“Microaggressions” and Other Dangerous Words

According to an article in Business Insider, there are 14 things you should never say at work (or anywhere else) because they are “indirect expressions of racism, sexism, ageism, or ableism.”

Here are some examples of these “microaggressions”:

* “You’re transgender? Wow, You don’t look like it at all.”

* “Oh, you’re gay? You should meet my friend Ann. She’s gay, too!”

* “My [female] boss is crazy.”

* “Where are you actually from?”

* “The way you’ve overcome your disability is so inspiring.”

* “Your name is so hard to pronounce.”

* “Are you an intern? You look so young!”

* “Is that your real hair?”

To read the article – which includes much-too-long explanations of why these words are offensive, along with suggestions of what to do instead – click here. (Spoiler alert: Most of the time, the suggestion is “Say nothing.”)

Meanwhile…

An Episcopal church in Manhattan is going the extra mile to insure its children feel protected from such dangerous words as “mom” and “dad.” Read the story here.

The Blue River

By Ethan Canin

222 pages

Published in 1991 by Warner Books

Blue River is the story of two brothers, Lawrence and Edward, who, after having taken very different paths in life, are reconnected.

Lawrence, the older brother, is an itinerant worker. Edward, the younger, is a successful ophthalmologist with a wife and son. The story begins when Lawrence appears at Edward’s front door after 10 years of absence.

With a start like that, the plot has nowhere to go but where it does go: backwards towards their childhoods, where the divergence began.

Canin’s prose style is clean, but not sparse. The action is unhurried, but not turgid. The characters aren’t fully natural, but they feel true. Something that struck me as especially good: the author’s close observations of small, physical gestures and the patterns of everyday speech.

Reading it, I found myself thinking, “This guy knows how to write.” But my appreciation stayed at that level. I was never swept away by the story or astonished by the prose.

Blue River, despite its short length and clarity, is not an easy book to read. One challenge is that the story is told by Edward, a character who sees himself as successful, smart, and virtuous, but is actually self-centered and smug.

But don’t let that stop you. Canin understands Edward’s limitations. And so will Edward, by the time this story ends.

An investment of, maybe, four hours of your time in Blue River will give you a sufficient, if not abundant, ROI.

Critical Reviews 

* “Blue River is beautifully conceived, full of subtle character shadings and powerful imagery. It is brilliantly plotted too, with so many twists and surprises that one hesitates to describe a single incident in the story.” (The New York Times)

* “There are a few moments when Canin might have eased off the confessional or let the reader make the connections without forcing them upon us with one or two excess lines of explanation. But in general the novel is a smooth and graceful movement through one man’s memories and self-reflection.” (Michelle Bailat-Jones)

* “If Ethan Canin’s celebrated debut story collection, Emperor of the Air (1988), was remarkable for its variations in tone, his first novel is notable mostly for its unremitting sentimentality.” (Entertainment Weekly)

Peacocks and Commas: The Best of the Spectator Competitions

By Joanna Lumley

200 pages

Published in 1983 in the UK by Bodley Head Ltd.

Because I had failed to consider how much time one spends in an airport when reading is not possible (e.g., going through security and being questioned about the mysterious-looking refrigerator part that you brought from the States because it was unavailable in Nicaragua), I was an hour behind on my reading schedule when Nestor picked me up at the airport in Managua.

That gave me only 90 minutes to read Peacocks and Commas – which wasn’t a problem. Because Peacocks and Commas is not the sort of book one should read in one sitting, from beginning to end. It’s a literary treasure chest packed full with parodies and paragraphs, sonnets and soliloquies, epigrams, epithets, epitaphs, and other brief literary forms. And it’s much better enjoyed in brief encounters over time.

I’ll give you a few examples.

For this first one, the challenge to readers of The Spectator was to complete a poem beginning, “It looks like a season of Peacocks and commas.” The winning entry was submitted by an E.O. Parrot. 

         It looks like a season of Peacocks and commas,

It looks like a winter of colons and Lear;

That Abbey’s a nightmare; they never love Thomas,

Nor Jude the Obscure by Hardy the Drear.

It looks like a season of essays and Emma;

And creative writing, which means they can’t spell;

There’s The Lord of the Flies, The Doctor’s Dilemma,

And Paradise Lost, which they find sheer hell.

It looks like a season of precis and Dombrey,

And dull comprehension they don’t understand;

I dictate all the notes, each writes like a zombie,

The Sixth’s got its Melville, which ought to be grand.

Now yet one more season of grim punctuation,

Of poems they scoff at, of novels they hate,

Of screaming and chalk dust and mental frustration;

I’m retiring next summer; I can hardly wait.

The challenge here: Compose a verse about a tragic hero and a tragic heroine coping with daily matters. This brilliant little parody was submitted by a T. Griffiths. 

To shave or not to shave; that is the question:

Whether ‘tis easier on the chin to suffer

The pricks and stubble of an evening shadow,

Or to take soap against a field of stubble,

And by a razor end it? To soap, to shave;

No more. And by a shave to say we end

The shadow and the thousand prickly points

That chins are heir to; ‘tis a consumption

Devoutly to be wished. To soap, to shave,

To shave; perchance to nick: ay, there’s the rub;

For in that sea of foams what nicks may come

When we have lathered all the shrinking chin,

Must give us pause. There’s the respect

That makes calamity of a morning shave,

For who would risk a stinging, painful nick,

When he might save himself the trouble daily

With a handsome beard? Who would shaving bear,

To smart and grimace under trickling foam,

But that the dread of breadcrumbs, clinging egg,

Doth make us rather shave, come the morn again…

An Epigram and an Epitaph 

Coffee Percolator 

by Tony Brode

Fit for a stately home that stands

In its own grounds, I see

No cause to envy house or lands –

My own grounds stand in me.

Samaritan 

by Joyce Johnson

Here lies a man who often sat

And listened on the phone

To those with lives so awful that

At last, he took his own.

The challenge: Write a pretentious wine blurb. The winning selection came from the same T. Griffiths who parodied the Hamlet soliloquy above. 

Hitherto synthetic wine could be robust – never svelte. Here’s one I can recommend as actually better than the natural variety; for it is silky as well as powerful, has a soft edge, large-scale yet graceful, and is both fastidious and charming.

Halcyon Harvests 1980 has an aristocratic languor with the bouquet of a great wine possessing real substance. The chemists have wrought a miracle. Free of any sulkiness or vulgarity despite its provenance, this is a true wine whose insinuating first taste has sinewy elegance and a heroic finish. Here is a classic vintage of great depth – its first taste is a minuet, its after-taste a symphony. Need one say more?

Interesting Facts 

* In addition to being an author, Joanna Lumley is an activist, television producer, and actress. You may have seen her in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, The Wolf of Wall Street, and Ella Enchanted, or heard her voice in Corpse Bride.

* Lumley won two BAFTA TV Awards for her role as Patsy Stone in the BBC sitcom Absolutely Fabulous (1992-2012), and was nominated for a Tony for Best Featured Actress in a Play for the 2011 Broadway revival of La Bête. Despite having more than 100 acting credits, she has no formal acting training.

* She is a strong supporter of Survival International and the cause of indigenous rights. She narrated the organization’s documentary Mine: Story of a Sacred Mountain, about a remote tribe in India, and contributed to the book We Are One: A Celebration of Tribal Peoples.

The Turncoat

By Siegfried Lenz

Translated by John Cullen

384 pages

Written in 1951; posthumously published in 2020

The Turncoat is the story of a German soldier’s experience of World War II, fighting for a cause, falling in love, struggling for survival, doubting his beliefs, being captured, joining the partisans, and then finally, after the war, questioning that decision.

The plot has three parts: the protagonist as a German soldier, as a Soviet partisan, and as an office worker under Soviet control.

What unifies the three parts are three themes: the mundanity and absurdity of war, the human impulse to survive, and the questionable tenacity of conviction.

The plot is not gripping, but it’s liberally peppered with incidents, actions, and conversations that are themselves interesting and serve to hold the reader’s interest to the end. The themes (as described above) are presented more in dialog than in action, which renders them more abstract and less convincing. Nonetheless, they raise worthy questions:

* Does a soldier’s allegiance to his country outweigh his moral conscience?

* Is an immoral act committed in war and under orders excusable?

* More generally, is it possible to be a good person involved in a bad cause?

* And perhaps the most important one for Lenz: Is it possible to be absolved from guilt?

My gold standard for rating ambitious books like this is: Has it changed me in some way? The answer to that, in this case, is no. So I would not call this a great book. But I’m the minority in that opinion. As you can see below, most of the critical response to The Turncoat has been very positive.

Note: In preparing for the Mules’ discussion of The Turncoat, I came across this video of a German war veteran recounting the atrocities of his fellow soldiers. Whether or not you read the book, I think you’ll find it interesting.

Critical Reviews 

“Never has the aftermath for Germans been better depicted than in Siegfried Lenz’s elegiac, The Turncoat. A newly discovered masterpiece.” (Alex Kershaw)

“This antiwar satire would have been quite a shock to the system of a wounded, divided postwar Germany… darkly comic… explosive… persuasive.” (New York Times Book Review)

 “Lenz effectively mines his experiences in the German army [as a deserter and prisoner of war] for this memorable account… [His] meaningful exploration of loyalty owed to one’s country and family is packed with thrills and chills.” (Publishers Weekly)

Interesting Facts 

* Rejected by his German publisher, who thought that the story of a German soldier defecting to the Soviet side would be unwelcome in the context of the Cold War (1947-1991), Lenz’s manuscript was forgotten for nearly 70 years before being rediscovered after his death. A posthumous triumph.

* As far as I can determine, The Turncoat has been translated into 10 languages (including Catalan and Slovenian) before appearing in English and, inevitably, being published by the small, independent Other Press.

A Letter from Charles Darwin, age 12, to a friend (Jan 4, 1822) 

You must know that after my Georgraphy, she said I should go down to ask for Richards poney, just as I was going, she said she must ask me not a very decent question, that was whether I wash all over every morning. No. Then she said it was quite disgustin, then she asked me if I did every other morning, and I said no, then she said how often I did, and I said once a week, then she said of course you wash your feet every day, and I said no, then she begun saying how very disgusting and went on that way a good while, then she said I ought to do it, I said I would wash my neck and shoulders, then she said you had better do it all over, then I said upon my word I would not, then she told me, and made me promise I would not tell, then I said, well I only wash my feet once a month at school, which I confess is nasty, but I cannot help it, for we have nothing to do it with, so then Caroline pretended to be quite sick, and left the room, so then I went and told my brother, and he burst out in laughing and said I had better tell her to come and wash them herself, besides that she said she did not like sitting by me or Erasmus for we smelt of not washing all over, there we sat arguing away for a good while.

(Source: Letters of Note)

Good news for art lovers… but only if you live in France. French museum directors have banded together and are revolting against the country’s COVID guidelines. Read the story here.

Self-Reliance

By Ralph Waldo Emerson

52 pages

First published in 1841

Something about the word bothered me. If a writer was described as a “transcendentalist,” I didn’t want to read him. (Talk about prejudice. I didn’t even know what the term meant.) So when Emerson’s famous essay, Self-Reliance, was assigned as supplementary reading in my Emily Dickinson class, I crossed it off my list.

I had a free morning at the Swamp House last Sunday, and so, when I noticed an old copy of Self-Reliance (perhaps the one I never read in college) tucked among much larger books, I sat down on the dock as the mist was lifting off the lake and read it.

I’m glad I did. In fact, I feel foolish for having avoided it all these years.

The essay has two major themes. The first is the one that most people talk about: Emerson’s contention that community is a distraction to self-growth. He advocates self-imposed isolation to allow more time for “reflecting on one’s self.”

What’s wrong with that is apparent to anyone that has spent a lifetime thinking. It’s also apparent to neurobiologists that understand the brain’s vital need for connection and community to stay healthy.

This idea seemed to me to be the brainchild of a young man, a writer that should have waited a few more decades before tackling the topic. In fact, Emerson was 58 when he wrote Self-Reliance.

The second major theme in the essay I very much like: Emerson’s belief in the importance of developing an independent mind. Thinking what you get from history books or editorial opinions is not serious thinking, he argues. In fact, the only possible way to think independently is to be a nonconformist. You should do what you think is right and (very important) is true based on your own experience, he says, no matter what others think or even what the community dictates you do.

If you think and act independently, Emerson warns, you will feel the scorn of “the cultivated classes.” That may be unpleasant, he says, but it is relatively easy to ignore. The outrage of the masses, though, is difficult to endure. “Only the unusually independent person can stand firmly against the rancor of the whole of society.”

Allowing yourself to be swayed by community opinion is a great mistake, he says. It will leave you with a head full of opinions that you haven’t seriously examined – thoughtless prejudices crowding out your ability to discover what is true.

“Envy is ignorance,” says Emerson. And “imitation is suicide.”

In the Orwellian world we have drifted into, Self-Reliance is more relevant than ever.

Critical Reviews 

* “The reader may find no better writer than Emerson to help make the leap into self-reliant freedom. It is difficult to read Self-Reliance simply as an historical work, because you are easily pulled into Emerson’s orbit of pure responsibility and self-awareness, a world in which there are no excuses, only opportunities for greatness.” (Tom Butler-Bowdon)

* “Emerson’s aphorisms are forceful, his cadences dizzying, his appeal to individual will seductive.” (Jenny Odell in The Paris Review)

Interesting Facts 

* Self-Reliance is the source of one of Emerson’s most famous quotations: “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.” It is a truncated version of this longer excerpt from the essay: “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall.”

* The hobgoblin quote has shown up several times in the movies. It was a running joke in the 1998 film Next Stop Wonderland, and was used in 1989’s Dream a Little Dream in reference to a group of teenagers. It was also in an episode of the television show The Mentalist.

Nick Cave Prevails 

On December 7, I commented about this: a fight between an art museum that allowed some “artist” (Nick Cave) to paint the words TRUTH BE TOLD on one of their walls, and the local community that objected to it.

The good news is that the artist and the museum won in court based on first amendment rights. The bad news is that some people consider this sort of crap worthy of being called art. The other good news is that Cave’s “piece” will be there for a limited time. The other bad news is that the museum could come up with something worse next time!

You can read the full story here.

The Price of Privilege

By Madeline Levine

224 pages

Published in 2006 by Harper Collins

The Price of Privilege is two books in one. It’s a critique of how some affluent parents in America today handicap their children’s chances of living good and healthy lives by consciously or unconsciously transmitting the wrong values. It’s also a primer for new parents that want to improve their children’s chances of living happy and fulfilled lives through love and discipline.

The first several chapters are devoted to arguing that the problem with spoiled little rich kids isn’t trivial. These are children that are likely to develop low self-esteem; suffer anxiety and depression; are less likely to become accomplished, autonomous adults; and are, in some cases, prone to drug addiction, self-abuse, and even suicide.

This may be true, but I found myself thinking, “Yes, but why should I care?”

The rest of the book is more pragmatic. Levine delves into the common mistakes that affluent parents make and how they can be avoided by substituting actions that will have more positive effects.

For example, she talks about what she calls “maladaptive perfectionism,” which she defines as an intense need to avoid failure and appear flawless. This, she says, comes from parents that want the outside world to see them, and their family, as flawless.

She does not suggest that parents refrain from setting standards. “High expectations are found to promote achievement and competency in children,” she says. “[But] it is when a parent’s love is experienced as conditional on achievement that children are at risk for serious emotional problems.”

Levine on Materialism: She sees an emphasis on materialism as a major issue in terms of the development of bad ideas, habits, and behaviors. She makes the point that although affluence provides some significant benefits, such as good private schools, tutors, extra-curricular coaching, and family trips abroad, the abundance of such benefits can have the adverse effect of limiting the educational and developmental experiences that the child would otherwise have on his own.

Levine on Permissive Parenting: Parents should not feel guilty about monitoring the behavior of their children. They should set clear but fair rules and then be consistent in applying them.

Levine on Educational Success: Parents should encourage curiosity, creativity, individual thinking, and intellectual courage, rather than simply grades.

Levine on Solving Problems: Parents should resist the urge to rush in and solve their children’s problems, whether they be at home, at school, or on the playground. Instead, they should talk about possible solutions, and from there teach their children the skills they need to put those solutions into action.

Levine on Behavior Management: Self-control, including anger management, frustration tolerance, and the ability to delay gratification, are learnable skills, not immutable traits. Parents should work on teaching their children these skills at a very young age.

The Price of Privilege is not a book that felt important to me, like The Coddling of the American Mind. But I would recommend it to new parents – or new grandparents, for that matter.

Critical Reviews 

* “[Madeline Levine] offers solid, proactive strategies for becoming a more connected, relaxed parent.” (Chicago Tribune)

* “This book has resonated in affluent communities all over the country. [Levine is] clearly on to something.” (Atlanta Journal-Constitution)

* “Alas, [Levine] may be preaching to the choir. Those who need her most may be too busy shopping to pick up such a dire-looking volume. Still, school guidance counselors should be happy to have this clear, sensitive volume on their bookshelves.” (Publishers Weekly)

A Moveable Feast

By Ernest Hemingway

1st ed. published in 1964 by Charles Scribner’s Sons

2nd “Restored” ed. published in 2009 by Seán Hemingway

223 pages (1964); 256 pages (2009)

This was the second time I read A Moveable Feast. Well, I didn’t read it this time, I listened to it. And I’m glad I did.

As my brother Andrew once told me, one can argue that Ernest Hemingway was one of the two most important prose stylists in English of the 20th century. (I don’t remember who he said the other one was.) Listening to this memoir of his years as a struggling journalist/ writer in Paris during the 1920s made me a believer. You really cannot appreciate how powerful and poetic Hemingway’s language is until you hear it read aloud.

If you are at all interested in the luminaries of literature during this time period, this book is what it claims to be: a literary feast of the most colorful characters of the Lost Generation. Here you will be introduced to the wit and eccentricities of F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, Ford Madox Ford, James Joyce, Wyndham Lewis, Ezra Pound, and Gertrude Stein, along with artists like Jules Pascin, and Sylvia Beach, the proprietor of the legendary Shakespeare & Company bookstore.

Hemingway died in 1961, before the book was published, leaving some question as to whether he had finished it. It was published posthumously in 1964 by Hemingway’s fourth wife and widow, Mary, based upon his original manuscripts and notes. But a second edition was published in 2009 by his grandson Seán Hemingway, who felt that Mary’s edition had been incorrectly altered to suit her version of his life at that time.

There is ongoing controversy in literary circles over which edition – if either – can be considered the book Hemingway intended.

Critical Reviews for the 1964 Edition 

* “Here is Hemingway at his best. No one has ever written about Paris in the 1920s as well as Hemingway.” (Charles Poore in The New York Times)

* “The reader of…  A Moveable Feast, who, of course already knows a lot about Hemingway, quickly suspects that whatever may have been the original facts behind Hemingway’s ruptures with Gertrude Stein, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ford Madox Ford, and Hadley Richardson (the first Mrs. Hemingway), he will never get them here. The book is too splendidly, too artfully written; the chapters are sketches and anecdotes often as fine in their texture as Hemingway’s famous stories; the dialogue is too witty; and the real plot of the book – a young writer’s struggles… – has been used up in so many novels and plays that Hemingway was smart to try this as memoir.” (Alfred Kazin in The Atlantic)

Critical Reviews for the 2009 “Restored” Edition 

* “Each chapter is short and vignette-like, comical, bitchy, and warm. They are best read a few at a time, so as to get into the flow of Hemingway’s surprising sentences, but not to be overwhelmed by the high concentration of egos gathered together on one page.” (Charlotte Newman in The Guardian)

* “A Moveable Feast  serves the purpose of a double nostalgia: our own as we contemplate a Left Bank that has since become a banal tourist enclave in Paris… and Hemingway’s at the end of his distraught days, as he saw again the ‘City of Light’ with his remaining life still ahead of him rather than so far behind.” (Christopher Hitchens in the Atlantic)

Interesting Facts 

* Hemingway’s working title for the book was The Paris Sketches. A Moveable Feast was suggested to Mary by his friend/ biographer A.E. Hotchner, who remembered him saying: “If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast.”

* Following the November 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris that killed 130 people, the city’s worst loss of life since WWII, A Moveable Feast was a surprise bestseller in France. When translated back into English, the book’s title in French – Paris Est Une Fête – is “Paris Is a Celebration.” In the context of the attacks, it became a symbol of defiance.

The Spy Who Came In From the Cold 

By John le Carré

256 pages

Published January 1, 1963 by Coward-McCann

This was the Mules’ January book selection. As I’m writing this, we haven’t yet met, so I can’t report on the members’ opinions, but I suspect they will be positive.

About a year after the Berlin Wall was erected, Leamas, a British agent, at the end of a long and difficult career where he has seen all of his operatives killed by the Communists, is sent to East Germany to bring down Hans Dietr Mundt, an important East German intelligence officer, by posing as a defector and “divulging” false information insinuating that Mundt is a traitor to the East Germans.

Of course, few things go as planned. Especially in this genre of fiction. There are surprises in store – for Leamus and for the reader – almost every other page, including a fateful love affair, the continual appearance of entertaining secondary characters, and lots of twists and turns in the action, topped off by one major surprise at the end.

As a spy novel, The Spy Who Came In From the Cold was fully satisfying. Two things, however, make it better than genre fiction.

At one level, it is a critique of the Cold War and the questionable tactics Western governments used in competing with the Russians.

At another level, it is a critique of ideological thinking per se – and how it lends itself to all sorts of useless and destructive actions that could not and did not make any sense in the light of reason.

In fact, some of the most enjoyable parts of the book, for me, were a series of conversations between Leamas and Fiedler, an East German spy, on their respective life views and career motivations.

The novel received critical acclaim at the time of its publication and became an international bestseller. It was selected as one of the 100 All-Time Best Novels by Time magazine.

From J.B. Priestly: “Superbly constructed, with an atmosphere of chilly hell.”

From The Guardian: “Le Carré handles the unspooling web of narrative and motive with exemplary poise.”