Art makes you smart!

As this article in the Times reminds us, viewing and thinking about art will make you a better person:

Clearly, however, we can conclude that visiting an art museum exposes students to a diversity of ideas that challenge them with different perspectives on the human condition. Expanding access to art, whether through programs in schools or through visits to area museums and galleries, should be a central part of any school’s curriculum.

How we write

According to the Times, neuroscientists are trying to understand how the brains of writers and readers work. How, exactly, does the reader feel an emotional reaction to the death of a character, for example? And is it the same emotional reaction that the writer felt in creating the scene?

How, you ask, do scientists measure these reactions?

Hook up the writer and (later) his readers:

They have asked Mr. Grunberg to try to keep each chunk of text limited to one dominant emotion, and have tracked where his cursor was at various points in each writing session, to match his words with the physiological data. The 50 readers will read the novella on an e-reader, to allow similar tracking.

Read more great literature!

Two recent articles focus on the benefits of reading great literature.

The first, published in The Guardian, argues that "bibliotherapy" can offer palliative effects that pharmaceuticals can't:

A tall order, but Ella Berthoud and Susan Elderkin would agree; as colleagues of de Botton at the School of Life in Bloomsbury their belief in the curative powers of the novel has led them to set up a formal bibliotherapy service "for life's ailments." They prescribe only fiction ("the purest and best form of bibliotherapy"), and apart from occasional excursions into the classics, concentrate on books written within the last couple of centuries. The Novel Cure is the distillation of those recommendations. "Our apothecary contains Balzacian balms and Tolstoyan tourniquets," they tell us in their introduction, "the salves of Saramago and the purges of Perec and Proust."

Some of the advice is tongue in cheek (the cure for being a shopaholic is Bret Easton Ellis's American Pyscho?), but some of the recommendations make sense.

The second article, in the Times, points out that a recent study found classic fiction teaches its readers important social skills, including empathy.

It found that after reading literary fiction, as opposed to popular fiction or serious nonfiction, people performed better on tests measuring empathy, social perception and emotional intelligence — skills that come in especially handy when you are trying to read someone’s body language or gauge what they might be thinking.

“Frankly, I agree with the study,” said Albert Wendland, who directs a master’s program in writing popular fiction at Seton Hill University. “Reading sensitive and lengthy explorations of people’s lives, that kind of fiction is literally putting yourself into another person’s position — lives that could be more difficult, more complex, more than what you might be used to in popular fiction. It makes sense that they will find that, yeah, that can lead to more empathy and understanding of other lives.”

Many questions still need to be answered (How long does the effect last?), but the research is promising. In the meantime, why risk being a social zero? Read more great literature!

Messy creativity?

The argument is that a messy environment is a better stimulus to creativity. A few novelists and poets that I've known have had neat and orderly offices, but most of them work in offices that should be condemned as health hazards: leftover food and half-drunk cups of coffee, stacks of books and reams of paper threatening to topple over, dog or cat hair floating through the air.

When people ask me why I never became the novelist that I wanted to be, I reply, "I realized that I had nothing to say."

Maybe the problem is that I can't stand to have anything out of place? That I literally can't concentrate if the books are out of order in my bookcase?

Evolution and writing

Is there an evolutionary advantage to being a good novelist? Yes, argues Jennifer Vanderbes in The Atlantic. In fact, the ability to tell stories vividly (and to read them sensitively) offers a number of advantages:

Let’s look first at survival: Among the many things that set humans apart from other animals is our capacity for counterfactual thinking. At its most basic level, this means we can hypothesize what might happen if we run out of milk; in its most elaborate form—we get War and Peace. Stories, then, are complex counterfactual explorations of possible outcomes: What would happen if I killed my landlady? What would happen if I had an affair with Count Vronsky? How do I avoid a water buffalo? According to Denis Dutton, these “low-cost, low-risk” surrogate experiences build up our knowledge stores and help us adapt to new situations. (“Mirror neuron” research indicates that our brains process lived and read experiences almost identically.)  A good “cautionary tale," for example, might help us avert disaster. Stories can also provide useful historical, scientific, cultural and geographical information. Bruce Chatwin’s Songlines illustrates this on two tiers: In armchair-travel fashion, the book acquaints readers with the Australian Outback, while simultaneously describing how Aboriginals sang stories walking at a specific pace so that geographical markers within the story would guide their journey.

In addition to travelogues, stories also offer nuanced thought maps. An imaginative foray into another person’s mind can foster both empathy and self-awareness. This heightened emotional intelligence might, in turn, prove useful when forming friendships, sniffing out duplicity, or partaking in the elaborate psychological dance of courtship ...

Will you please be quiet, please?

I can only do one thing at a time, and I can’t do anything if it’s not quiet. George Prochnik, in an essay in the Times, has some interesting thoughts on this topic. As he notes, “The findings [in one recent study] were clear: even when people stayed asleep, the noise of planes taking off and landing caused blood pressure spikes, increased pulse rates and set off vasoconstriction and the release of stress hormones. Worse, these harmful cardiovascular responses continued to affect individuals for many hours after they had awakened and gone on with their days.”

My sinister hand

I’m a leftie (both in politics and in handedness), so this item, from the New Yorker blog, caught my eye.

Getting pumped!

What’s the best way to get in the proper frame of mood to write? Vigorous sex? A shot of smooth bourbon? A walk in the woods? This fascinating short article, by Maria Konnikova in Scientific American, discusses how such luminaries as Vladimir Nabokov, Mark Twain, and John Cheever got “pumped” before settling down to write:

It’s not so strange, then, that in ritual, artists find such consistent gratification and creative value. While ritual in itself may not play any role in the quality of the creative output, the simple act of engagement could heighten both anticipation and enjoyment of the entire creative process. And while the suffering artist is another stereotype that’s right up there with the quirky artist in popular appeal, when it comes to actual creative quality, few things beat the engaged mind.

Thinking about Hamlet

I teach Hamlet frequently, so I certainly agree with the many critics who consider it to be one of the touchstones of literature. Indeed, the play goes to the heart of what makes us human. For example, this review of the new book Stay Illusion!, by Simon Critchley and Jamieson Webster, discusses Hamlet’s impact on Sigmund Freud, who, of course, was also thinking about what makes us human. As its author, Joshua Rothman, blogging for the New Yorker, says:

Watching “Hamlet,” we think that it’s about revenge—a familiar, safe subject. In fact, “Hamlet” is about desire. The real engine of the play is Oedipal. Caught up in Hamlet’s quest to kill Claudius—and reassured by his self-censure—we can safely, and perhaps unconsciously, explore those desires. Freud thought that prudery and denial had for centuries prevented critics from acknowledging the play’s propulsive undercurrent, which, he believed, the new psychoanalytic vocabulary made it possible to acknowledge. “The conflict in ‘Hamlet’ is so effectively concealed,” he wrote, “that it was left to me to unearth it.”

Later, Rothberg adds:

They [Webster and Critchley] incline toward the Freudian reading of “Hamlet,” which holds that Hamlet delays because he feels guilty. Hamlet’s problem, they argue, isn’t really that he’s hesitant about violence. Rather, it’s that the possibility of being violent fills him with shame. In “Hamlet,” they write, shame is pervasive; it has settled on Elsinore like a fog. For Freud, Hamlet’s shame has to do with his Oedipal desires. But for Webster and Critchley it’s more abstract. It has to do with the shame of needing to love, the shame about the emptiness that, they hold, is at the center of the experience of love.

Monkey Minds

If you’re having trouble finishing my posts, it’s probably because of your “monkey mind.” This article, by Alex Soojung-Kim Pan, explains better than I can.

Metacognition

Metacognition, or “thinking about thinking,” used to be one of the standard definitions for what sets humans apart from the other animals. In short, the ability to contemplate one’s own consciousness (which leads to contemplating one’s place in the universe, one's own mortality, etc.) is what makes us “human.” Recently, however, some scientists and philosophers have argued that other animals—such as apes and dolphins—show this metacognition.

At any rate, can thinking about our thinking make us into better writers, especially if it leads us to consider our experiences in new ways? Joyce Dyer, in an essay in today’s New York Times, suggests that it can.

So how is winter in North Dakota?

My family and friends from outside North Dakota often ask how we spend our winters, which run from early October through early May. Well, we drink a lot, get depressed often, and, on occasion, crack open a book. I recommend New Glarus Spotted Cow, the DSM, and Huckleberry Finn.

The Psychopath Test

Are you psychopathic enough to be the CEO of a large corporation or an important national politician? I’m not.

Jon Ronson is a deservedly popular non-fiction writer, known for the New Journalistic technique of immersing himself into his stories. In The Psychopath Test, Ronson explores the history of the most comprehensive test used to identify criminal psychopaths, those narcissistic personalities, lacking in empathy, who are determined to seize what they want. Ronson realizes early on that not just rapists and serial killers fit this profile, but that many titans of industry and politicians seem to fit it as well. He wonders if these powerful men (yes, nearly all are male) are, in fact, psychopaths.

The book begins with Ronson speculating, anxiously, that he has psychological disorders, which leads him to the Hare Psychopathy Checklist. Ronson interviews Dr. Robert Hare and later learns how to administer the test. During those conversations, as he thinks about the ruthless nature of psychopaths, Ronson begins to speculate that many of the most powerful men in the world seem to fit the checklist. A prime candidate, he concludes, is “Chainsaw” Al Dunlop, who literally delighted in firing hundreds of employees in order to increase short-term profits. Ronson’s decision to diagnose Dunlop as psychopathic, however, then leads him to wonder about the propensity of psychiatrists to classify people into such neat categories.

This book, a tasty look at a fascinating subject, is well worth your time.

P.S.: If you learn the Hare Checklist, please let me know if you spot any psychopaths in Dickinson. I’m keeping my eye on a few suspects!