Fifteen books

My friend, Maren Wood (Dr. Maren Wood, that is), recently posted on "Facebook" a list of 15 favorite books that she could remember and list in 15 minutes. I thought it was quite interesting. I do not know if she believes these books reflect who she is, or who she has become, or just if she found these books amusing or interesting or informative.

I was going to do the same thing, but then I began to reflect on this exercise a bit. I am 66 years old. I have read a few more books than Maren but, more importantly, I read many of them a VERY long time ago. What did influence me? And, were my influential books ones that I enjoyed? Just what would I be saying if I made such a list? I still do not know the answer to all of those questions, but I made the list anyway. To be fair, I probably took 30 minutes to put it together. And, I am not surprised, in some ways, in regard to what I listed while I am stunningly surprised in other ways. The books I listed, I should note at the start, are ones that profoundly effected my thinking or my perspective at the time that I read them, and for some time thereafter. I cannot, on the other hand, quote from any of these books. Nor can I even tell you the summary of the story or the ideas or sometimes even all of the subject matter. First, I will list them, and then maybe I can explain some things.

15 Books

(in order of publication date, not importance, I guess)

1. Michel de Montaigne, Essays (1580)

(Montaigne had human behavior and individual aspirations and human foibles sorted out long before Freud or modern psychology or modern sociology)

2. Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man (1791)

(Paine invented modern democracy. He invented a modern journalistic style of argumentation. He articulated the true nature of society and its needs in a postive, even optimistic way. And, what did he get for this? The refusal the country he helped bring into being -- the U. S. -- to reclaim him as a citizen from a Jacobin prison cell. Admire George Washington all you want, he failed the morality and decency test on this one (as did a number of people). The only thing his critics then and now had right was that Paine could be a pain as a dinner or house guest.)

3. Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays (1841, 1844)

(I would not want to have dinner with Emerson either. Stuffy, arrogant and oh so judgmental, in a way only New Englanders can be. But I would like to write with the care and precision and insight with which he wrote. His themes and ideas on life and nature are broad, universal, and inspirational, with just the right dash of east Asian religious philosophy.)

4. Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience (1849)

(Emerson’s better half; and, to his credit, Emerson knew and admitted this. This is an essay for a young person. When you get older, you squirm uneasily in your seat as you read it, and realize you have not lived up to your human and civic responsibility. I could have included Walden (also written for the young), or Thoreau’s other naturalist stuff, which are just as important, but this essay lays our responsibilities on the line.

5. George Eliot (Marian Evans), Middlemarch (1874)

(I read this later in life. It is a romantic novel, and its sentiments would be syrupy or cloying in the hands of a less skilled writer. But Evans makes her characters warmly human and sympathetic, and as the pages turn you cannot help but feel better about individual human beings – well, about the potential she found in human beings. Some call this the best novel ever -- I will not disagree.)

6. Emile Zola, Germinal (1885)

(My brother brought this book home during his first year of university, and I may have read it that summer. In any case, I read it when I was young and had hardly heard of Marx or the miseries of industrialization or the need for social justice or – well, you get the idea. This novel was like a slug in the stomach. One of the best works of realism (well, it was one of the novels that introduced realism), it is moving throughout, despite being a long book.)

7. George Orwell, Essays (1920-1950)

(Orwell was a journalist and essayist. Animal Farm and 1984, while brilliant in theme, are not especially well written and are heavy-handed in satire and argument. Orwell the essayist is always engaging as an observer, as a critic of those modern forces that have overwhelmed humanity and deeply harmed fragile human beings. I do not always agree with his politics but as a 20th century critic he was not bettered by anyone.)

8. Hannah Arendt, On Totalitarianism (1951)

(I read this book in graduate school, and it introduced me to a thinker and writer whom I have admired and recommended ever since. All of her works set out the limits of human achievement. Besides articulating the “banality of evil” in individual and collective human behavior, Arendt sets out the profound underpinnings of totalitarianism in a manner that suggests its ubiquitousness and its persistence. Totalitarianism is still with us, as is fascism.)

9. Kurt Vonnegut, Cat’s Cradle (1963)

(As a science fiction story that I cannot remember, this novel is a bit of an oddity on this list. But I remember it as the best of Vonnegut. Sometime in the 1960s I made Vonnegut my summer reading, and I loved his whimsy and his sense of the absurdity of modern life. Many saw him as a fun read, but I think he was a powerful thinker with a lot to say for his time. By the way, Vonnegut apparently pushed this novel as his dissertation in anthropology, and finally won out!)

10. Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (1974)

(Nature, ecology, philosophy, religion, and sensuality (yes, beyond the cat scene in the opening; there is always something sensual about Annie Dillard, matched only by a brilliant intellect) all laid out by a brilliant young writer – well, she was at that time – articulated in the small compass of Tinker Creek in Virginia. I love her later stuff as well – especially For the Time Being.)

11. V. S. Naipaul, A Bend in the River (1979)

(The persistent power of tribalism over nationalism and modernism and democracy, and the suffocating grip of the past over the future make this a dismal but compelling novel about Africa in general and the Congo in particular. I once took up Naipaul as my summer reading, and when I displayed signs of persistent depression and melancholy, and June discovered what I was reading, she made me quit. Good thing. Naipaul is too often right about the worst prospects for the future.)

12. William McNeil, The Pursuit of Power: Technology, Armed Force, and Society since A.D. 1000 (1985)

(This is a brilliant work of big history. I made it the foundation for the latter portion of my History 1000 classes for the last 15 years of my teaching. The relationship of the economy and democracy and arms build-ups and war is frighteningly laid out by McNeil.)

13. Robert Darnton, The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History (1985)

(While many other works might take the place of this work (some by Leroy Ladurie, for example), this was one of the first and one of the best representations of cultural history and its promise – at least for me. Being an old fashioned political historian, it helped release me from the dull statistics of social history and imagine a future for history that was vibrant and alive. It also encouraged another field to emerge – microhistory -- and this is a field that is going to be of as great importance as cultural history will be.)

14. Charles Taylor, The Ethics of Authenticity (1991)

(A lot of the historical interpretation I have brought to my writing has centered around human agency, autonomy and authority. Taylor takes on the existential, relativist side of these qualities and, again, while I do not always reach the conclusions he does, no one has seized this issue more intelligently than Taylor.)

15. Louis Menand, The Metaphysical Club (2001)

(The best book I have read in the last ten years, again written by a journalist. Menand frames the real lives of the leading pragmatist thinkers – Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., Charles Peirce, and William James – in a fascinating and engaging way. Menand’s book stands as one of three books – the other two being Wallace Steigner’s Wolf Willow (1955 ) and Norman McLean’s A River Runs through It (1976) – as the books I have either given away or recommended highly to a lot of people.)

Conclusion:

What surprises me is how serious most of this stuff is: I am not a fun-lovin' guy. I was also struck by how little of this list consists of "official" history; sure, I list McNeil and Darnton -- who are academics. And, Menand is a popular historian; Arendt is a philosopher who knows her history (what a rarity!), and Naipaul is a novelist who knows history and much more. But secondary works of history have not often impressed me, partly because I find them a boring read and partly because I find the analysis in academic history to be weak or limited. I believe that "history matters more," but not that certified historians matter more. I am also surprised to see how many of the things that have influenced me have been essays -- sometimes by philosophers, often by journalists. Montaigne, Paine, Emerson, Thoreau, Orwell, Darnton and Taylor are all essayists essentially. Perhaps I am too lazy for longer books; perhaps I like arguments presented in a short space without all of the footnotes and documentation. Six of my list are Americans, although their ideas range well beyond national boundaries, in the main. Only Thoreau, Dillard, and Menand have written on themes local to America, and even they are looking at a more distant horizon.

Ingmar Bergman begins his film Fanny and Alexander (1984) by portraying his nostalgic memories of Christmas at his grandmother's home. I somehow recall (but cannot locate and quote) a scene early on in the film, where Bergman's fictional grandmother -- Helena Eckdahl (played by Gun Wälden) -- admits that she never knew what a mother was, and that she only acted out what she thought was the role of being a mother. Becoming and imitating and role-playing rather than essentialist being is, of course, pure existentialism and pure Bergman. Looking at my list of books, I wonder if my life has not played out as a contest between essentialism and existentialism. Many of these books shaped my views of society, politics, human agency, cultural interaction, manners, morals, and nature. Have I just lived a life imitating the arguments, ideas and persuasions of books? Or, did I choose those books to read -- and to be influenced by -- because of already established proclivities of mind and sentiment? It is a "chicken and egg" question, I know, but the degree to which I give weight to either side of this question is of interest to me.

Listening

     Our ability to say what we want, to express our opinions, to reveal our inner-most emotions, to let people know what we are thinking or feeling RIGHT NOW, has never been greater. Most people are not going to get the opportunity of journalists or editors or pundits to let the world know what they have on their minds or in their hearts. But who needs that. We all have the chance to say what we want, when we want to say it. Conversations have never been more free. Electronic media -- such as e-mail, blogs, "Skype," "Facebook," "Twitter," and a long list of devices from cell phones to photo phones to Blackberrys have produced FREE SPEECH (in most cultures and countries). Even repressive regimes cannot stop people from speaking their mind. (I am only stating the "bleeding obvious" here.)

     Post-modern analysts has elevated "discourse" above all other motive forces in human relations. Long ago, it became the catchword of Michel Foucault, and deconstructionists like Jacques Derrida. Now it is the catchword of thousands of academics, and attached to, and dismissed by its opponents,as a culture of secular humanism. The material world, the world of institutions, the world of traditional culture, has given way to a world identified by, and defined by, discourse alone.

     Do not get me wrong. I love this spread of what we now call "discourse." I love being able to retrieve the opinions of loved ones, friends, and acquaintances about all manner of subjects. Two of my good friends are, for want of a better word, "talkers." I am happy with that. I learn much from them -- both in regard to rational thought and modern emotions. I delight in the opportunity for millions of people to express ideas and feelings to a wide audience. "Facebook," which I have criticized in another blog, allows my "friends" to let the rest of us know how they feel, what they are doing, what they feel is important -- now.

     But discourse is not just about making speeches. Discourse is not just about expressing one's own feelings and angst and outrage and opinions. Discourse is, by dictionary definition, also about "conversation," and for "conversation" to occur, there has to be a "listener." No, that is not correct. There has to be at least two persons who are both speakers and listeners.

     In the last twenty or so years of my life, I have acquired the ability (although I have not always exercised it wisely) to listen to others speak at great length, with only an occasional comment or reflection on my part. The people with whom I have done this, would probably deny that I have done this. They would claim that I spoke, interjected, interrupted, and generally dominated the "conversation" more than they did. I have been charged, sometimes rightly, with taking up all of the conversation time. But, lately, I have been actually timing how often I speak, and how often those in my company speak. In most cases, I have not exceeded my quota of time.

     This has been driven home to me in a concrete way by the fact that I have been conducting oral history interviews of first generation members of the administration, faculty, and student body of my university. In some of these interviews, I have almost been an inanimate object. My subjects have narratives to tell, and they have not needed questions to propel them forward. In other interviews, I have commented on one or another subject, in the hopes of eliciting some response from my interviewee. But, in all of my interviews, I have begun to recognize again the importance of just being there, of making eye contact, of showing an interest, of smothering a smile or a laugh, of nodding in agreement or shaking my head in disagreement. I am the listener. Although my family and friends would not believe this, I truly enjoy just listening.

     Much of post-modern discourse literature and theory acknowledges the importance of listening. But, aside from "reader response" theories of literature, there has been only a modest concession given to "listening" as an important part of discourse. By this I mean true listening:  listening not just to the ideas and opinions of others but to the cadence of the speech of others, to the manner in which they express themselves, and to the modes of expression they employ. Unfortunately, listening has become much like manners -- something one can ignore with social impunity. But no one can be a whole person without listening; just as no one can be a whole person without expressing themselves in some way. 

[This letter to the editor was published in The Lethbridge Herald for June 10, 2009]

      Alberta Bill 44 provides that parents (or guardians) of students must be notified “where courses of study, educational programs or instructional materials . . . include subject-matter that deals explicitly with religion, sexuality or sexual orientation.” Safe teachers will interpret “explicitly” as “to address in ANY WAY matters regarding religion, sexuality or sexual orientation.” That is one big problem. Another is that our Legislative Assembly wrongly thinks that religion and sexuality and sexual orientation are discreet subjects that can be segregated, even surgically divided from other subjects. Their understanding of “knowledge acquisition” (to use an ugly but revealing business term for education) is narrow, laughable, and ludicrous. Most real knowledge is integrated, and “religion” and “sex” are among those that overlap, intersect and merge with other subjects in all sorts of ways.     “Religion,” especially, is a subject so broad and so intimately involved with the basic elements of being human, that it touches upon almost every other subject involving human beings. Being religious (or not) has to do with how we view our world; how we react to our world; how we make sense of our world. To place it under special status (totalitarian regimes over the last century have eagerly placed issues of import under this status) is to eliminate much of what we call philosophy, history, and the study of society (to say nothing of art).

    “Sexuality” and “sexual orientation” are as problematical. While we KNOW what the legislature thinks it means by “sexual orientation,” they are babes-in-the-woods in regard to the broad subject-matter of “sexuality,” subject-matter intimately associated with many critical aspects of human development. The message is clear for any teacher, however:  stay away from anything that has to do with processes of biological reproduction in any form and, for good measure, anything dealing with human affection and intimacy. Who knows how fast those subjects might suddenly veer into the forbidden realm of human sexuality.

     If we lived in a province where “reasonable expectations” prevailed, good teachers with options would leave, and faculties of education would howl in protest. But we live in Alberta, an alternate-reality universe. Aside from a few courageous students and teachers, we will see little more than tighter lips, and young people poorly prepared for the world in which they live.

Halve Everything

     By now it is obvious that the hope aroused by the candidacy and then the election of President Obama has not caused a sea-change in the hearts and minds of his countrymen/women. Historians may find, fifty years from now, some important change among some young people who were inspired by the President's appeal to pragmatism and decency and reform. Right now, no such transformation is apparent. Why has the rocket fizzled? First, because, although the Republican Party and most of its federal representatives appear insane at best, congressional Democrats appear little better -- a hopeless motley crew of partisan hacks, intellectual light-weights, and visionless place-holders. They simply have no clue about moving forward in a clear, uncompromising direction toward anything. They consider halving every piece of legislation as bold and courageous reform. Secondly, and even worse, President Obama, partly because Congress has forced him to do so,  has decided to halve everything as well:  half a stimulus program; half ownership of GM (actually more); assuming half the costs of an irresponsible banking industry; a half-assed health program that promises very little change; half-way measures in pursuing those responsible for instituting a widespread torture program into American "intelligence" work; a halved promise on closing the Guantanamo Bay "facility"; a half-and-half attitude toward the virtues of unregulated capitalism.

     But these are surface issues, ones that can be changed with the election of a better Congress, and the appointment of better justices to the federal courts, and perhaps evidence of more backbone in the current administration once some victories are posted. Deeper cultural currents and bigger problems cannot be so easily eradicated. Here are my seven deadly sins of American politics and society:

     1. The American public, as responsible citizens, continue to lag behind every democratic, or democratically developing country, in terms of their political acumen and activism. "I am not political" is a phrase worn as a badge of moral honor only in North America. When students began to use this "excuse" with me in Canada in the 1970s, I developed a standard response:  "If you are not political, you are immoral." By political, I mean something more than passively voting. I mean acquainting oneself with the political issues of the day; protesting policies one considers bad or wrong-headed through a variety of means; and, discussing politics with one's acquaintances. These are the minimums. Contributing to a political party or working for a campaign or signing petitions and supporting online political interest groups, is a step further in the right direction.

     2. American journalism is immoral in the news they choose to cover, in the manner in which they report the news, and in ways they choose to analyze the news. Failures of omission and of commission are replete throughout all branches of the media. If we are not being addressed by vacuous air-heads of both sexes, whose hairdos alone tell you where they place their priorities, we are being assaulted and insulted by a parade of right-wing "experts" and subdued moderates in what journalism considers "balance" in analysis. There is no balance, and even if all sides were represented equally in these "debates," halving the views of two extremes does not result in truth and sensibility.

     3. "We live in the grip of the most powerful ideology the world has ever known -- capitalism." These are the words I used for over twenty years in my first year history classes whenever the issue of ideologies of the past became a topic of the course. Most older students thought I was going to end that sentence with the word -- "communism." The rest shrugged this sentence off as irrelevant, set against the power of pop culture (which is itself a partner in maintaining the myth of capitalist inevitability). But the pervasive and destructive influence of capitalism as an ideology seems to continue. And, it has emerged from our financial crisis virtually unscathed -- a remarkable feat for a set of ideas that should have been badly damaged by its advocates and extreme enthusiasts. Indeed, journalists make no objection when commentators -- or the "punditocracy," as Michael Moore correctly calls it -- sweepingly proclaim that the free market system is sacrosanct and must not be impeded. What utter nonsense. Some things must be nationalized (health care, we say today; roads and public utilities, so said Adam Smith in 1776; and why, by the way, don't right-wing ideologists read and cite him). Some things need regulation (uh, savings-and-loans, as proven by the early 1990s fiasco under Bush I, and the banks, as proven today). And, some things need to be driven by the market (our choices in what foods we want in our restaurants and what clothes styles we want to put on our backs).

     4. Paul Krugman, in a recent NY Times opinion piece, identifies the beginning of the current state of economic crisis with the Reagan administration. This is true. I have recently come across a talk I gave when Reagan was re-elected in 1984, and was reminded again that I never could comprehend his election to either term. What were people thinking? He was not even the jolly person most people made him out to be. He was a vicious anti-communist, anti-unionist, and anti-government-activist. He presented himself as some kind of lollypop libertarian; maybe that's why people think he was sweet. And then, just like the New England Puritans of the 17th century, the Republican presidential leadership proceeded to decline. Bush I (a seemingly good hearted and courageous veteran), along with his country-club, pretty boy running mate -- Dan Quayle, stumbled through a term. Newt Gingrich then steered the Republicans of the 1990s into an Alice-in-Wonderland vision of politics and economics and the future. And, then there was Bush II, a man almost as shocked as William Henry Harrison to be inhabiting the White House. We know the rest about the worst president in American history; Bush II was kind of the "Secretariat" (to use a horse-racing analogy unflattering to that great race horse) of bad and evil politics. Thirty years of wrong ideas, of "spend a lot but don 't tax" policies, of anti-democratic politics, has left most of us with no memory of how politics might be practiced correctly.

     5. Only in the impoverished world, do we see a middle and lower class as dispirited as we find them in the U.S. They have been down so long that just keeping one's job, or keeping a pay check that does not rise with inflation, is seen as a victory to be celebrated. Marx was only partly right in calling "religion the opiate of the masses"; sports, pop culture diversions, and, hey, real opiates, are also part of the "opiate[s] of the masses." Some say that ordinary folk have been "dumbed down." It is worse than that; they have been thoroughly anesthetized against hope and planning for the future. No hope and no planning are emblematic of societies of the poor throughout the world.

     6. How long have we put up with fighting the brush fires of idiotic right-wing political and religious groups and advocates. OK, abortion is not a good thing; but given sex education in the U.S. (and many other places) it is at least a necessary "evil." Plus, as a man, I expect to have authority over my body; women should too.  Darwinian evolution is right, insofar as every credible scientific test has been applied against it. Schools are not places over which parents en masse should determine curriculum or how subjects should be taught. Parents must insist on the production of good teachers, and then get out of the way. Being "gay" or "lesbian" is natural; "homosexuality," for want of a better comprehensive word, has existed from ancient times to the present. The only debate is how many people are naturally gay or lesbian; and that, my friends, is a discussion just too, too boring for me to address. Stupid cultural and moral issues are exhausting and diverting from real issues regarding how millions of real people are to live their real lives well.

     7. No one, from teenagers to the enfeebled elderly, are "entitled" to all that they claim. Yes, the young should be educated and protected. Yes, the elderly should be cared for in a humane and caring way. After that, it is all a matter of how far a society wants to go to enhance these protections without extending false expectations. If you are a lazy and not very bright teenager, you should expect the consequences of those twin failings -- one outside your control, the other supposedly within it. If you are a cranky, contentious, and poor senior, you should expect something less than luxury and fawning attention from those around you. There is no historical imperative that any age group should lead a life of sybaritic ease, or that ennui is the correct and expected response to unfulfilled expectations.

    So, with these 7 Deadly Sins still in full play, I am not anticipating seeing anything like the changes to politics and society that, only a few months ago, I thought might be possible in my lifetime.

[For those who think I am being harsh regarding the Obama administration, please read Kevin Baker's article, "Barack Hoover Obama:  The Best and the Brightest Blow It Again," Harper's Magazine, July, 2009]