Lost American Writer

I've written here before about Don Robertson, the author of the Morris Bird trilogy, which includes "The Greatest Thing Since Sliced Bread," "The Sum and Total of Now," and "The Greatest Thing That Almost Happened." It is still my fervent belief that this trilogy is something special in American literature, a truly unique and utterly accurate portrayal of the coming of age of a young boy. The coming of age story is a classic structure, but few writers pull it off convincingly. Robertson seems to do so with ease, delving into truths and mysteries few writers dare to touch.

His trilogy is, I argue, better than the more highly lauded "Catcher in the Rye," and is without question the equal of "To Kill a Mockingbird." That Robertson's work is wholly ignored today, that he is a great "lost writer," is a sad and unfortunate circumstance.

I have recently finished another Robertson novel, "A Flag Full of Stars," which takes place almost entirely upon election day during the presidential election of Harry Truman. If anyone recalls their history, Truman, who was the incumbent president, was not merely supposed to lose to the challenger Dewey, but to be roundly and solidly whipped. Every single polling agency in the country predicted President Truman going down in flames and the Republican party taking over the government. In fact, Truman won, the Democrats won, and Dewey became but a footnote in history. It was one of the greatest upsets in American politics.

Robertson's novel follows a vast cast of characters, many of whom have loose ties with each other, their lives having swerved together and apart throughout the years. But few of these characters actually collide on election day. Instead, Robertson follows this panorama throughout the day, showing in detail the lives of his dozen-plus characters, all of whom will be touched in ways either great or small by Truman's election.

Robertson does not try and make a case for politics as transformation. Most of his characters undergo no "ah-ha!" moment when Truman is elected. Some, in fact, are nearly oblivious to politics in general, and Truman's election does not induce an overwhelming redirection in their lives.

Instead, Robertson aims to show how politics interweave into the everyday lives of ordinary people. How the hopes and dreams of normal Americans are subtly altered by the political world. More importantly, by juxtaposing national politics with everyday life, Robertson illustrates how all politics are local. How politics begin, and often end, inside the small community, inside the home, inside the bedroom, and inside the mind. Also, by choosing Truman's election, Robertson aptly focuses on a defining American moment when all eyes were turned in the same direction, and in doing so he shows us how, in spite of our differences, we are all Americans. There are few such moments: Pearl Harbor, September 11th, Kennedy's assassination...it is to Robertson's credit, I think, that he chooses not a travesty (unless, perhaps, you're a Republican) but a powerful, social moment devoid of tragedy. He could have written a similar panoramic novel around, say, Lincoln's assassination or the 1929 stock market crash, but the tone and result would have been vastly different.

Where Robertson excels is in getting you to care about his characters. He does so in old fashioned ways. He gives you tremendous detail and information, but always in a way that is entertaining and thoughtful. His humor is present throughout, as is his pathos. Even his most pathetic characters retain some level of dignity, and it is the sign of Robertson's mastery that he can keep you hanging on whether he is writing about a pregnant teenage girl running away from home to a shotgun marriage or a bitter middle-aged wife encouraging her cheating husband to run for office in the hope that he will lose.

Don Robertson is a great American writer. He is also, sadly, a nearly-forgotten American writer. I don't know that you will be able to find "A Flag Full of Stars." It is currently out of print, but you might be able to locate it through a library loan. If you can't, Robertson's Morris Bird trilogy has been re-issued and can be found at any major bookstore. I would urge you to start there. "The Greatest Thing Since Sliced Bread" is an out and out masterpiece.

Good luck.

That Old Spooky Feeling

A week into my favorite month of the year, I feel it is high time to celebrate one of my favorite artists.

October often brings thoughts of Ray Bradbury, that master of fluttering fallen leaves and haunted gusts of wind, but there is another major American artist who deserves attention this time of year: Charles Addams.

Better known now for the movies made from his characters, The Addams Family, Addams' actual comics are sadly neglected. This is most unfortunate given that the films, while funny in their own right, turned Addams' biting, eerie humor into a form of ludicrous ham-it-up escapades. While the movies tickle the funny bone, Addams' comics jolt the gut. They are both funny...and churning.

It is often said that this artist or that is a "one of a kind," by which it is generally meant that an artist is talented, even though their may be a dozen other artists just like them. In Addams' case, the term fits rather well. There are other master cartoon series (I favor Dilbert, Garfield and The Far Side), there is no one who strikes the same balance of humor and queasiness that Addams achieves time and again.

For a taste, here are some of my favorites. If you like, check out Addams' collections Nightcrawlers and Monster Rally.

"Honestly, can't you do anything right?"

"George! George! Drop the keys!"

Please Set Me Free

Coming to the close of Jonathon Franzen's new and heavily lauded novel, I found myself reading B.R. Myer's review of Freedom in The Atlantic Monthly. It is the most incise and accurate description of the book I've read. There has been so much press surrounding Freedom and nearly all of it unabashedly, resoundingly--I hesitate only briefly to say weepingly--positive that one almost feels compelled to rush to the nearest bookstore, snatch the book off the shelf, and batten down inside the closest available bathroom to read this monument cover to cover.

But, alas...spare yourself.

It ain't worth it.

"But if Freedom is middlebrow," Myers writes, "it is so in the sacrosanct Don DeLillo tradition, which our critical establishment considers central to literature today. The apparent logic is that the novel can lure Americans away from their media and entertainment buffet only by becoming more 'social,' broader in scope, more up-to-date in focus. This may be the reason we get such boring characters. Instead of portraying an interesting individual or two, and trusting in realism to embed their story naturally in contemporary life, the Social Writer thinks of all the relevant issues he has to stuff in, then conceives of a family 'typical' enough to hold everything together. The more aspects of our society he can fit in between the books' covers, the more ambitious he is considered to be."

This is, I think, the finest summation not only of Freedom but of a whole swath of modern American fiction.

Interestingly, my experience with Franzen's novel was eerily the same as my experience with the other writer Myers name-drops, DeLillo. Underworld's prose dragged me swiftly along, shifting between periods when DeLillo really revs up and periods where the book is roughly on par, in terms of excitement, with watching cement dry (this, mind you, is the book that ranked number 2 in a recent poll of the greatest novels of the last thirty years). When I eventually tossed the book down, after 400 pages (the half-way point) it wasn't even primarily because it had become boring but because after all those pages absolutely nothing had happened (but then, maybe that is the definition of boring).

Freedom doesn't even have that much going for it. Nowhere do you really feel like Franzen is revving up. Mostly you wonder if someone will ever point him toward the runway. Strangely, though, he is not unreadable. In fact, quite the opposite. Franzen's writing is misleadingly swift, accessible, and compulsive; misleadingly, because it never leads anywhere.

It also, sadly, is full of hackneyed grammar and overburdened cliches, which, in their attempts to appear clever, have only that much further to fall.

Consider: "...stirred the cauldrons like a Viking oarsman," "...another overconsuming white American male who felt entitled to more and more and more: saw the romantic imperialism of his falling for someone fresh and Asian, having exhausted domestic supplies," "...the emptiness of her nest...now that the kids had flown."

American literary critics have yet to give justified explanation for why writers of commercially successful fiction can be condemned for such stilted, silly cliches but writers of mainstream garbage are given a free pass.

Indeed, it is not just a free pass that is often given, but high praise, awards, and money.

As it stands right now, Franzen's novel is the 2010 Oprah Book Club Pick (the irony here is sharp enough to draw blood). It is the number one and number two bestseller on Amazon.com (a miracle of marketing made possible by a separate, Oprah BC edition). Franzen will no doubt be up for a National Book Award or Pulitzer Prize (Pulitzer being more likely, as he won the NBA for his last novel). The movie rights have already been purchased. And Franzen made the cover of Time under the heading "Great American Novelist," with Freedom being compared to Tolstoy's War and Peace.

I rarely trash books...at least not publicly. And to be honest, I'm not that interested in trashing Freedom. It's not a horrible book. But it IS boring. And pointless. And, in the end, disappointing.

What disappoints most is that this is the literature the American literatti take seriously. This is what is held out to the world (and to our own society, to our children who struggle every day between choosing to read or choosing to watch movies) as the best we can do. If this is as good as our writers get, then we might as well stop trying. Because this isn't compelling literature.

There are a wealth of great writers in America. Unfortunately, Franzen isn't one of them.

If you want some better selections, take a look at the list to your left. These are the best books I read last year. All of them are worth your time.

Still Waiting...But There's Hope

I snagged up the new book "Waiting For Superman," a collection of essays given the dubious subtitle "How We Can Save America's Failing Public Schools." It is a companion piece to the new documentary film which has been getting nothing but fantastic press and which, hopefully, will spark some new and innovative debate around this particularly important and continually problematic issue.

The debate over public education has existed in America since the beginning, but the modern debate intensified roughly forty years ago with the release of the Coleman Report and, some two decades later, the "Nation At Risk" report. Both studies were extensive and exhaustive examinations of national educational standards and results. Both came to the same conclusion: things were bad.

Rather bitingly, "Nation At Risk" declared "If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war." That was in 1983.

Sadly, little has changed between the 1966 release of the Coleman Report and today.

Well, actually, some things have changed. Such as money. In 1960, America spent $3,170 per pupil per year (this is adjusted to current dollar amounts). Today, we spend $11,674. A few other things changed as well. Today's teachers are now better educated, with well over half of current teachers holding masters degrees as opposed to only 23.5 percent in 1960. Median teacher experience levels have steadily increased. And, also generally considered a positive, class sizes have (in spite of what you've heard) decreased dramatically. In 1960, the average class size was 25.8 students per teacher. In 2007 it stood at 15.5.

What didn't change, though, was the quality of education.

Fifty years of heated public debate and a tripling of per pupil spending, literally billions of dollars increase in spending, have not shown any significant alteration in student test scores or, even more relevantly, in any other area of student performance.

In fact, the sad truth is American schoolchildren have fallen far, far from where they stood fifty years ago when compared to the rest of the industrialized world. It is a particularly distressing and depressing fact to ponder that America ranks 25 in math and 21 in science...out of 30. Worse, when the comparison is restricted to the top 5 percent of students, America ranks dead last.



Delving deeper into the statistics is only more depressing. I'll spare you here, but you can read all about them in the book.

What's more important, though, is that this book isn't about getting depressed. It's about getting excited and getting involved. It's about getting from where we've been and where we are to where we want to be. And it just happens to be one of those rare books I've read where the ideas about how to do so are not only realistic and proven but also cut beneath the surface of the debate to the deeper and more fundamental issues that make real differences.

For example, when people discuss changing public education, they generally address only surface inputs. Higher funding levels. Higher teacher standards. Smaller schools. Tests and accountability. They basically discuss the issues which can be easily addressed, easily quantified, and easily understood. These are the things which can be shown on paper.

They are also the things we've been addressing for some forty plus years. They are the changes we HAVE made. And they have all been ineffective.

It's not that we don't need better teachers. It's not that smaller class sizes aren't nice. It's not more experienced teachers aren't (generally, on average) better than brand new teachers.

It's simply that these factors do not translate into better overall education. They are not one-to-one factors. They are not the magic bullet.

The truth is there is no magic bullet, which is the major reason public education remains on the rocks. It isn't a simple system where if we simply pull one lever the whole thing starts to run smoothly again.

However, there ARE proven things which can be done to change the dynamics and improve education. They're just not what we've been doing for years. And they don't translate well into soundbites, which means our politicians aren't talking about them and our media aren't covering them.

A good example is the teacher's unions. The two major teacher unions are the largest political contributors in the country, more than the AARP, more than the NRA, more than BP or Exxon. They are, undoubtedly, part of the solution, but they are also part of the problem. It is infinitely more difficult to remove a mediocre teacher than it is to get rid of an unethical lawyer or a criminal doctor. Mediocre teachers are hurting our kids, but they are fiercely protected by the unions. But this is not a politically viable stance if you want to get into office. You can't run on the platform of being against teacher's unions.

"Waiting for Superman" addresses these issues, and many more. Ranging from how we design our school buildings to the many ways in which average people can become involved in schools to utilizing volunteer groups like Americorps to partnering with business experts to create industry specific education standards. There are many solutions, many small pieces of the puzzle that when brought together can equal success.

I suggest anyone interested in public education get this book. Even if you're not an educator or don't have children, there is a section at the end of the book covering a myriad of ways you can contribute to bettering America's schools. There are many possibilities, all of them worth checking out.

So take a look. And get involved.