The Beautiful Sentence

This week, I came across a beautiful sentence while indulging in a little summer reading. (A second sentence is needed in the beginning because of an indefinite pronoun in the sentence I love so much.)

Once (it was in Mississippi, in May, in the flood year 1927) there were two convicts. One of them was about twenty-five, tall, lean, flat-stomached, with a sunburned face and Indian-black hair and pale, china-colored outraged eyes—an outrage directed not at the men who had foiled his crime, not even at the lawyers and judges who had sent him here, but all the writers, the uncorporeal names attached to the stories, the paper novels—the Diamond Dicks and Jesse Jameses and such—whom he believed had led him into his present predicament through their own ignorance and gullibility regarding the medium in which they dealt and took money for, in accepting information on which they placed the stamp of verisimilitude and authenticity (this so much the more criminal since there was no sworn notarized statement attached and hence so much the quicker would the information be accepted by one who expected the same unspoken good faith, demanding, asking, expecting no certification, which he extended along with the dime or fifteen cents to pay for it) and retailed for money and which on actual application proved to be impractical and (to the convict) criminally false; there would be times when he would halt his mule and plow in midfurrow (there is no walled penitentiary in Mississippi; it is a cotton plantation which the convicts work under the rifles and shotguns of guards and trustees) and muse with a kind of enraged impotence, fumbling among the rubbish left him by his one and only experience with courts and law, fumbling until the meaningless and verbose shibboleth took form at last (himself seeking justice at the same blind fount where he had met justice and been hurled back down): Using the mails to defraud: who felt that he had been defrauded by the third-class mail system not of crass and stupid money which he did not particularly want anyway, but of liberty and honor and pride.

The sentence is from William Faulkner’s The Wild Palms, from a chapter he also published as a short story, “Old Man,” in 1939. At over three hundred words, perhaps it is a bit overwhelming. I’ve examined it several times, and it appears grammatically correct. (Microsoft’s grammar-checker does not flag it, but then again, that disturbs me more than comforts me.) The heart of its power lies in the use of parenthetical expressions along with well-crafted parallel construction, and it underscores Faulkner’s consistent vision that no single story can be told without telling many stories, each story woven into the other, and only by swallowing the world in great-big-enormous-indiscriminate gulps and digesting thoroughly can anyone ever truly “know.”

I love reading sentences like this. I love hearing conversations spoken in this manner. It requires the listener to truly use his or her brain, to hold like a food server an entire dinner on a tray, balanced on the shoulder, to later rearrange plate by plate to the proper diner. Sentences like this can make one smarter.

I fear the postmodern brain can no longer stomach such sentences—mentally—maybe even physically. This isn’t a screed about Yankee minimalism versus Southern verbosity. Also, so much has already been written and broadcast about the dumbing down of American culture that I hate to add to it. I will joyfully remark that both Ezra Pound and H.L. Menken damned the United States as cultural and intellectual backwaters in the early decades of the last century, so not much has changed. But, cultural critics continue to make that cry. Just recently, for example, Nicholas Carr waded in with his book, The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains, suggesting that the Internet and its sea of hyperlinks is reducing any user’s ability to comprehend what is being read, that having to constantly evaluate hyperlinks and decide whether to leave what is being currently read and travel to a new text distracts from the reader’s focus.

Is the typical hypertext different from Faulkner’s strings of parenthetical expressions?

I suppose one argument against the comparison is that Faulkner’s text is still linear, and that the parenthetical expressions come at the reader one thought at a time. The reader doesn’t have to decide whether to explore in depth that parenthetical expression or not.

Returning to my original question, whether or not the postmodern brain can still comprehend, much less appreciate, a sentence like the one above, I grow uncomfortable trying to label a cause. Is the cause—the Internet, the iPod, youth culture, music, drugs, TV, gaming, texting, consumerism—an accurate cause or a scapegoat? Because I can’t answer that question, and because I am so tired of enduring so many obvious scapegoats in politics and the culture wars, I’m not comfortable diagnosing anything. Instead, I will point to artifacts.

I teach first-year writing to college freshmen and sophomores. To say they have come to college unprepared to communicate in their native language is a pathetic joke. Very rarely do I meet students who can compose a simple sentence. I count myself fortunate that the state college where I work admits high school students whom the school believes can take college level courses early. These are the students who will apply and win admission to the higher tiers of education, so I’m not just dealing with those students who couldn’t be accepted elsewhere. The most common issue nearly all of students face is the sentence fragment. Not just one or two—I’m talking entire essays, three to five pages, of fragment after fragment.

I find it fascinating; is it a reflection of their brains or their culture?

On a secondary note, the students who come closest to composing sentences like the beautiful one above are my Latino/Latina students. Somehow or another, beginning with Spanish or being fluent in Spanish enables these students to create masterfully long sentences that only require a little bit of correcting, mostly punctuation. I confess I am not a Spanish speaker. I have to let others comment on that. However, I will say this: To those who are English-only proponents, keep in mind what that suggests—Latino/Latina students have better control of the English language than native speakers.

Many years ago, one of my mentors said in passing that mastery of grammar leads to masterful analytical thought—and vice versa, that being sloppy with grammar makes one a sloppy thinker. I’m not ready to say I agree, but I’m moving closer to that agreement. I wonder if there is some sort of Ur-skill involved, meaning some other skill that facilitates both grammar mastery and masterful analytical thought. Should teachers try to locate and identify that Ur-skill, or should teachers focus on the two lower level skill sets in the hope the Ur-skill is muscled through exercise? Again, I’m not sure, but I can say with certainty that my students swim, or more aptly, flail, in a sea of fragmentary thoughts and expressions.

His Story Repeats

This week my literature classes have been discussing new historicism. Every week, we view literature through different lenses—I typically introduce students to notions of class, archetypes, gender, power and psychology. I began the week by asking if there was any value to considering the historical context in which a text was written. I received the standard answer—that history is important because history repeats itself and because contemporary societies need to learn from the mistakes of past societies. I’ve always liked that answer, that history repeats itself, or at least Mark Twain’s assertion that history at least rhymes.

Of course, there are historical texts to read, both imaginative like Shakespeare’s Macbeth and historical like the Domesday Book. When it comes to questions of value, for historians and new historicists, all texts have value, even ephemeral texts designed to be tossed after their use like sales fliers and pamphlets. Yet new historicists take that assumption a few steps further to assert that everything is a text to be read—architectural ruins, uncovered artifacts, even human remains. All of history is a narrative to be “read,” and all narratives are problematic.

As my students and I delved into literary texts and attempted to analyze them using new historicism, I kept recalling articles related to time and physics, like this one. As physicist Carlo Rovelli states, “We never really see time,” he says. “We see only clocks. If you say this object moves, what you really mean is that this object is here when the hand of your clock is here, and so on” (par. 3). From articles like this, I’ve come to learn of physics’ “problem of time.” On a quantum level, time seems to disappear. On a macro level, it is clearly evident as “things move forward.” Author Tim Floyd suggests a reason for this: “Although the laws of physics themselves don’t provide for an arrow of time, the ongoing expansion of the universe does. As the universe expands, it becomes ever more complex and disorderly. The growing disorder—physicists call it an increase in entropy—is driven by the expansion of the universe, which may be the origin of what we think of as the ceaseless forward march of time” (par. 9). At any given time, all that truly exists is matter and that matter’s momentum.

Thinking about the physical state while my students debated, I suddenly thought, “The past does not exist.”

I kept that to myself but could not jar it loose from my head. The point seemed almost too self-evident. Cleopatra is long gone, and the molecules that made up her body have since gone on to form new things. All that is left is the narrative, along with how that narrative is constructed. I also think about Spivak's subalterns, those millions (billions?) of voiceless humans who have slipped this mortal coil into oblivion. Just as paradoxically, history always exists, in the present, in just the same manner that characters in literary texts are said to exist—“Jane Eyre is unaware of the mad woman living in the attic.” Jane Eyre is a character in a book published in 1847, but because the reader is always translating toner ink and paper in the present while reading, “Jane Eyre” always exists in the present. The same can be said for history whenever I pick up Will Durant’s voluminous histories. History always is but never was.

So if “history repeats itself,” what keeps repeating?

I wondered if history repeats because of the way we construct this narrative, and what typically dictates how any reader constructs a narrative is his or her ideology, or at least his or her relationship to the current ideology in power. Do ideological constructs of history keep repeating themselves? One friend suggested that history repeats along the same argument that Northrop Frye uses to explain why narrative myths repeat—individuals interpret history based on their experience of life cycles—birth through death—with youth’s hubris discounting elders’ wisdom, leading to continual conflicts, one never learning from the other.

One of Frederic Jameson’s critiques against new historicism is that it lacks a theory of history. To this I answer that one of the reasons new historicism lacks a theory of history is that there is no history except the one constructed by the living. Sartre makes a similar argument in regards to the individual’s past (his or her facticity—birthdates, for example) versus his or her existential performance of themselves. I’m reading how some critics are calling this notion that history only exists as a narrative in the present “posthistory,” but at the moment those same critics are still squabbling as to what posthistory even means.

Now what does all this matter? Is there no history? Is it, as Henry Ford boasted, “more or less bunk”? Such would break my heart. I’m continually reading histories, and there are historical personalities I find myself seeking out again and again: Eleanor of Aquitaine, Elizabeth I, Frederick the Great, Suleiman, Voltaire or Ashoka. I sometimes wonder if my passion for reading history isn’t similar to fandom writing fanfic after fanfic of their favorite characters from Star Trek or Harry Potter because they simply can’t let go of the characters.

Where's the beef? Or pork? Or chicken?

I have issues with Farmville. (Having not played Farmtown, I will refrain from commenting on it.) Let me first begin by stating that I grew up on a farm in east Georgia, not far from the Savannah River. I learned not to give the livestock names, and we rarely had a dog reach old age. That is the nature of living on a farm. Some readers might be shocked by the callousness of that statement—hence the reason for this week’s blog.

I rolled my eyes when Zynga, the web development firm that created Farmville as a Facebook app, added pink cows that expressed strawberry milk. I saw it as whimsical, if anything, but left it at that. Then I noticed that ducks, geese and swans are raised by farmers solely for their feathers. I know from experience that such is not the case.

I drew the line with the addition of pigs to the game. Pigs are a significant farm animal that produce nothing but meat. I wondered how Farmville would broach the subject that adorable, stuttering Porky, clever Babe and humane Wilbur are all destined for the table. Language actually has a word for cooking with pork—charcuterie. According to the USDA, 100 metric tons of pork were consumed worldwide in 2006.

Farmville’s choice? Pigs collect truffles. Just so I’m clear, truffle production is so insignificant that Wikipedia doesn’t even devote any time to recording production or consumption information, other than to mention truffles of noteworthy size.

With each new Farmville update, I laugh at how the designers bend over backwards to avoid implying that cute, gamboling farm animals are ever consumed. Turkeys are raised only for their feathers and not for the glutton-fest every Thanksgiving. Lambs are petted. I’m tickled by the constant changes in bulls. For those who don’t know—bull cattle are used to breed more cattle, but only one of them. The rest of the male calves meet with castration so that they can devote their growth to becoming nice, juicy steaks. As for the females, they become breeding machines, with farmers gambling each birthing season for steak as opposed to new breeding stock. (Now that would make a good game—managing growing a herd versus harvesting beef.) The lucky few bulls are milked for sperm. So far Farmville has had users brush bulls (for fur?), only to recently shift to allow users to “calm” their bulls. I’m guessing that’s a euphemism for “milk for sperm.”

Even so, never have I laughed harder than when Farmville introduced the elephant. Elephants are hunted for their ivory. But in Farmville? One harvests circus peanuts from elephants. I fear to ask where one plucks circus peanuts from an elephant. Brother, that ain’t no peanut.

So why should I care? This is a web-based game, after all. Stop over-thinking things. Would that I could, especially when I come across evidence like this, which I found on the website, Failblog.org. For those who don’t wish to click the link, the site uploaded an image of a submission to a newspaper’s “vent” column, where users call or upload comments expressing their ire. I have no idea which paper published this reader’s thoughts, but here is a transcript:

“To all you hunters who kill animals for food, shame on you; you ought to go to the store and buy the meat that was there, where no animal was harmed.”

There is a possibility that such a comment was posted there as a troll by someone who really knew where packaged meat comes from, yet the cynic in me is not so certain. I recall my friend’s favorite retort: “Have you met people?” Sadly, I have. I’m more inclined to believe that there are stupid people out there who believe such tripe.

Games like Farmville and movies like Babe produce in the urban and suburban mind the notion that meat just appears at the grocery store. I’m reminded of Homer Simpson’s comment when Lisa decides to become a vegetarian: “Does that mean you’re not going to eat any pork?”

“Yes”

“Bacon?”

“Yes, Dad,”

“Ham?”

“Dad all those meats come from the same animal.”

“Right Lisa, some wonderful, magical animal!”

I’m convinced the issues behind overfishing stem from consumers not understanding where food comes from. On February 5, the United Nations backed the ban on bluefin tuna. Curiously, the normally highly educated Japanese and Norwegians can’t seem to understand why whaling is wiping out an entire genus of mammal. By far the most damaging details lie in industrial meat production. Living near these industrialized farms is an ecological nightmare, not simply with the smell, flies and bacteria, but the pesticides, antibiotics, and chemicals that leak into the water supply as well. I will let readers explore the Internet to see how chickens, cows and pigs are treated in their sterile cages, from birth to harvest.

Do not misinterpret this posting as a call for vegetarianism. I do, actually, approve of including more vegetables in contemporary diets. But to anyone who attempts to deprive me of my bacon, be prepared to face me barricaded in my home. I will have my steak, and on occasion, I will have my chicken and fish. Humans are omnivorous, especially this human. No, my concern is that we as humans have lost the understanding of where food comes from. Food does not come from a grocery store, or a restaurant, or even a box. Food is grown. Food is harvested. Food is the product of death; even that precious head of lettuce cried out when it was plucked from the ground and sliced into your healthy, preciously-ethical salad. And more and more, our media is only happy to entertain us as we look the other way. I propose that Farmville include an ear-piercing squeal whenever a user harvests a pig so that players can understand that food is no game.

We Shall Always Have the People of Wal-Mart

My name is CR, and I’m addicted to PeopleofWalMart.com. I’ll wait for the polite hellos to end. Like an addict with Protestant decorum, I never read the site alone but wait for a semi-social setting so that I’m not the only one gasping in disbelief or snickering at the disasters posted there. Mostly I gasp. I spread my eyes wide and gape at the image for several seconds, unsure that I’m seeing what I’m seeing.

But I should be ashamed of myself. Most of the poor sods whose images are displayed for all those who can afford a computer and Internet access will never know that they’ve become the laughingstocks of millions of people worldwide. I suspect most of them will never even comprehend why they are the laughingstocks. I feel pangs of guilt when I realize that these poor souls are probably living from paycheck to paycheck, with frightening gaps in between, the kinds of gaps some Internet viewers never experience. Is food a problem? (Perhaps not for those souls we mock simply because their abundant fatty tissues spill forth from their tube-tops and overalls.) Will they lose their homes or be kicked out of their apartments? In such circumstances, do they really care that their fashion is not up to our standards?

Perhaps. Yet the problem with laughter is that it comes unbidden. I click on the site; I see the images; I laugh. Only after do I realize that I probably shouldn’t have.

Easy solution—don’t read PeopleofWalMart.com.

But that’s not so easy. A thing that can be quit easily isn’t an addiction.

I take some comfort in knowing that texts like PeopleofWalMart.com are not new to this earth. Erskine Caldwell toyed with the same ambiguous subject in Tobacco Road. There his starving rednecks wrestled over a bag of turnips. They demolished a brand new car in a handful of days, and poor Sister Bessie, misinterpreting a brothel for a hotel, found herself charmed by the continual affection that strange men offered her again and again. I’ve worked with Caldwell’s text for years now: I still laugh. I suspect Caldwell intended me to laugh because the tone and delivery of these scenes are too ridiculous. However, I wonder if I should be appalled at Jeeter Lester and his tribe, or at myself for doing nothing to relieve their squalor. I suspect Caldwell intended both. Tobacco Road is a semi-documentary, recording how incessant poverty and hunger results in devaluation, where all the social niceties wither away—such things as dignity, honor and self-respect.

Caldwell’s Tobacco Road dates to 1932. That does not make it the first time well-off humanity has mocked the poor and their incomprehension of social niceties. Observe the February image in the Très Riches Heures, crafted by the Limbourg brothers at the request of Jean, Duc de Berry of France, around 1410 (see above).

Here one can see peasants lifting their skirts and tunics to expose their genitals to the observer. Is the image a salacious one, meant to titillate the medieval viewer? Jonathan Alexander, in his essay, “Labeur and Paresse: Ideological Representations of Medieval Peasant Labor,” believes otherwise. He argues that the image is designed “as an ideological representation showing the peasants as uncultured, boorish and vulgar” (par. 15).

As someone quoted to me recently from Ecclesiastes 1:9, “There is no new thing under the sun.” I suppose it is only fitting to reply with Matthew 26:11, “For ye shall have the poor always with you.”

PeopleofWalMart.com not only reveals that the better-off find the antics of the lesser-off entertaining, but the site also illustrates what middle-class culture finds worth mocking:

The morbidly obese. Granted, obesity is not the sole domain of the poor, but the Web houses numerous studies that suggest unwise food choices, poor eating habits, and the high fat content of cheap, industrially-produced food could partially explain how the poor and the obese have become associated with one another.

The flagrantly socially inept. Here I wonder how much shock plays into the entertainment factor: “I can’t believe he (or she) wore that!”

The fashion disaster.

The parent-of-the-year award.

The typical stereotypes, such as the mullet or big hair.

The incompetent cross-dresser. I have no idea what to say about this or what it means. I am more amazed that these individuals made it through Wal-Mart unharmed.

The ultimate mystery. Sometimes, I’m not entirely sure exactly what I’m looking at.

I will say that I call shenanigans whenever PeopleofWalMart.com posts pictures of shoppers who are clearly in costume, either for Christmas, Halloween or cosplay. That’s just cheating.

So if PeopleofWalMart.com perishes from this earth, fear not, for it shall be quickly replaced by some other means of mocking the poor. And there shall be those who think too much, who insist on taking things apart and feeling guilty because of it. Perhaps I should write a screenplay in which I choose to infiltrate the poor, to learn their ways, to discover their differing values and traditions, and help to lead them against their mockers. Oh, wait--that's not new either.