When Your Characters are Like Evil Robots: Thinking About Storytelling

(Ha! I'm back! I have grandiose plans of posting once a week again here, but I also sort of think that I'm going to write lots of articles for The Federalist, keep posting on Sister, Daughter, Mother, Wife, finish my novel, make a quiet book for my son--I've pinned all these ideas on Pinterest--and also decorate the house for Advent. While pruning a zillion bushes in the yard. So, yeah. I get these delusions of grandeur whenever the three-month-old falls asleep for ten minutes). 

I've been reading books on my Kindle and pondering the wherefores and how-is-it-done's of fiction. I really loved Amends (review here) and The Dean's Watch (review here). They are polar opposites as far as tone, setting, and style go; but at the same time both convey the sense that their authors are compassionate people. I, too, would like to write as if I understand the fundamental flaws and human ugliness in my characters, yet love them anyway.

I have also been reading a few books that aren't as expertly written. One (a retelling of St. George and the dragon, set in the twilight-years of the Roman Empire and involving persecuted Christians and a pagan priestess) is constructed upon a fun and engaging premise. I want to like it, and I will probably finish it just to see how the author brings his ideas to completion. My problem is that I read for style and literary value as much as story. Maybe more. Because of that, this book doesn't work for me.

I found myself complaining to my husband (poor man) about a number of little issues within the book, and eventually, I realized that they probably all stem from the same problem. So many things happen in the book--the antagonist launches into action, characters join forces to travel together, someone helps our protagonists, etc.--for no good reason. That is, as a reader, I feel as though they happen because the author wanted them to, rather than because they grew organically from the things that had already happened. If that makes sense.

It's not that the author fails to provide any ostensible motivations. We are, for instance, told that the antagonist "hates" the protagonist and see that they have a rivalry. Unfortunately, the level of dislike that the author shows us (during a boyish insult-fest in the street) isn't enough to explain why the antagonist would jump from saying, "Your father is a coward" to deciding, "Today I will kill your mother." And killing the poor lady. And that's just the start of his aggression.

My guess (unless the second half of the book reveals a backstory heretofore unhinted at) is that the author doesn't really know why the antagonist would do such a thing. Not in an in-depth way (the way that the author of The Dean's Watch would have known). He simply needs his antagonist to get the story started. It's an easy trap to fall into. My own novel is not exempt from this problem. Clearly, I need to spend a lot more time trying to know and understand all of my characters. Then I will need to spend a lot of time learning to succinctly show their feelings and motivations. Hmm. This book of mine is going to take a long time to write. Even then, who knows if it will be any good? But, of course, all I can do is try. And keep writing.

Dealing with Anne Shirley, And Other Quick Takes

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First, a digression: Recently I blogged about Jules Verne, Ursula Le Guin, dragons, and giant octopi. I've significantly expanded that into an article about the subtle, hidden, cultural rules of storytelling. You can read it at The Federalist.

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L.M. Montgomery's Anne Shirley is so very, very beloved by many readers that I hesitate to confess my ambiguous feelings about her. Each time I return to the novels (which I read several times throughout childhood, and very much enjoyed at the time), I find myself resenting her for being airbrushed and perfect. That might sound like a weird statement, since Anne is presented as a decidedly flawed individual who is always getting into "scrapes." However, every single one of her flaws are of the sort that readers are most willing to forgive. Inclined to daydream? Good, it makes the story better-- besides, our culture admires and encourages dreams, imagination, and originality. Generous to a fault? How sweet. Passionate tempered? Adds drama, and fits our desire for feisty heroines. Anne has flaws, but they are all romantic flaws. That is rather different from having the unattractive, wart-like flaws that tend to beset us real humans.

Classical Education is…. a Person

 We humans are forever chasing desirable traits that are really the natural by-product of other, more neglected things. In the sphere of marriage, we pursue feelings of excitement and attachment for their own sake, forgetting that feelings of love must be anchored and restored by service and commitment. In the sphere of religion, we fall into the trap of focusing our energies on our own good works, forgetting that good works are the result and not the cause of faith in God’s promise of forgiveness. In the world of education…. oh, we are dreadfully inclined to chase the wrong things. We see that good readers have good vocabularies, so we print lists of words and hand them out, instead of guiding children to good books. We see that successful learners believe that they are intelligent enough to learn, and so we tell all children that they are smart, even while handing them “F’s” on their half-blank quizzes.

It is hard to see that just because a thing is good, it may not be helpful to chase it. It is hard to recognize the essential sources of the good things we desire.

It is especially hard to know how to provide a good education, because the dominant educational outlook (progressivism) is problematic, and vibrant, cohesive alternatives (such as the current classical education movement) are still in youthful form. We think of classical ed as a return to past educational ideals, but structurally, it is really a re-invention. The classical education of the past was something that began after the young student’s primary education and centered on what we would now call high school and college. The classical education of the present is something that begins with pre-school or Kindergarten and often ends with eighth grade or, at most, twelfth grade. 

5 Favorites: Recommended Reading (About Reading)

In "Reviewing school books," Emily points out that, "Among journalists, there have been a number of studies showing up to an 80% decrease in copycat suicides when journalists follow certain guidelines." She discusses one family's loss of their high-school-aged son to suicide, and looks at how authors and teachers can responsibly address self-harm in a way that is less likely to lead youth to follow in a suicidal protagonist's footsteps.

We might wonder why youth should read "dark" books at all, but Nathan Wilson says that we owe our kids a "Dark-Tinted, Truth-Filled Reading List."

This review has made me eager to read Rachel Heffington's book as soon as it comes out. It will be very easy to remember the release date ("remember, remember, the fifth of November!").

Italo Calvino provides a delightful discussion about readers' interaction with the Classics.

Here is a beautiful discussion of "fantasy, realism, and telling the truth" for the writers and storytellers out there. I have ordered the book from which these extracts are pulled.

Seven Literary Lectures of a Very Brief Nature (including, "How to Interpret Mansfield Park")

Watercolor by Diana Sperling (The family at dinner)

1. Let’s not be ridiculous

People call Mansfield Park a “controversial” book because Fanny is passive and quiet, and accuse Jane Austen of suggesting that passivity is the way to get a man. How silly. If we applied this logic to the other books, we should accuse Miss Austen of also teaching that the way to win a husband is to accuse his father of murder (Northanger Abbey), be overly gullible in the presence of flattering fellows who tell lies (Pride and Prejudice), or wait until your crush’s current date acquires a head-wound (Persuasion).

Let’s Play, “Spot the Killer in Three Easy Steps” (or, Why Dorothy Sayers is Awesome)

(Image from HERE)

The problem with mystery novels is that they are expected to be surprising. This of course makes them unrealistic, because in real life, the sort of people who are the most likely to commit crimes usually do commit most of the crimes. In detective fiction, they rarely do. Readers of such literature will be aware of the following sacred and hallowed genre premises:

1. The least likely suspect is most likely to be guilty.
2. There are no random crimes.

Not to mention:

3. The inhabitants of small country villages spend so much time bashing each other on the head and having affairs with each others’ spouses, per capita, that it’s a wonder they get anything else done (or retain any population).

Might Miss Austen Have Been Pleased? Literary Links in 7 Quick Takes

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Increasingly, I wonder if brevity is the key to artistry, just as simplicity is often the heart of beauty. Good children’s novels are lovely because they distill observations about life and ideas into a short, simple, and potentially profound format. They appeal to the child and cause the adult to think. They are truly soul-stirring pieces of literature.

Brevity, conciseness, and distillation don’t necessarily require that pictures be small and books be short. Will Strunk, of Strunk and White’s Elements of Style, says, “Vigorous writing is concise… This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that every word tell.” Sometimes a very long story gives the impression that every word is essential. However, often a space-challenged medium forces a storyteller to bring out the very best in his tale. Often shorter novels actually say more. Miss Austen’s books are not in the least long, as novels (especially nineteenth-century novels) go, but they are polished to such a degree that they say a great deal.

I found much to think about in Eva Brann’s fascinating (and admittedly long) discourse on Austen’s novels. In Austen-esque language, she discusses Jane’s Austen’s character and personal life as well as her artistry. You really should read it: “The Perfections of Jane Austen.” 

On Coming to Terms with Being a Pseudo-Intellectual: Seven Quick Takes (Volume X), Illustrated with Pictures of Bunnies

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I like to listen to intellectual people talk. I like to use the word intellectual. I even like to imagine that I myself produce intellectual thoughts. However, I have come to realize that I am not An Intellectual. I’m just a pseudo-intellectual with a decent-sized vocabulary who read a lot of Victorian literature in high school.

John Henry Newman Critiques "Love of Reading"

Novels are a relatively new form of writing, even though to many readers, such fiction has become the definition of "classic literature." There was a time when novels were the low-brow entertainment of the educated class; merely a recent innovation that did not belong in the same category as history, biography, science, essays, and especially the (Greek and Roman) Classics. Voracious novel-readers were as little admired then as are consumers of reality T.V. today. Civil War general Robert E. Lee felt that novels "weakened the mind." Even the characters in novels expressed concern over excessive novel-reading (in Louisa May Alcott's Eight Cousins, a diet of unrealistic adventure stories is compared to the habit of smoking and drinking as an unhealthy way to pass the time).

Yet since the genre's appearance, great and worthy novels have been written. Such books do not "weaken the mind" (check out THIS COOL STUDY: reading literary fiction was observed to make participants more empathetic and better at interpreting nuances in people). However, I wonder if novels have contributed to the way we often treat literature as something to consume.  Unlike essays on morality or love, novels provide a format that is utilized by pop fiction (popular novels did not improve social skills in the study mentioned above). Pop fiction is meant to be enjoyed once, quickly, and tossed aside. Perhaps it has made us forget how we ought to read. In Of Other Worlds, C.S. Lewis remarks, "There is hope for a man who has never read Malory or Boswell or Tristram Shandy or Shakespeare's Son­nets: but what can you do with a man who says he 'has read’ them, meaning he has read them once, and thinks that this settles the matter?"

Now that even more consumable forms of entertainment compete with pop writing, I wonder if our culture has swung too far in our encouragement of any reading at all and our eagerness to praise whatsoever printed pages can hold the attention of an electronic generation. In our eagerness to encourage reading, perhaps we forget the differences between engaging with texts and consuming them. Perhaps we romanticize the consumption of books. John Henry Newman's critique of reading in his own, nineteenth-century context is food for thought (Newman was an Anglican priest who converted to Catholicism, was made a cardinal, and wrote The Idea of the University): 

“Nothing is more common in an age like this, when books abound, than to fancy that the gratification of a love of reading is real study….Such minds cannot fix their gaze on one object for two seconds together; the very impulse which leads them to read at all, leads them to read on, and never stay or hang over any one idea. The pleasurable excitement of reading what is new is their motive principle; and the imagination that they are doing something, and the boyish vanity which accompanies it, are their reward….they will have no consistency, steadiness, or perseverance; they will not be able to make a telling speech, or to write a good letter, or to fling in debate a smart antagonist….They cannot state an argument or a question, or take a clear survey of a whole transaction, or give sensible and appropriate advice under difficulties, or do any of those things which inspire confidence and gain influence, which raise a man in life, and make him useful to his religion or his country.” John Henry Newman, 1852. 

How to Train a Discerning Reader: 7 Quick Takes (Volume V)

(Illustrated almost entirely with
pictures of discerning cats)

(This is a follow-up to, “How Big Is Your Child’s Bubble? Weighing the Merits of Mainstream Fiction in a Classical Education”)

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“Teach and Release” (in appropriate stages)

It is easy enough to say, “Just make sure your child is a discerning reader, and then he can pick out his own library books.” 

However, how does one actually take a small, peanut-butter smeared child and turn her into a reader who can safely navigate the whirlpool of ideas in the YA section? How does one teach someone to enjoy and yet also evaluate stories that have been artfully arranged in order to influence her emotions, perceptions, and beliefs?

Reading critically is not an isolated skill that can slapped on like a bicycle helmet. It is part of a reader’s approach to life, books, and truth; and it grows with the reader’s maturity. It requires a teacher who is intentionally preparing students to function independently instead of merely keeping them safe within a homey little bubble.

Here are some factors that I think are important in your child’s relationship with books.

(You can't keep your reader
in a safe box forever) 

How Big Is Your Child’s Bubble? Weighing the Merits of Mainstream Fiction in a Classical Education

Recently, a friend asked me why I think it is O.K. for kids to read Harry Potter. This is the kind of conversation that can go in many directions, but is ultimately less about the specifics of J. K. Rowling’s work and is more about the proper role of literature in a Christian child’s upbringing. For me, it is also a discussion that highlights the philosophy of classical education.

First of all, why should fiction be part of a child’s mental and moral education at all? It would be possible to draw all stories from history and to spend the rest of the day on arithmetic, science, and theology. Theoretically, the child would thus be exposed only to truth instead of to imaginary people and their lives. Yet the physical information provided by science, arithmetic, and even history cannot fully explore psychological and spiritual realities and does not prepare the mind to grasp the intangible aspects of theology. Fiction is better than history at helping readers to explore the baffling, beautiful, and horrifying depths of human nature because fiction is an art form and is therefore free to arrange stories in whatever manner is needed to make truth clear. This arrangement can force the reader to think in new ways. It strengthens our ability to empathize with losses, sufferings, and triumphs that we have never experienced because it helps us imagine how they would affect us. It provides a safe way to examine the consequences of life choices without committing them ourselves. Fiction is needed because we humans were created with emotions and imaginations that arithmetic cannot fully satisfy. 

The classical education presents literature from throughout the scope of human experience in order to explore the great questions of life and to see how humanity's answers (whether true or false) influence our own culture. Simultaneously, these books shape the student’s taste by providing the best possible examples of literary and artistic excellence. In the classical model, then, books are chosen for three reasons: 

What if I Hate Wuthering Heights?

If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking. –Haruki Murakami

'Classic.' A book which people praise and don't read. – Mark Twain

Are the classics intrinsically great, or are they simply famous and influential? Is there a way to identify the “truly” classic books, and if so, must we read them to be educated?

Because I believe in classical education (or really, in a neoclassical education that I haven’t yet fully defined— which is OK, because my baby-in-utero doesn’t know Latin yet), this question nags at me. I have embraced the idea that education is accomplished through the study of the best available examples of everything. I know that I won’t become a great writer by reading potboilers any more than I would become a great cook by sharpening my palette at McDonalds. Yet sometimes I can’t help questioning the awesomeness of the classics. I don’t even like them all. Sometimes I even wonder whether there is an intrinsic benefit to studying Homer (or Shakespeare, or Kipling, or Hemingway), or whether The Iliad is merely useful for cultural literacy.

The funny thing is that when someone proposes that we should read the great works of Western civilization merely because they are always being reinvented and we should be able to understand the modern authors who subvert them, it rubs me the wrong way. It sounds too condescending. It sounds like someone looking down his enlightened nose and saying, “Well, yes, let’s study this funny little man who was Shakespeare so that we can put on a version of his play with all the genders reversed and the weapons replaced with pink balloons.” Good grief, folks, no one will be able to “get” Shakespeare if they are too busy being superior to him! 

I’ve come to realize that there are a number of qualifications that can get a title onto somebody’s list of classics. Some are more valid than others.

The book:

1. Has been regarded by multiple generations as artistically masterful or philosophically profound, and/or continues to be purchased by the public long after the author is dead.

2. Was the first (or most influential) to try something new that subsequently changed the way books are written.

3. Enmeshed itself in the cultural consciousness and is frequently referred or alluded to by later writers.

4. Comes from a time period that produced very little competition.

5. Was written by a woman in the nineteenth century.

6. Was written by a non-dead-white-male before the 1960s.

7. Shocked a lot of people with its contents (especially if it encouraged people to throw off moral constraints that have since become unpopular).

8. Has an expired copyright and so can be reprinted by anyone, usually with a piece of late Victorian art on the cover.

This list has helped me realize how I define classic literature. I think that whenever we attempt to construct a list of “The Classics,” we are attempting to gather profound examples of how human beings have grappled with universal questions and answers, and how human beings have turned those questions and their proposed answers into things of beauty. We call our list “classical” because it is universal enough to inspire and instruct readers across the lines of culture and time. This is why it is silly to talk about “modern classics.” We can’t yet know whether a recent book will speak to readers from a culture that has moved beyond our own. Perhaps this is why various lists of “The Top 100 Books” are essentially the same when they cover ancient, medieval, and early modern titles, yet diverge radically in their evaluation of nineteenth and twentieth century masterpieces.

However, the very universality of classical books means that they are not tailored to the needs and interests of any one individual. Just as a fantastic classroom teacher may not be the ideal fit for a particular student, not every enduring work of literature will speak to all of us. Perhaps this is especially true of the books that have survived at least in part because of their place in the evolution of literature—they may not be the very best examples of a particular technique or idea, but they are the most historically significant. They are a source of future inspiration and are read in order to understand later writers.

This leads us back to a pragmatic-sounding reason to read books. However, the problem is not in saying that we read certain books because doing so is useful. The problem is forgetting that we should be looking for profundity and beauty in those books. If we cannot see that beauty (despite an honest investment in learning to read the cultural language of another era), we should move on and find other books where we do. I think the reason that we read the classics is simply because they help us learn to read properly. They present ideas without the obscuring fog of our own culture (which can make a book appear more profound than it really is, simply by appealing to our cultural sensibilities). They help us realize which of our thoughts are universal and which simply cultural by showing us the minds of people from other times and eras. They do this particularly well because they are particularly good examples of great writing—as indicated by their enduring power. The classics educate our minds, but they also train our attitudes. They teach us enough humility to read Shakespeare without  the security of pink balloons. 

C.S. Lewis has an interesting take on why we should read old books:

“Every age has its own outlook. It is specially good at seeing certain truths and specially liable to make certain mistakes. We all, therefore, need the books that will correct the characteristic mistakes of our own period. And that means the old books. All contemporary writers share to some extent the contemporary outlook—even those, like myself, who seem most opposed to it. Nothing strikes me more when I read the controversies of past ages than the fact that both sides were usually assuming without question a good deal which we should now absolutely deny. They thought that they were as completely opposed as two sides could be, but in fact they were all the time secretly united—united with each other and against earlier and later ages—by a great mass of common assumptions. We may be sure that the characteristic blindness of the twentieth century—the blindness about which posterity will ask, “But how could they have thought that?”—lies where we have never suspected it…. The only palliative is to keep the clean sea breeze of the centuries blowing through our minds, and this can be done only by reading old books.”

The classics endure. They even keep selling, as discussed by Slate. Even if I happen to hate Wuthering Heights (too recent a book for us to know if it's really a classic), it doesn't matter. The classics will endure and I will educate myself by reading (at least some of) them. 

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This is NOT how we should approach the classics.