A Crime Against Art

In 1941, Orson Welles released his masterpiece, Citizen Kane, to the world.  It was to be the last movie he would have full creative control of, following by a career of studio meddling and diminished opportunities.  All this because of his abrasive personality.

I think this is a crime against art.  While it can't be argued that he never again made meaningful contributions to film, Welles should have been held up as the very pinnacle of Hollywood's early legacy.  For years Citizen Kane was the standard by which critics judged American film, and regularly topped their lists of the best movies ever made.  Just imagine if the filmmaker responsible for it had been encouraged to fulfill his potential, had been allowed to make films unobstructed the rest of his life...

Welles had a considerable ego, the product of an upbringing in which he was repeatedly told of the greatness that was ahead of him.  He literally thought he could do no wrong, that naysayers only got in the way, and that anyone who wasn't with him was against him.  There's always room for contradiction, and in fact is necessary for personalities like that, to help keep them in check, but what happened to Welles was a willful destruction, just as if someone had tucked Shakespeare out of the way, and thus deprived us of his later genius (there is in fact a clear distinction to be found between his Elizabethan years and the plays written under the rule of King James) and rich legacy. 

Because he was difficult to work with?  Because he was difficult to work with.  Sure, some of it was because he struck a blow against the powerful media tycoon William Randolph Hearst (you'd have to know now that this satire exists in Citizen Kane, because no one really cares about that anymore, except as intellectual curiosity), but Welles's idiosyncratic approach to his work was used against him just as impressively. 

It's true that hindsight often gives better perspective on the events of history, but sometimes the present speaks for itself, too.  Welles garnered Oscar nominations for Best Film, Best Director, and Best Actor while winning for Best Original Screenplay.  You'd think that was proof enough of his talent.  It's also true that Citizen Kane wasn't a box office draw, and studios then as now considered this a primary factor in their continuing creative decisions.

Was that good enough?  I'd like to think not.  Today, that wouldn't be the case.  Young directors making a big splash with a small production today usually are given bigger opportunities the next film, and their future opportunities are defined by those results.  Welles, he was simply buried, and his every decision second-guessed.  Again, that's the nature of filmmaking, but with Welles, this instinct was particularly vindictive.  It makes no sense, but again, ego had everything to do with it.  Other people wanted to prove he wasn't as good as he, or anyone else, thought he was, and worked hard to prove it.  Numerous completed films were taken out of his control and violently recut (The Magnificent Ambersons is the most famous example), with the excised material callously discarded.

Some of this may sound worse from a modern standpoint.  Early Doctor Who was lost to history, too, because film preservation as we know it simply didn't exist in years past.  But my basic argument, that what happened to Orson Welles can be summed up as embarrassing to the history of art, stands.

Because people didn't like him.  Really?  One the great creative visionaries of the past hundred years, stymied because people didn't like him?  It's like saying Pope Julius II would have had the right to end Michelangelo because of their complicated relationship.  Thankfully, that one ultimately resolved itself (see: The Agony and the Ecstasy). 

To be a fan of Orson Welles is to be entangled in the debate of what could have been, following restoration efforts, comparing competing cuts (I own a set of the film Mr. Arkadin in which there are several versions to be considered).  Nowadays directors release their own competing versions (Ridley Scott and Peter Jackson routinely provide extended cuts, for instance), but that's not what I'm talking about with Welles (Terry Gilliam is a more recent example of this phenomenon, and as such his Brazil has a similar fate and collection).

What I'm saying here is that, within reason, stay out of a true artist's way.  It benefits everyone.  The best of art of timeless.  History understands that.  Cultures are made on the backbones of art.  When countries fade away, only the art remains.  I wish Orson Welles could have benefited from his peers thinking that way.  Because we all would have, in turn.

IWSG June 2016 - Writer(s) in the family...

(We join the regularly-scheduled-meeting-of-the-Insecure-Writers-Support-Group, already in progress...)

This past weekend I had a chance to visit with Wit's family again.  For those unfamiliar with Wit, that's the alias I gave my cousin last year.  She was my writer-in-the-family that I got to talk to about this sort of thing (writing).  She also happens to be fifteen.

So it turns out her sister likes writing, too.  Her sister, whom I'll call Soul, is younger than her.  I had no idea, until this visit, that she likes writing, too.  So it kind of derailed what I had intended to talk about during the visit.

I ended up, briefly, chatting with Soul about writing.  Turns out she likes writing in notebooks.  I told her that's good.  I'm told the act of physically writing is a good creative outlet in and of itself.  It stimulates the brain to think in ways it wouldn't when, say, typing on a keyboard.  I told her, truthfully, that sometimes I begin new stories by writing some of it out in notebooks I carry with me everywhere.

And that's pretty much the extent of my writing conversations from the weekend.  Never even touched base with Wit.  The weekend ended with possible plans to meet up again for the July 4th weekend.

I'm talking to you about this, not to remind you about Wit, or to tell you about her sister Soul, but because I'm sad about chickening out.  When I talked about Wit last time, I was flush with the idea that I had a writer in the family.  At last!  Their mother, and her sister, have always been among my kindest supporters in the family, and so it was nice to know they were fostering little writers of their own.  I mean, despite what the Internet may have you believe, writing is a lonely calling.  Isn't that the whole point of the IWSG?  (Maybe it's just me, but isn't the group better for alleviating loneliness than insecurity?  Well, it should be.)

Then again, I'm not sorry, because I knew exactly what I was thinking throughout the weekend.  I didn't want to come off like I was desperately trying to connect with them.  From my own experience, conversations are best when they happen organically.  I spent nearly a decade away from Wit and Soul as it is.  They grew up considerably in the time I was away!  So really, I'm just getting to know them again.

But it's good to know they like writing.  That's something to work on, right?  And that's what writers always do.  They find something to work on.  And we're always busy, aren't we?

What did I accomplish in 2015?

I wrote very little in 2015.

This is in large part because of how 2014 ended, and how 2015 began.  I don't want to rehash, as I don't want people caring about me just because they're feeling sympathetic, but here we go in a nutshell:

My mother went into a nursing home last November, and I was almost too busy working on a manuscript to realize how big a moment that was.  Then she died in March, and I've been working my way toward finding it acceptable to write again ever since.

I've put so much pressure on myself to find some measure of success as a writer, so much emphasis on finding someone to help me make it a paying career, that it's really become something of a mania in my life.  But the truth is, some things really are more important.  Life itself, for instance.

Slowly, I started working on projects again.  Lately I've been reconsidering my potential future in comics (which has been a potential future for about a decade now).  Just before Christmas I found out I'd lost another contest.  I let it bother me until finally, I accepted the idea of perspective again. 

If it's not going to happen, fine.

What's bothered me so much about the writers blogging community is that everyone seems to think success is out there right here and now, and they support each other so blindly they never even stop for a second to think that it really isn't, and if it isn't that it's not the end of the world. 

But in July, I met someone new.  Brand new.  My sister's bouncing new daughter.  Between her birth and my mother's death, my life has been on a completely different roller coaster these past few years.  I returned home to Maine to help my mother, and it became a full witness to the end of her life.  Now I'm living in Virginia, helping my sister raise her daughter.  Three years ago, I would never have imagined any of that.  Three years ago, and two years ago, and a year ago, I still thought of my life in one way.  Now, it's become something else.

Some people shudder at the phrase, "art for art's sake."  And my pursuit of it has made my journey incredibly difficult over the years.  Now it means something else, too.  See you next week to discuss that.

Writer-in-the-family

One of the few good things I experienced last March was family coming back together.  Among other things, that meant seeing the full families from the New Jersey/Pennsylvania wing of the family again, which was the first time in about a decade. 

Cousins who were always just a little older than us also started their own families earlier.  It was their weddings and their births that helped mitigate a series of funerals we attended growing up.  These were always our favorite relatives.  Little did I realize that the little girls I was about to meet again held within their number a writer.

It was a subsequent follow-up visit on my part where I was really introduced to the Writer-in-the-Family (we'll call her Wit).  On the previous occasion, Wit's mother had briefly talked about this connection, but it was a different story talking about it in more depth.  Soon I was referring to this as talking shop. 

I didn't realize until Wit how much I'd wanted someone in the family to talk shop with.  My mother, and my older sister, loved to read my stories, but it's different when there's someone else actually writing. 

It's not as if I want to guide Wit's writing future.  Talking with Wit's mother, and then briefly with Wit herself, it felt good to talk about my perspective.  I know I've done it hear, but again, it's different, even in the context of my Colorado writing group, or in school.  Maybe it's just because socially I've always been a reluctant participant, but I've rarely felt comfortable merely expressing myself (again, Internet experience may vary).

The more I've thought about Wit, about the things we could discuss in future conversation, the more I've wondered what kind of writer I really am, forgetting about whatever or however Wit currently considers herself. 

When I was her age, I frittered away a lot of my creative energy.  I didn't start writing seriously until high school, and even then only for school projects.  Someone like Stephen King, who obviously went on to great success, didn't have nearly that kind of hesitation.

I'm thinking of King again, not because of all those coincidental similarities I like to bring up every now and then, which any number of other people share with the Maine native who continues to publish bestseller after bestseller (lately almost as prolifically as James Patterson!), but because I recently read a collection from Spider Robinson, and it reminded me all over again that King came from a specific generation, an identifiable one (Robinson is certainly a part of it), and it makes me wonder if I'm part of one (other than the Indy publishing era), or have I so thoroughly disconnected from any wider community that the very reason I struggle is because of, well, myself.

Robinson made his name as both a writer and as a critic.  His instincts are perfectly obvious in both capacities.  When he wrote to the publisher who would give him his fist assignment as a critic, he outlined the differences between a critic and a reviewer.  (For the record, Robinson would prefer the title of reviewer.)  His response was the classic debate over art versus accessibility. 

Now, I've long been a member of the art school.  Accessibility, to me, is a matter of what the Internet might call tropes, easily identifiable elements and themes that unite for your basic storytelling.  I've been a reader all my life.  Even if my writing doesn't necessarily reflect it, I know storytelling.  That's not what I'm interested in.  I'm the art guy because I like how the story is told.  For instance, when you boil Calvin & Hobbes down to its essence, you have a kid who's constantly misbehaving.  Isn't that basically Dennis the Menace?  Yet no comic strip reader of the past thirty years would ever confuse the two.  Why?  Because of the style.

Literally, Calvin and Hobbes was a comic strip of style, of art, of how.  When I talked to Wit's mother, we discussed Wit's approach to storytelling, and I brought up how knowing the ending is integral to the whole story.  This was something we readily agreed on.  I also mentioned the need for Wit to find her own voice.  Voice is everything.  Again, Calvin's voice is wildly different from Dennis's.

It's the shape of a story that interests me.  If the writer knows what they're doing, it'll show, no matter if there are mistakes made along the way.  Someone like Robinson obsesses over the mistakes.  Everyone does that, to material they hate, or don't trust, or haven't been preconditioned, at any rate, to love.  Robinson grew up reading classic science fiction, in an environment that nurtured his devotion to the form, if not the craft.  To him, the form was all about conforming, adhering to preconceptions, or merely being a writer (Heinlein) that he greatly admired.

And we're all prone to be bias to someone we already love.  The problem is, if you even consider being critical, will you become too critical, or will you simply see the wiggly lines in between the structures the writer has honed over the years?

I constantly think back to Star Trek, because it's the first thing I learned extensively, outside of school, and how little fans tend to be critical of, say, the original series, but couldn't be more critical of the later ones, especially the increasingly less popular later series, Voyager and Enterprise.  Culturally, we assume anything that isn't popular is either totally deserving of its poor reputation, or something we can rally around (hence making a new cult following) and hope its reputation will change in time.  (Conversely, and perhaps increasingly so, we're skeptical of popular things, too.)

The fact that I kept on liking Star Trek while it became easier for others to start, well, hating it, produced an interesting phenomenon.  Eventually I started thinking of Star Trek very much in the terms Robinson did his beloved science fiction.  I began to compare similar stories and weigh their relative worth.

The difference, I hope, is that I didn't let precedence (Robinson placed a premium on Heinlein, at least in part, because he considered Heinlein the father of modern sci-fi) get in the way.  It was the storytelling itself, the how of it, the craft, the voice.

Sometimes it's a matter of being able to handle having multiple voices.  Sometimes people merely choose the one they want to focus on and ignore the rest.  (It's hard to argue this to those people.  They always dispute that.)  And if not ignore, then do the whole hate-watch thing.  Except I've learned there are a lot of great voices out there.  I've found that a lot of them are more or less undiscovered.

But they're out there all the same.  And as a writer, it behooves me to have a voice, too.  Regardless of when the next time I talk shop with Wit happens to be, I'm glad I've imparted that already.  To me, it's easily the most important advice possible.  Yeah, success is great, which is what accessibility makes relatively easy to achieve.  But I don't want success.  Or, just success.  I want my writing to mean something. 

The very fact that Wit is already writing for her own interests, that encourages me.  I originally wanted to, given another conversation, encourage her to start submitting early.  I thought that was the difference I could make, if she wants to be a full-time writer some day.  But that's not really what's most important to me.  That's something I've realized, recently. 

I'm glad Wit has a mother who's interested in her writing, too.  Looking back, that's something I'm incredibly grateful for, something of immeasurable value, regardless of whether my mother was a perfect or ideal audience.  She wanted to read, to understand me.  My writing is my voice.  With a little encouragement, Wit is ahead of me already.  If that's all I'll ever really know about her writing, it's already enough.  It's enough. 

Having a Writer-in-the-Family is a very good thing.  Not because I have a chance to mold her to my interests, but because knowing she's there, and maybe even her knowing I'm here, is its own validation.  Writers are a curious breed.  Getting published, today, is just a part of being a writer.  For me, being a writer doesn't mean anything unless I've got something to say.  Like Robinson, there are plenty of people who disagree, who revel in being a part of something they themselves have admired.  But it's not the form, but the art that interests me.  I think Wit understands that.  And maybe, that's someone else who understands me.

To me, that's writing.

The power of imagery

I've just tracked down a poem that's lingered in my memory since I first encountered it a decade ago.

As a college student, I rediscovered poetry as a means of creative expression.  It was something I stumbled into in middle school but quickly left behind.  After a trip to Boston when I was attending Mercyhurst in Erie, PA, I decided I wanted to commemorate the experience in a series of poems, which I abandoned before completion.  But then at the University of Maine I seemed to fall into its poetry scene, by far the most vibrant aspect of the English department.

Much of my college experience took place in the shadow of 9/11.  Yet the scope of the event was illuminated for the first time when Chilean writer Marjorie Agosin visited a class dedicated to modern poetry.  This was the first time I heard of the significance of another 9/11, which resonates for all Chileans who experienced the Pinochet coup of 1973, which dramatically transformed the country and radicalized many of its citizens.  I was appalled when the consensus of the class was that her evoking the Chilean 9/11 was an insult to the American one.  If you can't trust poets to be sensitive, what else is there to believe in?

What stuck with me just as clearly over the years was a poem she'd written about Pinochet that, as with the best of poetry, was centered on the power of imagery.  Here she depicted the casual detachment Pinochet had to the suffering of his countrymen, contrasted with his immaculate white suit.  I tried saving most of the poems from that class, but things become lost over time, and when I wanted to read it again, the poem was nowhere to be seen.

So I began a quest to rediscover it.  This is harder to do with poetry than with just about any other creative medium, and that's a general indictment of society's current appreciation for the form.  But of course I finally succeeded.  For the record, it's called "The President" and can be found in her An Absence of Shadows collection.

Why talk about it at all, why rehash memories that stirred so much conflicting emotion?  Because for me, it speaks to the best quality of the written word, whether in poetry or prose.  In other words, the power of imagery.  Often as writers we're encouraged to "show, not tell," but the result of this advice is more often than not a lot of description that sets a scene, tiny details like the items that fill a room or what exactly someone is supposed to look like.  I find this tiresome.  In some cases, it works, it's actually important to the story.  Mostly, however, it's a chore.

What, then, about the power of imagery, and how poems do it so well, and why "The President" needs to be discussed first in order to make this point?  In film, which is a visual medium, the words of a book are often condensed and altered in order to produce the most striking version of the story possible.  When a play is adapted into a film, the critical reaction usually hinges on how "stagey" it remains, whether the actors look static, trapped in a limited space, or if the production has taken advantage of its new setting.

I know common wisdom is that literature is a culturally superior artform to film, but I'm suggesting that literature can use to learn a lot more from film.  The best films are poetry in motion.  See what I'm getting at?

The best prose, which is to say the best written words of any form (you probably don't think of Beowulf as poetry, but it is, much like Shakespeare), is filled with visual imagery, the capturing of a specific moment, a single scene.  It is a meditation on all the elements that have converged to make the moment happen.  You get a clear image in your mind of what has happened, why it's important, and it has nothing to do with whether you could produce an exact replica of it in a drawing.  It feels more like a memory than an artificial experience.

For me, that's the only kind of writing that truly qualifies as great literature.  The best poems know it.  I don't know that we think of the best literature as having it, too, but it does.  The problem is, young writers are never told this.  They're told to "show, not tell" endlessly, as if that really says anything at all.  It's one of the most common and least beneficial suggestions for creative development.

When an image like Pinochet dressed in white and casually strolling through the chaos that resulted from his actions sticks so clearly in my mind, when I find it impossible to forget it, the cool and precise nature of the poem is only half of the reason why.  It's because Agosin knows better than most writers what she's trying to accomplish.  I'm saying, more writers should try to keep that in mind.  It's not all about having an easy read.  If you want to be a writer at all, I hope you understand that the point isn't to have something readers will consume in one day and forget the next.  It's not about your name being remembered forever.  It's about the imagery.  It's about the material itself becoming unforgettable.  And, if you're lucky, your name will survive as well.  Because you write in order to preserve your perspective on the world.  You're creating a cultural record.  Because of Agosin, I know of the Chilean 9/11, and I'll never forget it because of the man in the white suit, the callous general and president detached from the horrors he's created.

If that's not your goal, why are you even trying?  

More Who than You

This weekend I attended a performance of Seussical.  That's all well and good, because this past summer I completed a script for a Dr. Seuss biography comic.  It was only right that I finally saw the musical version of his legacy.  The real reason I saw it was because my brother, robotic(s) professor at Yarmouth High School Paul Lamson-LaPume, was in the pit playing his trombone.  He's the only one in the family who continued playing his childhood instrument, even though we received absolutely no local notoriety as the Second Genuine, Elastic Family Band.

Anyway, it's a pretty good play, splicing together the most famous elements from Seuss's collected works, centering on Horton the Elephant from his two separate adventures (Horton Hatches the Egg, which is his first appearance, and Horton Hears a Who, the more famous follow-up), with narration from the Cat in the Hat.

What it really got me thinking was how much of Seuss, at least as defined by Seussical, is dedicated to the power of the imagination and independent thought, two attributes I greatly treasure, both in general and as a writer (especially as a writer).

Later, because the whole afternoon and evening was spent with the rest of Paul's family, I got to read Seuss himself to my nephew, including Horton Hears a Who and The Lorax.  The Lorax is a surprisingly forthright social commentary, all about environmentalism (although unlike his successors Seuss stressed the word "UNLESS," which my nephew asked me about, and I waited until we'd finished the story to explain).  For Seuss there was always hope.  Even the dastardly Grinch is as famous for his redemption as his grinchy ways (much like his famous predecessor, Scrooge).

Seuss is known for a lot of things, including his peculiar use of nonsensical words and creations such as Horton, the Lorax, and the Grinch.  But perhaps now I'm beginning to see him as much as a champion for the thing he embodied best, a imaginative outlook on the world around him.  That's the part I most want to embody myself as I work on my own stories.

Zen and the Art of the Catch-22

When I was in college I read a really good essay about writing that included the phrase, "When I read as I ought."  I still remember it for a number of reasons, one of them being the delightful professor, Carla Billiteri, and the other for its distinctive phrasing.

I'll modify it just slightly for today's purpose:

When I write as I ought...

I started by referencing school, and the truth is, as I've been thinking about what I wanted to write today, I didn't have much else positive to say about school.  In fact, there's another phrase that I was mulling: factory of mediocre thought.

Now, don't get me wrong.  I've had a bunch of memorable teachers, but even the best of them always seemed constrained by the invisible chains of mediocrity.  Or rather, to tie in the title I've chosen for these thoughts, Joseph Heller's famous Catch-22, taken from the name of the book where it was first coined.

Catch-22 is the idea is that you lose even when you win.  You just can't escape it.

And how do you end up with a Catch-22 in school?  By always insisting that your students write what you want or expect.  The closest I ever came to breaking from this, the closest I ever came to growing as a writer in school, was from a class taught by Kathleen Ellis.  This was around 9/11.  We were all warrior poets in those days, though.  But at least she had the good sense to have us read the other book eluded to in the title, Robert Pirsig's brilliant Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.  The depressing thought was that I was the only student in the class who seemed to get anything from it.

But I guess that's another Catch-22.  You can't force people to read something and expect everyone to love it.

But you can foster better readers, and perhaps better writers, by encouraging them to express their thoughts, no matter what they are.  In fact, have the whole class taught as much by the students as the professor.  Some of my teachers sometimes seemed to get that.  But not enough of them, and never well enough.  And schools in general are all geared toward something far more mundane.  In general, they're factories.

And to say nothing of research papers.  Why are research papers considered so important?  The synthesis of thought should be encouraged from within.  If you want to be a reporter, there might be a different story.  But encourage independent, critical thought above all else.  And don't make it feel like a chore.

The most brilliant orator I ever had in school, by the way, was Welch Everman, who had his students read the most interesting books.  But he was also a little impenetrable.  Because his verbal thoughts were so completely out of the ordinary.  Not to mention the enthusiasm of Randy Howarth.  I had his class too early in the morning.  One of two times I had the privilege of watching Monty Python in school, by the way.  That you always have to appreciate.

What am I really driving at?  When I was reading Roberto Bolano's literary thoughts in Between Parentheses, I was struck all over again with the thought that some nations can have a good sense of their literary scenes.  Smaller ones, like Bolano's native Chile, especially.  That's not the case here in the States.  Not the case at all.  And I think we all suffer because of it.

After suffering through the factories of mundane thought, we're all shuffled into the hodgepodge of luck and ambition known as the adult world.  We're told to make a success of ourselves, and yet we're perhaps more keenly aware than any other country in the world about how fierce the competition is.  Worse than the Chinese.  Worse than Indians.  And those guys worry about occupying the same space at the same time.

It's nuts.  We have no perspective.  Certainly none whatsoever on our literature.  We churn official publications by the hundreds every week.  And the unofficial ones, why they're proliferating faster than rabbits.  And that's not even to cover all of the people who are absolutely convinced that they were meant to be writers.

And what to say of the readers?  I think they're an anemic bunch.

Most of them aren't even good readers.  Bolano spent a lifetime laboring over a comprehensive, categorical appreciation of literature, not only from his own country or region but all over the world.  Most Americans in the States couldn't be bothered looking outside a particular genre, and that's not just readers, but writers as well.

And I find that continually troubling.

And therein lies the crux of this Catch-22.  The products of the factories of mediocre thought are convinced, absolutely convinced that they're entitled to whatever they can dream.  I mean, you've heard the dogma of the American Dream.  That's what it's all about.  And not just in their creative ventures are they're convinced they're unassailable.  Everyone is convinced they're the most clever voice in the world, no matter what they write, and they can usually find more than one eager soul to agree with them.

And most of them are wrong.  Think of it as one of those classrooms.  The whole reason why there are grades at all is because we're a culture obsessed with hierarchies, even though we claim loud and clear that they absolutely don't exist.  The worst and most obvious hierarchies are the ones that claim they don't exist.

But there are grades to prove to someone that at least a select few are better than the rest of them.  And that's what we all believe because the dirty little secret is that it's true.  The problem, the Catch-22, is that the person doing the grading normally skewers on a curve so warped it's an ouroboros, a snake eating its own tail.  Because everyone's happier the more simple and stupid something seems.  Even though everyone claims they're always looking for the best.  Catch-22.

When I write as I ought, I am always questioning myself.  I never trust myself.  I don't even trust myself this very moment, as I'm writing this sentence.

When I read as I ought, I'm doing the same thing.  That's the whole idea.

But the Catch-22 is, we're constantly told not to do this, even as everyone claims that they're saying exactly the opposite.

The sorry truth of the world is that it's full of people who are absolutely convinced that everyone will always believe what they're saying, even the people saying whatever it is they're saying, when the reality is that you should rarely believe what you hear, even when you trust the source.  You should not listen to anything you're reading from me right now.  In fact, I know you're not.  It makes everything so much simpler that way.

When I write as I ought, I'm saying things I know people will ignore.

And you can never control the message anyway.  It's not a matter of not trying, but of being aware that you're constantly opening the door to the opposing view, whether you're aware of it or not.

If I could have written like this, if I had been encouraged, in school, I sometimes wonder where I would be today.  I don't know if the education was much different for me, in Lisbon and Erie and Orono, than what they teach in, say, the ivy leagues (where the schools sport fancy ivy, and that's the ridiculous truth of it), if they let students read and write the best things as soon as humanly possible.  I don't begrudge my education, because I like to think I'm doing those things now, perhaps to make up for or at least continue the work of the factories of mediocre thought I knew when I was younger.

Anyway, that's the Catch-22 of it.