When I first started teaching at Green Mountain High School in the mid-seventies, I remember being struck by the relative largesse of the place. The place had a new building smell; the carpet was orange and clean and cheery; the library was well-stocked and centrally located. The language arts department had its own secretary. So did every other department. There were secretaries in the library and the main office and the counseling department. And to top it all off, I was pulling down a cool $8500 a year. This, compared to the $6300 I was making at Marycrest, a catholic girls' school, was almost too good to be true.
Things didn't stay that way. The story of my 34 years as a public school teacher is the story of yearly emergency budget talks responding to potential or real cuts. It was only a year or two after getting hired that we lost our departmental secretary. A new ditto machine was placed on top of her old desk where the pictures of her family used to sit. Pretty soon the number of library secretaries was pared by one. Eventually, the wonderful lady who acted as the single secretary for the entire factory, her position having been cut by yet another budget crunch, was moved into the main office as a secretary for one of our four assistant principals and two administrative assistants. When I first came to Green Mountain, we only had three A.P.s and one of them just sat in faculty lounge all day. All through this succession of lean times where we were annually enjoined to pitch-in and share the burden, I noticed that as faculty secretaries shrunk in number, the number of secretaries and administrative help in the main office--you know, the one that is the furthest away from kids--grew.
Other things grew during this constant cutting back. The list of teacher responsibilities grew. The time it took to do the paper work that our departmental secretary used to do grew. Our constantly evolving computerized system for taking and tracking attendance made the time it took to do the reporting grow. The amount of blame teachers got for low test scores or the apparent lack of preparation of our students grew. The worries about getting sued, monitoring email communication, being careful not offend any one, or drive anyone to suicide because of too much homework, all of that stuff grew exponentially.
And every year we would read in The Denver Post or Rocky Mountain News that Jeffco was in the worst budget crunch of its history and we were given a list of options for cutting costs that we needed to prioritize, first in private, and then in groups during a day long faculty meeting complete with coffee and donuts in the morning, pizza and soft drinks for lunch, and enough butcher paper to stretch from West Alameda Drive to the Ad Building.
Then we would have emergency union (oops I meant to say Association) meetings where we were told how this was yet another example of the powers that be trying to balance the budget on the backs of teachers. And we were told about phone banks to man and strike plans to create. We would root for our negotiation team and spread nasty rumors about the administration's negotiation team and something would get settled--always too little money, too few benefits, and too many concessions. We would, amongst lots of loud, tough talk, finally ratify the thing and get back to the business of teaching kids.
Here I am many years removed from the whole thing looking at the front page of The Post: "Schools bear brunt of Hick's new cuts." Since school spending amounts to some 40% of Colorado's budget and since states, unlike federal governments, can't run deficits, something has to go. Three hundred and thirty-two million slashed from k-12 funding. Another $36 million from higher ed. According to the article, that translates to a $497 cut per student in k-12 and $877 less for each college student. We're talking 40 kids in first grade classrooms. Hundreds of teachers will join the ranks of the unemployed. But as Hickenlooper said "balancing this budget would be a painful task." Painful for whom? Hickenlooper also said that "we have to find ways to make the entire culture more pro-business." Call me stupid, but I don't see how cutting funding on a higher educational system that already ranks in the bottom three in the country is a pro-business decision. I see it as a decision that will convince even more companies (like ProLogis for example) to move their headquarters elsewhere.
Will there eventually be a politician out there with the guts to point to what is fast becoming the only budget fixing alternative left? Will Warren Buffet continue to be the only public person out there to say we need to raise taxes, particularly on the rich, the very people the budget cutting republicans in Washington fought for when it came to rolling back the Bush tax cuts? How can these people sleep at night when they take funding away from schools, but don't tax the wealthy. Yeah, yeah, yeah I know that the wealthy currently pay most of the income tax in this country. Why should I apologize for that when the top 1% of the country account for more wealth than the rest of us put together. Adam Smith, all you neo-cons out there, said in The Wealth of Nations that the wealthiest would have to contribute more than their share for the benefit of society. Smacks of socialism doesn't it? I suppose Smith's masterwork is now part of the liberal plot to ruin the country.
Don't get me wrong. I don't want to pay more taxes any more than any one else does. I also don't like going to the dentist (no offense, Dr. Arendt) or waiting on the highway for lane painting, or having to spend ever increasing amounts of money on food, but somethings are simply necessary.
Why do budgets get balanced on the backs of those groups least able to pay? For the third year in a row Colorado government workers will get no cost of living raise. On top of that they are facing the second year in a row where more money will be taken out of their checks to pay for rising health insurance costs for retirees.
Hickenlooper's reaction: "There are people all over the state that have no job."
What does that have to do with anything? That answer doesn't work for the wealthiest 1% does it?
I wouldn't mind trading places with one of the wealthy one per centers, even if I did have the threat of a tax hike hanging over my head, keeping me from hiring, ruining all my plans for innovation, research and development. I know it would be tough, but someone has to bear it.
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
Friday, February 11, 2011
The Sputnik Moment
Two recent articles, one by James Surowiecki in The New Yorker and the other by Andrew Hacker in The New York Review of Books, cite Alexander Hamilton's urgings for a central government to do what is necessary to encourage the innovations of "ingenious and valuable workmen in different arts and trades" as support for their analyses of our current financial and employment picture. Hamilton, technically an illegal immigrant in his own right, pointed out the benefit our country would accrue "to open every possible avenue to emigration from abroad."
The thrust of Surowiecki's essay, "Sputnikonomics," is that, in spite of the cries coming from all sides to cut spending, we should be actively investing in research and development at a much higher rate than is our current practice. In fact, Surowiecki explains that the investments Obama's State of the Union Address called for in infrastructure, technology, and education are not just added on stimulus spending, but in fact a supply-side plan. Ronald Reagan would be proud. Increasing the pace of innovation and making workers more efficient improves our long-term growth rate by increasing supply.
Cost cutters will say we can't afford to spend money on anything. We can't afford not to. History tells us that spending on research and development (R&D) potentially creates more value than it costs. The creation of the interstate highway system under Eisenhower has returned an estimated 35% of the initial investment annually. The actual Sputnik moment spurred R&D that has changed the way the world works: GPS, microchips, the internet, satellites.
One of the reasons that we are in this financial malaise is that as our investments in R&D have shrunk (currently at only 60% of their 1960's level as adjusted for cost of living), our long term growth rate has slowed and with that so has our competitiveness.
The current climate of credit default swaps, stock holder pressure, and the unadulterated lust for profit has made private sector investment in R&D focused almost exclusively on the development side. One of the main reasons for this is that private companies don't like seeing their research creating "spillover benefits" that allow other companies to reap SOME of the profit that results from their innovation. For example, other companies are getting rich selling apps for the iPhone and iPad. That's the whole problem. So called "spillover benefits", while not necessarily helpful to Apple, are a huge benefit to the economy as a whole. Current business models don't seem to take much stock in benefiting the economy (read: society) as a whole.
Therefore we have the cancelling in mid project of a tunnel under the Hudson River. The "spillover benefits" would be huge: Less congestion, employment of thousands of construction workers, the little businesses that will crop up on both sides of the river, etc. But the recent election says that people are not in the mood to think long term. They would rather "eat their seed corn" and stick their money under an ideological mattress.
Hacker's essay, "Where Will We Find the Jobs," looks at the root of most of the electorate's outrage, the lack of job production. He makes a case for increasing our investment in education, but also stresses the changes that are currently besetting education.
He makes the rather tired point that the times they are a changing and we must change along with them. People have to rethink their educational goals. There will have to be some retraining. Colleges and universities need to rethink their approaches to vocational training.
And he tells us all sorts of disturbing facts: Even though the majority of growing careers of the future say they require college degrees, they really don't; even though everyone (read: high school counselors) say if you don't have math skills you won't be able to compete in the new technological age, that simply isn't true; the United States no longer reproduces itself and therefore relies on immigration to sustain the population; nonnative workers comprise 16% of the labor force; twenty-six per cent of U.S. physicians are foreign born; twenty-eight per cent of U.S. Ph.D.'s are also foreign born; and the list goes on.
In a nutshell, the fact is that by 2018, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, our country will suffer from a labor shortage. Partly from lack of proper training, but also from the fact that our work force will be smaller as the Baby Boomers all go off to retirement. To fill that gap we need to graduate tons more people. To do that we will have to invest tons more money in education. Short of that, the innovation that has always fueled and sustained our economic engine will go someplace else, some place like India, or China.
Contrary to what the Tea Party types would like you to believe (They've probably seen Dave too many times.) balancing the federal budget isn't the same as sitting around the kitchen table to figure out the household finances. That's the difference between micro- and macro-economics.
The thrust of Surowiecki's essay, "Sputnikonomics," is that, in spite of the cries coming from all sides to cut spending, we should be actively investing in research and development at a much higher rate than is our current practice. In fact, Surowiecki explains that the investments Obama's State of the Union Address called for in infrastructure, technology, and education are not just added on stimulus spending, but in fact a supply-side plan. Ronald Reagan would be proud. Increasing the pace of innovation and making workers more efficient improves our long-term growth rate by increasing supply.
Cost cutters will say we can't afford to spend money on anything. We can't afford not to. History tells us that spending on research and development (R&D) potentially creates more value than it costs. The creation of the interstate highway system under Eisenhower has returned an estimated 35% of the initial investment annually. The actual Sputnik moment spurred R&D that has changed the way the world works: GPS, microchips, the internet, satellites.
One of the reasons that we are in this financial malaise is that as our investments in R&D have shrunk (currently at only 60% of their 1960's level as adjusted for cost of living), our long term growth rate has slowed and with that so has our competitiveness.
The current climate of credit default swaps, stock holder pressure, and the unadulterated lust for profit has made private sector investment in R&D focused almost exclusively on the development side. One of the main reasons for this is that private companies don't like seeing their research creating "spillover benefits" that allow other companies to reap SOME of the profit that results from their innovation. For example, other companies are getting rich selling apps for the iPhone and iPad. That's the whole problem. So called "spillover benefits", while not necessarily helpful to Apple, are a huge benefit to the economy as a whole. Current business models don't seem to take much stock in benefiting the economy (read: society) as a whole.
Therefore we have the cancelling in mid project of a tunnel under the Hudson River. The "spillover benefits" would be huge: Less congestion, employment of thousands of construction workers, the little businesses that will crop up on both sides of the river, etc. But the recent election says that people are not in the mood to think long term. They would rather "eat their seed corn" and stick their money under an ideological mattress.
Hacker's essay, "Where Will We Find the Jobs," looks at the root of most of the electorate's outrage, the lack of job production. He makes a case for increasing our investment in education, but also stresses the changes that are currently besetting education.
He makes the rather tired point that the times they are a changing and we must change along with them. People have to rethink their educational goals. There will have to be some retraining. Colleges and universities need to rethink their approaches to vocational training.
And he tells us all sorts of disturbing facts: Even though the majority of growing careers of the future say they require college degrees, they really don't; even though everyone (read: high school counselors) say if you don't have math skills you won't be able to compete in the new technological age, that simply isn't true; the United States no longer reproduces itself and therefore relies on immigration to sustain the population; nonnative workers comprise 16% of the labor force; twenty-six per cent of U.S. physicians are foreign born; twenty-eight per cent of U.S. Ph.D.'s are also foreign born; and the list goes on.
In a nutshell, the fact is that by 2018, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, our country will suffer from a labor shortage. Partly from lack of proper training, but also from the fact that our work force will be smaller as the Baby Boomers all go off to retirement. To fill that gap we need to graduate tons more people. To do that we will have to invest tons more money in education. Short of that, the innovation that has always fueled and sustained our economic engine will go someplace else, some place like India, or China.
Contrary to what the Tea Party types would like you to believe (They've probably seen Dave too many times.) balancing the federal budget isn't the same as sitting around the kitchen table to figure out the household finances. That's the difference between micro- and macro-economics.
Thursday, February 3, 2011
When Vacations Attack
I am a little concerned about the new reality-type show being hyped all over television, "When Vacations Attack." The promos show a collection of horrifying scenes: A whale jumping into a small fishing boat; a jeep driven at too high an angle falling backwards down a cliff while a horrified woman looks on; a mountain biker running headlong into a small SUV, the dismounted biker hurtling toward the windshield; a climber losing her hold and plummeting down a steep and rocky embankment. And there are lots of testimonials from people we can only suppose to be survivors of these various mishaps: "Everything started moving in slow motion. . ."; "I saw my whole life flash before my eyes. . ."; "I knew I was dead. . .".
After shuddering through all of this I have been forced to admit that our vacations are pretty boring and pedestrian by comparison. I mean a whole episode about me getting food poisoning from some bad ceviche in Cabo San Lucas just doesn't stack up to getting jumped by a whale off the coast of Puerto Vallarta.
I have caught numbers of barracuda while on vacation and waded through choppy, fish-infested waters to wait for our guides to cook them up over a beach fire. There was always a risk that I might get a bone caught in my throat, but I figured that every once in a while you just have to take chances. Those barracuda were big, I hasten to add, and when Felipe held my first catch up I noticed the rows of sharp teeth. I remember being pretty proud of myself, but then just the other day there was a piece on the 4 o'clock news about a barracuda actually jumping into a couple's boat and piercing the woman's lungs. Her husband somehow managed to get her the medical help she needed in the nick of time. It'll be just my luck that we'll go fishing this summer in Belize and I'll get jumped by a barracuda but no one will have the camera going.
That's what happened when Katherine and I almost drowned in the freezing torrent of Cascade Creek as it fed into Jenny Lake. We were quietly paddling around the lake, a yearly tradition, when we decided it would be cool to paddle up the creek as far as we could go. The plan was to get upstream a bit, turn around, and "run the rapids" back to the lake. It was early in the morning; there was nary a ripple on the lake; and we had the whole place to ourselves, so there was no one to TALK US OUT OF IT. We made it maybe twenty-five yards upstream when the current got too strong (It wasn't called Cascade Creek for nothing, a fact that had somehow escaped us.), so we decided to turn around. Turning your kayak around in the middle of river cascading from 13,000 snow filled feet is a bad idea. The kayak hung up on a rock and "everything started going in slow motion" as the kayak slowly filled with water and flipped over, Katherine and I still aboard, into the stream.
We both, thank God, managed to get out from under the boat. Katherine scrambled to shore and I managed to stand in the chest high water clinging to the rock with one hand and to the front strap of the water-filled kayak with the other. After a few minutes we managed to get over our initial shock and somehow wrestled the kayak on shore where we dumped out the water, put it back in with it headed in the right direction, climbed aboard and shot back down to the lake where we managed to catch up to our paddles. All collected, we looked at each other, at the inlet in question, and laughed with a mixture of relief and pride. Hey, this was one of those wilderness moments for us, but like I said no one was on shore taking pictures and I don't want to go through it again.
There was also the time Katherine almost killed a trumpeter swan with a paddle. I will admit that this can't compare with capsizing jeeps and mountain bikers splashing through windshields, but it seemed life and deathish at the time. We were kayaking around Two Ocean Lake in the Tetons and were making a bee line for a family of trumpeter swans hanging out at the other end of the lake. We had seen them there every summer, so we were just intending to say hello. When we got close we noticed the baby swans swimming in formation behind their proud parents, so we just kind of coasted and watched.
Just when we noticed that we had somehow gotten between the adult swans and one of their offspring, the male swan got up on its legs, flapped his wings and started "running" across the water, clearly charging our boat. I was preparing myself for a feathery death when the swan skid to a halt, still flapping and honking, just a few feet from the boat. Immediately the female made the same charge. I noticed that Katherine had picked up her paddle, ready to do battle with the beasts.
They stopped their charge and we got the hell out of there. The swan family quickly reunited and I just remember being relieved we didn't have to explain a bludgeoned swan to a park ranger.
There were other moments that weren't so dramatic looked at in retrospect, but at the moment surely the stuff of reality television. I was sitting on the porch of Bluebell, our Jenny Lake cabin, drinking a gin and tonic when I noticed a line up of cars on the scenic drive around the lake. I got up to see what was happening and ran into a mama bear and two cubs walking up the side of our cabin just a couple of feet away. I backed up and told Katherine to grab the gin and tonics and get inside. I followed her in and we watched as the bears lumbered off in the direction of the main lodge. Katherine always gives me a hard time about wanting to SAVE THE GIN AND TONIC, but I figured gin came from juniper berries and bears liked berries. If we had left the gin and tonics out there is no telling how long the beasts would have stayed. Plus we were running low on dip,
There was also the no-good, terrible, very bad day when I skinned my knee on the way down Granite Canyon. We were walking around a forested bend that opened up to a view of the river below. As I made the turn, I saw a naked girl standing in the current cooling herself off. It was like a scene out of a movie where all of a sudden a pretty little fawn appears in a splash of light. I wrecked the moment by tripping on a rock and tearing a gash out of my knee. I still have a scar. The good news is that every year Katherine and I have a wild-life spotting contest to see who finds the most. We assign points to different breeds. The ubiquitous antelope is worth a point. Elk, almost as numerous, are worth two. A bear is worth five. I gave myself fifteen points for the girl, helping me win that year's contest.
After shuddering through all of this I have been forced to admit that our vacations are pretty boring and pedestrian by comparison. I mean a whole episode about me getting food poisoning from some bad ceviche in Cabo San Lucas just doesn't stack up to getting jumped by a whale off the coast of Puerto Vallarta.
I have caught numbers of barracuda while on vacation and waded through choppy, fish-infested waters to wait for our guides to cook them up over a beach fire. There was always a risk that I might get a bone caught in my throat, but I figured that every once in a while you just have to take chances. Those barracuda were big, I hasten to add, and when Felipe held my first catch up I noticed the rows of sharp teeth. I remember being pretty proud of myself, but then just the other day there was a piece on the 4 o'clock news about a barracuda actually jumping into a couple's boat and piercing the woman's lungs. Her husband somehow managed to get her the medical help she needed in the nick of time. It'll be just my luck that we'll go fishing this summer in Belize and I'll get jumped by a barracuda but no one will have the camera going.
That's what happened when Katherine and I almost drowned in the freezing torrent of Cascade Creek as it fed into Jenny Lake. We were quietly paddling around the lake, a yearly tradition, when we decided it would be cool to paddle up the creek as far as we could go. The plan was to get upstream a bit, turn around, and "run the rapids" back to the lake. It was early in the morning; there was nary a ripple on the lake; and we had the whole place to ourselves, so there was no one to TALK US OUT OF IT. We made it maybe twenty-five yards upstream when the current got too strong (It wasn't called Cascade Creek for nothing, a fact that had somehow escaped us.), so we decided to turn around. Turning your kayak around in the middle of river cascading from 13,000 snow filled feet is a bad idea. The kayak hung up on a rock and "everything started going in slow motion" as the kayak slowly filled with water and flipped over, Katherine and I still aboard, into the stream.
We both, thank God, managed to get out from under the boat. Katherine scrambled to shore and I managed to stand in the chest high water clinging to the rock with one hand and to the front strap of the water-filled kayak with the other. After a few minutes we managed to get over our initial shock and somehow wrestled the kayak on shore where we dumped out the water, put it back in with it headed in the right direction, climbed aboard and shot back down to the lake where we managed to catch up to our paddles. All collected, we looked at each other, at the inlet in question, and laughed with a mixture of relief and pride. Hey, this was one of those wilderness moments for us, but like I said no one was on shore taking pictures and I don't want to go through it again.
There was also the time Katherine almost killed a trumpeter swan with a paddle. I will admit that this can't compare with capsizing jeeps and mountain bikers splashing through windshields, but it seemed life and deathish at the time. We were kayaking around Two Ocean Lake in the Tetons and were making a bee line for a family of trumpeter swans hanging out at the other end of the lake. We had seen them there every summer, so we were just intending to say hello. When we got close we noticed the baby swans swimming in formation behind their proud parents, so we just kind of coasted and watched.
Just when we noticed that we had somehow gotten between the adult swans and one of their offspring, the male swan got up on its legs, flapped his wings and started "running" across the water, clearly charging our boat. I was preparing myself for a feathery death when the swan skid to a halt, still flapping and honking, just a few feet from the boat. Immediately the female made the same charge. I noticed that Katherine had picked up her paddle, ready to do battle with the beasts.
They stopped their charge and we got the hell out of there. The swan family quickly reunited and I just remember being relieved we didn't have to explain a bludgeoned swan to a park ranger.
There were other moments that weren't so dramatic looked at in retrospect, but at the moment surely the stuff of reality television. I was sitting on the porch of Bluebell, our Jenny Lake cabin, drinking a gin and tonic when I noticed a line up of cars on the scenic drive around the lake. I got up to see what was happening and ran into a mama bear and two cubs walking up the side of our cabin just a couple of feet away. I backed up and told Katherine to grab the gin and tonics and get inside. I followed her in and we watched as the bears lumbered off in the direction of the main lodge. Katherine always gives me a hard time about wanting to SAVE THE GIN AND TONIC, but I figured gin came from juniper berries and bears liked berries. If we had left the gin and tonics out there is no telling how long the beasts would have stayed. Plus we were running low on dip,
There was also the no-good, terrible, very bad day when I skinned my knee on the way down Granite Canyon. We were walking around a forested bend that opened up to a view of the river below. As I made the turn, I saw a naked girl standing in the current cooling herself off. It was like a scene out of a movie where all of a sudden a pretty little fawn appears in a splash of light. I wrecked the moment by tripping on a rock and tearing a gash out of my knee. I still have a scar. The good news is that every year Katherine and I have a wild-life spotting contest to see who finds the most. We assign points to different breeds. The ubiquitous antelope is worth a point. Elk, almost as numerous, are worth two. A bear is worth five. I gave myself fifteen points for the girl, helping me win that year's contest.
Thursday, January 27, 2011
The Godfather of Kathmandu - John Burdett
John Burdett and Richard Price are my favorite mystery writers, although I think Price transcends the genre. You will find his work in the fiction section of a bookstore. Burdett's will be be under mystery. That does a disservice to Burdett's work. It could just as easily be found under fiction, or religion, or perhaps travel, maybe sociology, and sometimes political science.
Lisbeth Salandar notwithstanding, Burdett has also managed to create the most interesting detective type in modern day fiction. Sonchai Jitpleecheep is a great tour guide for all things physical and spiritual. He will get you around the streets of Bangkok on the back of his motorcycle, or the temples and back alleys of Nepal, or the inner workings of a bustling brothel with equal expertise. And of course he will take you along on his spiritual quest with a succession of gurus and mantras.
Additionally, he will display his calm in the face of the most grisley crime scenes and salacious sexual escapades and dazzle you with his insight into all things seedy. This guy is great.
This latest installment of Sonchai's adventures has him acting as a consiglieri for a local mob moving heroin from Nepal to Thailand. This job does his karma no good whatsoever. There is also the matter of the horrible murder, or is it a suicide, of a prominent Hollywood director/producer with an appetite for drugs and Bangkok hookers.
You come away from this book with a few new convictions. Never let someone talk you into transporting drugs across international borders by hiding them in body cavities. Avoid driving in Bangkok traffic at all costs. Sometimes nothing gets your karma back into line like a good joint.
Lisbeth Salandar notwithstanding, Burdett has also managed to create the most interesting detective type in modern day fiction. Sonchai Jitpleecheep is a great tour guide for all things physical and spiritual. He will get you around the streets of Bangkok on the back of his motorcycle, or the temples and back alleys of Nepal, or the inner workings of a bustling brothel with equal expertise. And of course he will take you along on his spiritual quest with a succession of gurus and mantras.
Additionally, he will display his calm in the face of the most grisley crime scenes and salacious sexual escapades and dazzle you with his insight into all things seedy. This guy is great.
This latest installment of Sonchai's adventures has him acting as a consiglieri for a local mob moving heroin from Nepal to Thailand. This job does his karma no good whatsoever. There is also the matter of the horrible murder, or is it a suicide, of a prominent Hollywood director/producer with an appetite for drugs and Bangkok hookers.
You come away from this book with a few new convictions. Never let someone talk you into transporting drugs across international borders by hiding them in body cavities. Avoid driving in Bangkok traffic at all costs. Sometimes nothing gets your karma back into line like a good joint.
Thursday, January 20, 2011
Blue Valentine
I don't love Blue Valentine simply because Derek Cianfrance wrote and directed it; however, that is why I went to see it last Saturday. I love it because I still can't stop thinking about it. That's the good news. The bad news is that I also can't get "You Always Hurt the One You Love" out of my mind. If I knew the rest of the lyric it might be easier to go to sleep. Oh well everything has a trade off.
No, I love the movie because it is one of those increasingly rare films that holds its tone all the way to the end. Derek's first big success at Sundance, Brother Tied, had a hard time with tone, I thought, because the story had too many holes in it. The characters' motivations were hard to understand and thus their reactions seemed out of proportion at times. (I hasten to note that I saw the film back when I was still teaching and that seems like a hundred years ago, so my memory is less than reliable here.) I walked away from that movie proud of Derek, but not all that satisfied with the film. In fact it seemed like the story of Brother Tied was simply a vehicle for an impressive collection of camera angles, shots, and artsy craftsy dissolves, pans, and fades.
Blue Valentine, by contrast, has a much smaller story to tell, but the thread of the narrative is so strong, so universal, that it never gets lost in the technical mastery of the film. I never lost sight of the ups and downs of this at once beautiful and heart breaking relationship. Of course the performances by Michelle Williams and Ryan Gosling are pitch perfect. As I was watching them work I kept thinking of Holden Caulfield talking about the Lunts and Lawrence Olivier and how you could tell they were acting and how they were so good that they weren't real. That happens all the time in movies, but not in this one. I just felt that I was eaves dropping on two people whose story was not all that different from most love stories. There was never a moment when I thought I was looking at actors performing for my enjoyment.
Of course the editing and camera work and absolutely seamless flashes back and forward created that eaves dropping feeling. I loved how Dean and Cindy's conversations were filmed in extreme close-up and kind of over their shoulders. I loved the relative brightness of their past contrasted to the more muted colors of their present. I loved how the film didn't cop out at the end, but instead showed Dean walking away from his life into the (kind of) sad fireworks display.
Dean was such a great guy at the beginning of the relationship. The scene where he helps the old gentleman move into the nursing home is simply unforgettable. His parenting skills make him impossible not to love. Of course, it is easy to be a parent when your spouse does all the heavy lifting. You have to grow into a relationship. Cindy does; Dean doesn't. Sonnet 116 to the contrary, love can't withstand the stagnant contentment embodied in Dean's ever present cigarette (sexy during courtship; just obnoxious and smelly during six plus years of marriage), his lack of ambition, his less than sober self.
As a person who used to make his living getting kids to think about art, I always talked about tone and holding point of view. There are very few movies I can watch all the way through without losing interest. But there are a few that hold up for me. I'm not a film expert, but Straw Dogs by Peckinpah (spelling?)holds its tone to the bitter end. Virgin Spring by Bergman is another. I think Silence of the Lambs and Goodfellows are two more. I loved a little known film called Miss Firecracker. Fargo is the only Coen brothers film that holds on till the end. I think Blue Valentine belongs in that group.
This last comment may be a little hyperbolic, but I also thought about Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man when I saw the film. Joyce pays his readers the huge compliment of trusting them to find their bearings in the novel without any help from some omniscient narrator. He just dives in and expects his readers to get lost in the world he has created. I think Derek has done the same thing in his wonderful film. He has truly held a mirror up to nature and has invited us to watch and make of it what we will. There is no irritating voice over. There is no indication when we are in a flashback or in the present. We are left to our own devices and for that I am grateful and more than a little impressed.
No, I love the movie because it is one of those increasingly rare films that holds its tone all the way to the end. Derek's first big success at Sundance, Brother Tied, had a hard time with tone, I thought, because the story had too many holes in it. The characters' motivations were hard to understand and thus their reactions seemed out of proportion at times. (I hasten to note that I saw the film back when I was still teaching and that seems like a hundred years ago, so my memory is less than reliable here.) I walked away from that movie proud of Derek, but not all that satisfied with the film. In fact it seemed like the story of Brother Tied was simply a vehicle for an impressive collection of camera angles, shots, and artsy craftsy dissolves, pans, and fades.
Blue Valentine, by contrast, has a much smaller story to tell, but the thread of the narrative is so strong, so universal, that it never gets lost in the technical mastery of the film. I never lost sight of the ups and downs of this at once beautiful and heart breaking relationship. Of course the performances by Michelle Williams and Ryan Gosling are pitch perfect. As I was watching them work I kept thinking of Holden Caulfield talking about the Lunts and Lawrence Olivier and how you could tell they were acting and how they were so good that they weren't real. That happens all the time in movies, but not in this one. I just felt that I was eaves dropping on two people whose story was not all that different from most love stories. There was never a moment when I thought I was looking at actors performing for my enjoyment.
Of course the editing and camera work and absolutely seamless flashes back and forward created that eaves dropping feeling. I loved how Dean and Cindy's conversations were filmed in extreme close-up and kind of over their shoulders. I loved the relative brightness of their past contrasted to the more muted colors of their present. I loved how the film didn't cop out at the end, but instead showed Dean walking away from his life into the (kind of) sad fireworks display.
Dean was such a great guy at the beginning of the relationship. The scene where he helps the old gentleman move into the nursing home is simply unforgettable. His parenting skills make him impossible not to love. Of course, it is easy to be a parent when your spouse does all the heavy lifting. You have to grow into a relationship. Cindy does; Dean doesn't. Sonnet 116 to the contrary, love can't withstand the stagnant contentment embodied in Dean's ever present cigarette (sexy during courtship; just obnoxious and smelly during six plus years of marriage), his lack of ambition, his less than sober self.
As a person who used to make his living getting kids to think about art, I always talked about tone and holding point of view. There are very few movies I can watch all the way through without losing interest. But there are a few that hold up for me. I'm not a film expert, but Straw Dogs by Peckinpah (spelling?)holds its tone to the bitter end. Virgin Spring by Bergman is another. I think Silence of the Lambs and Goodfellows are two more. I loved a little known film called Miss Firecracker. Fargo is the only Coen brothers film that holds on till the end. I think Blue Valentine belongs in that group.
This last comment may be a little hyperbolic, but I also thought about Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man when I saw the film. Joyce pays his readers the huge compliment of trusting them to find their bearings in the novel without any help from some omniscient narrator. He just dives in and expects his readers to get lost in the world he has created. I think Derek has done the same thing in his wonderful film. He has truly held a mirror up to nature and has invited us to watch and make of it what we will. There is no irritating voice over. There is no indication when we are in a flashback or in the present. We are left to our own devices and for that I am grateful and more than a little impressed.
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
Reading in Puerto Vallarta
We just got back from twelve days in Puerto Vallarta with Bud and Janet. High seventies every day. Lots of good restaurants. Every morning by the pool reading books and drinking Pina Coladas. I polished off five books during my stay and got half way through a sixth on the plane ride home.
High Fidelity - Nick Hornby
I am accidentally reading Nick Hornby in reverse chronological order. I first read Juliet Naked a couple of years ago and fell in love with Hornby's voice and self-deprecating sense of humor. I say self-deprecating because the main characters he writes about have to be thinly disguised versions of Hornby, a person who seems to love drugs, sex, and (especially) rock and roll. Next I read A Long Way Down. I didn't think it as good as Juliet because it didn't have the same acerbic humor directed at rock and roll groupies and fanatics. High Fidelity, Hornby's first novel, is the best of the three. I haven't seen the John Cusack movie version, but after reading the book, one comes to the undeniable conclusion that only John Cusack could play Rob, the music store owner with one foot in reality and the other on a musical banana peel.
Rob and his down and out employees remind me of the guys in Diner, especially Daniel Stern who submits his prospective wife to a sports quiz to make sure they are right for each other. In Rob's world, everyone who walks into the store is subjected to a music quiz. YOU LIKE TINA TURNER?! GET OUT OF MY STORE! But Rob, unlike his co-workers, is slowly beginning to see the shallowness masquerading as good musical taste that is bringing about his ruination. The fact that he has just been left by his girlfriend helps bring him to that realization. In the end, Rob sees the light and seems willing to let someone with a bad record collection enter his life.
I know lots of Robs, but I am not going to mention any names on the off chance someone might actually be reading this. They usually have an icebox full of beer, a killer sound system, and a collection of concert tee shirts. Their homes are great places to hang out while getting lost in ear drum shattering recordings and good dope, but after awhile you just have to move on. Rob is on the verge of learning that lesson.
I loved the section at the end of the book where Rob is being interviewed by an undergraduate who innocently asks him to list his top five recordings of all time. Rob has waited all his life for someone to ask him this question and after much thought presents his list. But the list keeps festering and he calls back again and again to amend it. It is a funny moment and I can't imagine anyone who would be able to read on without stopping to make his own list. Here is mine.
"Cripple Creek" - The Band
"Eddie's All-Star Joint" - Ricky Lee Jones (Thank you Katie Hoffman)
"The Unsquare Dance" - The Dave Brubeck Quartet
"Wouldn't It Be Nice" - The Beach Boys
"Old Friends" - Paul Simon
Here is Kathie's list.
"Honky Tonk Woman" - The Rolling Stones
"Wouldn't It Be Nice" - The Beach Boys
"Come Together" - The Beatles
"Life Is A Carnival" - The Band
"Ain't Scared of Dying" - Blood, Sweat, and Tears
An Object of Beauty - Steve Martin
Steve Martin's Picasso and Einstein at the Lapin Agile is one of the smartest plays I have ever read or seen performed. It basically explores the idea that art and science both spring from the same creative impulse, the same need to explain. His new book isn't nearly as smart, but it taught me a lot about the inner workings of the art world. How art dealers deal. How art is valued. How to tell good from bad. It also gives a little history lesson about the state of the world the last couple of decades.
It is also a romantic comedy with a speaker who is a writer about art. This speaker unwittingly becomes involved in a little scam at an art auction which supplies the book with the bare bones of a mystery.
When I taught AP I would sometimes tell my students to go to a show at the art museum and rent the headphones. The descriptions of the paintings provided wonderful models for writing about literature, especially poetry. Steve Martin's descriptions of the various works considered in this book are masterful models of writing and thinking about art.
Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger
I decided to reward myself with Catcher. I hadn't read it for about ten years, so I figured it was time. Let me tell you that Salinger's masterwork holds up quite well against all the stuff I've been reading lately.
I read a piece about Catcher by Louis Menand(I think)celebrating the book's fiftieth anniversary a few years ago. The article was fun to read, even though it didn't teach me anything new. The one thing I remember from the article was Menand thought Holden was more articulate and more insightful than any seventeen year old could possibly be and he saw that as a flaw in the novel. At the time, I remember thinking he was as wrong as he could be, and now having read it again, I am convinced he was wrong. I've known all kinds of seventeen year olds with the same insight and the same ability to express that insight. On top of that, I continue to maintain that Holden Caulfield is the most memorable character in American Literature. I also maintain that anyone who doesn't love that little boy and that great book is either illiterate or has no heart.
The one thing that struck me about the book this time is that I am basically the same person I was when I first read the book at age fourteen. I laugh at the same jokes, cry at he same frustrations, recognize the same fears. I am still the hopeless neurotic I was in junior high school. I'm not sure what I think about this.
In Cold Blood - Truman Capote
I have recently enjoyed watching Phillip Seymour Hoffman in Capote, so while picking out books for our Mexican sojourn I chose this one to refresh my memory about the whole Clutter thing. It was quite a juxtaposition to Salinger, but it was even more compelling. Very few people write sentences like Capote. You can taste them.
I taught the book two or three times years ago and I remember that kids almost always loved it. I'm not a big fan of mystery novels. Don't get me wrong; I read them, but I always feel guilty afterwards. Not so with this magnificent book. I knew what was coming, but I still couldn't put it down.
Generosity - Richard Powers
In the midst of making some pretty heavy indictments against everything from genetic engineering (and profiteering) to the evils of Oprah Winfrey, this terrific book creates Thassa, maybe the most memorable character you will ever encounter.
Thassa is a blissfully happy and content creature and her happiness infects all around her. I found myself wanting to go out into the world spreading joy and good will, but not ironically. For real.
She is a student in a creative writing class taught by a young man whose caustic vision tends to skewer everything he encounters, but not Thassa. The problem is that anyone who is unqualifiably happy (She is said to possess the happiness gene.) is not sufficiently armed to withstand the 24/7 media scrutiny that such a person would inevitably be subjected to and we are forced to witness the gradual eating away of her joyfulness.
Don't worry. The end is satisfying without being sappy. This is a wonderful book and a great way to end my reading binge.
High Fidelity - Nick Hornby
I am accidentally reading Nick Hornby in reverse chronological order. I first read Juliet Naked a couple of years ago and fell in love with Hornby's voice and self-deprecating sense of humor. I say self-deprecating because the main characters he writes about have to be thinly disguised versions of Hornby, a person who seems to love drugs, sex, and (especially) rock and roll. Next I read A Long Way Down. I didn't think it as good as Juliet because it didn't have the same acerbic humor directed at rock and roll groupies and fanatics. High Fidelity, Hornby's first novel, is the best of the three. I haven't seen the John Cusack movie version, but after reading the book, one comes to the undeniable conclusion that only John Cusack could play Rob, the music store owner with one foot in reality and the other on a musical banana peel.
Rob and his down and out employees remind me of the guys in Diner, especially Daniel Stern who submits his prospective wife to a sports quiz to make sure they are right for each other. In Rob's world, everyone who walks into the store is subjected to a music quiz. YOU LIKE TINA TURNER?! GET OUT OF MY STORE! But Rob, unlike his co-workers, is slowly beginning to see the shallowness masquerading as good musical taste that is bringing about his ruination. The fact that he has just been left by his girlfriend helps bring him to that realization. In the end, Rob sees the light and seems willing to let someone with a bad record collection enter his life.
I know lots of Robs, but I am not going to mention any names on the off chance someone might actually be reading this. They usually have an icebox full of beer, a killer sound system, and a collection of concert tee shirts. Their homes are great places to hang out while getting lost in ear drum shattering recordings and good dope, but after awhile you just have to move on. Rob is on the verge of learning that lesson.
I loved the section at the end of the book where Rob is being interviewed by an undergraduate who innocently asks him to list his top five recordings of all time. Rob has waited all his life for someone to ask him this question and after much thought presents his list. But the list keeps festering and he calls back again and again to amend it. It is a funny moment and I can't imagine anyone who would be able to read on without stopping to make his own list. Here is mine.
"Cripple Creek" - The Band
"Eddie's All-Star Joint" - Ricky Lee Jones (Thank you Katie Hoffman)
"The Unsquare Dance" - The Dave Brubeck Quartet
"Wouldn't It Be Nice" - The Beach Boys
"Old Friends" - Paul Simon
Here is Kathie's list.
"Honky Tonk Woman" - The Rolling Stones
"Wouldn't It Be Nice" - The Beach Boys
"Come Together" - The Beatles
"Life Is A Carnival" - The Band
"Ain't Scared of Dying" - Blood, Sweat, and Tears
An Object of Beauty - Steve Martin
Steve Martin's Picasso and Einstein at the Lapin Agile is one of the smartest plays I have ever read or seen performed. It basically explores the idea that art and science both spring from the same creative impulse, the same need to explain. His new book isn't nearly as smart, but it taught me a lot about the inner workings of the art world. How art dealers deal. How art is valued. How to tell good from bad. It also gives a little history lesson about the state of the world the last couple of decades.
It is also a romantic comedy with a speaker who is a writer about art. This speaker unwittingly becomes involved in a little scam at an art auction which supplies the book with the bare bones of a mystery.
When I taught AP I would sometimes tell my students to go to a show at the art museum and rent the headphones. The descriptions of the paintings provided wonderful models for writing about literature, especially poetry. Steve Martin's descriptions of the various works considered in this book are masterful models of writing and thinking about art.
Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger
I decided to reward myself with Catcher. I hadn't read it for about ten years, so I figured it was time. Let me tell you that Salinger's masterwork holds up quite well against all the stuff I've been reading lately.
I read a piece about Catcher by Louis Menand(I think)celebrating the book's fiftieth anniversary a few years ago. The article was fun to read, even though it didn't teach me anything new. The one thing I remember from the article was Menand thought Holden was more articulate and more insightful than any seventeen year old could possibly be and he saw that as a flaw in the novel. At the time, I remember thinking he was as wrong as he could be, and now having read it again, I am convinced he was wrong. I've known all kinds of seventeen year olds with the same insight and the same ability to express that insight. On top of that, I continue to maintain that Holden Caulfield is the most memorable character in American Literature. I also maintain that anyone who doesn't love that little boy and that great book is either illiterate or has no heart.
The one thing that struck me about the book this time is that I am basically the same person I was when I first read the book at age fourteen. I laugh at the same jokes, cry at he same frustrations, recognize the same fears. I am still the hopeless neurotic I was in junior high school. I'm not sure what I think about this.
In Cold Blood - Truman Capote
I have recently enjoyed watching Phillip Seymour Hoffman in Capote, so while picking out books for our Mexican sojourn I chose this one to refresh my memory about the whole Clutter thing. It was quite a juxtaposition to Salinger, but it was even more compelling. Very few people write sentences like Capote. You can taste them.
I taught the book two or three times years ago and I remember that kids almost always loved it. I'm not a big fan of mystery novels. Don't get me wrong; I read them, but I always feel guilty afterwards. Not so with this magnificent book. I knew what was coming, but I still couldn't put it down.
Generosity - Richard Powers
In the midst of making some pretty heavy indictments against everything from genetic engineering (and profiteering) to the evils of Oprah Winfrey, this terrific book creates Thassa, maybe the most memorable character you will ever encounter.
Thassa is a blissfully happy and content creature and her happiness infects all around her. I found myself wanting to go out into the world spreading joy and good will, but not ironically. For real.
She is a student in a creative writing class taught by a young man whose caustic vision tends to skewer everything he encounters, but not Thassa. The problem is that anyone who is unqualifiably happy (She is said to possess the happiness gene.) is not sufficiently armed to withstand the 24/7 media scrutiny that such a person would inevitably be subjected to and we are forced to witness the gradual eating away of her joyfulness.
Don't worry. The end is satisfying without being sappy. This is a wonderful book and a great way to end my reading binge.
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
Tolstoy: A Free Writing
I've been home with an awful sinus infection for the last five days while Katherine has been down in Phoenix with Bud and Janet. I was just too sick to go, plus I didn't want to infect anyone. Most of the time I've been hanging out on the couch watching movies and taking a variety of medications. (I would advise against doing sinus rinses with any degree of regularity.) The last two days my headache subsided enough to let me read and I managed to finish Anna Karenina. I initially started to read it because after I read Jonathan Franzen's Freedom and some reviews that basically said it couldn't compare to the greatness of Russian novels, I wanted to see if the reviewers were right. Plus, just like Zelig and the neurosis caused by his failure to read Moby Dick, I didn't want Tolstoy's masterpiece lurking over my already hopelessly neurotic head.
Where it usually takes me less than a week to read a novel, I have been in Anna Karenina for about two months. As an excuse, I will hasten to add that I have been mostly engrossed in political stuff in my liberal magazines and that, plus the headache I've been having since Thanksgiving, have slowed me down a bit.
Furthermore, let us face it. Tolstoy is tough sledding.
I have never been able to understand how anyone can start reading a book without compulsively reading it until it is done. Personally, I have a hard time remembering what has transpired if my last reading was more than a couple of days ago. My friend Bud only seems to read when he is on an airplane or by a swimming pool. The result is that it takes him a year to finish a piece of pulp fiction. No wonder he does not relish reading.
I've discovered that Tolstoy is different. Sometimes I went as much as a week between opening the book, but the plot was so clear and the characters so memorably drawn that I never once felt lost. But that is not what I want to talk about.
I started reading it defensively. Why, I wondered, does a book have to be a CLASSIC in order to be great? Why does the fact that Freedom is easy to read and impossible to put down make it more trivial than Anna Karenina, or War and Peace, or Brothers Karamazov? Why does, according to the reviewer mentioned above, Tolstoy reach tragic heights when Franzen's wonderful novel is just a romance?
Sure enough, as I was reading it I kept wondering if the reviewer had actually read Anna Karenina, or was he just spouting conventional wisdom? At first glance, the characters seem every bit as small compared to the "big picture" as any of the characters in Freedom. Whole chapters are devoted to meaningless parties and horse races and grouse hunts where characters busy themselves with the minutiae of social discourse and worrying if they are wearing the right clothes, or creating socially acceptable impressions. Just like Franzen's novel, a good deal of Anna Karenina is focused on the political scene in Russia in the middle to late 1800's. Some scenes are clearly satirical. Some are didactic. Some are pointless
When I taught Edith Hamilton's definition of tragedy I always pointed out her comparison of Anna Karenina to Madame Bovary. Hamilton maintained that Emma was a small person who dies a pathetic death while Anna is a great person who dies tragically. For the first 600 pages of the book I didn't think Edith knew what she was talking about.
But then I got to the last 150 pages where Anna spends most of them contemplating suicide over, to put it rather simplistically, a love gone bad. Where Emma's taking of arsenic is a completely selfish escape from a situation of her own doing, Anna's is characterized by dozens of pages of introspection and increasingly bitter insights into the nature of the world. She walks on the train platform by a varied collection of humanity, each scene disgusting her further. Her walk is a lot like Yossarian's through Rome looking for Nately's whore, or Dante's descent into Hell. The scene builds and her final throwing herself under the train is a jolt this reader will never forget, not because it is pathetic and painful like Emma's suicide, but because she is too magnificent in her delusions to end thus. There is nothing in Franzen's novel, maybe in any novel, to compare.
Juxtaposed to that is what has become my all time favorite character--Levin. This wonderful man goes through the whole novel loving his work, being confused by the inane pomposity of Russian nobility, pursuing meaning while the rest only discuss philosophy as a kind of parlor game.
He wants to know the answer to those key questions: Who am I? Where did I come from? Is there a God? If not, why keep on going? The reader can see that Levin lives his life as if he knew the answers to the questions. Levin can't see that simple truth until the end. The answer to meaninglessness is DOING WHAT IS NECESSARY. He contemplates suicide, but he has his wife and his child and his in-laws, and his peasants, and god knows what else that he has to live for.
He kept passing the open windows.
We see Levin in the pages of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Catcher in the Rye, The Great Gatsby ("So we beat on . . . "), and in Wally in My Dinner With Andre.
Levin comes to this realization in a flash of insight, just like most of us do, but with a lot more poetry. And then, and this is what I most like about the book, as soon as he gets up from being in the field and looking at the dome of the sky, he reenters the real world with its pettiness and selfishness and joins in whole heartedly.
Where it usually takes me less than a week to read a novel, I have been in Anna Karenina for about two months. As an excuse, I will hasten to add that I have been mostly engrossed in political stuff in my liberal magazines and that, plus the headache I've been having since Thanksgiving, have slowed me down a bit.
Furthermore, let us face it. Tolstoy is tough sledding.
I have never been able to understand how anyone can start reading a book without compulsively reading it until it is done. Personally, I have a hard time remembering what has transpired if my last reading was more than a couple of days ago. My friend Bud only seems to read when he is on an airplane or by a swimming pool. The result is that it takes him a year to finish a piece of pulp fiction. No wonder he does not relish reading.
I've discovered that Tolstoy is different. Sometimes I went as much as a week between opening the book, but the plot was so clear and the characters so memorably drawn that I never once felt lost. But that is not what I want to talk about.
I started reading it defensively. Why, I wondered, does a book have to be a CLASSIC in order to be great? Why does the fact that Freedom is easy to read and impossible to put down make it more trivial than Anna Karenina, or War and Peace, or Brothers Karamazov? Why does, according to the reviewer mentioned above, Tolstoy reach tragic heights when Franzen's wonderful novel is just a romance?
Sure enough, as I was reading it I kept wondering if the reviewer had actually read Anna Karenina, or was he just spouting conventional wisdom? At first glance, the characters seem every bit as small compared to the "big picture" as any of the characters in Freedom. Whole chapters are devoted to meaningless parties and horse races and grouse hunts where characters busy themselves with the minutiae of social discourse and worrying if they are wearing the right clothes, or creating socially acceptable impressions. Just like Franzen's novel, a good deal of Anna Karenina is focused on the political scene in Russia in the middle to late 1800's. Some scenes are clearly satirical. Some are didactic. Some are pointless
When I taught Edith Hamilton's definition of tragedy I always pointed out her comparison of Anna Karenina to Madame Bovary. Hamilton maintained that Emma was a small person who dies a pathetic death while Anna is a great person who dies tragically. For the first 600 pages of the book I didn't think Edith knew what she was talking about.
But then I got to the last 150 pages where Anna spends most of them contemplating suicide over, to put it rather simplistically, a love gone bad. Where Emma's taking of arsenic is a completely selfish escape from a situation of her own doing, Anna's is characterized by dozens of pages of introspection and increasingly bitter insights into the nature of the world. She walks on the train platform by a varied collection of humanity, each scene disgusting her further. Her walk is a lot like Yossarian's through Rome looking for Nately's whore, or Dante's descent into Hell. The scene builds and her final throwing herself under the train is a jolt this reader will never forget, not because it is pathetic and painful like Emma's suicide, but because she is too magnificent in her delusions to end thus. There is nothing in Franzen's novel, maybe in any novel, to compare.
Juxtaposed to that is what has become my all time favorite character--Levin. This wonderful man goes through the whole novel loving his work, being confused by the inane pomposity of Russian nobility, pursuing meaning while the rest only discuss philosophy as a kind of parlor game.
He wants to know the answer to those key questions: Who am I? Where did I come from? Is there a God? If not, why keep on going? The reader can see that Levin lives his life as if he knew the answers to the questions. Levin can't see that simple truth until the end. The answer to meaninglessness is DOING WHAT IS NECESSARY. He contemplates suicide, but he has his wife and his child and his in-laws, and his peasants, and god knows what else that he has to live for.
"But Levin did not shoot himself, and did not hang himself; he went on living."
He kept passing the open windows.
We see Levin in the pages of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Catcher in the Rye, The Great Gatsby ("So we beat on . . . "), and in Wally in My Dinner With Andre.
Levin comes to this realization in a flash of insight, just like most of us do, but with a lot more poetry. And then, and this is what I most like about the book, as soon as he gets up from being in the field and looking at the dome of the sky, he reenters the real world with its pettiness and selfishness and joins in whole heartedly.
"I shall go in my same way, losing my temper with Ivan the coachman, falling into angry discussions, expressing my opinions tactlessly; there will be still the same wall between the holy of holies of my soul and other people, even my wife; I shall still go on scolding her for my own terror, and being remorseful for it; I shall still be as unable to understand with my reason why I pray, and I shall still go on praying; but my life now, my whole life apart from anything that can happen to me, every minute of it is no more meaningless, as it was before, but it has the positive meaning of goodness, which I have the power to put into it."
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