2018 School Spending Survey Report
>"Crap, here comes Teacher!"
>In the comments on the earlier post about dueling reviews, `h wrote:Speaking of the good stick.
Speaking of the good stick. There's something I'd like you to measure -- heavy handed instruction -- when an author sticks something into the text that clearly doesn't fit in order to model some lesson-- girls are just as smart as boys, or racism = bad, or it's okay to be yourself. Heavy handed moralizing is the best reason to return a book to the library unfinished, I think. What I really like is insidious invisible moralizing that is going to creep unreflected into the reader's head and take root!
Wait. No! Bad moralizing! Down you insidious lesson, you!
When you review a book, how do you judge the didacticism? Subtle is okay? Heavy handed, not? Or is the divide between didacticism that is currently accepted vs. didacticism you think is misguided?
Is subtle didacticism better or worse than the heavy handed? is insidious didacticism okay if it's on the side of the angels?
I mean the deliberate kind. I don't mean the unreflected reinforcement of cultural norms like Enid Blyton -- those things that stick out like sore thumbs when the culture changes.
I've moved the comment to here, because it's really a different topic, plus, this was the week of my return to the musical stage (it went fine, thank you) and I haven't had time to prowl around for something new. Although I think you can discern very different editorial styles among the seven of us who have been editors of the Horn Book, one thing we will agree upon when eventually gathered together in reviewer heaven is that we all hated didacticism, even while we might have had different definitions of the word and varying degrees of tolerance for it. But here I will only speak for myself. I think one could make a case that all literature is insidiously didactic, attempting to pull you into an author's view of the world. I have no problem with that.
And the problem I do have with overt didacticism is less with its frequent technical clumsiness, where swatches of sermons or lessons are just slapped into the story, then it is with the way it reminds readers Who Is In Charge. Having someone in charge is good for a lot of things--to return for a second to my singing class this spring, I loved the fact that the teacher, Pam Murray, knew more about singing than I did and could thus tell me, clearly and effectively (and diplomatically!), how to become a better singer. That's what I want in a teacher. But I don't want to hear it from a writer, especially when I think of myself as a child reader, being reminded, once again, that grownups are the ones in charge. Books are a great place for kids to escape from being told what to do. They are not a place where a reader wants to hear, "I know better, so listen up." As a reader, I want to feel that a book is a place I can explore, or even a place where the author and I are exploring together. Didacticism shuts that right down.
Didacticism can also bite the author right in the ass. Think of Go Ask Alice. It was clearly intended to be a moral instruction about the dangers of drugs; instead, it was a wild ride through a crazy, exciting world. (I'm now remembering a comment years ago by a librarian colleague, Pamela, who said "these stupid anti-drug books with all their blather about 'peer pressure' and 'self-esteem' aren't going to mean a thing until they acknowledge something else: drugs are fun.")
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Andy Laties
>I love Daniil Kharms, too.For instance -- is there a moral to this story, below? Is it didactic? Yes and no. Given that it was written in the late 20s, in Russia, is it political? Yes and no. Isn't it simply perfect, so that its political meanings perfectly merge with its beauty and humor?
A Sonnet
An amazing thing happened to me today: I suddenly forgot which comes first - 7 or 8.
I went to my neighbors and asked them what they thought on the matter.
To their and my surprise, we suddenly discovered that they too couldn't recall the counting order. They remembered 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6, but they'd forgotten what comes next.
We all went to the overpriced grocery store, the one that's on the corner of Znamenskaya and Basseinaya Streets, and asked the cashier to resolve our dilemma. The cashier smiled sadly, pulled a small hammer out of her mouth and, after twitching her nose slightly left-right, said: - In my opinion, seven comes after eight, whenever eight comes after seven.
We thanked the cashier and cheerfully ran out of the store. But then, thinking carefully about the cashier's words, we got sad again since her words were void of any meaning.
What were we supposed to do? We went to the Summer Garden and started counting the trees. But upon reaching six in count, we stopped and begun to arguing: in the opinion of some, 7 went next; but in opinion of others, 8 did.
We were arguing for a long time when, by some sheer luck, a child fell off a park bench and broke both jaw bones. This distracted us from our argument.
And then, we all went home.
Posted : May 29, 2007 05:36
rindawriter
>WHEW!!! The squeaking in the sandbox has been deafening today...and there's so much sand being thrown that I got something in my eyes and can't seeEEEEEEH......Wah! Wah! Wah!I will say this: I will be willingly lured without any ability whatsoever to resist by any book, ANY book that ENTERTAINS ME FULLY, satisfies me wholly, pleases me exquisitely--no matter how didactic it appears to others or how didactic the author might have intended it to be. I only care that I, me, myself, and mine experience enormous pleasure in reading it.
I am frankly bored by a lot of the YA and the fantasy for young folks out there because the books contain either no humor at all or else are swamped by the sort of derogatory, demeaning, insult humor without compassion, without gentleness that seems to be so popular on sitcoms and R-rated comedian shows these days....
Lloyd Alexander's work is didactic, and I can feel that in his work, see it, pick it out, but I also can't stop reading it and I can't stop loving to slurp it up yet one more time, and I can't stop forgiving him over and over again for minor faults becuase his work contains such compassion and such a tremendous sense of humor. I can't stand HP because I can't stand the author's brand of insult humor-frankly. It's not fun, not enjoyable to me. All too common already.....cheap and below the belt for my money.
I LOVE Gone with the Wind. I especially LOVE hating and admiring Scarlett all at one time, but I also suck up the lush word pictures and the way the action NEVER stops and how cleanly, concisely that author still writes for all the lushness...she never, NEVER makes me wait until I'm bored...superb plotting, superb sense of audience in that book...no wonder young girls have loved it so.
Posted : May 29, 2007 02:13
Anonymous
>Tobin said: "The similarity between totalitarian regimes -- right or left -- is of course the refusal to recognize that their truths are constructed and contingent, and the willingness therefore to violently align reality to match."This seems to me to be an apt description of the current administration, actually... and I'm not sure that a "Sophist" manipulation of language and logic doesn't always play a part in that endeavor. The effort to force reality into accordance with a dogmatic ideology seems generally to encompass language... For some reason I'm reminded of a scene in the movie The Lives of Others, in which the interrogator tells a prisoner-- who has avowed his innocence-- that if he believes himself to be innocent then he is implying that the State has been mistaken in arresting him...which would in itself be a traitorous criticism.
You know, I wonder if the power of absurdist writing in such an environment comes partly, also, out of the fear that such a state evokes. A totalitarian government, in its extreme attachment to a particular worldview and its willingness to subvert reality to support that view, *is* absurd. And a truly absurdist atmosphere can be terrifying-- maybe absurdist literature expresses some of that horror, and with it the hope of returning to a more ordered world?
I wonder, too, whether that sort of dis-ordering of language and meaning-- a Clean Air bill that is in fact a measure to lower the standards on harmful emmissions, for example-- isn't more unsettling and upsetting than overt didacticism.
As to whether this is in some way similar to a "Post-Modern" philosophy... I agree with those above who've argued that, when taken to an extreme, any ideology has a Shakespearean tendency to resemble its opposite. Though, you know, that very idea could be called kinda Post-Modern. I think, though, that many of the original writers who've been labeled PMs did try to get at something more subtle than the criticism of total relativism would suggest... though maybe this is just my interpretation...Still, old Jacques Derrida did write quite a bit about the need for political action...
I also can't help thinking of the Mahayana Buddhists, who argue that a pure vision of the world as being in change and flux, without central order or meaning, is ultimately a nihilistic view... unless one adds the practice of compassion.
But now I'm going way too far afield!
Thanks for the thought-provoking discussion,
Ruth
Posted : May 28, 2007 05:20
JeanneB
>Anonymous, do not tell me how I think. I do not think my impulses noble. (How ridiculous) I write the only way I know how, and I believe in trying to make better in some small way a frighteningly imperfect world.Posted : May 28, 2007 04:50
Anonymous
>Pertinent to that and to Roger's comment, I believe I have been attacked much more frequently and more harshly than I would have had I used my name, so I think, interestingly that it cuts two ways, athough I do understand people's objections to someone coming on anonymously. I did so from the outset because I admit I think blogging is fundamentally an icky thing to do and I couldnt believe I got sucked into some of these discussions, which are very stimulating but because I also think the impulse to enlighten is icky, a clarification for me, as many have been, thanks to all the varying voices on the blog and their willingness to speak (with names or not) I am going to get off the blog. This seems something of a paradox, but there you go. The best waters are always murky. If you clean them up the ponds die.Posted : May 28, 2007 03:36