Shipler: The Working Poor

The lovely Ms. A and I first wondered the winter streets of Paris in 1994. We tried to love Picasso at his museum, lingered in front of an exquisite bridal boutique with a discrete doorbell, and popped out of the dank metro to find the Eiffel tower just where we least expected. We made a daily landmark plan based on travel books, but mostly let our stomachs and noses lead us. We even flirted with danger and found ourselves in a Cuban restaurant for food that flamed our internal organs. Our adventures were precious and precocious.

My reading life this year is just such an indulgence. A recommendation, a passing comment, a footnote or a nagging good intention jolts me into action. Within seconds I have it on hold at the Boston Public Library. Or I dash out to the Trident to sip jasmine tea and check out their stacks. In my “normal” life, there was considerable lag time between that initial burst of reader’s curiosity and then sweet indulgence. Now I can jump right in. Get me hands messy with ink. Get my head in a tizzy. Follow where I am taken. Let my stomach lead.

All of this rumination springs from reflection about just why I read David K. Shipler’s The Working Poor: Invisible in America. I exchanged emails with the always on-line Mr. I, to whom I mentioned reading "The Shame of the Nation" and hearing its author, Kozol, expound at a public lecture(see my blog entry). Soon I had Shipler as a suggested author. I placed in on hold at the library. It sat on my shelf for a month and then some. Finally, I cracked the spine.

Shipler makes the invisible working poor in America starkly visible. I was struck by the story of Caroline in the chapter “Work Doesn’t Work.” Actually, I quickly realized that Shipler must have had this chapter published elsewhere (maybe the New York Times Sunday magazine?) because I already knew her story. Yet I still re-read once again with fresh eyes.

It is not a terrible sexy read, but stick with it. As one interviewer put it: “I suggest that readers -- and this is clearly one of those seminal books that every American should read and read now -- stick with it” (emphasis added).

Shipler's work did get me thinking, once again, about how I spend my working time. Specifically as a public high school teacher, I don’t fret over how or why I work, but I do think about where I choose to teach. Which students and schools need all the attention they can get?

Quotes
(page numbers from hardcover edition)

“Job trainers are discovering that people who have repeatedly failed—in school, in love, in work—cannot succeed until they learn that they are capable of success. To get out of poverty, they have to acquire dexterity with their emotions as well as their hands.” (7)

“The American ideal embraces an equality of opportunity for every person but not an equality of result.” (88)

“When a woman discloses such intimate humiliation to a stranger, she reveals its magnitude.” (143)

“One study found that ‘emotional deprivation, particularly at an early age, may predispose adolescents to seek emotional closeness through sexual activity and early parenthood.’” (145)

“Children saddled with grown-up burdens cannot succeed, and that is often their first failure, the root of inadequacy.” (155)

“The psychological techniques that help a child cope with sexual or physical abuse do not work when the child herself becomes a parent.” (161)

“. . . in a society where money is power, financial insufficiency may feel like personal inadequacy.” (168)

“When he laid out his plans, he got a clipped tone of false confidence in his voice, as if he knew that he was saying what he wished, not what would be.” (190)

“Students try to get attention because that is what they need, like food or water or oxygen.” (238)

“Will is a function of power, and the people who work near the edge of poverty don’t have very much power.” (286)

“To appraise a society, examine its ability to be self-correcting.” (298)

Related Links

York Times Audio Interview with David K. Shipler about “The Working Poor: Invisible in America”

New York Times Book Review "‘The Working Poor’: Can’t Win for Losing” by Ron Suskind

Brokeback Mountain

I read Annie Proulx’s 1997 short story Brokeback Mountain this past Fall in the Scribner’s Anthology of short fiction. It is a powerful story and the film adaptation directed by Ang Lee, as I found out last night, is well done. The only other work by Proulx (rhymes with “true”) that I had read previouisly was The Shipping News (1993) which I found in an English language used bookstore in Budapest a few summers back. I adored that book, which did win a Pulitzer Prize and was also made into a film, but hadn’t pursued her other writing. Now I am curious to check out more of her books and stories and to learn more about her as well. “At Home with: E. Annie Proulx; At Midlife, A Novelist is Born” by Sara Rimer offers colorful insight into her life and her writing career. (The article is dated 1994 and so I am sure there will be more up-to-date human interest pieces in response the film’s great success.) In this link Proulx reacts to the film and talks about how she wrote the original story.

I had intended to see Brokeback Mountain ever since it arrived in theaters, but just didn't seem to find the time. Then yesterday an occasion presented itself: The Coolridge Corner Theatre was screening the film in partnership with the Boston Psychoanalytical Society. As the Boston Globe blurb put it: "This year's buzz movie, "Brokeback Mountain," has a cast of characters who could use some one-on-one time with a licensed psychologist. The movie contains loads of denial, passive-aggressive behavior, alcohol abuse and phobias." The event was part of a series called "Off the Couch" and occurs every first Tuesday of the month.

After the film the majority of the audience stayed for an open discussion of the film and a consideration of the issues from a psychoanalytical perspective. It was a lively discussion. I was fully aware that this kind of gathering of minds is a rare thing in my usual neck of the woods. The gentleman seated in front of me was happy to confess that this was his third viewing, he had read the short story and the screenplay, and he listened incessantly to the soundtrack. When I asked him later if he was a film buff or an English professor, he said no. He had simply been swept away by the tragic tale. Another woman pointed out that this is the first film to use the predicament of the two men as the crux of the story while staying clear of identity issues, which I thought was a good point. Their predicament is true love that society thwarts. Romeo and Juliet cast as Ennis Del Mar and Jack Twist.

It is a tragic story. Not one single character in the entire story gets want they want out of life, except the young daughter at the end of the story. The price for her happiness is almost too much to bear. I will not say any more about the plot or the characters! It is a finely drawn tragedy and the actors do an exceptional job. See it.

Things I Know

Last night as I tossed and tried not to toss in order to let L. sleep, images and characters and entire plots raced through my head. I am terrified about taking a novel writing course. I can handle a month’s investment into a short story that goes nowhere. Somehow, a semester for a novel that may flop seems scandalous.

Yet, here I am, on leave in Boston. Isn’t that already scandalous enough? I may as well climb all the way up to the high dive and take the plunge. I am not going to save the world or reach nirvana in the next few months. I might as well try and write a novel.

The wise ones who plan such a class know that it is impossible to complete a novel in one semester. Thus we are expected to have a working outline and bring in three chapters for review. I know the professor. I should not be a lily-livered quake. But I am.

A rakish young man once rashly told me that you should do the thing that scares you the most. (I’d love to check in with him and see how that advice has governed him.) So, with one week left until the class begins: I remain on the roster.

Okay, so the title of my entry is “Things I Know.” People always say: write what you know about. This is useful, especially in terms of landscapes and politics, but requires the gumption to bald-faced lie when you do if what you know happens to reveal deep dark secrets about those you love, or those who love you or those you once loved or, even worse, your inner ruminations about near-total strangers who share your dinner table on occasion.

Last night, per usual, my mind raced along the Things I Know. None seemed to bear fruit when placed under the microscope of a novel’s strange and provocative distortion. Then I had a mini-revelation: It is not the THINGS I Know but perhaps the things I KNOW that matter. In other words, I know a lot of stuff (who doesn’t), but I think that I should write about the things I KNOW emotionally. This is why we read fiction after all. We read novels to watch other people make decisions and empathize with them. Empathy is the novel. So I have to start with emotions to get at emotions. Now I am thinking like a writer.

Theater: Les Liaisons Dangereuses

As you can tell from my previous entries, I have devoted quite a bit of time to reading over the holiday break. Lots of time on planes--to KS and then to South Bend last weekend--is always a boost for my reading shelf. It was vital for me to connect with friends and places in South Bend. Thanks to all who made time for me! Currently I am between novels and spending my reading time on various literary magazines.

Of course one shouldn't squander away all the fun of Boston between the pages. Both of us enjoy the theater and so last night we went to see another piece by the Huntington Theatre Company (in residence at Boston University). The playby Christopher Hampton is based on the novel Les Liaisons Dangereuses written by Pierre Ambroise Francois Choderlos de Laclos and both published and set in 1782. The center of the plot are two sexually liberated upper-class French snobs who use the bedrooms of Paris and its environs as a playground for their own tortured "love" affair. They use other people's bodies as a way to show their emotional superiority. All of this depravity, or at least the cynical spirit of it all, captures the very reasons why the peasants revolted in the French Revolution in 1789 shortly after Laclos penned the original epistolary novel (his one and only novel).

I have to admit, the play appealed more to L.'s sensibilities than mine. I just never connected to any of the characters--either the acting or the writing left me cold. At times I was disgusted at the events, but I suppose that was the point. There was one scene that positively exasperated me. The old aunty gave the following bit of wisdom to a young niece: men are happy when they have feelings, women are happy when they cause others to have feelings. Is this true? Or worse, still true? L. found it witty and a classic period piece. True, the costumes (with a few exceptions) were well done and the staging was finely choreographed. It was well executed, but soap operas -- even dark ones-- have never been my style.

This might be a good novel to accompany a study of the French Revolution, however. You most often get poignant stories of the poor and this offers another perspective--a portrait of the poor in spirit.

The play runs through February 5th at The Huntington.

Murakami: Kafka on the Shore

“It is easier to be bewitched by Haruki Murakami's fiction than to figure out how he accomplishes the bewitchment. His novels -- in America, the best known is probably ''The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle'' -- lack the usual devices of suspense. His narrators tend to be a bit passive, and the stakes in many of his shaggy-dog plots remain obscure. Yet the undercurrent is nearly irresistible, and readers emerge several hundred pages later as if from a trance, convinced they've made contact with something significant, if not entirely sure what that something is. Murakami's latest, ''Kafka on the Shore,'' is no exception, although it is a departure for this Japanese novelist in other ways.” --Laura Miller (see link below)

Miller captured my experience of reading my first Murakami novel, Kafka on the Shore. I was entranced, horrified, and utterly blown away. Humans who converse with cats, Con-cepts that eat cat hearts, a boy named Crow, sex dreams that redefine reality, and characters who exist on the edge of this world and interact with parallel truths. Crazy stuff. But highly engaging, and a breath of fresh Japanese air. Read it. Why not?

Memorable Quotes
(page numbers from hardcover library edition)

“I fumble around in the bushes, but all I touch are branches, hard and twisted like the hearts of bullied little animals.” (65)

“Works that have a certain imperfection to them have an appeal for that very reason—or at least they appeal to certain types of people.” (102)

“Kafka, in everybody’s life there’s a point of no return. And in a very few cases, a point where you can’t go forward anymore. And when we reach that point, all we can do is quietly accept the fact. That’s how we survive.” (148)

“I happen to like the strange ones,” the driver said. “People who look normal and live a normal life—they’re the ones you have to watch out for.” (174)

“A life without revelation is no life at all. What you need to do is move from reason that observes to reason that acts. That’s what’s critical. Do you have any idea what I’m talking about, you gold-plated whale of a dunce?” (255)

“We’re not metaphors.”
“I know,” I say. “But metaphors help eliminate what separates you and me.”
A faint smile comes to her as she looks up at me. “That’s the oddest pickup line I’ve ever heard.” (273)

“Anyone who falls in love is searching for the missing pieces of themselves. So anyone who’s in love gets sad when they think of their lover. It’s like stepping back inside a room you have fond memories of, one you haven’t seen in a long time. It’s just a natural feeling. You’re not the person who discovered that feeling, so don’t go trying to patent it, okay?” (276)

“Having an object that symbolizes freedom might make a person happier than actually getting the freedom it represents.” (292)

“The strength I’m looking for isn’t the kind where you win or lose. I’m not after a wall that’ll repel power coming from outside. What I want is the kind of strength to be able to absorb that outside power, to stand up to it. The strength to quietly endure things—unfairness, misfortune, sadness, mistakes, misunderstandings.” (293)

“I feel like I’m exactly where I belong. When I’m with Mr. Nakata I can’t be bothered with all this Who am I? stuff. Maybe this is going overboard, but I bet Buddha’s followers and Jesus’ apostles felt the same way.” (301)

“That’s what love’s all about, Kafka. You’re the one having those wonderful feelings, but you have to go it alone as you wander through the dark. Your mind and body have to bear it all. All by yourself.” (335)

“That’s right. a reciprocal metaphor. Things outside you are projections of what’s inside you, and what’s inside you is a projection of what’s outside. So when you step into the labyrinth outside you, at the same time you’re stepping into the labyrinth inside. Most definitely a risky business.” (326)

“Without those peak experiences our lives would be pretty dull and flat. Berlioz put it this way: A life without once reading Hamlet is like a life spent in a coal mine.” (352)

“The music that had been playing in my head vanished, leaving behind some faint white noise like a taut white sheet on a huge bed. I touch that sheet, tracing it with my fingertips. The white goes on forever.” (369)

“. . .the forest tries to threaten me. Blowing a chill breath on my neck, stinging like needles with a thousand eyes.” (370)

“Every one of us is losing something precious to us,” he says after the phone stops ringing. “Lost opportunities, lost possibilities, feelings we can never get back again. That’s part of what it means to be alive. But inside our heads—at least that’s where I imagine it—there’s a little room where we store those memories. A room like the stacks in this library. And to understand the workings of our own heart we have to keep on making new reference cards. We have to dust things off every once in a while, let in fresh air, change the water in the flower vases. In other words, you’ll live forever in your own private library.” (432)

Useful Links

Official Haruki Murakami website (worth a click!)

"Book of the Times: Adrift in a Universe in Flux Like Some Big FedEx Box” New York Times Review by Janet Maslin

“Crossing Over” New York Times Book Review by Laura Miller

“Subconscious Tunnels” New Yorker Review by John Updike

Purple Hibiscus

After reading Zadie Smith’s On Beauty over the Christmas holiday, I picked up Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, published in 2003. It will be read by my book club in the coming months. So I will try to avoid spoiling the story.

The author is Nigerian and tells a story of love and a country in turmoil set in her native land. The narrator is fifteen-year-old Kambili, who loves her father and God almost as one when the novel opens. In a few short months, she will begin to find her voice, even if she says very little. The events in the novel happen to her and she reacts and begins to blossom much like the hibiscus flower.

Memorable Quotes
(page numbers from paperback edition)

“I waited for him to ask Jaja and me to take a sip, as he always did. A love sip, he called it, because you shared the little things you loved with the people you loved. . . . The tea was always too hot, always burned my tongue, and if lunch was something peppery, my raw tongue suffered. But it didn’t matter, because I knew that when the tea burned my tongue, it burned Papa’s love into me.” (8)

“Jaja’s defiance seemed to me now like Aunty Ifeoma’s experimental purple hibiscus: rare, fragrant and with the undertones of freedom, a different kind of freedom from the one the crowds waving green leaves chanted at Government Square after the coup. A freedom to be, to do.” (16)

Papa: “Because God has given you so much, he expects much from you. He expects perfection.” (47)

Papa-Nnukwe: “If I had meat in my soup,” Papa Nnukwu said, “I would offer it to you.” (65)

“The first time I heard Aunty Ifeoma call Mama “nwunye m” years ago, I was aghast that a woman called another woman “my wife.” When I asked, Papa said it was the remnants of ungodly traditions, the idea that it was the family and not the man alone that married a wife, and later Mama whispered, although we were alone in my room, “I am her wife, too, because I am your father’s wife. It shows that she accepts me.” (73)

“She said “teenagers” as if she were not one, as if teenagers were a brand of people who, by not listening to culturally conscious music, were a step beneath her. And she said “culturally conscious” in the proud way that people say a word they never knew they would learn until they do.” (118)

“Sometimes I imagined God calling me, his rumbling voice British-accented. He would not say my name right; like Father Benedict, he would place the emphasis on the second syllable rather than the first.” (179-180)

Amaka: “But what’s the point, then?” Amaka said to Father Amadi, as if she had not heard her mother. “What the church is saying is that only an English name will make your confirmation valid. ‘Chiamaka’ says God is beautiful. ‘Chima’ says God knows best, ‘Chiebuka’ says God is the greatest. Don’t they all glorify God as much as ‘Paul’ and ‘Peter’ and ‘Simon’?” (272) “His letters dwell on me.” (303)

“Amaka says that people love priests because they want to compete with God, they want God as a rival. But we are not rivals, God and I, we are simply sharing. I no longer wonder if I have a right to love Father Amadi; I simply go ahead and love him. I no longer wonder if the checks I have been writing to the Missionary Fathers of the Blessed Way are bribes to God; I just go ahead and write them. I no longer wonder if I chose St. Andrew’s church in Enugu as my new church because the priest there is a Blessed Way Missionary Father as Father Amadi is; I just go.” (303-304)

Burning Questions

Why does the author have Kambili draw the distinction between her brother’s defiance and the people’s defiance against a tyrannical government? (See above quote from page 16.) Aren’t they parallel narratives? Is Kambili too young to see this?

Did the father beat the mother and cause the first miscarriage mentioned on pages 32-33? I think that he did because the narrator recognizes the sounds and tries to imagine that it is something else. When the mother returns she claims it was “an accident” and then cleans her figurines. But the author does leave it somewhat unclear. Even if the father didn’t cause the miscarriage (which seems unlikely if he wants more children), he still comes across as a monster when he prays for the mother’s forgiveness.

Did Jaja know that his mother was poisoning his father? It seems that he did (at least after the fact and before Kambilis knows, because he refused to drink out of the cups from his family’s home.) (p. 289)

Useful Links

http://www.readinggroupguides.com/guides3/purple_hibiscus1.asp
Reading Group Guide

http://bookcritics.org/blog/archive/from_the_archives_12_questions_for_chimamanda_adichie
Interview with Author

Zadie Smith: On Beauty

D. and I visited the Boston Public Library today to return a slew of books that had gone overdue while I was away in Kansas. The librarian chastised me for not returning Zadie Smith’s On Beauty—even though it is not yet overdue! “There are people waiting for that book,” she said as she nearly wagged a finger at me. Ouch.

I finished Smith’s novel shortly after arriving in Kansas, and then handed it over to L. to read as well. Naturally I shook my head and gestured innocently as I blamed my boyfriend for keeping the book longer than pleased the librarian.

I find the characters in this novel dynamic. Smith’s portrayal of life both inside the ivy walls and at home for small liberal arts professors works for me—even when there are has loose ends and less than plausible plot twists. The great thing about Smith’s writing is that you can tell how much fun she is having with her characters as they deal with classic human problems in a very contemporary setting.

Memorable Quotes 

(page numbers from hardcover library edition)

Levi Belsey: “It was a matter of an impossible translation—his mother wanted to know about a girl, but it wasn't about a girl or, rather, it wasn’t about just the girl. Jerome had fallen in love with a family. . . .How could he explain how pleasurable it had truly been to give himself up to the Kippses? It was a kind of blissful un-selfing; a summer of un-Belsey; he had allowed the Kippses’ world and their ways to take him over entirely.” (44)

Kiki Belsey: “She had only this brief glimpse of him, but Kiki suspected already that this would be one of those familiar exchanges in which her enormous spellbinding bosom would play a subtle (or not so subtle, depending on the person) silent third role in the conversation. Women bent away from it out of politeness; men – more comfortably for Kiki – sometimes remarked on it in order to get on and over it, as it were. The size was sexual and at the same time more than sexual: sex was only one small element of its symbolic range. Is she were white, maybe it would refer only to sex, but she was not. And so her chest gave off a mass of signals beyond her direct control: sassy, sisterly, predatory, motherly, threatening, comforting – it was a mirror-world she had stepped into in her mid forties, a strange fabulation of the person she believed she was. She could no longer be meek or shy. Her body had directed her to a new personality; people expected new things of her, some of them good, some not.” (47)

“It is an unusual law of such parties that the person whose position on the guest list was originally the least secure is always the first to arrive.” (97)

Howard Belsey: “It’s true that men – they respond to beauty. . .it doesn’t end for them, this. . .this concern with beauty as a physical actuality in the world – and that’s clearly imprisoning and it infantilizes. . . but it’s true and. . .I don’t know how else to explain what – ” (207)

“She called a rose a rose. He called it an accumulation of cultural and biological constructions circulating around the mutually attracting binary poles of nature/artifice.” (225)

“As Dr. Byford explained, she was really the victim of a vicious, peculiarly female psychological disorder: she felt one thing and did another. She was a stranger to herself.” (226)

Victoria Kipps: “But your class – your class is a cult classic. I love your class. Your class is all about never ever saying I like the tomato.” (313)


http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4961669
NPR Interview

Holidaze

We have just returned to Boston after spending a week in Kansas for Christmas. I took my nieces and nephews out on two trips to local bookstores for what has become my holiday tradition: we spend an afternoon browsing and talking about books, often over a hot cup of cocoa or tea. Together we whittle down their selections to one (or sometimes two!). Then I take the books home, wrap them up and pass them out on Christmas Eve when we exchange family presents. I like being the Book Aunt!

I try to follow the 90/10 rule when giving advice about their selections: 90% based on their reading pleasure and 10% of my deeply passionate beliefs about what they should be reading. It is sometimes tempting to impose my reading habits, but I know such selfishness could actually cause them to dislike my choices AND reading. So I give in a bit or a whole lot.

I arrived in KS on the Sunday before Christmas and spent the week book shopping and hanging out with family. L. arrived on Wednesday night and my parents took us out to Montana Grill, owned by Ted Turner and famous for selling the bison meat raised on a ranch miles from the restaurant. Bison is good--tasty and the product of my home state (see my food philosophy).

Friday we rose with the sun and headed off with my parents and M. for a day trip across the plains of western KS. The sun rising over the wild prairie grasses, especially in the Sand Hills, never fails to be awesome. It was a four-hour drive to Damar, KS, where my mother grew up. We stopped to see the Garden of Eden in Lucas, KS and for pie and coffee in their diner (where smoking is still allowed--not that we smoke, but it seems important to convey the essence of the place).

Damar is an unassuming place with a gorgeous church. We made a waffle brunch with eggs cooked in bacon fat before we headed out for a walking tour of the town. We even had time for cousin Brenda to cut L.’s hair. Did you know that there are feral hogs in KS? I had just read about them in the New Yorker. Turns out our cousin’s husband had killed a 350 pound one last year. The trophy dear heads mounted on their living room wall confirmed his prowess.

After another round of coffee, we headed back to the car for a return trip with a view of the setting sun. Why the long drive? I wanted L. to see my mother’s town.

Christmas Eve all the siblings—except the youngest who is wandering around Brazil—met at the church for the 4 o’clock children’s service. Our family took up about 4 or 5 rows and made a fair amount of extra-liturgical noise and activity. After mass we all returned to my parent’s house. Christmas Eve dinner for 25 is a bit much and we have some finicky eaters to account for. In years past we have all eaten at McDonald’s (the shame!) or ordered pizza. After much menu discussion I was put in charge of making chili and baked potatoes with various other toppings. It was a hit. Kids ate. Adults ate. Happily too.

Then the good stuff: We all gathered in our living room (you have to imagine lots of squirming little bodies) to listen as Grandpa read the Christmas Story. This year Anna cuddled up next to him and “helped” him read. There was a stillness as he read the story. Perhaps it was the quiet before the storm of gift giving. After the story, we all shared how we spent our $100 in remembrance of our Grandma Kelley, my dad’s mother. Then we gathered our gifts to be donated in a large Santa sack. Finally, it was time to exchange family gifts. The wrapping paper was deep very soon.

This year Matt made us all caramels, Kathleen made us candied popcorn, Sarah crocheted white delicate ornaments and angels, Margaret made us rich (with lottery tickets!), and I gave the others a set of tea mugs. Presents galore!

Sunday morning we awoke to Santa’s gifts and then started to work on the Christmas Lunch. (I mostly "worked" on lunch by staying out of the kitchen.) At one o’clock we all gathered again (this time minus a few cousins) for turkey, goat (a new tradition as of last year, locally grown by the Amish), mashed potatoes, dumplings, stuffing, meat dressing, squash, and cranberry sauce. Then. . . Matt’s pies: apple (so light, crisp and fragrant), pecan, and pumpkin.

Christmas weather was a balmy 60 degrees. After that big meal it was divine to walk around the neighborhood and see the colors of the setting sun change the prairie grass from gold to pink and back again.

Just a few highlights from our holiday in KS!

And I didn’t even mention the NuWay!

A Brief Reading History

Recently I was asked to give an account of books/authors that have influenced me and my writing. It is an impossible task, really. Too many books crowd my head and it is impossible to list them all. But here goes in roughly chronological order:

I loved the Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis and stories about Ramona by Beverly Clearly.

Growing up I was a huge Stephen King fan, until I got too creeped out reading Gerald's Game. We used to sneak his novels beneath our desks during English class. You have got to admire his craft. I adored Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card and Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. Now that I look back, reading was kind of what the boys did and my reading selections mirror that. The other book that stands out as an influence was A Girl of the The Limberlost by Gene Stratton-Porter, which was given to me by my Grandmother. It is a coming-of-age tale set in Indiana. I reread that one many times. These were books in which I got lost.

In college I really discovered literature (I was a science/sports geek in high school). One of my majors was essentially a Great Books program, which means we read works from the Western canon. I love the classics. But here is the stuff that moved me from college: Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto, A Passage to India by E.M. Forester, Arcardia by Tom Stoppard, The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Kundera, Goethe's Sorrows of Young Werther, Pope's Essay on Man, The Collected Stories of Flannery O'Connor and, of course, Shakespeare. There are others, but I'll spare you.

It has only been since I started to teach high school English that I began to seriously read like a writer. When I had to teach reading/writing/story concepts to 9th graders, I had to be able to analyze a story so that its mechanics were visible to my students (without destroying the magic, which gets dicey). Books/Authors that have moved me in this era include: Blindness by Saramago (really, a favorite), anything by Margaret Atwood or Louse Erdrich, Toni Morrison, Ian McEwan and Alice Munro among others. Most recently I finished Gaddis's Carpenter's Gothic and I am slightly obsessed. Oh, I can't leave out The Vagina Monologues, which I produced/directed for three years. I swear I can quote that text like a good Christian can quote the bible.

So the few authors I have mentioned thus far have shaped and informed my literary tastes and views. I suppose the most interesting thing I can contribute is what has come as a great surprise to me: One of the most significant influences on my creative writing is. . . . nonfiction. I never had the time for it, until the past few years. Now I realize that it greatly contributes to my understanding of the world: society and history etc. and thus informs my fictional worlds. Books I would say are must reads for this purpose: The Tipping Point and the many New Yorker articles of Malcom Gladwell; Fast Food Nation by Schlosser; Savage Inequalities by Kozol; and of course The New York Times. Read the paper.

This is far from complete, but it is a little glimpse into my reading history and writing future.

Food Philosophy in a Fast Food Nation

Let me start with this: I love french fries. And I am not alone.

Several weeks ago I blogged about my choice to become a vegetarian (read entry). For years I was a vegetarian, but that initial phase was set in motion less by philosophy than by an urge to control my caloric intake. I met a Hungarian in 1997 and soon thereafter sat at his mother’s table. The chicken paprikas and the winter salami were divine. Thus began an earnest meat eating phase. Actually I think it was a healthy phase insofar as I enjoyed what I ate without undue worry about calories. Thus for many years I maintained a "vegetarian" philosophy--an awareness that my eating habits were not in tune with my own health or the health of the environment, but did not practice it. I went about my eating with a robust appetite but without much thought.

Occasionally I would stop to ponder the right way to use foods. Should I pay money for bottled water that has been shipped half-way around the world? Is it right to stuff cows full of antibiotics? Would I want to work at a Fast Food place? Then my father recommended Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nationsoon after it debuted in 2002.

I found the book a fascinating account of the Fast Food industry's history in America, as well as an expose about where and how foods are produced. He hits on issues such as the Fast Food’s use of advertising to attract children, the safety and worker’s rights of restaurant workers as well as slaughterhouse workers and farmers, and the impact of the industry’s demand for uniformity of product has on agriculture and the environment.

Schlosser’s work deeply impressed me and for a time I abstained from Fast Food. I am weak, however and slowly gave in and ordered fries, now and then. Then I started a demanding job whose commute took me down a strip of Fast Food restaurants. It started with fries—my personal addiction—and ended up with numerous meals consumed in my car between work and meetings. I had fallen, totally. At least I didn’t take my family there, I reasoned. It was so convenient and so yummy. Let me be clear: I love, desire even, a good burger and a heap of fries. This is why it is hard for me to say no.

Now I live in a neighborhood in a larger city that allows me to walk almost everywhere I need to go. If it is too far (or too cold!), I can take the metro or the busses. The occasion to enter a Fast Food chain is rare. Thus my consumption has declined. My life has slowed down as well. Instead of rushing to work and rushing home exhausted and starved, I lead a slow writer’s life. In my pajamas till noon, then out in the city to a local independent bookstore to read or write some more. There are numerous independent bookstores and cafes from which to choose. Yes, Starbucks is just around the corner. Yes, I do go there—mostly for hot tea and a study session. Starbucks does not offer french fries and a burger; so, for the time being, their establishment is less problematic for me.

Perhaps my change to a slower lifestyle has given me the time to think more deeply about my food philosophy. When I met a certain Iranian at a party, who is a practicing vegetarian, I was primed to commit myself to practice my food beliefs as well. It was also necessary for me to sit down and spell out my food philosophy, which is why I am composing this entry.

First, let me clarify my gastronomical values:

1) I value the environment. The Fast Food industry has changed the American landscape because of its demand for uniformity. All french fries must be x inches long, etc. So instead of local farmers with local potato varieties, we have mass farms producing one potato. Cows are produced and kept alive by antibiotics so that each hamburger patty is exactly uniform. Cows today, bred for the Fast Food Nation, are not fit to stay alive, let alone eat. Pink-in-plastic salves our consciences. Thus I should abstain from eating foods that are grown/raised in ways that damage the environment and biodiversity.

2) I value community. So I will make the effort to eat local products. For example, here in Boston I have been eating fish and canned tuna (harvested safely). The fish industry has its own problems, I am sure. But at this point I feel that fish farming has fewer problems and that it is healthy to consume fish. As I am currently based near the Atlantic, certain fishes are local. It makes sense to consume the local product. If I lived near an organic beef ranch, I would readily consume that product. If I lived in Hungary, I'd go for salami. Or if I lived in Japan, I would readily consume tofu. Local is good.

3) I value hospitality. This is where my vegetarianism gets grey, but I am okay with the grey. Hospitality trumps philosophy. If a person prepares meat for me—especially in their home—I will never refuse it.

4) I value rituals. Holidays—Thanksgiving to weddings—trump philosophy. I wish I were Indian and had grown up in a vegetarian family that had special lentil dishes for holidays. But I didn’t. In my family, the turkey reigns. What can I do? I could abstain, but that is so abrasive and just plain sad. At this point, I do not have children of my own. So, perhaps I will have to reevaluate my traditional menu if I have my own little ones to cook for. On the other hand, perhaps it is healthy to reserve meats for special occasions? For example, eat the turkey on Thanksgiving as long as it is a local, fresh bird.

5) I value my health. This means that I will consider my personal health needs when I choose my foods. Preservatives and chemicals, in general, can be easily avoided. Food in boxes makes a big profit for the food industry, but it is not necessarily healthy for me to consume.

After this values clarification work, I realize that I am not really a “vegetarian”. I do abstain from most store bought meat and other industrial foods, and I do abstain from Fast Food. This means: no french fries, unless they are prepared from fresh potatoes, which is more difficult than giving up meat. Since I do not completely abstain from meat, I can't call myself vegetarian. Yet there is no catchy title for my food philosophy. Is there? Let me know if there is!

Here a few things that Schlosser recommends can be done in an effort to use food wisely:

1) “Nobody in America is forced to buy fast food. The first step toward meaningful change is by far the easiest: stop buying it. The executives who run the fast food industry are not bad men. They are businessmen. They will sell free-range, organic, grass-fed hamburgers if you demand it. They will sell whatever sells at a profit.”

2) Ban advertising directed at children less than eight years of age. “Today the health risks faced by the nation’s children far outweigh the needs of its mass marketers.” Thirty years ago cigarette ads aimed at adults were banned and smoking has decreased ever since. This ban would also encourage fast food chains to alter their recipes for children to make them healthier.

3) Fast food chains should provide fair wages and adequate health care benefits for their workers instead of churning through unskilled labor.

He recommends the following websites:

www.commercialexploitation.com
The Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood is an organization trying to limit marketing to kids.

www.mcspotlight.org
This is a rowdy, iconoclastic website about McDonald's

www.slowfood.com
The Slow Food Movement promotes agriculture that is traditional and sustainable, as well as food that is delicious.

www.lasatergrasslandsbeef.com
Dale Lasater's "wonderful" grass-fed beef, availabe online

www.ranchfoodsdirect.com
Mike Callicrate sells natural, antibiotic-free and hormone-free beef, produced outside the industrialized, meatpacking system.

www.heritagefoodsusa.com
This site has turkey, chicken, pork, lamb and wild salmon produced the "right way" and for sale online.

I urge you to read Schlosser's book for an in-depth look at these issues and what you can do to become a thoughtful eater. Food and eating are central to our biological and social lives. It is too bad that so many of our food decisions bypass our brains.