Read to lead

Not all readers are leaders, but all leaders are readers.

Harry S. Truman

Harry S. Truman

I doubt very much whether President Truman's statement is literally true. Surely there have been illiterate leaders over the years and leaders who could read but didn't. Still I suspect there is a correlation between reading and leading.

Many U.S. presidents gained a reputation for reading. These include Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower (even if he preferred westerns) and John F. Kennedy (even if he preferred James Bond thrillers).

My abiding memory of visiting Harry Truman's Key West "White House" several years ago is the many shelves of books that fill the place. He probably couldn't get away to Key West often during his presidency — it was much more distant than Hyde Park or Camp David — yet even so he filled it with books.

Why would reading benefit leaders? Perhaps because it gives them ideas and inspiration if they read nonfiction. History can guide the present. If they prefer fiction, it can give them empathy. Stories put us into the lives and minds of other people — people of other races, other social classes, other ages, the other sex, other points of view, etc. Leaders should give some thought to the people they are leading. Reading may help them do that.

The semantic halo

In his book Studies in Words (1960), C.S. Lewis writes about what he calls a semantic halo that floats over certain words at certain times in history.

One of his examples is the word gentleman, which at one time was a "designative term" like peasant or nobleman, Lewis writes. Later the term came to refer to men who maintained certain standards. "You are no gentleman," one gentleman might say to another who cheats at cards. The word had gained a halo, which since has been lost.

The word lady also gained a short-lived halo. Eventually people began referring to "cleaning ladies," a sure sign that the halo had been lost. Recently we heard of a man being fired from his job for using the word ladies in reference to female colleagues. No halo there.

Another word Lewis mentions is life. In the 17th century life was famously described as "nasty, brutish and short." The word gained status over the years, thanks perhaps to the phrase "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." Life was getting its halo. It became something to be revered, not just human life but all life. Today's political pressures seem determined to strip away that halo, especially pertaining to the phrase "right to life."

In the divided culture we live in today semantic halos seem to come and go depending upon what you believe and which side you take. Transexual has a halo as some use the word. Democracy has been given a halo, especially by those determined to change its definition. Just a few years the two major races in the United States were called black and white. Lately I've been noticing they have changed to Black and white, the capital letter suggesting a halo.

The meaning of life

My dad died. I'll never have golden thinking, like he did. I'll never understand meaning or find the answers falling into place.

Harriet Kline, This Shining Life

Ollie, an autistic 11-year-old boy, doesn't know how to cope even before his playful, always optimistic father dies. After Rich's death from a brain tumor, the boy is completely lost in Harriet Kline's inspiring 2021 novel This Shining Life.

Before his death, Rich tells Ollie something that is to him enigmatic about life being worth living. The boy loves sudoku puzzles, so he views his father's statement as a puzzle. If he can only solve the puzzle, everything will finally make sense to him.

The novel's only characters other than Ollie and Rich are Ruth, Ollie's mother; Nessa, her sister; Angram, Ruth and Nessa's mother; Marjorie, whom Ollie calls Other Grandma; and Gerald, Rich's father. Before his death, Rich selects special gifts for each member of the family, but because of his mental confusion sends each gift to the wrong person. Ollie believes that if he can get each gift to the proper person, he will be able to solve his puzzle.

As flawed as Ollie may be, each of the other family members has a flaw that may be no less disabling. Perhaps the greatest of these is their tendancy to ignore whatever Ollie says about solving his puzzle. His frustration builds.

How Kline resolves all this is a pleasure to read. In the end Ollie won't be the only one to learn something about the meaning of life.

Seen through the crack

Literature or sleaze? That question has always hovered around any discussion of the work of Erskine Caldwell (1903-1987), best known for the novels Tobacco Road and God's Little Acre about poor Georgia farmers torn between the appeal of sexy women, corn liquor and fundamentalist religion.

Caldwell may have been thinking in terms of a Southern trilogy when he wrote Journeyman, beginning in 1933. The problem was getting this third novel published. The other two novels sold well, yet were so controversial that Viking Press was reluctant to publish Journeyman without substantial changes, which the author resisted. This went on for years until a compromise was reached.

The sex in Caldwell's novels was never graphic — this was the 1930s, after all — but it was suggestive enough to keep readers turning the pages. Years later, the third novel restored to its original version, sex dominates. Even in the revival service near the end of the book, women in spiritual ecstasy strip off clothing. Yet somehow the novel reads like literature just the same.

Caldwell's plot is simple enough. Semon Dye, an itinerant preacher, comes to Rocky Comfort, Ga., and stops at the shack of Clay Horey, who may be the world's laziest farmer. Semon plans to preach at the local schoolhouse on Sunday, but that gives him several days to stir up enough sin to make the Sunday service more worthwhile.

"I'll run the Devil out of this place," the preacher promises. A few lines later he adds "The Lord don't have to bother about me. He sort of gives me a free rein."

And so the preacher sets out drinking another man's corn liquor, seducing every attractive woman in sight — and in Caldwell novels all the women seem to be attractive — and using crooked dice to take Clay's money, his car and even his teen-age wife.

In one of the novel's memorable passages, Semon, Clay and another man take turns peeking through a crack in the side of a barn. They see nothing but trees and brush, yet somehow the scene seems more enticing, powerful and meaningful when viewed through that crack in the wall.

Caldwell's novel becomes a crack in the side of a barn, giving readers a small but fascinating view of life in 1930s rural Georgia.

Comedians on comedy

Jerry Seinfeld had one show that famously was about nothing. Then he had another show that was about three things: cars, comedians and coffee.

Now the highlights of that second show are available in his book The Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee Book (2022), appropriately enough in the size of what used to be called a coffee table book.

Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee began on Crackle, where I caught several episodes, then moved to Netflix. In each episode Seinfeld picks up a comedian in a borrowed classic car and drives somewhere to get coffee while engaging in the show's very important fourth C: conversation.

His guests include such people as Eddie Murphy, Steve Martin, Tina Fey, Jerry Lewis, Don Rickles, Dave Chappelle, Cedric the Entertainer, Ricky Gervais, Sarah Silverman, Ellen Degeneres, David Letterman, Chris Rock and on and on. He also visited with old pals from Seinfeld like Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Larry David. Some of his guests can only be described as honorary comedians, such as Barack Obama.

The book consists mostly of excerpts from these shows on such topics as music, money, growing up, getting older and, of course, comedy. And comedians discussing comedy is where this entertaining book becomes most entertaining. Among the insights you discover here are:

• Jay Leno calls comedy "a concealed weapon." It can come out of nowhere and level a room.

• "Comedians speak in commandments," Seinfeld observes while talking with Chappelle. Listen to a comedian sometime and see if that's not true.

• Seinfeld and Fred Armussen concur that comedy must be spare. Too many words spoil the joke.

• You can't teach comedy. On that Seinfeld and Steve Harvey agree.

• Nor can you give up comedy and go into another kind of work. Silverman observes "If you can quit, then you're not a comedian."

Target audience

Patricia T. O'Conner

In her advice for writers in Words Fail Me, Patricia T. O'Conner addresses the question of for whom do writers write, and she says two things that seem, and in fact are, contradictory. Yet they are both true.

First, she says to write for yourself. Write what you want to read. I've heard writers say that because others weren't writing the kinds of books they like to read, they decided to write them themselves.

Lately I have begun writing sermons — and sometimes even preach them — partly for this very reason. I rarely hear the kinds of sermons that keep me alert and inspired on Sunday mornings. So I try to write them myself.

Yet O'Conner's second point — and major point — is that a writer must write for the reader. Children's books, romance novels, sci-fi novels, newspapers, college textbooks and that letter to your mother all have very different readers. So you can't very well write the same way for each. And if you write solely for yourself, you may lose your audience entirely, for they aren't you.

O'Conner writes, "As much as possible, try to anticipate your reader's needs, sophistication, likes and dislikes, attention span, mood, tastes, and sense of humor. In our personal relationships, this kind of discretion is called tact; in writing, it's called knowing your audience."

I like her mention of tact. That's sensitivity to those you are attempting to communicate with. Thus, while trying to to please yourself, you must also try to please others.

Grief and guilt

Your silence, it has always been the most perfect punishment.

Alison Espach, Notes on Your  Sudden Disappearance

Grief and guilt come together like a matched set. Where there's one, there's usually the other. So it is in Alison Espach's impressive first novel Notes on Your Sudden Disappearance (2022).

Although written in the style of a comic novel, the story rarely turns comic. The novel covers 15 years in the life of Sally Holt, who addresses her narrative to her older sister Kathy.

At first, 13-year-old Sally observes Kathy's infatuation with Billy, the handsome high school basketball star. Eventually Kathy wins Billy away from another girl, and Sally is almost as thrilled as her sister is. Then one day Sally demands Billy take her to her school, even though it risks making Billy and Kathy late for high school. Billy speeds, avoids a deer and hits a tree. Kathy dies in the crash, and Billy is badly injured, his promising basketball career ruined.

Thus grief and guilt overpower both Sally and Billy, not to mention the girls' parents. Having so much in common, the two teens are drawn to each other, despite their age difference. They hold long phone conversations in the middle of the night.

Years pass. Billy decides to become a friar. Sally moves to New York City, begins writing how-to essays for web sites and becomes engaged to a lawyer. Espach tells how she and Billy are brought back together by a hurricane — named Kathy.

Partly autobiographical, the novel holds power in part because of the author's deceptive light touch but mostly because it tells truth.