When Can a Writer Graduate Beyond the Thesis Statement?

"When you know what you're getting before you start
reading, you get what you read while you are seeing,"
Dr. Seuss was never heard saying.  

I have a confession to make: I hate thesis statements.  I recognize the irony of that statement, beings that  I just butchered a thesis statement, so I will rephrase my premise: A good writer doesn't need to tell you what he or she is going to write about; a good writer has only one obligation: make a valid point.

I also acknowledge that stating a disdain for thesis statements is dangerous because I am also a language arts teacher.  We're supposed to love English language absolutes like: never end a sentence in a prepositional phrase, never use colloquialisms in formal writing, avoid cliches like the plague, and every paragraph should have five sentences; I hate all those as well.  Maybe that's why I never get a "permanent" teaching position.

Anyway, the thing about thesis statements that is so elementary is the pure idiocy it requires of the reader--telling them beforehand what you are going to do.  Like foreshadowing without the creativity.  Like a magician wanting you to figure out his trick; "watch as I take the card you choose and slip it into my sleeve...I will try and distract you with some slight of hand movement away from the card going up my sleeve...but pay no attention..." A magician would never give his or her secrets away, so why do we writers have to announce what we are going to argue in the first paragraph.

Preach it Fredrick!  

Go back and read some of the great speeches. Luther's "I Have a Dream" speech has no true thesis statement, merely four or five rhetorical devices and perfect inflection. It takes him nearly ten minutes to even say, "I have a dream." Fredrick Douglas, the free-slave abolitionist, was once asked to give a Forth of July speech in NY in 1852 (before the Civil War).  Many thought, perhaps, that Douglas would graciously talk about life as a newly free man.  But Douglas placates, then slowly sautes the listening audience for over twenty minutes before getting to his real point; dropping his mostly white audience into boiling oil:

What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer; a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are, to Him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy-a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United States, at this very hour.          

Do audiences and readers of today not have the kind of attention spans and comprehension skills to read beyond the first paragraph to decide whether the writer is saying anything of merit?  Do we NEED a thesis statement (and is it needed in the first paragraph) as so many of our school teachers taught us?

My answer? No. Actually, I take that back. A good writer has no obligation to tell you what he is doing. A good writer has a bag of tricks.  Hyperbole, a nasty Hook, Humor...those are just a few that I use that start with the letter H.  Eventually, you will know what my point is, but I will get there my own special way...stop expecting it the way you always received it.  (please recognize that I only lumped myself into the "good" writer category...not great, or legendary).

I love the Grangerford/Shepherdson fued:  Mimicking
the absurdity of the Hatfield/McCoy brouhaha.  

My theory of writing is this: Mark Twain wrote Huckleberry Finn in a style that does not go directly from point A to point B.  It meandered all over the place, just like the Mississippi River. Sometimes, while reading the novel with students, they ask, "Why does he keep veering off track and adding these side stories," and my answer is, "because he is a master story teller, and he knows that if the story was just Huck and Jim on a river for two hundred pages, we as an audience, would be bored to tears." Plus he makes mini-points throughout the whole novel. While his major thesis is: Slavery is inhuman, he has twenty or more mini-theses throughout the novel that connect to different members of his reading audience. Even a racist, while ignoring the major theme, can still learn a thing or two reading his novel.  That's the beauty of a good writer: making points his/her own way.

That's all a good writer has to do. Connect with his/her audience with valid points. That's my contract with you the reader. I won't use this blog to talk about dinner recipes, or my hatred of gardening, or my annoying dog unless I can connect them to something of significance in your life. Yes, I write about my life, but hopefully in a way that connects to other people's lives. But if you need a thesis statement about my next topic?  Might want to find yourself an About.com article instead.  Those articles are always so helpful and soulless.

Fluff Reading vs Hard Literature: Find a Balance

Too many concepts for me to understand this novel.  

Do you ever meet those people who read ALL THE TIME, and yet you've never heard of a single title they are reading? As if they've somehow tapped into the completely irrelevant book club, where every book is fluffy cupcake fun, and the most difficult theme in those books is having an overbearing aging parent or a bad case of inner thigh razor burn?

I call it the reality television of book reading.  Technically, yes, you are reading. But nothing that makes you think. It's purely escapism.

Great, fine. We all need escapism. We all need entertainment, and fun, and a feel good moment before we shut the side lamp off, and hit instantaneous sleep from the exhaustion of living in a constantly demanding world. Perhaps this fluff reading is actually good for us on some psychological level.

Even I get confused and have to reread
hard literature 

Yet, I can't help thinking, with all those great reading skills you've been perfecting; why not pick out a classic story every once in a while, and read it while also doing some online analysis of the themes/motifs /symbolism/etc. and see if it does something more for your brain.

Some people (not in education) seem to think that learning is done once you've graduated from whatever level of schooling you needed.  From then on, it's purely on-the-job experience that makes us more well-rounded. Need information?  There's a youtube video that will explain it all, or a wikipedia link that will give you all the answer you need.

Which is information, but it isn't thinking.  Wikipedia doesn't make you think.

A few days ago, I was talking to my science fiction class about string theory.  I realized while talking about it, I only understood the theory on the most basic level.  I decided to do some quick research before the next class.  So I googled it.  I read layers and layers of encyclopedic type information, and still had no better understanding of the complexity that is particle physics than if I made it up myself.  It was information, but not the kind that made me think. I put it on my to-read list: more quantum physics by non-professor types.

I realized I was missing Michael Crichton, one of the rare science fiction writers who wrote fluffy novels with hard facts in a way that the lay-person could understand it.  Jurassic Park did wonders to my understanding of DNA and genetic manipulation. While you could hardly call Crichton a master of the English language, he did research the heck out of whatever subject he was writing about, and present it back to the reader in easy to understand language, while also making the reader think about the morality or ethics of the science.  Sadly, he didn't get the credit he should've when he died, because he wrote a book called State of Fear, where he tried to debunk global warming, and the elitists turned on him.

And people are always turning on authors. "Oh, I don't read Twain because he uses racist language..." Really?  You missed his commentary and satire? "Oh, I hate Fitzgerald, because he glorifies rich beautiful people..." Look closer my friend, you're wrong. "Sherman Alexie's stories are only about Native Americans..." You couldn't find yourself in even one of his stories?

How many times did I watch parentless kids do the same thing
at Sears? Enough that I stopped caring when they got hurt. 

I think the reason we turn on so many "classic" authors, is because their works represent WORK. As in, it takes longer to read, has hard passages, and leaves a lot to the reader to conclude themselves. It makes us think. And thinking, used to make us better conversationalists. We could talk about issues in interesting ways, and cite literature or studies that backed our ideas and opinions, and now we post memes with 13 word captions to make our opinions for us.

And we say we read, but really we are reading pop culture porn. Fluffy words attached to worthless paper, that have no significance and don't represent reality.  The equivalent of saying, "I'm going to exercise today," and turning on the computer and making your SIM exercise instead.

I don't mean to be condescending. I read at least six or seven books a year with no intellectual merit, just as I sometimes watch Ax Men on TV. I need it to balance myself. Yet I also need a little McEwen or McCarthy or Steinbeck or Munro or Alexie, as well as Game of Thrones and Downton Abbey on television, to make me think on a deeper level a few times a week.

Read and then watch Life of Pi.  I'm still
thinking about all the layers of the story.  

Am I the only one who watches Pawn Stars and secretly hopes that Rick will finally tire of Chumlee's stupidity, and say something so profound and intellectually stimulating that Chumlee's brain will literally be blown, thus removing his character from the show, so that we can learn something about antiques once again?

What are you reading or watching (or even  writing about) that is making you think, question, or investigate?  I'd love to know.

You Can Pry My Video Games From My Cold Dead Hands: Try Reading

I don't actually know any Joneses, but I know if I did, I wouldn't be able to keep up anymore.  I haven't bought myself any video games in over two years (besides free apps on the iPad), and while it has left me somewhat behind the times, it also has been incredibly freeing.  Gaming is an addiction, like smoking, or drugs, that takes over lives, especially boys, and it is nice to no longer be an online junky.

"Please, just two more minutes, I'm defeating the boss dog!"

The realization that I was not able to be a competent human and a gamer occurred somewhere in the 648th hour (or 27 actual days) of logged game time in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare.  My wife had asked me a simple question for the fifth time, which I was not able to formulate a cognitive answer beyond "uhh" or "what" or "bacon," because I was in the midst of freeing the mythological world of online terrorists.  My wife, appallingly, shut off the game device (the first time she'd ever "confronted" my problem).

"What are you doing!"

I was losing it, like a second grader pulled off a quarter-machine horse ride in the middle of its two minute saunter.  Myself, a grown man about to throw a fit over a game I'd already conquered (I was a level 10 prestige, with the golden AK-47...ask a nerd what that means), stopped, and it dawned on me that I might have a problem.

So I hung up my Wii nunchuck and remote on my fancy plastic holster-stand, and walked away.

It doesn't mean I don't miss the old gunfights and strategy games and imposing my will on 12-year-old braggarts online.  Like any addiction, it is always there, ready for a relapse when a friend harmlessly shows me their newest operating system or a revolutionary new game.

I can never get good wi-fi in this park

Right now, some of those friends would be arguing with me.  "Chris you sell out!  None of this is true! We don't have a problem!  We can quit at any time!  Just cause you are fat and lazy doesn't mean we are!"  And if any of them actually read my blog (Troy excluded) they would probably say that. I hope they do. Most of them don't have time to read with all the gaming they have to do. It's time we as a nation have a serious talk about gaming culture and what it's doing to boys; including the boys or men actually doing the gaming.

I say boys, when many are grown adults.  I just hesitate to call anyone who logs more than twenty hours of video game time a week, an adult.  At least not an adult in the sense of what our grandparents were.  If our grandparents had twenty hours a week to devote to anything besides work, it was probably to work around the house, or repairing the car, or if time allowed, reading.

Games based on literature aren't much better:  You can
play this 1990 NES game online.  Not sure why I hit
butlers with my boomerang bowling hat, but...

I got into an argument a few years ago about how someone was trying to argue that video games are the new literature, here's the article it was based on.  Initially this makes sense.  Games have a hero, they follow a narrative (some more than others) and have many challenges that the hero has to overcome.  In basic, it is a story.  To gamers, they are better than books, because the reader (or user) can actually dictate the outcome through his choices, whereas a book has a predetermined layout.  I'd argue that the majority of games have a predetermined outcome as well, just many different ways to get to the end point, but that's not the point I'm trying to make.

You see, the reason I don't buy the argument, is because games don't make us think.  Oh sure, they challenge our instincts, and our problem solving skills, and force us to figure out the riddles that the game designers put in place.  Some evidence has shown that games actually increase vision,  mathematical and instinctual skills (occipital lobe, hindbrain, and left brain development) to some extent.  Making us gamers quicker reactors to stimuli, and maybe better drivers at night.

There's something wrong with your medulla oblongata 

But evidence has also showed that those who log many hours playing violent games showed less activity in the part of the brain associated with controlling emotions and aggressive behavior.  The frontal lobe, the area of the brain most responsible for our decision making, is de-evolving due to the images we see on screen.  And it isn't any surprise to me.  For years, I have controlled characters with no empathy towards either the character I was playing, or for the enemies I killed.  It's a kill or be killed world in video games, that rewards survival, but doesn't really punish one for their death.  Many games take points away for killing pedestrians, or for friendly fire, but don't really put the situations even close to their real life perspectives.

Most of us gamers have the ability to separate reality from fantasy.  I know that the "terrorists" or Soviet troops, or zombies or aliens or whatever I'm obliterating on screen is merely a creation of a graphic designer.  My Wii remote, or Xbox controller is not a weapon.  However, just because I have the ability to go in and out of fantasy at will, does not mean that the guy on the other side of the screen does.  How many Star Trek fans cannot separate their dream world with reality?  Just the same, many boys, especially those that are loosely parented, or suffer a social disconnects like autism or Asberger's don't possess the emotional or mental processing to travel in and out of video game worlds.

Bioshock was one a few games where reviewers lauded
its storyline.  Some games now have "moral" questions and
variable outcomes ... a step in the right direction 

I've taught a lot of kids with social disorders the last number of years, and all of them immerse themselves in video games: they write 12 page novellas based on characters from Halo, or draw anime versions of Link and Zelda all over their notebooks. Their math based brains thrive in pixelated worlds, and I'm not advocating a removal of games from their weekly schedule.  I think to some extent it is good for them.  But not as good as books.

A good novel makes us think about consequences.  We develop empathy for characters like Lenny in Of Mice and Men, who by today's standards would be characterized as a dangerous mentally handicapped individual (maybe like the kind of individual who might commit massive gun violence).  We toil over George's decision to mercifully execute Lenny at the end of the novel.  While the novel is predetermined, it makes the reader think about LIFE.  How important and fickle and interconnected LIFE is.  How simple actions and reactions affect LIFE around us.  How we might affect LIFE.

Games don't teach us that.  They don't teach us how to deal with the complexities of people's character, and how someone else may respond to a situation in a different manner than I might.  But books do. They make the reader respond to the main characters actions and reactions and get mad, get sad, get annoyed, get caught up, and question the entire story arc.  That's what we as humans are good at. Analyzing situations and coming up with appropriate responses.  We aren't supposed to be reactionary creatures that respond to stimulus (like games teach us).  The fact that the the hindbrain and medulla, the oldest evolutionary aspects of the human brain, are increasing in ability as a result of games, is proof that we are becoming more animalistic.

Survival. Gamers will be good at it.  Better than they are with relationships, and maintaining jobs, and friendliness, and smelling good, and staying active.  But we as a society, and guys my age who grew up playing games, who probably have addictive aspects towards games, need to think:  Is this how we want our children to grow up?  Unwilling to open a novel, and sitting stagnant for hours on the couch manipulating avatars on screen?

Sad this actually exists

I can already hear my dissenters:  Video games, like guns, don't kill people.  Yes I know.  People do.  However, access to games, guns, violent philosophies, consequence-less societies, bad parenting, socially isolated individuals...all of these are aspects of "violent" prone individuals.  Just because I am not that person, and my children are not those people, doesn't mean those people aren't out there in large numbers.

I'm not saying we need to outlaw games or guns, or sterilize bad parents, or arm teachers and retail associates.  Those all seem exactly like the knee jerk reactions that video games teach us will help us "survive" as a species.  We need to pause the game...

Obviously, we need to teach people how to find value in life again.  Give grace to the annoying kid sitting next to you in class, value the Lennie in your life--and what you do to help him, value the random stranger who walks in the mall, value the child whose parents don't.  Recognizing people, whether they are hurting or not.  Looking people in the eye. Complementing others.... 

That paragraph could go on forever, so I'm just going to get simplistic.  Open up a book.  Open up a lot of books. Challenge the concepts. Trade 25% of your game time to reading time.  See if you don't understand yourself and others better after reading them.  Find lists like this one I made on Goodreads.com, and lose yourself in a world that might better yourself.

Life is Tough for Catcher in the Rye Fans.

Late sophomore year at my Podunk high school, the English teacher handed out the next of what seemed like an endless stream of novels.   The novel was titled Catcher in the Rye,  and it looked and sounded worse than every other book the teacher had previously handed out, with the exception of Beowulf.  Probably because rye bread is disgusting. 

The book must mean something to me, as I have a poster of
it in my man cave.  

Admittedly, the book didn’t instantly capture me, but somewhere, around page 60, I jumped ahead of the class, and devoured the book like it was some newfangled religion that had no qualm with profusely throwing around the “F” word.  Author J.D. Salinger’s theology resonated with me--the protagonist Holden Caulfield’s hatred of all things phony.  Phoniness was public enemy number one, as Holden ran away from institutions, family, relationships, schools, and anything that didn’t resemble authenticity. 

Holden would never
drink Pepsi.  

For years, partly because of this book, I vowed to be genuine.  I wanted to be the real deal.  I was secretly afraid that Salinger would come out of his reclusiveness, follow me around, and if I failed to live up to his fictitious character’s standard he’d yell, “How dare, you, you treasonous fraud.  I thought my words meant something to you!” 

Oh Eddie, you were so passionately angsty

I reread the book when I was 28, and it didn’t have the same effect (similar to grunge music).  It wasn’t the gospel of angsty adolescent truth that spoke so wholly to me in my youth.  In fact, the hypocrisy of Holden's character is kind of despicable.  Maybe it’s because I became a high school teacher, and had Caulfield-like kids repeatedly say things like, “Why do we have to learn this?; Why do we have to read?; I’d rather be doing meth; etc.”  Actually, that’s not true.  Holden was smart, and smart kids will actually read books, and rarely take meth.  Though it seems that even stupid kids want their life’s work to have viable realistic ramifications.  Hopefully, those kids will honestly mean, “Welcome,”  when they say, “Welcome to Wal-mart.”  

But you can rise up faster in the
company with just 37 pieces of flair.  

As Americans, it’s hard to find the real McCoy in anything.  Lance Armstrong is just the latest of a long list of American heroes who have been dethroned from their position of influential power because of performance enhancers.  Cheating is common, and phonies and are everywhere.  We have two running for President. 

So, to anyone who found validity in Caulfield’s values, life has been very hard.  We are constantly judging and critiquing the world through lenses of “truth, ” and we rarely see it, find it, hear it, or experience it.  It makes working for people difficult, as those boss people seem to waft and drift with whatever current the ocean is experiencing that day. We want the truth regardless of the changing tide.  Some of us just want to be anchored safely near the shoreline. But the seas are raging thanks to El Niño, or La Niña; what used to be a dry dock is now wet lands, and what used to be an oasis is now a desert.  Shifts in our social, moral and economic climates have decimated old seaways and our favorite trade routes are now unsafe because of thieving pirates.  It's rough waters out there.  

We’re lucky if we haven’t had to file an insurance claim on all the wreckage of the economy, politics, spirituality, and the physical cost of maintaining our physical bodies.  Perhaps you were a victim of one of the following: a mental breakdown, an emotional meltdown, a spiritual doldrum, a physical malfunction, an economic depression, or an intellectual impedance.  You’re not alone.  And perhaps that’s why many, recently called out our worst “phonies:” the 1%ers, for their ability to maintain their positions of power even as they’ve been discovered for the frauds that they really are.  Lance Armstrong, despite the amazing things he’s done for humanity, was just forced to give back his 7 Tour de Frances (even though the five next best players have actually failed a drug test), and yet these 1%ers in power have been cheating America for years, and we can’t do a thing about it, other than call, “bull-sh!t,” while they pocket our retirement and/or investment plans. Which initially, sounds depressing.  Okay, to some, it's very depressing, no matter what way I spin it.    

Now you'll just have to raise 250 million fingers, Lance, as that is the amount of money your Livestrong Foundation
has raised for cancer patients.  The number 7 means nothing to you anymore.  

I love conga lines.  Where are we headed?  

But instead of becoming a depressing Salinger character (and I love Salinger’s works, even his obscure short stories), what can one do? --Other than run from phony institutions and people, constantly trying to find something real, authentic, and sadly rare?  Well, maybe we should do what Holden Caulfield actually wanted to do.  He wanted to save little kids before they accidentally ran off a cliff while playing in the rye fields.  He wanted to be the Catcher in the Rye.  He wanted to help people maintain their innocence in a corrupting world.  And maybe that heroic trait was what captured my adolescent mind, instead of the whiny, complaining, hypocritical, underachiever that Holden actually is. 

Which means, those of us who related to Caulfield’s ideals, have a lot of work ahead of us.  The Pied Piper has been playing his seductive tune of false promises, and his army of lemming children are blindly following to a cliffside of destruction.  Hopefully, there are enough of us who care to catch them (despite their ignorance and stupidity) and re-navigate them on a course towards something real, authentic, valuable, and hopefully,  a less turbulent life.