WHY ENCOURAGE CREATIVITY WHEN WHAT WE NEED ARE MINDLESS DRONES?
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Category Archives: Book Reviews
A big buzz word in education and self-improvement circles is “creativity.” We’re urged to Are We Honest or Overboard About Obscenities?
While watching a 50s Western on television, I chuckled to be reminded of the extremes the media used to reach to avoid censorship or offending their audiences. One character, a rancher, was married to a Native American woman; and two of the townsmen launched a sexist tirade to get his goat, stating, “We’ve heard she’s some pumpkin.” To update the scene, replace “pumpkin” with the profanity of your choice.
At the same time, I was rereading a science fiction classic, The Stars My Destination,” by Alfred Bester. (The teleporting hero seeks revenge for his abandonment on a wrecked space ship and causes havoc all about him.) Published originally in 1956, the version I perused made special note twice of the lack of complete rape and sex scenes, claiming that had the author been writing more recently, he wouldn’t have been stifled and we could have been treated to vivid renderings.
I was thankful I’m not limited in my writing the way people were sixty years ago. I have more freedom, I thought. But then I wondered why that was my reaction. I didn’t miss the violence and sex in the book; the plot certainly raced through compelling scenes and conflicts, sending my fingers fluttering through the pages. I remembered the Western. Did I miss any tension because substitutes had been made for vulgarities? No.
One of my works in progress is a novel with a vivid sex scene. This is not one of my romances. In those, unlike the current trend to include in fiction every bang or whimper or lick, I don’t accompany the characters into beds. To me, that’s comparable to writing at length about someone eating or using the toilet. There’s not much difference among humans, it’s repetitive and boring no matter how a writer tries to dress it up. And yet, yes, I’m including this sex scene because it’s part of the satirical slant.
I have to say I don’t like unending vulgarities in films, books, television or otherwise. While some writers, composers, filmmakers will protest they’re just reflecting society, that’s not true. My friends and family don’t swear with every other word.
Many have noted that bad language is a substitute for thinking, for careful attention to expression. Am I offended when the man next to me on the bus is conducting a conversation loaded with F-bombs? I don’t think so. But my attitude tends toward disgust that he has so little regard for strangers around him, or himself and the image he’s conveying to them, that he uses it.
I’m grateful that society has loosened up so use of an obscenity is not grounds for jail or shunning. In any creative endeavor or situation taut with emotion, swearing is a tool of expression. But have we become too dependent on it in everyday life as well as our entertainment? Maybe before we open our mouths, we should ask ourselves if foul language will add to our expression and understanding.
What’s a Family?
A generation ago, defining a “family” was easy. Husband, wife, children, occasionally along with close relatives as peripheral subjects. Today, not so easy. We have same-sex parents, single parents, substitute families that include friends, many families that include no children at all. I have to wonder if, in the past, we just ignored those people who didn’t fit into our template of “family,” for I know there were half-orphans and orphans as well as pairs of “good friends” whose exact relationships went undefined.
Now people are stepping up and speaking out to create their own families. The best definition I’ve heard, although the least exact, is a family is whatever we define as “family,” much the same as “art.” While this vagueness makes categorization a challenge to non-members of a family (so do I hug my second cousin’s roommate as if he were a blood relative or politely shake his hand?), and certainly hasn’t been adequately dealt with by insurance benefits officers, it seems a wise move in a time when we need every connection we can lay our hands on.
We no longer have tribes on whom we can depend to provide routines, rituals, safety nets. I have a number of single friends getting along in years who face difficult decisions about their own care as well as eventual disposal of their assets and ashes. Even more important for day-to-day living, who celebrates our birthdays and holidays with us? A Facebook greeting is an inadequate substitute for a glass of cheer. So we cobble together our own families out of whichever acquaintances have something in common with us and can tolerate us. And vice versa.
Which brings me to a novel I read recently about an unusual family comprised of an older sister who suddenly becomes her eleven-year-old half-brother’s guardian after the death of his mother. In Fin & Lady, by Cathleen Schine, set in the 60s and 70s, these two manage to create a real family, supplemented by three suitors for the sister’s hand, and eased by the relative wealth they’ve inherited. I really like novels that feature families, maybe because I’m still trying to figure out my own. The tribulations brother and sister face rise in the main from their own struggles to grow up and learn who they are, in the end trumped, as we all are, by the vagaries of dispassionate fate. If you’re looking for a book with fascinating, real characters writing their own life stories as best they can, this is it. It may give you hope about your own path.
“The Good Parents” as Extraordinary Story
Stories can hold the sum of mankind’s knowledge, desire, and feelings. We learn better if our information comes in the form of tales. They needn’t be particularly dramatic or scary, but somehow they need to be human, connect to us through emotion. For me, religions and philosophies are specialized stories, and hard sciences are palatable only if they are related in anecdotal fashion. A friend of mine believes I majored in psychology purely because the case studies resemble mini-tales.
Everyone has his own story. It might be funny or frightening, instructive or entertaining. It might bore some and excite others. Telling a story well, so others can relate to it easily, is the duty of the writer. I have a long list of types of stories I don’t like: zombies, vampires, blood and gore, evil. Also not keen on most sports or tragedies. Don’t like offerings that include torture. Okay occasionally with deaths. I especially don’t like poorly written work. I know the definition of this varies according to the hearer/reader, but, as the untutored viewer said of art, “I know what I like.”
I especially adore stories about ordinary people. Now that I think about it, I like stories with characters much like my friends—bright, curious, with kindly impulses, interested in what’s around them. Like my friends, these characters hit highs and lows, have flaws and fortes. They face the challenge of surviving in a world that often is cruel and uncaring, nourishing within themselves a careful consideration for their own well being and the same for others.. Examples—“Pride and Prejudice,” “The Things They Carried,” “White Teeth.”
I’ve found a book that meets my qualifications and is a joy to read. “The Good Parents” by Joan London. Set in the author’s homeland of Australia, it features a teen-aged daughter seeking to reach adulthood through the time-honored fashion—an older man—along with the turmoil experienced by her mother and father, aging semi-hippies. There’s a mystery, in fact several mysteries: will the daughter meet a terrible fate and will a disreputable but powerful man in the mother’s past bring doom?
The beauty of this book, however, is neither plot nor action. Rather, the intricate weaving of the inner thoughts, the external impacts, the complex relationships, of the characters make you read faster and faster, to track the lives of people who somehow seem as close as dear friends or beloved relatives. The main characters as well as the secondary ones upon whom only a few pages may be expended are as faceted and radiant and entrancing as a diamond. Through this treatise on one family’s lives, I grew to appreciate my own more.
“The Good Parents” is truly an example of how ordinary people can have extraordinary lives.
How Do We Know What We Know Is Actually What We Know?
Or. . .how on earth can anyone believe such-and-such a pea-brained theory? That candidate? That idea?
Has this thought ever crossed your mind? The answer is that a great deal of our responses to life around us, our reactions to other people and events, even our memories are pre-programmed without our awareness.
Dozens (perhaps hundreds or thousands?) of studies exist that substantiate this point of view. Fortunately we don’t have to go in search of them. Author/physicist/screenwriter and all-round Renaissance guy Leonard Mlodinow has gathered them for us and relates them in fascinating and readable form in Subliminal: How Your Unconscious Mind Rules Your Behavior. You may be aware of the term “subliminal” from introductory psych class, the concept that we can be influenced by messages below the level of our cognizance. In the 60s ad agencies and businesses were enthralled with the idea that the robotic masses could be persuaded to buy more popcorn at movies or a certain brand of liquor, just about anything by flashing words on a screen, or hiding sexual images in print ads.
Mlodinow is waaay beyond that. Some of the points:
• No one’s memory is or can be perfect. Our brains fill in the gaps for us automatically. So two people can hold strong opposite views of a happening and be absolutely convinced they’re right. Remember that next time you have an argument with a friend or lover.
• Our brains filter any information we receive and skew it to support or oppose views we already hold. Hence the battles royal over gun control. This isn’t deliberate stupidity on anyone’s part; it’s our unconscious.
• Senses, like sight, smell, and so forth, also plug the blanks in our perceptions. An example, the stock market is more likely to turn upward in sunny weather, and the type of music played in a liquor store affects the sale of wines by nation of origin.
• Touching someone (even lightly and without his knowledge) makes that person’s perception of you more likely to be positive.
Subliminal, from the unconscious part of the mind, is different from subconscious. While psychologists and others may brangle over exact meanings, suffice it to say that the unconscious contains courses in the mind that occur automatically and that we cannot access.
So what does this mean? As a writer, I find this type of analysis helpful for creating and explaining my characters’ behavior.
As a person, I react exactly as predicted. I’ve always believed that people can be of good will even if they hold beliefs diametrically opposed to me. I have a friend who quite honestly feels that no Republican has the best of intentions. Literally absolutely none. But I don’t agree. My perception of reality is supported by what I already unconsciously believe. And we’re both right, according to Mlodinow and ourselves.
Bonnie McCune, author 