What Politicians Never Say in Public...

At this point in the political process - in the days right up before the election - one finds it harder to ignore a tendency some would call the most annoying and disturbing tick of political discourse in general, which is the necessity of avoiding at all costs any direct reference to most obvious, messy and controversial truths at the heart of a particular issue. Well of course, some would say...how can politicians be expected to utter incendiary remarks on issues as untouchable as: unemployment, the economy, the housing crisis, budget deficits, tax reform, entitlements, foreign relations, the Middle East,  foreign intervention, immigration,  gun control, etc. I mean - wouldn't it be weird (and therefore absolutely great, wonderful, wacky, downright surrealistic) if someone just ambled up to the podium for once and let loose a stream of unfiltered remarks:  "For starters, voters are out of touch and misinformed... The media has sold its soul to the gods of entertainment...Pundits never apologize....everyone contributes to pollution (and plastic bags aren't helping things)....Snobbery (or should I say "class conflict") is alive and well....Who the heck isn't part of a "working family?"...War is costly....it creates budget deficits, casualty lists, funerals and rising health care expenditures - not to mention increasing numbers of head trauma patients and suicide rates... We don't want it...we don't need it...there is no win-win, zero-sum game involved and there never was...." And just when the audience starts gaping with alarm, they hear: "Sorry to mention this folks, but we seem to have a surplus of 'automatic' as in 'meant-for-the-battlefield-only' type weapons in circulation...we might have to prevent mentally unstable people from stock-piling these things..." Huh? You can't be serious... "There are too many adults who are shirking their responsibilities as spouses and parents..." - stop, stop, I can't take it -  "Marriage in this country is broken and we might want to start having a conversation about how to fix it..." - I won't listen to this! - "the prison system in America is not presently doing an effective job of rehabilitating people...in fact it is damaging them further... in some cases beyond repair" - No more, I beg you. I can't handle the truth! -  "the drug war cannot be won until we get a handle on the 'demand' side of the equation..." -  "....the only way to permanently fix the budget crisis - in lieu of 4% GDP growth per annum - is to alter entitlements like Social Security and Medicare - which would mean raising the retirement age and regulating (i.e. cutting back on) extreme resuscitation or life-preserving measuring for terminal patients." Scary, I know.  This all sounds rather callous, brazen, impertinent and insanely blunt - doesn't it? One would be tempted to take it all back or make it all go away, but there's more - "we will never ameliorate poverty in America until everyone owns up to the fact that they fear it like the plague....and while we're at it, can we for once face up to our extreme ambivalence toward wealth and success... why do we celebrate, venerate, admire, exult, literally worship anyone who "fits the bill" as a celebrity, VIP, beautiful person - showering them with praise for howsoever them came to their 15 minutes of fame... while at the same time excoriating and disparaging other, less-famous but equally successful people for their fine educations, their arduous career-paths, their academic excellence, their job-related accomplishments, their intellectual pedigrees, their cultural sophistication? Why do we want our leaders to tell us that they've grown up in log cabins and scraped by for years living from paycheck to paycheck (which isn't exactly the case) until luck and good fortune allowed them accidental entry into the middle class - in the same breath extolling the bling, the clothes, the luxurious homes and decadent habits of glitterati set?

Herman Melville - Between Faith and Doubt

It's hard to think of an American writer with whom I have more sympathy with than Herman Melville....the decades of anonymity that this man endured for the sake of his forgotten art!

"A week ago last Monday, Herman Melville came to see me at the Consulate, looking much as he used to do (a little paler, and perhaps a little sadder), in a rough outside coat, and with his characteristic gravity and reserve of manner.... [W]e soon found ourselves on pretty much our former terms of sociability and confidence. Melville has not been well, of late; he has been affected with neuralgic complaints in his head and limbs, and no doubt has suffered from too constant literary occupation, pursued without much success, latterly; and his writings, for a long while past, have indicated a morbid state of mind.... I do not wonder that he found it necessary to take an airing through the world, after so many years of toilsome pen-labor and domestic life, following upon so wild and adventurous a youth as his was.... He is a person of very gentlemanly instincts in every respect, save that he is a little heterodox in the matter of clean linen.... Melville, as he always does, began to reason of Providence and futurity, and of everything that lies beyond human ken, and informed me that he had "pretty much made up his mind to be annihilated"; but still he does not seem to rest in that anticipation; and, I think, will never rest until he gets hold of a definite belief. It is strange how he persists -- and has persisted ever since I knew him, and probably long before -- in wondering to-and-fro over these deserts, as dismal and monotonous as the sand hills amid which we were sitting. He can neither believe, nor be comfortable in his unbelief; and he is too honest and courageous not to try to do one or the other. If he were a religious man, he would be one of the most truly religious and reverential; he has a very high and noble nature, and better worth immortality than most of us. -- Nathaniel Hawthorne - Notebook Entry, November 20 1856

LIbras and their Qualities

I've heard these qualities ascribed to Libras before...but is it really true that some (?), many(?),  most Libras are charismatic, gentle, kind, easy-going, stylish, romantic, intuitive AND good-looking all in one?  More power to us if it's true, fellow Libras. It didn't say anything about our flaws...Do we have any? Oh well...maybe vanity,  perhaps...

Mo Yan Wins Nobel Prize for Literature

"Life-Altering" Novels and Novellas

The Castle by Franz Kafka (Czech Republic)

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller (United States)

The Melancholy of Resistance by Laszlo Krasznahorkai (Hungary)

My Life by Anton Chekhov (Russia)

The Devil by Leo Tolstoy (Russia)

The Middle of the Journey by Lionel Trilling (United States)

The Red and the Black by Stendhal (France)

The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins (England)

Billy Budd by Herman Melville (United States)

Swann in Love (Part 2 of Swann's Way) by Marcel Proust

Chance (featuring Marlow, the irrepressible narrator) by Joseph Conrad (England)

Black Boy by Richard Wright (United States)

Recommended Short Stories - World Lit

"Day of the Butterfly" by Alice Munro (Canada)

"The Doll's House" by Katherine Mansfield (New Zealand/England)

"The Third Bank of the River" by Joao Guimaraes Rosa (Brazil)

"No Dogs Bark" by Juan Rulfo (Mexico)

"The Secret Lion" by Alberto Alvaro Rios (United States)

"The Balek Scales" by Heinrich Boll (Germany)

"In the Ravine" by Anton Chekhov (Russia)

"Ward #6" by Anton Chekhov (Russia)

"Four Meetings" by Henry James (United States)

"Investigations of a Dog" by Franz Kafka  (Czech Republic)

"The Book of Sand" by Jorge Luis Borges (Argentina)

"Gryphon" by Charles Baxter (United States)

"Poor Fish" by Alberto Moravia (Italy)

"The Black Sheep" by Italo Calvino (Italy)

"The Last Judgment" by Karel Capek (Czech Republic)

"Rhinoceros" by Eugene Ionesco (Romania/France)

"An Encounter" by James Joyce (Ireland)

"No Witchcraft for Sale" by Doris Lessing (Rhodesia/England)

"The Prisoner Who Wore Glasses" by Bessie Head (South Africa)

"Once Upon a Time" by Nadine Gordimer (South Africa)

"Another Evening at the Club" by Alifa Rifaat (Egypt)

"The Happy Man" by Naguib Mahfouz (Egypt)

"The Swimming Contest" by  Benjamin Tammuz (Israel)

"Wanted: A Town without a Crazy"by Muzzaffer Izgu (Egypt)

"Saboteur" by Ha Jin (China)

"Tokyo" by Fumiko Hayashi (Japan)

"Swaddling Clothes"* by Yukio Mishima (Japan)

Note: Most of these wonderful stories can be found in an anthology entitled Reading the World: Contemporary Literature from Around the Globe.   If you happen to be a teacher searching for new materials or are just someone who loves short stories (glad to know you're out there!), I would highly recommend this volume

Richard Wright & Harper Lee

Considering how many 9th graders across the country get their first taste of "protest literature" of sorts by sampling Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird wherein they glimpse into the old world of the deep south through the eyes of a precocious young white girl named Scout Finch, as a high school English instructor who has taught TKAM for many years now, I keep wondering about what other work of American fiction to pair with this work so that readers might be shown a similar set of circumstances, but through the eyes of an equally perceptive youthful narrator who doesn't happen to be white. The most obvious nominee, for my money at least, would be Richard Wright and his great memoir, Black Boy, the time-frame of which actually precedes Lee's novel by several years and, in my humble opinion, offers a wider swath of territory, nuance and prescient insight...