Book Beings

As much as I love my New York Football Giants and enjoy NFL Football, I have to concede that this wonderful North  American sport  is not football, it is something else.

Yes, there are punters and kickers in American football, but punts and kicks are secondary to throwing and catching and running the ball, and blocking and tackling your opponent. The vast majority of the players don’t ever touch the ball with their feet. In fact, kicking the ball intentionally if you’re not the team punter or kicker could get your team slapped with a fifteen-yard delay of game or unsportsmanlike conduct penalty.

Football, remarkably enough, is that sport played with a round ball and feet. What we in the USA call soccer is football to everyone else in the world, for obvious reasons.

As kids growing up in Newark, we distinguished between “touch” and “tackle.” We’d play touch on concrete or asphalt, and tackle when we had access to dirt or a patch of grass.

Tackle should be what the Giants play. The New York Tackle Giants of the National Tackle League (NTL). Sure, it would take some getting used to, but it would not be a bad thing for us as a nation to admit that maybe others outside our borders have got at least this one thing right.

Football is football, tackle is tackle, and soccer is? Well, surely some enterprising person could find a profitable use for the word.

The just completed 2010 FIFA World Cup tournament, grandly hosted by South Africa, has deepened my understanding and appreciation of the sport that sends nations and continents into extended periods of despair, resignation, or euphoria every four years.

Unfortunately, for the land of my birth, USA, the end came too soon. The Americans just couldn’t seem to focus hard enough in the initial stages of games and extra time to keep their opponents from scoring quickly and consistently forcing the Americans to wage the exhausting battle of playing from behind. Ghana scored in the third minute of extra time in their Round of 16 showdown, a blow from which the USA could not recover.

Happily, however, my ancestral home, Spain, recovered from a shocking opening match loss to Switzerland,  allowing just one goal from that point forward, in what amounted to six consecutive knock-out matches. The Spaniards asserted themselves as the world’s best football nation with their extra time 1-0 win over the Netherlands in the final.

For Spaniards, this first World Cup championship (only the eighth nation to win a World Cup), has at least for a time softened the harsh moment the country is experiencing with unemployment near 20% and a crippled economy. The historic accomplishment of the national team has permeated to all the corners of Spain and into the hearts of Spaniards of all the various regions of the country.

More than one will be delighted that divisive Catalán and Basque nationalist voices have been drowned out by the cries of deliriously happy and proud Spaniards in the streets of Barcelona, Bilbao, and every other city, town, and village in Spain.

Roberto Martínez, a Spaniard and Catalán (currently manager of the English Premier League team, Wigan Athletic) did a fantastic job as guest commentator for ESPN’s television coverage of all the World Cup matches. Martínez suggested the historic triumph of La Roja (“The Red,” the nickname of Spain’s national football team), would have enormous repercussions, not just for Spanish football, but for Spanish politics as well.

The model comportment and camaraderie of the Spanish players (who come from all the corners of Spain), and the dignified leadership of their coach, Vicente del Bosque, illustrated for an entire nation that unity and selflessness can accomplish great things. For the second consecutive World Cup, La Roja was awarded the FIFA Fair Play award for its noteworthy sportsmanship and humility.

We can only hope Spaniards throughout Spain will find in their national team, and not in agenda-driven politicians, a model to follow.

What is it that really matters to us? Of course the particulars differ from person to person. But I’m inclined to believe we are more alike than different.

There are commonalities among all persons, despite the fact we are perpetually at each other’s throats, and despite our diverse upbringings, during which we are forced to swallow cultural, political, and religious lies from Day 1.

I have nothing against culture, politics, or religion. I am talking about the “twisting” of these essential components of any society. I am talking about the propagation of lies throughout the history of the world, and the flip side of that, which is the suppression of truth.

Not in any systematic way over the course of centuries (I am no Dan Brown School of Perpetual Global Conspiracy disciple), but in a random, episodic fashion, whereby truth is defined according to the whim of the despot of the day.

I’m not going out on a limb here saying your average Joe and Mary (i.e., the vast majority of the world’s population) are fodder for those powerful men who govern worldly things. You have, of course, your dictators and ayatollahs, who oppress and dominate and exploit their people. But you also have your Special Interest Dictators of the Western democracies, who manipulate, lie, and cheat to obtain their ends.

And there is the trickle-down effect, evident in the person of overbearing boss, abusive husband, institutional pedophile, neighborhood bully, and others who drastically diminish and often irreparably damage the quality of life of so many ordinary persons.

But human beings are all the same in that we all want to be happy, and we want to feel that our lives have meaning. Some find a distorted type of happiness and meaning through POWER at the expense of others. But most persons would like to find happiness and meaning through relationship with others and doing good (nurturing, helping, healing, building, bridging, creating, teaching, encouraging).

Unfortunately, the former have a disproportionate influence on the quality of life of the latter. And the means by which they achieve their own toxic brand of happiness and meaning inevitably lead to war, genocide, terror, economic disaster, and personal tragedy.

Nonetheless, Average Joe’s can and do make a difference within the most trying of circumstances. We can point to generations of Christian martyrs and missionaries throughout the centuries, but every culture, political system, and religion has produced heroic men, women, and children who have shown the rest of us that what is good, beautiful, and true cannot and must not be suppressed.

These Light Bearers impart to us a precious gift: the understanding that we need not define ourselves as victims or captives or even imitators of monsters (for those who would choose the dark path as the way out of their captivity).

In fact, there is no reason we cannot be Light Bearers ourselves, for there is something (or Someone) much greater at work in each of us than the world and its Hollow Men.

The poet, Miguel Hernandez, while imprisoned during the Spanish Civil War, wrote, Ata duro a ese hombre: no le atarás el alma.  (Bind that man up hard: you shall not bind his soul.)

Which begs the question, how do you bind another person’s soul? You would need that person’s permission, it would seem.

And here is the marvelous irony: those who seek to dominate others have by their own series of choices imprisoned themselves. No one has done it to them. They have simply allowed their Weakness and Corruption to bind up and lock away their souls.

Think of it. It really is quite remarkable how it all works out, this strange order and balance of things. How is such a man (or woman) capable of having a meaningful relationship with another person? And how can he (or she) have eyes that are open to what the Light Bearers reveal, or ears to hear their Message of Freedom, when they are hell bent on trying to eradicate them?

What is it that matters most to us?

I was driving to work this morning. I am an utter, shameful fool to complain of my daily commute to work. I understand that, but when I am crawling in bumper to bumper traffic I am not at my best.

Today I was making good time, but up ahead there they were, five or six cars submissively lined up behind a stopped school bus with red lights a-flashing. I took my place behind them, resenting the yellow slug of a vehicle with its extended rickety Stop sign, and thinking, “Can I get to work once, just once, without some freakin’ delay?”

Then I saw a little boy, maybe 6 years old, running hard toward the bus, little white legs in  shorts pumping away, backpack bouncing on his little back. The bus wasn’t going to leave without him, but he was running hard anyway, determined and filled with purpose.

I felt ashamed of myself, and was flooded with memories of my own children as little students bearing impossibly large backpacks on their way to school. When the boy disappeared into the bus I turned and saw his mother. A young woman wearing checkered pajama pants and a white t-shirt, staring intently at the bus as it laboriously pulled away.

What matters to you?

Family? Meaningful relationships with other persons? Doing what is good?

I recently watched the film, The Stoning of Soraya M, a true story based on the 1994 book by the French-Iranian journalist, Freidoune Sahebjam, both of which have been banned by the Iranian government.

An Iranian woman living in a remote village (not the first, nor the last, I fear) was stoned to death because she refused to grant her husband a divorce, which would have left her and her daughters destitute. Knowing it would be impossible for Soraya to prove her innocence (as per Sharia law), her abusive husband accused her of infidelity, having already threatened and recruited a simpleton into serving as second witness. Under Sharia law, two witnesses equaled death sentence, freeing the husband to marry a younger woman.

Soraya’s aunt, Zahra (a devout Muslim and Light Bearer), managed to tell the story of what happened to her niece to the journalist, who was passing through the village on his way to the border. Both Zahra and Sahebjam risked their lives to bring Soraya’s story to the world, knowing those who live in darkness fear all light.

Absurdity and darkness go hand in hand with reason and light. The works of those with locked-away souls, as perverse and gruesome as they can be, help us to see life and the world more clearly. They force us to look at where exactly we stand. What side of the chalk line.

They prompt us to ask –

If I deny my family, if I dishonor the sanctity of life-affirming relationships, if I reject what is good, what can possibly remain of me?

Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death’s other Kingdom
Remember us—if at all—not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men…

from The Hollow Men by T.S. Eliot

BIG name for a book: The Return. Victoria Hislop’s second novel, following her popular debut, The Island.

Books titled The Return share with The Iliad, Divine Comedy, and War and Peace a BIG thematic title that promises a BIG delivery. Such works are must-reads for any serious Book Being.

Victoria Hislop was thinking BIG. Give her credit for that, but you also have to wonder what she was thinking…

I do try to avoid clumsy books, but I couldn’t help myself. The Return takes place mainly in Granada during that notorious prelude to World War II, the Spanish Civil War of 1936-1939. Very hard for me to pass by a book that addresses that pivotal conflict without picking it up and bringing it home with me.

The tragic story of the Ramirez family unfolds during those terrible years. There are some believable stretches (the descriptions of thousands of exhausted, starving refugees fleeing from city to city from Franco’s Nationalist forces and allied German bomber planes are particularly effective), but the characters seem more like caricatures, are never fully convincing, and are prone to speaking in cliches.

I should care about them, I want to, but I remain lukewarm, seeing too much Victoria Hislop in them and not enough Mercedes or Concha or Antonio or Pablo.

The story of the Ramirez family is sandwiched between the current day meetings between  an old Spaniard, Miguel, a café owner who somehow has come to master English like an Oxford don, and a married, youngish, middle-aged Englishwoman, Sonia, who came to Granada with Maggie (her single-but-on-the-prowl-for-a-Spanish-husband girlfriend), presumably to get away from the overbearing English husband for a few days.

It happens that Sonia’s mother was a Spaniard who died some years ago in England. Sonia’s almost complete lack of knowledge about her mother and her mother’s past and family are nearly as disturbing as her kindly English father’s utter cluelessness about his late wife’s past and family history. (You would think the woman had wandered into their lives for a couple of weeks solely to dust and change the bedding.)

The revelations that gradually emerge during Miguel’s account of the Ramirez family during  the war and the role his little café plays in bridging the gap between past and present are predictably implausible.

Still, the novel might have survived these flaws and given the reader something to chew on but for Hislop’s inability to refrain from interjecting her opinions and biases at nearly every turn. So that during the bullfight de rigueur scene, we get this: “The cruelty of the crowd was palpable. They did not want the bull to die too soon…” Is this Miguel’s opinion? Not likely, but it is included as part of his account.

In Hislop’s world, Bullfighting = Cruelty = Nationalists, whereas Flamenco = Truth = Republicans. If she was trying to make the point that the insular-minded Nationalists represented the old Spain and its progress-hindering old traditions, flipping flamenco over to the progressive, outward-looking Republicans (which included among their ranks Soviet-trained Communists, Socialists, and Anarchists) makes little if any sense.

Clearly, dance is dear to Hislop. She sprinkles in a few intense salsa (salsa? really?) and flamenco sessions for the gals from Britain to help them let loose and break a sweat in hot, romantic Granada. But this is about more than just having a good time, as Hislop offers an ongoing meditation on the liberating effects of dance, and in particular, of flamenco, which  speaks to the deepest part of us.

Which is? The deepest part, I mean… What exactly is the deepest part of us?

In Hislop’s world, flamenco is completely divorced from God and religion, despite the Spanish gypsy’s inescapable immersion in the imagery and spirituality of the crucified Christ and la Dolorosa, the suffering Madonna, the Virgin Mary. So we are to believe that flamenco is shunned by traditionalist Spaniards but embraced by atheistic Marxists?

Interesting take.

Examples of Author Interference abound in this novel. One more. When a Republican prisoner is at death’s doorstep, Miguel/Hislop offers this insight, “The priest that sometimes exploited such men for a last minute conversion did not bother to visit.”

What clever phrasing. If the priest visits, he is exploiting. If he doesn’t bother to visit, he is being inhumane. A “heads” I win, “tails” you lose scenario for the author.

This bias is extended to the entire Catholic Church, which, it would appear, exists only to punish innocent people and ensure they never find happiness. Consider that even the Spanish refugee children who are spirited away to England and are routinely welcomed by the curious but gentle English populace, are shunned by those nasty, embittered English Catholic nuns who provide these little rogues shelter and sustenance.

Clumsiness in writing can sometimes be overlooked and forgiven. Bias and the suppression of truth cannot. Being the grandson of two Spanish Republican grandfathers, one murdered, one exiled, gives me a bit different perspective on the matter.

Yes, it is widely known the Catholic Church officially sided with Franco’s Nationalists, and it is widely known that some priests were quite active in the war against the Second Republic and the men and women who fought to defend it.

But Hislop sees the conflict as I did when I was a teen: all the Nationalists and their supporters were evil, and all the Republicans and their supporters were good.

How arrogant and self-righteous I was! Maintaining such a position, of course, placed me beyond reproach, at least in my own little mind. I could blame it on youth and ignorance. Or I could confess to having had an over-inflated sense of Self that left me no room for objectivity.

I once heard an American military expert on the radio talking about the good guys (i.e., us) and the bad guys (i.e., them), in reference to Operation Shock and Awe, and I recognized my own arrogance and felt myself cringe.

The reality, of course, is that good people with noble intentions don’t always agree and may even wage war against each other. By the same token, bad people with the worst of intentions can also disagree and kill each other. And too often the vast majority of disinterested and innocent people get caught in the middle and end up being pushed to one side or the other without fully understanding what is at stake other than personal survival.

To her credit, Hislop does not deny that atrocities were committed by both sides, but her attacks against the Nationalists and the Church are presented as undeniable fact whereas the burning of churches, the raping and murdering of nuns, and the executions of priests by Republicans, some of which was already happening before Francisco Franco’s uprising, are only mentioned in passing and have the odor of rumor rather than fact.

In her concluding note Hislop cites the decision by the Spanish Government in January 2009 to grant the right to apply for Spanish citizenship to the children and grandchildren of those who went into exile after the fall of the Second Republic. This marks the closure of what had been known for decades as the pacto de olvido, which was an unofficial national silence about what had happened during the 3-year civil war.

My two grandfathers are buried in Spain. When I go to Spain I visit the grave of the one who returned from exile in the United States during the amnesty of the early sixties. The one who was murdered was left in a mass, unmarked grave somewhere.

What right have I to point the finger or to condemn? What right has Victoria Hislop?

If the Catholic Church has too often failed its people and its God, it has also, for 2000 years and counting, preserved and proclaimed the teachings of Christ during the world’s darkest hours.

How else would you or I know, for instance, that Jesus invited those who are without sin to cast the first stone?

Love the song. Big hit by the American alternative rock band, REM, from their 1991 album, Out of Time. May seem strange coming from a man of faith, this love, someone who lost, then found his religion.

I don’t mean “religion,” as in being “religious” in the way assorted self-described “spiritual” folks interpret it (as being a stultifying, perfunctory, impersonal, shallow, superstitious, law-driven, misguided, self-serving, man-made approach to faith), but in the true original sense of the word religion, which is “belief in and worship of God” (from which the “spiritual” life emerges).

Who insists on playing around with words to gain an edge over someone or to hide himself “will never wholly kiss you” or anyone else, as E. E. Cummings pointed out. But if that is your game, you might want to consider that being “spiritual” without being “religious,” you could argue, is to exclude the “belief in and worship of God” part of faith, which would make you an atheist, yes?

We do so have to be careful with words, look into them, not through them, just like persons. Can’t jump to conclusions, can’t judge…    (just reminding myself)

When Michael Stipe sings

That’s me in the corner
That’s me in the spotlight
Losing my religion

we infer existential crisis, the absence of God, a slowly administered self-immolation.

But that’s not it, Stipe tells us. He is using the expression “losing my religion” in the way people in the South (of the USA) might use it, to mean something akin to being at the end of one’s rope. Stipe tells us the song is about a fellow suffering from a strong dose of unrequited love.

Well, that is a bad enough place to be. But we can enlarge the meaning of this song, and its impact, by pointing out that the regional expression “losing my religion” is undoubtedly rooted in some long-ago, poor soul’s cry of hopelessness that signaled the reversal or collapse of the fundamental belief that Goodness would come to him – the promise that he would be happy, that his life would come to have meaning and purpose.

All of which suggests we at least, for the moment, glance in the direction of God, who is Love, and as such, the source of all that is good and beautiful and true, which all together give meaning and purpose to our lives.

To lose your religion (whether you are a believer or not) is to become separated, is to lose all possibility of communion with others, is to lose all hope and to allow yourself to be pinned to a wall like an insect.

Stipe, unwittingly perhaps, is singing about the absence of not just a woman’s love, but of LOVE. When someone in Alabama tells you he is losing his religion, he may be complaining good-naturedly to you about his life’s difficult and annoying, but manageable, circumstances, OR he may be telling the world (or informing God) that he is losing all hope that Goodness and Happiness will dwell with him.

Certainly, losing or never having possessed or being rejected by a woman (or a man) can cause a type of trauma, but people have perennially emerged from traumas, often stronger than before and more capable of making sound decisions and acting with purpose and competence.

Broken hearts are living hearts, and living hearts always heal, even if they remain scarred. But losing God is losing yourself, going the Insect Route.

Listen to Prufrock for a moment -

And I have known the eyes already, known them all—
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
And how should I presume?

- from The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock

T.S. Eliot’s 1917 poem is considerably more complex than Stipe’s “Losing My Religion,” but the similarities between the two men are noteworthy. Both are trapped in a state of anxious solitude and impotence. Both are oppressed by an intense self-consciousness that borders on paranoia.

Each is stuck in time, a grotesque prop, an object of imagined scrutiny (and ridicule?), incapable of engaging others in any meaningful, life-sharing and life-affirming way. Their focus is driven entirely inward, producing a state of being we might call Stuck On Self, or SOS for short.

When Paul McCartney, singing Eleanor Rigby, poses the question, All the lonely people, where do they all come from? he is not asking so much where they come from (what concert hall, village, planet), but how they’ve come to be SOS, gazing inward all the time and missing all the goodness, beauty and truth going around.

Some readers of Prufrock suggest Eliot was writing about man’s sense of isolation and unhappiness in the modern world. Not a stretch by any means. And it’s easy to understand why Stipe was convinced a whole lot of people would identify with the man in the corner. From the moment we are born, it really is all about us, about Me, out of necessity initially. But Life finally demands we turn our gaze outward, again out of necessity (i.e., for our own good).

John Lennon famously (though not the first to do so) proclaimed all you need is love. In fact, Love is all you need. But there is unrequited love, which can pack a vicious wallop and set you back a bit, and then there is God’s love, which is never unrequited, never limited, whimsical, manipulative, or conditional.

To know it requires turning yourself inside out, however, which isn’t that hard once you understand it all begins with a slow turn of the head, which even the most modest flower accomplishes when the sun comes calling.

Of course you can to your dying day deem God’s love the Sanctuary of Fools, and never come to know it.

Or you can step gingerly (or boldly, as either will do) out of your Self, seek His Goodness in others, accept your fool’s inheritance, grin your fool’s grin, and come to know Mercy and Goodness all the days of your life.

No, I didn’t come up with that title. Wish I had, though. David Shenk spent three years researching and writing The Genius in All of Us, and under different circumstances he may very well have listed me on his Acknowledgments page. But no…

Shenk calculated that his book was composed at the feverish pace of eight words per hour. Shenk is no Kerouac (Jack, whose mercurial writing rendered On the Road in a smattering of days), nor was he meant to be, and we should be glad for that.

As it happens, we are each of us unique, unlike anyone else in the universe. Some of us take longer to write a book than others, longer to run 100 meters, longer to solve a math problem, cook an egg, brush a tooth, file our tax returns. But that is OK, really, and I will explain why, in a moment.

(Unfortunately, too many of us are pacing around old familiar turf like dogs wearing electric shock collars. We are afraid to tread beyond our comfort zone for fear of getting zapped.)

(Understandable, yes. But clearly self-compromising.)

Now, what if that invisible electric fence that has kept you from growing as a person shorted out months ago and there is no shock to be had? Or what if someone turned it off? How would you know?

Or what if the shock, if there is one to be had, is worth enduring to break free into a new, more excellent You?

Let’s ponder for a moment. If you could be shown, scientifically, that you are far more capable of greatness than you think, would the how-when be of interest to you? Would you be willing to say, to hell with shock collars and self-compromising mediocrity! Would you summon enough desire to burst through that invisible barrier that has kept you from being great?

You may have heard that it takes 10,000 hours of practice to become a master of something. An Expert. A Guru. A Wiz. An Authority. You put in your hours and after 15 or 20 years you are the Man! Or the Woman! Right?

Well, there is a misconception here, which Shenk addresses in his book. It’s not just practice that is required. It’s deliberate practice. Big difference. Constant, daily, concentrated, grinding practice that bullies you and shoves you well beyond your feel-good  zone.

For example, imagine you want to get really fit. You’re not going to accomplish it by doing the same exercise routines day after day, week after week. After a while your muscles adjust to the demands placed on them, leading to a conditioning plateau where additional gains are no longer possible. You need to mix it up, maybe do cross-training, which doesn’t allow your muscles to get lazy and comfortable. You need to work different muscles in different ways to get really fit, you need to stretch, do aerobics, sweat, huff and puff, refrain from eating tasty crap and partying all night, etc…

Deliberate practice, whether of body or mind, never quite feels comfortable because you are always being pushed in new ways, always being challenged. Deliberate practice says to hell with plateaus, I’m climbing to the mountain top!

To hammer this point home, deliberate practice is not meant to be fun. Not meant to feel good. It is a form of ongoing trauma that triggers your survival instinct, forcing your body and mind to constantly respond to the ever-shifting bullying ghost, adjusting to overcome its demands as you climb higher and higher, for as long as it takes. In this constant adjusting new tissue, new insights, new skill sets, the New You is being forged.

So here’s the bad news: being great at something, truly great, will require much of you. Say, on the order of three hours a day of deliberate practice for ten consecutive years!

Ever watch the Olympics? Hear the stories of athletes getting up at 4:00 AM every day, training for endless hours, year after year? And what’s with those Kenyan distance runners, and those Jamaican sprinters? Shenk gets into that. Very interesting stuff.

And for those of us who always thought Mozart was just born that way, here’s what Amadeus himself had to say about that in a letter to his dad:

“People make a great mistake who think that my art has come easily to me. No one has committed so much time and thought to composition as I.”

There are countless examples of “geniuses” pointing to deliberate practice and perseverance as the bloody path to greatness.

Einstein once said, “It’s not that I’m so smart. It’s just that I stay with problems longer.”

Each failure is welcomed as a new opportunity to succeed. Just ask Thomas Edison, who insisted, “I have not failed.  I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” Each of those ways was one step closer to figuring it all out.

Pretty grim, huh? Especially for those of accustomed to instant gratification.

That’s the bad news. Greatness does not come easy, not to anyone. The good news is that greatness can be achieved by virtually anyone! You just need to want it enough and be willing to make the necessary sacrifices to reach your goal.

Let me tell you a Rat Story. In 1958 researchers in Manitoba, Canada performed an experiment to compare the maze-negotiating prowess of high-achiever rats, and low-achiever rats. The rats were chosen from two distinct genetic strains. The Maze-Bright rats had consistently tested high in negotiating mazes over the course of several generations, whereas the Maze-Dull rats had flopped miserably for generations.

The researchers raised sets of both Maze-Bright rat pups and Maze-Dull rat pups in three different controlled environments, enriched (lots of colors, play, toys, bells, and other stimuli), normal (ordinary walls, some toys, some activity), and restricted (just food and water, nothing to stimulate mind or body, your typical rat slum).

The findings were quite remarkable. As expected, in the normal environment, the Maze-Bright rats performed well, and the Maze-Dull rats flopped. However, in both the enriched and restricted environments, the results were almost identical!

When raised in an enriched environment, “dumb” rats proved just as smart as smart rats. And when raised in a restricted environment, “smart” rats were as dumb as dumb rats. Genetic differences disappeared!

Hmm… I know we’re not rats, but a little extrapolation is in order, no?

Numerous studies in recent years show that the nature versus nurture debate really should be shelved, along with any notions of ethnic or racial superiority.

Traits are not inherited directly from our genes, nor are they determined directly by our environment, but are developed through the dynamic process of gene-environment interaction, what Shenk refers to as GxE.

Genes, which are stretches of DNA, are not finished blueprints with predesigned instructions for our various traits, as the Augustinian priest and scientist, Gregor Mendel, held, and the rest of us have maintained for well over 100 years.

Yes, all 22,000 genes direct the production of protein molecules. And yes, these proteins help to create cells, transport vital elements, and produce necessary chemical reactions in the body. And we can agree that different protein types provide the building blocks for all the mysterious substances and elements that bind our bodies together (e.g., muscle fiber, hemoglobin, collagen, and so on).

But what we need to understand is that genes are not alone in influencing protein construction. The study of Epigenetics shows that genes can be activated or deactivated by environmental stimuli such as hormones, nutrition, nerve impulses, as well as other genes.

As Shenk puts it,

“Genes are more like volume knobs and switches. Think of a giant control board inside every cell of your body. Many of those knobs and switches can be turned up/down/on/off at any time—by another gene or by any miniscule environmental input.”

This flipping and turning of gene-knobs begins at the moment of conception and continues throughout a person’s life, to the moment of death. This process of gene-environment interaction “drives a unique developmental path for every unique individual.”

You cannot control everything that happens in your life, of course, but you do have a much bigger say in who you can become and what you can achieve than previously thought.

The Genius in All of Us, by David Shenk, contains life-changing power between its covers. It is a powerful testament to the uniqueness, promise, and dignity of each and every human being.

If you have always perceived yourself to be a Maze-Dull human, find yourself an enriched environment within which you can flourish and make the commitment to being the most excellent person you can be. No one, not you nor I, nor your dull, uninspired neighbor, is doomed to mediocrity.

I’ve never been a big fan of the writing style of Joyce Carol Oates. At times her writing  seems to me awkward, a bit uneven and unfinished. But her widely acclaimed 2004 novel, The Falls, has a strange, muscular power that drew me in and caused me to lose myself in the very mist rising from those rampaging waters.

Niagara Falls has been known over the years to have a remarkable power to entrance, beguile, mesmerize… Suicidal persons often look for grand landmarks to mark their  passage. You have to be careful in such a place, especially if you are one of Oates’s characters.

Oates has made this extraordinary natural phenomenon personal to a disturbing degree. Her words create a timeless being of immense seductive power that waits for you and me with resolute patience, like Death itself.

The personalization of The Falls is one reason I like Oates’s novel, despite its flaws. The other two are the erratic and insulated Ariah Erskine, and the maddening story of Love Canal.

The novel begins with two virgin newlyweds groping their way toward marital consummation in a Niagara Falls hotel, the soon-would-have-been-too-old-to-be-married daughter of a Presbyterian minister and the primed-to-receive-his-own-parish-church young Presbyterian minister.

Intimacy between the young couple turns embarrassingly grotesque. Before the following morning has fully revealed itself, the groom has hurled himself to his death into the famous and unforgiving gorge.

In order to assert some degree of control over her circumstances, the shaken Ariah determines she is damned, identifies herself as a damned creature, and arranges to live her life with no expectations other than disaster.

Oates beautifully crafts those days of shock and disorientation, Ariah’s stubborn refusal to be overcome by her circumstances, and the ripple effects of the weird tragedy as family and community assess the groom’s unthinkable act. The Widow Bride of the Falls takes on a mythic quality as the years pass, an altogether distinct being from the real widow bride.

Ariah’s damnation perspective colors the rest of her life, and is only partly softened during a several-year period of relative happiness that corresponds to her second marriage. Dirk Burnaby, a local attorney and son of a wealthy family, inexplicably falls in love with the skinny near-spinster at first sight as she stands daily watch at the rail above the gorge, waiting for her groom’s bloated corpse to appear.

Burnaby’s love does not free Ariah from her persecution complex, however, as she remains the perpetually pursued fugitive. As a result, she forever dons the armor of cynicism and sarcasm, and refuses steadfastly to be controlled or broken by persons or circumstances.

She expects damnation to revisit her at any moment. It does, of course, the moment Burnaby decides to obey his conscience and represent working class families in their initial suit against an alliance of the powerful and wealthy – the chemical companies, developers, contractors, politicians, judges, medical establishment, and board of education of the city of Niagara Falls.

The brazen negligence and disregard for the life of the poor and working class people demonstrated by those responsible for the toxic waste site known as Love Canal is rendered with cutting precision by Oates.

As much as I found myself captivated by Burnaby’s heroically naïve and doomed attempt to Beat the Power on behalf of the disenfranchised, and by the story of Love Canal itself, this important element, because it is developed to too great an extent, gives the novel a fractured quality.

Love Canal and Burnaby’s quest take on a life of their own. Yes, it is because of what happens to Burnaby as a result of his involvement in Love Canal that we see Ariah’s fatalism come to fruition and her life and that of her children forever altered. The Burnaby Quest could have, and maybe should have, formed the basis for a separate novel, however. But because it remains such a prominent element in The Falls, which is really Ariah’s Story, Ariah is gradually reduced to secondary status.

Oates has too many stories to tell to fit into this one novel. Nonetheless, the content of the novel makes it a compelling read, its loose structure notwithstanding.

Are character’s italicized thoughts sprinkled throughout the novel necessary? I could have done without most of these phrases that have little meaning or fail to create mood. They get in the way, adding nothing to the narrative or to our understanding. Is there a necessary musical quality or cadence I am missing maybe?

A few of the sections are narrated in the first person by someone who at first sounds like one of Ariah’s children, Chandler, Royall, or Juliet. But you quickly realize the speaker has referred to the three siblings by name. So is this speaker a completely unaccounted-for fourth sibling? An unborn child? A ghost? I am perplexed….

Some characters seemed destined to play larger roles in the outcome of the story, but later simply exited like phantoms. I am thinking in particular of “the woman in black,” who reappears briefly years later to perform a curious act and then vanishes forever. To a lesser degree, Burnaby’s mother also seemed headed toward some significant moment, but then slipped silently off into the sunset.  The Holocaust survivor and widower, Joseph Pankowski, Ariah’s neighbor, also seemed destined to play a bigger role, but he too is dismissed without event.

A lot goes on in this novel, too much. Ariah’s story becomes lost in the second half of the novel. Very late in the story Oates introduces Bud Stonecrop, a strange, laconic, and physically powerful young man with a shaved head, who she invests with great sexual power. Conveniently, he ends up being the key to resolving the family’s uncertainties about their husband and father’s demise, and bringing closure and redemption to Ariah and her small brood. Interesting character, but he does seem a bit of an afterthought.

The Falls does have some wonderful moments, but Oates seemed to lose interest in Ariah as she went along. Ariah’s existential predicament, which should have been the foundation upon which to build the novel, is reduced to a series of superficial defense mechanisms and sarcastic remarks.

If Ariah will not show who she really is, and who she becomes in the end, shouldn’t Oates show the reader? A neat little resolution (forged by a new and lesser character) is attached to Ariah in the end, like a life-time achievement award, a plastic silver badge to wear on her second-hand blouse.

One way to make friends with the very rich is to show everyone else that the very rich are victims. The way to accomplish this is by withholding pertinent information and by misleading those that are not very rich.

In fiction, withholding necessary information from the reader and misleading him is self-destructive behavior by any author. Such an approach announces to the world that the author is a) grossly incompetent; b) a phony; c) a propagandist; or d) any or all of the above.

Good literature respects its audience. A writer who wishes to be read, if he is honest with himself, desires that his reader be someone who will put some thought into what he has written. He writes in such a way that the possibility of connecting with another in an honest way is possible. Any deception vanquishes that possibility.

To the writer, the act of writing is a gift to himself, but it is also a gift to the reader. And like any gift we give, we should not attempt to control the recipient’s response. (How can we possibly do that, unless we are close-minded bullies? The uniqueness of each human being produces unique responses. We cannot impose our will over another, whether by force or deception, without giving up our humanity.)

The writer conceives his words and then sends them forth, like a mother her children. A  reader may choose to receive his words with a clear and open mind, but it matters little whether the reader likes or dislikes or accepts or rejects the writer’s words, or remains unmoved or indifferent. That is not the writer’s concern. Nor should it be. Good writing is as simple as honesty. And too often honesty is missing from writing.

Here is a recent example of dishonesty in journalism. I am no Socialist, nor am I a disciple of Ayn Rand. I have no allegiance to any political party. I do not believe anyone should restrict how much money anyone else can earn, as long as it is earned legally and without exploiting others. But I am weary of hearing people proclaim how unjustly the very rich are treated in this country, and how the rich are going to move to another country and take their money and jobs with them, leaving us financial orphans…

I received a link to an article sporting the provocative title, “Tax Burden of Top 1% Now Exceeds That of Bottom 95%” by Scott A. Hodge of taxfoundation.org. The article was published last July, but the attitude it represents seems to have permeated the national consciousness, particularly since the presidential election of the Democrat, Barack Obama.

This simple graph was presented as evidence:

A Disturbing Trend (to Some)

Long ago a friend of mine in high school was taking a Statistics course. He referred to it as “a royal pain in the ass.” Nothing remarkable about that, as most high school courses were described in that way, but I do remember him quoting his teacher:  “Statistics can be manipulated to make any point you want.”

These words were a stark revelation to my teenaged brain! You can use words to do the same. But if deception is your aim, then you discredit yourself. And if you do so publicly, you lose professional credibility. A few minutes examining the actual IRS data the writer cited to add legitimacy to his point reveals a more balanced picture.

The IRS numbers actually demonstrate how the very rich, the top 1% of Americans in terms of average gross income, would be utter fools to leave the US for another country! The IRS charts show all types of data from 1980 to 2007. During that time, the income of the top 1% increased by about 300%, and their tax rate in 2007 was the lowest during that 27-year span.

Those facts were conveniently omitted by the writer. Why? Because they contradict the point he is making.

The top 1% are not being singled out unjustly. In fact, the very opposite could be argued.  The rest of us should be so unjustly treated! The portion of the total national gross income of the top 1% went from 8% in 1980 to 23% in 2007! That means the percentage of gross income for the rest of us went down over that period, from 92% to 77%.

Where is the outcry? The wringing of hands? The fact is the “tax burden” of the very rich (if you insist on calling it that), will continue to increase as their percentage of the national gross income, or their piece of the American Pie, increases.

That is just basic math. And math doesn’t lie. Neither should writers.

You can see the actual IRS numbers here.

Fyodor Dostoevsky wanted to write a story about a perfect man and show how that perfection jarred with the world. He created Prince Myshkin, a somewhat Christ-like figure, and placed him with less perfect persons in a complicated scenario populated by Russian aristocrats.

You couldn’t help but love the gentle and humble prince, or hate him. Were you a truer person in his presence, or were you threatened by his purity? He graciously accepted being referred to as an idiot, happily acknowledging his lack of knowledge regarding most subjects of worldly concern.

But Myshkin could see into the hearts of men and women. He was no idiot. But the world, because it could not understand such a man, took pleasure in calling him The Idiot.

Perhaps The Innocent would be a more appropriate way to refer to Prince Myshkin. But is someone who is capable of seeing into the human heart an innocent? Is someone with such knowledge, which is greater than all the knowledge of the world, innocent?

Jesus Christ was innocent of any crime, or sin, as he hung crucified at Golgotha. Jesus could see into the hearts of men and women, know their light and their darkness. He knew everything that was in the human heart, yet was there ever anyone more innocent?

Having such knowledge is not like having an illegal firearm in your night table drawer or marijuana plants in your basement. Knowing evil does not make one evil. Is a physician who diagnoses a cancer in his patient doomed to develop cancer?

Like Jesus, Prince Myshkin enters into a world of sin, recognizes sin, but does not himself succumb to sin.

It takes a supremely special person, a saint or a Man-God, to remain innocent in this, our world.

As far as the rest of us… We were innocent once, before our knowledge of good and evil, before that first moment in our tottering little lives when we consciously chose to put our needs and pleasures before those of others, regardless of the collateral damage our choices may have caused.

To have knowledge of sin and to succumb to it regularly is uniquely human. This is not to say most people do not want to be good. We are good, most of us, but we are weak and inclined to make poor choices.

The state of the world shows us as much. As do literature and history. As does the Bible, which in addition to recording the Inspired Word of God, doubles as a chronicle of human folly.

No one ever called a sheep an idiot, to my knowledge, but maybe the Divine Shepherd was acknowledging a special brand of obtuseness in his metaphor for his followers, those who hear his voice. Sheep, though docile, are not noted for their acumen, after all. And they tend to stray.

If someone were to refer to Christians as The Flock of Idiots, should we be offended? For having heard His Voice, what excuse have we for our sins? Does our deeply embedded human weakness explain it? Does it entitle us?

This observation may engender smiles from those who don’t like Christians on principle, but no one ever said Christians were not sinners. It could be argued we are the greatest of all sinners.

The way I look at it, perhaps The Innocent better represents Dostoyevsky’s Prince Myshkin, whereas The Idiot is more suggestive of Leonard Marnham, the protagonist of Ian McEwan’s 1990 novel, The Innocent, one more like us (sheep or non-sheep, doesn’t matter), than the saintly Russian.

Not saying Dostoyevsky erred in his choice of title. Far be it from me… No, The Idiot is the perfect title because it makes clear The World’s interpretation of innocence. And similarly, I do not question McEwan’s choice of The Innocent, so finely laced with irony.

It happens that Marnham has worn his innocence for longer than most, like a baptismal gown that has shrunk and disintegrated with each passing day, until, at 25, there is no more gown and he is left naked. He is no different from the rest of us. It is just that some are late bloomers.

Marnham is a radio technician who has left his home in England, where he lived with his parents, to work for the Americans in West Berlin in 1955, the beginning of the Cold War.

To his surprise, he is assigned a small role in a joint US-British covert operation (setting up and repairing tape recorders), which involves the building of a secret tunnel from the American sector to the Soviet sector. The goal of the operation is to tap phone lines and intercept communications of the Soviet High Command.

For 25 years Marnham has led a comfortable, sheltered life.  He lacks knowledge, not only of the world, but of people. Everything is new and surprising. His first apartment, his role in the covert operation, post-war Berlin, the  Americans, the Germans, women, sex.

Unlike Prince Myshkin, he is unable to see into the hearts of men and women. He cannot see into his own heart, nor probe his insulated self. His is a lethargic, immature spirit, more attentive to proper protocol and social etiquette than to human emotion. He lacks decisiveness and conviction. He is like a pampered child, completely self-centered.

Marnham may think he is in love with Maria, the German woman he met in a night club. But his inability to see into her heart, and to understand her fears, leads him in one moment to treat her in a way that shakes her to the core. He sluggishly recognizes his mistake, and wins her back after some time, but she no longer sees the safe young innocent she was first attracted to.

When Maria’s former husband, a drunken German veteran, enters their shared life, Marnham is confronted with a series of disastrous circumstances that change his life forever.

Like most of us, Marnham the Innocent is ill-equipped to act unhesitatingly in a crisis. He is trapped in a miasma of fear, guilt and self-preservation. Maria, the survivor, infinitely more experienced, draws him out and sets him (and herself) in motion on a dark path, having made the decision for them both.

We can understand why Marnham ends up doing what he does, maybe. Each act can, perhaps, be justified, however unthinkable. We can place ourselves in Marnham’s shoes, take each step with him, and, given the sinister peculiarities and difficulties of the situation, think, yes, maybe I too would do the same. Maybe.

But all extenuating circumstances and justifications aside, would it be right?

Perhaps, ultimately, The Innocent is the one who, immune to self interest, trusts that doing what is right is the path to salvation, even as The Idiot breathlessly seeks the elusive escape hatch that leads to perdition.

The Kindle Wireless Reading Device, or eReader (also known as the Amazon Kindle), has undergone a rapid transformation in a short period of time. A Kindle eReader comparison will help those interested in this reading tool to distinguish between the various versions of this product.

It seems that eReaders have been around for some time, but the original Kindle Wireless Reading Device was made available to the public as recently as November 2007. Apparently, Amazon knew what it was doing as this first version of the Kindle sold out within hours. It remained out of stock for nearly half a year.

The second generation Kindle 2 was made available in February 2009.

Later in the year, Amazon stopped selling the Kindle 2 in its original form in favor of the Kindle 2 International.

Our eReader comparison will focus on some of the major features of the different versions of the Kindle Wireless Reading Device.

Kindle 1

• Display – 6” diagonal, 4-level grayscale
• Storage – 250 MB, expandable with an SD memory card
• eBook Capacity – 200 non-illustrated eBooks
• Delivery system –Whispernet, a wireless delivery system by Amazon that lets you download books off  the web without requiring an outside internet provider.
• Positives – carry around 200 virtual books (i.e., eBooks) in the palm of your hand!
• Negatives – available in USA only; in retrospect, lacked a lot of the features and power now available in newer Kindle models and other types of eReaders;  no longer available as a new item.
• Conclusion – good starting point, but limited; has been replaced by the more powerful  Kindle 2.

Kindle 2

• Display – 6” diagonal, 16-level grayscale display
• Storage – 2 GB
• eBook Capacity – 1500 non-illustrated eBooks
• Delivery system – free 3G wireless through Sprint mobile network allows you to download eBooks at anytime and from anywhere in under 60 seconds.
• Positives – thinner, lighter unit, faster page-refreshing, allows note-taking and highlighting, customizable fonts for easier reading, longer-lasting battery charge, more power, text-to-speech option that allows Kindle 2 to read to you, more eBooks!
• Negatives – no international availability, no Portable Document Format (PDF) file support – now available in Kindle 2 International
• Conclusion – great eReader replaced by more versatile version, the Kindle 2 International.

Kindle 2 International

• Released to the public in October 2009, taking the place of the USA-only Kindle 2. Virtually the same features and capabilities as the Kindle 2, but with a few key enhancements:
• Works in over 100 countries
• Sprint mobile network replaced by AT&T mobile network in USA and roams on EDGE, 3G, and GPRS on GSM networks in other countries
• 85% increase in battery life
• support for PDF file format
• Note: Outside the USA, most countries restrict the International Kindle Wireless Reading Device from accessing most web sites. This does not affect accessing the Amazon eBook store for viewing and purchasing eBooks and magazine subscriptions. The English language Wikipedia can also still be accessed in other countries.

Kindle DX

• Display – 9.7 inch” diagonal, 16-level grayscale electronic paper
• Storage – 4 GB
• eBook Capacity – 3500 non-illustrated eBooks
• Delivery system – Amazon Whispernet (Sprint).
• Positives – for people who like a bigger display and access to more than twice as many ebooks as the Kindle 2; battery life of up to one week while using wireless or two weeks offline;  accelerometer, automatically rotating pages between landscape and portrait orientations if the device is turned on its side, unless automatic rotation is disabled by the user. The DX adds support for PDF files natively, built-in stereo speakers
• Negatives – may be larger than ideal for some, as well as costlier.
• Conclusion – If you like having a bigger display and the ability to access up to 3500 eBooks, you may not mind paying the higher price for this particular Kindle Wireless Reading Device,  released in June 2009

Interesting notes:

• Christmas Day of 2009 marked a milestone as eBook sales at Amazon overtook sales of printed books for the first time.
• Approximately 1.5 million Kindle eReaders were sold in the 4^th quarter of 2009.

Ereaders? Where was I when the Areaders, Breaders, Creaders, and Dreaders of the world raised their ugly little heads?

I have to admit I’ve become increasingly fond of technology, insofar as it allows me to see, understand, and know more of life and, consequently, how little of it I do see, understand, and know… the realization of which just makes me teeter like a happy drunk before the awesome Mystery and Bigness of Creation.

But it took me a while to get into the whole Computer Thing, but by the time the Internet came on the scene I was ready and willing to be mesmerized by the possibilities it presented and to quickly enlist the information-gathering prowess of Google.

Don’t know Something? Google it. Now part of the lexicon. Within seconds you know as much or more about Something than most folks on the planet. So I Googled “eReaders” and found them to be, not another race of beings, but a tantalizing temptation.

So what the heck is an eReader, and are eReaders suitable for Book Beings?

Let’s explore a little. Just to get a clear picture of what we’re dealing with here.

An eReader is a portable electronic device that allows you to read eBooks. eBooks are electronic books, also known as digital books. Think of them as paperless books that can be read off a computer screen or the screen of a hand-held device created for that purpose (e.g., an eReader).

For someone who loves the texture, weight, feel, scent, and color of real books, eReaders can seem a bit stiff. The idea of curling up with an eReader hasn’t yet sunk in. Would you rather, for example, curl up with a human or a Cylon?

(Digression: For those of you who don’t know what a Cylon is, you owe it to yourself to buy or rent the 4.5 seasons of Battlestar Galactica, the award-winning science fiction series, starring James Olmos as Adama.)

Yes, if I am going to recline and enjoy a good book, it will be a real book with real pages that my fingers can touch and turn. But if I am traveling, or foraging, or gathering, or if I just want to have with me my own library of books that I can summon up onto my little hand-held device, then I’m going to go with the eReader. Do you have a bag large enough to carry 1500 books around? That is the initial capacity of most eReaders (capacity can be increased through optional memory cards).

This is not a question of choosing one over the other. Real flesh and blood books can coexist happily with ereaders, and being a Book Being, I can feed my hunger for books more completely by possessing both.

Think of the eBooks that appear on eReaders as virtual books or avatars of those beloved real books of yours that it’s not always practical to have with you. (If you were far away for a long, long time, on the Moon, say, and you could not bring your loved one with you, wouldn’t an avatar of your loved one help, somewhat?)

Just as there are different kinds of books, there are different kinds of eReaders with varying features and price tags. And more are being developed all the time.

The most popular and best eReaders share the following features:

• Portable and compact, with most eReader models being less than an inch thick and are available in 5, 6, or 8 inch sizes.
• Capacity to hold up to 1,500 books. Thousands of additional books can be added with the use of memory cards.
• eBooks can easily be downloaded from a number of online venues.
• E-Ink technology allows for a clear, paper-like display.
• Some have built in MP3 players.
• Some read to you.
• Long-lasting rechargeable batteries.

Given all this, are eReaders suitable for Book Beings? Any tool that makes more books easily accessible to the everyday person is good for Book Beings and for all. So I say, Yes! By all means!

And your response?

So say we all!

(If this response troubles, perplexes, irks you, I entreat you to watch Battlestar Galactica, not the old Lorne Greene series, but the James Olmos award-winning series – the opening scene of the series will captivate you, guaranteed).

I will be looking at the various types of eReaders in more depth as we go along. If you want to check some of these out for yourself, go to Amazon. They started this all with their Kindle Wireless Reading Device.

But you’ll find all kinds of eReaders and digital readers there, not just the Amazon Kindle. Amazon has always been the best place to look for books. Now it’s the best place to buy any number of different products. You can compare thousands of items and products, read real customer reviews, and make informed decisions about whether to buy Something or not.