Author Archives: Peter Levine

Calvino’s free hyper-indirect discourse

I recently finished Italo Calvino’s If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler, in William Weaver’s translation. It’s a novel about trying to read a novel of that name by Italo Calvino–a difficult and even perilous task, since the book is constantly being mixed up with others, stolen, or fraudulantly exchanged. Ten of the chapters are the beginnings of novels that the protagonist (“you”) try to read, hoping that they are continuations of what you have read so far. Each is a parody of a particular type of literature and a genuinely suspenseful story that breaks off just when your interest is most aroused.

Calvino’s writing has an aspect that I have never seen before, although it could be viewed as a radical extension of “free indirect discourse.” That is the technique of describing something in the omniscient third person, but in such a way that it seems to take on the perspective and language of a character within the book. A famous example from Austen’s Emma:

She had ventured once alone to Randalls, but it was not pleasant; and a Harriet Smith, therefore, one whom she could summon at any time to a walk, would be a valuable addition to her privileges. But in every respect as she saw more of her, she approved of her, and was confirmed in all her kind designs.

Harriet certainly was not clever, but she had a sweet, docile, graceful disposition; was totally free from conceit; and only desiring to be guided by anyone she looked up to. Her early attachment to herself was very amiable; and her inclination for good company and power of appreciating what was elegant and clever, shewed that there was no want of taste, though strength of understanding must not be expected. Altogether she was quite convinced of Harriet Smith’s being exactly the young friend she wanted — exactly the something which her home required.

Literally, that is the narrator’s description of Harriet Smith mixed with some of Emma’s thoughts–but the two are inseparable. The whole narration is suffused with Emma’s voice. It is Emma, for example, who sees Harriet as “not clever.” Emma’s patronizing attitude is presented with delicious irony.

Calvino takes this technique a step further. He describes what books would be like if they told particular stories. He uses such descriptions of imaginary texts as a means of story-telling. Examples:

A fight scene from the chapter entitled “Outside the Town of Malbork (p. 39): “The page you’re reading should convey this violent contact of dull and painful blows, of fierce and lacerating responses; this bodiliness of using one’s own body against another body …” As you read about the description of a fight, you visualize the actual struggle–but through the eyes of a book that Calvino regards with irony.

From Calvino’s parody of Magical Realism entitled “Around and Empty Grave”: p. 225: “I pass through a series of places that ought to be more and more interior, whereas instead I find myself more and more outside; from one courtyard I move to another courtyard, as if in this palace all the doors served only for leaving and never for entering. The story should give the sense of disorientation in places that I am seeing for the first time but also places that have left in my memory not a recollection but a void.”

Calvino flagrantly violates the rule that writers should show and not tell. He tells us what the story is about and thereby narrates it.

back to high school

Around 1985, Eccles and Barber asked 10th graders in Michigan to identify themselves with one of the characters in the recent Hollywood movie, The Breakfast Club. All but five percent readily placed themselves in precisely one of the following categories: “jock,” “princess,” “brain,” “criminal,” or “basket case.” Each type of student spent most of his or her time with others of the same self-ascribed category. Students’ identities at 10th grade were strongly predictive of outcomes a decade later. The princesses attended college but drank. The criminals did drugs and dropped out. The brains were sober and successful in college. Those who participated in the performing arts did well in school but had higher rates of alcohol abuse and suicide attempts.

If we allow students to self-associate, given the norm in a modern American high school, they are likely to segregate into groups that reinforce social stratification. Students have too much choice about peer networks, but not enough obligation or opportunity to work with others unlike themselves. In various qualititative studies, including my own last year, students complain about being in a “bubble” (their word), isolated from other types of people.

If we try to build democratic communities in schools, through such concrete means as student governments, public performances, websites, or scholastic newspapers, these products will be produced by particular peer groups for their own friends. They will not benefit the student body as a whole.

This study is an argument for more radical school restructuring.

Sources: Jacquelynne S. Eccles and Bonnie L. Barber, “Student Council, Volunteering, Basketball, or Marching Band: What Kind of Extracurricular Involvement Matters,” Journal of Adolescent Research, vol. 14, no. 1 (January 1999), p. 31; Bonnie L. Barber, Jacquelynne S. Eccles, and Margaret R. Stone, “Whatever Happened to the Jock, the Brain, and the Princess? Young Adult Pathways Linked to Adolescent Activity Involvement and Social Identity,” Journal of Adolescent Research, vol. 16, no 5 (September 2001), pp. 429-455.

engagement in the Middle East, without government

We can expect a big debate between 2006 and 2008 about whether America should disengage from the Middle East or continue to intervene there. Disengagement would require cutting our use of foreign oil, reducing our military aid to Middle Eastern states, and avoiding both military and diplomatic entanglements. Continued intervention would mean some more thoughtful and effective combination of diplomacy and occasional military force.

If you’ll excuse the clich?, there is a Third Way. We could engage in the Middle East, but not through the federal government. We have deep experience now with informal diplomacy, with cultural exchanges through universities and other independent institutions, and with transnational social movements that can promote democracy without working through the state.

I think the fiasco of the current intervention in Iraq cannot be fully blamed on the Bush administration. It is a more systemic failure, and blame must be shared (in some proportion that I do not know) by the uniformed military, the press, the political opposition, and even American citizens in their relationship to politics. There are some general lessons here about the susceptibility of large bureaucratic institutions to massive failure, especially when they have vast resources and power and monopolize information. The argument for non-governmental politics seems stronger than ever.

[August 3: Coincidentally, the same topic is now under discussion at Crooked Timber.]

index construction

For a client, CIRCLE is preparing an index of American civic engagement that will aggregate the trends in more than 40 indicators over the past thirty years. Our various trends begin and end at different times, depending on the whims of survey designers and changes in actual behavior. Therefore, it wouldn’t work to build an index by averaging the indicators for each year. If an activity that happens to be common (such as wearing a political button or sticker) is suddenly included in the available surveys, then the whole index would jump up arbitrarily. Likewise, we couldn’t add measures of new and relatively rare forms of engagement, such as writing blogs, without arbitrarily lowering the index.

Therefore, I’m proposing that we measure the percentage-point change in each indicator compared to the baseline year in which it was introduced. For instance, watching the TV news enters the National Election Survey in 1984 at 72% and rises to 85% in 1986. I don’t include it at all in 1984, but count it as 13 points in 1986. The index is thus a weighted average difference in all the indicators compared to when they began. Adding blogging doesn’t lower the index, but as blogging becomes more popular, the growth tends to raise the index.

I don’t know if this is an original method–probably not. I also don’t know for sure if it’s a good idea. I think it has some advantages, especially for measuring a category (such as “civic engagement”) that is likely to evolve over time.

the Gospels on two hot-button issues

On Saturday, Laurie Goodstein wrote a story in the New York Times about a Minnesota megachurch pastor, Rev. Gregory A. Boyd, who has broken with the conservative movement. He is not the only evangelical in revolt against the GOP, and the political implications are interesting. But I was struck by something different in the article: a point of theology and biblical interpretation. According to Goodstein’s paraphrase, Rev. Boyd said that “Christians these days [are] constantly outraged about sex and perceived violations of their rights to display their faith in public. ‘Those are the two buttons to push if you want to get Christians to act,’ he said. ‘And those are the two buttons Jesus never pushed.'”

Indeed, I cannot think of an episode in which Jesus demands the right to display his faith in a public setting, nor a moment when he expresses outrage about sexual behavior. In fact, there are two Gospel passages in which he does quite the opposite.

Chapter 12 of Mark ends with Jesus teaching in the Temple (a public edifice devoted to religious ceremony). Four brief episodes within that chapter praise privacy or discreetness in matters of faith. First, some Pharisees ask Jesus whether it is permissable to pay taxes using a coin that bears a graven image of Caesar Augustus, who is portrayed blasphemously as a god. Jesus replies that a public expression contrary to his belief is of no consequence; what matters is his inward faith. “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”

Next, a scribe “discreetly” accepts Jesus’ interpretation of Moses’ Law. The scribe confesses to Jesus that the whole Law means this: “to love [God] with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and with all the soul, and with all the strength, and to love his neighbour as himself, is more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.” The scribe’s discretion–as well as his rejection of public ceremony–seems to please Jesus.

Then Jesus inveighs against those who make a show of their faith:

Beware of the scribes, which love to go in long clothing, and love salutations in the marketplaces, and the chief seats in the synagogues, and the uppermost rooms at feasts: which devour widows’ houses, and for a pretence make long prayers: these shall receive greater damnation.

And finally he singles out a woman who, I have always imagined, makes her modest contribution very discreetly, out of shame for her poverty:

And Jesus sat over against the treasury, and beheld how the people cast money into the treasury: and many that were rich cast in much. And there came a certain poor widow, and she threw in two mites, which make a farthing. And he called unto him his disciples, and saith unto them, Verily I say unto you, That this poor widow hath cast more in, than all they which have cast into the treasury: For all they did cast in of their abundance; but she of her want did cast in all that she had, even all her living.”

While Mark 12 is about public displays of faith (and therefore relevant to debates about prayer in school), the great text for understanding Jesus’ view of sexuality is John 8:2-11, the story of the “Woman Taken in Adultery.” It’s a rich and controversial text, and I have pasted my own interpretation below the fold. (This comes from my book-in-progress about Dante.)

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