James E Hartley

The Weight of this Sad Time

Can it get any worse?

How long has it been since you asked that question? An hour, a day, a week, a year? Personal tragedy. Family tragedy. Friend tragedy. National tragedy. International tragedy. They pile up at times and you ask if it could possibly get any worse.

The Answer: Yes. Yes, it can.

Cf. King Lear. Things also just keep getting worse and worse in Shakespeare’s tragedy.

Howl, howl, howl, howl! O, you are men of stones:
Had I your tongues and eyes I’ld use them so
That heaven’s vault should crack. She’s gone for ever
I know when one is dead and when one lives;
She’s dead as earth.
[…]
And my poor fool is hang’d! No, no, no life!
Why should a dog, a horse, a rat, have life,
And thou no breath at all? Thou’lt come no more,
Never, never, never, never, never!

And then Lear dies.

What? Were you expecting a cheerful rumination on one of the greatest tragedies of all time?

Edgar can help.

O gods! Who is ‘t can say “I am at the worst”?
I am worse than e’er I was.
And worse I may be yet: the worst is not
So long as we can say “This is the worst.”

See! It’s not so bad. It could be worse!

Tragedies are, by definition watching a fall, but the descent in King Lear is precipitous and unrelenting. There is the personal fall of Lear, but there is also the fall of his friends and the ultimately his entire kingdom. Before one crisis has even hit its crescendo, the next one is already nearing its peak. Dealing with one personal tragedy or national crisis at a time is hard. Overlay them, and it is quite literally overwhelming.

You know this. At times, you have felt it.

Curiously, however, the final lines of King Lear (spoken by either Albany or Edgar depending on whether you are reading the Quarto or the Folio version of the play) are oddly hopeful.

The weight of this sad time we must obey,
Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say.
The oldest hath borne most: we that are young
Shall never see so much, nor live so long.

We that are young, you and I and everyone who has lived after Lear, shall never see so much. We shall never live so long. Ah, the optimism of youth.

The spirit of those final lines lives on. Think about the last big national tragedy—it makes no difference when you read this, just pick whichever tragedy is in the news. How often have you heard people wondering “How could this happen? After all that we have accomplished, how can we have this problem?”

Why is it a surprise when tragedy hits? I undestand the surprise of personal tragedy; you know horrible things happen to people, you are a person, but even still, there was no reason to expect that particular horrible thing to happen to you.

That being said, however, why is it a surprise when we read about tragedies happening in in the world? People are genuinely surprised every time something bad happens. We know bad things happened to people in the past. But, we really do believe “we that are young/Shall never see so much.” We really have internalized a triumphalist narrative that major tragedies are in the past.

We live in a fallen world. We often forget that. There is no surprise that bad things happen. Tragedy should not shock us. Some tragedies, like Lear’s, are brought about by our own actions. But, many tragedies, perhaps most, are, like those of Gloucester and Kent and Edgar and Albany and Cordelia, brought about by others. We try to stand firm in a fallen world, and the world collapses around us.

The question is thus not whether tragedy will hit. The question is how do we respond? Lear is a warning. Lean into the tragedy, rail against the tragedy, refuse to acknowledge the tragedy and the result is madness and despair. Speak not what you feel, but what you ought to say, and the result is blindness and banishment.

The alternative? Remember City of God. As Augustine explains at length (at long length), we should not be surprised about tragedy in the City of Man. Since Cain slew his brother in the field, the City of Man has been nothing but an unrelenting demise. The City of Man is doomed. The tragedies you see today are simply part of the death spiral. They were preceded by other tragedies and they will be followed by fresh tragedies. The City of Man offers no hope.

But, the City of Man is not the whole story. The City of God is a story of hope. The City of God runs parallel to the City of Man, offering beauty and joy. The surprise is not that there is tragedy. The surprise is that there is love and hope.

Why does this matter so much? In a time of national tragedy there is a very real temptation to anger and despair. You know this because you have felt it. As King Lear so perceptively demonstrates, that way lies madness. Instead, try loving your neighbor today. You may not feel like loving your neighbor when it seems like the world is burning down, but that is the perfect time to do so. That small act of love you perform today will benefit not only your neighbor. Showing love today will remind you that the City of God wins in the end, that this world contains something so much bigger than tragedy. This world contains Beauty and Truth. That truth shall set you free.

River of Life

“All there is to thinking,” he said, “is seeing something noticeable which makes you see something you weren’t noticing which makes you see something that isn’t even visible.”

A River Runs Through It, by Norman Maclean

A rough sketch of this story is that it is about a father and his two sons who really like to go fly fishing. I mean they really, really, really like to go fly fishing. Lots of fly fishing. Lots and lots of descriptions of fly fishing. Lots of details about how to go fly fishing.

I’ve never been fly fishing and quite honestly it doesn’t interest me, mostly because I think I would be really bad at it.

Then there was the movie. Starring Robert Redford! And Brad Pitt! I saw it. It was OK. The scenery was nice. Won an Academy Award for Cinematography, so yes, it is a very pretty movie.

It is safe to say that A River Runs Through It was nowhere near my “Maybe I should read that book” list.

Then along comes a really smart bookish student and she tells me A River Runs Through It is her favorite book. I was surprised; I’ve never even heard anyone mention the book since the early 90s when the movie came out. Weeks later she mentioned again how great the book is. Another few weeks and she mentions she rereads the book frequently. Now I am intrigued. When you are talking with an interesting student with an exceptionally high ability to read and discuss Great Books and she tells you she rereads a book frequently, well, you go read it.

She was right. It is a very good book. The movie did the book a huge disservice; the movie makes it seem like one of those books with an over-the-top soap-opera-like plot. But, the novel is not plot-driven at all. This is one of those ruminative novels, where you just go along at the pace of fly fisherman standing in a river casting and recasting before strolling down to the next spot and pausing again to cast and recast. The plot (such as it is) is mixed with musings about life and nature and, yes, fly fishing. I still have no interest in going fly fishing (now I know I would be really bad at it), but at least I can now appreciate the beauty of the sport.

The lesson of the book:

It was here, while waiting for my brother, that I started this story, although, of course, at the time I did not know that stories of life are often more like rivers than books. But I knew a story had begun, perhaps long ago near the sound of water. And I sensed that ahead I would meet something that would never erode so there would be a sharp turn, deep circles, a deposit, and quietness.
The fisherman even has a phrase to describe what he does when he studies the patterns of a river. He says he is “reading the water,” and perhaps to tell his stories he has to do much the same thing. Then one of his biggest problems is to guess where and at what time of day life lies ready to be taken as a joke. And to guess whether it is going to be a little or a big joke.
For all of us, though, it is much easier to read the waters of tragedy.

An interesting idea. Your life is not a book after all. You are just part of a giant river. The river runs through it. The river didn’t start at the beginning of your life and it doesn’t end when you die. It just runs through your life. Even the stories of your life don’t really have beginnings and ends; the river runs through all those stories too. You pause in that river, fish a bit and then move along to the next stop in the river. The river doesn’t really care when and where you stop; it’s all the same to the river.

Thinking about life that way, thinking about your specific life that way, why is it easier to read the waters of tragedy? This is a really interesting answer to a question I have long pondered. Life is full of tragedy and comedy, but we notice the tragedy more than the comedy. Why?

Tragedies seem to have beginnings, sharp moments when tragedy hits. If you step back, you can see that tragedy is just part of a longer river, but the moment the tragedy hits is abrupt and noticeable. On a river, you notice the waterfall or the place where the water goes crashing through jagged rocks. It is exactly the same river that existed a mile up when it was broad and flat and seemed quite lazy. But, you notice the disruption. You notice when tragedy hits. You don’t notice when it doesn’t.

The same thing is true when you think about lives other than your own. When you think about the people you know, you notice when tragedy hits their lives too. There is that moment when tragedy hits; what do you want to do? You want to help. You desperately want to help. But, you can’t. The narrator is talking with his father about this:

He spoke in the abstract, but he had spent his life fitting abstractions to listeners so that listeners would have no trouble fitting his abstractions to the particulars of their lives.
“You are too young to help anybody and I am too old,” he said. “By help, I don’t mean a courtesy like serving choke-cherry jelly or giving money.”
“Help,” he said, “is giving part of yourself to somebody who comes to accept it willingly and needs it badly.”
“So it is,” he said, using an old homiletic transition, “that we can seldom help anybody. Either we don’t know what part to give or maybe we don’t like to give any part of ourselves. Then, more often than not, the part that is needed is not wanted. And even more often, we do not have the part that is needed. It is like the auto-supply shop over town where they always say, “Sorry, we are just out of that part.”
I told him, “You make it too tough. Help doesn’t have to be anything that big.”

Therein lies the difficulty. Someone, say a student, walks into your life and she really needs help. The tragedy is obvious. And what do you have to offer?

“That should have been my text,” my father said. “We are willing to help, Lord, but what if anything is needed?”

I don’t know the answer to that question. This is, without a doubt, the hardest question I face in my job. What, if anything, is needed? Is it even possible to help someone move through the waters of tragedy into the calm part of the river on the other side?

The river runs through it. It runs through my life and yours. It just keeps moving. Tragedy is not the story of life; it is just a rough patch of water in the river. But, sometimes, it is hard to step back and see the river whole.

Seven Books

The Seven Book Challenge is one of those curious “challenges” that has been floating around social media. You know the drill: someone challenges you to post pictures of seven books. I have no idea why it is called a “challenge.”

I have a former student who recently tagged me in this challenge. Since all I do on social media is put up book reviews, just putting up pictures of seven books I enjoy seemed odd. But, I like my former student who issued this challenge, and so I feel duty bound to do something. Here it is.

Seven books. These are not the best seven books ever written. They are also not my favorite seven books. Instead, these are seven books which had a big impact on the way I think about world when I read them. There is no implied recommendation that you should read them, by the way. They are offered up purely for those of you who are interested in how I came to think about the world the way I think about it. These seven books will give you a good roadmap.

1. H. L. Mencken, A Mencken Chrestomathy

I can’t remember how I discovered Mencken. Sometime in undergrad or grad school, I must have started seeing references to him. I don’t remember which Mencken book was the first book I picked up to read. The Chrestomathy is thus a stand-in.

Mencken’s impact on my mindset was huge. I have always been a rather curmudgeonly sort. In fact, the adjective that may best describe my intellectual mindset is “iconoclastic.” Someone says something, and I instantly start taking apart the argument. Mencken is the ultimate curmudgeon. He mocks everything in sight. A master of prose; I love reading him. But, the thing which struck me the most about Mencken was that while he was as curmudgeonly as I was, he was always cheerful about it.

Q: If you find so much that is unworthy of reverence in the United Sates, then why do you live here? A: Why do men go to zoos?

That is a beautiful line and one I think about all the time. It has made me smile in the midst of many a bureaucratic meeting.

When I got to Mount Holyoke, the very first decoration I put up in my office was a picture of Mencken. It is still right over my desk. He always reminds me to be cheerful, no matter how annoying the world gets.

2. P. G. Wodehouse, Leave It To Psmith

This was not the first Wodehouse book I ever read, but it is the one that cemented Wodehouse into my mindset. While Wodehouse is always funny, this is probably his funniest novel. Every Wodehouse book has fundamentally the same plot and the jokes are repeated in book after book. That is the point.

Wodehouse taught me that life is a comedy. Yes, there is a lot of pain and misery in this world. A lot. We can easily spend our lives looking at all that pain and the result will be a fully warranted despair. But, there is another way to look at the same world. It is a comedy, full of joy and happiness, punctuated with tragedy. It is a matter of perceptive. Wodehouse taught me that when you step back from life and look at it, the best reaction is to smile and laugh. The eschatological end to this world is a joyful one. Given that we have to trudge through life, we might as well focus on the joy.

3. Augustine, Confessions

I grew up with a divided mind. On the one side, I went to school and learned a lot of things. On the other side, I went to church and learned a lot of things. But, those two parts of my mind never talked to one another. There was the intellectual part that enjoyed taking ideas apart (remember, I am an iconoclast). There was the spiritual part of my life that knew what I was supposed to believe and how I was supposed to act.

Augustine caused those two parts of my mind to come crashing together. Here was a guy who was obviously brilliant, who enjoyed learning and ideas every bit as much as I do, and who thought about Christianity with exactly the same level of intellectual rigor that he thought about everything else. Reading Confessions was a moment of epiphany.

After Confessions, I could never go back to thinking about my Christian faith as somehow separate from the giant intellectual project of understanding the world. Understanding God is an intellectual project. Theology deserves exactly the same iconoclastic tendencies I brought to every other subject. Why do people believe this is true? Is it really true? I grew up certain that faith and reason belonged in separate playpens. Confessions taught me that faith is strengthened when reason works alongside it.

4. Jacques Barzun, Teacher in America

I stumbled into graduate school. Through my first three years of college, I thought I was going to go to law school. Then, at the start of my senior year, I realized I had no interest in being a lawyer. So, I applied to Ph.D. programs. I wasn’t even entirely sure what one did with a Ph.D.

Eventually I realized being professor was a pretty good job for me. Where else could I spend all my time learning things and talking about what I learned? Knowing I would enjoy being a professor is not the same thing as knowing how to be a good professor. I really had no idea what professors actually did on a day-to-day basis.

Barzun’s book taught me the idea that there is a craft to teaching and that if I was going to do this job, I really needed to perfect that craft. The number one lesson I learned from the book was that being a teacher means the job is not really about me. Teaching is for the students, not the professors. (It is depressing to think about the number of my colleagues who do not understand this.) If I was going to be a good teacher, I had to always remember that I was here to serve my students, to teach them everything I know, to impart knowledge and wisdom. The goal is that when they leave, they will lead richer and fuller lives. Teacher in America taught me to care about the craft of what I do.

Barzun’s book is the reason I always leave my office door open. It is the reason I always drop everything when a student walks into my office. It is the reason I never usher a student out the door, that office hours are whenever I am in my office. It is the reason that conversations wander all over the place. Barzun’s book taught me that being a teacher is a calling.

5. Thomas Mayer, The Structure of Monetarism

Tom Mayer is the reason I am an economist. He was a curious guy; I never really understood him, and I never had the courage to ask him a personal question. I took four undergraduate, two graduate courses, and two undergraduate independent studies with him. I was his teaching assistant 3 or 4 times. I attended a weekly department seminar with him all through graduate school. He was the author of what was at the time the best-selling money and banking textbook in the nation and yet he always found the time to meet with me.

The man was a walking encyclopedia. I remember one time in graduate school, someone asking him a question in class. He replied “I don’t know.” The student re-asked the question two more times; both the student and everyone else in the room assumed the question just wasn’t clear. It never occurred to any of us that Tom actually didn’t know the answer to a question.

The Structure of Monetarism was Tom’s most famous book; I read it in one of those independent studies, but the ideas in the book were in his textbook. What was so important about the book for me personally was that it taught me how to think about economics. I came to economics through politics. I loved political debate and economics is one of those things politicians talk about, so I figured I better learn about it. Without Tom’s influence, I suspect I would have become one of those tired political types who see economics as just another tool in a political debate. Pick your political position and then find the economic arguments to match it.

Tom was not like that. He always went the other way. Monetarism was a monetary theory largely associated with Milton Friedman. Friedman was easily the greatest monetary theorist of the post-war era. He was also a notable conservative. What The Structure of Monetarism demonstrated is that politics and monetary theory are not equivalent. You could be a conservative and reject monetarism or you could be a liberal and accept monetarism. Indeed, monetarism is not even a monolithic idea, but a hodgepodge of a whole bunch of different ideas. You could easily accept some, but not all of the parts of monetarism. (There is even massive complicated diagram showing which parts are related to which other parts.)

What Tom taught me more than anything else was that if you want to be a serious scholar, you have to subordinate politics. First figure out the facts or build the model to explain the facts. Policy conclusions may or may not follow from the model. But if you use politics to help build the model, then you will never build a good model. Ideas are more important than politics.

6. William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying

In my second year of graduate school, I realized that all I was doing was reading economics. I decided I did not want to be someone who only read economics, and so I made a plan that every day I would read books totally unrelated to economics. It was the most important decision of my intellectual life.

I had no idea how to become a reader, though. I had no guide. So, I just started reading books I heard about. I had heard about Faulkner. What I knew about Faulkner was this: he was really hard to understand. That is quite honestly the only thing I knew about Faulkner.

I remember wondering why, with all the books in the world, anyone would ever bother to read a book that was hard to understand. Surely there were better books, like, for example, ones that you could understand. Then at a library book sale, there was As I Lay Dying and for a quarter I could buy it. I am not sure what possessed me to buy it.

I started reading it. By page 4 or 5, I had no idea what was going on. I reread the first few pages and still had no idea what was going on. Faulkner’s reputation was merited. I almost tossed the book aside. Then, again for a reason I do not recall, I decided to just keep reading. Wow. The book was terribly confusing, but gradually the fog lifted and by the end, everything all made sense. I never had that experience before. I realized then and there that there is something beautiful about reading, that it allows for exactly that experience of just letting the book do the work and going along for the ride and enjoying the process of discovery.

7. T. S. Eliot, Collected Poems

I hated poetry ever since my 10^th grade English class. Even though I had eventually become a reader, I never read poetry. The memories of that class killed any hope of enjoyment. But, eventually, after I had finished grad school and was teaching at the kind of place where the liberal arts are the thing we espouse, I realized that going through life hating poetry was not what I really wanted to do. I decided I should learn about poetry.

I was in Hailey, Idaho visiting my mom, went to a thrift store, and found a book of poetry that contained the poem I decided I should start reading. T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land.” All I knew about the poem was that it was important. I settled down one night to read it and I had absolutely no idea what I was reading. None. It was incomprehensible gibberish.

Remembering my experience with Faulkner, I persisted. I read the poem over and over, night after night. Eventually I started noticing things; eventually I started to see a structure. Eventually I realized that poetry could actually do things that prose could not do. Eventually I started reading poetry.

Over the years, I have read Eliot many times. He is the poet to whom I most often turn. His poetry has formed the background music of my life. He is the poet to whom I turned when tragedy hit. Eliot wrestles with exactly the same questions with which I wrestle. Eliot is the one who creates words to capture that which cannot be explained in any other way. If you want to know what it is like to think about the world the way I think about it, read Eliot.

Yes, I Really Did Read Twilight

But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil,
thou shalt not eat of it:
for in the day that thou eatest thereof
thou shalt surely die.

As everyone knows, that quotation is the epigraph in Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight. You might have also heard that the author of Genesis used it.

Yes, I recently read Twilight. The whole thing. Every single word.

I know you are eagerly awaiting my evaluation (what could it be?), but first a word of explanation. Why did I read this book?

I had a reading group last semester. Five students, all amazing. It was supposed to be a reading group funded with money from the Koch Foundation; I had been running reading groups with money from that Foundation for years, and so put together this set of students for the year, but then, alas, the Koch Foundation changed their funding priorities to large projects only and thus funding for small reading groups like mine went by the wayside. Sigh.

But, we decided to go ahead anyway, because, well, reading and talking about books is fun. One of the students, the clever snarky one (well…come to think of it, they were all clever and snarky…) decided the group needed a name and came up with the Dead Koch Society. The name stuck. They have had a group chat all year to which I was not invited, presumably because they spend much of their time mocking me.

There we were merrily reading and arguing all year when Coronavirus came along. But, fear not! The virus could not kill the Dead Koch Society. It moved to Slack. We finished the semester. Then the students decided it would be fun to keep going since nobody has a job anyway. So, they came up with a book. Yep. Twilight. I suspect they picked this book because they knew I would never agree to read it and then they could mock me for refusing to read a book. I called their bluff. I read it. Every word.

The quick evaluation: other than the prose, the plot and the characters, it was OK. The paper was really good quality. Very sturdy paper.

The book is really awful. It’s not just that it makes no sense, is written horribly, and has massive plot holes. It is a very trashy pre-teen romance novel. There is a scene in a glade with our Heroine Bella and the Super Hot Vampire Edward that may well be the most cringe-inducing pseudo-sex scene in literature. The ending of the novel is extraordinarily disturbing: an Evil Vampire traps Bella in her childhood ballet studio (yeah…), ties her to a chair, turns on a video recorder, and starts explaining how he is going to make a snuff film. Kids read this? Fortunately the Hot Vampire shows up in time to save the day.

I thought about quoting a few random passages to demonstrate the prose, but I will spare you. You may thank me, Dear Reader.

What I learned in the discussion we all had about the book:

1. To say this book and its sequels are popular among pre-teen/early-teen girls is an understatement. Why is it so popular? After talking with my former students, I think I get it. According to them, the book was really only popular with girls. That makes sense.

Bella (the heroine and narrator) is smart and likes to read. Bella is also, alas, incredibly awkward, both physically (she falls a lot) and socially. She is slightly older than the readers of the book, so this is exactly how a 12 year old girl who reads would see herself.

As the novel begins, Bella has just moved to a new town to live with her father. She shows up at school, knowing nobody. And suddenly, within a day, this awkward, smart, bookish girl has three different boys madly in love with her because she is so amazing. You can begin to see why this book is so popular with awkward, smart, bookish girls—and “bookish” is the key; they are the ones who read, you know, books.

But wait, there is more. There is also an ultra-hot, sexy, gorgeous, cool, sophisticated, aloof boy at the school. Oh, Edward. Be still my beating heart. Bella is instantly attracted to Edward. (Did I mention he is really good looking? Meyers point this out on just about every other page.) But, Edward sometimes acts like he can’t stand Bella and sometimes acts like he likes Bella. He loves me, he loves me not, he loves me…

Rest assured. Edward does love Bella with an intensity rivaled only by Bella’s intense love for Edward. There has never been a love in all of the history of literature as intense as the love between Edward and Bella. But, there is a problem! Edward is a Vampire! (Ooh! Shocking!) So Edward is torn between his love for Bella and his natural desire to consume all the blood in Bella’s circulatory system. This puts a damper on the relationship…but fear not, Edward is Strong! Strong enough to resist his desire to drink all her blood! So he can kiss her. Hooray! Sex is out, however. If they tried that, Edward might lose control and eat her.

Why is this book popular? It’s really obvious when you think about it. The awkward bookish girl has every boy in the school wanting to date her, but she is able to attract the mysterious hot boy with whom she falls madly in love and finds herself willing to give up her very soul to be with him forever. The hero saves her at the end. This is the perfect fantasy for pre-teen girls who like to read.

It even has an edge. Because Edward is a vampire, there is a very dangerous edge to this relationship. Edward is a modern day James Dean.

2. In the discussion with my former students, we spent a lot of time trying to figure out if Vampires had Human Rights and needed to follow Human Moral Codes. (Did I mention these former students are really nerdy?) It turned out to be a difficult question to answer because (surprise) Meyer is a bit vague and inconsistent on the details of vampires. They evolve differently than humans, but they cannot reproduce naturally, so you get more vampires by biting humans to poison them but then refraining from drinking all their blood. So, vampires are separately evolved creatures who cannot reproduce, leaving one to wonder about how they evolved, because they sure seem to be just undead humans.

Ah, but while a male vampire and a female vampire cannot have children, we learn in later books (so the students told me—I have not read the rest of these books) male vampires can impregnate female humans, but (alas) when the female human gives birth, she will die. Fear not, when this experiment is tried and Bella is about to die, Edward decides it is OK after all to turn her into a vampire. She lives! (Sorry, I have no idea which in volume of this series this exciting tale can be found.)

As a result, it is really not clear whether vampires have human rights or not. Do they have to follow human moral codes? Is it morally wrong for a vampire to eat a human? Here again, Meyer’s work is lacking a consistent narrative. We applaud Edward for not eating Bella (if he had, there would not have been any sequels!). But it is in the nature of vampires to feast on human blood. They can survive on animal blood, but that is like humans surviving on tofu or something. (My suggestion that vampires could enjoy the Impossible Burger was met with disdain—apparently it is not exactly the same thing as beef.)

But, since Edward is in love with Bella, is it wrong to turn her into a vampire? Bella wants to be a vampire—that way she can also always be young and hot like Edward! But Edward says it is wrong to do so. Why? Not clear. One would think vampires would not object to reproduction. It turns out only Evil vampires do not object to reproduction, well except when good vampires decide to take dying humans and make vampires, but promise to teach them how to be good vampires. What is a good vampire? Good vampires don’t eat people…except obviously the people they turn into good vampires. Or something like that.

If a group of seven vampires moves into town and five of them start attending the local high school because, well, it’s fun to go to high school or something, are humans supposed to welcome them into town?

It is really not clear how to sort out these ethical issues in Meyer’s book. After discussing these sorts of things at length, I am afraid I have to conclude that the Philosophy of Vampires is not well-explained in Twilight. Have to look elsewhere to answer such questions.

3. And finally the epigraph. I’ll admit, when I picked up the book I had low expectations. Then I saw the epigraph and wondered if maybe there would be something here after all. Nope.

Why this epigraph? Best guess: Bella is faced with a choice of whether to love a vampire. Edward is the forbidden fruit. Bella can taste the forbidden fruit and if she does, she will then know both good (being human) and evil (being a vampire). But, when she does that, she will die. Well, she will sort of die, she will become an immortal vampire. And vampires aren’t all evil, right? Isn’t the whole point? But it is definitely wrong to fall in love with a vampire, right? Well, except the book argues that it isn’t wrong to fall in love with a Really Hot Vampire if he is Mostly Good and promises not to suck out all of your blood.

So, what is the epigraph doing at the outset of the book? It is almost like Meyer wanted to add some literacy cache to a really trashy book so she tossed in that epigraph assuming nobody would actually spend any time thinking about it.

I really want to say something nice about Twilight. But, honestly, this book is worse than Jane Eyre.

Remembering to the Ending of the World

From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be rememberèd—
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition;
And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs’d they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.

Admiral William McRaven was not a-bed. Sea Stories: My Life in Special Operations tells the story of his rise from child daredevil though Navy SEAL training through his career ending as a four-star Admiral in charge of the US Special Operations Force. He was there, to put it mildly, at a busy time for Special Operations. The units he oversaw captured Saddam Hussein, killed Osama bin Laden, and captured or killed over 2000 other threats per year. That is 5-6 successful operations per day, year after year.

McRaven is a natural story teller; the whole book reads like hearing a guy telling stories over a couple of beers at a canteen. It is only when you pause to think about the story he just told that you are literally stunned. The tales of SEAL training, rumored to the hardest physical training in the military, are the sort of thing that leaves us mortals slack-jawed. Don’t believe me? McRaven’s training class started with 155 people. This is not a random cross-section of humanity. Imagine the toughest people in the world. Out of the 155 people who started the program, 122 quit. Yeah. That is not easy.

Want another tale? McRaven jumped out of an airplane on some training mission one day. While falling, he got tangled up in his parachute. He survived hitting the ground, but his pelvis was completely separated from his back. Five inches away. Obviously, he needed surgery. And after that, he went right on serving as a Navy SEAL. Yeah.

It is literally impossible not to hold your manhood cheap when reading this book.

As terrible as it sounds, every SEAL longs for a worthy fight, a battle of convictions, and an honorable war. War challenges your manhood. It reaffirms your courage. It sets you apart from the timid souls and the bench sitters. It builds unbreakable bonds among your fellow warriors. It gives your life meaning. Over time, I would get more than my fair share of war. Men would be lost. Innocents would be killed. Families would be forever changed. But somehow, inexplicably, war would never lose its allure. To the warrior, peace has no memories, no milestones, no adventures, no heroic deaths, no gut-wrenching sorrow, no jubilation, no remorse, no repentance, and no salvation. Peace was meant for some people, but probably not for me.

Then there are the tales, one after another, of extraordinary men doing extraordinary things all around the world. In my world, you get called “brave” for saying something unpopular at a meeting of the faculty. In their world, you get called “brave” for leaping out of a helicopter that just crashed and immediately rushing into a building containing armed men waiting to shoot you and then proceeding to systematically eliminate all the threats in the building as you go floor to floor and then you go back to get into another helicopter to take you out of the war zone deep in enemy territory.

After he retired from the Navy, McRaven became the chancellor of the University of Texas. I would have loved to see him talking with an angry faculty member.

I look back on the hundreds of men and women I visited in the hospitals. Every single one of them—every single one of them—asked me the same basic question: When can I return to my unit? When can I be back with my fellow soldiers? When can I get back in the fight? No matter how battered their bodies, all they could think about were their friends, their colleagues, their comrades, still in harm’s way. Never once—never once—did I hear a soldier complain about their lot in life. Soldiers with missing legs, blinded soldiers, paralyzed soldiers, soldiers who would never lead a normal life again, and yet not one of them felt sorry for themselves.

How do they do it? One step at a time

One evolution at a time. One evolution at a time. These words would stick with me for the rest of my career. They summed up a philosophy for dealing with difficult times. Most BUD/S [Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL] trainees dropped out because their event horizon was too far in the distance. They struggled not with the problem of the moment, but with what they perceived would be an endless series of problems, which they believed they couldn’t overcome. When you tackled just one problem, one event, or, in the vernacular of the BUD/S training, one evolution at a time, then the difficult became manageable. Like many things in life, success in BUD/S didn’t always go to the strongest, the fastest, or the smartest. It went to the man who faltered, who failed, who stumbled, but who persevered, who got up and kept moving. Always moving forward, one evolution at a time.

Why do they do it? As someone says to McRaven (echoing a line often misattributed to Orwell):

“It’s what I like best about this job,” Copeland said. “Every day you get to do some good. Someone is alive today because the guys did their job. Someone will have a lot more Easters because rough men stood ready to do violence on their behalf.”

And us?

And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs’d they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.

So, today, whenever you are reading this, pause a moment to remember these heroes who guard you while you sleep. I have no words better than those used by Kipling to explain why this should be so.

“Tommy”

I went into a public-’ouse to get a pint o’ beer,
The publican ‘e up an’ sez, “We serve no red-coats here.”
The girls be’ind the bar they laughed an’ giggled fit to die,
I outs into the street again an’ to myself sez I:
O it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ “Tommy, go away”;
But it’s “Thank you, Mister Atkins”, when the band begins to play,
The band begins to play, my boys, the band begins to play,
O it’s “Thank you, Mister Atkins”, when the band begins to play.

I went into a theatre as sober as could be,
They gave a drunk civilian room, but ‘adn’t none for me;
They sent me to the gallery or round the music-’alls,
But when it comes to fightin’, Lord! they’ll shove me in the stalls!
For it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ “Tommy, wait outside”;
But it’s “Special train for Atkins” when the trooper’s on the tide,
The troopship’s on the tide, my boys, the troopship’s on the tide,
O it’s “Special train for Atkins” when the trooper’s on the tide.

Yes, makin’ mock o’ uniforms that guard you while you sleep
Is cheaper than them uniforms, an’ they’re starvation cheap;
An’ hustlin’ drunken soldiers when they’re goin’ large a bit
Is five times better business than paradin’ in full kit.
Then it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ “Tommy, ‘ow’s yer soul?”
But it’s “Thin red line of ‘eroes” when the drums begin to roll,
The drums begin to roll, my boys, the drums begin to roll,
O it’s “Thin red line of ‘eroes” when the drums begin to roll.

We aren’t no thin red ‘eroes, nor we aren’t no blackguards too,
But single men in barricks, most remarkable like you;
An’ if sometimes our conduck isn’t all your fancy paints,
Why, single men in barricks don’t grow into plaster saints;
While it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ “Tommy, fall be’ind”,
But it’s “Please to walk in front, sir”, when there’s trouble in the wind,
There’s trouble in the wind, my boys, there’s trouble in the wind,
O it’s “Please to walk in front, sir”, when there’s trouble in the wind.

You talk o’ better food for us, an’ schools, an’ fires, an’ all:
We’ll wait for extry rations if you treat us rational.
Don’t mess about the cook-room slops, but prove it to our face
The Widow’s Uniform is not the soldier-man’s disgrace.
For it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ “Chuck him out, the brute!”
But it’s “Saviour of ‘is country” when the guns begin to shoot;
An’ it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ anything you please;
An’ Tommy ain’t a bloomin’ fool — you bet that Tommy sees!

Is It OK to Laugh?

A Midsummer Night’s Dream is unquestionably a Masterpiece.

One measure of how great it is: Neil Gaiman wrote an issue of Sandman that took the play, morphed it into something that worked seamlessly into the world of Dream, and then that issue of a comic book won the World Fantasy Award for Best Short Story of the year.

(After this happened, the organization that gives out the award immediately changed the rules of the award to prohibit comic books from ever winning again. It is apparently embarrassing that a comic book can win a Best Short Story of the Year Award.)

Gaiman had the advantage here of being able to start with one of Shakespeare’s finest plays. (He did the same thing with The Tempest later on in Sandman, by the way. Quite clever. But that is a digression.) I suspect it would be hard to find anyone who would doubt the greatness of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

But, is it funny? Be careful before you answer.

Consider the lion. As you will recall, within the play a bunch of rustic workmen decide to put on a play for the wedding celebration of the Duke of Athens. In the play, one of the characters, Snug, will play a lion. Snug is a joiner, a job which involves joining (hence the name!) pieces of wood together to make furniture. He isn’t terribly bright, but he can roar. Bottum (a weaver) thinks he would be better at roaring:

Snug: Have you the lion’s part written? Pray you, if it be, give it me, for I am slow of study.
Quince: You may do it extempore, for it is nothing but roaring.
Bottum: Let me play the lion too. I will roar that I will do any man’s heart good to hear me. I will roar that I will make the Duke say “Let him roar again. Let him roar again!”
Quince: An you should do it too terribly, you would fright the Duchess and the ladies that they would shriek, and that were enough to hang us all.
All: That would hang us, every mother’s son.

They obviously need to ensure a mild roaring. Later on, the workmen are still a bit concerned about frightening the ladies.

Snout: Will not the ladies be afeard of the lion?
Starveling: I fear it, I promise you.
Bottum: Masters, you ought to consider with yourself, to bring in (God shield us!) a lion among ladies is a most dreadful thing. For there is not a more fearful wildfowl than your lion living, and we ought to look to ’t.
Snout: Therefore another prologue must tell he is not a lion.
Bottum: Nay, you must name his name, and half his face must be seen through the lion’s neck, and he himself must speak through, saying thus, or to the same defect: “Ladies,” or “Fair ladies, I would wish you,” or “I would request you,” or “I would entreat you not to fear, not to tremble! My life for yours. If you think I come hither as a lion, it were pity of my life. No, I am no such thing. I am a man as other men are.” And there indeed let him name his name and tell them plainly he is Snug the joiner.
Quince: Well, it shall be so.

And then when they finally put on the play, Snug does indeed make sure nobody is frightened.

You ladies, you whose gentle hearts do fear
The smallest monstrous mouse that creeps on floor,
May now perchance both quake and tremble here,
When lion rough in wildest rage doth roar.
Then know that I, as Snug the joiner, am
A lion fell, nor else no lion’s dam;
For if I should as lion come in strife
Into this place, ’twere pity on my life

After which the nobility provide commentary mocking the whole enterprise.

Now, think about this particular thread of the play. Did you find it amusing? Shakespeare clearly wanted you to find it amusing. In the past, people laughed heartily at the joke. But did you find it amusing?

It is not hard to start listing the sins of that passage if you use the criteria beloved by the modern Campus Scolds. First, it is misogynistic and perpetuates gender stereotypes. Then it reinforces classism and the distinctions between the upper and lower classes. Third, it reinforces the idea that the lower classes serve only to amuse the upper classes. Fourth it demonstrates the inequality of wealth. Fifth, it roundly mocks the less educated. Need I go on?

So, is it funny?

While discussing this play with a couple of students, we got to talking about exactly this question. All three of us thought the whole lion thread was funny. Very funny. But, where is that line between being funny and being offensive?

Consider the following situation. Mount Holyoke has a couple of annual events where students give brief presentations on “What I did for my summer internship” and “What I did for my senior thesis.” The college spends a lot of energy in promoting these events. You can spend all day listening to undergraduates give 10 minutes spiels on their work. Nice idea I suppose, but truth be told, the day is pure torture. Don’t get me wrong. I love Mount Holyoke students. But, very few of them actually give riveting 10 minute talks on their senior thesis or their summer job.

Now, consider an event where the presentations at these events are mocked. Imagine a skit called “Senior Symposium” which was a full ten minutes of a really bad presentation in which every stereotypical feature of a bad presentation is featured. Could that be funny?

Then imagine that the presentation is not just a generic bad presentation, but actually specifically the kinds of things that students actually do at Senior Symposium? It cuts a bit closer to home. Is it still funny?

Then, imagine mocking a particular presentation. One of the students with whom I was talking wrote a senior thesis on the how the American Communist Party’s views on women changed over the course if its existence. Imagine mocking a presentation on that particular thesis at length. Is it still funny?

Somewhere along that spectrum, you probably drew a line. But, where? And does everyone draw the line at the same place? Of course not.

A sticky problem. Is it Ok to laugh at something if you know someone somewhere might take offense? One answer is “No.” That answer kills comedy. Try coming up with a joke that has no chance of ever offending anyone. Not just people you know, but anyone anywhere. Not just people you think are “reasonable” who “can take a joke” but even “unreasonable” people. Not just people you like, but even people you don’t like. Not just people today, but people in the future too. Good luck.

The problem is that it is literally impossible to draw the line here. So, either we have zero humor in the world or…what? If we don’t rule out the whole idea of humor, then what do we do? Shakespeare, ever the clever one, has an answer at the end of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The mischievous Puck walks out, looks at the audience and says:

If we shadows have offended,
Think but this, and all is mended,
That you have but slumber’d here
While these visions did appear.
And this weak and idle theme,
No more yielding but a dream,
Gentles, do not reprehend:
if you pardon, we will mend:
And, as I am an honest Puck,
If we have unearned luck
Now to ‘scape the serpent’s tongue,
We will make amends ere long;

There is an intriguing option. If you are offended, just pretend it was all a dream. Pardon others. It is not a perfectly satisfying answer, obviously. But, it does point us in the right direction. Have a little grace with others. The alternative is the death of laughter.

P.S. The thesis mentioned above about Communists and women is actually really good. It deservedly won all three major college awards for which it was eligible. It is also quite honestly without a doubt the best work ever written on the relationship between women and the American Communist Party. (That is a low bar, to be sure.) The conclusion I drew from the thesis is that Communists are really pathetic, have no deep principles, and just make up their views on an issue in order to constantly sound hip and avant-garde. The student didn’t particularly like the conclusion I drew, however, so maybe there is another possible conclusion which can be drawn from the thesis. If anyone wants to read the thesis, let me know. Of course, I expect precisely zero people to ask me for a copy. This is a thesis, after all, about Communist women in the mid-20^th century, a topic which interests precisely nobody. Don’t pretend you think it is interesting—remember—you won’t even ask me for a copy! I will get a mock-angry e-mail from this student now. I will laugh.