The Joy of Reading and Challenge of Good Writing--Luminous Thoughts from George Saunders

 A Swim in A Pond In The Rain, by George Saunders.

 

I found this a humbling and mind-opening book.  Humbling in realizing even more that I should have spent more time editing everything I have written.  Honing every sentence, deleting the extraneous and the expected.  It was humbling, too, in the intricacy of the Russian short stories which Saunders analyzes.  There is so much more to these stories by Chekhov and Tolstoy and Gogol than I appreciated on the first reading Saunders loved writing this book; that is clear.  He loves reading, too.  Don’t we all?  We write, we read, because we love doing it.  That is how I feel even as I read more slowly, forget more of what I read and write more verbosely.  

 

Saunders practices good writing in this book with great care.  His ability to do that leaps off the page again and again.  “The focus of my artistic life has been trying to learn to write emotionally moving stories that a reader feels compelled to finish.  I consider myself more vaudevillian than scholar.”

 

I identify with his assertion that there is a “vast underground network for goodness in the world”.

 

 He identifies in the book clubs he has known and participated in:  “a web of people who put reading at the center of their lives because they’d often experience that reading makes them more expansive, generous people and makes their lives more interesting.”  That says it.  No more, no less.

 

A new perspective I emerge with: “a story is a linear, temporal phenomenon.  It proceeds, and charms us (or it doesn’t), a line at a time.  We have to keep being pulled into a story in order of it to do anything to us.”

 

Saunders follows in Einstein’s footsteps:  “No worthy problem is ever solved in a plane of its original conception.” 

 

 I believe Saunders is right in writing, “all art begins in that instance of intuitive preference.”  The artist just comes to like it better that way, for reasons he couldn’t articulate, and before he had the time or inclination to articulate them.  It just feels right.  It is appropriate.”  When Saunders is writing well, he says, “There is almost no intellectual/analytical thinking going on.”  He is trying different orders of words, looking for the perfect sentence, but mostly the artist “tweaks that which he has already done.  There are those moments when we sit before a blank page, but mostly we are adjusting what is already there.  A story is frank, intimate conversation between equals.  We keep reading it because we continue to feel respected by the writer. 

 

When it comes to Saunders universal laws of fiction—“Be specific!  Honor efficiency!, always be escalating.  That is all a story is really:  a continuing system of escalation.”

 

What will keep a reader reading?  The only method, Saunders asserts “is to read what we have written on the assumption that our reader reads pretty much the way we do.  What bores us will bore her.  What gives us a little burst of pleasure will light her up, too.” 

 

He suggests reading the prose in front of us, the prose we have already read a million times, as if it is new to us.  How do we react?  In writing fiction, “we are in conversation with our reader, but with this great advantage:  we get to improve the conversation over and over with every pass.  We get to ‘be there’ more attentively.”

 

Saunders distinguishes those talented writers who go on to publish from those who don’t.  “First, a holiness to revise.  Second, the extent to which the writer has learned to make causality.”  That may not seem sexy, Saunders writes, but it is the hardest thing to learn.  “It doesn’t come naturally, but a story is a series of things that happen in sequence, in which we can discern a pattern of causality.”  “Causality is to the writer what melody is to the songwriter:  a superpower that the audience feels as the crux of the matter; the thing that audience actually shows up for.”

 

Of all the short stories, I found Gooseberries by Anton Chekhov and Saunders’ comments on it and Chekhov to be the most mind-opening. The story is very short, only ten pages.  It is a complex, insightful and ironic story.  It appears to be asking “is it right to seek happiness, knowing that it is ephemeral and he cannot have much of it at all.  His life can be lived for pleasure or duty.  How much belief is too much?  Is life a burden or a joy?”

 

The story cautions against being too judgmental.  Too fixed in our views.  It encourages open-mindedness, for seeing two sides of questions.  “Every human position has a problem with it.  Believed in too much, it slides into error.  It is not that no position is correct; it is that no position is correct for long” (or I would say guaranteed to be correct forever).  “We are perpetually slipping out of absolute virtue and failing to notice, blinded by our desire to settle in—to finally stop fretting about things and relax forever and just be correct; to find an agenda and stick with it.”

 

Chekhov was open to criticism on this point.  Tolstoy accused him of having a “very good heart, but thus far it does not seem to have any very definite attitude toward life.”  But this quality, Saunders avers, is what we love him for now.  In a world full of people who seem to know everything, passionately, based on little (often slanted) information, where certainty is often mistaken for power, what a relief it is to be in the company of someone confident enough to stay unsure (that is, perpetually curious).

 

Through Chekhov’s short life, he lived to be only 44, he seemed glad to be alive, he tried to be kind.  “His feeling of fondness for the world takes the form, in his stories, of a constant state of reexamination.  Reconsideration is hard; it takes courage.  We have to deny ourselves the comfort of always being a certain person, one who arrived at an answer some time ago that has never had any reason to doubt it.  In other words, we have to stay open in the face of actual grinding, terrifying life.”  And I would add,  new emerging facts.

 

Back to the joy and satisfaction from reading and writing.  “These days, it is easy to feel that we have fallen out of connection with one another and with the earth and with reason and with love.  I mean:  we have.  But to read, to write, is that we still believe in, at least the possibility of connection.”

 

At the end, Saunders calls on himself to address the question:  How are we altered by reading?  He gave it a try: 

 

 “I’m reminded that my mind is not the only mind.  

 

I feel an increased confidence in my ability to imagine the experiences of other people and accept these as valid.

 

I feel I exist on a continuum with other people:  what is in them is in me and vice versa.

 

My capacity for language is reenergized.  My internal language, the language in which I think, gets richer, more specific and adroit.  I find myself liking the world more, taking more loving notice of it.

 

I feel lucky to be here and more aware that someday I won’t be.  

 

I feel more aware of the things of the world and more interested in them.

 

That is all pretty good,” Saunders concludes.

 

That is one fine summary. 

 

In Search of New Narratives

We are, as a nation, in search of new narratives, both in our view of the history and destiny of our own country, the United States, and in our attitude to the rest of the world, too; in other words, our foreign policy.

Our national narrative is up for grabs today.  There are those on one end who follow the direction of “1619,” saying our history has been founded on slavery and its perpetuation.  There are others who view our history as growing from the words of our Declaration of Independence, committed to achieving “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” of freedom for all.

Our eyes have been opened more than ever in the past couple of decades to the imperfections and misbegotten chapters of American history:  slavery, our treatment of Native Americans, our aggrandizing spirit as evidenced in the Mexican War of 1848, our imposition of our own values on other countries without due respect to their culture.  This confrontation of reality is essential but it carries the great risk that we will lose sight of the extraordinary goodness of our ideals and the benefits of their realization both for the citizens of the United States and beyond (think of the Marshall Plan).

My own admittedly simplistic view of a correct national narrative pivots around the fact that we are blessed with a brilliant foundational document (the Declaration of Independence) which identifies the right ends to seek but a narrative which at the same time honestly recognizes that have fallen dramatically short of reaching these ends and we must continue on a journey of continued learning and seeking truth to realize these ends.

When it comes to the narrative of our relations with other countries, our foreign policy so to speak, it seems to me that these are the salient points:

1.         We have to confront and take action to ensure that our existence as a nation is not threatened by external forces such as terrorism.  We have to recognize there are some bad people in this world who not only have different views than we do (that’s understandable) but want to impose their views on us violently.  We have to prepare ourselves to deny this happening.

 

2.         We must recognize the futility of trying to impose our values on other countries.  We can and should provide an example of the benefit of our values, hoping others will learn and take note, but to seek to impose these values on other countries while perhaps evidencing a noble humanitarian disposition will rarely if ever be productive.  I think of values here such as same-sex marriage, women’s rights, etc.  We must never relent in our commitment to continuing to learn how to accord every person the respect and freedom they deserve.  But we should not view ourselves as the world’s preacher or policeman when it comes to imposing these values.  We need to recognize how long it took us in this country to achieve progress in these areas, and there is more progress to be made.

 

3.         We must seek common ground to achieve common goals with other countries, even those that are tough competitors like China.

While China’s view of what constitutes good government and stable society is different than ours, there is no objective reason why we should be enemies.  The economic bonds between our countries need no emphasis.  The importance of working together on nuclear proliferation and climate change are self-evident.  The challenge is to distinguish between a country being a competitor and being an existential enemy and act accordingly. 

 

How Will We Remember 9/11

 

HOW WILL WE REMEMBER 9/11

 

Surely, we will never forget the agonizing experience of seeing the Towers fall and bodies as well.  We will never forget the heroism of the firefighters and others who risked and lost their lives in rescuing people trapped in the burning fury.  We will never forget the mind-blowing, chilling, unforgettable demonstration that we are not free from violence from terrorists.

 

We will never forget how for a short time the country came together in unity to mourn the lives that were lost, to herald the heroes who fought the flames and helped survivors to live. 

 

However, an opinion column in the New York Times (9/12) by Laila Lalami reminds us of other things we dare not forget, because they have implications on what we do as a nation in the future. 

 

We have to recognize the unintended consequences of the war on terrorism which 9/11 precipitated, a war which went well beyond, in time and geography, what we set out to do in the beginning, which was to eliminate Al Qaeda. 

 

The attacks served as justification for the 20-year war in Afghanistan, the invasion and occupation of Iraq, the indefinite detention of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay and the periodic bombing of Pakistan, Yemen, Syria and Somalia.  This led to the deaths of some 800,000 people, including 335,000 civilians and the displacement of an estimated 38 million people. 

 

Over the 20 years, we were constantly reminded that we were attacked on 9/11.  And we should have been reminded.  However, in what became a continually grieving state, the public was understandably more willing to accept what it might not have otherwise. 

 

Along the way, the reporting of the loss of civilian lives was stopped, intentionally.  That was wrong: hiding ourselves from Truth.

 

David Blight in his magisterial biography of Frederick Douglass writes a lot about memory and its uses.  He observes that Douglass understood that although all people crave stories, some narratives are more honest than others.  It is imperative that our stories of 9/11 are honest and comprehensive and that the lessons from it on what is within our capability as a nation and what is not, what is right and what is wrong, never be forgotten. 

 

Fourteen years ago, General H.R. McMaster wrote a stunning book about the Vietnam War aptly summarized by its title, Dereliction of Duty.  Its sub-title extends the indictment:  Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Lies that led to Vietnam.

 

I don’t know what General McMaster will write about the war in Afghanistan.  He served as National Security Advisor in 2017-18 until he was fired by Trump.  I do know that as late as August 2021, he felt it was a mistake to totally leave Afghanistan.  He felt we should sustain a presence and that by doing so we would be able to hold off the Taliban.  I’m skeptical.  They had already taken well over half the country.  They were feeding off the corruption in the government and the collateral damage the U.S. and its allies was doing to civilians.  It seems questionable whether we could have held off the Taliban with as few troops (2,000-3,000) as we had then.  We may have been able to preserve the government for some time in Kabul but not the country as a whole.

A Moment Of Truth for the Biden Administration--Its Very Future is At Stake

 The blazingly blunt cover of this week's "The Economist" has it right:

"BIDEN'S DEBACLE"

There is no escaping, no side-stepping this brutal description.

 Sure, we had to finally exit this 20-year commitment. But we had pledged we would do it carefully, with dignity  while protecting our troops and citizens and those thousands of Afghanis who supported us in the pursuit of Freedom, at risk to their and their families' lives. 

We are failing miserably to do this.

 Biden claimed the right to the Presidency based on his competence, his compassion and his integrity. Sadly, his response to date fails on each of these measures.  

He is failing to acknowledge a grave misunderstanding of the speed of the Taliban takeover as a result of his actions. He is shifting blame to Trump (who admittedly deserves a good measure of it) and to the Afghani government and worst of all to the Afghani soldiers  He is failing to be compassionate about the threat to the lives of thousands of people.  Above all, I believe, he is failing to be transparent and speak straight to the American public and maybe even himself.  People aren't blind or dumb. They see what is happening. 

If he doesn't turn this situation around dramatically in the next week, I believe Biden's presidency will incur fatal damage. 

Inevitably it will be scarred; the photos of petrified Afghanis on the tarmac of the airport clinging to the landing gear will live on for decades. However, the jury is out on how this event will most be remembered and the impact it will have on the next three years of Biden's administration.

It is perfectly clear what Biden has to do to avoid "fatal" damage. 

1. Start by speaking straight to the American and world public. "I misjudged the speed with which the Taliban would assume control" and "we are going to do everything to make sure we do the right thing now and going forward" We have seen again and again that much worse than making a mistake is not owning up to it promptly and taking action to deal with its consequences. 

2. Expand the number of troops, clear the roads, open other airports and do everything else necessary immediately to secure the safe exit of U.S. citizens AND those many Afghanis who supported us as interpreters and in other ways. 

3. Provide humanitarian support for the Afghani people working with other nations. 

The most fundamental values of our Nation are at stake here. Can people trust our word and our promises? Are we honest with ourselves and others? Will we do everything in our power to do the right thing?

David Brooks' "Blame the Bobos"

 

DAVID BROOKS’ – BLAME THE BOBOS

This article, which appeared in the September edition of The Atlantic recycles the thesis Brooks (and others) have advanced, Brooks in a book close to the same title, over a decade ago.

 

He brings an abundance of secondary research to demonstrate the sharp contrast of attitude between classes--the “elite” feeling superior based on wealth acquired through merit (as they see it) and openness to diverse views—in contrast to “others” of lesser means who feel looked down upon (to some degree they are) for their less informed and idealistically pure attributes, as they believe the elite class improperly construes them. 

 

I have written elsewhere about how I see multiple forces coming together, building on each other, to increase inequality.  These forces include differences in education, starting at the very earliest age, differences in the neighborhoods in which they live, differences in the social circles in which they circulate, differences in their marriages (with today, more and more couples marrying with the same educational and cultural background).  None of these factors, of course, are truly new but they have been exacerbated by the increasingly reinforcing systems in which we live. 

 

In my view, however, Brooks over generalizes and deals in stereotypes with some of the sub-groups he describes.  He emerges for this reason being too pessimistic about the possibility of change going forward.  I, of course, am forever hopeful, optimistic.  I have often been proved wrong.  But sometimes right, too, for I have seen advances many would have predicted would take far longer or not come at all.  For example, the recognition of not only the legitimacy but the beauty of same-sex marriage and parenting. 

 

I believe Brooks is particularly off-base in his discussion of two classes.  The first is what he calls “the blue oligarchy:  tech and media executives, university presidents, foundation heads, etc.”  While he acknowledges that these executives tend to be in favor of higher taxes, redistributive welfare policies, universal healthcare and concern for the environment, he goes on to say they “tend to oppose anything that would make their perch less secure:  unionization, government regulation that might affect their own businesses, anti-trust policies.”

 

While that is true of some, it is not true of many others.  Nowhere is this more evident than in the leadership of many major corporations, including P&G.  I believe for example that many more executives than in the past are ready to take on restrictive voting rights.  Most of all, I believe they see their responsibility to society as being greater than they have before.

 

The other group I believe Brooks underestimates is what he calls the “offspring” of the elite class.  He notes that many of them are driven by “moral contempt.”  He says they look up and see the generations above them “talk about equality but drive inequality.”  I have experienced the truth of that.  I believe many of these younger so-called offspring will do more to change the environment in which they live than Brooks predicts.   We need to count on that.

 

Brooks is right in saying that the victory of Trump and other populists has come from a large number of people who feel they are looked down upon, and for good reason.  This has to change and I believe a program like National Service, which Brooks (and Biden) supports, is absolutely key to the future.  

 

I agree with Brooks in his belief that Joe Biden's character and belief in people and the programs he is advancing through the infrastructure bill and his family support proposal, including universal pre-K and free tuition for community college, strikes at the heart of what we need to thwart the current widening inequality. 

 

These initiatives are importantly economic in nature.  But they’re more than that.  For the availability of these economic opportunities will lead people to think differently about themselves and about how they are regarded.  And as they advance, it will lead all of us to regard them differently, too, at least so I hope. 

 

An element which Brooks’ article seems to fail to take account of is race and particularly the challenge African-Americans face.  Brooks talks about a sense of ease which the elite class has in fitting into situations, knowing what to say and what not to say to advance in the system.  He has a key point here, and there is a racial as well as a class aspect to this.  I have found that African-Americans who have been accorded the benefits of quality education and have had the benefit of empowering relationships with one or more individuals, are much more likely to acquire that sense of ease than African-Americans who have not had these benefits.  This makes the formation of intentional positive relationships within corporations and any organization so important, especially with minorities.  But it also enhances the value that I am confident will accrue from better education starting in the very earliest years, preschool and Kindergarten.  It also calls for schools of higher education to reach out more affirmatively to bring in more young men and women from lower income, racially diverse backgrounds. 

 

A Collection of My Essays and Blogs

 Friends, 

For your information, I have recently published a collection of my favorite blogs and essays. Its title is, not surprisingly, "Pepperspectives: Reflections on Values for Living, Global and National Issues and Other Contemporary Issues". 

Some of these essays are more personal than others; many draw on my favorite books; most have been written in the last six years and, hence assess the contemporary challenges and opportunities we face, nationally and globally. They include a few essays informed by my children and one written by my twelve year old granddaughter. 

The collection is available on Amazon in paperback and e-book formats. 

John Pepper

Recognizing Special Interests Alongside a Unifying Common Good: Justice and Equal Opportunity

 The One of the Many:  America’s Struggle for the Common Good by Martin E. Marty

 

This book, written by Martin Marty, was published 23 years ago but it could have been published today with equal if not greater relevance to the moment we’re living in.  It is a short book of about 240 pages. Its essence could be boiled down to an even shorter book, really an essay. Whatever the length, it is powerful and relevant. 

 

I took away three related thoughts:

 

1. The importance of telling and understanding each other’s stories, personally and as special interests, alongside the importance of recognizing the importance of pursing a unifying common good.

 

2. The concept of affection.  The value of “having affection” for one another and how that is different than love; it is not as strong as love but terribly important.

 

3. The concept of kinship or kin.  

 

Marty explores the different pulls of “pluralism” and allegiance to the common good.  He contrasts the unum and the plures.

 

There has constantly been in our country tension between the two.  Alexander Hamilton in 1802 expressed his fear of the influx of foreigners who must “tend to produce a heterogeneous compound; and to change and corrupt the national spirit; to complicate and confound public opinion; to introduce foreign propensities.  In the composition of society, the harmony of the ingredients is all-important.  And whatever tends to discordant intermixture must have an injurious tendency.” 

 

Our other founders, Franklin and Jefferson, offered similar testimony in defense of the unum, of sameness. 

 

We face the question:  How do individual special interest groups themselves co-exist and how do they make contributions to the common good?  What we’ve seen in Lebanon and Bosnia to this very day alerts us to the dangers of tribalism, unchecked by republicanism—that is a commitment to see how we do achieve the common good.

 

One writer came upon an interesting metaphor—the porcupine—to depict civil association. This is a model that allows for both the need to “hover together” and the need to “draw apart.”  This metaphor describes citizens in their national and sub-national groupings and as individuals.  

 

James Madison in Federalist No. 51 speaks clearly to the rights of factions and common interest.  He recognized the importance of individual factions but he did not want those members to lose the sight of a theme that brings together everyone against the goal of “justice as the end of government.”  Justice is a unifying theme for a cohesive sentiment. 

 

Marty wisely writes that “intimate communities, because of the closeness and commitment that they express, depend upon love.  Citizens, however, cannot express sentimental attachment or personal affection for all fellow citizens and societies conceived as civil association.  They certainly will not credibly display love, because of the impersonality of the bonds of association and the heterogeneity of those who are encompassed by them.”

 

Here is where the concepts of association, affection and kinship come in.  I turn to Procter & Gamble.  I’ve often described it as a community, and I still do.  Having read this book, I believe that the concept of affection is a very good description of how P&Gers feel about one another.  So is kinship.  Fellow P&Gers are kin. 

 

Family reunions, just like P&G reunions, bring together kin and affection.  They draw on the notion of the “binding tie of cohesive sentiment,” which Felix Frankfurter enunciated. 

 

As I wrote at the beginning, this book was written 23 years ago.  It was meant to address the need to resolve the tension between particular interests and factions with the need to pursue the common good.  At this moment, I believe we have in Joe Biden a President who instinctively is primed to unify the interests of individual factions, many of whom have been deprived of justice, with the pursuit of a common good, of a binding sentiment--justice and opportunity for all—which can unify us. 

 

Marty’s book serves to illustrate that the search for this unifying end point has been a perpetual one in this country and, indeed, in the history of the world. Despite the challenge, it should not stop us from continuing to pursue it. I feel confident it will be pursued under the current administration. Now, may it only be realized. We need a unifying common vision o