I have white friends, people who ought to know better, who are shocked, shocked that a minister of the cloth would say the things Rev. Jeremiah Wright has said.

Rev. Wright, in case you’ve been sleeping under a rock, is the retired pastor of Barack Obama’s church in Chicago. He has been caught on YouTube saying highly critical things about the U.S. government and its alleged mistreatment of African-Americans over the years. Probably the most incendiary quote was this one, from Wikipedia:

“‘The government lied about inventing the HIV virus as a means of genocide against people of color’, referring to AIDS origins theories, and ‘The government gives them the drugs [referring to the Iran-Contra Affair], builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing “God Bless America.” No, no, no, God damn America, that’s in the Bible for killing innocent people…God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human. God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme.’”

I have to ask those white friends of mine and others like them: How could you not know this was going on? How could you be unaware that many black Americans believe HIV is a government plot against them? That their government has been foisting addictive street drugs on them with malice aforethought? That they’ve been treated by that same government as less than human since, oh, slavery?

[I said “many.” Certainly not all black Americans believe such stuff. But as Senator Obama said in his big speech on race a few days ago, a “legacy of defeat” still flourishes in many corners of black America — mostly within the underclass, but also in the upper strata — that leads some African-Americans to believe the worst, including even paranoia about HIV plots. In light of syphilis experiments on uneducated, unsuspecting black men at Tuskegee, maybe such paranoia, though ridiculous, becomes understandable.]

I am not here to defend Rev. Wright, but to ask again: Why the heck are we whites so surprised? Aren’t we listening?

Guess not.

A lot of us whites seem to think race isn’t much of a problem these days, and things certainly have changed for the better. We see black faces in the White House (Rice, Powell), on the screen (Rock, Berry), on the courts (Magic) and the links (Tiger), even in some boardrooms (Richard Parsons of AOL, Bob Johnson of BET). We see black faces in our workplaces too and some are doing well; some have become our friends, or anyway workplace buddies. And now one African-American has a good shot at becoming President. But as that individual correctly stated in his speech:

“For the men and women of Reverend Wright’s generation, the memories of humiliation and doubt and fear have not gone away; nor has the anger and the bitterness of those years. That anger may not get expressed in public, in front of white co-workers or white friends. But it does find voice in the barbershop or around the kitchen table.”

And, I would add, in the pulpit. My white friend Richard says, “I cannot imagine any Catholic priest saying, in public, ‘God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human.’” But actually the Catholic priests of the liberation theology movement have made many similar denunciations of repressive governments in Latin America and the Caribbean.

So did our secular saint, Dr. Martin Luther King. Dr. King is currently being held up as the anti-Jeremiah Wright, but here’s what he said in a 1968 sermon at his Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta [quoted by E.J. Dionne in today’s Washington Post]:

“God didn’t call America to engage in a senseless, unjust war. . . . And we are criminals in that war. We’ve committed more war crimes almost than any nation in the world, and I’m going to continue to say it. And we won’t stop it because of our pride and our arrogance as a nation. But God has a way of even putting nations in their place.”

So what is it with us whites? How can we so quickly forget Dr. King’s truly radical critique of America, and the even more radical critique of Malcolm X who many of us now profess to revere? Folks, I even listen to Louis Farrakhan. I detest him as an anti-Semite and worse, but I know he speaks for a segment of black American society, so I pay attention when he speaks and try to understand where he’s coming from.

I try to listen to the conversations of ordinary black Americans too, and participate in them when I can. It isn’t so hard, even if you don’t have black friends. Here in the Washington area, just tune in to the call-in shows on WPFW-FM, 89.3. In Chicago, where I’ve been spending a lot of time lately, tune in WVON-AM, 1690. Heck, on a good day you can even get a semi-earfull on C-SPAN.

Since slavery ended 143 years ago, our society has been stuck on this question of race. We can’t get past it because we won’t talk about it — not in an honest, open and forthright way, anyhow. We’re all of us, white and black, walking on eggs, afraid we’ll come to blows (or worse) if we say what we really think. And not only do we fail to talk; we also fail to listen, to creep out of our comfort zone and try to hear what the other guy is saying, even if it makes us squirm.

But change might be at hand at last. This presidential race has handed us a golden opportunity. Mr. Obama, responding to political pressure, has shown the leadership to take the question seriously. He is inviting us all, white and black, to start saying what’s on our minds, and thereby perhaps start to push the 800-pound gorilla out of our living rooms forever. I for one hope we accept the challenge.

Frank Joseph
www.tolovemercy.com

P.S. I’ll be in the Chicago area from March 28 through April 12. I am “Writer in Residence” at Thurgood Marshall Middle School (3/28-4/5) and Albany Park Multicultural Academy (4/6-12), teaching 7th and 8th graders to write narrative. How cool is that?

My friend Margie Weiner died of cancer Tuesday, not yet 60 years old.

Margie was a kid when I first met her, working for — sometimes against — the ineffable David Swit. David, although my dear friend (and ski buddy), was (in)famous for bullying his staff — except for two: Karen Harrington and Margie. Both these redoubtable women told David where to stick it on a daily basis, but it wasn’t only that: Without Karen, everyone would have walked off the job; without Margie, the money would have stopped pouring in.

Margie went on to become marketing director of many more companies in what used to be the newsletter business (now we call ourselves the “specialized information industry”). Then Margie started running companies — Food Chemical News, American Lawyer. She was smart, sharp, fast on her feet; a little bitty thing, but tough enough when she had to be. One of her eulogizers used the word “capable” to sum her up professionally, and that she surely was.

She was impatient with incompetence but encouraging where she saw promise. She’d knock herself out for you — not for payback but because you were her friend. She was funny, she was chummy, she made you feel good. It’s not surprising she had hundreds of friends, not surprising that she became president of our trade association (then called the Newsletter & Electronic Publishers Assn. [NEPA], now the Specialized Information Publishers Assn. [SIPA]).

Margie and Larry fell in love when they were kids and were still in love Tuesday when she died. When I saw them several months ago, Larry was on compassionate leave from his job but facing having to return to work Jan. 1. As I watched him take care of her I thought, ‘This guy isn’t going back to work as long as this woman is breathing,’ and he didn’t.

Margie and Larry have two kids, Sam and Alexis. Sam spoke at length this morning, happy and funny as he recalled his happy, funny mom the way she’d like to be remembered. He lost it a bit at the end, but who wouldn’t? Alexis, through her grief, could speak only briefly.

Sam and his wife are expecting their first child in a few weeks. Margie had wanted to live to see this first grandchild. She’d wanted to visit Israel this spring too. When I saw her, frail and head-scarved but just as funny and upbeat as ever, I was pretty sure she’d accomplish both things. But she didn’t.

Margie and Larry were Jewish and observant. I’m Jewish and not observant but, as anyone who’s read my novel TO LOVE MERCY knows, I’m sure interested in religion. One of the things I’ve thought a lot about in recent years is God, or more specifically, the idea of God.

I used to think there was no God; then I realized that what I REALLY thought is that there is no personal God. That is, God isn’t paying attention: He or She (or It) doesn’t know what I’m doing, nor anyone, nor cares. No rewards for good behavior, no punishment for bad, no answered prayers, no eternity of harp-playing above the clouds, no end to man’s inhumanity to man. For most of us, once those things are gone, God’s gone, but that’s OK with me. Of course He/She/It exists, if you say so. Now can we stop arguing about it?

But every now and then I feel the touch of magic in my life and I think I see the hand of God. My kids, both adopted, but so much in tune with me that they must be my True Son and Daughter, the kids God meant me to have. My wife Carol, who loves me when I least deserve it and whose patience and understanding are without end. How can such luck exist but for a caring God? wonder I. Maybe such God-thoughts are just my Sunday-School training, implanted at such an early age that I’ll never rationalize my way out of it. But then I think, So what if they are? Haven’t I reached an age where it’s OK to be inconsistent if I want?

Margie was buried this sunny bright March morning in a pine box, its sole ornament a Star of David. The body returns to the dust but the soul finds its way to be rejoined with God, the rabbi said, and as I stood looking on with hundreds of Margie’s friends, that seemed right enough to me. There may not be room for a kazillion harp-players anywhere — not even Heaven — but there certainly ought to be room in an infinite and eternal God’s heart for Margie’s soul, and mine and yours and everyone else’s too.

Frank Joseph
www.tolovemercy.com

P.S. Margie’s family is establishing a scholarship for marketing students. You can help it along with a tax-deductible donation to the Specialized Information Publishers Foundation, http://www.sipaonline.com/Foundation/SIPF_mission.htm

P.P.S. My friend David Swit, mentioned above, himself died several years ago of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, a hardening of the lung tissues without apparent cause for which the only cure is a lung transplant. David died young too, just a few years into his 60s. David could drive you nuts (especially if you worked for him) but he had kick-ass news instincts and his generosity, kindness and good fellowship to others was legendary. Like Margie, he also was a president of NEPA. David was more serious about having fun than almost anyone I’ve ever known. His watchword was: “Life is uncertain. Eat dessert first.” Fortunately for David and the rest of us, he did.

P.P.P.S. TO WALK HUMBLY, sequel to TO LOVE MERCY, is half-plus-three-chapters-written. Going way slower than I’d like, but I think some of it is pretty good. No way I’m going to meet my April 1 completion deadline, but at least I know where I’m heading.

We all know the habit of reading for pleasure is dying. But a chilling article in the current issue of The New Yorker (”Twilight of the Books, www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2007/12/24/071224crat_atlarge_crain/) envisions the day when reading for pleasure may become merely “an increasingly arcane hobby.”

For many in America, I believe that day already has arrived. The question then becomes, Why does it matter? Why, when we have great choices available to us at little or no cost on TV, in the movies, on the Web and elsewhere, does it matter that we no longer rely on the printed word to stimulate our thoughts and imaginations?

For one thing, it matters because reading IS a unique, and uniquely stimulating, activity. Watching TV or a movie is principally passive, whereas reading is principally an activity of involvement. The action on the screen washes over you. But there is no “action” on the page; YOU must create the pictures, the sounds, the scents, the ambience. The author gives you the blocks; it’s up to you to build the building.

Right now I am in the middle of Bruce Wagner’s scarifying novel I’M LOSING YOU, Book I of his “Cellphone Trilogy.” It’s a great example of what I’m talking about. It is hands down the best thing ever written about Hollywood; but, even though it is about the movies, no movie could ever capture its subtleties. The novel is written in at least a dozen voices, through at least a dozen points of view, and every one of these narrators is unreliable. We the readers know more about them than they know about themselves, because of the skills of this uncommonly gifted author, who says so much but leaves so much more unsaid. Wagner is a screenwriter himself, but it doesn’t surprise me that he chose the novel form to tell this story.

I am also reading THIS IS YOUR BRAIN ON MUSIC by Daniel J. Levitin, a perfectly fascinating primer on neuroscience written with great panache by a guy who was in a rock band before he got his Ph.D. This book could indeed be made into a great series on PBS or the Discovery Channel, but you’d be watching a long long time before such a series could relay all the fascinating knowledge Levitin gracefully packs into 320 pages.

For another thing, failing to read for pleasure may be costing us some of our abilities to think. The New Yorker article makes this point in a variety of ways, among them the following. Quoting from a recent National Endowment for the Arts report, “To Read or Not to Read,” it says (striking terror into the hearts of parents everywhere): “Poor reading skills correlate heavily with lack of employment, lower wages, and fewer opportunities for advancement.”

And here’s another cost we risk, which I ran across while researching my recent presentation on getting boys to read: Fiction coaxes us to place ourselves in the shoes of characters we won’t encounter in life, thereby building our capacities for empathy and understanding — which, whether you’re caring for an injured person or negotiating a business deal, can be real useful in real life.

There’s a lot of fascinating neuroscience in the New Yorker article too, and some equally fascinating cultural anthropology. It compares our thinking styles with those of preliterate “oral” cultures to show how reading molds our worldviews and shapes what we are pleased to call “intelligence.” In one study it cites, illiterate peasants were unable or unwilling to make logical inferences about hypothetical situations. “Asked by [the researcher’s] staff about polar bears, a peasant grew testy: ‘What the cock knows how to do, he does. What I know, I say, and nothing beyond that!’” It continues:

“[Another researcher] synthesized existing research into a vivid picture of the oral mind-set. Whereas literates can rotate concepts in their minds abstractly, orals embed their thoughts in stories. According to [the researcher], the best way to preserve ideas int he absence of writing is to ‘think memorable thoughts,’ whose zing insures their transmission. [Shades of writing a “grabber” novel opening!] In an oral culture, cliche and stereotype are valued, as accumulations of wisdom, and analysis is frowned upon, for putting those accumulations at risk. There’s no such concept as plagiarism, and redundancy is an asset that helps an audience follow a complex argument.”

Not only novels will go bye-bye, but newspapers too (gone already, eh?), with their ability to present argument and counter-argument and go beneath the surface in a way broadcast news cannot do. Indeed, the New Yorker author, Caleb Crain, seems to think all is lost. “No effort of will is likely to make reading popular again,” he wrings his hands. “Children may be browbeaten, but adults resist interference with their pleasures.”

Hey, I do this stuff too. I listen to recorded books in the car all the time. I’m listening to Tom Perrotta’s LITTLE CHILDREN right now, and it’s first rate in the way a fine novel ought to be — you savor the prose and fill in the blanks, much as you’d do if you were reading instead of auditing. Because of that need to fill in the blanks, it seems to me that listening to books is a lot more like reading them than watching movies is.

I know this is a pretty heavy topic for Christmas Eve so I’ll lighten up. Have wonderful holidays, everyone. There’ll be enough time in the New Year to be afraid, very afraid.

Frank Joseph
www.tolovemercy.com

P.S. Remember about me being asked to be “Writer in Residence” at Thurgood Marshall Middle School in Chicago? Make that two schools. Thurgood Marshall has talked me up to the nearby Albany Park Multicultural Academy. For two weeks in early spring, I’ll be teaching seventh and eighth graders how to write narrative. Apropos of the above topic, if I were to save a soul or two I’d be a happy guy.

P.P.S. Apropos of none of the above (except the movies), the boffo boxoffice hit of the moment is “I Am Legend.” If you want to see a truly awful movie — implausible from the first scene on, maudlin, badly acted, badly directed, muddled story, bad ending, zero out of a possible five stars, what in the world can I think of to say worse about it? — this is that movie. Bah humbug!

I’m not planning to vote for Mitt Romney. He’s smart, competent and has a great jawline, but he is a shameful flip-flopper, a man so eager to get elected that he is ready to abandon whatever principles he may have had.

My opposition has nothing to do with his religion though and, if you oppose Romney, I hope your opposition is not on religious grounds either.

In fact, I’d like to stick up for Romney’s religion, or anyway its secular aspects.

Romney is a Mormon. Mormonism – more properly known as the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-Day Saints, or LDS – is a purebred American religion that emerged during the 1830s when a young man in upstate New York, Joseph Smith, claimed to have discovered buried golden tablets inscribed with new religious instructions from heaven. Smith’s followers ultimately migrated to Utah. There, they created their heaven on earth centered in Salt Lake City, and there it remains, though plenty of Mormons reside elsewhere too.

I met my first Mormon in high school, a kid named David Bedwell. He was not unusual in any discernible way. I don’t even know how or why I knew he was a Mormon. I assumed Mormons were Christians like everyone else (except us Jews).

Then I started going out West to ski and met lots more Mormons. Seventy per cent of Utahns are Mormons, and Utahns are nice. Unusually nice – polite, solicitous, well-mannered beyond what you’d expect in, say, New York City. (No, let’s be realistic and compare Utahns to, say, Chicagoans. Nicer than most Chicagoans. WAY nicer than most New Yorkers.)

Mormons are more than nice; they are unusually successful in American society. They are relatively affluent (Utah median income is $45,726 vs. $41,994 nationwide); relatively generous (22% of Mormons give $5,000 a year or more to church-related causes, vs. 9% of Southern Baptists and 2% of Catholics, according to J. Quin Monson of BYU and David Campbell of Notre Dame, quoted in the Boston Phoenix); and relatively self-sacrificing. At any moment there are about 50,000 young Mormons giving a year or so of their lives as missionaries – proselytizing, to be sure, but also doing good and helping others. The LDS Church strongly urges its youth to be missionaries; Mitt Romney served as a Mormon missionary for 2½ years.

And Mormons have stable families. While many Mormons divorce at rates comparable to other Americans, Mormons who commit to one another in the demanding “temple marriage” show only a 6% divorce rate. (Source: BYU Prof. Daniel K. Judd, quoted in the Los Angeles Times.)

Mormon family stability traces back to some unusual Mormon “family values.” From the BBC website:

“Mormon families differ from other families in that they can continue to exist as families after earthly death; and they live with the expectation that they will live again with their ancestors and their eventual descendants. Mormon parents regard it as their duty … to have children in order to create physical bodies for spirits to come to earth in order to fullfil God’s plan.”

I can think of two other religious groups that have been extraordinarily successful in their respective societies despite being tiny minorities (1.8% to 1.9% of the population), and in the face of religious persecution that sometimes rises to the level of violence: Jews in America, and Sikhs in India. The basic beliefs of Mormons, Jews and Sikhs may have little in common, but all three groups share a commitment to the centrality of family life.

(Sikhs occupy a niche in Hindu-dominated Indian society strikingly analogous to that of Jews in America. Carol and I know a lot of Sikhs, and we spent a month in India as the guest of Sikhs. It’s a long story, don’t ask.)

When it comes down to it, I don’t care what religious beliefs my President holds as long as he or she is doing a job for me. On that score, Mitt and I seem to diverge. Facing the same kind of voter hostility because of his Mormonism that John F. Kennedy faced in 1960 on account of his Roman Catholicism, Romney just delivered a major speech about faith in public life. He felt compelled to reassure voters he believes “that Jesus Christ is the son of God and the savior of mankind.” While he called for religious tolerance in public life, Romney also said “nativity scenes and menorahs should be welcome in our public places,” and added: “Freedom requires religion, just as religion requires freedom.”

Romney may welcome more demonstrations of religiosity in public life but lately I’ve had a bellyful of it. I deplore the litmus tests candidates feel compelled to take these days as they try to out-pander one another for the votes of the faithful. I’m with JFK who in his 1960 speech said: “I believe in a president whose religious views are his own private affair, neither imposed by him upon the nation, or imposed by the nation upon him as a condition to holding that office.”

Yeah, Mitt, I knew John Kennedy and, believe me, you are no John Kennedy. And by the way, where did you pick up that ridiculous nickname?

Frank Joseph
www.tolovemercy.com

P.S. Congratulations to my baby sister Judith Susan Joseph Thompson Assisi, affectionately known as Hey You, on her release from thralldom. Welcome to the free world, Toots. Now get to work on your tennis game.

Couple of years ago I couldn’t spell ‘young adult author.’ Now I are one.

I appeared at ten public high schools and middle schools during my recent trip to Chicago:

• One Chicago middle school (Thurgood Marshall) invited me back as “Writer in Residence.” For a week in late March, I’ll be teaching seventh and eighth graders how to write narrative.

• Another (Montefiore Special School) has invited me back for a presentation to three schools — Montefiore and two other nearby elementary schools.

• And a third (North River Elementary) has asked me to consider being commencement speaker.

I am deeply gratified and, frankly, stunned. When asked about being commencement speaker, my first reaction was to laugh nervously and blurt something like, ‘Oh, SURELY you can do better than me.’ And ‘Writer in Residence’? Holy moley.

There’s more. The Chicago Public Schools have taken a strong interest in TO LOVE MERCY, my first novel. An autographed copy has been hand-carried to Rufus Williams, the president of Chicago Public Schools, and the wheels are now turning inside CPS headquarters. I don’t know what will come of this, but fingers, toes and you-know-whats are crossed. (Eyes, fool.)

Add to that, we sold or handed out close to 450 copies of TO LOVE MERCY during my 2 1/2 weeks in Chicago. Most of these copies were bought by the schools where I appeared.

What fascinates me is this novel’s appeal down to seventh grade. As I’ve said before, I didn’t think I was writing a young-adult novel; if anything, I thought I was writing an OLD-adult novel. TO LOVE MERCY contains a little language, plus references to pederasty and murder, and the historical references will sail right over most kids’ heads. But it’s also a book about kids, with kids as protagonists … and boy-type kids, at that; it’s written in words of one and two syllables (”Fog Index” = 4th grade); and its themes of race and religion, conflict and reconciliation are just what schools want kids to be thinking and talking about. Plus, with its strong Chicago setting, it’s especially appealing to Chicago schools.

I have no problem with kids as readers. If a good book can change a life, it’s likelier to change an open young life than a jaded older one. Face it, the world wants us all in cubbies of some sort; I’m comfortable enough in this YA cubby, as long as I can continue writing what I want to write and not be asked to talk down to readers.

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Regarding my last blog (”Boys and books, Part II”), Rich Weinfeld asked me to clarify that, although both his grade-school-age sons confirmed the statistics about homophobic insults, the stats were drawn from SMART BOYS by Sanford Cohn and originated in a study by the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Network. Also, the assertion that men and women differ genetically at about the same 1%-2% rate that humans differ from chimpanzees, comes from Rich’s book HELPING BOYS TO SUCCEED IN SCHOOL, not Michael Gurian’s; Rich found it in a Washington Post article that cited an MIT study.

Last word on getting boys to read goes to Son Sam, who comments: “There needs to be a way that boys see that girls like smart, well read guys. Man, when I figured that out is when reading really started becoming exciting.”

Frank Joseph
www.tolovemercy.com

Dear Friend of Frank,

On Nov. 3, I gave a presentation, “Getting Boys to Read,” to the Illinois School Library & Media Assn. (ISLMA) annual meeting in Springfield IL. It was enthusiastically received — as well it might be. After all, I had devoted two full weeks to its study.

Chutzpah, thy name is Frank.

Chutzpah aside, a lot of people — educators, parents, Bill Gates for God’s sake — are really worried about the decline in reading for pleasure, especially among boys. I am too, which is why I chose the topic (that and the fact that I knew it’d draw a good crowd, which it did).

I didn’t become an expert in two weeks, but I did learn some fascinating stuff, to wit:

• Girls can sit at a desk with their hands folded and learn learn learn, but boys tend to have ants in their pants. Many boys just need to move around, experience variety, get their senses stimulated. But in school — especially elementary school — kids are expected to maintain focus for long periods and information “is primarily presented in the same low-tech way that it has been for years – listening to a teacher talk or reading a book.” As one boy put it: “School is where you sit at a desk all day and listen to women talk.”

• Reading is gay. Boys will seize any opportunity to put down other boys as “sissies;” one common way they do it is to say reading is for sissies. I didn’t believe this until my friend Rich Weinfeld, a nationally recognized authority on these topics, told me boys deliver homophobic taunts 20-30 times every school day. Rich’s source: His own grade-school-age son.

• Corollary to reading-is-gay is the “boy code”: don’t cry, don’t ask for help, don’t reach out for comfort or reassurance, don’t show tenderness, etc. This has an impact on boys and learning. One of those books I read said: “With little or no practice in identifying and talking about their own emotions or emotions of others, boys tend to be at a loss to discuss what a character in a story or book they read was feeling.”

• Boys at age 5-6 may lag girls developmentally by as much as a year and a half. They are physiologically unready to read. But in many schools, especially public schools in elite neighborhoods full of go-getting rat-racing moms and dads, kindergarten is the new first grade and reading is the curriculum. Here’s what Leonard Sax MD, author of BOYS ADRIFT, had to say about that: “The first thing that happens when you ask kids to do stuff they have no interest in doing is they stop paying attention. … The second thing … is they get annoyed. They get irritable. They withdraw. ‘I hate school. It’s stupid.’ Anything associated with school becomes uncool. Reading is uncool.”

• Michael Gurian, author of THE MINDS OF BOYS, makes other fascinating developmental points:
– Boys differ genetically from girls by 1%-2% … the same difference that separates ALL humans from chimpanzees. (I got a big appreciative snicker with that one.)
– Boys’ bloodstreams carry more dopamine, a marker for impulsive behavior.
– The frontal lobes in boys’ brains develop later, a marker for poor executive decisionmaking.
– The language centers in boys’ brains develop later.
– The hormonal mix in boys’ bloodstreams favors aggression, sex, territoriality, hierarchy.
– Girls’ brains multitask better, boys’ brains compartmentalize better.

• Time was when boys and girls entered puberty around 12 or 13. No more, apparently — now some girls enter puberty up to three years earlier, whereas some boys don’t do so for as much as two years later. Imagine an eighth-grade class full of sexually mature women and sexually immature boys. Now imagine trying to learn anything. At all. [The reasons for these developmental differences are unclear, but Sax cites suspicious environmental causes including, of all things, the phthalate-based plastic that baby bottles are made of.]

What to do? In the classroom, boys do better when they can move around and “be boys.” They often like to act out what they read. They like being split into teams and making reading a competitive activity. They need role models — the Chicago Public Schools have a program, “Real Men Read,” that seeks to address this. All those things schools are cutting out as frills and frippery — recess, gym, art, music — are helpful in getting kids into the frame of mind to read, to learn. Gurian, quoting a teacher: “I began taking my class down to the gym and letting them run laps before our spelling tests. The boys especially showed marked improvement in their test grades.”

And boys appreciate choice. If they’d rather read about A-Rod than A TALE OF TWO CITIES, let ‘em. Throw the canon out entirely, at least until high school. Don’t ever force one more boy to read THE DEERSLAYER.

And never, never make them read JANE EYRE or PRIDE AND PREJUDICE. Boys won’t read about girls. Boys will read about boys. They will read about animals and robots too, if they’re boy-like … but not about girls. Girls will read about girls. Girls will read about boys. Girls will read about just about anything (this is not just me talking — educators confirm it) … but Boys. Will. Not. Read. About. Girls.

The point my presentation led up to was this: Boys — anyone, actually — respond to Story, Character, Voice, Situation, Plot, Conflict, Fair vs. Unfair, Good vs. Evil … all the good old things they teach us in writers’ workshops. Boys — all readers, actually — just want the author to grab them by the lapels and yank them headlong into the tale, then keep them so amused/confused/terrified/excited/rapt that they can’t stop turning the pages.

Frank Joseph
www.tolovemercy.com

P.S. Rich Weinfeld’s book HELPING BOYS SUCCEED IN SCHOOL [ISBN 1-59363-198-7] was a tremendous resource in preparing my ISLMA presentation — comprehensive, up-to-date, concise and eminently readable. It’s $16.95 but Amazon discounts it to $12.71. Click here: http://www.amazon.com/Helping-Boys-Succeed-School-Terry/dp/1593631987/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1196385405&sr=8-1

P.P.S.  This is my first blog in more than six weeks. I was totally tied up preparing for my Chicago trip, then even more tied up once I got there. I spoke at 10 schools, four bookstores, four public libraries, a book club and ISLMA, plus I interviewed 11 Hyde Park High School alumni as research for TO WALK HUMBLY, my novel-in-progress. Unbelievably great things happened in Chicago. Watch this space.

My first novel To Love Mercy is about, among other things, kids — how children view the world. Its protagonists are a white Jewish boy named Steve, a son of privilege, and a black street kid nicknamed Sass whose father is a storefront preacher. It is also about intractable social issues — race, class and religion in American society. A kids’ book it ain’t … or so I thought.

But from well before it was finished, readers were asking whether it was a young-adult (YA) novel. This seemed to me like an oversimplification: kids-as-protagonists = YA. No, I responded — with its nostalgic evocations of Chicago in 1948 it was, if anything, an Old Adult Novel. My publisher, Patrick Grace, felt the same and published it as “mainstream period fiction” for general audiences. It was a big plus in our relationship that Patrick had read the book I thought I’d written.

But it didn’t take long before we bumped up against the marketplace. Debbie Smart, then assistant manager of Barnes & Noble-Arlington Heights IL, the very first bookseller I got to know, said she thought the novel was a YA. She cited three reasons: 1) kids as protagonists, 2) kids on the cover, and 3) large type. (The type is larger than is typical, for reasons Patrick has never convincingly explained, since he didn’t see it the book as a YA. Maybe he saw it as an OA and wanted to help the boomers with their reading glasses.)

There were other reasons to view it a YA, though, as I was to discover:

• Schools are real interested in books that deal candidly with race.
• Schools are real interested in books with boys as protagonists. Boys are hard cases when it comes to reading. They respond best to “boy” books — of which, I was to discover, there aren’t so many.
• Schools are real interested in books that are easy to read … and To Love Mercy is, I acknowledge with a trace of embarrassment. The issues are complex but the language is simple — words of one and two syllables, boy-speak. Its “Fog Index” tests out at fourth-grade level. (This fact courtesy of Amazon.com’s mind-boggling array of tools.)

We started referring to To Love Mercy as “mainstream period fiction with crossover appeal to young adults.” Classify or die.

To Love Mercy went on to do well — real well. It won six awards, garnered 23 five-star reviews on Amazon (some from you dear Friends of Frank), and went into a second printing. On the strength of this record, among other things, it attracted a top-notch literary agent, Michele Rubin of Writers House in New York, who signed me up and asked …

… ‘Frank, how would you feel if I sold your work as YA?’

We-elll. The marketplace had spoken. Who was I to resist?

Actually I didn’t mind it at all. Kids are the best readers — because they have read the fewest books. A good book can stay with a kid all his or her life. And the YA genre’s formerly tight restrictions are loosening as publishers, parents and kids acknowledge the reality that a kid’s life isn’t a Disney movie — that kids today have to deal with their own versions of hell, and a book that understands that is a book they will read. As long as I don’t have to write about powder-puff derbies and gossip girls, I’m down with it.

Thus, we are now aiming our efforts at schools. Through the good offices of dear Marla Wolf, I am appearing at ELEVEN Chicago-area schools in November. And through the good offices of dear Jane Sharka, President of the Illinois School Library Media Assn., I am addressing her annual meeting in Springfield on the topic, “Getting Boys to Read.”

And all this week, I’ve been hammering out a Study Guide for To Love Mercy. It’s been hard work, requiring me to put still more distance from a work that once was like my flesh and blood. First I had to separate myself from it as a marketer; now I have to separate from it again, this time seeing it as a teacher would.

But it’s been fun too. The Study Guide opens with a three-page historical overview, and I’ve illustrated it with period photos found on the Internet and elsewhere. I’ve enjoyed dreaming up the questions too, especially those that end, “If you don’t know the answer, look it up.”

But I’ve never done something like this and I’m not sure what I’ve created is what educators are looking for. So, to you Friends of Frank who are educators, I’d like to request a favor: Please look over the Study Guide and email me your comments and critiques, if any. I’ve posted the draft at www.frankjoseph.com/studyguide. Thanks in advance.

Frank Joseph
www.tolovemercy.com

P.S. We’ve added another bookstore appearance for my upcoming Chicago trip! Please visit Borders Books in Oak Park IL, at 2 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 4. The store is smack in the center of downtown Oak Park, corner of Lake Street and Harlem Avenue.

Here are the rest of my Chicago-area public appearances –

• Wednesday, Nov. 7, 7 p.m. — Barnes & Noble, Village Crossing Center, 5405 W. Touhy Ave., Skokie IL

• Thursday, Nov. 8, 7:30 p.m. — Schaumburg Central Library, 130 S. Roselle Rd., Schaumburg IL

• Friday, Nov. 9, 7 p.m. — Local author night, The Book Cellar, 4736 N. Lincoln Ave. (Lincoln Square), Chicago

• Saturday, Nov. 10, 2 p.m. — Homewood Library, 17917 Dixie Hwy., Homewood IL

• Sunday, Nov. 11, 2 p.m. — Barnes & Noble, Westfield Hawthorne Mall, Vernon Hills IL

• Tuesday, Nov. 13, 7:30 p.m. — Skokie Public Library, 5215 Oakton St., Skokie IL

• Thursday, Nov. 15, 7 p.m. — Arlington Heights Memorial Library, 500 N. Dunton Ave., Arlington Heights IL

The full Chicago-area appearance schedule, including the 11 schools, is posted at www.tolovemercy.com/frank_joseph_appearances.html

P.P.S. This posting is called “Part I” because I expect to say more on this topic after I ready my “Getting Boys to Read” presentation. Stay tuned.

I am blessed by the kindness of strangers.

The latest blessed stranger is Marla Wolf, whose generous assistance I cannot hope to repay. Marla has booked me into ELEVEN schools on my November trip to Chicago. Among them –

• Hyde Park Academy (formerly Hyde Park High). Hyde Park High is the setting for much of To Walk Humbly, the novel I am writing now. My mom graduated from Hyde Park High; I’d have too, except my family fled to the suburbs during the “white flight” that is a subject of this novel.

• Englewood Academy (formerly Englewood High). Key characters in To Walk Humbly  live in Englewood, the neighborhood to the southwest of Hyde Park. My dad grew up in Englewood; he attended Englewood High until my grandparents packed him off to military school.

• Shore High (formerly South Shore High), in the neighborhood just south of Hyde Park. When I was growing up in Hyde Park, many of my friends attended South Shore.

I met Marla through Gail Duberchin, another so-far stranger of immense kindness. Gail and I are on a listserv about marketing Jewish-themed books. One day Gail, who is in the Chicago suburbs, put out a call for help. I responded, and before we knew it we were buddies — exchanging stories to critique, sharing tips and experiences. When I mentioned that I needed to contact Chicago-area schools, Gail put me in touch with her Cousin Marla, who is the librarian at the Pulaski Fine Arts Academy (yes, Marla has booked me there too). Marla could as easily have had a stellar career as a marketer or agent.

That’s how things happen in the Internet era, eh?

As I said, it isn’t possible to express how grateful I am to Gail and Marla — both of whom I have yet to meet in person. And they’re not the only strangers with whose kindness I have been blessed. There’s …

• Debbie Smart of Barnes & Noble. One day, as Debbie tells the story, she opened a box of books and To Love Mercy, my first novel, fell out. She read it, loved it and contacted my publisher. At that time, Debbie was assistant manager of the Arlington Heights IL Barnes & Noble, where I made my first-ever bookstore appearance. That was on a Friday night; the next morning was my second bookstore appearance — also at Debbie’s store. Debbie has written an article about my novel for the B&N employee newsletter; gotten it onto reading lists at Wheeling High; had me address a teachers meeting in her store; and has invited me back twice, the latest to her new store, Barnes & Noble-Westfield Hawthorne Mall in Vernon Hills IL, where she is, deservedly, manager. (That appearance is scheduled for Sunday, Nov. 11, 2 p.m. Please come! Meet me! Meet Debbie!) Debbie Smart is one of the great unsung entrepreneurs of the book business; it is my good fortune that our paths crossed.

• Dan Lauber. Dan is a publisher in Oak Park with whom I did business when I published the FEDERAL PERSONNEL GUIDE, so not technically a stranger; but I really got to know Dan only after he read (and loved) To Love Mercy. Turns out Dan and I have been tracking each other’s footsteps all our lives though neither of us knew it. Dan knows everyone in Chicago. He got me an introduction to Timuel Black, the historian of Bronzeville, when all other efforts had failed; and has been helpful in dozens of other ways small and large. Plus he’s a White Sox fan and deeply knowledgeable about gelato.

• And so many others who have been so helpful along the way. Some are relatives, some old friends, some new friends, some strangers who’ve become friends. Ann Shlensky Hoenig. Judy Thornber. Barbara Koretz Katz. Bea Greene. Jack Foster. Joyce Rotman Brengle. Skye Blaine. Ellen Sandler. Mike and Marilyn Hollman. Jane Sharka. Jolyn Robichaux. Tory Cowles. Davida Berger Kristy. And undoubtedly others I’m forgetting, for which my sincere apologies. I can’t thank you enough, all of you.

Frank Joseph
www.tolovemercy.com

P.S. Please come see me in Chicago! Here are the public appearances –

• Wednesday, Nov. 7, 7 p.m. — Barnes & Noble, Village Crossing Center,  5405 W. Touhy Ave., Skokie IL

• Thursday,  Nov. 8,  7:30 p.m. — Schaumburg Central Library,  130 S. Roselle Rd.,  Schaumburg IL

• Friday, Nov. 9, 7 p.m. — Local author night, The Book Cellar, 4736 N. Lincoln Ave. (Lincoln Square), Chicago

• Saturday, Nov. 10, 2 p.m. — Homewood Library, 17917 Dixie Hwy., Homewood IL

• Sunday, Nov. 11, 2 p.m. — Barnes & Noble, Westfield Hawthorne Mall, Vernon Hills IL

• Tuesday, Nov. 13, 7:30 p.m. — Skokie Public Library, 5215 Oakton St., Skokie IL

• Thursday, Nov. 15, 7 p.m. — Arlington Heights Memorial Library, 500 N. Dunton Ave., Arlington Heights IL

The full appearance schedule, including the 11 schools, is posted at http://www.tolovemercy.com/frank_joseph_appearances.html

I’m not crazy about other people’s pets, but they love me.

My daughter Shawn’s late dog Maya never failed to greet me with a leap to the chest that’d knock down a child. After Maya’s sharp claws punctured a nice Izod shirt, I tried to remember not to wear knit clothing when visiting. Shawn’s remaining dog Sparky slobbers me up at every opportunity. And her cat Whitey, who is deaf, doesn’t need hearing to know I’m in the room; he just sidles up, purring, and lays his head in my lap. Cat radar.

Carol and I have loved our own pets well enough. I was 5 when our springer spaniel Lassie died after picking up poisoned food in an alley; I still recall my grief. Our golden retriever Sandy was my buddy from age 10 to age 20. And Carol gets misty remembering the Jason family dog, Dopey Jason.

For that matter, Carol — in addition to possessing clairvoyance and ESP — is a dog whisperer. When Carol croons, savage beasts whimper.

Sam forced us to revisit the pet issue. He was dying for a dog when he was little. Naturally he promised to take care of the creature. We both knew he was full of baloney. As kids, both of us had made — and broken — the same promise.

We also knew how much trouble a pet can be, starting with the need to walk them four times a day. That’s the standard my parents set anyway. Walking the dog turned into one of the great alienating events of my childhood, with my dad deploying nagging and guilt, and me responding with passive aggression … for nothing. Shawn doesn’t walk the dog four times a day yet Sparky seems to survive.

And the responsibility never ends. Walk ‘em, feed ‘em, housebreak ‘em, keep ‘em off the furniture and away from the letter carrier, take ‘em to the vet, put ‘em in the kennel when you go away, yada yada yada. For what? Unlimited, unconditional love, sure, but big deal. Kids give you unconditional love too — for the first 10-12 years anyway, the typical dog lifespan — and after that … well, at least teens are not boring.

I started thinking about this topic after Carol read me an item about people who visited friends and family with their pets in tow. The visitees, pet-less, were miffed. The visitors were taken aback, stunned, uncomprehending. What’s the problem? It’s only Fido.

Whether or not you’re a pet owner, you probably know what’s going on. To the visitees, Fido is an animal … to the visitors, a person.

No, more than a person, better than a person (sometimes better-looking too). Always up for some fun. Doesn’t ask you to take out the garbage while you’re reading the paper. Likes being petted but willing to take no for an answer. Can’t cook — can’t even talk — but those may be pluses too.

Sorry. I once was able to go there but no more. I’d rather deal with messy human relationships than messy animals. Maybe it’s because I’m writing novels. The social scientist seeks for us to understand our nature, the clergyman seeks for us to rise above it … but the novelist just wants us to roll around in it.

President Harry Truman once said, “If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog.” But I’d rather give the last word to Dorothy Parker, the writer, who said, “People are more fun than anybody.”

Frank Joseph
www.tolovemercy.com

P.S. Come see me in Chicago in November! The appearance schedule is posted at last. I’ll be at three bookstores, four public libraries, eight schools, one book club and the Illinois School Library Media Assn. (ISLMA) annual meeting in Springfield (talking on “Getting Boys to Read”). Check out the full schedule at www.tolovemercy.com/frank_joseph_appearances.html

I think of myself as a fast writer. I also think of myself as Roger Federer.

The novel I’m currently writing, working title To Walk Humbly, is about one-third finished — 135 pages and 28,887 words since I first put word to paper (pardon me, screen) on March 25. So let’s see, that’s 28887 words/167 days = 172.97604 words per day. I mean, yuck.

I can write fast, mind you. When I’m cookin’, I can write fiction as fast as I can type. The problem is what to write.

You’ve seen the cartoons: Frustrated writer sits at typewriter next to wastebasket piled high with crumpled pieces of blank paper. Add your own caption. I’ve seen the same cartoons and, foolish me, I thought that was how it’s done. Obviously it’s not or they wouldn’t be drawing cartoons about it. (Well, maybe it is if you’re Joyce Carol Oates, but not if you’re Frank Joseph.)

I spent three months doing historical research before I even started writing the current novel, in a quest to prime the pump. That certainly was useful and necessary, but when the day came that I thought the pump was primed, nothing trickled out. I started to get anxious.

Then I had a brainstorm. I’d brainstorm! Linda Morefield, a member of my writing group, graciously agreed to participate and one fine day we sat on her screened porch and talked my story out. Linda played sounding-board while I did most of the talking. That was OK, that was fine, that was actually great, because after about 90 minutes I was on fire. I went home and started writing this novel.

It petered out quickly. I started feeling like the guy in the cartoon again.

Frustrated, I started writing in longhand on a yellow pad … and that, folks, was the breakthrough.

See, the stuff I want to write about is floating around in my mind but it’s incoherent. Writing it down stream-of-consciousness-style does not cause it to cohere. What it does, I think, is summon into existence a virtual brainstorming partner — a Virtual Linda if you will.

I have filled a yellow pad with this narrative. It is truly a narrative — messy and disorganized, just like my mind. There are no plot trees or character charts or lists or any of that organized stuff writers are advised to do — just whatever happens to be bubbling in there when I do this exercise.

For what it’s worth, I do this writing using a treasured fountain pen my son Sam gave me as a birthday gift when he was about 11. And green ink. I am not superstitious by nature, but Dumbo is my favorite movie.

Does it work? Yes, for me, and sometimes very quickly indeed. Yesterday afternoon I wrote in longhand on the yellow pad for no more than 20 minutes, then turned to the computer and cranked out some 1,200 words of fiction in about two hours.

So try it, you writers out there. If it works for you too, I’ll put the word out. If you have your own trick for getting the words to flow, let me know and I’ll put out that word too.

Frank Joseph
www.tolovemercy.com

P.S. I need to interview people who went to Hyde Park High School in Chicago in the mid ’50s. If you did, or know someone who did, please contact me at 301-656-8753/frank@tolovemercy.com.