It's been almost a month since I wrote this and saved it as a draft. Where has the time gone?! Essentially, I wrote so much during the last few weeks of school (final papers) that, even being the obsessive communicator that I am, I just needed a break. These next few entries will be post-dated. Today, in real time, is May 21st.
Sometimes I feel like my student ID is a magic key. There are so many events that I can get into simply by showing that little card. Even at non-school events, it amazes me what identifying as a student does to the way people perceive me. And no, the school did not pay me to say this.
With all of these events constantly happening, I sometimes wish that I had a little less homework so I could go to all of these lectures. I'm also really glad that I carry the dialogue journal with me at all times; if I didn't, I would never have notes from the lectures I drop into last minute.
This Monday, after my Myths class, I headed uptown (a little) to Baruch College. To commemorate the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, the college had a ceremony with candle-lighting and Yiddish songs. I went with my Oral Histories class because the second half of the ceremony featured two guest lecturers. The first was David Gerwitzman,a holocaust survivor. The second was Jacqueline Murekatate, a survivor of the 1994 Rwandan genocide. Mr. Gerwitzman began with a story about his melamed who had addressed his class one day and said that if any of them survived they would have an obligation to "tell the world what happened here." This was in Losice, Poland. Right before the soldiers came, his cousin had come to the town and warned them about the slaughter taking place in other towns. Mr. Gerwitzman was only eleven when this all happened; his parents decided to build a hiding place in their house. When the soldiers ordered everyone out into the square, his family didn't go "because of the warning of my cousin...and because it was extremely hot." Which was one of those 'God is in the details' moments: what if it hadn't been extremely hot and they decided to go? What if the cousin hadn't warned them until a week later? Anyway. Most of those who did go into the square were sent to labor camps, but the elderly, sick, and women with very young children were all shot. Mr. Gerwitzman's presentation included pictures of around his town, and he had some of this massacre because a pharmacist in the town was a member of the Polish resistance and had been hiding there as well. The Gerwitzman parents sent the children out to escape once the soldiers had gone. He and his sister ended up in a Polish prison for a bit, but a confused guard executed the wrong prisoners and let them back out. Eventually he talks about how the family reunited and hid in a pigsty where they "existed" when they once had lived. He was about 16 when he was liberated by the Russian Army. Someone in the auditorium asked at the Q & A how the Russian soldiers had treated him and he said they were some of the kindest people he had ever met. Interestingly, he also talked about being in a displaced person's camp for a time before his American relatives helped him emigrate. I don't know that any of the books I've read ever mentioned what happened when survivors turned to go home and realized there was nothing left.
Jacqueline Murekatate spoke next. She explains how the genocide officially only lasted 100 days, but that the country had been heading towards it for a long time. The Belgian colonists required everyone to have identification cards with 'ethnicity' listed alongside 'name' and 'age.' They started drumming up competition between the Hutus and Tutsis to 'divide and conquer' more easily. Ms. Murekatate said that when colonialism ended and the country was free, the new government kept the practice for the same reason. Tutsi killings started occurring more frequently in 1959 and through the 60's and 70's. She talked about how her family ran to police and neighbors when the killings started in their area: "We told ourselves that they would protect us." She had been visiting her grandmother when they started, and she wasn't able to go home to her parents. After the dust settled, an uncle informed her that her parents had been killed in their village when they attempted to hide with their neighbors. She was dumbfounded: "I couldn't understand how people who used to come to our house for lunch or dinner would refuse to hide my family." Her grandmother was also killed, but Jacqueline was able to survive hidden at an orphanage run by two Italian priests. Her uncle found her after the war, and she came to America as soon as they could arrange it. Mr. Gerwitzman had been invited to speak at her English class when she was in; she introduced herself after class and they began a friendship that inspired them to start lecturing together about the horrors of genocide.
That was the 19th. The next day, I started the morning watching two films in anthropology. From there, I got a coffee (trying to spend those 40 meals I have left. Thank you, Aramark, for mandating freshman year meal plans. What a waste.) and then went to sociology of ed where we talked about New York's board of Regents (which I'll explain sometime in the future), alternative certification routes, and the Texas textbook controversy (which I'll post an article about once all my finals are done and I have time to relocate it). On the way to meet up with Hillary for our weekly Tuesday lunch, I decided to walk through the park. Back home, 4/20 meant that people joked about brownies. Isolated for the morning in the world of academia, I didn't even have a brownie-joke to alert me to the "holiday." Let me just say, I've never walked in and out of the park so quickly. And just in time; I was walking out as the NYPD cars pulled up. What a mess! Anyway, I had a lovely lunch and then went uptown to Jean's art show again so that I could walk though slowly and really look at everything. She and Maria were there with some of their friends, and we hung out until it was time for classes. Then they went back to school. I didn't have evening classes, but I did have my pre-departure study-abroad meeting. Guess I should start applying for that visa...
Wednesday I went with Hillary and Alex to an Earth Day Banquet. Hooray for free vegan food!!! The first speaker was Amanda Park Taylor who writes about food waste and the virtues of vegetarianism. Her information was interesting, but I wondered whether she was addressing the proper audience. Not to generalize, but the kind of people who find a vegan dinner and eco-aware banquet of environmentalist speakers among all the events at school--and who decide to make time right before finals to go to this event--probably already know about how going veggie reduces a person's carbon footprint and how NYC just cut composting from next year's budget. I could be wrong, but I was wondering...
The next speaker was Karen Washington, an urban farmer from the Bronx. She talked about getting foods into poorer neighborhoods, "what food has become," how mono-cropping means that the consumer does not pick what he or she buys in the market because "the choosing has been done for you by the corporate farmers," the innovations in urban gardening developed in Cuba, the value of water, and how food "crosses all boundaries" as a world-wide unifier. She had a very dynamic speaking style, introducing herself as "Mother Earth." I thought of a friend who has mentioned wanting to be an urban bee-keeper. It's now legal in Manhattan, and I wonder if Ms. Washington would have advice for her.
The third speaker was Andrew Revkin from the New York Times...sort of. He now writes for Dot Earth, and independent affiliated blog. His theory is that this is our environmental puberty stage. He explained that he saw this in the public's previous resistance to change wearing away as the danger becomes more critical. He characterized the scientists and journalists as parents who we have been avoiding but who we must soon grow up and listen to. I'm not sure I buy that theory, but if one looks at puberty as a rite of passage (yay anthropology! This one is care of Victor Turner), then the departure from our previous state would be the realization that our choices are altering the conditions on the planet. The liminal state--where Revkin places us now--is this place where the data tells us there is a Texas-sized Styrofoam island in the pacific and more grain produced for cattle than people, yet we hear it all without listening. The goal then is to move on to the new state of hearing, understanding, and reacting appropriately...all before it's too late. An interesting concept. He talked about my generation as "generation E" and he explained that the field most rapidly gaining public interest is global health or "one health." I was intrigued when he mentioned that he moved to blogging from paper journalism because he feels that there is no future for paper journalism. Once upon a time, I wanted to be a journalist. I like people, education, and writing so it seemed to fit. Then I realized that I'm not pushy enough for that line of work. I'm also not enough of a sensationalist, which was something he acknowledged. He was really pushing that environmentalists need to resist the temptation to exaggerate their case. I really appreciated that he acknowledged that, particularly since he was speaking to a room of eager, passionate, college students.
The three did a Q&A session afterward, but I didn't take too many notes. The rest of the week slipped past all to quickly. With my last day in the city fast approaching, I feel as if I'm straining to tip-toe through each remaining hour with much more care than I've yet put into such a thing. Once when I was little, I remember the sun throwing a rainbow on my wall as the light shone through a stained glass decoration I had on my window. As the decoration moved, the rainbow moved. I was delighted watching it flit across my wall, and suddenly I decided that I wanted it for a pet. Why not? How delightful it would be to have a rainbow for my own! So I took a plastic cup I had for catching ladybugs and I ran to the wall...where my attempts to capture the rainbow were frustrated by its intangibility. Wishing for more time here is like trying to catch a rainbow: it's impossible not to want to but just as impossible to realize that desire. For now at least.
Anyway, Friday came rather quickly and today Cindy called about a "Tactical Culture Workshop" that was being run on account of the Gallatin Arts Festival. The panel discussion was facilitated by Stephen Duncombe, who is reputed to be one of Gallatin's best professors and who is leaving for MIT before I have the chance to take a class with him. I was expecting to listen to a presentation about the role of art in social movements...but I should really know better by now. When they advertise Gallatin as the interdisciplinary and interactive program, they mean it. The workshop had several purposes. They declared that the topic we would focus on was the cost of college. They talked through explicating the nature of the topic, possible solutions, what a movement to draw attention to this issue would look like, and how to begin such a movement. The audience--composed of students, teachers (including one of my first semester professors, Laurin Raiken, who constantly awes me with his seemingly infinite knowledge), and guests--participated in the discussion as it developed. Because of this, the workshop allowed for a group of veteran activists to design the skeleton of a movement, initiated dialogues about both the issue of college cost and ways to prompt social change, presented to audience members an example of what the brainstorming process looks like, and showcased effective leadership in the form of an excellent facilitator guiding collaborators firmly but respectfully. The workshop also gathered eager minds into a shared space where they could network after the program, and I think Rhoen is planning a tutorial next semester in which he hopes to continue the discussion begun at the workshop.
Personally, I'll be abroad taking History of Czech Architecture and wishing them the best of luck from afar. I felt that the discussion focused more on how to convince NYU to publish their budget plans and generally be more transparent in their spending. Which would be lovely...if the majority of my tuition were going to paying my professors (which I suspect it isn't as Duncombe's voice took on a slightly bitter edge when we touched on this subject... and the edge softened when he reminded us all that he's leaving next year) then I would be more content paying it than if it were going to something like knocking down a neighborhood church to make space for a new dorm (Founder's Hall anyone?). That said, students who attend NYU chose to attend a private university. One trait of a private university is that it has the right to be private. It would be nice if they published their numbers, but they don't have to and students should be aware of such things when applying. If you want a transparent school, go state school. The cost of college is ridiculous anyway. If I weren't both completely in love with my concentration and a born student, I really don't think I would choose to go to college at all. Sure, it might not sound so great on a job application to list that I have no undergraduate degree...But if I took the tuition money that I was saving and put it towards starting a bi-lingual pen-pals program or developing programs to teach financial literacy to youth or rounding out Howard Zinn's People's History and turning it into an interactive museum then maybe, just maybe, some crazy person would recognize the value of life experiences outside the structure of a degree program and hire me anyway. Or I'd just end up self-employed...
Friday, April 23, 2010
Saturday, April 17, 2010
There is no way I would ever--I mean never never never--kiss a frog!
Surrounded by creepy music, a sleepy-bear roomie, and some Disney-craving theater kids, I've had to leave off writing yet another anthro paper. How can I work with "The Princess and the Frog" in the background. Er...foreground.
Remember when I wrote about the rubber rooms at the beginning of the semester? When I searched for it at the time, the first page that came up was about a documentary-in-progress. Tonight, I saw a pre-release screening of that documentary, but if you search "rubber room" in google the first thing that comes up is a news page. If you want to read about it:
Here is the radio broadcast (Thanks to Professor Sloan for letting me know about it!)
News story one
News story two
and
The documentary page.
So the rubber rooms are reassignment centers for teachers who are for whatever reason deemed to be unfit for the classroom. The teachers have to report to these facilities for the length of the school day each school day, and while they get paid for it the conditions are frightful and in many cases the teachers haven't been told the charges being filed against them. Now I'm not well versed in politics or law, but the way these centers were being run was obviously problematic. Innocent teachers were mixed in with guilty ones in a repressive environment where they stayed for months or even years while they waited for their cases to be heard. I shouldn't be using past tense; that's wishful thinking. The D.O.E. announced yesterday that they will be closing the rubber rooms. From here on, they claim, teachers waiting for their arbitration hearings will do clerical work in their schools or at another location. Also, the city would like to see the process sped up and so is aiming to increase the number of arbitrators available to handle the cases from 26 to 29. For the entire city? Excuse me for being skeptical, but when arbitrators work half-days anyway I'm not sure what a difference 3 more will make. Hmmm.
And while I'm certainly no expert, one of the documentary makers also expressed doubts about the city's plan. His thoughts: There were already limits on the length of time a teacher could be suspended without a case review but these limits haven't been followed, so what good could more limits do? What does the district intend to do with suspended teachers instead? What is 'clerical work' and if teachers do it in a cleaner room is it not still a rubber room in theory?
As the film is still in its pre-release phase, the directors acknowledged--in the Q and A session afterword-- that they still need to do some technical editing for lighting and sound quality. That said, I felt like they did a good job showing how complicated the issue really is. They had tenured teachers and former teaching fellows; they had old and young, women and men, gay and straight, white and 'minority'; they had teachers, guidance counselors, and politicians. And while they had a good number of people, they didn't have a huge cast of interviewees. Rather, they focused on a group that showed the diversity of the people impacted. I was also relieved to see that they mixed the innocent with the guilty. Chancellor Joel Klein responded to most questions with a comment about protecting the children from harm. While this got old rather quickly, I was wondering how the filmmakers were going to address the question of teacher who really did deserve to be out of the classroom. They found a teacher who admitted to losing his temper in the classroom, throwing and kicking furniture when he did lose his temper, and generally teaching because he's "an egomaniac who likes to have an attentive audience." Crazy! Interestingly, he was released from the rubber room after two weeks and allowed back into the classroom while other teachers who were later found to be innocent of any accusations spent months or years before returning to teaching, if they were able to return at all. Thus the filmmakers acknowledged that some people need to be removed from classrooms but that those people should be fired and that the rubber rooms weren't helping get that done at all.
Of course the room was full of teachers, policy makers, graduate students, and those interviewed for the movie. I felt very outside the culture; they recognized people and phrases in the film, and they reacted collectively. Sometimes I knew why they chuckled or groaned, but most of the snickers and jeers were lost on me. It was interesting to experience, though. And during the Q and A, it was funny to be in a room full of teachers whose phones were going off and who were interrupting the filmmakers despite the fact that this was supposed to be a facilitated discussion. People fascinate me sometimes.
After the discussion, I came home to write for a bit. While doing my roommates' dishes from the past two weeks I dreamed about sharing a kitchen someday with people who like their cooking/eating spaces clean (Hillary, Alex, Cass...). I wrote some more, had tea with Alex, wrote some more, and then was distracted by Disney so decided to write this bit. I've been posting more recently...Is blogging merely procrastination disguising itself as productivity perhaps? Regardless, the day itself was fairly productive. I'm hoping to arrange an internship while abroad next semester, to move out before my roomies so I'm not left cleaning the mess at the end of the year, waiting on paperwork so I can apply for my student visa, wishing I could go to Georgia, revising my Roald Dahl paper, looking forward to a 2011 independent study on Gothic Literature with Dr. Lennox, craving baked eggs, and getting a little bit sleepy.
A final note: Best of luck to Cass and Lanie at Forensics Nationals! I'm terribly proud of them. While I'm writing about Anne Meneley and Nancy Ries, they'll be competing with students from across the country in delivering duos and after-dinner speeches and other such things. Meanwhile, my cousin Jean Calderone will be displaying some of her work in her school's thesis show this weekend. Congratulations all around!
Remember when I wrote about the rubber rooms at the beginning of the semester? When I searched for it at the time, the first page that came up was about a documentary-in-progress. Tonight, I saw a pre-release screening of that documentary, but if you search "rubber room" in google the first thing that comes up is a news page. If you want to read about it:
Here is the radio broadcast (Thanks to Professor Sloan for letting me know about it!)
News story one
News story two
and
The documentary page.
So the rubber rooms are reassignment centers for teachers who are for whatever reason deemed to be unfit for the classroom. The teachers have to report to these facilities for the length of the school day each school day, and while they get paid for it the conditions are frightful and in many cases the teachers haven't been told the charges being filed against them. Now I'm not well versed in politics or law, but the way these centers were being run was obviously problematic. Innocent teachers were mixed in with guilty ones in a repressive environment where they stayed for months or even years while they waited for their cases to be heard. I shouldn't be using past tense; that's wishful thinking. The D.O.E. announced yesterday that they will be closing the rubber rooms. From here on, they claim, teachers waiting for their arbitration hearings will do clerical work in their schools or at another location. Also, the city would like to see the process sped up and so is aiming to increase the number of arbitrators available to handle the cases from 26 to 29. For the entire city? Excuse me for being skeptical, but when arbitrators work half-days anyway I'm not sure what a difference 3 more will make. Hmmm.
And while I'm certainly no expert, one of the documentary makers also expressed doubts about the city's plan. His thoughts: There were already limits on the length of time a teacher could be suspended without a case review but these limits haven't been followed, so what good could more limits do? What does the district intend to do with suspended teachers instead? What is 'clerical work' and if teachers do it in a cleaner room is it not still a rubber room in theory?
As the film is still in its pre-release phase, the directors acknowledged--in the Q and A session afterword-- that they still need to do some technical editing for lighting and sound quality. That said, I felt like they did a good job showing how complicated the issue really is. They had tenured teachers and former teaching fellows; they had old and young, women and men, gay and straight, white and 'minority'; they had teachers, guidance counselors, and politicians. And while they had a good number of people, they didn't have a huge cast of interviewees. Rather, they focused on a group that showed the diversity of the people impacted. I was also relieved to see that they mixed the innocent with the guilty. Chancellor Joel Klein responded to most questions with a comment about protecting the children from harm. While this got old rather quickly, I was wondering how the filmmakers were going to address the question of teacher who really did deserve to be out of the classroom. They found a teacher who admitted to losing his temper in the classroom, throwing and kicking furniture when he did lose his temper, and generally teaching because he's "an egomaniac who likes to have an attentive audience." Crazy! Interestingly, he was released from the rubber room after two weeks and allowed back into the classroom while other teachers who were later found to be innocent of any accusations spent months or years before returning to teaching, if they were able to return at all. Thus the filmmakers acknowledged that some people need to be removed from classrooms but that those people should be fired and that the rubber rooms weren't helping get that done at all.
Of course the room was full of teachers, policy makers, graduate students, and those interviewed for the movie. I felt very outside the culture; they recognized people and phrases in the film, and they reacted collectively. Sometimes I knew why they chuckled or groaned, but most of the snickers and jeers were lost on me. It was interesting to experience, though. And during the Q and A, it was funny to be in a room full of teachers whose phones were going off and who were interrupting the filmmakers despite the fact that this was supposed to be a facilitated discussion. People fascinate me sometimes.
After the discussion, I came home to write for a bit. While doing my roommates' dishes from the past two weeks I dreamed about sharing a kitchen someday with people who like their cooking/eating spaces clean (Hillary, Alex, Cass...). I wrote some more, had tea with Alex, wrote some more, and then was distracted by Disney so decided to write this bit. I've been posting more recently...Is blogging merely procrastination disguising itself as productivity perhaps? Regardless, the day itself was fairly productive. I'm hoping to arrange an internship while abroad next semester, to move out before my roomies so I'm not left cleaning the mess at the end of the year, waiting on paperwork so I can apply for my student visa, wishing I could go to Georgia, revising my Roald Dahl paper, looking forward to a 2011 independent study on Gothic Literature with Dr. Lennox, craving baked eggs, and getting a little bit sleepy.
A final note: Best of luck to Cass and Lanie at Forensics Nationals! I'm terribly proud of them. While I'm writing about Anne Meneley and Nancy Ries, they'll be competing with students from across the country in delivering duos and after-dinner speeches and other such things. Meanwhile, my cousin Jean Calderone will be displaying some of her work in her school's thesis show this weekend. Congratulations all around!
Friday, April 16, 2010
Slow Reading
I would love to be a "slow writer," but as I have about seven writing projects due in the next three weeks, it seems that the university is conspiring against my putting on such an identity. Oh well. Cass passed this article on to me and I took a study break to read it. Now I pass it on to you:
SLOW READING: the affirmation of authorial intent
by Lancelot R. Fletcher
The phase, "slow reading," is taken from Nietzsche. In paragraph 5 of the preface to Daybreak (Morgenröthe) he writes:
A book like this, a problem like this, is in no hurry; we both, I just as much as my book, are friends of lento. It is not for nothing that I have been a philologist, perhaps I am a philologist still, that is to say, A TEACHER OF SLOW READING:- in the end I also write slowly. Nowadays it is not only my habit, it is also to my taste - a malicious taste, perhaps? - no longer to write anything which does not reduce to despair every sort of man who is 'in a hurry'. For philology is that venerable art which demands of its votaries one thing above all: to go aside, to take time, to become still, to become slow - it is a goldsmith's art and connoisseurship of the WORD which has nothing but delicate, cautious work to do and achieves nothing if it does not achieve it lento. But precisely for this reason it is more necessary than ever today, by precisely this means does it entice and enchant us the most, in the midst of an age of 'work', that is to say, of hurry, of indecent and perspiring haste, which wants to 'get everything done' at once, including every old or new book:- this art does not so easily get anything done, it teaches to read WELL, that is to say, to read slowly, deeply, looking cautiously before and aft, with reservations, with doors left open, with delicate eyes and fingers...My patient friends, this book desires for itself only perfect readers and
philologists: LEARN to read me well![1]
"I AM A TEACHER OF SLOW READING." So says Nietzsche. When I started my teaching career (in the 1960s) I tried saying the same thing in the first class of every course I taught: “Good morning,” I would say. “My name is Lancelot Fletcher. I am a teacher of slow reading,” at which point all the students would laugh. Why? Because they thought they already knew how to read slowly. In those days in the US many people used to pay considerable sums of money to teachers who promised to teach them “speed reading.” Students and businessmen alike were desperate to improve their reading speed because they had too much written material to read and not enough time to read it all at their normal reading speed – which they all felt was much too slow for their purposes. So the idea of taking a course from a teacher of slow reading struck them as utterly ridiculous. As far as they were concerned reading slowly was a problem, a sign of their inadequacy in the field of reading. Why would they want to study how to walk (slowly) when what they needed to do was to run – as fast as possible?
After the laughter subsided I would tell my students that what I meant by saying this as: “This is the nature of philosophy. For me philosophy IS the teaching of slow reading.” This didn’t help very much, but it was strange enough so the students didn’t laugh and some of them began to pay attention. In one class the cleverest student said, “Ok, I will accept that, even though I don’t know what you mean. I’m ready. So let’s begin slow reading.” And I answered, “But that’s just the problem. You can’t begin.” “What do you mean?” he asked, beginning to sound rather exasperated. “If you can’t begin slow reading, how can anybody learn it, and how can you honestly say that you teach slow reading?” “The problem is you are thinking that to begin slow reading means to pick up a text and read it in a certain way, different from how you have been reading before, but that’s not the way it works. Slow reading doesn’t start with reading. When slow reading begins, you are already reading. You have been reading for a long time. Slow reading starts, not with reading but with slowing. But even that is not quite right. It would be more accurate to say that slow reading starts with stopping, with turning around. In our reading habits we are like drivers who have been speeding down the highway, intent on reaching our destination, when we begin to notice that things along the side of the road don’t look quite the way we expected. At some point we begin to think that we might have misinterpreted a road sign that we passed a few kilometers back, and then suddenly the thought strikes us that we have been driving rapidly in the wrong direction! Now, as you turn your car around and start driving back to take another look at that sign, now you may find yourself in the slow reading frame of mind.” If one could begin slow reading the first lesson would be: Just be present to the words on the page. Allow the words to simply BE there, and take note of the fact that they ARE there – BEFORE YOU DECIDE WHAT THEY MEAN. If you are like most of my students you will again feel tempted to find this ridiculous and dismiss it with a wave of your hand. “Does this guy think he is some kind of Zen master? What does he mean by telling me that I should learn to ‘Allow the words to simply be there?’ I mean, the words are what they are! They can be what they are without any permission from me, so I don’t need to allow them to be there, and I certainly don’t need to learn how to do this!” And, of course, for the students who respond in this way, which is to say most students, this is a very hard lesson, because it asks them to do something that they are completely unaccustomed to doing, and even the request they experience as an insult. If you doubt this, make the
following test: Read a sentence of eight or ten words to a group of students – or to any group of people you choose -- and ask them to reproduce the sentence word for word. What happens? Do they repeat the words that you spoke? In my experience that almost never happens. Instead almost everybody responds by telling you what they thought the sentence meant – but in different words.
Why does this happen? I think it is because we are utterly preoccupied with deciding what the sentences we read and hear MEAN to us. Even more than that, we are preoccupied with deciding whether WE agree or disagree with what we take the sentences to mean, whether WE approve or disapprove. And, because we are so preoccupied. we generally do not pause to take note of what the sentences we read actually SAY. This rush to interpretation and judgment is strongly encouraged by most of our educational practices.
Perhaps we need to consider how we originally began to read. Nowadays most of us have learned to suppress vocalization as we read. We are taught that it is bad form to read aloud unless we are intending to share what we are reading with someone else who is willing to listen. And some of us can even read without moving our lips. But I am willing to bet that, for each one of us, when we first learned how to read, reading meant reading aloud -- that is, speaking, reproducing, the words exactly as they are on the page. In your first moments of reading, when you were just learning to read, being a reader meant that you were an actor. To read you had to speak; you had to become the voice of the author. So that is where we begin. The intention of the teaching of slow reading (which, as I said, is what I understand philosophy to be) is to subvert the customary mode of reading. Its intention is to afford students (i.e. those who make us the gift of their listening) some critical access to their own interpretive activity. The purpose is not to leave students with the notion that the text means whatever they wish to make it mean. That is pretty much the customary mode of reading that the teaching of slow reading wishes to subvert. These days students will do that pretty well on their own without any teaching from us. But to subvert this mode of reading we do first need to make students aware of what they are doing, aware of the fact that they are in the habit of imposing their own meanings on the text.
But some people might say that that is the only thing we can do. What alternative is there to imposing our own meanings or interpretations on the text? To answer that question it is useful to step out away from the literary context for a moment and think about an ordinary conversation. As an example let me relate a conversation I recall from my childhood, when I was about fourteen. My best friend had a younger sister named Fay who was about seven at the time of this conversation. Fay had the misfortune to be blind, but she was also a musical prodigy and had perfect pitch. One day I was visiting my friend and her sister was playing the piano as she often did when suddenly Fay stopped playing music and started simply banging her fists on the keyboard, making horrible, loud crashing sounds. Then she screamed, “This piano is so out of tune I can’t play it anymore!” To which her mother responded, “Fay, what’s the matter? Are you hungry, do you want me to fix you some food?” And Fay then screamed even louder, “NO! I don’t want any food, I just want you to get the piano tuned!” What happened in this little domestic drama? Fay’s mother, being the sort of mother who lived in the kitchen and tended to understand many things in terms of food, brought her “kitchen listening” to her daughter’s exclamation and, being full of motherly concern for her daughter’s wellbeing she responded to her daughter’s cry for help with an offer of the kind of help she was most capable of providing, To that extent Fay’s mother was like one of our usual modern (or postmodern) students in imposing her own meaning on her daughter’s “text”. Fortunately, Fay’s mother then did something that our students rarely do: she asked the “author” if her interpretation was correct, and the author emphatically set her straight. To say it once more, the teaching of slow reading is intended to give students some critical access to their own interpretive activity – their own habit of manufacturing meanings. However, this is not the end of slow reading. It is only the beginning. For the discovery of our own interpretive habits is the necessary precondition for gaining access to authorial intent. In ordinary life we become aware of and sometimes correct our interpretations of the speeches we listen to by having conversations with the authors of those speeches. The purpose of the teaching of slow reading is to allow us to enter into conversations with the authors of great works -- those authors whose distinction is that they afford us the opportunity to think things that are worthy of thought. But how can you enter into a conversation with an author who is dead or otherwise not available? I will offer a suggestion in a moment, but first let me pose a question: Do the principles of interpretation critically depend on whether or not the author is available to answer your questions? If you are reading a book by a living author to whom you could presumably send email and then, when you are half way through the book you learn that the author has suddenly died, does this fact cause you to suddenly change your way of interpreting the book? Do you say, “Oh, good! He is dead so now I can make his words mean whatever I want because he is not around to tell me that I am wrong?” Now let me say how I approach this issue in my own teaching. When I am beginning to teach a course on one of the important texts in philosophy, say Plato's Republic, after saying that I am a teacher of slow reading I say, "As you read this book, I want you to assume that it was written by God." This often causes a certain amount of consternation and incipient revolt (more in the US than in Georgia). Most of the students suddenly feel that I am trying to dominate and control their minds. They ask, "You mean we have to accept what this guy says, even if we don't agree? Even if we think he is wrong?"
"Not at all," I reply. "The purpose of asking you to assume that the text for the course is written by God is to give you the opportunity to learn."
"How so?"
"Well, if you are going to learn, and you are going to learn from the author of this text, then I suppose there must be something you have to learn from that author. Right?"
"I suppose so."
"And what you have to learn from the author, in this case Plato, must then be something about which you know less than Plato. It might even be something about which you have incorrect opinions or assumptions. Do you agree?"
"Yes."
"Now, when you read a passage in a book and you find the passage unclear or inconsistent with what you already think, do you immediately say to yourself, "Here is an opportunity for me to learn?"
"Well, not always."
"'Not at all,' would be more like it! What most of us do is to say, 'That guy was confused. He is just making fallacious arguments.' Of course, in the abstract, especially when we are being polite, we say we 'know' that knowledge is supremely desirable. Somebody who took us seriously might suppose, therefore, that when the opportunity to acquire knowledge and get rid of some portion of our ignorance presented itself we would immediately jump at it, as if it were some particularly delicious food which we have long craved. But, in fact, that is not what usually happens, is it? In most cases, when the opportunity to learn is seen close up it looks distinctly unattractive. It is bad news. The reason it is bad news is that the opportunity to learn is always accompanied by the realization that we have hitherto been ignorant and mistaken. Naturally enough, we tend to avoid such discomfort by seeking to shift the blame. 'It's not my fault!' we cry, 'It's the author who is mistaken.' That, then, points us to the purpose of assuming that the author of our text is God, i.e. a being whose intention may be obscure, but who does not make mistakes. If we adopt the working hypothesis that the author of our text is God, and if we act on that hypothesis when we come to something that appears strange, confusing or wrong, attributing this to errors or ignorance of the author is not an available strategy, so we are driven to look first at the possibility that the confusion reflects our own ignorance."
And then a student will say, "But what if the author really IS mistaken? I mean, we can pretend that Plato's dialogues were written by God, but we all know that that isn't really so, and besides I don't even believe in the existence of God. So, by accepting your hypothesis, don't we run the risk of deceiving ourselves and never finding out the truth?" I answer, "Did I ask you to believe anything? To accept anything in the text as true? Not at all. I am not asking you to believe anything the author says. I am asking you to try to think what the author thinks. We are concerned with what we should do when a passage in the text occurs for us as questionable, and I am suggesting that, by supposing the author to be God, the perplexity that occurs for us in the text becomes an occasion for self-examination, an occasion for the discovery of our own ignorance. Yes, I suppose that, at the end of the day, after we have finished our slow reading, I might have to agree that the author of the text was probably a human being capable of making mistakes, not a god. But if we start out operating on the assumption that the text was written by God, by the time we reach the point where we need to consider the author's mistakes, we will have reached a thorough understanding of the questions which the author meant to ask. If we refuse to assume the author's divinity even provisionally, we may never get so far. And perhaps that -- the knowledge of the questions -- is the real object of philosophical inquiry."
In some parts of the academic world the idea of authorial intent has become an object of contempt. We are sometimes told that, since the meaning of the author cannot be known with certainty (especially in the case of dead authors) we should interpret texts based on our own ideas, without even considering what the author meant. The absurdity of such a practice becomes very clear as soon as you imagine it in the context of ordinary conversation: A person says something, say X. You respond by saying, “That means …Y.” The first speaker responds, “No, that’s not what I meant at all.” And you say, “I don’t care what you have to say now. I know that what you meant was Y, and that’s the end of it.” In short, the denial of respect for authorial intent entails a contempt for authors which ends by sanctioning in students a contempt for speakers that ultimately leads to a complete breakdown of effective communication. The teaching of slow reading, therefore, is an experiment that aims beyond itself. In itself the practice of slow reading intends to create occasions for joining in conversations with (not just
about) some of the most powerful thinkers who have ever lived -- not merely to learn what they thought, but to think with them and learn from them. But the aim of slow reading beyond itself is to consider whether the practice of slow reading might foster the recovery of a certain art of conversation: that in which listening holds at least an equal place with speaking. The practice of slow reading avoids debates about the status of authorial intent in hermeneutic theory. Instead, the practice of slow reading aims at a practical demonstration of the power of respect for authorial intent and, through that, a demonstration of the power of respect for authors, whether they are alive or dead, whether their authorship is expressed in writing or in speaking. The practice of slow reading explores the possibility that a respectful reading of books that are thoughtfully written, whatever their age, is an exceptionally powerful means for generating new ideas relevant to the issues of the present day. And we hope to find that reading with respect for the intent of the authors of our study texts also tends to generate conversations in which we are attentive and respectful toward one another.
[1] Friedrich Nietzsche, Daybreak, 1881, translation by R.J. Hollingdale, Cambridge University Press, 1982, p.5.
Monday, April 12, 2010
Love and Loathing in the Words of Roald Dahl
Spilling Off the Page:
Power Struggles In and Around Roald Dahl’s “William and Mary”
That tale runs thus: Odin departed from home and came to a certain place where nine thralls were mowing hay. He asked if they desired him to whet their scythes, and they assented. Then he took a hone from his belt and whetted the scythes; it seemed to them that the scythes cut better by far, and they asked that the hone be sold them. But he put such a value on it that whoso desired to buy must give a considerable price: nonetheless all said that they would agree, and prayed him to sell it to them. He cast the hone up into the air; but since all wished to lay their hands on it, they became so intermingled with one another that each struck with his scythe against the other's neck (Hare).
Through the years, Roald Dahl has been accused of anti-feminism and anti-Semitism, general racism, blunt vulgarity, thinly veiled nymphomania, and violent anarchy. Meanwhile, other accounts color him as a caring husband, loving father, brilliant innovator, and situational pacifist. One reviewer summarized, “Dahl…was a man of many contradictions: a Tory who loved to subvert authority, a misanthrope who found optimism in adversity, a shameless self-promoter who enjoyed giving money to worthy causes” (Kakutani, C21). Some contradictions boarder on hypocrisy; for example, in an interview with reporter Nancy Mills he asserts: “I would never write an autobiography. I think it’s the height of vanity and egocentricity” (N4). Three years later he released Boy: Tales of Childhood, the first of two autobiographies he would write before his death.[1] Yet even so complex a character as Dahl focuses on certain themes time and time again. An attempt to piece together his worldview based on clues gleaned from his works reveals that the thread that ties Dahl’s works together is not so much an autobiographical element as an obsession with power and control as themes. Dahl seems almost Hobbesian in his treatment of the subjects, although such a mold would be yet another imperfect fit.[2] This paper will deal mostly with the short story “William and Mary” from the collection Kiss, Kiss, analyzing the power struggles that are apparent both within the story and in the presentation of it (17-54).
Best known in recent times as a children’s author, Dahl started out writing very adult stories for publications including The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, and Playboy. Eventually he began publishing collections of these stories. Kiss, Kiss was published in 1960, the third of these collections. The second story in the collection, “William and Mary,” opens with the death of Mr. William Pearl and his final letter being handed to his wife, Mrs. Mary Pearl. The solicitor does not meet her eyes, and he refers to her as Mrs. Pearl. Mary hesitates before opening the letter, savoring a moment free from her husband’s demands before wondering what the tone of the letter will be: “There is no knowing what people will do when they are about to die, Mrs. Pearl told herself, and she tucked the envelope under her arm and hurried home” (18). This foreshadowing is tacked on to a moment in which Mary allows herself to dream that her husband wrote her a love letter instead simply leaving her a list of his usual admonishings. He had been diagnosed with cancer and given one to six months to live, and he had been growing noticeably weaker daily as he waited in the hospital for death. She contemplates disregarding the letter as she lights a cigarette, something that she can only do now that William is out of the house. She thinks about how she disliked his watchful and disapproving eyes, but then her sense of duty overwhelms her and she opens the letter.
Her husband’s voice takes over the narrative at this point. William mentions that he would like to thank her for being a “satisfactory wife” and that he intends to if he has time later. Then he lapses into a brief retrospective before he declares:
You are my wife and you have a right to know these things. In fact you must know them. During the past few days I have tried very hard to speak with you about Landy, but you have steadfastly refused to give me a hearing. This, as I have already told you, is a very foolish attitude to take, and I find it not entirely an unselfish one either. It stems mostly from ignorance, and I am absolutely convinced that if only you were made aware of all the facts, you would immediately change your view. (20)
Landy, as it turns out, is a doctor with whom William has made a peculiar bargain. The rest of the letter lays out how Landy approached William with a proposal; he wants to remove the dying man’s brain after death, revive it by attaching it to an artificial heart, and keep the brain—as well as one of William’s eyes—in a tank. Initially William reacted strongly against the experiment; however, Landy remarks that the brain could survive on its own for 200-300 years once preserved and hooked up to the artificial heart. William decides that he likes the idea and gives Landy permission to extract his brain once he has died. This he consents to with neither his wife’s knowledge nor her approval, as she was too repulsed by the idea to even consider the experiment a possibility. William signs the letter with a guilt-inducing “Your faithful husband” before adding a post-script of interdictions: “Do not drink cocktails. Do not waste money. Do not smoke cigarettes. Do not eat pastry…” (42). Mrs. Pearl has already broken all of these previously enforced rules. She does not want to call Landy, as her husband commands in his letter, but she does and consequently arranges to visit her husband’s brain and eye in the doctor’s lab.
When confronted with her husband’s new form, Mary becomes very concerned for his well-being. She insists that Landy provide William’s favorite newspaper for him to read, and she rebukes the doctor for referring to the brain as “it” rather than “him.” Regarding her husband’s helpless state, Mary suddenly becomes very affectionate and possessive. She does smoke a cigarette deliberately for William to see and she informs him that she’s in charge now, but she does none of this spitefully. She seems sincerely concerned with making sure he is taken care of, and she bristles when Landy explains that the brain is an experiment and so cannot be relocated to the Pearl household. The story closes with Mary reminding the doctor that she has more right to her husband than he does before she turns to coo at her husband about how she is looking forward to getting him home.
The number of power struggles carefully folded into this short story is astounding. Mary, when interacting indirectly with William through the letter, struggles to break her old habitual deference to his wishes. The relationship between William and Mary illustrates marital conflict similar to that Dahl himself experienced. Meanwhile, Landy represents an authority figure and also a man of scientific knowledge. Both Pearls struggle with Landy, though for different reasons. Internally, William struggles with vanity and a desire to prolong his life. Through the story Dahl questions the abuse of power by scientists; external to the story, Dahl discusses the power of experience to influence decision-making. He also demonstrates his prowess as a businessman—proving almost as manipulative as Landy—in catering to his audience and empowering them. His accomplice in this is the brilliant illustrator Quentin Blake, who did not illustrate Dahl’s works until 1975 but whose significance in shaping all Dahl’s works after that date must be acknowledged.
Initially, Mary’s reaction to being handed the letter from William allows the reader insight into their married life. She feels the thickness of the envelope and guesses that he has written her a formal farewell letter, but she then imagines it as a list of careful commands. Her imagining reveals William to have been a dominating individual. She mentions how she used to smoke behind his back and hide money so that she would have funds for when he withheld her allowance. This image of William as an over-controlling husband is reinforced when she glances at his old chair and remembers how he used to watch her constantly. She fixates on the memory of his eyes and the “little black dots of fury” that would appear in them when he was upset by her behavior: “And even now, after a week alone in the house, she sometimes had an uneasy feeling that they were still there, following her around, staring at her from doorways, from empty chairs, through a window at night” (20). Her awareness of his constant surveillance and subsequent disapproval has been so habitually heightened that its weight lingers even once the man himself can no longer reproach her. His language in the letter implies that his authority is derived from a more complete understanding of the world than she possesses. He belittles her; he disregards her wishes by agreeing to the experiment and informing her that Landy will be expecting her visit.
Now in response to the overall collection of stories, a researcher wrote, “In the… stories [in Kiss, Kiss] a member of one sex is usually trying to control a member of the opposite sex” (West, 45). Though this is only one of the conflicts that play out in “William and Mary,” the sex-based struggle between spouses is commonly mentioned in connection to both Dahl’s writings and to his personal life. After interviewing both Dahl and his actress wife Patricia Neal, one journalist wrote, “The Dahls seem totally devoted to each other, but from the very first there’s been a struggle over who’s boss…” (Mills, N4).[3] Dysfunctional marriages feature in many of Dahl’s stories, from adult pieces such as “Royal Jelly” and “The Great Switcheroo” to children’s books such as The Twits and Matilda. The Pearls are neither quarrelsome adulterers nor conspiring child-abusers, but their marriage seems akin to a dictatorship. The frustration of living for years in this environment is evident as Mary finishes William’s letter: “Her little mouth was pursed up tight and there was a whiteness around her nostrils. But really! You would think a widow was entitled to a bit of peace after all these years” (42).[4] Is the widow entitled to her bit of peace? Initially she sounds relieved that William is dead. Before reading the letter, she has resumed openly smoking in the house and she has purchased a large television to set on top of his old work desk. William disapproved of both smoking and television. Despite these initial declarations of rebellion, Mary remains dutiful in most ways. Her internal struggle develops from ‘desire versus habit’ to ‘independence versus power.’ William’s influence on her life is reasserted with the letter, which she concedes to read out of a sense of duty to her dead husband. After the letter, she contemplates neglecting Landy just as she contemplated ignoring the letter: “She hesitated, fighting hard now against that old ingrained sense of duty that she didn’t quite yet dare to shake off” (44). Again, she feels obligated to see to her husband’s last wishes. Dahl wrote about struggles between same-gendered opponents as frequently as he wrote about those between different-gendered opponents. Empowered, vengeful Mary struggles with faithful, subordinate Mary. It takes Landy challenging her right to care for with her husband to help her establish her position. Mary realizes that she wants control more than revenge. To continue identifying as a ‘widow’ and free woman involves surrendering William to Landy, and this is something she decides she will not do.
Another set of power struggles involve Landy and his claim of authority. When dealing with Mary, Landy refers to her by her proper name and plays the role of the concerned doctor. He inquires about her emotional state, but when she insists on bringing William home, Landy attempts to assume the authority that he presumes his education and career afford him. He insists on referring to what remains of William as “it” and as his “experiment.” Mary, however, demands that the floating brain be recognized as her husband. This means that she is not a widow, that Landy should be using the pronoun “he,” that she has the right to provoke and return William’s disapproving glare, and that she can take her husband home where she can make sure he has the newspaper he likes. Landy’s assumed power and authority cannot hold up to Mary’s. She has a right, by virtue of her faithfulness and frequently uncomfortable submission to William over the years, to control of him, and she is not about to relinquish her hold now that she’s finally in a position of power.[5]
Landy struggles with both of the Pearls, but he takes a different position in his interactions with each. While attempting to persuade William to take part in his experiment, Landy addresses him by his first name. He insists even when William protests, yet he frames the discussion as one between two colleagues. He knows that William self-identifies as a philosopher, and he uses this vanity to push his cause. He insists, “You’d be able to reflect upon the ways of the world with a detachment and a serenity that no man had ever attained before. And who knows what might not happen then! Great thoughts and ideas that could revolutionize our way of life! Try to imagine, if you can, the degree of concentration that you’d be able to achieve!” (38). He flatters William while building intimacy by claiming to also be a philosopher. It works, largely because Landy knows how to manipulate William.
Dahl’s constant challenging of authority figures led to the accusation that he was an anarchist; however, one could say that he had good reason to be skeptical. Dahl wrote both at the beginning and end of his career about his time spent with the British RAF during World War II. Before he even made it into combat, he incurred serious injuries as the result of a plane crash; he had been given incorrect directions to a base, run out of fuel while en route, and crash-landed in the rocky desert. His plane caught fire, but Dahl escaped—temporarily blinded and with serious head injuries—to spend several months in a hospital recovering. According to researcher Mark West, “This period was a very trying one for Dahl. The pain and the loneliness ate at him, as did the meaninglessness of the whole episode. He found it difficult to accept the fact that he had nearly lost his life simply because a commanding officer had given careless instructions” (8). When Dahl did return to combat, he was sent to join in a disastrous campaign in Greece. The odds were so poor that “the consensus among the pilots was that they were being sacrificed so that the propaganda machine could argue that the gallant RAF ‘fought to the last pilot and the last plane’” (Fisher, 26). Dahl’s military experiences involved repeatedly watching skilled pilots being killed due to incompetent leadership. Though the authorities were no longer government officials or laws once Dahl switched to the literary scene, he still ran into problems with those in positions of power. In an early case of this, his first story was submitted by his friend C.S. Forester for publication. As things turned out, “The editors of the Post accepted it, but they made one significant change before publishing it. Instead of using Dahl’s title, “A Piece of Cake,” they called it “Shot Down over Libya,” thus beginning an inaccuracy that followed Dahl for many years” (West, 11). Dahl corrected the title when he rereleased the story, asserting his right as the author to insist on naming his own stories. When one considers that he agonized over word selection in composing his stories, his rejection of the superimposed title is not at all surprising. When one considers his experiences with authority figures, it is even less surprising that he criticized arbitrary authority derived from status or wealth rather than ability.
Next one might notice that the foible which finally convinces William to take part in the experiment is vanity. He is not the only one of Dahl’s characters to find himself in a compromising position as a result of this weakness. In “The Visitor,” a story from the collection Switch Bitch featuring the lascivious Uncle Oswald, an overly exaggerated sense of self worth leads to Oswald’s disturbing and ironic demise. His vanity makes him careless: “As is often the case with Dahl’s characters, arrogance contributes to Oswald’s downfall…His condescending attitude toward women and his determination to have sex with whomever he chooses blind him to the possibility that he might simply be a pawn in somebody else’s game” (West, 51). Though William’s arrogance does not lead him to womanizing as Oswald’s does, it still gets him into trouble. His initial doubts about the experiment center around his desire to avoid losing control of his body and, subsequently, the power that comes with the ability to initiate motion. He worries about the helplessness that will come with the loss of his voice and his limbs, but then he reconsiders:
Was there not, after all, I asked myself, something a bit comforting in the thought that my brain might not necessarily have to die and disappear in a few weeks’ time? There was indeed. I am rather proud of my brain. It is a sensitive, lucid, and uberous organ. It contains a prodigious store of information, and it is still capable of producing imaginative and original theories. As brains go, it is a damn good one, though I say it myself. (40)
William has invested a lifetime in studying and nurturing his brain. He views the loss of such knowledge to death as a tragedy, and he seriously becomes interested in the experiment when Landy mentions that the brain would be able to survive for 200 or 300 years on its own. At first glance, it seems as if William’s internal struggle involved weighing the power to express himself against the desire to avoid death. In choosing to avoid death, however, William chooses a different kind of power: he chooses to outwit nature and preserve his thoughts long enough for them to become valuable as a reference for future scholars… which is the closest thing to immortality attainable in his world.
From a scientific perspective, the linguistic conflict between Landy and Mary focuses on whether post-experiment William is still technically a living person. Working with a basic qualitative biological definition of life as that which is possessed of the potential to metabolize, reproduce, move, and grow, the question of William’s state cannot be resolved. “It” implies that the doctor has control over this experiment; “he” implies that this detached brain has a gender and a will. While post-experiment William does not metabolize, he does not seem to have a need for such processes. Perhaps the brain cannot move of its own will, but apparently it can still think which requires producing electric charges for various synapses to receive. While it is doubtful that Dahl meant to explore social justice questions in this story, this question is a sticking point in the story.[6] Though Mary’s last line assumes that she wins the argument, Dahl has designed a conflict that cannot be definitively resolved. The nature of the experiment puts man in competition with nature and asks how much science has a right to interfere.
In the story, Landy turns William into an experiment through science. In writing such a circumstance, Dahl creates a conflict that cannot be resolved using deductive reasoning. True, he has the power to invent a non-metabolizing organism because he is writing a fiction piece. However, his mastery of language and his taste for the most realistic of the absurd allow him to draw readers into his created world. Many of Dahl’s other stories feature scientists who seek to use their knowledge to manipulate others. “Bitch” from Switch Bitch centers around a perfume that a chemist creates to bring out the suppressed animal in one who smells it, making her much more willing to have sex with the wearer. In another story, “Royal Jelly” from Kiss, Kiss, a mad beekeeper uses a substance called royal jelly to combat nature on two occasions. In the first case, he begins taking it to increase his potency so that he and his wife can finally conceive. In the second case, he gives the jelly to their listless infant and she immediately begins to put on weight. Science gives him the power to change his circumstances—however the conclusion of the story gives one pause and invites one to question how much nature should be tampered with. In real life, Dahl was fascinated by the ways science could alter the quality and length of life a person naturally experienced. While Dahl created characters whose experiments had horrific results and he was extremely against the development of atomic weapons, he was also a great supporter of science when it was used to enhance life instead of to control or destroy it. When his son Theo needed a shunt, Dahl quickly became frustrated with the poor quality of the device.[7] Taking matters into his own hands, the author enlisted the help of Stanley Wade and Kenneth Till for a new project; together they developed the streamlined Dahl-Wade-Till Valve which then went into standard use around the world (West, 16).
Unfortunately, Dahl knew well that science did not hold all the answers. When his daughter Olivia died of a measles complication, he was reportedly depressed until the birth of his next daughter. From this and other experiences, he intimately understood the long-term impact that an experience could have on a person’s thought processes. This idea is not explored in “William and Mary,” but another story from the collection called “Georgy Porgy” involves a clergyman who recoils from women due to a traumatic memory from his youth. The experience so affects his thinking that he eventually has a breakdown and needs to be institutionalized. Alternatively, the dangers of growing up without any exposure to social experiences are bloodily illustrated in the short story “Pig” which was also published in Kiss, Kiss. Unlike Mary, the boy in “Pig” does not know when to challenge an authority figure or disobey a command. For Dahl personally, past experiences provided subject matter for his stories. While it might be a stretch to suggest a connection between Landy leaving William one eye for reading and procuring knowledge and the Norse god Odin trading one eye for two ravens who will give him knowledge, the influence of the Norse myths Dahl read in his childhood stand out in other short stories of his. One of these is “They Shall Not Grow Old,” which directly parallels the story of Valhalla on several accounts (West, 29).[8]
Also external to the story, Dahl presents the story in a way that will appeal to the reader. He empowers the readers by acknowledging their tastes. Dahl is a fantastic businessman; he writes in “Pearson’s Pleasure”—also in Kiss, Kiss—about presenting oneself according to the desires of the intended audience. The main character of the story is a shifty antique furniture salesman. Dahl describes:
… [Mr. Cyril Boggis] was a talented salesman, and when buying or selling a piece he could slide smoothly into whichever mood suited the client best. He could become grave and charming for the aged, obsequious for the rich, sober for the godly, masterful for the weak, mischievous for the widow, arch and saucy for the spinster. (76)
Though the perceived needs that Boggis caters to are obviously satiric, a good businessperson also knows how to figure out and then adapt to meet the needs of those he or she intends to sell to. Dahl always tailors the pieces to his intended audience. Giving insight on Dahl’s view of children as well as his perception of their needs, William Honan reports, “The key to his success, he frequently said, was to conspire with children against adults…The adult is the enemy of the child because of the awful process of civilizing this thing that when it is born is an animal with no manners, no moral sense at all” (26). Of course, Kiss, Kiss is not at all a children’s book. However, the difference between writing for adults and writing for children is frequently exaggerated, though not completely contrived. In an interview included at the end of The Twits, Dahl says, ““When you’re writing a book… it is no good having people who are ordinary, because they are not going to interest your readers at all. Every writer in the world has to use characters that have something interesting about them” (83). Accordingly, his characters are all exaggerated and curiously affected in their manners. Dahl writes realistic absurd fictions. His work for adults is surrealist in content and utilitarian in form. One critic wrote, “To my mind Dahl’s flatly authoritative statements have a universal sweep and psychological penetration…with the added bonus of actually being true…” (Self, 2). Another, commenting on his completely unreal plot twists and their appeal to adults as well as children, remarked, “Has not experience taught us that adults are more susceptible to make-believe than children, and far more skilled at creating it?” (Early, 96). Dahl is a master of make-believe, and his books allow adult readers a voyeuristic glimpse into his fantastically twisted mind.
When Dahl decided to focus completely on children’s books, finding the illustrator was the last challenge to perfecting his magic. Though Quentin Blake was not always Dahl’s illustrator (and Kiss, Kiss has no illustrations), his drawings compliment earlier books and later become as critical to the stories as Dahl’s texts. Blake’s illustrations act as scaffolding to guide the reader in visualizing the characters and action that Dahl conjured. In this way, the reader is permitted to maintain a certain amount of autonomy while Dahl remains the master of the experience. As friend David Walliams reflected, “…He understood that children respond to stories where they are empowered” (2). He refers in the interview to the children protagonists of Dahl’s stories; however, this understanding carries over to the direct empowerment of Dahl’s child readers when he builds his stories around Blake’s piecewise illustrations. Blake implies the tangles of Mr. Twit’s beard as he scowls and the scrawniness of Charlie Bucket as he waves at the reader. At the same time, his relaxed style feels familiar to the reader, who becomes more willing to follow Blake’s guidance. His power is akin to that of a translator; knowing that Dahl cannot be directly translated, he sketches idiomatic expressions with connotations that the reader understands and qualitative definitions that leave plenty to the imagination. The two worked together so well that the reviewer Will Self go so far as to write of “Dahl-world” as a place relative to Blake’s illustrations instead of the other way around: “As in Blake’s drawings, there are big white spaces in Dahl-world where any realistic detailing might well be shaded in by a lesser writer; and again, in common with Blake’s vision, Dahl-world is at once lurid and curiously ill-defined…” (2).
If Self’s analysis of Dahl-world holds true, the power struggles with the Dahl-worlds can also be described as “lurid and curiously ill-defined” (2). Power is central to all of Dahl’s stories; characters vie for control over each other, themselves, and their situations. Power also influences Dahl’s crafting of each story’s presentation. External to the plot, the author is sharing his experiences indirectly with the readers, molding stories to suit the needs and wants of specific audiences, and collaborating with an illustrator who can enhance his work. Dahl mastered the ability to empower his readers while never losing control of his creation. In “William and Mary,” the variety of power struggles that come into play are representative of those found throughout the body of Dahl’s work. Whether Dahl hated women, Jews, blacks, politicians, or any other specific group cannot be determined from reading his work; he seems to subjugate everyone equally in turn. Everyone, that is, except for himself.
Works Cited
Dahl, Roald. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. New York: Puffin Books, 2004. Print.
“—.” Going Solo. New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1986. Print.
“—.” Kiss, Kiss. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1979. Print.
“—.” Switch Bitch. London: Penguin Books, 1974. Print.
Dahl, Roald, and Quentin Blake. The Twits. New York: A.A. Knopf, 2002. Print.
Early, Gerald. “On Literature & Childhood.” Daedalus 133, 1 (Winter 2004): 95-98. ProQuest. Web. 24 Mar 2010.
Fisher, Trevor. “Roald Dahl and the Lost Campaign.” Historian 95 (Autumn 2007): 22-27. ProQuest. Web. 23 Mar 2010.
Hare, John B. "Skáldskaparmal." Internet Sacred Text Archive Home. 6 Apr. 2009. Web. 07 Apr. 2010.
Honan, William. “Roald Dahl, Writer, 74, Is Dead; Best Sellers Enchanted Children.” New York Times 24 Nov 1990: 26. Proquest Historical Newspapers. Web. 24 Mar 2010.
Kakutani, Michiko. “The Facts Behind A Fantasist’s Unsettling Stories.” New York Times 26 Apr 1994: C21. ProQuest Historical Newspapers. Web. 23 Mar 2010.
Mills, Nancy. “Roald Dahl Opts For The Children’s Hour.” Los Angeles Times 22 Mar 1981: N4. ProQuest Historical Newspapers. Web. 23 Mar 2010.
"Roald Dahl South Bank Show 1." Online Video Clip. South Bank Show. 18 Oct 2007. YouTube. 24 March 2010.
Self, Will. “Review: Tails of the Unexpected: Roald Dahl’s Children’s Books Are Full of Barely Submerged Misogyny, Lust and Violence. And Will Self Adores Them. The New Film Version of Fantastic Mr. Fox Is An Ideal Introduction To This Fabulous, Cruel World.” The Guardian 17 Oct 2009: 2. ProQuest. Web. 23 Mar 2010.
Walliams, David. “Roald and Me.” The Independent 4 Nov 2009: 14. ProQuest. Web. 24 Mar 2010.
West, Mark I. Roald Dahl. New York: Twayne, 1992. Print.
Works Referenced
Armour, Richard. “Carnal Comedy of Roald Dahl.” Los Angeles Times 13 Oct 1974: P76. ProQuest Historical Newspapers. Web. 23 Mar 2010.
Dahl, Roald. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. New York: Puffin Books, 2004. Print.
“—.” Going Solo. New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1986. Print.
“—.” Kiss, Kiss. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1979. Print.
“—.” Switch Bitch. London: Penguin Books, 1974. Print.
“—.” The Best of Roald Dahl. New York: Vintage, 1990. Print.
“—.” The Enormous Crocodile. New York, N.Y., USA: Puffin, 1993. Print.
“—.” "The Great Switcheroo." Playboy Apr. 1974: 92+. Print.
“—.” Vile Verses. New York: Viking, 2005. Print.
Dahl, Roald, and Quentin Blake. Esio Trot. New York, N.Y., U.S.A.: Viking, 1990. Print.
“—.” Fantastic Mr Fox. New York: Puffin, 2007. Print.
“—.” The Magic Finger. London, England: Viking, 1995. Print.
“—.” The Twits. New York: A.A. Knopf, 2002. Print.
Early, Gerald. “On Literature & Childhood.” Daedalus 133, 1 (Winter 2004): 95-98. ProQuest. Web. 24 Mar 2010.
Fisher, Trevor. “Roald Dahl and the Lost Campaign.” Historian 95 (Autumn 2007): 22-27. ProQuest. Web. 23 Mar 2010.
Hare, John B. "Skáldskaparmal." Internet Sacred Text Archive Home. 6 Apr. 2009. Web. 07 Apr. 2010.
Henein, Eglal. “Male and Female Ugliness Through the Ages.” Marvels & Tales: III, 1. 45-55.
Honan, William. “Roald Dahl, Writer, 74, Is Dead; Best Sellers Enchanted Children.” New York Times 24 Nov 1990: 26. Proquest Historical Newspapers. Web. 24 Mar 2010.
Kakutani, Michiko. “The Facts Behind A Fantasist’s Unsettling Stories.” New York Times 26 Apr 1994: C21. ProQuest Historical Newspapers. Web. 23 Mar 2010.
Lindow, John. Norse Mythology: A Guide to Gods, Heroes, Rituals and Beliefs. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. Print
Mills, Nancy. “Roald Dahl Opts For The Children’s Hour.” Los Angeles Times 22 Mar 1981: N4. ProQuest Historical Newspapers. Web. 23 Mar 2010.
Reusch, Jutta. "The Crossover Novel. Contemporary Children's Fiction and Its Adult
Readership." Bookbird 48 (1 2010): 69-70. ProQuest. Web. 24 Mar 2010.
"Roald Dahl South Bank Show 1." Online Video Clip. South Bank Show. 18 Oct 2007. YouTube. 24 March 2010.
Roberts, Allison. “The Odd Couple; David Walliams Has Teamed Up Again With Illustrator Quentin Blake For His New Book. So What’s It Like Working With His Childhood Hero And How Is Matt Lucas Coping With Writing Their New TV Show After His Recent Tragedy?” Evening Standard 12 Nov 2009: 20. ProQuest. Web. 24 Mar 2010.
Self, Will. “Review: Tails of the Unexpected: Roald Dahl’s Children’s Books Are Full of Barely Submerged Misogyny, Lust and Violence. And Will Self Adores Them. The New Film Version of Fantastic Mr. Fox Is An Ideal Introduction To This Fabulous, Cruel World.” The Guardian 17 Oct 2009: 2. ProQuest. Web. 23 Mar 2010.
Treglown, Jeremy. Roald Dahl: a Biography. New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1994. Print.
Walliams, David. “Roald and Me.” The Independent 4 Nov 2009: 14. ProQuest. Web. 24 Mar 2010.
West, Mark I. Roald Dahl. New York: Twayne, 1992. Print.
Whetstone, David. “Double Act, Single Vision; Roald Dahl’s Stories Are Almost Unimaginable Now without Quentin Blake’s Illustrations. David Whetstone Talked To Him About This Fruitful Partnership.” Journal 14 Jul 2007: 46. ProQuest. Web. 23 Mar 2010.
[1] The interview was published in 1981. Boy was released in 1984 and its sequel, Flying Solo, in 1986.
[2] Hobbes’ philosophy—at a basic level—is frequently summarized as ascribing all of humankind’s decisions to two drives: desire for power and fear of death. Curiously, in the introduction to the Leviathan he defines fear as “aversion, with opinion of hurt from the object.” Implicitly, fear stems from the desire to avoid pain. As such, focusing on the desire for power as the stronger drive can be justified with the consideration that fear results from preexisting desire. The conclusion that Dahl’s writings do not completely fit with Hobbes’ philosophy stems in part from Hobbes’ rejection of the metaphor, a linguistic device Dahl uses masterfully in many of his works.
[3] This interview took place after Neal’s debilitating stroke in 1965, but before the couple’s divorce in 1983. After the divorce Dahl was quickly remarried—scandalously—to one of Neal’s close friends, Felicity Crosland.
[4] Note that she refers to herself as a widow here. This is before she ‘meets’ William in his new form, and the significance of this language will be discussed shortly.
[5] Mary is just one of many female characters empowered in Dahl’s stories. While he may or may not have been a womanizer, it appears from his writings that Dahl was not as anti-feminist as some have suggested. One anecdote that illustrates this particularly well is from Dahl’s time in the military hospital, as recorded in Flying Solo. He says, “When the orderly came level with the woman, he suddenly whipped away the cloth from the tray and pushed the tray towards the woman’s face. On the tray there lay the entire, quite naked amputated leg of a soldier. I saw the poor woman reel backwards. I saw the foul orderly roar with laughter and replace the cloth and walk on. I saw the woman stagger to the window-sill and lean forward with her head in her hands, then she pulled herself together and went on her way. I have never forgotten that little illustration of man’s repulsive behavior towards woman” (120).
[6] The implications of deeming a thinking brain to be less-than-human based off the fact that it lacks a controllable body are serious in the world of medicinal ethics. Similarly, declaring that post-experiment William with his natural brain, natural eye, and an artificial heart sustained by internal mechanics rather than metabolically derived energy is human and male would perhaps require adaptations to the textbook definition of life. Who has the power to take someone else’s humanity?
[7] A shunt is used to drain excess fluid from the area of its placement. In Theo’s case, it drained fluid that had been putting pressure on the brain.
[8] Interestingly, a staged interview for the show South Bank (available in multiple places online) records Dahl explaining that witches have blue saliva that is just like ink. In Norse mythology, the mixing of the gods’ saliva created Kvasir whose blood mixed with honey to become the mead of poetry. Whether there is a connection between the tales in uncertain.
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