Snoopy's unvarying opening line harkens back to 1830 when the English writer and politician novelist, Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton penned the now-cliched sentence to open his novel, Paul Clifford. Like the fairytale opening of "Once upon a time," this formula ended up copied by many others over the years influencing Snoopy in his style of writing much like generative AI is trained by the models of writing it ingests as its training.
In fact, it is now influencing the title of a collection of works that predate 1830. A Dark and Stormy Nightis the title of a collection of ghost stories told by Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and Mary Wollstonecraft, who would later become Mary Shelley.
It references what was in fact a possibly dark and stormy afternoon in the spring of 1816 when the group that had traveled to Geneva told ghost stories to passed the time while stuck inside. Mary's story was one that has taken on a life of its own, and the standard flat-headed, green-tinted image of the monster Victor Frankenstein created popularized by countless film adaptations is more familiar to people today than stanzas of Romantic poetry.
Two years after her oral telling, Mary Shelley published her novel under the title Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, bringing to light the downside of the Prometheus impulse that her husband celebrated in his epic poem, Prometheus Unbound.
Most people who have read the novel have not read the 1818 version. Mary Shelley revised the novel, which was published anew in an 1831 edition. You can read about the changes entailed here.
While the legend of the Frankenstein monster was was born in 1816 in Geneva, Mary Wollstonecraft herself was born in 1797 in London, Her parents were the feminist writer Mary Wollstonecraft, who died just 10 days after her daughter's birth, and William Godwin. Her birthday is August 30th, the date of this post.
While I may have heard of Buckminster (more commonly known as Bucky) Fuller in the distant past, what made me grow curious about him was a visit to a Long Island park named for his friend, the author, Christopher Morley. There are far larger and more impressive parks on Long Island, but the distinction this one has is that Morley's Knothole -- a small house in his yard he would escape to to write in peace and quiet -- has been relocated on the park grounds.
Failing to find the bathroom in the park
While anyone may build a shed of sorts in which to escape the hubbub at home, they are not likely to have it equipped with a Dymaxion bathroom. But as Morley was a close friend of the man who dreamt up the design, he got on for his Knothole. Curiosity about that drove me to visit the park to see this marvel of easy-cleaning engineering that dates back to 1936. Alas, you cannot see anything inside the Knothole, which is kept closed and is falling into a sad state of disrepair.
What it should have looked like is this:
source https://slideplayer.com/slide/4283236/
The bathroom would have been made out of metal in a very compact and efficient design that was meant to be very easy to clean. Fuller did plan to one day render it in plastic for greater comfort, but the ones he did get made were metal. The bathroom was supposed to be just one component of the highly efficient Dymaxion house that he was hoping would take off but never did.
Even Morley's Knothole follows very traditional-looking architecture with nothing that would make you expect it houses a revolutionary design. In contrast, the full Dymaxion home was meant to be modern all around, and I do mean round. See the vintage video that showcases it here:
Reading Fuller
With my curiosity piqued, I checked out several Bucky Fuller biographies from my library last year. But despite being a pretty fast and determined reader, I couldn't make it through them. But in August, my library got in a new bio, and this one I was able to read within the allotted two weeks for new books. It's Inventor of the Future: The Visionary Life of Buckminster Fuller.
If I were to give it a star rating, I'd probably give it 4/5. It's highly readable despite the geometric details entailed in describing Fuller's concepts and their applications that endure beyond his own lifetime (like the carbon formation that resembles a soccer ball that was named Buckminsterfullerene AKA Buckyballs in his honor).
However, I don't fully buy into the parallels that Nevala-Lee attempts to draw with modern day influential figures and Fuller. Not all people who may be described as visionary or innovative operate in the same way. Certainly, Fuller was never was a major commercial success and really did not have good business sense at all.
This account of Fuller may upset some people. Other descriptions of him focused on his creativity and presented him as a kind of magnanimous leader. But the take on his personality here is much darker. There are several account of fallouts with people who felt they were shortchanged on credit for concepts or who were cut out of Fuller's organization because he refused to cede control.
Worse than that are the glimpses into his more private life that shatter the romantic story of his marriage. He remained married for over 60 years and was not even parted from his wife in death.They shared a funeral and a grave. Yet he cheated on her repeatedly -- sometimes with women young enough to be his daughter or just barely of legal age. It seems he bought into a kind of myth he created of himself and associated these women with muse-like figures, linking them to particular discoveries, as he wrote in a certain account himself. But the marriage itself reflects some of the Long Island connections that the book brought to light.
Fuller and Long Island History
What struck me in particular is that Fuller was married at Rock Hall, a colonial house that has been a museum since the middle of the 20th century. But in the early part of that century, it was still being used as a home by the Hewlett family. Fuller's wife, Anne, was a Hewlett, and her wedding took place in that house. The Fullers even lived in Lawrence for some time and attended a church in Far Rockaway.* As someone who grew up in that area and who has visited Rock Hall a few times, I found it striking that such a famous person had such a strong connection to the place is not featured at the museum at all.
Fire Island lighthouse: photo by Ariella Brown
But there is yet another location on Long Island that is connected to the Fuller name. That is his great-aunt, Margaret Fuller. If you visit the Fire Island Lighthouse -- or its site -- you can find an account of the shipwreck that proved fatal to her and her young son when she was returning to the United States from abroad
Nevala-Lee does make much of the Margaret-Bucky connection, as they both had a strong sense of purpose and conviction that they were particularly endowed with abilities to use to guide the world. Bucky even took a nautical image to express that -- not of a lighthouse but of the small end on a ship's rudder that can determine its direction -- the trim tab. In fact that is what he had inscribed on his gravestone pictured below:
*One thing the author does get wrong is the name of the hospital in Far Rockaway. He mentions that Anne went to St. Joseph's in Far Rockaway, but the name of the hospital is St. John's. It's still there.
I'm now reading The Splendid and the Vile by Erik Larson. As I remember from reading Dead Wake and Devil in the White City, Larson's style infuses the feel of a novel on straight history (though he's not quite as much fun to read as the somewhat fictionalized Kopp Sisters series).
One thing that struck me early on (p. 75) was why Churchill so valued Frederick Lindemann AKA The Prof, as summed up in one brief observation:
The Prof delighted in coming up with ideas that turned conventional beliefs upside down. Once, as he walking with a colleague, Donald MacDougall, he saw a poster that admonished, "Stop that dripping tap," an exhortation meant to conserve water and thereby save the coal that fueled the water-distribution system. As he walked, the Prof began calculating the cost in energy, wood pulp, and shipping needed to produce the paper for the poster. "and Of course," MacDougall recalled, "Prof was right in his initial suspicions that it all added up to enormously more than was going to be saved by the posters' advice being followed."
Yet, those who put up the poster feel they are fulfilling a patriotic duty and would delight in castigating the waste of others. We see that over 75 years later, we repeat the same exact error. If anything, we've gotten worse at elevating virtue-signaling that actually takes up more resources than the ones that are saved by the recommended actions.
Seven years ago I posted It's a meaningful life about Viktor Frankl's famous book, Man's Search for Meaning. This year, another book based on selections of Frankl's lectures that were published in German in 1946 was first published in English: Yes To Life In Spite of Everything.
The book is very short, especially in light of the fact that about a third of the 127 pages is taken up by an introduction and supplementary notes at the end. The book, however, would be worth the purchase price for just one of the stories it includes on pp. 59-62. I'll summarize it here:
A young man who worked as a graphic designer for the advertising industry was struck with a inoperable form of cancer on his spine that induced paralysis in stages. As he cold no longer work at his profession to infuse meaning into his life, he found different outlets "in the passive experiences of his restricted situation."
While hospitalized, he devoted himself to reading the books he didn't have time for while working, listened to music, and engaged in "stimulating discussion with individual fellow patients." When his physical ability deteriorated further, though, he could no longer hold the book, wear headphones, or speak with ease.
So he found himself "again pushed to one side, rejected by fate, but now not only from the realm of value creation but also from that of experiential value." While it would be understandable for such a person to descend into despair, that was not the case for this man.
Frankl recollects that when he was the doctor on duty, he made his rounds at this hospital, and this man beckoned him over. Though it was difficult for him to speak, he made a last request that shows tremendous depths.
He told Frankl that he had overheard Professor G give orders that he should receive a morphine injection to ease the pain of his last hours when his death would be imminent. Anticipating that he would come to that point that very night, he requested that he be given the shot now, "so that the night nurse would not have to call me especially because of him and disturb me while I was sleeping."
Consider for a second how quick we are to disturb others when we want something because we're so used to putting our own needs ahead of others, and this man who had already suffered so much still had the strength to think ahead to express "this wish to consider others, literally in his last hour!"
Frankl adds his observation "that no terrific advertising graphics, not the best nor the most beautiful in the word... would have been an accomplishment equal to the simple human achievement that this man demonstrated with is behavior in those last hours of his life."
This is not an actual review of James E. Ryan's book Wait, What?: And Life's Other Essential Questions. You can read 70 or so of those on Amazon. It's just some of my impressions, the kind of things that my husband would likely dismiss as nitpicks. He's the one who told me to read the book after he finished himself today. I agree it is a good read, though I wouldn't consider it really life-changing.
Here's my most nitpicky nitpick: it's about a question marks. The book is set out as an exploration of 5 essential questions, and most are set as such like the question in the title. Among them is a paired set: "I wonder if .../ I wonder why..." He believes those are essential to remaining curious and engaged in life, and I do agree with the thought. I just don't agree with the punctuation that he opted for. He placed question marks after each of them, and I would punctuate them as statements because they are not really formulated as questions but as assertions about what one is thinking about.
There is a way to set the equivalent as a question, and that would be, "What would happen if ....?" or "Why does ...?" Those are expressions of curiosity that are about the things happening rather than how one feels about them -- wondering.
He brings up that kind of curiosity as resulting in positive benefits in recounting the story of finding his birth mother. It's a nice story, though I didn't really find it as surprising as he made it out to be. What actually did surprise me is that he could claim credit for his pursuing this out of curiosity when he admitted to being perfectly content not to find out until he was 47. I would think a really curious adopted child would have thought about finding his mother at a much younger age.
And now my final nitpick, which is not really a nitcpick but an understanding of reality that eludes the author. One of the key questions is "Could we just...?" He presents that as how his wife gradually won him over to considering having a fourth child. Now here's the thing: generally if a woman is the one who really wants the child-- barring fertility issues -- it will happen. The odds of his thwarting her ambitions in that area were slim to none. In that area the mother's wishes carry a lot more weight than the father's, so it was not really a question of if but merely of when he would agree with her. In retrospect his agreement extends to her observation that until then the family did not seem complete. But in reality, parents (who are not averse to being parents) would feel that way about any child, whether it was the first, second, third, fourth, fifth, or even twelfth, as the case may be.
In terms of really useful advice, I'd say the sections on asking people how they want to be helped and the insight he gained from being shown what to do by a girl named Cindy are worth noting.
Did you know that the brother of the man who killed Abraham Lincoln saved the president's son's life at a train station in NJ? That is one of the interesting points of history that you can pick up in the very readable book, Here Is Where: Discovering America's Great Forgotten History .
Really, you don't have to be a history buff to enjoy reading about Andrew Carroll's travels to the sites of historical significance.
A good part of Carroll's focus is on the historical figures who are largely forgotten. They include Irene Morgan and Claudette Colvin, African-American women who refused to give up their seats on the bus before Rosa Parks did.
However, not all historical people featured in the books would be considered forgotten, for he spends some time on names that are preserved in history books. For example, nearly everyone has heard of Alexander Fleming, though Carroll devotes quite a bit of time to describing how penicillin came to be mass-produced in the USA (secret ingredient, cantaloupe mold). An interesting note, though, is that the author's mother recollects meeting Fleming when he came to Long Island, and gives her own impressions of the man and his wife.
One of the things we learn from this is if you are quiet and unassuming, you likely will be largely forgotten by history -- even if you develop the vaccines that save millions of lives every year. That's the story of Maurice Hilleman. Other doctors' contributions and sometimes questionable methods are also featured in the book, which hops around the country to cover the spots associated with particular people, events, or artifacts.
After reading Carroll's account of boating around Hart Island and relaying what his guide told him about it, it's interesting to see that there is now Hart Island Project with the goal of making "the largest cemetery in the United State visible and accessible so that no on is omitted from history."
Launched in 2008, HERE IS WHERE is an all-volunteer initiative created by the Legacy Project to find and spotlight unmarked historic sites throughout the United States. Many of these forgotten places are where significant events occurred, and others are connected in some way to remarkable individuals—from the Native Americans, explorers, and pioneers who first set foot on this land to the pioneers, patriots, inventors, artists, and activists who transformed it.
The only thing missing in the book -- and the associated site, as well -- are pictures.Though I do like taking my information in through text, I kept expecting to see some photos because Carroll constantly refers to taking pictures along the way. So where are they? I figured perhaps it wasn't economical to work them into the book, but he, surely, could have posted some to the site. No, none in sight. If you don't intend to put in the pictures, don't keep talking about taking them. Still, the book is worth reading, much more to my taste than most books on history.
A few weeks ago, I visited the New York Historical Society's Armory Show exhibit. Though it opened in 2013 for the 100 year anniversary, you can still catch it until February 23, 2014 (and if you're a Bank of America credit card holder you can get in free, January 5 and February 2 courtesy of the Museums on Us program) There is an audio guide for the exhibit, but it is really difficult to take in all the details of the politics behind the show from that information. It became much clearer when I read Elizabeth Lunday's The Modern Art Invasion: Picasso, Duchamp, and the 1913 Armory Show That Scandalized America.The books clarifies the differences in various types of modern art and the reactions they aroused. One of the things I found striking was how responses spread in 1913, through poetry, of all things. Lunday explains (p.80) that it would have been the "Twitter" of the day. "Where today's individual tweet and caption photographs in response to popular events, in the 1910s they wrote poetry -- vast reams of it, on every subject from the weather to fashion, foreign wars to the suffrage movement." The number of rhymes devoted to the Armory Show made it the equivalent of the subject an internet "'meme'" today. The book includes a few examples of such rhymes. While the subject is the Armory Show, the book follows up on development in the modern art world throughout most of the 20th century and touches on major figures in American art whose fame came laer. One figure who currently looms large in the art world and did sell a painting through the show is Edward Hooper. But it wasn't the show that made him a success. He didn't sell another painting until another decade had passed. Lunday follows up on him briefly, as well as other artists whose names have became associated with modern art -- or the reactions against it. Related posts: http://uncommoncontent.blogspot.com/2013/11/masterpiece-marketing.html http://uncommoncontent.blogspot.com/2013/01/art-reflecting-life-reflecting-art.html
The crowd waiting to get in to the Frick on Sunday, November 17th
Today I visited the Frick Collection to see the special exhibit on view through January 19, 2014, Vermeer, Rembrandt, and Hals: Masterpieces of Dutch Painting from the Mauritshuis. (Of course, I also went into the rest of the museum, but as I've there several times before, the real draw for me, as it was for the many people waiting around the whole stretch between 70th and 71st and even round back onto 71st -- in the rain as pictured here.)
The visiting painting that is the unquestioned star of the special exhibit is "Girl with a Pearl Earring." Not only does it illustrate all the promotions for the exhibit, but it given pride of place -- the equivalent of a solo performance -- in the museum. It is the only painting hanging in the oval room. Its special position allows visitors enough room to cluster around it without blocking people's view.
The exhibition details tell a rags to riches story about the painting, both in terms of its restoration and in terms of its valuation. The audio guide, relayed that the star painting was sold for the equivalent of just $7, as relayed here:
The history of the acquisition of the Vermeer has by now become legendary. Des Tombe purchased Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring in 1881 at a sale at the Venduhuis der Notarissen in the Nobelstraat in The Hague for 2 guilders with a 30 cent premium. ...After Des Tombe’s death on 16 December 1902 (his wife had died the year before and their marriage had remained childless) it turned out that he had secretly bequeathed 12 paintings to the Mauritshuis, including Vermeer’s famous Girl with a Pearl Earring."4(from Quentin Buvelot, "COLLECTING HISTORY: ON DES TOMBE, DONOR OF VERMEER'S GIRL WITH A PEARL EARRING" in the Mauritshuis Bulletin, Vol. 17, no. 1, March 2004)
Why should a painting that originally sold for just $7 become such an attraction? The answer is simple. It is now Vermeer's best known painting, thanks to Tracey Chevalier's 1999 novel, which was the basis of a very successful 2003 movie. Now that's an interesting point in terms of marketing value. The Frick is well aware of the film's role in the painting's popularity and so is offering a showing of it on Monday evening, November 18th, with an exhibition viewing to begin at 5:30 and the film at 6.
Not to say that the painting is not worth of attention, but I'm not certain it would have drawn such a crowd if not for the attention cast on it by a bestselling book and well-received movie. It's certainly not the only painting by Vermeer to feature a woman in pearl earrings. One of the three Vermeers that the Frick owns is a later work of his, "Mistress and Maid" pictured here. But no one wrote a book to popularize the story that the painting seems to tell and then went on to dramatize the same in a film, despite the suggestiveness of the woman's expression at being handed a letter by her maid.
It's something to consider: commissioning a book that could turn into a popular film to cast the spotlight on a particular work of art.
Do you find happiness surrounded by the throngs of people and noise in a club?
Or do you find in silent contemplation of the beauty nature?
Happiness is not one-size-fits-all but a function of one's own subjectivity --whatever or whomever one loves. For some people that may be parties and rock concerts, while for others it may be reading a book on a beach and listening to a string quartet. Though one's choice of activity is more social on an objective scale, that does not mean the individual is experiencing a greater feeling of happiness.
That's because happiness can be found in quiet contentment just as much as it is in outward celebration.
Herein lies the problem of declaring who is the happiest of them all. As researchers rush in where angels fear to tread, psychologist Will Fleeson of Wake Forest University headed an often quoted 2010 study that declared extroverted behavior is correlated with happiness.
In Study 1, participants reported their extraversion and positive affect every 3 hr for 2 weeks. Each participant was happier when acting extraverted than when acting introverted. Study 2's diary methodology replicated the relationship for weekly variations in positive affect. Study 3's experimental methodology replicated the relationship when extraversion was manipulated within a fixed situation. Thus, the relationship between extraversion and positive affect, previously demonstrated between persons, also characterizes the internal, ongoing psychological functioning of individuals and is likely to be explained by something capable of rapid intraindividual variation. Furthermore, traits and states are at least somewhat isomorphic, and acting extraverted may increase well-being.
For his research, Fleeson drew on a three-component model of happiness, using just one of the three components: Positive affect. That's the happy other people can see and hear, and it is strongly related to extroversion. The second leg of the stool is life satisfaction, which is more cognitive than emotional: Even if you're not feeling great at the moment, you know your life is pretty good all around. (Introverts have a little bit less of that kind of happiness than extroverts. We think too much, right?)
The third component of happiness is absence of negative affect--not having anxiety, fear, anger, frustration. "And the opposite of that is feeling at peace, at ease," Fleeson explained.
At peace, at ease. Those also sound introvert-ish to me.
So one could argue that introvert happiness here is being described as a sort of negative space. Feeling peaceful is not positive affect, it is the lack of negative affect.....
As she points out, though, the peaceful, calm type of happy is the one that introverts normally prefer to what she describes as "one long Mountain Dew commercial." Even though they do sometimes want to socialize as much as the next person, extended extroverted behavior drains them of energy, which would make them not exactly happy -- even if they are keeping up a socially accepted smile..
Oh, and whether introverts pay a price for behaving like extroverts is research for another day. Fleeson didn't explore the energy cost for introverts behaving extroverted, although he personally understands the need to crawl into a dark room after a stretch of interaction. But he did say that when he had subjects sit at a table and assigned them to act either introverted or extroverted for ten minutes at a time, the subjects who got most exhausted by the task were extroverts who had to behave introverted.
Maybe extroversion is a force so strong that suppressing it is exhausting. Or maybe introversion generates energy of its own, so intense it wears extroverts out.
A note on the book, it does make some excellent observations about introverts, though as it is a short paperback, it is much less thorough than Susan Cain's book. I also found the short chapters too much like blog posts, which, as self-contained pieces sometimes overlap a bit with other chapters in the book -- though it's great for people who like to just read a couple of pages at a time.
Dembling refers in places to Laurie Helgoe's writing, which I reviewed, along with Cain's and another name in the field of inroversion in http://uncommoncontent.blogspot.com/2012/05/perspectives-on-introversion-this-is.html Interesting that all these books are written by women. While the other three all identify their husbands as extroverts, Dembling is not altogether clear about that; it sounds like he is also an introvert, though more extroverted than she is.
I usually remember quite a bit from books I've read even years later. Sometimes I may forget the title and start reading a book only to realize I have read it before once I get to a more distinctive section. Then I will only read it again if it really has something going for it. Classic works, on the other hand, I do remember reading and reread deliberately.
It gave me a strange feeling, though, when I realized that the book I read in under 4 hours was one I had read back in my teen years. I remembered absolutely nothing about the plot or even the characters. But I did remember the pearl necklace. In Anna and Her Daughters ( in which the good are rewarded as Wilde's Miss Prism asserts is the meaning of fiction) the narrator/heroine is given a very valuable pearl necklace to wear from the woman she works for. The woman explains that she had the wrong kind of skin for it, which caused the pearls to get discolored. Locking them up did not improve their conditions either. The young heroine agrees to wear them, and the pearls return to their original luster. The woman then tells her to keep them.
I read this 1958 book many decades after it was published, though quite a few years before Google, so I never looked into the question of curing sick pearls, as they are described in this book. Even with Google, I haven't been able to find much about it beyond an eHow piece that says dry conditions can cause pearls to turn yellow and that agrees with what the novel claims that pearls need to be worn to retain their luster. There is a comment on that article that gets rather scientific in describing what causes the discoloration and insisting that it can't be reversed:
There is no scientific evidence to back up the claim that wearing pearls will prevent them from turning yellow. Pearls turn yellow because they are made of an unstable substance called aragonite which due to the immutable laws of chemical science will eventually crystalize into calcite which is a more stable structure of calcium carbonate. Both substances are forms of calcium carbonate. Once this has happened the pearls turn yellow and nothing can reverse it. Oils in your skin cannot keep this from occurring, and there is no scientific evidence or even scientific conjecture to back up this idea. ''Drying out''from air tight storage might cause the nacre to peel but drying out does not hasten the process from aragonite to calcite which causes pearls to yellow. That process is hastened by moisture and heat.
The eHow articles that give tips on cleaning pearls also warn not to soak them because they will absorb the moisture and become soft. Sevenson's heroine, though, makes a special trip to the seaside to place the pearls in saltwater, as she has been told that will improve them. And the book that, in combination with her daily wearing, reverses the discoloration altogether.
On this reading, I realized that the author intends the pearls to function as a kind of symbol without having to make it explicit. It still strikes me, though, that the image of the sick pearls being cured by being worn as they should really stuck in my head for a couple of decades when nothing else in the book did.
Though I do tend to remember whodunit in mysteries, for other novels, concretely rendered images in books are much more memorable than plots.
I checked out The Uncommon Reader, a novella by Alan Bennett published in 2007 in part because the title echoed the title of this blog. If you like to read for plot, then this is not a book for you. There is not much action. However, it does have some nice observations on reading.
On pp. 21-22:
"briefing is not reading. In fact it is the antithesis of reading. Briefing is terse, factual and to the point. Reading is untidy, discursive and perpetually inviting. Briefing closes down a subject, reading opens it up."
On p. 34
"A book is a device to ignite the imagination."
Unlike the authors of the other two books,
Susan Cain is not a psychologist. She actually started out as a Wall Street
lawyer. Having recognized her own ability to negotiate based on introverted traits and
became a consultant and writer. Her book reflects some careful research and
interviews with some insight based on her own experience.
The pieces of the book may have functioned as
separate articles. She talks about quiet strength in heroic figures like Gandhi
and Rosa Parks – who partnered with the more extroverted Martin Luther King, Jr.
She runs through the problem for introverts
at school who are utterly silenced by the dynamics set into play by group divisions
and work places that that torture introverts
with open plans. She also looks at the contrast between Asian (quiet,
introverted) culture and American (louder, extroverted) culture and how those
caught between two worlds cope.
While Cain is generally very positive about
introvert traits, the book does include sections on faking it as an extrovert,
which she calls “self-monitoring.” It
becomes necessary for any introvert whose life’s passion includes the necessity
of interacting with groups of people, whether it is a professor who must
deliver lectures or an author who must promote her book.
The second book I read on the topic wasThe Introvert Advantage: How to Thrive in an Extrovert World byMarti Olsen
Laney(2002). I found this one seriously annoying at times. The fact
that the author insists on referring to introverts as “innies” made me want to take
Dorothy Parker’s advice about a certain novel and throw it with great force.
However, I refrained from doing so because it was a library book and I was
resolved to follow through on reading, for persistence is one of the great
introvert traits.
Laney’s book is just loaded with advice, much of which is not particular to introverts –
like pack sunscreen, drink water (add some lemon juice to pick yourself up) and
dress in layers to assure comfort. She justifies the inclusion of such by
saying that introverts tend to have sensitive skin and also may be more
sensitive to temperature changes with a tendency to be cold. Well, I do slather
on the sunscreen but not because of any introvert traits. Such practical but
somewhat irrelevant advice is a minor annoyance, as far as this book goes.
What is more problematic is the way she constructs an introvert. She
stresses that introverts are set in a “throttle-down” mode which makes it take
longer for them to process information and more stimulant-averse. That may be
true, but really I have not found that being an introvert makes me any slower
than other people. In fact, I move pretty quickly and efficiently.
The thing that most bothers me about Laney is that her book title is
completely misleading. The way
introverts come off, poor, delicate, slow creatures who are easily overwhelmed,
they really have no advantage. In fact, in order to survive they simply must
learn how to act and talk like an extrovert.
The lowest point for me in the book is when she offers suggestions to make
small talk that include gems like “Isn’t the food delicious?” and “Isn’t this a
lovely home?” Yup, that’s just what introverts despise – empty conversation
just to fill in the silence. If you have
to resort to such stratagems, you may want to consider Lincoln’s observation, “Better
to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.”
In contrast to Laney's approach, Laurie Helgoe’s book, IntrovertPower: Why Your Inner Life Is Your Hidden Strength (Sourcebooks 2008) is the ultimate introvert manifesto. It pretty much say, “We make up at
least half the world’s population; we have the right to be ourselves and not
conform to any other standard.” She spends quite a bit of time debunking the perception
that introverts make up only 1/3 of the world and so are overwhelmed by the
majority made up of extroverts. She points to flaws in statistics and identification
to make the case for over 50% of people qualifying as introverts. Cain does touch on the perception of numbers
but does not make the larger number central to her approach.
I admit I found this book a lot more fun to
read than Laney’s. It also flowed rather more organically than Cain’s. She does
touch on Japanese culture, as Cain did, but in a much more brief and
personalized way. The focus of the book nearly always comes back to Helgoe’s assertion
of being an unapologetic introvert. That is someone who does not buy into the
argument that she is missing out on the fun that extrovert have: “The Socially
Accessible introvert looks like an extrovert on the outside and sees
extroversion as a bar that he or she can never quite reach. These individuals
are often very successful in social arenas, but fault themselves for not having
fun.” That leads to feelings of “alienation
from self” which can result in depression (p 27).
Her positive spin on introvert traits really resonated with me, like the
definition on p. 7:
being an
introvert does not mean you’re antisocial, asocial, or socially inept. It does
mean that you are oriented to ideas…. It means that you prefer spacious
interactions with fewer people. And it means that, when you converse, you are
more interested in sharing ideas than in talking about people and what they’re
doing. In a conversation with someone sharing gossip, the introvert’s eyes
glaze over and his brow furrows as he tries to comprehend how this conversation
could interest anyone. It is also important to recognize
that it’s not just a matter of preference, but of survival: “For introverts, being ‘talked to death’ is very much like
being beaten on the head. … most of us feel drained of life energy. Talk can
hurt us, and protecting ourselves from harm is not rude” (133).
In contrast to Laney’s advice for making conversation in
social situations, Helgoe insists that you can be an introvert when interacting
at a party: “Be real. If you want
real, be real. You don’t have to keep small talk small. You can be polite
without selling out. You can acknowledge someone without grinning from ear to
ear. Let your depth be evident in your manner, and the people you meet will
actually meet you.” (p. 153)
Along the same lines, (on p. 127) she offers ways “to ‘go
deep’ with people you find through introvert channels:”
Don’t…
Introduce
topics that bore you – i.e, ‘Where do you work?’
Ask
questions that can be answered with ‘fine’ – i.e., ‘How are you?’
Do…
Ask
question you don’t know the answer to – i.e., ‘When did you first know you
wanted to teach?’
Ask
for personal definitions – i.e., ‘Help me understand. When you say the film was
‘dark’ what does that meant to you?’
Observe.
Notice how it’s going. Allow silence. Don’t try too hard.
Helgoe includes the biographical detail that
she came from a family of ten children but chose to have only two because of
her introverted nature. While very
devoted to her husband and children, she does not feel guilty about taking time
– even overnight retreats – for herself. Like Cain, she likes to coffee bars,
and will park herself in one for hours. But her preference is to travel out to
one not in her neighborhood. In the inverse of the assumption of the “Cheers”
theme song, sometimes she wants to go where no one knows her name. She wants to
be around people that she can choose to engage with – or not – with no
obligation to catch up and converse if she wishes to remain alone in the crows.
The three books touch on the pleasures and perils of mixed marriages, as
conflict is inevitable when an introvert is wedded to an extrovert. Cain offers a nice example of a compromise
that does not make either side give in (see the-marriage-of-opposites), while Laney says she and her husband take turns selecting vacation
destinations (I noticed that Amazon includes The Introvert and Extrovert in
Love: Making It Work When Opposites Attract by Marti Laney PsyD
MFT and Michael Laney (2007), though it has only 9 reviews)
All three introvert writers are women married
to extroverts. They also all happen to be mothers – with Cain and Helgoe both
identifying their children as boys, while Laney is already a grandmother. So they do have much in common, and the books
do, inevitably offer some overlap. However, each has her own take on what is
central to the introvert experience.
Cain’s is quiet, Laney’s seems to be a
slower pace, while Helgoe’s is escape from intrusion. Now, if I were to come up with my own take on
introversion, it would be autonomy – being allowed the space and the
independence to do what one wants without having to check with another.
Zappos.com is often presented as the paradigm of branding success. InDelivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose, Tony Hsieh, the company's CEO tells the story of the creation and evolution of the distinctive company culture alongside a bit of his own life story. Of course, the only reason everyone applauds Zappos is because it has turned out to be a success, but it was on the verge of failure many times. Hsieh sank a lot of his own money into keeping it going when he could not find other companies willing to invest in it. Hsieh does not focus on success as such but on attaining happiness.
Hsieh's book reminded me of two others. One is Amy Chua's Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, and the other is Robert Kiyosaki'sRich Dad, Poor Dad. Hsieh's account of his parents' expectations for him generally fits the model that Chua presents for Asian culture. The goal was to go to Harvard and then acquire a PhD. Along the way, the child is not only supposed to earn top grades but devote time daily to practicing an instrument Hsieh's out of the box thinking was at work there to foil his parents' musical aspirations by recording himself and replaying previous practice sessions rather than actually practicing during the designated time. He makes it sound like they never caught on.
Despite the stereotyped expectations, though, Hsieh's parents did allow him to indulge in his passions for business ventures, some of which failed instantly -- like a worm farm -- and some of which actually took off with great success -- like his mail order button business. In that way, though they may not have taught him the "Rich Dad" lessons, they did let him find out for himself, and that is the education he gains in college -- not from his classes but his various ventures, like the pizza business he sets up.
He does graduate from Harvard and accepts a job at Oracle that pays very well but leaves him very bored. On the side he and and a college friend who also works at Oracle set up what becomes LinkShare, a business that they, ultimately, sell for millions. Though his parents could not see the sense in leaving a secure position to start something new and risky, (which would be the "Poor Dad" kind of thinking) in his case the risk paid off very well. It is the same sort of approach that he carried over in starting other companies and in devoting himself and his personal assets to building up Zappos.
At the end of the book, Hsieh shifts his focus to discussing happiness. He says his goal in writing was "to contribute to a happiness movement to make the world a better place" (p. 239). Now that sounds utterly sappy, but the idea of fostering a certain type of culture is that you create a context in which such statements are acceptable. He also said that Zappos is about delivering happiness to the world" (p. 230). Hsieh believes that happiness can function as an "organizing principle" for businesses. While for an individual, passion and purpose combine to arrive at pleasure, in a business, those two goals combine for profit. There is something that is undoubtedly appealing in that model, but I do not buy it altogether. There are many businesses that are far more successful than Zappos who developed different models for their own culture of success.
There is also the question of happiness that Hsieh brings up: "Most people go their lives thinking, When I get ___, I will be happy, or When I achieve ___, I will be happy" (p. 231). There is the low level of happiness that fades as soon as the novelty of having that ___ fades, and one reverts back to a state of looking at what goal to set up next. Hsieh's own story shows that he feels happy while in pursuit of certain goals. When he finds the thrill is gone, he does look for new ventures. Though he has not admitted to getting disenchanted with Zappos, he has taken on a new challenge --trying to turn around a big part of Vegas, around the company headquarters. Perhaps he feels that fits into his stated goal of making the world a happier place in a more substantial way than wowing customers with service in delivering their shoes, accessories, and apparel.
The full title of Lise Eliot’s book really explains her intent: Pink Brain, Blue Brain: How Small Differences Grow Into TroublesomeGaps -- And What We Can Do About It. The way it is structured, she goes through the differences that are “hard-wired” or innate and how the difference set by nature tend to get exaggerated by the nurture effect. Each descriptive section is followed by a prescriptive list of things to do to counteract some of those stereotyped paths that can prove detrimental to both boys and girls.
In her introduction, Eliot asserts that the two sexes do not originate on different planets but on neighboring states: “’Men are from North Dakota, women are from South Dakota.’” The fact is that while “the mean male and female” ranks are not all that far apart, though “it’s only the extremes that make headlines.” Perhaps in the romantic spirit of vive la difference, most of what gets published about men and women highlights points of divergence beginning in childhood or even in the womb.
This book also ends up highlighting differences, though it does point out that some of them are completely due to parental and other response to a baby’s sex. Dress a baby in a pink outfit, and people will comment on how dainty, delicate, and pretty she is. Dress the child in blue, and you will hear altogether different types of comments. Experiments show people respond to the clothes cues rather than the child itself, for they do the same when the clothes are deliberately switched. Parents, of course, have the greatest influence on gender expectations, and already from the time a baby crawls, the boy is expected to be capable of greater challenges in slope than the girl (see pp. 66-67).
However, due to the fact that girls do mature somewhat faster, some parents feel their boys could be at a disadvantage in school with girls who have greater verbal development. Consequently, boys are more often selected by parents to start school later in the practice called redshirting.
In fact, school principals and teachers often promote redshirting for girls, as well, either by advising parents of children near the cut off dates to hold the child back for the sake of better competitive advantage or by forcing the effect on everyone by arbitrarily moving up the cut off date, say from December to mid-October or even September. Despite their claims of expertise, they could be setting people on the wrong track:
Whatever the motives, most research finds the practice of redshirting misguided. Although the older children in a class may have a modest advantage in kindergarten and the first few grades, their academic boost typically fades by later elementary school. There is also some evidence that children who were held back are more vulnerable to risk taking and other emotional and behavioral problems when they reach adolescence of their classmates.
Aside from that, it is possible that their on par performance that is due to being older than their classmates could conceal the fact that they have “true development delays or learning disabilities” that are better addressed earlier than later (144-145).
Eliot does take veer off a bit at times , as she seems to have it in for Leonard Sax. Sax advocates educating boys and girls in separate schools, a concept that she devotes quite a number of pages to in arguing against it. Though she admits that boys do prove more aggressive and more competitive than girls and that they avoid playing together through most of the elementary school years, she maintains that they should work together in school in the same classrooms. The way she dismisses the records of success for women who have gone to all female schools is by saying that they were atypical – the best and the brightest in their day. Of course, once you start analyzing results in that way, you can dismiss the findings of many studies, including many of the ones Eliot refers to in her own arguments.
My particular greater concern here would be that the book’s premise can be turned on its head by those who would characterize themselves as conservative or “traditional.” Wouldn’t they be able to say that what her prescriptions demand is for people to work against the pink princesses and dolls for girls and superhero and construction toys for boys that they would naturally go for? That is exactly the type of thinking that gave rise to the Lego line “for girl,” which I discussed in a blog post elsewhere. While I was reading Eliot’s descriptions of how girls play, it sounded to me like a corroboration of (should I say justification?) for Lego’s assessment that girls would not care to build unless they have dolls and accessories and feminine colors to work with.
That brings me to an even more fundamental question is something that Eliot merely touched on but didn’t really explore: the fact that the genders seem to have grown more polarized over the past few decades – just when you would think progress would have narrowed the gap. That is why people are so disappointed in seeing Lego tacitly characterize the standard sets as for boys. The pink bricks and “Friends” sets are supposed to be a godsend for girls who are assumed to otherwise never build once they outgrow the Duplo sets. Even things that were considered gender neutral now have to be labeled as either blue or pink. Based on the advertising and habits of children in the 1980s, people actually did not box boys and girls into such rigid categories as much then as they do now. I would really like to see when and why the road of girlhood started to curve back toward the 1950s .
The full title of Lise Eliot’s book really explains her intent: