GALVANIZE PRESS

Welcome to Galvanize Press!

I am excited to finally share the idea I’ve been quietly building on for the last three years.

 

We hear the word Tolerance a lot. It’s revered as the pinnacle of policies, the mark of a civilised society. But when I think about the verb, Tolerate, it brings negative connotations to mind. We merely tolerate things that we don’t particularly like.

 

Is this the best a society has to offer: to grit our teeth and endure those who hold different beliefs or propagate different ideas to us? It hardly seems like a lofty goal!

 

Yet, to quote Marilynne Robinson, “History could make a stone weep”. We stand in the dark shadow cast down the ages through wars and crusades that have divided humanity over worldviews. Perhaps Tolerance is a lofty goal.

 

Our politicians think so. But politicians are not cultural leaders, they are culture followers. It is those in the Arts who are cultural leaders, forging new ideas in creative ways that appeal to the masses. My book club has found that 90% of the novels we read have something to say about worldviews.

 

With this in mind, I have decided to interview authors about their books and their worldviews. There’s something for everyone; memoir, fiction, non-fiction, children’s books, horror, romance, mystery, crime, literary. I hope a few of the featured books might inspire you to read more than you normally would. If you come across a book you're interested in reading, you can order it with free shipping at the end of the post.

 

My aim is to encourage inquiry and break down the taboo of talking about worldviews. The best method I can think of to do this is Socrates’ approach to philosophy. He would go to the city square not to preach or lecture or instruct, but to ask questions and nurture discussion.

 

So I invite you and your friends to consider Galvanize Press the city square where you can come and listen to what others have to say, to join the discussion if you have a question or insight to share, or even better, to continue the discussion in person.

 

Maybe then we will come to see worldviews for what they really are: a set of presuppositions, of beliefs and doubts that help us to make sense of the joys and sorrows of life. In our pursuit to make sense of life humanity is united, even if in our conclusions we are divided.

 

Of course the risk of being open to what others have to say is that we may be forced to defend, amend, or abandon the worldview which we hold dear. And if my experiment should fail, I only hope the good people of the blogosphere will spare me the Hemlock Socrates was forced to drink.

 

It’s only fair that I should be first to answer the type of questions I will put to the willing authors.

 

1.  What was the impetus for writing your novel? I started writing as a way of working through the grief of my young brother-in-law being killed. The very first thing I wrote was a funeral scene. I eventually moved away from real-life events and started writing fiction, but the premise is the same: learning to live and laugh again after tragedy and patching up your ruptured worldview. (Said novel is still a work in progress).

 

 

2.  If you were the only person with 25 hours in your day, what would you do with your secret extra hour? Go for a walk on the beach if I felt energetic, or lay in the hammock with a good book.

 

3.  In terms of worldview, what do you believe? I believe that grace is the most beautiful, mysterious, necessary and difficult thing in the world. Beautiful: as anyone who has had grace extended to them can attest. Mysterious: because the ability to extend grace is often contrary to our natural instinct. Necessary: because at some point everyone in the world needs grace extended to them. Difficult: because although we might need grace, it is very humbling to receive. Also because I have the most difficulty mustering grace at precisely the moment it’s needed.

 

 4.  What do you doubt? That we will ever find a permanent solution to poverty, considering all the politics involved. But I live in hope and still believe in action.

 

5.  How is your current worldview different from the one you were brought up with? Only in the particulars.

 

6.   What’s in your “too hard” basket? Once you start substituting letters for numbers, maths just doesn’t make sense to me. I remember saying to the teacher, How can x have a value? It’s a letter! And he would say, That’s what you’ve got to work out: the value of x. Anything trickier than long division is beyond me. OK, anything trickier than multiplication. Thank goodness for calculators!

 

7.  Belinda’s Favourite:

Book: Gilead, by Marilynne Robinson

Film: The Painted Veil

Music: At the moment, Jason Mraz

Motto: Your weakness may be strong, but your strength is never weak.

Charity: Kiva because it aims to break the poverty cycle.

 

Each new author interview will be posted on a Monday morning and a discussion thread will be posted on the Galvanize Press facebook page. I hope you follow along and join in the journey.

 

Think. Write. Share.

Belinda G

Tuesdays With Morrie, by Mitch Albom

 

Publisher: Broadway

Pages: 224

Genre: Non-Fiction

 

"An elegantly simple story about a writer getting a second chance to discover life through the death of a friend."—Tampa Tribune

 

Last Thursday night was book club night--probably my favourite night of the month. I'd left it until the Sunday before to start reading Tuesdays With Morrie, as it's only a small book and I wanted it fresh in my mind for our discussion.

I'd heard about the book since its publication in 1997. I knew it had been made into a movie and a stage play. It was on my to-read-list, along with a hundred other books. So I was thrilled when Julia chose it.

The book is essentially an intimate philosophy class given by a dying lecturer, Morrie Schwartz, to his past student, Mitch Albom. Together, they generously allow the reader the rare privilege of sitting in to glean of the wisdom Morrie imparts. Reading it in one sitting added to the intimacy, for me. I felt I was almost a fly on the wall during their weekly chats, riding their emotions in real time.

The first shock for Mitch was learning on a late night chat show that his lecturer from sixteen years ago was dying; the lecturer he had bought an expensive parting gift for. The one he had promised to keep in touch with. His favourite lecturer. But Mitch had spent the years building momentum in his career as a sports journalist and they had lost touch.

Yet the first shock for the reader is that Morrie is pleased for the protracted death ahead of him, courtesy of Lou Gehrig's disease. We're forced to wonder who, in their right mind, would be pleased to have a degenerative disease that will rob them of bodily control and leave them mentally intact?

But when we discover the devastation Morrie felt at the sudden, distant deaths of his parents when he was young, it makes sense that he considers it a blessing to be able to love and be loved, to have an intimate death in which nothing is left unsaid.

Morrie coins aphorisms along his journey, summing up his thoughts on a given matter, or his observations of others' thoughts. The line we spent the most time discussing is, "Everyone knows they're going to die, but no one believes it. If we did, we would do things differently."

One of us said she never gives death or dying a thought in the busyness of life with young children.  Another admitted to thinking about death often, for the very same reason as Morrie--that by learning out how to die, you learn how to live.

And that's the legacy of this little book: many people say their lives have been changed by it. In the front of my copy there are two pages of testimonies to that fact. For me, it was a watering hole to rest at for an evening. It helped germinate seeds in my mind on how we all question what we believe when faced with death. For our book club, it was a moment to think about the big questions of life and to share our thoughts, fears and reflections with one another.

It's refreshing to read a non-fiction book between all the novels. Because you might just encounter a real person with such insight, clarity and sober judgment that you would deem as too unbelievable a character in fiction.

 

The Lemon Tree: An Arab, A Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East, by Sandy Tolan

Publisher:  Bloomsbury USA (2007),

Paperback, 384 pages

 

Book Review by Danielle T

When I think of home, I feel happy and content.  I do not feel an intense sadness or longing, or an intense feeling that my current home is not my real home.  My ability to live quietly in the 'burbs has never been challenged by a government, an army or a liberation movement.  I read this book, a true story, and remembered how privileged I am.

 

This book tells the story of two people and their connection to one house in Ramla, in modern day Israel.  As we follow the parallel stories of Bashir and Dalia, we see developments in Israel through two perspectives: that of the Palestinian refugee, and that of the Israeli settler. 

 

Bashir's father built a house in Ramla for his wife and young  family.  His extended family had been an important part of the Ramla community for centuries.  Bashir was six years old when Israeli troops forced his family to leave their house, and their town, in 1948.  His family joined many other Palestinian refugees in Ramallah, on the West Bank.  The lemon tree that Bashir’s father had planted in the back garden, its scent and its promise, becomes a painful memory for Bashir’s family, a symbol of the life they were forced to leave.

 

Dalia's family are Bulgarian Jews.  During World War Two, the Jews in Bulgaria received an eleventh hour reprieve from an order to deport them to Treblinka.  The reprieve was miraculous and exceptional:  it came about through ordinary people petitioning the government, and the willingness of the Bulgarian Orthodox Priest to speak up against the treatment of the Jewish people.

 

Dalia is a baby when her family leave Europe after the war to come to Israel, seeking a safe haven.  They find this safe haven in an attractive "abandoned" Arab house in Ramla. Dalia sees the horrible imprint of the Holocaust in the lives around her.  She is a university student at the time of the 1967 six day war, and responds to the Israeli victory against the Arabs with joy and with wonder.  She is also a bit perplexed : why did God decide to save the Jews from annihilation this time?

 

Bashir and his family are devasted at the defeat of the Arab forces in 1967.  He becomes part of a Palestinian movement to "liberate" all of old Palestine and guarantee the right of return of Palestinian families to their homes.  He is jailed many times over the years for alleged links to terrorist activities, including a bombing in a Jerusalem supermarket. 

 

In 1967 many Palestinian Arabs are able, for the first time, to travel from the West Bank into Israel to visit their old homes.  Bashir travels to Ramla with this hope, not knowing who will be living in his family's old house, and not knowing whether they will welcome him in for a visit.

 

After walking in circles in the heat, Bashir realised that he had found the house. He heard a voice from somewhere deep inside himself: This is your home.

 

When Bashir knocks at his old door Dalia is home alone.  She is not certain whether to open the door to the stranger, and then not sure whether to allow him into the house when he explains the reason for his visit.  But Dalia’s decision to show Bashir through the house opens up the possibility of friendship between her and Bashir, and between their families.  This friendship is remarkable: Bashir and Dalia cultivate it even though they each become aware that if their worldviews were to be fully unwrapped, they would face each other as enemies. 

 

Later, Dalia visits Bashir and his family in Ramallah.  The hospitality shown to Dalia  is overwhelming.  During the visit Bashir reveals his belief that only Jews who arrived in Israel before 1917 have a right to stay in the country.  Dalia is unnerved.

 

What am I doing here? she thought.  What is the point of continuing this conversation? 

 

Still, she had noticed something: Bashir had never repeated the threats of the Palestinian nationalists to one day take all of Palestine by force.  He had never said, We will take your house from you- and Dalia had avoided asking him his intentions or his political affiliations.  Each had chosen to reside within the contradiction: They were enemies, and they were  friends.  Therefore, Dalia believed, they had reason to keep on talking; the conversation itself was worth protecting.

 

There is a lot of history in this book.  This history highlights how complex the conflict in Israel is, and how difficult (and ongoing) will be the struggle to achieve peace. It also makes you realise that many many family stories are woven through the big political picture. The stamp of history on each family, and on each person, is very individual.   The way in which each family, and each person, responds to their situation is also very individual.

 

Many years after their first encounter, Bashir and Dalia cooperate to create Open House, a preschool for Palestinian children.  This preschool is run out of the house in Ramla.    Bashir and Dalia's story is full of grace.  It shows how a person can extend amazing grace to another person and their family through the simple (but not always easy) gift of conversation and hospitality.  And it then shows how this generosity and perseverance can spill over and benefit a community.  It shows a small light of hope, against a very bleak political backdrop.  This book is very inspiring, and very sad.

Betsy Talbot, author of STRIP OFF YOUR FEAR: Slip into something more Confident

 

Publisher: CreateSpace

Pages: 210

Genre: Non-Fiction

 

"Reading Betsy's work makes you feel like you're chatting with a great friend; a friend who inspires you with her wisdom and grace and kicks you in the behind when you try to make excuses for not being all you deserve to be." Alison, Amazon reader review

 

I just spent a few days away on an adventure camp with 103 eleven and twelve year olds. Some of the activities were scary and there was always someone too scared to join in. But the aim of the camp was to encourage the kids to work together at overcoming their fears. One of the darling girls sobbed her heart out at the prospect of crawling through underground tunnels that were broken and disjointed (a claustraphobe from way back, I empathised). It took a good five minutes for her to calm down and a whole lot of encouragement from her team before she would attempt the descent. At the end of camp I asked her what her favourite activity had been. Can you guess? The tunnels! The camp staff said the sense of personal achievement and satisfaction kids felt after facing their greatest fear always made the scariest activity their favourite.

Watching kids face their fears and come out beaming with satisfaction made me want to interview Betsy Talbot about her new release: Strip Off Your Fear. Betsy considers herself a recovering Good Girl, having lived an increasingly authentic and confident life until her decision in 2008 to sell everything she owned and travel the world with her husband, Warren. They blog about their adventures at marriedwithluggage.com.

Betsy wrote Strip Off Your Fear  to help women live a better quality of life individually and as a whole, after the murder of an old high school friend by her ex-husband. That tragedy convinced Betsy that, "We can no longer be silent about what is important to us".

 

1. What was your idea for writing Strip off your Fear?

For years I've had women ask me how I had the courage to go against the grain to get what I wanted, and in the back of my mind I contemplated writing a book on fear and confidence. I even started writing a way-too-generic book on fear. But it wasn't until I saw women's rights being taken away with the assumption we wouldn't even protest that I realized how much personal self-confidence and speaking up was needed in our world. If we can't speak up for ourselves in our own homes and jobs, how will we preserve our rights in society as a whole?

 

2. From your extensive travels, have you found that humanity generally shares the same fears, or do you think fear is contextual to our particular culture and environment?

We all share the same basic fears and concerns: we want to be safe, healthy, sheltered, and have education and opportunity for our children, and we fear things that would take those away. People are far more alike in the world than they are different.

But environment and culture do place an important filter on these fears. More than a few people have told me they would be scared to travel in the USA, my home country, for lack of affordable healthcare options and the high incidence of gun violence. People from my country would probably be surprised to know this since it is their everyday reality.

In Thailand transgendered people are an accepted part of the culture and have a place in society. I think it has to do with the Buddhist concept of reincarnation and the thought that sometimes a female being is inserted into a male body. Those same people would face significant fears of physical violence and discrimination in other cultures who do not have that same belief system.

Sadly, women and girls all over the world – gay and straight – still modify their behavior, routines, and clothing in certain situations to avoid attention and the potential for violence, though it may manifest itself in different ways based on the culture. We are not able to walk through this world with the same physical comfort level as men – yet.

 

3. What are the fears that you have overcome on your life journey?

How much space do I have? Seriously, my list of fears was and is long, but the difference is that I'm no longer paralyzed by them. Having fear is a gift because it signals we are at the border of our comfort zone. A small push will give you a bigger boundary to live in, and regular practice "bumping out the walls" will give you a life that is seemingly without restriction. 

Some of my bigger fears are around commitment, dependence, and trust. There is nothing that will shake those fears from the tree like quitting your job, selling everything and taking off into the unknown with another person, living together 24/7 and negotiating dozens of daily decisions in a different country. Since my husband and I left the US in 2010 with nothing but our backpacks and each other, I've become much more comfortable with interdependence.

Another fear I had in my 20s and early 30s was worrying what other people would think. This hasn't entirely gone away, but the more I've lived my life on my own terms the less this fear crops up. Practice makes perfect.

 

4. Do you have fears you're still working on overcoming?

I still have an incredible fear of heights, and I continually expose myself in an attempt to dilute the fear. I tell myself it is okay to be scared, but not okay to stop living because of it. So I regularly hike in the mountains, cross rickety bridges over canyons, and even take the occasional gondola ride. 

My goal is not to erase all my fears but to acknowledge them and work through the ones that are keeping me from experiencing a full life. Fear is a good and healthy thing when you keep it in check, a monster with paralyzing powers when you don't.  

 

5. What has been the highlight experience (so far) in your world travels?

My favorite moment so far was when we were crossing the Atlantic by ship from the tip of Argentina to England. We were the only passengers on a repositioning cruise, and we had the run of the ship. After dinner we would go up to the top deck, where the officer on duty would turn out the lights so we could lay on the deck and see the stars without any light pollution. You've never seen such a clear sky and profusion of stars as from the middle of the ocean. It was magical and romantic and awe-inspiring. I felt very lucky to see such a thing in our crowded world.

 

6. Do you think the religious or philosophical frameworks through which we view the world are an attempt to assuage our fears? 

 Religion and philosophy are attempts to explain what we don't know, and the unknown is often our biggest fear. Not only do religions and philosophical schools of thought provide answers, but they also provide a group of believers with which to bond. There is safety in numbers.

 From my experience, religion tends to fan the flames of fear far more than it soothes, and I think that's the point. When you don't have logic or facts on your side, you have to rely on other tactics to prove your points. Fear is an effective one.

 

7. In terms of worldview, what do you believe?

I believe in basic human rights and equality for everyone, the freedom to pursue any kind of lifestyle as long as it doesn't infringe upon the rights of others, and that education and learning to work together are key to our long-term survival as a species and a planet.

 I do not believe might makes right, there is only way of living or being, or there is one ruler watching over us all. We are our own rulers, and we are not always doing such a great job of it.

 In terms of religious affiliation, I have none. I am an atheist. I believe we are all capable of making our lives better or worse on our own.

 

8. How is the worldview you currently hold different to the one in which you were raised?

My worldview is much bigger and more tolerant than the one in which I was raised. I see far more shades of gray than black and white, and I think this comes from regular exposure to different ideas and cultures. 

 

9. What adventures have you got planned for the rest of this year?

We are currently on an 18,000-km overland journey from Thailand to Portugal. It is an experiment in "just in time" decision-making, only focusing on the next step ahead of us in reaching our overall goal and not fixating on future plans or problems. We are making it up as we go and documenting it on our Married with Luggage website for our readers. We are currently in China and progressing very slowly with our Mandarin but having a great time.

 

10. Betsy's Favourites: (Did I not tell you earlier I have commitment issues?)

Book: Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese 

Film: The Matrix (My inner geek is flying here, but you cannot deny what it teaches about following your own path.)

Music: Pink

Motto: Everything you want is on the other side of fear.

Charity: Kiva.org for their fantastic work in microfinance around the world.

 

It was Franklin D Roosevelt, in his inaugural address, who said, "the only thing we have to fear, is fear itself." But in Strip Off Your Fear Betsy shows us that we don't even have to fear that!

 

Think. Write. Share.

 

Belinda G

Available at Amazon

David Owen, author of THE CONUNDRUM

   

Publisher: Riverhead Books

 Pages: 280

Genre: Non-Fiction

 

“Very few pieces of writing are capable of changing the way you think about the world. The Conundrum is one of them. And unlike many other such books, but like everything else David Owen has written, it is clear, funny, graceful, and concise.”

James Fallows, National Book Award–winning author of Postcards from Tomorrow’s Square

 

You wouldn’t expect one of The Fifty Funniest American Writers to write a book about one of the most serious subjects of our time. Nor would you expect someone who went undercover as a high school student and wrote an exposé on the SAT exams to also write prolifically on the subject of Golf. But David Owen is not a writer easily pigeon-holed. His interests are as broad as they are deep. In his latest book, The Conundrum, Owen challenges our thinking on what it means to be green, saying our efforts to improve efficiency and increase sustainable development only exacerbate the problems they are meant to solve.

Owen has been a staff writer for The New Yorker since 1991. Before joining The New Yorker, he was a contributing editor at The Atlantic Monthly and, prior to that, a senior writer at Harper’s. He is also a contributing editor at Golf Digest. He is the author of more than a dozen books. He lives in Connecticut with his wife, who is also a writer and they have two adult children, also writers.

I’m thankful for the time he gave to explain the current environmental conundrum we face.

 

1.  It has taken a decade for scientists to convince the public of the dangers of global warming and to warn of the radical changes necessary for a sustainable future. In Australia, some politicians still deny the reality of Global Warming and the need to limit carbon emissions. What would you say to them?

Scientists and other have been warning about global warming for more than a decade, actually. Yet in recent years the percentage of Americans who view climate change as a political priority has actually fallen—not to the bottom of the list, but close. Australians have generally been more forward-thinking on this issue, but in some ways their concern is an economic luxury. The Australian economy is in decent shape and the U.S. economy is not, and Australians have financed their environmental concern in part by doing things like selling huge quantities of Australian coal to China—where, needless to say, the Chinese don’t put it back in the ground. I don’t know how to explain the apathy of American voters. It’s certainly not a shortage of unsettling facts. My suspicion is that a growing number of intelligent people have thought it over, at least subconsciously, and decided that the potential global gains aren’t worth the certain personal sacrifices. If that’s the case, more warnings won’t accomplish anything positive.

 

2. I know nothing of science and have to trust what I'm told about the environment--how we have damaged it and how to limit our damage. An introduction for your book, The Conundrum, says, "Everything you've been told about living green is wrong." How can the average citizen, like me, know what information to trust for a green, sustainable future?

You shouldn’t necessarily trust me, either, of course. But I think we should all be generally suspicious, especially of approaches that seem easy or that consist primarily of substituting one product for another. It’s easy to look busy on a long list of environmental issues; it’s much harder to have an unambiguously positive impact. The measures that even environmentally enlightened Americans and Australians favor tend to be either ones that are cost-free and easy to implement (more recycling, different shopping bags) or that seem like lifestyle upgrades (a new car, a remodeled kitchen, better-tasting tomatoes). A good test of any activity or product that’s described as sustainable is to multiply it by 9 or 10 billion (the expected population of the world by midcentury) and see if it still seems green. This is not an easy test to pass.

 

3. Could you briefly explain how our efforts towards efficiency have exacerbated the problems they aim to solve?

It seems obvious that redesigning a machine to make it use less energy to perform the same amount of work should cause energy consumption to go down. In the long run, though, at the macroeconomic level, it has the opposite effect. Enthusiasts tend to talk about efficiency as though it were something we’d just invented—a promising new tool for addressing environmental problems. But it’s actually something we’ve been doing, quite successfully, ever since our species moved out of caves. Steady increases in efficiencies of all kinds have made us immeasurably wealthier, healthier, and more numerous, among other extraordinary benefits, but they have also created the environmental problems we’re wrestling with now. The main part of the Industrial Revolution was inaugurated by an increase in energy efficiency: James Watt’s invention of an improved steam engine. That technological breakthrough did not, in the long run (or even in the short run) cause overall energy consumption to fall. On the contrary. The problem with efficiency gains, from an environmental point of view, is that we reinvest them in additional consumption. As we get better at making things, we make more things. Worldwide, energy consumption is expected to at least double by mid-century. It’s growing faster than population, and it’s growing in every income category.

If total energy consumption is constrained in some way—by taxes, by legal caps, by rationing—then efficiency gains can enable people to live better without increasing their overall energy consumption. That’s what happens when the price of oil rises, or when economies implode. But we have no history of intentionally imposing limits like that—certainly not on a global scale.

 

4. What changes can the average family make to their routines to make the biggest positive impact on the environment?

Individual acts are insufficient—and if they’re guided by conventional thinking they’re often counterproductive. We learned in grade school that every little bit counts—every act of kindness, every penny saved, every vote cast, every beverage can retrieved from the trash. But, in truth, plausible solutions to the world’s present difficulties are measured only in billions and trillions. The British physicist David J. C. MacKay has written, “The mantra ‘Little changes can make a big difference’ is bunkum when applied to climate change and power.” The only relevant changes, he writes, are truly big ones. Those are the kind even caring individuals tend not to like. The real sacrifice required of each of us is to demand and support change by all. I have no idea how to do that. The vast majority of people will undoubtedly continue to act in accordance with whatever they believe to be their personal economic interest. So I guess the first responsibility for a concerned individual would be to demand public policies that change the economic incentives, almost all of which currently encourage ever-increasing consumption.

We don’t usually think of it this way, but the fundamental question is not “Are we willing to invest in renewable energy?” The fundamental question is “Are we, as a species, willing to leave some very large fraction of the world’s remaining fossil fuels in the ground forever?”  The first question is easier to say yes to than the second one is. In fact, I would guess that, for the vast majority of humans, the honest answer to the second question is probably no.

 

5. If people heed the message of your book, what do you expect as the best case scenario for the future of our planet? 6. If we don't heed the warnings and make the necessary changes now, what do you fear as the worst case scenario for our planet?

Nobody has ever been much good at predicting the future, except by accident. I guess my hope would be that we find ways to work together, globally, to at least ameliorate the worst impacts of climate change—which will fall disproportionately on the world’s poorest people.  I guess I could say that I’m cautiously optimistic about the chances that, in the future, we will deal with such issues no more disastrously than we deal with them today.

Here’s a thought problem: Imagine that the world, tomorrow, reaches a consensus on energy and climate and rapidly does whatever needs to be done to slash global consumption of fossil fuels and hold atmospheric greenhouse gases at their current level. Imagine, further, that those measures are immediately effective and that average global temperatures stabilize, glaciers stop melting, and sea level remains where it is. Such a worldwide feat, however accomplished, would necessarily involve huge, permanent reductions in consumption—but imagine, as well, that those sacrifices are willingly made and are distributed equitably, so that the largest burdens fall not on the poorest but on those who, historically, have gained the most from human profligacy.

Now imagine what might come next. How likely would the 9 or 10 billion human residents of the world be, in the absence of any signs of worsening climate stress, to permanently endure, decade after decade, the continuing sacrifices required to maintain the new status quo—the halted growth, the forgone consumption, the reduced mobility, the population control, the willing abandonment of vast known reserves of fossil fuels?

 

7. In terms of worldview, what do you believe?

The more I’ve traveled, the more I’ve seen of other countries, the harder I’ve found it to believe that the world could ever be capable of united long-term action on almost any issue. If a life-annihilating asteroid were speeding toward the earth and the only possible way to prevent global extinction were to work together to find a solution, I think we would set aside personal, ideological, ethnic, religious, and national differences and find a solution. But climate, energy, and environmental degradation are much harder to deal with cooperatively, because the specific dangers are less obvious, less certain, and less evenly distributed among populations, and because the likely effectiveness of possible solutions is hard to assess. We’re better at dealing with acute problems than with chronic ones, both individually and collectively.

 

8. What do you doubt?

Conventional wisdom. Taking the other side of the easy bet is usually pretty safe, in almost any field.

 

9. What's in your 'too hard' basket?

 At the moment, preventing myself from getting older.

 

10. David's Favourite

Book: There are too many for me to pick one, but a relevant book I’ve especially enjoyed recently is “Why We Get Fat,” by Gary Taubes. It’s not a diet book—although if you read it you’ll learn how to lose weight and keep it off. It’s a devastating examination of decades of self-deception and sloppy thinking by people who ought to know better, including scientists.

Motto: Environmental problems innovate, too—and, usually, they have better funding.

 

I've included a promotional video for The Conondrum at the end of the post, to give you a glimpse into the issues it raises. Let's not throw our hands in the air in despair, but keep educating and innovating and sharing information that will help us all live more responsibly.

 

Think. Write. Share.

 

Belinda G

 

 

John Dickson, author of HUMILITAS

 

Publisher: Zondervan

Pages: 208

Genre: Non-Fiction 

 

"Dickson argues that humility is generative, a powerful key to learning and growth. Pride is the engine of mediocrity because the proud think they have “arrived” and have nothing left to learn..." Dr Bret L. Simmons, Positive Organizational Behavior

 

Speaker, writer, singer, historian and Director are a few of the titles you can pin on Dr John Dickson (PhD). He is a Senior Research Fellow of the Department of Ancient History at Australia’s Macquarie University and a Lecturer on the Historical Jesus for Sydney University’s Department of Jewish Studies and serves as a parish priest. He lives in Sydney with his wife and three children.

Dickson has authored a dozen books and presented two major historical documentaries for commercial television, The Christ Files and Life of Jesus.  His latest book, Humilitas, examines the virtue of humility; its historical roots and the fact that it is the distinguishing feature of many great historical figures.

I was keen to understand the humility paradox; that we exalt the humble and like to see the proud humbled, sometimes to the point of humiliation.

 

1. What was your impetus for writing Humilitas?

Ten years ago I was involved in a post-doctoral project at Macquarie University exploring the origins of humility. I wasn’t particularly humble but the study covered my specialty and I was invited to play a part. My friends found it funny. My best friend quipped, “At least you have the objective distance from that subject”. Over the last decade I’ve just noticed that many business and leadership discussions have a place for humility in leadership, so I started to think about how the historical perspective on all this might encourage contemporary conversation about humility.

 

2. What do you hope to achieve by its publication?

I could say I want what every author wants—to become rich and famous—but that’s a little incongruous for this book! Basically, I want to provoke leaders to think about virtue in leadership. All leadership is, at heart, about relationships. When the leader is trusted or loved, not just feared and obeyed, leadership is obviously more productive. That’s where humility comes in. The person who is humble, rightly defined, will foster relationships better than the person who is arrogant. I think military leaders, soccer coaches, educators, CEOs and mums and dads all know that when you can move people by force of character, rather than structural authority, that is true leadership. I hope my book inspires more reflection on these ideas.

 

3. A few social commentators have coined a new trend, 'the humble brag'. It has risen through social media and the tendency to want to promote ourselves, without seeming arrogant. It's where someone posts a status or tweet that appears self-abasing, but the back-handed brag tagged on the end makes it sound more like a boast. How would you explain this arrogance versus humility tug-of-war we seem to have with ourselves and each other?

There is a personal struggle and a cultural one. All of us have an internal fight. Part of us wants to be noticed and esteemed and part of us wants to be humble, other-person centred. We live in the tension. But there is a culture point here, too. Western society is the product of two cultures, the Graeco-Roman heritage and the Judeo-Christian heritage. In Greece and Rome ‘honour’ was the top pursuit. Much of life, including ethics, was directed toward winning public honour for yourself and your family. Conversely, shame was the great evil, avoided at all costs. Scholars describe most ancient Mediterranean societies as honour-shame cultures. We’ve inherited that tradition. That’s the part of us that wants to win glory and admiration from the crowds.

But, equally, the Western world is the product of the revolution that took place in the first to fourth centuries, when Christianity came to the fore. The Judeo-Christian ethic was very much centred on serving the poor and needy, something conspicuous by its absence in Graeco-Roman culture, and so those in a low position came to be honoured as equals. This is the beginning of the story of humility in the Western ethical tradition. Anyway, the point is: we find ourselves caught between our heritage from Greece and Roman and our heritage from the Judeo-Christian worldview.

 

4. Public figures such as Politicians, Activists, Artists, Athletes and Celebrities seem to have to tread a fine-line between arrogance/self-confidence when it comes to their performance and humility when it comes to receiving accolades or criticisms. Do you think we tend to expect public figures to be more virtuous than we expect ourselves to be?

Yes we do, because almost by definition such people are aspirational figures. Part of what we like about them, with the possible exception of politicians, is that they are in a way better than we are. I think there’s a kind of transposing of our own longing for greatness onto the hero figures. And part of that is ethical. Most of us are upset when our hero sportsman is a jerk or some beautiful celebrity has a foul mouth. Arrogance/humility is a perfect example. When our heroes are up themselves, we are usually deeply disappointed. It’s not that we wouldn’t be exactly the same, if we were in their shoes. It’s just that we want them to be a better version of human. We can go too far, of course. Our expectations can be too high and unrealistic, but I think there’s something nice about wanting to see in others our better selves.

 

5.  Can you name some of the "greats" of history you researched for the book and something surprising you discovered about them?

There are the religious greats like Buddha and Jesus. But I also think of Mandela and even someone like Sir Edmund Hillary. I was delighted to learn that Hillary, after conquering Everest in 1953, devoted himself to the people of Nepal, trying to use his fame, power and fundraising capacity to give something back to the Nepalese. He built schools and orphanages and so on, right to his last days. He is the epitome of the humble person. To be humble isn’t to have a low view of yourself. It is to redeploy your resources for the good of others. In fact, my working definition of humility is to hold your power—whatever that is—for the good of others before yourself. Hillary and many others have done that and it is inspiring.

 

6. What did you learn about the nature of humility in the researching/writing of your book?

The primary thing to realize about humility is that it has little to do with what we call ‘modesty’. When we refer to a modest person, we usually think of someone who doesn’t think highly of themself, or never says ‘boo’. But that’s not humility. Humility is not thinking less of yourself; it is thinking more about others. In fact, I reckon the truly humble person usually has a healthy ego. They know what skills and talents they have. They’re not afraid to name them. But they use these things for the organisation or for the good of others, not just for their own advancement. In other words, humility is a social virtue, not a personality trait. It is about taking what I have and seeing how I can use it all for the benefit of those who need it most.

The other thing that I found surprising is the very clear influence the figure of Jesus of Nazareth had on the rise of humility in our culture.  I was surprised to learn how widely accepted it is that, whereas Graeco-Roman culture did not value humility, the story of the man who gave his life for the sake of others reshaped what ancient people thought was true power. The first followers of Christ reasoned that, if the greatest man they’d ever known willingly gave himself to an awful Roman cross, then true greatness must consist of lowering yourself for others.

Suddenly, the word humilitas in Latin and tapeinos in Greek, words which usually had the very negative connotations of being crushed and put low, came to be used in a positive sense. We can date this quite precisely. At first it was the Christians who used this subversive terminology, but then it caught on. Today, of course, it doesn’t matter what you believe, if you were raised in a Western country, you will generally agree that it is a good thing to hold your power for the good of others before yourself. We like humility. That is the result of the influence of the Jesus-story on our culture, even though most of us don’t connect with religion anymore. Just as we got some of our ways of thinking from the Greeks, and don’t know it, we got an awful lot of our ethical reasoning from this narrative of ultimate greatness sacrificing itself in love for others.

 

 7. In terms of worldview, what do you believe?

I guess I’ve already hinted at something of my worldview. Put simply, for me, no text reads human nature, explains the orderliness of the world and articulates human longings better than the Bible. This book ‘knows me’. I can’t think of another way to put it. It is spook. The more I study this tome, in all its sophistication, complexity, messiness and grandeur, the more it feels like a voice from outside humanity, calling us beyond ourselves. I often think that reading the Bible is like walking into a beautiful café for the first time and just as you take your seat the staff bring you your favourite double-shot latte with one sugar. How did you know that!?, is how I feel. To me this completely explains why this book is the biggest selling book of all time. In fact, apart from a blip in 2007 when Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows pipped the Bible at the post for twelve months, this book is the no.1 bestseller every year since records have been kept. Still today it sells 30 million copies a year. Someone gets a Bible every second. There’s a reason for that.

 

 8. How did you arrive at your worldview?

I was raised without any faith and I had never been inside a church before I was about 16 years old. For me, it is was a lovely, middle-aged Scripture teacher at my state high school who had answers to all my smart alec questions and showed incredible compassion toward me and others in the group. She embodied the stuff I came to read about in the Gospels, the narratives about Jesus. He was a master of the lost art of holding strong religious and ethical viewpoints but treating with spectacular grace those with whom he profoundly disagreed. That’s how he got the tag, given to him by the religious authorities, “The friend of sinners.” That wasn’t meant to be a compliment but it sounds like one to me now.

Anyway, this woman embodied that. I knew she had strong views about some of the stuff my mates and I got up to, but she showed us consistent kindness. Her words and actions were a powerful influence. Over a period of a year or so I found myself a complete fan of the figure in the Gospels. I baulked at calling myself a ‘Christian’ for a while, and sometimes I’m still coy about that label because of all the associations it has for some, but that’s what I had become.

 

 9. Can you give us a glimpse into your next planned book?

I’m working on two books. One is called How the Church is Better and Worse than You Ever Imagined. It’s a history of the awful and beautiful things Christianity has brought into Western culture. The former gets a lot of bad press, and I don’t want to shy away from that or try and whitewash it. But very few people, outside the nerdy club of ancient and medieval historians, know the story of how Christianity dispelled the all-pervasive superstitions of the ancient world, established what we today call ‘charity’, set up schools, inspired all of the first scientists and continues to be associated, in all of the sociological studies, with higher levels of civil involvement, volunteering and philanthropy. That story needs to be told, if only as a foil to much of the silliness that passes for enlightened conversation today.

The second book is called Persuasion from Aristotle to Apple, and it explores how persuasion works. Aristotle wrote a very important book on the subject that was the standard work for 2000 years. Many of his insights remain crucial for contemporary persuasion, marketing and public discourse.

 

10.John’s Favourite:

Book: To Kill a Mocking Bird
Film: Brave Heart, Love Actually and the Piano. These are my three selves.
Music: U2, U2 and U2. Oh, and Yo Yo Ma’s Cello Suites
Motto: Veritas Vincit. It’s the clan motto of my Scottish forbears, and means “Truth prevails”. I believe the truth will always ‘out’ and do its good in the world. I’m an idealist.
Charity: WorldVision and Tear Fund

 

As director of the Centre for Public Christianity (publicchristianity.org) Dickson regularly writes for mainstream newspapers and appears in the media promoting thoughtful Christianity.

I'm thankful for the time he gave to the interview. If there's one thing I've learnt, it's that humility is the slipperiest of virtues; for as soon as you feel you possess it, you no longer do.

 

Think. Write. Share.

 

Belinda G

 

 

 

 

 

 

3. A few social commentators have coined a new trend, 'the humble brag'. It has risen through social media and the tendency to want to promote ourselves, without seeming arrogant. It's where someone posts a status or tweet that appears self-abasing, but the back-handed brag tagged on the end makes it sound more like a boast. How would you explain this arrogance versus humility tug-of-war we seem to have with ourselves and each other?

There is a personal struggle and a cultural one. All of us have an internal fight. Part of us wants to be noticed and esteemed and part of us wants to be humble, other-person centred. We live in the tension. But there is a culture point here, too. Western society is the product of two cultures, the Graeco-Roman heritage and the Judeo-Christian heritage. In Greece and Rome ‘honour’ was the top pursuit. Much of life, including ethics, was directed toward winning public honour for yourself and your family. Conversely, shame was the great evil, avoided at all costs. Scholars describe most ancient Mediterranean societies as honour-shame cultures. We’ve inherited that tradition. That’s the part of us that wants to win glory and admiration from the crowds. But, equally, the Western world is the product of the revolution that took place in the first to fourth centuries, when Christianity came to the fore. The Judeo-Christian ethic was very much centred on serving the poor and needy, something conspicuous by its absence in Graeco-Roman culture, and so those in a low position came to be honoured as equals. This is the beginning of the story of humility in the Western ethical tradition. Anyway, the point is: we find ourselves caught between our heritage from Greece and Roman and our heritage from the Judeo-Christian worldview.

Ramona Ausubel, author of NO ONE IS HERE EXCEPT ALL OF US

 

Publisher: Riverhead Books

Pages: 336

Genre: Historical Fiction

 

"Ausubel's style is arrestingly beautiful, even as the story is devastatingly sad. Not quite magical realism, it’s fantastic in the way of traditional European Jewish folklore where miracles and mysteries balance out pain and sorrow. It’s hard to overstate the power of this book, which takes on a familiar subject in a completely original way." Sarah Rachel Egelman, Book Reporter

 

Ramona Ausubel grew up in Santa Fe, New Mexico, a world and a lifetime away from the atrocities of World War Two. Yet stories of how her family survived the war piqued her interest and her imagination and became the cornerstone for her debut novel, No One Is Here Except All of Us. It tells the story of a how a small Jewish Community bands together to survive the war, by imagining they are the only people in existence.

Ausubel graduated with an MFA from The University of California, Irvine where she won the Glenn Schaeffer Award in Fiction and served as editor of Faultline Journal of Art & Literature.

Ausubel's work has been published in The New Yorker, One Story, The Paris Review Daily, The Best American Fantasty and elsewhere and has received special mentions in The Best American Short Stories, The Best American Non Required Reading, and was a finalist for the Puschcart Prize.

Ausubel's debut novel is soon to be followed with her collection of short stories, A Guide to Being Born. I was really looking forward to interviewing Ramona, to find out about what led her to write No On Is Here Except All of Us.

 

1. Can you briefly explain your impetus for writing 'No One is Here Except All of Us'?

 I grew up hearing amazing stories from my grandmother about our family.  She was born in Romania, and though she came to U.S. as a child, her parents still talked about the old country and their life there.  During WWI, my great-grandmother had escaped the latest pogroms with her children, surviving on tree-bark and not much else for years.  Meanwhile, my great-grandfather had been taken to Italy as a Prisoner-of-War, which turned out to be the best three years of his life.  It was warm, the people were nice, the food was good.  He stayed for a year after his release because it was so wonderful there.  I had those stories in my head, but I wanted to know more and since the people who were there were no longer alive, I decided to imagine my way in. 

 

2. How long did it take you to research and write the book?

 It took eight years from the beginning to the end, though I wasn’t working exclusively on the novel the whole time.  I’d write obsessively for a few months, give up for a while and then come back again later.  I was also teaching and working on a collection of short stories at the same time called A Guide to Being Born, which should be out next year. 

 

3. Your book is about a Jewish community in a Romanian village in 1939, trying to work out how they can survive the war. What did you learn about the importance of community?

When thinking about death and destruction on the scale of the Holocaust, I came to feel that hope was in collective survival.  Though some do not make it, life itself, the life of the whole, goes on.   

 

4. You have said your book is about, "Faith, the loss of faith, life and the end of life, freedom and imprisonment". Can you share what you learnt about these things in the writing of the book?

 That’s a big question!  I wish I could sum up what I know about faith, death and freedom in a few sentences.  Asking questions about those things was one of the things that made me want to write this book, and one of the things that kept me going deeper and deeper for all those years.  Those questions alone could probably keep me writing for many books to come.  

 

5. War is about deeming one ideology superior and seeking to quash or eradicate the opposing views, as if killing people will kill their ideas. What did you learn about the power of worldviews through the writing of your book?

Though the book does take place during a terrible moment in which one person’s worldview changed the course of history and of many, many lives, most of the story is on a much smaller scale. Very often, I think we turn inward and keep ourselves protected (or at least distracted) from the big unfolding events.  That’s why, in this book, the characters go so far as to write the rest of the world out of the story and believe only in their little corner of the globe.    

 

6. In some countries, the Holocaust is not taught as an historical event. What do you think will be the consequence for humanity in denying history?

 It can’t be good, can it?    

 

7. Growing up, did you identify as being Jewish as a personal religious experience, or did you see it more as a family cultural heritage?

 My great-grandparents were very religious, but my grandparents were not and my dad was even less so.  It wasn’t until I was older, maybe twelve or so, that my Jewish background meant anything to me.  It continues to matter to me, though I would not consider myself very religious.   

 

8. In terms of worldview, what do you believe and is it different from the worldview you were brought up with?

 I think my worldview probably hasn’t changed that much from the way I was raised: be kind, tell the truth, appreciate the beauty, don’t skip over the hard parts, try to show up with cookies whenever possible, eat well. 

 

9. What is in your 'too hard' basket?

  Running.  I just can’t make myself keep going after I get tired.

 

10. Ramona's Favourite:

Book: Impossible question!  Three books that come to mind this instant that I love (this would change next time you asked) The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, by Michael Chabon, Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner.

Film:  The Wizard of Oz, Best in Show, The Princess Bride

Music: Bob Dylan, Tom Waits

Motto: Get fascinated.

Charity: My grandmother (the other side of the family from the Romanians) founded an artists’ and writers’ colony called Ragdale, outside of Chicago.  It’s a wonderful place where people go to work for several weeks at a time and I’m so proud of her for creating it. 

 

Reading about Ausubel's novel kindled in me a spark of hope; that not everyone relegates history to the archives. There is much to learn about humanity even from imagining how people coped with their reality. As Mark Twain said, "The past does not repeat itself, but it rhymes."

 

Think. Write. Share.

 

Belinda G

Alain de Botton, author of RELIGION FOR ATHEISTS

Publisher: Signal

Pages: 320

Genre: Religious Non-Fiction

"His ability to eloquently argue his points elicits a desire in this reader to aspire to similar eloquence in my own thoughts. De Botton, if nothing else, demands clarity of our own thinking, even if our thinking mostly entails a disagreement with his fundamental arguments. For that reason, he remains a literary asset for those looking for introductions into fields of thought."  

Joe Winkler, Huff Post

 

 Winsome and thought-provoking, Alain de Botton is the liquorice-all-sort of Philosophy. Since the age of twenty-three, he has written books to get us thinking on everything from love, travel and work, to architecture, life and religion. The range of topics on which he has written, suggests he has a profound understanding of the human condition; our quest for truth via reason, meaning via experience and belonging via relationships and community.

He is leading the charge of Atheism 2.0: The Do-Over, the call to Reformation. His is a gentle voice amidst the abrasive in the Atheistic-call-to-arms of recent years. In his latest book, Religion for Atheists, de Botton effectively suggests we should take hold of Religion and shake it upside down so all talk of theology and doctrine, spirituality and the supernatural fall out, leaving the culturally-appealing bits for secularists to pick and choose from.

I first came across de Botton in his TED talk and mentioned what a refreshing change his approach to the atheist discussion was in this post on teaching religion in schools. I am grateful Alain gave so generously of his time for this interview.

 

1. What was your impetus for writing Religion for Atheists?

I was deeply frustrated by the anger and intolerance of 'New Atheists' like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens. They are atheists, so am I, but their brand of atheism was so aggressive and destructive.

I think probably the most boring question you can ask about religion is whether or not the whole thing is ‘true’. Unfortunately, recent public discussions on religion have focused obsessively on precisely this issue, with a hardcore group of fanatical believers pitting themselves against an equally small band of fanatical atheists.

I prefer a different tack. To my mind, of course, no part of religion is true in the sense of being God-given. It seems clear that there is no holy ghost, spirit, geist or divine emanation. The real issue is not whether god exists or not, but where one takes the argument to, once one concludes that he evidently doesn't. I believe it must be possible to remain a committed atheist and nevertheless to find religions sporadically useful, interesting and consoling – and be curious as to the possibilities of importing certain of their ideas and practices into the secular realm.

 In my book, I argue that believing in God is, for me as for many others, simply not possible. At the same time, I want to suggest that if you remove this belief, there are particular dangers that open up - we don't need to fall into these dangers, but they are there and we should be aware of them. For a start, there is the danger of individualism: of placing the human being at the center stage of everything. Secondly, there is the danger of technological perfectionism; of believing that science and technology can overcome all human problems, that it is just a matter of time before scientists have cured us of the human condition. Thirdly, without God, it is easier to loose perspective: to see our own times as everything, to forget the brevity of the present moment and to cease to appreciate (in a good way) the miniscule nature of our own achievements. And lastly, without God, there can be a danger that the need for empathy and ethical behaviour can be overlooked.

 Now, it is important to stress that it is quite possible to believe in nothing and remember all these vital lessons (just as one can be a deep believer and a monster). I am simply wanting to draw attention to some of the gaps, some of what is missing, when we dismiss God too brusquely. By all means, we can dismiss him, but with great sympathy, nostalgia, care and thought...

 

2. What do you hope to achieve by the publication of your book?

I want to fundamentally change the debate about what it means to be an atheist. I want to create a Reform Atheism if you like, distinguished from the orthodox atheism of Dawkins. This would be marked by tolerance and curiosity about religion, from an entirely atheistic backdrop.

 

3. You seem to be on your own in the wave of "new atheists," in saying there are things to be learned from Religion. How has your book been received by fellow atheists?

The militant kind are furious. Their blogs are on fire, writing the most appalling things. Let me give you a peak, so you have a flavour of how these 'reasonable' people proceed:

http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2012/02/28/i-am-officially-disgusted-with-alain-de-botton/

 

4. You talk about religion being a cultural construct and that if we can pick and choose aspects of arts and culture we like, why not choose the parts of religion we like, too. What parts of what religions do you like?

Here are five:

Education

Religions are supremely effective at education, because they know that we forget everything. They are based around rehearsal, repetition, oratory and calendars. They create appointments for us to re-encounter the most significant ideas. Every day has a spiritual agenda. In the secular world, we think you can send someone to school or university for a few years and it will then stick with you for forty years. It won't. Our minds are like sieves, yet we unfairly associate repetition with being stifled. The Jewish or Catholic calendars are masterpieces of synchronisation: every day brings us back round to some important idea. You might need to repeat important truths 4 or 8 times a day.

 

Mind & Body

Religions remember we have bodies and therefore integrate their insights with physical practices. In Zen Buddhism, you don't just hear lectures: you have a tea ceremony where the drinking of a beverage underpins a philosophical lesson. In Judaism, you don't only atone, you do so by plunging yourself into a mikveh bath to 'cleanse yourself'. So religions appear to know that if you want to reach the mind, you have to acknowledge the overwhelming role that the body and emotions have over us.

 

Pilgrimages

Religions have shown a surprising degree of sympathy for our impulse to travel. They have accepted that we cannot achieve everything by staying at home. Nevertheless, unlike secularists, the religious have singularly failed to see the business of travelling as in any way straightforward or effortless. They have insisted with alien vigour on the profound gravity of going on a trip and have channelled the raw impulse to take off into a myriad of rituals, whose examination could prompt us to reflect on our own habits and sharply alter where and how we decided to travel next. We all want travel to change us, religions honour this wish properly.

 

Community

The secular world isn't short of bars and restaurants, but we're singularly bad at any kind of regular way of turning strangers into friends. We know from parties that people don't talk to each other until there's a good host that does the introduction. Religions function as hosts: their buildings and rituals allow us to express a latent sociability which lies beneath our cold exteriors. Moreover, unlike Facebook, they don't introduce us only to people with whom we already have much in common. At their best moments, they confront us with The Other, and help to show that there is humanity in all of us.

 

5. You have said that society has "secularized badly," can you explain what you mean by that?

Secular society has been unfairly impoverished by the loss of an array of practices and themes which atheists typically find it impossible to live with because they seem too closely associated with, to quote Nietzsche's useful phrase, 'the bad odours of religion'. We have grown frightened of the word morality. We bridle at the thought of hearing a sermon. We flee from the idea that art should be uplifting or have an ethical mission. We don't go on pilgrimages. We can't build temples. We have no mechanisms for expressing gratitude. The notion of reading a self-help book has become absurd to the high-minded. We resist mental exercises. Strangers rarely sing together. We are presented with an unpleasant choice between either committing to peculiar concepts about immaterial deities or letting go entirely of a host of consoling, subtle or just charming rituals for which we struggle to find equivalents in secular society.

In giving up on so much, we have allowed religion to claim as its exclusive dominion areas of experience which should rightly belong to all mankind – and which we should feel unembarrassed about re-appropriating for the secular realm.

 

6. A long-standing complaint against religions is their proselytising. Would you say the influx of atheist literature over the past six years falls into the category of proselytising?

Yes, it repeats all the mistakes of the worst kind of religious tracts: it is abuse, shrill and utterly unreasonable - a far graver problem given atheists' claims to be reasonable.

 

7. It is often said that Atheism is not a faith, rather it is an absence of faith. But isn't there an element of reason and faith in every worldview?

Yes, I agree.

 

8. How did you arrive at your current worldview?

I was brought up in a commitedly atheistic household, as the son of two secular Jews who placed religious belief somewhere on a par with an attachment to Santa Claus. I recall my father reducing my sister to tears in an attempt to dislodge her modestly held notion that a reclusive god might dwell somewhere in the universe. She was eight years old at the time. If any members of their social circle were discovered to harbour clandestine religious sentiments, my parents would start to regard them with the sort of pity more commonly reserved for those diagnosed with a degenerative disease and could from then on never be persuaded to take them seriously again.

Though I was powerfully swayed by my parents attitudes, by my mid-twenties, I underwent a crisis of faithlessness. My feelings of doubt had their origins in listening to Bach's cantatas, they were further developed in the presence of certain Bellini Madonnas and they became overwhelming with an introduction to Zen architecture. However, it was not until my father had been dead for several years – and buried under a Hebrew headstone in a Jewish cemetery in Willesden, North London, because he had, intriguingly, omitted to make more secular arrangements – that I began to face up to the full scale of my ambivalence regarding the doctrinaire principles with which I had been inculcated in childhood. 

I never wavered in my certainty that God did not exist. I was simply liberated by the thought that there might be a way to engage with religion without having to subscribe to its supernatural content – a way, to put it in more abstract terms, to think about Fathers without upsetting my respectful memory of my own father. I recognised that my continuing resistance to theories of an afterlife or of heavenly residents was no justification for giving up on the music, buildings, prayers, rituals, feasts, shrines, pilgrimages, communal meals and illuminated manuscripts of the faiths.

 

 9. Do you think people easily part with the worldviews in which they were brought up?

Almost never, 99% of one's positions vis a vis religion is upbringing

 

10. Favourite:

 Book: Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time

 Film: Wim Wenders, Alice in the Cities

 Music: Natalie Merchant, Ophelia

 Motto: What need is there to weep over parts of life, the whole of it calls for tears. Seneca

 Charity: Psychotherapy for kids.

 

Whether you agree or disagree with de Botton's conclusion; that we can select aspects of Religion we like and discard the parts we don't, given the pandemic loneliness of our individualistic society, it's hard to disagree with his premise that the world has secularized badly.

Think. Write. Share.

 

Belinda G

 

 

 

Maya Sloan, author of HIGH BEFORE HOMEROOM

 

Publisher: Gallery Books (Simon & Schuster)

Pages: 299

Genre: Mainstream Fiction

 

"Searing one moment, laugh-out-loud funny the next, Maya Sloan's High Before Homeroom is an honest, surprising, and dazzling debut." Davy Rothbart, FOUND Magazine and This American Life

 

 Here she is, Maya Sloan; the woman who inspired me to start a blog interviewing authors (as I wrote about in the Joy of Book Club post). Maya was my first lecturer at New York Gotham Writers' Workshop a couple of years ago. She's the kind of lecturer every tentative writer needs: full of encouragement and brutally honest!

Maya's been a writer since she was a kid, as this poem she penned at the age of 8 attests. But it was the encouragement of her own brutally honest teacher, Leslie Epstein, that got Maya to start taking her writing seriously, by calling her "gifted but lazy". Lazy is not something Maya can be called theses days. I've been begging her for an interview for six months and she's been too flat-out writing to deadlines and teaching until now, which is a wonderful problem for a writer to have! 

Maya has an MFA in Creative Writing from Boston University, as well as a MFA in Fiction Writing from the University of Arkansas. She has taught writing at 9 different Universities, at last count. She's received a Kostova Foundation fellowship, the Writers at Work Fiction Fellowship, Boston University’s Inaugural Saul Bellow Literary Prize and a St. Bolotoph Foundation Emerging Artist Grant.

High Before Homeroom is Maya's debut novel, which has been optioned for film and is in pre-production. Maya is writing the screenplay. She has just finished ghost writing a memoir, Redefining Diva by Sheryl Lee Ralph, to be published by Simon & Schuster this month.

Here, Maya talks about High Before Homeroom, her teenage drug-addiction debut.

1. What was your impetus for writing High Before Homeroom?

Crazy enough, a TV show.  I’m a big reality TV watcher and not afraid to admit it.  I mean, it can’t be Faulkner all the time, right?  And there is a show on A&E called Intervention…these addicts get the whole family to come together trying to get a loved one to rehab…and read letters about how amazing they are, what beautiful kids they were before the addiction, how much they mean to the world, etc.  And I thought, “That’s nice.  I want people to do that for me.”  Without the addiction/rehab part, of course.  I mean, we so rarely build each other up, say how much we love each other and why.  So then I got this idea for a kid who decides to get addicted just for the intervention.  He’s got a crush on a girl who only likes “bad boys”…so his plan is to get addicted to meth, have the intervention, get sent to rehab and cleaned up, come back and win her.  He’s only sixteen, so of course this somehow seems logical to him.

2. There seems to be a theme of absent fathers throughout the book. Do you see a strong correlation between the choices your characters make and the absence of their father?

 Absolutely.  These boys are searching for themselves without a father figure to guide them.  Hence, both Doug and Trevor have some pretty messed up concepts of what it means to be “a man”.  I think we really put pressure on American men to live up to some idea of masculinity that is old-fashioned and straight-up weird.  This is especially prevalent in the South and Southwest, where I grew up.  And I’m a firm believer that a real man doesn’t have to walk around trying to prove it.  So both Doug and Trevor , without a father figure, have had to create their own versions of masculinity. Trevor goes for the weightlifting, beer chugging, ass-kicking, love ‘em and leave ‘em, extreme…Doug, on the other hand, knows he could never succeed with that route.  Instead, he doesn’t try; going the opposite direction.  Doug faces a lot of mockery and harassment for his choices, but the choices are authentically him. 

 

3.  Your lovable protagonist, Doug, always seems to revere someone and act according to their influence on his life, or to gain their attention. Do you think it's in our nature to want to have an idol, as such?

Completely!  And the idols change as we do.  When I look at my idols at Doug’s age…well, I loved a lot of the same people he does.  Mostly writers, of course, but musicians and artists and actors too.  Now I have a fondness for all those former heroes of mine, but, in retrospect, see their flaws.  They represented a time in my life, a specific focus (or, at 16, a lack of one).  Tastes change, as do the people you look up to.  So I got a whole new bunch of idols, and they rotate and change with the day…and I love having someone to look up to and admire.

4. One of the main characters, Angela, comes from a family with strong religious beliefs. Her mother has no idea of what she gets up to and wouldn't approve of any of it. Do you think Angela was being a rebel against her mother's beliefs or a hypocrite against her own beliefs? 

Wow, these questions are great.  I have to say…I don’t know.  I have no idea.  Damn, these are penetrating questions, and I don’t want to get myself in any trouble here…I’ll just say, growing up in the bible belt, I’ve seen how hardcore religious beliefs affect young people.  Some turn their backs on the faith of their upbringing, others remain devout throughout their lives.  Then some, like Angela, cross the line between.  I am not against organized religion, but I do think some extremes are stifling to the individual spirit…and require much therapy later in life.


5. How hard, do you think, is it for teens to sift through the worldview they were brought up with and decide for themselves what they will accept of it and what they will reject? 

Incredibly hard.  Thank god I’m not a teenager anymore.  You couldn’t pay me to go back!

6. How does the worldview you currently hold differ from the one you were brought up with? 

In some ways, very similar.  I’m lucky to have a very open, free-thinking family that always let me explore my own beliefs and passions.  But growing up in Oklahoma, the world felt small.  One mall, a handful of bookstores, movies we get six months after they were released.  That said, Oklahoma has really changed…the place is a lot hipper than when I was growing up.  It amazes me when I go back.  But when I was sixteen, all I could think about was the big bad world outside my state and how much I wanted to see it.

7. What's in your "too hard" basket?

Life, love, destiny.   But only sometimes.  Like, Tuesdays and Thursdays.


8. As well as writing, you also teach fiction writing. Do you enjoy the solitary writing or the social teaching the most?

A lot of fiction writers resent teaching.  They’d rather just write.  I was raised in Academia, and both my parents are extraordinary educators, so teaching came naturally to me.  And I love that my students inspire me and remind me what I love about literature in the first place.  And hearing their voices and perspectives on the world...that kind of insight into human nature is invaluable to my own writing.  And then there are students like you, Belinda, who surprise me with their talent.*  You get to watch them grow as writers, evolve and take risks (like creating this extraordinary website).  Seeing that as a teacher is the best feeling.  And you better not cut this part or I’ll be mad! 

(*Believe me we went back and forth on email about leaving this in, me saying it's very kind, but I look like a schmuck, she saying that's why I said I'll be mad if you cut it, etc. etc. Maybe it's Australian, being averse to compliments!?)

9. Can you give us a little peek into your next planned project?  

I just finished ghostwriting a memoir, Redefining Diva by Sheryl Lee Ralph.  It began as a favor to a good friend and mentor, E. Lynn Harris, who died early in the writing process.   He was a huge fan of Sheryl Lee. I loved him, and our final conversation was about this book and how much it meant to him that I’d be involved.  His death was sudden, and I knew I had to finish the book in his honor.  Now, years later, it is finished and being released from Simon & Schuster next month.  As for my own fiction…well, I’m deep in a new novel.  But I can’t talk about it right now because I don’t want to jinx anything.


10. Maya's favourite:
Book:  So many I couldn’t even begin to name them all.  Right now?  I just finished Visit from the Goon Squad.  It was crazy good.

Music:  Lou Reed, Lucinda Williams, bad 80’s hits, Iggy Pop.  My boyfriend is an obsessive music freak…we have 2000 LPs and 200 eight tracks.  In a studio apartment.  And guitars.  Five of them.  So our life is about music.  I get to hear the most random stuff.  People he’s introduced me to recently?  Edan, the best rapper you’ve never heard of.  Abner Jay.  Listen to “I’m So Depressed” on Youtube.  You will be obsessed. 

Film:  I see everything, but I get disappointed. One thing about learning story structure…a lot of times you can predict the plot twists.   Most recently? Tin Tin in 3D.  That blew my mind.  And lots of documentaries.  It is a lot harder to predict real life.

Thanks so much for your time and for agreeing to be interviewed, Maya.

'OMG Belinda, so sorry I took so long. But awesome questions, you really got me thinking.'

 It was worth the wait!

 

 The promotional trailer for High Before Homeroom is worth a look; it was nominated for a Moby award!

 

 

 

 

Think. Write. Share

Belinda G

 

Anthony Meindl, author of AT LEFT BRAIN TURN RIGHT

Publisher: Meta Creative

Genre: Non-Fiction

A 15 week guide to unleashing your creative genius

"At Left Brain Turn Right shows you how to silence the noise of your left brain and ignite your creative side" Synopsis

 

Apparently you are no less gifted than Shakespeare, no less creative than Da Vinci. You just don't know it yet. So says award-winning writer, producer, director and actor, Anthony Meindl. According to Meindl, the most successful and creative people in the world don't possess anything different than you, 'They have no magic formula or special secret. They've simply prevented the left hemisphere of their brain - the "logical," analytical side - from sabotaging their life.'

As  Artistic Director of Anthony Meindl’s Actor Workshop (AMAW) in Los Angeles, Meindl's life is constantly submerged in creativity – where the ‘right brain rules’. Meindl says he is, 'endlessly inspired by his students' fearless creativity.'

Meindl’s first feature screenplay, The Wonder Girls, was the Grand Prize Winning Feature Screenplay in the Slamdance Film Festival Screenplay Competition in 2007. The film is slated for production in 2012 in Berlin.

His other credits include the award-winning 35-mm short film, Ready? OK! and the feature film Birds of a Feather (with Olympia Dukakis, Bruce Vilanch, Trevor Donovan and Lindsay Hollister and is currently in making the festival rounds) both of which he wrote, directed, and produced.

I was intrigued to find out about the whole left brain/right brain theory.

 

1. What was your impetus for writing At left brain turn right?

I think it was mostly my desire to help artists specifically (and people in general) to get out of their heads and live a more liberated, joyful, alive life. I have found that in the years I've been working with artists of all types and developing these theories, the more these people (including myself) began having more fun, felt more hopeful, became more creative and really started attempting things they didn't think they could do previously. To that end, I realized it was time to write a book to reach more people and hopefully help them get out of their own way and tap into their innate creative potential.


2. How did you become interested in theories of left/brain right/brain functions?

As an artist myself, I have found that the biggest hurdles I have had to overcome in life were actually the obstacles in my own head. As I began to meditate and find practical ways to actually get out of the criticisms and judgments of the left brain, I found that all of us have moments where we are tapped into the creative power that the right brain gives birth too. We have 'a-ha' moments, we engage in some sort of physical activity and are in 'the zone,' we create a piece of art and are so engaged in the moment we transcend time and feel the exhilaration of timelessness. These actual states of being are our birthright, but we live in a culture that is so left-brain-driven we have lost the ability to access these states naturally. So, for me, as I began to have more experiences in them, I became interested in the science behind it.

3. An introduction for your book says it shows you how to ignore your left side and ignite your creativity. What about the converse: does it also show creative people how to employ the analytical side of their brain?

Well, the left brain is always going to be there, isn't it? It's the loud noise we hear droning away at us the very first thing when we wake up in the morning. And it's the last noise we hear rumbling in our heads when we go to sleep. I think creative people know how to employ the left side of their brain because that function is always in over-drive for all people. It's cultural. It's epidemic. And actually, I think that the perception that creative people are only in their creative right brains is false. I actually have found that creative people are often in their left brain more than we realize because they are constantly judging and being judged by the output of creative work they produce. They want to be liked. They want their work to be embraced. So they often have a battle between the brains in order to create and at the same time not listen to the judgments of the left brain that want to prevent them from creating.

I joke with the people with whom I work that you really only need a left brain for a few things: balancing a check book, making a grocery list, remembering names, doing your taxes. Creativity doesn't involve left brain mechanics.


4. Why do you think most of us have let the left, or analytical side of the brain rule our thinking?

I think because it's the side that constantly gets reinforced individually and socially. We have become conditioned to believe the things we say to ourselves. Not because these things are true but because we say them to ourselves over and over again. So a belief is really born out of a habituated thought that just gets re-booted. And the science behind it is that we have these neural pathways that simply get charged when we continuously think the same patterns of thought. New neural grooves can be created. But they require thinking new paradigms of thought. Just because you were told you were "ugly" as a child or "fat" or "stupid" doesn't make those statements true. You've just stored them in the receptor of your brain and they automatically get called upon when something gets triggered emotionally in your life that seems to confirm those untruths that you are "ugly" or "fat" or "stupid."

5. Are you really saying any one of us can become a creative genius like Shakespeare, or Da Vinci?

All of us already are creative geniuses. It's all contained within us. How our creative talents want to be expressed and manifested is uniquely different for each of us. But we all possess this genius. Some of us aren't aware of it. And still others choose life paths that don't encourage or nurture our latent creative talents because we do what others tell us instead. Our parents make us go to business school when we really want to create music. Someone else tells us to get this "important" job even though we want to go travel the world. We constantly do what others tell us and before we know it, we're unhappy and unfulfilled because we're living someone else's life path instead of our own. And it's sad because these people don't actually tap into their innate gifts waiting to be expressed because they've really been doing things they felt they had to do rather than the things they wanted (and needed) to do.

Sometimes when people begin to face this internal conflict between who they are and who they wish to be, it shows up as midlife crisis. Some become brave enough to make drastic changes in their life at this juncture to really live the life they had been too scared -- or didn't know how -- to live. Sometimes, other people ignore their own inner guidance and stay stuck in the same debilitating patterns their entire lives. I'm not saying it's easy because a lot of this is old patterning that has to be broken. But the rewards are great and really, life-changing.

Part of realizing our potential is getting aligned with what it is we're supposed to be doing with our lives. It's not just thinking about it in terms of a job. It's about self expression. Someone like Shakespeare or Da Vinci was more attuned to this creative life force within them so this creative genius found a way to be expressed. But we're all channels. The key is to get plugged into the right outlet and then get the hell out of the way!

6. The modern school system seems to place a higher value on analytical subjects such as maths and science over creative subjects, like art and music. Why do you think that is?

Partly because we're living in a society that indoctrinates us from a very early age that success (and therefore life) is all about competition. I mean, it's cut-throat to get kids into certain pre-schools nowadays! There are 14-page applications to fill out for your two-year-old. That's nuts. And very harmful to a young person's spirit and self-worth. Competition is becoming ingrained earlier and earlier. And it's about getting ahead at whatever means necessary and not honoring that everyone has different learning curves. Some people mature later. Some kids bloom as they get older. Everyone's process is different. Why are we trying to cookie-cutter human beings and fit square pegs into round corporate holes? There's a place for Square Pegs in our world!

I think also that math and science is quantifiable. People with those skills can create new technological software or find the cure for a terrible disease or develop new engineering breakthroughs. And this is an amazing contribution to our society. So they are valued in big business; whether it's corporations or the medical profession or drug companies. The Arts, however, is not quantifiable in the same way. But it's purpose in life is not any less significant. Art shows us how to be human. How to feel. How to love. How to survive loss and have hope. It's not quantifiable. But without it, we would have no culture. We would be machines. (And actually, if we allowed ourselves to be more connected to our own artistry, we'd require less drugs, less medication, less hospitalization, less technological stimulation.)

Math and science are necessary. We need people to excel in these areas to create. Expressing skills in these areas is also absolute creativity. Kids who show a propensity toward these disciplines should be encouraged to nurture and develop these gifts. This is not only their mode of self-expression but also their contribution to the world. Other kids show a desire at a young age to create. To draw. To perform. These kids shouldn't be told those are "recreational hobbies," and be steered to subjects that they neither understand or care about, or are made to feel stupid because they don't innately grasp them. They should be encouraged to develop those inherent skills that come most naturally to them.


I hated geometry. I sucked at it. I was forced to take all these geometry classes in school that not only I failed at, but also created a lot of anxiety and self-loathing because I thought I was the stupidest kid ever because I couldn't quite get it. The irony is that since the 10th grade, I personally have never had to call upon my (lack of) geometry skills ever again. So what was the point? I'm not saying children shouldn't receive a well-rounded education. I'm saying that the current model of educational punishment and reward or "failing" a child who simply doesn't understand or connect to a certain subject seems to be missing the mark. It's a little Draconian and Middle Ages learning. Steering children toward what they do excel at and love creates not only healthier and happier children, but more productive and fully-realized adults.


7. Asked why he never wrote fiction when his peers seemed to jump between writing fiction and non-fiction, Christopher Hitchens said he felt inept in creative writing. He'd given it a lot of thought and decided it was due to his lack of appreciation for music. His peers were musical. Do you think that being creative in one sphere opens your mind to other avenues of creativity?

Absolutely. I never knew I was a writer until very recently. I have always been an actor and singer and the creative work I was doing with artists opened me up to other areas of self expression I didn't know I had. I think that's the point of just creating. By just stepping through that creative door, other creative worlds are opened to you that you never knew existed. That doesn't mean you have to be proficient in all of them. I mean, I'm a lousy dancer! But it does, in some way, seem to connect more deeply to the creative discipline at which you most excel. You seem to get better at it because of all the creative outlets, insight and new information that present themselves to you.

8. What would you say is the most important thing we can do to encourage creativity in ourselves and others?

Just do it. It's like the NIKE ad. I think we look at the finished product of something (whether it be this book, or a movie, or a song that Adele is singing) and we think that those creative beings have something we don't. That's the illusion because we only see the finished product. The act of creativity isn't about the finished product. The act of creativity is an act of bravery and trust and surrender. Some of the most amazing creative moments come after many, many pages of drafts or failed song attempts or un-produced films. I think artists become disillusioned because not all creative roads lead to an end product that's sold on TV or makes millions of dollars so we think it's a failure and stop because we attach a monetary value to something that transcends commerce. Being creative is a state of being. You can be creative the way you bake a cake or say hello to someone or do your taxes. But that comes from staying present to the creative act itself and not getting caught up with "further down the road," or "what's it going to look like," or "how's it going to be perceived."

Just watch children. They create something and then moments later they destroy it and they're on to the next thing. They are in the moment, moment-to-moment. They don't get stuck on the end results. They don't try to figure it out ahead of time. They just build their Lego land. Or their doll house. They just commit to playing cops and robbers. They just do it. They just play. Fully. And when it's done, it's done.


9. In terms of worldview, what do you believe?

My worldview is one of hope. Of compassion. Of understanding that everyone is doing the best they can at any given time so it's hard to judge. (Athough I do! But I constantly try to keep coming back to acceptance.) The truth is that we really can't change anyone but ourselves. I have to just keep working on myself and hopefully, like a ripple effect, those positive changes will reach out to help other people. As cliche' as it might sound, Gandhi's maxim about being the change you wish to see in the world is really it. I can't really change the world. (Nor can anyone else).

The world has been spinning for millions of years and will continue to do it's thing long after I'm gone. But while I am here, I can do my best to show up in my life with a little more presence. A little more compassion. A little more generosity. A little more love. A little more fun. I may fail at it at times but with this mindset you really do begin to see a change in your own being and then obviously it's reflected in the world around you. So your environment changes. And this, then, can create a positive difference. If everyone could do this (which we can) can you imagine what we could become? Not just as people, but as a culture? Exciting and inspiring, I think.

10. Anothony's Favourite:
Book:  Autobiography Of A Yogi and Siddhartha by Herman Hesse. And I also love everything by Carrie Fisher (very funny, unique way of seeing the world). And all of Anne Lamott's work.
Film: I love "Aliens." Maybe because Sigourney Weaver was such a bad-ass.
Music: I like all kinds of music. No favorites, really. I think musicians/singers are our modern-day poets so they're all pretty incredible, I think. Especially the ones who write their own stuff.
Motto: Onwards and Upwards
Charity: I particularly like Women For Women International who I've been supporting for a number of years now. They provide the resources for women in developing/war-torn countries to become self-sufficient by starting their own micro-businesses.

Thanks so much for your insight into empowering our creative brain, Anthony. Although I'm a writer, I find the editing much easier than the creating, so I'm keen to find out more about unleashing my inner Shakespeare!

'No, thank you! This was SO much fun. You asked some amazing, thought-provoking questions.'

Thanks! There you have it: Within fifteen weeks you can be on your way to harnessing your right brain, to unleash your creative energies on the world.

 

Think. Write. Share.

Belinda G

Valerie Frankel, author of FOUR OF A KIND

Publisher: Ballantine Books

Pages: 352

Genre: Mainstream Fiction

 'Sweet and compelling' People Magazine

Valerie Frankel is a bestselling novelist and an award-winning journalist. She has published twenty-five books in a range of genres; chick lit, young adult, self-help, mysteries and two memoirs. She has also contributed to dozens of publications including the New York Times, Self, Allure, Glamour, Parenting and Good Housekeeping.

Frankel's memoirs, Thin is the New Happy and It's Hard Not to Hate You both received rave reviews. She also collaborated with Nicole "Snooki" Polizzi on her novels A Shore Thing and Gorilla Beach.

If the titles of some of Valerie's books suggests she has a healthy sense of irony, the fact she co-authored (with the Joan Rivers) Men Are Stupid . . . And They Like Big Boobs: A Woman's Guide to Beauty Through Plastic Surgery, confirms it!

I am thrilled that Valerie agreed to be interviewed about her new novel, Four of a Kind.

 

1. What was your impetus for writing 'Four of a Kind'?

I wanted to do a novel about female friendship that came into my characters’ lives as an unexpected gift. So often, friendship arrives in our lives out of the blue, or where we least expect to find it, in the least likely place or person. The idea of four totally different types of women meeting for their kids’ school’s Diversity Committee seemed like a solid way to dramatize this idea. Having them play poker for each other’s secrets was a quick and juicy way to help the characters get to know each other quickly, and to draw in the reader to their private lives.

 

2. How would you describe your writing process and how long did it take you to write 'Four of a Kind'?

My process is pretty straightforward. I sit down at the desk, and don’t get up until I’ve written a certain number of words. Usually, I try to produce 1,000 words per day. I’ve found that it’s useful to keep moving forward with plot, even if I changed direction midway. After I finish a first draft, I got back to page one, and retrofit the plot and character changes. As a result, I often wind up completely rewriting the first 100 pages or so during that first edit. The second and third edits are for continuity and polish. The writing of Four of a Kind was slightly different than my usual process. I took my time with this novel, writing about 50 pages at a stretch, then working on another book for a while, and coming back to FOAK several months later. All told, it took about two years to complete it.

 

3. Your characters are thrust together on a school committee, but get to know each other through playing poker, with the high stakes of secrets. Would you say they were driven by a desire to be understood by sharing their own secrets, or by the desire to be privy to someone else's and maybe feeling a little better about their own lives?

We all know from airplane travel, that it’s often easier to spill your secrets to near strangers than to confide in your closest friend. So when the characters met for the first time, sat down and, as a lark, decided to play for secrets instead of money, the context allowed that to be possible. An objective listener can be the most helpful, which is why therapy works. The characters definitely took the opportunity to share without caring too much about the others’ reaction (later, however, as they go to know each other better, caring about each other influenced their lives tremendously). None of the characters used the experience in order to feel better about their lives, although when you realize that everyone, no matter how seemingly perfect, has her share of problems, that can be a relief.

 

 4. We have an innate desire for intimate relationships, yet we are often thwarted in our attempts to be known and understood. Why do you think that is?

It’s scary to put your thoughts and feelings out there! People fear judgment, rightly so. People do judge. They can’t help it. If you express your deepest feelings and fears in order to be understood, you risk being misunderstood and rejected or humiliated in the process. The characters in Four Of a Kind took big risks to reveal themselves to each other. Each woman was so isolated in her own life, though they were in “share or die” mode. The risk was worth the potential downside. And the rewards were beyond what they could have imagined.

 

5. What did you learn about life through writing about these four women's lives?

I was reminded to value and treasure my own friends. I’m embarrassed to say, I often take them for granted.

 

6. In terms of worldview, what do you believe?

Freedom of the press. Freedom of speech. Freedom to make personal decisions about health card and reproduction without government interferences. Regarding certain recreation drugs that can be grown in a planter, I believe in taxation and regulation, not criminalization. I believe people should read more books than watch TV, but I also believe it's none of my business what anyone does with their time. I believe strongly in my opinions, and don't believe in cramming them down anyone's throats. I'd probably be a Libertarian, but I also believe government has an obligation to help and protect the most vulnerable members of our society. So, in a nutshell, I believe in freedom, food, pot and books for all! But only if they want it.

 

7. How is your current worldview different to the one you were brought up with?

My parents don't approve of pot smoking. 

 

8. What's in your 'too hard' basket?

Twitter. I just can't keep up with it.

 

9. Can you give us a glimpse of your next planned project?

 I’m working on a new novel about mothers and daughters, and the bushel of mixed and complicated emotions at play in that relationship. I’m also doing some magazine work for Self and Good Housekeeping about a host of subjects that are pertinent to women’s lives.

  

10. Valerie's Favorite:
Book: Can't say fave book. I can't even begin to imagine who to figure that out.
Movie: Big Lebowski
Band: Wilco
TV show: Mad Men, Downton Abbey (at the moment), Bored to Death (RIP)

 

Thanks so much, Valerie, for your time. It's inspiring to see a writer continue to create award-winning work.

'Thanks for the opportunity to answer your questions.'

 

Think. Write. Share.

Belinda G