Plodding Insight

Language Application Sketch

2011-08-27T15:27:00.000-04:00

This is just a wacky idea that won't leave me alone, so I'm writing it down so that maybe that will get it out of my head.

This computer (or mobile device) application would assist someone in teaching themselves a new language. It would probably need to be supplemented by an very basic-level intro to grammar and tenses, but that could be delayed until the user feels it would be helpful. The app focuses on memorizing vocabulary and then branches into sentences and paragraphs from texts that are the user's choice.

Part I: The Set Up

You feed it big blocks of text in the language you want to learn(users choice). The new testament, vatican II, pride and prejudice, whatever you're interested in, maybe some classic novels that were written in that language originally. Young adult chapter books would probably be great because they're written at a lower level.

It analyzes word frequency. I'm expecting a ballpark of 10K unique words, maybe a max of 20K if you feed it multiple texts in different genres. It scores the words words in percentiles by their frequency. (Assign each word to one of 100 levels, approximately 100 words per level.) Level 1 is "a", "the", "is", etc. Level 100 is the words that are rarest. Then it goes back to the source texts and breaks them into sentences. It scores the sentences. Obviously each sentence is probably unique, but the sentence can be scored based on how rare the words in it are. Look at the "level" of each word in the sentence. The highest level of any word in the sentence is the level for that sentence.

Anti-Boredom Optimization subroutine: The method described so far would proabably not have a lot of sentences at the lower levels. Level 1 would be full of "a", "the", "is", etc. That's really boring to study, and it would mean memorizing a ton of vocabulary before you could begin looking at sentences. So this takes part takes that scoring as a starting point and reassigns the levels of some words in order to get the user reading more complete sentences at earlier levels.

First, each word gets a count of how many sentences it is the highest scoring word of. (You generate this simultaneous with scoring the sentences.) At each percentile the 10% of words that "scores" the most sentences moves down a level and the 10% of word that scores the least (probably zero) moves up. (Note: This has the effect of increasing the total number of words in level 1 and decreases the number of words in level 100 but the rest are still of equal size.) Now use the new assignment of levels to rescore the sentences and compute the change in the average sentence score due to this change, or perhaps another metric like the number of sentences under level 20, something like that. While rescoring you can also redo the count of how many sentences each word "scores", so this can be an iterative process. Each time you do it, the sentences should move down a bit, on average. When the average level of all sentences no longer drops very much, or some other metric is met, you can then stop the iteration and you have your final scoring of both sentences and words.

It's my intuition that setting it up this way will tend to lead very naturally from shorter sentences with low levels to longer sentences with high levels, since longer sentences will be more likely to have one or two rarer words. It's possible to also adjust the sentence scores to directly reflect length, but I don't anticipate that would make a big difference in the user experience.

Now break the texts into paragraphs and score those as well. I'm not sure if you want to just use any consecutive sentences here or pay attention to the actual carriage returns in the text to do this. You don't want a lot of one-sentence paragraphs because we're already using the sentences as they are, and you don't want super long paragraphs. Maybe some combination of techniques would get it into good-sized chunks of sentences.

Each word, sentence, or paragraph has a level. We'll call any of these three things an "element".

Part II: The User Interface

Once the database is all set up, the user is presented with one word, sentence, or paragraph at a time. Learning is essentially a flash-card approach. The word is displayed, and ideally there's a robot pronunciation (keyed to the foreign language pronunciation rules) that automatically plays in the speakers.

Whether the user has never seen the word before, knows the word instantly, or something in between, the next step is to press the reveal button that shows the english translation. (Google translate could probably be used -- either to generate a translation of each element in the database ahead of time, or else to do it on the fly.)

Now the user gives some feedback. Generally he will just hit "next". However, he also has the option to hit another button that says "that was easy", which allows the program to keep track of what the user has learned, and optimize which flashcards are used. Part III will describe what goes on behind the scenes.

Whichever option the user picks, it goes on to the next flashcard, using the same interface. A word or a whole sentence will function the same way. A paragraph might give consecutive sentences, but allow the user to reveal the translation of one sentence at a time as they work their way through.

Ideally, the user will develop a routine of sitting down to do a few flashcards on a regular basis, maybe twice a day. This repetitive exposure will facilitate rapid learning, while the behind-the-scenes optimization will, hopefully, greatly reduce the need to take any kind of notes or waste mental energy figuring out what to learn next, or measuring progress, etc.

Part III: Behind the Scenes

Obviously we want to begin the user on level one and progress them through the levels as they indicate mastery with the "that was easy" button. There are two variables that should be set by the user to personalize their experience.

First user option: how many consecutive times should they click "that was easy" for the same element before we log that they have achieved mastery of that element? Some people may want to set this option to 1 and manage the concept of "mastery" directly by only clicking that button when they feel that they are done studying that element. Another person might use the button differently. They might click "that was easy" every time they successfully translate the element without help, but they may want the application to log that they have mastered that element only after they get it right three times consecutively, or five times, or whatever. Obviously various strategies can be handled easily by letting the user set that parameter (and even change it as they go if they change their mind).

Second User option: how many levels should be the very most the user can be studying at any one time? The answer could be one, or it could be five to ten, or even more.

Given those parameter selections, there are a couple simple rules that control what flashcards the user sees. All possible flashcards are in one of three groups:

Group 1: Elements the user has already mastered.
Group 2: Elements the user is currently working on.
Group 3: Elements the user should not yet be exposed to.

Each flashcard should be a random draw from group 1 or 2, with a weighted probability that strongly favors group 2. In other words, perhaps 1 out of 10 flashcards will be an element from group 1 that the user has already mastered. But there's a catch: When the element is a review, if they don't click "that was easy", it moves back into group 2 and goes into the regular rotation until they master it again. Each element that they master moves from group 2 to group 1.

With that established, we just need to know how things move from group 3 to group 2. The user should start with only level 1. Level 2 elements don't move into rotation until the user has seen all of level 1 at least once. Then when they've seen everything from level 2, and they're probably still working on most of level 1 and 2, we can put level 3 flashcards into the mix as well, and so on. The second user option establishes an additional constraint: If you set the maximum number of levels to 3, it won't allow anything from level 4 into the mix until all of level 1 has been fully mastered. Level 5 wouldn't get in until you've mastered level 2, and so on. This limits the total volume of elements that you're working on at any one time.

How To Run

2011-07-20T10:24:00.000-04:00

1) First, understand how running is different from nearly every other form of exercise. If you go read about weight lifting, for instance, you will find that people typically repeat an exercise until they can't do it (correctly) anymore. They do it "to failure". It is very important to understand that taking that approach to running will _break you_ every time. That is to say, your body is able to continue running far past the point at which you're no longer improving your fitness. You can run until your muscle and bones begin to separate where they should connect, until your tendons tear and even snap loose, until your bones fracture from the impact. And once you get injured, there are no take-backs. You're done running for weeks, maybe months.

So run easily. Run frequently. 4 or 5 days a week is ideal. Run slow enough that you could maintain a conversation while you run, and I don't mean once in a while. I mean do all your running that slow. Trust that a really moderate amount of stress will stimulate greater strength, and that some day soon you will run farther and faster. But for now, you're simply putting coins into the piggybank. You're investing in your future ability to run far. Expect to finish a lot of runs feeling like you could go out and do the same distance over again. That's not a wimpy workout. That's a regular workout for a runner, even an elite runner.

2) Running shoes cause most people to overstride which increases your risk of injury. That's not to say you can't wear them and learn to run correctly. I run barefoot and I personally believe most people would ultimately prefer that if they tried it long enough for their feet to adapt. But you don't have to. If you're going to put on shoes, I recommend minimalist shoes like Vibram Five Fingers or, for a more conventional look, I've heard great things about the Somnio Nadas. Cheapo "water shoes" are fine too. If you wear regular shoes I recommend not getting ones that offer a lot of "support". But no matter what you have on your feet, the rest of what I have to say here applies.

Run on flat, hard pavement or well-packed gravel. Grass can obscure holes that will twist your ankle. Large rocks and roots can be treacherous when you become weary. But the best reason to run on pavement is that it tells you something about how you are moving: If the "pounding" on the pavement is hurting you, you're doing it wrong. That brings us to proper form:

As you run, cycle through the various things that should be happening and adjust your stride accordingly: Your back is very straight and your chin is lifted. Your knees are bent. Your feet hit the ground directly beneath your body, not in front. Your midfoot should hit the ground first, not your heel. You should be stepping quickly and lightly. Your cadence is your number of steps per minute. 180 is ideal, which means three steps per second. It's easy to have a cadence this high while running slowly, but only if you are keeping your feet beneath your body and not overstriding. In order to step more lightly, focus your conscious attention on lifting each foot. That lets your subconscious deal with placing the other one down lightly. After well over a year of running barefoot and working on my stride, I am still working on proper form. You just keep working on it.

By the way, a good way to get an idea of a 180 cadence is to watch the seconds tick by on a clock and say "one two three one two three one two three" as the seconds pass. Three beats per second is a 180 cadence.

3) Start with the couch to 5k program. That will get you from zero to running a 5k in two months. (5 kilometers is 3.1 miles.) Sign up for an actual 5k in order to motivate yourself. If you are going to run barefoot, you may need to do a transition period first where you walk barefoot a lot, to acclimate the skin of your feet to being in contact with the ground, and to strengthen the foot before running.

Once you finish your 5k, I recommend not increasing your mileage for another month. Just keep running 2-3 miles at a time for a while, so you can better adapt to going that distance. Then, if you want to, you can begin to increase your distance. While doing this, you should have one long run per week that is 30-50% of your total mileage for the week. Don't increase your total weekly distance more than 10% from the previous week. Don't keep increasing your distance at 10% a week forever, either. Eventually even that will break you. Remember that you are investing in your future ability to run far and fast. Even if your average weekly increase is only 5%, that will get you to absurdly long distances in as little as a year. Be patient and keep investing. Nothing will slow you down more than getting injured because you overdid it.

4) Get some inspiration by reading. Born to Run and Ultramarathon Man are two great books that are enjoyable to read and will make you want to run all the time.

Write yourself a good conservative schedule, sign up for races, and keep plugging away. Some day, about 3 miles into a run, all of the sudden the endorphins will kick in and you will get a jolt of runners high.

Then you will be addicted.

At that point, reread "Born to Run". It's much funnier when you're an addict.

Chicken Tikka Masala

2011-03-13T21:04:00.000-04:00

I'm reposting this recipe because I've changed it a lot and it's much closer... still not quite there, but much closer.

The marinade:

1 cup plain yogurt

1 TBSP lemon juice

1 tsp each of cumin, cayenne pepper, salt, and black pepper

0.5 tsp each of cinnamon, garam masala, and dried ginger.

Chop up 3 boneless chick breasts into bite-sized pieces. (1.5 to 2.5 pounds of chicken)

Put the chicken in the marinade, mix well, and refrigerate for an hour.

You grill the chicken while making the sauce, then you put the chicken into the sauce to simmer a bit.

I grill on the stovetop with a square pan that has some ridges on it. You could also just sear the chicken in a skillet on high heat. Cover them with a lid while you're doing this. Do it in two batches so they don't start just boiling in their juices, and for goodness sake don't overcook them. 2 minutes, flip, 2 more minutes is probably fine. Just put them on a plate when they're done.

The Sauce:

Start with a TBSP of butter and some minced garlic. Then add:

1 tsp salt

0.5 tsp each paprika, cumin, and garam masala

1/8 cup heavy cream

Cook this on medium to low heat for 20 minutes, stirring regularly. Then add the chicken and let it simmer for another ten minutes or so. Serve with white rice and whatever.

political jujitsu: how embracing "gay marriage" might be a win for traditional Catholicism

2010-11-06T21:34:00.000-04:00

How's that for a title that hooks the reader's interest?

(Edited and reposted from the old blog.)

I mentioned in a recent post that, in the culture wars, or more generally in politics, I prefer to engage in "jujitsu".

In the martial arts, Jujitsu is a style of fighting that involves using the opponent's weight and momentum against them. In other words, it eschews the direct confrontation and impact of opposing blows, in favor of a more subtle, perhaps manipulative approach. There are three ways that we can engage in political jujitsu.

1) I really don't know anything about martial arts, but I can imagine that having a low center of gravity and a stable stance is very important for Jujitsu, or for any art that involves throwing the opponent. What is the political and cultural parallel to this? You can understand the analogy when I say that having a firm sense of identity is like having a low center of gravity. You are rooted in place, in other words.

2) In addition to being rooted you must be decisively flexible when necessary. In politics this implies a clear-eyed essentialism, an understanding of exactly what things are most important, and what is not important, even when the two are deeply intertwined in tradition. Jujitsu, if I understand it correctly, seeks to deflect a blow only a little, to waste no energy in combating it head-on with opposing force, but to deflect it away from the most vulnerable target, and use the great power and momentum of the blow against the enemy. This requires the martial artist to understand clearly what are his most important assets, i.e. what parts of his body are most vulnerable.

3) Finally, when attacked, you must use your rootedness and your flexibility to find a way to redirect your opponent's attack, acting decisively in an unexpected way. Along the general path of his motion, there must be some destination that it is safe or advantageous for you to send him. We are always on the look-out for how to use the attack to our advantage.

Take for a good example, the extremely contentious issue of gay marriage. Here is a political disagreement that has nothing to do with solving an economic problem or protecting the nation from a foreign threat. Instead it is a simple disagreement of values, over what our society should consider "normal". Both sides experience a heightened interest in winning: the left, because it truly believes that government sanction bestows moral legitimacy (in other words that gay couples are being gravely wronged by their community's withholding of its approval), and the right, both because it correctly understands that it has a majority on the issue and on an individual basis because of each person's natural disgust for sexual perversion.

Now lets look at the right and wrong ways to go about dealing with the controversy. (From the conservative side, of course.)

The wrong way is the obvious, simple resistance.

Many years ago, it was true that society had a kind of ultra-consensus on the definition of marriage. For this reason, laws were written in the context of that accepted definition, and their reference to marriage was a matter of convenience. It is much easier, for instance, to write child custody laws, if you assume that most parents are married and everybody agrees with what that means.

Once that ultra-consensus is gone, there will be all kinds of trouble, regardless of whether a simple majority is able to maintain the older view in the legislature. (Even setting aside the issue of a pro-active judiciary!) If we accept that the courts are going to have to deal with situations such as a lesbian couple fighting for custody of a child, of whom one of the women is the biological mother and the other has been the de facto primary care giver, real questions of fairness arise that cannot be handled by the older system.

To simply insist that the nation at large maintain the fiction of a consensus, on the strength of only a majority, is not a tenable strategy. Constitutional amendments in defense of marriage represent the wrong strategy, in my opinion.

But that does not mean that we should accept defeat and go home. What strategy is suggested by my idea of political jujitsu?

1) Rootedness. Christians and others who believe in traditional marriage need to defend, maintain, and promote a firm sense of identity and comfort with their beliefs. We should recognize that in a diverse society where a majority is not guaranteed to us, it is a mistake from the beginning to have the definition of marriage be determined by a democratic vote. Lets put ourselves in the shoes of gay couples for a second: How would we feel and react if ONLY gay couples could marry, and our relationships were not recognized? I can't speak for everyone, but I would laugh it off and go on with my life: living my marriage, secure in my identity, and comfortable with my religious beliefs. I don't believe the government has the authority to define marriage in contradiction to Christianity, and to those who agree, I say we must begin to act as if we really believe that. It doesn't matter what the government says marriage is. Legal terminology cannot alter the form of the Sacraments.

2) Flexibility and Essentialism. What are the most important things that Christians have a stake in, in the argument over gay marriage? I would argue that the legal definition of marriage is not itself one of those things. The reason that we value a legal definition of marriage is that it makes it easier for us to be Christian. It makes it easier to pass our values on to our children, easier to catechize our adults, etc, because we have the government essentially supporting the Christian doctrine the way that outlawing adultery would assist our understanding and teaching that sex is reserved for marriage. But that doesn't mean that we should insist that adultery be outlawed.

No, the gravest threat of gay marriage isn't the existence of gay couples or the fact that they might get a tax break, etc. The real risk is that once society has implemented gay marriage, our very freedom of conscience and religion will be under attack. Under the banner of "human rights", it will be demanded that Christians recognize gay marriages as metaphysically and morally equal to Christian marriage. Religious coercion will begin to take place once opposition to that idea is redefined as "hate". Preachers will risk losing their tax-exempt status for teaching Christian doctrine, parents will be unable to object to what their children are taught in schools, etc. We will not be permitted to agree to disagree - the Christian teaching on marriage will be considered as vile as racism.

There are two ways to protect our freedom of religion in this matter. One is to somehow achieve a homogeneous Christian society in which we all agree. The other is to achieve an honestly pluralist society in which the rights of Christians are protected even when Christians are in the minority, or like today when the Christian majority has lost control of the government for whatever reason. I make two observations.

First, the goal of achieving a homogeneous Christian society is not realistic in America today.*

Second, working to achieve both goals at the same time is counterproductive and contradictory. Everything we do to try to control society, and particularly ramming Christian marriage through our legal system, only legitimizes our opponents tactics, making oppression of Christian doctrine the most natural thing in the world to follow the redefinition of marriage to include gay couples.

3) Taking Action. Having clearly identified our priorities, we must act to deflect our opponent's blow, and turn his energy against him. First, we unexpectedly give in and end the Christian legal definition of marriage, giving the gay lobby exactly what they say they want. Second, we take all the value out of that victory by making the legal definition of marriage irrelevant, and returning such metaphysical questions to the churches, where they belong. We do this in two concrete ways.

The first way to deflate the victory is to immediately allow not only gay marriage but polygamous marriage, interspecies marriage, temporary marriages for any reason, etc.

The second way we make their victory worthless is we refuse to enter legal marriages. Oh, we will still have weddings. We will still "marry" in the sense of entering a sacramental bond that is witnessed and recorded by the Church. The only thing that changes is that we completely boycott the paperwork and the legal benefits of marriage. In the eyes of the state, Christian married couples will become mere cohabitators like so many of their neighbors. We will declare that our religious convictions tell us that the state has no business licensing us to practice our sacraments. Which is perfectly true. And politically unassailable.

I believe that the results of all this would be a greater religious freedom for Christian culture in the long term. We would end up in a situation where it wouldn't matter what kind of legitimacy for gay marriage is taught in public schools: Everybody can see that you can "marry" any person or thing, and that it is meaningless. Preachers would be free to talk about Sacramental matrimony because it would be clear that it is in no way a political topic, any more than there are political problems today for priests who teach the Catholic doctrine on divorce. And the reason is simple: We're not trying to ram our religious beliefs on divorce through the legal system to impose it on a bunch of people who don't practice our faith.

And that is it. The first item in the list is the most important to our success: a rootedness in our Christian identity. Without that, the same approach just ends in a post-Christian society with no idea of the importance of gender and sex. But with a proper grounding, we can reclaim the whole idea of marriage as a sacrament of the church and indeed the genesis of the domestic church which is the family. In fact I'd recommend going farther and getting rid of the word "marriage" altogether. We should be concerned with sacramental matrimony. Ultimately that is what we are concerned with today. By eliminating "marriage", we cut the cord that binds our sacrament to the whim of democracy. Matrimony ends up in the exclusive control of the Church. That sounds like a win to me.

---

*Important footnote: My fellow Catholics should be warned that I am dangerously close to denying non-negotiable doctrine in this essay. As you can read here, the CDF (in fact, Cardinal Ratzinger before he became Pope) has said that Catholics must oppose legal recognition of same-sex marriages. In fact,

When legislation in favour of the recognition of homosexual unions is proposed for the first time in a legislative assembly, the Catholic law-maker has a moral duty to express his opposition clearly and publicly and to vote against it. To vote in favour of a law so harmful to the common good is gravely immoral.

So how do I justify my position? Well first of all, it's perfectly possible that I am flat wrong about this issue. But I would like to point out that I'm not denying the fundamental moral assertion of the CDF document: that giving same-sex unions the same status as marriages is harmful to society. My point is rather, first that it is not realistic to expect to win on the issue, because the cultural shift has already taken place. A handful of states have legalized gay marriage since I wrote the essay. Right or wrong, this is the path that we are on. Second, failing in the vehement attempt to prevent this from taking place can cause us grave harm. I am recommending an alternative path of action where we actually do work against the idea that homosexual unions are the same as marriages -- But we do so pragmatically, the way a political minority should.

Am I wrong in discounting the possibility of a revival of Christian values? Am I selling short the work of the Holy Spirit in our society? Perhaps. It could be that I am lacking in the virtue of Hope. But we have to remember that we are fighting, in the words of J. R. R. Tolkien, "the long defeat." Christianity does not predict or expect a long march to an ever better, ever more utopian society. Yet we have a duty to work for the good even when it is unlikely that we will win. Am I abandoning that duty, or am I just saying that we should choose which hill we want to die on? The reader may judge.

I should strongly emphasize that I am not saying we shouldn't witness to our faith. People should be aware that we are morally opposed to homosexual relationships, just as they should be aware that we are opposed to divorce and contraception. But we all recognize that if Catholics started calling for divorce to be outlawed, our credibility would be shot. This is despite the fact that divorce, especially no-fault divorce, is gravely harmful to society, perhaps even more harmful than gay marriage because of its wider appeal to human selfishness. We have to be able to find an effective balance between an uncompromising witness of our moral beliefs and a prudent incrementalism in our political agitation. Anybody who is paying attention knows that if we come out of the next few decades with our freedom of religion strongly intact, it will be cause for a big sigh of relief. What it comes down to, in the end, is that I will fight to protect my kids from a thought-police state even if it means putting up with bad influences. If that's the worst influence my libertine American culture has on my Catholicism, I'm in a pretty good place.

a 3400 word misogynistic takedown of Pride and Prejudice

2010-11-05T14:44:00.000-04:00

Reposted from my old blog which is broken. Try not to take this too seriously.

I have a vague memory of reading, sometime in my childhood, a comic account (Was it Calvin and Hobbes?)of father turning off the television, which is protested by his son who is watching some kind of science fiction show in the vein of Star Trek. I remember the dialogue being something like this:

"But I want to see what happens!"

"I can tell you what happens. Captain AwesomeGuy saves the day. The end."

"But I want to see _how_ he does it!"

I recall this to draw attention to something I think is interesting: The son admits, implicitly, that he agrees with the father about how the story is going to end. There is never any doubt that Captain AwesomeGuy is going to triumph. In fact, he triumphs every time a new episode is made, probably weekly, and for a fan it never gets old. It's formulaic and we love it.

If you think back to the disappointment and betrayal that many fans felt when DC Comics did the whole Death Of Superman gimmick, you can see that we revel in the formulaic episode. It's deeply satisfying, and if our enjoyment of the latest episode is interrupted, we feel a loss -- whether it is a father turning off the television in the middle of a show, or a writer who decides to deviate too much from what the fans expect.

Is it unsophisticated? Is it something we should be ashamed of? At the very least I can say that letting the knowledge of how predictable these stories are rise to the forefront of my consciousness can certainly deaden or even ruin the experience. But that may be simply to say that part of the "experience" is necessarily the suspension of disbelief.

This is all a prelude to my main intention, a book review! I have criticisms of a formulaic novel, whose intended fan base almost certainly does not include me, but I can't help feeling as if it is bad manners to express them. I'm talking about the book Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen. Let me get more quickly to the point by summing up my hesitations: I'm sure I could be made to feel pretty silly about myself if somebody made a keen and devastating deconstruction of the sort of stories I enjoy as a "fan". (I could probably watch the film adaptation of Iron Man once a year and never grow tired of it.) My main criticism of Pride and Prejudice is that it is almost certainly enjoyed by so many women because it appeals to their baser appetites such as the ego and encourages some prevalent forms of wishful thinking. In essence, instead of _revealing_ humanity with a penetrating eye of genius that we might attribute to the greatest writers, Austen conceals it, offering a comfortable lie.

So just remember, this isn't meant as an indictment of women. I am susceptible to the same kind of offerings when they are tuned instead to my own inclinations. Let's begin.

***

First, the good. Austen is obviously very talented. She has a great ear for dialogue, and she is generally enjoyable to read. On a scene-by-scene basis, she shows herself to be an apt observer of human beings. Although the style of speaking is by this time long out of date, (published: 1813) it retains a flavor of authenticity even to the twenty-first century English speaker. She is easily able to establish and distinguish an array of characters in the mind of the reader, sometimes by explaining but more often simply by the natural impressions that come through in the dialogue. No easy feat, to be sure.

One of the things that ensure the book's enduring popularity is Austen's laser-like focus on the human relationships between her characters. Although the plot is grounded firmly on the social structure of English society at that time, it is unchanging humanity that it is exclusively at the forefront of the reader's attention. No space is wasted on physical description of what turn of the (nineteenth) century looked like, which would only put cold distance between her characters and modern readers. We are left to fill in our own details, as simply or as complexly as we like, accurate to whatever degree of familiarity we have with that historical epoch.

And of course I can't praise the book without mentioning my giddy enjoyment of every word spoken by the character of Mr. Bennet, the protagonist's father. Although a retiring man and not a particularly effective parent, Mr. Bennet's witticisms hilariously betray the desperate attempt of one man not to drown in the sea of estrogen that is his household: a wife and five mostly grown daughters. Whenever I felt that I couldn't take any more _chatting_ from a bunch of women who seemed never to lift a finger to perform any chore or fill any responsibility, Mr. Bennet would pop his head out of his study and say something deliciously funny. He and I were in this together, you see.

So far, so good. But as I progressed through the novel, I began to have a strange feeling. Even though each particular scene was authentic enough, when I stepped back and looked at the arc of the narrative as a whole, there was something bizarrely unreal about the whole thing. I distinctly remember this beginning at the point at which all the set-up had been put in place and things started _happening_, with Mr. Darcy's failed marriage proposal to Elizabeth. From this point on, I began to develop a dark certainty: This story is a cleverly crafted lie. Far beyond the sense in which all fiction is untrue, the gradual and involved resolution of every obstacle that stood between Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy seemed ... dishonest.

I even developed a tongue-in-cheek thesis that explained the whole thing:

As related in the text, after Elizabeth's refusal of the moderately well-off Mr. Collins' proposal, she sees her friend Charlotte instead be married to him in her place. She then visits the new Mrs. Collins in her new home, where she experiences the dramatic wealth of their neighbor and benefactor Lady Catherine de Bourgh, who as it turns out is Mr. Darcy's aunt. Mr. Darcy arrives and she is reminded that he is practically engaged to Lady Catherine's daughter (and his cousin) Anne, a quiet and sickly, unimpressive girl.

Then my interpretation adds: Elizabeth is far too certain and justified in her dislike of Darcy to admit to herself any jealousy of Anne. Indeed she is perfectly correct that she wouldn't be happy with Darcy. However she is also growingly aware that her high standards make it fairly likely that she will never marry, especially to someone as rich and fabulous as Darcy, the grandness of whose life she is only beginning to suspect, and that even if she finds some poor but intelligent chap, she will have a very difficult life in any case. Then, in an uncharacteristic fit of subconscious desire, she ... daydreams the contents of the rest of the book, beginning with Mr. Darcy's proposal to her and her angry refusal, followed by a complicated dance of revelation and reality-augmentation wherein her impression of Mr. Darcy as a pompous ass is proved totally wrong, and a new, desirable Mr. Darcy emerges who is a misunderstood, shy man earnestly and quickly working to improve himself (driven by his love for her), transforming himself into her ideal mate, and ultimately resulting in a rich and privileged life for her, and the approval and admiration of her parents and sisters, above whom she is raised on a pedestal forever.

Then the daydream ends. She sighs and turns her attention back to real life.

***

Why is it, I wonder, that this interpretation is far more credible to me as a reader than the straightforward story Austen presents as (fictionally) true? Is it merely because as a man, I don't relate well enough to Elizabeth to get sucked into the narrative and heave great sighs of passion along with her as the story unfolds?

No, I'm afraid there is more to it. What I have playfully described as Elizabeth's subconscious desires is actually my perception of what is going on in Jane Austen's psyche as she maps out the storyline. (Although 38 when it was published, the first full draft of the novel was completed when she was fanciful young woman of 21.) And the resonance that the book achieves with her audience is (as always) because of two things: the universality of the human experience being treated and the skill of the author in encoding that experience in a recognizable form. In other words, Austen recognizes something that is common to human beings and manages to put it into words, with the result that her readers are able to both understand and identify with her subject matter.

Parenthetically, this is my way of summing up what makes any book popular - first that the audience is able to understand what the author is talking about, and second that they recognize or appreciate the ideas of the author as something they want to spend time thinking or reading about.

But what separates really good literature from everything else is that really good literature reveals (as I began to say before) something about humanity that increases the audience's understanding of reality and of themselves. The reader of a really good book should say to themselves, "Yes, people really ARE like that, aren't they?" And that is where I think Jane Austen fails, for the same reason that episodes of Superman and Star Trek are not great works of art: They show what we want to see, playing on our desires, not challenging us to notice something new about the world, but encouraging us to futilely long for what is impossible.

Should we talk about what is unrealistic in Pride and Prejudice? Let's start with a modern aphorism of the "gender wars":

--
Women get married thinking that their husband will change, and he doesn't. Men marry thinking that their wife will not change, and she does.
--

Now, hopefully I don't need to point out that many exceptions do not make a generalization false. It isn't controversial that women, much more than men, enjoy reading Pride and Prejudice. That is a generalization, and a true one. To explain why, we need to appeal to other generalizations, or else we are necessarily off track.

We can remove the idea of marriage from the saying just mentioned: Women, rather than men, begin romantic relationships with the expectation that their partner will change over time. In the optimism of love, they often imagine that men will change in ways that please themselves, with their encouragement and help.

And of course since we human beings are all flawed and ignorant, any "typical characteristic" of women (or men) is going to often manifest itself in unfortunate ways. The stereotype of a perfectly bewildered husband wondering how his wife transformed into a bitter nag didn't just spring out of nowhere. And nor did the idea of women settling for a "fixer-upper" man. I suppose the second stereotype mentioned often precedes the first.

Now it's not my intention to ask why women think and act this way or to judge whether it is men's laziness that is more often the cause of her disappointment than her own unrealistic expectations. The point is, this is a real phenomenon that occurs often enough to make a true generalization, and my criticism is that books like Pride and Prejudice only encourage the problem.

Mr. Darcy is nothing, after all, but the quintessential fixer-upper.

He's filthy rich. (Women are usually not _so_ good at lying to themselves that they think they can "encourage" a poor man into becoming rich.) He's tall. He's not an extremely handsome man, but he is passably good looking. He's been brought up well enough to converse quite politely when he can be bothered, which is not very often because he is also a conceited, arrogant jackass.

"Maybe I can work with this," she says.

Or rather she doesn't say it. She thinks it, deep in the half-conscious areas of ego and desire. And the audience is feeling the same sentiment. We're told outright near the beginning of the book that Mr. Darcy is attracted to Elizabeth. As her animosity towards Darcy grows, the readers sympathize with her high standards, but we can expect that they're also saying to themselves, "You know, if it weren't for the unfortunate matter of his personality, Mr. Darcy's adoration would be the luckiest thing that ever happened to Elizabeth Bennet. If only..."

***

At this point in my review, fans of the book are already furious at me, so I have to argue my case carefully. "You've got it all wrong," they will protest. What we sympathize with is the rightness of Elizabeth's distain for Mr. Darcy. We admire her for NOT being swayed by his riches and his self-confidence. In a world where women's options were severely limited by society, she is a hero for restraining herself from the gold-digging tendency of her fellow young women! And on top of that, much of her dislike for Mr. Darcy was built on innocent misunderstandings that eventually get cleared up."

There is some truth to that last bit. Mr. Darcy broke up a blossoming romance between Elizabeth's sister and Darcy's good friend, but as it turns out he did so with the best of intentions. He honestly thought Jane Bennet didn't give a hoot about his friend, and he was trying to prevent his unhappiness. And then there were some lies told about Darcy's past by the charming Mr. Wickham, who ends up being revealed a scoundrel. So far so good. But what about the man's personality?

Early on, before any of the real misunderstandings begin, Darcy's friend is trying to get him to dance at a ball. This conversation is overheard by Elizabeth:

---
"Come, Darcy," said he, "I must have you dance. I hate to see you standing about by yourself in this stupid manner. You had much better dance."

"I certainly shall not. You know how I detest it, unless I am particularly acquainted with my partner. At such an assembly as this it would be insupportable. Your sisters are engaged, and there is not another woman in the room whom it would not be a punishment to me to stand up with."

"I would not be so fastidious as you are," cried Mr. Bingley, "for a kingdom! Upon my honour, I never met with so many pleasant girls in my life as I have this evening; and there are several of them you see uncommonly pretty."

"_You_ are dancing with the only handsome girl in the room," said Mr. Darcy, looking at the eldest Miss Bennet. [meaning Jane]

"Oh! She is the most beautiful creature I ever beheld! But there is one of her sisters sitting down just behind you, who is very pretty, and I dare say very agreeable. Do let me ask my partner to introduce you."

"Which do you mean?" and turning round he looked for a moment at Elizabeth, till catching her eye, he withdrew his own and coldly said: "She is tolerable, but not handsome enough to tempt _me_; I am in no humour at present to give consequence to young ladies who are slighted by other men. You had better return to your partner and enjoy her smiles, for you are wasting your time with me."
---

Ladies, there is scarcely a guy around who could sympathize more with Mr. Darcy's desire not to dance in this scene, but I think I could manage to beg off without insulting the looks of Ms Bennet, to say nothing of doing so within earshot of her!

Somehow, for all the admiration her high standards win her, Elizabeth overlooks Mr. Darcy's personality when he finally decides to turn on the charm, three quarters of the way through the book. The resolutions of the various misunderstandings that occurred is plausible, if a little contrived. But what possible justification could she have for believing that the charming attitude he takes up isn't a complete lie that will be abandoned as soon as they tie the knot? In any case, I don't think she asks herself that question. It's as if the resolution of the more material misunderstandings are _running interference_, drawing our attention away from the issue of his character in order to hide Austen's narrative sleight-of-hand. If it works, as it seems to, I can only conclude that on some level her readers are wishing to be deceived.

And I worry that for the more impressionable of her young readers, Austen is presenting a really bad example. It is all too common for young people in love to overlook the glaring faults of their beau. If Elizabeth were really so independent of mind as she is given credit for, she ought to at least grapple with the idea that Mr. Darcy's best efforts to impress her don't mean that he has become a completely different person from the one who was so willing to insult her when they first met. (And it's worth mentioning that the whole thing takes place over the course of about a year.) The _role_ that Austen intends for Elizabeth is one of exceptional intelligence and good judgment. But when good judgment ultimately conflicts with the need to move the plot along, she relies on the sympathetic reader to overlook astonishingly poor judgment.

Something needs to be said also of another way that Elizabeth is a poor example for young women: She is too willing to overlook and even sympathize with Mr. Darcy's confession of his distain for her family members. How familiar this part of their relationship must seem to many adolescents -- a boyfriend that gets annoyed (unreasonably by adult standards) at some offense given by a girl's mother, and doesn't want to be around her family. Should an intelligent role model be going along with that kind of thing, or challenging him get to know her in her place as a family member? Maybe young women are relating to Elizabeth's situation in ways that are unhealthy. Why is she accepting behavior from a 28 year old man that we would instantly recognize as immature if he was 16 instead?

***

In the end, we're not turning the pages to find out what happens next, whether they end up together and whether they find happiness. Instead we are playing the roll of fans. Like a boy watching Star Trek, we're not wondering whether the protagonist is going to triumph. The obstacles in her way are only bit players. We're reading because we know she's going to win, and we want to revel in it. And like fans watching another formulaic episode, we can't stop at the mere suspension of disbelief: We are required to have a fan's willingness to overlook the stretches. In order to really enjoy the story, you have to _want_ them to end up together.

I don't condemn anybody for _liking_ Pride and Prejudice, for the same reason I don't feel ashamed for liking movies like The Matrix or Iron Man. There ought to be no guilt in enjoying the kind of stories that we tend to describe as "guilty pleasures". But I hope we can move past the pretense that men don't enjoy these kinds of books because men are uncultured or shallow. Monday Night Football has an _appeal_ to men: it has striving, excellence, a narrative of triumph and defeat, and unexpected twists and turns. Caring about it means mentally putting yourself in the place of those on the field. Those who find it empty, whether men or women, (and I confess I'm no sports fan,) are those that for whatever reason can't get emotionally involved in the conflict in that way. I think the same is quite true for Pride and Prejudice. Its conflicts and dangers have a direct appeal, and those that are drawn into sympathizing with Elizabeth enough to be really putting themselves in her place will enjoy it immensely.

But this is different from a work of really great literature. You don't need to be rooting for a murderer to _appreciate_ Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment. The account of Raskolnikov simply rings true in a way that Elizabeth Bennet does not.

This essay is much too long already, so that is all.