We are pushing them away.
In recent years we’ve received waves, herds, packs, carts, cars, hordes, of youthful minds and placed them forcefully into pastures where they’re allowed to roam within set limitations and eat only what we permit. This makes some sense; you don’t leave the front door open and allow your baby to crawl out into the street and meet one of a million of fates. I understand the methodology of cultivation in containment. Where we so often go wrong is that we don’t tell them there’s a whole world out there, different from the one they’re kept in; or we tell them the world out there is one they’re not ready for. We forget the very doctrines by which we teach: everyone’s different. We need to accommodate. We all consist of the same core animalistic influences, but the rate at which we reach them varies. Mozart was composing at 5. Patricia Hampl said in regards to the memoir something that applies, I think, to all forms of art, “A certain kind of mentality takes over the memoirist, no matter what age you are. It’s like this: there is a life back there, and you’re here, and you need to move forward to the next place, whatever it is.”
We create cardboard representations of the struggles they’ll face and expect them to be able to recognize their real-life counterparts when we set them free. Nothing in life, save for cardboard, resembles cardboard. If we won’t allow them to go out, we must let them look out, to frollick near the edge. Most importantly, let them say, “I climbed this wall and saw a world out there.” Not one, not he, not they; I. All too frequently the idea is taught that the first-person pronoun is an identifier of self-indulgency, of narcissism, of confession. We neglect to tell them it’s the first person pronoun who experiences everyday life. By using oneself as a filter you can make clearer the world we all perceive.
Worst of all, we’re forcing classic teachings down the throats of millions, regardless of age. So many teachers and scholars fear the rise of television, of the internet, “Our precious books will lie to waste in landfills and everyone will become stupid!” That’s a touch dramatic. They’re holding onto threads of the past and trying to sew them into modern (or postmodern or avant-garde) garments. “Of course this is bullshit,” David Foster Wallace says of this idea, “If an art form is marginalized it’s because it’s not speaking to people.” I’m not saying use these books as doorstops, I’m saying as responsible enablers of this and coming generations, we must not be afraid to teach that today is important too. Yes, the past was important. Yes, the past has provided a foundation, but there’s nothing more present than the now. Rather than resist modernity and respond with antiquity, can we not, at the very least, incorporate them into the same space?
Fiction is a genre I know and love; it’s the most honest lie around. “Fiction reveals the truth that reality obscures,” as Ralph Waldo Emerson said. But in fiction lies another of our faults. The general rule fiction is to show, not tell. The 21st century demands something other than this. Why is it, do you suppose, that the personal essay and memoir are taking on such great strength and popularity? We want things succinct, we want the point. In memoir and personal essay the whole driving concept is that the author is supposed to show and tell. Why must we assume that by giving the reader our thoughts we’re denying them the opportunity to produce their own? I should make it clear that I’m saying this in response to writing as an art. I’m not talking on the self help book or propaganda, etc. Of course those forms do tell, but theyr’e far from works of emotion and beauty. If quality literature is to survive, as I’m confident it will (despite what your, or my, fifth grade teacher claimed), we mustn’t be afraid of changing the way we compose it to speak to a broader audience.
Offer to hold their heads high above the fence. Say to them, “Look, you see that out there? That’s the world. I’m going to tell you some things about how the world was and the way it seems to be going. I want you to use those things to make the world what it will be.”
Bring them back, hold them close.