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How Our Stories Affirm Eternal Truths
A play, a film, a book, each story sets out to consolidate something true about life. The narrative winds its way through characters, setting, scenes, and plot to capture in time what otherwise takes a long time to learn in real life. A director directs actors, hoping the audience will get caught up in the story and feel all the feelings, experience a reality that embeds itself in memory, almost as if the events portrayed had happened to them. “I’m awfully interested in how big things begin. You know how it is; you’re twenty-one or twenty-two and you make some decisions . . . then whissh! you’re seventy. You’ve been…
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“What do you know for sure?”
On a podcast titled, “What We’re Learning,”[1] the speaker shared that when film critic Gene Siskel asked Oprah Winfrey on live television “What do you know for sure?” Oprah could not answer. Later, Oprah recalled that instance as one of her most embarrassing moments. The podcast speaker went on to say how hearing that interview had motivated her to make a list of what she knew for sure. This person felt sure she could. Only after her attempt to do so did she admit the question itself proved unanswerable beyond a list of loves and preferences. Loves and Preferences vs. Convictions Beyond loves and preferences lies convictions. Loves and preferences…
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When Sane People Believe Lies
Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, a book written in 1841, spawned the title for Louise Penny’s latest book. In her author acknowledgement, Louise Penny explains that the original book by Charles Mackay “offered a series of nonfiction essays looking at why sane people believe the nuttiest things,” begging the question, “What happens to tip people over into madness?” (434). People do behave differently in crowds. Crowds begin small, adding numbers like wood to a fire. Words that influence crowds can serve as a weapon. Reading that Disturbs the Peace The Madness of Crowds, (#17 in Louise Penny’s Inspector Gamache series), takes place back in the tiny village…
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How Memory Can Help You Heal
In Jane Austen’s novel Mansfield Park, the character Fanny Price plays the role of observer. Unpretentious, sensitive, and circumspect, Fanny has adapted herself to her subservient situation. Fanny gets treated as inferior by those around her. The author reveals through Fanny’s character her own commentary about other people in the story, composing a scene––a snapshot––of the characters, their interaction, prejudices, and indulgences. “This is very pretty,” said Fanny, looking around her as they were thus sitting together one day: “every time I come into this shrubbery I am more struck with its growth and beauty. Three years ago, this was nothing but a rough hedgerow along the upper side of…
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Checkpoint July 2021: Is the Media Helping You Feel Better About Your Life?
(From the archives, this article was posted a year ago. Unable to write new posts the past 2 weeks, this article contains edits to update. Thank you, Readers, for checking back with me.) Mark Twain lived most of his life in the 19th century and Malcolm X lived during the 20th century. These men could not have existed further apart in history, society, or proximity. Consider these quotes. “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.” MARK TWAIN, B.…
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The Best Books Reveal How People Think
The Summer Before the War tells a story that takes place in “The town of Rye . . .” (first line of the novel), a real place in the county of Sussex, England. Carefully researched, the idyllic coastal region contrasts not only the losses of WWI (World War I), but chronicles the end of an era––or rather the beginning of the end of an era––where class distinction slowly disintegrates under the weight of its own hubris. “Here’s to taking the future at a run.” Helen Simonson, The Summer Before the War, Acknowledgements The above quote is the last statement in the author’s note to recognize the contributions of others who…
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The Hard Work of Writing in Order to Be Understood
Roman statesman Cicero (106-43 B. C.) said, “The aim of writing is not simply to be understood, but to make it impossible to be misunderstood.” Unlike face-to-face dialogue, the writer must imagine readers of all sorts in various times and places interacting with words written on a page. The words on a page cannot rearrange themselves in order to clarify a point. Neither can the writer know whether the reader reads to the end, or whether the reader reacts to one part of the writing and dismisses the whole. Or whether a reader reacts to something the writer never intended by reading into what he reads. The possibilities of being…
