Quick review

Quick review
The 10 cognitive distortions are
1. All or nothing thinking.  Everything's black or white.  One error means black.
2. Overgeneralization.  One negative means you can predict never-ending negatives.
3. Mental filter.  You pick out a single negative and dwell on it exclusively.
4. Disqualifying the positive. You reject positive experiences or comments because "they don't count".
5. Jumping to conclusions
                             a. mind reading. You assume someone is thinking negatively of you.
                             b. fortune telling.  You anticipate and expect things will go badly.
6. Magnification and Minimization.  You exaggerate the importance of goof-ups and mistakes and minimize the importance of the good things you do.
7. Emotional reasoning.  If I feel bad it must be bad.
8. Should statements. You try to motivate yourself with "shoulds", "musts" and "oughts" and the emotional consequence is guilt for yourself and frustration when you mentally use those words in connection with others.
9. Labeling and mislabeling. You attach negative labels to yourself and others.
10. Personalization.  You see yourself as the cause of an external negative event that you were actually not responsible for.

So, with that review, can you identify which cognitive distortions are in the following scenario?

You've been reading sections of "Teaching, No Greater Call" about classroom discipline and applying the principles in it to the Sunday school class you teach.  You've been doing it for several weeks and it seems to be making a difference.  Then, suddenly, things in the classroom take a turn for the worse as a couple of kids in your class start acting out and in three consecutive weeks you are back to where you started.  You feel bitter, disillusioned, hopeless and desperate due to thinking, "I'm not getting anywhere.  These methods won't help after all.  I should have things under control well by now.  That 'improvement' was a fluke.  I was fooling myself when I felt like things were going better, They really didn't.  I'll never be able to get these kids to pay attention."  Which of the following one or more cognitive distortions did you employ?

a) disqualifying the positive
b) should statement
c) all-or-nothing thinking
d) jumping to conclusions
e) emotional reasoning

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answer:  all of them.  Did you find some of them?  Good!  You could probably add "personalization" to the list if in fact the two kids are acting out due to chaos at home beyond your control.

Can you see how our thoughts and responses to a situation can create our emotions?  And how distorted thoughts can mess up our emotions?

The goal, then, is to learn how to think thoughts based in reality, things as they really are, not in distortions of reality.  And that can be done.  The first step is to start identifying those distortions.  And you just did that.

The next step is to talk back truth to them when they pop up in your brain.

Recalling an Adage

Thinking about things...

"An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure."
Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanack

Wise words

"Some things are more important than money.  And one of the things that is always more important than money is people."
~ E.  August 2012

"Magnifying" a calling

Thomas Monson's message in this month's Ensign is about serving in our church callings which he equates with loving and serving as Jesus did and taking responsibility instead of seeking to be comfortable.

That article and its sidebar, of course, use quotes that refer to "magnifying your calling".  I've sat in on classes where teacher and students have discussed what that word "magnify" means or doesn't mean in that context where they have had a bit of a struggle creating a definitive definition.

Today I found this:

Magnify:  late 14th century, "To speak or act for the glory or honor (of someone or something)," From O. French magnafier,  from Latin magnificare, "esteem greatly, extol", from magnificus, "splendid".  Meaning use of a telescope or microscope is first attested 1660s.

It is relevant to note that the King James Version of the Bible was finished in 1611.

So, perhaps, if one is called by the Lord  to do some work in his Kingdom, then to magnify one's calling mostly just has to do with acting in that calling in a way that honors the divine nature of that calling thereby speaking and acting for the glory or honor of the Lord; speaking and acting in ways that reflect his way of loving and serving and that help turn others hearts to honor him, not making that calling bigger or clearer or more visible or detailed as later definitions of the word came to mean.

That makes sense to me.

Florence Barclay

"To my thinking, offence has no possible place in a genuine friendship.  The one pained always forestalls offence by the realization of non-intention to wound on the part of the other."

~Florence Barclay, "The Broken Halo"

Galatea and Pygmalion

Étienne Maurice Falconet: Pygmalion & Galatee (1763) Hermitage Museum, photography by abakharev, April 2006 

(public domain)

I found this in a very old book yesterday:

"True happiness does not come from marrying an idol throned on a pedestal.  Before Galatea could wed Pygmalion she had to change from marble into glowing flesh and blood and step down from off her pedestal. Love should not make us blind to one another's faults.  It should only make us infinitely tender, and completely understanding...Men and women, who are human enough to marry, are human enough to be full of faults; and the best thing marriage provides is that each gets somebody who will love, forgive and understand."              
 ~Florence Barclay

Secular Liberals and Conservative Evangelicals: the root of their differences

Professor of Anthropology (Stanford) Tanya Luhrmann was interviewed about a book of hers that was recently published. You can find the resultant article here.

What struck me was her comment about her understanding of the root of the difference in political thinking between secular liberals and conservative evangelicals.  She said,

"Secular liberals want to create the social conditions that allow everyday people, behaving the way ordinary people behave, to have fewer bad outcomes. When evangelicals vote, they think more immediately about what kind of person they are trying to become—what humans could and should be, rather than who they are. From this perspective, the problem with government is that it steps in when people fall short."

One party wanting to change the effects of human beings' choices and the other wanting to change the causes that are behind the choices made.  No wonder that they have such a terrifically difficult time understanding each other's modus operandi and feel totally thwarted by each other at every turn.

It reminded me of this quote by Ian Buruma:

"Obama is neither a socialist, nor a mere political accountant. He has some modest ideals, and may yet be an excellent president. But what is needed to revive liberal idealism is a set of new ideas on how to promote justice, equality and freedom in the world."

I am old enough to remember the idealism and belief about what we Americans could become in terms of equality, justice and freedom  that rang through the rank and file of many Democratic Party members in the days of Martin Luther King Jr., George McGovern and others in spite of the political old-boy network that still controlled its upper echelons.  I recall that that idealism and belief were grounded in a vision of moral integrity and the brotherhood of man that carried its believers forward through incredible opposition, fear-mongering and  hate that also prowled the political scene. 

I think we could use more of that vision, both of moral integrity and universal brotherhood in all political parties.

Learning from the view

Since my house burned down
I now own a better view
of the rising moon.

~Mizuta Mashide, 17th century Japanese poet

paint the window white and tile the wall. nice

Other design

My Grandmother's Voice

When I was a girl, visiting at my grandmother's home, she would give me the task of using her nice teapot to water her houseplants.

"How much water?" I would ask.

"To about here," she would reply, smiling and touching a point on the side of the pot housing the plant.

This past week our house was hit by lightning and caught fire.  Today I am housesitting for a friend who has offered to let us stay here while she is away on vacation and we look for a temporary rental in which to live while our house is repaired.  So this morning I was on my friend's patio, watering her potted plants.

"How much water do these need?" I wondered.

And in my mind I heard my grandmother again.  "To about here."  And I remembered again the blessing she was in my young life.

Creativity, Divinity and Work

“There is something about the creative process – and not just for solving design-related problems, but in all creative problem solving – that feels very good to me. It is as though when I am creating something – anything – that I am in a “sweet spot.” My soul tunes to the rhythm of the project and I pour my whole being into the process. The finished product often makes me happy, but it is the work of creating that brings me deep joy.

My belief about our ultimate origin resides in the existence of God. And if it is true – if it is true that He created the heavens and the earth, and at some point created male and female humans, describing us as being in His image - then we exist in the image of a creative Divinity. When we create – be it designs or paintings, lyrics or melodies, scripts or movies, short stories or lectures, campaigns or solutions to social issues, even lesson plans or to-do lists in their own right – we participate in the nature of God. We find a “sweet spot.” Our souls rejoice in the process because we were created to create.”  ~Russell Shaw

Also true in the everyday work we do.  When I am only responding to demands, be they the demands of others or the demands of my own preconceived notions of what is acceptable or laudable in the responsibilities before me, my work is just work and can easily become tedious.  But when I look at the daily work before me (be it housekeeping, childrearing, church work or paid work) with a heart open to reality and a mind free to learn, research, think outside the box and solve puzzles in creative ways my work becomes engaging and more deeply satisfying.  "We were created to create."

"Increased Understanding"

There was a query in February's Ensign Magazine about feeling confused about "increased understanding I hear Church leaders describe" as a result of temple worship and a sense of concern that one is not making attending the temple "a learning experience".  Actually I think that sometimes we get anxious that each temple experience fall into the category of "unfolding the mysteries of God" in order to be acceptable, when, actually, learning through temple worship is far more varied and subtle.

My experience is that temple learning comes to me in multiple ways.  Three of them are: 1) from contemplation of the various things I can learn from the symbols there, 2) from personal revelation about my personal concerns that comes more easily to my mind and heart in a peaceful place, and 3) from thoughtfully reviewing the principles of righteous living and blessings that I am reminded of there.  At some times in my life learning has come in one of those ways and at times in another.  So sometimes when I feel that my learning curve has slowed it is because I have been focusing on one of those three learning methods and its time for me to learn better how to increase my understanding from one of the others.

That third way of learning is one that we sometimes overlook or discount as “increased understanding” simply because it involves nothing “new”.  I have found that, on occasion, I will learn something from the Lord during my temple worship which he hopes that I, personally, will consider and implement carefully into my life.  That consideration and implementation can sometimes take a long time.  During that time my temple worship changes and becomes a time for the Lord to peacefully review what he has taught me, and for me to celebrate that gift and to recommit myself to that process of living in a way that I have already felt inspired by him to do.  I am not necessarily learning new principles or new symbolic meanings, but instead, at those times, my temple worship leads me to reflect and turn my heart to the Lord, which in turn helps me to remember that understanding which I previously received, recommit to incorporating it wisely into my particular life and to perceive, with divine help, how to better do so with love and courage.  That is also “increased understanding”.

"Everyday family life fosters or hinders a child's spiritual growth more than any Sunday manual ever could."

Roslyn Welch posted, here, about her parents thoughtful education, both religious and secular, of their children.  It reminded me of my own upbringing for which I am ever grateful.  Among other things, she wrote:

"When it comes to family environment, I won the lottery. My parents are ordinary humans with ordinarily imperfect kids, but they created a family environment that equipped us extraordinarily well to meet faith challenges without fear, betrayal, or emotional crisis. Certainly I hold myself up as no paragon of faith or spirituality. But my own challenges with belief have brought me relatively little personal upheaval and no rupture of my relationships. Whether or not my parents' approach was typical, or whether it would work for everybody, who can say? Nevertheless, and on the strength of personal anecdote alone, here's what worked in our home.

"1) Teach your children to read critically. Reading with my parents was the defining experience of my childhood. They read to us and with us all the time: stories every night before bed, scripture every evening at dinner, Sherlock Holmes stories on long Sunday afternoons, anything and everything on the endless road trips to Utah. Every chapter was a covert lesson in critical reading. To read critically doesn't have to mean negatively or skeptically, of course; my parents approached scripture with love and respect. But they showed us how to read a text as more than just words on a page: look for connections, make inferences, recognize different points of view, point out interesting contradictions, begin to historicize, suggest several different interpretations. A child can't find real value in scripture until she can ask real questions of it.

"2) Buy books, lots and lots of books, for them to read. My parents' personal library is legendary. They bought the best books in every category: Mormon studies, including critical and outsider treatments, and religious studies generally, of course, but far beyond that. Science, history, mathematics. Politics, biography, memoir. Literary criticism, social science. Philosophy and poetry. And shelves and shelves of children's fiction. There was a bookshelf in every room, but the bulk of the collection was shelved topically in the family room where we spent much of our time. The titles and subtitles lining the wood-paneled walls were an education in themselves, and their image still wallpapers the back of my eyelids. I've pulled only a fraction of those books off the shelf, but their presence in the home, their constant accessibility, and the silent conversation among those thousands of spines worked on us day and night. A library of books in the home builds a library of ideas in a child's mind, ideas that can make sense of challenges when they come. Kindle can't do that, folks.

"3) Take responsibility for your own children's spiritual formation.We attended church faithfully every week, but my parents did not rely on the ward to manage our spiritual education. Never directly undermining what was taught on Sunday, my parents personally introduced us to Mormon history, scripture, cosmology, sociology, and culture. They did this in family home evenings, in regular scripture study sessions, in Sunday family devotionals, and in special summertime seminars for the teenagers in the house my mother called "School of the Prophets." They gave us free access to their complete collection of Dialogue and BYU Studies—and they read the journals themselves. They did not parade us past every bit of challenging history or cultural gripe they may have harbored, but they gave us the tools to cope with them when we encountered them on our own."


Well said.

Jephtha and his Daughter

In the last two hundred years there have been multiple scholarly responses to the story of Jephtha and his daughter found in the book of Judges.  In a nutshell, Jephtha, was a military leader among the Israelites in a period of time when they, "again did what was evil in the eyes of God...they abandoned God and did not worship him. So the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel, and he sold them into the hand of the Philistines and into the hand of the Ammonites ..." (Judges 10:6-7).

Jephthah lived in Tob, east of Gilead where he, "there gathered around him some worthless ["empty"] men, and they went out with him." (Judges 11:3) The elders of Gilead asked him to be their leader in the campaign against the Ammonites, but he held out for a more permanent and a broader position, and the elders agreed that, provided Jephthah succeeded in defeating Ammon, he would be their commander permanently. So, Jephthah challenged the Ammonites and after the campaign began to be successful and the Lord began to help him, he made an oath:

"Whatever/whoever emerges and comes out of the doors of my house to meet me, when I return in peace from the people of Ammon, shall surely be God’s, and I shall sacrifice him/her/it as a burnt offering

The victorious Jephthah was met on his return by his daughter, his only child. Jephthah tore his clothes and cried, "Alas, my daughter! You have brought me very low!" but is bound by his vow: "I have given my word to God, and I cannot go back on it" (Judges 11:35). The girl asks for two months' grace, "... that I may go down on the mountains ... and bewail my virginity" (Judges 11:37). And then Jephthah "carried out his vow with her which he had vowed" (Judges 11:39). The story ends by recounting how "the daughters of Israel went four days each year to lament the daughter of Jephthah the Gileadite" (Judges 11:40).

Contrary to popular understanding of many modern Christians of the inerrancy of the Bible, the accuracy of the Bible translations was frequently doubted by believing scholars in the 17^th and 18^th centuries.  The most well known of these might be Benjamin Kennicott (1718-1783) perhaps the leading English Old Testament scholar of the period, who agreed with the deists, such as Voltaire who used the story of Jephtha as a catalyst for their arguments against the veracity of the Bible, that the Hebrew text was corrupt and unreliable, although he and the deists drew different conclusions from this shared realization.  His decades of work in collecting, translating and comparing ancient biblical texts to compare with modern translations was legend.

Scholars of the Christian tradition, both believers, and unbelievers, (as well as Jewish ones before them) have debated this story of Jephtha for centuries, mostly centering their arguments on the etymology and translation of the text.  Some declared that Jephtha actually sacrificed his daughter as a burnt offering.  Others disagreed.   For example, there was much debate in the 17^th and 18^th centuries on what should be the translation of verse 31: “Then it shall be, that whatsoever cometh forth of the doors of my house to meet me, when I return in peace from the children of Ammon, shall surely be the Lord’s, and I will offer it up as a burnt offering.”

One key to the scholarly, believing revisionist reading was that “and” (in “and I will offer it up”) could be translated as“or.” Robert Jenkin (1656–1727) who was a Professor of Divinity at Cambridge, for instance, wrote that, “it is well known” that the word “which they translate and in the Text, often signifies or.”

Addressing the problem of why, if Jephtha’s daughter had not been killed, it should have become the custom to “lament” her, Jenkin suggests a better translation than “lament” would be “to rehearse or speak”: “From whence it has been supposed, that she was not put to Death, but was obliged to live in a State of Virginity and Solitude.”  She would have been required to live the life of a Nazarite.

Samuel Humphreys, similarly arguing against the sacrifice in "Sacred Books of the Old and New Testament" (pub. 1735–39), also suggests that “or” is a better translation than “and” in verse 31 and criticizes the Vulgate’s reading “whoever” as inferior to the King James’s “whatsoever.”

Humphreys concludes that if the creature greeting Jephtha is human, “he or she shall be consecrated to the service of God as some sort of Nazarites were; or if it prove a beast, it shall be offered up for a burnt-offering.”

Whichever translation is most accurate, however, and whatever the ultimate fate of Jephtha’s daughter, the story still feels problematic to many readers.  As a teenager, in my first encounter with the book of Judges my response was “What!!??”   What was I supposed to make of this book full of stories of people who were ostensibly of God’s chosen house of Israel but who continually undertook, what seemed to me at best, stupid, and at worst, depraved actions.  In the years of Sunday school and seminary that followed I heard Jephtha held up as an example of the virtue of being willing to sacrifice anything to the Lord as well as the explanations brought forth about mistranslations, stating that his daughter bewailed her virginity because she was about to commence a life of nazarite vows.  The former sounded barbaric and the latter like a senseless imposition of submissive though misguided obedience to parental authority.  Neither sounded like an example of enlightened Godly life to me.

I have come, however, to believe that the book of Judges is best approached as a fine example of what can happen to people in a culture that has a history of belief in God, but who have lost their sense of a direct connection to God and for whom their religious orientation has become, at most, a part of their tradition and culture (and in some cases, see the last couple of chapters for example, is totally abandoned), instead of a breathing, living, daily communication with God.  The stories of Samson, Gideon, and Jephtha all contain examples of this slide into a sense of God as a formula or tradition or a force to make bargains with instead of a divine, loving, intimate, personal daily guide.  As such it is good to look at elements in the story of Jephtha one by one and then look at our own modern culture and relationship with God to see if we find parallels to be wary of.

First, Jephtha’s desire for a powerful position.   The man is asked to assist in the war against the Ammonites.  He refuses, holding out for a more permanent position of power beyond the immediate task at hand before he will join in the war.  His interest is not in the completion of the task being asked of him, but instead in the power and career it will afford him if he participates.  My question:  what are my motives when deciding whether or not to assist in an undertaking?

Second, having procured a conditional bargain with the elders of Gilead (“if you are successful, then we will give you the position you want’) he is willing to sacrifice ANYTHING to be successful.  My question: am I making the mistake of becoming the sort of person who will sacrifice anything, no matter what, in order to become “successful” in the eyes of those in power or those who will determine the course of my career?

Third, the Lord inspires Jephtha once he undertakes the work (yes, God does help further causes even when the leaders thereof are stupid) (vs. 29) and Jeptha’s response is not humilty or gratitude, but rather, bargain-making.  My question:  Do I fail to recognize God as a loving, daily, helpful, awe-inspiring guide, but instead see him as another political ally that I can make intermittant powerful contractual bargains with in order to achieve the good things that I want to have happen?

Fourth, once Jephtha makes an oath, he keeps it even when he discovers that doing so will be destructive.  We see this sometimes masquerading in modern culture as “honor”.  My question: When I make a promise and I later discover that it would be destructive to keep it, does my traditional sense of pride and “honor” prevent me from being humble enough to admit my mistake and do what is kindest and best?  Does my sense of pride and honor take precidence over my commitment to charity and justice?  Does it prevent me from communicating with God about making a change in my declared course of action?

Fifth, (and I realize that some will take issue with this, because it concerns the victim in this case and the phrase in question can have layered meanings) when Jephtha’s daughter realizes that she faces being sacrificed (either literally killed or given over to a Nazarite life) and that there is no recourse for her, the focus of her mourning is her virginity. I guess that this part of the story particularly jumps out at me because of the increasing and erroneous notion expressed in media for young people that, of all things that it would be tragic to die (or to live) without experiencing, the most tragic would be to not have experienced sex.  My question: If I were facing a medical diagnosis with a short estimated time of life left, or if I came to realize that I would be single all of my life, what would I mourn not having the opportunity to do?   Would my sorrow be selfish or selfless?  And would my faith in the recompense and mercy of God carry me through that sorrow?  

Sixth, if we assume the interpretation that Jephtha did in fact sacrifice his daughter we realize that he has offered a sacrifice that is, according to the descriptions given by God, repugnant to God.  God’s descriptions of acceptable sacrifice are very clear in the book of Leviticus.  Human sacrifice of one’s children was forbidden.  Sacrifice of one’s child was, on the other hand, a type of sacrifice that was acceptable in the worship of the god Moloch, a Caananite god worshiped at the time.  Thus we find that Jephtha has dictated the bounds of the sacrifice he will make, using parameters set forth in an aspect of society that does not worship God, instead of following the direction of the Lord as to what an acceptable sacrifice is.   My question:  How often do I determine what is acceptable to the Lord by looking to what the society around me sees as most noble or heroic, rather than seeking to find what the Lord asks of me?

Whatever interpretation of the story of Jephtha and his daughter one takes as most accurate, the questions are good to ask.


Bibliography:
The Holy Bible KJV
Susan Staves, "Jephtha's Vow Reconsidered", Huntington Library Quarterly, Vol. 71, No. 4, pp 651-669, University of California Press 2008.

One man's learning curve of life

My department at my alma mater has a  newsletter that it sends annually to each of us alumni.  This bit, amidst the various news items about various of us caught my attention.

"Neville W______ (MA 1978) died in October 2010 in K______, Maine.  According to his obituary, "W_______ was well educated, attending Kings College (Cambridge, England), Tufts University (magna cum laude, 1965), and Stanford University upon receiving a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship in 1965-66.  After retiring from retail in 2002, Neville was able to return to his lifelong love and pursuit of painting and poetry.  He published his first book of poetry, The Early Morning Clapboarder, in 2007.  His poems remain a legacy of joy, love and wonder of life.  His life is well summarized in a quote he gave for a 2007 interview in the local Tourist News: 'It takes time to reach the center of who you are.  I found that life is ever changing, and there are no certainties, only possibilities.  Love is man's last great hope of peace and the source of all that's important.  The journey is what's important.'"

Well said. A discourse worth listening to.

"Grace shall be as your day."

Brad Wilcox on grace.

Notes on Ephesians 5

1.       To add to your repertoire of information on Ephesians 5:

vs 21, (members of the church) submit yourselves one to another in the fear of God. Greek word for “submit”: hupotassomai
vs 22 Wives submit submit yourselves to your husbands. Greek word used for “submit”: hupotassomai
vs 23 Husband is the head of the wife. Greek word used for “head”: kephale
vs 25 Husbands love your wives: Greek word used for “love”: agapeo
vs 27 That he might present it to himself a glorious church. Greek word used for “might present”: parasthsh

Hupotassomai doesn’t have a direct English equivalent but means something along the lines of “give allegiance to”, or “tend to the needs of ” or “be supportive of” or “be responsive to”. In military contexts it is used to describe taking a position in a phalanx of soldiers; to be united with the group in effort and support. The German Bible translates it as “to place oneself at the disposition of”. This is what members of the church are asked to do for each other and what wives are asked to do in these verses in Ephesians. Its meaning relates very much to the admonition in Galatians 6:2 to “bear one another’s burdens”. Very importantly, Greek not only has active and passive forms of verbs, but also a middle form, which is used when the subject of the sentence neither acts on another nor is acted upon, but rather volunteers willingly to a state of being or to a course of action that is self-directed, not imposed. Hupotassomai, in these verses is in the middle form. Paul uses it to invite a purely voluntary action, not as a command.

“Kephale” is a word used to denote a person who goes ahead into battle, putting himself the most dangerous and vulnerable position in the phalanx.

“Agapeo” is used here and also in the commandment to love our neighbor and God and our enemies and in Jesus’ description of the Good Samaritan who loved and helped freely another who could not (and probably would not) repay his kindness.

Agapeo and hupotassomai are very similar words, both involve giving up one’s self-interest to serve and care for another’s. Both mean being responsive to the needs of others. Many scholars recognize this passage of Ephesians as a chiasmus with hupotassomai at the beginning of it and agapeo as an equal term at the end.

“Parasthsh” means “to stand beside”.

Knowing the Greek words sheds further light on the passage which the English translation obscures.

Thanks for some of the above to various sources, including 

What Paul Really Said About Women: The Apostle's Liberating Views on Equality in Marriage, Leadership, and Love

by John T. Bristow

Thoughtful listening goes both ways. Do I take time to explain well? Do I listen like he does?

"Most often when we pray, we expect to speak while God listens." 

Michael S. Wilcox, "Let Us Ask of God", December 2004

Artist: Nathan Florence

Quote for today

“Jesus Christ and all the writers of the New Testament call us to break free of mammon lust and live in joyous trust...They point us toward a way of living in which everything we have we receive as a gift, and everything we have is cared for by God, and everything we have is available to others when it is right and good. This reality frames the heart of Christian simplicity. It is the means of liberation and power to do what is right and to overcome the forces of fear and avarice.” 
—Freedom of Simplicity: Finding Harmony in a Complex World
by Richard J. Foster 

Thoughts on readers and modern serious fiction

The author Jonathan Franzen was interviewed on NPR yesterday and his comments about writing novels caught my attention.  This particularly:

“…much of the work on a novel for me consists in the kind of work you might do in a paid professional's office of trying to walk back from your stuck, conflicted, miserable place to a point of a little bit more distance,  from which you can begin to fashion some meaningful narrative of how you got to the stuck place. And the stuck-ness, for the working novelist — or at least for this one — has to do with not wanting to get into certain intensely fraught or private experiences… [but] feeling that it's absolutely necessary to say things that are absolutely unsay-able."

When the interviewer asked about “unsayable things” he responded:

“The great thing about novels is…you are converting unsayable things into narratives that have their own dreamlike reality and instead of having factual statements about what is [pause] ‘Here’s the factual statement I will never make about myself, I can’t make about myself, I’m afraid or ashamed to make about myself’.  If that can be translated into characters who feel like they have some independent life and if they are embodying through their story that informational material about myself then I feel as if it’s not quite been said but it’s been enacted.”

Though Franzen is talking about information about himself, the description also applies to authors who use this genre to relay information about social issues they know first hand as well.  He captures in these words something I’ve long understood about much of modern serious fiction; that it is an author’s way of portraying something that is a profound and also disturbing ("unsayable") truth to him or her in a way that is less direct than prose and, because it is fiction, also allows dramatic flair to be added to creatively emphasize the author’s emotion or thoughts on the subject or theme of the piece of work.  As such, it can be, in some situations, an effective way of teaching the reader, adding to the vibrancy of the reader’s understanding or empathy of the subject being addressed, particularly if it is a subject that the reader has not experienced first hand, or has been previously only marginally aware of.

In this sort of previously unaware reader, the reading experience, if it is taken thoughtfully, adds insight or understanding or sympathy.  It may even become a stepping stone to passionate action when the subject is encountered in daily life.  On the other hand, unfortunately, if the reader approaches the book as entertainment, it tends to harden the reader, making it more difficult for him or her to respond with anything other than passive amusement when the issues in the novel are encountered in real life.  

For a second group of readers, those who have encountered the "unsayable" issues portrayed in their own lives and are still dealing with the fallout the experience is quite different, and also variable.  If they are still angry or frustrated, the reading can feel cathartic, expressing in a dramatic form the feelings that they are still dealing with.  On the other hand, if the issues are still ongoing and raw, it can re-open old wounds and cause increased pain.

Finally, this type of fiction doesn’t work at all for a third group of readers.  For a reader who has experienced first or second hand in the real world the "unsayables" that the novel deals with creatively, and has already addressed and is still addressing it directly in their own mind and actions in proactive ways, the dramatic flair of fiction is annoying.  For such a reader, that fictitious dramatization often feels like a trivialization of sober reality, making a serious matter look like a form of voyeuristic entertainment that reduces the reader of it to a passive consumer.  And for this group of readers, passive consumption in response to the topics being addressed is unacceptable.

This last group of readers requires personal narrative or prose that they can use in the work they are already doing.  Fiction doesn’t work.