Remembering the Lost Generation

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place: and in the sky
The larks still bravely singing fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the dead: Short days ago,
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved: and now we lie
In Flanders fields!

Take up our quarrel with the foe
To you, from failing hands, we throw
The torch: be yours to hold it high
If ye break faith with us who die,
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
– John McCrae, May 1915

One hundred years ago today, Great Britain entered World War I. This, as other remarkable events in 1914 are worth remembering. Not only are we still living with the repercussions of that war – like the current strife in the Middle East, Russia and Ukraine, and even Africa – we live daily with the literature that the Great War generated.

In his novel, All Quiet on the Western Front, Erich Maria Remarque describes the soldiers in this way: “We are forlorn like children, and experienced like old men, we are crude and sorrowful and superficial – I believe we are lost.” His and others’ books about the era are poetic, yet filled with yearning and loss.

Both F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway were WWI vets. These two unparalleled American authors were part of the “Lost Generation” that was the result of the War to End All Wars. They were men who sensed the immense pointlessness of world politics, who were simultaneously swept up in world events. This generation of soldiers witnessed the horrors of mass warfare; the first systematized chemical weaponry, tanks, and airplanes used in battle.

Perhaps it was this time of tribulation one hundred years ago that ushered the world into a maturity for which we were not ready nor able to accept. It was certainly not the first time people had to face both violence and a reckoning of conviction, but it was the first time it was done on a global and technologically-advanced scale.

One hundred years later, we still may not know what World War I wrought in terms of geopolitics. But we can know that it did produce some of the most poignant, creative, and disturbing literature of modern time.

This was a generation that was forced to question all they had held as solid, and so even language could have lost its meaning; in this way, the Lost Generation was perhaps more cautious about the power of seemingly insignificant things like words. When a battle could be fought over mere yards for years, the color of words becomes grey. Yet these authors and those that followed have taken the tools of writing and experimented, granting the world Technicolor prose.

To My Last Grads

My last group of high school students graduated today.  I attended their graduation both to celebrate their achievement and because the class of 2014 is one of the kindest and inspiring  I ever taught.  I did not leave teaching because of them; in fact, they were really the only reason I wanted to stay in the end.  Tonight, they proved that all my perceptions about them were true.

If I had them in my classroom one more time, here are some things I would like to say:

I was proud to teach journalism and help you gain a mastery of an entirely different style of writing.  I loved discussing how even current world events could affect a small suburban town that often feels insulated from the outside world.  Eliminating superfluous information and maintaining journalistic writing is difficult after many years of “elaborating” in literary essays.  Yet you met the challenge and earned silver medals two years running from the Columbia Student Press Association.  You should feel proud of your progress, and I look forward to seeing some of your names in bylines and, some day, as Pulitzer Prize winners.

I loved teaching you about literature.  I adored forming relationships with you and sharing my passion for words and reading.  When you said, “I don’t like poetry,” it became a challenge I could not resist; I think I helped a lot of you find meaning in how poetry can tell the truth of humanity in a few carefully crafted words.

Introducing books like The Great Gatsby, To Kill a Mockingbird, Cry, the Beloved Country, and Lord of the Flies to you was a joy.  You surprised me with your insights and understanding of these texts.  More often than not, I heard you say, “This is the first book I have read in years, and I really liked it.”  I know that I needed to motivate you to read with frequent pop quizzes, but you did read, and that is what matters.  Trust that I did everything in my power to give you the cultural capital you will need to lead a full life, even if it felt punitive at the time.  I believe that you learned to love literature enough that you will return to some of the works you studied in high school and enjoy them even more or discover their beauty in a new way when you reread them in the future.

Your writing shows ingenuity, even in its infancy.  Even if your ideas are rough, or if you are mimicking authors you love, that you want to write is vital.  That is the development of literature.  I encourage you to write all the time.  Then revise, and share your writing with the world, whether through traditional or modern publishing means.

Beyond the subject matter, though, I hope I taught you about resiliency and integrity.  I have faith that you are capable of dealing with the challenges of the changing world, and that you do your best to make it better.  You are the promise of the future and the reason I began this outrageous pursuit as a teacher in the first place, and I hope so much that you can take what I offered and run with it.

I still find it remarkable the path that my life has taken, and I am confident that I have made changes that will carry me successfully into the future.  I hope that, along with all the other lessons I taught you, you will likewise have the adaptability and self-reflection to make changes when you need to and recognize when those changes are necessary for you to lead a full and happy life.

Finally, I want to say to the class of 2014 that you made my last year of teaching memorable and joyful.  Congratulations, and make the future what you want it to be.

Too Literary

I have been accused of being too literary.  When I recommend books to friends and family, someone will inevitably say, “Is that one of your books?” as an accusation. 

Well, literary books are appealing to me, but I can also enjoy what I like to call “popcorn” fiction.  “Popcorn” because you can consume a whole bunch of it quickly and mindlessly.  It’s that type of book you can sit down and read in one a rainy afternoon.  Give me a John Grisham or a John D. MacDonald and I can devour it in one sitting.  But I do enjoy prose that stirs me, and beautiful language can do that in a way that a popular book like Divergent cannot.  Don’t get me wrong; I had the latest book in Veronica Roth’s series pre-ordered and was excited to find out how the story ended, but it did not move me in the way Madame Bovary did. 

The world is filled with ugly stories, both real and fiction.  Poor writing is, unfortunately, far more common than good.  I did not participate in the craze that surrounded 50 Shades of Grey, so I cannot speak from experience, but I did hear from those who read it that the writing was terrible.  Why would I want to support that by buying a copy, much less spend precious time reading it? 

Some people are put off by literary writing; it is too much like work and they find it too challenging to understand.  But good literature is clear, even if it challenges you to go beyond the familiar.  I like writing that makes me think, even more so if it makes me sigh at the beauty of the language.  Readers should not disregard a work labeled as “literary.”  For instance, Martin Luther King, Junior’s remarkable “I Have a Dream” speech is loaded with metaphors, allusions, and difficult vocabulary.  The message would not be as powerful if MLK had shared his “goals” with his audience.  It is a memorable speech because it is literary.

The most difficult and literary book I have ever read was James Joyce’s Ulysses.  It took a couple of months and I read it with a separate book of explanatory notes and a dictionary by my side.  The complexity of Joyce’s writing made it even more enjoyable when I felt like I understood it, recognized what Joyce was doing, and reveled in the beauty of it.  It is a literary achievement, and people still respond to it as the annual Bloom’s Day celebration in Dublin demonstrates.  In one hundred years, I doubt anyone will recall the books that top best-sellers’ lists today.

I can wax poetic about F. Scott Fitzgerald and Zora Neale Hurston.  Their writing is lovely, yes, but it transcends beauty.  Their stories are engaging, their characters compelling – even when you hate them.  If your opinion of Tom Buchanan is that he is a privileged jerk, or you mourn Tea Cake as much as Janie does, that means the authors have done their jobs; they brought the characters to life through their literary prowess.  That The Great Gatsby and Their Eyes Were Watching God are considered “literature” does not detract from the stories.  Indeed, the precision and poetry of the language make the stories even more gratifying.

As I said, I am not averse to popular fiction, and I will certainly consume a lot of “summer reads” as I sit out enjoying the sun this season.  But I also will immerge myself in more literary books.  The richness of fine literature awakens a part of my spirit that popcorn books simply cannot touch.

L

Written by Hand

Before I learned to actually write, I would fill papers with handwritten loops, trying to mimic my grandmother’s beautiful cursive.  I brought these pages to my mother frequently, telling her that I had written something new; I was enamored with the idea that I could commit to paper – with my own hand – ideas that came from my head.

I used to be better about keeping a journal, writing letters and postcards, and brainstorming story concepts in a notebook.  I even wrote journals in cursive because I liked to practice my handwriting, although my natural tendency is to use print.

When I was in college, I filled notebooks with copious handwritten notes from classes – from lectures to small seminars – and rarely even revisited them to review for exams, yet I recalled most of what I had written.  As a teacher, I urged students to buy their own copies of books in order to annotate by hand, or at the least use Post-its to annotate their books for the same reason.

Gradually, though, I have gotten a little lackadaisical about putting pen to paper.  This clearly does not mean that I do not write, but the daily exercise of hand writing notes and ideas is a practice I have gotten away from.

Yet a recent New York Times article suggests that I should revisit my earlier predilections of writing down my thoughts.  Perhaps you should, too. Neuroscience (yes, here I go again) suggests that the act of writing stimulates parts of the brain that are not activated when a person types.  It helps to inspire planning, increases memory retention, and helps people create unique ideas. In consideration of creativity, we can look at some of the greatest authors throughout history.

Obviously, Shakespeare wrote all of his work by hand, as did Mark Twain, Charlotte Brontë, and Victor Hugo.  Even after the advent of typewriters, though, many of the most ingenious books were written by hand.  James Joyce penned ideas for his first draft of Ulysses on scraps of paper.   Zora Neale Hurston wrote Their Eyes Were Watching God in just seven weeks by hand while in Haiti.  The first draft of The Grapes of Wrath is in John Steinbeck’s tidy cursive handwriting.

What is lost when we stop hand writing letters and thank you notes is far more than basic civility.  We are losing ideas, creativity, and even brain function.  Perhaps it is the visualization of an idea linked with motor function but, as with reading literature, it appears that as we put more value on using technology to communicate, we are narrowing our abilities.

I am as guilty as most people on relying heavily on technology when it comes to writing.  At the same time, I am attempting to write more by hand.  Given this research, I hope that more people will put pen to paper and forgo the keyboard – and let the ideas and words flow.