READING LEVELS

I heard the piece below on NPR a month ago, and it has stayed in the back of my mind with respect to the literacy/illiteracy level of many law students. 

QUERY: If students do not read in high school, or read but do not read complex materials, will they be able to read complex legal texts? Or will they need to subscribe to a service that translates complex legal text into simplified language (isn't that what Gilbert's did? will practicing law using updated versions of Gilbert's and CLE to stay abreast of the law?). And not being readers, or not readers of complex texts, will they be able to write on complex and subtle legal matters, or engage in complex and subtle legal analysis? Not being readers, or not being able to read complex texts, may explain why more or more law students want "experiential learning" opportunities. It will be interesting to see how more and more law schools "dumb down" their curriculum to accommodated the next generation of law students.

Just a thought.

What Kids Are Reading, In School And Out

by LYNN NEARY

June 11, 2013 4:51 PM

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Walk into any bookstore or library, and you'll find shelves and shelves of hugely popular novels and book series for kids. But research shows that as young readers get older, they are not moving to more complex books. High-schoolers are reading books written for younger kids, and teachers aren't assigning difficult classics as much as they once did.

At Woodrow Wilson High School in Washington, D.C., the 11th-grade honors English students are reading The Kite Runner. And students like Megan Bell are reading some heavy-duty books in their spare time. "I like a lot of like old-fashioned historical dramas," Bell says. "Like I just read Anna Karenina ... I plowed through it, and it was a really good book."

But most teens are not forging their way through Russian literature, says Walter Dean Myers, who is currently serving as National Ambassador for Young People's Literature. A popular author of young-adult novels that are often set in the inner city, Myers wants his readers to see themselves in his books. But sometimes, he's surprised by his own fan mail.

"I'm glad they wrote," he says, "but it is not very heartening to see what they are reading as juniors and seniors." Asked what exactly is discouraging, Myers says that these juniors and seniors are reading books that he wrote with fifth- and sixth-graders in mind.

And a lot of the kids who like to read in their spare time are more likely to be reading the latest vampire novel than the classics, says Anita Silvey, author of 500 Great Books for Teens. Silvey teaches graduate students in a children's literature program, and at the beginning of the class, she asked her students — who grew up in the age of Harry Potter — about the books they like.

"Every single person in the class said, 'I don't like realism, I don't like historical fiction. What I like is fantasy, science fiction, horror and fairy tales.' "

Those anecdotal observations are reflected in a study of kids' reading habits by Renaissance Learning. For the fifth year in a row, the educational company used its Accelerated Reader program to track what kids are reading in grades one through 12.

"Last year, we had more than 8.6 million students from across the country who read a total of 283 million books," says Eric Stickney, the educational research director for Renaissance Learning. Students participate in the Accelerated Reader program through their schools. When they read a book, they take a brief comprehension quiz, and the book is then recorded in the system. The books are assigned a grade level based on vocabulary and sentence complexity.

And Stickney says that after the late part of middle school, students generally don't continue to increase the difficulty levels of the books they read.

Last year, almost all of the top 40 books read in grades nine through 12 were well below grade level. The most popular books, the three books in The Hunger Gamesseries, were assessed to be at the fifth-grade level.

Last year, for the first time, Renaissance did a separate study to find out what books were being assigned to high school students. "The complexity of texts students are being assigned to read," Stickney says, "has declined by about three grade levels over the past 100 years. A century ago, students were being assigned books with the complexity of around the ninth- or 10th-grade level. But in 2012, the average was around the sixth-grade level."

Most of the assigned books are novels, like To Kill a Mockingbird, Of Mice and Men orAnimal Farm. Students even read recent works like The Help and The Notebook. But in 1989, high school students were being assigned works by Sophocles, Shakespeare, Dickens, George Bernard Shaw, Emily Bronte and Edith Wharton.

Now, with the exception of Shakespeare, most classics have dropped off the list.

Back at Woodrow Wilson High School, at a 10th-grade English class — regular, not honors — students say they don't read much outside of school. But Tyler Jefferson and Adriel Miller are eager to talk. Adriel likes books about sports; Tyler likes history. Both say their teachers have assigned books they would not have chosen on their own. "I read The Odyssey, Tyler says. "I read Romeo and Juliet. I didn't read Hamlet. Asked what he thought of the books, Tyler acknowledges some challenges. "It was very different, because how the language was back then, the dialogue that they had.

Adriel agrees that books like that are tougher to read. "That's why we have great teachers that actually make us understand," he says. "It's a harder challenge of our brain, you know; it's a challenge."

But a challenge with its rewards, as Tyler says. "It gives us a new view on things."

Sandra Stotsky would be heartened to hear that. Professor emerita of education at the University of Arkansas, Stotsky firmly believes that high school students should be reading challenging fiction to get ready for the reading they'll do in college. "You wouldn't find words like 'malevolent,' 'malicious' or 'incorrigible' in science or history materials," she says, stressing the importance of literature. Stotsky says in the '60s and '70s, schools began introducing more accessible books in order to motivate kids to read. That trend has continued, and the result is that kids get stuck at a low level of reading.

"Kids were never pulled out of that particular mode in order to realize that in order to read more difficult works, you really have to work at it a little bit more," she says. "You've got to broaden your vocabulary. You may have to use a dictionary occasionally. You've got to do a lot more reading altogether."

"There's something wonderful about the language, the thinking, the intelligence of the classics," says Anita Silvey. She acknowledges that schools and parents may need to work a little harder to get kids to read the classics these days, but that doesn't mean kids shouldn't continue to read the popular contemporary novels they love. Both have value: "There's an emotional, psychological attraction to books for readers. And I think some of, particularly, these dark, dystopic novels that predict a future where in fact the teenager is going to have to find the answers, I think these are very compelling reads for these young people right now."

Reading leads to reading, says Silvey. It's when kids stop reading, or never get started in the first place, that there's no chance of ever getting them hooked on more complex books.

ON THE ROAD WITH PICO IYER

Pico Iyer, Falling Off the Map: Some Lonely Places of the World (New York: Vintage Departures/Vintage Books, 1993, 1994).

Pico Iyer, The Global Soul: Jet Lag, Shopping Malls, and the Search for Home (New York: Knopf, 2000) ("The Olympics pose a curious kind of conundrum for people such as me, of course, if only because they affirm affiliation to nation-states in an age that has largely left them behind, mass-producing images of nationalism and universalism without much troubling to distinguish between them. They ask us to applaud the patriotism of others while transcending the patriotism in ourselves, and they draw our attention to the very boundaries that are increasingly beside the point. (I, surrounded by cheering fans waving flags, am often reminded how difficult it is for the rootless to root for anyone, and, reluctant to ally myself with a Britain, an India, or an America that I don't think of as home, generally end up cheering the majestically talented Cubans or the perennial good sportsmen from Japan)." Id. at 110.).

Pico Iyer, The Lady and The Monk: Four Seasons in Kyoto (New York: Vintage Departures/Vintage Books, 1991, 1992) ("One reason I had always been interested in Zen was my sense that for people like myself, trained in abstraction, Zen could serve as the ideal tonic. For Zen, as I understood it, was about slicing with a clean sword all the Gordian Knots invented by the mind, plunging through all specious dualities--east and west, here and there, coming and going--to get to some core so urgent that its truth could not be doubted. The best lesson that Zen could teach--though it was, of course, something of a paradox to say or think it--was to go beyond a kind of thinking that was nothing more than agonizing, and simply act. In that sense, Zen reminded me of Johnson's famous refutation of Berkeley by kicking a stone. It was unanswerable as pain." Id. at 65. "Nowadays, of course, he continued, Zen had much more appeal for foreigners than for Japanese (who generally entered monasteries only if they had to take over a family temple): this despite--or maybe because of--the fact that outsiders had a great deal to give up before they could even enter the front portals of Zen, and the surrendering of self and cerebration clearly came less easily to us than to many Japanese. 'I remember this one Zen teacher told me, soon after I arrived, that the appeal of Zen to many foreigners was like a mountain wrapped in mist. Much of what the Westerners saw was just the beautiful mist; but as soon as they began really doing Zen, they found that its essence was the mountain: hard rock." Id. at 15.).

Pico Iyer, Video Night in Kathmandu: And Other Reports From the Not-So-Far East (New York: Knopf, 1988).

PICKING UP MY DOG'S POOP . . .

. . . something I do three or four times a day, is my three or four moments of Zen every day. With all the crap going on in the world, let me be worthy enough to pick up after my dog.

OUR DOGS CIVILIZE[D] US!

Donald McCaig, Eminent Dogs, Dangerous Men: Searching Through Scotland for a Border Collie (New York: Harper Perennial, 1991, 1992) ("It is politically unpopular to claim that human character traits (intelligence, courage, ingenuity) can be inherited. But that's the working belief in the sheepdog breeding world. It is thought that a dog sired by Wiston Cap, one who looks like the old man, will likely behave like his eminent sire." Id. at 9. "Learning a dog's worldview, altering it (within bounds), accepting a dog's understanding as sometimes more reliable than a man's--these commonplace tools of dog training are a mild cultural treason. The rare dog handlers who, by gift or necessity, become truly dangerous inhabit a reality most of us can scarcely imagine--every day they share the thoughts, habits, tics and aspirations of a genuinely alien mind. When I asked these men about their connection with their dogs, they were reticent. They were also, without exception, masterful and deeply obsessed." Id. at 78. "It has been twenty thousand years since man and dog formed their partnership. That we have altered the dog genetically is well understood; it is hardly known how they changed us. Since dogs could hear and smell better than men, we could concentrate on sight. Since courage is commonplace in dogs, men's adrenal glands could shrink. Dogs, my making us more efficient predators, gave us time to think. In short, dogs civilized us." Id. at 132. "In America, dogs are rarely seen in offices, shops, subways, trains or buses, and only in our mountain West will you find a dog in a bar. Sometimes I think Americans are afraid of dogs." Id. at 133. "J. M. Wilson once said the proper thing to do with a dog that qualified at the National is put it away until the International. This sound advice is universally ignored. When a man has a dog that's almost, almost perfect, it's beyond human restraint to leave the dog alone, Instead, they'll work on that slight imperfection, screwing the dog down tighter and tighter until, under the pressure of the big trial, the god just falls to pieces." "Many a man came off the course today abashed at problems he;d caused himself, overtraining his dog." Id. at 193.).

"ONLY THAT A MAN CAN STAND UP."

Esther Forbes, Johnny Tremain, illustrated by Michael McCurdy (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1943, 1978) ("James Otis was on his feet, his head close against the rafters that cut down into the attic, making it the shape of a tent. Otis put out his arms. 'It is all so much simpler than you think,' he said. He lifted his hands and pushed against the rafters.' We give all we have, lives, property, safety, skills . . . we fight, we die, for a simple thing. Only that a man can stand up.'" Id. at 206.).

RANDOLPH S. BOURNE, WAR, AND THE THREAT TO INTELLECTUAL AND ACADEMIC FREEDOM

Randolph S. Bourne, War and the Intellectuals: Collected Essays, 1915-1919, edited with an introduction by Carl Resek (New York: Harper Torchbook, 1964) (From "The Idea of a University": "[T]he American university has become a financial corporation, strictly analogous, in it motives and responses, to the corporation which is concerned in the production of industrial commodities. Trustees who are business men, who hold positions as directors or executives in large financial or industrial corporations, carry over into the management of the university the attitudes and sensitivities learned in the corporate world. The university produces learning instead of steel or rubber, but the nature of the academic community has become less and less potent in ensuring for the academic workman a status materially different from that of any other kind of employee." "As directors in this corporation of learning, trustees seem to regard themselves primarily as guardians of invested capital. They manage as a sacred trust the various bequests, gifts, endowments which have been made to the university by men and women of the same orthodoxies as themselves. Their obligation is to see that the quality of the commodity which the university produces is such as to seem reputable to the class which they represents. And in order to maintain the flow of capital ad the general credit of the institution they must keep the stock above par. In the minds apparently of the trustees, and of the executives and professors who work with them, the reputation of a university is comparable to the standing of a corporation's securities on the street, the newspapers taking the place of he stock exchange. . . . When your stock is depressed by an alarming rumor, it is irrelevant whether the rumor is true or not. The mischief lies in what people think, not in the actual facts. And for this purpose newspaper chatter is authoritative, Your object then becomes not to discover the truth but to combat the rumor. If the fall in your stock is due to a suspicion of the value of your commodity, you renew your efforts to convince the public of its soundness. If it is due to an offending employee, you dismiss the employee. Having removed the cause of the prejudice, you then expect your securities to resume their former level." Id. at 152, 152-153. "... One is often amazed at the callousness of university trustees towards the indignation that follows these arbitrary dismissals of professors. But this corporate attitude naturally discounts the opinions of the non-investing public. It is not the discontent of idealists that matters, but the vague complaints from parents that their sons are being taught irreligion and sedition within the university, complaints from business men that a professor is tainted with economic heresy, indignation of prominent alumni at the connection of the university's name with unpopular movements. Theses are the attitudes that depress the credit of the university in the investing world, and these are the attitudes that carry weight, therefore, with the university president and the trustees.Vested interests presumably receive dividends in the form of orthodox graduates. Whatever interferes with the supply of such a revenue is therefore a serious assault on the stability of the corporation." "In any such system of ideas, the professor becomes inevitably a mere employee of a company which has a standing to maintain in the corporate world. His intellectual freedom is extremely precarious, because a chance remark, or any public activity, may bring him that newspaper censure which causes the grave damage the university is likely to incur in the minds of the significant classes." Id. at 154. One wonders what Bourne would say were he around in this era of super-corporatization of universities, an era where more and more universities do see themselves as primarily engaged in business rather than education. Certainly don't see education as their primary business, and have little interest in providing their customers (though still designated "students") with an intellectual education. And, where academic freedom is either absent or viewed as a nuisance. From "A War Diary": "The kind of war which we are conducting is an enterprise which the American government does not have to carry on with the hearty co-operation of the American people but only with their acquiescence. Ant that acquiescence seems sufficient to float an indefinitely protracted war for vague or even largely uncomprehended and unaccepted purposes." Id. at , 36, 36.).

Bruce Clayton, Forgotten Prophet: The Life of Randolph Bourne (Baton Rouge & London: Louisiana State U. Press, 1984) ("Viewed in light of the war, his earlier nonpragmatic prescriptions for youth seem dreamy, paper thin, of a piece with a romantic era, too fragile for the real world. And yet, here in 1917, Bourne, although certainly chastened and less romantic, was still clinging to a sustaining faith in the essential rightness of his own personality. He was sill pitting the individual personality against the crowd. Even in his attacks on pragmatism, he relied upon the trust that he and the other irreconcilables were right. ..." "The, too, historians who emphasize Bourne;s disillusionment, particularly those who pigeonhole Bourne as alienated, play a dirty trick on him. Today few can swallow [Woodrow] Wilson's lofty idealism or the confident predictions of Dewey and the American liberal community. Yet because Bourne could not, because he was in a tiny minority, [Christopher] Lasch labels him alienated, making the rest of us to feel slightly sorry for the young man's stubborn refusal to become another liberal visionary. Presumably, those like Bourne who could not believe that war could advance much of anything, let alone international democracy, are alienated, while those today who see Wilson's idealism as an extravagance, and a dangerous one at that, are insightful, sophisticated historians." Id. at 226-227.).

SUGGESTED FICTION, or what to read while teaching summer school

Jorge Amado, The War of the Saints: A Novel, translated from the Portuguese by Gregory Rabassa (New York: Bantam Books, 1983, 1993).

Allison Amend, A Nearly Perfect Copy: A Novel (New York: Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, 2013) ("It was just like him, Elm thought, to give the ethical reason for truth before the more practical one. This was one of the things about Colin she felt was so simultaneously endearing and infuriating, his insistence on living by principles in one of the most corrupt industries on the planet. That was what she had fallen for, his scrupulous adherence to the way he saw the world, its potential, rather than its actuality." Id. at 223.).

Kate Atkinson, Life After Life: A Novel (New York: A Reagan Arthur Book/Little, Brown, 2013).

Carlene Bauer, Frances and Bernard (Boston & New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012) ("You know I've stop reading current fiction--once I headed for law school, I decided that I would read only history, biography, reportage, and political thought, and I have never felt anything remotely like a hole in my soul since, which means that I was right to give up writing for lawyering. Maybe once a year I'll read Our Mutual Friend, when Kay and I go to Maine, but that's it. From what I remember, current fiction used to be pretty insipid, and i'm thinking it's pretty insipid now too. But your book is fantastic. Every sentence is a whip crack." Id. at 180.).

Francesca Lia Block, The Elementals: A Novel (New York; St. Martin's Press, 2012) (Elementals are defined in "Isis Unveiled" as "the creatures evolved in the four kingdoms of earth, air, fire, and water, and called by the Kabbalists gnomes, sylphs, salamanders, and undines. They may be termed the forces of nature, and will either operate effects as the servile agents of general law, or may be employed by the disembodied spirits — whether pure or impure — and by living adepts of magic and sorcery, to produce desired phenomenal results. Such beings never become men.").

Bryher, Visa for Avalon, with an introduction by Susan McCabe (Ashfield, MA: Paris Press, 2004) ("The majority of people unconsciously wanted the barbarians and in such a struggle, reason was not quick enough to defend itself and the barbarians usually won." Id. at 38.).

Don Carpenter, Hard Rain Falling, with an Introduction by George Pelecanos (New York: New York Review Books, 1966, 2009) ("How do you wake up? It was one thing to know that you had been asleep all your life, but something else to wake up from it, to find out you were really alive and it wasn't anybody's fault but your own. Of course that was the problem." "All right. Everything is a dream. Nothing hangs together. You move from one dream to another and there is no reason for the change. Your eyes seethings and your ears hear, but nothing has any reason behind it. It would be easier to believe in God. Then you could wake up and yawn and stretch and grin at a world that was put together on a plan of mercy and death, punishment for evil, joy for good, and if the game were crazy at least it had rules, But that didn't make sense. I had never made any sense. The trouble was, now that he was not asleep and not awake, what he saw and heard didn't make sense." Id. at 78-19.).

Lee Child, The Affair (A Reacher Novel) (New York: Delacorte Press, 2011) ("She didn't want to hear about how it got worse. She didn't want more. Not right then. She was still beating herself up for missing the thing with the blood. I had seen that kind of reaction many times. I has had that kind of reaction many times. Smart, conscientious people hate making mistakes. Not just because of ego. Because mistakes of a certain type have the kind of consequences that people with consciences don't like to live with." Id. at 79-80.).

Amber Dermont, Damage Control: Stories (New York: St. Martin's Press, 2013).

Nell Freudenberger, Lucky Girls: Stories (New York: Ecco, 2003).

Thea Goodman, The Sunshine When She's Gone: A Novel (New York: Henry Holt, 2013).

Neil Gaiman, Anansi Boys: A Novel ( New York: Morrow, 2005).

Moshin Hamid, How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia: A Novel (New York: Riverhead Books, 2013).

Khaled Hosseini, And The Mountains Echoed: A Novel (New York: Riverhead Books, 2013) ("It blistered the eyes, beauty like hers." Id. at 64.).

Ken Kalfus, The Commissariat of Enlightenment: A Novel (New York: Ecco, 2003).

Ken Kalfus, A Disorder Peculiar to the Country: A Novel (New York: Ecco Books/Harper Perennial, 2006) ("Every human relationship was a conspiracy." Id. at 89.).

Ken Kalfus, Equilateral: A Novel (New York: Bloomsbury, 2013).

Ken Kalfus, Pu-239 and Other Russian Fantasies: a Novella and Stories (Minneapolis, MN: Milkweed Editions, 1999).

Ken Kalfus, Thirst (Minneapolis, MN: Milkweed Editions, 1998) ("'Medical school?' I asked mildly. 'Do you think many children of my nation have been saved by American medical schools?' She shrugged. 'A few. Anyway. I would save this one.' 'May be,' I allowed. 'But this child doesn't need a doctor--a whole doctor, that is--any more than he needs piano lessons. He may even need piano lessons more. Sure, a medical doctor trained in the West, after about a hundred grand in personal tuition fees and government subsidies, has many skills, including one or two that would help this kid, but ninety-nine percent of the stuff is irrelevant. Most of it is irrelevant to anything but making money. Mumbo jumbo so that every MD in a BMW sounds like a scientist. They come here with their CAT scanners, their centrifuges, their pills they get as samples form the pharmaceutical multinationals, and their self-righteous do-gooding, and they turn health into a commodity. My people can't afford to think of health as something to be purchased, or even as a tangible gift. What this kid needs is fresh milk, decent food, and a few shots. Two of these items were in abundance in my country long before anyone in your medical schools had ever heard of us, back before we were told progress had to be imported. The average life span of my people has actually dropped in the last sixty years. But what's the point of living longer anyway? What's the point of saving this kid if this is the brute existence in store for him?' 'Well,' Leslie said. 'I still wish I could break this fever.' 'I wish i could teach the kid to play the piano.'" Id. at 179-180.).

M. M. Kaye, The Far Pavilions (New York: St. Martin's Griffin, 1978) ("'Just think of it -- Kabul! Wouldn't you give anything to go there?' 'No,' Ash's tone was sill dry. 'Once was enough.' 'Once . . . ? Oh, of course, you've been there before. What didn't you like about it?' 'A lot of things. it's attractive enough in its way; especially in the spring when the almond trees are in bloom and the mountains all round still white with snow. But the streets and bazaars are dirty and the houses rumble-down and shoddy, and it wasn't called the "Land of Cain" for nothing! You get the feeling that savagery is near the surface, and could break through at any moment like lava form a dormant volcano and that the line drawn between good-will and bloody violence is thinner there than anywhere else in the world. Not that Kabul belongs to the modern world any more than Bhithor does--in fact they have a lot in common: they both live in the past and are hostile to change and to strangers, while the majority of their citizens not only look like cut-throats, but can behave as such if they happen to take a dislike to you.' Ash added that in his opinion, it was perhaps not so strange that a city reputedly founded by the world's first murderer should have a reputation for treachery and violence; or that its rulers should have been faithful to the tradition of Cain, and indulged in murder and fratricide. The past history of the Amirs being one long tale of bloodshed: fathers killing their sons,  sons plotting against their fathers and each other, and uncles disposing of their nephews. 'It's a grisly tale, and if it's true that ghosts are the unquiet spirits of people who who died terrible deaths--and that there are such things as ghosts--then Kabul must be full of them. It is a haunted place, and I hope I never see it again.'" Id. at 715-716. "'I remember reading somewhere,' observed Ash meditatively, 'that Henry I of France said of Spain that if you invaded it with a large force you would be destroyed by starvation, wile it you invaded it with a small one you would be overwhelmed by a hostile people. Well, you could say the same of Afghanistan. It's an appalling country to invade, and unless the Russians think that they can walk in unchallenged, with the consent of the population as well as the Amir, I can't believe they'd try it--any more than I am prepared to believe that Cavagnari knows much about the Afghans if he thinks for one moment that the Amir's so-called "subjects" will ever tamely submit to having Russian garrisons quartered all over the country. They may be a murderous lot of ruffians with an unenviable reputation for treachery and ruthlessness, but no one has ever denied their courage; or been able to make them do anything they don't like doing, And they don't like being dictated to or ruled by foreigners--any foreigners! Which is why, in my opinion, this whole Russian scare is probably nothing but a turnip lantern.'" Id. at 727-728.).

Mary Beth Keane, Fever: A Novel (New York; Scribner, 2013) ("Mary shared with Mr. O'Neill the observation she'd made ages ago, that all the great houses of New York City are the same. They are headed by women who should have been male, and should have been ministers, women who go down to the employment agency in their white gloves to look around like they are in a brothel, discussing terms with the madam while each whore to be hired looks on. Then when the terms are agreed upon, instead of directing the cook to the kitchen or the laundress to the laundry, every lady give a speech about joining a Christian home. [] They all they they want a good cook, but what they want even more is a worthy project." Id. at 79.).

A. L. Kennedy, The Blue Book: A Novel (Boston & New York: New Harvest/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013).

John Le Carre, A Delicate Truth (New York: Viking, 2013) ("'I shall need your permission before I call the police. Can I call them?' 'No point.' 'Why no point?' Becasuse the police aren't the solution, they're part of the problem. But again that's something you can't easily put across, so best just let it go." Id. at 300-301.).

Dennis Lehane, Mystic River: A Novel (New York: Morrow, 2001) ("Brendan knew about the truth. In most cases, it was just a matter of deciding whether you wanted to look it in the face or live with the comfort of ignorance or lies. And ignorance and lies were often underrated. Most people Brendan knew couldn't make it though the day without a saucerful of ignorance and a side of lies." Id. at 369-370.).

Dennis Lehane, Shutter Island: A Novel (New York: Morrow, 2003).

Sam Lipsyte, The Fun Parts: Stories (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2013).

Ayana Mathis, The Twelve Tribes of Hattie: A Novel (New York: Knopf, 2012).

Colum McCann, TransAtlantic: A Novel (New York: Random House, 2013) ("He has taken to yoga in recent times, on Heather's insistence. Felt rather stupid at first. Downward dog. Dolphin plank. Crane pose. But it has loosened him enormously, untightened all the bolts. In his younger years he was far less supple. A certain mental agility in it, too. He can sit and close his eyes and find a good meditative point." Id. at 108. "There is always room for at least two truths." Id. at 152. "What was a life anyway? An accumulation of small shelves of incident. Stacked at odd angles to each other. The long blades of an ice saw cutting sparks into a block of cold. Sharpening the blades, seating them, slotting them into handles. Leaning down to make the cut. A brief leap of ember in the air." Id. at 221.).

Carson McCullers, The Ballad of the Sad Cafe and Other Stories (New York & Boston: Mariner Book/Houghton Mifflin, 1951, 2005) (From "The Ballad of the Sad Cafe": "Life could become one long dim scramble just to get the things needed to keep alive. And the confusing point is this: All useful things have a price, and are bought only with money, as that is the way the world is run. You know without having to reason about it the price of a bale of cotton, or a quart of molasses. But no value has been put on human life; it is given to us free and taken without being paid for. What is it worth? If you look around, at times the value may seem to be little or nothing at all. Often after you have sweated and tried and things are not better for you, there comes a feeling deep down in the soul that you are not worth much." Id. at 1, 54.).

Claire Messud, The Woman Upstairs: A Novel (New York: Knopf, 2013) ("'When you're young--but even now--how do you understand this?' he said when he first spoke of it, walking the night streets. 'You can't understand it. It makes no sense, You can allow yourself to be swallowed by your anger, but this will kill you. And yet how can you look at the panther, how can you look him in the eye, when he won't stay still? When he's nowhere and everywhere, belongs to no one and to everyone? So if you're me, how you deal with this is that you say, I'll look at how we talk about the panther. I'll study the history of history, the ways that we tell stories, and don't tell other stories, and I'll try to understand what it says about us, to tell one story rather than another, to tell it one way rather than another. I'll ask the question about what is ethical, about who decides what is ethical, I'll ask whether it is possible, really, to have an ethics in the matter of history.'" Id. at 154. "'What does it mean, you see, that the first thing every American child knows about Germany is Hitler? What if the first thing you knew was something else? And maybe some people would say that now it's important, after the Second World War, it's ethical and vital that Hitler is the first thing a child knows. But someone else can argue the opposite. And what would it do, how would it change thing, if nobody were allowed to know anything about Hitler, about the war, about any of it, until first they learned about Brahms, Beethoven and Bach, about Hegel and Lessing and Fichte, about Schopenhauer, about Rilke--but all this you had to know first. Or one thing only, the Brahms Piano Quintet in F Minor, or the Goldberg Variations, or Laocoon--one of those things you had to know and appreciate before you learned about the Nazis.' 'But the world doesn't work like that.' 'No, it doesn't.' He smiled in that vague way, as if amused by a joke only he had heard. 'But what does it mean that it doesn't? And what would it mean if it did?'" Id. at 155. From the bookjacket: "Told with urgency, intimacy and piercing emotion, this brilliant novel of passion and artistic fulfillment explores the intensity, thrill--and the devastating cost--of embracing an authentic life.").

Lawrence Norfolk, John Saturnall's Feast: A Novel (New York: Grove Press, 2012) ("'Ah yes, praise. B-beware praise. D-dip your spoon d-deeper,' the serving man stammered, indicating the spoon in John's hand. 'You will find that sourness lies beneath the sweet crust of praise.'" Id. at 224.).

Thomas O'Malley, This Magnificent Desolation: A Novel (New York: Bloomsbury, 2013).

Audrey Schulman, The Cage (Chapel Hill: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 1994).

Audrey Schulman, A House Name Brazil (New York: Morrow, 2000).

Audrey Schulman, Swimming with Jonah (New York; Avon Books, 1999).

Audrey Schulman, Three Week in December (New York: Europa Editions, 2012) ("An explosion, faded with the distance, echoed its way up the mountains. On this vast continent, she was thousands of miles from everything she'd ever known, in a situation she'd never imagined. Her lips moved silently, mouthing the wold, 'Please God please God Please.' She marveled once again at how chameleon was the human mind--capable of shucking off a lifetime of values fast as a dirty shirt--able to angle the facts toward whatever it found convenient. She was quite surprised to find this capability inside her own mind." Id. at 304.).

Jan-Philipp Sendker, The Art of Hearing Heartbeats: A Novel, translated from the German by Kevin Wiliarty (New York: Other Press, 2002, 2006) ("'What more do you need?' asked U My. 'The true essence of things is invisible to the eyes.' A long silence, then: 'Our sensory organs love to lead us astray, and eyes are the most deceptive of all. We rely too heavily upon them. We believe that we see the world around us, and yet it is only the surface that we perceive. We must learn to divine the true mature of things, their substance, and the eyes are rather a hindrance than a help in that regard. They distract us. We love to be dazzled, A person who relies too heavily on his eyes neglects his other senses--and I mean more than his hearing or sense of smell. I'm talking about the organ within us for which we have no name. Let us call it the compass of the heart.'" Id. at 123.).

Lionel Shriver, Big Brother: A Novel (New York: Harper, 2013) ("'Know what, quote, "higher education" is about, don't you?' [] 'Know what a diploma is really about? It's a little piece of paper says you followed the rules. Says you're a good doobie, and you'll do what folks expect you to. Degrees are all about jumping hoops and fulfilling an arbitrary set of requirements, and it don't matter what those requirements are, only that you ticked the boxes. It's a rehearsal for nine-to-fiving your life away. Employers want that piece of paper to be sure you'll drag your sorry ass into an open-plan office every day, and no matter how futile or flagrantly idiotic the order is, you'll do what you're told.'" Id. at 106-107.).

Kate Southwood, Falling to Earth (New York: Europa Editions, 2013) ("A man makes himself important, clothed in false dignity, by passing judgment on those made suddenly more fortunate than himself. He'll persuade himself that he is performing a kind of service this way, alerting his neighbors to the unevenness of it all, and imagine himself justified when he begins to hear similar things in return." Id. at 152.).

W. M. Spackman, The Complete Fiction of W. M. Spackman, edited with an afterword by Steven Moore (Normal, IL: Dalkey Archive Press, 1997).

Jean Stafford, Boston Adventure (A Harvest/HBJ Book/ Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1944, 1972) ('She had been unrecognizable in her casket: her hair had been curled when its beauty had been its straightness. A little rouge had been put on her lips which had never before been so treated. She was dressed in her wedding gown; she looked pinked and cooked like a frivolous cake. Mrs. Frothingham whispered in someone's ear, 'Such a pretty girl to make such a plain corpse!'" Id. at 534.).

Jean Stafford, The Collected Stories of Jean Stafford, with an Introduction by Joyce Carol Oates (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1969, 2005).

Jean Stafford, The Mountain Lion, with an afterword by Kathryn Davis (New York: New York Review Books, 1947, 1972, 2010) ("'Molly, you are becoming an intellectual snob,' said Rachel, taking out a gold and white Coty's compact she had got for graduation. 'Becoming?' said Molly. 'I have been one ever since I was nothing going on one.'" Id. at 143.).

Elizabeth Strout, The Burgess Boys: A Novel (New York: Random House, 2013).

Patrick Suskind, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, translated from the German by John E. Woods (New York: Vintage International, 1986).

M. G. Vassanji, The Magic of Saida: A Novel (New York: Knopf, 2013).

M. G. Vassanji, No New Land: A Novel (Toronto, Ontario: McClelland & Stewart, 1991, 1994) ("We are but creatures of our origins, and however stalwartly we march forward, paving new roads, seeking new worlds, the ghosts from our pasts stand not far behind and are not easily shaken off." Id. at 9. "It seemed to Nurdin that, with the dust settled, some kind of commitment had been wrought from him in the proceedings of the past few weeks. Missionary had exorcized it in their hearts. Before, the past tried to fix you from a distance, and you looked away; but Missionary had brought it across the chasm, vivid, devoid of mystery. Now it was all over you. And with this past before you, all around you, you take on the future more evenly matched." Id. at 207.).

Patrick White, Riders in the Chariot, with an Introduction by David Malouf (New York: New York Review Books, 1961, 2002).

Patrick White, The Vivisector, with an Introduction by J. M. Coetzee (New York: Penguin Classics, 1970, 2008).

Patrick White, Voss, with an Introduction by Thomas Keneally (New York: Penguin Classics/Penguin Books, 1957, 2008).