Assuming everything goes according to plan, Winterim 2023 will see me and a score of kids playing, dissecting, and creating our own board games. It’s going to be good--at least, I hope it will--and I’ve been prepping for it for a few months already. I’ve purchased a lot of games on the school’s dime: Too Many Bones, Wingspan, Carcassonne, The Big Book of Madness, Azul, Mysterium, Marvel United, and a handful more. Part of the class is to talk about the history of board games. There’s a pretty great video by the Shut Up & Sit Down guys (one of the preeminent board game reviewers on YouTube) that takes about an hour to watch and gives a good overview. However, I wanted to have something a bit more substantial. I often want some sort of book read before the Winterim starts (for my dinosaur Winterim, for example, I had them read Raptor Red; for the fantasy Winterim, I had them read Elantris), so I set out to see if there was an accessible and worthwhile look at the history of board games. I found It’s All A Game: The History of Board Games from Monopoly to Settlers of Catan by Tristan Donovan. And what do you know? My local library had a copy. I picked it up at the beginning of the summer, picking at it as the mercury climbed. Donovan has an easy and approachable style that weaves through the key points and puts in context a lot of pieces (pun, as always, intended) that I hadn’t thought of before. Additionally, he includes a lot of the connective tissues of how one game inspires another, responds to it, or fails to catch the imagination of the masses yet opens up pathways to future inventions. It’s really fascinating, and I enjoyed my time in the book overall. A couple of points really stood out to me. The first one comes from my own sensitivity towards public perception of video games. I’ve been a gamer all my life, and while I’ve had a healthy love of board games, most of my adult life’s entertainment has been in the digital realm. There’s a pretty obvious reason for this: You don’t have to coordinate time, schedules, or energy levels with other humans to get to play (most) video games. I can plop myself down on the couch and away I go. My wife enjoys board games, too, but a lot of her downtime is spent at the sewing machine. So while board games have always been in our home and we’ve waxed and waned on different titles, video games have held a place of primacy since the beginning. Because of that sensitivity, there’s always a raising of hackles when the idea of “video games are bad for you” starts cropping up. A recent study indicates that one’s well-being is not necessarily negatively affected by video game playing, with a caveat that compulsive or addictive playing makes for a noteworthy exception. While it’s important that we continue to do research into this new medium, I have to admit that the stigma around video games, particularly their influence in increasing violence in participants, has always left me a bit uncertain. I do believe that what you absorb through media can affect you--it’s why I think there needs to be more diversity in the genders, races, and situations that are depicted on all of our screens everywhere. Positive representation really does make a difference. And yet, there are loads of examples in Donovan’s book that explain how board games have led to real violence. He talks about how the crossword puzzle was invented back in 1913 (originally called Word-Cross, but, due to a negligent error, turned into Cross-Word). A decade later, finishing the crossword puzzles had become so addictive to some that it strained relationships. Some took their puzzle-solving way too seriously. In 1923 one Chicago woman filed for divorce because her husband stopped going to work so he could focus on his crosswords. The following year a man shot his wife because she refused to help him with a particularly vexing crossword. (139) From Monopoly’s original intention (a critique and condemnation of the rapacious greed of landlords) to the Japanese game go and how it’s influenced AI development and neural networks, It’s All A Game provides wonderful stories, fascinating anecdotes, and worthwhile glimpses into the histories that have created so much of the world that we live in. And that’s the other thing that I really took from this book: Each game on my shelf has a story behind it. And while most of what I play right now isn’t in the book, each one could have been added in without any real detriment to the overall thesis. Every game I have had some motivation in making it (probably profit for a lot of them, though I know for certain that isn’t the case for all of them), and every game that I have tried to make likewise came from a place of desire. Though I’ve only three or four games in different stages of development, each one came from a desire at a certain time in my life. (Example: During 2020’s Harry Potter Winterim, before the world ended, I wanted to try to make a game based on Quidditch that utilized the idea of height--not a 2D game, but one with a vertical ability, too.) The last thing that stood out to me was the eerie explanations of the roots to the game Pandemic. The book, written in 2017, has a couple of chilling paragraphs as Donovan looks at the global response to SARS in 2003. He writes, The world watched on [at China’s response to the virus], wondering if this was the start of a terrifying global pandemic similar to the 1918 influenza outbreak that claimed the lives of at least fifty million people. […] The SARS outbreak infected several thousand people and killed more than seven hundred, but the rapid global response saved the world from an epidemic that could have been much, much worse. (225) Yeah. It’s kind of creepy to read that.
So, yeah. This book is great. I really enjoyed it and I look forward to assigning it to my students. I will have to tell them that they aren’t required to read the chapter entitled “Sex in a Box” that talks about how Twister came to be and what games it inspired. While it doesn’t go into anything shockingly explicit, it’s not really the direction that I want to take the class. (Obviously, students will likely still read that chapter, but it won’t be assigned.) You could give it a whirl. Kind of like board games, it’s a lot of fun. I have long struggled with my addiction to Twitter. I gave it up for Lent, then was right back on the thing as soon as it was "allowed" again. I spend approximately two minutes (not exaggerating) a day on Facebook and multiple hours--spread throughout the day--on the bird-platform. I've talked about it before, so I don't need to rehash old statements. The long and the short of it (#shakespeareiseverywhere) is that I prefer that social media to the Book of Faces.
One of the reasons that I like Twitter so much is that it gives me a chance to read from a lot of unexpected sources and get insights into what a lot of people are talking about. I've purged my follow list a couple of times, trying each time to focus more on what I really want out of the platform: Information regarding agents, writers, and goings-on in the world of my interests (teaching and publication and comic books and video games and Shakespeare and…and…). I do a poor- to fair job parsing down the accounts, then tend to accumulate more and more until I need to winnow again. It seems that time is upon me again. What's happening is kind of inside baseball (to use a phrase I know exists but doesn't make any sense to me), but the basic thrust is this: Comic book and book publishing are getting their turns in the sunlight, and it isn't a pretty sight. I don't buy a lot of comics these days--I don't buy a lot of anything, thanks to Ms. Rona--so I don't know exactly who's doing what and how they're abusing their power. However, this site helps put a finger on the reckoning that's going on. It isn't just comic books, either: The reason that I even found the aforelinked website is because a writer named Myke Cole and his friend (and fellow writer) Sam Sykes both are dealing with allegations of misconduct and abuse. I say allegations, but Myke Cole, during the heat of the #MeToo movement, wrote about it in February 2018--and it seems like he hadn't changed his attitudes or behaviors. I don't know the details of the newest stuff, but both he and Sam Sykes have been called out as perpetrators of sexual harassment. I own one book each from the two men, though I've never read them. (I'm a fan of ebooks in principle, though I tend to prefer non-fiction on my ereader, and since both of the purchases were electronic, well…) Their main interest to me was watching them banter across the internet in some decidedly hilarious interactions. Cole had a lot of worthwhile things to say about the recent protests, about how white supremacy usurps and twists historical concepts to serve their purposes, and the need for police defunding and abolition. Sykes had a number of insightful threads about the creative and writing process, and he was a great amplifier for artists whose work he liked. As far as I knew, they were just normal creatives on Twitter with books for sale. I guess I was right: They were "normal". And that's the problem. It's not hard (like, really not hard at all) to recognize that all people deserve to be treated as human, that their consent and preferences be taken into account when interacting with them, and that they should never be made to feel uncomfortable or unsafe. Women in particular (and by that, of course, I include transwomen--because they're women, obvs--and non-binary people who rely on female designations for whatever reason) are human beings with equal rights, boundaries, and personal agency. Yet women in particular end up becoming targets of sexual harassment (and worse) far too often. Men, too, are put into compromised positions by others in power. It is an abhorrent reality that too many people face. The #MeToo movement helped show us how pervasive sexual misconduct (to put a too-polite word on the behavior) is within American society. Misogyny in any form ought to be anathema to, well, everyone. It has no place in our world. …except that it's here. It doesn't deserve to be here. It's like the divine right of kings: At best a relic of an antiquated age that needs no renaissance, at worst a tool that some may seek to remain in power for whatever personal gain they hope to achieve. (And lest you think that there aren't a lot of people who wish for a king in America, you perhaps haven't been paying attention to the loudest and most ardent followers of President Trump.) Misogyny (and its less-frequently seen sibling, misandry) shouldn't be in the world, yet it is. And we have to do something about it. No cancer is cured without intervention; no malady of humankind will go away without confrontation. There are lots of complexities in this issue, but the part that is most salient, I think, is a recognition of power. As cis-het White males who've been published, both Cole and Sykes are in positions that create a power imbalance. Power imbalances are inherent in our system--parent/child, teacher/student, politician/voter (in theory), employer/employee--and the differences in power positions is the area in which abuses are most likely to occur. The idea that an abuser can do heinous things and get away with it is one of the ways that these power imbalances become more and more entrenched. In the case of two published and visible (comparatively) writers, there's an additional power dynamic that a non-writer may not immediately see: Envy. I can't speak for other creative enterprises (though I imagine it's pretty similar), but in the writing community, aspiring writers are the most vocal and eager component of a fanbase. Book signings are often scenes of long lines of would-be writers hoping to get a bit of the signee's luck to rub off on them. The reason is pretty simple: It is extremely hard to break into writing. It's even harder to make a career out of it. And it's next to impossible to gain a wide readership. The competition is omnipresent and fierce. Going to a writer's conference is going into a place where the air has been replaced with desperation. Aspirants are desperate to learn something that will get them on the other side of the panel--to have "made it" and to be the one dispensing advice rather than writing it down. Published authors are desperate to keep their success going--to shill their books to the attendees and hope that the can earn out sometime in the near future. Editors are desperate to find someone whose work will provide a stable residual income for them; agents are desperate to strike a partnership with someone whose writing they love. Despite the fact that everyone is desperate, there are different degrees here. Power is strongest in the editors. They tend to be the ones acquiring the new talent, going to bat for the new books and new authors. This means that the editors have additional leverage over people who are desperate, and that increased power can far too often translate into heinous abuses. (A non-writing example would have to be Harvey Weinstein, who doesn't need any more thought spared to him.) Though neither Cole nor Sykes is an editor, they're both guys who "made it". They're one step closer to the dream. That means that people who might not normally accept an off-color or sexually suggestive remark will give a partial laugh and half-smile when it comes from an author that they like, or an agent they're thinking of querying. Richard Paul Evens learned the hard way that giving an unsolicited hug to fans can cross a line he didn't realize was there--and he did it, as the article says, probably "thousands of times". Were there thousands of victims? No. But there were some, and they were victimized because of the power imbalance. (Another example of this, though its effects are more diffuse: J.K. Rowling, despite having a lot of progressive concepts and values in her books, is a TERF, and she's recently come under fire for comments that dismiss transwomen. In this case, her power is less personal--she has an immense influence in the writing world, despite the fact that she isn't writing nearly as much as she has in the past--and it has turned into a flashpoint for a number of fans. So while you couldn't say that a specific person is harmed by Rowling's statements in the same way that the victims of Cole's or Sykes' behavior have been, there's still a kind of abuse that's happening here.) The results of these allegations have come rapidly. Cole has removed himself from Twitter for the foreseeable future; Sykes is insisting that victims continue to speak out. Everyone responds to this situation in slightly different ways. In my case, I remain in an uncomfortable crux that I've been in for many years now: What to do with the fact that human beings are behind so many of the things that I love. This isn't to dismiss the negative things that come from the embedded misogyny and racism that has built the world I live in. Being human means making mistakes, of course, but that doesn't mean that success should be deprived you because of those mistakes--but neither does it mean that second (or third or tenth) chances should be afforded, either. In some cases, it's a matter of reception. Milton and Shakespeare are near and dear to my heart and they're also emblematic of the Dead White Male that dominates the English departments. Eve in Paradise Lost moves between shockingly original and disappointingly dismissed. Kate in The Taming of the Shrew is a portrait of Stockholm Syndrome and one of the great tragedies in the canon, despite being a comedy. How can I maintain my feminist credentials, as it were, when embracing these two anti-women writers? Neither Milton nor Shakespeare can be "cancelled"--their presence in the world of letters is settled, at least during my lifetime. Their works are crucial to our modern identities, regardless of whether or not we recognize it. And I can't very well stop buying Milton or Shakespeare--they aren't getting royalties, and voting with my wallet will do nothing to their reputation. If economics is the barometer, the Bard and the prophet-bard are safe from reprisal. But what about Rowling, Cole, Sykes, or any other number of "problematic" authors who've done/said something that shows a sinister side to them that I can't agree with? My dollars will support Orson Scott Card if I buy his book, which means that I continue to empower a known- and proud homophobe. Is buying another round of butterbeer at Universal Studios only prolonging how long Rowling will be visible, pertinent, and capable of spreading her misconceptions about women? Now that I've purchased their books, is my continued non-reading of Cole and Sykes a way of boycotting them? And how is that different than the fact that I haven't gotten around to reading their books in the first place? These kinds of questions have been on my mind, as I said before, for years. And while I may have given examples that don't resonate with you. Maybe there are other views that these people espouse that you fundamentally disagree with--like Cole's calls to abolish the police. So you're okay with seeing his career end (will it, though?) or go on an unexpected and prolonged hiatus. You now will no longer buy books from a guy you weren't planning on buying from anyway. Have you done something to him? A creative's life is one of perpetual rejection (most of it's hidden, as authors don't stalk bookstores and feel personally offended when every patron who walked past her book on the aisle leaves without even picking up the book), so are you doing anything by boycotting his books? People talk about voting with their wallets all of the time--I used the phrase myself in the course of this essay--but I don't think it's quite as clear cut as we'd like to assume. After all, you may be able to buy a book from Rowling or Card or Sykes or Cole, but you could just as easily buy a book from Okorafor or Kuang or Chu or Kowal. All of these authors write in the same science fiction/fantasy genre, so why not pick one of these "less problematic" writers? Except you can't go to Hogwarts with Kuang and Okorfor's version of Ender is a Black girl named Binti, and does Kowal have as much fantasy violence in her books? In other words, you normally can't read one person's book and get the same story from a different author. So if Hogwarts means something important to me, something crucial, then I can't just go anywhere else. See? It's complicated… Or maybe it isn't. What's the difference between writers anyway? If you don't like one person's story, buy someone else's. Write your own books (which only makes sense to anyone who's never tried to write a book before). Don't do research into the humans who make your art. Don't expect them to abide by your own morals. Only buy from those who share your morals. Only retread what you've seen before, keeping your diet safe and vanilla, hypoallergenic and without surprises. Refrain from interpreting, interpolating, or interrogating the books you read--it's just fiction, it's just a story. No need to put anything else into it. I don't know how to square this circle. I bring it up from time to time in an attempt to get my feelings figured out, but it always slips free. I don't want to support people who've done harmful things. I don't want to give a pass to creators whose content I like simply because I like what they've made. I also have to acknowledge that someone has a problem with everything that I like for a whole host of reasons, so I have to understand what my own lines in the sand are…and what that says about me. Lastly, what this whole sordid tale exposes to me is the reality that I, too, have made mistakes. Never have I knowingly acted in a way that was intended to be inappropriate or harassing, sexually or otherwise. But that doesn't mean that I haven't been the reason someone felt unsafe or that I had ulterior motives in what I said or did. I know that there have been times--I can think of a couple--where brave women told me that what I was doing was making them uncomfortable. I immediately apologized and changed my behavior and that was the end of it. How many times have I inadvertently "shot mine arrow o'er the house, / And hurt my brother" (Hamlet 5.2) or sister? Lots of questions, I fear. And, as it happens so often for me, precious few answers. I like to think that I'm a pretty easy person to birthday shop for: Get me a book in something I'm interested in and that goes down well. Still, my family prefers to do things a bit more specific, so I try to keep my Amazon wishlist updated. This birthday, with it being in quaran-times and without the ability to do the annual tradition of going to a movie to celebrate my ageing up, I spent a quiet evening at home with the family, doing essentially the same thing that I've done with them for over two months. Though the party wasn't particularly memorable, the situation was, and I'm grateful that my family and I can have moments like that despite the strangeness of life in the spring of 2020.
One of the things that I put on my wishlist was a Magic: The Gathering book called War of the Spark: Ravnica. My son bought it for me, and I finished reading it yesterday. It is…good? And bad? It's complicated… What Worked As a teenager, my friend, Mark Wyman, was big into the Rifts TTRPG. He had a novel set in that world which he liked. I asked him if I could read it, but he didn't recommend it. After all, I wouldn't know what they were talking about. I figured that I'd be fine--it's a science fiction world, and I'd read quite a bit of science-fiction with weird worlds and weird things. I tried reading it anyway, and returned it to him after about twenty or so pages. It was just too hard to deal with how much was assumed of me as a reader. When it comes to these types of spin-off sff novels, there's always a bit of a problem with lore. How much backstory for characters, events, or locations should be provided? How much can the author expect of her readers in terms of preexisting knowledge? What kinds of details are necessary, especially if it's an art-heavy kind of IP? In the case of War of the Spark, Greg Weisman has a lot of ground to cover, as the story's premise is, for lack of a better comparison, the entirety of Endgame. I mean, Endgame doesn't really work that well as a movie qua movie, does it? (I haven't seen it since it came out, so I may be wrong about this.) That is, the emotional stakes, the personal desires, the consequences of the Snappening…all of that is foreground that other movies established. So Endgame has a really strong foundation that assumes a great deal of investment from the audience. (For the record, I think it really did pay off.) So how does this connect to Weisman's book? Well, there was an intricate plan to stop the Big Bad (an Elder Dragon named Nicol Bolas) from attaining god-like power. The book begins with the aftermath of that plan's failure. (See? Kind of a lot like Endgame.) The events of the next day as the heroes of the Magic: The Gathering universe (called Planeswalkers) scramble to fix the situation fills the rest of the novel. As far as it goes, this worked well…but only because I'm an ardent enough fan to know the mythos, lore, locations, and even abilities of a great many of the characters. (Weisman head-hops from Planeswalker to Planeswalker, going through at least a dozen different ones in the course of the story.) I knew what Jace Beleren was capable of doing, I knew he had a relationship with Lillianna Vess (I didn't know about his fling with Vraska, which was a surprise), and I knew his commitment to protecting the Multiverse from destruction. The card game from which the book is based has a rich and complicated lore that comes through all sorts of different avenues, including art books (of which I own five), novels, and articles, and more. So there's a lot of information that a reader has to absorb before this story can make sense. And, in a lot of ways, that makes this book an excellent piece of fan-service. Everyone gets a bit of the spotlight, with the ten different guilds of Ravnica participating in one form or another. Planeswalkers galore fill out the ranks, and the stakes are tangible. The action is persistent, but there are still moments of connection and emotional empathy--provided, of course, one already has an understanding of these characters. What Didn't Work I have to admit, I felt like I was reading the second book in the series, though: The web of intrigue and feelings that connected the Planeswalkers was already so advanced that I checked online a couple of different times to make sure that I hadn't picked up the wrong book. (There is a sequel, which I will likely buy at some point.) This sense of not-quite-knowing but being able to pick up enough of the pieces is a testament to Weisman's skill as a storyteller. Unfortunately, though I was able to figure out what happened before the book began as I read along, it meant that the reasons for people's behavior throughout much of the story I had to take for granted. I didn't know their specifics well enough to understand why everyone felt the way they did about, say, the betrayal of Vraska. By the end, yes, I got it. The result of storytelling this way, though, is that I watched the consequences of choices that I didn't understand until much later. That made the story feel out of order, and the ramifications of the pre-story actions weren't as strongly felt. Additionally, though I think Weisman tells the story well, his sentence-level writing is perfunctory and sometimes even bad. His pacing is cinematic--there are page-long chapters, as well as chapters that sprawl for a dozen pages--and that works well, but his descriptions are consistently inconsistent. This, of course, is part of the problem of adaptations: How much should one describe a character whose face is plastered on a thousands of copies of cards? Usually, Weisman will throw a single sentence--maybe two--about what a character looks like, focusing on the important details. Ajani is a leonin, so his head looks like a lion's. For players of the game, that's all that's needed. So it came as a surprise to see the loving and lengthy descriptions of the Cult of Rakdos. Multiple paragraphs were spent describing the dark, bloody atmosphere as some of the Planeswalkers made their way through it. The criticism isn't that the details of the Cult of Rakdos were expansive; it's that the rest were not. The inconsistency stood out to me. Going along with that, the various problems that the Planeswalkers needed to solve were done quickly, often within their short chapter. I understand the impulse: There's a lot of story here, so a focus on moving the plot forward was probably a good one. Unfortunately, that choice led to the book feeling skimpy. There were chapters that should've been an entire third of the novel. Trying to pack into 360 pages such an immense and complicated story with a dozen POV characters in a fantasy world (which are notorious for being longer, as there's more explanations needed for how the fantasy world works) is a task that might very well be impossible. Should You Read It? Weisman did his best--and it's an enjoyable romp that I'd recommend to Magic: The Gathering players--but that isn't enough to make it a good book. It's good at what it's trying to do, but I think there are enough dings and flaws in it to make it a book for Magic-lovers, rather than someone who's curious what a Magic: The Gathering book is like. (If you want one that doesn't require a lot of knowledge about the game, check out Arena. It's the first novel set in the game's universes, and though it takes some shortcuts, I found it an enjoyable read.) As far as a flat out recommendation, I'd say your mileage will absolutely vary. My younger brother will probably like it quite a bit (though I'm sure he already knows all the events that the book depicts anyway). I think my middle son will want to read it once he's done a bit more reading of the art books I own and played the game a little longer. But I don't think my mom's going to be interested in this one. Note: The Concurrent Enrollment English class I'm teaching is writing a personal essay about their literary journey. We're using Fahrenheit 451 as our text, but writing our own stories as we go along. Personal narratives are kind of my jam, so I decided that I would draft my own example essays/approaches to the topic. Fortunately for me, I won't be graded on what I write. Instead, I can simply let the story take me where it will. Here's what I wrote.
Naked trees. Kniving winds. The too-early setting of an October sun. A strange street. A dripping nose. In my cold-chapped hands, I held a flyer for Jim Ferrin, a guy in our ward who was using the youth to help canvas Orem neighborhoods with his candidacy. I did not much care about him--aside from being politically ignorant, I was twelve years old and completely uninterested in doing this bit of service. Besides, I wasn’t friends with any of his kids. Add to that the injury of having had to give up a perfectly good book-reading evening, and my pre-teen angst about the job becomes clearer. I walked to the next house, numb fingers fumbling with the slender elastic, wrapping the half-sheet of paper (hunting-orange in my memory, though who now knows what it really was) around the screendoor’s black handle. As the leaves gossiped past me, I shrugged deeper into my thick leather coat. “I don’t want this,” I said to myself. “I want to be at home, with Lessa, F’lar, and Jaxom.” Lessa, F’lar, and Jaxom, of course, aren’t real. They’re characters from the Dragonriders of Pern series by Anne McCaffery. Set on a faraway planet, the book series revolves around the men and women who have become selected to ride massive, fire-breathing dragons, all in defense of their planet from a mindless mycorrhizal threat. The world is a rare feat in secondary-world creation, second only to Tolkien’s Middle Earth in the complexity, interaction of disparate parts, and world-building. (The late Anne McCaffery didn’t build her own unique languages for her world--something that will likely always put Tolkien at the top of the list for most detailed secondary-world creation in literature.) To a twelve year old whose primary experiences were imaginative, having such a wonderfully wrought world--even if it was fictional--was where I wished to spend as much time as I possibly could. What I didn’t understand then but can see more clearly now is that Lessa, F’lar, and Jaxom--and Robinton, Menoly, and the rest of the entrancing cast--came into my life as permanent residents, people who became real to me through the viral act of writing and reading. They felt almost tangible, with problems that were large-yet-solvable, a type of bravery that I could only aspire to, and beneficiaries of a world in which dragons weren’t terrible beasts to slay but instead gentle companions, loyal and true. I grew up in the late eighties and early nineties: Ronald Reagan’s deregulation of what constituted advertisements to children meant that my Saturday mornings were twenty-three minute long commercials with a plot, interrupted by seven minutes of actual commercials. I knew very well how a child could pine for something. After all, watching an entire episode of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles--during which time there were a half dozen reminders that I could actually play with the Technodrome or get that Donatello action figure to round out my collection--was an injection of desire coming straight into my eyeballs. There was a yearning for the toys on the TV (to say nothing of the jealousy I felt toward the child actors who got to play with the toys during the commercial) that can be difficult to fully understand. I would ache for what I saw on TV, almost as if I could physically feel it. That’s what I felt that blustery October day as I hawked flyers for Jim-Ferrin-in-our-ward. But it wasn’t an ache for the action figures and playsets. It was a desire to return to a written world, a place where these fictitious people lived. I wanted to return to Pern, not suffer through the bad weather of Utah in late-autumn. I couldn’t say that this was the first time that I felt such a pining for the fictitious, but it’s certainly one of the strongest. The pull of characters--a concern for them that was akin to caring about my real life friends and their problems--was so intense that I almost cried. (Being freezing cold and miserable probably only added to that emotional response.) This, of course, is a different sort of experience than when I finally “got” what Shakespeare was saying in Hamlet or could “see” Milton’s brilliance. This was a more tangible, more from-the-gut experience. I found myself wanting to be in a place that I had never seen with people I had never met more than I wanted almost anything else in that moment. I did, unsurprisingly, get to go home when my service was complete. I don’t remember if Brother Ferrin ended up winning that election a couple of weeks later; I do remember, however, that Pern has--ever since that time--been a part of me, a place that I happily return to. And though I don’t ache to return there anymore (at least, not to the same degree), I know the keenness of such yearning. I now look forward to the next time an author’s words can so fully enrapture me--I look forward to being teleported again. Goodness gracious. Well, 2019, I'm really okay that you're leaving. What a year… That isn't to say that some great things didn't happen: They did, and I'm proud of some of what I've achieved in the past dozen months. Still, there was a lot of stress, strain, and sadness that came with the passing of time, and seeing those woes recede in the rearview mirror is fine by me. I can only hope that they don't pursue me into the new decade. Goals--Made, Lost, and Won As I was staring down the barrel of 2019, I wanted to try something different in terms of my readings: I wanted to reread all of Shakespeare's works, as well as go about my reading habits differently. I wanted to spend a lot of time reading certain books, with less emphasis on my nonfiction writing. I also hoped to finish writing some shorter books. Let's see how I did on these, shall we? Shakespeare reading: This one will go down as a definitive brick on my road to hell, as it was made with the best of intentions and was promptly glossed over. I honestly blame 1 Henry VI for being a fair slog that I'd just seen the previous year at the Utah Shakespeare Festival. Some of Shakespeare's plays can come up again and again without growing stale. The first part of Henry VI is not one of them. It took me a fair amount of time to read through that one, so though I'm finally in Richard III, it's rather frustrating to be sitting at the end of December and only have six plays finished. Yes, I'm going more slowly because I have pencil in hand as I'm roving through the pages, but that doesn't change the fact that, if given a chance to sit and read some of the Bard, I'll probably find something else to do with my time. This isn't because I don't love Shakespeare--obviously--but because reading his stuff is a lot of work. I usually come home from work having already put forward a lot of work, so the idea of picking up some "light reading" at the end of the day usually means not picking up The Norton Shakespeare. I did acquire quite a bit of Shakespeare-adjacent things, including Tyrant by Stephen Greenblatt, Richard III: England's Most Controversial King by Chris Skidmore, and Shakespeare's First Folio by Dr. Emma Smith. My Milton and Shakespeare library grows apace, much faster than my attention span, lamentably. Reading Anew: I had planned on reading one book per quarter, pencil in hand, with an eye toward becoming a deeper reader--as the previous year I ended up reading quite widely. There's nothing wrong with this goal, save my lack of will in completing it. Persuasion by Jane Austen failed to charm me, and I ended up having a really rough time trying to finish the book. With that taking so much longer than I anticipated, I ended up skipping out on whatever else I had planned--though I have read some more in Somme, which is immensely sad (the book, not the amount I've read)--and going back to my default of reading whatever snatched my fancy for the nonce. The pending Harry Potter Winterim, however, did put a monkey-wrench in my summer plans, as I realized that, by mid-July, I would have to start my reread of the entire Harry Potter series. This I did, reading the first three books in the delightful illustrated version, then the final four in my old Scholastic editions, all of which were carefully marked up from the last time I taught the class (back in January 2012). I finished Deathly Hallows a couple of weeks ago. That six month reread ate into the time I might have otherwise spent on the other books I was planning on reading. I'm disappointed by this failure, if I'm being honest. I wanted to broaden my deep-reading skills, but I was flustered by the first choice going so far awry. I still want to read a philosophy, a piece of fiction on my To Be Read pile, and a history book. I still want to improve my reading base. So I may try the same sort of thing in 2020, though appropriately tweaked. And, while I'm on the subject of what I read, I'm going to throw down the list of completed books right here, mostly as a way to remind myself what I finished this year: There are a couple of books I'm missing, I think, which would put me up to about 75 total titles this year. Some interesting (to me) notes: Numbers 48-52, 69, and 72 are unpublished works. Crimson Hands (number 52) is one that I read from a friend in the writers' group. The others are all books that I wrote over the course of the year (more on that below). Other interesting things include that I have absolutely no memory of what Kids These Days is about; it took me a while to remember what Skeleton Keys is; Mother Tongue is an absolute blank in my mind. While I can conjure a couple of thoughts about most of the things on the list, these are some that I don't even know what to think. I also had duplicate readings--not just the normal ones of Les Misèrables or Pride and Prejudice, which I read every year with my students--of things like Why Write? and It. (In the case of Why Write?, I finished it in January, then again in November.) As a matter of blasé interest, I also kept track of my comics, video games, plays, and movies that I enjoyed this year. 1. Fellowship of the Ring I rather doubt this is an exhaustive list. Also, there are still a few days left of the year, and I need to finish watching the Harry Potter movies. In other words, I've another five titles to add to this. I think it's safe to say that I consumed about 100 titles, though how I counted them is rather arbitrary: I counted individual seasons of Upstart Crow, but didn't include any of the Invader Zim or Animaniacs cartoons that I listened to as I shuttled the kids hither and yon during the year. Still, this gives a good sense of what I'm willing to devote my time to, if nothing else.
Nonfiction Writing: This has absolutely decreased this year. Back in 2018, I wrote over 625,000 words. Between my daily essays and the journaling I did, I estimate that about 395,000 of those words were nonfiction. And, though I've still a couple of days to add to the number, my current (not counting this essay) writing levels are these: Nonfiction = 213,000; fiction = 281,000; total (including editing and worldbuilding) = 520,000 words. I'm almost a hundred thousand words behind where I was yesteryear. My fiction output is upped (281,000 in 2019 versus 230,000 in 2018), but my overall word count is lower. In terms of my goal to write less nonfiction, I definitely achieved that. I missed it, however. I really enjoyed putting my thoughts down for all dozen or so readers to see. I liked having the ability to sound off on whatever it was that ate at me, to say nothing of the satisfaction of having written over 600,000 words in twelve months. That's not a small amount of writing, and I feel like it's definitely been a part of my life that I should reincorporate. However, as I look at those estimated numbers, I remember why I decided to ease off on the essays. I've written over a thousand of these things now, and even more than my NaNoWriMo projects, they are abandoned. I don't reread them--heck, I don't even look them over once before publishing them. They're all rough drafts. And, with the exception of the memoir about Shakespeare, I don't think I mind them being anything more than what they are. I'm okay with them being just sketches that never turn into paintings. They're lumps of slightly formed clay. That's fine. The issue is, I've spent hundreds of thousands of words honing my nonfiction writing. I can slap something together with precious little thought and still have it make a bit of sense. This comes because of all of that practice. If I had my druthers, I would want to see that much commitment to my fiction writing. I want to be a fiction writer, not an essayist (and, having read quite a bit by David Sedaris, I know that the expectation and competition in that genre are far above what I think I can attain). I have to put the time in writing fiction if I want to improve how I write fiction. Which leads me to the last goal I wanted to write about… Fiction Writing: I completed a lot of projects this year. I've talked about them before, but in case you've forgotten, I wanted to write a five-novella book that feeds into a novelette--almost like an Avengers-lite, a way of getting to know five characters well, then see them all come together to solve the bigger problem that they were all experiencing (to one degree or another) in their own way. But I had some lingering issues to take care of. The first was my 2018 NaNoWriMo novel, Theomancy. Of all my NaNoWriMo books, this one is perhaps the only one that I'd like to see again--though when and in what way I don't really know. I tend to write an idea, then, if it didn't work, abandon it in favor of something else. So I don't know quite what to do with Theomancy, save knowing that I did like the world, even if (as always happens) the wheels fell off by the end of the story. Theomancy, however, wasn't finished in November of 2018. I let it hover on the edges of my mind until January was about to start. See, in January 2019, I had a winter writing retreat, during which time I decided to finish the NaNoWriMo novel. So while I technically started Theomancy in 2018, I finished it in January 2019. So that's one project done. I've also been working on my horror novella, Mon Ster, for quite a while--a couple of years, in fact. Through some luck, some moments of worthwhile writing, and continual pressure, I finished it in the summer of 2019. That makes for two completed projects. Last school year, I had the opportunity to write each day for about fifty minutes. The goal was, with the rest of the class, to write 50,000 words on our projects by the end of the semester. I spent a portion of that time channeling a couple of different sets of inspiration: At that time, I was playing Resident Evil 2 remake and enjoying that survival-horror-and-hunt-for-clues kind of story. I had also listened to Mr. Lemoncello's Library with my kids, which was using reading, books, and authors as the fuel for his own puzzle story. Having been disappointed in a recent Shakespeare's Secret, I decided to write my own, Shakespeare-inspired puzzle story. Basically, think of The Da Vinci Code but with Shakespearean clues, and you have Raleigh House. Tonally, I think it could have been a bit tighter, but as a love-letter to the Bard, I think it went pretty well. I worked on that one all of second semester, finishing it sometime before school ended (if I remember correctly). That makes for three projects done. Once the writing season (read: summer) was in full swing, I set down the aforementioned novellas-into-novelette story. This required hours of careful plotting, copious note-making, and plenty of revisions to the outline. It's easily the most complicated project that I've tried to do. In my typical way, I wanted to start my first summer writing retreat by having a clear idea of what to do, but not a single word down in the actual writing. During that retreat, I managed to write the entire first novella--about 32,000 words of it--with a bit of time to spare. This was exciting and unexpected, and meant that, though the entire story still had thousands of words to go, I had accomplished something toward it. I count that as the fourth finished project. With the time off from school, I found a way to weave the second novella into being. It wasn't easy, as writing at home is no problem when it's quiet, but as I have three boys, quiet time isn't particularly abundant. (Maybe that's why I like writing on Sundays so much; the children aren't running in and out, friends aren't over, and the entire day is more sedate.) Nevertheless, I had a goal of finishing Novella Two before approaching the next writing retreat. Days before I left for the family cabin, I finished it. Fifth project: Done. When it was time for my second writing retreat (the first was with my writing group; this one was solo), I managed--despite coming down with conjunctivitis--to write a 29,000 word novella. Thus I completed a sixth project. After that retreat, the reading really kicked in, to say nothing of the family vacations that ate up the remainder of the time. School resumed, my attention fractured, and I spent almost none of my writing time in the Novella Story. (I managed to squeeze out four painful chapters--a third of the project--but haven't touched the thing since the end of September.) However, November came, and with it, the desire to retell Hamlet in a modern setting and without the poetry. I started Elsinore Ranch on 1 November, finished the NaNoWriMo goal of 50,000 words, and left the story incomplete. At the same time, I started an edit of War Golem to go along with my goal to improve my editing skills. That took up a fair portion of November and December, though I did manage to finish that edit before Christmas arrived. I call this one my seventh writing project of the year. That's not the end, though. Despite having left my retelling alone through the majority of December, just this past week saw me again picking away at it. I conjoined some chapters, cut out some of what I thought I wanted, and focused on getting it done. With little fanfare, I finished Elsinore Ranch yesterday (28 December). It took a lot--and I can't say that it's all been worth it--but I did complete eight projects in 2019. Yes, you can quibble about the merits of short stories, novellas, and novels, but I feel like each one of these projects is different enough to appreciate them the way I did here. The quality of the stories varies widely, as do the subjects and characters. Still, finishing this many works in a single year is nothing to be ashamed of. My word count may be smaller than before, but I think that I've done something remarkable. Next Year's Goals For that, I don't know. I could perhaps postulate some things, but this essay is already creeping up on 3,200 words, which is far too long for a cold winter's day. I'll end it thus: Just as this year marks a highwater mark for project completion, I'm hopeful that this next decade will see--somehow--a change in my writing career as a whole. I can, at least, hope. I found out about Megan Phelps-Roper's departure from the Westboro Baptist Church when a video clip interview made its way across my timeline on Twitter. I poked about a bit and found out that Megan (I'm going to use her first name instead of her last because it's shorter) left the Westboro Baptist Church a handful of years ago. Now she's written a memoir and doing the whole book-tour thing, which piqued my interest. While I try to buy books as often as possible, sometimes I snag stuff from the library, which also shows support for writers. I put her book, Unfollow: A Memoir of Loving and Leaving the Westboro Baptist Church, on hold and promptly forgot about it. When the text notification let me know it was there, however, I made it a point to pick it up as soon as possible. With all of the other things that I have on my plate--including Les Miserables (for the twelfth time) and Why Write? (for the second time…this year) among others--this was actually the best way for me to read the book: I knew I had to return it, so I couldn't pull a typical-Steve and buy the book so that it could gather dust at my house instead of Barnes and Noble.
I'm glad I read it, though. It really is a heartbreaking and inspiring story that traces Megan's involvement since she was a little kid with her family's church. If you aren't familiar with the Westboro Baptist Church…well, you're pretty lucky, then. This is the church that protests the funerals of soldiers, victims of mass-shootings, and other high-profile people. They tote around colorful protest signs that say things like "Thank God for IEDs" and, their number-one-jam, "God Hates F*gs". They use harsh, offensive language, manipulating press coverage to get themselves more publicity, though the "inside look" that Megan gives us is much more nuanced than this summary. And that's what I really liked about the book. It gave me a glimpse into a life that I had already judged--and, on occasion, was even right about--being one of a type of religious depravity. But there's more to what's going on than hatemongering--which they are absolutely doing. Some of what I've long heard about the church had to do with the late Fred Phelps, the founder of the Westboro Baptist Church and most prominent firebrand. His fiery sermons invoked hellfire, wrath, destruction, and condemnation on any who weren't the elect of God (e.g. his church and its handful of members, almost all of whom are family). His doctrines focused primarily on the collective sin that America has committed by allowing the LGBTQ+ community to have human rights; death was the ultimate punishment, in his mind, drawing attention to that sin during a community's most vulnerable moments (that is, at the funerals for victims of sundry events) was the best way to demonstrate the immorality of the country. From a theological point of view, his thinking was pretty messed up, though Megan points out that, as they were a Calvinist-inspired denomination, they didn't have to worry about trying to convince anyone of what they were preaching, as everyone was already heaven- or (more likely) hell-bound. It doesn't really behoove me to unpack their doctrine, in part because my Bible game is pretty weak, and also because that seems like a waste of time. I'm more interested in seeing the ways that Megan navigated her youth. She's about my age--within one or two years, give or take--which makes it easier to tap into some of the things that she had to deal with, including the way the internet changed everything in the late '90s. However, Megan had a couple of experiences that stood out to me: One was the cocksure way of approaching any problem. "We're right and they're wrong" was a catchall. Biblical explanations pasted over massive problems--while Megan doesn't report of any specific physical abuse from her grandfather, it's clear that he beat Megan's mother (his daughter) and his other children. When explaining this part of the story, Megan did what she does throughout--tosses in a verse of scripture, in italics, that would be used as the hermeneutics for the behavior. In the case of child abuse, she quotes Proverbs 23:13, which reads (in the King James Version of the Bible, which is the one both Mormons and Westboro Baptists use), "Withhold not correction from the child: for if thou beatest him with the rod, he shall not die." I don't think I have to explain--I hope I don't have to explain--why this was so startling to me. What really got to me was that I, as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, have a distinctly different relationship with the Bible than other denominations (probably one of the larger reasons why I'm not in the "Mormons are Christians, too!" camp, but I've already talked about that). More than that, however, I don't worry about fitting every moment of my life into a biblical narrative, which is clearly an impulse that Megan grew up with. If something bothers my heart, I don't turn to the Good Book to try to assuage what's bothering me--and it really doesn't take too much to find a biblical verse to support any specific idea that one might wish. That isn't to say, however, that I'm not also in a tradition that is cocksure about any and every question. Even if you take one that's non-eschatological (though, if we poke at it long enough, it could be eschatological) as the concept of evolution, some Mormons will assert that the official word is that evolution isn't true. Others, including my wife, will point out that there actually isn't any official stance on the topic (which is correct; the Church doesn't go either way), though there are plenty of opinions on the matter, even from high authorities in the church. The point of this example, however, is to show how "We don't know" can be a bit of a surprise answer when the theology is supposed to be one that "has all of the answers". My own understanding of that reality has been one of the necessary steps I've had to take in how I treat my belief system. Megan had a similar issue, and in the end she decided to abandon her church--which also meant that she had to abandon the family she deeply loved. She apologized for the hateful messages she'd been sharing for the majority of her life, and in many ways sought to make amends. This was hard to read about, not because I think she did the wrong thing (she didn't; leaving her church was the only logical thing for her to do in her situation), but because it's so familiar. Members of the LDS Church are taught to care deeply about families, and a family member who doesn't worship the way the rest of the family does can very often be ostracized. There are plenty of heartbreaking stories about kids who are transgender, gay, atheist, or somehow non-conforming to Church principles being exiled from family institutions. In Megan's case, she left her church after she'd already graduated from college*, making her able to land on her feet, to a large degree. Her process of self-discovery takes up the last third or so of the book, and her musings over what she'd learned, how she had to unlearn it, and what she did to try to make things right is a beautiful component of the text. On the whole, I would really recommend this book. It's thoughtful and thought provoking. I don't always agree with some of her conclusions--particularly the argument, voiced in the final pages, that a marketplace of ideas is the panacea for the poisoned discourse that we suffer through daily (though that's a different topic for a different day)--but Unfollow is a remarkable book. I would say that, of the two, Educated struck closer to home, as its theology more closely mirrors mine, but both memoirs of women leaving the theologies of their youths are worth pursuing. --- * This was one of the surprises about the Westboro Baptist Church: It is a well-schooled institution. Many of the highest members are lawyers, and they always sent their kids to school (Megan picketed her own high school graduation, then went inside to get her diploma), and they are a far cry from the homeschooling version of fundamentalism that I saw in Educated. The other large surprise was that Fred Phelps was instrumental in advancing civil rights for Blacks in America back in the day. That he could view racism (though not antisemitism: he had a lot of spleen for Jews) as a genuine evil but not homophobia is one of the most extraordinary examples of cognitive dissonance I've ever seen. Like most bibliophiles, I have more books than I've read. The aspect of owning a book, simply for the joy of owning it, is rather important to me. So I do buy more books than I can actually read (unless, of course, I put a moratorium on purchases and sit, satisfied, with what I have already purchased; then, in a year or two, I might catch up).
I have another reason why I purchase books, even knowing that I have others at home that need attention. It comes from a desperate hope for some sort of karmic reciprocity between me and the unknowing author that I have done her (or him) the courtesy of purchasing her (or his) book and, provided the blessed day ever arrives for me, she (or he) will happily part with some of her (or his) hard earned money by buying one of my books. This is one of the primary reasons why I don't frequent the used bookstore as often as I do Barnes and Noble. It isn't that I dislike the used bookstore format or what they're trying to do. Not only that, but there are rare and unexpected gems that one can find on the shelves at used bookstores. I do harbor a couple of exceptions: If I'm there and there's a book that I want, I'll go ahead and buy it at the local place rather than digging around online to purchase the used book; and if the author is no longer with us, then I don't feel the possibility of that author buying one of my future books, so I'm okay going used. Now, this isn't a perfect system--I order used books online all of the time, though I usually do so with a twinge of conscience--and it's predicated on a future that is looking about as likely now as it did fifteen years ago when I was working on my first post-high school novel. I'm over 1.6 million words away from that time, so in that sense I'm different, but there is nothing--not even a nibble, though a couple of extra rejections--that indicates that I'm going to be finding an agent very soon. Not only that, but it's a system that assumes that karmic balance, which may just be a way of justifying to myself my decisions. I also carve out exceptions for buying, say, a Stephen King novel (though I usually buy those new because I'm in the mood for one when I'm at Barnes and Noble), where I'm perfectly content to buy one that's a loss-leader for a store, since I figure Mr. King isn't in need of the money anymore. Same goes for people like Sanderson and Rowling and Martin--though I tend to buy those new anyway because I don't want to wait for a used copy to become available. I spend too much on books, is what I'm saying. So what are some of the twinges to my reading conscience that are currently languishing on the shelf, giving me condemnatory (albeit understandingly condemnatory) looks? Well, on the easy-to-read side, I have Attack on Titan Vol. 28 that I bought the day/week (can't remember now) it came out. Unfortunately, I've misplaced Vol. 27 and there are some details in that one that I need to refresh m'self on, which makes me disinclined to pick up the sequel. Also an easy-so-why-are-you-complaining purchase is Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld (not Thomas Hobbes; this is an easy read I'm talking about here). It's a steampunk novel that piqued my interest back when Gayle and I were doing more steampunk-related costumes and characters. I've yet to even crack the cover. A third on that front would be Macbeth by Jo Nesbø. It's one of the Hogarth Shakespeare offerings, sitting next to Hag Seed by Margaret Atwood. Oh, and speaking of Atwood, I started the first couple of chapters of The Handmaid's Tale, but lost interest when I put it down and haven't picked I up again. I also have two of Brandon Sanderson's Alloy of Law spin-off books to read, to say nothing of the fact that I've had Oathbringer for multiple months and haven't bothered getting past the one-quarter mark. I've two short story collections edited by George R.R. Martin, neither of which I've finished. There's still an unread Mark Edmundson on my nightstand. Oh, and a couple of King novels, a Mull novel, and even one by Naomi Novik that continue to shame me. On the more complicated reading front, I've yet to finish Plato's Republic, and I've three really interesting philosophy/theory books that gather dust: The Parallax View by Žižek, Molecular Red by Wark, and Society of the Spectacle by Debord. I've done basically nothing with Tatum's Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? As far as hard-even-though-it's-fiction level, I'm not much farther through Jerusalem by Alan Moore than I was two and a half years ago when I forced my way through the first half (approximately) of the story. I read maybe twenty pages of Don Quixote. I struggled to even start The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin. I've stared at the cover of The Poppy War by R.F. Kuang longer than I've put eyes on her words, and I have scarcely looked at the art on that one. I get it that I wanted to support some of these authors, or my interest when I bought them was high but has since faded. That's natural and normal, I suppose. But it doesn't change the fact that I'm embarrassed by how many books are on my shelf that I failed to read. I'm going through Paradise Lost with my students right now, so I have a reason to be returning to Milton, but other than school-demands, why do I often revisit what I've already read? Why aren't I more inclined to branch out and really challenge myself with complex texts? Why don't I put my money's worth in my mind and actually read what I've bought? I don't have answers for these questions. They're part of the weird inconsistencies that comprise a person, and though it's frustrating, I don't think that my problem here is unique. We all do this, I think, though what it is we buy may differ: Blu-rays or video games, albums or cookbooks, streaming services or magazine subscriptions. With the plentiful bounty of what's available, it's understandable that we try one thing and then flit to another. But just because it's natural and understandable doesn't mean that it's what I should do. The new year is creeping up on me; since I so spectacularly failed at what I planned on doing with my reading for 2019, perhaps I should set a reading goal to really dive into the "to be read" pile during 2020. That, at least, is an option. And, hey, if I finish those already-purchased books, it gives me an excuse to go buy more, doesn't it? That sounds like a win to me. Another goodie from Mark Edmundson, Why Teach? is a collection of thoughts about what it means to be a teacher in the twenty-first century. More than that, however, it's about what it means to teach the humanities in the twenty-first century. More than that, though, it's about what it means to teach the humanities at a college level in the twenty-first century. In other words, it has a more limited audience than the first book of his I read, Why Write?
That doesn't mean, however, that the book isn't worth pursuing. In part, it might help those who didn't spend time in college studying the liberal arts, as he lays out a case for the humanities as being integral, even if it isn't necessarily lucrative. In case you're only interested in whether or not I recommend the book, and you'd rather not have to sit through a few hundred words of filler, let me just say that, yes, this book is worth reading. No, it isn't as profound or life-changing to me as Why Write? was. I really enjoyed it; your mileage may vary. What works for me about Why Teach? is that it's a book that's after a particular way of living. Edmundson's fond of the Romantics and transcendentalists--an acquired taste, and one for which I never cared much--but he tempers their exultations with wisdom and practicality. One of his professors was Harold Bloom (the first Shakespearean critic I ever read, and one whose Shakespeare: Invention of the Human continues to be an enjoyable resource to me), a man whose declarations have made him, even against his intentions, into a polemicist; Edmundson smooths those rough edges with strong stances that recognize the value others' ideas have in a way that his own professor struggles (or doesn't care) to do. This ability of blunting the more extreme strains of a poetic view of the world is one that makes Edmundson's arguments feel more grounded. He's not actually asking if we should live at Walden's Pond when he asks if we can "live" what a writer has to say. He asks us if we can find the truth in writing and see ourselves living up to it. That is what the humanities can do for someone who's willing to try. I'm reminded of a poem by Taylor Mali, "What Teachers Make", when he says, "I make them write, write, write, and then I make them read". There is so much more to life than the dollar bill, we all want to say, but few people will live that. We'll agree with Matt Embree when he sings, "We're finding out/That we know better/No number will ever replace me," but we also cluck our tongues and skip our eyes over to the envelope containing the overdue bills. We may know that the system wants to treat us like a replaceable cog, but we also feel that we're individuals from the tips of our too-familiar fingers to the backs of our heads (which we've never seen with our own eyes). Studying the humanities is about studying humans, and since we're all human, we can gain great benefit from knowing ourselves more thoroughly. That isn't to say that engineering and physics, political science and MBAs, medical journals and paleontological conferences aren't also part of being human. Edmundson, I think, would argue that the skills and tools that can only be found in the humanities are what help to imbue the "hard sciences" and non-humanities sections of human living with a greater value, a broader sense of self and purpose. If anything, I feel that Why Teach? really does apply to every teacher if only because teaching is about being passionate about living, being alive, being. It's why Hamlet's right to say that "To be or not to be" is the question. Where do we find the answer to that question? In the scribbles of others, the pulped up remnants of trees scarred with ink. In the flicker of pixels in white and black. In reading, in studying, in becoming. Of course, this book resonates with me for the simple reason that I teach humanities, in my own, idiosyncratic way. This book is saying, "Yes, Steven, you do have a purpose. Your work is important, even if you don't think you've made much of a difference today, yesterday, last week, or even this last year. You're molding them because you know the techniques, because you've read some of the greatest things that a human can read, and you're sharing them." That is the kind of thing that's nice to hear. I don't know quite what to say about Tara Westover's popular memoir, Educated. On one hand, I can see why so many people have picked it up. It's a fascinating look at the complicated knot that family ties, religion, tradition, and education can create. A memoir about a woman's life growing up in an isolated part of rural Idaho, Educated has a bit of a sensationalist vibe to it in that the family from which she came is a Mormon survivalist clan--and the picture Westover paints isn't particularly flattering of them.
On the other hand, because of its roots in my own religion, I couldn't help but feel a connection to what was going on in the book and feeling uncomfortably close to what was happening there. Westover's experience is not a particularly pleasant one. She recounts much of her childhood, sharing snippets of what it was like to be homeschooled (because the schools will brainwash her into being a socialist, according to her dad, so she never went to public school) only to, at the age of about 17 or so, manage to get into BYU. From there, Westover got incredible opportunity after incredible opportunity, eventually earning a doctorate from Cambridge. All the while, as she talked about her life trying to learn more about the world, she describes the ways her family's hooks remained in her, always pulling her back to Idaho, always putting her back "in her place" as a woman. (Up to and including a brief moment when she walked into her parents' kitchen one morning only to see her father trying to make pancakes. When he saw her, he told her that she was now in "her place" (meaning the kitchen) and he should make him some food. She didn't.) I'm not interested in reiterating what else happens in the book--frankly, I think you should read it. It's not a happy experience, but it is an important one. Instead, I want to focus on how I responded to it. It made me really uncomfortable. There are many different instances in Westover's life where she explains how she was physically abused by her older brother. The moments of his violence and death threats are shocking and discomfiting, with only the understanding that, as this is a memoir, it means that Tara would, eventually, survive whichever trauma she was experiencing. I write fiction--mostly fantasy--and violence is part of the toolkit for the kinds of stories I write. But one thing that always makes me uncomfortable in fiction is torture. In Metal Gear Solid 3, which is a video game, my least favorite part is when Naked Snake gets captured and tortured. It's gruesome and I really don't like it. Would I put some of Westover's experiences into that category? Yup. But those uncomfortable scenes of domestic abuse (abuse that she tries, later in the novel, to get her parents to acknowledge, only--and frustratingly--to be rebuffed by her parents' staunch defense of their son at the expense of their daughter) are only one aspect of frustration. Tara Westover's dad wasn't (though, since he's (somehow) still alive, I guess isn't would be more correct) a believer in a lot of things: School, government, credit, vaccinations, the "medical establishment", or even seatbelts. So when those last two collide--literally; twice--I felt immense frustration. Because of how the Westovers earned money, accidents happened a lot. Whenever someone would be hurt--whether it be a small thing like a scrape or something more severe, like being lit on fire--they would turn to their mother and her herbalist tinctures. Then the victim of the injury would suffer through weeks of agonizing, disfiguring pain while the salves and essential oils were utilized in lieu of actual medical treatment. Every time Westover brought up another episode of injuries, I knew what would happen: Dad would rely on "your mother's herbs and the power of the Lord" to get the person through the difficulty. Mental damage happened to at least two of the Westovers because of this, and possibly more of them suffered in ways that Tara didn't know and, therefore, didn't relate. This attitude of anti-medical belief is hard for me to stomach. My oldest son, Puck, was born with half a heart. He's alive today, instead of being buried at two weeks of age, exclusively because of the incredible medical treatments available. Vaccines have helped keep him safe and alive. More than that (and this is getting into something I haven't really discussed before, so bear with me as I work it out), homeopathic solutions cause an almost visceral disgust in me. I realize that could upset some people who have anecdotal evidence of something being alleviated by essential oils. As there's precious little research done in the efficacy of essential oils and the like, I'm inclined to think most of them are placebos (at best) and hoaxes (at worst). My grandmother, for many years, relied on similar types of homeopathic "remedies" (her flavor of choice was Brain Gym and herbs), while some of my uncles and aunts swore by Noni Juice. While I don't doubt that there can be some positive benefits to healthful food (isn't that the typical panacea even from doctor's offices? Good diet and exercise?), it was only when my grandmother insisted that my wife's miscarriage happened because we didn't "eat food closer to the earth" and that my son's heart defect could be healed via praying that I started to align "homeopathic" with "quackery". Reading an entire book in which the family was dangerously attached to herbal solutions--and, by the end, profiting nicely on them--struck just a little too close to home.* The paranoia in Westover's father was particularly grinding: Illuminati, socialist, End Times, and more came through his fractured mind, with everything happening in his life being part of God's plan for him. Easily prevented difficulties (like stopping a headache with ibuprofen) were anathema to him, as it would frustrate the Lord's work--which he, especially, had been called to perform. An explosion that nearly killed him was later called a "tender mercy of the Lord" because he not only pulled through, but it was because of "mother's tinctures" that he was saved. And that boils down to the crux of the difficulty I had with the book. Ostensibly, the Westovers and I share the same religion. Tara went to BYU because it was a "Church school". She discussed her problems with her LDS bishop. She was taught about modesty--albeit a more extreme, puritanical form of it--that I was. And that's the thing: Papa Westover has incredible faith. Immense faith. Willing to do stupid things faith. And I don't. At least, not to that same degree. Whereas I see God answering my prayers for my son's life through the expertise and knowledge of doctors, he sees God answering his prayers by having his daughter gain a scholarship without the benefit of "socialist public schools". What I see as dangerous, almost deadly abuse and treatment, he sees as the "way things have to be to get the work of the Lord done". We're both--again, ostensibly--involved in trying to further God's work; but we can't both be right. This is the great conundrum within Mormonism, as well as membership in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints: For all the talk (and there is a lot of talk, much of it accurate) about uniformity, conformity, and quashing of dissent, there is still a panoply of beliefs and cultures that thrive within the Church. My time on my mission made it clear to me that there are other ways of worshipping that don't look like what I grew up with in Utah Valley. But there's a parallax gap there, a fissure that makes things murky. If I'm willing to go along with the "Mormons versus gentiles" (and both the word versus and gentiles are used reluctantly here), then I have the camp of those who can be saved**…and Brother Westover is in it. How? Setting aside the immaterial concept of bias and the distraction of "what if she's lying?", there are clear examples in Westover's account about abuse--emotional, physical, and spiritual--that make me feel like heaven can't be expansive enough to fit people like me ("mainstream Mormons", he would probably say) and people like him ("fundamentalist nutjob Mormons", I most definitely say). And maybe the thing that really gets stuck in my craw is the possibility that he is the right one. When God sits me down for that great postmortal interview, is He going to lean across His desk (because of my upbringing, I assume that talking to God will be essentially the same as talking to my bishop) and say, with a sad, regretful expression, "You tried your best, Steve, but…you just didn't really see what I was trying to get you to do. All that stuff you read--all those books you adored and filled your soul up? They were from the devil. You drew close to Me with your lips but your heart was far from Me. You didn't put faith in My prophets. You used medicine. You educated yourself through the public schools--and, what's worse, sent your own children to them. You should have been more like Brother Westover"? How will God be able to let the more fanatical know that they went too far, that the more lackadaisical didn't go far enough? What lines can/ought to be drawn? This kind of thinking preoccupies me a lot, and no amount of "We have to leave it in the Lord's hands" answers really satisfies me. Perhaps it's the educator in me, who wants to see the rubric and have the expectations clearly laid out, with the percentages clearly indicated. The Church is big into checklists, with everything short of literal maps for how a person's life is supposed to go. Almost no one's life actually does, of course, but we have these guidelines anyway…or are they rules? How simple is salvation, really? There are a lot of things that I not only have to have done, but continue to do for salvation to be rendered. Is my Mormonism sufficient? Would I be better off having grown up with Tara Westover's level of education? Am I better off knowing the paltry scraps of knowledge that I've gleaned? Is my drinking a caffeinated beverage drinking sin? Or my herbal tea? Or my violent, dark books? Or my writings? Do I condemn myself when I write thoughts that I've had? It's times like these when I really feel for Martin Luther, a man who was incapable of not wondering about the status of his soul. The ignorance is maddening. Of course, I only know about him because of the time I've spent in trying to gain an education. --- * Hypocrisy of hypocrisies, when one of Papa Westover's grandchildren was born at 26 weeks and had massive heart- and lung problems, they sent the child to a hospital so that he could get treatment there. ** I recognize the delineations between salvation in my church's eschatology. I'm not interested in plumbing those depths just now. I have a love/hate relationship toward Brandon Sanderson's work. I'm not a huge fan of his prose--I find it rather uninspiring, which I know is his entire point: He's said that he purposefully goes for prosaic descriptions. Still, after reading something like Patrick Rothfuss' or Alan Moore's writings, where part of the power is the wordsmithing, I feel like that this deliberate choice is a genuine weakness of his style*. I know that this isn't his intent--and I say that mostly because I feel like, having listened to hundreds of hours of his podcast, lectures, and even personally sitting down and chatting with him for a couple of hours over lunch a few years back--but the effect for me is almost one of…I don't know, dumbing down his writing to make it more accessible. That sounds like a good thing, of course: What writer doesn't want to write accessibly? But there are a lot of deep thoughts and moments of dilemma and distress in his books--as there are in other works of fiction. Comparing a paragraph of, say Victor Hugo to Sanderson's work is almost laughable: Both are authors with incredible stories, pacing, interconnection, and thought. One, however, inspires in the very way he writes, while the other keeps it simple and plain.
This isn't a particularly large criticism, especially as it is mostly an explanation of taste: I prefer to have a little more flavor in the prose I read. Some don't. Fortunately, Rothfuss and Moore have their books out for me to read, as does Hugo, so there will always be an alternative for me. However, I won't get Rothfuss-level words with Sanderson-style worlds, which is really too bad. Okay, and, if I'm being really honest, I'm…jealous isn't the right word, as the generosity and willingness to help others along is really strong in Sanderson. But envious, maybe? I think seeing a local author have meteoric success makes me wonder what I'm doing wrong, and that's a question that's been rattling around in my head for so long that my synapses are almost numb at the thought. Also, I've often had an allergy for the popular. If I come across something on my own terms, and I like it, I tend to go all of the way with it. If it's something that everyone seems to be in love with, I often will push back as a matter of principle. This is why I've never watched Dr. Who and, though I like Sherlock, I probably won't finish that series. I treated Harry Potter that way for a long time, taking years to warm up to it. So while my tendencies aren't easily predictable, they do follow a general trend. As far as Sanderson goes, I have a hipster mentality to him a bit: I read Elantris back when it was the only thing he had written and before his enormous success. So maybe I resent people who only like him now that he's done the Wheel of Time series and written double-digit titles, which makes the fandom push me away from his stuff. The thing about all of that is, that's a very trite and superficial reason not to read a person's work. He writes in a genre that I love, he writes well, and he makes exciting and expansive worlds for readers to get lost in. My feelings of minor resentment (though that's too strong a word) probably don't make a lot of sense in that case. So that's the "hate" part--another too-strong word--on Sanderson. As for the love, well, I really like the worlds he creates. Having read most (some? The guy produces so many stories that it's hard to know what I've missed) of his major works, and revisiting the novel that started his career, Elantris, I can see some similar strands running through a lot of his oeuvre. For example, he loves to have really good hearted men doing a lot of clever planning to get what they eventually want. Raoden is that, as is Kelsier in the Mistborn books, and Wax and Wayne in Alloy of Law and its sequels. Lightsong in Warbreaker has that personality, and I see it in Kaladin in the Stormlight Archives. Not only that, but they're all quite witty and bubbly (though Kaladin is a bit more of a brooder), with a strong desire to help others…at least, by the end of the story they are. He also likes smart, forceful women who are also witty and capable of acting around the gender roles that his multitudinous societies embrace--though most of them are fairly patriarchal in most ways. In Elantris, Sarene is the prototypical Sanderson female protagonist: Beautiful, smart, capable, a bit uncouth, and willing to shake things up to make a difference in her world. Vin from the Mistborn series fits a similar role, as does Shallan in the Stormlight Archives. In the case of Elantris, part of what I really enjoyed in my rereading of the book was seeing how well Sanderson sets up the utter chaos of the final fifty pages. People who were thought to have been discarded end up having important roles to fill, while tiny details are brought out in unexpected ways. And though this is a major spoiler for the ending, I feel like the last sentence of the book is absolutely spot on. Early in the book, Hrathen shows up in Arelon in order to save them: In the end, he accomplishes his goal. Admittedly, the death of Hrathen lacks a lot of emotional clout because we were supposed to kind of hate the guy throughout the story, so though he changes his mind and helps Raoden and Sarene, I don't think people really feel like they've lost someone important--not the way Kelsier's death at the end of Mistborn: The Final Empire affects people. It's also nice to read a Sanderson novel and then be done with it. In almost every other thing he's done (I think Warbreaker is the only other standalone novel), there are multiple volumes to go through. That's part of the reason I picked Elantris for my Winterim, as it's a self-contained novel that, though it hints toward a greater world, is finished by the time the ending arrives. By comparison, His Stormlight Archive is only three tomes deep and running over 3,600 pages. For a bit of context, the entire seven book Harry Potter series has about 4,100 pages. And the quantity of words per page definitely tips toward Sanderson, who, if I remember correctly, once said that his worldbuilding alone for the Archive ran over 100,000 words. In terms of worldbuilding, the only one who did it better would have to be Tolkien, and I think there's no way to top that guy unless a writer was also a linguist and tried to emulate Tolkien. In fact, I get the sense that Sanderson is trying to do that, but on his own terms: Rather than having one world deeply interconnected and drawn together through linguistic consistencies, he has created multiple worlds that interconnect through his Cosmere--his word for the shared universe in which all of his major writings transpire. The amount of background work for things like Middle Earth and the Cosmere are acts of immense imagination and I'm always impressed when I think about the amount of sustained attention such approaches would take. I have a fairly complicated world mapped out for the book Theomancy, and it probably is about 10,000 words deep…maybe. And though that isn't my most intricate, it's near the top. All of this is to say that, though this may not have been a strong review of Elantris itself, I do appreciate Brandon Sanderson's work and I look forward to finding time to read more of it. After all, there's plenty to go through. --- * I'm not saying his writing is bad, by the way. I know that Sanderson has done this consciously, and there's almost always a method in his madness. |
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