Julian the Hospitaller, as it is
given on the stained-glass window of a church in my birthplace.
_______________________________________
61) Everybody Does It
Academic cheating is at an all-time high. Can anything be done
to stop it?
September 09, 2007|By Regan McMahon
If there were a test on the current state of cheating in school, I would
have gotten an F. My knowledge was as outdated as the stolen
answers to last week's quiz. Ask a high school or college student
about cheating, and before you can finish the sentence, the person
will blurt out two things: "Everybody does it," and "It's no big deal."
Survey statistics back up the first statement, and the lack of serious
consequences and lax enforcement of academic integrity policies in
schools support the second.
Not only is cheating on the rise nationally - a 2005 Duke University
study found that 75 percent of high school students admit to
cheating, and if you include copying another person's homework,
that number climbs to 90 percent - but there has also been a cultural
shift in who cheats and why.
It used to be that cheating was done by the few, and most often they
were the weaker students who couldn't get good grades on their own.
There was fear of reprisal and shame if apprehended. Today, there is
no stigma left. It is accepted as a normal part of school life, and is
more likely to be done by the good students, who are fully capable of
getting high marks without cheating. "It's not the dumb kids who
cheat," one Bay Area prep school student told me. "It's the kids with
a 4.6 grade-point average who are under so much pressure to keep
their grades up and get into the best colleges. They're the ones who
are smart enough to figure out how to cheat without getting caught."
Denise Pope agrees. She's an adjunct professor in the School of
Education at Stanford University, founder and director of Stanford's
SOS: Stressed-Out Students Project and author of "Doing School:
How We Are Creating a Generation of Stressed-Out, Materialistic
and Miseducated Students." "Nationally, 75 percent of all high
school students cheat. But the ones who cheat more are the ones who
have the most to lose, which is the honors and AP (advanced
placement) students. Eighty percent of honors and AP students cheat
on a regular basis."
The pressure to succeed weighs heavily on these students. An uppermiddle-class senior at an East Bay private high school, whom I'll call
Sarah (who like many high school and college students I interviewed
insisted on anonymity), sums it up succinctly: "There's so much
pressure to get a good job, and to get a good job you have to get into
a good school, and to get into a good school, you have to get good
grades, and to get good grades you have to cheat."
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Pope understands how Sarah feels, considering the college
admissions climate, where one B can put your application on the
reject pile. "For kids with a very high GPA and very high SAT
scores, who have taken a ton of AP classes, what distinguishes them
is how perfect they are. So there's no room for any kind of error. And
if there's no room for error, you tend to cheat, even though these
students would have done just fine on the test. They say they cheat
because 'this is my safety net.' "
Cheating to win
The other group of students recently revealed to be most like likely
to cheat is athletes. In a landmark survey of nearly 5,300 high school
athletes conducted in 2005 and 2006 by the Josephson Institute of
Ethics in Los Angeles, 65 percent admitted to cheating in the
classroom more than once in the previous year, as opposed to 60
percent of nonathletes, a percentage that institute founder Michael
Josephson says is statistically significant. And varsity athletes were
more likely to cheat than nonvarsity.
Athletes in the high-profile male sports such as football, baseball and
basketball are more willing to cheat than other athletes. The one
women's sport that yields similar results is softball. For generations,
sports have been perceived as an endeavor that builds character and
instills positive values in youth. These study results, released in
February, prompted many to ask: Just what are the coaches teaching
these kids?
The fact that athletes must maintain a minimum GPA to stay on the
team is one factor, but Josephson thinks there's something deeper
going on. "The major male sports seem to be spawning a win-at-anycost mentality that carries over into the classroom. Thirty-seven
percent of boys and 20 percent of girls said it was proper for a coach
to instruct a player to fake an injury. Forty-three percent of boys and
22 percent of girls surveyed said it was proper for a coach to teach
basketball players how to illegally hold and push, for example. "Now
that is clearly illegal," says Josephson. "Whether you call it cheating
or just breaking the rules, it's illegal. It changes the game. You're not
supposed to hold. In the survey, a substantial number of the young
people thought that was permissible. So you have to ask yourself,
what is that telling us about the values that sports are generating?"
He understands the minimum-GPA factor and the time-management
issue - fitting studying in amid the practices and games. "I think what
allows them to succumb to it is also the fact that there's a sort of
mental attitude that it's not that big a deal. I don't think they lose a lot
of sleep over it. So as an ethicist, that's the piece of it I worry about.
Is there no conscience operating? Because without a conscience, you
have Enron."
Madeline Levine, Marin author of "The Price of Privilege: How
Parental Pressure and Material Advantage Are Creating a Generation
of Disconnected and Unhappy Kids," says it's worrisome that the
highest-performing kids in high school have few qualms about
cheating. "They will be our doctors, our lawyers, our policymakers.
And if the issue of integrity is on the back burner, that doesn't bode
well for all of us."
Endemic in college
The pressure to succeed at all costs has boosted cheating levels in
college to record levels also. A graduate of San Francisco's
independent Urban School, whom we'll call Ellen, now a junior at
the University of Southern California, says, "Everyone cheats. There
is no cushion, so you have to do well; there isn't a choice. In college,
there is no room for error. You cannot fail. You refuse to fail. People
become desperate, so they'll do anything to do well. That's why
people resort to paying others to do their papers. Because you feel:
Mess up once and you are screwed. The end."
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Tests are a big part of the grade in college, she says, and those are
largely multiple-choice, which were a rude shock to someone
coming from a progressive high school. "It's just memorization,"
says Ellen. "I came from Urban, where I was taught to bask in the
glory of learning something, not to just sit down the night before
with a bunch of kids on Adderall and go through the 30-page study
guide and memorize as much as I can. And you can say that taking a
drug to stay up so you can study is another form of cheating."
From her research, Pope is well aware of the widespread use by high
school and college student of the drugs Adderall and Ritalin,
normally prescribed to kids diagnosed with attention deficit disorder.
Students without the disorder find them easy to obtain legally
(college students often use the phrase "I'm having a little trouble
focusing" at the campus health center to get a prescription) or
illegally from students sharing their prescription or selling pills for
profit. Ellen says some college students will trade marijuana for
Adderall.
Pope says use of stimulants is on the rise in high school, and more
and more kids are using them to take the SAT. As in the debate over
the use of steroids in sports, some students don't feel it's morally
wrong - because it's still your brain at work - and are ignoring the
health risks of taking a drug not meant for them, with no monitoring
of dosage or side effects by a doctor. Pope says when she wrote
"Doing School" (published in 2001), "it was No-Doz and caffeine.
Now, especially in the past five years, it has switched to Adderall,
Ritalin and illegal stimulants."
Pope says a lot of students' philosophy is "Cheat or be cheated." So
many of their friends are cheating, they figure they'd be a chump not
to. "If you're the one honest kid, you're actually going to get the
lower grades or the lower test scores."
And Josephson points out that according to one study, less than 2
percent of all academic cheaters get caught, and only half of them
get punished. So there's almost a 99 percent chance of getting away
with it.
Pirouz Mehmandoost graduated from Washington High School in
Fremont in June and is about to enter California State University,
Stanislaus. He says cheating is so common in middle school and
high school that after a while "you just get used to it. It's not even a
moral issue for high schoolers. Kids have become immune to it."
He says a popular method of cheating is networking, which he
defines as "the easygoing smart kid gives the answers to some other
kid."
"There was one time in a science class in freshman year," he recalls,
"when I was networking with some other girl and we didn't get
caught. We both got A's. It was a great feeling, actually, I'd have to
say with no regret, mainly because I knew I would never have to use
that information ever again."
Technology has made cheating easier and more sophisticated. But
Pirouz says it's not causing the rise in cheating. "Cheaters are
causing the rise. Technology is a catalyst, but text-message cheating
is big because the cheaters are sending out the message. Some people
keep their integrity, but some fall into the trap when it's suggested."
The Internet has provided all sorts of shortcuts for cheaters. They
have Wikipedia at their fingertips, and thousands of ready-made term
papers available for downloading from sites like Cheaters. com,
Schoolsucks.com and Schoolpapers.com.
Some schools have tried to combat plagiarism by using a scanning
service such as TurnItIn. com. The students are instructed to turn
each paper in to the service, which uses a computer program to scan
it for instances of plagiarism by comparing it against all published
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materials and previously submitted papers in the company's
database. Any phrases in common are then highlighted for the
teacher to see. According to the company, significant levels of
plagiarism appear in 30 percent of papers submitted.
Kids use survival-mode thinking and exercise risk management
when they decide to cheat, says Pope. Suppose someone gets to the
end of several hours of homework and it's 10 p.m. and she still has
an English paper to write. If she turns in nothing, she knows it's a
guaranteed zero. If she downloads a paper from the Internet, she
might get caught and get a zero. But if she doesn't get caught, she
might get an A. So it seems worth it to many to turn in the
plagiarized paper.
That's not cheating, it's helping
published yet, but she shared some of them with The Chronicle.
Students are given examples of cheating and then asked to indicate if
they have done it more than once, and if they consider it not
cheating, trivial cheating, regular cheating or serious cheating. At a
local private high school, when presented with the phrase "Working
on an assignment with others when teacher has asked for individual
work," 60 percent said they had done that more than once, and 36
percent see it as not cheating. Of students at a large public high
school responding to the same phrase, almost the same number: 61
percent, said they had done it more than once, but an even higher
number, 42 percent, see it as not cheating.
The adults are doing it
One of the most disturbing trends is that behavior once considered
cheating is no longer thought to be so. Copying homework, for
example. An eighth-grader in private school says, "That's not
cheating, it's helping."
With examples of cheating ever-present in the news - the BALCO
scandal, point shaving by an NBA ref, grade changing at Diablo
Valley College; and frequent examples of cheaters in at the highest
levels of the corporate world, Washington and Hollywood escaping
harsh penalties - many suggest kids learn to cheat from the larger
culture.
"We call it the morning scramble," says Pope. "In the morning at a
high school, you see a ton of kids sitting around copying each other's
homework. Because a percentage of their grade is based on their
turning in their homework. And a lot of these kids are doing so many
classes and after-school activities that there's no way they could
possibly do all the work required of them. So kids don't even count
that as cheating. That's just sort of survival for them: divvying up the
work. That's why they're IM-ing (instant messaging) all the time
while they're doing homework. It's another way of divvying up the
work. It's a way of ensuring that you get it done. It doesn't matter
how you do it, just get it done and get it in."
Ethicist Josephson says, "The rule of thumb we use is: Whatever you
allow you encourage. So whether they're seeing it with Enron or
Barry Bonds or Paris Hilton, somewhere here or there, they are
seeing people get away with stuff. The truth is they don't have to
look further than their own high school. There is so much cheating
going on in their own school by their own colleagues, with their
teachers looking the other way, in a way that almost looks like
passive approval. There's a culture that begins to develop, when you
see people do this, and it provides the moral cover they need to
insulate themselves from a conscience. It's like saying, 'Come on, I'm
not the only one, it's happening all the time.'
Pope has done a survey of cheating in 10 Bay Area middle school
and high schools, both public and private. The results have not been
"One of the marker questions we use is, 'People have to lie and cheat
occasionally to succeed.' People who answer that affirmatively - and
297
just under 50 percent of the whole sample of high school students
answers that affirmatively, and half of the males - are more likely,
the correlation shows, to cheat. You could infer that if you think you
have to cheat in order to succeed, then your choice is between not
cheating and not succeeding. If, on the other hand, you believe you
can succeed without cheating, though it may be harder, there's a
much greater chance you will resist the temptation."
David Callahan, author of the 2004 book "The Cheating Culture:
Why More Americans Are Doing Wrong to Get Ahead," says there
are two economic explanations for the rise of cheating. One is that
there's more to gain. "We live in a time when the winners are getting
ever more lavish rewards and the incentives to get to the top are
greater than they've ever been before. In the late 1960s, if you were a
CEO and you inflated the value of your company's stock by cooking
the books, maybe you'd make a couple of extra million dollars when
your stock holdings went up. But if you do that now, there's the
potential to make hundreds of millions of dollars. If a top baseball
player took performance-enhancing drugs 20 years ago and hit more
home runs, maybe he'd make $1 million a year, which is how much
the top players got paid in the mid- to late 1980s. Now, if you can
join the ranks of the super top players, you can sign a $150 million,
five-year contact."
The other economic reason is there's more to lose. The penalties for
failure, or for simply being ordinary, have grown. The middle class
has been squeezed, so it's harder and harder to maintain a decent
standard of living.
Callahan says the two other things that account for the rise in
cheating are lack of oversight and enforcement (as in deregulation in
business and lack of serious consequences for violations in business,
politics and the academic world) and a change in American culture,
ushered in the 1980s with "greed is good" individualism and a
shredding of the social contract. "In that cultural context, it's not
surprising that people are willing to cut corners to advance their own
self-interest."
But even if kids are not aware of cheating scandals like Enron, says
Pope, "they are absolutely influenced by the role models they see
close to them." So when they see their parent go "diagnosis
shopping" to get a doctor to say they have ADD so they can have
extra time to complete their SAT test, or they hear a coach tell them
to fake an injury in football when their team is out of time-outs to
gain an unofficial one, kids get the message that it's OK, even
necessary, to do take whatever steps to gain an advantage. And to an
adolescent that may translate as lie, cheat and steal.
"The interesting thing about cheating is that it's a window into a kid's
soul, and into the family's soul, too," says Joe Di Prisco, the
Berkeley author who co-wrote "Field Guide to the American
Teenager" and "Right From Wrong: Instilling a Sense of Integrity in
Your Child" with Mike Riera, head of Oakland's Redwood Day
School. "Because so many of these kids are cheating to please their
parents - to get a grade, to get into college, whatever. The 100 or so
academic integrity cases I dealt with in 20 years as a high school
English teacher and in two years as a vice principal in charge of
disciplinary matters showed how desperate kids are to please their
parents and help their friends."
The key for him was capitalizing on teenagers' desire to be authentic,
to stay true to themselves, "and so you point up the irony that when
you cheat you're not representing yourself, and you're helping your
friend not to represent himself or herself, and it doesn't feel right,
does it?
"There are just transcendent moments there in that room when kids
see themselves, and they hear you saying, 'It's hard to be honest. We
all make mistakes. You made a mistake, but we're going to move
forward. There are consequences, but I still love you. Don't do it
298
again.' If you do that, the kid will probably not cheat again.
Probably."
But, he says, there have to be serious consequences and schools have
to enforce them. If schools don't, cheating will increase. "You start
expelling some kids for cheating, and cheating will stop."
What will stop it?
Josephson says there are a few steps schools could take that don't
cost any money, that would cut the incidence of cheating in school
testing by two-thirds in one year: Don't give the same test over and
over again, separate kids so they don't see each other's papers, make
it clear to students that it is unacceptable, have them sign a document
that says they haven't cheated and punish cheaters. Also, don't let
them come into tests with PDAs and cell phones.
Ronald Pang, principal of Lincoln High School in San Francisco's
Sunset District, has an academic integrity policy at his school. He
says it makes both the definition and consequences of cheating very
clear. English teachers go over the policy with their students every
year, and students and their parents must sign the policy and return
it.
Some say schools have been lax on enforcement because today's
parents often threaten litigation if a school pursues a cheating charge
against their child. Pang says one of the benefits of having the
integrity policy is that he can remind parents, "You signed this."
The reason parents aren't outraged about cheating, suggests Levine,
is that we have come to value achievement over character.
"You don't find any parent movement saying, 'Oh my God, why is
this happening?' " says Josephson. "It's a silent conspiracy creating
the disease of low expectations: 'Well, we can't really expect people
to be honest anymore.' "
Josephson's institute has worked with thousands of schools across
the country to implement his Character Counts! framework for
character education, which has reduced cheating in those schools.
And Pope has worked with Bay Area schools to establish honor
codes, which nationally have been shown in both high schools and
colleges to reduce cheating substantially. "It takes a lot more than
just saying we're going to slap your hands. You have to infuse it in
the culture.
"I hate to put the blame on teachers and schools," she adds. "Schools
are so burdened right now, and the teachers say parents won't
support them when they catch the kids cheating, and before that, they
put so much pressure on the kids to get these grades and test scores.
And they set poor examples, like on the sports fields. If the parents
aren't doing their job, it's very difficult for the teacher. You've got to
have that consistent message across the school, home and coaching
environments."
"We have lost our moral compass," says Josephson. "And no one is
putting the flag in the sand and saying, 'This is wrong! It's dishonest,
it's unacceptable, I don't care what the stakes are and why you're
doing it, it's wrong, and we will not permit it.' The solution is in the
voluntary commitment of the school system and the people who run
it, the boards of education and the parents to say this is not
acceptable. If they would do that, they could change it."
Top 5 Ways to Cheat
-- Copying from another student
-- Plagiarizing by downloading information or whole papers from the
Internet
-- Cell phone cheating - text-messaging answers to another student,
taking a picture of the test and e-mailing it to another student, or
downloading information from the Internet
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-- Getting test questions, answers or a paper from a student in a
previous period or from a previous year
-- Bringing a permitted graphing calculator into the test loaded with
answer material previously input into the computer portion of the
calculator
Top 5 Ways to Curb Cheating
-- Create an honor code with student input so they're invested in it
-- Seriously punish cheaters according the academic integrity policy
-- Create multiple versions of tests to make purloined answer keys
useless
-- Ban electronic devices in testing rooms
-- Develop multiple modes of assessment so the grade is not
determined primarily on tests
From http://articles.sfgate.com/2007-0909/living/17261612_1_cheat-school-students-part-of-school-life
62) The Cheating Game
REPORT Archives
from US NEWS and WORLD
'Everyone's doing it,' from grade school to graduate school
11/22/99
By Carolyn Kleiner; Mary Lord
Umpteen pages to plow through for honors English, anatomy, and
U.S. history. . . . Geometry problems galore . . . . It was a typical
weeknight for high school sophomore Leah Solowsky. Before
tackling her first assignment--a Spanish essay on healthy eating--the
honor-roll student logged on to her computer to chat with pals.
Suddenly, it hit her: Perhaps she could download some of her
workload.
Solowsky cruised to the AltaVista search engine, clicked on
"Spanish," and typed in "la dieta." Fifteen minutes later, she had
everything she needed to know about fruits, vegetables, and grains-all in flawless espanol. She quickly retyped the information and
handed in her paper the next day. "I had a ton of homework, I wasn't
doing that well in the class, and I felt, hey, this is one way to boost
my grade," explains Solowsky, now a junior with a B-plus average at
the highly competitive Gulliver Preparatory School in Miami. "I
didn't think it was cheating because I didn't even stop to think about
it."
Every day across America, millions of students from middle school
to medical school face similar ethical quandaries--and research
indicates that most choose to cheat. In a recent survey conducted by
Who'sWho Among American High School Students, 80 percent of
high-achieving high schoolers admitted to
having cheated at least once; half said they did not believe cheating
was necessarily wrong--and 95 percent of the cheaters said they have
never been caught. According to the Center for Academic Integrity
at Duke University, three quarters of college students confess to
cheating at least once. And a new U.S. News poll found 90 percent
of college kids believe cheaters never pay the price.*
Crib sheets and copying answers are nothing new, of course. What's
changed, experts maintain, is the scope of the problem: the
technology that opens new avenues to cheat, students' boldness in
using it, and the erosion of conscience at every level of education.
"I'm scared to death," says Emporia State University psychology
Prof. Stephen Davis, who recently expanded his study of cheating to
300
graduate students--including those in medical school. "I hope I never
get a brain disease."
range of studies shows that figure has exploded, to anywhere from
three quarters of students to an astonishing 98 percent.
Cheating arts. Academic fraud has never been easier. Students can
tamper electronically with grade records, transmit quiz answers via
pager or cell phone, and lift term papers from hundreds of Web sites.
Sam, a junior at the University of Alabama, can barely recall the first
time he cheated. He thinks it must have started back in middle
school, copying the occasional math assignment or printing a key
formula on his forearm. (Like other current cheaters quoted in this
article, Sam asked that his real name be withheld.)
At the same time, an overload of homework combined with intense
pressure to excel in school, from harddriving peers and parents,
makes cheating easy to justify--and hard to resist. Valedictorians are
as likely to cheat as laggards, and girls have closed the gap with
boys. In fact, the only thing that makes Leah Solowsky's case
unusual is that she got caught--earning a zero on her Spanish paper
and getting barred from the National Honor Society.
Sissela Bok, author of Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private
Life, suspects part of the problem may be that "people are very
confused [about] what is meant by cheating." When does taking
information off the Internet constitute research, and when is it
plagiarism? Where does collaboration end and collusion begin? The
rules just aren't that clear, particularly given the growing number of
schools that stress teamwork. The result: widespread homework
copying among students and a proliferation of sophisticated sixthgrade science projects and exquisitely crafted college applications
that bear the distinct stamp of parental "involvement."
Most alarming to researchers is the pervasiveness of cheating among
adolescents. What begins as penny-ante dishonesty in elementary
school--stealing Pokemon cards or glancing at a neighbor's spelling
test--snowballs into more serious cheating in middle and high
school, as enrollments swell and students start moving from class to
class, teacher to teacher. Professor Davis, who has gathered data on
more than 17,000 students, notes that 50 years ago, only about 1 in 5
college students admitted to having cheated in high school. Today, a
A decade later he is still at it, most recently lifting a paper on postCivil War racism off the Internet. "I realize that it's wrong, but I
don't feel bad about it, either, partly because I know everyone else is
doing it," says Sam in a deep Southern drawl. "If I ever stole a test or
something to that degree, I'd feel guilty. But just getting a couple of
answers here and there doesn't bother me."
Competition for admission to elite colleges has transformed the high
school years into a high-stakes race where top students compete for a
spot on the sweet end of the curve. It has also spawned a new breed
of perpetrator: the smart cheater. In the Who's Who survey, the
country's top juniors and seniors talked about copying homework,
plagiarizing, or otherwise cheating their way to the head of the class.
"Grades are so important to these kids," sighs RevaBeth Russell, an
advanced-placement biology teacher at Lehi High School in Utah,
who has seen copying incidents skyrocket as collegebound students
from prosperous families settle in the rural area.
What's going on. The notion that schools are awash with cheaters
doesn't always square with what administrators say goes on in their
classrooms and corridors. "My goodness, the students are 12-, 13-,
14-year-old kids, and sometimes they make a bad decision," says
Gary McGuigan, principal of the H. E. Huntington Middle School in
San Marino, Calif. "But [cheating] isn't rampant." Sunny Hills High
School in nearby Fullerton weathered two major cheating scandals in
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two years involving more than a dozen honorroll students, yet
principal Loring Davies insists these are "isolated" incidents.
But in scores of interviews in a cross section of communities
nationwide, students gave U.S. News a strikingly different reading of
the situation. "We all know that cheating is cheating, and we
shouldn't do it," says Melissa, a student at Duke University. "But
there are times that you cheat because there aren't enough hours in
the day." Case in point: last month, Melissa found herself with a
computer programming assignment due in a few hours--and several
hours of driving to do at the same time. So she had a friend copy his
program and turn it in for her. "It's not a big deal because it's just a
mindless assignment," rationalizes Melissa. "It's not a final or a
midterm. I mean, I understood how to do it; I just didn't have the
time."
Most distressing to teachers is the way plagiarism, copying, and
similar deceits devalue learning. "We're somehow not able to
convince them of the importance of the process," laments Connie
Eberly, an English teacher at J. I. Case High School in Racine, Wis.
"It's the product that counts." For too many students and their
parents, getting that diploma--that scholarship, that grant --is more
important than acquiring knowledge. "I'm just trying to do
everything I can do to get through this school," acknowledges Brad,
a junior at an exclusive Northeastern boarding school and a veritable
encyclopedia of cheating tips. (Feign illness on test days and get the
questions from classmates before taking a makeup exam. Answer
multiple-choice questions with 'c'--a letter that can easily be altered
and submitted for a regrade.) "If this is the only way to do it, so be
it," he says.
The pressure to succeed, particularly on high-stakes tests, can drive
students to consider extreme measures. Two months ago, nothing
mattered more to Manuel than doing well on the SAT. "If your score
is high, then you get into [a good school] and scholarships come to
you," explains the high school senior from Houston, who is going to
have to cover half of his college expenses himself. "If not, then you
go to some community college, make little money, and end up doing
nothing important the rest of your life."
Desperate for a competitive edge, he started poking around the Net
and soon stumbled upon an out-ofthe- way message board where
students bragged about snagging copies of the test. Manuel posted
his own note, begging for help; he says he got a reply offering a
faxed copy of the exam for $150 but ultimately chickened out.
While crib notes and other time-honored techniques have yet to go
out of style, advanced technology is giving slackers a new edge. The
Internet provides seemingly endless opportunities for cheating, from
online term-paper mills (story, Page 63) to chat rooms where
students can swap science projects and math solutions. They also
share test questions via E-mail between classes and hack into school
mainframes to alter transcripts; they use cell phones to dial multiplechoice answers into alphanumeric pagers (1C2A3D) and store
everything from algebra formulas to notes on Jane Eyre in cuttingedge calculators. Some devices even have infrared capabilities,
allowing students to zap information across a classroom. "I get the
sense there's a thrill to it, that 'my teachers are too dumb to catch me,'
" says English teacher Eberly.
Cram artists. As the stakes rise--from acing spelling tests, say, to
slam-dunking the SAT--so does the complexity of the scam. "It's a
constant race to keep up with what people are doing," says Gregg
Colton, a Florida private investigator who serves as a security
consultant for a dozen licensure and testing organizations. His
biggest concern is "cram schools" that charge test takers hundreds to
thousands of dollars for the chance to study a dubiously obtained
copy of an exam in advance. In one notorious case, a California man
sold answer-encoded pencils to hundreds of students taking graduate
school entrance exams for up to $9,000 a pop; ringers had sat for the
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test in New York, then phoned the results across the country, aided
by a three-hour time difference.
wonder that teachers see students of every age handing in essays that
contain words they can't pronounce, much less define.
Reasonably priced surveillance equipment, including hidden cameras
and tape recorders, is taking cheating to a whole new level. Colton
cites numerous cases in which video cameras roughly the size of a
quarter were hidden in a test taker's tie (or watch or jacket) and used
to send information to an outside expert, who quickly compiled
answers and called them back into a silent pager. "If [students] spent
as much time on their studies as they do on cheating, we'd be
graduating rocket scientists all over the
Sue Bigg, a college consultant outside Chicago, often sees the hand
of pushy parents. "I am beginning to think of myself in the role of
'integrity police'," she says, relating countless stories of college
application essays that have been "edited" by Mom or Dad--and
often for the worse, as big words replace any shred of youthful
personality. "I'm afraid a lot of this cheating comes from home,
where the parents' modus operandi is success at any cost." Edithappy adults are part of the reason why schools across the country
are having students do much of their writing in class nowadays. (It
also prevents them from pulling papers off the Web.)
place," says Larry McCandless, a science teacher at Hardee Junior
High in Wauchula, Fla., who recently caught his students using sign
language to signal test answers to each other.
If students do spend homeroom copying assignments from one
another, it may be because schools send such mixed messages about
what, exactly, constitutes crossing the line. Mark, a senior at a
Northeastern boarding school, doesn't believe that doing homework
with a friend--or a family member--is ever dishonest and blames the
people at the head of the classroom for any confusion over
collaboration. "I mean, some of my teachers say you can't do it,
some say two minds are greater than one," he explains, breaking into
a laugh. "I obviously agree with the latter."
He isn't the only one. In a new study of 500 middle and high school
students, Rutgers University management Prof. Donald McCabe, a
leading authority on academic dishonesty, found that only one third
said doing work with classmates was cheating, and just half thought
it was wrong for parents to do their homework. So where, exactly,
does teamwork end and cheating begin? It's not always that clear,
even for grown-ups. According to the U.S. News poll, 20 percent of
adults thought that doing homework for a child was fair. It's no
Parents who complete the bulk of their children's work often
frustrate those with a more hands-off approach. "It all begins with
the Pinewood Derby," grumbles Christopher Hardwick, a father of
four from Philadelphia, who confesses to doing his "fair share of
putting toothpicks into Styrofoam" for soap-box derbies and science
projects. But Margaret Sagarese understands why parents are
tempted to meddle.
"You do feel caught between a rock and a hard place," says
Sagarese, who lives in Islip, N.Y. "You're trying to do the right
thing, and yet you know your child is going to lose, because [other
classmates'] parents are doing the work."
The U.S. News poll found that 1 in 4 adults believes he has to lie and
cheat to get ahead, and it seems this mentality is communicated to
children. "Students see adults--parents, businessmen, lawyers-violating ethical standards and receiving a slap on the wrist, if
anything, and quickly conclude that if that's acceptable behavior in
the larger society, what's wrong with a little cheating in high school
or college?" says Rutgers Professor McCabe. "Too often the
messages from parents and teachers come off as, 'You need to do
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everything you can, at all costs, to get to the top.' You never see any
gratification for being a good person anymore," says Audrey James,
a senior at the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics in
Durham. "Once you get to high school, it's all about who has the
grades and who's going to get the most scholarships."
Teaching cheating? Some blame schools, not parents or students, for
the cheating epidemic. "We should look at the way we run our
institutions and the way those institutions tolerate, or at the very
least, make cheating easy," says Theodore Sizer, a longtime educator
and coauthor of The Students Are
Watching: Schools and the Moral Contract, citing teachers with too
large classes and too little time to get to know students or to create
new assignments that cannot be pulled off the Internet.
Sometimes the schools are directly responsible. In the midst of
March Madness last spring, a former tutor for the University of
Minnesota revealed that she had written 400 papers for 20 basketball
players between 1993 and 1998; four athletes were suspended, and
the team was upset in the first round of the NCAA tournament. "You
can talk to any academic adviser [for a sports program], and they
will tell you that there have been times when coaches have put
pressure on them to do anything it takes to keep an athlete eligible,"
says Richard Lapchick, director of the Center for the Study of Sport
in Society at Northeastern University. He claims that in the past year
alone, he has counseled tutors and former players at six different
schools to report cheating, only to have every athletic director--and
one college president--investigate and deny there was a problem.
It's clear that when students really care about learning, they're much
less likely to cheat. Take Bob Corbett, for example. Though he
details his years of making cheat sheets and paying people to take his
AP exams in The Cheater's Handbook: The Naughty Student's Bible,
Corbett insists that he never cheated in any subject he really cared
about or in classes with inspiring instructors. In fact, he dedicated his
book to the 11th-grade teacher who "did such a wonderfully
engaging job that he destroyed any shred of desire I may ever have
had to cheat in English thereafter. . . ."
Still, the temptation is great. Prof. Gregory Cizek was inspired to
write Cheating on Tests: How to Do It, Detect It, and Prevent It, after
he caught three of his education graduate students in a clear-cut case
of academic fraud a few years back; the would-be teachers
apparently broke into his office, stole a copy of a final exam,
collaborated, and then subbed pages of prewritten work into their
tests.
The same standardized exams that drive students to do whatever it
takes to gain an edge also push teachers --whose job security or
salary can be linked to student performance--to do the unthinkable.
This summer, for example, the Houston Independent School District
demanded the resignations of a principal and three teachers after a
nine-month probe turned up evidence of instructors giving oral
prompting during the state achievement test and then using answer
keys to correct students' responses, among other offenses.
Most cheaters don't get caught. In fact, perhaps the major reason
students cheat is that they get away with it, time and time again.
Numerous studies say that students almost never squeal on a
classmate who cheats. And most instructors just don't want to play
cop. "I'm not here to prevent students from cheating," says Robert
Corless, an applied mathematics professor at the University of
Western Ontario who eliminated take-home exams a few years ago
after he caught students collaborating on them. "I'm here to help the
genuine learners catch fire." He'll close off the easy routes, but that's
about it. "Spending my time listening to appeals or accusations of
cheating is not my idea of spending it well."
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Procedures are the least of the hassles encountered by those who
pursue cheating cases. It can be complicated, time consuming, futile,
and--in the worst-case scenario--litigious. Science teacher
McCandless says he feared a lawsuit when one mother berated him
for damaging her daughter's selfesteem; she felt he should have
waited until after a test to chastise the girl for cheating. And although
legal action is rare, teachers at both the K-12 and higher-education
levels say it makes them wary about pursuing cheaters. John Hill, a
professor of law at St. Thomas University in Florida, actually landed
in court. His house was egged and his students hissed at him. And all
because he charged a student whose brilliant report for a course on
legal ethics was practically identical to a Stanford Law Review
article. (She contends she mistakenly turned in an early draft.) The
university honor society narrowly convicted her and meted out a
token punishment. Now graduated, she is suing Hill and the
university for "loss of ability to obtain a job as an attorney," among
other complaints.
It’s early on Novermber 6, SAT day, and Ray Nicosia is on the
prowl. The director of test security for the Educational Testing
Service, Nicosia is making the rounds at a high school test center
that has had a string of recent security problems, to guarantee things
go smoothly this time--or take steps to shut the site down. He cruises
the corridors, a vision of calm amid the throngs of edgy students, and
runs through a mental checklist: He verifies that test booklets are
kept in a secure storage area, far away from the probing eyes--and
fingers--of students, until the very last minute. He glances in
classrooms, making sure that proctors follow the rules, checking and
double-checking valid forms of identification, randomly assigning
students to desks at least 4 feet apart, filling out a seating chart (a
permanent record of who sat next to whom), and then strolling about
the room during the exam, searching out wandering eyes and other
suspicious activity.
To combat a scourge some deem as pernicious as underage drinking,
educators are implementing such countermeasures as character
education programs, honor codes, and strict academic integrity
policies.
"I'm not saying it's impossible to cheat, but we're taking a lot of steps
to secure our tests," says Nicosia. In recent years, ETS, which
administers some 11 million stand- ardized tests a year and questions
less than 1 percent of scores, has boosted prevention efforts, aiming
to thwart impersonators, thieves, and copycats either before or
during the act. Even the simplest precautions, from better training for
proctors to a free hotline for reporting shady activity, can make a
huge difference. In 1996, for example, ETS began shrink-wrapping
the essay section of Advanced Placement exams, to stop students
from sneaking a look during the first part of the test; peeking is now
virtually nonexistent.
Fighting back. Low-tech tactics work in the classroom, too. In a
1998 study conducted at two public colleges, Oregon State
University economics Prof. Joe Kerkvliet found that students were
31 percent more likely to cheat in courses taught by teaching
assistants--graduate students or adjunct professors -- than those
taught by tenured or tenure-track faculty. (Typically, 1 in 8 students
will cheat on at least one exam in any given class.) By offering
multiple versions of the same test, so students can't share answers
with friends in different sections, adding extra proctors, and giving
verbal warnings that cheaters will be punished, Kerkvliet has
reduced cheating in his classes to practically zero.
Just talking about the problem can be enough to stop it. Sohair
Ahmadi used to regularly cut corners back in the ninth and 10th
grades--trading test answers in biology, copying homework like
mad--and no one seemed to care. In her junior year, she switched
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schools, to the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics,
where teachers discuss academic integrity from the outset, outlining
why it's important and detailing a laundry list of unacceptable
behaviors. "They make it clear that cheating will not be tolerated,"
says Ahmadi, 18, who not only shed her habit but now heads a
committee dedicated to starting a school honor code.
High-tech countermeasures are also on the rise. From the moment a
student walks into ETS's computerbased testing center at George
Mason University in Fairfax, Va., for example, it's clear that Big
Brother is watching. A digital camera stands in one corner, ready to
snap a test-day photo for posterity; five video cameras record each
student's every move; the 15 computers run customized exams, with
the order and type of questions determined by a test taker's previous
answers. At the moment, ETS is working toward adding a biometric
scan (using, say, thumbprints to identify students) to the check-in
process.
Make 'em pay. The biggest stumbling block, however, may be that
when cheaters do get busted the penalties are rarely harsh. Last year,
for instance, the valedictorian at Brea Olinda High School in
Southern California was caught electronically altering a course
grade. His punishment: being banned from the graduation ceremony.
Cheat on the SAT and your score will be canceled; but you can take
a retest. It's often true that getting caught cheating "doesn't have the
terrifically terrible college ramifications you might think," says Don
Firke, academic dean at Choate Rosemary Hall, a boarding school in
Wallingford, Conn. "If a college really wants a kid, they're going to
find a way to take him." Once on campus, a cheater is apt to find
similarly lax discipline. With the exception of a handful of schools
like the University of Virginia, which have one-strike-and-you're-out
honor-code policies, the vast majority simply dole out zeros for an
assignment or course in which a student has been found cheating.
Still, a growing number of institutions are trying to turn discipline
into a teachable moment. At the University of Maryland-College
Park, for example, students caught cheating must attend a sevenweek ethics seminar. "We're not trying to mar someone's life, but we
are saying, 'You're going to have to think about this behavior and
what danger it poses to you and the larger society,' " says Gary
Pavela, director of judicial programs and--a recent addendum-student ethical development.
Do the cheaters actually mend their ways? Leah Solowsky isn't glad
she was caught plagiarizing last year, but she acknowledges that the
experience did teach her a thing or two. "I learned that teachers aren't
as stupid as some people think they are," she says with just a hint of
humor. Pausing to think for a moment, she adds: "I mean, cheating
should affect your conscience, because you are doing something
wrong." Solowsky vows she's sworn off cheating for good--no
matter how much loathsome Spanish homework piles up every night.
Buena suerte.
According to an exclusive U.S. News poll, 84% of college students
believe they need to cheat to get ahead in the world today.
90% of college students say cheaters never pay the price;
9