Review: Jeff Sharlet's C-Street

I just finished Jeff Sharlet’s follow-up to The Family. I’m sitting on a plane on my way to Ireland and I just devoured about half the book. While I don’t read much fiction anymore because I find so little of it compelling, it still always amazes me when a piece of nonfiction can be as or more gripping than a novel. Perhaps its an old prejudice from younger days—kid’s nonfiction is a terrible genre—that I have not managed to erase even after years of higher education. Even years in which, possessed for a passion by various books or articles, my friends would sit long hours debating into the night or call each other excitedly to find out whether someone else had read the same passage. I remember one sleep deprived semester planning to read only the first five pages of an article by – and staying up to finish it. The same article caused two friends of mine, who had spent the night in the classics lounge working and taking brief naps to regenerate, to bound out to greet my professor, bouncing in excitement, before our 8am class. Non-fiction certainly can inspire, but my gut tells me that it usually doesn't.

I may not be jumping up-and-down—I’m pretty sure that I would get chastised by the flight attendants—but I have to say that this book not just appealed to me but it impassioned me. After 2 hours of sleep, 1 hour of airport delay, and 3 hours of flying, I’m still writing this review and that in itself should speak volumes. This book is wild.

Back in the days of the John Ensign and Mark Sanford scandals I became very interested in C-Street. I heard Jeff Sharlet speaking on the Rachel Maddow show and I instantly wanted to buy his book. What appealed to me was not the hypocrisy of a Christian movement that hid and even helped the adultery of its adherents and leaders, but that a group of prominent officials could create a fundamentalist prayer cell meant to alter the way that they did government work in a country under the first amendment.

Perhaps even more, I was intrigued because I had come up with a similar idea for a novel. I was reading some Greek texts by one of the oligarchists—Xenephon, maybe, or Heraclitus, I don’t remember—and I came up with an idea about a modern oligarchic movement. Thinking back to the political writings of Chomsky that I read when I was in high school and the takeover of the democratic system by elites who manipulated the media and electoral process for their own undemocratic ends, I considered what would happen if this idea was taken wide-scale. I thought to myself, what if a group secretly began placing a number of crypto-conservatives into powerful positions in government and companies around the world preparing for an eventual takeover and essentially conservative revolution (however much of an oxymoron that idea might e). But my idea wasn’t compelling—conservatives, at least how it exists in the United States today does not inspire the devotion for a secret brotherhood like that. Then, right on television, Jeff Sharlet articulated the missing link: fundamentalism.

The Family is a fundamentalist Christian fellowship that does precisely that—they infiltrate the highest positions in government and other powerful institutions in order to network and spread their agenda. At first, it seemed like it couldn’t be true, but after vague and evasive quotes from members of the organization, I finally realized that it was absolutely true. I read The Family last year and I really enjoyed it. The exploration of the topic was deft and provided the necessary facts while giving an objective—sometimes unnervingly so—account of the operation.

The problem, however, with The Family, is that it got bogged down. Sharlet, wanting to give the full history of this insidious institution in American politics got bogged down in the details. Too many of the founders were striking men with blond hair and blue eyes described in almost exactly the same words. While one can’t change history to make it more varied, one can attempt to couch one’s narrative differently in order to keep reader interest. While I found the book fascinating, it didn’t stick as well as I would have liked in my memory and I didn’t pursue my research farther.

One day, browsing on Amazon, I noticed that Jeff Sharlet wrote another book. I put it on my Amazon wishlist, but I didn’t pay it as much heed as I might have. I was more interested in this book because it was called C-Street and so, I assumed, it would focus on the political aspects of the movement and the way in which the C-Streeters influenced American policy. He delivered. This book is an amazing chronicle of the way in which the fundamentalist contingent—specifically the family—influence American policymaking both foreign and domestic. The group’s influence runs even deeper than I anticipated and their issues are those which now appear on the forefront of America’s social battles: abortion, women’s rights, and homosexuality.

This book is magnificently written. Sharlet divides it into chapters based on the Family’s principles and each section blends politics, history, and interview. It’s gripping. Perhaps, in some sense, I have fallen prey to what Sharlet calls the problem of the American attention span. He argues that people are much more interested in sex scandals than they are in the family’s support of genocidal regimes. It did indeed take the Ensign and Sanford cases to bring C-Street to my attention. However, I hope that I have proven myself a more worthy reader than that. I found the chapter entitled “The War” to be the most engaging and almost as terrifying as the sections on the Ugandan kill-the-gays bill and on foreign policy more generally. “The War” detailed the rise of fundamentalism in the American military. The combination of superiors using their position to indoctrinate servicemen and the anti-Semitism detailed in this chapter was absolutely shocking. You have to read it to believe it.

Ultimately, I think this book was fantastic and that everyone everywhere should read it. The idea of Christian evangelicalism using government positions and advocating on blatantly elitist principles—they refer to these people as the “up-and-out”—is something that should be investigated and brought to the forefront of the public consciousness, especially since the American taxpayer is paying for a lot of the trips during which senators attempt to evangelicalize leaders of other nations—especially the poor and corrupt—is something everyone needs to ponder. Also, the writing is concise and powerful.

I’m planning on reading The Family again. Maybe on the flight home. I think I'm going to try to sleep on this next leg of the flight.

The Hunger Games

Unlike everyone else, I had my last final on Monday so my spring break was cut a little bit short. However, I managed to put the break to good use and spend a lot of time hanging out out with friends and not getting any sleep. Unfortunately, I caught a cold from my insane lifestyle for the past few days which involved lots of friends and wine and visiting a couple of museums and even a spa. Classes start again on Tuesday. In the meantime, I promised one of my tutoring students that I would read the The Hunger Games because she was shocked and appalled that I had not yet read it.

I decided I didn't want to buy the book so I check out the ability to borrow a book from Amazon that is one of the new feature of Amazon prime. It actually works really well with novels and I think that I am going to really enjoy this capacity during the summer. I just borrowed the second book.

In general, I don't think the The Hunger Games is particularly fantastic. It kept me awake and reading while I've been sick, but it's neither particularly well written or particularly gripping. It surprises me that it is such a hit, because it does not have the magical world of Harry Potter or anything. But maybe the second installment will prove more fascinating...

Thoughts on Speculative Fiction

Happy New Year, everyone!

 

Over break I ended up sitting in a waiting room for a very long time. As much as I enjoy waiting rooms for people-watching, people get a bit suspicious if you stare at them. Instead, I decided to read the one novel I got over the holidays. It's the sixth in a series I like called the Thursday Next series. The books are quite silly and enjoyable. They are quick reads; I read the entire book while sitting in the waiting room.

They belong to a category that I would call "metafiction"-- i.e. fiction about fiction-- but that the author himself places in a category called "speculative fiction." Inside the book fiction is a continent divided into countries such as "Racy Novel" and "Science Fiction" with surrounding islands like "Vanity" (i.e. self-published). The story centers around the politics in the fiction landscape and parodies modern day England.

I very much enjoyed One of Our Thursdays is Missing. It was entertaining and kept my mind off of other matters. I would recommend the series to anyone who enjoys Douglas Adams style humor with a literary bent (although make sure you've read a reasonable chunk of classics otherwise its not very funny). The one problem with the series is that the mythology is inconsistent. Fforde does not seem to care about consistency, sometimes even from chapter to chapter, e.g. how to book jump, the process of writing (interfacing author and ideas in the well of lost plots), generics, etc. However, there is something so charming about the writing style and something ridiculous enough about the world that it really doesn't seem to matter that much even to me (mythology is the big thing that excites or bothers me in a novel). I think part of it is the humor; the audience appreciates the joke more than the mythology.

I will attempt to post more regularly as my schedule gets back to normal.

Nox, A Review

I just finished Anne Carson's Nox, which was a Christmas gift from one of our oldest family friends and his wonderful girlfriend who is a famous novelist. On the back of the "book," Carson describes her work thus: "When my brother died, I made an epitaph for him in the form of a book. This is a replica of it, as close as we could get." I put the word "book" in quotations marks because this work is not, strictly speaking, a book. It is, rather, a box with a fold out visual-and-prose poem and at the same time, an associative reading of Catullus 101.

The Catullus poem is beautiful, as is Anne Carson's work. While being a poem and a journey in grief, it is also a character study and a postmodern novel; the readers must flesh out the complicated lives of the characters through (often literal) fragments. It is an engaging read which develops a sort of ethos of sadness as well as a desire for inquiry.

I don't want to spoil it; I suggest you read it. Her work is wonderful.

Slightly Ill Meditations on Textbooks

Although I have been taking good care of myself (sleep, veggies, fruits, vitamins, Greek, scholarship, a little Latin, etc), my cold seems to have relapsed and I feel rather ill. Consequently, my understanding of the world (as it always does when I am distracted by a painful throat, the sniffles, etc, declines rather sharply. Although I struggled through both some Crito and even a poem by Catullus this afternoon (110), my ability to effectively take in information sharply declined after a long art history lecture in a darkened room. As such, instead of continuing with Plato, Homer, or even reading Zuckert for my research, I have been reading a textbook.

My only mandatory class for the fall (aside from at least one course in each Greek and Latin) is a seminar on, essentially, how to produce classical scholarship. I am not sure what this entails precisely, although I seem to remember something about producing a term paper, the only book assigned for the class is a recently-published research manual by David Schaps called the Handbook for Classical Research. After I began nodding off while reading Plato's Philosophers (which quite interesting and this demonstrates clearly that I do not feel well), I decided to something with a simpler tone and point: my new textbook.

Like any good textbook, Schaps' work is engaging without being particularly challenging. Schaps has a strong personal style in his writing that is amenable, even if his opinions, at times, can be rather irritating (especially when he presents them as universal sentiments). However, there is something that feels wrong about the book. Although I am only 50 pages into the book, I get the distinct feeling that Classical research is simply not a subject that can be stuffed into the form of a textbook. Furthermore, although Schaps' distinct voice makes the book more engaging that it might be with a more distant author, it also causes me as the reader to constantly question his qualifications for writing such a book. The only place I have heard his is in one brief discussion of ancient coinage. It caused the more cynical part of me to wonder whether he has children to put through college, because certainly a general research handbook is going to sell better than the Economic Rights of Women in Ancient Greece.

To be sure, there are a lot of things that I still do not know. Until a few days, I had never researched fragments and my examination of the Teubner volume in the library containing Pindar 169a gave me some interesting insights (like how many times Plato's dialogues quote this fragment), but if it indeed contained the information I sought, I did not understand it. I have not gotten to examine Schaps' explanation of research with fragments yet so I do not know if he would be helpful. I certainly could have used this book in high school or early college when, while I had access to them, I did not understand what a commentary was and I sailed through my texts blindly until Propertius II helped me out in my Aeschylus class. Yet, at this moment in my career, I am less in need (for example) of a textbook that explains what scholia is than a textbook that provides a detailed understanding of different types of scholia and how to read them (e.g Ancient Greek Scholarship) or perhaps (more pertinent ant the moment) a detailed monograph on strategies to deal with textual fragments and their sources.

Maybe Schaps refers students to resources like this (I do know that he mentions Eleanor Dickey's book), but even if that were the case, it seems like a fruitless mission to write a book on a topic that is designed only as a chaperone to bigger and better resources instead of writing (or hiring someone else to write) analysis at the level necessary for rigorous undergraduates or less experienced graduate students as the book, by it's very nature (and the assumption made clear in the introduction) is geared solely toward individuals who intend to research and publish in the field. More thoughts as I get farther along (and hopefully as I become more coherent as my cold wains).

Notes 08/17/11: I was thinking that the book was declining further when I came to a chapter entitled "Book Reviews" (Schaps 57-65), but I was impressed to discover that the chapter was not instruction on how to read a book review, but on how to write one that might be accepted by a journal and what types of journals tend to publish them. However, the jury is still out.

Note 08/19/11: Once again I must add a positive addendum to my review. Although I have used many dictionaries in my time as a student of the classics, I still found Schaps' chapter on lexicography illuminating when it came to dictionaries (Schaps 69-80). It was nice to find out that there is a dictionary of Mycenean Greek (although, apparently, the best one is in Spanish) and that Woodhouse is the only full English-Classical Greek dictionary around, but other smaller ones, such as one by by James Morwood (good to know for prose composition).

Real and Fictional Bookstores

When I read trashy fiction, I tend to read books about books. The Thursday Next novels, The Club Dumas, Shadow of the Wind (which was fabulous and not at all trashy), etc. I am a total bibliophile: I love books, libraries, bookstores, and most places that worship the written word. I read much more slowly now-- as I primarily read nonfiction, and read more articles than books, but I love books in the same way that I did as a child.

In all of the books-on-books, there seems to be some vision of a perfect bookstore or library. Often the bookstores are in exotic stone buildings or have underground tunnels with musty shelves and rare volumes. In my lifetime, I have yet to encounter such a place. Powells (Portland) and Elliot Bay (Seattle) are fabulous to be sure, but they lack the grandeur of my dream bookstore or library. As it turns out, some of these bookstores still exist, or did until recently. Servia sent me a wonderful piece on an old man who ran a bookstore devoted too early editions of Jules Verne. I am not a fan of the author, although I read plenty of Verne in my time, but the bookstore sounds marvelous enough to be out of one of my trashy novels. It must have truly been a magical place, and I wish that I had been able to visit Paris in time to see it while it lasted.

Primordial Musings

Yesterday, I read an incredible article on jellyfish in the New York Times. I realized that they were a primitive life form, but I had no idea that they were three times older than the first dinosaurs and had survived five mass extinctions. The article is quite fabulous and I highly suggest it to anyone interested at all in marine biology.

Infinite Summer: This is my fourth (?) day of Infinite Jest, and I still have little good to say about it. I feel slightly less in the dark than before because some of the characters have been given names instead of obscure nicknames which makes them significantly more identifiable. My greatest compliment for it is that it is is more articulate and sophisticated in verbal style than the stories to which I have been comparing it (Oy, The Dogfish Series), but, on the other hand, "The Dogfish who Swallowed the Universe" was written by a twelve-year-old.

Speaking of primordial, I reread "The Dogfish who Swallowed the Universe" today, after my Infinite Jest allotment. I realized that I glamorized the story significantly because I spent so many hours of my formative youth arguing over it [1] with it's author (who, for convenience, I will refer to as Sockhead [2]). I was even inspired to write a similar work of my own around the same age that was a historical and religious parody instead of a social commentary. However, there is still a life and a humor in it that is not only precocious, but still holds up to this day.

"So it was that a cluster of naive lunatics met in a pub" (DSU. 1) and the story is off describing each of the characters. I wanted to quote one of the funniest sections, but most of them require references from earlier in the work to make sense or included a set up that was simply more than I wanted to type out. One vignette-like struck me as amusing. It lacks the subtlety and humor of other scenes (in fact it isn't particularly funny) and the writing lacks a degree of verbal artistry built up in the sequels "Hell Heck" and "Trousers," but in a stand-alone moment it provided a snapshot of the staccato absurdest style that reminds me of Infinite Jest.

"We decided to walk to a place we had sighted on the way to the inn, two or three blocks away. It was a Liberian fast-good pub called Ye Olde Liberian Fast-Food Pub. All of the rooms had themes. Our table was in the "fluffy fire-hose room." Our waiter looked like a cross between a stereotypical caffeine-addict and a stereotypical boy scout. He introduced himself as John and promptly died. I guess Abilio Manuel Guerra Junqueiro was correct. The manager said our waiter was under some stress because there had been a lot of complaints directed toward him. When I asked why, he said that John was more than a waiter; he was also a curator. He curated the rooms. He was criticized for putting stratified rocks in the ocean room. He thought that all stratified rocks came from the ocean. I guess he trusted Abraham Gottlob Werner's theories too much." (DSU 6).

Maybe my problem is that as much as I appreciate parts of Infinite Jest, I find it rather joyless and have not laughed or even cracked a smile at those things which I believe are supposed to be funny. While silly and unrefined, I found myself smiling and laughing at "The Dogfish who Swallowed the Universe." I am certainly a proponent of dark humor, but joyless humor seems like an oxymoron.

Endnotes

1. The story at once a bizarre fantasy, an exercise in humor, and a social parody of our social group. Any understanding of social dynamics I possess came from discussing, nitpicking, and expanding the social commentary from this book. My interests in social dynamics became so focused that in "Hell Heck" (the second story) my character was described thus: "Gruiforms had sort of become a "watcher." She merely watched (and watched and watched)" (HH 2). Obviously, my opinions are skewed.
2. At the time when this story was written, the author of the story constantly wore an eccentric gray beanie (for lack of a better term) which, when not being worn, looked a bit like a sock. This vague resemblance caused the author to refer to himself as "Sockhead" when some pseudonym was required.

Books and Science

Back when I was in high school, I read Dan Brown's Angels and Demons. Although, as with all of Dan Brown's plots, it focuses on the conspiracies withing Christian hierarchy and doctrine, the specific plot centered around a container of antimatter. This, however, has not been an achievable feat. Only recently have scientists been able to keep antimatter particles around for 1000 seconds (specifically antihydrogen). Servia sent me an article about it.

Update on Infinite Summer: Maybe I have poor taste, but I am still not a fan of Infinite Jest after reading another 2%. Although the language is erudite and interesting and the images are eccentric, much of what gestures toward humor relies upon a type of gross imagery that gets rather boring and repetitive. When I heard about the book, I was expecting something like an absurdest-humor non-fantasy version of Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell with a plethora of footnotes and backstory. I'm going to stick with it for the moment.

Book Review: Life From Scratch

I downloaded Life from Scratch for free from Amazon a few days ago. After reading a couple of scholarly article on the last exam I proctored, I decided to switch to something lighter. It was a quick and easy read. I finished it in a total of 3-4 hours.

I started reading the book in the first place because I thought the idea of resurrecting a life through cooking (kind of like I did-- although i did mine by Sparkpeople with exercise and healthy cooking) sounded interesting to me-- I did not look closely enough to realize that it was not a true story. However, I quickly realized the story was fictional (due to timeline irregularities). In general, it was a vapid account of two-dimensional characters that ended in a totally unrealistic and trite manner. I would not particularly recommend it.

Book Review: The Alchemist

 

Yes, I know, everyone else read this book ten years ago. Recently I picked it off my bookshelf as my I-need-a-five-minute-break book. It worked pretty well-- an easy to follow storyline and short chapters made it the ideal momentary break from the world.

I cannot say that I highly recommend the book. It had some of the elements of Spanish writing that I seem to like-- that fantastical gifted phrasing that makes words seem magical-- but it lacked a complicated plot or believable characters. Every person seemed to have a unified core that appeared unmediated through their actions with the world almost as if the main character had invented them to entertain him during long nights in the desert. Furthermore, although the character went through some hardships, I do not think I have ever encountered a self-discovery story where the path was so clear or the journey so easy. Maybe this is my view from reading too many books where authors torture their characters, but it seems like omens/God/happenstance/luck (all things to which the main character's first person narrative constantly refer) provide such easy roadmaps.

The book was enjoyable and moderately charming, but not something I could highly recommend.

Book Review: The Family

On the journey up to my Alma Mater, I (finally) finished readying The Family, Jeff Sharlet's investigative piece into a secretive, elite Christian organization that operates in Washington and all over the world.

Sharlet's writing style has a very personal quality-- almost as though you are sitting in his living room while he recounts the story to you himself. It is easy to believe that he would have gotten some of the access he did because he has a manner of self-presentation that makes the listener believe he is an open book, even though that probably is not the whole story. I think the one flaw of the book may be the long sections on the history of the family and different important members.

It is clear that Sharlet did his research-- down to the personal appearance of each one of the historical figures he describes-- but there is a little less of Sharlet's voice in these sections and they end up dragging more than the text from the present day. However, he did make some fascinating connections. My personal favorite was that the Charles Colson of the Watergate scandal (which I researched so extensively in eighth grade American history) is the same Charles Colson who is now a part of the Family and a leader in the Evangelical Christian movement. I was shocked.

I highly recommend the book. It provides an interesting and unusual insight into the American Evangelical movement and it's history. Were one to read it in more concentrated chunks than I did, it would be a quick read.

He recently followed this with a book called C Street, which is the name of the house run by the Family where many congressmen live while they are in Washington. I have put it on my list of things to read.

Blogs and Books

There seems to be something of a symbiotic relationship between blogs and books. I guess this probably springs from the fact that blogs are started by those who like to write and provide a way for an author to gain a following without attracting a publisher. When I first considered writing a blog, the first blogs that I came across were publishing blogs for aspiring writers, such as Rachelle Gardner's wonderful blog that attempts to guide writers through the maze of writing and publishing as well as Janet Fitch's blog which is a forum for Janet's short stories in between writing her novels.

The links between the book world and the blogging world run deeper than providing a platform for writers and those in the publishing business. Blogs allow the average individual to enjoy and review books, providing valuable information to their fellow readers. I also review books on both this blog and on Platonic Psychology from time-to-time. There are now websites that provide books for people to review. One I found today is called Book Sneeze. Any individual can apply to Book Sneeze to receive free books to review. At the moment, almost all of the books on Book Sneeze are Christian in theme. Does anyone know of a similar website with a broader range of books?

Jeeves and Wooster

I have been rewatching Jeeves & Wooster with my family since we finished Downton Abbey. I absolutely love Jeeves & Wooster. The writing is incredible and Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry have incredible chemistry I highly recommend it. Laurie plays a vapid British bachelor with an aristocratic inheritance and no ambition, while Fry plays Jeeves, the perfect gentleman's gentleman-- a snobby valet who has a good brain for intrigue. Together they get into-- and out of-- various ridiculous situations.

I also think the books are fabulous. I read a bit of them here and there when I am feeling sad and they cheer me right up. I grew up with the Jeeves and Wooster Omnibus, but I have recently found that some of the stories are up on Project Gutenberg. Check out My Man Jeeves and Right Ho, Jeeves. They are hilarious. I had to stop reading Right Ho, Jeeves while proctoring exams because it made me laugh aloud.

Bibliophillic Dream

A friends recent blog entry lead me to Ideal Bookshelf, which is artist Jane Mount's project to do portraits of people by painting the books that made a difference in their lives. I think the work is phenomenal and the project is a wonderful idea. I'm not yet sure what I would put on my bookshelf. What would you put on yours?

I chose an assortment of cookbooks from the website as a sample.

The Bookstores of the West

One of my favorite things in the world is shopping for books. I love books. I love the way they feel in one's hands, the way they smell, the differences in paper, binding, and cover art. Even though I also own lots of electronic books and a Kindle DX, I will always love and own lots of books.

I do a lot of shopping for books online, partially because books are often cheaper from Amazon or Half than in a store, and partially because it is convenient. However, nothing compares to browsing a bookstore. My job on campus when I was in college was at the bookstore and I bought a lot of books because of the discount.

Two of my favorite bookstores in the world are in the Northwest. I splurged, with the remainder of a gift-certificate, and bought six books today because one of them was having a sale. So, I thought I should profile these two great stores:

Powells, and specifically the immense location on Burnside, is one of the greatest places ever. The store is two stories tall and takes up about half of a city block. It includes a coffee shop and a rare book room. The books are organized by subject and color coded by room as well as given a Dewy Decimal number. It's amazing. Used books are interspersed among the new books and rare editions are displayed in glass cases. It's awesome. Right now, they are having a set of sales to celebrate the 16th anniversary of their founding. They also sell books online.


The other great Northwestern bookstore is Elliot Bay.I fell in love the second I set foot in this store. Most of the books are new, but there is a huge used book room and when I was there the coffee shop walls were lined with shelves of $1 books. It is absolutely fabulous.

Teaching through the Invisible Wall

I proctored another practice test today. Practice tests are a long four hours and I finished Genres in Dialogue: Plato and the Construct of Philosophy and was able to cross it off of my reading list [1]. I also read two other works which I will discuss in detail over the next few days.

At one of the five-minute breaks in the four-hour exam, I asked my students how their college applications were going. People were nervous-- and rightfully so-- but were in the process. I told them that I was doing graduate school applications, and they were a nightmare because they do not have a common application and require a lot of strange GPA manipulations (depending upon whether the school is focused on your grades in courses in your major, in your last two years, etc). After explaining this, I realized that this attempt to explain my sympathies with the students' situation was precisely the wrong approach. They do not want to hear how hard my experience is-- or the things that may be awaiting them after college-- but rather they would like some encouraging words.

I always thought, while I was in high school, that when I became a teacher (I wanted to be a professor of course, but I figured that it was a similar principle) that I would understand the plight of the student and not be alienated from it in the way that my teachers seemed to be. My specific specific qualms were with busy-work, "creative projects" as graded material, and improper balancing of review and new material (in either direction). Now, I realize that there is as much of an invisible wall between my students and me as there was between me and my teachers. Maybe it is the inevitable position of being a teacher.

One thing that cheered me up was an essay that a student wrote today. The topic asked the students to consider what type of learning should be done in schools. One of the girls related a personal anecdote about a friend of hers sitting at lunch one day and complaining that school did not have enough breaks and did not incorporate enough creative learning. The girl questioned her friend, and through questioning the friend agreed that although it might feel that way, but the purpose of school was to provide a learning experience and that it was ultimately useful. I do not know if the anecdote was true, but it made me feel a little bit better.

Endnotes

1. Genres in Dialogue: Plato and the Construct of Philosophy is fabulous. Andrea Nightingale utilizes a mixture of history and classical scholarship with Bahktin and a smattering of literary theory to provide an energetically written and scholastically footnoted work that provides a fascinating analysis of Plato and the development of philosophy as a genre. I will do a full review soon.