This commencement speech was originally given in 2008 at Harvard, and it was not lost on Rowling that the people she spoke to had lives that were percThis commencement speech was originally given in 2008 at Harvard, and it was not lost on Rowling that the people she spoke to had lives that were perceived by the outside world as every bit as magical as Harry Potter’s.
That may be why she focused on failure, a thing Harvard graduates may not be expected to know enough about, and imagination, which she credits with making the world a better place. Utter abject romantic and financial failure after her graduation with a Classics degree taught her what resources she had inside that failure could not destroy but, paradoxically, could set free. And Rowling tells us that imagination has to do with empathy—imagining worlds we have not lived—and how critical that is for a world in which we want to live.
Rowling was eloquent on the subject of her first paying job, at Amnesty International in London, where she learned that terrific and terrible evil can exist, and how empathy can allow our indignation and refusal to submit to surface. Those who refuse to see the burdens under which others struggle can collude with evil through apathy, without ever committing an evil act themselves.
University-educated young people will have some idea of the world outside their doors and will be able to conceive of solutions for the very difficult problems that plague us. In a way, Rowling’s speech would be best widely read outside of Harvard’s yard, among those folks who are fearful of what is to come and who are not sure they have the intellectual resources to meet challenges they cannot even imagine.
One of the things that those attending Harvard are expected to understand and to internalize is competition. And yet, our success in the world—the success OF the world—may depend on cooperation. What worries me more than a few Harvard graduates escaping those hallowed walls thinking they just want to claw their way to the top of the heap are the people who have begun to disparage education, learning, empathy, compassion, and self-knowledge. This is the far greater danger, the looking backward, the denial of science, of imagination. Rowling says
“We do not need magic to transform our world; we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better.”
Snyder, a professor of history at Yale University, has written a pamphlet reminiscent of Thomas Paine’s Common Sense which was written in 1776, at AmeSnyder, a professor of history at Yale University, has written a pamphlet reminiscent of Thomas Paine’s Common Sense which was written in 1776, at America’s beginning. Snyder’s pamphlet contains twenty admonitions for us to consider as we pay attention to the political environment we see right now in the United States. The first sentence of Snyder’s Prologue brings us right back to our founding fathers, the Constitution, and the democratic republic they envisioned.
It’s a small book, the quarter-page size running slightly more than one hundred pages. I love short books. “Tell me what you’re thinking and let me think about it,” is how I view it. However, in this case, the brevity may leave a few notions unclear. We need to be careful in reading, combing it over until our questions are clarified, calling them out and talking with others about them if not.
There is no reason for me to deny I agree with Snyder’s take on the present administration and the henchmen that carry out the damaging policies dreamed up by our thoughtless, fearful leader. For that reason I was all set to clap through a review, stamping it with my approval. Imagine my surprise, then, to find myself slowing down and viewing what Snyder has decided to spotlight with a critical eye.
The very first point Snyder makes caused me to back up, circle around, scratch my head until it finally dawned on me that we probably agree. What Snyder says is 1. Do Not Obey in Advance which in my parlance would be, “Do not anticipate your leader’s orders.” The example he gives is
“In 1941, when Germany invaded the Soviet Union, the SS took the initiative to devise the methods of mass killing without orders to do so. They guessed what their superiors wanted and demonstrated what was possible. It was far more than Hitler had thought.”
Snyder goes on to say that “anticipatory obedience means adapting instinctively, without reflection.” Yes, I agree that the eagerness to be agreeable can make fools of us. Even if we are in the uniformed services, Snyder argues, we have the responsibility to 7. Be Reflective if You Must Be Armed. “Be ready to say no” and stand up for our values.
19. Be a Patriot. The word patriot has been so bandied about we are no longer sure what it means any more. Snyder tries to help us think critically about this concept. In addition, he exhorts us to remain skeptical and 11. Investigate and still 10. Believe in Truth. The world is changing rapidly and dangers are all around us. We must 17. Listen for Dangerous Words and do not allow words to be hijacked and used against us. We can reclaim our vocabulary and the language of reason, but it requires speech, action, dissent.
To give us feel a measure of stability and solidarity in a political world in which we no longer have faith, Snyder suggests we 2. Defend Institutions: we created institutions to protect citizens from changes in attitudes and government. We must defend them now, when they come under attack, so that they continue to be able to protect us when needed.
And when Snyder exhorts us to 3. Beware the One-Party State, he means
“We believe we have checks and balances [in government], but have rarely faced a situation like the present: when the less popular of the two parties controls every lever of power at the federal level, as well as the majority of statehouses. The party that exercises such control proposes few policies that are popular with the society at large, and several that are generally unpopular—and thus must either fear democracy or weaken it.”
We must be strong, 18. Be Calm When the Unthinkable Arrives, and 20. Be As Courageous As You Can. “If none of us is prepared to die for freedom, then all of us will die under tyranny.” When I read these words I thought of the bravery of the man in the white shirt holding grocery bags in each hand who stood in front of rolling tanks during the Tiananmen Incident in China in 1989. It wasn’t just that man who showed extraordinary bravery, but the soldier in the tank whose orders were to reach the square. He stopped, disobeying orders, and for all he knew, would bear the wrath of his superiors. That’s when we know the values hold and the country is not irreparably broken.
I was eleven or perhaps twelve years old when I learned that ignorance is no excuse for anything.
That revelation completely changed the way I viewed I was eleven or perhaps twelve years old when I learned that ignorance is no excuse for anything.
That revelation completely changed the way I viewed the world. I ran to my parents, separately, I remember, my eyes wide. I said to each of them, “Ignorance is no excuse!” It won’t save anyone from the repercussions of whatever they are ignorant of. You can die as a result of ignorance or you can participate in something evil as a result of ignorance.
As I remember it, my parents did not say anything. There is much I would think as a result of my eleven-year-old coming to me with such a revelation, and I am not sure I would know what to respond, either. But it was a big moment, and it came from reading a novel.
Now I wonder which novel gave me such an insight, but I cannot remember. I was an ordinary schoolgirl, with no special access to literature. I read too much, my sisters said, and most of them were bodice-rippers…
This book reminds me of that moment of realization. The insights into what man is and how he responds to national, political, and personal trauma come fast and hard in this work. Alexievich begins by recording voices from the Gorbachev years: “Those were wonderful, naïve years…” Both for and against Gorbachev, the voices record people’s naiveté. They had an excuse, the lack of reliable, comprehensive news coverage one of them, but it would not save them from their future nor their past.
There is simply nothing to compare with this fabulous reconstruction of the lives of people under communism and after. Alexievich records the stories of people under the dictatorship of the people, and there is so much nuance, so much pain, fear, crazy love, faith, and delusion tied in with people’s understanding of those years that it becomes as clear a record of what humanity is that we have.
“Changing the nature of man” was on the table. From the sounds of some voices, it succeeded on every measure. But if nature can be changed, we question again what "nature" is. Naomi Klein tells us man is not hopelessly greedy but it is hard to see that when greed is rewarded and protected. The Soviet Union, Russia, has gone through enormous social upheaval in the last one hundred years, and Alexievich manages to give us a window through which we can begin to see what happened to people.
Among the voices are ordinary folk, high Kremlin officials, members of the brigades who spent their days shooting “enemies of the people.” We see what they were thinking at the time and what they are thinking now. Because governance the world over has many similarities, constraints, and imperatives, everyone who can read should see how governance actually plays out, no matter what we believe.
These people are not so different from us. They are just people after all. All that they did, all they experienced, can happen to us. It is necessary to be vigilant, to be aware, so that we do not, inadvertently, give evil a chance to thrive. Alexievich has taken memory and made literature. For me, it will be one of the most meaningful books I have ever come across.
I want to point everyone to Ilse's review of this title. She does such a lovely job of articulating what Alexievich managed to accomplish....more
Richard Price is something of a wonder. Word on the avenue is that he wrote this under the pseudonym Harry Brandt hoping a popular pot-boiler would brRichard Price is something of a wonder. Word on the avenue is that he wrote this under the pseudonym Harry Brandt hoping a popular pot-boiler would bring in some fast cash while he could keep his street cred as a literatteur. It is kind of laughable when you see what he did with the form. His characters have motivations so deep we can cut loose our therapists, the plotting is so intense and detailed I needed a name map, and his language is so fly I learned on the job. Nah, this is like no pot-boiler that I can think of. Brandt overshot the mark by a mile, coming in way high on this one.
At a time in our nation’s history when we are steeped in talk of race, cops and black men, and justifiable shootings, a book called The Whites grabs our attention. But the treatment of race in this novel is the healthiest, most irrelevant subject in this novel. In this book race is a descriptor, not a definition.
The Whites instead refers to the white whales, suspects who got away: “those who had committed criminal obscenities…and then walked away untouched by justice…” Every cop has his or her own personal “white,” and Price is democratic in this, too. One of the five hard-core detectives who started as cops in one of the worst precincts in the East Bronx and were then promoted and dispersed as detectives across the boroughs is a woman. As a group, they are called the “Wild Geese.”
All of the WG were obsessed with their Whites,
“heading into retirement with pilfered case files to pore over in their office and basements at night, still making the odd unsanctioned follow-up call: to the overlooked counterman in the deli where the killer had had a coffee in the morning of the murder, to the cousin upstate who had never been properly interviewed about the last phone conversation he had with the victim, to the elderly next-door neighbor who left on a Greyhound to live with her grandchildren down in Virginia two days after the bloodbath on the other side of the shared living room wall—and always, always, calling on the spouses, children, and parents of the murdered: on the anniversary of the crime on the victims’ birthdays, at Christmas, just to keep in touch, to remind those left behind that they had promised an arrest that bloody night so many years ago and were still on it.”
Only Billy Graves, the youngest of the WG, is still on the job. “His flatline personality and bland solidness” is the rock in his marriage to a damaged ER nurse, and to the group of WG who find they fear his uncompromising relationship to the truth and duty.
There was also another detective, not a WG, who had his own personal White. This novel is about finding Whites and bringing them to justice, legally or not. Price makes us see the struggles, hear the backstory, recall the misery, and gives each man and woman a reason for murder.
This novel recalls “mean streets” narratives of the past, either in film or fiction, either in Europe or the United States. The idea of Whites is not new. But Price makes it as American as Melville, as classic as Moby Dick. The laconic questioning, the deadness behind the eyes, the sense of justice, the quality of the brutality, the mean streets—these are all ours.
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I was looking for something to listen to while working and this one was available. I;d already liked the book, so was very pleased to find the audio terrific. Read by Ari Fliakos and produced by Macmillan Audio, this audiobook is a perfect listen. All the confusing bits come clear, and the desperation of the characters comes through loud and clear....more
David Foster Wallace gave only one commencement address in his foreshortened life. I say only one, but I was surprised to learn he gave one at all. ItDavid Foster Wallace gave only one commencement address in his foreshortened life. I say only one, but I was surprised to learn he gave one at all. It was to Kenyon University, a small private liberal arts college in Ohio, in 2005. He died in 2008.
Who among us believes we become adults or fully-realized humans the day we receive our diploma? So the commencement speech given by DFW is entirely appropriate to point us toward the new goals we have in our future. Not just how to think, but what to think about.
DFW tells us tiny parables that highlight his message. There is one about the fish in the water that I will never forget. It is so simple and so thought-provoking. He is basically saying that one needs to keep one’s awareness close and one’s judgments at a distance.
It’s a short book, probably the shortest he ever wrote. But it gives us a sense of the man and his prescription for living a fulfilling life. One wishes he could have been able to do that. ...more
This book is the convocation speech George Saunders gave to the 2013 graduating class at Syracuse University.
George Saunders is the kind of old white This book is the convocation speech George Saunders gave to the 2013 graduating class at Syracuse University.
George Saunders is the kind of old white guy that we want to give us life advice. He doesn't have many answers, and I argue this makes his advice even more valuable. He has only a few good hints, gleaned after a lifetime of rough and tumble. His dedication at the beginning of the book mentions his grandparents, in loving memory. In the course of the speech he tells us that when we become parents we know what sacrifice is and what it takes to love another. He hopes that we apply those lessons as the educated adults that we are, and maybe not wait until we get there, as parents. To know it, and to act on it. Now.
Convocation speeches are not just for graduates, ever. They are for those who aspire, for those who hope one day to graduate to better life management, to a happier, more fulfilling existence, for those who still need advice. That probably includes all of us. Even George Saunders.
George Saunders is my kind of guru. He is funny, articulate, self-deprecating, smart, and unassuming. He doesn't pretend to be something he is not. He is a fiction writer who is flummoxed by humans, and yet is someone who has figured out a few things in his life.
In this speech Saunders paradoxically brings up death. Just to remind us that this moment--it is just a moment. That a life is justifiably filled with plans, hopes, dreams, striving, and that this is good, necessary, and normal. But there is something we don't want to forget as we make our plans because it puts everything in order, and perspective, and that is death. We are not alone and striving in the world, but we live with others. We will have lots of opportunities in our long lives to choose to be kind or not. He recommends "to err in the direction of kindness." Because nothing else matters, in the end.
Every time I read this speech I cry in the exact same place. I wonder if you will, too. I cry when he says how proud our parents are on this day of our graduation, I cry because I know how much my parents did to get me to that place. How much they gave up, how much they loved, how much they hoped. I cry because I know what the parents feel looking at their kids graduating. How proud, yes, relieved, hopeful, etc.
Anyway, this book is about going after things that matter, like kindness. Because in the end...and in the beginning, and in the middle...that's all that matters....more
George Packer returned from several years overseas writing about problems of the United States in the world, never imagining that the United States woGeorge Packer returned from several years overseas writing about problems of the United States in the world, never imagining that the United States would become his next subject. But he was appalled with the condition of America when he returned and wondered what had happened to our forward momentum. In reading this book, you may feel the perplexity I had in the beginning, for his stories are wide-ranging and diverse and seem to bear no relation to one another. But slowly, the accretion of pages, stories, and facts begin to take their toll and we begin to glimpse the outlines of our recent past and possible reasons for it. And something akin to a slow-burning rage may take hold in your breast.
Packer might be flint to dry tinder—many of us know what we think might be wrong with governance, banks, farming, energy policy, education—Packer hits all the hot, dry, sore spots in his round-the-country assessment in the form of interviews. He does not paint a flattering picture of anyone, really, (which one of us is perfect?) but neither is he completely negative except for the portrait of Newt Gingrich. Newt looks and sounds like a megalomaniac on the level of Ron Hubbard and according to Packer may have been the beginning of Washington’s political dysfunction and discourtesy. If Newt had left Washington when he was thrown out of office, we may have been saved, but he stayed around tinkering with political leadership using money and words. But Newt is not single-handedly responsible. We have ourselves to thank.
Packer allows us to imagine our own choices, had we other people’s lives. He is explanatory rather than judgmental. He shows us the curve of the earth and allows us to use our experience and observation to draw our own conclusions. And he is radicalizing me. I realize my own collection of facts, tempered by my education and experience, have caused within me a slow-burning anger over the widening inequality and waste of our vast resources, both human and soil-based. I do not admire the men and women of our Congress and I do not admire the echelons of wealthy bankers and corporate executives. I do not aspire to, nor do I wish children to aspire to, their ranks. I want them to realize they are us, albeit with money they frankly do not deserve.
Packer is not prescriptive so the answers must come from within ourselves. But he does point out that the 99% have already staged a mass action in Occupy Wall Street. Deep feelings of injustice already roil through our cities and countryside. Now is the time to learn the skills you will need should your house be lost in a tornado, an earthquake, a flood, or a firestorm. Now is the time to be the leaders you wish your Congresspeople were. Now is the time to think for ourselves. Think. Soon, it will be time to short Wall Street. ...more
”…I had no idea God and the Devil live so close together. They’re neighbors, in fact, their houses are right beside each other, and sometimes when the
”…I had no idea God and the Devil live so close together. They’re neighbors, in fact, their houses are right beside each other, and sometimes when they’re sitting around with nothing to do they play cards, just as a way to pass the time. But they never wager money—what good is money to them? No, it only souls they’re interested in…[Che Guevara]”
Che Guevara never actually makes an appearance in these stories—just sightings of him—but his philosophy gets a workout. Sometimes events just have a way of confounding even a well-thought-out life, where every step is taken with good intentions toward some worthy goal.
Moral dilemmas face us in each of the eight stories and Fountain does not make it easy for us. The characters may decide to do something morally questionable, but their conflict is not resolved sufficiently to finish the task without second-thinking and regret. There is always another, starker moral dilemma right around the corner as a result of their first choice.
This first collection of stories won Fountain a heap of attention in 2007 when it came out, as did his first published novel, Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk (2012). His writing is clear and free of flourish, though his locations are richly imagined. In this collection he spans the globe, though he pays special attention to Haiti, a place that allowed him to explore in microcosm “power and money and history and race and the most brutal sort of blood-politics.”¹ The Haiti stories make me the most uncomfortable in this collection, yet it is the one place he’d visited and so arguably knows most about.
The stories highlight displaced persons confronting the world’s troubles: a woman is forced to share her soldier husband with his dreams; a captured American doctoral student in Colombia manages to continue his ground-breaking study of birds of the Central Cordillera; a peacekeeper in Haiti finds a way to save a piece of Haiti’s cultural heritage; an aid worker in Sierra Leone tries to finance her sideline sewing co-op.
A word might be said about the final story in the collection, which moves us back to the nineteenth-early twentieth centuries. The story is about a Jewish prodigy in Vienna facing racial taunts as she develops her extraordinary repertoire over a period of years. The tone of this story is so sharply different from the others in the collection that we must ask ourselves why it was included. The language is reminiscent of George DuMaurier’s story of Svengali and his creation, the beautiful songstress Trilby O’Ferall. This story would not have been out of place in a Maupassant collection. It may give us an insight into the author’s opinions on the dilemmas he poses in the previous stories. In all the interviews he’s given, I’ve not seen a question about the inclusion of that story addressed, though I might rest easier if I had.
It turns out that I discovered I have read this collection before, when it came out in 2007. At the time I was not recording or writing about my reading and so did not wrestle as thoroughly with the questions it poses. It stands up very well to a second reading (and more!) so I recommend the collection for packing the punch of a novel without all the words. Besides, this man’s moral compass spins in a world that challenges the best of our well-thought-out and perfectly inadequate solutions.
¹”A Conversation with Ben Fountain”, reprinted in the Ecco paperback edition of Brief Encounters with Che Guevara, P.S., p.3 ...more
I read this twice, once again after a period of years. I had remembered it as something that changed the way I thought about fire. To me now, I remembI read this twice, once again after a period of years. I had remembered it as something that changed the way I thought about fire. To me now, I remember it as a sort of war memoir...it had that horrifying inevitability and those devastating consequences that are the stuff of war. It explained the vocabulary and choreography of fire fighting in remote areas and told of blow-overs and the terrifically searing heat, wind, and weather created in a firestorm. I have an awe of those men and women willing to brave such conditions fighting fire, and fear for them. I will never willingly or knowing place myself or them in danger by trying to outwit or outguess a wildfire. I feel great sadness for those whose families, homes, and livelihoods are threatened by fire, flood, or wind. But I would prefer to lose all and begin again than face the unholy rage with which there is no argument....more
Listened to this several times while working on the overgrown garden at my old family house. It is not long, but the people were so real, and so now, Listened to this several times while working on the overgrown garden at my old family house. It is not long, but the people were so real, and so now, and so conflicted. There is no question that this is one to be savored again and again. I especially like being read to. Actually, I think the edition I had was Naxos, read by Oliver Ford Davies •BN ID: 2000003473397. ...more
Jan Chozen Bays has written a book that brings us back to ourselves and calmly, gently, laughingly teaches us to focus on immediate tasks…not to get tJan Chozen Bays has written a book that brings us back to ourselves and calmly, gently, laughingly teaches us to focus on immediate tasks…not to get them over with but to be guided by the process. This is book meant to be read slowly, which is a good thing, for it took me a year. Each chapter is meant to be read one week at a time, giving us time to perform the daily exercise for a week. It gives us time to savor the moments of everyday life, not rush through them as though there were somewhere to be other than where we are.
Everyone can do these exercises. They do not require special equipment or set-aside time. They do require some flexibility, and the author encourages us to do them with a group that may meet at the end of a week and discuss the results. This seems a fine way to grow in closeness, since, as the author points out, intimacy is what we humans crave more than any other thing.
Whether or not one completes the exercises for a week at a time, just reading about them brings a sense of peace, lengthens the spine, deepens the breath. One wants to be in that place of mindfulness. And it is a book one can pull out again and again to remind oneself what it is to be “in the moment,” to focus, to notice. The group of exercises themselves will undoubtedly bring a sense of control, and of peace, to those that practice.
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