Category Archives: Books-Libraries

War, Fiction, and the Ethics of Memory

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Stephen Clingman, Chair of the Troy Committee, introduced the lecture, which began at 4:30 in the Student Union Ballroom.  According to the UMass English Department website, the Troy Lecture honors Frederick S. (Barney) Troy, who was a Professor of English, an Honorary Professor of the University, and a former UMass trustee.  I can agree that this lecture is the “most important event of the year for the English Department,” as it focuses on literature, culture, and civic responsibility.

Viet Thanh Nguyen, writer and scholar, 2016 Pulitzer Prize winner, 2017 Guggenheim Fellow, and 2017 MacArthur Fellow, was chosen as this year’s lecturer.  His debut novel The Sympathizer appeared on thirty “Best Books of the Year” lists, but he is not a novice writer; in fact, his recent success follows years of toil in the groves of academe.  Nguyen is the author of Race and Resistance: Literature and Politics in Asian America (2002) as well as The Refugees, a best-selling recent collection of short stories.  Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War was a finalist for the National Book Award in non-fiction in 2016.  His is a critical voice in Asian-American Studies and exemplifies the heterogeneity we celebrate here at UMass.

Nguyen is himself a refugee; during his first decade in America, beginning in 1975, he and his family lived in San Jose, California.  It was not easy — he clearly remembers a sign in a grocery store across the street from his parents’ business that read, “Another American driven out of business by the Vietnamese.”  He regards himself as emotionally damaged by these experiences, but they led to his eventually becoming a writer.  As he grew older, he began making connections between war and memory.

In The Sympathizer, the protagonist flees to the United States, along with the other South Vietnamese lucky enough, or wealthy enough, to escape after Saigon fell to the NVA in 1975.  However, the protagonist remains loyal to the Communist regime, and his mission in America is to spy on his fellow refugees and report back to Vietnam.

Nguyen noted that in the refugee community, the war did not end when the guns fell silent.  In her novel Beloved, Toni Morrison uses the word “rememory”; for her characters, the Civil War was rememory.  Nguyen played with this concept and invented his own word, “disremembering,” with its echoes of both memory and dismemberment, to describe what was happening to the Vietnamese refugees.  He noted that Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man was also a strong influence on his novel.  Ellison understands this essential truth about all minorities: to the majority culture, they are either invisible or hypervisible as “the other.”

Another formative experience from Nguyen’s teenage years was seeing the movie Apocalypse Now; when he watched Americans kill Vietnamese civilians, he realized that the Vietnamese were not “unseen” — they were seen, but seen through.  For example, Americans know by heart the number of their own who were killed:  58,000 — but the 3 million Vietnamese dead are never talked about, nor the hundreds of thousands of dead Laotians and Cambodians.  [The 3.4 million casualty figure for the duration of the 20-year conflict was released by the Vietnamese government and is an estimate; casualty figures vary widely and remain disputed. -B]

When Nguyen began to write, he felt he had to write about refugees.  The Vietnamese, he says, are a haunted people; to them, ghosts are real.  Americans are also haunted by the Vietnam War, but of course rather differently.  For the United States, the War had some dramatic social and economic consequences: our current volunteer Army, our use of drone strikes, as examples, are direct consequences of us not wanting to fight another war like the Vietnam War.

“All wars are fought twice,” Nguyen said, “the second time in memory.”  A writer engages with war as it’s being fought the second time.  In thinking about these issues, Nguyen realized there are three dominant models of the ethics of memory:

First, we remember our own people, which translates into “We are human; the other is not.”   This is a normal human reaction — no one wants to be forgotten.

The second model is we remember other people, which comes in a liberal version and a radical version.  The liberal version says, “We are all human” — adhering to the liberal values of diversity and cosmopolitanism, we are reminded of our own humanity.  In the radical version, “We are the inhuman ones; the other is infused with humanity.”  Unfortunately, both versions are stereotypes, because the “we” and the “they” are always simplified.

The third model of ethical memory is remembering inhumanity: we are both human and inhuman; they are both human and inhuman.  In this model, slogans such as “War is hell” or “We are all human” are inadequate.  Nguyen wants to work within this mode, because he feels we need to recognize complexity.

In speaking of himself as a writer, Nguyen was adamant that he did not want to be classified as an ethnic writer or a minority writer; instead, he wanted to offend everyone (!)  Perhaps because of this attitude, he had a hard time getting The Sympathizer published (he noted that 87% of publishers in New York are white males); the book was rejected by over a dozen publishers before one agreed to take it on.  The literary device he chose for the novel was the confession, which is often a monologue.  The other technique he used was to forbear translating or explaining himself.  Instead, he was determined to write a literature of defiance.

In concluding his talk about war, literature, and memory, Nguyen added a third consideration to ethics and aesthetics, which is control.  Writers have to understand the industries which try to control memory, and strive to take that control into their own hands.

Backyard Astronomy at the Haston Library

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Tonight I joined about twenty other North Brookfield residents for a presentation titled Backyard Astronomy: Scanning July Skies Using the New Library Telescope by John Root and Jim Zebrowski, both of the Aldrich Astronomical Society.  Founded in 1932 and operating out of Anna Maria College in Paxton, the organization has a presence in 19 states.  Mr Root is the Library Telescope Program Coordinator, and Mr Zebrowski is the President of the Society.  Thanks to a donation from Country Bank in Ware, the Haston Free Public Library in North Brookfield now owns a new telescope which patrons can borrow as if it were a book.

The Library Program began eight and a half years ago, in New Hampshire, and quickly became so successful that it was featured in an October 2014 article in Sky and Telescope magazine.  The first two libraries to participate in this program were the Paxton Library and the Winchendon Library.  Out of the original fourteen Massachusetts libraries which expressed interest in the program, half managed to obtain funding within the first year.  That number has grown: today, there are 126 Massachusetts libraries with telescopes, and the program is expanding into neighboring Connecticut and Rhode Island.

The library’s new telescope is an Orion reflector telescope, with some specific modifications to make it easier for novices to use.  For example, it has a Zoom Eyepiece enabling a range of magnifications, as well as a Rack-and-Pinion Focuser with EZ Finder (meaning you can “put the red dot on what you want to see”).  For the unsuspecting user, the images one sees will be upside down and backward.  Another feature of this modded telescope is power provided by 2 AA batteries, instead of one button battery.

When a patron borrows the telescope, he or she will also take home an accessory pouch, with two important publications: a guide to the constellations, and an instruction manual.  In accordance with principles of good UX design, controlling buttons — knobs, covers, and switches — are marked by a green dot, but patrons need only adjust magnification and focus.  Patrons are advised not to touch the optical surfaces, ever, and to familiarize themselves with the telescope operations during the day, before they attempt to view anything in the night sky.  Most importantly, NEVER point the telescope at the sun, as that will cause permanent blindness.  Parents: please supervise your children’s use of this sophisticated optical instrument.

The presentation touched briefly on what’s important in telescope specifications: although lay people assume magnification is most important, aperture, the diameter of the light-gathering lens or mirror, is far more critical.  Even with 50x magnification, one can see Jupiter’s moons and Saturn’s rings.  Patrons interested in purchasing their own telescopes would do well to consult with a local astronomy club, like the Aldrich group.  In addition, if library patrons find themselves becoming hooked on this new hobby, local clubs are a helpful resource in matters such as telescope etiquette (yes, there is such a thing).

So, what is there to see?  Stars, of course.  The night sky has fascinated humans for millennia, and cultures as diverse as the Babylonians and Native American Micmacs have named the constellations, or star groups.  Early in the 20th century, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) ratified and recognized 88 modern constellations.  This may seem overwhelming, but spotting only a few of these star groups will enable you to see even more.  Here’s how it works: for those of us in the northern hemisphere, look for the Big Dipper (in the constellation Ursa Major), with its seven bright stars.  Follow the lip of the dipper to Polaris, the North Star, in the Little Dipper.  Above that will be Cassiopeia, in the shape of an “M” or “W” or “3” or “E” (whatever).

Another group of summer stars that are easily identifiable are those of the Summer Triangle.  At the apex, Vega is the brightest.  To the lower left is Deneb, and to the lower right is Altair. (Vega is in the constellation Lyra, Deneb is in Cygnus, and Altair is in Aquila.)  Being able to spot the Summer Triangle will lead you to the Milky Way, which passes between Vega and Altair.

The cool thing about looking at the night sky through a telescope is that you can see so much more than with the naked eye.  For example, many stars we see are double stars, or even double-double stars.  Look for the star Mizar with its faint double Alcor in the Big Dipper.  Look for other interesting sky phenomena such as the Double Cluster in Perseus (just below Cassiopeia) or the globular cluster M13.  And yes, look for Jupiter’s Red Spot or its moons and the rings of Saturn.  You may not want to look at the full moon, as you’ll probably be disappointed.

Another phenomenon you might see if you’re lucky is the Aurora Borealis, even in our area in the summer.  The best way to predict when the aurora might be visible is to keep track of the sun’s geomagnetic activity.  To do this, you can look at a scale called the Kp index, a scale of 0 to 9, that shows the geomagnetic activity in the atmosphere, 1 being calm and 9 being high activity. For our latitude, the Kp index has to be greater than 6 for us to have a good chance of seeing the Northern Lights.  Websites such as http://www.spaceweather.com/ can be helpful in this regard.

This month, July, also marks the two-year anniversary of the successful flyby of dwarf planet Pluto by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft.  According to the NASA website, “Clyde Tombaugh was tasked to look for Planet X, theorized to exist beyond the orbit of Neptune. He discovered a faint point of light that we now see as a complex and fascinating world.” (The naming of Pluto is also an interesting story.)  Mr Zebrowski mentioned that the re-classification of Pluto came about when astronomers explored other planetary systems in our galaxy and thus began to have a better understanding of the objects in our own solar system and how they might have been formed.  As of now, we have eight planets (the four terrestrial planets, the two gas giants, and the two cold rocky ones), the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, and the Kuiper Belt beyond Neptune, composed of KBOs (Kuiper Belt Objects) such as comets and dwarf planets.

No presentation on backyard astronomy in July 2017 would be complete without a reference to a daytime celestial event happening a month from now, on August 21st: the total solar eclipse.  It will be visible throughout the continental United States, beginning in Oregon at around 10:15 am and ending in South Carolina at around 2:36 pm.  Here in New England, we will see a partial, about 63.5% cover.  Although the moon passes between the earth and the sun every month, total solar eclipses don’t occur that often.  They are not rare, but few people see them, because so much of our planet is covered by oceans, for one thing, and weather conditions have to be favorable, for another.  Another reason is that the orbits of three bodies, earth, moon, and sun, have to align just so, and due to the moon’s orbit being tilted about 5 degrees out of synch with the earth’s orbit, most often the moon is too high or too low in the sky to pass in front of the sun.  If you are interested in viewing the solar eclipse, DO NOT look at the sun directly.  You can purchase special glasses which will protect your eyes, but you can can also use pinhole projection to view the eclipse safely.

The two presenters also set up a display table in the meeting area with additional information about their organization and about astronomy in general.  After the presentation, they held a drawing for door prizes, but onIy the children were allowed to participate.  I was much more interested in the two meteorite samples they brought, one of which was much heavier than I expected.  They explained that there are three main types of meteorites: stony, iron, and stony-iron.  The iron ones are the heavy ones; the stony ones with small, colorful, grain-like inclusions are the chondrites; the stony-iron ones are quite rare.