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From: Perry Nodelman <perry_nodelman>
Date: Sat, 25 Jul 2009 20:51:22 -0500
I said:
> It's nice
> for a writer, for instance, to think that he or she can write anything
> he wants because readers will only take what they need from it. It's
> easy--too easy, i think. An awareness of how your words might actually
> effect people in ways they weren't aware they needed and maybe didn't
> even really want would, I hope, lead to a keener perception of one's
> real power and an exercising of it with greater responsibility.
And in response, on 25-Jul-09, at 12:13 PM, Kristin Butcher wrote:
> Not only do I think this manner of thought is very nearly impossible
> to achieve, I don't believe we should aspire to even attempt it. To
> me it smacks of mind control. We writers are just people. We should
> not be held responsible for deciding what to expose readers to. It
> feels like book banning before the books are even written.
In a sense, I'm afraid, it is mind control--our own control over what we think and what we say about what we think. It is, surely, a kind of control we exercise all in time in our writing and indeed in all our interactions with other people. With an awareness of the potential effects of our words and actions on other people, we don't always, of ever, say exactly what we think, or say it in the raw, honest words we first think it--not even always in conversations with those closest to us. It true that it might be wonderfully freeing to say and to write whatever we feel like whenever we feel like it. But if it ever actually did happen, writing anything without an awareness of how our words might relate to the expectations we assume of our potential readers or the potential negative and/or positive effect of our words on others would also surely be rather seriously anti-social and self-involved, putting one's own need to express oneself exactly and always as one wishes over all other considerations? (I happily acknowledge that some brave writers can and do work to express themselves completely and honestly in the conviction that their doing so is what might be best for their community of readers--but i suspect that preceding in that way, with that amount of self-assurance, also requires a profound degree of humility, lest it just turn ugly and monomaniacal. In other words, it requires an even stronger than usual sense of responsibility to others, and carefully thinking about why your being freely honest might be helpful or useful to them.)
Or in other words: I'm convinced that we writers always do, in fact, continuously decide as we write "what to expose readers to" and how best to expose them to it. And I do think the process works best for everyone concerned when our thoughts about that emerge form an awareness of our power as writers to affect others and our responsibility to do so ethically and in a spirit of communal concern. I don't see this as anything like banning books--no more than having carefully considered laws about where you can dump your garbage represents an infringement of one's freedom and one's inherent right to leave it in the middle of a playground.
Quite the opposite, in fact, since my major concern is not that writers for children tend to be too free in expressing their honest thoughts and feelings to child readers, but just the opposite: that we tend, often without thinking about it enough, to produce books that simply re-enact and confirm the standard, conventional, limiting assumptions about what child readers are capable of that so many people do thoughtlessly take for granted. With more awareness of how our words do effect others, especially inexperienced young readers, and a greater sense of an obligation to therefore use our words responsibly, writers might well work to produce books that respect children more by assuming them to be capable of more--less encouragement to being conventionally and limitedly childlike, more room to think and feel in more complex and more genuinely liberating and surprisingly exhilarating ways.
Kristen says she thinks that "this manner of thought is very nearly impossible to achieve." No more impossible, I hope, than any of the thinking we do in our lives about the effects of our words and our actions on other people before or as we utter the words or perform the actions. And if that's not possible, then I have to worry about who we are and where we might be going.
Yours, Perry
_____________ Perry Nodelman http://pernodel.wordpress.com/
Book Trailers: The Hidden Adult: Defining Children's Literature http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3t7JAfPQeA The Ghosthunters2: The Curse of the Evening Eye http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qapDE1Kwnis The Ghosthunters I: The Proof that Ghosts Exist http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sw0ow7oQV7k
Received on Sat 25 Jul 2009 08:51:22 PM CDT
Date: Sat, 25 Jul 2009 20:51:22 -0500
I said:
> It's nice
> for a writer, for instance, to think that he or she can write anything
> he wants because readers will only take what they need from it. It's
> easy--too easy, i think. An awareness of how your words might actually
> effect people in ways they weren't aware they needed and maybe didn't
> even really want would, I hope, lead to a keener perception of one's
> real power and an exercising of it with greater responsibility.
And in response, on 25-Jul-09, at 12:13 PM, Kristin Butcher wrote:
> Not only do I think this manner of thought is very nearly impossible
> to achieve, I don't believe we should aspire to even attempt it. To
> me it smacks of mind control. We writers are just people. We should
> not be held responsible for deciding what to expose readers to. It
> feels like book banning before the books are even written.
In a sense, I'm afraid, it is mind control--our own control over what we think and what we say about what we think. It is, surely, a kind of control we exercise all in time in our writing and indeed in all our interactions with other people. With an awareness of the potential effects of our words and actions on other people, we don't always, of ever, say exactly what we think, or say it in the raw, honest words we first think it--not even always in conversations with those closest to us. It true that it might be wonderfully freeing to say and to write whatever we feel like whenever we feel like it. But if it ever actually did happen, writing anything without an awareness of how our words might relate to the expectations we assume of our potential readers or the potential negative and/or positive effect of our words on others would also surely be rather seriously anti-social and self-involved, putting one's own need to express oneself exactly and always as one wishes over all other considerations? (I happily acknowledge that some brave writers can and do work to express themselves completely and honestly in the conviction that their doing so is what might be best for their community of readers--but i suspect that preceding in that way, with that amount of self-assurance, also requires a profound degree of humility, lest it just turn ugly and monomaniacal. In other words, it requires an even stronger than usual sense of responsibility to others, and carefully thinking about why your being freely honest might be helpful or useful to them.)
Or in other words: I'm convinced that we writers always do, in fact, continuously decide as we write "what to expose readers to" and how best to expose them to it. And I do think the process works best for everyone concerned when our thoughts about that emerge form an awareness of our power as writers to affect others and our responsibility to do so ethically and in a spirit of communal concern. I don't see this as anything like banning books--no more than having carefully considered laws about where you can dump your garbage represents an infringement of one's freedom and one's inherent right to leave it in the middle of a playground.
Quite the opposite, in fact, since my major concern is not that writers for children tend to be too free in expressing their honest thoughts and feelings to child readers, but just the opposite: that we tend, often without thinking about it enough, to produce books that simply re-enact and confirm the standard, conventional, limiting assumptions about what child readers are capable of that so many people do thoughtlessly take for granted. With more awareness of how our words do effect others, especially inexperienced young readers, and a greater sense of an obligation to therefore use our words responsibly, writers might well work to produce books that respect children more by assuming them to be capable of more--less encouragement to being conventionally and limitedly childlike, more room to think and feel in more complex and more genuinely liberating and surprisingly exhilarating ways.
Kristen says she thinks that "this manner of thought is very nearly impossible to achieve." No more impossible, I hope, than any of the thinking we do in our lives about the effects of our words and our actions on other people before or as we utter the words or perform the actions. And if that's not possible, then I have to worry about who we are and where we might be going.
Yours, Perry
_____________ Perry Nodelman http://pernodel.wordpress.com/
Book Trailers: The Hidden Adult: Defining Children's Literature http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3t7JAfPQeA The Ghosthunters2: The Curse of the Evening Eye http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qapDE1Kwnis The Ghosthunters I: The Proof that Ghosts Exist http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sw0ow7oQV7k
Received on Sat 25 Jul 2009 08:51:22 PM CDT
