More to follow, but I just wanted to make that comment right away.

For those of you who know of my well-documented aversion to modern technology, it must be a surprise to find me on the Internet. For nearly two decades my fictional private investigator, Sharon McCone, and I resisted computers, but today I’m writing this on a Mac, and she’s probably running a search on hers. We’ve come a long way! Thanks for your patience until I [...]]]> Over the years I’ve read many books (more than two dozen) by the great mystery writer, Marcia Muller, who actually has a website now. Why is that surprising? Well, here’s the explanation in her own words:

For those of you who know of my well-documented aversion to modern technology, it must be a surprise to find me on the Internet. For nearly two decades my fictional private investigator, Sharon McCone, and I resisted computers, but today I’m writing this on a Mac, and she’s probably running a search on hers. We’ve come a long way! Thanks for your patience until I made my slow entry into the twenty-first century.

There are many reasons to recommend Muller’s novels, but the principal one becomes evident only if you read her Sharon McCone series in order. Sometimes a series doesn’t need to be read in any particular order, sometimes it needs to be read chronologically for plot reasons, and sometimes it needs to be read chronologically for character development reasons. The Sharon McCone series falls into the third category. Over the course of 29 novels and 33 years, we learn a great deal about McCone, and she learns just as much about herself. You certainly don’t have to read all 29 unless you’re a completist like me, but I do recommend picking a few over this long span of time and reading them sequentially. It’s not just that the later ones won’t make sense otherwise — though I fear that in fact they won’t make as much sense as they should. It’s more that you’ll be missing out from the rich experience that you would otherwise get.

Muller’s last two in the series — Locked In and Coming Back — are especially interesting because of the step they take away from the detective genre. The titles signal their primary plot element: as a result of a gunshot wound, McCone suffers from locked-in syndrome, a little-known but horrifying disorder, and she gradually comes back from it. How do you run a detective agency if you can’t really communicate? How do you lead an investigation? How do you keep your staff from ignoring you? These ideas overshadow the plot of the mystery story in the case of the two novels — not that there’s anything wrong with the story itself, it’s just that it pales in comparison.

I can’t yet review A Slight Trick of the Mind, by Mitch Cullin, as I am only halfway through reading it. I can, however, report that it is written in a much more literary style than the Moore and Chabon works. In fact, one of the reasons that I am only halfway through it is that I find myself reading every word of every sentence, savoring the style as much as the content. I happen to like that, though I [...]]]> You’ll recall that a month ago I wrote a few words about Mitch Cullin’s novel, A Slight Trick of the Mind:

I can’t yet review A Slight Trick of the Mind, by Mitch Cullin, as I am only halfway through reading it. I can, however, report that it is written in a much more literary style than the Moore and Chabon works. In fact, one of the reasons that I am only halfway through it is that I find myself reading every word of every sentence, savoring the style as much as the content. I happen to like that, though I know that many readers do not. Anyway, here we have Holmes even older than in Chabon’s portrayal: at age 93, after the end of the Second World War, Holmes is still retired and keeping bees in Sussex. I’ll refrain from saying anything more until I’ve finished the book, but I’m quite sure that I will end up recommending it.

The context here was a piece about two other Sherlock Holmes pastiches, The Sherlockian, by Graham Moore, and The Final Solution, by Michael Chabon. Now I’ve finished A Slight Trick of the Mind and can actually review it.

The first thing to say is that my preliminary comments quoted above still hold true. In fact the “literary style” is just one indication that this book isn’t a genre novel at all but definitely a mainstream novel. Cullin has intertwined three stories, one current (i.e. 1947), one very recent (a flashback to a trip to Japan), and one from the time right after the canon (in the form of a previously undiscovered manuscript). The result is a character study in which the protagonist didn’t really have to be Sherlock Holmes at all — except that our understanding of him is inevitably informed by our prior knowledge of Holmes in his prime.

A Slight Trick of the Mind is sad and revealing. Read it, but read it when you want to experience a novel, not when you want a Sherlock Holmes story.

This book came to the world’s attention through an excerpt published in the Wall Street Journal and splashed all over the Web. Chua seemed to be claiming that Americans raised their kids all wrong, that Chinese (and other Asian) parents knew how to do it right, that it’s OK (and even desirable) to emotionally abuse one’s children in public, and that the important thing was to emphasize doing huge amounts of homework and [...]]]> I’m sure you’re familiar with all the controversy surrounding Amy Chua’s memoir, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. Some of the controversy is well-deserved, but much is not.

This book came to the world’s attention through an excerpt published in the Wall Street Journal and splashed all over the Web. Chua seemed to be claiming that Americans raised their kids all wrong, that Chinese (and other Asian) parents knew how to do it right, that it’s OK (and even desirable) to emotionally abuse one’s children in public, and that the important thing was to emphasize doing huge amounts of homework and spending even more time on practicing piano and/or violin. No other instruments would do. Theater was certainly out of the question. Grades of A– were also out of the question; only straight A’s sufficed.

Needless to say, this seemed exaggerated and full of stereotypes. But Chua is a successful law professor at Yale, the second-best law school in the country (well…some people do call it the best…), so she has to be taken seriously. I decided to get the whole story by reading the entire book, not just the brief excerpt that had caused such extreme reactions.

The book is worth reading. It’s written in a breezy style that makes it quick to read, and no deep thinking is required. That’s a mixed blessing, of course. Clearly there were some logical inconsistencies, such as the claimed insistence of every Chinese family in a class that their child had to be #1. More interestingly, it became apparent that the Journal had unfairly selected the most sensationalistic portions of the book, no matter how unrepresentative they might be. The full realization doesn’t appear until close to the end of the book, where the reader discovers that Chua recants half of what she had said earlier. It turns out that her child-rearing methods worked for one daughter and not for the other. (It also turns out that this memoir is only partly about child-rearing; like any memoir it covers an entire range of events.) It also turns out that Chua admits to unfair generalizations by contrasting Chinese child-rearing with American, since she admits that it isn’t ethnically based after all. So don’t believe everything you read in the papers, even the Wall Street Journal.

In closing, however, I need to point out that there are, of course, several grains of truth hidden in the excerpts and in the earlier parts of the book. It’s not coincidence that over half of the students at the state math meet are always Asian. We know that it’s not genetic; it’s because of parental expectations. That much is believable.

Finally, Weston received the coveted Stage Manager’s Award–given not by the judges but [...]]]> Last night I saw the Weston High School Theater Company’s excellent performance of The Lie That Binds. What? You’ve never heard of this play? That’s because it was written collaboratively by the cast and crew — namely, the students in the Theater Company. Click on the link for more information, including photos of the production. You will also see there that Weston was one of the winners of the preliminary round at the Mass Educational Theater Guild Drama Festival. Congratulations to all involved! I particularly like this paragraph:

Finally, Weston received the coveted Stage Manager’s Award–given not by the judges but by the host school to the stage manager of the school that is the “best guest” — friendly, efficient, organized and professional in their approach to the one-hour technical rehearsal and the festival day itself.  Stage Manager Irene Droney accepted the award on behalf of the whole company.

And now a segue to something that sounds entirely unrelated: Laura Lippman’s novel, Life Sentences, which I just finished reading. Lippman is best known for her Tess Monaghan mysteries, which I have unaccountably failed to review, though I reviewed two of her other novels five years ago — on April 13 and April 24, 2006. Life Sentences is a hybrid, a cross between a mainstream novel and a genre novel, and I definitely recommend it. The connection here is that the crux of the stories is a set of lies that may (or may not) hold a family together, and what happens when the lies come out. The lie involves adultery and a dead child, partly involving the family of a prominent politician — close to the story of The Lie that Binds. Although it is possible that someone in the Theatre Company has read Life Sentences, I think it’s unlikely. It’s more probable that this is an old literary theme that awakens especially whenever real life gets close to it.

Actually, when I watched The Lie that Binds, I wasn’t thinking of Life Sentences (since I hadn’t finished the Lippman book until today) but of Henrik Ibsen’s The Wild Duck. We read this provocative play in the wonderful eleventh-grade English class in which I was a student many decades ago. We also read five or six other Ibsen plays, and The Wild Duck is one of three that have stayed with me ever since. Again I have no reason to believe that anyone in the Theatre Company has read or seen The Wild Duck, but some of the thematic similarities are striking. Like all of Ibsen, the play feels quite modern, even though it was written well over a hundred years ago. As in both of the newer works — the Lippman novel and the Weston play — an initial lie is based on adultery, and then more lies are piled on. Eventually the truth turns out to be worse than the lies. Of the three works, only Lippman’s manages to have a happy ending.

First, let’s get that title out of the way. The publisher obviously pulled it out of a small portion of Chapter One, the only part of the book to which it actually applies. Presumably the reason they did this was that it would sell more copies than the subtitle [...]]]> On the whole it was refreshing to read Why Don’t Students Like School? A Cognitive Scientist Answers Questions about How the Mind Works and What it Means for the Classroom. Despite the misleading title and overly long subtitle, Daniel Willingham’s new book offers an interesting mixture of the obvious and the unconventional.

First, let’s get that title out of the way. The publisher obviously pulled it out of a small portion of Chapter One, the only part of the book to which it actually applies. Presumably the reason they did this was that it would sell more copies than the subtitle alone would do. (Speaking of disservices committed by the publisher, Jossey-Bass, I also have to observe that the tiny font size is very difficult for readers over the age of 40.)

Willingham limits himself to nine principles, chosen on the basis of three criteria (quoted verbatim here, except for punctuation):

1. Using versus ignoring a principle had to have a big impact on student learning.
2. There had to be an enormous amount of data, not just a few studies, to support the principle.
3. The principle had to suggest classroom applications that teachers might not already know.

These criteria lead to principles that Willingham casts in the form of questions, a form that I like in this context:

1. Why don’t students like school?
2. How can I teach students the skills they need when standardized tests require only facts?
3. Why do students remember everything that’s on television and forget everything I say?
4. Why is it so hard for students to understand abstract ideas?
5. Is drilling worth it?
6. What’s the secret to getting students to think like real scientists, mathematicians, and historians?
7. How should I adjust my teaching for different types of learners?
8. How can I help slow learners?
9. What about my mind?

Some of these are yawn-inducing, but some are truly intriguing. Willingham certainly goes against the conventional wisdom in #5–7. He makes a compelling case for devoting more attention to practice (“drilling”) than is currently in vogue; he makes an even more compelling case for not “getting students to think like real scientists, mathematicians, and historians”; and he debunks the current orthodoxy that there are different types of learners, such as auditory, visual, and kinesthetic. In this last context he observes that Howard Gardner is usually credited with this distinction even though it comes much more from Gardner’s followers than from Gardner himself. I’ve never been convinced that there’s a good reason to refer to Gardner’s list as intelligences rather than talents, and Willingham also claims that “most psychologists think Gardner didn’t really get it right.” Most interestingly, he observes that not only Willingham but also Gardner himself disagrees with the following idea that is usually attributed to him:

Many or even all of the intelligences should be used as conduits when presenting new material. That way each student will experience the material via his or her best intelligence, and thus each student’s understanding will be maximized.

Finally, it’s worth mentioning Willingham’s observation that much of psychology can be learned from your grandmother.