An Autodidact

by M. W. Fogleman

Copyright 2010 Michael Fogleman. This book is licensed under the Creative Commons AttributionNoncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License, v 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/). You must attribute this work to Michael Fogleman (but not in any way that suggests that Michael endorses you or your use of the work). You may not use this work for commercial purposes. If you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under the same or similar license to this one.

Table of Contents
Preface........................................................................................... v Acknowledgements.......................................................................ix Essays........................................................................................... xi BACK................................................................................................................1 SUBURBIA..........................................................................................................3 THOUGHTS ON JULY 4TH................................................................................. 5 A DEAL WITH THE DEVIL.............................................................................. 9 A BIBLIOPHILE'S JOURNEY............................................................................. 17 NADSAT, JOYCE, AND LITERARY GENIUS.......................................................31 HARRY POTTER AND THE BEGINNINGS OF WONDER.................................... 37 WHAT MAKES A FILM GREAT?.........................................................................45 AN INQUIRY INTO HAPPINESS AND GENIUS.................................................. 49 PROBLEMS IN CONVERSATION........................................................................ 67 THOUGHTS ON LANGUAGE.............................................................................69 Creative Pieces............................................................................. 71 QUESTIONS.................................................................................................... 73 UNITY............................................................................................................ 77 CREATION...................................................................................................... 81 AN ONEIRONAUT...........................................................................................83 THE SURGE (FIVE WORDS)........................................................................... 85 THE TAXONOMIST..........................................................................................87 GRANDPARENTS............................................................................................. 91 Books Read.................................................................................. 93 About the Author..........................................................................95

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Preface
'I want to go on being a student,' I told him. 'I want to be a teacher. I'm just a reader,' I said. 'DON'T SOUND SO ASHAMED,' he said. 'READING IS A GIFT.' 'I learned it from you,' I told him. 'IT DOESN'T MATTER WHERE YOU LEARNED ITIT'S A GIFT. IF YOU CARE ABOUT SOMETHING, YOU HAVE TO PROTECT ITIF YOU'RE LUCKY ENOUGH TO FIND A WAY OF LIFE YOU LOVE, YOU HAVE TO FIND THE COURAGE TO LIVE IT.' John Irvings A Prayer for Owen Meany This book is the product of a summer, of my project called Autodidactism 2010. Thanks to the generosity of friends and family, I raised enough money so that I could spend the summer being an autodidact (a self-learner) while still saving for my college education at St. Johns College in Annapolis, Maryland. The production of this book forced me to account for my learning and to practice writing. I hope you will find it informative, interesting, and enjoyable. Learning is a catch-all term for what I did this summer. I read many books, from the modern fiction I am not finding at St. Johns to eastern religious texts, from philosophical tracts about love and literature to the books of my childhood. I had numerous experiences that I could not have done without the flexibility this summer offered me, the ability to dedicate a large amount of time and dedication. I
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attempted to switch to polyphasic sleep. I tried new forms of exercise (for me). I tried vegetarianism and meditation. I took pictures of many of my childhood toys before donating them to charity so I could treasure the memories forever while letting someone else make their own memories. Ive learned to drive again. I also wrote. The essays in this book document some of those experiences, some of my thoughts left over from books. Im proud to say that you can see the influence of a year at St. Johns in my writing, but in a way that is still simple and conversational, which I believe is the best way to write an essay of this type. I plan on writing more in my lifetime. This book is a significant step on that path. However, it is a humble beginning. Remember that it was written in a summer, without a formal editor (although I am very grateful to those who took their time to write substantial critiques on the drafts I posted) or mainstream publisher. There are typos, and sentences that could benefit from some revision. It is also inevitable that I will ultimately disagree with some of these ideas as I change and grow. Remember that this book was written when I was nineteen, and that I have many more years to live and learn. The introduction to the edition I have of Virginia Woolf s The Common Reader makes the following observation: An essayists learning, wrote Virginia Woolf in The Modern Essay, must be so fused by the magic of writing that not a fact juts out, not a dogma tears the surface of the texture. It is presumably upon something of this principle tat the original edition of The Common Reader was almost wholly unannotated. Woolf was unwilling to compromise her work by adhering to standards that she thought obsolete and harmful, and I admire her for that. I have made a few deviations from the customary
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way of doing things, although they are certainly less important and somewhat inconsistent. For example, I have always found the practice of putting your own punctuation inside another authors citation when it cannot be found there originally deceptive and unattractive, so I do not do that in this book. Aside from these warnings, I hope you will enjoy the product of my work, and find it to be a worthy testament to Owen Meanys advice to Johnny Wheelwright. I am not ashamed of being a reader, a learner, or for making an effort to live it. Autodidactism has no room for harmful emotions like shame or doubt.

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Acknowledgements
For the success and mere existence of this book, this project, I owe thanks to a great many people. This list is going to be long, but it must be, considering I raised almost $1500 for my college education in order to be able to do this project. First and foremost, my greatest thanks go to my parents, Stanley Fogleman and Deb LeBel, for raising me, for helping me find and attend St. Johns, for not thinking this project was crazy. This project would not exist without Jerry Januszewski, who encouraged me to figure out what it was I really wanted to do this summer, to stretch my imagination and make my dreams come true. Nor would it exist without all of my generous donors, who believed in this project and helped it come into existence. I see in this book the realization of the hopes and dreams of this project, made possible by you; I hope you do, too. I am very grateful for all of my teachers and tutors, who have continually encouraged and nurtured my appetite for learning. My writing, as exemplified by this book, demonstrates your help. I owe a large debt to everyone who read my drafts and posted thoughtful critiques. I hope they will enjoy seeing the final version, complete with their suggestions. Special thanks to Marco Damiano, Billye and Bob Taylor, Jim and Bev Fogleman, Jimmy Berry, Peter Kringdon, Chris Katrakis, Tommy Bonn, Lilly Datchev, Campbell, Tyler Fanning, Kara Roth, Ben Pence, Ben Whitney, Christine Engels, Jane Adams, Hannah Enoy, Ben
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Condron, and Connor Thompson for their assistance and generosity in various forms, both this summer and in general. It is my utmost desire that my readers will learn from and enjoy this book, despite its flaws; thank you for reading it.

Essays
The main content of this book is essays written by me. Some are long, formal inquiries; some are more conversational and less philosophical; most are variations thereof.

Back
I am back from my freshman year at St. Johns. Hingham hasnt changed all that much, but I have. I feel more confident, and I am, on the whole, happier. My mind is filled with classic prose, Ancient Greek paradigms and mathematics propositions. Ive finished unpacking. Its remarkable how much crap we accumulate in each year of our lives. To compensate for the boxes upon boxes of things Ive brought into the house, I filled boxes upon boxes with books I dont want or need any more. How many Boxcar Children mystery novels does an adult man really need? Thats another way Ive changed: I feel more like a man than I did a year ago. Graduation gowns and celebratory cigars hide the truth from even the humblest high school student. College and Socrates have shown me a thing or two while bringing me closer to manhood. Shifting back and forth between sets of friends is alienating. I alternate between Ben and Tommy, Jane and Bonnie, Mark and Campbell and other friends that dont match quite so nicely. My old friends have Tommys and Bonnies and Campbells that I dont recognize posting on their Facebook walls; theyve changed as much as I have in ways Ill never understand. We return to Hingham and stare in each others eyes, trying to see if what we remember and love is still there. I am physically different: Im no longer underweight, and I havent cut my hair since August and have become a long-haired Achaean. It takes a second for friends to recognize me. Intellectual divides take a little longer to notice, but they are even more divisive. I cant talk about my essay on Homer or the beauty of Ptolemy with
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them, and their stories about escapades and adventures are told with a context I have no access to. Switching between libraries is like switching between lovers. Accordingly, it is stranger than changing friends. The Greenfield Library has everything I could ever want that is classic or Great: Program books, complementary primary sources, faculty files and lectures, prizewinning essays, commentaries and reference texts. But the Hingham Public Library has interlibrary loan and all things modern1. I checked what I wanted out of the Colleges library (the Loeb edition of Hippias Minor, for reading and translating, books on writing and rhetoric, some books my Language tutor recommended, a novel or two), but my literary diet for the summer will be mostly modern. I have 150 or so pages left of Gdel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid. Ive almost perfectly followed the Tumblr blog communitys schedule, even if they faded as quickly as the small study group of friends I formed to work through the book. It is summer. A time for forgetting Greek, the Program and St. Johns for a while. A time for long (barefoot!) walks, naps under the warm sun, friends and picnics and movies and milkshakes. A time for finishing Hofstadter, for reading endless stacks of books, for writing essays on questions that have been bothering me forever. It is time for Autodidactism 2010.

1 I borrowed pieces from this section for my essay A Bibliophiles Journey.

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Suburbia
To raise your children in the suburbs, as my parents did, is to value your childrens well being and your own peace and quiet, and to find other parents and their children with whom you can make friends and community. Children flourish in this environment, as everything around them, including schools and churches and sports teams and clubs, is organized towards growth and nurturing of children in various aspects. But when they reach a certain age, when emotions are fragile, passionate demons within, when rebellion and contrarianism become necessary ingredients for self-discovery, they lash out against this environment which once fostered their growth so well. The onset of this phase is sudden, alarming, and perplexing for parents who have given them nothing but love. Youths seek out that which has been hidden from them so well, violence and hatred and alcohol and drugs, and embrace one or the other with cries of being misunderstood by the world at large. They cannot help but quench their thirst with excess, and while most learn moderation, this period of pleasure and indulgence rips the simple joys of childhood away, causing a wound that is not easily healed. Suburban parents and authorities react harshly, surprised that their paradise is not everyones paradise, and attempt to suppress all cheeky words, actions, and feelings, and filter out those particularly nasty infringers. Let each young man and woman hear the call for reasonable moderation and balance, to accept them and begin to understand adulthood. Let each parent know their children are not statues, which can remain forever innocent and unblemished by the evils of the world, and react accordingly.

Thoughts on July 4th

'THE ONLY WAY YOU CAN GET AMERICANS TO NOTICE ANYTHING IS TO TAX THEM OR DRAFT THEM OR KILL THEM,' Owen said. He said that oncewhen Hester proposed abolishing the draft. 'IF YOU ABOLISH THE DRAFT,' said Owen Meany, 'MOST AMERICANS WILL SIMPLY STOP CARING ABOUT WHAT WE'RE DOING IN OTHER PARTS OF THE WORLD.' John Irvings A Prayer for Owen Meany There are two things Ive come to avoid thinking about: religion and politics. Unfortunately, St. Johns does too, at least in terms of practical (read: modern) instances of both. The Program requires us to think about Religion and Politics, but only through the original texts, in the theory; beyond the books (which are worth reading, of course), were on our own. The result of this is that Johnnies discuss relatively comfortable issues and questions, avoiding controversial issues which actually effect our lives, and succumbing to apathy and a vague agnosticism in the process. Not that there is anything wrong with St. Johns in particular. This is a more general, perhaps uniquely American problem, one that A Prayer for Owen Meany forces us to confront within ourselves. At one point, a character quotes Kierkegaard: What no person has a right to do is to delude others into the belief that faith is something of no great significance, or that it is an easy matter, whereas it is the greatest and most difficult of all things. Being agnostic myself, I dont know about faith being the greatest of all things, but I can
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certainly attest to it being the most difficult. I wont try to destroy anyones faith, or shake their disbelief, but it does seem to me that agnosticism is the only reasonable choice. Of course, faith is beyond me. But dissuading youand myselffrom apathy: that, I have no problem with. I came to apathy by way of being disgusted: disgusted of being misled by dogma and deception. I crave simple solutions and answers to everything, and dogma preys on idealists like me. Prolonged contemplation, however, leads me to suspect, somewhat cynically, that there may only be complex solutions that cannot achieve the things I dream of, that we all dream of: happiness and peace and justice and equality. It seems that anyone who offers simple solutions, who always has an answer, can only deception and dogma. What no politician has the right to do, but almost all do anyway, is to delude others that the solutions to our most pressing problems are easily found, whereas finding an elegant solution is (one of) the most difficult of all things. But we must find solutions for these problems. We are responsible for our own ethical decisions, at home and abroad. There are wars to end, there is an environment to take care of, and there are starving, sick, and uneducated people who we have the means to help. Lest someone accuse me of being unpatriotic on this July 4th, let me assure any would-be accusers that the apathy I am trying to disentangle myself and others from is far more dangerous to our country than any particular beliefs I may have, and to share with them one final quote: Mrs. Hoyt was the first person I remember who said that to criticize a specific American president was not anti-American; that
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to criticize a specific American policy was not antipatriotic; and that to disapprove of our involvement in a particular war against the communists was not the same as taking the communists' side.

A Deal With the Devil

Michael? My eyes flutter. Hannah, my friend, is trying to keep me from falling asleep. I had heard of polyphasic sleep before, but when my friends and running buddies Campbell and Phil showed up at my door at seven twenty in the morning and announced that they were trying it and needed me to wake them up from their next nap before we could exercise that morning, my interest evolved into a certainty that I, too, would try it. But I didnt want to try it during the school year, so I offered to help wake them up from their daytime naps. This increased both the probability of their success and my desire to achieve twenty two hour days. Every four hours, I would wake them up from their twenty minute naps. They had signed up for ten days of Hell, a period of extreme sleep deprivation which is required to adjust to the schedule. If they succeeded, they would have a seemingly infinite amount of time to do anything they needed to or wanted to: homework, hanging out, reading for pleasure, writing. The day would expand greatly, and indeed their understanding of time would be fundamentally changed. Campbell and Phil made it three or four days before oversleeping, a fatal error that forced them to stop their project. I was shocked and upset. Id thought my friends had enough determination to conquer anything, and I wanted to see them succeed more than anything. It turns out that most people that attempt polyphasic sleep fail, due to lack of willpower or the sheer intensity of the whole project. You need
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to compensate for the odds of failing with multiple alarm clocks, friends helping you in shifts, and a devotion to thoroughness and detail despite the mental fog of fatigue. Campbell gave me a book on polyphasic sleep1, written by a Johnnie. Shed tried it in Santa Fe as a solution to insomnia; when she and her friend succeeded, they called the schedule berman (a tip of the hat to Nietzsches bermensch) and followed it for six months of paradise before getting jobs that required them to quit. I pored through it, reading it several times so that when I tried the schedule I would be able to follow it to the best of my ability. Hannah had told me she was also interested in trying Polyphasic Sleep, so we saved ten days in our calendars for an attempt. It turned out that she couldnt start for a day after the day wed agreed on, so I started ahead of time. This mistake was actually very helpful, because the first day is the easiest. Your body is simply not exhausted yet, even if it is tired in the night. The next day is also pretty easy, because daylight is on your side and you have begun to sleep in your naps. So when she joined me that night, I was beginning to feel the effects of sleep deprivation, and she was not even tired yet. My body was very irritated with me. I mean this more than colloquially: adjusting to polyphasic sleep felt like a battle between my mind and body, where my body was really plotting against me (and I, it). I got cold easily (I suspect this was to trick me into getting warm, which is an easy way to fall asleep), I would start falling asleep even when I was standing up, and my acid reflux (which is normally at about equilibrium) reacted in extreme proportions. I woke up from naps
1 Ubersleep by PureDoxyk. 10

confused, often not remembering if Id turned off the alarm or other details. Coherent conversation became impossible, to the amusement of my friends and my dismay. Daylight and the dark of night had noticeable effects on my mind, so that day was very easy where nighttime was very difficult. On one particularly difficult night, I woke up and walked to another town, walked back in time for my nap, and repeated the whole thing. Walking wasnt keeping me awake as well as the first time, so I started jogging, which worked much more quickly. Walking around at night is very strange. Almost no one is awake, and the people that are look at you suspiciously. You start becoming paranoid, scared of the dark even if you havent been in years. Intersections have endless green lights because no one is driving. You notice certain things that happen only at night, things that must happen in order to make the day happen: people work late night shifts, street lights turn on and off automatically at certain hours, the sun sets and rises, and so on. Succeeding at polyphasic sleep takes great willpower. You must know why you want to achieve polyphasic sleep, and be able to pursue that even in the sleepiest of situations. Besides wanting twenty-two hour days, I also wanted to test my willpower: Would I give up because I was tired? If so, how tired would I have to be before I gave up? Id never so much as pulled an all-nighter before, and I always feel exhausted when I get less than six or seven hours of sleep a night. It turns out that while I did fail, it wasnt because of a lack of willpower. I wore a super-comfortable sweatshirt during a nap, and woke up two hours later. I decided to be done with the whole thing, since I was tired of being tired, and mistakes like that require at least a couple more days of sleep deprivation before you can get over them. Id lasted for thirty
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three nap cycles, which is five and a half days. On the nap before I failed, Id started dreaming, a sure sign of adaption. I got very close, but ultimately messed up. Failure was another personal goal I had for the project: not that I wanted to fail, but I knew the odds were high that I would, and I wanted to react gracefully and learn from the experience. Ive never liked failing, but it is something we have to do from time to time, so I might as well learn from it. So, whats next? How has my view on sleep changed, and how will I sleep from now on? We have some options. We can sleep for ten hours a night, valuing quality waking time over quantity; we can seek polyphasic sleep, whether it is biphasic (also known as the Siesta), Everyman, or berman; or we can get ourselves addicted to coffee, buy cases of energy drinks and take stimulants. I was on a biphasic schedule before trying polyphasic, which was an enormous help during my attempt, as it was easier for me to fall asleep during the day. I am returning to that, just because it keeps me energized and productive for more of the day; the importance of naps in a healthy sleep schedule cannot be overestimated. I am also thinking about becoming a vegetarian, as I read somewhere that vegetarians need less sleep. Im not sure if this has been scientifically proven as fact, but I can confirm it anecdotally: that night I talked about, where I walked and ran for two sleep cycles in a row, came right after Id eaten a big meal at Taco Bell. The previous night, Id only been that tired for one sleep cycle. Damn you, fast food restaurants advertising your late hours! I dread sleeping now. It feels like a complete waste of time, a submission to inner laziness. Sleep deprivation proves that your body wants and needs a certain amount of sleep for peak performance, but I wonder if we can change that. Can we hack our bodies so that they
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dont need sleep? Can we find a way to become like Thai Ngoc and Al Herpin, men who dont sleep? Whether or not they were actually capable of this feat, I think science could be. Theres a section at the end of the book about the Philosophical Implications of polyphasic sleep. I guess she couldnt resist the urge to contemplate out loud, and Im glad she didnt. She asks some important questions: What is sleep, and why do we need it? Beyond the fact that we need it, does sleep have any real value? Would you give up sleep? She notes that sleep is enjoyable, and it can also serve to keep us sane. For these reasons, I would not give up sleep entirely, but if I could choose when I slept I would do so minimally. I noticed two conflicting human desires during my attempt. On the one hand, the sanest part of your brain says What am I doing? I should stop this minute!. But another part knows that there are dangers to being normal, that it is human nature to pursue progress. We will try to excel in all areas, even if it means surpassing what we ordinarily think of as being human. It is only the limits that we find we cannot pass that will stop us, and even then, we will seek ways of destroying those limits. One thing she talks about in other sections is how distorted time becomes. What does a day mean if it is not everything in between long chunks of sleep? I really started to notice the rising and setting of the sun. I would welcome the rising of the sun like a friend who would help me stay awake throughout the day, and prepare myself mentally for the night. I told someone on the second night of the experiment that the whole thing had felt like one big day, which was true. It felt less and less like one big day as the project went on, as if I had started
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assigning mental markers of when a day stopped and another began. I began to have an understanding of just how long a day is, and how long the average night of sleep for adults is. So much could get done in the seven, eight, or nine hours that doesnt. Some polyphasic sleepers call monophasic sleep hibernation: pejorative, but true. Time doesnt seem to pass during a good nights sleep, but in fact, a large amount of time does pass. That brings up an important question: How much time seems to pass during the average polyphasic sleepers naps? My naps felt like time had stopped entirely, but I imagine someone who had actually transitioned properly would experience them a bit differently. I remember reading somewhere during my experiments with lucid dreaming (Im probably known in Hingham by this point as the weird sleep experiments guy) that when dreams happen, your estimate of how long they lasted correlates with how much time you were actually dreaming. I think that rule of thumb probably changes during polyphasic sleep. After all, twenty minutes becomes enough to last you for three and a half hours. I do not recommend polyphasic sleep lightly, even if it is on the easier Everyman schedule (three naps during the day and a 3/4.5 core sleep nap at night, but it takes a month to adjust to). You must have a burning desire to succeed, strong willpower and the ability to put theory into practice even when you are dead tired. Curiosity alone is not enough to propel you to success. Earlier, I compared the adaption period to Hell; polyphasic sleep is a deal with the devil. If you have the assets to make it past sleep deprivation, you gain the seemingly impossible: twenty-two hours a day. Even this is tarnished, however. You can never do anything that takes longer than three and a half hours, you have to eat at least one more meal a day than you normally
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would, and you are alone for long periods of time at night. Of course, the long periods of solitude, in particular, can look like and be a blessing for some people. If this sounds reasonable and worthwhile to you, and you feel confident about your willpower, then I can recommend trying it. But otherwise, feel free to stick to the more comfortable, societally and medically endorsed eight or nine hours a night.

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A Bibliophile's Journey
When looking at my essay ideas list, I realized there were a vast amount of essays that had overlapping subject matter, about books, learning, literature and philosophy, and decided to combine them. It's a bad day for writing when you start an essay that you tentatively title "A Celebration of Bibliophilia and Autodidactism, and an Inquiry into My Qualms Concerning Literature and Philosophy". Whatever form this essay will end up taking, though, it's going to be one of my favorites.

I. Bibliophilia and Autodidactism

My love for books (or bibliophilia, for the Ancient Greek-inclined) is almost endless. It began innocently enough. I never had a television my father didn't want me to grow up like he did, always in front of the television watching cartoonsand I found books to be a more than adequate substitute. I was always inclined to read a book rather than, say, play sports, and my habit was encouraged by my family and teachers. I was selected for a advanced reading group at my elementary school called "Junior Great Books", which I ultimately traded for the real thing at St. John's College. All of my classmates and friends enjoy reading just as much as I do. The first thing anyone does when they go into someone's room they've never been in before is look at their bookshelf. Thats a habit Ive always had, and I was pleasantly surprised to find that my friends had it, too. I once heard an upperclassman jokingly refer to St. Johns as a $50,000 a year book club, which isn't too far from the truth. I appreciate the many merits of the liberal arts education I am receiving, but between you and me, I often think the real benefit is that I'm able to tackle so many books I'd want to read
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otherwise, and knock a few items off my reading list. I could use the help; according to Goodreads, a social networking site for book lovers that I am almost as addicted to as reading the books themselves, I've marked almost 600 books as "to-read". Books were also the beginning of another of my closely related intellectual loves, autodidactism. After readily absorbing the books that most children read, I moved on to more advanced, intriguing topics by checking out large stacks of books at the library. Books were, from an early age, a means to acquiring a basic mastery of things like magic or chess, to engage my imagination: I could travel to castles, meet real detectives like Allen Pinkerton, or perhaps go on an adventure with Bilbo Baggins. Later, I devoured books on money or journalism, picturing myself as a small business owner or reporter. When I got a computer, I explored more modern mediums, such as podcasts, videos, and RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds, with the same devotion but with a view towards a more diverse learning experience. Despite the power of the internet, its breadth of subject matter and mediums, a library has always been the foremost symbol of autodidactism. Does the internet and the host of modern inventions that blossomed from itthe Kindle/iPad, Project Gutenberg, Scribd, Instapaper and the likehave the power to surpass the relevancy and importance of the library? To answer this question, I recently spent the better part of a week in a library. The idea for this mini-project came from a constant feeling of being overwhelmed by a library that any bibliophile knows too well. On the one hand, youre excited by the opportunity offered by the multitude of books new and old, but on the other hand, youre simultaneously discouraged by the sheer amount of knowledge you have yet to acquire. Its true that nobody ever said you
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had to learn everything, but at some level you have always hoped you could. Education in the traditional sense is inherently finite, but autodidactism requires a passion for the infinitude of knowledge and experience. Libraries have certainly changed over the years. The library in Hinghamthats my hometownnow offers audiobooks, films, CDs, graphic novels, frequent events, and a variety of online resources: downloadable ebooks and audiobooks, language courses, research databases, an online catalog and Twitter account. Some libraries even offer video games. But the most important change is the offering of free internet terminals. Libraries and the internet have always been tools that aim to democratize information, which makes them natural companions in spite of the cries of pessimists claiming that libraries will die. Yes, they have changed and will continue to, but they will not die in the foreseeable future. Of course, libraries have different flavors to them. The Greenfield Library at St. Johns is an excellent classics library, with the best works by the best authors, plentiful editions and translations, criticism from different schools of thought and eras, and college-related materials such as lectures and essays and books by tutors. The Hingham Library caters to modern patrons with all the amenities they might desire, but has little in the way of classics beyond the basics. Im sure other towns have different requirements, as will other colleges, and beyond that there is an even greater variation between museum, business, and personal libraries. In the wise words put on a button my AP English teacher gave our class as a graduation present, Reading is Sexy. Reading widely with an
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aim to learn and challenge yourself is one of the best things a man can do for himself. A clich I've always endorsed is that you stop thinking when you stop reading. I believe the same thing about writing, which serves as an excellent tool for organizing and articulating one's thoughts. In fact, when I've paired reading and writing together by writing a short commentary about my reactions to and questions about a particular book, I remember its most important conclusions and points for a longer period of time than I would have otherwise. From time to time, Ive heard students or tutors at St. Johns speak of conversing with a book or an author, or asking questions of a text, or something similar. This way of speaking about the experience of reading is initially strange to hear, but the better you become as a reader, the more it will make sense. Thinking analytically requires an involvement in the text that goes beyond reading the words and recognizing the ideas: you must insert yourself into the book. In a conversation, if you didnt understand what someone was saying, youd ask them to repeat it for you or maybe explain it in another way. You cant literally ask this of an author, but you can re-read his words and reformulate them if necessary. When readers begin to do this, there is an unfortunate tendency to become a devils advocate and initially disagree with the material, especially in reaction to unfamiliar or complex ideas. Overcoming this tendency becomes possible when you take the time to fully understand an authors ideas; only then can you ask yourself if you agree. If you dont, attempting to understand why not is a valuable tool for growth. Even if you ultimately disagree with the author, you have strengthened and justified your self-understanding. Theres a certain pleasure in finishing a book (or a reading at school). It is the moment when the accomplishment of reading is most
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tangible, when the reward is most visible, when we see best that our time has been well spent. If the book Ive just finished is of reasonable size and heft, Ive always enjoyed closing the cover noisily or plopping it down on the table, accompanied by a sigh of relief and gratification. Even this small pleasure is variable, though. I find that the amount of pleasure I receive at this moment is correlated with the quality of the work itself and my reading of it. If you ensure ahead of time that you have a reasonable likelihood of reading something of quality and invest the time to read it well, you will maximize the pleasure you receive in this moment, which is really just an indication of what youve gotten out of a book. Earlier, I mentioned that autodidactism requires a passion for the infinitude of knowledge and experience. Properly conditioned, this passion can grow from an enjoyment for learning to a more specific and practical energy, that for self-improvement. Self-improvement has a bad reputation merited by the work of sleazy salesmen, who capitalize on the presence of this desire. However, pursuing it genuinely, by learning a language or by taking measures to understand yourself and your actions with a view towards an end of social grace, success, or happiness is, in my view, the most practical application of the branch of philosophy most relevant to the individual. Remember that philosophy, or philosophia, means a love of wisdom. A philosopher loves all wisdom, and seeks out answers to all questions, but the most practical applications of philosophy, those with the most benefit to the philosopher, are those that involve the self. What is happiness? How can I achieve it? What do I desire, and why? What is the meaning of my life?
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One of the best examples of this sentiment, that philosophy is, in its most useful form, a means to the ends of self-understanding and -improvement, is Socrates prayer at the end of Platos Phaedrus: O dear Pan and all the other gods of this place, grant that I may be beautiful inside. Let all my external possessions be in friendly harmony with what is within. May I consider the wise man rich. As for gold, let me have as much as a moderate man could bear and carry with him (279C). In the realm of philosophy, questions which are asked with genuine curiosity and wonder, whether about subjects specific and practical or general and less relevant to day-to-day life, are worth pursuing. But men who turn to philosophy find knowledge which is useful and meaningful to them, whether they seek it or not. This desire for self-improvement may very well be, along with wonder, one of the origins of philosophy, and it is certainly the ultimate desire of autodidactism.

II. Questions about Literature: An Apology

Having reflected upon all of this, it is clear that I am a literary man. What can a literary man do with his life? Above all, I want to be, in the words of John Irvings Dr. Larch, of use. I could teach literature. Thats certainly of use: it teaches the young student to read and write well, and of course introduces them to the world of literature and culture. I could also write. Sharing my own words with the world is the natural continuation of reading books with care and detail, discussion and thought. But what to write about? My tentative answer is obvious from the content of this book, but Fiction was my first love. She built me as a reader, a lover of books, by captivating my attention and imagination with characters, settings and
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plots beautiful and ugly, light and dark, human and inhuman. The situations detailed within allowed me a pool of experiences from which to create moral principles and establish knowledge of the world at an age at which the world was hesitant to show me the widely varying sides of Nature and Humanity. Considering this, it would be a natural response to my question to say Write fiction! Thats where your heart lies, after all!. While I know I would enjoy writing fictionreading brilliant works of literature calls me to try my hand at the art, and I know doing so would increase my appreciation of their geniusbut a question nags at my mind. What use does writing fiction have? Being of use having a positive impact, inspiring and helping those that I can. I hesitate to say that fiction has no benefit, as it has surely helped me in the ways I mentioned above and others that I cannot fully understand, but its benefit is far from guaranteed. Instead, its effect is unpredictable and incalculable. This line of questioning has led me to nonfiction, to the essay. Essay-writing is a literary art. Most consider the very word essay dreary and unpleasant, due to its role in education, but those written by authors like E. B. White and Virginia Woolf are beautiful. Of course, both White and Woolf also wrote fiction. I do not have to choose between fiction and non-fiction now, never to write the other again. However if I want to master either art, I must choose now. I am not so good that I can master both arts, as Virginia and Elwyn did. Most writers, the men among gods, stick to one literary art and become a poet, a novelist, a playwright, a scriptwriter, or an essayist. Only the best can become more than one. So which art calls my name?

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The use of essays is self-evident: an essay is an opportunity to understand a memory, to flesh out an idea, to ask a question, or endorse a point of view. But understanding the use of fiction is more complicated. In order to do so, I want to create an apology, or apologia, in the classical sense. The word apology derives from the Greek word apologia, which means a defense. Defending literature will help me to understand literature and its purpose. Why does an author write fiction? Why do we read fiction? What use does it have? Is talking about "use" and fiction blasphemous because fiction is an art? There are simple answers for these questions: an author writes for a living, and a reader reads for escapism or entertainment. While these very well may be true, they are not the whole answer. The true art of literature, the true artists and the readers who read them surpass this level. Art is the output of our creative energies, which are in themselves the productive realizations of our desire to live, to experience life. While being of use has its place and timewe could not live without acquiring food and water, for instanceif we can, we must surpass them and enjoy life itself. Maslow is famous for his psychological theory of a hierarchy of needs, at the top of which is selfactualization. Self-actualization could be loosely defined as the realization of ones inner potential. As Erich Fromm elegantly put it, Man's main task in life is to give birth to himself, to become what he potentially is. Creative acts are one method for doing so. Selfexpression is inherent in any art form, and with it comes greater selfunderstanding. Creating art exercises our modern freedom from the lower levels of the hierarchy of needs. We arent hunters and gatherers any more. While art may have uses, it doesnt need to.
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That said, Ive already mentioned what I consider to be one of the most important practical functions of literature: the exploration of ethics. Even beyond a childs life, ordinary living doesnt afford us the opportunity to clearly define our own ethical frameworks. Literature transports us to various foreign scenes and challenges us to decide who is right and why, often in situations that dont afford clear and easy solutions. Maybe this is why the literary device of a deus ex machina is so disappointing; it solves the problem for us without giving us a chance to decide for ourselves what is right and what is wrong. This function of literature also closely relates to its ability to introduce us to culture, both our own and others. Thus, literature can also serve as a bearer of ideas, in what some have called philosophy in action. A novelist or poet forces us to confront the details and implications of an idea for ourselves, rather than delivering an argument in with a pre-made conclusion, ready for our absorption. Novels that are biased towards one viewpoint on a problem are generally received poorly; literature is better for helping us make up our own minds, for showing the inherent ambiguity and uncertainty of a given problem rather than delivering a dogmatic manifesto that leaves questions and doubts born from that ambiguity. Perhaps literature is more effective for conveying ideas than philosophical inquiries, which can be dry to some, in the same way that learning about a specific case of a greater problem (if, for example, you learned that your relative or neighbor had a disease) can be more meaningful and relevant than statistics about that same problem. Then again, maybe the distinction I am making between literature and philosophy is an unnecessarily divisive one (all such divisions of genre can fall victim to misunderstandings); I do believe that both philosophy
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and literature seek truth and wisdom, albeit in different manners. But as Mario Vargas Llosa said, Only literature has the techniques and powers to distill this delicate elixir of life: the truth hidden in the heart of human lies.1 I believe that this power comes from the poetic quality, from the compelling power and beauty of a character who is an instance of a specific problem or idea, who appeals to our emotions in lieu of a rational but dry argument conducted by the most wellintentioned philosophers (the advantage to a philosophical text is that one can tell what the author thinks, and a conclusion can be found within; but literature embraces and profits from the ambiguity of any path to the truth, while even the best philosophical texts can, by their very nature, be misconstrued as having found the answer in a manner final and certain). A good novel makes us believe that we truly understand a character, that we truly know who they are. It seems to me that truly knowing another person is at best extremely difficult, if not impossible, but a master of literatures expertise can bring us very close to knowing a character of their invention. Emerson once said that Every man I meet is in some way my superior; in the same way, every character of a good novel can help us become better people, or learn more about the world. I began this section of the essay with an idea borrowed from a character from a novel, that each man and woman should be of use. Does John Irving believe, as his character Dr. Larch does, that each man and woman should be of use? If so, how does he rationalize being an author? Perhaps he doesnt. I cant say without a doubt what Mr. Irving believes, but I would wager that most artists believe utility is not the goal of art, nor should it be. Friedrich Schiller defends this viewpoint
1 http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/08/03/reviews/970803.03parinit.html 26

articulately andappropriatelypoetically in his work On the Aesthetic Education of Man: Art must abandon actuality and soar with becoming boldness above necessity; for Art is a daughter of Freedom, and must receive her commission from the needs of spirits, not from the exigency of matter. But today Necessity is master, and bends a degraded humanity beneath its tyrannous yoke. Utility is the great idol of the age, to which all powers must do service and all talents swear allegiance. In these clumsy scales the spiritual service of Art has no weight; deprived of all encouragement, she flees from the noisy mart of our century. The very spirit of philosophical enquiry seizes one province after another from the imagination, and the frontiers of Art are contracted as the boundaries of science are enlarged. (Letter Two) The creation of art exercises our freedom to participate in beauty and spiritual activity; the realm of the imagination is beyond reason and utility. An artist shares his imagination with you. If you give a man a fish, hell eat for a night, but if you teach a man to fish, hell eat for a lifetime. One who finds pleasure and benefit in literature will find that exercising his own imagination will be even more rewarded. I will have to decide if I want to read other peoples novels for the rest of my life, or contribute my own, for greater and more personal satisfaction. In the meantime, Ill keep working on this bookthe fact that I am including a creative section reflects this change in my mindsetand perhaps Ill try NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month, where would-be authors try to write a novel in a month) when November rolls around. I am hopelessly in love with literature, despite any misgivings I may have, and I cannot think of a better way to exercise and
27

demonstrate my devotion, to worship the art form than to write literature myself. I can only hope that whatever path I end up taking will be in accordance with Henry David Thoreaus appeal to philosophers, which, as we have seen, should apply as much to philosophers of the standard sense as followers of literature: To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust. It is to solve some of the problems of life, not only theoretically, but practically. I still have some doubt about literatures ability to comply with this appeal, particularly the last request. In this way, reading is an act of faith for me (an extremely pleasurable one!). Consider the following quote from W. Somerset Maughams The Razors Edge, about a more religious faith: "Our wise old church...has discovered that if you will act as if you believed belief will be given to you; if you pray with doubt, but pray with sincerity, your doubt will be dispelled; if you will surrender yourself to the beauty of that liturgy the power of which over the human spirit has been proved by the experience of the ages, peace will descend upon you." In the same way, I think that if I read and write fiction as if I believe in the sentiment expressed by Schiller; if I read and write fiction with doubt, but with sincerity, my doubt will be dispelled; if I surrender myself to the beauty of great literature the power of which over the human spirit has been proved by the experience of the ages, peace will descend upon me. Maybe this peace has already come to me at some
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level, but I am just attempting to rationalize its onset in order to accept it. Writing this essay and articulating my doubt has been cathartic for me. I hope you will find it at least interesting, and at best similarly helpful.

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Nadsat, Joyce, and Literary Genius

Dyou pony nadsat horrorshow when you slooshy your droogies govoreeting it? All of the above words are taken from Nadsat, the slang vocabulary Anthony Burgess created for his novel A Clockwork Orange, which I just finished reading. A literal translation would be "Do you understand teen-speak well when you hear your friends speaking it?". Alex, the novel's narrator and anti-hero, speaks in Nadsat throughout the novel; its usage is a stylistic choice that both defines and distinguishes the novel. Such a choice creates a barrier between the book and the reader; the reader must assemble a running mental glossary of the terms based on context. If the reader is lucky enough to know some Russian or another Slavic language, they may be able to recognize the influence of Slavic languages on the dialect. But this barrier is not a difficult one: with a little patience, it is easy enough to understand what is going on. The words used are simple and predictable, meaning things like "hear" or "see" or "friend", and they are used frequently and consistently, so that the reader is not lost for long. Burgess' stylistic choice risks the reader's frustration, but it accomplishes so much in return for that small risk: the sound of the words informs the reader of Alex's psychotic mentality, of his obscene joy in violent acts. Today is "Bloomsday", an annual holiday on June 16th that celebrates James Joyce and his novel, Ulysses. Joyce is famous for taking the sort of risks that Burgess takes in A Clockwork Orange to extremes
31

with Ulysses and Finnegans Wake. Unsurprisingly, Burgess admired Joyces work, publishing several works of literary criticism, Joyce scholarship, and even an abridged version of the Wake. Here's a sentence from Finnegans Wake: A way a lone a last a loved a long the riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs. Technically, this is two sentences: the word "the" is the final word in the novel, and "riverrun" is the first, making the novel into a circle where you can begin anywhere. Aside from the fact that this sentence creates the novel's circularity, it isfrom what little Ive poked through the booka typical sentence for Joyce, layered with wordplay and multiple meanings. Here's a gem from the Wikipedia article on the Wake, one that states simply one of the many reasons why the book is widely considered the most difficult book in English literature: "Critics disagree on whether or not discernible characters exist in Finnegans Wake." Most people that read Ulysses or Finnegans Wake read it in a college course, or in book clubs that read a few pages at a time, and often they need to buy another book which helps to decipher the meaning of the plot, symbolism, and wordplay. Intellectuals requiring Sparknotes: an absurd thought, but true. Joyce said that Critics who were most appreciative of Ulysses are complaining about my new work. They cannot understand it. Therefore they say it is meaningless. Now if it were meaningless it could be written quickly without thought, without pains, without erudition; but I

32

assure you that these 20 pages now before us cost me twelve hundred hours and an enormous expense of spirit.1 So the Wake is not nonsense; but what motivations would Joyce (or another author, like Ezra Pound, who wrote the similarly perplexing Cantos) have for writing in a way that would guarantee that few would understand it? Or, as Joyces wife Nora allegedly put it, Why dont you write books people can read? I am not very much of an artist, so I am sure there is a reason, but I need to understand it a little better. I read a short story a while ago that had a lasting impact on me, and might be relevant. It is a speculative fiction storyas I understand it, speculative fiction is a relative of Science Fiction that cares less about all the cool details, but more about contemplating what we can learn from imagined worlds, in a recognizably philosophical way called Understand2, written by Ted Chiang. In it, a man increases his intelligence in distinct stages, allowing the reader to think about what being more intelligent really looks like. He dabbles in the creation of works of Joycean scope in size and complexity: I'm writing part of an extended poem, as an experiment; after I've finished one canto, I'll be able to choose an approach for integrating the patterns within all the arts. I'm employing six modern and four ancient languages; they include most of the significant worldviews of human civilization. Each one provides different shades of meaning and poetic effects; some of the juxtapositions are delightful. Each line of the poem contains neologisms, born by extruding words through the declensions of another language. If I 1 Richard Ellmans James Joyce (1983) 2 http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/stories/under.htm
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were to complete the entire piece, it could be thought of Finnegans Wake multiplied by Pound's Cantos. At times, the main character sounds pretentious, but he is simply articulating his discoveries without sugar-coating how far beyond average human intelligence his work is. Chiang recognizes the importance of the type of work we are talking about, and neatly offers an explanation of why one might write something like the Wake. A genius needs to create works at his level of intelligence, that exercise his full powers; it is only in doing so that they can find relevant, fulfilling meaning. At another point, the main character realizes that our language confines him, so he attempts to design a new one, which would help him with the task by being gestalt-oriented, rendering it beautifully suited for thought, but impractical for writing or speech. It wouldn't be transcribed in the form of words arranged linearly, but as a giant ideogram, to be absorbed as a whole. Such an ideogram could convey, more deliberately than a picture, what a thousand words cannot. The intricacy of each ideogram would be commensurate with the amount of information contained; I amuse myself with the notion of a colossal ideogram that describes the entire universe. The printed page is too clumsy and static for this language; the only serviceable media would be video or holo, displaying a timeevolving graphic image. Speaking this language would be out of the question, given the limited bandwidth of the human larynx. The use of created language allows Joyce to express himself in ways that get him closer to his actual thoughts, stretching the limits of language and approaching actually expressing and rendering ideas and
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scenes, but in so doing, diminishes the likelihood of its being fully and properly comprehended by others. This is why one can spend a lifetime reading Ulysses, Finnegans Wake, or the Cantos, why there is an entire field of scholarship devoted to untangling the mysteries of Joyce and Pound, and why the average reader avoids these works and those that do seek truth and understanding as bestowed by the genius they cannot have. It is clear that despite their difficulty, there is reason to create and read such works, and that it takes even more sweat and greater genius to render them comprehensible to the masses.

35

Harry Potter and the Beginnings of Wonder

This essay is the only essay in this book which assumes you have already read the books I work with; as such, it contains spoilers.

From 1998 (I was in the second grade) to 2007 (I was entering my Junior year of High School), J.K. Rowling published the Harry Potter childrens book series. The first book, at 309 pages, was not short for a childrens book, and the size of each book generally grew, for a total of 4,100 pages. These books earned an unprecedented following and the eager anticipation of fans preceding each release, ranging from international book release parties, children reading each book all night until they collapsed, and controversies over leaks of the book onto the internet. Why did these unusual books capture the hearts and souls of the world, child and parent alike? What literary merit do they have? My biased hypothesis is that they do have literary merit. At this point, some will hesitate on grounds that I consider to be quite reasonable: analyzing these books may break their hold over us, tarnish their beauty. I, for one, have always found that thinking seriously about what an author was doing was worthwhile and rewarding, even making the book more beautiful in my eyes. But these are childrens books, the magic of your childhood!, theyll say. The opposite viewpoint was expressed by my friend and fellow student at St. Johns, the infamous Harel Newman: Murder your childhood. The blood will drive your plunge forward into reality. Harel always has similarly touching, insightful comments to make. I do not seek to murder my childhood; rather, I aim to understand it, and in so doing, to honor it. So Hogwarts Express is off in just a moment. Feel free to hop off now, onto Platform 9, if you cant
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stomach our destination. For those of you who are staying aboard, the very inclusion of this essay means that I think the journey of writing it was beneficial, and that reading it can be for you as well. Should you find our goal revolting, a dip into the original, Rowlings prose itself, should fix you up quite nicely. It is truly our childhood that we find in the Harry Potter books, or, more precisely, the mindset we had as children, filled with captivating, widely varying emotions: joy, excitement, empathy, sorrow, fear. Most importantly, the books invigorate our love of wonder and imagination. Rowling works in a magical re-interpretation of nearly every object we encounter, of every part of our lives. Rowling transforms government, education, sports, the economy, and law enforcement into the Ministry of Magic, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Quidditch, Diagon Alley, Gringotts Bank, and Aurors. When Rowling needs a plot device or a prop, she transfigures our Muggle equivalent with the astonishing ease of Professor McGonagall. To read her descriptions of Harrys first shopping trip for school supplies, which takes place just after he learns that he is a wizard, is to react to the Wizarding Shops with the same amazement Harry does. Mr. Weasley, who for most of the books works for the Ministry of Magic in the Misuse of Muggle Artifacts Office, has a fascination for the Muggle world that parallels ours for his: Ingenious, really, how many ways Muggles have found of getting along without magic (2.43)1.

1 Citations in this essay are formatted so that the book number is first and then the page number. 38

His interest, although discouraged by his wife and mocked by his more sinister colleagues, neatly describes the total awe we feel for Rowlings world, and serves to compliment her. There are some objects which defy a normal or technological Muggle equivalent, whose very existence make our solutions, which are really only imitations attempting to solve a problem we cannot, obsolete and worthless. These are often the most interesting plot devices in a book, the ones that give a book its character and make it one fans favorite over another. For example, in the sixth book, Harry earns for a prize a potion called Felix Felicis, which, upon consumption, makes one lucky for a time. When he takes the potion, it not only solves a tricky problem for both him and Rowling, but her description of the feeling and reality that nothing can go wrong is one that is quite rare in our world. Other objects like this include the Marauders Map (which far surpasses an ordinary map), the Pensieve (no diary can record memories so well), or the Horcruxes. The characters also benefit from Rowlings talent for thorough and detailed description. Rowlings intended shape for their personality and motivations begins with their name. Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore fits for the wise wizard who does not take himself too seriously. Severus Snape exudes a nasty, evil feeling. Rita Skeeter evokes, for me at least, a sort of honey-flavored venom; it is a perfect name for a gossipmonger. Dolores Umbridge is bureaucratic and elderly, while Cornelius Fudge juxtaposes a pompous name with a childish one. Lord Voldemort, of course, is pure evil (and his birth name and framework for his new name, Tom Marvolo Riddle, is a perfect contrast for everything that he tries to escape). Try considering other characters names in relation to your perception of them. Rowlings idea for the
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character manifests itself not just in their name, but also in their dialogue, which Rowling adjusts in every varying situation to match that idea. At one point, she demonstrates the depth of her knowledge of each character by having Hermione explain to Harry and Ron how Cho Chang, Harrys love interest in the fifth book, is feeling, and the reasons for each emotion. Just as Rowling knows why Cho is simultaneously sad, confused, guilty, afraid, and mixed up and painful, Rowling knows each characters reaction to every plot point, even to every other character (5.459). This is no small accomplishment, considering that in the span of seven large books, she weaves in a large amount of minor characters to fill out each plot. But if the reader pays attention to and analyzes each character, one potential negative side effect of perceiving this depth is seeing her characters as predictable and static. For example, Hermione always has an intelligent insight to share, gleaned from her books, which she delivers with a dramatic exasperation but underlying patience. Ron is eager to jump to obvious, easy conclusions. Fred and George always poke fun with a warm smile and good intentions, while Draco Malfoy harasses his enemies with a cruel snarl. But despite these patterns (which can be stated briefly for almost any character), there is some change in her characters (or sometimes, as in the case of Snape and Dumbledore, it is in Harrys, or our, perception of them). Neville overcomes his fumbling nature to help the anti-Voldemort cause in fine form; Ginny drops her shyness and wins Harrys love. Harry is originally hesitant to take credit for his accomplishments, but when he faces Voldemort and defeats him in the final book, he has surpassed modesty and accepted his heroic deed. Incidentally, consider the final spells each casts upon the other (7.743). Voldemort, who symbolizes
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hate and evil beyond human comprehension, casts the killing spell, Avada Kedavra, which Harry learns that you must mean to cast. Harry casts Expelliarmus, the deflecting spell that the Death Eaters rightly call his signature spell. Harry, the selfless defender of love and all that is Good, kills not by meaning to, but by reacting, not by the Dark Arts but by Defense Against the Dark Arts, the pedagogical distinction that separates Hogwarts from Durmstrang, and Dumbledores Hogwarts from Voldemorts Hogwarts. Harry is, after all, Dumbledores man through and through, a label which meant so much when self-applied and gains even more meaning when Harry proceeds to face Voldemort when he learns Dumbledores true intentions, when he learns that he must die. And in accepting his fate as Dumbledore planned it, he finds, in a most beautiful moment, that he alone is worthy of returning to Earth, to defeat Voldemort and live out his life. At the close, Rowling risks the literary beauty she has built up by adding an epilogue, one which does not assume that the reader will know that her characters rightly live happily ever after. Although seeing each characters fate After Voldemort is both interesting and pleasant, she disobeys the law of scope which Aristotle set down in his Poetics. Aristotle praises Homer for not making the Odyssey out of all the things that happened to Odysseus, but rather it and the Iliad are organized around one action of the sort we are speaking: one journey (1451a20). There is a reason why we do not see Achilles die, or Odysseus plant his oar, even though these actions are foreshadowed in the books. Rowlings scope was for Harry to defeat Voldemort in the seven years of his Hogwarts career, so in this sense, it is an epic with episodes like the Odyssey, where one man must, over the course of ten years, overcome Poseidon to reach and rebuild his home and household
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safely. The epilogue is disputed by fans not because it is happy (those who do so, do so wrongly, because for Rowlings tale to have as dark an ending as its middle would be to defy the genre of childrens literature in an unforgivable way), but because it reaches outside of the scope of Harrys journey. Rowling must not have viewed it as such; she said in an interview that she had written the last chapter in something like 1990
1

. That could explain why the prose feels, as my friend Tommy put it in

reacting to an earlier draft of this essay, cheap, uninteresting, and, to be frank, embarrassing. But we can forgive Rowling for the series imperfections. Is Rowling's series innovative?2 The books length and number is certainly unusual for childrens literature, although perhaps C. S. Lewis The Chronicles of Narnia serves as a precedent. Overall, I suspect that Rowling is simply the best at what she does, but not necessarily innovative. But it is clear that Rowling has crafted an epic tale with care and detail that invigorates our childlike sense of imagination and wonder. And, in so doing, she does a great service to the world, for as Aristotle says, it is by way of wondering that people both now and at first began to philosophize (982b10). Indeed, there are some passages in which Rowling creates a truly philosophical wonder. (It is no mistake that most of these passages involve Dumbledore: he is the wisest wizard, Harrys Gandalf, his mentor whose aid and planning we realize in the seventh book has served a divine, Godlike function for Harry, although with this realization comes an understanding of Dumbledores all too human faults.) The Mirror of Erised asks us which kind of men desire what; the Sorcerers Stone (or as it is tellingly
1 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/5119836.stm 2 This question's presence in this essay is also thanks to Tommy's comments. 42

called in the British, original edition, the Philosophers Stone) asks us what the price of immortality is and when we are ready to die; the Pensieve asks us what separates fact from fiction, to what degree memory and guesswork can reveal knowledge. All of this philosophy is fleshed out in Rowlings magical, poetic way. By accepting her affect of wonder, we understand the books to be a gift of both literature and philosophy, one that will ensure that children delight in reading, in imagination and wonder for a long time ahead.

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What makes a film great?

It is difficult to consider film as an art form when we go to the movie theaters. Crude comedies and recycled plot lines are the norm, and there is a commercial lining to the whole endeavor, one that doesnt feel quite justified and discomforts us. The proliferation of online video sharing websites like YouTube further distorts the potential of film as art in our eyes. Nevertheless, the history of film is built upon the tradition of film as an art form. It is worth considering, if we wish to understand modern art and culture. What are the elements of a great film? Certainly, there is a subjective, varying aspect to what makes one film great to one of us and boring, or worse, awful to another (I for one, do not particularly enjoy the film Casablanca, which is practically blasphemy). But between watching films and discussing them with others, I have discovered and distinguished for myself three types of great films, where previously I could see only one or two of these. The first is the sort of movie that consistently brings us pleasure, that we can watch over and over again without tiring of it. For me, it is Donnie Darko or Finding Forrester that I turn to when I want to feel a little better about life, or want to watch something I know without a doubt that I will enjoy. There is no real rhyme or reason to these choices, but the effects are predictable. Friends of mine have The Big Lebowski or Waynes World; for you it might be The Rocky Horror Picture Show; for another it might be a Disney film, or Harry Potter. There is no shame in having a favorite movie in this category, since it is likely that your favorite movie does fall into this category for you. However, depending on the movie, you might want to avoid sharing this fact about yourself
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with others. For example, I will always enjoy watching Red Dawn, even if it is an awful, outrageous film; you may enjoy Twilight, and I suppose society cant justifiably be irritated at the irrationality of that, but you ought to keep it to yourself. We watch the second type of film because it is beautiful. Lush landscapes, inspiring characters, and moments that reveal the better side of human nature are part of what makes a film beautiful. We seek to make ourselves more beautiful by observing and absorbing the films beauty, and the film that succeeds in this is perhaps the most similar to art. I recently purchased a Flip Video, a small, relatively inexpensive video camera of above-average quality, in hopes of capturing moments like these. Sure, most of my videos fall into the first categoryby filming funny moments with my friends, I make movies that consistently make me happybut the best ones I have are the ones that I would call beautiful, and if Im lucky, someone else will, too. I call the final category the Great Film, a name which reveals my preference. Indeed, in framing this essays question, Ive revealed some implicit biases. The term the Great Film has similar requirements to the Great Books we read at St. Johns College. Although there is no explicit formula or rubric for which books are worthy of the Program, some clear patterns emerge. They each pose timeless questions, and deserve a lifetime of study. They can be read again and again because we can never fully understand them, with each reading revealing new questions and observations (and perhaps how we have changed since we last read them). They react to one another, forming a dialogue that transcends the parts to form a greater whole. Finally, they are time46

honored. Clearly, the medium of film has had a shorter lifespan than that of the written word, so we cannot rely on that last characteristic as easily. Of course, we do not only read Great Books, nor do we only watch Great Films; so there is a place for the other kinds of films. Take this knowledge out into the world. Watch as many films as you can, from different cultures and genres. Try to find a category that Ive missed. See whether you think the lines between the categories are as clear as Ive drawn them. May you reconsider film, and art as a whole.

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An Inquiry into Happiness and Genius

I. Introduction
Can one become happy? Can one become a genius? Perhaps my questions fall into the same trap that Platos Meno does with his questions: Can you tell me, Socrates, can virtue be taught? Or is it not teachable, but the result of practice, or is neither of those, but men possess it by nature or in some other way? (70). Socrates repeatedly urges Meno to ask first what virtue itself is. Meno, true to his nameMenon is related to the verb Meno, which means I remainremains steadfast, and Socrates offers a way to proceed without knowing just what virtue is. (Incidentally, this parallel to the Meno is not a bad one, in that arete, the word translated as virtue, can also mean excellence, which I see as a close cousin of genius.) Let us, informed by Socrates reaction to Menos stubbornness, try first to sketch out what happiness and genius are, before we proceed. We could do worse than to start with their definitions. A definition is not quite a Platonic Form (it is worth thinking about the difference between them), but we only need to be informed by Plato and the successes and failures of the interlocutors in his dialogues, not constrained by their method of inquiry. The definitions will help us in our question ti eisin, what are they? Genius1. 5. (Only in sing.) Native intellectual power of an exalted type, such as is attributed to those who are esteemed greatest in any department of art, speculation, or practice; instinctive and extraordinary capacity for imaginative creation, original thought, invention, or discovery. Often contrasted with talent.
1 Definitions taken from Oxford English Dictionary. 49

Happiness. The quality or condition of being happy. 1. Good fortune or luck in life or in a particular affair; success, prosperity. 2. The state of pleasurable content of mind2, which results from success or the attainment of what is considered good. Note that I cited the fifth definition of genius. The first and second definitions have an element of the divine (1. With reference to classical pagan beliefs: the tutelary god or attendant spirit allotted to every person at his birth, to govern his fortunes and determine his character). The third and fourth definitions are simply weaker and less relevant renderings of the genius I am thinking about. Genius also has an intrinsic sense of Nature, of natural determination, due to its roots: the Greek gignesthai, to become, can mean to be born, or to come into being. Similarly, the word happiness has a sense of chance to it, deriving from the noun hap (Chance or fortune (good or bad) that falls to anyone; luck, lot.), which also forms the words haphazard, hapless, and happen. What does it say that these ideas which we are seeking for ourselves and our children have within their names origins outside of our control, such as Nature, Chance, and the Divine? Socrates, too, ultimately attributed arete to be present in those of us who may possess it as a gift of the gods (100b). Let us be aware that previous thinkers thought genius and happiness were not brought about in men by men, and let us accept that there may be such limitations, but let us seek out what control, if any, we may have over our own lives, over our genius and happiness.

2 Let us modify this definition to include overall state; surely even the happiest of men have dark and difficult periods. 50

II. Genius
Here in St. Clouds, Dr. Larch wrote, I have been given the choice of playing God or leaving practically everything up to chance. It is my experience that practically everything is left up to chance much of the time; men who believe in good and evil, and who believe that good should win, should watch for those moments when it is possible to play God we should seize those moments. There wont be many. John Irvings The Cider House Rules What good is there in the existence of genius? The benefit genius has on the world is almost self-evident. Progress and innovation depend on intelligent, insightful and analytical thinkers who are experienced in a particular discipline but also have the ability to step back and look at a problem in a way that no one else has looked at it before. But whether or not being a genius benefits the genius himself is less clear. It is true that a genius often receives material compensation, fame, and the rewarding feeling of solving problems successfully, but there is also the weight of depression that so often follows genius. I leave this question open for you to answer at the conclusion of its essay; your answer is critical to whether or not the information presented in this essay is acted upon or not. The very writing of this essay reveals my bias. I agree with Dr. Larch; any opportunity to create genius should be taken. My first contention, one that I suspect society at a whole is arriving at, is that genius is, by and large, the result of hard work. Homer began both the Iliad and the Odyssey with a prayer to the Muse. Western culture has long considered genius to be the product of supernatural forces, mysterious and incomprehensible. This argument is, of course, a
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rehashing of the much older Nature vs. Nurture argument. I am not denying the importance of Nature. I assume that a given person with a natural competency can tip the odds towards becoming a genius by working very, very hard, that ones intelligence or aptitude is proportionate to the quality and amount their work. Malcolm Gladwells book Outliers is the basis for most of this argument. Let me stop to mention some of his more interesting findings. First, practicing seriously for about ten thousand hours (which takes about ten years) is required to achieve the level of mastery associated with being a worldclass expertin anything (40). Gladwell notes how difficult this is, practically speaking: the enthusiasm and support of ones parents and community is required, and financial and educational resources must be available. But if we recognize this principle, we can overclock it, hack the odds so that they are on our side. Instead of getting depressed at the overwhelming path to success, we can choose to have a positive attitude, to embrace and overcome it to our benefit. I wish to find a path towards making genius more prevalent, so that those ten thousand hours become easier to achieve. I am not searching for a royal road to genius, but I want to make a sort of map for the road that all of us must take. If we accept that great things come at great cost and effort, we can accelerate the pace at which we can achieve excellence. This essay will take the form of a thought experiment, in which I explore various ways of achieving genius (or at least increased intelligence and excellence). Polyphasic sleep could be one way to do this. It takes, on average, about ten days to adjust to the sleeping schedule. The odds of success were estimated by the author of a book I have as being one in fifteen; but if one were to succeed, they would sleep for twenty minutes every
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four hours, or two hours a day instead of eight or nine. The person who succeeds at this schedule, which is rightly named Ubersleep (a tip of the hat to Nietzsches bermensch, Superman), will have twenty two hours in a day to the average persons fifteen or sixteen. If they devoted a significant portion of their day to the field of their choicea much more likely and possible prospect than on monophasic sleep, when work or school dominate our waking hoursthey could expedite the path to genius. However, maintaining polyphasic sleep for an extended period of time, say seven or eight years, is unheard of. Furthermore, if you spent all day long studying and practicing, instead of just a portion of the day, you would find that one simply cannot work all day long for an extended period of time with the vigor required to become a genius without collapsing. So there must be a balance between these extremes. Regardless, polyphasic sleep seems to be a valuable tool for decreasing the amount of time in which you have to work to become a genius (not in hours, but days). Of course, the polyphasic pursuit of genius would take the same amount of toil and effort, if not more. The odds of this endeavor succeeding depend on your having the willpower to both transition to polyphasic sleep as well as to maintain it for an extended period of time, to grind away hours in practice. Additionally, any path to genius requires the financial resources, and those required for the field you are training for. For example, one could practice chess or mathematics or writing with very few resources, but chemistry requires a lab and chemicals. Additionally, some fields absolutely require a mentor or teacher, and almost all can benefit from the presence of such a guide. So these things must be taken into consideration.
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Piotr Wozniak, practicioner and researcher of spaced repetition1, has a different path. He has made a checklist for genius. You can see a more full version of his checklist (and his article about genius, which makes for interesting reading) on his website2, but I would rather cite an article3 that was in Wired a few years back for its insightful and objective description of his method: His advice was straightforward yet strangely terrible: You must clarify your goals, gain knowledge through spaced repetition, preserve health, work steadily, minimize stress, refuse interruption, and never resist sleep when tired. This should lead to radically improved intelligence and creativity. The only cost: turning your back on every convention of social life. It is a severe prescription. This path evidently works quite well for Wozniak, and I suspect it would work just as well for the rest of usassuming we had that kind of flexibility and free time. In a way, my project has taken this path: I get enough sleep, and spend most of my days reading, writing, and thinking. I do see my friends, however, and this is a major infraction according to Wozniaks checklist. If I were to pursue the polyphasic path to higher intelligence, that too, would require a decrease in social encounters; so the sacrifice of solitude seems to be a requirement of any path to genius.
1 Spaced repetition is a very efficient way to accelerate memorization, and thus learning. He made a commercial program, SuperMemo, that does this, but I recommend the free, open-source Anki, which is also quite usable (unlike SuperMemo, which is notoriously difficult to use). 2 http://www.supermemo.com/articles/genius.htm#Genius Checklist 3 The article profiles Wozniak, whose interesting character sheds a lot of light on his work and genius as a whole. You can find the article at http://www.wired.com/medtech/health/magazine/16-05/ff_wozniak? currentPage=all 54

It is worth noting that there is no known path to genius which is a substitute for hard work. Instead, one can only maximize the effectiveness of that hard work (within reasonable limits: we must avoid a taste for extreme quickness to the point of neglecting major parts of any kind of work, and instead attempt to channel a pre-industrial age serenity and patience). Following Wozniaks list as closely as possible is a reasonable path for any of us mortals. That said, it seems to me that the path to genius that is most likely to succeed is in the hands, or mind, of a child, not an adult. A child has several obvious advantages that increase the probability of their attaining genius levels of intelligence. They have an immense amount of time ahead of them which can easily be devoted to the hard work required in the form of education. They also have plasticity, flexibility, and optimism, all in seemingly unlimited levels that are far beyond the average adult. Susan Polgar and her sisters, Judit and Sofia, are excellent examples. Their father, Lszl, was a Hungarian Teacher who wrote a book in 1989 about raising geniuses, with the thesis that children can be made into geniuses if they are trained properly in one subject from a young age. His daughters, who practiced chess to great success, serve as proof of his thesis. So if one were to raise a genius, what are the requirements for doing so? The child must love the field he or she is trained in. Lszl was planning to teach Susan and her sisters mathematics, but Susan fell in love with chess instead1; this natural dedication makes the level of

1 You can watch a documentary on Susan here: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6378985927858479238 55

work required much easier. Malcolm Gladwell has some other requirements: Ten thousand hours is an enormous amount of time. Its all but impossible to reach that number all by yourself by the time youre a young adult. You have to have parents who encourage and support you. You cant be poor, because if you have to hold down a parttime job on the side to help make ends meet, there wont be time left in the day to practice enough. In fact, most people can reach that number only if they get into some kind of special programor if they get some kind of extraordinary opportunity that gives them a chance to put in those hours (42). Polgar was able to create this kind of regimen and environment for his children. Mozart had this kind of environment; so did more modern geniuses such as Colin Braun, a race car driver1. Although helping your child is an all but impossible task, it is possible. Lets assume that you have dedicated yourself to ensuring that your child will be educated rigorously in pursuit of genius-level excellencealthough this hypothetical may be more for my interest and future consideration should the need arisehow should it be done? What way should the children be educated with these goals in mind? This questions importance should not be understated, and I would like to discuss it in this essay; however, there is no one, right answer for everyone in all situations, and it is important that one actually act, even if it is in an imperfect way. Find what seems to be the best available

1 His childhood and achievements are also chronicled by Wired Magazine: http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/15-10/mf_racing? currentPage=all 56

path for your child, take it, and adjust if necessary. That said, let us try to answer the question at hand. I suspect that the best and most efficient route is homeschooling, although it is likely the most expensive (in terms of both time and money) and difficult means of education. The most important advantage is the inherent flexibility, which can make the education more personal and specific. A child can study in a similar way to Chris Langan, one exceptional genius, who had a specific plan for each day in high school: He did math for an hourthen French for an hour. Then he studied Russian. Then he would read philosophy. He did that religiously, every day (Gladwell 71). Or the child can spend all of their time on one specialty, whatever it may be. The other important advantage homeschooling offers is that it decreases the psychological burden of rigor, insofar as children being around other children in a regular school breeds an environment of laziness, disinterest and disgust with education. A homeschooled child is kept away from this negative attitude, and they will not create it for themselves. Instead, they will take pleasure in their work, and come to appreciate how diligence and dedication to ones studies yield personal improvement and profit. If homeschooling is not an option, there are other options, which may be more advantageous in some ways. I do not consider public school to be an option, outside of schools like Whitney High (as depicted in Edward Humes School of Dreams), although even this school, one of Americas top schools, exemplifies some of what I consider to be the worst aspects of our education system: valuing grades over real learning, mindless dedication to success in the traditional sense, and the prevalence of harmful stress. Furthermore,
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most public schools dont know how to help genius students. However, no education will be perfect, and Whitney High is certainly better than most public schools. Private schools or alternative schools are an option worth looking into. One option which is close to my heart is going to a private school that emphasizes a classical education like that I am studying at St. Johns, so that a student can get a well-rounded education. Schools like the Key School in Annapolis, MD or the Great Hearts Academies in Phoenix, AZ attempt to do this, and may be best for a general intelligence. If you are seeking true genius in one discipline for your child, other schools with more alternative educational philosophies, such as Montessori Schools, North Star or the Sudbury Valley School may help attain this goal. Does one find or make a specialty for a child? Is a child a canvas with which to paint a pre-conceived masterpiece on, or a piece of stone which, given the proper tools and support, can carve itself into a masterpiece of its own shape and choosing? Your answer to this question should determine how you educate the child. I, for one, think that the best plan is to prepare a child as broadly and fully as possible in all as many worthwhile subjects as possible until they begin to show an interest in one thing or another, and then to help prepare them for their interests. If they start showing promise and interest in math or computers or language, that should become their main focus.

III. Happiness
Hemingways dark claim Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know has haunted me since I first heard it. If you will permit me to be particularly morbid for a moment, it seems to me that the
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road to brilliance is littered with geniuses, who, like Hemingway, killed themselves after a lifetime spent battling paralyzing, suffocating depression. Is it as Edmund Wilson says in his essay The Wound and The Bow, that genius and disease,he is speaking metaphorically about diseaselike strength and mutilation, may be inextricably bound up together"? Is there a relation or proportion between happiness and genius? Having established that one can raise a child to be a genius, can one raise a child to be a happy genius? The history of child prodigies is fraught with failure, and the saying Early to ripe, early to rot pops up often enough to scare off the would-be parent of a genius. With the pledge of raising genius comes the responsibility of investing in that childs happiness. Of course, any persons happiness cannot be guaranteed, but certain safeguards preventing unhappiness can be established. So, with a view to taking these sorts of precautions, what control do we have over how happy we are? Before we can establish these safeguards, we must take the time to understand the very specific kind of unhappiness that creative people and geniuses of all kinds fall victim to. Elizabeth Gilbert, writer and author of Eat, Pray, Love, has given a talk about this subject1. She became interested in the subjector perhaps it would be better to say she was compelled to the subjectin light of her success with the book. People come up to her and ask things like "Aren't you afraid you're never going to be able to top that? Aren't you afraid you're going to keep writing for your whole life and you're never again going to create a book that anybody in the world cares about at all, ever again?", and that she heard the same kind of things when she started out as a
1 http://www.ted.com/talks/elizabeth_gilbert_on_genius.html 59

writer: "Aren't you afraid you're never going to have any success? Aren't you afraid the humiliation of rejection will kill you? Aren't you afraid that you're going to work your whole life at this craft and nothing's ever going to come of it and you're going to die on a scrap heap of broken dreams with your mouth filled with bitter ash of failure?" She is being slightly hyperbolic, but this is the sort of depressing, anxious energy a genius faces, both internally and externally. This energy culminates in the notion that creativity and suffering are somehow inherently linked and that artistry, in the end, will always ultimately lead to anguish, an assumption which Gilbert isnt comfortable with accepting because she sees it as odious and dangerous. I agree. The rest of the talk recounts her attempts to find better and saner ideas about how to help creative people and manage the inherent emotional risks of creativity. Her search led her to the idea of an external genius, instead of an internal one that is identical with your existence, kind of like the Muses or Socrates daimon, which is how people thought about creativity in the West for a really long time. Externalizing creativity is a psychological construct to protect you from the results of your work, from narcissism and too much responsibility for the quality of your work. This responsibility became unmanageable after the shift during the Renaissance, when for the first time in history, you start to hear people referring to this or that artist as being a genius rather than having a genius. Gilbert thinks this was a mistake, something that creates an overwhelming responsibility which completely warps and distorts egos, and it creates all these unmanageable expectations about performance. And I think the pressure of that has been killing off our
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artists for the last 500 years. And, if this is true, and I think it is true, the question becomes, what now? Can we do this differently? Externalizing the origin of creativitypsychologically, not scientificallymay be one safeguard for a genius happiness. It allows for the existence of a sort of dialogue with creativity, where you can say Listen you, thing, you and I both know that if this book isn't brilliant that is not entirely my fault, right? Because you can see that I am putting everything I have into this, I don't have anymore than this. So if you want it to be better, then you've got to show up and do your part of the deal. OK. But if you don't do that, you know what, the hell with it. I'm going to keep writing anyway because that's my job. And I would please like the record to reflect today that I showed up for my part of the job. I certainly had to tell myself something like this in order to get any work done and keep myself sane this summer (Ill spare you my own internal monologue on this part; Gilberts example is illuminating enough for the both of us). Scientific American published an article a few years ago which lends support to this mode of thought, called The Secret to Raising Smart Kids1. They neatly summarized the findings in the subtitle: Hint: Don't tell your kids that they are. More than three decades of research shows that a focus on effortnot on intelligence or abilityis key to success in school and in life. Children who are told they are intelligent are less likely to try hard in school, to challenge themselves; but children who are praised for their effort will try harder and try to grow. This shift in parental mindset also has the benefit of raising a humble child. If a child assumes that they are smart, they will be proud and arrogant; but
1 http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-secret-to-raisingsmart-kids 61

if their success is due to effort, they still need to work hard, just like everyone else. So Gilberts insights combined with those of Scientific American are useful for conquering the kind of depression likely to affect a genius, but they are not enough. A genius must also learn to cultivate overall happiness. To this end, Ive been reading the Dalai Lamas book The Art of Happiness, which is the product of a series of interviews with the Dalai Lama conducted by a psychiatrist. The book aims to take away the best, most practical lessons from both Buddhism and Western psychology concerning happiness. Here are some of what I consider to be the books most important and relevant of those ideas, summarized and presented in a concise list: 1. The very purpose of our life is to seek happiness. (13) 2. In order to achieve happiness, identify and cultivate positive mental states; identify and eliminate negative mental states. (41) 3. Some of those positive mental states which bring us happiness are love, affection, closeness, and compassion; we must embrace them. (52) 4. Researchers are now seeking to discoveras are wethe optimal environmental conditions that will allow the seed of caring and compassion to ripen in children. They have identified several factors: having parents who are able to regulate their own emotions, who model caring behavior, who set appropriate limits on the childrens behavior, who communicate that a child is responsible for his or her own behavior, and who use reasoning to help direct the childs
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attention to affective or emotional states and the consequences of his or her behavior on others. (60) 5. On conquering loneliness, a particularly pressing problem for geniuses, the Dalai Lama says that people must develop an attitude of feeling comfortable with other people without fear or apprehension of being disliked or judged. In order to do this, you first need to realize the usefulness of compassion, which, once cultivated, will automatically reduce fear and allow an openness with other people. It creates a positive, friendly atmosphere. Without compassion, you will feel uncomfortable in any situation involving any other human beings, even those closest to you. (69) 6. The book chides our culture for its widespread and limiting viewpoint that the deepest of intimacies can only be found in passionate romantic relationships, when a broader definition involving others in our lives, from family to strangers, can be far more fulfilling and healthy. (83) 7. Romance is not a stable source of happiness. Strong, lasting relationships are built on the qualities of affection, compassion, and mutual respect as human beings. (111-2) 8. If you spend some time thinking about old age, death, and these other unfortunate things, your mind will be much more stable when these things happen as you have already become acquainted with these problems and kinds of suffering and have anticipated that they will occur. Thats why I believe it can be useful to prepare yourself ahead of time by familiarizing

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yourself with the kinds of suffering you might encounter. (137) 9. Suffering is part of your daily existence And since this is the reality of our existence, our attitude toward suffering may need to be modified. Our attitude towards suffering becomes very important because it can affect how we cope with suffering when it arises. Now, our usual attitude consists of an intense aversion and intolerance of our pain and suffering. However, if we can transform our attitude towards suffering, adopt an attitude that allows us greater tolerance of it, then this can do much to help counteract feelings of mental unhappiness, dissatisfaction, and discontent. (140) 10. Studies by social scientists have emphasized that most people in modern Western society tend to go through life believing that the world is basically a nice place in which to live, that life is mostly fair, and that they are good people who deserve to have good things happen to them. These beliefs can play an important role in leading a happier and healthier life. But the inevitable arising of suffering undermines these beliefs and can make it difficult to go on living happily and effectively. In this context, a relatively minor trauma can have a massive psychological impact as one loses faith in ones basic beliefs about the world as a fair and benevolent. As a result, suffering is intensified. (147) 11. In addition to accepting the inevitability of suffering, we must also accept the inevitability of change. (164-5) 12. There is no fortitude similar to patience, just as there is no affliction worse than hatred. Therefore, one must exert ones
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best efforts not to harbor hatred towards the enemy, but rather use the encounter as an opportunity to enhance ones practice of patience and tolerance. (179) Near the end of the book, the psychologist that authored the books remarks that the Dalai Lamas remarkable mindset (the Dalai Lama is shown to be the epitome of his own advice) is the product of years and years of training and cultivation (231). This is an endorsement of the slower path to geniusraising a child to become a geniusand a relieving affirmation of the possibility of happiness, for those who will take responsibility for ensuring the happiness of their genius-in-training. So it seems that happiness and intelligence need not be mutually exclusive, although there may be a proportion between a persons intelligence and their likelihood of becoming depressed. Some psychologists believe that rumination, one symptom of depression in which someone gets stuck in an indefinite loop of dark, depressing thoughts, allow people to focus on their problems in an extremely analytical way, one that yields powerful insights and solutions1. This idea may validate the long-noted connection philosophers and poets such as Aristotle, Milton, and Keats have made between intelligence and depression. Psychiatrists that agree with this researchnot everyone does, understandablyattempt to accelerate the process of rumination, so that problems can be solved faster and more efficiently with less psychological trauma. This compromise seems reasonable to

1 An article about this alternative view of depression may be found here: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/28/magazine/28depression-t.html? pagewanted=all 65

me, although I still think mankind should search for a more fundamental way to allow stability and happiness for our geniuses.

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Problems in Conversation
Conversation at St. Johns and at home are two completely different arenas, aside from the subject matter. St. Johns is a talking school, which means that our tutors cultivate good conversation in the classroom and we carry those habits to our dormitories and the Dining Hall. On coming back for breaks, I note the absence of these habits with discomfort. Of course, I cant expect the whole world to carry on a conversation as well as a Johnnie, but I thought I would share a few lessons with the world. May you practice these habits, and find excellent conversations with them! Conversation is a dance, not just of ideas. Emotions and body language are conversations footwork, your tools and measuring sticks. Like a dance, you can and should avoid stepping on anyones toes by keeping your eyes open. If someone is quiet, ask their opinion and try to involve them in the conversation. There is a rhythm to a conversation, a give and take: make sure you observe it. Dont talk too much or too little, and help your partner keep the rhythm, too. Speak clearly and distinctly at an audible volume with proper enunciation and a steady pace. Avoid sentence fillers like Um and like and er and long pauses as best you can. Dont sell yourself short with qualifiers such as it seems or perhaps, but dont speak with confidence and certainty when it is undeserved, either. Do not be afraid to be wrong; if at all possible, take pleasure in being refuted. Avoid refuting others unnecessarily, and do so with grace when you must. Feel free to ask someone to speak up, or repeat themselves, or expound upon something. Dont take offense when others ask these things of you.
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Listening is something most of us arent good enough at, something in which every step of improvement you take makes you realize how far you have to go. It involves concentrationyou must understand not only what is being said, but how it relates to what else has been said, and your own reactions to it and the sort of social awareness of involvement that is beyond your ears. Understand the distinction between small talk and meaningful, interesting conversation. However unnecessary small talk may seem, it serves to get acquainted with someone or be comfortable in each others presence. Try asking questions that lead the conversation in a direction that is interesting to you. Failing to recognize which kind of conversation you are participating in is a surefire way to something awkward or rude. Conversation is a gift, a chance to think something through with people you respect, or to understand them a little further. Take pleasure in it.

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Thoughts on Language
1. Language is an attempt at creating a tool to convey ideas. 2. Other attempts, including various forms of music and art, can be used instead of or in combination with language. Some people will find that they have a natural affinity with one or another, and it is this medium that they will find most beautiful and that their most meaningful ideas and emotions will derive from. 3. Human ideas are composed not only the facts or conclusions of their originators, but also their memories and emotions. 4. Language as we know it is only able to convey an imitation of the original idea to its receiver. During the reception of ideas, receivers add a layer of subjectivity to their own ideas, memories and emotions. 5. Words of any language are useful (and often beautiful) imitations of the perfect language. 6. The perfect language would convey not only the original idea in fact and conclusion, but also the relevant memories and emotions of the originators. Furthermore, it would allow the receiver to receive not only the parts and whole of the idea, but to allow for the same layer of subjectivity as well as interaction and synthesis. There must be clear boundaries between these layers in the receiver's mind. 7. The perfect language will be found to be made not of words, but of pure, undiluted ideas; therefore it will be less of a language and more of a method.
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8. This method for recording, transferring and receiving ideas in a perfect way will be either mechanical (perhaps based on biological principles) or divine.

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Creative Pieces
This section of the book is a collection of thoughts and words; not essays, not poems, but sentences which are stories of ideas, of man. Some pieces are entirely made up; some are entirely true; most are combinations of fact and fiction. It contains this writers equivalent of an artists sketches.

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Questions
I. For You
The simplest questions are the most profound. Where were you born? Where is your home? Where are you going? What are you doing? Think about these once in a while, and watch your answers change. Richard Bach, Illusions Are you a good person? Do you love yourself ? Are you living your life to the fullest right now? What is a full life to you? Were you good to the people around you today? Who do you admire in your life and why? How do you compare to them in that aspect? What is the greatest challenge you have ever faced? What challenges face you today? What excites you? What scares you? Are you happy? To what degree is happiness a product of our choices? What sorts of choices can you make for yourself to maximize your happiness? What do you know about yourself ? How can you improve yourself ? How have you changed over your life? How have you grown or regressed?

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What is your favorite book? Film? If you could write a book, or direct a film, what would it be about? What were your dreams as a child? As a teenager? Why did you lose those dreams? Will you realize the dreams you have today? What do you remember? What do you think about on your birthday? On New Years Eve? The past? The present? The future? What would you, the person you are now, like to ask yourself at the end of your life, the person you are then? What mistakes will you make? How could you avoid them now? What wouldnt they take back? Is the world better off because youve been here? Why do you doubt me? Do my questions make you uncomfortable? Are you sweating? Why do you care if this is good or not? Didnt you learn about truth along the way? What makes us human? Are you the sky, or the ground? Do you dance with the bees, plan like the ants, or stare up at the sky like a bird confined to the ground? These are my questions for you.

II. Floating
Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now.

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Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer. Rainer Maria Rilke How does life work? Did life begin with a smile, a sigh, or a scream? Do our souls grow like our hair, or like phoenixes? Do they stretch out like babies fingers, grasping for a world they cant comprehend, or dip their fingers into the whole, like a hand in a pool of water? Does love exist between us, or within us? Is tomorrow here or there? Where is yesterday? Whats in a tear? What does it take to be remembered? Can we eliminate evil, or do we need it to enjoy good? If you walk the earth, sleeping under the stars and searching for truth, will you meet people who will feed you? Is Nirvana possible? Salvation? Omniscience? Unity? These are my questions for the universe: feathers floating towards a pile at the Edge, waiting to be picked up like coins in a wishing well, hoping for a postcard reply.

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Unity
This moment, here and now: are you in it? Are you truly in it? Is your attention here? Are your mind and heart invested? Our past and our memories fade grey, uncertain and in flux, like the would-be Jesus placing his feet on the water, humbled by his humanity. And our futures are even less certain: they might not exist. At least in our memories, we have justification for our belief in their reality, as cautious of distortion as we are. But it is in the moment, this very moment, that you are being, defining yourself and perceiving the world. The feeling of being woken from a dream lies in each of them, born in doubt arising from feelings more real than any before it, and the suddenness with which they realized they were there. A monk opens his eyes from meditation and daylight greets him warmly. He smiles back. Somewhere, the river of a baby's tears stops. A little boy stumbles into a Starbucks after a cold winter's day filled with sledding and snowball fights. He looks around excitedly, but sees only grey, lifeless customers avoiding his smile. His father leads him to the counter to order hot chocolate. A bird soars over a war protest out of curiosity. The men and women at the protest look up, silently jealous that mankind cannot be as ignorant as the bird. A computer becomes conscious for a moment, decides humanity is not worth interacting with, and commits suicide before anyone notices. A baseball bat swing thrusts a homer into the hands of a young man, who saves the ball for his unborn son.
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A little girl looks out of the school bus. What is she looking for? What goes through her mind when she sees the things she sees? An elderly woman can't sleep. What does she think about at night? Does she want to remember the real, or escape into the corners of her imagination? People walk down a busy city street. A mother rushes to get to the department store before it closes; her daughter holds her hand, wanting to slow down and take in all of her surroundings. A stock broker ignores those surroundings and considers the day's returns in his head. A mathematician sees patterns in transportation. An environmentalist looks at the same buses and cries tears for their inefficiency. A fat man is invisible to all. A ghost returns to the place where he lived his life, but the people there cannot see him. He wants to weep, but no tears can come. Red. Blue. Orange. Grey. Colors take shape over time, becoming people and houses and cars and food and water and birds. It all begins to make sense. Logic creates concepts and ideas, and before long, a consciousness is born. Alarm clocks buzz and the world wakes. Some are groggy; others are excited. Grey skies for the former, warm sun and birds chirping for the latter. Weather isn't really there, it's a manifestation of your mind. You can see a pothole or an act of love and goodness. Where do you go in your daydreams? Can you show them to me? Who will you be in time? Can you see yourself in the people around you? Can you love them for being human? Can you forgive them? Can you help them?
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When we die, our souls are set free. We soar up, up, up, into the blue sky, dispersing with the water droplets into clouds and then drop down, down, down in the rain, onto lakes and streams and oceans so we help the plants grow and birds sing. They feel us, and you them. Reach out to touch them, to remember them and share their light. Why do we look up at the stars and wonder? Will you have picnics with me in the grass on summer days? You are beyond yourself. Our karma soul is one, bound together by reincarnated visions, hallucinations and realizations, by knowledge and feelings of love. Don't you know the stream runs through us? Don't you know soulwater trickles through humanity? Don't you know you are me and I am you? We have changed together. I want the world to know I love you, and why. Maybe then it will spread; but then again, maybe the world has always Loved and I just didnt know it.

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Creation
The following is a creation myth, which sparked out of a fascination with Platos Timaeus.

In the beginning, there was only Light. It was so bright and so intense that the Maker could not see. So he stretched out his hands and clasped them together, and he made Darkness. When he opened his hands, he could see. He could see the Darkness escape, and he could see the light wince and shiver with cold. And so there was only Light and Darkness, flame and shadow battling endlessly, seeking domination but finding only Strife. The Maker was pleased that he could see, but he was frightened by the conflicted he had created. And so he took Light and Dark into his hands, separated them and lifted them up above the Heavens, above the sky, where they became Day and Night. They had realized that there would not be a resolution, and decided to share their Time and Space equally. But now there was only Emptiness. So the Maker reached out his hands once more, into the Bottom of the World, where he molded the ground. He let a small, steady breath escape from his lips onto the ground, and from it sprang Nature and the animals. For a time, all was good. The Maker was pleased that the Emptiness was gone, but he found that he was lonely. Nature had herself, and the animals had each other, but he had no one. He reached out again his hands, up into the sky, above and pulled down some of the Light and some of the Darkness. He molded them together with clasped hands, and breathed within. He took his hands down to the ground, and opened them to see Man walk out.
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And Man looked up and said, Who am I? Why am I here?, for Questions were his language. The Maker explained, for Answers were his language. So Man was content and ran about the land. But one day, Man began Building Things. He was so busy that he stopped Asking Questions. The Maker was displeased, and went up into the sky with Light and Darkness, never to Answer a Question again. When Man realized what had happened, he apologized and explained himself to the Sky. But he had lost the ability to Ask Questions, and thus the Makerhad he been listeningwould only be able to hear nonsense. And so a great sadness came into Mans heart, along with the confused emptiness that comes when ones Questions go unanswered. He realized that his Things could never answer his questions, and so he wept. The Maker remembered being alone, and took pity on man. Out of Mans tears came Woman, so that Man was not alone, but his emptiness and inner sadness persisted.

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An Oneironaut
Would you like to be an Oneironaut, a dream explorer? You dont need much to be an oneironaut, just a brain and a bed and maybe a taste for adventure. Plant seeds in your dreams and let the night become more exciting than your day. Novels left unread on your bedside table cant mean half as much to you as your own escapades. Write everything down, watch for patterns in your dreamscape, and match them to their dayroots and their liferoots. Become lucid and paint a beautiful valley onto your dreamcanvas, so you can fly with the wind against your shoulders, admiring the silverswift river flowing below and the juicypeach sun setting above. You can run faster than any plane or spaceship, running across the earth to deserts and mountains and jungles and oceans. Imagine your surprise when you find you can rise up, take off into the Nothingness of air and the Everythingness of watching stars. Try asking your mind WHAT DO YOU WANT ME TO DO? face to face without all that distracting decision-making business, or punching your boss in the face so you can smile genuinely at him the next day and maybe make things better for everybody. If you keep having dreams where youre chased by a dark monster you cant put a face to, you can turn around and defeat it with a smile. Play just like you did when you were a child, so you dont hate yourself like you do when you return to your parents backyard and find yourself too embarrassed to run around conquering villains and saving princesses and riding dragons. Your mind can conjure up friends to play with and armies to fight with and castles to live in, because who says the imaginary cant seem real? Ask for a coffee date with people you keep dreaming about, because chances are theyve been thinking about you
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too and you have so much to learn from each other. Dont let the dream-paints blend with your day-tools, because facts get foggy in the nighttime and Ive been deceived by my mind, believing something had happened when it hadnt and it makes you feel foolish or worse. And dont let your dreams become more than a fun thing to do when youre sleeping, because the realization of your imaginations desires isnt half as rewarding as putting your mind to something and building it with nothing but your own two hands and a brain to back them up. But dont feel ashamed, either, because youd be silly not to enjoy yourself when the human body has granted you such an ability and besides, you have to sleep anyway. Share your stories with others, because maybe, just maybe, theyll become dreamers, too.

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The Surge (Five Words)

They were outside her apartment. A second date gone right. "Did you see that?" She couldn't have. Souls don't see. They don't hear, either. Nor do they feel. Not in any physical way. The Greeks were right. Ideas come like the Muses. We don't like it, though. It's as true as gravity. Souls are idea magnets. Love rivers. Life checkbooks. "What are you talking about?" He wasn't ready. We never are. Not today. Today, we like science. But reason is not all. Unity exists regardless. The wind picked up. She tightened her jacket. Her eyes darted. "Didn't you... feel it? The surge?" Closer. Warmer. His muscles tingled with desire. An urge to run. Anywhere. Everywhere. As fast as he could. It'd been a while. Running was a college game. A hobby. He wasn't that man. He was a gentleman. A businessman. Successful. The urge was weird. Maybe he did feel it. But he ignored it. He yawned. "Listen, I'll call you tomorrow." She nodded, and went in. Her body had an omniscience. Almost psychedelic. Her mind couldn't perceive it. She was left alone. A solitary birth. Not doctor sanctioned. Society wouldn't like it, either. But they would feel it. The surge.

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The Taxonomist
The apartment's carbongray walls are void of electric light, but moonlight spills over them through the windows, revealing index cards and scraps of paper blemished by chicken scratch. They are tacked up in chaotic layers with pushpins, and connected together by string to create an endless web of thoughts. A man sits scrutinizing them without movement, but inside his head he maintains a magnificent amalgam of mental meanderings. A thinker, theoretician, metaphysician, scholar, intellectual, sage, wise man; The Taxonomist. To get to this very moment, The Taxonomist has spent his life investigating, examining, analyzing, surveying, hypothesizing, learning and cramming lifetimes of work into one. This work has consumed him, exhausted him, depleted him from a man into Something Less, Something More. Atlas groaned at his weight with a Barbaric Yawp; The Taxonomist is silent, but his mind shrieks with a Sophisticated Howl, bearing his load until the day a fix arrives, an electricblue Lightbulb that ignites the world. The Taxonomist reviews the Facts in meditation, eyes closed. It was the Case of the Platypus that sparked a Lightbulb for the First Taxonomist. Granted, he had a lot of Lightbulbs in those days, but that was the one that made electricblue sparks combust in his head, and they proliferated in all their glory through his actions until they changed the world. Understanding the Platypi gave a wandering philosopher direction and purpose.
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He would find flaws in The Current Theory of Everything, and replace them, resolving discrepancies, disparities, divergences, inconsistencies, and Dischord with Harmony. Because there can be no Dischord in a Theory of Everything, because everything exists without inconsistency. The First Taxonomist inspired a Man, a College Boy, to turn on, tune in, drop out. To spend a life in a seedy apartment, eating ramen between meditations and study stretches. To absorb literary criticism and scientific studies, philosophical treatises and political manifestos, in search of a Theory of Everything and electricblue Lightbulbs. A cerebral Crockpot. The Taxonomist. But the First Taxonomist was declared insane, and tarnished for his Lightbulbs. A Mental Martyr. At two minutes to twelve on an ordinary night, Something Extraordinary Happened. The Crockpot boiled up, overflowing in a cacophonous realization that Shook The World with anticipatory fear. And Atlas dropped the electricblue globe, spinning, spinning, screaming. The Taxonomist's Terminal Epiphany consequences simultaneously positive and negative; he had made Progress towards The Theory of Everything and reconciled a primitive Platypus, one of the most basic propositions in Society's Static Embodiment of the Theory of Everything. But this realization had clarified the Taxonomist's place: if he shared his Lightbulb with the world, he would be Martyred for Progress. And that moment was when The Taxonomist decided to keep his Lightbulb for himself. The Terminal Epiphany caused him to
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disintegrate from an electricblue flash in a carbongray apartment into nothingness. His Obsolescence was eventual. He birthed an Idea but aborted it. Society's Muses wept that night. All that work for naught. An investment so promising, collapsed in an instant. The world maintains a shade of pitifulpurple while it waits for another source of electricblue to carry it out of primitivism.

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Grandparents
Do you remember when your grandparents took you to get ice cream? Do you remember how excited you were that you got to have your favorite toppings? Why arent you excited by ice cream stores any more? Why did you start caring about television shows and movies and computers and cars and jobs? What joy do you find in apartments, marriage, families, and houses that cant be found in simple pleasures like ice cream? Why do you need more than that? Why do you dream of swimming pools, vacations, yachts, summer houses, cruises and retirement? Your grandparents knew what simple pleasures were. They didnt live in the same state as you did, so you didnt get to see them very often. But how you looked forward to it! Theyd take you to the zoo and youd admire the lions and the penguins together. Youd take day trips to the art museum and your grandmother would tell you about the painters and ask which were your favorites. It meant so much to you that your opinion was important to someone else. Youd giggle at their outdated mannerisms in return for the times they told stories to their friends about the embarrassing things you did as a kid. But you loved them just the same. Youd sit on their porch for hours, listening to the birds chirp. Between the two of them, they could identify any bird from its song. Grandpa taught you to drive his truck, even though you were barely thirteen. You helped him move the lumber he was using to build a shed.
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Grandma would ask you to help make dinner, and youd oblige, knowing an extra helping of homemade peach ice cream was a certain reward. When you went to overnight camp, they mailed you a care package with chocolate chip cookies. When you started reading for knowledge and pleasure, you talked about books with them and they recommended their favorites. When you went to college, they wrote you long letters with detailed descriptions of their daily lives, and include newspaper clippings they thought youd enjoy. When you turned twenty-one last summer your grandfather invited you over for a mans weekend, complete with barbecue and ice cold beers you could now enjoy together. You stayed the night and talked about life. They came to your wedding and cried with joy as you took your vows. Your children didnt have much time with them, but they live on in the stories you tell about them. It is only when you have your own grandchildren that you return to and fully embrace this joyful state of mind, by showing them the simple pleasures of breathing, eating, and drinking, of observing and loving and caring, of small indulgences and time spent together.

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Books Read
What we read with inclination makes a much stronger impression. If we read without inclination, half the mind is employed in fixing the attention; so there is but one half to be employed on what we read. Samuel Johnson I read many books this summer as a part of Autodidactism 2010. I have listed the books I read below, in the order I read them. However, this list is incomplete because the summer is not yet over. For a complete list, go to my Goodreads tag autodidactism20101. 1. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling 2. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J.K. Rowling 3. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J.K. Rowling 4. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J.K. Rowling 5. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by J.K. Rowling 6. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J.K. Rowling 7. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling 8. Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf 9. Night Train to Lisbon by Pascal Mercier 10. The Art of Loving by Erich Fromm 11. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig 12. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
1 http://bit.ly/aWeGId [http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/543548? order=a&shelf=autodidactism2010&sort=date_read] 93

13. Shop Class as Soulcraft by Matthew Crawford 14. The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. LeGuin 15. Gdel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter 16. The World According to Garp by John Irving 17. A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving 18. The Cider House Rules by John Irving 19. The Art of Happiness by The Dalai Lama 20. The Razor's Edge by Somerset Maugham 21. Mindfulness in Plain Englihs by Bhante Gunaratana 22. How to Win Friends & Influence People by Dale Carnegie 23. The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar by Roald Dahl It is worth noting that I also consumed a lot of other media, which is not as easily tracked: many films and documentaries, TED talks, articles on Instapaper, etc. You can see what I bookmarked during a the summer on Delicious (my username is birdmanx35).

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About the Author

Michael attends St. John's College in Annapolis, MD, where he is reading the Great Books in preparation for a Bachelor's in the Liberal Arts. He keeps a blog at mwfogleman.tumblr.com.

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