Remembering September 11, 2001

On this September day, exactly ten years after the attacks on New York and Washington, and after the deaths of so many that day and afterward there, in Pennsylvania, and later in Afghanistan and Iraq and elsewhere, I, like you, remember and grieve. I was just now listening to a video of John Lennon singing "Imagine," and I mourn that his vision of a peaceful world seems farther away than ever. But watching the memorial coverage on television, I am reminded that most people are still basically good. I am reminded too that music and art and literature are expressions of our individual and shared human experiences and connections, expressions that can be cathartic, comforting, and transcendent. The arts remind us of our higher selves, and they give us courage to go on, and to keep trying, despite all odds, to make the world a better place.

Memorable Muckraking Books

The term “muckraker,” originally a negative one, in the early twentieth century came to mean writing to expose scandals and problems that hurt the public, and advocating reform. Muckraking writers often had to be courageous, risking a lot to uncover dangerous truths and publish them. Many of their books made a difference, sometimes leading to new protective laws addressing the issues raised by the muckrakers. The term is used less frequently these days, but fortunately there are still writers in the muckraking tradition. Below are just a few of the most memorable examples of “muckraking” books published over the past century or so; in each case the book shed light on an issue in which there was misuse of power, generally for the profit of the few. Most of the books listed are nonfiction; a few are novels. These and other such books illustrate the power of the written word. We should all be grateful to the brave and intrepid writers who have made the world a bit better through their work.

All the President’s Men, by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein
The American Way of Death, by Jessica Mitford
The Death and Life of Great American Cities, by Jane Jacobs
Fast Food Nation, by Eric Schlosser
The History of the Standard Oil Company, by Ida Tarbell
The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair
Maggie: A Girl of the Streets, by Stephen Crane
McTeague, by Frank Norris
Nickle and Dimed, by Barbara Ehrenreich
The Octupus, by Frank Norris
The Shame of the Cities, by Lincoln Steffens
Silent Spring, by Rachel Carson
Ten Days in a Mad-House, by Nelly Bly
Unsafe at Any Speed, by Ralph Nader

"Poe House Museum May Be Nevermore"

The headline of an 8/10/11 San Francisco Chronicle story, "Poe House Museum May Be Nevermore," saddened me. Apparently Baltimore government officials have stopped funding as a museum the house where the famed resident of Baltimore and writer Edgar Allan Poe lived for several years with his young wife Virginia and other family members. It was there that he wrote his first short stories and had his first literary success, winning $50 in a contest for one of his stories. The Poe House is designated a landmark, so it will not be torn down, but the museum housed there is in danger of closing for lack of funding. I understand that in these bad economic times, there are other priorities for funding, but it is always sad when our connections to the literary past are severed or limited.

What Happened to Novels about Workers?

An E. J. Dionne opinion piece in the 9/5/11 San Francisco Chronicle says, “We may still celebrate Labor Day, but our culture has given up on honoring workers…and their honest toil.” He goes on to say that workers, and the working class, are now mostly ignored even in literature and the arts. He quotes a 2006 essay by critic William Deresiewicz observing that “we no longer have novelists such as John Steinbeck or John Dos Passos who take the lives of working people seriously.” This comment made me try to think of current authors who write about working life, and I came up with very few. In the past there were Hardy, Dickens, Balzac, Zola, Gaskell, and London, among others; in the more recent past there were Lawrence, Dreiser, Howells, Farrell, Algren, Le Sueur, Richler, Sillitoe and Carver. And nowadays? The list is thinner; those that spring to my mind include Carolyn Chute, Dorothy Allison, Jayne Anne Phillips, Marge Piercy, and Jeannette Winterson. OK, I really didn’t notice until I typed these authors’ names that they were all female. Readers, can you think of authors – male or female – that have recently written more than glancingly or superficially about workers’ lives, particularly working class lives?

"Yesterday's Weather," by Anne Enright

Dublin writer Anne Enright’s 2007 novel, “The Gathering,” is sad but beautifully written; I was not surprised when it was awarded the Mann Booker Prize. I have just read her following book, a collection of short stories titled “Yesterday’s Weather” (Grove Press, 2008); it is a compilation of stories published between 1990 and 2008. Enright has the gift of surprising readers with unique situations and characters, yet providing us with that shock of recognition that connects us somehow to the variations of the human condition displayed by these characters. Almost every story has a twist, not in a gimmicky O. Henry way, but in a way that defies prediction. Enright seems to be speaking of herself and her writing when she has one of her characters (Cathy, in the story “(She Owns) Every Thing”) say, “She loved corners, surprises, changes of light.” Enright gives us eccentric, disaffected, unhappy, resigned, unfaithful characters, along with just a few contented characters. She is an astute observer of human nature, and seems especially interested in characters who are a little different, offbeat in some way, yet she makes us understand these people rather than be put off by them. Her writing is precise, witty, sometimes spare, sometimes generous with details and explanations. There are 31 stories, so it is hard to make generalizations about them, but I can say that most of them are about relationships, especially between spouses and between lovers. There is much about marriage, adultery, and sex. The sex is talked about but not generally described. She also seems to be interested in social class, although without making a point of it; she often portrays people in the middle and lower-middle classes. These stories are both stimulating and thought-provoking, each one with its surprising and satisfying tale unfolding in a very few pages, each one eliciting from the reader a little outtake of breath of surprise yet recognition. It is collections such as this one that have recently made me a renewed reader of, and admirer of, short stories.

Marriage in "Middlemarch"

Yesterday I wrote about how George Eliot’s “Middlemarch” contains all the world in one town, in one novel. Today I write about marriage as portrayed in “Middlemarch.” Eliot shows deep insight into marriage. She herself had a long (about 25 years) marriage-like relationship with George Henry Lewes; they could not marry because he was already married, although separated from his wife. After Lewes' death, Eliot entered a marriage that lasted only a few months before her own death. Whether her knowledge of marriage comes from her own relationships or from her perceptive close observations of those around her, or -- probably -- both, she seems to understand it deeply. There are three main couples in “Middlemarch.” The two main protagonists, Dorothea Brooke and Tertius Lydgate, are each gifted and idealistic and want to use their lives to do something meaningful, something that will make a contribution. Because it was hard in those days (the early 19th century) for even educated women to have careers on their own, she marries an older man, Casaubon, who has been working on a comprehensive philosophical book for many years; she thinks she can make her contribution through helping him with the book. She soon finds that his book is already outdated and will never be finished, and despite her innate goodness and her best efforts, their marriage becomes difficult and fraught with tension and jealousy. Lydgate, a doctor and researcher newly arrived in Middlemarch, has great hopes for his progressive ideas about medicine, and for his making lifesaving scientific discoveries. He allows himself to be drawn into a flirtation with a very pretty young woman, Rosamond, and before he knows it, he appears to be committed to marrying her. (An old, old story, isn't it?) He soon finds that she is both shallow and stubborn, doesn’t understand or care about his work, and will destroy his dreams with her ignorance and too-lavish spending. Worse, he ends by compromising his own ideals in order to pay his debts. In other words, both of these highly intelligent, well-educated, idealistic young people -- Dorothea and Lydgate -- with the best of intentions somehow find themselves in terrible marriages, marriages that thwart their best selves and their dreams. The third couple is even younger: Fred Vincy and Mary Garth. Fred has a good heart but is irresponsible, can’t stick with his education or decide on a career, and gets in debt that he can't repay, to the detriment of those he has borrowed from. Yet he has always loved his childhood playmate, Mary, who is plain looking and has little money but is good, clever, funny, and kind. She is his muse, his guiding light. She loves him too but won’t marry him until -- for his own sake -- he gets his life in order and proves himself worthy. This young couple, the one that seems to have the least chance of success, is actually the real success story of the novel, as Fred (with a little help from friends) finally gets his life in order, and things finally work out for the couple. What is most interesting about all this, to me, is Eliot’s portrayals of the emotional connections and disconnections in marriage, and the ways that couples interact with each other in everyday life. Casaubon’s stiffness and sensitivity about his work, and his jealousy of his dashing young relative Will Ladislaw, weigh Dorothea down and make her feel caught in a sticky web; she can’t find a way for them to be comfortable and happy together. Lydgate too finds that despite his efforts, his marriage seems to be inexorably worsening. Both Dorothea and Lydgate have to choose their words carefully and tiptoe through conversations with their spouses. Both of them find that they are helpless against losing their dreams of making contributions to bettering the world. I don’t mean to imply that Eliot’s portrayals represent all marriages, but that she knows how blind and almost willfully ignorant people can be in choosing their spouses, and she understands how difficult and messy marriage can be, even in ideal circumstances. She knows how easy it is for things to go wrong in marriages, despite good intentions. She does show us several at least reasonably happy marriages, though, including that of Mary Garth’s parents, who are exceptionally kind, good, and reasonable people, and obviously dearly love each other. I remain impressed by Eliot’s skill in writing about this wide variety of marriages, successful and unsuccessful, and about the threads that connect them all, as almost no marriage is all good or all bad.

"Middlemarch" Contains the World

I recently re-read George Eliot’s masterpiece, the 1874 novel “Middlemarch.” I have read it several times over the years; it is for me a great source of wisdom, insight, and pleasure. It holds the whole world in it, as embodied in an English provincial town called Middlemarch. This town contains all the characters you can imagine, all the people you meet in your everyday life. There are the idealists, the realists, the dreamers, the moralists, the hypocrites, the confused, the pragmatic, the yearners, the creators, the disappointed, the disillusioned, the good, the evil, the scared, the complacent, the satisfied, the perpetually unsatisfied, and more. They are at every stage in life: children, young people, students, workers, married, parents, middle-aged, old, dying. In other words, the novel leads us to look deeply into the human condition. Despite my list above, very few of the characters are one-dimensional; Eliot’s characters are richly complex. She sets them into motion, watches them grow and learn or stagnate, find or not find their ways in life, succeed or fail, and interact or avoid interaction with each other. You might say any novel does all this, but I reply that the town, and by extension the world, that Eliot creates is both universal and unique. We ache for the wrenching choices some characters make, and for the sad consequences of some of their choices. We identify with the lovers, and we identify with those who have lost love. We are in suspense about how certain matters will turn out: matters of the heart, matters of business, and matters of the soul. Some have called Eliot’s work dry, but they are so wrong. Yes, the prose is precise and intellectual, and the tone is sometimes philosophical, but the novel represents all the life forces; it is full of passion, love, fear, hatred, grief, and redemption. Every time I read this novel, I learn more from it, and appreciate it in new ways. (I have often said that to read a great novel at different stages of one’s life is to understand it in a new way each time, because we bring our own experiences to each reading.) If I were limited to a small armload of books for the rest of my life, “Middlemarch” would be in that armload.