Down with Reality(?)

Three different people have written to me this past week to say they “just finished” or are “enthralled by” a novel. Each time, I grinned—because I know exactly how they feel.

Remember those old Calgon bath salts commercials? When her world became too chaotic, the woman would cry, “Calgon, take me away!” and end up relaxing in a tub of bubbles.

Well-written fiction, too, can whisk you away from your woes or push you to delve deeper into them. Good writing introduces you to characters and environments that jog your perspective, surprise you with insights, equip you with new coping mechanisms. It expands your world, allows you to luxuriate in thoughtful, exquisite phrasing.

If you’re recovering from an injury, fighting to hang on to your job, or just struggling with each day’s dreary headlines, pick up a book. I guarantee it’s better than Calgon.

“To acquire the habit of reading is to construct for yourself a refuge from almost all the miseries of life.” 

—Somerset Maugham

[Art by John White Alexander.]

BOOKreMARKS: Anthologies, Part 2

 Well, well, well.

Had no intention of revisiting yesterday’s rant, but a recent discovery requires a correction and a mea culpa from me. Apparently, when I searched for clues regarding the authorship of a story in the anthology I mentioned (but didn’t name, thank goodness), I searched at the wrong end of the book.

Last night, before I started reading a new section of the dog anthology, I skimmed the table of contents and right there in front of me was the clue I’d earlier missed. Each work of fiction was clearly labeled “A Story.”

Duh.

Now the editors of said dog anthology have returned to their elevated position on my admiration meter. I’m sorry I doubted them—I hate it when my heroes fall.

But my rant still holds. Other anthologies have erred (honest) on this subject and stirred my ire.

Whew! Glad that’s off my chest. Thanks for listening.

[The anthology cover pictured is not one I’ve read, so I have no idea where it stands on the subject of mixing fact with fiction.]

Oh. One more thing. The title of the Norman Rockwell magazine-cover art used in yesterday’s post is hardly legible. The work is called “Fact and Fiction,” hence its inclusion.

BOOKreMARKS: Anthologies Tap Pet Peeves I Didn’t Know I Had

I’ve read a fair number of anthologies this past year. Some have been great reading, others just so-so. Yet regardless of the quality of writing, I’ve learned that a single editorial omission can really tick me off.

The other night, while reading an anthology of dog stories, I stumbled on the very first page of one selection. The writer of the story, a woman, opened her contribution with a reference to her “wife.” Assuming that this was a true narrative as the others before it had been, I made the short leap of faith that the author was a lesbian. But soon, little clues were dropped to indicate that the narrator was a man.

I stopped reading and looked again at the short bio included in the back of the anthology. (Bios, I’ve learned, are a critical element of anthologies for me. They give insights about the writers and context for the story; they help me decide whether I want to read more of a writer’s work. I give a thumbs-down to anthologies that are bio-less. Also, I find it frustrating when anthologies that contain a mix of contemporary authors and those from previous centuries omit birth/death dates in the bios.) It gave me nothing.

Next, I put the book aside and searched the Internet for an explanation. Had the wrong author been cited with the story? Had a simple editorial mistake sent me on this hunt?

No, as it turned out. The story was, indeed, written by the woman whose name was published beneath the title in my anthology. The story had also been published previously in a journal or two, but (and it’s a BIG BUT) the story was FICTION! That is to say—because I think our society is often confused about the differences between FICTION and NONFICTION (Isn’t that right, James Frey, Mike Daisey, Jayson Blair?)—this story was NOT TRUE. It was a fabrication. The incident described in the story did not really happen; the people of the story were characters conjured in the author’s imagination.

The good news: I could finally stop puzzling over the story and just read it for its entertainment value.

The bad news: The editors of the anthology fell a notch or two on my admiration meter. Certainly this wasn’t the first anthology I’d read that mixed fact with fiction. I simply expected more of these particular editors.

For the record, I don’t oppose combining fact and fiction. I just want a heads-up about it. I want it clearly labeled—especially in a thematic anthology that may be read for reasons other than entertainment. Maybe it’s a book of surgeons’ life-and-death experiences, or mountain-climbers’ biggest challenges, or, as in the case of the anthology that got me kvetching in the first place, a book about the human-canine relationship. Readers should know whether they’re reading fact or fiction before they: 1) Try to replicate a situation described in the story; 2) Use information from the story to resolve a real-life problem; 3) Retell part of the story at a cocktail party; 4) Assume connections between the story and its author; and 5) Use parts of the story for educational purposes.

Oh dear. How I’ve gone on about this. I’ll stop now.

There is a silver lining in all this, though: I regard my reading as further instruction toward editorial mastery. I hope to one day curate my own animal-related anthology and when I do, I’ll have a long list of Dos and Don’ts to follow. I’m grateful to the editors who have pioneered the way before me.

Compassion: Yet Another Endangered Species?

I’ve been reading Ian Parker’s “The Story of a Suicide: Two College Roommates, a Webcam, and a Tragedy,” a New Yorker article about the Rutgers freshman who jumped to his death from the George Washington Bridge, leading strangers to jump to conclusions about his motivation. The author includes numerous e-mails and text messages that the players in this drama exchanged, and I was struck again and again by a common theme in their banter: compassion. Or, rather, a lack of it.

I realize these exchanges were private and written in techno-haste by kids who easily fall prey to the rhythm of peer-bashing—us vs. them. But words impart meaning and if used repeatedly, become a kind of truth. Homosexuals weren’t their only target. The kids expressed disdain for violinists, computer illiterates, people of inferior intelligence, people who don’t have Gmail addresses, and, most especially, poor people.

Poor people?

I thought I knew what I was up against in my mission to generate compassion for animals from the general population. But this New Yorker article indicated a societal mindset foreign to me.

As I related my concern to my husband, he found “What, Me Care? Young Are Less Empathetic” by Jamil Zaki. It’s a summary in Scientific American of long-term studies conducted on empathy in humans—how we apply it and how we think about it. In the U.S. college population, empathy has been on the decline in the last decade.

After watching the Super Bowl ads and halftime show this past weekend, I can understand why. It seems as if harshness and snarkiness and loudness are easy to come by in the media; for softness and kindness and quiet, we have to actively search for examples. All too often, most of us take whatever comes to us. I thought this indicated that our emotional world is out of balance with our multimedia world, especially for younger generations. For compassion to gain importance, we simply have to try harder to achieve equilibrium.

Then I read the comments to the Scientific American article. Here’s one that stands out:

“Perhaps low empathy levels could be improved if people were given the time and space to find each other interesting. … If it were somehow necessary for people to depend on the kindness of strangers, they might find reasons to care about them.”

Ah, it all makes sense now. If poor people could just be more interesting, they might rouse compassion from others. Poor people (like exploited animals) vie for our attention in the same media muddle as do displays of glamour, sexuality, affluence, athleticism, and trendiness. Is this a level playing field? How can we make society’s invisible more interesting?

I was about to give up on humans until I read this in Poetry magazine:

“If I can only be horrified by my species, then I will have to kill myself. If I find others recognizable, I guess I will continue. It’s as simple as that.”
—Fanny Howe

I guess it is as simple as that. I must do what I can as I can. I urge you to do the same.

Sidenote
One difference between empathic individuals (children and adults) and those with little compassion: Those who read more fiction have more empathy.

[Pics from top to bottom from Dog Files, Have Dog Blog Will Travel, and Dog Eat Dogma.]

Stories for the Overscheduled

You’ve no time for fiction, you say? Your life’s about to change.

Tomorrow marks the release of 420 Characters, a collection of fictional stories spilling from the mind of acclaimed artist Lou Beach. (If you’re near Los Angeles, you can hear him read excerpts at Book Soup tomorrow night.) No story exceeds 420 characters—the maximum allowed by Facebook for updates, which is where 420 began. Everyone has time to read at least one of these stories this year.

Get the lowdown on the book at NPR or read excerpts in The Paris Review. Now travel to your favorite indie book peddler and help keep the publishing economy moving. Please?