Archive for Greatest Hits

The Writing Life

This is the 600th blog post at jamespreller.com.

Will anyone read this? Google Analytics informs me that about 250 “visitors” will swing by today. Whoever they are, taking whatever they want. Close friends, curious guests, lost surfers riding the wave. I’m here to say it does not matter. I’d write it anyway.

Slip the note into the bottle, plug it up, toss it over the side, sail on.

I joke about my “Nation of Readers,” but writing this blog (and most writing in general), is not much different from scribbling notes on a raft in the open sea. Why bother? To what end? Those questions seem wholly irrelevant.

For most writers, there’s little feedback. Blog readers rarely comment, books are written and go out of print with barely a ripple. Most bottles, like books, sink unopened to the ocean floor. Still writers persist in throwing material into the void. Or maybe, like me, they have a drawer full of poems and stories that few will ever read. And it strikes me that this is the essence of the writing life. If the planet was empty, an arctic solitude barren as a blank page, a writer would still write. Because to write is to continue on despite, or in  spite of, the resounding silence. Writing might be our response to that white silence.

Not that it isn’t disappointing at times. It so often is. I get very discouraged, downhearted.  A writer wants to connect. And I’ll sometimes ask myself, Why do this? Who cares? Yet still, yet still. The hand moves over the keyboard, or lifts up the pen, pad of paper on lap, and words lay smote like fallen soldiers.

There’s a fundamental contrary to this solitary-seeming process. For writing is yin to reading’s yang. Somehow when we read — that most exclusionary of acts, far from the madding crowd — we are profoundly not alone. We swim in words, words, an ocean of words. An electric current shivers through us. Miraculously we are connected to something, someone else. We remember that the world was created with words. They told us that story in school. And He said, “Let their be light,” and behold there was light. Writers take note: it was the saying made it so.

The boy with his book and the girl with her journal, in their quiet rooms: Not alone. The writer in his basement, the reader on a crosstown bus.

I recently read an interview with Lois Lowry. She was asked a frivolous question about fame and success. And she gave a great answer:

My guess if that very few writers think about—or aspire to—fame. Certainly I never did. I think most of us are propelled, as I was, and am still, by a love of stories and a fascination with language, its cadence and precision. And so we find ourselves playing with those two elements, combining them, thinking about them. I did that from a very early age. My first published work was a letter to a children’s magazine in 1947, when I was 10 years old. Part of it said, “I am writing a book.” I was always writing a book—or a poem—or a story—or simply a list. I had started doing that, maybe even somewhat obsessively, when I was 7 or 8. And I continued. I don’t recall when I first thought: I want to be a writer someday. It was always simply a part of me, and my only real aspiration.

It made me think of my own writing, and my experience so far with my new blog, Fathers Read. I’ve gotten some support, heard some nice things, but right now, today, very few people visit the site. In sum: It’s a great idea, I love it, and nobody cares. That’s not self-pity, just an accurate assessment of the way things are. The world never promised to come running with open arms. Now maybe I don’t know how to market this thing, maybe I need to Tweet faster or Facebook harder, or maybe I’d rather write than market. Again I’m confronted by the question that all writers face. What’s the point? Why bother? Isn’t this all just a waste of time?

As if, in my fantasy, the notion of choice enters into it. As if not writing was an option.

So another bottle goes into the water. Gurgle, gurgle, glub.

I mean to say: Thank you, dear reader, for stopping by. I’d do it without you, almost certainly, but it is infinitely better that you are here. Six hundred blog posts, a bunch of books, a lifetime of reading and writing later. Alone, and not alone. Thanks.

———

NOTE: The season for school visits is upon me. I’ll be away for much of the next six weeks, posting sporadically. It’s fun to get out and visit schools, but I’m such a homebody.

Getting Boys to Read: Two Authors Chat About It (part 2)

A while back, author Kurtis Scaletta and I shared on this blog an online chat we had on the wide-ranging topic of “the reading gender gap.” Specifically, we discussed an Associated Press article, written by Leanne Italie: “How to get boys to read? Try a book on farts.”

If you missed it the first time around, click here to read that conversation.

Today we’re back at it again, this time responding to a provocative piece written by Thomas Spence for The Wall Street Journal back in late September. I really encourage you to read it, and you can do so by banging on this link.

Here’s a few paragraphs from Spence’s article to set the stage:

One obvious problem with the SweetFarts philosophy of education is that it is more suited to producing a generation of barbarians and morons than to raising the sort of men who make good husbands, fathers and professionals. If you keep meeting a boy where he is, he doesn’t go very far.

The other problem is that pandering doesn’t address the real reason boys won’t read. My own experience with six sons is that even the squirmiest boy does not require lurid or vulgar material to sustain his interest in a book.

And now for the chat portion of today’s program:

JP: Kurtis!

KS: Hey, how’s the weather in Albany? It’s damned cold here.

JP: Nice, sunny. It’s December, so it’s all about sunshine. We can go grim stretches of gray without it.

KS: Yeah, I have to remember to take walks or I don’t see the sun. Dark on the way in, dark on the way home. Windowless cube.

JP: I’m typing from a windowless basement, so I feel your pain. Anyway, do you remember your first gut-reaction to Spence’s article?

KS: Yes, but every time I go back to it I feel differently. My gut reaction was to feel the same outrage and disgust as the author. Now I’m not sure it’s a fair piece.

JP: I agree. But let’s stay with the positive for a moment.

KS: The gist of his point was nicely summarized in one sentence: “If you keep meeting a boy where he is, he doesn’t go very far.” That’s my philosophy as an author of children’s books. I want to set high expectations for children. My experience as a child who loved reading and as a book club facilitator is that kids who love reading are reading a bit ahead of themselves, if that makes sense. I think of books as grappling hooks. Kids throw the hook up and then climb up to it. They deal with issues through literature, then confront them personally. And the truth is that books like Sweet Farts — which is about science project — might do that. But the treatment in the popular press is that boys can only be saved if we dumb down their books. It’s that message that worries me, not the books.

JP: Backing up a bit, Spence was reacting against — and at times, churlishly over-reacting –- to the AP article we discussed a month ago. This lazy idea that boys are somehow primitive creatures.

KS: I guess that’s it. Boys are dumb, you need to give them dumb books. Don’t bother giving them anything else, they won’t enjoy it because they’re all video-game-crazed and have the attention spans of gnats.

JP: Right, this sweeping negative caricature of boys.

KS: Like I’ve said before (even on your blog), to an extent when you say what boys like you are telling them what they like. You set expectations. Kids are always looking to adults to know who they are and how they’re supposed to behave. Man, I see myself doing it now that I have a kid, and he’s only a baby. Trucks on his sheets, sports themed jammies.

JP: I was reading an article the other day, and it focused on how boys influence the reading of other boys, this peer-checking system where, in groups, maybe it’s not so cool to admit to liking certain kinds of books. So the boys do it to themselves, too — to the point where some boys don’t even want to admit to liking books.

KS: Oh yeah. I remember as a boy that some books had to stay at home. Betsy Byars, Judy Blume.

JP: Right, bring one of those books to the lunch table and here comes the “Are you gay?” comment.

KS: Heh. But parents and teachers shouldn’t encourage that by creating “boy book” sections that are all farts and firetrucks. So we’ve been over this and I guess the question is, in the words of Boss Tweed, what are you going to do about it?

JP: Which is why we come back to the critical importance of male role models — of men reading, sending the powerful message that reading is a guy thing.

Art by Edward Gorey.

KS: And reading all kinds of stuff. But I think there has to be some kind of message sent to teachers and libraries and parents as well. “Stop selling boys short.”

JP: As of today, 15,024 Facebook users “liked” The Wall Street Journal article and it generated almost 200 comments. So it obviously touched a nerve.

KS: Wow.

JP: He is awfully unfair though. These broad swipes at R.L. Stine, for example, whom I see as a sincere, talented man with an uncanny gift for plot who writes lively, fast-paced thrillers that many kids (girls, too) genuinely enjoy.

KS: Yes, and I saw an interview with Raymond Bean that made me reconsider his book, Sweet Farts. I guess I’m jealous of the instant success of it based on a scatological theme, but it’s just about a kid’s science project. If you said, “Kurtis, a book about a science project for middle school readers is a big hit,” I’d think that was cool.

JP: Likewise, I think it’s easy to under-estimate the “Captain Underpants” series. In the hands of a lesser writer, those books might be awful. But I found them genuinely funny. It doesn’t read like pandering to me. My oldest son, Nick, now 17, loved them. He even wrote a piece of fan mail to Dav Pilkey. And Nick is still a reader today and a great student. I think we’re agreed: It’s not about the books — there are so many, many great books out there — it’s about the collective perception of boys and what they are capable of, what they may one day become.

KS: Exactly. All I can do is write the books I want to write and hope they’ll catch on.

JP: I’ve come to intensely dislike lists of “books for boys,” because they are so dependent upon limited (and limiting!) stereotypes. These lists are almost part of the problem, I think, because they seem to inevitably lead to the lowest common denominator — i.e., all boys love gross-out books!

KS: The problem with a boys book list that isn’t diverse is really two-fold. First, it sells boys short. Second, it makes boys who have different tastes feel like they aren’t proper boys. It’s something serious to think about. There’s so much emphasis on getting boys to read at all that we lose sight of the big picture. Books shape us. That’s why they’re important. It’s not just about doing well on the SAT. But that’s just the mainstream media. I’ve learned that scholars and teachers are having a completely different conversation.

JP: Previously you talked about books that are game-changers, those singular reading experiences that can turn kids into life-long readers.

KS: Yeah, the conversations I mean are at a much deeper level. They aren’t looking for ways to “trick” kids into reading. They’re looking at those books that Stephen Krashen calls “home run” books — single books that turn kids on to reading because they affect them in profound ways.

JP: Reading is such a private experience. Alone with a book. It’s when readers can be most authentically themselves — at a time in their lives, for these boys, when they are really uncertain about who that “self” is or might become. Great literature has done that for me. It’s helped shaped my thoughts, my feelings. When we say we want boys to read, those are the experiences we are hoping they’ll have.

KS: And William Brozo’s work has probably given me more thought about my own work than anybody else. He has written about the male archetypes in books.

JP: I read Brozo’s book on your recommendation.

KS: I haven’t figured it all out yet, but Krashen and Brozo have made me really thoughtful about my own work.

JP: How so?

KS: I mean that when I write books I’ll be thinking about the men my boy characters are becoming. It’s done instinctively in Mudville, but for the most part I don’t think more than a month ahead in the lives of my characters.

JP: Interesting. When I wrote Bystander, I clearly saw the character of Griffin very likely ending up in prison some day. On a somewhat-related note, when my son was very sick, it really put parenting issues to a test. It was so tempting to spoil a kid with cancer. Here, have whatever you want! But we’d remind ourselves, “We’re not raising a sick boy, we’re trying to raise a healthy adult.”

KS: I love that statement, Jim. I remember it from your blog. I was repeating it to everyone for a week at least . . . of course your wife gets the credit.

JP: She’s a great mother.

KS: Well, I’ve got to head off to work. Maybe we can pick this up in a future conversation. It’s a great topic. And one that writers might find useful.

JP: Thanks, I learn something every time we talk. And by the way, I’m really looking forward to your upcoming book, Tanglewood Terror. Is it a book for boys? Ha!

KS: Tanglewood Terror has some definite influence of Brozo, which I read while I was writing it. There’s a really rough-and-tumble boy, a football player, but he’s also sensitive. He cares a lot about home, family, wildlife. It was tricky to communicate that in his voice, since it’s a first person story. I wanted to show that there was no paradox there.

Gavin and me

JP: Quick story: My 6th-grade son, Gavin, is a pretty good athlete, and reasonably competitive. He wants to do well. This week in intramurals they are just now self-selecting teams for a four-on-four tournament. So last night one of his longtime friends called to see if he could team up with Gavin. However, his friend is not very good, to put it mildly. Now Gavin is conflicted and has to navigate some tricky issues. And I thought to myself, that’s exactly what Along Came Spider was about. It’s what being a human being is about, pulled in different directions. How do you do the right thing . . . and still win? And what is the right thing? And how important is winning? It’s not always clear.

KS: I can sympathize with his friend. I guess I’d say, in ten years you won’t remember who won this tournament, but the kid who gets dumped will remember it. But maybe that’s just my perspective as someone who was a liability on every team I was ever on . . . I guess I write about kids who are good at sports to get over it.

JP: True, but I can sympathize. He wants to compete, not get crushed by his peers. There’s a pecking order, and status in the pack to be considered. It’s hard for a young boy to willfully surrender that, at a time when athletic skill is the currency of the playground. My point is that in the final analysis — actually, I believe it’s our point — is that “boy” cannot easily be reduced to a handful of cliches. Each lad is vast and full of conflicting impulses and contradictions. Walt Whitman’s, I am large. I contain multitudes.”

KS: I love that line.

JP: So let’s stop here while we’re behind. I leave you with a look at Walt’s amazing face.

Patti Smith Commencement Speech: Direct from the Heart

I am a huge Patti Smith admirer, for many years now, but especially now after reading her fascinating memoir, Just Kids. A fabulous, uplifting book that could have been subtitled: “Portrait of an Artist as a Young Woman.” I’d love to hang out with her for an afternoon, or invite her to one of those miracle lunches when you can bring together a bunch of anybodys.

Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe.

She is a true deep-to-the-bone artist.

Patti Smith recently earned an honorary degree from Pratt College and gave a commencement speech, which you can see in full. I recommend that you watch it.

You can also read the full transcript here, at the Smoking Bop Gun.

The ten-minute talk is filled with great moments, here’s just one of them:

I think of this like Pinnochio, because Pinnochio went out into the world. He went on his road filled with good intentions, with a vision. He went ready to do all the things he dreamed, but he was pulled this way and that. He was distracted. He faltered. He made mistakes. But he kept on. Pinnochio in the end became himself because the little flame inside him, no matter what crap he went through, would not be extinguished.

We are all Pinnochio.

And do you know what I found after several decades of life? We are Pinnochio over and over again. We achieve our goal. We become a level of ourselves. And then we want to go further, and we make new mistakes, and we have new hardships. But we prevail. We are human. We are alive. We have blood.

For a punk rocker and a tough-minded bird, Patti still has a lovely vulnerability and sweetness to her, a purity of intent, as evidenced in this amazing clip when she sang “You Light Up My LIfe” on the TV show, “Kids Are People Too.” She always, always speaks directly from the heart.

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Books for Boys: A Tribute to “William’s Doll”

“William wanted a doll.”

And so begins Charlotte Zolotow’s classic picture book, William’s Doll, illustrated by William Pene Du Bois. Published 38 years ago, and dedicated to Billy and Nancy, it is still relevant today — and very possibly moreso.

This title has been on my mind a lot lately, and comes to mind whenever the discussion turns to “books for boys.” Somehow the collective thinking about boys and reading has become muddled, to the point where “boys” has become a code word for “reluctant readers.”

I’ve talked about this before, here and here and here and elsewhere, and I don’t wish to repeat myself endlessly. Except to paraphrase Walt Whitman: Boys are large and contain multitudes. I find it unsettling, even disturbing, when I come across lists of “books for boys” that offer all the usual standbys: bodily humor, nonstop action, cars and trucks, sports, violence, and so on. You know, the kinds of stuff all boys like.

Imagine such a list for girls. Would it offend you?

And now imagine all the great books, and important thoughts, that would be missing from such a list. Because the nature of such lists is reductionist and simplistic and full of stereotypes, a narrowing of what children are and what children can become. Girls and boys.

Yes, for sure, I am strongly on the side of a teacher or parent who longs to turn a reluctant reader onto books. I can understand the desire for something sure-fire, a book that will turn the trick, unlock the door, open up the world of reading. But once that door has been pushed open, let’s not forget that boys can be sensitive, thoughtful, dreamy, mild, frightened, lonely, tender, loving, sad, and a thousand more things. It’s not just farts and firetrucks.

When my oldest son, Nick, was sick with leukemia, we struggled as parents. It was tempting to give him things, do things for him, make the experience easier and more enjoyable. In short: spoil him. After a spinal tap, how do you not buy that kid a lollipop? And a DVD of whatever he wants. So we did. But not always. My wife Lisa once said one of the most profound things about parenting I ever heard. Talking about this subject, she reminded me: “We’re not only trying to take care of a sick boy — we’re trying to raise a healthy adult.”

I think that applies to boys and reading.

So let’s look at this book, William’s Doll. To me, the best illustration is on the first page, before even the title page. You know, the page we hurry past on our way to the story. It’s a picture, we will learn, of William and Nancy from next door. Nancy is holding a doll. But if you glance quickly at that illustration, look at it from a distance, it is a portrait of every young family in the world. Father, mother, and child.

“He wanted to hug it

and cradle it in his arms

and give it a bottle

and take it to the park

and push it in the swing

and bring it back home

and undress it

and put it to bed . . .”

His brother and the boy next door did not approve.

William’s father brought home a basketball instead.

He practiced a lot

and got good at it

but it had nothing to do

with a doll.

William still wanted one.

So his father brought home an electric train. With similar results.

One day his grandmother visited. William proudly showed her the basketball and his new train. He also expressed his desire for a doll, explaining, “My brother says it will make me a creep and the boy next door says I’m a sissy and my father brings me other things instead.”

His grandmother listened attentively.

“Nonsense,” she said.

She bought him a doll. I love the detail in this description, the clicking of the eyes. It reminds me of my mother’s Shirley Temple doll (not that I ever played with it!).

The doll had blue eyes

and when they closed

they made a clicking sound

and William loved it

right away.

William’s father was upset. “He’s a boy!” he said.

And so the grandmother must patiently explain to her son:

“He needs it,” she said,

“to hug

and to cradle

and to take to the park

so that

when he’s a father

like you,

he’ll know how to

take care of his baby

and feed him

and love him

and bring him

the things he wants,

like a doll

so that he can

practice being

a father.”

I highly doubt you’ll find this book on a list of “books for boys.” It’s probably too sissyish. No, instead we’ll give them books about trains and basketball.

ENDNOTE: A song based on the story, with lyrics by Mary Rodgers and music by Sheldon Harnick, was included in the bestselling album, “Free to Be . . . You and Me.” In 1974, it was turned into a television special. According to producer Marlo Thomas, ABC fought to have the song dropped from the show. She recalled: “They wanted William’s Doll cut, because it would turn every boy into a homosexual.”

True to her ideals, and (importantly) armed with enough marketable power to win this battle, Ms. Thomas refused to comply, and the song remained. Somehow civilization was not destroyed — by this show, at least.

Click here for more on the sources of Charlotte Zolotow’s inspiration for this story, which was based on personal experience as a mother and wife. Commented Zolotow: “I wrote it out of direct emotional sorrow.”

Entenmann’s & Dad: Part 1, from memory to realistic fiction

Though sudden, it didn’t feel traumatic when my father died a few years back. He was in his 80’s and, well, it seemed about right. He went the way he wanted to go, puttering around in the yard. Then gone. I had the honor of giving the eulogy.

I find that I miss him more than I expected. Or, no, that’s not quite it. I find that I miss him more, now, and that’s not what I expected. I figured that the pain, or loss, would lesson over time. I’d get used to it. Dad’s gone. Okay.

And it is okay — but I keep thinking about him, remembering things, expressions he used, his odd habits. The memories have gotten sharper, more frequent. I do what I can to keep them coming. And I cling to them.

Growing up, my mother did not drive. Unusual, yes, but I simply saw her as a rare lady who did not drive a car. The roads were safer, I was sure. So my father always did the grocery shopping. And he did it with flair; he had a sweet tooth and made poor nutritional choices, week after week, year after year. Soda, peanut butter cups, sugary cereals!

Because of that, I can’t wheel past a supermarket display of Entenmann’s breakfast cakes without thinking of him. Dad was a sucker for Entenmann’s. I guess I inherited my father’s sweet tooth.

I submit to you: the raspberry danish . . .

. . . as constructed by the friendly folks at Entenmann’s.

These days, my wife Lisa is all about local produce, organic this, free range that, healthy choices, blah blah blah. I get it. She’s smart, she’s good to us, she’s doing the right thing.

Infrequently, I do the shopping. The way these things work, of course, is that I’ve become my father. I’m dad pushing the cart. I eye that Entenmann’s display and ask myself, WWDD? What Would Dad Do? So I toss that raspberry danish into the cart and roll on, pleased, full of good cheer. It drives Lisa a little crazy, how I undermine her best efforts. The kids don’t seem to mind. Mostly, it’s just a dance we do. When dad goes shopping, everybody knows he’s going to come home with a couple of things mom would never buy. It’s not really about Lisa, or me, or even the kids. It’s about my father, and keeping some things — even the silly stuff that seems to have no meaning at all — alive in our hearts and our kitchens and even our books.

And honestly, the danish is delicious.

CLICK HERE FOR PART 2, WHEN I SHARE HOW I USED THESE MEMORIES IN JIGSAW JONES #28: THE CASE OF THE FOOD FIGHT.