This is an artifact from half a lifetime ago. Although I had not yet come into my own as a poet when I wrote these words, and the poem has the painfully trite, often forced, singsong quality that marks so much of my juvenilia, the content still rings true to me. I could even make a case that the style reinforces the subject matter, although I had no such intent at the time I wrote it.
"I don't feel any taller now,"
I did, when turned four, say.
I don't feel any older now,
And I'm fourteen today!
At thirteen I was foolish,
Acting young and immature.
At thirteen I was lonely,
Feeling small and insecure.
Yet am I any wiser,
By my age alone enhanced?
Am I done with childish ways,
By newer paths entranced?
Yesterday I was thirteen,
But what more can I say?
I'm still a foolish, lonely child,
And I'm fourteen today!
Monday, November 8, 2010
Friday, November 5, 2010
Thursday, November 4, 2010
Flower in the Crannied Wall
This poem by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, may be short, and, like the flower of which the poet speaks, deceptively simple, yet there is a world of truth in it. An unusually metaphysical poem for the nineteenth century, it is possessed of a timeless impact. It has long been one of my favorites. I hope it inspires you.
Flower in the crannied wall,
I pluck you out of the crannies,
I hold you here, root and all, in my hand,
Little flower - but if I could understand
What you are, root and all, and all in all,
I should know what God and man is.
Flower in the crannied wall,
I pluck you out of the crannies,
I hold you here, root and all, in my hand,
Little flower - but if I could understand
What you are, root and all, and all in all,
I should know what God and man is.
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
A Tale of Two Smart Women
Once upon a time, there was a smart woman who gave birth to her first child, a girl. With her background in child development, this woman was able to recognize very quickly that the baby was quite brainy in her own right, and to nourish her daughter's infant intellect. The mother's fondest hope was that the child would grow up to be a creative, independent, and ingenious thinker, capable of making sound decisions and contributing meaningfully to the world around her. The woman soon discovered that her daughter, despite her docile temperament, would prove a challenge not only to her parents, but to educators, agemates, and innocent bystanders, due to her unique worldview and nonconformist streak.
When she was little, the daughter more or less trusted the adults around her in matters beyond her comprehension. When she was in first grade, there was a presidential election, her first for all intents and purposes, and although she knew nothing of politics she was fascinated by the spectacle. When she learned that the candidates were named Bush and Dukakis, she immediately threw the full weight of her support behind the former, for good reason: her personal experiences with shrubbery had taught her that "Bush" was a name that could be trusted. Occasionally, she wondered if she was making the wrong choice. After all, "Dukakis" was a pretty nifty name, a nice crunchy name like the sound of biting into a pickle. But her concerns were eased away when she learned that her mother intented to vote for Bush. Her mother wasn't much concerned with the candidates' names, though; apparently Bush was a Republican and her mother was rooting for the Republicans to win the election, the same way her grandfather was always rooting for the Red Sox to win the baseball game.
Of course, as she got older, this bright girl came to understand the Issues - what they were, if not why anyone really cared about some of them - and since it was usually her parents who explained what they were all about, it was only natural that her parents' positions on the Issues made perfectly good sense to her (most of the time, anyways). As the years passed, she found herself more and more often exposed to viewpoints that differed from what she had been taught. Some of them made more sense to her than what she had been told by her parents. When she discussed these different viewpoints with her mother and father, sometimes they were able to point out something she hadn't thought of, some sort of weakness in the argument. Other times, they couldn't - not to her satisfaction, at any rate.
She arrived at puberty right on schedule, but unlike many on the cusp of adulthood, she never developed a rebellious spirit or felt the need to reject the values with which she had been raised solely because they were her parents' values. In fact, possessed of a strong need for harmony and the approval of others, she tried to rock the boat as little as possible. On the other hand, her intellectual and moral maturity far outstripped her emotional growth, and she did feel a compelling need to re-examine and evaluate nearly everything she had been raised to believe - if only in the privacy of her own mind. It was somewhat comforting, perhaps, when the conclusions she came to happened to be in line with the opinions of those around her, but when they did not, she had enough faith in her own moral compass to take a stand, however tremulously.
Although they often came to similar conclusions by different methods, this young woman was growing up to be very much like her mother in her political thinking: practical yet compassionate, able to consider both sides of an issue and seek a rational solution that would take into account the needs of everyone involved. Both these smart women knew that life is less fair than it should be, and that change takes time to become entrenched, and that sometimes you just have to settle for a compromise. They believed in living and letting live, and agreeing to disagree. And when the day came, nearly eighteen years after the daughter's birth, for the mother to wrap her in one final embrace before she boarded the airplane that would take her to college three thousand miles away, it was true that the two of them had agreed to disagree about a number of things in life, but when it cames to politics, they were more or less both on the same page.
As fate (and the Constitution) would have it, that happened to be another presidential election year. Now, although they were good citizens who tried to stay basically aware of national affairs, both mother and daughter were a little too busy to get swept up much in all the political hoopla. The daughter was, much to her dismay, one day too young to vote at all - and she was more focused on adjusting to all of the wonderful and terrible changes that come with young adulthood. The mother planned to vote, and gave much thoughtful consideration to the candidates and issues - but she was more focused on her new job teaching third grade at a Protestant church-affiliated private school, and on the lovely woman which whom she had unexpectedly fallen in love the previous spring.
Although neither mother nor daughter had a particular interest in politics just at that moment, they were both to have politics thrust upon them. As a student at a highly-regarded women's college, the daughter had hoped to find herself surrounded by mature, thoughtful young women. Much to her disappointment, she found that many of her new schoolmates were little more than overgrown adolescents; heady with a newfound freedom expressed in smoking, screwing, and swearing; professing their opinions with a swagger that belied their unwillingness to think too much. "Often in error, never in doubt," one of them boasted in the signature to her e-mails, and the young woman was bewildered: was admitting to uncertainty supposed to be a greater shame than being shown up as flat-out wrong? Although she hadn't immediately found the campus to be the haven of intellect and reason that she had at first hoped, it wasn't until she had been there about a month that she learned just how vicious her schoolmates could be.
It was that September that the Food and Drug Administration approved the use of the drug mifepristone as an abortifacient, and when the news hit that college campus, the online bulletin boards lit up with excitement. Students hailed it as a great step forward for women's rights. One young woman even proclaimed that she was "celebrating" the news. Now, much like her mother, our young protagonist thought abortion was the wrongful destruction of a human life. But she also, much like her mother, had the greatest sympathy for those women whose lives were turned upside-down by an unexpected pregnancy, and she certainly believed that no woman should be forced to continue a pregancy that endangered her life. She'd never really come down hard one way or the other on the matter of abortion, but the idea of "celebrating" an abortion method made her sick to her stomach. She posted to the bulletin board, reminding her ebullient schoolmates that abortion is an ugly and painful matter for all involved, and ought to be regarded with appropriate solemnity. The replies to her post came fast and furious, attacking and denouncing her as ignorant, uncaring, and backwards. When she tried to defend herself, it only got nastier. One poster made reference to our heroine's "gun-toting friends, hiding in the bushes in front of clinics." If she hadn't been so shocked and wounded by this outpouring of hostility, this could have been amusing, considering her stance in favor of gun control. (Those theoretical gun-toting friends most likely wouldn't have looked too kindly on her vegetarianism, either, or her wholehearted support for her mother's lesbian relationship.)
Back on the other side of the country, the mother wasn't finding her place of employment any more comfortable, politically speaking, than her daughter was finding her college campus. She'd been in the staff room one day, and one of her coworkers had mentioned a relative who was struggling with a risky pregnancy - and it prompted another coworker to go on a long rant about the evils of abortion. As the election approached, the political feeling in the school grew even more fervent. When they were planning their fall carnival, a sort of substitute Halloween party without the pagan overtones, one of the teachers suggested using a picture of Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore as a dartboard. When her mother mentioned this during one of their nightly telephone calls, the daughter forwarded her a glurge e-mail she had received from her aunt. The e-mail told the story of a seminary professor who had had all his students throw darts at pictures of people they disliked, only to take down the dartboard at the end of class to reveal a picture of Jesus underneath, torn and mangled by the darts his students had thrown. The mother appreciated the e-mail, but didn't share it with her colleagues, reluctant to rock the boat.
It was almost a shock to the daughter's system to hear that somewhere out in the world, there were masses of people vilifying Al Gore. In her world, it was the name of Republican candidate George W. Bush that was mud. She'd learned from her experience in September not to get into political discussions on the school bulletin boards, but when one brave Republican posted her opinion, only to be subjected to ad hominem attacks, our heroine could keep silent no longer. Brimming over with sweet reasonableness, she posted a reply in which she made it clear that she didn't agree with the Republican on many of the issues, but she didn't see any need to insult the young woman for speaking her mind. After all, the free exchange of ideas was historically one of the things that made this country great, and the balance of opposing viewpoints was necessary to prevent either side from spiralling off into extremes. "Besides," she concluded, "if there weren't two sides to every issue, there wouldn't be intelligent, well-meaning people on both sides." Surely no one could object to that?
Surely they could. "I have freedom of speech too and I reserve the right to call her an idiot if I want to!" one student proclaimed, in a truly impressive display of maturity. Almost as much invective was heaped on our heroine, for defending the Republican's right to speak freely without harassment, as had been directed at the poor Republican in the first place. Somehow, in this community that prided itself on its open-mindedness, it was possible to be ostracized, not only for disagreeing with the majority position, but for simply standing up for the right of others to do so.
The election came and went; the daughter woke up on her eighteenth birthday to the news that George W. Bush had won the election, and rejoiced at having attained the age of majority while her schoolmates mourned. Campus Republicans enjoyed a moment of triumph and went out to proudly chalk the letters "GOP" on the sidewalks; disappointed Democrats grabbed some chalk of their own and converted "GOP" into "GORE." Three thousand miles away, another smart woman grappled with her new role as the mother of an adult, while her coworkers whooped and cheered at the election results. Mother and daughter: the one too liberal, the other too conservative, two of a kind, with the same brown hair and the same gently bewildered smile.
When she was little, the daughter more or less trusted the adults around her in matters beyond her comprehension. When she was in first grade, there was a presidential election, her first for all intents and purposes, and although she knew nothing of politics she was fascinated by the spectacle. When she learned that the candidates were named Bush and Dukakis, she immediately threw the full weight of her support behind the former, for good reason: her personal experiences with shrubbery had taught her that "Bush" was a name that could be trusted. Occasionally, she wondered if she was making the wrong choice. After all, "Dukakis" was a pretty nifty name, a nice crunchy name like the sound of biting into a pickle. But her concerns were eased away when she learned that her mother intented to vote for Bush. Her mother wasn't much concerned with the candidates' names, though; apparently Bush was a Republican and her mother was rooting for the Republicans to win the election, the same way her grandfather was always rooting for the Red Sox to win the baseball game.
Of course, as she got older, this bright girl came to understand the Issues - what they were, if not why anyone really cared about some of them - and since it was usually her parents who explained what they were all about, it was only natural that her parents' positions on the Issues made perfectly good sense to her (most of the time, anyways). As the years passed, she found herself more and more often exposed to viewpoints that differed from what she had been taught. Some of them made more sense to her than what she had been told by her parents. When she discussed these different viewpoints with her mother and father, sometimes they were able to point out something she hadn't thought of, some sort of weakness in the argument. Other times, they couldn't - not to her satisfaction, at any rate.
She arrived at puberty right on schedule, but unlike many on the cusp of adulthood, she never developed a rebellious spirit or felt the need to reject the values with which she had been raised solely because they were her parents' values. In fact, possessed of a strong need for harmony and the approval of others, she tried to rock the boat as little as possible. On the other hand, her intellectual and moral maturity far outstripped her emotional growth, and she did feel a compelling need to re-examine and evaluate nearly everything she had been raised to believe - if only in the privacy of her own mind. It was somewhat comforting, perhaps, when the conclusions she came to happened to be in line with the opinions of those around her, but when they did not, she had enough faith in her own moral compass to take a stand, however tremulously.
Although they often came to similar conclusions by different methods, this young woman was growing up to be very much like her mother in her political thinking: practical yet compassionate, able to consider both sides of an issue and seek a rational solution that would take into account the needs of everyone involved. Both these smart women knew that life is less fair than it should be, and that change takes time to become entrenched, and that sometimes you just have to settle for a compromise. They believed in living and letting live, and agreeing to disagree. And when the day came, nearly eighteen years after the daughter's birth, for the mother to wrap her in one final embrace before she boarded the airplane that would take her to college three thousand miles away, it was true that the two of them had agreed to disagree about a number of things in life, but when it cames to politics, they were more or less both on the same page.
As fate (and the Constitution) would have it, that happened to be another presidential election year. Now, although they were good citizens who tried to stay basically aware of national affairs, both mother and daughter were a little too busy to get swept up much in all the political hoopla. The daughter was, much to her dismay, one day too young to vote at all - and she was more focused on adjusting to all of the wonderful and terrible changes that come with young adulthood. The mother planned to vote, and gave much thoughtful consideration to the candidates and issues - but she was more focused on her new job teaching third grade at a Protestant church-affiliated private school, and on the lovely woman which whom she had unexpectedly fallen in love the previous spring.
Although neither mother nor daughter had a particular interest in politics just at that moment, they were both to have politics thrust upon them. As a student at a highly-regarded women's college, the daughter had hoped to find herself surrounded by mature, thoughtful young women. Much to her disappointment, she found that many of her new schoolmates were little more than overgrown adolescents; heady with a newfound freedom expressed in smoking, screwing, and swearing; professing their opinions with a swagger that belied their unwillingness to think too much. "Often in error, never in doubt," one of them boasted in the signature to her e-mails, and the young woman was bewildered: was admitting to uncertainty supposed to be a greater shame than being shown up as flat-out wrong? Although she hadn't immediately found the campus to be the haven of intellect and reason that she had at first hoped, it wasn't until she had been there about a month that she learned just how vicious her schoolmates could be.
It was that September that the Food and Drug Administration approved the use of the drug mifepristone as an abortifacient, and when the news hit that college campus, the online bulletin boards lit up with excitement. Students hailed it as a great step forward for women's rights. One young woman even proclaimed that she was "celebrating" the news. Now, much like her mother, our young protagonist thought abortion was the wrongful destruction of a human life. But she also, much like her mother, had the greatest sympathy for those women whose lives were turned upside-down by an unexpected pregnancy, and she certainly believed that no woman should be forced to continue a pregancy that endangered her life. She'd never really come down hard one way or the other on the matter of abortion, but the idea of "celebrating" an abortion method made her sick to her stomach. She posted to the bulletin board, reminding her ebullient schoolmates that abortion is an ugly and painful matter for all involved, and ought to be regarded with appropriate solemnity. The replies to her post came fast and furious, attacking and denouncing her as ignorant, uncaring, and backwards. When she tried to defend herself, it only got nastier. One poster made reference to our heroine's "gun-toting friends, hiding in the bushes in front of clinics." If she hadn't been so shocked and wounded by this outpouring of hostility, this could have been amusing, considering her stance in favor of gun control. (Those theoretical gun-toting friends most likely wouldn't have looked too kindly on her vegetarianism, either, or her wholehearted support for her mother's lesbian relationship.)
Back on the other side of the country, the mother wasn't finding her place of employment any more comfortable, politically speaking, than her daughter was finding her college campus. She'd been in the staff room one day, and one of her coworkers had mentioned a relative who was struggling with a risky pregnancy - and it prompted another coworker to go on a long rant about the evils of abortion. As the election approached, the political feeling in the school grew even more fervent. When they were planning their fall carnival, a sort of substitute Halloween party without the pagan overtones, one of the teachers suggested using a picture of Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore as a dartboard. When her mother mentioned this during one of their nightly telephone calls, the daughter forwarded her a glurge e-mail she had received from her aunt. The e-mail told the story of a seminary professor who had had all his students throw darts at pictures of people they disliked, only to take down the dartboard at the end of class to reveal a picture of Jesus underneath, torn and mangled by the darts his students had thrown. The mother appreciated the e-mail, but didn't share it with her colleagues, reluctant to rock the boat.
It was almost a shock to the daughter's system to hear that somewhere out in the world, there were masses of people vilifying Al Gore. In her world, it was the name of Republican candidate George W. Bush that was mud. She'd learned from her experience in September not to get into political discussions on the school bulletin boards, but when one brave Republican posted her opinion, only to be subjected to ad hominem attacks, our heroine could keep silent no longer. Brimming over with sweet reasonableness, she posted a reply in which she made it clear that she didn't agree with the Republican on many of the issues, but she didn't see any need to insult the young woman for speaking her mind. After all, the free exchange of ideas was historically one of the things that made this country great, and the balance of opposing viewpoints was necessary to prevent either side from spiralling off into extremes. "Besides," she concluded, "if there weren't two sides to every issue, there wouldn't be intelligent, well-meaning people on both sides." Surely no one could object to that?
Surely they could. "I have freedom of speech too and I reserve the right to call her an idiot if I want to!" one student proclaimed, in a truly impressive display of maturity. Almost as much invective was heaped on our heroine, for defending the Republican's right to speak freely without harassment, as had been directed at the poor Republican in the first place. Somehow, in this community that prided itself on its open-mindedness, it was possible to be ostracized, not only for disagreeing with the majority position, but for simply standing up for the right of others to do so.
The election came and went; the daughter woke up on her eighteenth birthday to the news that George W. Bush had won the election, and rejoiced at having attained the age of majority while her schoolmates mourned. Campus Republicans enjoyed a moment of triumph and went out to proudly chalk the letters "GOP" on the sidewalks; disappointed Democrats grabbed some chalk of their own and converted "GOP" into "GORE." Three thousand miles away, another smart woman grappled with her new role as the mother of an adult, while her coworkers whooped and cheered at the election results. Mother and daughter: the one too liberal, the other too conservative, two of a kind, with the same brown hair and the same gently bewildered smile.
Friday, October 29, 2010
The Trouble with Five-Paragraph Essays
The five-paragraph essay is a phenomenon so universal, in the American education system at least, that it really should require no introduction, but I have it on good authority that when it comes to five-paragraph essays, a solid introduction is of the essence. So then, for the sake of form, I shall remind the reader that a five-paragraph essay is a simple form of written argument. It begins with a paragraph that introduces the topic and contains a thesis statement which briefly sets out the author's main points, which are elaborated upon in the three following paragraphs, and then restated and wrapped up neatly in the fifth, concluding paragraph. It's all very neat and tidy and efficient, and let me put it bluntly: I hate five-paragraph essays. I always have. I hated them when I was in school and expected to write them. I hate them now that I'm grown up and, in my capacity as an unofficial teacher's assistant, grading them. Five-paragraph essays hinder critical thinking; they stifle literary style; and, however indirectly, they encourage academic dishonesty.
The purpose of most academic writing exercises, up to and perhaps including the undergraduate university level, is to teach the student how to think. No one expects new insights about Shakespeare's soliloquys or the fall of Rome from a grade-schooler. Less important than the content of most student work is the thought process that goes into it: the ability to think through the subject matter, to take a position and state and support that position so that another person can understand it. In "The Ill Effects of the Five Paragraph Theme," English teacher Kimberly Wesley describes the way in which overemphasis on one particular format limits the development of thought in other directions. "But how can I fit seven pages into five paragraphs?" one of Wesley's students fretted, given the assignment of a comparative analysis of two novels. This question prompted Wesley to reflect that the five-paragraph essay tends to stifle critical thinking by forcing every argument into the same narrow form. Just as Orwell's fictitious totalitarian regime strove to remove from the English language all words redolent of freedom and rebellion, and in so doing make it essentially impossible to entertain the concepts thereof, the constrictions of the five-paragraph format channel student thought into limited and somewhat predetermined patterns. According to Wesley, the "emphasis on organization over content squelches complex ideas that do not fit neatly into three boxes." Repeatedly, she saw students touch upon ideas in their papers that were never fully developed, because they did not "fit within the neat, prescribed formula" of the thesis. Quite simply, not every argument worth making can be supported neatly by "three separate but equal points," and often critical thinking and relevant insight are sacrificed to the demands of form. Some arguments require far more than three points of support. Some don't need more than one or two. And not all points of support demand or deserve equal weight: in some cases, more than a sentence or two would be redundant; other ideas may require several paragraphs to be set forth with the barest adequacy. So deeply entrenched is the five-paragraph argument in the mind of some students that it shows up even when it's wholly inappropriate: when the assignment was a descriptive or narrative essay, for example. Many students consistently feel the need to include three paragraphs of support in anything they write, and end up valiantly defending such stupid theses as "The Roman patricians were very interesting."
Once, when I was in high school, there was an announcement read over the intercom of who were the four best writers in the school. I wasn't one of them. Nor were any of the other students I knew were original, creative, and insightful thinkers with a masterful prose style. As far as I knew, the ones who were named were competent and diligent students, but hardly extraordinary, and I was bewildered. Then I understood: the students who were chosen to be so honored weren't the ones most likely to be shortlisted for the Pulitzer in fifteen or twenty years. They were the ones who were best at writing five-paragraph essays: the ones who always adhered to the rubric and followed all the rules. I, on the other hand, found the rubrics and formats painfully constricting, and my need to express my thoughts in the way I truly felt they needed to be expressed often came into painful conflict with my desire to abide by the guidelines within which I had been told to work. I knew I was an excellent writer; I felt I had earned my artistic license, so to speak. But my teachers, jaded perhaps by years of dismally dull student writing, had learned to grade by the rubric: no exceptions. When students are taught to write to a formulaic standard, they learn to formulate, not to write. Literary style becomes something to cross off a checklist. Thesis and three points of support? Check. Vivid, precise language? Check. Quote from an expert? Check. Illustrative personal anecdote? Check. Strict adherence to the five-paragraph essay format offers no room to grow for those who already know the rules well enough to get away with breaking them, no chance for the writer to find his or her own solutions to the unique challenges and demands of each written work. With the structure and the direction of the essay already prescribed, where is the writer's chance to build rapport, to deviate briefly from the main course of the argument into some enlightening subtopic, to startle and shock and surprise? I grant that it may be possible for a writer of unusual gifts to compose a five-paragraph essay with wit, irony, and endearing braggadocio, but I for one have never seen it done. Overreliance on the five-paragraph essay format teaches students to be adequate, not extraordinary.
I'm not sure some of them are even bothering to learn how to be adequate. If writing can be reduced to a formula, if there's no reason why one essay shouldn't be very much the same as any other, why should students even bother writing their own essays in the first place? Of course, no matter what they're told to write, there is no excuse for plagiarism, any more than there is for copying the answers to a friend's math homework. But if there's anything duller than writing a five-paragraph essay (and there is), it's grading a whole stack of five-paragraph essays. Nothing makes my eyes glaze over faster, except perhaps spelling tests. Even with my near-eidetic memory for verbal material, too many essays saying exactly the same thing in exactly the same way can leave me wondering if there's some plagiarism passing under the radar - and, frankly, just how much it really matters. If the flow of thought can be reduced to a formula, if there's one simple right way to do it, what does it matter where you get your answers?
For the sake of simplicity and adequacy, the American educational system has become overly reliant on the five-paragraph essay, to the detriment of students' critical thinking skills, literary style, and, I believe, their respect for the process of writing itself. I believe it is time to retire this tedious form and start teaching students, especially those in the upper grades, to write with daring and originality, letting the direction of the their thoughts determine the structure in which they set them down.
The purpose of most academic writing exercises, up to and perhaps including the undergraduate university level, is to teach the student how to think. No one expects new insights about Shakespeare's soliloquys or the fall of Rome from a grade-schooler. Less important than the content of most student work is the thought process that goes into it: the ability to think through the subject matter, to take a position and state and support that position so that another person can understand it. In "The Ill Effects of the Five Paragraph Theme," English teacher Kimberly Wesley describes the way in which overemphasis on one particular format limits the development of thought in other directions. "But how can I fit seven pages into five paragraphs?" one of Wesley's students fretted, given the assignment of a comparative analysis of two novels. This question prompted Wesley to reflect that the five-paragraph essay tends to stifle critical thinking by forcing every argument into the same narrow form. Just as Orwell's fictitious totalitarian regime strove to remove from the English language all words redolent of freedom and rebellion, and in so doing make it essentially impossible to entertain the concepts thereof, the constrictions of the five-paragraph format channel student thought into limited and somewhat predetermined patterns. According to Wesley, the "emphasis on organization over content squelches complex ideas that do not fit neatly into three boxes." Repeatedly, she saw students touch upon ideas in their papers that were never fully developed, because they did not "fit within the neat, prescribed formula" of the thesis. Quite simply, not every argument worth making can be supported neatly by "three separate but equal points," and often critical thinking and relevant insight are sacrificed to the demands of form. Some arguments require far more than three points of support. Some don't need more than one or two. And not all points of support demand or deserve equal weight: in some cases, more than a sentence or two would be redundant; other ideas may require several paragraphs to be set forth with the barest adequacy. So deeply entrenched is the five-paragraph argument in the mind of some students that it shows up even when it's wholly inappropriate: when the assignment was a descriptive or narrative essay, for example. Many students consistently feel the need to include three paragraphs of support in anything they write, and end up valiantly defending such stupid theses as "The Roman patricians were very interesting."
Once, when I was in high school, there was an announcement read over the intercom of who were the four best writers in the school. I wasn't one of them. Nor were any of the other students I knew were original, creative, and insightful thinkers with a masterful prose style. As far as I knew, the ones who were named were competent and diligent students, but hardly extraordinary, and I was bewildered. Then I understood: the students who were chosen to be so honored weren't the ones most likely to be shortlisted for the Pulitzer in fifteen or twenty years. They were the ones who were best at writing five-paragraph essays: the ones who always adhered to the rubric and followed all the rules. I, on the other hand, found the rubrics and formats painfully constricting, and my need to express my thoughts in the way I truly felt they needed to be expressed often came into painful conflict with my desire to abide by the guidelines within which I had been told to work. I knew I was an excellent writer; I felt I had earned my artistic license, so to speak. But my teachers, jaded perhaps by years of dismally dull student writing, had learned to grade by the rubric: no exceptions. When students are taught to write to a formulaic standard, they learn to formulate, not to write. Literary style becomes something to cross off a checklist. Thesis and three points of support? Check. Vivid, precise language? Check. Quote from an expert? Check. Illustrative personal anecdote? Check. Strict adherence to the five-paragraph essay format offers no room to grow for those who already know the rules well enough to get away with breaking them, no chance for the writer to find his or her own solutions to the unique challenges and demands of each written work. With the structure and the direction of the essay already prescribed, where is the writer's chance to build rapport, to deviate briefly from the main course of the argument into some enlightening subtopic, to startle and shock and surprise? I grant that it may be possible for a writer of unusual gifts to compose a five-paragraph essay with wit, irony, and endearing braggadocio, but I for one have never seen it done. Overreliance on the five-paragraph essay format teaches students to be adequate, not extraordinary.
I'm not sure some of them are even bothering to learn how to be adequate. If writing can be reduced to a formula, if there's no reason why one essay shouldn't be very much the same as any other, why should students even bother writing their own essays in the first place? Of course, no matter what they're told to write, there is no excuse for plagiarism, any more than there is for copying the answers to a friend's math homework. But if there's anything duller than writing a five-paragraph essay (and there is), it's grading a whole stack of five-paragraph essays. Nothing makes my eyes glaze over faster, except perhaps spelling tests. Even with my near-eidetic memory for verbal material, too many essays saying exactly the same thing in exactly the same way can leave me wondering if there's some plagiarism passing under the radar - and, frankly, just how much it really matters. If the flow of thought can be reduced to a formula, if there's one simple right way to do it, what does it matter where you get your answers?
For the sake of simplicity and adequacy, the American educational system has become overly reliant on the five-paragraph essay, to the detriment of students' critical thinking skills, literary style, and, I believe, their respect for the process of writing itself. I believe it is time to retire this tedious form and start teaching students, especially those in the upper grades, to write with daring and originality, letting the direction of the their thoughts determine the structure in which they set them down.
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Autumn Fever
"So," my friend asked, "how are you?" It was a Friday morning at the very beginning of October, a day of fierce almighty storms that battered the house with hot thunder and rain so sparse and windblown it was almost dry.
"I'm all right," I replied. "Feeling something change inside me. I'm restless."
"You feel like you want to do something?" she asked. "Like there is a burst of energy in you or you're longing for something? Perhaps feeling a bit anxious for something?"
"Yes!" I exclaimed, amazed how she had managed to elaborate my feelings so perfectly.
"Autumn," she diagnosed succinctly.
It didn't take much reflection before I realized she was right. I have always loved the "season of mists and mellow fruitfulness," in a most deep and personal way. I was born in the very heart of autumn; gifted with a spirit of soil and mist, and a proclivity to austerity and decadence. When the leaves begin to turn, I feel myself called back to a home I never knew, to an unsettling and familiar wildness.
With the coming of autumn I am feral and expansive and lonely - so full of feeling I can hardly stand it, and yet I wouldn't trade it for the world. I want to spin in circles and run into walls and be honest and honest and honest. I want to take risks and drink clear cold water. I want to write a song and stub my toe and sing and bleed. I feel so primal! and I want to love: without a destination or a target, if I must, just loving for the sake of loving.
I feel fearsome. Powerful. Tremendous. Untouchable. Charmed. Strange!
It is hard to capture the delicate tremulous expansiveness of it in words alone. When I go out to walk in the brisk moist autumn air, whether it be by day when the whole world is the bright color of scattered light, or by night when the streetlamps color the mist like the haze from a fire - I take my iPod. Everything sounds different against a backdrop of infinite possibility, but there are certain songs that enhance the effect. In this climate of sky and soul I want to hear music as plaintive and pensive as my own meditations, wide and acoustic and resonant.
Here is a playlist of the songs I love to hear in these days of brilliant gloom, songs that capture some of the beautiful yearning ache that surrounds me at this time. I have tried to reflect all the moods of the autumn here: tender and fierce, hopeful and despairing. It is my hope that I have captured in this list a small piece of the season's melancholy splendor, to dip back into at will the other three-quarters of the year.
TRACK LISTING:
Somethin' Grand (Madeleine Peyroux)
Black Winged Bird (Nina Persson)
Moving (Kate Bush)
La Soñadora (Enya)
Sibeling (Depeche Mode)
Scarborough Fair (Rosalind McAllister)
Who I Was Born to Be (Susan Boyle)
Anywhere Is (Enya)
The Ash Grove (Michelle Amato)
Circle (Edie Brickell & New Bohemians)
Pax Deorum (Enya)
Time to Say Goodbye (Sarah Brightman)
Fallen Embers (Enya)
Memory (Barbra Streisand)
Fields of Gold (Sting)
I Won't Stay Long (Sixpence None the Richer)
Although I'm sure any commentary on these songs would only be gilding the lily, I can't resist a few brief liner notes, as it were.
Somethin' Grand - This is a lovely, gentle song that somehow embodies that sweet restless feeling of great things on the horizon. "Wide awake, breath taken / I'm shaken by my sight / Couldn't sleep, couldn't keep / Quiet secrets on the wind I hear."
Black Winged Bird - The sweetness of this pretty tune belies the strength and resignation and painful maturity of the lyrics: "I made up my mind to be a black-winged bird / Never turn my head for how things were . . . And I'll soar on my way / Sad as the state of things we can't change."
Moving - The music and the lyrics of the hauntingly unusual song are perfectly bound together, and the unabashedly plaintive yearning is evident. "How I'm moved / How you move me / With your beauty's potency / You give me life / Please don't let me go / You crush the lily in my soul."
La Soñadora - This pensive tune casts a graceful spell, like waking up from a lovely but scarcely-remembered dream. "I; the autumn . . . I have been an echo . . . I have been everything, I am myself . . . I am she who dreams."
Sibeling - This ominous, airy instrumental evokes the cries of seagulls on a day heavy with portents of storm.
Scarborough Fair - The plaintive futility of this English folk song could break your heart, if you let yourself think about it (which I suggest you do): "Tell her to make me a cambric shirt . . . Without no seam nor needle work . . . Tell her to find me an acre of land . . . Between the salt water and the sea strand / Then she'll be a true love of mine."
Who I Was Born to Be - This is a perfect hymn of new beginning: acknowledging the hurts and damages of the past, but soaring beyond them. "When I was a child / There were flowers that bloomed in the night / Unafraid to take in the light / Unashamed to have braved the dark / Though I may not know the answers / I can finally say I am free / And if the questions led me here / Then I am who I was born to be."
Anywhere Is - The strong, sweeping melody could so easily overwhelm the lyrics if they did not possess a power all their own: "The moon upon the ocean / Is swept around in motion / But without ever knowing / The reason for its flowing / In motion on the ocean / The moon still keeps on moving / The waves still keep on waving / And I still keep on going."
The Ash Grove - This traditional Welsh folk song has lent its tune to several hymns and even a political ditty, but these lyrics by John Oxenford perfectly capture the nostalgia of the melody, celebrating the beauty of nature ("The ash grove how graceful, how plainly 'tis speaking / The wind through it playing has language for me") and the memory of lost loved ones ("Each step brings a memory as freely I roam . . . The dear ones I long for again gather here / From ev'ry dark nook they press forward to meet me"). And in autumn that ash grove might look something like this, which is enough to justify its inclusion here, I think.
Circle - This is a perfect song of defiant solitude, and it sounds just amazing outdoors on an autumn night, when "the streets are wet" and "the colors slip into the sky." "I quit, I give up / Nothing's good enough for anybody else / It seems / And being alone is the best way to be . . . When I'm by myself, nobody else can say goodbye / Everything is temporary anyway."
Pax Deorum - The chanted Latin lyric that constitutes the greatest part of the song doesn't quite make grammatical sense, though it's clearly some sort of summoning invocation. The power of the chant is more important than the meaning, though; this lovely piece evokes the awesome force of a storm rising, raging, and breaking. Turn this one up loud.
Time to Say Goodbye - You don't have to know a word of Italian to hear the yearning in this beautiful song, but the lyrics are deeply powerful in their own right: "I'll leave with you / On ships upon seas / That I know / Exist no longer / It's time to say goodbye." I can't listen to this song without wanting to love with all my heart, even if hurts.
Fallen Embers - This is an almost painfully beautiful song about the memory of something impossibly poignant. "Once, as the night was leaving / Into us our dreams were weaving / Once, all dreams were worth keeping / I was with you."
Memory - There are songs of resignation, and their are songs of resolution. And then there's "Memory." Autumnal in setting ("The withered leaves collect at my feet . . . Burnt out ends of smoky days") as well as ambience, this song makes me ache and dream in the same tone. "I remember the time I knew what happniess was / Let the memory live again . . . I must think of a new life / And I mustn't give in . . . Another day is dawning."
Fields of Gold - This truly haunting song seems to reveal a new mood to me every time I listen to it: joy, love, tension, loss: "You'll remember me when the west wind moves / Upon the fields of barley / You can tell the sun in his jealous sky / When we walked in fields of gold." I'm not a huge fan of music videos, but I watched this one twice, then downloaded it. It's simple, powerful, and perfectly suited to the song. If you've never seen it, please don't deny yourself.
I Won't Stay Long - I can say for certain that my friend and I aren't the only ones afflicted with autumn fever. Lyricist Sam Ashworth clearly gets it too. I couldn't express the feeking of sweet autumnal melancholy better than the words of this song: "Leaves are falling, and something's calling me here / The state of depression that I'm walking in / Got the impression that I won't stay here long / I know I am like this, but still I don't know what to do / The sky is darkening, I can feel it in the air / My heart is sinking, I know winter's on its way."
"I'm all right," I replied. "Feeling something change inside me. I'm restless."
"You feel like you want to do something?" she asked. "Like there is a burst of energy in you or you're longing for something? Perhaps feeling a bit anxious for something?"
"Yes!" I exclaimed, amazed how she had managed to elaborate my feelings so perfectly.
"Autumn," she diagnosed succinctly.
It didn't take much reflection before I realized she was right. I have always loved the "season of mists and mellow fruitfulness," in a most deep and personal way. I was born in the very heart of autumn; gifted with a spirit of soil and mist, and a proclivity to austerity and decadence. When the leaves begin to turn, I feel myself called back to a home I never knew, to an unsettling and familiar wildness.
With the coming of autumn I am feral and expansive and lonely - so full of feeling I can hardly stand it, and yet I wouldn't trade it for the world. I want to spin in circles and run into walls and be honest and honest and honest. I want to take risks and drink clear cold water. I want to write a song and stub my toe and sing and bleed. I feel so primal! and I want to love: without a destination or a target, if I must, just loving for the sake of loving.
I feel fearsome. Powerful. Tremendous. Untouchable. Charmed. Strange!
It is hard to capture the delicate tremulous expansiveness of it in words alone. When I go out to walk in the brisk moist autumn air, whether it be by day when the whole world is the bright color of scattered light, or by night when the streetlamps color the mist like the haze from a fire - I take my iPod. Everything sounds different against a backdrop of infinite possibility, but there are certain songs that enhance the effect. In this climate of sky and soul I want to hear music as plaintive and pensive as my own meditations, wide and acoustic and resonant.
Here is a playlist of the songs I love to hear in these days of brilliant gloom, songs that capture some of the beautiful yearning ache that surrounds me at this time. I have tried to reflect all the moods of the autumn here: tender and fierce, hopeful and despairing. It is my hope that I have captured in this list a small piece of the season's melancholy splendor, to dip back into at will the other three-quarters of the year.
TRACK LISTING:
Somethin' Grand (Madeleine Peyroux)
Black Winged Bird (Nina Persson)
Moving (Kate Bush)
La Soñadora (Enya)
Sibeling (Depeche Mode)
Scarborough Fair (Rosalind McAllister)
Who I Was Born to Be (Susan Boyle)
Anywhere Is (Enya)
The Ash Grove (Michelle Amato)
Circle (Edie Brickell & New Bohemians)
Pax Deorum (Enya)
Time to Say Goodbye (Sarah Brightman)
Fallen Embers (Enya)
Memory (Barbra Streisand)
Fields of Gold (Sting)
I Won't Stay Long (Sixpence None the Richer)
Although I'm sure any commentary on these songs would only be gilding the lily, I can't resist a few brief liner notes, as it were.
Somethin' Grand - This is a lovely, gentle song that somehow embodies that sweet restless feeling of great things on the horizon. "Wide awake, breath taken / I'm shaken by my sight / Couldn't sleep, couldn't keep / Quiet secrets on the wind I hear."
Black Winged Bird - The sweetness of this pretty tune belies the strength and resignation and painful maturity of the lyrics: "I made up my mind to be a black-winged bird / Never turn my head for how things were . . . And I'll soar on my way / Sad as the state of things we can't change."
Moving - The music and the lyrics of the hauntingly unusual song are perfectly bound together, and the unabashedly plaintive yearning is evident. "How I'm moved / How you move me / With your beauty's potency / You give me life / Please don't let me go / You crush the lily in my soul."
La Soñadora - This pensive tune casts a graceful spell, like waking up from a lovely but scarcely-remembered dream. "I; the autumn . . . I have been an echo . . . I have been everything, I am myself . . . I am she who dreams."
Sibeling - This ominous, airy instrumental evokes the cries of seagulls on a day heavy with portents of storm.
Scarborough Fair - The plaintive futility of this English folk song could break your heart, if you let yourself think about it (which I suggest you do): "Tell her to make me a cambric shirt . . . Without no seam nor needle work . . . Tell her to find me an acre of land . . . Between the salt water and the sea strand / Then she'll be a true love of mine."
Who I Was Born to Be - This is a perfect hymn of new beginning: acknowledging the hurts and damages of the past, but soaring beyond them. "When I was a child / There were flowers that bloomed in the night / Unafraid to take in the light / Unashamed to have braved the dark / Though I may not know the answers / I can finally say I am free / And if the questions led me here / Then I am who I was born to be."
Anywhere Is - The strong, sweeping melody could so easily overwhelm the lyrics if they did not possess a power all their own: "The moon upon the ocean / Is swept around in motion / But without ever knowing / The reason for its flowing / In motion on the ocean / The moon still keeps on moving / The waves still keep on waving / And I still keep on going."
The Ash Grove - This traditional Welsh folk song has lent its tune to several hymns and even a political ditty, but these lyrics by John Oxenford perfectly capture the nostalgia of the melody, celebrating the beauty of nature ("The ash grove how graceful, how plainly 'tis speaking / The wind through it playing has language for me") and the memory of lost loved ones ("Each step brings a memory as freely I roam . . . The dear ones I long for again gather here / From ev'ry dark nook they press forward to meet me"). And in autumn that ash grove might look something like this, which is enough to justify its inclusion here, I think.
Circle - This is a perfect song of defiant solitude, and it sounds just amazing outdoors on an autumn night, when "the streets are wet" and "the colors slip into the sky." "I quit, I give up / Nothing's good enough for anybody else / It seems / And being alone is the best way to be . . . When I'm by myself, nobody else can say goodbye / Everything is temporary anyway."
Pax Deorum - The chanted Latin lyric that constitutes the greatest part of the song doesn't quite make grammatical sense, though it's clearly some sort of summoning invocation. The power of the chant is more important than the meaning, though; this lovely piece evokes the awesome force of a storm rising, raging, and breaking. Turn this one up loud.
Time to Say Goodbye - You don't have to know a word of Italian to hear the yearning in this beautiful song, but the lyrics are deeply powerful in their own right: "I'll leave with you / On ships upon seas / That I know / Exist no longer / It's time to say goodbye." I can't listen to this song without wanting to love with all my heart, even if hurts.
Fallen Embers - This is an almost painfully beautiful song about the memory of something impossibly poignant. "Once, as the night was leaving / Into us our dreams were weaving / Once, all dreams were worth keeping / I was with you."
Memory - There are songs of resignation, and their are songs of resolution. And then there's "Memory." Autumnal in setting ("The withered leaves collect at my feet . . . Burnt out ends of smoky days") as well as ambience, this song makes me ache and dream in the same tone. "I remember the time I knew what happniess was / Let the memory live again . . . I must think of a new life / And I mustn't give in . . . Another day is dawning."
Fields of Gold - This truly haunting song seems to reveal a new mood to me every time I listen to it: joy, love, tension, loss: "You'll remember me when the west wind moves / Upon the fields of barley / You can tell the sun in his jealous sky / When we walked in fields of gold." I'm not a huge fan of music videos, but I watched this one twice, then downloaded it. It's simple, powerful, and perfectly suited to the song. If you've never seen it, please don't deny yourself.
I Won't Stay Long - I can say for certain that my friend and I aren't the only ones afflicted with autumn fever. Lyricist Sam Ashworth clearly gets it too. I couldn't express the feeking of sweet autumnal melancholy better than the words of this song: "Leaves are falling, and something's calling me here / The state of depression that I'm walking in / Got the impression that I won't stay here long / I know I am like this, but still I don't know what to do / The sky is darkening, I can feel it in the air / My heart is sinking, I know winter's on its way."
Monday, October 25, 2010
The Egregious Excerpts: Truth Reads Lemony Snicket (So You Don't Have To)
First off, let me make it clear that I in no way mean to discourage anyone from reading A Series of Unfortunate Events. I shall offer my very free disclosure that I had no desire whatsoever at first to dive into a long and reportedly ridiculous children's series, but I finally decided that I had better read the first two books, at least, since my mothers' students have sometimes chosen them for a Language Arts assignment, and I have taken it upon myself this year to read all the books that they have to choose from, as I have often found myself in the position of grading their papers and it's much easier to do if I really know what I'm reading about. (It's not always necessary, however. When, for example, a student states that the climax of The Bad Beginning is when the Baudelaire orphans learn how to make pasta with puttanesca sauce, I don't have to have read the book to feel reasonably confident giving a very low grade.)
I give fair warning to any reader who might deem it suitable to follow my example: Lemony Snicket can be addicting, particularly if you have a passion for wordplay, metafiction, and underdog stories. If you have the time to read thirteen increasingly lengthy books, comprising 170 chapters in total (not counting two non-chapters and one moment of déjà vu), there are certainly worse ways you could spend it. There is more to this series than the very frivolous diversion it may at first appear to be. However, I recognize that many of you have better things to do with your time, or believe you do at any rate, and it would be most unfortunate if for this reason you were to be deprived of the wit, wisdom, and violently funny diatribes of Lemony Snicket. The moments that have made me laugh out loud are too numerous to reproduce here, and many of them would lose something out of context, anyway. But there are a few passages scattered throughout the series that are so brilliant they simply take my breath away, and it is these that I have felt it necessary to share with the readers of this blog. Enjoy this moment of vicarious fiction discovery.
It is a curious thing, the death of a loved one. We all know that our time in this world is limited, and that eventually all of us will end up underneath some sheet, never to wake up. And yet it is always a surprise when it happens to someone we know. It is like walking up the stairs to your bedroom in the dark, and thinking there is one more stair than there is. Your foot falls down, through the air, and there is a sickly moment of dark surprise as you try and readjust the way you thought of things. (from The Reptile Room)
There is a way of looking at life called "keeping things in perspective." This simply means "making yourself feel better by comparing the things that are happening to you right now against other things that have happened at a different time, or to different people." For instance, if you were upset about an ugly pimple on the end of your nose, you might try to feel better by keeping your pimple in perspective. You might compare your pimple situation to that of someone who was being eaten by a bear, and when you looked in the mirror at your ugly pimple, you could say to yourself, "Well, at least I'm not being eaten by a bear." You can see at once why keeping things in perspective rarely works very well, because it is hard to concentrate on somebody else being eaten by a bear when you are staring at your own ugly pimple. (from The Wide Window)
If you have ever had a miserable experience, then you have probably had it said to you that you would feel better in the morning. This, of course, is utter nonsense, because a miserable experience remains a miserable experience even on the loveliest of mornings. For instance, if it were your birthday, and a wart-removal cream was the only present you received, someone might tell you to get a good night's sleep and wait until morning, but in the morning the tube of wart-removal cream would still be sitting there next to your uneaten birthday cake, and you would feel as miserable as ever. (from The Miserable Mill)
It is true, of course, that there is no way of knowing for sure whether or not you can trust someone, for the simple reason that circumstances change all of the time. You might know someone for several years, for instance, and trust him completely as your friend, but circumstances could change and he could become very hungry, and before you knew it you could be boiling in a soup pot, because there is no way of knowing for sure. (from The Vile Village)
Entertaining a notion, like entertaining a baby cousin or entertaining a pack of hyenas, is a dangerous thing to refuse to do. If you refuse to entertain a baby cousin, the baby cousin may get bored and entertain itself by wandering off and falling down a well. If you refuse to entertain a pack of hyenas, they may become restless and entertain themselves by devouring you. But if you refuse to entertain a notion - which is just a fancy way of saying that you refuse to think about a certain idea - you have to be much braver than someone who is merely facing some bloodthirsty animals, or some parents who are upset to find their little darling at the bottom of a well, because nobody knows what an idea will do when it goes off to entertain itself, particularly if the idea comes from a sinister villain. (from The Vile Village)
You might think that being humiliated, like riding a bicycle or decoding a secret message, would get easier after you had done it a few times, but the Baudelaires had been laughed at more than a few times and it didn't make their experience in the House of Freaks easier at all. The Baudelaire orphans knew that they weren't really a two-headed person and a wolf baby, but as they sat with their coworkers in the freaks' caravan afterward, they felt so humiliated that it was as if they were as freakish as everyone thought. (from The Carnivorous Carnival)
Grief, a type of sadness that most often occurs when you have lost someone you love, is a sneaky thing, because it can disappear for a long time, and then pop back up when you least expect it. With the Baudelaire orphans, it was as if their grief were a very heavy object that they each took turns carrying so that they would not all be crying at once, but sometimes the object was too heavy for one of them to move without weeping, so Violet and Sunny stood next to Klaus, reminding him that this was something they could all carry together until at last they found a safe place to lay it down. (from The Carnivorous Carnival)
It is hard for decent people to stay angry at someone who has burst into tears, which is why it is often a good idea to burst into tears if a decent person is yelling at you. (from The Carnivorous Carnival)
Fate is like a strange, unpopular restaurant, filled with odd waiters who bring you things you never asked for and don't always like. (from The Slippery Slope)
It is always tedious when someone says that if you don't stop crying, they will give you something to cry about, because if you are crying then you already have something to cry about, and so there is no additional reason for them to give you anything additional to cry about, thank you very much. (from The Slippery Slope)
Deciding on the right thing to do in a situation is a bit like deciding on the right thing to wear to a party. It is easy to decide on what is wrong to wear to a party, such as deep-sea diving equipment or a pair of large pillows, but deciding what is right is much trickier. (from The Slippery Slope)
If everyone fought fire with fire, the entire world would go up in smoke. (from The Slippery Slope)
It is one of life's bitterest truths that bedtime so often arrives just when things are really getting interesting. (from The Grim Grotto)
If you are considering a life of villainy - and I certainly hope that you are not - there are a few things that appear to be necessary to every villain's success. One thing is a villainous disregard for other people, so that a villain may talk to his or her victims impolitely, ignore their pleas for mercy, and even behave violently toward them if the villain is in the mood for that sort of thing. Another thing villains require is a villainous imagination, so that they might spend their free time dreaming up treacherous schemes in order to further their villainous careers. Villains require a small group of villainous cohorts, who can be persuaded to serve the villain in a henchpersonal capacity. And villains need to develop a villainous laugh, so that they may simultaneously celebrate their villainous deeds and frighten whatever nonvillainous people happen to be nearby. A successful villain should have all of these things at his or her villainous fingertips, or else give up villainy altogether and try to lead a life of decency, integrity, and kindness, which is much more challenging and noble, if not always quite as exciting. (from The Grim Grotto)
The way sadness works is one of the strangest riddles of the world. If you are stricken with a great sadness, you may feel as if you have been set aflame, not only because of the enormous pain, but also because your sadness may spread over your life, like smoke from an enormous fire. You might find it difficult to see anything but your own sadness, the way smoke can cover a landscape so that all anyone can see is black. You may find that happy things are tainted with sadness, the way smoke leaves its ashen colors and scents on everything it touches. And you may find that if someone pours water all over you, you are damp and distracted, but not cured of your sadness, the way a fire department can douse a fire but never recover what has been burnt down. (from The Grim Grotto)
People aren't either wicked or noble. They're like chef's salads, with good things and bad things chopped and mixed together in a vinaigrette of confusion and conflict. (from The Grim Grotto)
Deciding whether or not to trust a person is like deciding whether or not to climb a tree, because you might get a wonderful view from the highest branch, or you might simply get covered in sap, and for this reason many people choose to spend their time alone and indoors, where it is harder to get a splinter. (from The Penultimate Peril)
One can remain alive long past the usual date of disintegration if one is unafraid of change, insatiable in intellectual curiosity, interested in big things, and happy in small ways. (from The Penultimate Peril)
Dewey was wrong when he said that being noble enough is all we can ask for in this world, because we can ask for much more than that. We can ask for a second helping of pound cake, even though someone has made it quite clear that we will not get any. We can ask for a new watercolor set, even though it will be pointed out that we never used the old one, and that all the paints dried into a crumbly mess. We can ask for Japanese fighting fish, to keep us company in our bedroom, and we can ask for a special camera that will allow us to take photographs even in the dark, for obvious reasons, and we can ask for an extra sugar cube in our coffees in the morning and an extra pillow in our beds at night. We can ask for justice, and we can ask for a handkerchief, and we can ask for cupcakes, and we can ask for all the soldiers in the world to lay down their weapons and join us in a rousing chorus of "Cry Me a River," if that happens to be our favorite song. But we can also ask for something we are much more likely to get, and that is to find a person or two, somewhere in our travels, who will tell us that we are noble enough, whether it is true or not. We can ask for someone who will say, "You are noble enough," and remind us of our good qualities when we have forgotten them, or cast them into doubt. (from The Penultimate Peril)
There are some who say that you should forgive everyone, even the people who have disappointed you immeasurably. There are others who say you should never forgive anyone, and should stomp off in a huff no matter how many times they apologize. Of these two philosophies, the second one is of course much more fun, but it can also grow exhausting to stomp off in a huff every time someone has disappointed you, as everyone disappoints everyone eventually, and one can't stomp off in a huff every minute of the day. (from The Penultimate Peril)
It is very difficult to make one's way in this world without being wicked at one time or another, when the world's way is so wicked to begin with. (from The Penultimate Peril)
The burning of a book is a sad, sad sight, for even though a book is nothing but ink and paper, it feels as if the ideas contained in the book are disappearing as the pages turn to ashes and the cover and binding blacken and curl as the flames do their wicked work. When someone is burning a book, they are showing utter contempt for all of the thinking that produced its ideas, all the labor that went into its words and sentences. (from The Penultimate Peril)
If you live among people, whether they are people in your family, in your school, or in your secret organization, then every moment of your life is an incident of peer pressure, and you cannot avoid it any more than a boat at sea can avoid a surrounding storm. All day long, everyone in the world is succumbing to peer pressure, whether it is the pressure of their fourth grade peers to play dodge ball during recess or the pressure of their fellow circus performers to balance rubber balls on their noses, and if you try to avoid every instance of peer pressure you will end up without any peers whatsoever, and the trick is to succumb to enough pressure that you do not drive your peers away, but not so much that you end up in a situation in which you are dead or otherwise uncomfortable. This is a difficult trick, and most people never master it, and end up dead or uncomfortable at least once during their lives. (from The End)
Sooner or later, everyone's story has an unfortunate event or two - a schism or a death, a fire or a mutiny, the loss of a home or the destruction of a tea set. (from The End)
There is a kind of crying I hope you have not experienced, and it is not just crying about something terrible that has happened, but crying for all of the terrible things that have happened, not just to you but to everyone you know and to everyone you don't know and even the people you don't want to know, a crying that cannot be diluted by a brave deed or a kind word, but only by someone holding you as your shoulders shake and your tears run down your face. (from The End)
It is likely your own eyes were closed when you were born, so that you left the safe place of your mother's womb - or, if you are a seahorse, your father's yolk sac - and joined the treachery of the world without seeing exactly where you were going. You did not yet know the people who were helping you make your way here, or the people who would shelter you as your life began, when you were even smaller and more delicate and demanding than you are now. It seems strange that you would do such a thing, and leave yourself in the care of strangers for so long, only gradually opening your eyes to see what all the fuss was about, and yet this is the way nearly everyone comes into the world. Perhaps if we saw what was ahead of us, and glimpsed the crimes, follies, and misfortunes that would befall us later on, we would all stay in our mother's wombs, and then there would be nobody in the world but a great number of very fat, very irritated women. (from The End)
The world, no matter how monstrously it may be threatened, has never been known to succumb entirely. (from The End)
I give fair warning to any reader who might deem it suitable to follow my example: Lemony Snicket can be addicting, particularly if you have a passion for wordplay, metafiction, and underdog stories. If you have the time to read thirteen increasingly lengthy books, comprising 170 chapters in total (not counting two non-chapters and one moment of déjà vu), there are certainly worse ways you could spend it. There is more to this series than the very frivolous diversion it may at first appear to be. However, I recognize that many of you have better things to do with your time, or believe you do at any rate, and it would be most unfortunate if for this reason you were to be deprived of the wit, wisdom, and violently funny diatribes of Lemony Snicket. The moments that have made me laugh out loud are too numerous to reproduce here, and many of them would lose something out of context, anyway. But there are a few passages scattered throughout the series that are so brilliant they simply take my breath away, and it is these that I have felt it necessary to share with the readers of this blog. Enjoy this moment of vicarious fiction discovery.
It is a curious thing, the death of a loved one. We all know that our time in this world is limited, and that eventually all of us will end up underneath some sheet, never to wake up. And yet it is always a surprise when it happens to someone we know. It is like walking up the stairs to your bedroom in the dark, and thinking there is one more stair than there is. Your foot falls down, through the air, and there is a sickly moment of dark surprise as you try and readjust the way you thought of things. (from The Reptile Room)
There is a way of looking at life called "keeping things in perspective." This simply means "making yourself feel better by comparing the things that are happening to you right now against other things that have happened at a different time, or to different people." For instance, if you were upset about an ugly pimple on the end of your nose, you might try to feel better by keeping your pimple in perspective. You might compare your pimple situation to that of someone who was being eaten by a bear, and when you looked in the mirror at your ugly pimple, you could say to yourself, "Well, at least I'm not being eaten by a bear." You can see at once why keeping things in perspective rarely works very well, because it is hard to concentrate on somebody else being eaten by a bear when you are staring at your own ugly pimple. (from The Wide Window)
If you have ever had a miserable experience, then you have probably had it said to you that you would feel better in the morning. This, of course, is utter nonsense, because a miserable experience remains a miserable experience even on the loveliest of mornings. For instance, if it were your birthday, and a wart-removal cream was the only present you received, someone might tell you to get a good night's sleep and wait until morning, but in the morning the tube of wart-removal cream would still be sitting there next to your uneaten birthday cake, and you would feel as miserable as ever. (from The Miserable Mill)
It is true, of course, that there is no way of knowing for sure whether or not you can trust someone, for the simple reason that circumstances change all of the time. You might know someone for several years, for instance, and trust him completely as your friend, but circumstances could change and he could become very hungry, and before you knew it you could be boiling in a soup pot, because there is no way of knowing for sure. (from The Vile Village)
Entertaining a notion, like entertaining a baby cousin or entertaining a pack of hyenas, is a dangerous thing to refuse to do. If you refuse to entertain a baby cousin, the baby cousin may get bored and entertain itself by wandering off and falling down a well. If you refuse to entertain a pack of hyenas, they may become restless and entertain themselves by devouring you. But if you refuse to entertain a notion - which is just a fancy way of saying that you refuse to think about a certain idea - you have to be much braver than someone who is merely facing some bloodthirsty animals, or some parents who are upset to find their little darling at the bottom of a well, because nobody knows what an idea will do when it goes off to entertain itself, particularly if the idea comes from a sinister villain. (from The Vile Village)
You might think that being humiliated, like riding a bicycle or decoding a secret message, would get easier after you had done it a few times, but the Baudelaires had been laughed at more than a few times and it didn't make their experience in the House of Freaks easier at all. The Baudelaire orphans knew that they weren't really a two-headed person and a wolf baby, but as they sat with their coworkers in the freaks' caravan afterward, they felt so humiliated that it was as if they were as freakish as everyone thought. (from The Carnivorous Carnival)
Grief, a type of sadness that most often occurs when you have lost someone you love, is a sneaky thing, because it can disappear for a long time, and then pop back up when you least expect it. With the Baudelaire orphans, it was as if their grief were a very heavy object that they each took turns carrying so that they would not all be crying at once, but sometimes the object was too heavy for one of them to move without weeping, so Violet and Sunny stood next to Klaus, reminding him that this was something they could all carry together until at last they found a safe place to lay it down. (from The Carnivorous Carnival)
It is hard for decent people to stay angry at someone who has burst into tears, which is why it is often a good idea to burst into tears if a decent person is yelling at you. (from The Carnivorous Carnival)
Fate is like a strange, unpopular restaurant, filled with odd waiters who bring you things you never asked for and don't always like. (from The Slippery Slope)
It is always tedious when someone says that if you don't stop crying, they will give you something to cry about, because if you are crying then you already have something to cry about, and so there is no additional reason for them to give you anything additional to cry about, thank you very much. (from The Slippery Slope)
Deciding on the right thing to do in a situation is a bit like deciding on the right thing to wear to a party. It is easy to decide on what is wrong to wear to a party, such as deep-sea diving equipment or a pair of large pillows, but deciding what is right is much trickier. (from The Slippery Slope)
If everyone fought fire with fire, the entire world would go up in smoke. (from The Slippery Slope)
It is one of life's bitterest truths that bedtime so often arrives just when things are really getting interesting. (from The Grim Grotto)
If you are considering a life of villainy - and I certainly hope that you are not - there are a few things that appear to be necessary to every villain's success. One thing is a villainous disregard for other people, so that a villain may talk to his or her victims impolitely, ignore their pleas for mercy, and even behave violently toward them if the villain is in the mood for that sort of thing. Another thing villains require is a villainous imagination, so that they might spend their free time dreaming up treacherous schemes in order to further their villainous careers. Villains require a small group of villainous cohorts, who can be persuaded to serve the villain in a henchpersonal capacity. And villains need to develop a villainous laugh, so that they may simultaneously celebrate their villainous deeds and frighten whatever nonvillainous people happen to be nearby. A successful villain should have all of these things at his or her villainous fingertips, or else give up villainy altogether and try to lead a life of decency, integrity, and kindness, which is much more challenging and noble, if not always quite as exciting. (from The Grim Grotto)
The way sadness works is one of the strangest riddles of the world. If you are stricken with a great sadness, you may feel as if you have been set aflame, not only because of the enormous pain, but also because your sadness may spread over your life, like smoke from an enormous fire. You might find it difficult to see anything but your own sadness, the way smoke can cover a landscape so that all anyone can see is black. You may find that happy things are tainted with sadness, the way smoke leaves its ashen colors and scents on everything it touches. And you may find that if someone pours water all over you, you are damp and distracted, but not cured of your sadness, the way a fire department can douse a fire but never recover what has been burnt down. (from The Grim Grotto)
People aren't either wicked or noble. They're like chef's salads, with good things and bad things chopped and mixed together in a vinaigrette of confusion and conflict. (from The Grim Grotto)
Deciding whether or not to trust a person is like deciding whether or not to climb a tree, because you might get a wonderful view from the highest branch, or you might simply get covered in sap, and for this reason many people choose to spend their time alone and indoors, where it is harder to get a splinter. (from The Penultimate Peril)
One can remain alive long past the usual date of disintegration if one is unafraid of change, insatiable in intellectual curiosity, interested in big things, and happy in small ways. (from The Penultimate Peril)
Dewey was wrong when he said that being noble enough is all we can ask for in this world, because we can ask for much more than that. We can ask for a second helping of pound cake, even though someone has made it quite clear that we will not get any. We can ask for a new watercolor set, even though it will be pointed out that we never used the old one, and that all the paints dried into a crumbly mess. We can ask for Japanese fighting fish, to keep us company in our bedroom, and we can ask for a special camera that will allow us to take photographs even in the dark, for obvious reasons, and we can ask for an extra sugar cube in our coffees in the morning and an extra pillow in our beds at night. We can ask for justice, and we can ask for a handkerchief, and we can ask for cupcakes, and we can ask for all the soldiers in the world to lay down their weapons and join us in a rousing chorus of "Cry Me a River," if that happens to be our favorite song. But we can also ask for something we are much more likely to get, and that is to find a person or two, somewhere in our travels, who will tell us that we are noble enough, whether it is true or not. We can ask for someone who will say, "You are noble enough," and remind us of our good qualities when we have forgotten them, or cast them into doubt. (from The Penultimate Peril)
There are some who say that you should forgive everyone, even the people who have disappointed you immeasurably. There are others who say you should never forgive anyone, and should stomp off in a huff no matter how many times they apologize. Of these two philosophies, the second one is of course much more fun, but it can also grow exhausting to stomp off in a huff every time someone has disappointed you, as everyone disappoints everyone eventually, and one can't stomp off in a huff every minute of the day. (from The Penultimate Peril)
It is very difficult to make one's way in this world without being wicked at one time or another, when the world's way is so wicked to begin with. (from The Penultimate Peril)
The burning of a book is a sad, sad sight, for even though a book is nothing but ink and paper, it feels as if the ideas contained in the book are disappearing as the pages turn to ashes and the cover and binding blacken and curl as the flames do their wicked work. When someone is burning a book, they are showing utter contempt for all of the thinking that produced its ideas, all the labor that went into its words and sentences. (from The Penultimate Peril)
If you live among people, whether they are people in your family, in your school, or in your secret organization, then every moment of your life is an incident of peer pressure, and you cannot avoid it any more than a boat at sea can avoid a surrounding storm. All day long, everyone in the world is succumbing to peer pressure, whether it is the pressure of their fourth grade peers to play dodge ball during recess or the pressure of their fellow circus performers to balance rubber balls on their noses, and if you try to avoid every instance of peer pressure you will end up without any peers whatsoever, and the trick is to succumb to enough pressure that you do not drive your peers away, but not so much that you end up in a situation in which you are dead or otherwise uncomfortable. This is a difficult trick, and most people never master it, and end up dead or uncomfortable at least once during their lives. (from The End)
Sooner or later, everyone's story has an unfortunate event or two - a schism or a death, a fire or a mutiny, the loss of a home or the destruction of a tea set. (from The End)
There is a kind of crying I hope you have not experienced, and it is not just crying about something terrible that has happened, but crying for all of the terrible things that have happened, not just to you but to everyone you know and to everyone you don't know and even the people you don't want to know, a crying that cannot be diluted by a brave deed or a kind word, but only by someone holding you as your shoulders shake and your tears run down your face. (from The End)
It is likely your own eyes were closed when you were born, so that you left the safe place of your mother's womb - or, if you are a seahorse, your father's yolk sac - and joined the treachery of the world without seeing exactly where you were going. You did not yet know the people who were helping you make your way here, or the people who would shelter you as your life began, when you were even smaller and more delicate and demanding than you are now. It seems strange that you would do such a thing, and leave yourself in the care of strangers for so long, only gradually opening your eyes to see what all the fuss was about, and yet this is the way nearly everyone comes into the world. Perhaps if we saw what was ahead of us, and glimpsed the crimes, follies, and misfortunes that would befall us later on, we would all stay in our mother's wombs, and then there would be nobody in the world but a great number of very fat, very irritated women. (from The End)
The world, no matter how monstrously it may be threatened, has never been known to succumb entirely. (from The End)
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