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.