Beyond School » books

Of Confucius, Holy Clowns, and Holy Murderers: Some Advantages of China’s Religious Atheism

Clay Burell — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 21:13:04 +0000

[This space has been quiet because I've been fact-checking and otherwise researching my Unsucky Gilgamesh chaptersso far (which I hope to publish as a book when finished) and, since school started two weeks ago, writing for my students. The below is one such piece for my History of China students. There's no reason other students -- whether in school or out, and regardless of ability to pay the high tuition of the private school I work for -- should be excluded from the fun. Call it a Do It Yourself form of Open Courseware. I enjoyed writing it because I enjoy trying to make sense of that deep, rich ocean called Chinese history. So I hope some of you enjoy reading it. Any mistakes are my own, and I'd love to hear your corrections or other pushbacks.]

First, to set the mood: A 2-minute clip from Woody Allen’s Hannah and Her Sisters, in which Mickey’s (played by Allen) Jewish parents are freaking out because he has found Jesus Christ and converted to the Catholic faith. It ends with one of my favorite comic lines in film history:

–It’s also a line I think China’s religious sages would find wiser than most of what they hear coming from the West about these questions.

And here we go:

~ ~ ~

Of Confucius, Holy Clowns, and Holy Murderers:
Some Advantages of Chinese Religious Atheism

           MOTHER
  (offscreen in the bathroom)
Of course there's a God, you idiot!
You don't believe in God?

          MICKEY
        (sighing)
But if there's a God, then why is there so much
evil in the world? Just on a simplistic level...
Why were there Nazis?

          MOTHER
  (offscreen in the bathroom)
Tell him, Max.

          FATHER
       (offscreen)
How the hell do I know why there were Nazis?
I don't know how the can opener works.

--Woody Allen
Hannah and Her Sisters

I. Why Today’s Students, Particularly, Should Care

Why should anybody today care about knowing ancient Chinese religion? A few sentences can make the case:

First, anyone who is East Asian — Korean, Japanese, Chinese, Taiwanese, Thai, Vietnamese — should care because their family life and personality are very likely molded by the ideas that arise in the Warring States Period.

There’s a 2,500-year-old reason East Asian airports are safe.

Even people who are not East Asian have good reason to learn it: it’s no secret that the 21st Century is shaping up to be the Century of China (and, yes, India), so odds are that anybody with a future will cross paths with East Asia either socially, romantically, or professionally. So they should know what a different world they’re entering when they do, and thus be able to navigate that world with better success, be it at the business dinner or the girl-friend’s parent’s dinner.

A third reason, of course, is that it’s simply good mental traveling to learn about all this.

II. Confucianism

Point blank: when we talk about East Asia, we’re talking about Confucius, the man most religious studies scholars agree is by far the most influential “religious” figure and moral philosopher of all time — more than Moses, Jesus, Buddha, or Mohammed. One in four people on the planet today is Chinese; from the beginning of history to today, China’s population has always been larger than that of Europe, Central Asia, Africa, and the Americas. And China’s people — plus, later, those of Korea, Japan, Thailand, Vietnam, and Singapore — have lived the core Confucian values since 200 years before Jesus until today. (And they live them seven days a week, not just on the Sabbath.)

Even Christianized Asians live Confucian lives as their daily norm: family values, respect for elders and authorities, humility and a distaste for vulgarity and boasting, a gentle distaste for conflict, the importance of “face” and, glaringly obvious at SAS, of education — all of those things go back to Confucius.

So understanding Confucius is understanding most of East Asia today — from family life to social attitudes to manners and etiquette and sexual norms. (And to understand Confucius, the Shujing we read from last week will take you a long way.)

Second, Confucius is not a teacher about religion and life after death; on the contrary, his focus is the good life on earth, and how to live it wisely, happily, and graciously. When asked about who made the universe, where we go after we die, and the other Ten Thousand Unknowable Things, Confucius said:

To know when you know something, and to know when you don’t know something: that is wisdom.

He knew humans don’t know about the Unknowable, so he advised it best to pay attention to ritual and ceremony, yes, but to keep a clean distance from questions that can’t be answered — and from people who claim they know the answers. He thought those people dangerous to social order, and their superstitious claims dangerous to individual intelligence.

The Analects, the major collection of Confucius’ alleged sayings as recorded by his students, is a refreshingly easy book to read. Nothing in it is hard to believe except that its common sense and rationalism, which arrived in the West only during the Renaissance, Scientific Revolution, and Enlightenment a short 500 years ago, rose in China a very long two thousand, five hundred years ago.

III. A Holy Clown: Zhuangzi and the Tao

Zhuangzi dreaming he's a butterfly dreaming he's Zhuangzi dreaming...

And while Confucius does have a sense of humor in places, it’s one that at most makes you smile a little as you read. Like practically every other religion or philosophy, laughter and a sense of humor seem somehow against the rules. Confucius is serious this way too. But his “opponents,” the Daoists? They give us laughs by the belly-full, while all the while discussing the same subjects the more sober religions talk about. Reading the great Zhuangzi, Daoism’s second great sage, is like reading Jesus doing stand-up comedy. You can’t help but love the guy. He’s a hoot, and he’s also as deep as they come (in my book, anybody who insists there’s nothing unholy about laughter, that it’s every bit as sacred as all the more depressing emotions we usually find glooming up houses of worship, is wise by definition. Why shouldn’t laughter and play count among the holy things? What’s more heavenly than that?).

Zhuangzi had no patience for the Confucians. He was an individualist and an escapist, believing the wisest reaction to suffering is not to try to “fix the problem,” but instead to flow with it, “like water — seeking the path of least resistance.” You can’t fix human society any more than you can fix an earthquake or a drought. You fix your own mind’s way of reacting to things, stop freaking out when life is hard, slow down and enjoy it, and don’t get caught up chasing gold and honors. It’s all a fool’s errand to him. He prefers to go fishing and tell good, deep, playful stories. Your favorite weird uncle. (And one of my five favorite human beings in history.)

IV. A Tangent: Connections to Greece

These might help, if you remember the basics about Greece from other classes:

Greek and Chinese philosophy share a sort of “philosophical relay race” pattern: Socrates taught Plato, and Plato taught Aristotle. In China, Confucianism has a similar threesome: Confucius, Mencius, and Xunzi.

Socrates, like Confucius, never wrote his philosophy down. We know Socrates through the writings of Plato, yet Plato took Socrates’ ideas into areas Socrates may not have agreed with. Similarly, Mencius studied under Confucius’ grandson, so there’s a Socrates-Plato/Confucius-Mencius pattern there.

Aristotle studied under Plato, but ended up arguing against his master. Xunzi similarly argues against Mencius concerning, above all, human nature. As Ebrey explains, Mencius thought human nature was essentially good, but a bad environment can corrupt it (thus the importance of a model king). Xunzi says this is naive, that human nature is prone to stupidity and vice, and thus needs education. (Not the kind of education in today’s world, which more and more seems to teach that education is simply a means for getting a job and making a lot of money, which is what success means. Confucians taught that the pleasures of an educated life are themselves the wealth, and the success. The gold is in the mind, not the bank.)

Xunzi is also interesting as the first flat-out atheist in Chinese philosophy. Confucius was not, mind you, an atheist. He said “We can’t know about God, Gods, and before and after life.” That’s an agnostic position: “a-” means “not,” and “gnostic” means “knowledge” — so Confucius is agnostic. Xunzi is different. He says, flat out, no gods are out there, as plain as an atheist can put it. But he continues with a totally interesting argument: “Even though all of this religious belief is superstitious nonsense, we should continue and support it.” Why? Because first, rituals are beautiful. They add pleasing colors to our days. And second, they’re useful. People need an outlet for fears of death and frustrations with life, so let them pray away, even though it’s totally pointless. You AP Lit people might think of Aristotle’s argument that Greek Tragedy was healthy because it was “cathartic” — it let people drain out all of their fear and horror at the dark sides of life. Xunzi seems to think religion is a similarly useful form of “mental hygiene.”

And then there’s Laozi, Daoism’s “Old Master.” Laozi wrote the Dao de Jing (“The Classic of the Way”), and it’s so deep, mysterious, and paradoxical that I pretty much refuse to even try to teach it to high schoolers. Deer in headlights gazes is all I’ve seen each time I’ve had students read it. So taste it if you’re curious, but we won’t focus on it in class much, if at all. We’ll focus on Zhuangzi instead.

V. Holy Murderers

There’s one final “So what?”, and I’ll close with it: it’s tantalizing to wonder what Jesus and Mohammed would have thought about Confucius. I picture them totally approving of his morality: he argues, like they do, that greed and the fever for gold are vulgar and the “root of all evil.” He also argues that we should love our neighbors and treat everyone well. Confucius, too, would approve of the moral teachings of Jesus and Mohammed — at least their social ones. But Confucius probably would have drawn the line at believing their claims to “know” about beginnings and endings, heavens and hells, spirits and demons. One can only imagine how interesting their conversations would be if they had the chance to debate these things. And while that’s impossible, of course, somehow it still points to something I notice every time I pass through airports in the Middle East, the West, and in China: pretty much everywhere but China, soldiers patrol airports looking for suicide bombers — and they obviously do it for good reason. Muslims, Jews, and Christians have been fighting for thousands of years because of their conflicting knowledge-claims based on their ancient religious texts.

But traveling through Confucian airports, you simply don’t see these soldiers, and you don’t see the terror threats (nor do you see doctors who provide abortions being murdered by Those Who Know When the Soul Enters the Embryo, or political priorities in an age of global warming, economic chaos, and several other urgent problems, being dominated by strange issues like gay marriage by Those Who Know that Homosexuality is an Abomination. Chinese newspapers and TV don’t argue about whether their president is a secret Muslim, either. On and on.)

Confucian countries are free of all of these strange things because in their culture, they know, thanks to Confucius, that they are Those Who Cannot Know Some Answers and, knowing they can’t know these things, they have no such Knowledge to Kill For. In their airports, instead of soldiers patrolling for Those Who Do, you more often see just a bunch of families, parents leading the kids, the kids leading their suitcases stuffed with textbooks, cramming that education day and night to please their parents — people who don’t know what any Creator of the Universe thinks, but who do know this: family is important, and education is important.

And it’s all because of a guy who read the Shujing during the Warring States Period 500 years before Jesus, thought it was wise, taught it to students, and left teachings that, 2,500 years later, have worked for more than half of the world.

Hand-Held Libraries for God-Like Searches (a Geek Challenge)

Clay Burell — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 21:53:38 +0000

Remember, this is a man with that old-fashioned European humanist faith in the library as a model of good society and spiritual regeneration – a man who once went so far as to declare that “libraries can take the place of God.”

–Lee Marshall, “The World According to Eco,” Wired.com

I have a hallway for literature that’s 70 meters long. I walk through it several times a day, and I feel good when I do. Culture isn’t knowing when Napoleon died. Culture means knowing how I can find out in two minutes. Of course, nowadays I can find this kind of information on the Internet in no time. But, as I said, you never know with the Internet.

–Umberto Eco, ‘We Like Lists Because We Don’t Want to Die’ (interview in Der Spiegel )

I’ll reward any geek-genius a million cool-points who can teach me how to make this possible on Mac OS X Snow Leopard: “Spotlight” search results with contextual lines around search terms for each file that matches the search.

You know, a Spotlight search that doesn’t look like this:

–but instead, looks like this:

Here’s the vision: My hard drive has dozens and dozens of carefully selected ebooks about my areas of interest right now — primarily World History and Chinese History. I’ve invested a good bit of cash into this because I want a “searchable academic library” on my laptop, out of the following heretical conviction: academic ebooks on a hard drive are a better resource than the internet. Think about it: less time sifting through online search hits; less time evaluating each site’s reliability; higher quality writing; deeper depth of coverage and analysis; broader sample of perspectives from reputable historians specializing in the topics of interest.

Interlude: “I Won’t Go Off on How Exciting This Is”

(I won’t go off on how exciting I find this historically new possibility to have an entire library of hundreds of books in your laptop — a portable, personalized university library, so to speak — ready to be searched, sorted, sifted, copied, compiled, compared, and to generally give you a booklover’s orgasm for its technological speed and literary quality. I just won’t. I won’t say another word about the literal thousands of books you can fit on a standard 500 gigabyte hard drive today, and all but the last few decades of them free and public domain. Not a word, I tell you. I’ll just pretend it’s nothing to get excited about, mention how this idea relates to Umberto Eco’s insistence that personal libraries are more valuable for the books they contain that you haven’t read — but might one day need to crack open to satisfy a spontaneous blast of learning-lust — than for the ones that you have read. Not a word.)

Back to the Geek Challenge:

Let me illustrate:

I posted a vodcast about the Opium Wars and the Fall of the Qing Dynasty on Youtube last year for my History of China course, embedded it on my class Ning for my students to watch and/or download, then promptly ignored the YouTube page. But a couple of days ago I went there for some reason, and discovered a couple thousand visits and a dozen or more comments from the world. Some were the barbaric doozies you’d expect from the Wingnutosphere, but others were quite good — to wit: One viewer questioned a claim I made in the lecture about opium being illegal in England at the very same time England was illegally forcing it on the Chinese market. He said he thought opium was legal in England until the 20th century.

I could have googled “opium england illegal” or whatnot and spent 30 minutes doinking around Wikipedia’s “further reading” links, other sites’ “about” pages, etc. But I knew I had several ebooks on 19th century Chinese history in a folder, so I entered those terms in my spotlight instead, and promptly found info confirming my visitor was right (and interestingly enough, that the famous claim in the open letter of China’s Commissioner Lin to Queen Victoria was also factually wrong), while at the same time being able to read several pages that went deeply into opium use in 19th c. England. It took less than 10 minutes, and had the imprimatur of Oxford, Harvard, and similar ivied fauntleroys to ban the “But is this credible?” goblins from the learning.

The screenshot of that dialogue below (click image to enlarge) shows the quality of the ebook search versus a Wikipedia search, if you look at the level of detail in the passages I copy-pasted into the thread:

Upshot: What I’m envisioning is the ability to integrate ebook search results in classroom discussions. If a question like the Youtube gent’s above came up in class, this type of quick search would be entirely practical and seamless, unlike many a web-search. But, to get back to my original request, it would be even more magical if my hard drive search results looked more like Google’s, and less like Mac’s. (And the possibilities for speeding up the compilation of course packets with sets of pages extracted from the ebooks is another shiny bit of awesome.)

Let me close with a) a prayer that Miguel Guhlin (who has always struck me as an über-geek in the best possible way) answers this trackback and takes on the challenge; and b) since I never thought to share that 20-minute vodcast on the Opium Wars — a fascinating and tragic story that every Westerner should know, if they want to understand better how China sees the Western world — what the hey, here it is. I spent a goodly number of hours on it, which is no guarantee that the investment paid off for the viewers. You tell me:

8 Comments

At July 17, 2010, Miguel Guhlin wrote:
For fun, I wrote it up at - http://www.mguhlin.org/2010/07/seeking-white-hart.html
At July 17, 2010, Stephen Downes wrote:
The images in this post are .tiff but .tiff is a non-standard image format for the web and will not be viewable by most users.
When posting images to the web, images should be .gif .jpg or .png only.
At July 17, 2010, John Larkin wrote:
Hi Clay, I wonder if tossing the eBooks in the Web folder of your user folder followed by the creation of a simple HTML page with an embedded Google search directed at that specific local folder would work? Crude and basic but maybe. I might try tmw when I awake. Cheers, John.
At July 18, 2010, Clay Burell wrote:
Fixed, noted, and thanks. (This post shows how un-geeky I am, and so does your comment.)
At July 18, 2010, Clay Burell wrote:
John, that's intriguing. I follow as far as creating the folder in the "Sites" folder, but beyond that...
If you do try it, let us know if you've solved the challenge, and teach us. Thanks
At July 18, 2010, Clay Burell wrote:
And Stephen, while we're educating, I'll just share more by saying that Mac's "Grab" app takes .tiff's by default, whereas CMD + Shift + 4 takes screenshots in .png format. So the second alternative is better for web-bound screenshots.
Thanks again for the lesson.
At July 21, 2010, Thomas Aquinas wrote:
I don't have the time to code it right now, but methinks that you could use OSX's unix grep capabilities and combine them with this Python library: http://www.boddie.org.uk/david/Projects/Python/pdftools/index.html.
At July 21, 2010, Clay Burell wrote:
I can't believe I'm replying to Thomas Aquinas. Wow.
And I'm crestfallen at the blank look in my eyes when they see the words "code" and "python," and tantalized that you sense a solution.
Curious: how much time would it take a geek to do such coding?
Thanks for dropping in.

Mark Twain’s Posthumous Bombshells

Clay Burell — Sun, 11 Jul 2010 08:54:30 +0000

Why is Mark Twain’s autobiography only coming out now, 100 years after his death? Because he stipulated so before dying.

What he expresses in these screenshots from a PBS Newshour clip of the manuscript suggests why he might have wanted these thoughts to stay silent for a century. And they’re strangely resonant in our own day.

Exhibit One: Twain as the Fifth Horseman

This reads like something straight out of Dawkins, Dennet, Harris, or Hitchens:

Transcribed:

There is one notable thing about our Christianity: bad, bloody, merciless, money-grabbing and predatory as it is — in our country, particularly, and in all other Christian countries in a somewhat modified degree — it is still a hundred times better than the Christianity of the Bible, with its prodigious crime — the invention of Hell. Measured by our Christianity of to-day, bad as it is, hypocritical as it is, empty and hollow as it is, neither the Deity nor his Son is a Christian, nor qualified for that moderately high place. Ours is a terrible religion. The fleets of the world could swim in spacious comfort in the innocent blood it has spilt.

Exhibit Two: Twain Against the Neocons

This snippet, if you look at the top, picks up after quoting Pres. Theodore Roosevelt’s apparent statement concerning a US Army massacre of Philippinos during or after the Spanish-American War.

Transcribed:

[TR's] whole utterance is merely a convention. Not a word of what he said came out of his heart. He knew perfectly well that to pen six hundred helpless and weaponless savages in a hole like rats in a trap and massacre them in detail during a stretch of a day and a half, from a safe position on the heights above, was no brilliant feat of arms — and would not have been a brilliant feat of arms even if Christian America, represented by its salaried soldiers, had shot them down with Bibles and the Golden Rule instead of bullets….

Who wants to place bets that teaching Twain in American high schools is going to become an even dicier idea once this book filters out into the mainstream?

And who else notes that Twain’s objections both to American religion and American politics are based on simple morality — that standard so important to so many free-thinking heretics?

5 Comments

At July 11, 2010, Laura Gibbs wrote:
Twain's weird story The Mysterious Stranger (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mysterious_Stranger) gave many clues as to these thoughts... I was surprised and amazed when I stumbled across Mysterious Stranger some years ago completely by accident, and it definitely made me appreciate Twain even more. Excerpt:
Satan laughed his unkind laugh to a finish; then he said: "It is a remarkable progress. In five or six thousand years five or six high civilizations have risen, flourished, commanded the wonder of the world, then faded out and disappeared; and not one of them except the latest ever invented any sweeping and adequate way to kill people. They all did their best - to kill being the chiefest ambition of the human race and the earliest incident in its history - but only the Christian civilization has scored a triumph to be proud of. Two or three centuries from now it will be recognized that all the competent killers are Christians; then the pagan world will go to school to the Christian - not to acquire his religion, but his guns. The Turk and the Chinaman will buy those to kill missionaries and converts with."
At July 12, 2010, Clay Burell wrote:
Wow, Laura, nice find.

Interesting that he wrote this from 1890 to 1910. That perfectly bookends the Boxer Rebellion in China, during which Chinese locals got fed up with missionaries and their Chinese converts ("rice Christians") and went on, as your Twain quote pegs it, "to kill missionaries and converts."

Unfortunately for them, they didn't have the cash to buy the Western guns, and believed their own superstitious magic would protect them from the Western armies (always ready to back up beleaguered missionaries via the infamous "Gunboat Diplomacy"). It didn't. Instead, the West used it as a pretext to invade Beijing, storm and loot the Forbidden City and Imperial Library of much of their treasure, and finally to force more concessions to Western imperialist nations than they'd already forced after the Opium Wars of the 1840s and '60s.

It amazes me that Westerners know so little of their crimes against China a short century ago. China certainly hasn't forgotten it.
At July 13, 2010, Laura Gibbs wrote:
So true about Chinese history! One of the things that really struck me about the Robert McNamara documentary Fog of War was the his admission that during the Vietnam War he knew nothing at all of Vietnamese history and only later, as he learned about it, did he gain some insight into the dynamics that he was oblivious to during the war itself!
About Mysterious Stranger: I was listening to a bunch of public domain audiobook stuff five or six years ago and stumbled across this book. It had me completely mesmerized. I could definitely see myself teaching a course on folklore and literature about the devil - what a device he is for intense thought experiments! This book would definitely be on the reading list for such a class...
At July 14, 2010, Clay Burell wrote:
@Laura, Fog of War is a great film, and so are so many other documentaries by that filmmaker (whose name senescence hides from me at the moment).

McNamara's a great example of an expert who knew next to nothing about Asia. If he'd looked into Vietnamese or Chinese history, he'd have quickly found that China tried to conquer Vietnam -- as a neighboring state with far larger forces -- for 2,000 years, and never could. The Vietnamese never say "quit."

The Twain story is on my reading list.
At July 16, 2010, Harold Jarche » From Mark Twain to the Future wrote:
[...] Mark Twain’s Posthumous Bombshells by @cburell Why is Mark Twain’s autobiography only coming out now, 100 years after his death? Because he stipulated so before dying. [...]

What China Can Teach Writing Teachers

Clay Burell — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 14:00:46 +0000

[A fun little conversation I'm having with Laura in this comment thread includes her question about differences between Chinese literary types and Western ones. It reminded me of this post I wrote last year on Change.org, and planned to cross-post here eventually anyway. I hope you agree that its quotes are lovely things.]

~ ~ ~

I just read a passage so striking I have to share it. It’s from Lin Yutang‘s 1936 book on China called My Country and My People, and is quoted in Richard E. Nisbett’s The Geography of Thought: How Asians and Westerners Think Differently . . . and Why (another keeper):

In Chinese literary criticism there are different methods of writing called “the method of watching a fire across the river” (detachment of style), “the method of dragonflies skimming across the water surface” (lightness of touch), “the method of painting a dragon and dotting its eyes” (bringing out the salient points). (p. 18)

Nisbett’s whole point in this book of “cultural psychology” is to show that modes of thought differ from culture to culture, that Enlightenment universalism is belied by the evidence, etc, etc. The point of the passage itself is to illustrate how unlike our abstract and essentialist Greek way of thinking is the Chinese, which resists hard categories and prefers, as Nisbett puts it, “expressive, metaphoric language.”

I’m going to follow the dragonfly method and leave it to you to watch the ripples of that quote, or not. Just two quick impressions before I go:

First, it somehow ties to the notion of Core Knowledge, and underscores to me the need for that “Core” to be wordly, and not ethnocentric, in order to avoid a sort of in-bred genetic shallowness. We can learn much by trying to see through Chinese eyes, for example, and see our own cultural “core” differently, and surely often benefit from that. (Hell, the Greeks learned from traveling to Egypt, Crete, Asia Minor and the Levant, and North Africa anyway. Their knowledge came less from the core than that far-flung periphery, and it’s the synthesis they performed with it all that was the thing.)

Second, as a writing teacher, I cannot wait to share the above with students. Our Western language for teaching writing does seem, as Nisbett claims, abstract and categorical and, when you think about it from the Chinese angle, mind-numbingly dull: “expository,” “persuasive,” “argumentative,” “analytical,” and so forth are not words to inflame a young mind. But “watching the fire from across the river”? “Skimming the water like a dragonfly”? “Dotting the dragon’s eyes”? Oh, yes.

(Third: point two illustrates point one.)

Image by I’mBatman

Originally posted 4/12/09 on Change.org’s Education blog.

12 Comments

At July 3, 2010, Sui Fai John Mak wrote:
Thanks Clay for this very interesting post. We learn those metaphors when young, in fact in Grade 6 (around 12 years old).
May I clarify a bit on the “watching the fire from across the river”? “Skimming the water like a dragonfly”? “Dotting the dragon’s eyes”?
1. Watching the fire from across the river means to be detached from the problem, and be an observer. There are subtle meaning here, but when used in in real life setting, it means that you need to ensure your safety, and so don't get yourself into trouble, in case of conflict.
2. Skimming the water like a dragonfly refers to light touch on a subject, and has a philosophical tone - especially when giving a speech, where one wants to briefly mention about a topic, but not in depth. Another use would be its application in dancing, where one is dancing with such lightness who seems to float.
3. Dotting the dragon’s eyes - This relates to an old Chinese story. It was about an artist who drew a dragon, but then when the eyes were dotted, the dragon actually flied away. In the dragon dance, the dragon won't have her life unless the eyes are dotted, which is also part of the ceremony at the start of dragon dance. I think people might have then interpreted such dotted of the eyes as the symbolic meaning of drawing out of salient points in an artifact.
There have been lots of "interpretations" of those metaphors, analogies in Chinese stories, and sometimes, due to the translation from ancient Chinese colloqualism to English, the meaning might have been shifted, exaggerated, or used with a new context.
There are many versions of these translations, and I don't think there are universal versions which could provide unique explanation. The Lin Yutang Wikipedia entry is reliable.
As I learnt these at a young age, so it was based on my memory and interpretation.
Cheers.
John
At July 3, 2010, Clay Burell wrote:
Wonderful comment, John. If I can persuade you to write about where you were when you learned these as a child, and go more deeply into it, skimming-like, in a memoir piece on your blog, and then to drop a link here so I and others can read it, I'll be a happy man.
I just bought Lin's book, so I'll be looking into it soon enough.
Thanks for dropping in,
Clay
At July 3, 2010, Laura Gibbs wrote:
Oh oh oh, you are ringing my bells here... this is exactly the kind of thing I was trying to get at with the ability to let the metaphorical expression of a proverb and its analytical interpretation sit side by side in your mind, not just decoding the form in order to extract the abstract interpretation (and banish the image), but letting them both stand in your mind together and resonate - not forcing the firefly skimming the water to be "only" a firefly but at the same time not losing the firefly even as you let it lead your mind somewhere beyond to other ideas.
I think you are spot on to identify the Greeks as a crucial turning point in the abstracting and essentializing of things. The word "idea" itself is a great example: Greek eidos and the related word eidolon (whence "idol") were originally words from the realm of the visual, from the seeing of things ("idea" is related linguistically to the "video" we borrowed from Latin). But as the philosophical tradition worked its powers of abstraction and essentializing on the "ideas" they lost their sense of vision and became invisible. Poof: they're gone! Abstracted from the world into the uncertain terrain of our minds.
Have you read The Alphabet Versus the Goddess: The Conflict Between Word and Image by Leonard Shlain…? Fabulous stuff, I think - very provocative and useful whether you agree or disagree with the directions he goes with that. I learned recently that Shlain has died (http://leonardshlain.com/blog/?p=101)… very sad! I think he still must have had a lot of good books in him that he did not have time to leave behind for us to enjoy and learn from!
At July 4, 2010, Joan Vinall-Cox wrote:
Fascinating. I was lucky enough to write an Arts-Based Narrative Inquiry thesis and, although I like theory, that approach allowed me to be metaphorical, poetical, and visual, which was the only way I could truly dot (my) dragon's eye. I guess that's why I thoroughly enjoyed writing it.
At July 4, 2010, Sui Fai John Mak wrote:
Thanks Clay for your response. I was educated in Hong Kong and learned these in La Salle Primary School. I could elaborate these in my blog at a later stage, if you wish to know more about Chinese philosophy and how it is applied in our life.
I liked writings very much and you could find some of my writings here http://suifaijohnmak.wordpress.com and Ning Community Network http://connectivismeducationlearning.ning.com plus my postings on Facebook.
I like to write about different topics in my blog, and some of my posts relate to Chinese philosophy in education and learning.
If you are interested in Chinese philosophies, then may I suggest you check these topics out? I Ching, Tao Te Ching, and the Sun Tze 36 military strategies. There are plenty of artifacts on these on wikipedia, Google, Google scholar links, etc. I could also refer you to the officical website from Chinese education authorities if that is of intersts to you. Let me know if you would like to have them.
You could forward me with an email or via your blog post or mine for further connections. You could check out my other details on Facebook and Twitter too (under suifaijohnmak)
There are huge potentials in the use of Chinese metaphors - Yin/Yang that is part of Tao Te Ching in understanding nature (see the metaphors on my blogs - with tags of metaphors), in writings, or in education and learning.
Please note that I am a Catholic and so my belief stems strongly with a Christian belief. However, you may find many Chinese teachings and philosophies align with the teachings of Christ - in passion, in love, in personal integrity (trustworthiness, honesty), and altruism etc.
Finally, I have read a few of posts before and found them very intersting and inspiring.
John
At July 4, 2010, Sui Fai John Mak wrote:
Here is my combined response post with some links to site http://suifaijohnmak.wordpress.com/2010/07/04/a-response-to-what-china-can-teach-writing-teachers/
Cheers.
John
At July 4, 2010, Lewis wrote:
As an American writing teacher in China I can and cannot agree with the title of this post. My college students in Beijing must learn academic writing .While these academic styles may not be "words to inflame a young mind" it is a necessary style to learn for academic writing. For other writing styles such as creative writing or personal narratives, or novel writing , or children's books, etc, the above post title can fit and I will agree with the premise.
At July 4, 2010, Clay Burell wrote:
Hi again and thanks for the reply, JSF.
I'm pretty good on Chinese philosophy and history - I taught it in Shanghai, where I lived for six years, and I'm teaching it here in Singapore. I'm currently in the middle of quite a few books -- Oxford History of Ancient China (1180 pages!), Brooks and Brooks' Original Analects, Fung Yu-Lan's History of Chinese Philosophy, plus the Book of Documents, Book of Songs, Zuo Chronicles, and Sima Qian's works; and I hope to read the Three Kingdoms, Monkey, Plum in the Golden Vase, and Dream of the Red Chamber and other literary classics before the end of the year -- to dig deeper.
And while I'm not an adherent of any institutional religion -- I'm an ex-Christian who still has much respect for the teachings of Jesus, but few for the dogmas that Rome and the Protestant Church (not much different in terms of the basic creed) attached to his story -- I do find Zhuangzi and Confucius combined about as rich and credible as any ethical-metaphysical system has been on this planet.
So I guess we balance each other ;-)
Anyway, the broad strokes, and many of the finer ones, in Chinese history and culture I get. But the little peeks at such things as its rhetorical tradition and approaches that Lin points to above? These don't find their way into most historical writings. Thus the delight at bumbling across them in a book and wanting to know more.
All for now and take care.
At July 4, 2010, Clay Burell wrote:
Um, Lewis, I can't find any assertion in the post that college students shouldn't learn academic writing.
But the second half of your comment gets closer to what I did mean to imply.
Thanks for dropping in,
Clay
At July 4, 2010, Sui Fai John Mak wrote:
Thanks Clay for sharing your background experience. I greatly appreciate your intersts in the literary classis. When I was in my high school, we were free to study to Three Kingdoms, Monkey, and Dream of the Red Chamber. However, in our lessons, there were only selected chapters from these three classics, and since they were written in colloquialism, we needed more elaboration from other literature review and teacher's guidance to understand the genre, syntax, semiotics and pragmatics of such colloquialism. There were other rich themes in ancient poets (the 5 and 7 "narrative" poets).
Relating the Chinese literature, it was divided into the ancient and modern ones, which are based on the modern prose, which is more pragmatic and comprehensible. Nowadays, most communication in Chinese are based on plain simple Chinese syntax, that was all originated from the "evolution" of modernisation of Chinese language.
I think you could trace back lots of traditional metaphors, though the modern interpretation might be a bit difficult to comprehend, as one must consider the historical context, and why those metaphors were used.
Relating to religious belief, thanks for the great sharing. I respect your belief, and so I am delighted to see its significance in one's writings too.
Take care and best wishes from John
At July 28, 2010, Cristy wrote:
An interesting post. The native americans in our area describe their language as representative of their religion. I think that is often the case in other cultures. Ours represents the “expository,” “persuasive,” “argumentative,” “analytical,” because of our Judaeo/
christian heritage. Cristy
At July 30, 2010, Clay Burell wrote:
Hi Cristy,
Sorry to be so late on this, but I'd say those categories are far more Greek than Hebrew. Know what I mean?

Education as “Aversion Therapy”: Watchmen Author Alan Moore

Clay Burell — Sun, 13 Jun 2010 07:06:46 +0000

Alan Moore, author of The Watchmen, V for Vendetta, and so many other comic book masterworks, has this to say about education:

All too often education actually acts as a form of aversion therapy, that what we’re really teaching our children is to associate learning with work and to associate work with drudgery so that the remainder of their lives they will possibly never go near a book because they associate books with learning, learning with work and work with drudgery. [A]fter a hard day’s toil, instead of relaxing with a book they’ll be much more likely to sit down in front of an undemanding soap opera because this is obviously teaching them nothing, so it is not learning, so it is not work, it is not drudgery, so it must be pleasure. And I think that that is the kind of circuitry that we tend to have imprinted on us because of the education process.

Bingo. Such a tidy summary of the Business Roundtable vision of education as preparing workers for the workforce.

Moore has more to say about how, for him, the counterculture and independent reading were his education. He was apparently expelled from secondary school for experimenting with mind-altering drugs other than alcohol, television, and consumerism, and never went to college either.

He seems to be doing okay despite that.

(I taught V for Vendetta in a literature class a couple years ago. It was a great counter-piece to Animal Farm, except this time dark regime was on the far right. So many connections to current events in the Bush-Cheney-Rove era, you’d have never guessed it was written in reaction to Thatcher’s England.)

Switching gears, check out this fantastic Moore video. From its YouTube page,

A comic strip film noir featuring hardboiled gangsters, double crosses and dead blondes. Written and animated by Alan Moore and Lloyd Thatcher. Music by The Sinister Ducks. Edited by Vile Balloon on a overcast Saturday as the rain pounded on the ground like a meaty fist into a face.

(Hat-tip to One Good Move for the video.) Reminds me of Tom Waits (the son of two school-teachers, I just learned by clicking on the link. Follow it for both a Wikipedia entry and a whacked video of his song, “God’s Away on Business”. I love Apture plugins!).

Article, without video, cross-posted from Education.Change.org
Photo by acb

“Lies My Teacher Told Me” Author Censored in China

Clay Burell — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 19:41:24 +0000

Interesting. James Loewen, author of Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong, shares his experience of being invited to write a preface to the Chinese translation of his book due for publication in the People’s Republic of China. Loewen writes,

[O]n behalf of . . . one of the largest publishers in China, Ma Wanli assured me that my preface would not be censored. I finished the preface in late fall, and the Chinese translation reached me in December of 2008. My U.S. publisher had it translated back into English and assured me that my meaning had not been changed. All seemed well.

In late spring 2009, however, the translator emailed to request that I use “more Aesopian language,” particularly in making points about the individual’s relationship to the society.

Loewen revised, and wrote the translator saying, “I have made those changes of my own free will and am still happy with the resulting essay. I hope you are too.” He continues:

Ma Wanli called my revisions “magnanimous.” Nevertheless, at the end of the process, my book came out in China in November, 2009, without the preface, but with an afterword in which Ma Wanli spoke of his “sympathy” for the book and looked forward to its “translation spurring much self-criticism among Chinese academic and education circles.”I offer the forbidden preface to you, below. You are the first to see what could not be published in China.

You can read the full preface on China Beat.

For what it’s worth, I find myself far more sympathetic to the Chinese government than most liberals I know, and this is because I’ve not only spent the last year teaching a semester-long survey of Chinese history for two semesters in a row (after teaching it for a couple of years while living in Shanghai in the early ’00s), but also because I spent that time reading, researching, and reflecting on China fairly obsessively on the clock and off.

But more on that in Part 2, tomorrow when I get around to re-writing the Part 2 that I just deleted

Image from flickr.

2 Comments

At June 12, 2010, Joyeuse wrote:
Hey, Clay. Yet another interesting post.

I was just curious, what is it in your studies and reflections that makes you more sympathetic to the Chinese government? Is it simply the fact that you've spent so much time analyzing the government that you are more prone to forgiving it, or do you feel there's something in Chinese history that makes its somewhat dubious human rights decisions more forgivable?
At June 12, 2010, Clay Burell wrote:
Hi J,
I'm hoping to articulate many, many stabs at answering your questions in the next two months. I'm into China so deep these days, and only going deeper, so the hard part is coming up for air and putting everything I'm experiencing in coherent shape.
I'll surely catch hell from many Westerners for much of it, and maybe that'll be good for me; but maybe the many "somethings in Chinese history" of which most Westerners are woefully unaware will complicate the issues for them, too.
Short version: stay tuned. Sorry I can't offer more than that yet.

Must-Reads Before Dying: My List (and Yours?)

Clay Burell — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 19:36:30 +0000

Two reader requests that beg for a book-lovers’ crowd-sourced response.

First, Richard writes a request that in itself stirs the literary imagination with echoes of Twain, Conrad, Crane:

I just wanted to let you know that I really enjoyed your series on Gilgamesh. I had read it a while back but forgot exactly where it was on the internet so I had to spend a while digging up this gem again. I’m a Plebe at the US Merchant Marine Academy. It being a maritime engineering/transportation school there aren’t many literature classes but I’m proud to say that I’ve gotten my literature/history fix (for this week at least) from your blog. I’ll be going to sea to work on commercial vessels for 4 months this June and was wondering if there are any books you could suggest to me?

Thanks for your consideration and keep up the good work!

In a similar vein, an old student emails this sad (see last line) heart-warmer:

I apologize if this is all kinda strange and out of the blue but frankly, I’m in a college crisis and I would like to ask a favor. I don’t know of anyone to ask for advice on this except you. I’ve decided to switch to English as my major and I figured since you’ve read about a million books by now, I was hoping you could recommend some (classics or modern) that are a must-read-before-dying. Also, if you have any tips that would be helpful for a student to fully understand and appreciate literature. I would be overjoyed to hear back from you! It’s been such a long time! I’ve always enjoyed your class, I just wish I hadn’t slacked off and sponged in all the insightful lessons you shared with us instead.

I’ll start, but hope you add your treasures in the comments. It’s a delicious assignment.

Books to Read Before Dying

(Do I have to mention Gilgamesh?)
The Norton Anthology of English Literature (Volume I and II): Don’t be put off by the stodgy college textbook connotations: the Norton is a gem. For budding bibliophiles wanting a map of the territory (and yes, it’s imperfect as any map), the Norton‘s chronological survey of the “Great Conversation” that is English literature does the job admirably. The major periods are given in broad outline in each chapter’s introduction, and then each major writer, school, and/or movement is also given a fine introduction within each section, followed by generous samples of their best works. Call it a year’s worth of “one-night stands” with writers from the past 1,000 years. Skim past what doesn’t seduce you, and yield to what does. Those writers who ravish you best, extend the affair by adding their books to your library. (And Norton has anthologies of World, American, and Women’s literature too.)
The Iliad and The Odyssey: Translations are crucial: Robert Fitzgerald and Robert Fagles won’t disappoint. Better still, buy the Audiobook of the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Derek Jacoby reading the Iliad, and Ian McKellen reading the Odyssey. My favorite memories from the ’80s include driving cross-country from L.A. or Oregon to my hometown in Tennessee solo in my old beat-up VW Van (and later, the vintage Mercedes 220s I restored by hand), sleeping days and driving the nights through, with Homer in the passenger seat telling his tales in the dark. I’d listen for ten hours at a stretch before pulling over for sleep “when dawn,” quoth the Bard, “stretched out her fingertips of rose.” Words can’t do justice to the wonders of these works.
Plato’s Euthyphro, Apology, Crito and Phaedo (the tetralogy narrating the trial and death of Socrates), plus the Symposium. I’m not a Platonist philosophically, but I’m a huge fan of his writing. Rare is the philosopher who has made me laugh or cry, and Plato has done both.
The Zhuangzi — Taoism’s second sage, whose book is the only religious text I know that deems laughter and humor okay in the presence of the sacred. If only the other religions were healthy enough to laugh too (and the other gods to encourage it). He’s too sane about life to make sense to most Westerners–especially his disdain for ambition and his comfort with death. Full text of Zhuangzi online here.
I read St. Augustine’s Confessions in one night in college, finished it as dawn broke. A powerful picture of a tormented Christian. Online Confessions here.
The Letters of Abelard and Heloise: A top theologian of the Late Middle Ages (and a singer-songwriter with lady-melting looks and voice to boot), Abelard secretly seduced his young student Heloise, and was later castrated for it in revenge. She became an abbess, he an abbot. Their story and letters are fascinating on many levels, from the bawdy to the sublime. Josephine Bonaparte was so moved by their story she had their remains transferred to the Pere Lachaise cemetery in Paris, and placed side by side.
John Donne: Besides his stunning (and stunningly erotic) poems, his Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions is a book I carry around the world with me. His sermons are powerful, regardless of one’s religion (or lack thereof). (Donne’s complete poems and Devotions online here.)
Shakespeare: King Lear (watch the Laurence Olivier performance from the ’80s, when Olivier was in his 80s and able to play the old king like no other); The Tempest (Peter Greenaway did a wild film adaptation of this, again starring the old Olivier, called Prospero’s Books), Henry IV (Gus van Zant’s My Own Private Idaho, despite casting Keanu Reeves and because of casting River Pheonix, is an interesting modern adaptation of Henry IV, and Falstaff is one of my favorite characters in literature) and Henry V (Kenneth Branagh’s film version is electrifying) and check out and just about everything else Shakespeare wrote (including his sonnets). (Complete Shakespeare online here.)
Milton’s Paradise Lost: You don’t have to be a Christian to admire this epic. Satan is a seductive hero who seems to have gotten the best of Milton despite himself.
Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels: It’s not a kiddie story. Take a hint from the fictional preface and read it as a good man’s path to madness through the venality of humankind. Wicked satire, both hilarious and infinitely sad.
William Blake’s Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Songs of Innocence, and Songs of Experience: to be savored line by muscular (and just as often tender) line. Be sure you get an illustrated version in color (or view the prints at the wonderful Blake Archive).
John Keats’ Complete Poems and Selected Letters: Better still, read Bates’ biography of Keats (John Keats) as you go through the complete poems and letters. A more tragic life for a more beautiful person can’t be imagined. It was another peak experience in my reading life.
John Clare is a “minor” Romantic poet, but his bio and his poems left a mark.
Friedrich Nietzsche’s complete works (Walter Kauffman translations are fine stuff): okay, maybe skip The Birth of Tragedy, though it’s interesting. And ignore much of the superficial and wrong-headed stereotypes about Nietzsche. And again, read a good bio of Nietzsche as you read his works (Hollingdale‘s bio is good). Fritz is the only philosopher besides Plato whose writing and ideas made me laugh and cry. He lived alone long enough to go deep and find joy in solitude — and to butcher a staggering number of traditional sacred cows of European history and culture along the way. (If Voltaire and Nietzsche and Blake aren’t in Heaven, it’s less interesting than wherever they are.) If not up to the “complete works” challenge, at least read Human, All-Too-Human, The Gay Science, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, and the Genealogy of Morals. When you reach his final book, Ecce Homo, as his mind seems to be slipping into insanity, you’ll feel like you’re losing a close friend. (Sounds silly, I know, but I’m too tired to try to say it well.) Old translations of most of his works here.
Gerard Manley Hopkins: See his images, hear his rhythms, and be amazed. Beauty and power. My god, his rhythms. Read out loud and listen. The lines beat like struggling hearts. He sees god quite often, the light and dark sides. I see it too, when I read his poems.
Oscar Wilde‘s Importance of Being Earnest and a few other plays (watch them), plus Richard Ellmann’s bio Oscar Wilde. Then read his De Profundis. Another great life with a tragic end. (I have a thing for history’s bad boys. Lord Byron was another one. He’s not on this list because his poetry never did much for me, but his life was a masterpiece. Read about it in the Norton Anthology.) (Complete Wilde online here. Also buried in Pere Lachaise in Paris, near Abelard and Heloise…and Jim Morrison.)
Walt Whitman, Walt Whitman, Walt Whitman: ecstatic love for life. Oscar Wilde visited him in America and sat in old Uncle Walt’s lap, if I recall Ellmann’s bio correctly.
James Joyce: “The Dead” from Dubliners. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man has fine moments too. (Joyce online here.)
John Steinbeck: Cannery Row, Of Mice and Men, Grapes of Wrath, Travels with Charley, more. Laugh, cry, love, hate with the big-hearted master of American prose.
Vladimir Nabokov: Lolita (remember, Faye?): a miracle. Also see his quirky novella, Pnin, about the strangest little professor of Russian language living sad emigre life in America. Tender and hilarious.
John Barth: The Sotweed Factor is an intoxicating blend of eroticism and philosophy in the high comic mode, set in Colonial Virginia. Dazzling structure and language; one of my five favorite novels. A much older Barth’s On With the Story is one of the tenderest, saddest, formally and intellectually brilliant things I’ve ever read. Not for the lazy reader. I love Barth because he’s fully functioning on the levels of intellect, heart, and libido.
[Update:] The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien: Devastating Vietnam War novel, mind-bending plot, crushing characterization of an American losing his innocence. You won’t understand its full beauty and power until you finish the last page. Then you’ll realize you’ve completed one of the highest works of modern fiction. (While we’re on war novels, Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front is a must-read too.)
Don Delillo: White Noise. A suburban tragicomedy only possible in America. Lots of other novels by him too.
Cormac McCarthy: Blood Meridian has echoes of Homer, Faulkner, and Melville, all set in the American southwest during the Indian Wars. White mercenary Indian hunters possessed by an evil rarely matched in literature. All the Pretty Horses and The Crossing too. And just about everything else McCarthy wrote. If he doesn’t get a Nobel Prize, something’s wrong. His prose is of the High Style, which is rare among contemporary authors. Stately, vivid, disturbing and disturbed.

I’ve no doubt left a million worthwhile works out, whether due to faulty memory or gaps in my reading, but the above certainly worked for me. [Updated: Egads, man, I left out Twain's Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn, and with a nod to Stephen Downes will gladly grant a place to Robert Frost--but not to the many philosophers he mentioned whose ideas may engage, but not their writing. And Stephen, notice the sentence before this update? Of course there are omissions. There are also the obvious factors of personal taste, and of audience: the requests were made by young adults just starting out. Kant, Hegel, Hume, and Descartes for them? I don't see it, and don't thrill when I read them. The Tao Te Ching? A deep book, but too ponderous and opaque next to the joyous alternative of Zhuangzi. The Analects? Sure, though far from a literary masterpiece.]

(And that somehow felt on the same level as writing a Last Will. Thanks to both of you for asking.)

Your turn?

Image: “Embraced by Words” by Robbert van der Steeg

31 Comments

At March 25, 2010, Josh wrote:
I have only a few to add: God Bless You Mr. Rosewater by Kurt Vonnegut, Brave New World by Huxley, a good collection of Twain's speeches and essays, and Awakening by Chopin.
At March 25, 2010, Morgante Pell wrote:
Though I don't have years of reading to draw on, I'll add a couple. Something by John Irving would add some modernity to your list, perhaps Owen Meany. Dorian Gray also deserves to be added to Wilde. Oh, and The Rape of the Lock is a personal favorite.
At March 25, 2010, Christina wrote:
This brings back my lifelong fantasy of a deserted island and stacks of books (or just a good internet connection!)...
I've discovered the poetry of Langston Hughes with my IB English class this year and he is simply amazing!
Also George Orwell's '1984' and his essays, specifically 'Politics and the English Language.'
At March 26, 2010, Michael Doyle wrote:
Galway Kinnell....sheesh.
At March 29, 2010, Beverly wrote:
Great List, seems a bit (and I understand the reasons) white guy.
Some of my personal favorites that shaped my late teens and early 20's and might add variety of perspective to the list:
The Letters of Hildegard of Bingen (use the Joseph L. Baird and Radd K. Ehrman translation though)
- Found out about her in my History of Christianity Class in college and was blown away not just at the quality of her thought, but the influence she had with the policy makers of her day. I also enjoy listening to her musical compositions.
Vindication of the Rights of Women by Mary Wollstonecraft
- Found this one in high school and was amazed.
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
- Moving the novel from "Women's mindless entertainment" to Literature.
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
- If only one "Gothic Novel" gets included, this is the one.
The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvior
- This is the definitive work of "Second Wave Feminism."
Night by Elie Weisel
- I would put this in the list of required reading in the war novel genre.
The Sermons and Speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr.
- I am thinking this is obvious, but will add that the prose vibrant and beautiful.
Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
- This is my favorite by one of the best authors of the 20th century.
The Temple of my Familiar by Alice Walker
- This is not her most famous novel, but one of my favorite literary characters of all time, Lissie, is a great "every man" (insert tongue in cheek here) prototype.
So Far from God by Ana Castillo
- This is an amazing commentary on the blending of tradition, faith and modern culture.
At March 29, 2010, Clay Burell wrote:
Great additions, Beverly, (I'll add One Hundred Years of Solitude to the Marquez list). Guilty as charged of being white guy. Glad you evened things out.
Virginia Woolf's "The Death of the Moth" essay (pdf) and Annie Dillard's "Death of a Moth" deserve a place in my list, no male guilt involved.
It's wonderful how endless this list must be. Thanks for the additions.
At March 29, 2010, Tom wrote:
I'm going to be the guy who adds To Kill a Mockingbird and The Catcher in the Rye to your list because they're both seminal and love them or hate them (especially Catcher), it's important to understand what they mean.

I beg to differ on Gulliver, though ... I read it last year and while the first half (Lilliput and Brobdingnag -- which I teach in 12th grade) was excellent, the rest bored the crap out of me.

A few more ...

Generation X by Douglas Coupland. A little dated, I guess, but it taps into a mindset in a way that's rarely been recaptured in print or on screen.

High Fidelity by Nick Hornby. In fact, I think that you can go for the Cusack film and be okay with this.

Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics. A dense work but the idea of virtue being a mean between two extremes (which is a simple way of putting it, I know) is a wonderful concept to build upon.

Plato's Republic. Well, specifically, the portion with the allegory of the cave.

Machiavelli's The Prince. Uh, can you tell that half of my degree is in Political Science?

The Essays of E.B. White ... or, if you're pressed for time, "Once More to the Lake," "Afternoon of an American Boy," "Farewell, My Lovely," and "Here is New York." White had a style and a sense of humor that is so wonderful that even half a century later he works.

All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque. Pair it with the O'Brien novel (one of my all-time faves) and you have everything you need to know about war.

And the comic book geek in me wants to add some comics (notice I didn't use that pretentious "graphic novels" label). Yes, go for Watchmen or The Dark Knight returns because everyone does, but I recommend the following ...

Crisis on Infinite Earths by Marv Wolfman and George Perez. Back in 1985, DC Comics decided to do one of those huge-assed epic BIG CHANGES TO EVERY HERO stories. It is, quite frankly, how every gargantuan, epic story should be done.

Strangers in Paradise by Terry Moor. A very long-running comics series (there's 20 volumes or so, so it's definitely an investment) about two friends and how they fall for one another. There's also a great story concerning one of their pasts that I can't get too much into without spoiling it (Moore has a website that's worth checking out).

I'm sure I could go on ...
At March 31, 2010, Kate wrote:
Haroun and the Sea of Stories by Salman Rushdie. He plays with words, he takes on bullies, and he shows us that stories can save our lives.
Fear and Loathing on The Campaign Trail by Hunter Thompson. Drug addled absolute clarity about the American Political system (and the Nixon-McGovern campaigns). See also - The Great Shark Hunt
Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen because nobody laughs at her peers and "betters" better than our Jane. And marrying up still seems to be a goal 200 years later.
The poetry of Mary Oliver.
It's a tough question - so many of these books on your list we "should" read - but I won't enjoy reading. These suggestions for me balance the "need to read these" with the "love to read these" aspects of a Before I Die list. heck, I should read the Bible, soup to nuts, before I die; I was raised Catholic though and we weren't encouraged to do so.
At March 31, 2010, Clay Burell wrote:
Noted, thanks. I need to get around to Chopin. Twain always. Vonnegut: Slaughterhouse Five, too. Dresden rewind is brilliant.
At March 31, 2010, Clay Burell wrote:
Well-taken, but note that Barth, Delillo, and McCarthy are as modern as Irving. Which is not to poo-poo Irving. The sea is vast.
Pope's Rape is fun, you're right. It's in the Norton Anthology, of course. And I wanted to suggest Wilde's complete works, because the more you read him, the more you love him. Should have thrown some George Bernard Shaw in there too. Similarly savage satire.
At March 31, 2010, Clay Burell wrote:
That's funny, Kate, because I was trying to separate out the things I loved reading from the things I read because they were important for other, less hedonistic, reasons. (Thus the omission of the Bible.)
You make me want to read Rushdie.
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, while we're on tripping with Hunter S. Thompson. I almost peed myself reading it.
At March 31, 2010, Clay Burell wrote:
See, Catcher leaves me cold. Haven't read Mockingbird (don't tell). And really, the Yahoos bored the crap out of you in Gulliver? It's the best picture of our species you could ask for: feces and gold rocks.
Thanks for the others. V for Vendetta, while we're on comics!
And thanks especially for the White essay recs. Helps to know specific titles.
At March 31, 2010, Clay Burell wrote:
And give us a few poems to start with, why don't ya?
At March 31, 2010, Clay Burell wrote:
The problem with listing great poets is that it's a lifelong task. Thanks for adding.
I like Orwell (and "Shooting an Elephant" is a fave), but does he hit you like a ton of bricks?
At March 31, 2010, Morgante Pell wrote:
Thanks. Wilde is definitely one of my favorites—his satire just hits that perfect spot for me. Earnest in particular.
Looks like have some reading to do this summer. :)
At March 31, 2010, Kate wrote:
St. Francis and the Sow
My favorite.
At March 31, 2010, Kate wrote:
It's a good thing that we all "love" different things. I like but don't LOVE Delillo and I have read All The Pretty Little Horses (and that's enough McCarthy for me). I adore Hopkins and Blake and I prefer Shakespeare's comedies. And you know my affection for Uncle Walt. So many books, so little time.
At March 31, 2010, Clay Burell wrote:
Is there any sort of taste gap between males and females, do you think? (I love Shakespeare's comedies too, btw, and am dashed that I didn't think to add Midsummer Night's Dream at least. Maybe too tired -- wrote this in wee hours -- to have the spirit needed for comedy.)
White Noise I love for so many reasons. Others of his works I've left unfinished.
As Morgante above said, we've got a nice summer ahead of us to dream of.
At April 1, 2010, Kate wrote:
I don't know that there is a definitive gender gap on reading taste. My husband is catholic in his taste, though I have never seem him pick up my well thumbed Austen, and while the girls and I enjoy (frequently) Shakespeare's comedies, Sam does seem to make himself absent as we sit down to enjoy Twelfth Night or Dream or Much Ado or Taming of the Shrew ONE MORE TIME - but he is not alone. My sister rolls her eyes at the books in my book pile and at the fact that my seventh graders (2 of 'em) can recite Shakespeare learned by osmosis. And she wouldn't be caught dead reading Austen. In my classroom I see a taste gap - but they're 13 years old and there are too many other things that go into a book choice beyond "I like it."
I read Delillo's Underworld and it did not thrill me. I believe that I will add White Noise to my summer pile. So many titles to dream on.
At April 1, 2010, Clay Burell wrote:
Thanks for not taking the gender-essentialism flirtation as an excuse to pounce :)
I didn't finish Underworld. I like a lot of his earlier novels, but only White Noise overjoyed me. And "books that overjoy" is maybe a good definition of the standard I was aiming at.
I do recall finding Austen delicious, and I enjoy the film adaptations. I should go visit the old girl again.
Signed,
The Dude
At April 2, 2010, linzel wrote:
Ahh, to be an illiterate in this company.
1984 seemed my best unlisted choice. Then it was listed.
I'll offer my less than 'literature' additions:
-The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings. -Tolkien
-On the Origins of Species. - Darwin
-Guns, Germs and Steel. -Diamond
-War -Dywer
-Guide to the Bible -Asimov
-The Stand -King
I know. Not exactly up to the previous classics. But those I most enjoyed and learned from.
At April 4, 2010, Tom wrote:
I just thought of this one while making lunch, but I think that a book to at least own before dying is the Betty Crocker cookbook. It sounds silly, but my wife and I have had our copy for at least a decade and it's one of those "functional" must-have books, like a dictionary or something.
At April 4, 2010, Clay Burell wrote:
Tom, you're killing me.
At April 9, 2010, Steve wrote:
Albert Camus. No young adult should begin their life without a healthy dose of continental existentialism. I’d go for ‘The Stranger’ or ‘The Fall’.
Gabriele Garcia Marquez. ‘100 Years of Solitude.’
At April 13, 2010, Clay Burell wrote:
Sorry for the late reply, Steve, but it just hit me that for better or for worse, I've left behind my old taste for existential angst (and I note you framed it implicitly as a young man's stage). I used to love Camus (and if I picked him up now, 25 years later, would maybe remember why that was so), but now, if I'm going to go existential, it's going to be with Nietzsche's sunny version. Playfulness has become more and more important to me with each passing year. Don't know your age, but wonder if you notice the same thing.
At April 13, 2010, Steve wrote:
I'm not a young man anymore, 37 now. I teach kindergarten, so play has and always will be a big part of my life, both at work and at home.
Camus, so many fond memories. I need to revisit him. I have to say I appreciate others that see the Nietzsche as 'sunny'. Existentialists have a very undeserved negative reputation. Maybe they tried to explain their position too much. Imagine if those minds had access to master Dogen.
At April 25, 2010, Cindy wrote:
Cool list,
I'd add:
The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
The Loved One - Evelyn Waugh
Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
At April 28, 2010, Greg wrote:
Its not that popular with teachers, but Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged is really good.
At May 23, 2010, teachermrw wrote:
Nobody mentioned James Baldwin? Wow...that's a shame. Or Malcolm X? Or MLK? Hmmm...Anyway, those are *my* choices. BTW: I agree with Beverly's assessment of the list. Oh...and Anton Chekov.
At June 2, 2010, Joyeuse wrote:
Just thinking about Ayn Rand, I really enjoyed her book, Fountainhead. I'm not sure if it's a must-read, but it sure did have an awesome first line: "Howard Roark laughed. He stood naked at the edge of a cliff." In fact, that is by far the best opening line I've ever heard.

I also really enjoyed most of the Plato works you mentioned. I haven't gotten around to Euthyphro, but Crito and Phaedo were amazing. It was actually quite awkward- I was in a public setting when I read Socrates's death and I actually began to cry. Apology I didn't feel so strongly for. I thought it was good, but Socrates came off as very subtly arrogant- almost like a, "I'm so arrogant I'm going to boast about my humility," sort of thing. So that makes it a good, but not great, work in my eyes.

To Kill A Mockingbird, on the other hand, is an absolute delight. Something about Harper Lee's writing style, the perspective of a young child, and Atticus Finch's integrity all make it very innocent, in a way. I definitely recommend it.

I like that you mention that Gulliver's Travels is not a "kiddie story." My school apparently forgot that. When I was in Fifth grade, they had us read the novel and it absolutely turned me off to literature for a while. I just didn't understand the satire. And even worse, it was a summer book, so I had to endure the confusion without getting help from an educated teacher. But how they expected me to realize the satire of 17th-18th century scientific societies I cannot fathom. For a while, that was my least favorite book. Thankfully, I've realized it would probably be a much better book if I read it today. (Now, my least favorite book if Pilgrim's Progress. Oh, god that was awful.)

Thanks for the question, Clay. I really enjoy your blog and this question in particular reminded me of a lot of good books from my past.
At June 2, 2010, Wesley B wrote:
Great list.
I can add dozens of personal faves, but the one I think everyone interested in literature should definitely read is "The Power of Myth" by Joseph Campbell.
It is a great primer on thinking deeper about universal themes and archetypes one will come across in all the other books on the list, regardless of the age, language, or culture they were written in. It really helps people provide "big picture" context to so many ideas and helps translate literary joy to real life experiences (and vice-versa).