Fear not ... and read

President Eisenhower (left, center) at Dartmouth College

Not long after he became president of the United States in 1953, Dwight D. Eisenhower gave the commencement address at Dartmouth College. He said, among other things, "Don't join the book burners. ... Don't be afraid to go in your library and read every book."

Perhaps he should have said any book. I think I would fear trying to read every book in a public library of any size.

But let's take apart Eisenhower's words. Book burning in any form — actual book burning, censorship, protests, refusal to add to a public library's collection or to a bookstore's shelves — doesn't work. You have probably noticed that bookstores and libraries everywhere often have a table of "banned books." Most of these books have never actually been banned, certainly not in the United States, but they have been frowned upon publicly by somebody. The result is that these very books become highlighted, put on display and made more attractive to those who otherwise might never be drawn to them.

The best way to sell a book is to have somebody raise a fuss about it.

And so book burning is counterproductive. You can't burn every copy. You can't ban everyone from reading a book, printing it or selling it. It simply makes more people want to read it. And in a country with a free press, it would be illegal anyway.

This is not to say that there are not certain books that can be controversial in certain circumstances. A prominent man recently drew controversy when he was exposed on the Internet leafing through a lingerie catalog on an airliner. Carrying a book by a prominent conservative author on a liberal college campus could get a person in hot water with friends and professors. Reading a book denying the existence of hell, as was published a few years back, might raise eyebrows in certain churches.

Eisenhower was right. Don't be afraid to read any book. But you might want to be careful where you choose to read it.

Just friends?

Can men and women be "just friends"? Well, maybe, Or maybe not. Gabrielle Zevin explores the possibilities in her 2022 novel Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, a line from Shakespeare's Macbeth.

The novel covers about three decades and takes us inside the video game industry. Sam and Sadie meet when they are both kids. Sam is hospitalized with a bad foot, that will be amputated later in the novel. He is uncommunicative and mostly just plays video games. Sadie likes games, too, and they play together, gradually building a friendship, a rocky friendship as it turns out.

They meet again a few years later, he a student at MIT, she a student at Harvard. They decide to build a game together, which leads to more games and then a thriving video game company.

Can they be more than friends? More than business partners? Both ask these questions but hesitate to bring them up with each other. Why spoil a good arrangement? But then Sadie takes lovers, both of them involved in their video game business. Why these others but not Sam?

Meanwhile there is a lot about video games and how the industry changes through the years. Zevin goes into detail about fictional games you might wish were real so you could play them along with the characters. Eventually Sam and Sadie develop a relationship in a game that they lack in real life. But this proves no more satisfactory.

The novel probably works better for readers younger than me. I haven't gotten much beyond playing Spider and FreeCell. But even I am intrigued by the question: Can you be "just friends"?

The things that offend us

In a three-way conversation with friends a few days ago, the subject turned to books and, in particular, the things we found most offensive in the novels we read. Although we are close friends of about the same age who attend the same church and share similar world views, we found we were bothered by very different things in the novels we read.

Is it the graphic sex that bothers us? Well, yes ... or no. The person I expected might be most bothered by the sex turned out to like it. Was it the bad language? Well, yes, but not to the same degree for each of us. Was it the violence? We all read thrillers, and no violence at all in a thriller can be dull. But even so, extreme and graphic violence can be offensive. What about certain social or political viewpoints? Well, it depends.

Isn't it interesting how different things bother different people in different ways? And if I am any judge, I think different things can bother the same person at different stages of life.

I have read Vladimir Nabokov's controversial novel Lolitia twice in my life, once as a college student when it was assigned reading for a class and again when I was in my 70s. Very different things bothered me in each reading, I noticed.

As a young man, the violence when Humbert Humbert kills another man disturbed me most. I hardly noticed the sex, probably because it was mostly implied and not explicit. When I read the novel again decades later, I hardly noticed the violence, probably because I have read so much fictional violence in the meantime, but the the sex between a middle-aged man and a young girl offended me. At this point in life I could read between the lines.

The novel had stayed the same, but I had changed.

The "aching urge" to write

John Steinbeck

Novelist John Steinbeck once wrote, "The formula seems to lie solely in the aching urge of the writer to convey something he feels important to the reader."

We write, I suppose, for the same reason we talk — because we think we have something to say. Steinbeck uses the phrases "aching urge" and "something he feels important." These phrases seem to raise the stakes. They suggest that we feel compelled to say what we have to say. And it's not just important to us. It's important to others, as well.

This caused me to think about the various kinds of writing I have done in my life. Are Steinbeck's words true in these instances?

School essays and reports — What was most important here was the grade. The aching urge was more about satisfying the teacher or professor — producing the 100 words or eight pages or whatever was required by the assignment.

News stories — I was a newspaper reporter in my early professional life. Importance was a required for anything printed as news. The most important stories went on the front page and got a byline. But even minor inside stories were expected to have some importance to someone. The "aching urge," quite frankly, probably had more to do with keeping my job.

Editorials — I was an editorial page editor for much of my career. I wrote opinions, which in most cases were manufactured opinions. That is, I had to manufacture feelings about things I would not have otherwise cared much about. The best editorials I wrote, however, were those for which I felt Steinbeck's "aching urge."

Columns — I wrote many columns over the years, mostly book reviews but also columns of a more general kind, including many that were intended to be humorous. Many of these I wrote simply because I had to write them, yet quite often they were very important to me and I felt like I had something valuable to say.

Blog posts — For the first time, beginning more than 15 years ago, what I wrote was entirely optional. I wasn't being paid. Nobody could fire me or flunk me. Steinbeck's formula began to make more sense to me.

Sermons — For the past few years I have tried my hand at writing and often preaching sermons. Again this is optional, and yet I find myself writing what I feel compelled from something inside me to write, saying what I sense is important for someone else to hear.

Over the years I believe my writing has actually improved as it has become less a requirement and more an aching urge.

Understanding each other

Jane Smiley

The death of the novel, if that is what is happening, may be more serious than we thought. Jane Smiley certainly thinks so in her book 13 Ways of Looking at the Novel, and her book was published in 2005. Things have not improved in the past two decades.

Novels have been around for only a few hundred years, just as widespread literacy has been common for only a few hundred years. Certainly human life has changed during this time, mostly for the better. Might the novel have had something to do with this? Smiley thinks so. Novels take us into the lives of other people, often people very different from ourselves. We occupy, however briefly, the minds of these people. Novels help us to better understand one another. If fewer people read novels, perhaps much of this understanding and empathy will be lost.

"If the novel has died for the bureaucrats who run our country, then they are more likely not to pause before engaging in arrogant, narcissistic, and foolish policies," Smiley writes.

"If the novel has died for men (and some publishers and critics say that men read fewer novels that they used to), then the inner lives of their friends and family members are a degree more closed to them than before," she writes.

And this affects women, too, for most of the novels they read are written by other women, thus depriving them of the male point of view.

"If the novel dies, or never lives, for children and teenagers who spend their time watching TV or playing video games, then they will always be somewhat mystified by others, and by themselves as well."

Do we really want to go back to a time before vast numbers of people — men and women, rich and poor, old and young — began reading Defoe, Dickens, Austen, Scott, Twain, Stowe and all the others and thus began to better understand each other?

What Pulitzer prized

Joseph Pulitzer, the newspaper publisher best remembered today for the prizes made possible through his legacy, often criticized his children, especially his sons, for their lack of ambition, for being spoiled by wealth.

Yet the old man himself, as described in Pulitzer: A Life in Politics, Print. and Power (2010) by James McGrath Morris, acted much the same way himself once he had made his fortune. He owned thriving newspapers in both New York City and St. Louis, yet in the latter half of his life he spent most of his time in Europe or at sea. He often left his family behind, but he took along many underlings who pampered him, read to him because of his poor vision and made arrangements for his comfort, such as by making sure his rooms were as soundproof as possible. He was sensitive to every stray sound.

As a younger man, however, Pulitzer made his great fortune through nonstop ambition. Although "accuracy, accuracy, accuracy" became his cry at his newspapers, he himself lied at will when it benefited his position. He lied frequently about his age as a teenager in order to get an early start on his career.

His editorial pages regularly blasted the wealthy class, the very people he mingled with and spent winters with at Jekyll Island.

He may have made his money in journalism, but Morris makes clear that Pulitzer's true love was politics. He had the misfortune, however, of being a Democrat in the post-Civil War years when Republicans won the White House every four years. He sought political office himself, both in St. Louis and New York, yet when he was finally elected to Congress, he quickly realized that a congressman had much less power than the publisher of a great newspaper, and he promptly resigned.

Another dark side to his personality came through his treatment of his younger brother. He regarded Albert as a hated rival, perhaps even more hated than William Randolph Hearst. While Joseph owned the thriving New York World, Albert owned the New York Morning Journal, which was not as successful yet was still too successful for his big brother. He once hired away Albert's entire staff.

Joseph Pulitzer may have been a great man. He just wasn't a very good man.

Breaking the rules

Peter Heller

"I'll try," Beckett lied.

Peter Heller, Burn

I have a few pet peeves when I am reading fiction, and one of these is illustrated in the brief line above from Peter Heller's novel Burn.

Back in the 1960s when I attended Ohio University, I took several creative writing classes. Among the lessons remembered from those classes are these two:

1. It is better to show than to tell.

2. Avoid such phrases as "he boasted," "he implied," "he questioned," "he proclaimed," etc. There may be many words that indicate speech, but it is best to stick with "said." Ordinarily a fiction writer should avoid using the same word too often, but in this case using "said" again and again works best because the word becomes virtually invisible. It does the job without calling attention to itself. Again, you should show, not tell.

Heller, like so many writers, violates both of these rules with the word lied. To be fair, the above line comes near the end of the novel, and the author lacks much opportunity to demonstrate that Beckett is lying. Yet there must still be other ways to avoid telling us outright that Beckett is lying:

"Beckett said with an obvious lack of sincerity." "Beckett said in a distracted manner." "Beckett said. though Jess didn't believe him" "Becket said, putting up a brave front." "Beckett said without conviction."

Heller, in my view, could have revealed Beckett's lie in a more sophisticated manner than simply telling his readers that he is lying.