Childishness and complexities and culture

Johanna Basford page from her Colouring Gallery,
colored by Philip

The invention of Mother's Day

Sunday was pleasant, with flowers and chocolates and a necklace so pretty it could have been a flower--most of all, a dinner with my husband and sons (our daughter was off in Montreal.) The familiar rumor is that Hallmark invented Mother's Day, but in fact it was a daughter, Anna Jarvis, who eventually attacked the commercialization of the holiday and thought that tributes should be heartfelt and homemade. No doubt she would have disapproved of my gifts, though perhaps not of Sunday dinner; I enjoyed my day, mainly because my sons came out to celebrate.

(Side note: Are there any great poems about mothers? Poems by Heaney and Plath and Poe and more, surely, come to mind. I think of Yeats's worn mothers, their daughters with ribbons in their hair--the mothers can't warn or fix a thing! If you like some poem about a mother, please leave the title and author.)

But Anna Jarvis brings up the idea that so often what starts out as a lovely thing becomes co-opted and degraded, doesn't it? And that goes for every little wisp and strand of culture.

Kidnapped

Currently I am listening to two books I've read before, The Woman in White or Kidnapped, when I fold laundry (one of my least-favorite things to do.) In Kidnapped, I'm just up to the point where David Balfour must defend his life for the first time. And I'm thinking about how different the book is from popular young adult books of our own day, though it has adventure and a teen protagonist. David Balfour begins as a very adult sort of child who has already suffered losses and is seen off in the world by the kindly Mr. Campbell, minister of Essendean. He goes off on foot to find the House of Shaws. He is no fool and does not trust his Uncle Ebenezer, but his downfall comes when he persuades himself that his uncle may mean some degree of good to him--even though his uncle tried to kill him earlier by sending him up rotten tower stairs in the dark--and he also feels a desire to step on board a ship. David suffers both physically and mentally for indulging his desire and distrusting his own instincts. Quite soon he faces another situation where he must assess right and wrong and make a moral, high-cost decision about whom to support and whether to be brave, and he sides with the outnumbered Alan Breck Stewart, even though he fears that it may cost his life and even though Stewart is a Jacobite, while David is a Whig. But it is a giant leap into adulthood, where David opposes the child-killing Shuan and the ongoing evil of Captain Hoseason.

The horror of what he has been forced to do in the battle of the roundhouse wrings David's heart, but Alan Breck Stewart is full of frolic and poetry. It is Alan who is the child, and David who is full of civilized unrest and regret and grief. And I'm looking forward to "the flight in the heather," which no less a stylist than Henry James admired. Up ahead in the tale, things become quite murky, and it's difficult to sort the moral threads, and to know exactly what Alan Breck Stewart is, and whether he is on the side of right and the angels or not. The moral crux cut through by love in Kidnapped is as fundamental to the book as the one in that other great boys' book, Huckleberry Finn.

Stevenson in a modest mode, to James, 1884

I am rejoiced indeed to hear you speak so kindly of my work; rejoiced and surprised. I seem to myself a very rude, left-handed countryman; not fit to be read, far less complimented, by a man so accomplished, so adroit, so craftsmanlike as you. You will happily never have cause to understand the despair with which a writer like myself considers (say) the park scene in Lady Barberina. Every touch surprises me by its intangible precision; and the effect when done, as light as syllabub, as distinct as a picture, fills me with envy. Each man among us prefers his own aim, and I prefer mine; but when we come to speak of performance, I recognise myself, compared with you, to be a lout and slouch of the first water.

We could use such "a lout and a slouch." It's like thinking of Auden on vacation, learning Icelandic.

Complexities and the adult

I'm thinking about Stevenson in the light of Susan Nieman's article about the infantilization of Western culture.

Each of us has to take some responsibility for this collective madness. As individuals, we are scared to read “difficult” books or attempt other challenging activities. As the Enlightenment’s two greatest philosophers, Rousseau and Kant, argued, growing up is a challenge.

Real adult activity takes effort and often courage. Colouring in someone else’s designs is always easier than making your own, just as forming your own opinions – after gathering and weighing information – is always harder than parroting other people’s views. This is why Kant wrote that thinking for oneself is the key to growing up. 

The moral complexity of the relationship between Balfour and Stewart: is it equaled in our "young adult" novels? According to Nieman, more than half of the young adult books sold are sold to adults, and most of those report buying them to read themselves. In a world awash in Marvel hero movies, infinite games, artists who can't paint or sculpt, writers who want to shock an unshockable world with heightened sex and violence, and coloring books for adults, do we even desire morally complex relationships in any kind of novel? Does anyone care if entertainment wrestles art to the ground and skips away triumphant?

All of this leads me to conclude that I am really a minor character in Gawain and the Green Knight, unseen, occasionally bringing out a serving dish but mostly scribbling in a back room by the fire, leaves in my hair. I send you greetings from the leafing castle.

More from Basford's gallery of fans.
Colored by Lynn Lamont
with Staedtler Noris Club pencils.

Dreaming better dreams--

Minotaur study by Clive Hicks-Jenkins 
for Glimmerglass

BOOKHOOKERY

Writer bounces out of bed at 6:30 and scurried about making lunch for her third child, packing track-snack in a sack (can I toss in another rhyme?), fixing breakfast, and tossing books in the backpack (there you go.) Mid-way, the writer turns on NPR and hears that 45% of teens read no more than 1-2 books a year. Or did they say less than 1-2? At any rate, not much of note. Writer plunks down at her laptop to have a cup of tea. First thing she sees: novelist Darin Strauss on twitter, mentioning a new book that uses "Jewish man" as a slur: "Nobody cares / even notices." The Author aka "Ass Queen" is featured in Salon (a coup for a writer, right? like her treatment in Slate or on NPR) with an interview about being a porn star and drug abuser--smoking crack in a BSDM dungeon, anybody? Hey, now we know what kind of lively, appealing-to-the-curious book the almost-non-reading 45% might possibly read! Because that's a book-with-a-hook--we writers are always suppose to have a hook that we are willing to share with the world--that will sell, even to non-reading teens, I expect.

WHO KNEW

Who would have guessed that this would one day be the writer's world, back when she first gave her years to making something true and rejoicing in putting words into new shapes? A world where teens don't read and professors complain that their students don't crack open their books. A world where a clever volume reveling in unabashed porn and drug use has more of that desirable quality, hook, and will get more coverage than a first-rate novel (and infinitely more coverage than a good book of poems.)

ASPIRE

All you lovers of reading and shapeliness in words, defy this crazy world! If hopeless, still be brave. Read better books, make better books. Encourage taste, a human achievement that used to support culture. Online or in-person, recommend what's best in the arts. Make the better world, even if you fear that you are the only person who inhabits it. Dream of a better culture, a more worthy gift to hand on to our children.

Caring for culture

I've been thinking a lot about how we need to support our culture and help it grow into what we want it to be. We have let big business and government shape our culture for too long. Here are a few simple ways we can vote with our dollars and time.

Caring for Image Culture

A while back, I wrote an article about a solo show that a painter friend, Ashley Cooper, was having at the Earlville Opera House. I wrote about the need to support our local artists and galleries:

Ashley Norwood Cooper is an artist with a vocation, one that we locals ought to support with our attention and time and, yes, money. From now through May 14, pay a visit to her work at the Earlville Opera House, a model for arts programs in our area.

I happen to know that at least one person responded and supported both gallery and artist by purchasing a painting through the Opera House: that is, my husband read that article and acted on it! I don't know if anybody else did.

We don't have to be wealthy to support the arts in our area; a print or a painting by a young artist is often quite affordable. A modest original print or sketch already framed by the artist can be cheaper than the sort of framed posters people routinely buy at the mall.

Caring for Book Culture

Given the current "Big 6" demand for strict controls on e-book royalties, the push to "re-sell" e-books (strange, isn't it?), and the recent Supreme Court decision that foreign printers (okay, publishers--but they do none of the work of publishing) can sell (i.e. under-sell) their editions of books by American writers in the U. S. (books for which writers receive no royalties), I suggest that those of you who love books and want book culture to continue do a simple thing. Decide how much you could budget each year to support books.

Caring for Youth Culture

I quite like this article by Peter Brown Hoffmeister, a former "troubled youth" and now a high school teacher--an occupation in which he has a special awareness for kids who don't fit in. Many of the comments below the article disagree with some of his conclusions, but much that he says is impossible to argue against. I especially like his recipe for a life lived more out-of-doors for boys, and I salute his Mom for holding the line against videogame violence (if not against backpack guns.) He doesn't suggest that people volunteer with children and teens, but I think the thought is a natural outgrowth of the article.

A good many Cooperstown parents (including my scoutmaster husband) just came back from a trip to the Grand Canyon with Scouts, a trip the boys won't forget. Closer to home, they go on day hikes and local campouts; they camp year-round in the region and attend summer camp. As a result, they have a life that more closely resembles the sort of out-of-doors life and play all children used to enjoy (even though they're probably also addicted to videogames!) The well of the spirit fills up and is satisfied by images of the natural world, and bonds are created that persist through the school year, even creating some group loyalty for those who most don't fit in--the minority of Scouts with Asperger's/autism, dyslexia, ADD, and so on.

Caring for a Culture of courtesy

What has happened to us? The past week has seen the death of numerous public figures mocked and jeered online in public comments, often from anonymous voices. Sure, the thoughtful summation of a life is an important thing; we call it reasoned assessment, criticism, or history. But to dance and spit on the grave of the barely-cool dead is, I think, to act against that rare-in-the-universe substance: life.

We have moved from a culture where a mix of ideas about what to do about national political issues or what to think about religious issues has come to be seen as flat-out bad. Frankly, this will be creating a very poor world for the novelist, unless he or she happens to be, say, George Orwell. How do we accept that other people's ideas may have some value and points that we ourselves don't grasp? How do we show respect for the beliefs or solutions of others? We have forgotten how, it seems.

Love one another: it sounds so simple.