A not so political literary classic

This special "Ink", a featured insight article by Tyler Foggatt, published in the April 8, 2019, The New Yorker, is worthy of a "Let's Write" echo blog. 

Although it has a tongue in cheek (or maybe not so subtle) political slant, the creative writing is recommended for reading. Of course, I could not control my instincts to make one or two casual parenthesized remarks. Sorry.

When special investigations become best sellers. Who knew?

Robert Mueller's Magnum Opus*

The Mueller (aka the "Russia if you're listening") report has been awaited with more excitement than—and for three times as long as—Meghan Markle’s (or any royal) baby. 

Now that the special counsel’s report is here, sort of, three publishers have announced plans to release it as a book: Skyhorse, with an introduction by Alan Dershowitz (MaineWriter- aka "Blurbowitch"); Scribner, with supplementary material by Washington Post reporters; and Melville House, straight up. (The document will be in the public domain.) “Our printers are ready to print faster than usual,” Dennis Johnson, Melville House’s co-founder and co-publisher, said last week, over the phone. “And we’ll ask the truck drivers to do at least the speed limit to deliver the book.” Tony Lyons, the president and publisher of Skyhorse, said that he’d received thousands of pre-orders, and he’s been touting his edition’s Dershowitz bonus. “Alan was right from Day One,” he said. “He was the only pundit whose cautious predictions proved to be correct.” (Dear Mr. Foggatt, I would not give 'Blershhhhhowitch' that much credit. Broken clocks are also correct two times a day. Instead, I agree about the Day One analogy, as being more to the point.)

The first government report published as a trade book was the Warren Commission’s 1964 report on J.F.K.’s assassination, which sold more than a million copies. In his novel “Libra,” Don DeLillo calls the report “the megaton novel that James Joyce would have written if he’d moved to Iowa City and lived to be a hundred.” Three decades later, the independent counsel Kenneth Starr, with help from Brett Kavanaugh, authored the Starr report, which three different publishers released as a four-hundred-plus-page potboiler. (It sold almost two million copies in two days.)

Adam Gopnik, in this magazine, argued that the Starr report could be read “as a novel in the classic tradition,” with Bill Clinton as the scapegrace hero. Others likened the work to soft-core porn. Sean Wilentz, a Princeton historian, asked, “Why did Starr and Kavanaugh put all the sex in it? Well, they didn’t do it to sell a lot of copies.” Gopnik acknowledged, “The laboriously recounted instances of near-ejaculation, the orgasms achieved and enumerated—it’s all there for the reviewers.”

Then came the 9/11 Commission Report, a doorstop of nearly six hundred pages, written in what the Post called the “ultra-spare, purposely unemotional—yet quietly seething—language of American pain.” The Harvard historian Daniel Aaron, the librettist Leslie Dunton-Downer, and the lawyer Harvey Silverglate went further, arguing in a 2005 article that the literary genre that the 9/11 report belongs to is the epic. The terrorists are our Grendel, and the Twin Towers, like Heorot, are “too lofty and too visible” for their own good. “Bereft of a miraculous rescuer like Beowulf,” the authors write, “The 9/11 Commission Report calls on the American people to serve as their own collective hero.” The report sold more than a million copies in the first four months, and, in 2004, it was named a finalist in the nonfiction category of the National Book Awards, cited for its “literary style.”

Harold Bloom, the eminent Yale literature professor, finds the idea of such reports having literary merit offensive. “If a Harvard professor thought that the 9/11 report could be compared to ‘Beowulf,’ they achieved an abyss of absurdity,” he wrote in an e-mail. As for the Warren Commission report, he said, “I am very fond of Don and of ‘Libra,’ but there are limits: Joyce in Iowa City is like visualizing the eighty-nine-year-old Harold Bloom climbing mountains in Tibet.”

Stephen Greenblatt, a professor at Harvard and Bloom’s sometime rival in Shakespeare criticism, was more open to the idea of the Mueller report as literature. “Quite a large number of people have been indicted. Some of them are going to jail,” he said. “I would have thought those individual instances would be quite gripping, both as stories and as outcomes.”

If the Warren report is a modern novel, the Starr report a bodice ripper, and the 9/11 report an epic, then which genre will the Mueller report fall into—assuming we ever get to read it? “Like a lot of people, I was led to believe that the Mueller report might resemble Richard Condon’s ‘Manchurian Candidate,’ ” Greenblatt said. “But I gather from the Attorney General’s letter that it’s most likely to resemble a postmodern novel, like DeLillo’s ‘White Noise’—one in which there isn’t a big bang at the end.” Wilentz had doubts that the Mueller report would be nominated for a literary prize. “It’d be a political statement, in a way that nominating the 9/11 report was not,” he said. “Regardless of what the report says.”

Harold Bloom, the eminent Yale literature professor, finds the idea of such reports having literary merit offensive. “If a Harvard professor thought that the 9/11 report could be compared to ‘Beowulf,’ they achieved an abyss of absurdity,” he wrote in an e-mail. As for the Warren Commission report, he said, “I am very fond of Don and of ‘Libra,’ but there are limits: Joyce in Iowa City is like visualizing the eighty-nine-year-old Harold Bloom climbing mountains in Tibet.”

The publishers are more optimistic. “These are exciting books,” Johnson said. “They remind you of the power of a book and its place in our democracy.” Lyons said, “The reports that have been released in the past have been of the highest quality. I have no reason to believe that the Mueller report would be any different.”

But Greenblatt is skeptical that Americans will be racing to the bookstore to purchase the next “Infinite Jest.” “If the report turns out to be a postmodern novel with interesting and complex threads that go in different directions but don’t lead into a grand, clear narrative, then it’ll probably have less appeal,” he said. “More like something that people would just look at online.” ♦

Sketchpad 

To pass the time as we wait for the Mueller report to be released to the reading public, graphic designers were asked to create book covers for the special counsel’s masterwork, twenty-­two months in the making, which is said to weigh in at more than three hundred pages. 

*Magnum Opus- A large and important work of art, music, or literature, especially one regarded as the most important work of an artist or writer.

Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden talks "Bright April"

https://thinkprogress.org/librarian-of-congress-explains-why-kids-of-color-need-to-see-themselves-in-childrens-books-9e85de966d6a/

The first black woman Librarian of Congress’ favorite children’s book

Library of Congress 

Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden — the first black woman to hold this position — explained why it’s so important for children of color to see themselves reflected in children’s books in an interview with PBS NewsHour’s Jeffrey Brown this week.

Hayden talked about a children’s book that holds particular importance to her: Bright April, written and illustrated by Marguerite De Angeli and published in 1946. The book portrays a black girl’s life in the Germantown section of Philadelphia and her experiences with racial prejudice.

Hayden connected with the book as a child because she was able to relate to the main character.
"She was a little African American girl who had the little socks and two pigtails and she was a Brownie. And at that time, I was a Brownie, I had two pigtails, and I had a family that was reflected in this book. There weren’t many books that showed African Americans in a sympathetic way."

Dr. Carla Hayden, believes in citizens' right to access information. “It should feel very special because it is very special,” ...

From 1993 until 2016, she was the CEO of Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore.

“It really emphasized later when I became a children’s librarian, about how children really need to see themselves reflected in books,” she said. “Books can be mirrors and they can be windows.”

Hayden is the first woman and the first African American to head the Library of Congress. In her interview, she pointed out that being able to break these barriers is especially significant considering that slaves used to be punished harshly — and sometimes even had their fingers amputated — for trying to learn to read.

“Being the first African American really resonates because, for so many years during slavery, slaves were forbidden to learn how to read,” she said. “So to have an African-American head up the largest institution that signifies knowledge and information resonates with me quite a bit.”

Research over the years shows that when black students see their experiences reflected in lessons and reading materials, students are more likely to be interested in the curriculum. 

It seems like common sense to make curricula relevant to the students engaging with it. Yet, too often, traditional representations of American history leave out or quickly pass by important pieces of history for the black community, such as the Harlem Renaissance, or fail to accurately teach the realities of slavery. Some educators also say that the literature that students are reading isn’t diverse enough.

Noah Cho, who teaches middle school English, wrote about the importance of teaching students with literature they can identify with in The Toast last year. Cho said he understands the importance of diversity in literature because he didn’t have it growing up.

I always had trouble connecting with the novels I read in high school — The Scarlet Letter, Pride and Prejudice, Heart of Darkness — because I saw so little of myself in those works, and was in consequence less motivated to read and study them … But once I started reading works in college that spoke to me, sang to me, suddenly I couldn’t stop writing. I fell in love with literature again.

The Librarian of Congress isn’t exactly a high-visibility position, but that doesn’t mean the work the librarian does isn’t important. The Librarian of Congress has major influence over copyright — which means they have influence over the free flow of information — is in charge of choosing the U.S. Poet Laureate, and can add new sections to the Library of Congress. In her role, Hayden could choose to prioritize literature from writers of color.

Hayden has already embraced somewhat of an activist approach to her work as a librarian — working to reclaim libraries as important public gathering spaces. When she oversaw Baltimore’s public library system, for instance, she kept libraries open even as the city declared a state of emergency following protests after the death of Freddie Gray.