What's Elizabeth Reading? ...Kurt Vonnegut

Now, who was I reading that made me realize I hadn't read any Kurt Vonnegut? Oh, that's right. Anna Quindlen. I still need to do an actual post about that book, don't I?

Anyway, Kurt Vonnegut is one of those literary names you hear thrown around relatively often, like Hemingway or Virginia Woolf, and I hadn't read any of his work yet. Also, I figured it was time for a small break from all the autobiographies.

I went to the library and picked up Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five, which I'd heard of and read was a good book of his to start with.

Leave it to me to take a break from reading autobiographies by reading what amounted to a personal historical fiction.

Vonnegut had taken a major event in his life, the bombing of Dresden, Germany, during WWII, and placed a fictional character in it. Vonnegut shows up in his own story, multiple times, and at the beginning admits that much of the story is true. So it's a historical fiction ... off a memoir.

I didn't even know people did that. Then again, I'm learning that there are many styles of autobiography. So far:

Alan Alda -- Scenes and stories from life focused on a set of themes, written out of order.
Malala Yousafzai -- Scenes and stories from life set in detailed backdrop of a culture's history
Anna Quindlen -- A reflection on a generation and how it has changed and grown
Kurt Vonnegut -- Making a fictional character go through your life instead

... But giving him adventures that are much more exciting, I'm sure, because he is kidnapped by aliens and does an awful lot of time travelling within his own lifetime. The character relives portions of his life over and over, in whatever order fate throws him into them. He has even experienced his own death a number of times.

A couple criticisms, though, need to be thrown in. First, and it's a style choice, but I wasn't fond of how often Vonnegut said "So it goes." It was his comment after every death, or mention of death (a fur coat, for instance), in the book. It got too repetitive for me and lost its profundity. That does tell you that there is a lot of death in this book, though. Also a lot of crudity. For the record.

My second criticism is that Vonnegut's first chapter reads like a forward, or an introduction, and that's what it should have been. The book actually begins in Chapter Two. Perhaps he wanted to make absolutely sure his introduction was read? Chapter One gives a background to the book itself and says that the story starts with the sentence that opens Chapter Two.

It also gives away the last line, interestingly enough. A bird gets the final say with the sound "poo-tee-weet?"

What's also interesting about that bird is that Vonnegut says after a massacre of Dresden's magnitude, no one is supposed to be alive to say anything about it, and indeed, there isn't much at all to be said. Birds say the only thing that can be said, "poo-tee-weet."

Vonnegut. I didn't imagine the curly
hair, personally, but that really doesn't matter.

It's weird because he finishes a book that is largely dedicated to discussing and talking about the Dresden bombing by saying that there's really nothing that can be said about it.

Maybe it's a reminder of that concept? Maybe he gives the bird the last word because he thinks that, after it all, that is really the best last word.

How do you choose to end an autobiography? Alda and Quindlen both wrote more than one autobiography, making it less of an issue for them. Malala is only 20 right now, so I'm betting she'll come out with a sequel at some point, too.

Is one's gravestone really the last word in their autobiography? Perhaps not, since most people don't write the text for their own gravestones, but I think there is some poetry in ending an autobiography with your name and dates. People who know and love you see your name and it encapsulates everything you are. It means you. As for the dates, those are for the strangers who stop by and wonder what was going on in your lifetime. It's a kind of marker, placing you in history. My name is Elizabeth, and my place began in 1991.

Family, work, and feminism

I recently finished reading Anna Quindlen's Lots of Candles and Plenty of Cake. It's, you guessed it, another book from the biography section. Except this book is more of a reflection on her generation, particularly its women.

Anna Quindlen is a baby boomer and a writer who was able to manage both a successful career and motherhood (she has three children, all now grown).

That said, something she put in there struck me:

All the times I've been asked on college campuses about balancing work and family, I've never been asked the question by a young man. Young women, even with their own mothers' successes, wonder how they will manage job and kids; young men still figure they'll manage it by marrying.

It's so true, isn't it? I've been thinking about it all week.

One reason I like the business I am starting, Stories from the Hearth, is that it will someday allow me to be a mother while also working at something I enjoy. It is a work-from-home job; when I need to interview people, I can foreseeably bring children with me. It will be hard, but it seems possible.

My husband has a goal of owning his own research and development company someday. He has never mentioned how he will be a father at the same time.

So I asked him about what he thought of this quote from the book, and he said he thinks it's because women think about being mothers someday, and men don't think about being fathers. While many girls are excitedly planning their weddings years in advance, the expectation for men is that they'll just show up and it will be grand. Those same girls have also been playing with dolls and playing house since they were tiny. Generally speaking, they have always been thinking about someday being mothers. Men, not so much.

A good friend of mine directed me to read this article by Anne-Marie Slaughter. Slaughter discusses work-life balance for successful women in government, particularly, and notes that men do not have the same problems with it. While women are more likely to quit their jobs to spend more time with children they think could benefit from their time, she says, men are likely to look at their jobs as a way of supporting their family, and thus think the best thing they could possibly do is work harder.

I was reminded of another book, one my in-laws read and told me about. It's called Outliers: The Story of Success, and it's by Malcolm Gladwell. Gladwell talks about the reasons why certain people are successful and others aren't. Apparently, one key to success is that someone else has sacrificed so you have the time or skills to succeed. Someone takes on all the necessary tasks so that the other person can chase their dreams and do amazing things.

Case in point, the woman raises the children and takes care of the home so that the man can have a rewarding career. In Slaughter's case, though, it was the other way around. Her husband held down the fort so she could work as the director of the federal government's policy planning department for two years.

I am the current breadwinner of my two-person family. My husband is still attending school and has a back injury he is trying to heal from. He was working this summer, but as time wore on he was in too much pain to continue. Now he is working from home as much as he can.

This means I wake up, go for a run (hopefully), get ready for my day, go to work, work, get home, make dinner, do laundry (not every day), massage my poor husband and work on one of my numerous side jobs: starting my business, writing this blog, teaching my sister to play the piano, writing a column for the Idaho Press-Tribune. Hopefully I get to relax sometime.

I am sincerely hoping this is not an eternal situation ... and that I'm not setting a trend for me doing all the work and my husband sitting around for life. That would not be okay. If I'm going to be doing the lion's share of the work at home, he better be out there being amazing.

For me, then, I suppose this issue is less your typical feminist problem and more of a marriage problem: How do you balance all the tasks associated with home and family? This, of course, is solved differently in each marriage.

In marriage and home, it should all be equal, with any superiority thrown out the door. That was another quote in Quindlen's book that I liked:

True friendship assumes a level playing field -- no one is up, no one is down, no one the queen bee or the drone.

Replace "friendship" with "marriage," and I think that about sums it up.

Pride: An Investigation

I recently completed a weeks-long reflection on pride. I've always considered one of my greatest flaws to be my pride, and I'm too scared to ask God to help me solve it. I mean, that's just a bad idea. The last time I said a "Please help me overcome my pride" prayer to God was in middle school, and I didn't get a part in the school play that week. When you ask God to humble you, He humbles you. It's not fun.

So instead I got smart. I'm going to ask to understand my pride, I said. If I understood it, perhaps I could conquer it myself, like I've been trying to do all along.

It turns out a prayer to understand pride is synonymous with, "Please give me a chance to examine my pride," which is synonymous with, "Hurt it, please."

After living successfully on my own, supporting first myself and then a spouse at a job that used my English degree in the Boise area of Idaho, I have moved back to Utah, the Mormon homeland, to live in my in-laws' basement. That's another post altogether, and I'll probably get to it. But to make it short for now, this circumstance hurts my pride.

Oh, and on top of that, I'm working at a job that does not use my degree (something I'd been proud of) or my natural talents (something else I'm proud of), and my in-laws are my bosses (...yep).

My pride is pretty shot right now. Thanks, God.

Pride is a pretty big topic, and unlike many people when they tackle something of that size, I didn't start by looking it up. That came somewhere in the middle. Instead, my thoughts turned to observing when my pride was hurt and why. I also thought about it while I read from the scriptures each day (a breakfast ritual).

Most of the time, when we think of pride in the negative sense, we mean someone who is full of themselves and self-centered. There is a quote I love, and it's by C.S. Lewis (a man I definitely would have invited to dinner had he lived in the neighborhood and still been alive):

Humility is not thinking less of yourself. It is thinking of yourself less.

This feels true to me, and it implies that you do not have to sacrifice self-esteem for the sake of humility. So here's my first truth: Thinking well of myself does not mean I am prideful.

In the scriptures, pride is usually mentioned when an individual or group is unwilling to obey or turn to God for help. "Stiff-necked," they're called, a metaphor that refers to an inability to bow down before someone. But no one wakes up one morning deciding to be stiff-necked. I'll address the obedience part later, but for now, why do people refuse to turn to God for help?

Lack of faith. Lack of hope. Thinking you don't need God. Most important for my pride investigation: Putting others' opinions before God's.

I have a hard time of this. I care way too much about what others think of me. In college, I once caught myself walking down the street, taking home a pizza, and thinking that the people driving past me thought I must be a really poor person, to not afford a car.

What they were actually probably thinking: Pedestrian, stop sign, right turn signal. I am quite sure that none of them cared about me as much as I cared what they thought of me. And who cares what they thought of me, anyway?

This fear, the fear of what people think of me, leads to me to putting their opinion before God's sometimes. That means I do stupid things. For instance, in the LDS religion, a person is only supposed to take part in the sacrament (similar to communion) if one is worthy. I wasn't, but did anyway. Later, I admired those people brave enough to not take part.

Perhaps this is what the scriptures mean when they tell us to fear God? Second truth: I indulge in pride when I won't humble myself before others and I put their opinion before God's.

My thoughts, over the course of weeks, next went to honor, I believe. Honor is some mythical thing, something men used to have that caused them to be brave. What does it mean, really? Do we still have honor today? Is honor the same as pride?

I looked honor up and found a website that described honor as having two types: horizontal and vertical. Horizontal honor is when those around you respect you because you deserve respect, as a human being. Everyone has that. Vertical honor is when you deserve that respect based on special recognition you have received, such as having a high rank, a lofty award, or a blog everyone reads and loves. When it comes to honor, I find it is closer to one's right to respect than to pride, the one being from an outside source and the other coming from inside.

Do we have honor today, then? Yes, but we've obviously assigned it a new name, and people bestow it based on varying criteria. Everyone wants to be respected, and with horizontal honor in mind, honor is a basic human right. Gaining more of it is good; it goes along with being a good person and working hard so that you'll be successful and well liked.

Third truth: Honor is worth striving for. Caring about the opinion of others is not inherently bad.

Now is the time when I finally got around to looking up pride in the dictionary (a bit late, I know). Definitions:

1. A feeling or deep pleasure or satisfaction derived from one's own achievements, the achievements of those with whom one is closely associated, or from qualities or possessions that are widely admired.

2. The consciousness of one's own dignity (akin to the honor thing I mentioned earlier)

3. The quality of having an excessively high opinion of oneself or one's own importance (synonym: conceit)

4. A feeling that you respect yourself and deserve to be respected by other people.

5. A feeling that you are more important than other people.

Etymology: Old English word for excessive self-esteem (pryde) 

I think it is #5 that I have the toughest time with. I have a pretty high sense of my own accomplishments and abilities that I constantly try to tone down.

It was soon after looking up definitions that I made my final breakthrough. Perhaps I should have looked them up at the beginning, but maybe I wasn't ready for them. I am a believer that experience teaches the best lessons, and a person only truly learns after experiencing a thing. That's part of why I'm drawing this out so much, so you can see behind the piece of wisdom I discovered and hopefully understand it all.

 I'll deliver my conclusion as it is written in my phone:

Pride has its basis in comparison. So why do we compare? We want to improve ourselves, we want what others have, we want to feel loved. Perhaps if we gave love, we would not feel such a need to compare. We see their good points, and because we feel loved in return, we see our own good points?

This bit about love didn't go many places, but I still think it's a nice thought. By loving others, we feel loved in return and learn to love ourselves.

Being proud of myself for an accomplishment is wonderful. I should feel that happiness in myself.

Someone who just got their degree should celebrate. They did it! Someone who just scaled a mountain should be in the same boat, as should someone who flew a plane for the first time, finished a hard project for work or finished reading Anna Karenina, because that book is a beast.

Good pride = happiness in myself?

That, ladies and gentlemen, was my breakthrough. I was proud when I got up my first day wakeboarding = I was happy that I managed to get up so fast. I hadn't thought I'd be able to do something like that.

This idea of pride pairs with the notion that good pride is happiness in others. I'm proud of my sister for doing so well in her piano lessons = it makes me happy to see how well she is doing.

This fourth truth is something I suspected but didn't dare hope for: Pride is not inherently bad. It is, at its root, happiness--in yourself and others.

But then, why do we look down on pride so much, and why does God strip people of pride so often? Next phone note:

God humbles people who are so happy, too happy, with what they are becoming and that something is not closer to God. He is setting them back on the right path. The other possibility is with thinking others are lesser and correcting that. The sin with the former is that they don't want to be like God. They want something else and think that is happiness.

Because if you like yourself as A, but God is like B, then that means you don't want to be like God. I do hope that makes sense.

My last two truths come from that final realization.

Fifth truth: Pride becomes an issue when we think of other people as being less than ourselves. It is good and possible to be proud of yourself/others without looking down on someone while doing it. (This plays in with the fifth definition. Coincidence, I assure you.)

Sixth truth: God wants us to be like Him. Therefore, He sets course corrections that we don't enjoy--a humbling experience.

What's Elizabeth Reading? ...Douglas Adams

At the same time my husband and I were in between books in a fantasy trilogy, waiting for the next one to arrive at our library, we were going on vacation. We needed a book, so I chose "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy," one he hadn't read yet and one I felt it was culturally imperative that he did. That, and it's a fun book to read.

He was hesitant because he had not enjoyed the latest movie, which I also thought came across as lame. I promised him, and I promise you, that the books are much better.

We finished The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (by Douglas Adams, by the way) in half a week. For the record, we only read the first book, not its sequels.

The thing that makes this book a classic in science fiction is the narration, I'm sure of it. I mean, read this beginning:

Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-eight million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea. This planet has--or rather had--a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy. And so the problem remained; lots of people were mean, and most of them were miserable, even the ones with digital watches.

It could be rewritten to be something like this:

There is a small, yellow sun in the western spiral arm of the galaxy, and a little, blue-green planet populated with humans orbited it at ninety-eight million miles. The planet had a problem: Most of the people living on it were unhappy. Many solutions were suggested, but most of them involved money and didn't work. Thus, many of the people were mean, and most of them were miserable.

Which says the same thing, right? It's also shorter, which is supposed to be a good thing, conventionally speaking.

But it's not nearly as interesting or fun to read. Now, each author has their own voice, and that voice can gain an accent, if you will, depending on the genre or the voice of the character, if written in first or third person limited. This is Adams's voice.

I used to have a digital sticky note on my laptop that said "Write like me, and genre will come." My writing should be better if I just sound like me, basically, and I will find stories to tell. Well, I was reading this book and realized that my sass and absurdity may work in my favor if I just let it out like Adams did.

While trying to go to sleep, I gave it some thought. What sort of story would suit a sassy, weird narrator? I wanted the main character to be a regular person, so they could look on the world with the necessary sass and so the absurd things would be even more funny (prime example, Arthur Dent, the book's main character). So in my mind, I invented a 20-something woman who works as an executive assistant (my current day job, easy to use) an a metropolitan area. The next step is to give the character desire. What do they need? Arthur Dent wants normality and for his house not to be bulldozed. Eventually, he just wants to stay alive. My character, I decided, was single and LDS and thus wanted to get married eventually (it's a cultural thing); get a different, better job; and ... here is where I stagnated.

Because those are boring things that would give me a boring, cliche story. What was it that gave The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy its original spark? The Earth gets blown up.

I couldn't think of a story that would suit a sassy narrator well that didn't involve an inciting incident (event that sparks the plot) that was so devastating it was absurd. Try to think of one and let me know if you can. I couldn't.

Without Earth blowing up, this book would just be characters getting drunk and hating on bureaucracy. Not nearly as fun.

So now we have an executive assistant who is LDS, wants to get married eventually, hates her job, and just had her city bombed during an invasion, with her and her office aquarium fish as the sole survivors. Or she just watched her boss turn into a zombie. Or she's been kidnapped by Tibetan monks and has to fight her way out to safety before the monks or cold get to her.

Then a sassy narrator could really shine.

As for the absurd part, I realized while grocery shopping that stories with absurd events in them have a wild card built into them. Examples: The Heart of Gold in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. The board game in Jumanji. Book magic in Inkheart. Foo in Levan Thumps. The rabbit hole in Alice in Wonderland. The wardrobe in The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe.

The wild card is a prop or gateway thrown in there that allows the author's imagination to run wild. Anything is now possible, thanks to that one item/place/person/thing. The Heart of Gold turns two missiles into a bowl of petunias and a sperm whale. The Jumanji board game sends wild animals through the house and eats Robin Williams. Book magic in Inkheart allows characters to come to life, whichever ones happen to arrive. Thanks to Foo, a living tree is turned into a living toothpick, who then splits farther into the good and evil sides of himself. And we all know about Alice in Wonderland  and Narnia (I like the lamppost in the middle of the forest. That was a nice touch).

I haven't finished thinking about this story, but in case you also think this is a good idea, have at it. You'll need an attitude, some humor, a bizarre inciting incident and a wild card to let your imagination go wherever it pleases.

Best of luck.

Writerly Podcasts

A while back, I wrote a series of posts* about "Writing Excuses," a podcast by a group of authors that focuses on writing advice and advice for the business of writing. There are other writing podcasts out there, though, and I've been doing a little looking into them. To start my search for an excellent writing podcast (I'd love to find one, if you have a suggestion, let me know), I listened to the New Yorker's "Fiction Podcast" and a podcast put out by Grammar Girl. Here are my reviews.

Fiction Podcast

PROS: This is a quality podcast, and you can tell. Each month, an author is invited to pick a piece of short fiction published by the New Yorker (from any date) to read in the podcast and discuss/analyze it with New Yorker fiction editor Deborah Treisman. I listened to a few of these podcasts; the discussion was always informed, on both sides, and the stories were read in full, which is fun for a person who generally prefers fiction to nonfiction.

Listening to this podcast has the potential to expand your reading horizons. So what if you normally wouldn't listen to a particular author or genre? You get to sample it now. If you don't like it, no harm done.

There are ads, but they are kept to a minimum.

CONS: These podcasts are long. Like, over an hour. That means that, if you aren't careful, you may find yourself zoning out. This kept happening to me during one particular podcast about a story that both Treisman and the author admitted were boring. They actually tried to analyze the boringness at some point, if I recall correctly. The length, the subject matter, and the understated way of reading aloud that seems to be in vogue these days all made it hard for me to pay attention to.

This way of reading aloud could be considered a con, too, if you dislike it enough. Some people love it, though, so it's undecided.

It only comes out once a month, so once you're caught up, it's not like you can continue binging. There are about a hundred back episodes, though, so don't let this deter you too much.

The other con, for me, is that this podcast is meant for readers, not writers. They do not analyze how the writer wrote the story, but the ideas, the symbolism, a bit about the author on a personal level, that sort of thing. I didn't come away with many writing tips.

... beyond this one: Every major character you write is going to be part of yourself, one evolution of you. Face that fact and harness it.

Grammar Girl

PROS: This podcast appears about once per week, so more often than the New Yorker's. It is also shorter (varying lengths, but none I saw were longer than 20 minutes), meaning you can sneak it into your schedule much easier.

The other pro I found was that these episodes are simple and easy to understand. Listeners receive a variety of interesting tips on grammar, pronunciation, punctuation, and even how to write different things (I listened to one that talked about writing a letter of recommendation).

CONS: I'm going to admit that I am not a fan of this podcast -- for me. I had to search through episodes to find something new. That simple advice I talked about is either stuff I already know or else things I can look up -- through Grammar Girl, usually -- and figure out in less than a minute. The host, Mignon Fogarty (the Grammar Girl), explains these simple things and repeats herself about them far beyond what is necessary for comprehension.

The ads in this one go in the cons list because it feels like they are long, and there are three per episode, one to start, one in the middle, and one at the end. Sometimes, they are for the same product.

Another grievance I have comes from an episode I listened to about writing in the third person: They talked about the different types of third person without giving tips or decent examples about how to write in each. Not so useful.

The last one is that different segments of each episode are written by different people, but the same person, Fogarty, reads it all, giving attribution at the end. This makes it confusing, because I assume it is her talking up until the end, when you find out it was actually some professor of something at a university. I'm sitting there, being all impressed by her experience as a professor, then find out she's been reading someone else's words. They should put the attribution at the beginning.

The writing takeaway I got: "Huh. I haven't read any Kurt Vonnegut, now that you mention him. I should get on that."

On to finding better writerly podcasts! So far the New Yorker podcast is in the lead.

*This link goes to the first in the series. Here are links to the others:
Writing Excuses: Course Complete
Writing Excuses notes, Season 1
Writing Excuses notes, Season 2
Writing Excuses notes, Season 3
Writing Excuses notes, Season 4
Writing Excuses notes, Season 5
Writing Excuses notes, Season 6
Writing Excuses notes, Season 7
Writing Excuses notes, Season 8

What's Elizabeth Reading? ...Malala Yousafzai

My second autobiography! This one has been on my to-read list since it came out, and I know its surge in popularity has died down since then, but I still wanted to read it.

All I really knew before reading “I Am Malala” was that Malala had won the Nobel Peace Prize and was a young woman who had been shot by the Taliban.

I now know a whole lot more, like the fact that she is from Pakistan and is as old as my younger brother (right now, 19). Even before she was shot, Malala was a well-known activist for children's right to education, particularly for girls. One doctor working on her after the attack described her as Pakistan's Mother Teresa.

One cool tidbit that you may not know is that she didn't have a last name originally and chose “Yousafzai” because it is the name of her tribe. Her father also uses the name and also is an activist for education.

In contrast with Alan Alda's memoir, Malala gave insight into her family. I can tell you she idolizes her father, her mother has great faith and is (or was) illiterate, and she argues often with one of her brothers (I believe she has two, but they did not get much emphasis, though they were sorry to leave behind their chickens when the family first had to evacuate their home in Swat, the valley of Pakistan they live in). Grandpa was a great speaker, Mom's family lives one valley over from Dad's, and her maternal cousins all think she's some big city girl (back when they were growing up; they probably think even more so now).

I feel like I got to know Malala, but I also feel like this book had a major focus on the history and politics of the region. It was like the history of Malala was the history of Pakistan and her people's place in it.

So in that way, it also wasn't personal. Since she co-wrote the autobiography, I'm left wondering whether she told the story and the other writer, Christina Lamb, wrote it down in whatever words seemed best or if she wrote the bulk of it herself and Lamb just helped. I do know she had people help her research the history of her region, so she didn't know all that off the top of her head.

Some storytelling techniques and autobiography ideas I saw and was intrigued by:

1. Use small stories to give details to the bigger one. For example, if I was telling the story of Cinderella, to include a story that illustrated how much her dad loved her, include a story about what she first thought of her stepmother, include a story about past fairy godmother “sightings” Cinderella had heard of, include a story about the first fancy dress she'd ever worn and use it to describe the current ball gown, etc. Small stories along the way to add depth to the large one that is being told.
2. Include name origin. It's kind of fun to know where a person's name came from. I was named Elizabeth because my mother always wanted an Elizabeth, and I share that name with my great-grandmother. Malala was named for a Pakistani war hero who was female, and as I said earlier, she chose her last name to reflect her people.
3. Describe places, not just events. I don't mean this in the Lord of the Rings way, where places are exhaustively cataloged so that the reader knows about each blade of grass. I mean it in a way similar to the first technique mentioned; describe a place using anecdotes, and use that to support events. Describe a room by saying “That's the chair where, when I had the flu, my mom would sit and rock me for hours because that's the only way that I could sleep,” or “I always tried to grow ivy plants by that window, but they never quite worked out.” This gives a place character, and then when an event happens there, the background is already colorful and meaningful. It adds nostalgia and/or an added understanding of what the events mean to the narrator (“This is where we keep our computer, the only computer for miles around,” for instance).

As I said, this isn't an autobiography like the ones for my business, but I'm still learning things from it. This felt like the autobiography of a people, and there is good in that. Just because you know your culture does not mean your kids will live in the same one, after all.

Oh, and because I loved this part:

"I wrote a letter to God. 'Dear God,' I wrote, 'I know you see everything, but there are so many things that maybe, sometimes, things get missed, particularly now with the bombing in Afghanistan. But I don't think you would be happy if you saw the children on my road living on a rubbish dump. God, give me strength and courage and make me perfect because I want to make this world perfect. Malala.' The problem was I did not know how to get it to him. Somehow I thought it needed to go deep into the earth, so first I buried it in the garden. Then I thought it would get spoiled, so I put it in a plastic bag. But that didn't seem much use. We like to put sacred texts in flowing waters, so I rolled it up, tied it to a piece of wood, placed a dandelion on top, and floated it in the stream which flows into the Swat River. Surely God would find it there." (Page 89)

Dream Catcher - start of a short story (I couldn't sleep last night...)

After her husband died, she started making dream catchers. Soon, they were all over the house -- hanging from the banisters, tied to tree limbs, even stowed away with the cutlery. All sorts of colors, too, with beads, feathers, and ribbons hanging from them. Her house was a wonderland.

Jean said she made them whenever she couldn't sleep. Seems to me that must have been every night. Since I had been her neighbor all those years, I guess it fell to me to be the one to look after her. Take her with me to get groceries, drop her off at the salon to get her hair done, that sort of thing. 'ts what neighbors are for, after all.

His name was Hank, and he had loved to garden and go fishing. They used to get up early every Saturday to go fishing down at Utah Lake, but then he got sick and, well. She never did the fishing herself, anyway.

'Bout near cried the first time I had her over for dinner and offered her some trout her husband had caught and frozen for me. It was meant to be a comfort, obviously, but that didn't work out quite like I had hoped.

It's been seven months now, and those dream catchers are still showing up everywhere. Take today, for instance.

I was pulling some weeds out from behind my roses (Lord, help me) and saw her step out of her front door, dream catcher in hand, and start spinning slow circles in the middle of her yard, looking for a spot. I leaned back on my haunches, lifted a hand to shield my eyes from the sun, and waited to see where she would put it.

This dream catcher was woven so as to look like it was a framed doily. There were no beads or feathers this time, but she had hung a mass of ribbons from it. Made me wonder if she was cleaning out her whole drawer.

When she caught me staring, she waved her free hand and called out, "Morning, Lia! Your front swing is looking nice, did you repaint it?"

I glanced over at the swing. It was 30 years old and hadn't seen a fresh coat in 35. "You need to get your eyes checked, Jean!" I said, shaking my head at her. "That bench is the same as it's always been, except maybe for a fresh coat of dust!"

She smiled wide, walked over to her trellis, and somehow found a way to snug it in there along with the overgrown hollyhock plant. "I thought it looked a shade more gray!" she said, then waved again before going into her house.

"A shade more gray, my butt," I'd said to myself, but I was smiling. It was a good day. The sun was shining, the neighborhood was coming alive, and I was wearing the new sun bonnet I had bought just the Wednesday before.

I made pancakes for breakfast and thought I'd bring some over for Jean. Who knows whether that woman ever feeds herself enough. She was organizing photos when I knocked on the screen door and let myself in. They were spread all across the dining room table, some in shoe boxes, some in piles and some sitting next to frames.

"Which do you think would go better over the stairs?" she asked, holding up two photos for me to see. One was of her and Hank next to the New York City Christmas tree, and the other showed them next to the house, probably just after they bought it.

"I think pancakes," I said, putting a couple photo piles onto a chair so I would have room to set the plate down.

“Oh, I already had breakfast. Thank you, though,” she said, moving around the table to consider another photo.

“What did you eat?”

“Corn flakes.”

“No, that’s what you ate yesterday.”

“A person can eat the same cereal two days in a row, you know. It’s actually quite normal.”

I looked over at her sink and saw no dishes in it. She does this sometimes, forgets that she forgot to eat. She could make millions if she could just bottle that style forgetfulness. Annoying as I’ll get out.

“Jean, I made these pancakes especially for you, and if you don’t eat them, I’m throwing them on your driveway.”

“Can they wait until lunch?” she said, holding a photo at arm’s length and cocking her head to one side. After a moment, she turned it around for my approval. It was a photo of an elephant. I shook my head and she tossed it back on the table.

We negotiated for brunch, settled on a photo of the two of them in a fishing boat, and I stayed to help her organize pictures for a minute before returning to my house to do a couple more chores before my book club (we were reading “1984.” It was horrible).

Bridge release

It started with the computer, which hadn't entirely been on purpose. Iris had been balancing it on the bridge's stone wall, trying to use Skype to show her mother the mountain view from where she was, and one far-flung hand had sent it flying.

Almost, almost it felt like she had drowned her own mother. Then the woman had called in a panic to know whether Iris was alright and what she would do about the computer. So far as Iris cared, though, the laptop was gone. She was not going to go swimming for it, and besides that, it would be waterlogged and destroyed.

The next thing to go was her old socks, which had been on purpose, though she pretended otherwise. It wasn't littering so far as it wasn't on purpose, and socks decompose...right? Either way, they were old, and she wanted to be rid of them. So off the bridge they went.

Over time, Iris added her old college textbooks, an ex-boyfriend's ball cap, a stupid collection of rocks, three pairs of sunglasses, her bra (on a particularly fun night), a coffee mug and the coffee inside it, and some carrots she hadn't wanted to eat. It was so relieving, throwing things off that bridge and into the river, that she bought the house nearby and just stayed put.

Most annoying, of course, was when items would wash back up on the shores in her yard. It defeated the whole point. She always threw them back in and, except for the bra, every one of them left.

The bra haunted her, though. It was a pale blue one with yellow lace trim from Victoria's Secret, and it just would not leave, no matter how many times she tried. Iris had had no choice but to hang it from some wire beneath the bridge, hidden from view of the house and out of the water's treacherous reach.

But she knew it was there. The stupid thing wouldn't let her walk across the bridge without thinking about it, and every time she checked, there it was, hanging, there. There and never going to leave her truly alone.

The next course of action, then, was to get high on caffeine, tear down the bra, which busted one of its straps, and wear it with nothing else while swimming in the river. This would absolve her of all crime, she was sure, by showing acceptance of both the river and the bra. It would then have no unfinished business and could leave her to herself.

That didn't work, either.

It was upsetting enough that she stopped visiting the bridge altogether. Iris rehung it under the bridge after its last visit to her home shores and avoided the area. It was more than she could handle.

When the bra showed up on her bank again, even though she had last seen it hanging safely from its wire, Iris gave up. She screamed for all she was worth and flung the bra as far downriver as she could, then ran away. To Louisiana. She's still trying to sell the house, if you're interested. It's got a nice gabled roof and a few flowers coming up near the front door.

(Honestly, I was going to write some fiction about someone attempting suicide, but my attempt didn't work out and this did. Something silly for your day.)

How to Write a Press Release

Remember that post I wrote a couple weeks ago, saying that English classes should teach students how to write things they will actually be writing as adults? This week, I've decided to not be a hypocrite. I usually talk about how to write fiction, but today, I'm going to discuss how to write a press release.

Let us begin with cliche: What is a press release?

Well, inquiring mind, a press release is when an organization -- whether that is a company, club, church group or something else that starts with a "c" -- sends a letter to the media. These days, a press release is also something you could send to your customer base or following. It is meant to disclose whatever has been happening lately in a way that draws attention to your group. Usually, it's happy news, but I suppose tragic news could also warrant a press release.

It is important to note that a news outlet will not publish or use your press release if the news is not interesting or important enough. Saying you got a company pet is not newsworthy, but it would be if said pet works as an on-call seeing eye dog for whoever visits your store. (Can seeing eye dogs switch people, or are they trained for specific people? Unsure.)

News outlets are looking for the following, called "news values": timeliness (last month's news? Forget it), impact (how many people does this affect, and by how much?), prominence (I lied earlier. If Facebook got a company pet, that would make the news), proximity (choose a news outlet in your area, please), interest (how bizarre or heartwarming or sad, basically. The emotion factor), and conflict (who cares if you sold a book? ... Until it gets banned, that is).

When you write a press release, keep these factors in mind. If your news does not fit these categories, I honestly wouldn't even bother. It's important to know your audience, though; a recent press release I had to write said the company I work for had gained membership in an international organization in its field. The local news station couldn't care less, but our customers do care, and they are the ones I sent the release to. It tells customers that we are a bit more legit.

Using that press release as an example, here's how I covered those news values. Timeliness got covered by a photo of a store manager hanging the sign saying it. That makes it seem current. I also used the present tense when talking about the photo. In actuality, the membership started back in January. Impact happened when I said it would help us to better serve our customers and improve the quality of our products. Remember, since the customers were my audience, the question was "How does this impact me?", not the vague, "Who does this impact?" Prominence came in when I labelled the organization as an international one. For some reason, "international" means "important." I also said this was the go-to organization for the industry. I introduced interest by (I hope) going through the organization's code of ethics and giving recent examples (continuing to make it timely!) of how we already uphold it. There were Google reviews to add interest, too, and change up the voice. A press release like this isn't really emotional, but I probably could have worked on this aspect a bit more. As for conflict, there wasn't any. I mean, was I supposed to pretend the organization hadn't wanted us and we had fought our way in? Lesson: You don't need to address all the news values, just all the ones you possibly can.

There is no set length for a press release. I'd say write your news and stop when you've said it all, at a max of two pages. One is better. Don't keep writing for the joy of it, because someone has to read that and all they want is the news, not your life story. They want you to get to the point, answer the who, what, when, where, why and how, and be done.

Please remember to answer those questions. If you leave some of that out, you're missing a crucial part of your story.

Finally, include your contact information and any photos you think would support the story. When I worked at the Press-Tribune, we regularly had people email in a press release (you can mail, email, whatever you want) and then call to make sure we noticed it. This is good practice for dealing with a news outlet.

Best of luck! Google a few examples and you're ready to go.

What's Elizabeth Reading? ...Alan Alda

I've entered a new phase in my reading: I'm reading autobiographies.

I don't think younger me would be impressed. Actually, that depends on which age of younger me you're asking. Some of those ages might have been in awe of my sheer adultness. Because boring adults read autobiographies, right?

I'm not so sure about that anymore.

I am reading autobiographies as research for Stories from the Hearth, the personal histories company I am starting, because I figured I should be more familiar with the genre of real stories, and I chose to start with Alan Alda's Never Have Your Dog Stuffed for three reasons:

1) The length was reasonable for the overworked person I am becoming (272 pages in paperback).
2) I wanted to know why I shouldn't have my dog stuffed, should I ever get one.
3) It's Alan Alda. M*A*S*H was an amazing TV show.

The first thing to be noticed about this book is that it is broken down into three sections, or "acts," that follow the structure laid out in the book's epigraph (quote that kicks it off): "Act one: Get your hero up a tree. Act two: Throw rocks at him. Act three: Get him down again." (Attributed to George Abbott)

So the first section is about how Alan Alda got involved in acting (in short, his father), the second is about how hard he worked to be successful (this included working as a clown on street corners, among other interesting stories), and the third is about success and his later life.

Beneath that overarching structure, stories are mostly given according to chronology. He does jump back and forth a bit, to serve his main topics and sense of drama, I think, and it's a little disorienting. The main topics he sticks to in the autobiography are his parents -- unstable mother, famous actor father -- and his acting. He bounces between these topics, trying to give his life a traditional story arc. I'm not sure I'm a fan of that, but since this book seemed to have, at its heart, the object of entertaining, I'll give it a pass.

I could tell Alda was out to entertain from the moment I read the first sentence: "My mother didn't try to stab my father until I was six, but she must have shown signs of oddness before that."

I mean, what person starts out an autobiography that way? Not David Copperfield, for sure. Usually people follow the king of Wonderland's advice and start at the beginning. This was not the beginning; it was a hook.

Not necessarily a bad thing, just different.

Alan Alda

My main problem with it being an entertainment autobiography is that I came away feeling like I did not know Alda well. I know almost nothing about his marriage or his children, for instance. I know their names, and I know how he met his wife (it included him going AWOL from the military multiple times in efforts to visit her a couple states over, amusingly enough). There are moments here and there when they show up, but this is mainly about Alda. Somehow, the man wrote an autobiography while keeping his privacy intact.

Useful for a famous actor, but not really what my clients will be going for.

HOWEVER. This book would be, I think, useful to someone pursuing a career in acting. Besides the pick-me-up of, "Wow, he had to work really hard to get where he did, even with all that talent," there are nuggets of wisdom sprinkled throughout the book that would serve an actor well. For instance, he talks about how he learned to cry real tears on command. He also discusses empathy at some length.

For those who are interested, some fun facts about Alan Alda:

• Alan Alda is not the name he was born with. That was Alphonso D'Abruzzo. He actually hated the name "Alan Alda" when it was first proposed.
• He was beat up in school for trying to entertain the "crowd" during recess.
• Spent some time doing a film in a prison in Salt Lake City, UT (cool for me because it's near my hometown)
• He wasn't sure he was going to be able to pull off being Hawkeye Pierce until the first moment the camera was actually rolling.
• He grew up in the world of burlesque, and so was surrounded by comedians and exotic dancers.
• He once had polio.
• He had his dog stuffed.

It seemed like every day, I was turning to the people next to me and saying, "Did you know, Alan Alda ..." I'm sure it would have gotten on their nerves more if the man didn't have such interesting stories to tell.

Captain Benjamin Franklin "Hawkeye" Pierce

Yes, he does dedicate some time in the book to M*A*S*H, as well as some time to Scientific American Frontiers, which I found out ran for even longer than M*A*S*H (14 years. He was Hawkeye for 11). It kind of feels like he includes these sections as crowd pleasers, the "We all know why you picked up this book today," chapters, but he's right. I wanted to hear about them. Nothing wrong with knowing your audience.

After finishing the book, I went to the library and borrowed the first and last season of M*A*S*H, just to see how I would feel about it now.

But you know what? I didn't see Alan Alda acting. I saw Hawkeye.

So no, this is not the autobiography of the man who played Hawkeye, because Hawkeye was so real he wasn't really played by anyone. This is the autobiography of the man who became Hawkeye.

Why keep taking language arts classes once you're literate?

My brother found a summer job with the company I am working for, and we live in the same city, so we carpool to and from work each day. It's been great for sibling bonding time -- we've talked TV shows, meditation, politics, you name it. On one day this week, the topic became language arts classes. His question: Why does the school system ask students to continue in language arts after they already know how to read and write?

I thought it was worth discussing here, too, so here are my thoughts.

My brother. Except he isn't Leo, obviously.

In elementary school, people are taught the basics of how to read and form letters. By the fifth grade, I was being taught how to write essays. In middle school, classes read books together and learn more about literary devices such as similes, alliteration and rhyming. I was also introduced to reading and writing poetry in middle school. By high school, students are focusing on essay writing and book analyzation (I wrote another post about analyzing books a while back. Read it here). We are told that writing essays teaches us how to form arguments. It is also an avenue for teachers to help improve writing skills -- grammar, sentence fluency, that sort of thing.

Along the way, teachers select books for their students to read. Sometimes, these books are part of a bigger, government-dictated curriculum. Other times, teachers choose books they think will interest their students or help them through a particular stage in life. This is why so many middle schoolers find themselves reading coming of age books like Bridge to Terabithia or The Outsiders. Some teachers will also select books they loved themselves and want to share with the students, since the books are age appropriate (if your child's teacher has them reading Harry Potter, this is what happened). The other three factors I can think of that would affect book selection would be current or recent events, genre introduction and cultural aptitude (this is the main reason for all the Shakespeare, I'm sure of it).

Teachers guide youths' reading up until they are set free by the school system and either re-enter by going to college or go off on their merry way into the work force. Recreational reading outside of the assigned books is encouraged, of course, but you have to admit that teachers do a lot of book introducing for youth.

As for college, those language arts classes teach specific aspects of the language or writing in it. After all, even though you know how to read and write, you can still improve. This is why we continue taking language arts classes.

Note: Philosophy can be taught using
literature and film, too.

However, language arts classes should also teach more forms of writing than essays. Philosophy classes (in high school) can take over on the essay front, since one major purpose of the discipline is argument formation and presentation. A philosophy class, or at least a language arts class with a strong philosophy component, would produce deeper thinkers and people who can express themselves well.

As for what else people would be writing in those language arts classes, the only times in real life when essays are used are in the justice system, book introductions and academics, so far as I can tell. Adults write in other formats: blog posts, articles, press releases, business correspondence, letters (cover letters, query letters, others), creative writing, memoirs, reports (which aren't written in MLA format!), speeches, contracts, and more things I can't think of right now. Imagine how much better these communications would be if we had classes in how to write them well!

The main problem with this is we don't have teachers trained to teach all these various forms of writing.

But alas, I am not a teacher and would be scolded for telling other people how to do their jobs. So I'll step off my soapbox with one last sentence: Brother, language arts classes should continue, but with a stronger philosophy component and varied writing instruction.

Doubting my story beginning

The following is the beginning of the first chapter of the novel I have been working on for some time now (think years; I'm a slow writer).

Elke had never liked porridge, but his dislike for the bland mush that filled his wooden bowl this morning was dwarfed by his dislike for the look on his mother’s face. He had seen it way too many times this past week, and he knew his best bet was to quietly force himself to swallow his breakfast and disappear for a few hours—but not so far that he couldn’t hear her call his name.

He averted his eyes from hers, sure that her uncanny ability to read them would only spell more trouble for him, and then he wouldn’t be allowed to disappear but instead would be stuck chopping wood, even though winter was a long ways off. He stared at a knot in the table instead and did his best to eat quietly.

Mother was sitting in a chair near the open front door, hand over her eyes and head tilted back against the frame. She usually would have been sitting across from Elke, swatting at his hand if he held the spoon incorrectly, but the head pains always rendered her more quiet and still, and she craved the fresh air without the sounds of Nostos. She looked up now and then to see if he was eating, but that was all.

When he was finished, he did his best to quietly stand up. He winced when his chair squeaked and mother flinched, then carefully rinsed out the bowl using the bucket of water mother kept for that purpose. He kissed her cheek on his way out the door, whispered that he would be back to check on her, then crept away from the house, breaking into a run once he was out of earshot.

“Arato! Get up, you slug! Can’t let Sakuunu see you in bed at this hour!” He slapped on the wood wall of his friend’s home, aiming for the spot where his bed met the wall. Elke paused to listen, then slapped the wooden planks a couple more times for good measure, moving to the front door when he was sure he heard Arato get up.

He bounced a little in his deer-hide shoes while he waited, then opened the door to peek inside just as Arato came scrambling out. “Welcome to the morning, brother!”

“Oh, go eat a pine cone,” Arato said, still adjusting his apprentice necklace, a leather strap ornamented with a metal hoop similar to those that held barrels together.

“I’d rather not be seen eating the ancestors, thanks,” Elke said. He instinctively checked to make sure he hadn’t forgotten to wear his own apprentice necklace with its accompanying miniature cloth stachel, meant to represent the full-sized ones carrying seed. He, however, was carrying a couple coins in his -- something his mother would kill him for if she were to find out.

“So do it at night, when the sane people of this world are asleep.”

“I sleep!”

They had been walking, but at this, Arato stopped and turned toward him, an incredulous look on his face.

“Most of the time,” Elke said, grabbing his friend’s arm to get him going again. “We’re going to miss it. Come on.”

They had just managed to climb into one of the trees when the first girl walked through the meadow. This one was Pylliah, who was too young to have a woman’s figure but too old to bathe with the children. She had carefully wrapped herself in her towel but was walking with a slight cower just the same, hiding herself from the world at large until she could put on her proper clothing. Elke and Arato didn’t waste more than a glance in her direction, instead fixing their gaze on the path to the river, waiting for the next female to emerge.

It turned out Arato’s early wakeup had paid off, because Sakuunu was in the small group of women who followed Pylliah out from the bathing place. Elke had little interest in her, though he could appreciate how her long black hair waved slightly as she walked and the way her towel hung from her figure to reveal its perfection. He knew her to be a tad self-centered and she had mocked him one too many times to earn his desire. Arato was another story; he had been smitten since the day he had first seen her ride one of the village’s horses through the street. Arato had walked into Elke’s home with a glazed look on his face and had stayed that way until Elke had thrown a handful of fish guts at him.

Sakuunu was one of the few to wear her apprentice necklace, ornamented with a miniature horse, to the bathing place. Some of the women were too old to have them and instead wore the armband of their trade, and others, like Pylliah, were as yet too young. Elke and Arato had only received theirs the month before, and Elke was still having a hard time remembering to wear it some days.

Arato scooted forward on the branch he was lying down on, legs holding it tightly beneath him and arms propping his shoulders and head up slightly. The movement caused the tree to shake a little, but it seemed none of the women noticed. There were four of them in Sakuunu’s group, one of whom was her mother. All were wrapped in their towels, feet clad in wooden bathing shoes. They were laughing about something.

Arato scooted forward again, bringing himself to the edge of the leaves, where even one more inch would expose their hiding place. Elke was tempted to either push him off or haul him back in, but indecision about which would be better kept him from doing anything. Besides, there were more women bathing and one may bring him to the edge of his branch, too. He didn’t have his eye on anyone, but he knew that could change any day.

Sakuunu paused before leaving the clearing, gesturing her companions onward and turning back.So she had noticed, then. This ended Elke’s moment of indecision and he leaned forward, shoving Arato to the side. His friend had been too entranced to hold on properly, and the shove sent him crashing to the ground at Sakuunu’s feet.

I like this beginning, because I think it is fun and well-written. It introduces some of my main characters in a personable way and gives each a foundation to stand on. My problem with my beginning (it is longer than this) is that it doesn't really take the story anywhere.

So this week, I had the thought to open it in a very dramatic way: a self-defense killing. I wrote it the next day, about 380 words, and am not as impressed with it as with my original beginning. Perhaps I stick my self-defense killing elsewhere in the story?

Truth be told, my main problem is I want to get the story moving but don't feel like a good enough writer to do it justice. I have a basic outline for it in my head and love it, but I feel like except for a few bright spots, like this scene, it's not all that great yet.

Maybe this post is a pep talk, a reminder that I can write well and all writers start somewhere. I defer to Ira Glass to make the motivational point:

“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know it's normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”

Quote searching

I've decided on a concept for my business cards for a business I am working on creating, called Stories from the Hearth. Through the business, I will be helping people write down their life stories.

With business cards, you want to make them informative, memorable and professional, right? So my idea is to have all my contact information on one side and a quote about life and/or stories on the other.

This post is going to be a list of quotes I'm considering, partially so I can stare at them more and partially so if you have any input, you can give it!

In the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years. -Abraham Lincoln

My life is my message. -Mahatma Gandhi

Life itself is the most wonderful fairy tale. -Hans Christian Andersen

Life itself is the proper binge. -Julia Child

Memories are the key not to the past, but to the future. -Corrie Ten Boom

The worst part of holding the memories is not the pain. It's the loneliness of it. Memories need to be shared. -Lois Lowry, The Giver

It's like everyone tells a story about themselves inside their own head. Always. All the time. That story makes you what you are. We build ourselves out of that story. -Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind

Stories have to be told or they die, and when they die, we can't remember who we are or why we're here. - Sue Monk Kidd, The Secret Life of Bees

If history were taught in the form of stories, it would never be forgotten. -Rudyard Kipling

I will tell you something about stories. . . . They aren't just entertainment. Don't be fooled. They are all we have ... -Leslie Marmon Silko

Do you have a favorite quote about life or stories? Post it as a comment! I'd love input!

What's Elizabeth Reading? ...Andreas Eschbach

My husband and I took The Carpet Makers by Andreas Eschbach with us on vacation recently. It was both one of the most ridiculous and one of the most atrocious books I have ever read.

The Carpet Makers is a science fiction book that was originally written in German. It has been translated into English by request of American author Orson Scott Card, and frankly, that was the reason I checked it out of the library.

The premise is that for millenia, men have been tying carpets using the hair of their wives and daughters. The creation of one carpet (more of a rug) takes an entire lifetime, and some men die the minute they sell it (an honorable death). Each carpet is sold when completed, and the money from that purchase is given to the carpet maker's son, who then uses that money to live on as he raises his own family (one son allowed, but many daughters encouraged) and creates a hair carpet for the next generation's benefit.

The book is interesting in that it lacks a linear storyline but instead uses short stories, some involving the same characters, to slowly answer the question: What are the hair carpets? Where do they go after they are sold?

The carpet makers believe they go to cover the floor of the deified Emperor's palace. There are rumors, however, that the Emperor (always capitalized) is dead. Of course, that's heresy and impossible, besides. Everyone knows the Emperor is immortal.

The answer to the question of where the hair carpets go is the reason this is one of the most ridiculous books I have ever read. It comes out of left field. I'm pretty sure no one expected this.

As for the atrocity bit, the Emperor is terrible, as were his predecessors, and that's all I'll say about that.

The book is well written, though my husband complained about the lack of a main character or main story thread. I found it intriguing that the story thread was the investigation of a question. We go from a hair carpet maker's home to others in the village, to a merchant who buys a hair carpet, to another who's been buying several, and on from there. I don't think I've ever seen a book that is organized this way.

Warning for those who like happy endings: There are enough atrocities (there really is no better word for it) in this book that it doesn't leave you with a happy feeling at the end. Also, there is no distinct resolution.

One aspect of science fiction is that it is an avenue for critiquing one's society. It says, "Here is a problem in society today; let's make it bigger than it really is and see how things go." For example, 1984 by George Orwell was written in response to the leader worship Orwell was seeing in the world (see this letter for more on that).

The Carpet Makers reflects on tradition and how it can blind people to reality. It could also be considered a reflection on religion as a whole, and it doesn't put it in a positive light.

It makes me wonder whether there are any traditions I follow out of ignorance. I can see how others may be in this situation, but it's harder to see it in myself. Maybe that is part of what Eschbach is saying, and it's a sort of Plato's Cave. I can't see that reality is different from being as I see it because nobody has shown me anything different -- and even if they do tell me I'm wrong, I may not believe them.

Things to think about, which means that even with the atrocities and absurdity, this book is worth a read.