Ethan Canin's new novel America America explores the complicated dance between character and power in American politics. It is the story of three idealistic men whose lives intertwine in the presidential campaign of 1972. New York Senator Henry Bonwiller, proven champion of the working man and passionate foe of the War in Vietnam, seeks the Democratic nomination. We know from the first scene, his funeral three decades later, that he did not succeed, and we sense that some great tragedy unfolded. As the story of 1972 unfolds, we watch the progress of the campaign from its strategic center, the estate of Liam Metarey, heir to an industrial empire and a legacy of responsibility for the people who fill its homes and factories. Once Bonwiller decides to run for President, the gifted and honorable Metarey throws everything he has into running the campaign.
The third figure is narrator Corey Sifter, who recounts the thirty-year-old story to a young intern at the small-town newspaper he owns. The son of hard-working, uneducated parents, he grew up learning integrity, discipline, and respect for the Metareys. At sixteen he was hired to do odd jobs on their estate, where he was treated like a son. His work involved him peripherally in the Bonwiller campaign, but was never privy to the motivations and manipulations of the powerful men he served. Even at fifty, he can only guess at the answers to the questions both men left behind. His innocent, veiled viewpoint, coupled with his impeccable honesty, makes him the perfect narrator of a story that is all about the difficulty of finding truth, both factual and moral.
As Corey unravels the story of the campaign, we move back and forth in his life, seeing the boy awakening to the ways of the world, the sadder-but-wiser young man out on his own, and the mature adult pondering the fates of his own parents and children. Corey's steady voice and unwavering integrity provide the anchor that makes the complicated narrative work. We learn the truth--or what might be the truth--about Metarey and Bonwiller in bits and pieces, as Corey did, and Canin's timing in revealing crucial details while moving back and forth across decades is remarkable. The final revelation of what doomed the campaign was, for me at least, surprising, heart-breaking, and perfect.
America America is an ambitious title for a story so grounded in a few individual lives, but the more I think about it, the more apt it is. The America of 1972 was not so different from America today, with opposition to the war enervating the administration and passionate liberals pushing for change. Then and now, power corrupts, cherished heroes inevitably reveal their dark sides, and the public must decide which sins are necessary and which are unforgiveable. Canin seems to be suggesting that it is only by staying out of politics that a person can keep his integrity. I hope he's wrong about that.
Read this novel for its artful story-telling, its complex characters, its insight, and its reminder that hard work and humility, not power, are the tools we need in pursuit of happiness.
Monday, August 18, 2008
Sunday, August 17, 2008
Online Reading: Better than the Book?
Does the growing preference for reading from a screen rather than paper threaten our nation's intellectual health? That's the question discussed in a thought-provoking article by Motoko Rich in today's New York Times (link below). After considering the questions the piece raises about the effects of online reading, particularly on young people, I wondered what it meant that I, a Boomer addicted to the feel of a book in my hands and uninterrupted time to lose myself in it, had read it not in the paper but online?
As a teacher and librarian who watched the changes technology brought to the reading practices of high school students, I have both welcomed and worried about the monumental shift in the ways kids seek knowledge and entertainment. I reveled in the new, often free accessibility of more knowledge than any library full of books could provide, even while I extolled the primacy of books, believing that reading online encourages quantity over quality, superficiality over depth, immediacy over truth with all its time-sapping subtleties. I may have spoken with enthusiasm when I taught kids how to use library databases, but it was only when I gave book talks that passion, even a sense of the sacred, gave music to my voice. The superiority of the printed page, I thought, would always win out.
Now I'm not so sure. Whether I like it or not, the days of the printed page are numbered. But I'm not as saddened or alarmed by that as I once was. Does onscreen reading have its dangers? Yes. Will much be lost as paper books become mere antiques? Yes, just as much was lost when horses were replaced by cars and torches by electric lights. But whatever the consequences, this ship has sailed, and nothing short of an apocolypse will abort the journey we're on. Future generations will, I'm convinced, look back at the age of the personal computer as the start of a whole new epoch of human progress, with ramifications as significant as the changes in the beak of the finch.
And so even while I'm hoarding my books, I'll be hoping that educators can do a better job of acknowledging and maximizing the techno-human evolution we're in than the test-makers in Mokoto's article who continue to assess only one form of acquiring knowledge while students are happily multi-tasking, or the educator who sees no need to teach online reading because “Nobody has taught a single kid to text message....When they want to do something, schools don’t have to get involved.” Would this English teacher exempt from her class any student who can already read and chooses to do so? If this attitude prevails, and kids aren't taught the critical skills they need to find the truth in the blitz of half-facts zooming past their eyes, then the dangers of online reading may indeed outweigh the benefits.
I started this essay by asking what it meant that I, a lifelong practitioner and teacher of reading in its traditional medium, read the article in its online form? I guess it means that I've gone over to the Dark Side, and found it not so dark after all.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/27/books/27reading.html?ref=books
Another good piece is Nicholas Carr's "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" in The Atlantic: http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200807/google. "Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski."
As a teacher and librarian who watched the changes technology brought to the reading practices of high school students, I have both welcomed and worried about the monumental shift in the ways kids seek knowledge and entertainment. I reveled in the new, often free accessibility of more knowledge than any library full of books could provide, even while I extolled the primacy of books, believing that reading online encourages quantity over quality, superficiality over depth, immediacy over truth with all its time-sapping subtleties. I may have spoken with enthusiasm when I taught kids how to use library databases, but it was only when I gave book talks that passion, even a sense of the sacred, gave music to my voice. The superiority of the printed page, I thought, would always win out.
Now I'm not so sure. Whether I like it or not, the days of the printed page are numbered. But I'm not as saddened or alarmed by that as I once was. Does onscreen reading have its dangers? Yes. Will much be lost as paper books become mere antiques? Yes, just as much was lost when horses were replaced by cars and torches by electric lights. But whatever the consequences, this ship has sailed, and nothing short of an apocolypse will abort the journey we're on. Future generations will, I'm convinced, look back at the age of the personal computer as the start of a whole new epoch of human progress, with ramifications as significant as the changes in the beak of the finch.
And so even while I'm hoarding my books, I'll be hoping that educators can do a better job of acknowledging and maximizing the techno-human evolution we're in than the test-makers in Mokoto's article who continue to assess only one form of acquiring knowledge while students are happily multi-tasking, or the educator who sees no need to teach online reading because “Nobody has taught a single kid to text message....When they want to do something, schools don’t have to get involved.” Would this English teacher exempt from her class any student who can already read and chooses to do so? If this attitude prevails, and kids aren't taught the critical skills they need to find the truth in the blitz of half-facts zooming past their eyes, then the dangers of online reading may indeed outweigh the benefits.
I started this essay by asking what it meant that I, a lifelong practitioner and teacher of reading in its traditional medium, read the article in its online form? I guess it means that I've gone over to the Dark Side, and found it not so dark after all.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/27/books/27reading.html?ref=books
Another good piece is Nicholas Carr's "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" in The Atlantic: http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200807/google. "Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski."
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