Citizens United v FEC: One Year Later by Paul Schlieben

Justice Never Peeks

It was one year ago this January that the Supreme Court decided the case known as Citizens United v FEC.  By now, most Americans have forgotten about what I believe to be one of the worst Supreme Court decisions since Dred Scott (the name commonly given to the 1857 decision affirming the Fugitive Slave Recover Act), Plessey v Ferguson (the 1896 “Separate but Equal” decision) and, least we forget, the 2000 Bush v. Gore decision.  Only time will tell whether this characterization is justified.  Some feel that it will not make any difference – it’s “no big deal” – but this may be only because corporations so dominate public discourse and government policy already that this decision is just a continuation down the slippery slope of corporate dominance of government affairs.  There’s only one more step to the bottom; direct corporation contributions to campaigns.

At the heart of the Court’s (5-4) decision extending First Amendment rights to corporations is the belief that our legislators and leaders are somehow immune from corruption.  I’m relieved to discover that the Court’s majority finds “quid pro quo corruption” – in other words, verifiable, out-and-out bribery – objectionable.  However, apparently, everything else is just an exercise of free speech—the free, uninhibited flow of ideas.  Donations to campaigns (wink, wink) that result in favorable treatment later on, is “access,” not corruption.  A junket to attend, say, a pharmaceutical sponsored event at Hilton Head, dine with corporate leaders, and play lots of golf is OK.  If this looks and smells like corruption, well, that’s just a misperception the public will have to get over. After all, free speech is absolute—NO exceptions.  (More about that later.)

Stanley Fish, law professor and New York Times columnist provides an excellent analysis of the conflicting views of the majority and minority Court.  Fish points out that the word that best describes the majority view is “chill”, as in, any restriction of corporate speech has a “chilling” effect.  The word that best describes the concerns of the minority is “corrupt”, reflecting a belief that corporate speech and money have a corrupting effect.  Therein lies the irreconcilable divide of the First Amendment “absolutists,” on the one hand, and “consequentialists” on the other.[1]  I recommend reading Professor Fish’s article and many of the almost six hundred online comments logged in response to it.  [Note that you can select the “Highlights” tab or sort them by clicking the “Reader’s recommendations” tab to read a sampling of comments.]  Many are extraordinarily insightful.

As for the Supreme Court decision itself, the most persuasive argument comes not from the majority opinion, but from the minority opinion written by Associate Justice John Paul Stevens.  This ninety-page dissent is both clear and persuasive reasoning, and brilliant writing.  When I read it, the first question I asked myself is, “why did he put so much effort into this?”  After all, the vote has been taken; it was 5 to 4.  He’s arguing for the minority.  At eighty-nine and ready to retire, it seemed a Herculean effort.  I’ve come up with three possible explanations: he thought his dissent itself might persuade one of those who had voted with the majority to change sides (unlikely, since the only likely swing vote, Justice Kennedy, wrote for the majority); that this was his last decision and he wanted it to be memorable (it is); and/or, he felt that he was laying the groundwork for a reversal, at some future date.  His dissent provides all the fuel a future Court would need to override this decision; one that disregards over one hundred years of precedent.[2]

While I don’t intend to address each of the Courts arguments (Justice Stevens does that best,) here’s a summary of the most important points.

• The assault on common sense and the Constitution: Corporations are not people.    (For the benefit of strict Constitutional constructionists, the word “corporation” does not appear even once in the Constitution or its Amendments.  Do a word search.  Go ahead.)
• The “money equals speech” argument.  Again, most Americans find this an assault on common sense and fairness.  The ability of one class of people to so dominate the “bandwidth” as to drown out all other voices suppresses rather than advances free speech.  Reasonable limits on campaign contributions should be retained to ensure all voices are heard.
• Erosion of prohibitions on corporate influence.  This is just the latest in a series of decisions expanding corporate political rights.
• The myopia of the court as evidenced by the majority statements on corruption. “What planet are they from?”  Or, what boardroom.
• The “Well, newspapers are corporations aren’t they?” argument.  Yes, but as a class, they are granted an explicit protection in the first amendment.  They are the essential fourth branch of government.
• The “Free speech is absolute and should be unrestrained” argument.  No one is suggesting individuals be muzzled – that includes corporate leaders; they should just do it on their own dime.
• The Court blithely ignored the international makeup and allegiance of corporate officers.
• The Court ignored precedents and case law.  The text of the decision and the dissent are the best place for this level of analysis.  I’m not a lawyer, but a few landmarks are worth noting (below).
• Chief Justice John Roberts made numerous statements regarding “stare decisis” (the importance of precedents in law) during his confirmation hearings.  I won’t go into this aspect of the case other than to note here that during the Robert’s hearings, he emphasized this belief to “stare decisis” many, many times.
• The Court ignored the inevitable consequences of 1) its decision and 2) the effects of the expansion of corporate influence.  In doing so, it also ignored clear evidence that Congress unearthed during many long hours of hearings—evidence that informed the legislation it passed.
• Will restricting the speech of Exxon-Mobil, Coke or GE have a “chilling effect” on the free exchange of ideas?  
• Remedies: Just for fun, what would a Constitutional Amendment look like?

I won’t be addressing all of these here, but I have included this list as food for thought.  Let’s just examine a few of them.

The Supposed Incorruptibility of Congress

As I mentioned at the outset, at its heart, stripped of all other pretense, the majority decision rests on these two highly questionable assertions: 1) “… this Court now concludes that independent expenditures, including those made by corporations, do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption. That speakers may have influence over or access to elected officials does not mean that those officials are corrupt. And the appearance of influence or access will not cause the electorate to lose faith in this democracy.” and, 2) “The hallmark of corruption is the financial quid pro quo: dollars for political favors.” (italics are mine.)

The first “don’t worry, be happy” statement flies in the face of centuries of evidence to the contrary.  Take the clause “That speakers may have influence over…” What is corruption if not inappropriate “influence over” a government official?  I agree, “access” does not mean that corruption is afoot.  But, financial contributions certainly raise the “appearance of corruption.”  One must ask, why would corporations donate funds if not to influence or corrupt?

(c) New Yorker September 31, 2011

Did the Court hold hearings before reaching these conclusions?  Is the Courts assertion that “expenditures … do not give rise to corruption” based on evidence or academic research?  Did it base it on any evidence? Is it based on historical precedent?  No and No… it is simply based on five Justices’ opinion.  Maybe they conducted a private poll of legislators: “Have you ever been swayed by corporate contributions, or the threat of a corporation withholding a contribution?”  “No sir.  Certainly not!”  At the least, you would think that the Court could site studies or evidence to support their opinion… but nothing.  Have the justices not noticed what’s been going on in Washington?  Have they never heard of K Street?

Faced with criticism of this decision, Clarence Thomas responded that the NY Times and Washington Post are corporations.  Assuming that this was a serious response, what does that mean?  That the decision was a swipe at these two papers?  Certainly this statement reflects the antagonism some members of the Court feel towards the two publications, but it flies in the face of the Constitution and the First Amendment, which extends freedom of speech to the Press, not to Exxon-Mobil, Walmart, GE or Wendy’s.  (The decision to allow GE or Disney or whoever to buy media organizations is worth revisiting.)

The notion that limiting the speech of corporations somehow limits the free flow of information is absurd – no one is limiting the speech of the individuals who make up corporations.  Within the constraints of the law, they are free to speak.So.  One has to ask, from what oxygen-deprived bubble did these five Supreme Court Justices emerge?  We can read about the pernicious effects of corruption and the “appearance” of corruption practically every day[3].  Are they so ill informed?  Maybe they should spend more time reading the Times or the Post.

The Court’s Assault in Common Sense and the Constitution

The majority of Americans[4] find the notions that “corporations are people” and that “money equals free speech” offensive.  As corporations gain a stranglehold on the popular culture and government policy through advertising, PACs and their lobbyists, common sense suggests something is seriously amiss.  The courts decision seems to fly in the face of the widely held perception that corporate influence needs to be restrained, not expanded.  As Justice Stevens says in his final paragraph, “While American democracy is imperfect, few outside the majority of this Court would have thought its flaws included a dearth of corporate money in politics.”

Occasionally, a decision or action violates a universal and deeply held sense of right and wrong.  This decision appears to have crossed that line.  Polls indicate that 80% of the population thinks this decision was wrong—a majority of Republicans, Democrats and Independents.  While I tend to believe common sense is just another ay of saying “lowest common denominated”, in the case of Citizens United, it is backed up by lots of supporting not-so-common evidence.

First, as I noted earlier, the word “corporation” does not appear anywhere in the Constitution or its Amendments. Not once.  Second, corporations are defined by state statutes and operate under the laws of the various states in which they are registered. They are legal persons, not natural persons. (More about that distinction later.) Third, the Federal role regulating corporations is derived almost exclusively from the “Commerce Clause” of the Constitution (Article I, Section 8).  Since most corporations operate across national and/or state boundaries, most are subject to federal laws and regulations.

While a very few corporations existed in the late 18^th Century, corporations grew rapidly in the mid-19^th century, spurred on by the Civil War and Reconstruction.  Naturally, laws governing their influence lagged behind and corruption became commonplace.  For decades, Robber Barons called the shots.  Corporations bought and sold legislators.  Since legislators were beholden to people like JP Morgan, Jay Gould, John D. Rockefeller, Cornelius Vanderbilt, to name a few, they were reluctant to pass any laws that would upset these oligarchs.  Sound familiar?  It took Teddy Roosevelt’s stubborn, aggressive leadership and the trust-busting legislation he championed to curtail their influence and establish a modicum of control.

Corporations are established by law to fulfill some commercial purpose.  The law allows people to join together under a legal framework that subjects the corporation to legal requirements and holds the corporation itself accountable and liable, while shielding the corporate officers from personal liability, except, in rare instances, for gross, personal misconduct.[5]  Unlike people, corporations are immortal; they can exist in perpetuity.

Over time, the corporate governance model was extended to labor unions, non-profit organizations such as charities, and to special interest groups organized to promote a political point of view.  While a case can be made for protecting the speech rights of some of these groups, especially those established for a political purpose, in my view, there is room for treating them as separate classes and legislating rules to govern each.  (Nonsensically, some are required to disclose their sources of financing while others are not.)

For more than one hundred years, the courts seem to have agreed there should be limits.  The first crack in the dam appeared in the 1976 decision Buckley vs. Valeo.  While it allowed limits on political contributions to stand, for the first time, the Court removed limits on expenditures, allowing an individual candidate to spend as much of his or her own money as he or she wanted[6].  Another case that same year was “Virginia State Board of Pharmacy v. Virginia Citizens Consumer Council, Inc.”  This decision extended First Amendment protection to commercial speech.  Other decisions that expanded corporate influence followed.  (Again, I refer you to Justice Steven’s dissent for a thorough legal analysis.) 

Since the word “Corporation” does not appear in the Constitution, you would think that the Congress would then have the power to define rules concerning corporations, as McCain-Feingold gingerly attempts to do.  An “activist judge” might think otherwise.

Unrestrained Speech

The “absolutist” interpretation of the Constitution and Bill of Rights subscribes to the notion that there should be no constraints on speech; to do so would have a “chilling” effect.  Here are some exceptions few would find objectionable:

• Yelling Fire in a crowded theatre
• Divulging troop positions to the enemy
• Outlawing bribery
• Criminalizing the solicitation for sex
• Conspiracy, such as planning a bank heist
• Communications with terrorist organizations
• Prohibitions against obscenity, child pornography
• Laws against slander
• Privacy protections
• Copyright and patent law
• Ordinances against Noise
• Non-profit 501(c)3 organizations are prohibited from participating in political activities.
• I’m sure I’ve missed a few more. 

Oh, Yes.  Don’t even think of joking about having a bomb in your briefcase at the airport.

The fact is the Court has recognized many restraints on speech and most of us accept these as being in the public interest.  There is no such thing as absolute free speech.  That the Court failed to recognize that unrestrained corporate speech is equally pernicious and deserving of restraint is where, in my opinion, justice has come off the rails.  When it comes to a closer examination of free speech, the founders punted, and, tragically, the team that picked up the ball ran the wrong way.

Certainly, laws that limit speech need to be debated and viewed with suspicion.  But, the unrestrained speech of entities created by the states solely for commercial purposes has no place in our polity, whereas individuals who make up corporations have every right to speak and do so freely.  Viewed from that vantage point, one has to wonder if this is even a legitimate First Amendment issue.

International Nature of Corporations Ignored by the Court

The largest and most powerful corporations are multinational.  For example, GE, one of the largest, derives sixty percent of its revenue from overseas.  There is no prohibition in the current law, or mention in the Courts decision, against non-citizens owning or controlling an American corporation.  No government entity is charged with determining the “nationality” of a corporation.  It’s not possible.  Many corporations have interests that do not align with our national interests; witness the outsourcing of manufacturing jobs or their pursuit of markets in China.  Multinational or not, a corporation’s goal is maximize profits, period.  Granting corporations the ability to sway elections or influence the electorate on critical national issues extends their political influence beyond what is reasonable.  Yet, except for Samuel Alito’s mouthing of “That’s Not True” at the 2010 State of the Union address, the Court does not address this concern or suggest a remedy that would limit the influence of foreign-owned or controlled corporations.  If you are a free speech absolutist, your response might be, “So what?   We don’t care from where the free flow of ideas emanates – an idea is an idea, right?  Chill-out!”  Stanley Fish’s “consequentialist” might disagree, especially in light of the Courts prevailing view that money is speech.  Corporate money tilts the playing field; it buys elections.

I also find this troubling: If the logic of the court prevails – that a corporation is a person – then this decision grants the corporation and the people running it each the right to speak, magnifying the voices of its officers who, incidentally, presume to speak for its stockholders.  Does “one man, one vote” extend to “one man, one voice”?  Does a corporation officer now have one voice or two?

A final thought on corporations.  If I own stock in corporations (as I do through mutual funds,) I own part of that corporation.  When it expresses an opinion in the political arena, does it speak for me?  What gives the board or CEO of a company that right?  No one asked me.  As for the notion, as some have suggested, that I can always sell my shares (have you ever waded through a mutual fund report?) that reflects the never-never land in a galaxy far-far away from which this decision came.

Does Muzzling Corporations Muzzle People?

No.  There are no constraints on people who run corporations.  I just don’t want to give them unlimited license to influence the outcome of elections or dominate public discourse to the extent that they do.  The individual members of corporations enjoy unrestrained free speech.  One respondent to Stanley Fish’s NY Times article said it best: referring to corporations, “…to imply that this necessary and useful entity’s role can and should be extended to the political realm is both ridiculous and injurious.  Shareholders who wish to take political stands on issues can and should be able to donate their own money to politicians and political causes.  Suggesting that removing the corporate vehicle from the equation somehow infringes on their rights verges on the ludicrous.” (Comment from “Zorro” in Riverside, CA.)

So, to those who would argue that freedom of speech is absolute, I would argue that denying a corporation’s rights does nothing to infringe on freedom of speech, since any individual can exercise his or her free speech rights at any time.

The Court

The Supreme Courts role is to say what the law is, not to make laws.  In the absence of Constitutional language governing corporate speech, laws passed by the Congress should prevail.  Otherwise, it’s the Court making policy, not the U.S. Congress. The law in question in this case was the McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance Reform Act[7].  This is the law that should have governed this decision.  The irony is that, were it not for the composition of the present Court, dominated as it is by lawyers more sympathetic to corporate interests than to the public’s, the prohibitions in the law against corporate meddling in political speech would have been even stronger.

What Can Be Done?

Other than initiation impeachment proceedings or waiting for the composition of the Court to change and rearguing the case, there are few realistic remedies available.  But two possibilities – admittedly remote – are 1) an act of judicial nullification[8] by the Congress and the President, or 2) a Constitutional Amendment.  Good luck.  There are dozens of Constitutional Amendments submitted every year that never see the light of day, including at least one on this subject submitted by former Representative Paul Hodes (D-NH). Nevertheless, it’s fun to contemplate what one might look like; so here goes:

Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United Sates of America in Congress assembled (two-thirds of each House concurring therein), that the following article, which may be cited as the “Governance of Corporate Speech Amendment” is proposed as an amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which shall be valid to all intents and purposes as part of the Constitution when ratified by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several States within seven years after the date of its submission for ratification:

Article

Section 1.  a) Corporations in any form or variant are legal persons, not natural persons  [Corporations are not people] and; b) The Free Speech clause of the First Amendment applies exclusively to natural persons.

Section 2.  The U.S. Congress is hereby empowered to regulate the activities of legal persons, including proscribing and regulating their financial activities and their political and commercial speech.

Section 3.  a) The rights of groups of natural persons forming a corporation for the sole purpose of disseminating political opinion or endorsements shall not be abridged, in so far as b) its membership consists exclusively of natural persons; c) its members approve pronouncements by majority vote and d) a individual member be permitted to withhold his or her financial support freely, without prejudice, and; e) its source of funding be published at intervals to be established by Congress.

For Print and download version ->> Print Version

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[1] See Stanley Fish Citizens United v FEC article

[2] This decision including J.P. Steven’s dissent can be read by going to this webpage -- Supreme Court 2009-10 Decisions and downloading the .pdf of the “Citizens United vs. Federal Election Comm’n” decision (number 19 in the list).

[3] One brief example: Ten years ago, private for-profit colleges were minor players.  Today, organizations like the University of Phoenix (owned by the Apollo Group) and the Kaplan College Company (owned by the Washington Post Company) garner 91.5% of the sixty-five billion dollars ($65 Billion) of all moneys allocated by the Federal Government to higher education.  These companies prey on the least qualified applicants and returning vets. They use deceptive practices to recruit and retain students. How did this come about?  One of those organizations (and not the only one), Kaplan Colleges, has increased their political donations and lobbying dramatically over the same period.  Coincidence? An oversight?  This is just one not-so-small example of how corporate special interests dominate the legislative process and profit from it.  Their foot is firmly in the door; don’t expect them to go away.  This is just one example of hundreds of similarly well-financed industries writing the rules in their favor. [To read a series of articles on For-profit Colleges, click here NY Times For-profits College articles]  Quid pro quo corruption?  You decide.  As we witness the debate to bring our National budget in balance, this is something to keep in mind.

[4] See Article on ABC News/Washington Post polling

[5] The most oft-sited phrase with respect to the relationship of individual officers to their corporation is “corporate officers should not pierce the corporate veil.”  For example, if the corporation purchased a car that was then used by a corporate officer’s spouse for personal transportation, that would be a violation.  While it is obvious that this rule is routinely ignored, especially at large corporations, it is a standard that most of us would recognize as ethically and legally sound and one that a court would enforce, if challenged to do so.

[6] While not debated here, I have seen the effects of a financial imbalance during a gubernatorial race here in New Hampshire.  One candidate, Craig Benson (R), spent twelve million dollars or so of his own money.  His opponent, Mark Fernald (D) spent less than ten percent of that.  Not only did this result in a one-sided media blitz in Benson’s favor, but the media, itself the recipient of all this campaign cash, went easy on Benson, lobbing softball questions his way, while sending the hard questions Fernald’s way, or ignoring him completely. When there’s a resource imbalance, media complicity is a hidden hazard.  They are the silent opponents to campaign finance reform.

[7] The role of the Court is also to decide “cases” and “controversies” brought before it.  In this case, the Supreme Court went way beyond the controversy that was at issue.  A reasonable person might question if that overreaching itself is Constitutional.

[8] While I’m sure this idea is controversial in the extreme – a snowball’s chance in hell – might not Congress, relying on its powers as defined in Article III, Section 2 paragraph 2 of the Constitution, declare campaign finance or corporate governance out of judicial bounds?  “…with such Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make.”  Hasn’t Congress done something like this in declaring certain terrorist decisions by the Executive out of bounds?  I suppose someone with a contempt for the rule of law, like Dick Cheney, would have no trouble arguing this point, but would the Court then be able to declare the nullification itself unconstitutional?  

'The Corrections' by Jonathan Franzen

It is not possible to be unimpressed by this novel, if for no other reason than Jonathan Franzen’s metaphoric virtuosity and linguistic invention.  However, I would not recommend this book for the aspiring writer; it just sets to bar too high.  You will come away despondent, knowing that it would be impossible to measure up, as you plod along producing your own pale, delusional, weekend-watery prose.  If Franzen lived in another time, another century, you could take solace; telling yourself contemporary writers lack the patience or courage or education or vocabulary or chutzpah to be this good.  But Franzen is a contemporary; he’s an Olympic bar-setting literary decathlete with a remarkable vocabulary and the dexterity to make it look easy.

Besides being a spectacular read, ‘The Corrections’ is also extremely funny.  Pick up the book at practically any point and start reading… you’ll see what I mean.  Here, watch this…  [Honestly, I just picked a passage at random!]  OK.  Let me set the scene.  Early in the book, Chip’s sister, Denise, is talking to Chip outside his New York apartment building while their parents, who just flew in from St. Jude (a comfortable Midwestern town outside of Chicago) on their way to a Fall foliage cruise to the Canadian Maritimes, are waiting for Chip to serve them lunch.  But Chip has other plans—no, wrong word.  Not plans, he’s not into planning.  He’s completely untethered by now; call it “acting on testosterone-driven impulse.”  He is in hot pursuit of his girlfriend who was moving out just as he arrives home from the airport with his parents.  (She hoped to have made her escape before they arrived.)  Explaining to Denise how his girlfriend has been led astray by therapy, (rather than Chip’s odd behavior) Chip says this:

“I’m saying the structure of the entire culture is flawed.  I’m saying the bureaucracy has arrogated the right to define certain states of mind as ‘diseased.’  A lack of desire to spend money becomes a symptom of disease that requires expensive medication.  Which medication then destroys the libido, in other words destroys the appetite for the one pleasure in life that’s free, which means the person has to spend even more money on compensatory pleasures.  The very definition of mental ‘health’ is the ability to participate in the consumer economy.  When you buy into therapy you’re buying into buying.  And I’m saying that I personally am losing the battle with a commercialized, medicalized, totalitarian modernity right this instant.” 

Denise closed one eye and opened the other…  [And so on.] 

In case you missed it, let me say that at this stage in the story, Chip is adrift in the world and in need of a good slap up the side of the head, which Denise, his younger sister, having herself recently derailed a meteoric career as a chef in Philadelphia, fails to deliver.  She hands him cab fare instead.

And here’s one of my favorite outbursts (not picked at random):  Again let me set this up.  Chip is now working in post-Soviet-beyond-redemption-corrupt Lithuania for a colorful character named Gitanas (deserving of his own book,) who has developed a scheme to bilk American investors by setting up a website called Lithuania.com.  Eventually – predictably – competition for “most corrupt” degrades into “most ruthless.”  Gitanas has the appetite for the former, but not the later.  In the midst of this deflationary spiral there is an election.  But let Franzen finish setting it up himself –

On a very gloomy Sunday morning, Lichenkev and his slate of smugglers and hit men on the Cheap Power for the People Party ticket claimed 38 of 141 seats in the Seimas.  But the Lithuanian President, Audrius Vitkunas, a charismatic and paranoid arch-nationalist who hated Russia and the West with equal passion, refused to certify the election results.

“Hydrophobic Lichenkev and his mouth-frothing hellhounds will not intimidate me!” Vitkunas shouted in a televised address on Sunday evening.  “Localized power failures, a near-total breakdown in the communications network of the capital and its environs, and the presents of roving heavily armed ‘constabularies’ of Lichenkev’s hired mouth-frothing lickspittle hellhounds do not inspire confidence that yesterday’s voting reflects the stubborn will and immense good sense of the great and glorious immortal Lithuanian People!  I will not, I cannot, I must not, I durst not, I shall not certify these scum-flecked, maggot-riddled, tertiary-syphilitic national parliamentary election results!” 

Talk about civility!  (John Boehner, you mouth-frothing lickspittle hellhound you!  Mitch McConnell, you scum-flecked, maggot-riddled, tertiary-syphilitic excuse for a Senate minority leader.  Wow! … OK.  Enough random – and not so random – sampling.) 

Let me step back a bit.  This is a story about a wildly dysfunctional family.  (My wife, Joan, say, “Why would you write about any other kind”?  Good point.)  Enid and Alfred Lambert set off on a Fall foliage cruise on some Norwegian cruise line up the east coast to the Canadian Maritimes.  Alfred, suffering from Parkinson’s and progressive dementia, has been retired from his job as an executive at a Midwestern railroad for ten years and has spent the intervening years in his big blue chair in the basement.   Their home is slowly disintegrating around them.  Enid, who arranged this cruise and has paid for it from her own stash, takes care of Alfred more out of duty than love.  As Alfred’s condition degrades, Enid sees their lives spinning out of control but is powerless to do anything about it, so she fixates on something she thinks she can control, Christmas in St. Jude.  If only. (Even as he is slipping in and out of dementia, Alfred still holds the cards.)

Meanwhile, their three grown children, Gary, Chip and Denise have gone off to make lives for themselves, each in his or her own uniquely dysfunctional way.  Gary, in his early forties, and living in a trendy Philadelphia suburb, is an investment banker whose wife, Caroline, a masterful, psychologically intimidating manipulator, sets the terms of their marriage and their parenting.  Gary functions best at the office.  The hilarious interplay between Gary, Caroline and their young three boys will, alternately, make you laugh and cringe.  Caroline indulges – in fact – encourages the boys’ every whim.  Powerless to stop her, poor Gary is trapped between his own timidity and his beautiful wife’s Quaker inheritance.  Any time Gary raises an objection, Caroline suggests he’s in need of psychotherapy, thus turning every disagreement about raising their children into Gary’s having to defend his sanity; sanity he frequently has reason to doubt.   The oldest of the three Lambert children, Gary’s the most responsible.

Chip.  Ah Chip… at thirty-nine, Chip is an ex-tenure-track English professor recently fired from a New England college because he got a little too close in a carnal way to one of his students, a precocious, hedonistic young senior who pursued him aggressively and then ditched him.  His transgression, which turned him into a drug-addled sex-obsessed borderline-stalker, came to light about the same time his mentor the Dean died and his chief rival for tenure published her book.  (Chip, certain he was on the fast track, had neglected this essential requisite of academic life.)  Unhinged and unemployed, he goes down in flames.  He relocated to New York to write an absurd screenplay (with a pedantic opening monologue that runs forty minutes,) and works odd jobs for which he is eminently overqualified, except that he is far too distracted to show up for work.  A stroke of luck, in a manner of speaking, occurred immediately after the scene in front of his apartment building with Denise, when he is introduced to the colorfully fatalistic Lithuanian entrepreneur, Gitanas, the soon-to-be ex-husband of the woman who just left Chip (yes, this does gets hilariously complicated) and who, magnanimously (since Chip’s affair with Gitanas’s wife now seems to be past tense, and because Chip is the only prospect), offers Chip a job as the web marketing director of his new ethically challenged venture, Lithuania.com.  Chip, who had to borrow the cab fair from Denise and, in all probability, would have to walk home in the rain, has little choice but to accept the job and the generous cash advance offered.  Chip and Gitanas fly, that very evening, to Vilnius.

Then there’s Denise. At thirty-two, Denise is the youngest.  At the outset, she appears to be the rock of the family, the successful chef of a trendy Philadelphia restaurant, “The Generator,” which her newly minted millionaire boss builds into a recycled Philadelphia power plant, complete with massive power generator.  Were it not for Denise’s sudden discovery of a blooming, obsessive, and irresistible preference for having sex with women, especially her boss’s wife, things might have turned out better for Denise.  Eventually, Brooklyn claims her, but the path to Prospect Park was somewhat twisted. 

These four stories – Enid and Alfred’s, Gary’s, Chip’s, and Denise’s – are told in parallel, culminating around Christmas in St. Jude, attended by Gary sans familia (early on, Caroline had extracted a promise never to have to attend a Christmas in St. Jude, a promise to which she held firm), Denise the least alienated of the three, and Chip, who flies in from Lithuania and arrives broke, under the dark cloud of Gary’s disparaging doubts on Christmas morning, just a few hours before Gary has to fly back to Philly.

Nestled deep inside this brilliant comedy is hidden a more serious literary mission. The title, “the Corrections” provides the clue.  Think of a stock market or housing market ‘correction.’  Now back off to, say, thirty thousand feet.  This is a story about generational ‘correction’ in a nation and a world that has changed, is changing, dramatically, wrenchingly, from one generation to the next.  Here, the Lambert progeny are set adrift from the comfortable shores of Midwestern life onto a sea without a map or compass, left to stumble about finding their own way, without the advantages of either a trade union or good ol’ American nepotism, vainly grasping at anchors of stability that their parents’ generation, and most generations that preceded them, took for granted.  But here, the parents are adrift too—Literally, at sea.  Their Fall foliage cruise serves as a metaphor for their life in retirement; experienced in isolation, one from the other, but tied together in a financial lifeboat or straightjacket, take your pick.  Then there’s Chip.  The desperation of Chip’s Lithuanian adventure illustrates the extent to which he is adrift.  Lithuania, cut adrift from the former Soviet Union, serves both as metaphor and as a reflection of the chaotic and corrupting reality with which younger generations must contend.  We Americans like to pretend the only thing you need to succeed is a vision and ambition.  But as automation finally fulfills its promise of rendering human beings superfluous, and the few jobs that are left go offshore to the lowest bidders, it will take more than an exciting new technology to reinvigorate the world economy.  But, this book is not a commentary on the state of our economy; it’s a book about how the accelerating pace of change, from generation to generation, tends to pull the rug from under anything resembling stability; leaving it its place a constant state of upheaval into which each generation stumbles, able to rely less and less on strategies that served the last, left to totter forward in the dark alone, sometimes (if you have a taste for bewildering irony) with great comedic affect.

Jonathan Franzen’s latest book, ‘Freedom,’ came out last summer.  I very much wanted to read that when it arrived at the bookstore.  But before I did, I decided to read at least one of his earlier books first, then to read his latest to see how he has changed in the intervening years; to see how a writer might learn from an earlier work, and how (or if) that is reflected in his later works.   Of course, with a writer as accomplished as Franzen, this might be as good as it gets and everything that follows is of equal quality, just pointed in a different direction. 

So, now that I’ve sampled Jonathan Franzen’s work, I’m ready to see the effect of nine years passing.  Bring in on.  Bring on ‘Freedom’!

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Merry Christmas 2010

Joan Leaps Tall Buildings- Joan flew in SchliebenAir to Charleston, SC in April.  This is a monumental event.  Given her former aversion to flying in anything resembling a glorified aluminum cigar tube, this was the equivalent of a deep space adventure packed in a sardine can.  That Joan did not deposit predigested unpleasantness on the control panel is even more remarkable.  We stopped in Cape May the first night and stayed at the ‘Southern Mansion.’  This inn I highly recommend.  On the other hand, the ‘Pilot House’ restaurant avoid like the plague, or maybe dysentery.  Worst food on the planet!   Probably the universe.  Mrs. Paul’s Fishsticks would win, hands down.  The next day we flew to Charleston, rented a car and spent three nights there and then three nights in Savanna.  Both are wonderful tourist cities – easily traversed on foot and friendly – and, with Savanna’s beautiful squares every three blocks or so and its streets lined with magnificent live oaks and magnolias, one could almost imagine living there (except summers.)  (Savanna’s economy got a big boost with the publication of John Berendt’s book ‘Midnight In the Garden of Good and Evil,’ in the mid-90s.)  We also had the best fish dinners we’ve ever had – and I mean the best ever – in the Chart House along the Savanna River.  Its décor? standard issue Georgian country club, but the food was fantastic.  During our return flight, we stopped in Chapel Hill, NC to visit friends, and stopped again in Trenton for an overnight with Dad, then home.  All together we overcame Joan’s worst fears.  The weather cooperated and we didn’t run into anything more unforgiving than – splat! – bugs.   Who knows?  We might even do it again, someday.  Bangkok, in one-hour increments.

Our Summer Vacation (When your retired, sounds doubly redundant)-

We spent a delightful two weeks at Silver Bay, NY in July.  Roy, Jenn, Jess and Brendan were with us the first week.  Grandfather Ernie and his friend Margie spent three nights there at the end of the first week, overlapping their stay with his grandchildren.  A highlight was an cruise down Lake George on the Silver Spray.

Jess: Interior Designer Extraordinaire / Studentessa Perpetua- Jess is working at one of the few Boston firms that hired staff during this recession.  Lucky her!  Since all design work these days is computer-based, she says she lives in her computer, or at least spends most of her day there.  In the spring, Jess will complete her fifth year at Boston Architectural College and next year (yes, just one more year!) she will complete her master’s thesis.  Ask her about wayfinding and site-lines… she’ll regale you for hours!  Brendan Haley, Jess’s significant other (should that be in caps?) runs a design/build business (BHaley Designs) and has been busy designing and renovating restaurant and condo interiors.  If you want to start a restaurant in the Boston area, call Brendan!

Roy and Jenn Keeping Their Heads Down in Bangkok- In Thailand now for over two years, Jenn continues as Assistant Chief of Station at AECOM, an international development consulting firm, and Roy has been saving tigers (well, not single-handedly) as a communications officer at Freeland Foundation, whose mission is to prevent wildlife and human trafficking.  Life in Bangkok got a little tense this spring during the Red Shirt uprising.  When the barricades went up on their street, they relocated to a hotel away from the action but, fortunately, it didn’t last too long.   Life is less chaotic now.  Oh yes, they’ve adopted another dog, Hop-along-Cassidy (Cassie for short.)  Cousin Ken would have named her ‘Tripod’, but he missed out on that one.  They now have two dogs and a cat.   They expect to be in Bangkok through 2012.

Acadia- Each year Joan and I spend four or five days in Maine’s Acadia National Park, hiking, recovering from hiking, eating with abandon, drinking in moderation—all, timed around Joan’s birthday.  Yes, Joan is a year older again.

Our Life In General- Other than the foregoing, Joan and I spend an inordinate amount of time just staying healthy.  I walk and work in the yard; Joan walks and attends a weekly Tai Chi class.  It’s amazing how much time and energy is consumed just moving one’s body … that, and reading the paper and all of life’s daily chores, like opening and closing the refrigerator door… good, nothing’s escaped.

Joan has always been an avid reader and enjoys a variety of subjects and genres.  She continues to be Paul’s book filter; sorting books worth his time from books to be sold back to the bookstore for pennies on the dollar.  She’s also been known to watch an occasional episode of ‘House’ and ‘Desperate Housewives,’ “the best program on TV,” she says—“sad commentary,” Paul says.

In addition to writing the occasional short story, essay and poem, Paul enjoys being able to think and write about the books he reads, and he posts his writing on a blog he calls ‘Synaptia:  The Random Firings of a “Maturing” Mind.’  (Paul notes that he shares an enthusiasm for Barbara Kingsolver with his sister-in-law, Barbara Reed.)  Additionally, flying for Angel Flight, household chores (indoors and out,) cooking, eating and imbibing (red wine, an organic health-food high in omega-3) fill out his busy week.

So, there you have it.  While our hopes for peace and national sanity have taking a hit this year and our imperfect union made more so by the Supreme Court’s disastrous “Citizens United vs. FEC” decision, we remain inexplicably optimistic.

Best wishes for a joyous holiday with friends and family. 

Paul and Joan

paul.schlieben@gmail.com

joan.schlieben@gmail.com

synaptia.blogspot.com/

'The Poisonwood Bible' by Barbara Kingsolver

I don’t think I’ve ever read two books by the same author, back to back, before.  I’m not sure why.  Maybe it's because some books deliver an emotional intensity that I find both exhilarating and exhausting, and I feel the need to recover by reading something mindless, like a plot-driven mystery or a memoir by George Bush.  Or maybe it’s because once I’ve read a book that I really admire, I’m afraid I’ll be disappointed with the next; afraid my admiration for the author will be undermined.  Like most of us, I treasure my illusion.  Well, where Barbara Kingsolver is concerned, I need’t have worried.  Once again, as with ‘The Lacuna,’ I filled a legal pad with quotes that I read again and again. With luck, I’ll find a way to slip a few of them into this review.

‘The Poisonwood Bible,’ is the story of a Southern Baptist missionary family, Nathan and Orleanna Price and their four daughters, who travel to the heart of Africa to spend a year at a remote mission in the jungles of what was, in 1959, the Belgium Congo. 

This novel consists of seven “Books,” each beginning with Orleanna’s account, followed by her daughter’s contemporaneous account of their years spent in the Congo, and of their lives since.  Each tells of many of the same events in her own distinctive voice.

Orleanna’s ruminations – lamentations, really – are written years after her return from Africa at her secluded cottage on a Georgia Sea Island.  There, she struggles to make sense of their African experience – to understand how she had let Nathan lead her family to Africa, of how little she understood about Nathan and the Congo beforehand; of her failure to recognize the dangers that cost the life of one of her daughters and the dissolution of her family.   Of her flight from Africa and her life since, she writes movingly, “As long as I kept moving, my grief streamed out behind me like a swimmer’s long hair in water.  I knew the weight was there but it didn’t touch me.”

You only have to read the following description of the jungle on the opening page to be drawn deeply into Kingsolver’s story.  It is both evocative of the Congo and portentous.

(My advice to any reader of ‘The Poisonwood Bible’ is this: after reading each of the seven “Books,” reread this first chapter.)

“Every space is filled with life: delicate, poisonous frogs war-painted like skeletons, clutched in copulation, secreting their precious eggs onto dripping leaves.  Vines strangling their own kin in the everlasting wrestle for sunlight.  The breathing of monkeys.  A glide of snake belly on branch.  A single-file army of ants biting a mammoth tree into uniform grains and hauling it down to the dark for their ravenous queen.  And, in reply, a choir of seedlings arching their necks out of rotted tree stumps, sucking life out of death.  This forest eats itself and lives forever.”  (Italics mine)

As is characteristic of her prose, Barbara Kingsolver’s descriptions of the natural world are spellbinding.  Further down the same page, we are made to understand that, while Orleanna is leading her four daughters along a jungle path, she is in no way in control of events that transpire or understands how she and her daughters happened to be there in the first place.  Speaking as if observing herself from afar, she writes,

“The mother … watch how she leads them on, pale-eyed, deliberate.  Her dark hair is tied in a ragged lace handkerchief, and her curved jawbone is lit with large, false-pearl earrings, as if these headlamps from another world might show the way.”  (Italics mine)

While sitting on a stream bank, her children playing around a bend, Orleanna writes, 

“A beautiful animal stands on the other side of the water.  They look up from their lives, woman and animal, amazed to find themselves in the same place.  He freezes, inspecting her with his black-tipped ears, from the gentle hump of his shoulders … Finally he surrenders his surprise, looks away, and drinks.  She can feel the touch of his long, curled tongue on the water’s skin, as if he were lapping from her hand.” 

This most rare and delicate forest creature, this okapi, a “horseish gazelle, relative of the giraffe” and this pale, white woman, as rare a sight as the okapi, calmly observing each other from across a stream.

Thinking back on her life years later, she writes,

“I had washed up there on the riptide of my husband’s confidence and the undertow of my children’s needs.” … “I stir in bed and the memories rise out of me like a buzz of flies from a carcass.  I crave to be rid of them…”

“What is the conqueror’s wife, if not a conquest herself?”

“Some of us know how we came by our fortune, and some of us don’t, but we wear it all the same.  There’s only one question worth asking now: How do we aim to live with it?” 

This is the question that consumes her since her exodus from the jungle.

Thus begins Orleanna’s struggle to make sense of the devastating experiences that would indelibly brand her for life.  Orleanna’s begins as a seventeen-year-old wife, on what appears to her to be a predictably happy path that quickly spins beyond her grasp in unexpected ways, overrun by an overwhelming force, the “riptide of her husband’s confidence.” 

Here’s how it all began: It’s the Depression.  Orleanna is living in a town called Pearl, near Jackson, Mississippi with her father, an eye doctor.  Along with her girlfriends, Orleanna attends a religious revival led by Nathan Price, a handsome, young, red-head, itinerant Baptist minister.  “We threw ourselves at Jesus with our unsaved bosoms heaving,” she writes.  Nathan took an immediate interest in Orleanna and “fell upon my unclaimed soul like a dog on a bone.  He was more sure of himself than I’d thought it possible for a young man to be, but I resisted him.”  After weeks of courting and equivocation, Orleanna’s Aunt Tess tells her, “You’re a-feeding him anyways, child, why not go on and marry him if that’s what he’s after.”   Whether or not that was what he was after, they married.  Then the war began.

When Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, “half the men in all this world were pledged to a single war, Nathan included.”  Nathan volunteered to be a Chaplain but was sent to infantry training in Paris, Texas, instead.  From there he was sent to fight in MacArthur’s army in the Philippines where, just a few months later, he is injured and, dazed, is picked up wandering on the beach by the crew of a PT boat.

“From a Hospital bunker on Corregidor Island he wrote me a cheerful V-mail letter about his salvation by the grace of God,” Orleanna wrote. “That was the last I would ever hear from the man I’d married.”

While Nathan is recuperating, his unit is massacred.  In Orleanna’s words,

“Through the tunnels of that island fortress came wind of a horror too great to speak aloud—whispered litany that would take years to be fully disclosed to the world, and especially to me.  It would permanently curl one soldier’s heart like a piece of hard shoe leather.”  (Italics mine)

This is the genesis of “The Poisonwood Bible,” the closest we come to an understanding of the demons that possessing Nathan, gradually transforming him into someone possessed by a myopic Christian dogma—a madness.  It’s the closest we come to a sympathetic portrait of the man whose single minded religious fervor becomes a fever from which he never recovers.  It is also the point at which Orleanna’s imagined life took an abrupt turn towards the incomprehensible. 

Discharged from the Army early, Nathan returns home to Mississippi a changed man and resumes his Baptist ministry.  He had changed from “one who could laugh, … call me his ‘honey lamb,’ and trust in the miracle of good fortune…” to one who angrily scolded her when she tried to touch him “teasingly” … “Can’t you understand the Lord is watching us?”   Years later, after giving birth to four girls, including one set of twins, Orleanna declares, “I cannot believe any woman on earth has ever made more babies out of less coition.”

Nathan and Orleanna settle in Bethlehem, Georgia where they spend the next fifteen years.  It is at this point that their African story begins.  In 1959, Nathan volunteers to become a missionary in the Congo for a year.  Whether because they judged the Congo politically unstable or Nathan too unbending, the Southern Baptist Mission League advised against their going, (a detail Nathan keeps to himself,) and so they went.  The family packed up all they could carry and traveled to Kilanga, a remote village on the Kwilu River in the heart of the Congo.  Their daughter Leah says it best: “We came from Bethlehem, Georgia, bearing Betty Crocker cake mixes into the jungle.”  The humorous descriptions of what they brought with them captured perfectly the giddy excitement and anticipation of a travel adventure into the unknown.

They struggled to keep their luggage below the allowable weight limit.  Then someone from the Mission League told them there was a weight limit for luggage, but not for what they could carry on their person.  Leah tells us, “We struck out for Africa carrying all our excess baggage on our bodies, under our clothes.  Also, we had clothes under our clothes…. the other goods, tools, cake-mix boxes and so forth were tucked out of sight in our pockets and under our waste bands, surrounding us in a clanking armor.” … “My Father,” she continues, “was bringing the Word of God—which fortunately weighs nothing at all.”

They are utterly unprepared for life in the Congo, which, without running water, electricity, gas or any of the conveniences of home, imposed the most primitive conditions on the family.  Quickly, their bleached flour spoils, their vegetable garden planted with seeds from home, fails miserably, and even the hammer they’ve carried from Georgia turned out to be useless, since there were no nails in the jungle.

There is also the historical backdrop that is key to understanding this novel.  Within six months or so of their arrival, in the face of increasing unrest, Belgium grants the Congo it’s independence and holds elections.  Fearing danger, especially for whites, the sponsors of their mission, Mr. and Mrs. Underdown, fly in from Stanleyville to urge Nathan and his family to leave.  Nathan refuses, ignoring the danger to his family and stubbornly holding on to his delusion that he is saving souls.  In the face of Nathan’s refusal to leave, the Mission League withdraws its meager financial lifeline, leaving the Prices to fend for themselves.

Patrice Lumumba is elected president.  However, in the face of US and Belgium – especially US – hostility, and of mining interests of southern Congo, Lumumba’s presidency lasts just fifty-one days.  The father of Congo’s independence is deposed and beaten to death.  Joseph Mubutu, a corrupt, rapacious army colonel and coup leader, becomes President.

(For more background on these events, see --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrice_Lumumba)

Nathan, a physically imposing and domineering Southern Baptist minister, possessed by his war guilt and inflexible biblical dogma, sees his mission in the narrowest possible light—to save souls.  Nothing else matters, not even the wellbeing of his family.  As his daughter Leah observes, when speaking of the frequent funeral processions that pass their front porch, “He doesn’t seem to mind the corpses so much as the souls unsaved.  In the great tally Up Yonder, each one counts as a point against him.” 

Although unequipped for life in the jungle and cut off from financial support, the Price family struggled to survive.  Predictably, things do not go well.  Eventually, after a year of extreme hardship, events transpire that culminate in Orleanna’s and her daughters’  abrupt “exodus.”   Without other means of escape, they walk out of the Congo.  Nathan doggedly remains behind. 

We come to know Nathan only in relief, like a photo negative, viewed only through Orleanna’s and his four daughters’ eyes.

(Maybe, some day, as was done for Beowulf’s ‘Grendel’ in John Gardner’s 1971 novel by that name, Kingsolver will retell ‘The Poisonwood Bible’ in Nathan’s voice, although I doubt he would be any less a monster.)

Now, let’s talk about the daughters, whose narrations make up most of the book.  They are Rachel, sixteen; Adah and Leah, fourteen; and Ruth May, five.

Rachel, the oldest by sixteen months, is a self-absorbed teenager whose most important possession in the Congo is her mirror.  She wants nothing more than to get back to Georgia.  Upon arriving in their remote village, she declares, “Jezz oh man, wake me up when it’s over” and “…the Bobbie girdle I quit wearing right off the bat, this horrid sticky jungle being no place for Junior Figure Control.”  (Yes, as with her other books, Kingsolver serves up a considerable helping of humor, especially from the pens of these daughters.)  Rachel’s sister Leah describes Rachel this way: “[O]n the plane, she kept batting her white-rabbit eyelashes and adjusting her bright pink hairband trying to get me to notice she had secretly painted her fingernails bubble-gum pink to match.”  Rachel becomes familiar to us for her hilarious malapropisms and critical eye of her own, and for her acerbic observations in response to one assault after another perpetrated by the Congo or her father.  Of her father, she writes, “Hurray! They all cheered, but I felt a knot in my stomach.  He was getting that look he gets, oh boy, like Here comes Moses tromping down off of Mount Syanide with ten fresh ways to wreck your life.” and, when asked, “Did you know Katanga has seceded from the Congo?”  “I’m just happy to know somebody has succeeded in something.” she replies.  It turns out that Rachel, as detached as she is, is the truest reporter of events and dialogue, often punctuated with her own sardonic, malaprop-laden asides.   (I can only imagine the fun Kingsolver had writing as Rachel.  I can hear her laughing out loud, as I did, when writing lines like, “It is my girlfriends …” that helped me “… make the graceful transition to wifehood and adulteration.” And, “Maybe he’s been in Africa so long he has forgotten that we Christians have our own system of marriage, and it is called Monotony.”)

Rachel's reporting of her father tense meeting with his predecessor, Brother Fowles and his African wife and children, and Nathan’s debate about scripture with the genial Brother Fowles is sharp, enlightening and a joy to read.  (I highly recommend Rachel’s chapter, starting on page 245 of the paperback edition.)

Then there’s the twins, Leah and Adah, both cleverer than Rachel, and more complicated—less stereotypical American teenagers and more open to the Congo experience.  Leah is a tomboy who, early on, works hard to win the approval of her father, but is determined to learn the ways of the jungle, like hunting with bow and arrow. As Adah attests, “Nelson [their houseboy] shows her how to stand, close one eye, and whack her arrow trembling into the heart of a leaf.  She is a frighteningly good shot.”  Her determined embrace of Africa separates her from her Father.  She comes to view Nathan as Africans might view him, if not deranged, inconsequential.  Consequently, she loses her own religious faith, but never her earnestness, her intensity, saying at one point to her future African husband, “I want to be righteous, Anatole.  To know right from wrong, that’s all.  I want to live the right way and be redeemed.”

Her twin sister, Adah, brain damaged at birth (“Officially my condition is called hemiplagia.”) walks with a pronounced limp and has trouble speaking, but is in every other respects as clever as her twin sister.  “It is true…” Adah says, “that I do not speak as well as I can think.  But that is true of most people, as nearly as I can tell. … Silence has many advantages.”  Besides being a sharp observing and chronicler of events, Adah’s talent or affliction, depending on how you look at it, is palindromes – reading and making up verses backwards and forwards, like, “Amen enema,” (her palindrome for her father) and “Poor Dan is in a droop.”

The youngest, Ruth May, is just five when they arrive in the Congo.  Her voice is less distinct, but she has a charisma all her own and quickly earns the affection of the village children by leading them in a game of “Mother May I” or, from their mouths, “Ma-da-meh-hi.”  Born nine years after the clutch of the first three, who had arrived within sixteen months of each other, Ruth May is Orleanna’s favorite.  Referring to her last child, she says this: “… the baby who trials her scent like a flag of surrender through your life when there will be no more coming after—oh, that’s love by a different name.  She is the babe you hold in your arms for an hour after she’s gone to sleep.”

Of course, Africans play a vital role in this book and it is here that Kingsolver’s meticulous research and talent for empathy are on full display.  She absorbs the rich traditions, language and nature of Africa and plays them back to us in ways that make them intelligible, teaching us to appreciate and respect Africa’s struggles and rhythms, even to understand some of the subtle tones that make up the Kongolese language.  And, while not as foreign to her as Africa must have been, she achieves the same feat of affinity, as she inhabits the souls of each member of the Price family. 

The central tragedy here is that Nathan, a fundamentalist southern preacher bent on baptizing African children in the Kwilu River, a river in which an alligator had recently eaten a child, is the least suited to the task of saving African souls.   Religion, race, prejudice, cultural assumptions and ignorance conspire against his ever succeeding, especially at this critical moment as the Congo is waking from a century of colonial rule, to demand its independence. Kingsolver’s novel drives this point home: our approach to Africa ignores Africans.  The reasons for this are made manifest.

Nathan’s predecessor, Brother Fowles, who has married an African and embraced Africa on its own terms, and who plies the Kwilu River in an old barge delivering aid, put it this way: “If some of the branches have been broken off, and you who were only a wild olive shoot have been grafted in, and made to share the richness of the olive’s root, you must not look down upon the branches.  Remember that you do not support the root; the root supports you.” 

Armed with his religious dogma and southern American prejudices, Nathan is unequipped to absorb this central lesson.  Africans have their own religions passed down for milllennia; the Congolese only tolerate his; they don’t embrace it.  He brought a hammer to a jungle that uses vines and grasses to build their homes.  They have no need for nails.

The Africans of the village have indigenous knowledge acquired over centuries that it would take a lifetime for an outsider to acquire.  So too, have they been subjected to centuries of colonial rule that they have patiently endured, and for the most part, struggled to peacefully rid themselves.  Patrice Lumumba finally achieved Independence in 1960.  Yet, as was revealed more than a decade later, the United States saw Congo’s independence only through the narrow lens of the Cold War and considered Lumumba a Soviet puppet—an enemy who must be eliminated.   Speaking to CIA director Allan Dullas, Eisenhower said something to the effect that that “Lumumba should be eliminated.”  He was, and the consequences reverberate even today.

In a very real sense, ‘The Poisonwood Bible’ is an allegory.  Nathan arrives in the Congo with his own prejudices and misconceptions, dragging along a reluctant family as ignorant of the environment and people there as he is, but who come to see firsthand what their preacher father is incapable of seeing.  Nathan is burdened with contempt for anyone who doesn’t accept the righteousness of his mission and burdened too with contempt for women, even those in his own family, and of the blacks that inhabit the Congo and even those whites who have learned to appreciate and love the Congo, as Brother Fowles does.  If Nathan represents a US government that views the world through its own narrowly defined interests and exaggerated fears, then the women of his family represent those who come to see, after its too late, the greed and ignorance that drives a nation’s policies, and the shameful injustice imposed on so much of the world by their own government.

Barbara Kingsolver has much to teach us here.  We have seen this story played out, time and again, in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, where a powerful nation’s economic interests and imagined fears overwhelm weaker nations around the world.  There may be short-term gains, but as the bubble that is our economic empire’s arch through history pops, these chickens will come home to roust.

While ‘The Poisonwood Bible’ is allegorical below the surface, foremost, it is a moving story about a family caught up in its own history; lives they can barely understand themselves decades later. As Orleanna writes, referring to that rare okapi she spied across a stream, “I didn’t know any name for what I’d seen until some years afterwards, in Atlanta, when I attempted briefly to consecrate myself in a public library, believing every crack in my soul could be chinked with a book.”  

This speaks to the universal human condition to which we all are subject.  It is what makes this book an enduring classic.

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I Write, Therefore, Am I?

I’m not a writer.  That’s not to say I haven’t written anything.  I have.  Lots.  Memos, technical documentation, email messages – some of them quite good.  But when was the last time you read a collection of someone’s memos or emails?

No, I write, but I’m not a writer.  Writers are people who write to live and live to write.  Some even make a living at it.  They’re fascinated with people, thoughts, and words – the kind of people who can do the New York Times crossword puzzle while on the john – in ink!  They’re the ones who collect reams of notes of ideas and details to punch up their prose; and write pithy, insightful character sketches, even if these never see the light of day.  Real writers get up at 4 A.M., brew a pot of coffee and sit down at their computers, typewriters, legal pads – whatever – and become so engrossed in their work they forget the coffee.  Writers are natural storytellers; able to weave a story around the most mundane events and, adding just a few ‘embellishments,’ make us laugh out loud, weep, sigh or gasp in surprise.  Writers have an eye for details and they have really good memories, able to summon evocative details at precisely the right moments.  They have perfect pitch, able to reproduce dialogue and accents convincingly.  They remember punch lines to jokes.  They have a rich vocabulary and the good sense not to flout it.  Writers are people who know that, as Mark Twain famously said, “The difference between the right word and the almost right word is like the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.”

I’m not one of those people.  Crossword puzzles frustrate me.  I forget jokes even if I remember the punch line.  Following a daily routine has never been one of my strength.  I’m not a natural storyteller or raconteur.  My education, as far as it goes, was more intent on getting the right answer than exploring a plethora of possibilities.  Like most Americans, school succeeded in stunting my curiosity.  Conformity was the goal.  I’ve had to make a conscious effort to reverse this conditioning.  My favorite quote is from George Bernard Shaw, who said, “The only time my education was interrupted was when I was in school.”  That almost describes my condition, except, in my case, I didn’t learn all that much when I was absent either. 

Is it possible to become a writer; one who appreciates words and never confuses “affect” with “effect”? Or “castigate” with that other word…?  Where would one start?

My own thoughts and experiences are all I have.  That’s all any of us have.  But, at sixty-five, I worry that my imagination has atrophied.  Perhaps, if I work at it, my curiosity can be rekindled, my imagination inspired.  Then, just maybe, stories will flow forth.  With luck, when inspiration strikes, it will be more lightening than lightening bug!

Why do I write at all?  This is what I ask myself.  The answer is that it’s the only way I’ve ever been able to order my thoughts.  I want to better understand who I am and what I believe; to better align my actions and beliefs; to feel the solid ground of certainty – not that my opinions are necessarily correct, but that my thoughts are my own, arrived at honestly; and that they form a solid foundation on which to build new insights.

The object of all of this?  To live the remaining years of my life fully.  Yes, I know.  Sounds hollow, like a New Year's resolution made after too much wine or, as a cynic might put it, “like a crock.”  We’ll see.  The difference between an accomplishment and a resolution is like the difference between a crock of jam and that other kind. - PS

'The Lacuna' by Barbara Kingsolver

W

hen an author’s name is the prominent feature of a book’s jacket, there is one obvious conclusion you can draw.  The author is a brand – all that’s needed to guarantee brisk sales.  Another less obvious conclusion is that, being successful, the author gets to pick the title.  The publisher may suggest a title, but what’s going to sell is the author’s brand, so a publisher is unlikely to press hard.  So what?  There’s a world of difference between a title picked by an author and one picked by a marketing department.  When an author picks a title, it is likely to contain a significant clue to understanding the book.  And, for an author of Barbara Kingsolver’s caliber, it is unlikely that she would be satisfied with a title that expressed just one idea or feature of her book.  She would select a title that was multidimensional, reflecting the complexity and richness of her story. 

In the case of ‘The Lacuna,’ I wondered if the title preceded the writing of the book or even whether the word “lacuna” itself might have in some way been the spark igniting the idea for the book.  Whatever its genesis, ‘The Lacuna’ is a great title that represents perfectly the many dimensions of this wonderful book. 

[Before I go any further, here’s a definition.  According to Dictionary.com, “lacuna” is “a gap or missing part, as in a manuscript, series, or logical argument; hiatus.”  It can also refer to “one of the numerous minute cavities in the substance of a bone…”  

The only usage of the word I could find was in Condi Rice’s 2007 congressional testimony.  "In response to charges that private security firms were not held accountable for their aggressive behavior, Rice dodged responsibility by repeatedly referring to a “lacuna” or a gap in the law that prevented the contractors from being prosecuted.”   I couldn’t resist including a poem by Madeleine Kane inspired by this testimony. 

Pondering Condi
By Madeleine Begun Kane

Rice shrugs off blame
For wartime’s toll.
Poor oversight?
Rice claims a hole—
A legal “lacuna”
Impedes control
Of contractor actions
On Iraq patrol.
Must fill that lacuna—
She touts that goal.
But who will fill
The lacuna in her soul?

For more, visit madcane.com.  OK, now back the to reviewing the book.]

 
‘The Lacuna’ is a wonderfully imaginative historical novel that threads the fictional life of its protagonist, Harrison William Shepherd, into the tumultuous lives of the celebrated 20^th century Mexican artists, Diego Rivera and Freda Kaylo, and also the Russian revolution leader, Leon Trotsky, who, for a time in the late 1930s lived in exile at Freda’s villa in Mexico.  Trotsky was assassinated there by one of Stalin’s assassins in 1940.  Kingsolver also manages to weave into her story Douglas Macarthur’s rout of the WW I “Bonus Army” in 1932, as well as J. Edgar Hoover and the House Sub-Committee on Un-American Activities’ post-war pursuit of communists in the late 1940s and early 1950s.  Amazingly, it all works.

Notable among Kingsolver’s fictional characters is Shepherd’s Mexican mother, a comically irresponsible, restless 1920s flapper who frantically attaches herself to one man after another, as if jumping from one lily pad and then another, as the previous one sinks under the weight of her expectations.  A fatally attractive flapper, she thoroughly absorbed the slang of that era, spouting words like “fillies” “pips” “sweet patooties and no-o-o dotie brodies” and “I’m just razzing you” and “wad of tin” … and on and on.  The best example is a brilliantly comical conversation between mother and son on pages 136-39 [Shepherd’s May 4^th journal entry].  If you read nothing else, read this.  It’s some of the best dialogue in the book.

Another prominent character to emerge later in the story is Violet Brown, of the “peculiar antique grammar,” to whom Shepherd, inviting her to become his secretary, writes, “… your discretion is prodigious. You resisted the siren song of tattle.  The seams of your character must be sewn with steel thread.”   Violet emerges as a character worthy of a book of her own.  Strong-willed, independent-minded, seventeen years Shepherd’s senior, she becomes his private secretary in Ashville, North Carolina in the 1940’s, and eventual his archivist after his presumptive death.  She has broken away from an uncomprehending Carolina hill family to pursue a dream of independence and travel. 

Harrison William Shepherd was born in 1916 just outside of Washington, D.C. in Virginia of a Mexican mother, Solomé, and an American father – “a claims accountant in her father’s firm who was helpless before her charms.”  She was under age, but as Shepherd himself writes,  “She solved the mathematical problem of age sixteen by saying she was twenty.  At twenty-four she said the same thing again, balancing the equation.  She became Sally, confirmed in the church of expediency.” 

From the very beginning, Shepherd was caught between two cultures.  Subject to a chaotic existence, he was tethered to a woman whose restless devotion to motherhood was tenuous – at times deniable, if judged an impediment to attracting a man.  Blessed with a keen intelligence and natural gifts of a writer, Shepherd is destined to make sense of it all by writing journals throughout his early years.

When Shepherd was ten years old or so, his mother ran off with him to Mexico to live with Enrique, a wealthy Mexican landowner of several oil rich properties.  Enrique planted her and her son in an isolated hacienda on a plantation island called Isla Pixol, far from the exciting urban life she had imagined.  It is on Isla Pixol that Shepherd’s story begins. 

Solomé is enamored of the post-World War I flapper craze.  Life on Isla Pixol is a great disappointment to a woman whose blood has been heated to boiling by the “Roaring Twenties.”  At one point, as Enrique is entertaining American oilmen with whom he is eager to make a deal, “Solomé tries to get them all to cut a rug.  She cranked up the Victrola and waved the mezcal bottle at the men, but they went to bed, leaving her fluttering around the parlor like a balloon of air, let go.”  That pretty well describes her life on Isla Pixol.  She is disdainful of the local natives and eager to make her escape.  As a boy free of prejudice and mentored by their cook, Leandro, Shepherd sees it differently. Shepherd writes admiringly of the couples dancing at a festival in the square, “…girls with red yarn braided into their hair and wound around their heads in thick crowns.  Their white dresses swirled like froth, with skirts so wide they could take the hems in their fingertips and raise them up to make sudden wings, like butterflies, fluttering as they turned.  The men’s high-heeled boots cut hard at the ground, drumming like penned stallions.  ‘Indian girls,’ his mother spat.  ‘What kind of man would chase after that?  A corn-eater will never be any more than she is.’” 

To Shepherd young eyes, “The dancers were butterflies.”  To his mother, “From a hundred paces Solomé could see the dirt under these girls’ fingernails, but not their wings.”

It is at a newsstand in Isla Pixol that Shepherd persuades his mother to buy him a student’s pasteboard notebook in which to keep a journal.   It is here, also, that Leandro teaches Shepherd to cook.  And, it is Leandro who becomes Shepherd’s link to the Aztec and Mayan history and Mexico’s past that will become the subjects of his novels, later on. Eager to learn, Shepherd slips books out of “Enrique’s library, every wall was covered with wooden cabinets.  The room had no windows, only shelves, and all the book cabinets had iron grilles covering their fronts like prisoners’ windows… The square openings between the welded bars were just large enough for a fine-boned, long-fingered boy to put his hand through, like slipping on an iron bracelet.”   It is from these books that he becomes fascinated with Mexican history and learns of Cortes and Montezuma and the defeat of the Aztecs.  His journals begin to take shape with wonderfully descriptive entries like this, “No word is heard from the turkey that chased children from the yard all December.  He greets the New Year from the kitchen, a carcass of bones attended by his audience of flies.”  And he casts an observant, bemused eye on his surroundings and, particularly, his mother, “a museum of bad words”, who, according to his kitchen mentor, Leandro, “… can’t even remember the day she gave you birth.  If an orphan boy is going to have any luck, he will have to make it himself.” 

It is on Isla Pixol as a boy of fourteen that Shepherd discovers the “Lacuna” – the underwater cave and the thematic metaphor of the book.  On the opposite side of the island, the cave is accessible only when the tide and the moon are perfectly aligned.  After several failed attempts and much study, Shepherd discovers that if you wait for a full moon and a flood tide, a tall boy of fourteen who is a strong swimmer can swim through the cave and surface in a saltwater pool in the center of the jungle; a pool that turns out to be the center of an ancient ruin and site of countless human sacrifices.  Here’s another sample of Kingsolver’s magical prose.

“Amate trees stood in a circle around the water hole like curious men, gaping because a boy from another world had suddenly arrived in their pool.  The Pombo trees squatted for a close look, with the knobbly wooden knees poking up out of the water.  A tiger heron stood one-legged on a rock, cocking an unfriendly eye at the intruder.  San Jaun Pescadero the kingfisher zipped back and forth between two perches, crying, ‘Kill him hill him kill him!’ …. It was like coming up inside of a storybook.  An ancient temple in the forest, a pirates cave down below.”

It isn’t long before Solomé looks for an escape route and finds it by charming “Mr. Produce The Cash” from Mexico City while Enrique is away on one of his many trips visiting his other properties.   “Mr. P.T. Cash” eventually affects her escape to Mexico City to become Mr. Cash’s “casa chica” in a small apartment above a bakery.  Harrison Shepherd writes in his journal, “Mother says a casa chica means probably his wife knows about her but doesn’t mind.”

It is in Mexico City that Shepherd becomes acquainted with Diego Rivera and his wife, Freda Kaylo.   Quit by chance, due to his experience mixing dough in Leandro’s kitchen, Shepherd becomes a plaster mixer for Diego Rivera, who is painting a mural in a public building.  When Rivera goes off to work on another project, Shepherd is left with nothing to do but go to school.  “School or a job is the only choice,”  His mother says.  Failing to gain entrance into the Preparatoria, he “begins a year of all suffering at the School of Cretins, Deaf Mutes, and Boys of Bad Character…”

“For a son on the wrong track, Mother has found a different set of rails and packed him off on them.  ‘Lock, stock, and barrel’, she said.”  He is sent to Washington, where his father immediately enrolls him in the Potomac Academy just outside Washington, D.C.   Arriving from Mexico in winter, Shepherd is introduced to “nostril ice.”

“Mathematics: the worst.  Nothing past the tables de multiplicar will ever fit in this calabash.  Algebra, a language spoken on the moon.  For a boy with no plans to go there,” he writes.

It was while enrolled at Potomac Academy – “A prison camp in brick buildings built to look like mansions, where native leaders called Officers rule over the captives” – that Shepherd witnesses, in 1932, McArthur’s infamous rout and burning of the shantytown built by the “Bonus Army,” 17,000 starving veterans of WW I, and their families, camped in Washington seeking bonus’ that they had been promised and of which they were in desperate need.   It was also here that Shepherd – described later in the book by his lawyer as “disqualified from service on account of sexual indifference to the female of the species…” – was caught in some unspecified sexual encounter with another student and expelled.   Later on, as the FBI is pursuing Shepherd, he burns the journal covering this period – another of the many “lacunas” of this story.

Shepherd returns to Mexico City and is hired as a cook and private secretary by Diego Rivera.  Gradually, he becomes a confidant and close friend of Freda Kaylo and chronicles (under Freda’s cautious, watchful eye) the arrival and exile of Leon Trotsky and his wife.  When Trotsky’s party move into another villa, Shepherd joins them there as one of Trotsky’s personal secretaries.  There is much turmoil that I am glossing over here, like the explosive affair between Trotsky and Freda, and the plotting of Stalin’s agent assassin, and Shepherd’s mother’s death. 

When Trotsky is murdered, all of Shepherd’s journals, and much else of monetary value, are confiscated by the Mexico City police.  As far as Shepherd is concerned, they’ve confiscated his soul, bringing his writing career to a halt.

After Trotsky’s assassination in 1940, Freda arranges for Shepherd to reenter the US as her agent to accompany her traveling exhibit of paintings destined to various cities in the US.  It is this experience that eventually earns him a job with the US Government, moving artwork for safe keeping during the war from Washington to the Biltmore Estate in Ashville, North Carolina.

Shepherd’s father has died, leaving him a roadster, which he drives south.  He settles in Ashville.  Eventually, he opens a crate of a painting that Freda sent with him to “Gringolandia” that contained one small painting, a gift to Shepherd.  Living in a rooming house, he had put off opening the crate but, when he finally does, he finds that Freda has packed it with all of his journals, which she had rescued, by unspecified means, from the police.  This is the catalyst that reignites Shepherds passion to write again.  He embarks on a writing career in earnest, writing historical novels set in ancient Mexico – novels that filled the “lacuna” of life missing from all the Aztec temples and hieroglyphs.

I

f the New Deal and the rise in interest in communism and socialism during the depression was in reaction to a capitalist system run amuck that had failed the majority of Americans and was, in most peoples minds, the root cause of the depression, then the post-war McCarthy witch-hunt was right-wing America’s revenge!   Thousands of Americans were caught up in the web of suspicion; and anyone who might have toyed with socialism or communism before the war was fair game.  Imagine the fate of a recently celebrated, well-known author, a closeted gay, Mexican-American man, living in Ashville, North Carolina, who had been associated with Diego Rivera, Freda Kaylo (both self-declared communists) and had served as secretary to the Russian revolutionary leader, Leon Trotsky.   This is Shepherd’s fate.  Questioned by the FBI, shunned by friends and neighbors, summoned by the ‘House Subcommittee on un-American Activities’, his publishing contracts cancelled – this is what Shepherd faces during the final chapters of ‘The Lacuna’.  All that is missing from newspaper accounts is the truth.  Slowly, the noose closes in around him.  Death seems the only escape.

So.  Harrison Shepherd is a Mexican-American boy who grows to become a celebrated American writer of historical novels that recreate Aztec and Mayan culture.  He bounces between the US and Mexico.   His mother runs off with him to Isle Pixol, Mexico, and then sends him back to Washington, (or as Freda Kahlo sardonically refers to it, “Throne of the kingdom of Gringolandia”), then back to Mexico, then back to the US, settling for a time in Ashville, North Carolina, (home town of author Tom Wolfe and the Biltmore estate of George Vanderbilt) where he lives from about 1940s until 1951. In 1951 he disappears – presumably, suicide by drowning – during a surreptitious return visit to Isla Pixol, Mexico.

As I said at the outset, the title, ‘The Lacuna,’ represents many things.  The most obvious is the cave on Isla Pixol.  It also refers to a missing journal that turns up after Shepherd’s death.  But it seems to stand, also, for the missing history of the Aztecs and Mayans, whose monuments and hieroglyphs are all that remain of a rich, vibrant culture.  And it stands for the truth that so often is missing from news accounts of events and the lives and of people we think we know, but superficially.  The recurring theme of the book is expressed this way: “That you can’t really know the person standing before you, because always there is some missing piece.”  Whether describing historical figures such as Rivera, Freda or Trotsky, or describing fictional characters such as Shepherd or even his own Mother, or Violet Brown, our understanding of them is only an approximation.  

In form, the novel is a brilliant construction.  The first chapter is memoir.  The remainder consists of a series of journals and “archivist notes”, published “posthumously” fifty years after Shepherd’s reported death.  The first chapter is written and abandoned in the late 1940s by Shepherd himself, by then a successful author.  The memoir was begun reluctantly at the urging of his determined assistant, Violet Brown. The “Lacuna,” here referring to a missing 2nd journal, is Shepherd’s excuse for abandoning the project.  But, at this stage in our nation’s history, there is a darker secret he is reluctant to expose.  Violet Brown, seventeen years older than Shepherd, becomes the “Archivists” in the novel, posthumously editing his journals for publication.  At a time when the FBI is pursuing Shepherd in the late 1940s, he instructs Violet to burn all of his journals, but she secretly saves them by pretending to burn them in the backyard of his Ashville home, and then hiding them at her rooming house.  Upon Freda’s death in 1954, Violet receives the missing 2^nd journal. This contains a crucial detail of his early years on Isla Pixol that resolves the mystery of his “death” and, consequently, provides great comfort to Violet, for he has certainly become the ‘lacuna’ in her heart.

Barbara Kingsolver has sewn history and fiction together so skillfully, it’s impossible to see the seams.  ‘The Lacuna’ is a brilliant work – rich in imaginative, descriptive language, humor, characters and pitch-perfect dialogue.  You will linger over dazzling passages, tossing them around on your tongue.  It’s also alive with something more difficult to describe – organic relationships that grow out of intimate knowledge, acceptance, and devotion.  This is the perfect “slow read” – a book that you’ll want to go through with a highlighter and spend hours returning to the passages that gave you pleasure.  I included just a few of the hundreds I highlighted to illustrate my point, but repeating them out of context only diminishes their effect, so I’ll close by simply saying, read this book slowly.  It will delight you.

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(c) Paul Schlieben 2010