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Review: Withering by Kellie Elmore

8/28/2014

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It is not often we encounter a protagonist who meets things head-on while his mental faculties are crumbling. But that is exactly what Elmer does in Withering by Kellie Elmore. At the outset, his remaining friend with similar past and current circumstances finds the only way to maintain his independence is to take his life rather than be placed in a home. It gives context to Elmer, trapped in a New Mexican trailer park by his failing health. Elmer seems to be fully aware and in the present as we see his interactions with his case worker, new at her job, but genuinely caring. As the story progresses, we come to realize that Elmer is not only physically disabled, but is suffering from a mental disorder as well, which causes lapses into better times of the past. He has alienated his neighbors with his bitterness, along with his children. He still loves his wife, who left him long ago for another, and she remains very real in his flashbacks, beautiful and happy. Only his dog Charlie provides some solace for his present loneliness.

 

Elmer wanted to be a writer, but gave that up to provide as best he could, ultimately leading to his accident at work and disability. He still keeps journals, and they are full of entries as beautiful as Ms. Elmore’s prose. He writes with lucidity and craft, and in few, poetic words, captures his past and present experiences. These excerpts are framed in the unfolding story, full of sensory stimuli to share his situation. We can smell the musty air of the trailer, blink at the blinding New Mexican sunlight, feel the fur of the dog as he is petted, and sense the change in the dry desert air as a storm unfolds. It is a bleak picture as we see Elmer’s life contract further and further, understanding more and more about him, but it is a beautiful and eloquent exposition of decay, sadness and bitterness.

 

Ultimately, he is lucid enough to take stock and see things as they are. He does this on his own terms and in his own way, with a unique kind of decisive bravery. There is a last gesture of kindness he shows a boy, displaying the vestiges of a once generous heart that has been diminished and constrained by the ruins of his life. One might be inclined to see Elmer ultimately as a failure, but in fact, he has ceded no control nor permitted himself any self-pity nor allowed himself to be stacked away with the old and infirm like cordwood. This, to me, makes him a hero, and the book worth reading.

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The liberal arts

8/10/2014

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I was reading The Cave and the Light  by Arthur Herman given to me by my daughter. Herman was discussing Gerbert of Aurillac, later to become Pope Silvester II in 999, who he describes as "the greatest teacher and scholar of his generation." In the context of this, he notes the study of grammar, rhetoric, logic, astronomy, music, geometry and arithmetic as being a late-Roman invention called the liberal arts. They were so-called because they were education fit for free men (liberi) as opposed to slaves. See also The Seven Liberal Arts in the Middle Ages edited by David Wagner.

Our society does not consider these things as befitting free men today, rather as an education suited for people who ask "...and do you want fries with that?" Aside from the sciences, which have drifted in their purview from the late Roman era, our educational system places little value on music, and students consider the mathematical sciences as painful things to be endured, never to be used again unless you become an engineer or have a career involving numbers. I am not sure if grammar is studied much at all, and rhetoric is certainly not, just like logic but for the mathematical variety for a few studying probability or computer sciences. 

I believe this absence of value placed on a liberal education is why we are an inarticulate society moving from disaster to disaster. One assumes there is something to be said in the public forum (which may not be the case), and our language gives us the ability to communicate it in public debate. Instead, to paraphrase the language of Jose Ortega y Gasset, in our mass society we have a competing elite passing off the low-grade rhetoric of shipwrecked ideas as genuine thinking on the issues of the day. And we as a society are not discerning enough to recognize it for what it is and demand more or better leaders.

Have you ever noticed that our leadership, elected, aspiring or self-regarded, speak in what they consider the language of the people in catch-phrases of mass media or keywords of their constituencies? They are all thinkin' and workin' in our interests, and they have no idea what our interests are, or perhaps no genuine concern. As soon as you hear the "g" disappear from the public addresses of anyone, especially this elite of Rhodes scholars and Ivy League alums, products of the very best educations that can be had, then stop listening and hold you wallets tightly. They are trying to make you think they are like you and convince you to go along with things that are clearly not in your interests, obvious were a few moments of evaluation spent on what they are saying.

I would suggest you shake their hands some time. I went to a fund raising event for politicians when I was very young with my father, who was a union organizer. I shook hands with some local political luminary. I asked my father why his hand was so soft when I shook it, like a woman's hand, so very unlike my father's hand. He explained that it was because he had never worked a day in his life. And these are the leaders who try to convince us they are like us and have our interests in mind.

If we go back to the idea of a liberal education, we all being free men and women, we are equipped to discern the truth from the marketing. If we permit our children to be the uneducated products of failing educational systems that are being forced into models on a business paradigm, we are equipping them to be slaves. We can do better.

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    William Serad is a man who loves words and music and is interested in just about everything.

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