Doctor, Patient, Poetry

Being sick has very few advantages that I can name. Literary enthusiast that I am, I would not subject myself to illness simply to come upon insight about literature. However, it can happen.

Having been sick recently, I was reminded today how much of medicine is reliant on, first, self-diagnosis, and second, the communication between doctor and patient. As a result, the doctor’s role is far less different from a literary scholar’s than you might think.

The doctor can rely on certain objective (if all equipment functions and is used and interpreted correctly) measurements like weight, heart rate, lung sounds, blood pressure, and temperature. Similarly, literati can note (with some discrepancies) the meter, rhyme scheme, rhetorical devices, and shape of a poem.

After that, though, unless the diagnosis is serious enough to merit more tests, much of the examination is based on the patient’s response to questions:

• Are you in pain?
• How much pain?
• How often do you cough?
• Have you noticed improvement since you started the medication?
• Have you experienced any side effects?

Even I, a conscientious patient, notice the ambiguity in my conversations with the doctor. I ask clarifying questions, but I’m not always sure that we understand each other. I’m not sure if I’m describing my condition accurately or in the right terms.

Like it or not, some symptoms are subjective and not as “scientific” as medical personnel would like. It is the doctor’s job to take what I’m saying and try to translate that into what it means for my health. A poet does something similar, looking not simply at the words that are used, but how they relate to one another to produce meaning.

I am not making the argument that analyzing poetry is the same or as important as diagnosing illness. As much as I love literature, I go to see a doctor, not a scholar, when I’m sick.

What I am suggesting is that the broadest divide is one of knowledge, and to a lesser extent, purpose—not method. Both jobs require thoughtful consideration of words and the meanings they convey. Both require judgment skills. Both require the ability to synthesize individual pieces of information into a deeper understanding of the whole.

And in that respect, Pre-Med and English majors may have more in common than the initial diagnosis would indicate.

Literati versus the CEO

Last month, columnist David Brooks wrote an op-ed run by the Salt Lake Tribune called “Why people in literature, media, don’t understand business.” Unfortunately, the full text of the article is no longer available.

I’m a fan of Brooks’ writing, but the article bothered me a little. Brooks’ point was that the skills required of a CEO do not call for a well-rounded person, but rather someone with the ability to focus singly on the job.

He has a point. (The unwillingness of the literati to let go of the Oxford comma may also be a factor.)

This admission made me take a step back to reconsider my own views on the subject of literature and the workforce. I’ve always been a strong believer in the practical value of the liberal arts. But look where I am: working part time, getting ready to return to academia in pursuit of a job that will require me to divide my attention between those who love literature and those who just want to pass the class.

So is that it? Should academia and corporate America go their separate ways, each graciously conceding the theoretical significance of the other sector, but remaining largely disparate from it?

I have to say no.

At the risk of shooting myself in the foot, I’ll concede: reading Jane Eyre may do little for your day-to-day leadership skills. And yet learning has to start somewhere.

I was browing the Internet a few days ago when I found a blog post from the Acton Institute. The author begins by admitting, “I don’t read very fast.” He goes on:

…it’s amazing to me that with all the hope and change being discussed and voted on in Congress these days, that the laws being proposed and voted on — laws, some of which we can down load in massive pdf files — have been read and inwardly digested by the elected representatives who will vote on our behalf. [...] some of these proposed laws are over a thousand pages long.

He then asks the challenging question,

…how did the Founders manage to get a country going with a document we can still read over a cup of coffee?

More words doesn’t mean better ideas. It does, however, make mindlessness easier, particularly if one has little experience decoding complex texts.

Reading, like any other skill, requires practice. Critical thinking requires even more. In “An Examination Into the Leading Principles of the Federal Constitution” (1787), Noah Webster wrote this:

In the formation of our constitution the wisdom of all ages is collected–the legislators of antiquity are consulted, as well as the opinions and interests of the millions who are concerned. It short, it is an empire of reason.

David Brooks may be right when he concludes that today’s CEO does not need literature. He may be right that people in literature fail to understand business. (I’ll be the first to raise my hand.)

Perhaps, though, the problem lies in the fact that both sides need to redefine their priorities. For the literati, that may involve a descent from the ivory tower. For the CEOs, that may involve an occasional step away from the bottom line. I dare say both parties, myself included, would find themselves better off for the experience.

Faith and Fiction

Author Mary E. DeMuth writes in BreakPoint magazine, “What flows to a thirsty world comes from what is inside our hearts. And our hearts are typically instructed through story, not bullet points.”

Concisely and poignantly, DeMuth reviews from a Christian perspective a handful of reasons why reading fiction has lasting value: it draws us into community; it reveals our own hiding places; it deepens our understanding of truth; it pulls us out of ourselves.

“I’ve better understood (and wept over) genocide after reading stories,” DeMuth says. “My prayers have deepened for those experiencing human trafficking. Why? Because a novel took me to places my visa wouldn’t take me; novels widened my American-centric view of the world.”

Christians and non-Christians alike can appreciate the novel’s ability to undercut even Priceline in making “travel,” or at least exposure to another culture, available to the masses. (Not to mention the fact that airplanes have yet to master time travel).

Empathy is often the first step toward inspiration to act or seek change, and stories are ideally suited to foster empathy.

In her conclusion, DeMuth again underlines the active nature of fiction, saying, “Some novels have destroyed lives, wreaked havoc. But there are novels that have instigated revolutions, restored hope, enacted life-giving legislation.”

It is true: humans, not books, effect change. However, it is equally true that what we read can have a profound impact on the kind of change we choose to effect.

DeMuth’s newest novel, Daisy Chain, is available from Amazon. (Also see Redeeming Fiction, from The Point.)

Dear Frustrated Student…

For most college students, the year is over or shortly to be over. K-12 students might have a little longer. That being said, I’m surprised views of my site have yet to plummet, and have in fact risen. 

I would venture a guess that many students have been assigned last-minute papers on The Great Gatsby, Hamlet, or A Christmas Carol. How do I know? Word Press tells me what search terms have been used to find this site. Many are surprisingly similar; clusters are very specific, and even identical. 

I’ve been there too, trying to write a paper when I didn’t fully understand the intent of the assignment or the work on which it was based. (For me, the killers were Derrida and postmodern literature). 

However frustrated you may be, however desperate, however eager just to turn something in — think very hard before you take the easy route and copy an article from Wikipedia, buy an essay online, or use my blog as a starting point for your thesis. (The last would be doubly unwise, because I don’t even have an advanced degree in the field.)

Plagiarism is “the unauthorized use or close imitation of the language and thoughts of another author and the representation of them as one’s own original work” (Random House, 2009).

It’s not just copy-and-paste; it’s taking someone’s idea and calling it your own. It’s paraphrasing without giving credit. It’s claiming something that is not your own work. It’s cheating.

I’m not your teacher, your parent, or your guidance counselor. But as a fellow writer and student, I urge you to think about a few things before you click “paste.” 

     1. The chances that you will get caught are very good. It’s not an insult to your intellect to say teachers can tell a difference between your writing style and the essay you’ve copied from the Internet. If you can find it, so can they.

     2. If you don’t get caught now, you may later. What then? As a former member of the student-based judiciary at my college, I can tell you that you would fail the assignment. You would probably fail the class, meaning you would have to retake it or keep an ‘F’ on your transcript. You could face mandatory tutoring sessions or punative writing assignments. And you thought you were too busy to write the first paper! 

     3. If you put enough effort into disguising your cheating, you’ve probably expended more effort than you would have used in writing the paper yourself. Is it really worth it?

     4. Even if you never pick up a work of literature again, you will have to use critical thinking to analyze a decision, a project, a report, or a budget. You will have to write clear, concise reports, e-mails, or cover letters. The life skills you’re developing do have value.

     5. To me, what is most important is that by doing your own work, you are developing an ethic of diligence and honesty. You’re learning to ask for help if you don’t understand an assignment or are afraid you can’t complete it in time. You’re learning to work hard and manage your time, even if failure is the most effective way to learn.

At a job, down the road, you may have a heavy workload that seems impossible. Will you borrow someone else’s work and call it your own? Will you take shortcuts that may cost the company or your co-workers later? Will you take the easy way out? Or will you do your best, seek help when you can, and create a result of which you can be proud?

I hope, even if it means my blog will get fewer hits a day, that you will choose the latter not only then, but now.

Literature for…Psychology

The community of famous literary characters (here’s one designation of the top 10 – incidentally written by a psychologist specializing in the arts) includes suicidal introverts, individuals disassociated from reality, incestuous fathers, and drug addicts. Most of them seem like prime candidates for the oft-stereotyped psychiatrist’s couch.

The gap between literary studies and psychology should be thin. And yet  in psychology, the study of books may be entertaining, but it does not begin to approach the utility of psychological studies and research papers. So how can the literati emphasize the crossover skills literature has to offer?

The simplest route is for students to anyalyze literary characters as if they were real people. Hamlet has been used (and, some could say, abused) in this role for decades: this page offers a good overview. But I think another route exists, a subtler and more realistic meeting point of the two disciplines. 

One of the most basic premises of a book report is that the student (a reader, an individual) will like or dislike the assigned book. What makes writing the judgment element of the paper so difficult is the need to give a reason.

• “Why did you hate reading Moby Dick and love reading Harry Potter? – they’re almost the same length!” 
• “Why did you sympathize with Hester Prynne and not with Roger Chillingworth?”
• “I thought you hated Brothers Karamazov!” … “I did – at first.”

In psychology (and communication studies), students learn to look beyond instinctive reactions to the triggers that cause or invite them.

A new way to approach literature would be to evaluate the motivators that inspire like or dislike on the part of readers.  One method would be to establish a scale for like/dislike (say 1-10, with one being strong dislike, 5 being apathy, and 10 being strong enjoyment).  At the end of each chapter, students would rate their impression of the book, without looking back to see previous rankings.

After finishing the book, students would look for chapters that marked turning points in their attitude toward the book, return to those chapters, and look for variables that changed – a new character, a shift in style, or the onset of action, for example. 

To make it more interesting, students could compare notes to see if any parts of the book inspired universal distaste or admiration among their classmates. Those sections would be excellent fodder for a discussion on shared preferences among people in the students’ demographics, or even on Jungian archetypes. 

As I have said in previous posts, if this topic swerves from traditional literary criticism, bear in mind that the skills or principles are the same, just framed in different vocabulary.  In order to learn the skills, the student may need to complete more traditional analysis of literature.  In order to instill the drive and enthusiasm, the teacher may need to be willing to speak in terms the student can appreciate.

Literati for…Life

Lovers of literature, like me, may ask how their artistic or literary pursuits fit into their daily lives. Does literature have to be a career to be a true passion? What can career literati offer to society? The question quickly becomes, in making literature an isolated pursuit, has the answer been lost?

Go back to the late fourteenth century, to Ming China, another context in which “literati” attempted to carve out and define their niche. (See this overview of the period from Washington State University’s World Civilizations website.)

For this ProfoundNet, I’ve chosen The Flowering of China’s Scholar-Artists, a Gallery View piece published in 1987 in The New York Times. The exhibit in question is “The Chinese Scholar’s Studio: Artistic Life in the Late Ming Period,” at the Asia Society.

Lohan Seated in a Tree (1608)

The article, quoting James C. Wyatt, defines literati as a “highly cultivated group of men in the late Ming whose basic training was in literature but whose major achievements were in almost any artistic activity outside their field of professional competence.”

As artists in a highly structured, orderly society, “everything had a place but nothing quite fit.” They looked to intuition, spontaneity, and nature for inspiration, but they also valued order, structure, and establishment.

As intellectuals, they were treated with alternating generosity and suspicion. Their culture was embedded in everything they produced.

Spontaneity and restraint. Order in chaos. Reaction and convention. Thinking and feeling.

In order to offer a constructive model of change, one must take into account these dichotomies. Politics, at the forefront of civil debate today, requires foresight and balance between the short-term and the long-term vision, between reform and steadiness. Education, another important issue, requires a blend of creativity and conten or structure. Economics is measured by subtle shifts along a range of curves: supply and demand, productivity, balances of trade and currency. 

So much of literature is about finding balance (comedy, romance) or exploring the consequences when balance is lost (history, tragedy).

One of my favorite movies is the 1971 musical Fiddler on the Roof. Consider this quote:  ”You might say every one of us is a fiddler on the roof trying to scratch out a pleasant, simple tune without breaking his neck.”

Is Tevye’s statement still relevant? Think back to the comments of the Nobel Prize Committee about American literature.

Perhaps American literati, like Anne in Lucy Maude Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables, need a Josie Pye to push us to take risks and climb out of our comfortable box; because while the literati of America may no longer seek out the ridgepole on a daily basis, we come from a heritage of innovation, of effecting change while still balancing tradition.

Literature for…Science

At the small liberal arts college I attended, we used to joke about the physical divide between the Arts and Humanities students and the Sciences students. The main street running through campus neatly separated the buildings. Trying to cross the “Dinkel Divide” was risky, especially during the morning and afternoon commutes.

Although other schools may not have the same physical representation of the divide, the sentiments tend to be similar. General education classes for the sciences major include the dreaded literature class, and many arts and humanities majors live in fear of natural and physical sciences requirements.

Not everyone shares this sense of mutual exclusion. The book Math and the Mona Lisa by Bulent Atalay is an interesting discourse rooted in the work of one of the most famous interdisciplinary scholars, Leonardo da Vinci.

Students may recognize the value of broad-based knowledge, or they may simply enjoy literature or science outside their choice of careers, but I think it is fair to say that many students and scholars on each side of the divide fail to see the applicability of study in the other discipline.

Because I am a staunch advocate of the liberal arts and the interconnectedness of all subjects (see the root meaning of the word “encyclopedia” - en-kyklo-paideia, or education in a circular manner), I like to think about ways that the study of literature could hone skills scientists could cross-apply to their own fields.

One possibility is the similarities between the scientific experiments designed by scientists and the social experiments designed by writers. Some novels, particularly those with a political or moral core, begin by asking the reader a question. The story is, in essence, the data of the experiment, from which readers must formulate their own conclusions.

Like characters in literature, facts in science – particularly in controversial areas – are subject to interpretation and manipulation.  Recognizing the craft of storytelling in literature is one way to learn, a) recognition of crafted arguments in science, and b) awareness that individuals can use data to support their own viewpoint.        

Robert Oppenheimer

As technology improves and moves forward at an ever-increasing rate, pure science and its applications can no longer be entirely separate.  (See Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle or the writings of Robert Oppenheimer for more thoughts on this subject).  

Ethical questions that scientists now face are, in their simplest forms, not new. Tampering with nature. Choosing one life over another. The greater good. Authors like Mary Shelley (Frankenstein) and N. Hawthorne (“The Birthmark“) dealt with these questions.  So have writers and thinkers all the way back to Hippocrates.  

As modern scientists are called more and more into the spotlight for ethical decision-making, it is important for them to consider the foundations of ethics, so that when a difficult quandary arises, they will have a basis for the choices they are required to make.  Literature is one way to open these valuable discussions.

So how can these crossover skills be emphasized?  

One way to make the ties between literature and science more apparent is to apply a scientific template to a literary product.  Students could take a novel like Frankenstein or Cat’s Cradle with a definite purpose or theme and write it up as a “lab report.”  With what question is the author concerned?  What is his/her hypothesis?  What data are provided by characters and events in the book?  What conclusions does the author want you to derive?  Do other data – history, science, other peoples’ life stories – support these conclusions?

As I said in a previous post, if this topic swerves from traditional literary criticism, bear in mind that the skills or principles are the same, just framed in different vocabulary.  In order to learn the skills, the student may need to complete more traditional analysis of literature.  In order to instill the drive and enthusiasm, the teacher may need to be willing to speak in terms the student can appreciate.

…Incidentally, science for English majors would be the subject for another post altogether, and one I am not qualified to pursue. I would love to hear the thoughts of those who are…

Literature for…Business

“But how is this ever going to help me?” 

General education classes.  The college student’s bane.  Why not just focus on one subject area and truly excel there?  There are strong arguments on both sides of the Liberal Arts debate.  This 2004 article from Jay Mathews of the Washington Post is a great place to start… 

But setting aside the theoretical arguments for a moment (not dismissing them, just setting them aside for the purpose of discussion), let’s talk about whether or not literature has practical value for someone in, say, business.  Science.  Math.  Political Science.  Psychology.  History.

And are there ways that literature professors can make literature expansive and enlightening for everyone and yet applicable for each individual at the same time?

Let’s start with business.  First, what qualities or skills might a business major gain from a literature class?  On a large scale, making business deals and negotiating requires the ability to read people, to analyze their past actions and find a way to approach them on their level.  You need to learn to read their subtext. 

Thanks to classic literature, literary characters are multi-dimensional and complex.  In order to understand them and analyze their character, you will study their actions and venture a guess at their motivations.  In other words, you will learn to read the subtext. 

Conducting business also requires the ability to calculate the risks and advantages of an action and to make high-pressure decisions.  To do these things, you have to see through the lens of multiple outcomes.

When you study literature, you gain perspective by looking at a work using different critical methods.  Reading Alice in Wonderland in the context of the author’s life and relationships gives a vastly different reading than viewing the book as a social commentary on Victorian England.  In other words, you must learn to look at a text through multiple lenses. 

So how can these crossover skills be emphasized?

Forbes: Jay Gatsby

Some writing assignments can be tailored to match these skills.  For example, if Jay Gatsby were alive and offered you a business deal, on the basis of his past dealings as recorded in The Great Gatsby, would you take it? (see this fictional article in Forbes).  Analyze the foundations of the Boss’s empire in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court: was his development plan for England built on sound principles?

If these topics swerve from traditional literary criticism, bear in mind that the skills or principles are the same, just framed in different vocabulary.  This requires compromise and flexibility from both parties: student and professor.  In order to learn the skills, the student may need to complete more traditional analysis of literature.  In order to instill the drive and enthusiasm, the teacher may need to be willing to speak in terms the student can appreciate.