Winterdance

‘Do you like the race so far?’

I looked at her, trying to find sarcasm, but she was serious; she really wanted to know. And I thought of how to answer her.

I had gotten lost, been run over by a moose, watched a dog get killed, seen a man cry, dragged over a third of the teams off on the wrong trail, and been absolutely hammered by beauty while all this was happening. (It was, I would find later, essentially a normal Iditarod day — perhaps a bit calmer than most.) I opened my mouth.

‘I …’

Nothing came. She patted my arm and nodded. ‘I understand. It’s so early in the race. There’ll be more later to talk about …’

And she left me before I could tell her that I thought my whole life had changed, that my basic understanding of values had changed, that I wasn’t sure if I would ever recover, that I had seen god and he was a dog-man and that nothing, ever, would be the same for me again, and it was only the first true checkpoint of the race.

I had come just one hundred miles.

Gary Paulsen is an award-winning writer of adventure stories for children and young adults and Winterdance is a wonderful account of his experiences on the world’s greatest dog-sledding race, the Iditarod.

I absolutely loved this book and it made me want to run the Iditarod for myself. I appreciate that there is controversy about how some of the dogs are treated (over 140 dogs have died since the race’s start in 1973) but if Paulsen’s account is anything approaching a typical experience then the majority of the dogs are treated extremely well. Part of this is pure survival – your life literally depends on these dogs.

Two of the things I loved about this book was the bond between man and dog as well as Paulsen’s prose style. Paulsen describes in wonderful detail the change that he undergoes as he lives with the dogs all the time and really gets to know them (including the aptly-named crazy Canadian Eskimo dog Devil) in preparation for the race. The second part describes the race itself – from the ‘phony start’ in downtown Anchorage to the treacherous descents of Rainy Pass, the bone-chilling cold of the Yukon and the starkly beautiful Norton Sound.

This is an adrenalin-filled, funny, life-affirming account of a 43-year old Minnesota man’s journey with 15 dogs on the ultimate dog-sledding race. Easily one of the best books I’ve read this year.

**

I would also recommend watching a clip of the type of sledding that the mushers experience on the Iditarod. Having read Paulsen’s book, I was expecting  a hair-raising crash-filled dash with larger-than-life dog-wolves. The reality is a lot more sedate – until they get to the downhill part. And bear in mind that this clip is taken by one of the experts, a four-time Iditarod winner.

The Chymical Wedding

Alex Darken is a poet, father of two, lecturer at the Poly, and he’s in crisis. His marriage has fallen apart and he’s retreated to a cottage in Norfolk to lick his wounds and gain perspective. There he falls under the influence of an alcoholic, elderly poet (Edward) and a beautiful, troubled psychic, Laura. Together they “pursue the alchemical and personal secrets of the spirited Louisa Agnew”, a woman who is the centre of a parallel story from 140 years before. In this second narrative, Louisa follows her father’s obsession by devoting herself to the Hermetic arts, which in turn forces her to “confront her own dark side and her feelings for a tormented minister”.

I really enjoyed this novel. The modern-day story of Alex, Edward and Laura on the one hand and the intricate Victorian-era tale of Louisa, her father and the tormented reverend Edwin on the other. What made it particularly interesting from a psychology point of view was the way Lindsay Clarke draws on Carl Jung’s work on psychology and alchemy, which made me want to explore this area again.

I’ve always admired Jung’s emphasis on integration and his instruction that in order to be psychologically whole, we need to come to terms with our shadows or darker sides. In Psychology and Alchemy, Jung makes an analogy between the great task of the alchemists and the process of reintegration and individuation of the psyche in the modern psychotherapy patient.

On one level, alchemy is about turning base metals into noble ones (silver and gold) while at a psychological level it describes a more symbolic process of transformation. When we engage in psychotherapy, Jung says, we are engaged in a process of transforming ourselves. The difficult experiences of our daily lives are changed through the act of working on them and more significantly, like the alchemists, we ourselves are transformed.

If you’re interested in reading more about Jung’s Psychology and Alchemy, a good place to start would be the Wikipedia entry. In the novel there is also a lovely description of the process of firing up a kiln, which draws on the language of alchemy to describe the transformation through fire of moulded clay into a beautifully glazed work of art.

But to return to the novel, at one level it is a coming-of-age story and both Alex Darken and Louisa Agnew need to grow up and take responsibility for the different aspects of who they are. But while Alex emerges from the novel seemingly refreshed and ready to take up the challenges once again, Louisa is much more restricted by her circumstances. There’s an interesting aside here in that Clarke based his story on the real-life story of Mary-Ann Atwood. Like Louisa Agnew, Atwood published an alchemical book which she then withdrew at the request of her father. But unlike Louisa, Mary-Ann Atwood was able to marry and live a more fulfilled life.

A couple of gripes here. Firstly, some of the descriptions of alchemy and the hermetic arts were too wordy and detailed for my liking. Secondly, it struck me how much the novel both draws on psychology while also ignoring it. There’s the issue of psychotherapy for a start – none of the characters even contemplate it in the face of pretty serious ‘life events’. And while therapy would (hopefully) offer a calm, containing environment to sort through any number of disturbing thoughts and feelings, that doesn’t of course make for a thrilling novel. Much more exciting to have wild unconscious forces at work than to talk them through on the couch.

There is one passage though, which I thought beautifully captured for me what therapy can be about. Edwin Frere, the troubled Victorian priest, seeks out Louisa Agnew’s advice late at night:

And someone was there who listened. She listened without judgement, with concern and a tender regard for every difficulty in which he struggled. There were moments when he dared to look up into the searching blue of her eyes and he might have believed it possible to say anything — anything and everything of his shame and rage, his fears and his fathomless dread. Never had he felt himself in the presence of so receptive a spirit. She was more truly priest than he was himself. She would silence nothing, forbid nothing. She would exhort nothing but such measure of honesty as he felt able to share.

I’d love to hear your opinions if you’ve read this novel. I was thinking that it qualifies as a psychological thriller (although not in the conventional sense) and it may well turn out to be one of the more interesting novels I read this year.

The White Tiger

When I first encountered The White Tiger, Aravind Adiga’s 2008 Booker-prize winning novel about class, the caste system, corruption, violence, poverty and India’s emerging super-rich, I wasn’t that interested. Another novel about violence, I thought. Balram Halwai, the chauffeur and main character, was bound to be a bit like the tigerish bully in The Life of Pi. I didn’t want to read about bullies. I wanted the gentle and rare over the brutish and personality-disordered.

Well yes, Balram (the White Tiger of the title) is a bully, but he is also sensitive in his own way. His mother dies when he’s still young, his father works himself to death as a rickshaw-puller and Balram’s extended family live in grinding poverty in an oppressive feudal-like class system in the poor state of Bihar in North-Eastern India. Balram, like the once-in-a-generation White Tiger of the title, is different, however. He might be a man who is still afraid of lizards and who bows and scrapes before his bosses, but he is special. He is intelligent, cunning, ambitious and lucky and is able to rise above his very limited circumstances.

This year I picked it up again and I was pleasantly surprised at how readable (and also interesting and disturbing) it is. The starting point is a rather awkward framing-device. Balram writes a letter in seven parts over seven nights to Chinese premier Wen Jiabao. Halwai, who is in hiding in Bangalore after killing his boss and stealing a large amount of money, hears that the Chinese premier is coming to Bangalore to learn about Indian entrepreneurs, and decides to tell his story.

And it is an interesting story, which opened my eyes to some of the vast complexity of India’s class system. Balram is a poor, uneducated (but quite intelligent) young man when he gets his lucky break as a chauffeur to one of India’s emerging rich families. His immediate boss Ashok is the son of a powerful landlord from Balram’s childhood village.

Through cunning, bullying and luck, Balram gets to drive the American-educated son Ashok and his American-Indian wife ‘Pinky Madam’ to New Delhi where they live in an expensive apartment, Buckingham Towers B, while the servants live in a maze of poorer rooms below ground. Balram and Ashok start out good and relatively innocent and quite quickly become corrupted. Pinky Madam runs over a child in freak drunk driving accident, Balram takes the rap, and this spirals into a situation in which Balram murders his boss and steals a massive bribe which was intended for one of the country’s ministers. In making a new life for himself in Bangalore as the owner of a taxi business, he becomes a symbol of the new Indian entrepreneur.

As implausible as I found the ending, what I did find interesting was the master-servant relationship between Ashok and Balram. I was also interested to see how the novel had been received. Reviewers praised the searing intensity with which Adiga dissects India’s economic and social problems but also panned the crude simplicity of this portrayal. Characters here are rich or poor, black or white. There’s no middle class moderation and gentle upward advancement. (Adiga compares himself with Dickens and there are also comparisons with Zola). Some reviewers praised the novel’s gritty realism and then either commended or criticised Adiga’s attempt to capture the sense (if not the essence or the vocabulary) of a desperate North Indian working class man’s subjectivity. The task is a massive one and I’m not in a position to judge how well Adiga has fared there. One thing that does strike me is that this is a well educated man’s attempt to imagine himself into a working class character’s life. It’s not bad (jarring in some places perhaps) but also not entirely convincing.

Three other comments to make. Firstly, Adiga does a good job of describing the narcissism which pervades oppressive class arrangements. The exploitation, lack of empathy and general lack of sensitivity are shocking. It is not hard to imagine that corruption and ultimately murder are the logical outcomes of such an oppressive system.

Secondly, women get a very bad rap in The White Tiger and that is another major weakness for me. Of course, Balram is a narcissistic murderer and thief and so we shouldn’t expect him to be very rational and objective in his views on fellow Indians. But the stereotypes here are too extreme. All politicians appear to be corrupt. All women (admittedly viewed through Balram’s distorted view) are prostitutes, simple, narrow-minded wives, or cruel matriarchs.

Thirdly, I was interested (and also disappointed) to hear that The White Tiger beat Sebastian Barry’s The Secret Scripture to the 2008 Booker prize – apparently because Anne Enright had won the year before and it was not considered advisable to award the prize to an Irish novelist two years in a row. I’ve been wondering whether more violent novels (and I would include The Slap here) garner critical acclaim because of their shock value. Do they reflect society more accurately than the gentler novels?

But as a starting point in reflecting the new India with its globalised multinational companies, its vast disparities of rich and poor and some of the multitude of stories that lie underneath the glossy surface of the “world’s largest democracy”, The White Tiger is worth a read.

On turning 43 and reading Bluets

Pictures of Kirstenbosch this past Saturday. Late summer sun shining on Castle Rock. Red balloons in the trees. A quiet bench. I was in a bit of a mood. Still digesting turning another year older (43). Nothing to feel bad about really. Tea on my birthday with family two days earlier. Lovely presents (including some really interesting books, many of them chosen by me).

Admittedly Leah had a complete meltdown on the evening of my birthday. It was a good thing we hadn’t planned to go out. Screaming. Refusing supper, bath, bottle, bed. Climbing out of her bed. Telling L and I to “Go away!” It’s all relative of course. I told L that I thought our daughter had the beginnings of a mood disorder. “This is not normal! Our daughter will end up with Bipolar.” L in tears.

So to Kirstenbosch on the Saturday. By myself for an hour. A book (Bluets) to finish but I was disappointed. I loved parts of this book but as a whole it was disappointing. As a memoir there was so much she left out. As a meditation on the colour blue and what it meant to her in that period of her life it was amazingly powerful but also …. skimpy perhaps? It didn’t fit the mould of memoirs that I’m used to.

But as always, just thinking about this book makes me appreciate it more. And I know that when Litlove reviews it, I will see it again in a whole new light. But on Saturday I was grumpy. And the book didn’t help. I think she captured the intangibility of the colour blue and also the intensity of emotion. (Very crude plot summary: she was a bit depressed at the end of a relationship.) The result was a disturbing but also inspirational read. We love (people, colours, things) and then those things disappoint us. Life goes on.

Tempted by audio

1. I’m seriously tempted to buy some more audiobooks. I know that I often don’t have the time or the energy to read so it might be easier just to listen instead.

Wolf Hall or The Examined Life? I’m really interested in Stephen Grosz’s account of 50,000 hours of being a psychotherapist. This is just the kind of book that I like. Purrr.

2. I enjoyed Netherland by Joseph O’ Neill but I also found it a bit boring in parts. However, since I finished it and read an interview with the author I’ve been thinking about it a lot more. There was the whole comparison with The Great Gatsby which completely passed me by but which now makes perfect sense. Chuck Ramkissoon and Jay Gatsby. Both self-made men embodying the American Dream. Both idealists who are brought down by their own greed. And the voice of Hans van de Broek has also stayed with me (and the comparison with Nick from the The Great Gatsby). I found the descriptions of cricket in the US charming. And I’ve warmed to the book a lot more now that I know that Joseph O’ Neill lived in the Netherlands and the UK himself. I presumed (quite wrongly) that he had decided to make his lead character Dutch on a whim.

Friday Bullets

• The Interpretation of Dreams by Freud promised much but it’s proving a slow read. Freud can be wonderfully chatty and interesting but he also takes ages to support his arguments. I’m also reading it on a Kindle which I find is better suited to reading fiction. For one thing, I don’t get the chance to flick backwards and forwards, gaze at the cover, read the blurb, and gauge my progress. My Kindle just tells me that I’m at 38% of the way through.

• Sweet Tooth by Ian McEwan is about Serena Frome, a young Cambridge graduate who gets groomed to work in the British Intelligence services (MI6) in the early 1970s. The sweet tooth of the title is a project to finance promising writers who have the right (that is, not pro-Communist) attitudes. Serena soon becomes romantically involved with her writer and I’m guessing that this sparks off all kinds of problems. McEwan is a masterful storyteller and there’s just enough intrigue to keep me engaged. The only snag at the moment is that her writer is not terribly good (although he does have a lot of promise).

• Susan Cain’s Quiet is brilliant. The blurb says it’s about ‘the power of introverts in a world that can’t stop talking’. Cain has done extensive research into extroversion and introversion and she explains it all so well, and with so many relevant examples, that it is a pleasure to read. I’m quite taken with being an introvert at the moment and Cain reassures us that introverts are important and need to be nurtured. She also debunks the extrovert ideal without devaluing the values of being sociable. At the moment she’s discussing the genetics of high reactives versus low reactives and I’m guessing that it’s the high reactives (or the introverts) who will take great comfort in knowing that there’s nothing wrong with them, they just get over-stimulated quite easily by all the sensory input around them.

• Two years ago L and I got married and had a child. It’s been a wonderful two years in some ways and a really exhausting and frustrating two years in others. “No-one tells you about the tiredness” would be one theme from a post like that. And even if they did tell us, we probably didn’t believe them. Early parenting is not the best environment for nurturing a relationship. And a youngish relationship is probably not the best environment for nurturing a child either. Ah well, we muddle along.

• Leah has started playschool and is enjoying it. Yesterday she didn’t cry when her granny dropped her off, which was a bonus. She seems to have grasped the idea that after three hours someone will come and fetch her. The group is small, the people are kind and she has made a friend. 🙂

• I’ve been neglecting the psychology side of this blog. There are interesting books to discuss, interesting articles to explore and, as always, new psychology-related blogs to find. But I’ve been ignoring my own psychology journey and I’m not sure that this is the right place for me to talk about that. Should I stay or should I go? Perhaps the year will bring greater clarity on that.

Winter reading

It’s the last day of my winter holiday here and it’s been so good to have some time to read and write. Not as much time as I would like — but I have new respect for all those mothers and fathers who balance childcare and writing / research. This past week I’ve been getting to my office at about 10am and have been relishing in the freedom to do what I like. I am way behind on blog-reading but my research is pretty much on track and I also managed to finish two books over the holidays and am busy with four more.

The Gift of Rain is the story of Philip Khoo-Hutton, a young Chinese-English boy’s relationship with his Japanese sensei before and during the Second World War. I took a while to get into this novel but I loved the descriptions of Penang, the island just off Malaysia where the book is set, the philosophy of martial arts that Philip must learn and the different groups of people (Chinese, Japanese, English, Indian) that populate the novel.

At first I wasn’t that moved by the relationship between Philip and Endo-san (his sensei) but as the Japanese occupation of Malaya unfolds, this sets up unbearable tensions in Philip’s life. The son of a wealthy English businessman and a Chinese mother, Philip straddles two worlds and his relationship with his Japanese sensei means that during the war he is involved on all sides of the conflict. The terrible cruelty of the Japanese, the suffering and resistance of the Chinese, the hardships and failings of the English all blend together in making him who he is. It’s a good story (if a trifle unbelievable at time – for example the emphasis on reincarnation and how this binds Philip and Endo-san together) and I was extremely curious to see how it would end. I was also glad to read a different perspective on the war (and a Chinese one as well) and it gave me a better understanding of Chinese, Malaysian and Japanese ways of life.

A Death in the Familyis an excellent if somewhat controversial memoir. Karl Ove Knausgaard has been a publishing sensation in his native Norway and I can see why. He writes with the skill of a novelist and his ‘merciless frankness’ is refreshing. At the heart of this story is his relationship with his stern (and later alcoholic) father but it is also a reflection on his life so far. He was under 40 when he wrote this memoir and I listened to an interview in which he described how he has had to shut himself off from any reviews and reactions in order to complete the next books in the series. At the moment I am reliving his adolescence with him and I am amazed at his candour. For example, he describes in some detail his first friendships and relationships and I couldn’t help wondering how the girls that he talks about (as well as his male friends) have taken to their details being shared like this.

Another book revelation has been Project Gutenberg, which is a site dedicated to free ebooks (mostly older books that are out of copyright). The most popular download so far has been an audiobook (as well as the text) of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and I snapped it up. I’ve listened to ‘A Scandal in Bohemia’ and am really interested to see how timeless but also a little dated Sherlock Holmes is. We are all so familiar with grisly detective stories that this mystery has a quite innocent quality about it. The detective story formula works so well here that it is lovely to see one of the earliest examples of it.

Psychology-wise, I’m taking a break from anger research and have started Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams. I didn’t realize how chatty he can be! And his thoroughness in analyzing his own dreams is quite inspirational. Lately I find that my dreams slip from my grasp before I can catch them but I know from experience that if the dream is important enough, it will allow me to get some glimpse of it.

Lastly, I am filling in the reading gaps (small as they are) with Zadie Smith’s collection of essays Changing My Mind. I won’t describe them here but she writes beautifully.

If only I had another three weeks (preferably in a warmer climate) to read all of these. The next big break will be December. I imagine that some of these may still be on the go then.

The Dance of Anger

‘Stand like a mountain, bend like grass. It’s at the heart of having both a marriage and a self.’ I love this quote from Harriet Lerner’s Huffington Post blog because it sums up much of what I think psychology is all about — the relationship between self and other.

Harriet Lerner is a clinical psychologist, one of the US’s foremost relationship experts and an author who has ‘dedicated her writing life to translating complex theory into accessible and useful prose’. Her 1985 classic The Dance of Anger is one of those books that I wish I had read years and years ago. As someone who has had my fair share of ‘anger issues’ over the years, I could really have used her calm advice on how to use anger in a productive way to improve my relationships.

This is the opening paragraph:

‘Anger is a signal and one worth listening to. Our anger may be a message that we are being hurt, that our rights are being violated, that our needs or wants are not being adequately met, or simply that something is not right. Our anger may tell us that we are not addressing an important emotional issue in our lives, or that too much of the self – our beliefs, values, desires or ambitions – is being compromised in a relationship. Our anger may be a signal that we are doing more and giving more than we can comfortably do or give. Or our anger may warn us that others are doing too much for us, at the expense of our own competence and growth.’ — Dance of Anger, p.1

Great opening I thought. Any reservations that this book is just for women (the subtitle is A Woman’s Guide to Changing the Pattern of Intimate Relationships) were quickly dispelled. After all, men have just as much difficulty defining themselves and how to balance those selves in relationships as women do.

One of the things that Lerner does here is to use practical examples from her own life and those of her patients to explain typical relationship pitfalls. For example, she and her husband Steve (also a clinical psychologist) used to get into major arguments when their first son was six months old. Harriet was worried that their son was developmentally delayed while Steve refused to acknowledge the possibility. The two of them would get into a repetitive pattern in which she would get more and more worried and he would distance and minimise:

The more I expressed worry and concern, the more Steve distanced and minimised; the more he distanced and minimised, the more I exaggerated my position. This sequence would escalate until it finally became intolerable, at which point each of us would angrily point the finger at the other for ‘starting it’.

As it turns out, their son wasn’t delayed but their arguments about it became particularly unhelpful. As Lerner explains, venting anger in the form of complaining at your partner usually doesn’t solve the problem.

If feeling angry signals a problem, then venting anger does not solve it. Venting anger may serve to maintain, and even rigidify, the old rules and patterns in a relationship, thus ensuring that change does not occur. When emotional intensity is high, many of us engage in non-productive efforts to change the other person, and in so doing, fail to exercise our power to clarify and change our own selves.

She then makes a helpful distinction between two typical female styles of anger: ‘nice lady’ and ‘bitchy woman’. Nice ladies keep anger to themselves and avoid making clear statements about what they think and feel ‘when we suspect that such clarity would make another person uncomfortable and expose the differences between us’. Society rewards them for their ‘niceness’ but the personal costs in terms of emotional and mental well-being are high.

In contrast, the ‘bitchy woman’ often gets into a ‘pattern of ineffective fighting, complaining and blaming that only preserves the status quo’. As Lerner says: “When we voice our anger ineffectively – without clarity, direction and control – it may in the end be reassuring to others. We allow ourselves to be written off and we provide others with an excuse not to take us seriously and hear what we are saying.”

The answer here is deceptively simple. Use anger as a tool for clarifying your own position and for changing relationships rather than blaming people:

1. Tune in to the true sources of our anger and clarify where we stand
2. Learn better communication skills
3. Learn to observe and interrupt non-productive patterns of interaction
4. Learn to anticipate and deal with countermoves and “change back” reactions from others.

Lerner does explain that it’s not as easy as it sounds and that families (and partners) will often do their best to try and resist that change. She provides example from all aspects of family life — one of the chapters is titled “Anger at our impossible mothers” while others deal with children, ageing parents and family triangles. Obviously patterns that have taken decades to develop require a lot of work to change but I found the scripted dialogues very helpful (if a trifle formulaic at times). I was surprised to see that the process of change could be summarised (at its most basic) to the rather bland-sounding steps of observation, clarifying the pattern and gathering data (as part of disrupting the pattern).

Interestingly, an important part of that data-gathering appeared to be going back to how previous generations dealt with similar issues. For example, a 50-year old woman struggling with an ageing father who is increasingly dependent on her, looks to previous generations to see how similar problems were solved in the past (and how people felt about those solutions). She is then able to choose an option which works best for her (while still being caring towards her father).

Lerner talks about “emotional hanging-in” and this was a particularly good point I thought. Applying her theories to our present situation in which our little one has meltdowns when she doesn’t get to watch “winna-pooh” has been helpful. Clarifying the boundary (e.g. once a day) and still being attuned to her emotionally seems to be the way to go here. In some ways the problem is hers in that she is having the tantrum but the problem is also ours in that we are the ones who don’t like her behaviour. Clarifying our position and remaining calm in the face of the meltdown seems to be a good way to keep that elusive balance between self and other. But I’ll let you know how we get along with that strategy!

All in all, an excellent read and one I’ll come back to in years to come (in addition to checking out The Dance of Connection, The Dance of Anxiety and her latest one, Marriage Rules).

Distractibility and all that

Ah, holidays! I’ve been looking forward to this two-week break for a while now but now that it’s actually here I’m struggling to get anything constructive done. I have a talk to prepare on “Managing ADHD in the classroom” for when we get back and it’s taking away the fun of my free time (that is, the time that’s not taken up with child-minding). What’s particularly un-fun about this talk is that it’s my first chance to address the whole staff in a detailed way, and it’s also scheduled for my birthday.

In order to prepare I’ve been reading up on the topic, surfing the net and watching YouTube videos. There is so much material out there on the subject that I would need several solid weeks in order to prepare properly. The main book on the subject seems to be Driven to Distraction by Ned Hallowell. Hallowell is a well-known child and adolescent psychiatrist in the U.S. and he suffers from ADHD and dyslexia himself. He starts off by describing the epiphany he had during his psychiatry training when he heard about ADHD and realised with one of those “Aha!” moments that it fitted him perfectly. I’m a little sceptical of those religious-conversion type experiences because I know from experience that they obscure as much as they reveal.

ADHD, in Hallowell’ book, becomes both a biological imperative and an identity. Emotions are secondary to biology, as are relationships. As I read further and further, I started feeling more and more uneasy. For millions of people (children and adults) apparently, they were being misunderstood and misdiagnosed and then along came the diagnosis of ADHD, and more importantly, the magic drug to treat it, methylphenidate, and their lives were turned around.

Anyway, I’ve found it helpful to read it with a critical eye. I’m not a great fan of the diagnosis. I can see how it can be very helpful, life-changing even, to parents and teachers who struggle to contain the distractibility, impulsivity and high activity which characterise children with this condition. But I’m also quite resistant to fashionable diagnoses. Ned Hallowell is careful to point out that ADHD is not a catch-all diagnosis and shouldn’t be over-diagnosed. But then he does exactly that. He sees ADHD everywhere — in narcissistic men, in couples, in alcoholics and people addicted to risky behaviour, in people with Borderline symptoms, in people suffering from depression and anxiety, and especially in children with behavioural problems. And a lot of this is actually pretty convincing. I started thinking that maybe ADHD is the answer after all.

But then I returned to my healthy scepticism and I’m also reassured in this position by the scepticism of people like Ken Robinson, the education consultant with those inspiring TED talks. Robinson points to a map of the east coast of the United States and shows how the prescription rate for Ritalin increases dramatically as you move eastwards towards Washington D.C. He calls ADHD a ‘fictitious epidemic” and likens it to the fad to take out children’s tonsils a few decades ago. He says that Ritalin anaesthetises children and turns them into zombies. Our job as educators, he says, should be to wake kids up and get them to focus on their emotions. All very well, I hear the teachers say, but it’s not waking these kids up that’s the problem. It’s getting them to calm down and focus.

I’ve heard Robinson describe a case where the mother takes her daughter to the doctor complaining that the girl won’t sit still and that she doesn’t focus. The doctor leaves the daughter in the waiting room with the radio playing and then takes the mom into his consulting room and listens to her story. After a few minutes they take a look to see what the daughter is doing. Sure enough, she’s moving around the room to the music and the doctor says to the mom, “Your daughter doesn’t have ADHD, she’s a dancer.” It’s a good story, especially for those teachers in the Arts who have to struggle to see their subjects taken as seriously as Mathematics and Science. But it’s precisely the subjects such as Maths which are the problem for these kids. They can’t focus well without a lot of help, and the teachers and parents just don’t have the time to sit with them individually and guide them every step of the way.

I’m also interested to see that Hallowell says very little about the miracle drug itself. I’d be interested in reading more about Ritalin, but a balanced account. These debates get very polarised.

Enough about ADHD. I thought I’d post a pic of our little one taking delight in her lego. (Taken at Betty’s Bay a couple of months ago.)

She is a real joy, that is when she isn’t giving us near heart-attacks at 4.30 in the morning by setting off the apnea alarm by rolling to the corner of her cot. L and I were both pretty fast asleep when we heard the loud beeping noises of the alarm and L made it to Leah’s bedroom in about two seconds with me close behind. As soon as I heard that Baby F was breathing I slowed down. That adrenaline surge is horrible. I understand the need for it but it pretty much ruined our morning. Well, the first part of it anyway.

L’s car is being fixed so all three of us made the trip to the hospital where L works and then it was off to the granny for tea and porridge and a walk with the dog.

Me: “That’s the whole point of the walk, in order for her to fall asleep.”

Granny: “No, we go for a walk for some fresh air and to see the birds and flowers.”

Me: “Well, we go for a walk so that she can fall asleep. Which is why we need bunny.”

And then to Leah, “silly old granny. I don’t know why she has to be so difficult”.

Granny had to laugh at that. But of course we did it her way.

Losing the Plot

The plan was to write a review of The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides. But the reality is that I’m struggling to finish the work that I have here let alone set more work for myself in tackling a review. Why did I want to review it? The simple answer is that I found it one of the more interesting books I’ve read this year. I haven’t read many books this year but this one made me wish I was part of a bookclub again so we could discuss it at length.

I loved this book and it also frustrated me. And I’m also very interested in how books reflect their authors. So please excuse the ‘wild analysis’ type of discussion below.

The Marriage Plot concerns three university students at Brown University in the early 1980s. Madeleine Hanna, Leonard Bankhead and Mitchell Grammaticus. Madeleine’s the all-American literary one, Leonard’s the brilliant-but-damaged one and Mitchell’s the religious-and-slightly-odd one. What drives the plot for much of the novel is the question of who Madeleine will choose. Will it be the brilliant-but-damaged Leonard or the more-stable-but-also-weird-in-his-own-way Mitchell? And behind that question seems to be a broader feminist awareness that women should not be defined by their choice of partner. There’s an interesting diversion into the ‘marriage plot’ of Victorian-era literature and also a reflection that however much we might try to be aware of the socially constructed nature of love and romance, people are very much still preoccupied with their most intimate relationships.

I’m not sure that this is the best way of putting it, but one question that I had was “Why is Madeleine such a sap?” Why does she allow herself to be so consumed by the relationship with Leonard? There were other questions that I had and one was around the extent to which Eugenides was influenced by David Foster Wallace (DFW) in his depiction of Leonard Bankhead. Readers who are convinced that Leonard is really DFW point to the brilliance, the bandana, the chewing tobacco and the Bipolar Mood Disorder. Eugenides does say that Leonard is not DFW and there is the glaring difference that Leonard is a Biology major and not a literary major. But some readers are not convinced. DFW was a major contemporary of Eugenides. DFW taught creative writing at Pomona College in California while Eugenides teaches creative writing at Princeton. Both of them are leading US writers of their generation.

There’s also the question of how closely Eugenides resembles his other leading man, Mitchell Grammaticus. Both of them are half-Greek, both are very interested in religion, and both (apparently) had awkward times as university students. Eugenides also says that Mitchell’s Indian trip was based very closely on Eugenides’ own trip to India around the same time. The danger here is that as readers we can assume that Mitchell = Eugenides. And what Eugenides is at pains to point out is that he resembles all three of his characters. He is able to draw on different aspects of himself to flesh out Madeleine, Mitchell and Leonard.

But just staying with the Mitchell = Eugenides and Leonard = DFW ideas for the moment, what does this say about the relationship between the two writers? Mitchell feels intense jealousy towards Leonard while Leonard is barely aware of Mitchell’s existence. As for Eugenides and DFW, both are very successful but I gather that DFW is considered the more brilliant of the two. Brilliant but damaged obviously since he ended up taking his life. If Madeleine represents the all-American reader then she is far more enamored with DFW than with Eugenides, at least for a while. I know that this is a very ‘wild analysis’ type of literary interpretation. But then we always bring our own ideas to the text anyway so maybe this says more about my own rivalry issues than it does about Jeff Eugenides!

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At this stage in my life perhaps I should be more concerned with the “Married with Child” plot. Certainly there are times when all three of us seem to lose the plot. Baby F (or Toddler F as she now is) lost the sleeping plot last night and we had a taste of what it is like for many other parents whose children won’t go to sleep at the regular time. She was up early this morning (4.30am apparently) and I was pretty oblivious, sleeping through. She’s crawling and walking now (walking with support that is) so it’s a very busy time. And she also seems to want to stand up a lot of the time (for baths, meals etc.) She babbles away, commenting on the light (wight) and the flowers (wowers) and her toys. Dis! Dat! Not dat! Mudda. Nana. Buddha.

I get to escape to a boys school conference this weekend so L will be coping on her own once again. I hope the plot stays calm and uneventful while I’m away.