Writing to Rescue the World
David Nurenberg has written previously for the Daily Hampshire Gazette and the Boston Globe. Here, he reviews Writing to Change the World by Mary Pipher, Riverhead Trade, 2006, pb $14.
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If the pen is mightier than the sword, then it comes as no surprise that would-be literary cavaliers need some training before they're ready to become the D'Artagnan of the word processor. Mary Pipher's Writing to Change the World attempts to impart such advice. Pipher, a psychotherapist, gained national fame with her 1994 book, Reviving Ophelia, which held the #1 New York Times book slot for 27 weeks. The book used anecdotes and research to portray the abusive effects of social conditioning and consumerism on adolescent girls, and focused on the power of the media to shape harmful and contradictory images of women's roles. In Writing to Change the World, Pipher seems to want to harness the power of the media for generative ends, particularly for socially progressive causes.
While her introduction begins with a familiar detailing of the abusive power of language as "just another marketing tool" at best, and at worst, a "weapon" in the hands of dehumanizing propagandists, she quickly moves beyond this idea, declaring, "I am not interested in weapons, whether words or guns. I want to be part of the rescue team for our tired, overcrowded planet. The rescuers will be those people who help others to think clearly." A writer's job, says Pipher, is to "tell stories that connect readers to all the people on earth, to show these people as the complicated human beings they really are.... [W]e can replace one-dimensional stereotypes with multidimensional people with whom our readers can identify."
With that mission in mind, Pipher spends the rest of the book offering anecdotes and advice as to how to actually accomplish this task. She invokes and quotes a parade of role models, not just professional writers (Fitzgerald, Dostoyevsky, Twain) but social scientists (Margaret Mead, Sigmund Freud, Jean Kilbourne), political activists (Thomas Paine, Thich Nhat Hanh, Aung San Suu Kyi), and even Vermeer and Lawrence Welk. Her examples range from the humble -- a book on horticulture that convinces her to buy a sycamore -- to large scale -- Michael Harrington's The Other America catching President Kennedy's attention and helping to motivate President Johnson's anti-poverty campaign.
The place to begin, Pipher says, is with oneself. She details the influences on her own long road to writing (from her Grandmother Agnes, to her junior high school English teacher, to the college professor who finally helped her find the confidence to write publicly). She describes her work with animals and her activist awakening at the Berkeley, CA, People's Park protests. She mixes in writing exercises for her audience: observe something carefully each day, try generating metaphors, don't worry about being likeable. Be bold, be honest, silence self-critical voices, find support groups, exercise brevity.
The strength of this advice lies in its continual message of affirmation ("there is a place for you at the table"), but its weakness lies in the often cursory fashion with which it approaches the brass-tacks, nuts-and-bolts work of taking 26 letters and crafting them into the kind of words that create the change she wants to see. Her advice remains abstract, focusing on the "large" questions of point of view and representation -- who is the "I," who is the "they," and how can we frame our work in such a way that dispels prejudice. Her advice for tailoring writing to the "choir" versus the "unconverted" is perhaps most useful to those who already command the mechanics of language, discourse, and ideas.
An advice book for would-be composers that spoke of all the different emotional effects of different genres of music would be of questionable aid to a pupil who has yet to learn the basics of notation and the definitions of scales, and a course of study on the vast possibilities of creative open-space architecture may do little for those still learning how to use a belt sander. John Gardner's The Art of Fiction or Steven King's On Writing take a far more hands-on approach to the actual craft of writing, addressing necessary prerequisites before one can approach the meta-level on which Pipher wishes us to operate.
Paradoxically, the breadth versus depth approach of Pipher's makes her accessible to a general, non-writerly audience. Her departure mid-book to reprint an essay she published in 2004 is hysterically funny; she conducts a mock "psychological intake" of a new patient, "Mister USA." Her faux report notes include: "Mister USA values independence over connection, and freedom over obligations and commitments.... [W]hile he tests in the superior range intellectually, he is not functioning at that level...experiences daily panic attacks... reports he is not close to any of [his] friends, except England, [and] even England doesn't seem to want to spend much time with him. This social isolation could be detrimental to Mr. USA's health."
Although we get little specific advice as to the construction of such satire, Pipher's example does allow us to see how writing served as catharsis for her during a time of frustration with her national identity. Additional examples from other writers hint at these processes. Pipher has assembled a staggeringly comprehensive anecdotal repertoire of cases where writing, songs, and speeches made a social impact. A section on the potential of contemporary media like blogs is a welcome addition that really should have received more time and detail. Combined with moments when she draws upon her own experience in book tours and activism (she provides useful and specific craft-advice for effective speeches and letters), she more than makes her case for the social power of writing.
Less a real how-to guide than a rallying cry, Pipher's book does keep a sense of perspective. She continually revisits James Baldwin's advice to the activist writer: "You write in order to change the world, knowing perfectly well that you probably can't, but also knowing literature is indispensable to the world.... [T]he world changes according to the way people see it, and if you alter, even by a millimeter, the way people look at reality, you can change it."
Pipher's invitation to join that process is more than persuasive enough to motivate her reader to then purchase a book on the actual craft of writing.
