I first discovered this British author by watching her interview with Bill Moyers on his "Faith & Reason" series. She was open, intelligent, modest, and thoughtful. What struck me most was the rawness of her emotions and personality. Adopted at a young age by a fundamentalist Christian couple, later to see her adopted mother burn all of her treasured books, and later deal with discovery of her own homosexuality, this is a woman who has been in pain, and hasn't yet allowed it to heal over. Although I ache for her pain, I am actually grateful for her ability to use it to create.
"Weight" is a retelling of the myths of Atlas and Hercules ("Heracles" in her book), part of a recent series of great myth retellings commissioned from some of the world's best-known authors, including Margaret Atwood and A.S. Byatt.
In her short, searing novel, Winterson portrays Atlas as a Titan who believes he was punished by the gods and is locked into his fate, his eternal doom to hold the weight of the world on his back. Over millenia he is forced to question himself and the gods, prompted by Hera's claim that, no matter how difficult life seemed at any given time, he always had choices.
Winterson inserts chapters of her personal struggles with reality and choices, the questions that each of us face about our own role in the condition of our lives. The ancients knew about Fate, she says, because they knew how terribly impossible it is for humans to make true choices about our present circumstances. The present is crushed between the weight of the past and the future.
She ends the book with an answer to the question Atlas has been asking himself for centuries, since Hercules tricked him into taking back the weight of the world for all time: "Why not just put it down?" In this question is the monumental problem of Winterson's own life. In spending years trying to recreate her own reality, she has instead, like Atlas, created a world that she must carry on her back. A world that crushes her present.
"Weight" is honest and beautiful. It forces us to ask questions about our own belief in fate or choice, and how willing we are to admit to the choices we make, both conscious and subconscious. It forces Winterson, and her readers, to acknowledge the world that we each carry on our own backs, and how they inhibit our lives.
Wednesday, January 31, 2007
Know why your kid hates to read?
I am a copy editor by profession. I sit at home and read manuscripts of children's textbooks. As I don't ever have to talk with anyone on the phone, and I don't have to go an office, the work suits me far better than my former profession as a journalist. I remind myself of these benefits while the futility of my job and the inanity of most textbooks eats away at any sense of purpose and well-being. But you've gotta make a living.
There are many, many things wrong with the textbooks I edit (which, of course, means "things that are wrong with education in the U.S."). But the two most egregious problems, the two things that really screw up the education of your average American child are:
-Every state has it own standards, most of which suck (Texas: "large muscle group motion, such as circling arms"; New York: "The peoples and peopling of the American colonies (voluntary and involuntary)." Um, involuntary peopling, yeah, that's what we call it.) This doesn't mean the federal government should get involved. They've already gutted things enough with the "Leave all non-wealthy children behind" Act.
--They are BORING. Crashingly boring. Heartbreakingly boring. You want to know why so many teachers have so many behavior problems with young kids? The kids are bored to tears.
State standards and standardized testing have to answer for a lot of the boredom. Take a K-2 reading and phonics textbook set I worked on last year. The kids got to read cool little stories, except that the teachers weren't allowed to let them learn to read, enjoy, and employ their imaginations. Oh, no. The teacher had to say idiotic, killing things like, "Good readers look for a main idea and details as they are reading," or, "Careful readers think about cause and effect on each page of the story." They had to stop kids throughout the reading to make them think about things like characterization and setting. They're in kindergarten!
If you had been taught to read this way when you were 6, or 8, or even 15 years old, wouldn't you prefer television, too?
There are many, many things wrong with the textbooks I edit (which, of course, means "things that are wrong with education in the U.S."). But the two most egregious problems, the two things that really screw up the education of your average American child are:
-Every state has it own standards, most of which suck (Texas: "large muscle group motion, such as circling arms"; New York: "The peoples and peopling of the American colonies (voluntary and involuntary)." Um, involuntary peopling, yeah, that's what we call it.) This doesn't mean the federal government should get involved. They've already gutted things enough with the "Leave all non-wealthy children behind" Act.
--They are BORING. Crashingly boring. Heartbreakingly boring. You want to know why so many teachers have so many behavior problems with young kids? The kids are bored to tears.
State standards and standardized testing have to answer for a lot of the boredom. Take a K-2 reading and phonics textbook set I worked on last year. The kids got to read cool little stories, except that the teachers weren't allowed to let them learn to read, enjoy, and employ their imaginations. Oh, no. The teacher had to say idiotic, killing things like, "Good readers look for a main idea and details as they are reading," or, "Careful readers think about cause and effect on each page of the story." They had to stop kids throughout the reading to make them think about things like characterization and setting. They're in kindergarten!
If you had been taught to read this way when you were 6, or 8, or even 15 years old, wouldn't you prefer television, too?
There's a new life in my way
There are a lot of things nobody told me about pregnancy. Top of the list is the utter exhaustion these first three months. I'm tired all the time, with nothing to show for it. All I want to do is sleep, sleep and drink tea and read books. Nobody told me, either, about the hurricane-like feeling that my life has been stolen.
I feel plugged. The works are gummed up. Not just the parts that are meant to excrete, but the rest of me, too. My mind--it's dammed. Or damned. Everything has stopped, as if stuck in a held breath that will never exhale. Emotions float around so lazy that it is too much trouble to be sad, scared, or angry. I have been stoppered.
It's a child that's done this. Or it might not be a child yet, depending on how you look at things, especially whether you want it or not. I've had this feeling before, when I was a stupid teenager, and it was most definitely not a child then. It is one this time because I wanted it. Or thought I did. That's the problem, that I wanted this and am now horrified because I feel like I'm caught in a web or stuck in resin or, as I said, stoppered. I have been stopped. Everything that I am, or want to be, has stopped to make room for something more important: new life. That's how it feels, anyway. It's terrifying to be afraid--or is it jealous?--of something that doesn't really exist yet, and when it does will be totally dependent on me.
I should stop calling it 'it.' It has a name. She has a name. Nobody's told me she's a 'she,' but I know anyway.
Nobody told me that it would feel like this, that the happiness and expectation would be replaced by a limb-gripping fear that my life has just come to a screeching halt. And I haven't even done anything with it yet.
I feel plugged. The works are gummed up. Not just the parts that are meant to excrete, but the rest of me, too. My mind--it's dammed. Or damned. Everything has stopped, as if stuck in a held breath that will never exhale. Emotions float around so lazy that it is too much trouble to be sad, scared, or angry. I have been stoppered.
It's a child that's done this. Or it might not be a child yet, depending on how you look at things, especially whether you want it or not. I've had this feeling before, when I was a stupid teenager, and it was most definitely not a child then. It is one this time because I wanted it. Or thought I did. That's the problem, that I wanted this and am now horrified because I feel like I'm caught in a web or stuck in resin or, as I said, stoppered. I have been stopped. Everything that I am, or want to be, has stopped to make room for something more important: new life. That's how it feels, anyway. It's terrifying to be afraid--or is it jealous?--of something that doesn't really exist yet, and when it does will be totally dependent on me.
I should stop calling it 'it.' It has a name. She has a name. Nobody's told me she's a 'she,' but I know anyway.
Nobody told me that it would feel like this, that the happiness and expectation would be replaced by a limb-gripping fear that my life has just come to a screeching halt. And I haven't even done anything with it yet.
Hating New York
Maybe it's not true that I hate New York. I don't like it, certainly. It bores me, definitely. Frustrating? Annoying? Dull? Absolutely. But hateful? I'm not sure. Mostly it puts me to sleep. Maybe it's the weather. Maybe it's the people. Maybe it's the fact that, to New Yorkers, a Westerner like me has nothing to add to their worldview. In their minds, I should be grateful to be here. That makes me hate it.
I hate Boston, its snobbish, introverted self-interest and obsession with inherited blueblood money. It's like a wealthy old great-aunt who's always reminding you that your hippie mother from Seattle was never accepted as "one of the family," and you never will be either. New York seems so childish by comparison, some little toddler boy fascinated with the action of its own penis. It's hard to hate a baby that's always so gleefully impressed with its own accomplishments.
"I'll move anywhere with you," I told my travel-loving husband almost ten years ago. I wanted to see the world, too. "Anywhere, except the East Coast of the U.S." I meant it. The one place I'd loathed and dreaded since my childhood, the one place I held a grudge against. I hated the East Coasters' assumption that the middle didn't matter, that those of us in rural places, hiding in the mountains or on the plains, were just dying to get out. I hated the New Yorker magazine's grip on the throat of American literary culture.
Then six years ago his company transferred us to my own personal hell. We spent two years in Boston, two dull, despised years among the most provincial people I have ever met. I daydreamed of the Rockies where I grew up and gritted my teeth at the tolerant smiles given by people who assumed that I was grateful to be somewhere cultural--somewhere that meant something. I felt like I was constantly hammering on a glass wall, waiting for the people on the other side to notice me. What I really wanted was for them to admit that my reality--my Western life--was just as valid and important and meaningful as theirs, or more so. Which they never did.
Now I've been sixty miles outside of New York City for four years, another four long, boring years. My neighbors are all natives of Queens, Brooklyn, and the Bronx. They're fat. They're stupid. They're ugly--god, they're ugly. And they're loud. God, they're loud.
Then there's the other group, the urbane New York City-dwellers who come up here on the weekends to their tiny unheated cabins. They're nice, in general, fairly intelligent, self-absorbed, and boring. Between these two groups, I've never met people so uninterested in the world outside their home, or in the world at large.
The truth is, New York is too boring to hate. I go into Manhatten fairly often. I see plays, go to bars, walk around a whole lot, and find the whole city incredibly tedious. Why? Because it's completely turned inward on itself. Its residents think they have the entire world at their fingertips. Its art--music, theater, literature--feeds upon itself, regurgitating never-ending variations on the same "Isn't New York endlessly fascinating" theme.
Like a toddler, New York doesn't see itself as part of the wider world. Anything that matters begins and ends with the limit of its limbs. You can tickle a toddler, or feed it, or watch its antics, but you can't hold a conversation with it. And you can't expect it to grow up and take its place among entities that matter.
I hate Boston, its snobbish, introverted self-interest and obsession with inherited blueblood money. It's like a wealthy old great-aunt who's always reminding you that your hippie mother from Seattle was never accepted as "one of the family," and you never will be either. New York seems so childish by comparison, some little toddler boy fascinated with the action of its own penis. It's hard to hate a baby that's always so gleefully impressed with its own accomplishments.
"I'll move anywhere with you," I told my travel-loving husband almost ten years ago. I wanted to see the world, too. "Anywhere, except the East Coast of the U.S." I meant it. The one place I'd loathed and dreaded since my childhood, the one place I held a grudge against. I hated the East Coasters' assumption that the middle didn't matter, that those of us in rural places, hiding in the mountains or on the plains, were just dying to get out. I hated the New Yorker magazine's grip on the throat of American literary culture.
Then six years ago his company transferred us to my own personal hell. We spent two years in Boston, two dull, despised years among the most provincial people I have ever met. I daydreamed of the Rockies where I grew up and gritted my teeth at the tolerant smiles given by people who assumed that I was grateful to be somewhere cultural--somewhere that meant something. I felt like I was constantly hammering on a glass wall, waiting for the people on the other side to notice me. What I really wanted was for them to admit that my reality--my Western life--was just as valid and important and meaningful as theirs, or more so. Which they never did.
Now I've been sixty miles outside of New York City for four years, another four long, boring years. My neighbors are all natives of Queens, Brooklyn, and the Bronx. They're fat. They're stupid. They're ugly--god, they're ugly. And they're loud. God, they're loud.
Then there's the other group, the urbane New York City-dwellers who come up here on the weekends to their tiny unheated cabins. They're nice, in general, fairly intelligent, self-absorbed, and boring. Between these two groups, I've never met people so uninterested in the world outside their home, or in the world at large.
The truth is, New York is too boring to hate. I go into Manhatten fairly often. I see plays, go to bars, walk around a whole lot, and find the whole city incredibly tedious. Why? Because it's completely turned inward on itself. Its residents think they have the entire world at their fingertips. Its art--music, theater, literature--feeds upon itself, regurgitating never-ending variations on the same "Isn't New York endlessly fascinating" theme.
Like a toddler, New York doesn't see itself as part of the wider world. Anything that matters begins and ends with the limit of its limbs. You can tickle a toddler, or feed it, or watch its antics, but you can't hold a conversation with it. And you can't expect it to grow up and take its place among entities that matter.
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