BATHROOM READING

Posted on November 23, 2016 Updated on November 7, 2016

Whether soaking in the tub or sitting on the “throne,” many of us find time spent in the “little room” put to better use if we have something to read while we’re at it.  (I once heard—probably read—that if you spent a mere fifteen minutes a day reading, you could read twenty books a year!)

So—like so many others—I read in the bathroom.  But, not wanting to get involved with characters and their escapades in such short spurts of time, I read things that present a whole idea in a paragraph—or less.  Well, sometimes in 2 or 3 pages— but no more.  Things like those collected lists of Harper’s Indexes or a book discussing 2,000 things that might have merited only a footnote in longer treatises.  Magazines like Readers Digest and People make perfect bathroom reading.

For the last few weeks, I have been reading 100 Banned Books by Nicholas Karolides, et. al. (Checkmark Books, 1999).  By no means a complete list of banned books, it manages to present an overview of books outlawed over time from Ovid’s poetry and The Canterbury Tales to The Catcher in the Rye and To Kill a Mockingbird.  It would appear that, as soon as Guttenberg lifted the first works off his marvelous printing press, the thought police were out there trying to stifle his efforts.  Karolides and his collaborators have divided their selections into four categories of reasons for banning: political, religious, sexual or social.

For each title discussed, they present a summary of its content, its censorship history, and suggestions for further consideration.  Among the one hundred titles, you would immediately expect to find D. H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterly’s Lover and the anonymously written Fanny Hill of the Nineteenth Century.  And you do, but there are surprises too—such as Anne Frank’s diary and William Tyndale’s translation of The New Testament.  (Tyndale was burned at the stake.  In the Sixteenth Century, those thought police took their work very seriously.)

Most of those advocating censorship do so from an arrogant assumption that only a few people should be permitted to pass judgment on what the rest of us may read.  Of course their battleground of choice is the world of education—English classes in particular, from middle school right on up to university classrooms.  There is little consistency in the final decisions on whether given works remain in school curricula.

Personal note:  In my first year of teaching I ran smack dab into this issue.  Teaching American literature to 11^th graders, I gave students a two-page, single-spaced list of books from which to choose for individual book reports.  One parent—one!—called the principal to object vehemently to the inclusion of Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath.  I took exception, of course, but my principal suggested that the way to avoid a confrontation was to give students a list of authors, for most parents, often as not, would not recognize authors.  He was right.  But really—The Grapes of Wrath???

ALVIN TOFFLER’S “THE THIRD WAVE”

Posted on November 16, 2016 Updated on November 7, 2016

In the 1970s, Alvin Toffler wrote the best-selling book Future Shock.  He followed it up in the early 80s with The Third Wave which I finished re-reading a couple of weeks ago.  Thirty-five years later, the book holds up quite well. [I thought it could do with some examples and anecdotes to flesh out some of his ideas, but as is, the book is over 400 pages long.]  This time around, I found it quite interesting to see if his prognostications for the future were even beginning to play out.  I think the world is not moving as fast as Mr. Toffler had thought it would (though, to be honest, he did not set time frames).  I also found it extremely interesting—and apropos—in light of recent political rhetoric.

For Toffler, the First Wave occurred when humans became food producers rather than food gatherers.  A settled, agricultural way of life revolved around the home with family units producing and consuming such things as they needed to survive and make life easier and more comfortable.  Anything extra, they sold in local markets.  This was the prevailing way of life all over the world for not just centuries, but for millennia.  Political organization—such as it was—tended to be patriarchal (despite an occasional female leader) and structured along a well-defined hierarchy that was, nevertheless, rather remote from most of the people.

The Second Wave (Toffler always capitalizes these terms) came with the industrial revolution and brought with it tremendous upheavals in society as populations were forced to move from the country to the city for viable livelihoods.  Their jobs required more structured (restrictive?) ways of doing things to ensure that standards were met.  This, of course, brought changes in social institutions, especially in government and education, which were expected to serve the needs of the new structures not only for the workplace but for most social interactions.  This period lasted for a few hundred years and Toffler argued in the early 80s that we were in transition from that age to the next.  We still are, for such changes literally take generations to achieve.

The Third Wave arrived with incredible advances in technology—particularly those dealing with communication.  The book was written before the advent of Facebook and Twitter and all those other instruments that allow us to communicate with others (after a fashion) while never encountering them in person.  Third Wave people are not as tied to the workplace as in previous times—they can live farther and farther from actual job locations—hence, the flood of Americans who have escaped to the suburbs and beyond.  Toffler sees the attendant changes in lifestyle as requiring new thinking about the institutions of government and education that were once designed to further the causes of the Second Wave.  He also suggests that these changes bring a degree of anxiety that have not been known before, and that many people keep looking to a past that no longer exists for guidance in choosing leaders for this new age.

His most profound points (for me) have to do with how external aspects of life have influenced how we think and how we form communities, large and small—our individual and collective personalities, if you will.  I found the book just as interesting this time as I did way back when (though I would still argue with him about a few of his conclusions!).