Twelfth Night

For most people, the holidays have staggered off into storage until next Christmas.  However, may I remind you that today, January 5, is actually Twelfth Night?  The twelve days of Christmas (so tediously!) recounted each December conclude today with the twelve drummers drumming in the feast of the Epiphany with a loud bang.  So don't put away the wrapping paper yet, folks, it's Three Kings Day!  

I have selected three books for the occasion:  

1. Shakespeare's Globe: An Interactive Pop-up Theatre, published by Candlewick.  Okay, it's not so much a book, but it is book-like.  For those who wish to carry the "Twelfth Night" theme in dramatic fashion.

2. Three Kings Day: A Celebration at Christmastime by Diane Hoyt-Goldsmith and Lawrence Migdale, for those who want to note the day in an ecclesiastical fashion.

and lastly

3. Martin's Big Words, by Doreen Rappaport, illustrated by Bryan Collier, for those who want to celebrate the whole month, and not just today!  

 

What I'm Studying Right Now

Quantum mechanics. Yes, that's right. I should sell tickets to this show: I read, I scratch my head, I reread the same paragraph. My head drops forward onto my chest: a sign that my brain is on the run. I am watching, for the second time, a twenty-four lecture series on Einstein and the quantum revolution. I'm okay with Newton, and a clockwork universe. I can handle Gallileo. I can even manage to wrap my head around special relativity and curved space-time.

But the statistical probability of matter just freaks me out. Before observation, contradictory possibilities exist simultaneously; the act of observation forces one possibility into existence, and eliminates the other. So I am forced to consider that while I'm sitting at my desk, the black kitten named Mimi is behind me, watching me, and at the same time, upstairs asleep on my daughter's bed. Both possibilities (and more besides!) are real. It's not just that both are possible. Both are equally real until I check. It gives me the creeps -- should I turn around and check, or just sit here, wondering, trying to trick quantum physics by looking -- really fast! -- and then turning back and hoping the universe didn't see me peek?

One of the attractions of nonfiction (for me, at least) is the comfort of knowing that things are real. Either a historical event happened or it didn't. Either a bat is a mammal or it isn't. The maybe-ness of quantum mechanics has thrown a big monkey wrench into my Weltanschauung. I have the sensation of moving inside a bubble that consists of the possibilities I drove into existence by my observation; my bubble is floating through a gray, multi-dimensional miasma of contradictory possibilities which are all co-existent because I haven't observed them yet. What is this sensation, this head-spinning, stomach-lurching sensation? Oh, I remember now: this sensation is poetry. Or something like that.

Strange, isn't it?

Nature (Book?) Deficit

I've jumped onto a new bandwagon, the Children and Nature Network. When I was solicited to get on board, I was alarmed by the information I was shown: more and more children staying inside, choosing electronic screens over not only books (our focus here) but over authentic experience of the natural world. It's a mounting crisis with implications for the environment and for children's health, for social networks and political movements, among other things. My role for our local chapter of C &NN will be, not surprisingly, related to books. In the coming weeks and months I will be trying to discover how children's books about nature are helping to combat (or foster!) "nature deficit disorder."

My preliminary commando raid of research (via Amazon.com) offers the following food for thought. The bestselling children's book in the category of Environment & Ecology is Dr. Seuss' The Lorax. It comes in at #1,207 of all Amazon.com titles, a respectable ranking indeed (and of course it's not even nonfiction). But the long tail quickly thins with nonfiction books. Many of the books in this long tail have an admonitory tone to their titles, a sort of "turn off the lights before another polar bear dies," sort of tone. Ouch. Are these books inspiring love of the natural world, or an unwelcome feeling of moral burden? The Lorax may be selling well thirty-some years after its publication, but it's not clear that it has inspired families to go outside and romp around in the Lorax's forest.

Coming at this from another angle, we find The Dangerous Book for Boys, which has been going strong since its publication in spring of 2007, and which currently stands at #421 overall, another very respectable showing. Not exactly beside it, at #966 overall, is The Daring Book for Girls. Both of these present outdoor activities, skills and games that used to be the common currency of childhood as nostalgia. A chapter on snowballs? On skipping stones? Is outside now so outlandish that children need instructions for even its most casual use? Does this presentation imply that although outside may have been the playground of long ago, it is too quaint to be taken very seriously now?

Books about nature abound -- books about monarch butterflies and manatees and rain forests and every conceivable topic -- and many of them are amazing, many written by my colleagues here on this blog. But where are the books for children that are sending them outside to collect the bugs and gaze at the clouds and build forts? Are there books that do this? Is it appropriate to ask books to do it at all? Do we not, as nonfiction writers, hope to inspire wonder and excitement over the natural world in our readers? What are we not saying? Why are the children not running outside to play after they read our wonderful books? Why are they not engaging directly with the natural world?

As I said, I am only just beginning this investigation. I welcome your comments and leads.

Back to School

We're already seeing color in the trees here in upstate New York. Nights are suddenly cooler. Like many of you, I've got that old "back to school" feeling; for me, it's a tightening in the chest, an urge to sit up straighter, a glance around with renewed vision. What a mess, my thought bubble reads. What have I been doing this summer to produce such chaos?

More than New Year's Eve ever does, the impending first day of school prompts me to make resolutions. This year I will keep my desk neater so that I don't undermine my ability to work. This year I will expand my repertoire. This year I will return to suspended projects and make something magical. The bounty at the farmers' market has me cooking every day and packing lunch-box-sized portions into the big freezer in the basement for the coming months. This is the time of year my label maker gets its toughest workout. I fight my way through the crowded aisles at Staples and finger file folders. I put on sweaters even when it's not really cold yet, just because it seems like the thing to do.

It's all a process of mentally disengaging from the loosey-goosey habits of summer. I don't really need new file folders. I've got everything I need already; it's mostly in my head, anyway. More file folders are not the answer. I will walk my daughter to her first day of third grade on Wednesday, come home, and get back to work.

What I'm Researching Right Now

Remember the disgusting, voracious insectile aliens from the "Alien" movies -- and how their blood was a kind of corrosive slime that burned holes into whatever it touched? Turns out that -- well, I'm getting ahead of myself. Let me answer the question in my title. What I'm researching right now: Caves.

Here's the wildest info I've come across. Just within the last two decades, speleologists (cave scientists) have discovered a new form of life in some very unusual caves. There are a few caves with a highly sulfuric ecosystem -- the sulfuric acid is so concentrated, in fact, that it's close to battery acid. Cavers have to wear protective clothing to keep from being burned, and respirators so they aren't killed by poisonous sulfur gas. (What nervous twitches the families of these scientists must have!)

So, we have a highly toxic environment in these caves, too toxic for most known life forms. And yet there are microbes that dwell and thrive in these conditions. Generically they are called extremophiles. Some of these microbes form a kind of slimy matrix to live in, and threads of this slime hang like rubbery stalactites from the walls and ceilings. Called "snotties" (for obvious reasons) these microbes are giving scientists some new clues to possible life beyond our earthly boundary. Talk about thinking outside the box.

So, what am I doing with this information? I don't know yet. That's the great thing about being a writer. I'm just following an intriguing trail to see where it takes me. At the moment my trail is leading me deep into a rather terrifying cave. If I don't make it back out ... send help!

In Praise of Lists

My lifelong passion is lists. As a child reader, I found great satisfaction in ordering and categorizing. When I got my first transistor radio (a Christmas present, 1973) I spent the rest of the holiday vacation with the radio in my lap, listing the top 100 pop songs of the year on several sheets of colored construction paper. "And coming in at #14 it's Delta Dawn by Helen Reddy."

I loved the Guinness Book of World Records. I loved the encyclopedia. I loved the Thesaurus. Oh, how I loved (and still ove) the dictionary! I loved catalogs. A back-to-school ritual was the reverent perusal of the giant Sears catalog, agonizing over my choice for my "nice outfit" for the year. My best friend and I spent an entire year creating a collection of word search puzzles with a nature theme; the best part of the project was not the laborious typing (with carbon paper) of the puzzles, but the creation of the lists. "Things That Live Under a Log," was a good one (perhaps the only word search puzzle to include slime mold.) "Water Birds" was another. Our categorization and compartmentalization of nature became ever more specialized the longer we worked on the project.

I don't think it takes a degree in psychology to figure out that my urge to list was a way of managing the great flood of information that washes over us every day. Sorting, ordering, and naming are forms of control or stimulus management. After all, what was Adam's task in the Garden of Eden but to name the animals?

What lists also do is show the tremendous, dazzling variety and abundance of the world. Look how many things live under a log! Look how many water birds there are! In my nonfiction you will often find lists; I like to throw them in as Baroque flourishes. Look how many different kinds of ice there are! Look how many different things a traveling photographer needed.

Lists also reveal something of the list-maker. Which characteristics do you choose to highlight with your list? Color? Habitat? Size? Place of origin? Function? Oh, the many ways you can categorize any given bunch of stuff! Oh, the subtle ways you can influence understanding depending on the list, oh the insights you can nurture, depending on the list. Is it a ranked list? If so, how do you decide how to order? How many items should be on the list? My, my, my, what possibilities!

So here's to interesting information in its most basic form. Maybe my next book will just be a list. Yes. I like that idea.

Aristotle's Poetics

Drama (or we may say an invented story, i.e. fiction) is superior to history (a narrative of true events, i.e. nonfiction) because drama tells us what may happen, whereas history only tells us what has happened. Thus proposes the central thesis of A's Poetics. Back when I was primarily a fiction writer, I gloated when I was first treated to an exegesis of this foundation of literary criticism. "Aha!" I cried in triumph. "If Mr. Aristotle says so, it must be so!"

But then I found myself writing more and more nonfiction, and I was forced to pick a fight with the great Greek. Hmm. How very reckless of me, trying to go head to head with him! But I do have an argument, and it is this: perhaps this central claim of the Poetics is true if our field of enquiry is limited to human experience. (I say perhaps.) But if we are interested not only in what can happen among people but also in what can and does happen among stars and starfish, we can explore the physical world via nonfiction, and not be second-class literary citizens.

Aristotle was mainly discussing tragedy as the most noble literary expression because of its ability to produce katharsis, the cleansing esthetic experience of pity and fear. We can debate whether the ability to produce katharsis is the pinnacle of literary achievement. If we bend the definition a bit to suggest a profoundly moving emotional response, rather than just pity and fear, I think we can easily say that nonfiction can achieve this. I know I have often been moved to the point of tears when reading astronomy and physics and biology because -- because some of this stuff is just so amazing, so much more amazing than human imagination can invent. Oh, if only Aristotle could read contemporary science -- he might just change his mind.

What I Wish I Had Known

Being book-oriented means I have always preferred doing my research at the library. Or in an easy chair in front of the fire. Sometimes, however, there is no substitute for direct experience. Depending on the topic of the research, however, there may not be an opportunity for direct research. Not many of us get to go into space, for example, so writing a book about space travel will have some unavoidable physical limits on the kind of research you can do.

I can think of two examples of opportunities for direct experience that came my way after the book was written -- written, published, and on the library shelves. The first was my trip to Antarctica, which I made well after my two books about Shackleton's Endurance adventure were in print. (Shipwreck at the Bottom of the World, and Spirit of Endurance both published by Crown.) Of all the direct experience of Antarctica that I had, the one that I wished I had known before writing about it was....... silence. I have never experienced such profound silence as I encountered in Antarctica. I remember clearly the day I wandered through an expanse of volcanic debris on Ross Island, with no sound at all but the crunching of grit under my feet. No animal sounds, no wind through trees. No mechanical noises. Yes, there are other places in the world to experience deep silence; that is true. But without a trip to Antarctica while I was writing about it, I overlooked that silence as a meaningful part of the story.

The second example is from a class in wet-plate collodion photography that I was able to take after I wrote a book about Civil War photographs (Photo by Brady: A Picture of the Civil War, published by Atheneum.) During the three-day workshop I was relieved to discover that I had, in fact, described the process accurately. Whew! But one little thing had escaped my researches at the time, and I think it is because it was so commonplace for wet-plate photographers that none of them had mentioned it. The silver nitrate solution, which is what turns jet black when exposed to light, thus creating the image on filmed glass, gets on the photographer, too! It's unavoidable, especially in rough, outdoor conditions. In the darkroom the clear silver nitrate might splash on the photographer's hands or clothes; the moment that photographer steps out into the light, those splashes turn black! I left that three-day workshop stained everywhere -- on my feet (I'd worn flip-flops), on my hands, on my jeans, even a smudge on my cheek where I'd scratched an itch with a silver-nitrate-dipped finger. And it didn't wash off, it just had to wear off after several days. There is no way a field operator in the Civil War could have avoided tell-tale drips, drops, and splashes of black on his skin and clothes. I wish I had known that when I was writing.

Sometimes this kind of direct experience is not available to the researcher. But this is why my recommendation is to experience as many things as possible. Some day you may be writing about that subject and you'll remember the silence and the stains. These are the things you won't find in the library stacks.

Reading Between the Lines, Part 3

Here I will give another example from my book, Photo by Brady: A Picture of the Civil War. In doing research with photographs and other primary sources, one must always consider the source. This famous photograph (in the National Archives) is entitled "Brady Under Fire." On your screen it may be hard to make him out, but the celebrity photographer, Mathew B. Brady, is indeed in this picture, standing by the wheel of an artillery piece, wearing his distinctive straw boater. "Wow," the viewer exclaims. "That Brady risked life and limb to get his pictures of the war."

Excuse me. Just a moment, please. Consider the source! This photograph was produced and published by the Brady studio. Brady was careful to include himself in many of his famous war images -- it helped solidify his reputation as the war photographer. He created the title for the image. It could just have easily been titled "Look at Me! I'm the Dauntless Photographer Staring Into the Eyes of the Enemy!" Okay, fair enough, you might think, if he did make this image under fire why not say so? For decades this image was taken on faith as just what it was called.

However, photographic historians have debunked the photo and they did so without breaking a sweat. The technological constraints of photography in this period were such that figures were required to stay motionless for several seconds -- as much as thirty seconds depending on light conditions. Although you probably can't make it out on your screen, the U.S. flag in the background is blurred, showing that it was flapping in the wind during the exposure of the picture. And yet all the men are clear and unblurred, meaning that they held still for the picture.

Now think about it: can you imagine a crowd of some two dozen men standing perfectly still for the period of time required to compose the image and make the exposure -- during an artillery bombardment? Oh, Mr. Brady, you humbug! This picture is a publicity stunt worthy of your friend, P.T. Barnum.

Reading between the lines becomes easier with practice, and it also becomes easier with more specialized knowledge. Without knowing how photographs were made in the Civil War you might not be able to deconstruct this picture. But if you have the facts and you consider the source -- aha! You discover you have a document that is interesting in a very different way than what you thought you had at first. Facts and logic are two indispensable tools for writing nonfiction. Consider the source!

Reading Between the Lines, Part 2

Using primary sources in the research process can be both rewarding and frustrating. Reading a letter or a diary can be exciting, but so often I find myself thinking "Why didn't he explain X?" -- or Y or Z? So much is left out that the original audience was expected to know without being told! My job is to figure out what went without saying, and to decide what the missing pieces might be. This requires a certain amount of confidence, and the willingness to make logical inferences.
Let me give you an example. While doing research for a book about the Civil War (Photo by Brady: A Picture of the Civil War), I ran across a fascinating battlefield tidbit (of course, I ran across dozens, but I'm just going to use one right now.) The tidbit was the information that at the end of a battle, sodiers' faces would be black around the mouth from gunpowder, because they had to bite off the ends of their paper cartridges, and in the frenzy of battle the biting and tearing got a little messy with gunpowder splashing and spilling.

Okay, what can we extrapolate from that? I like to consider all the senses when I have to flesh out details. "Faces black with gunpowder" is a vivid visual detail, but it also suggests other sensations: the gritty feel of gunpowder between the teeth, not to mention the taste of it in the back of the throat for hours at a time. (Full disclosure: I have not tasted gunpowder so I don't know how to describe it.) It suggests the sting of gunpowder in the eyes or up the nose; I can imagine spitting black spit and blowing black mucous into a hanky. Does everything smell of gunpowder when it coats the inside of your nose? Do you spend the first hour after battle spitting and rinsing out your mouth, provided you can get water? The gunpowder must also be in the ears, the hair, down the shirt collar -- everywhere. If you've been sweating no doubt you are smeared with black sweat, and the creases of your skin will be etched with black powder. Chances are that a right-handed soldier will have more powder on the right side of his face and head, and vice versa for a lefty.

Thus with one sensory detail, I can extrapolate a whole panoply of contingent information. It takes some practice, but anyone can do it. I find many kids are unaccustomed to making logical inferences, so when I demonstrate this process to young readers it looks a little like a magic trick, or like I'm just "making stuff up." But trust me, it's not really pulling a rabbit out of a hat -- you just have to look carefully inside the hat and see what's in there.

Reading Between the Lines, Part 1

A large part of what I do while researching historical documents or images is read between the lines, or draw logical inferences. Making historical information feel immediate and alive to readers means feeling my way into the material. This photograph from the Library of Congress website collection of Civil War photographs provides a good illustration. (Some details may be hard to see on your screen, so just bear with me. ) At first glance this photograph seems rather mute. Most kids seldom look at black and white images, and this picture might say nothing to a contemporary student. But with a little practice we can infer a great deal about the circumstances of this photograph, and paint a more colorful picture.
We can infer, to begin with, that the time of year is not winter -- we see leaves on the trees. Okay. Can we pin it down further? Yes, I think so. You notice how dusty the road looks -- the wheel tracks are deep but dry. I don't think it has rained for several weeks. This suggests late summer, right? And the shadows are crisp and sharp, so it's a bright sunny day, and probably hot. All at once I can bring all of my experience of "hot bright late summer day" to this photograph, and I can hear the cicadas buzzing in the trees, and see the swallows swooping for mosquitoes over the creek, and smell the damp stones in the arches of the bridge. I don't need direct, documentary evidence of the cicadas or the mosquitoes or the swallows; indirect evidence abounds. In doing historical research the writer (of fiction as well as nonfiction) can safely extrapolate a great deal from available evidence.