It's All in Here

Book Review: The Best American Essays 2013 edited by Robert Atwan and Cheryl Strayed

In my opinion, the purpose of literature is to help me see the world through other eyes, and to look beyond the narrow construct of my personal view of 'how things are'. The essay seeks to accomplish this by allowing the author to forward their personal viewpoint on matters of their choosing; a well-written essay will bring the reader into the author's world view, hopefully to expand the reader's viewpoint in the process.

The Best American Essays 2013 opens to the reader a wide selection of windows on the world. While they are all written from a first-person perspective, the subjects they reveal go beyond simple autobiographical short stories. It's all in here: economics (the subject on everyone's mind), politics, science, psychology, relationships. Every essay reveals not just the author's personal outlook; to the perceptive reader they also show our collective views as Americans.

In this day of sound bites and tweets, maybe it is too much to ask for readers to look beyond the mere words on the page, to read between the lines, to savor and mull over the stories that are laid before us and see the deeper secrets they hold. As Charles Baxter points out in "What Happens in Hell": "Why do you desire to believe the ideas that you hold dear, the cornerstones of your faith?" Are we more comfortable with our heads in the sand, seeing only that which is directly in front of us? That world where "... people will walk smiling through puddles of your blood, smiling and talking on their cellular phones. They're going to the movies." (J.D. Daniels, "Letter from Majorca").

Editor Cheryl Strayed points out that "Essayists begin with an objective truth and attempt to find a greater, grander truth by testing fact against subjective interpretations of experiences and ideas, memories and theories. They try to make meaning of actual life, even if an awful lot has yet to be figured out." This demands of us as readers to look for the greater truth as well; to not merely look at these stories like we do the evening news: passively absorbing what we are told and moving on to the next. We need to be actively looking within, even as the author shares THEIR experience of the world.

A book to be read slowly, thoughtfully, and purposefully, digging out those golden nuggets of greater truth.

In a Word: Exceptional

Book Review: I Can't Complain by Elinor Lipman

When reading a book, I usually find myself coming back to what I call the "Three Cs" - Clarity (how well it is written), Consistency (do the characters behave in character), and Cohesiveness (does the whole thing stick together). I have found over a lifetime of reading (and I am past the half-century mark, thank you) that these measures pretty much apply to any book, in any genre.

Elinor Lipman's I Can't Complain hits all three and throws a few bonuses as well. Of course, since these are personal essays, the main character stays in character - it's Elinor after all. Her writing is concise [an undocumented C], clear, and simply a joy to read. And the whole thing sticks together like Silly Putty.

More than that, Elinor Lipman takes the everyday and makes it ... more than that. Events do not need to be extraordinary to make them meaningful. I think the present generation has lost sight of the simple fact that the simple things and the basic emotions that go with them are important in their own right. Everything does not have to be an adrenaline pumping heart-pounding YouTube event to be important in a person's life. To expect otherwise is, I believe, missing the point of life entirely.

Thank you, Ms. Lipman, for writing about what it is really like to live life, and to be aware you are living it.

The Evolving Art of Virtual Teamwork

Book Review: Virtual Teamwork: Mastering the Art and Practice of Online Learning and Corporate Collaboration edited by Robert Ubell

Despite the glut of books on social networking (or perhaps because of it) there is a scarcity of peer-reviewed source material on virtual teams. Virtual Teamwork takes an important step toward bridging that gap.

Distance learning and virtual collaboration are here to stay. Team projects are now the norm in most organizations, often across geographical boundaries. In the past ten years I have been involved in three virtual teams for three different employers, as well as being involved in several distance learning efforts. The results have been mixed, but this is an indication of how this sector is evolving, not a question of its validity.

As many organizations are discovering, it is not just about the technology. "Cute cat" tools like Facebook or Twitter are obviously not a solution for corporate or educational communication. The fact that millions of people use social media does not give it value - millions of people also watch "reality" TV shows. Wall Street made it clear that Facebook was over-valued. But just installing Lync or some other flavor of the month messaging tool into the corporate software pool isn't the answer either if no one uses it.

The essays that editor Robert Ubell has gathered covers many of the hurdles that one encounters in virtual teams. Although they are often couched from the perspective of one discipline, the insights can be applied across the spectrum. For instance, the problems that occur in team projects in a university class are not any different than one sees in a corporate environment, and the solutions bear equal weight as well.

While there may not be enough detail for organizational leaders looking for a blueprint ("use software X, it will solve all your problems"), Ubell and his contributors have given us a research based framework to build on. As such, I find Virtual Teamwork an invaluable resource that promotes 'out of the box' thinking towards managing virtual teams and collaborative groups.

Travels with Reg

Book Review: The Great Northern Express: A Writer's Journey Home by Howard Frank Mosher

"But now faith, hope, love, abide these three; but the greatest of these is love." [1 Corinthians 13:13, NASB]

Easy to say, not as easy to realize. As Howard Frank Mosher takes us on his journey through the three phases of The Great Northern Express, he re-learns the lesson that love is an ongoing process, not a destination. Love of life, of one's work, and of the people that we hold dear are intertwined in ways that we do not always appreciate or comprehend.

Northern Express is not so much a tale of a book tour; like all great journeys the actual reason may be obscured, even to ourselves. It is not a series of momentous discoveries and personal epiphanies. At the simplest level it is the story of a man in a car, traveling across the country to see what he can find. Like John Steinbeck in Travels with Charley in Search of America, Mosher is not really sure what he is looking for, or even sure he will know if he finds it.

The true measure of a road trip is not the things that you see, or the people you meet, or the photos you take. The true measure of a journey is seen in the person that comes back home. The journey does not occur 'out there', it is internal, and personal. Through his series of tales Mosher shows us both sides of the story, allowing us a glimpse of ourselves as he finds his own way home.

Thanks for the ride Harold.

The Lost Art of the Essay

Book Review: Sex and the River Styx by Edward Hoagland

In the experience of the average American, the word essay brings to mind a formalized piece of writing inflicted on us in the course of high school English classes. Successor to the "book report", and predecessor to the "term paper", the essay has become a formulaic piece of drudgery that has lead more students to avoid writing as a communication method than any other form of public education.

In an effort to make the essay an achievable goal for the average student, the process has been broken down to the cellular level. Students are micro-managed in their essay-writing, to the point of being instructed not only how many paragraphs are permitted in a "good" essay, but also as to how many sentences in a paragraph, and how many words in a sentence. Grading is done by word count; content is irrelevant as long as the proper mechanics are used. It is small wonder that students throw up their hands and buy a ready-made one off the Web.

It was not always thus. The essay has its roots in the Renaissance, and left its mark on writers from Descartes and Rousseau through Huxley to Asimov. It is in this tradition that Edward Hoagland guides us in Sex and the River Styx. In the original meaning of the word, essay is "to try" or "to attempt", and Hoagland attempts to bring us along on his journey to a different perspective on life, love, and death.

In doing so we have to make a jump, not only in our understanding of what an essay really is, but in our reading as well. This is not a novel, quickly paced and easily digested while waiting in the airport. This is a book not to be read so much as mined, to be dug into, its truths extracted like prized nuggets. The digging is not always easy, but it is well worth the effort.

Each of the essays in this baker's dozen is a work unto itself; while related to each other and the whole they are not dependent on one another for understanding. They do not have to read in a particular order - choose a spot to your liking and start digging. Take your time and savor the effort, allow yourself to feel the textures, the woof and warp of the fabric Hoagland has woven.

It may not make you enjoy writing essays, but Sex and the River Styx might give you a new take on reading them.