Storytelling by others is powerful source of self-knowledge

Such is the conclusion of some research reported in e!Science News. The focus of the research is on how good a predictor other people's experiences might be upon our own decisions affecting future happiness. The money quote that reinforces the importance of storytelling is:

"People do not realize what a powerful source of information another person's experience can be," says Gilbert, "because they mistakenly believe that everyone is remarkably different from everyone else. But the fact is that an alien who knew all the likes and dislikes of a single human being would know a great deal about the species. People believe that the best way to predict how happy they will be in the future is to know what their future holds, but what they should really want to know is how happy those who've been to the future actually turned out to be."

Truman Capote

On our Spring break travels through southern Alabama, we stopped in Monroeville, hometown to Harper Lee and Truman Capote.

Capote was never on my radar screen as a child. I might have come across the name in the last couple of years of high-school but really my first awareness probably only occurred in college and then only as some vestigial writer whom some friend recommended that I eventually some day ought to read. Years later, I came across a number of references to Capote's seminal In Cold Blood and I had that book parked on my mental check-list as I periodically scan local used book stores but I had never come across it in passively looking over the past couple of years.

In Monroeville you can of course find just about anything by and about either Lee or Capote. In the court house bookstore I picked up both In Cold Blood as well as a collection, The Complete Stories of Truman Capote.

Having just finished In Cold Blood I can vouch for it being well worth reading and probably particularly attractive to young adults (15-18) interested in crime, mystery, true crime, and the nature of good and evil. Styled as a literary work of non-fiction, the story itself is fascinating but you can see the marks of a fine writer all over the tale.

Describing the bleakness and loneliness of a prairie winter:

A month passed, and another, and it snowed some part of almost every day. Snow whitened the wheat-tawny countryside, heaped the streets of the town, hushed them.

And the closing lines of this sad, tragic story:

Then, starting home, he walked toward the trees, and under them, leaving behind him the big sky, the whisper of wind voices in the wind-bent wheat.

Monroeville

For Spring Break, we drove down to Dauphin Island at the head of Mobile Bay in Alabama. I love these back roads excursions. I love being surprised by things I did not know or which I did not comprehend.

On the way down we passed through Mobile and stopped for groceries. I knew of course that the city existed; knew of its historical significance vis-a-vis the naval battle for Mobile and Admiral Farragut's "Damn the torpedoes. Full speed ahead."

What I did not comprehend was how sizeable the city was, how many beautiful old neighborhods there were, and how big the port was.

On the return from Dauphin Island, we drove back roads through most of southern Alabama, meandering our way up to Monroeville, childhood home of both Harper Lee of To Kill a Mockingbird and of Truman Capote of In Cold Blood among other works.

What a panorama of visual delights. Small towns with all sorts of local and global manufacturing facilities. Fields with the stubble and whispy white remains of King Cotton. Downtown facades so evocative of the rural prosperity following World War I. Old barns and farm out-buildings being slowly reconsumed by mother nature in distant corners of remote fields.

Not all was uniformly cheering of course. There were signs of the downside of the population move away from the country into cities as well. While some small towns clearly have sustained themselves or even found niches of growth and prosperity, others have become anemic and wasted. One small town through which we passed was emblematic of this hollowing out. Of twenty or so downtown 1920's brick one and two story commercial establishments, only a couple were occupied. One lonely commercial hold-out being a branch of an insurance company, the other being some sort of retail jack-of-all-trades. Of the remaining eighteen buildings, a couple were burned out, some were shuttered, cobwebbed and piled with junk and a couple were completely hollowed out - no glass in the windows, no furnishings, interior fittings or even floor or cieling; just the four brick walls. And finally there were a small handful of buildings that looked like someone had turned off the lights, turned the key and left some summer evening in 1963 and had never returned. Signs still in the windows, product around the interior, some retail Mary Celeste waiting for it's crew to return. Eerie, fascinating, heart-wrenching evidence of wasted dreams and hopes.

And then there are the towns like Monroeville - communities still and determined to make the best of the hand dealt them. What a charming little place, anchored on its lovely central court house and on its literary off-spring; Lee and Capote. The court-house is basically a literary museum and an homage to To Kill a Monkingbird with summer theatrical renditions being offered annually. The very essence of a thriving, spirited, small town community.

Having Merlin, our boxer dog, with us, we were of course seeking fairly flexible lunchtime dining arrangements. As an aside, I felt well and truly enmeshed and welcome in small town Alabama, as I was greeted, while walking Merlin around the town square by more than a couple of nods from front porches and park benches and "Fine looking dog you got there."

We found a good traditional greasy spoon on the road out of town with the menu highlights painted on the cinder block walls. Having determined that there was something everyone might enjoy, and having seen an open lot next door where we might picnic and let Merlin stroll, we ordered and moved over to the next lot. There we discovered the foundation brick walls of some old building and then looking roadside read on a brass marker that this was actually the site of Truman Capote's childhood home with the Fauks. So that is how we had lunch, everyone reading, eating, perched in the literary ruins as it were (and of course with Merlin keeping a sharp eye for any falling scraps.)

Quite, Almost Too Quiet

The site that is. A combination of Spring Break for the children and a major technology push which I hope to announce in a couple or three weeks are the root causes. The kids are back in school this week, the technology project is in technical review and I am back in the saddle. Back to our our regularly scheduled broadcasts.

Book Numbers

In the US each year, between 25,000 and 35,000 new children's books are published.

I just came across this interesting fact in The Story of English by Robert McCrum, William Cran and Robert MacNeil:

Before 1500 the total number of books printed throughout Europe was about 35,000, most of them in Latin.

We've come a long way in five hundred years when a single year's number of new titles just for children in a single country amounts to the accumulated number of titles for an entire continent.

Common sense from a lifetime ago

For Christmas my mother sent me a facsimile of Instructions for American Servicemen in Britain 1942, a short (originally seven typed pages) set of guidelines introducing American soldiers to their hosts. As the London Times commented, in comparing the brief pamphlet to other efforts by such luminaries as Irving, Emerson and Hawthorne to explain Britain, "None of their august expositions has the spotlight directness of this revelation of plain common horse sense understanding of evident truths."

It is wonderfully direct. For some peculiar reason, it reminds me of George Mikes' "How to be An Alien".

It is fascinating to read this capsule of such a different time and such a different place. Our respective countries have morphed and changed in the intervening sixty-seven years. The seeds of some of those changes are alluded to in the changes arising from wartime exigency (see the quote on female officers below.) But it feels contemporary and fresh, kept fresh by the directness, brevity and simplicity of the observations. Many of the observations bring a lump to the throat in reminding us of just what extraordinary things ordinary people did.

"You defeat enemy propaganda not by denying that these differences exist, but by admitting them openly and then trying to understand them."

"To say 'I look like a bum' is offensive to their ears, for to the British this means that you look like your own backside."

"Most people get used to the English climate eventually." Seems to be said more in resigned hope than in true conviction.

"In 'getting along' the first important thing to remember is that the British are like the Americans in many ways - but not in all ways."

"In general more people play games in Britain than in America and they play the game even if they are not good at it."

"The British are beer-drinkers - and can hold it. The beer is now below peacetime strength, but can still make a man's tongue wag at both ends."

"The British have reserved much of the food that gets through solely for their children. To the British children you as an American will be 'something special.' For they have been fed at their schools and impressed with the fact that the food they ate was sent to them by Uncle Sam. You don't have to tell the British about lend-lease food. They know about it and appreciate it."

"But remember that crossing the ocean doesn't automatically make you a hero. There are housewives in aprons and youngsters in knee pants in Britain who have lived through more high explosives in air raids than many soldiers saw in first class barrages in the last war."

"You are coming to Britain from a country where your home is still safe, food is still plentiful, and lights are still burning. So it is doubly important for you to remember that the British soldiers and civilians have been living under a tremendous strain. It is always impolite to criticize your hosts. It is militarily stupid to insult your allies. So stop and think before you sound off about lukewarm beer, or cold boiled potatoes, or the way English cigarettes taste.

If British civilians look dowdy and badly dressed, it not because they do not like good clothes or know how to wear them. All clothing is rationed and the British know that they help war production by wearing an old suit or dress until it cannot be patched any longer. Old clothes are 'good form.'

One thing to be careful about - if you are invited into a British home and the host exhorts you to 'eat up there's plenty on the table,' go easy. It may be the family's rations for a whole week spread out to show their hospitality."

"A British woman officer or non-commissioned officer can - and often does - give orders to a man private. The men obey smartly and know it is no shame. For British women have proven themselves in this way. They have stuck to their posts near burning ammunition dumps, delivered messages afoot after their motorcycles have been blasted from under them. They have pulled aviators from burning planes. They have died at gun posts and as they fell another girl has stepped directly into the position and 'carried on.' There is not a single record in this war of any British woman in uniformed service quitting her post or failing in her duty under fire.

Now you understand why British soldiers respect the women in uniform. They have won the right to the utmost respect. When you see a girl in khaki or air-force blue with a bit of ribbon on her tunic - remember she didn't get it for knitting more socks than anyone else in Ipswich."

"Almost before you meet the people you will hear them speaking 'English.'" Got to love the author's quotation marks.

"The accent will be different from what you are used to, and many words will be strange, or apparently wrongly used. But you will get used to it. Remember that back in Washington stenographers from the South are having a hard time to understand dictation given by business executives from New England and the other way around."

A Hero and a Paragon

Thank goodness for men like Captain Chesley Sullenberger, setting examples in everything he does.

See the following article in the LA Times regarding Captain Sullenberger and his overdue library book.

Ouch and double ouch!

From Robert Hendrickson's The Literary Life and Other Curiosities (1994). Gustave Flaubert writing to a friend:

Criticism occupies the lowest place in the literary hierarchy; as regards form, almost always; and as regards "moral value," incontestably. It comes after rhyming games and acrostics, which at least require a certain inventiveness.

Plus ca change - Ouch!

From an essay by British author Angus Wilson in The Seven Deadly Sins by Angus Wilson, Edith Sitwell, Cyril Connolly, Patrick Leigh Fermor, Evelyn Waugh, Christopher Sykes and W.H. Auden, published by Quill from the original 1962 edition.

When you are 4% of the world's population and produce 25% of the world's wealth, there is a natural latent envy and animosity. Wilson was writing on the sin of Envy. At the end of his essay, he has this to say which, despite being nearly fifty years old, seems unpleasantly contemporary.

This can be seen in the most distressing, foolish Envy of our time - anti-Americanism in Western Europe. To me European anti-Americanism is plain silly because it is suicidal, but there are, after all, not only Communist but tolerably argued neutralist views about this, and at times American policy inclines one to sympathize with such views. There are grievances against America which deserve consideration from everyone. But anti-Americanism is quite another thing; it is an impotent Envy which does nothing but disgrace the speaker. Listen to any county Englishman or his wife who in dislike of the changed English social order seeks refuge in anti-American talk, hear the silly bray of their laugh, the frightened note that underlies their jokes about American brashness or crudity. Or, almost worse, hear a group of rich, beleaguered French or Italian or Spanish describing the necessity for a civilized Europe where American barbaraism cannot interefere. There are few more nauseating sounds in the modern world; nauseating because like all envious sounds they make one feel ashamed for the emotions that the speaker is betraying. And the same for for anti-Russianism where it is solely built on hopeless Envy.

This, of course, is why Envy is so unenviable a dominating emotion. All the seven deadly sins are self-destroying, morbid appetites, but in their early stages at least lust and gluttony, avarice and sloth know some gratification, while anger and pride have power, even though that power eventually destroys itself. Envy is impotent, numbed with fear, yet never ceasing in its appetite; and it knows no gratification save endless self-torment. It has the ugliness of a trapped rat that has gnawed its own foot in its effort to escape.

Perspective on controversies

Thinking people always contest with one another as to whether they have all the facts, whether they are interpreting the facts correctly, or whether the facts are relevant to the decisions that need to be made. Unfortunately, we are often not well schooled in the mechanisms and cadences of effective dispute. Emotion becomes the energy behind a debate. Rationality, willingness to accept the incompleteness of our knowledge and humility give way to overconfidence and hubris. Sometimes it is science - what do we really know about global warming versus the wild claims from both sides? Sometimes it is economics - what are the appropriate actions to take in the wake of an asset bubble deflation? Almost always it is really just opinion and loud shouts.

It is refreshing sometimes to look back on past debates. Not how they were resolved, though that is of course interesting. Rather, what is interesting is what we have forgotten about how they began and what was thought to be known at the time with complete certainty.

Brian Switek has an interesting blog post, Ancient Armored Whales, on a long ago and long forgotten debate from the turn of the last century when paleontologists debated heatedly with one another as to whether ancient whales were armored. It makes us smile now, but these were not stupid people. Just overconfident in their facts or their interpretations. We can only smile if we are confident we have learned the lesson of humility about our facts and interpretations. Nothing I see suggests that we have.