Seven Books That Demystify Human Behavior
I firmly believe that reading fiction teaches us a lot about being human. Here freelance writer Chelsea Leu suggests books, both fiction and nonfiction, that can increase our understanding of people.
Make it awkward!
“Rather than being a cringey personal failing, awkwardness is a collective rupture – and a chance to rewrite the social script”
Alexandra Plakiasis, an associate professor of philosophy at Hamilton College in New York, recently published the book Awkwardness. In this article on the topic she points out the difference between awkwardness and embarrassment:
Embarrassment happens when an individual commits a social gaffe; its characteristic facial and bodily expressions involve a kind of apology. Embarrassment is thus a kind of social repair. But awkwardness is different: it’s not something an individual causes, and it’s not something an individual can resolve on their own; it’s a social rupture. The failure involved in embarrassment is a failure to conform to existing norms. Awkwardness is different: it happens when we don’t have a social script to conform to. In other words, embarrassment happens when we violate socially prescribed scripts; awkwardness happens when we lack prescriptions to guide us.
Plakiasis bases this distinction on the fact that generally understood societal norms govern how people act in certain situations. Situations, not individual people, are awkward. For example, when someone tells a racist or sexist joke in mixed company, we hope that an awkward silence will follow. And this awkward situation provides the opportunity for people to examine their social expectations, “to repair the social infrastructure.”
Against Rereading
Since I’ve declared September as my month for rereading, it seems only fair to offer Oscar Schwartz this rebuttal of the idea: “In a life that marches relentlessly forward toward its end, rereading can seem like a weapon against the inevitable. But, of course, it isn’t. The same fate awaits us all, whether you’ve reread Proust or not.”
The Death of Critical Thinking Will Kill Us Long Before AI.
I started my college teaching career in the fall of 1971. I was teaching writing, a necessary component of which is thinking, and I was flabbergasted to realize that most of my students had almost no background in critical thinking. Ever since then I’ve been watching with increasing alarm as critical thinking skills have continued to decline.
Joan Westenberg writes about that trend here:
We have witnessed a multi-generational decline in reading comprehension. We read less, retain less of what we read, and struggle to engage in critical analysis. And if this trend continues, we risk undermining the very foundations of our society.
The Allure of Living a Radically Different Life
“What the proliferation of multiverses in pop culture reveals”
Stephen Kearse examines “he woozy and weighty mood of multiversal fiction.” What started out as a comic-book trope “has in recent years taken root in movies, television, and literature.”
Stories with multiverses turn choice into trippy transit, spiriting characters through realities that differ from their own in slight but significant ways. These journeys through infinity often overwhelm the wee travelers’ psyche. . . . At its core, the multiverse is like an omniscient crystal ball that displays all fortunes rather than just one.
An example of “multiversal fiction” that I enjoyed is Dark Matter by Blake Crouch. In this article Kearse reviews the recently published novel All This & More by Peng Shepherd, which I have just now added to my TBR list.
“A Word About a Word Addressed to a Word.” On Embracing the Fictiveness of Fiction
In this heady piece Maureen Sun, author of the novel The Sisters K., examines what she was trying to accomplish in her writing: “The underlying reality I tried to wrestle into language is the ways that we are locked in meaning with others.”
“Storytelling lends form to experience,” she writes.
Why Thrillers Matter
All right, I’ll admit it: This piece by thriller writer Mike Maden is over-the-top melodramatic. But every word of it is true. Part of the reason why I like mysteries and thrillers so much is that they probe some of darkest, best-hidden places of the human heart and psyche.
Oh, the Places You’ll Go
“The Haunted Wood: A History of Childhood Reading by Sam Leith”
Philip Womack admits that children’s literature is “a Snarky beast, . . . an unstable, intertextual field” in which books aimed at children and books aimed at adults refer to and borrow from each other. Sam Leith’s book, Womack writes, navigates these murky waters by focusing on “what he [Leith] dubs a study of ‘childhood reading’ rather than of children’s books per se.”
“While The Haunted Wood doesn’t offer up anything new, Leith has synthesised a vast amount of material and produced a marvellously charming and enjoyable history for the general reader,” Womack concludes.
Landmark Western Novels
Susan Kollin, director of the American Studies program at Montana State University, writes, “The Western evolved out of colonial adventure narratives that dramatised a battle between so-called ‘savagery’ and ‘civilisation’; dime novels then turned the cowboy into an iconic symbol of masculinity.” But, she continues, “this antique genre has plenty of literary potential and moral uncertainty to offer to the modern reader.”
Here she recommends five contemporary novels that have emerged within the traditional Western genre.
© 2024 by Mary Daniels Brown
I spent a sizable chunk of my academic career developing curriculum and courses for critical thinking. I also taught critical thinking. So, yeah, the decline is a dagger to the heart.