Literary Arts

By Leah Cohen

This article was originally published in The Washington Independent Review of Books here.

With his latest book, The Betrayal: How Mitch McConnell and the Senate Republicans Abandoned America, Ira Shapiro completes his critically acclaimed trilogy on the U.S. Senate. In addition to writing, the former Senate staffer and trade ambassador for the Clinton Administration serves as president of Ira Shapiro Global Strategies, LLC, a consulting firm focused on trade policy and international government relations. A new edition of The Betrayal includes an updated foreword that adds the events of 2022-2023 to the story.

The Betrayal first came out in 2022. Why did you feel compelled to publish an updated version so soon, in 2024?

I was delighted that my publisher (Rowman & Littlefield) thought that The Betrayal was an important book that warranted a paperback edition. Jonathan Sisk, R&L’s senior editor, and I quickly agreed that the past two years (2022-23) were part of a continuing story about the Senate’s performance during this period dominated by Donald Trump, necessitating a substantial new foreword to bring the story up to date. I believe the updated edition provides important perspectives on the success of the Biden presidency; the Senate’s role in a surprising set of bipartisan accomplishments; Trump’s unexpected resilience and continued dominance of the Republican Party; the rampaging Supreme Court supermajority; and the consequences of the Republican Senate’s catastrophic failure to stop Trump’s assault on our democracy when it had the opportunity and the responsibility to do so. America has watched as the legal system has struggled to make up for the failure of the Senate to perform its constitutional role.

What was the process like for writing from ideation to completion?

I wrote The Betrayal in 2021 in anger about the Republican Senate’s knowing and deliberate failure to protect our democracy from Trump, particularly in the crisis year of 2020, including their last clear chance in the second impeachment trial in February 2021. The book told the story of how the Senate Republicans repeatedly put partisanship above patriotism. They stood by while America had an unhinged president during a pandemic, which caused hundreds of thousands of Americans to die needlessly. The book also illustrated that it was clear that Trump was not going to accept the results of the election unless he won. I was incensed that McConnell and his Senate roused [themselves] from torpor only long enough to ram through the confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett eight days before Election Day. By the time I wrote the foreword to the paperback, my white-hot anger had become deep concern and growing dread for the condition and future of our country.

How did your view of the Senate evolve over the decade you spent researching and writing the trilogy? Or did it?

I am very proud that Brookings Institution scholar William A. Galston, one of my wisest and most experienced political commentators, said that The Betrayal “completed an epic trilogy” about the modern Senate. I came of age during the last constitutional crisis, when Lyndon Johnson’s Vietnam War tore America apart and then led almost inexorably into Richard Nixon’s abuses of power known as Watergate. During that difficult period, the Senate was a beacon of hope that drew many idealistic young people to public service. I became a lawyer to work in the Senate, and I had 12 great years there from 1975-87. Decades later, dismayed by the Senate’s long decline, I circled back to write The Last Great Senate: Courage and Statesmanship in Times of Crisis (2012). I wanted to show how the Senate worked when it was at its best, hoping to inspire senators and Senate leaders to emulate their great predecessors. Can’t claim to have succeeded; unfortunately, the second and third books chart the decline and accelerating downward spiral. The once-great Senate becomes the “broken” Senate (2018) and then the Senate that betrayed America (2022).

It’s clear how you see Mitch McConnell’s legacy vis-à-vis the Senate, but how do you imagine he sees it? Is it “mission accomplished,” or did things go off the rails for him?

That’s a great question! The longest-serving Senate leader ever, McConnell is by any measure one of the most impactful political leaders in our history; he has profoundly affected all three branches of government. I have no doubt that McConnell was surprised that Trump might be president again; he expected Trump’s power to wither away after the January 6th attack on the Capitol. McConnell’s steadfast advocacy for Ukraine has been his finest hour; he knows with absolute certainty that Trump is a danger to Ukraine and [to] the security of our NATO allies and America. But he endorsed Trump anyway because ultimately what matters most to him is Republican power — and winning. In February 2024, McConnell waxed philosophical, saying: “History will settle every account.” His legacy will be one thing he didn’t do — stop Trump’s assault on our democracy — and one thing he did: create the radical Supreme Court supermajority. And at a time when America desperately needed a great Senate leader like Howard Baker to help bring us together, we had Mitch McConnell, a fiercely effective and endlessly divisive partisan.

What’s next for you as an author? Do you anticipate a fourth book?

Thanks for asking. There won’t be another Senate book; a trilogy is enough. I love to write, and I hope to find another subject that excites me. But for this year, I’m entirely focused on writing articles and speaking about the stakes in the presidential and Congressional elections. Everything else — other than family and friends — can wait.

By Leah Cohen

This article was originally published in The Washington Independent Review of Books here.

As a cardiologist on faculty at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Jonathan D. Reich is no stranger to research. The author of multiple articles for medical journals, he shifted his focus to historical research during the pandemic. After reading A. Scott Berg’s Lindbergh, Reich dove into studying the groundbreaking aviator and onetime presidential candidate. The result is his first book, A Convenient Villain: Charles A. Lindbergh’s Remarkable and Controversial Legacy Preparing the U.S. for War.

As a physician by training, how did you make the jump to writing a book?

Before I went to medical school, I was an aerospace engineer. I worked for the Navy designing airplanes and got a master’s degree. Part of my coursework was done in Israel. I had always known that Lindbergh had a legacy as an antisemite. So, during the pandemic, I read the Pulitzer Prize-winning biography Lindbergh. I expected to conclude this was his legacy. While reading the book, I had two realizations. First, although the author, A. Scott Berg, wrote an outstanding encyclopedic book, he had no appreciation for the aerospace contributions of Lindbergh’s life. I read a few other books about Lindbergh, especially about the period of his life when he lived in Europe and visited German air force facilities. I concluded that much of Lindbergh’s legacy was misrepresented. Second, Lindbergh’s legacy was too facile. He was a complicated man with a complicated, nuanced legacy. I decided that no one else would ever try to establish an accurate legacy of Lindbergh because it was unlikely there was another Jewish aerospace engineer who would want to spend years researching his life. I tried writing a magazine article but found it was impossible to condense the misrepresentations of Lindbergh’s legacy into 1,500 words. So, three years later, here it is: a biography of Charles Lindbergh’s life. I believe this is the first biography written by someone who is qualified to define his legacy.

What was your research process like?

During the pandemic, I had time to read nearly every biography I could find about Lindbergh and research references to see if statements had a valid basis. I also read dozens of other books about Europe in the 1930s, President Roosevelt, the 1940 presidential election, the Depression, and isolationism. I read [Lindbergh’s] journal and his wife’s journal. I read every New York Times article that mentioned Lindbergh and a host of other articles both critical and supportive of his legacy. As a physician, I concentrated on the two major medical advances that Lindbergh made: the first cardiac perfusion pump and his improvements in high-altitude aviation. I read about the different definitions of terms like “antisemite” and “Nazi sympathizer” and how they are applied to people from different eras. These figures existed and were sometimes dangerous, but using the definitions inaccurately hurts your credibility. Having a wife who is the daughter of a Holocaust survivor helped with perspective. Once the pandemic subsided, I made a trip to Yale University to go through Lindbergh’s papers. That was a fascinating experience; it felt almost as if I got to meet him.

What was the most interesting document you came across in your research?

The most interesting were the drafts of his speeches. Between September 1939 and December 1941, Charles Lindbergh gave five national radio addresses and 20 national speeches in opposition to the U.S.’ creeping involvement in World War II. The Yale archives contain not only the texts from which he read the speeches, some of which have handwritten edits, but the drafts of the speeches from his original handwritten notes (with his wife’s edits) to the final version of the speeches. But the most important document I came across was the letter from the U.S. embassy in Berlin on U.S. embassy letterhead in May 1936, asking Lindbergh to go to Germany to obtain information on Germany’s air force. Prominent historians have written that Lindbergh visited Germany because he admired the Nazis, and his intelligence work was “invented” later by his supporters. Finding this letter proved that no one “invented” Lindbergh’s intelligence work. It was the reason he visited Germany in the first place.

What made you want to take a closer look at Lindbergh’s life and politics?

I am continuously stunned by the poor academic scholarship and abject sloppiness that historians have engaged in when discussing this man. The more I write and the more feedback I get, the more examples I find. I not only find more misquotations and unsupported allegations, but I have found attempts at suppressing others’ opinions of him. We (defined as everyone, historians and non-historians, Jews and non-Jews) must be committed to the truth. He was a complicated, flawed man. I suspect we all are. Yet, his contributions to American security and medicine are remarkable and, in some respects, unparalleled. His flaws are discussed. But if we allow his flaws to supersede an honest discussion of his life, then we are truly doing a disservice to understanding the history of this country.

Did you uncover anything in particular that changed — or at least called into question — your previous understanding of him?

Reading his and his wife’s journals led me to an understanding of the times he lived in and the decisions he made. I tried strenuously to adopt a position of not judging people based on the ethics of our time. I spent a significant amount of time speaking to people who lived through the 1930s and 1940s to try and understand what it was like to be Jewish then.

Was Lindbergh a great man who had some flaws or a flawed man who did some great things? Does the distinction matter?

Fascinating question. Lindbergh was human. In his lifetime, his accomplishments are truly mind-boggling. However, he had major flaws — not just his legacy as an antisemite but in his personal relationships. He was not evil. He did not kill his son and he was not a Nazi. He was investigated by the FBI and exonerated. FBI director J. Edgar Hoover respected no restrictions on his investigative power and destroyed people when he had the chance. If he had found any evidence Lindbergh had any connection with any fascist power or organization, foreign or domestic, he would have produced it. He found nothing. I don’t think the distinction matters. We are all flawed. Few of us are great. Lindbergh’s contributions to the Allied effort to defeat both the Germans and the Japanese far outweigh his blemishes.

By Abby Stuckrath

This article was originally published in Tagg Magazine here.

Writing comes naturally to Layla Said, creator of Said Nothing. Media. She told Tagg that sharing her life through art was something she “always felt really compelled to do.” 

Said’s poetic and written talents will officially culminate in her first poetry book, “Don’t You Cry, I’m on Venus.” Releasing this summer, this 7-year project reflects her life journey in navigating the world as a queer BIPOC woman.

A Life of Poetry

Said’s book took its first breath during her junior year of college when her professor, Sarah McCallum, encouraged her to become a poet. “She was the first person to ever call me a poet. She’s brilliant, she made me realize I was more than good enough,” says Said. 

But Said didn’t begin writing poetry in college; she wrote her first poem at age 7. Poetry even runs in her blood. 

Said shares that her grandmother used to be a political poet who was once imprisoned by the communist Romanian government. At nine months pregnant, she sat in jail reciting poems to the guards. Like a siren who lured pirates into dangerous waters, her poetry moved the guards to tears, and they let her go. This miraculous tale within Said’s ancestral past inspires her work today. “Her first name is my middle name, so I’ve always felt really connected to her,” she says. 

Said’s book is divided into three parts: “Enter the War Zone,” “Leave the War Zone,” and “Enter Self.” The proclaimed “war zone” began in high school, where Said, a Romanian Afghan woman, was surrounded by predominantly white peers. “I was very other in their eyes there,” says Said. “Everyone was super white, and they really made it a point that I was not.” 

The Beat of Her Own Drum

Said’s poetry doesn’t simply stay on the page. It finds life musically as well. Said has produced two EPs, “Poetry is Not a Luxury” and “Portrait of a Young Woman,” and she is adding a new song, “She Who Laughs Lasts,” to her discography on May 24th. The song was produced entirely virtually through voice memo recordings and Zoom calls with her producer. 

Her book and song are vulnerable expressions of her familial trauma and battle with bipolar disorder. While it can be difficult to share her experiences publicly, she says that it’s a vital part of how she heals. “I just feel like processing that in my art is really the only way I’ve been able to get through it to move on to have better relationships with my family,” Said says.

Uplifting Others

Discussing her past isn’t the only way that Said is healing and reclaiming her power. To challenge capitalism’s dominance over artistic expression, she created Said Nothing. Media is a company dedicated to amplifying poetry in all forms, specifically by women and minority artists. “There are so many ways to sell your soul and I really think that there’s such a power in being your own boss, and having your own voice and not having anyone dictate that,” says Said. 

But her passion for uplifting unheard voices doesn’t stop there. Said is also a fierce advocate dedicated to helping end homelessness in Denver, Colorado. She says, “My art is an extension of my public service, which is core to my identity and human experience.” This past year, she helped secure $2.58 million in recurring city funding to support homeless youth. 

Said says she doesn’t need recognition or fame to feel that her art and advocacy have made a difference: “The important thing is to just create, and to kind of just let the risk be and not try to force the outcome so much. Do I hope people consume it? Sure. But is that the end-all-be-all? No.” 

By Haley Huchler

This article was originally published in the Washington Independent Review of Books here.

It’s nearly impossible for me to resist a good campus novel. Any setting that throws together people from different backgrounds and cultures is bound to create the sparks required for interesting literature. In Come & Get It, author Kiley Reid takes full advantage of her college locale to craft a drama fueled by the financial tensions her compelling, complicated characters endure.

Reid’s sophomore effort has been eagerly anticipated since the success of her debut, Such a Fun Age, about a young Black woman entangled in the lives of the wealthy white family she nannies for in Philadelphia. Come & Get It returns to the author’s fascination with issues of race, privilege, and class, this time at the University of Arkansas. The narrative alternates among the perspectives of three women: Millie, a student and resident assistant saving up to buy her own house; Agatha, a writer and visiting professor dealing with a recent breakup; and Kennedy, a transfer student struggling to adjust and make friends.

The story begins with Agatha interviewing three undergrads in Millie’s dorm for a book she’s writing on weddings. After they pepper her with anecdotes about “practice paychecks” from their parents and the “fun money” they earn at their campus jobs, though, Agatha leaves the interview more interested in the girls’ economic backgrounds. She enlists Millie’s help to continue listening in on the lives of these wealthy, out-of-touch students. Soon, both Agatha’s book project and her relationship with Millie get messy.

Abundant references to contemporary books, movies, and brands make the novel feel truly of-the-moment. Reid leaves the reader with no doubt that her story is anchored in a specific time and place. Birkenstocks, “Pitch Perfect 2,” and Victoria’s Secret all appear within the first two pages; Millie’s bookshelf holds Americanah, Sweetbitter, and The Omnivore’s Dilemma; and Kennedy’s homesickness is personified by her weeknight plan to watch “27 Dresses” while her mother simultaneously streams it at home. Such specificity makes the characters feel incredibly real; anyone who’s spent time at a Southern university in the past few years would recognize them instantly.

This plethora of detail falls in line with Reid’s style of writing. You can be sure upon meeting any character that you’ll soon know everything about them, from where they grew up to what they ate for breakfast last Tuesday. These details are particularly important in illustrating the financial tensions at the heart of the story. For example, we learn that much of Agatha’s incompatibility with her former partner stems from their out-of-sync spending habits, and that Millie’s desire to save for a home drives her every decision. In Come & Get It, everything comes back to finances. Unfortunately, it’s not always clear why.

Unexpected plot twists also make this a slightly darker book than readers might initially expect. In the first half of the novel, the stakes aren’t all that high — it feels almost like a character study — but a rapid turn of events shakes things up. While Reid certainly knows how to keep readers hooked, the story’s climax feels oddly disconnected from the book’s earlier acute emphasis on wealth (or lack thereof).

Despite the intense and unwavering focus Reid projects onto each character’s relationship with money, I can’t tell what she wants us to make of it all. Yes, Come & Get It presents a world divided by privilege and class, but it offers no conclusions. Getting to know Millie, Agatha, and Kennedy felt like peering into a zoo and being intrigued by the inhabitants’ understandable, sometimes deplorable behavior. You walk away entertained but unenlightened.

Nonetheless, it’s an enjoyable, easily digestible read with characters who’ll stick with you long after you’ve closed the book. And if you happen to be anywhere near an American college campus, you just may run into them.

By Samantha Neugebauer

This article was originally published in DCTrending here.

It was standing room only at Politics and Prose on Sunday for an event with Emily Wilson, acclaimed translator of Homer’s Odyssey and, most recently, The Iliad. With a deep and frightening cadence, Wilson began by reciting the ancient text in its original Greek, and a pin drop could be heard throughout the crowded aisles as attendees were transported to a time of the Trojan War. Eventually, however, after too short a time, Wilson broke the spell she set over the bookstore by switching back to English. 

For Wilson, who lives in Philadelphia and is a professor of classical studies at the University of Pennsylvania, contemporary readers of Homer need to undergo the sonic and rhythm experience of his text as much as the narrative experience. For this reason, in both her Homer translations, she uses iambic pentameter (da-DUM da-DUM da-DUM…) instead of the free verse preferred by many other renowned English translators. In her forward to the Iliad, released this October, Wilson explained that “Ancient Greek verse did not rhyme, but it always used regular rhythm” and that “sonic patterns were created by the length of syllables, rather than by patterns of stress, as in English verse.” She believes that the iambic pentameter is our closest equivalent to the original’s dactylic hexameter. Indeed, English speakers often enjoy verse in iambic pentameter; its musicality not only reminds us of Shakespeare but also of our heartbeat. As a result of Wilson’s metrical choice, her short lines are straightforward yet mighty, mimicking Homer’s lineation.

See Wilson’s opening compared to noteworthy translations by Alexander Pope and Richmond Lattimore.

Wilson

The Quarrel 

Goddess, sing of the cataclysmic wrath

of great Achilles, son of Peleus 

which caused the Greeks immeasurable pain 

and sent so many noble sons of heroes 

to Hades, and made men the spoils of dogs…

Pop

Argument

The Contention of Achilles and Agamemnon.

In the war of Troy, the Greeks having sacked some of 

the neighbouring towns, and taken from thence two beautiful

captives, Chryseis and Briseis, allotted the first to Agamemnon,

and the last to Achilles…

Lattimore

Sing, goddess, the anger of Peleus’ son Achilles

and its devastation, which put pains thousand-fold upon the 

Achaians, hurled in their multitudes to the house of Hades strong souls

of heroes, but gave their bodies to be the delicate feasting

of dogs, of all birds, and the will of Zeus was accomplished

In Wilson’s telling, her reverence for English literature and anglophone metrical poetry tends to set her apart from other classists. At the event, she detailed her academic background, describing how she and her work are the product of interdisciplinary studies. She holds a Ph.D. in Classics and Comparative Literature from Yale, and a B.A. in Classics, and an M.Phil. in Renaissance English Literature from Oxford.

“Most people trained in the classics,” she said, “are not as interested in the tradition of English literature as I am.” It’s perhaps not surprising then that Wilson appears interested in the development of the English language and doesn’t shy away from employing modern language and syntax in her translations: “He will not come home/ from the war and cruel conflict, and his children/ will never clutch his legs and call him Daddy.” In general, Wilson sought to capture the “folk-poetry feel of the original.” Simultaneously, however, Wilson doesn’t aim for overt vernacularism. She likes some artifice, she says, and avoids contradictions in her translation. 

A lot has been made about Emily Wilson being the first woman to translate the Odyssey, however, for Wilson, that fact is not as essential as the media makes it out to be. Frankly, it’s refreshing to see a creator gesture toward the merits of their creative and intellectual choices over the personal biography. At the same time, she told the audience that this does not mean she is uninterested in discussing what’s going on with gender within Homer. She very much welcomes that discussion. 

Near the program’s conclusion, an attendee asked Wilson if she considered The Iliad an anti-war poem. Wilson responded that she doesn’t think it’s a “pacific book.” Moreover, she says, that while it’s true that the text does not imagine a world without conflict, it does imagine ways that society may not have to be as deadly. Nevertheless, The Iliad is a violent book; it’s a story where life and death stakes marked page after page, where the human body is constantly being unknotted. 

While the book’s violence might seem to some relevant, the audience was looking for why to revisit this ancient text; Wilson doesn’t care about ‘relevance’ either. On Twitter, Wilson commented: “When people ask me about the “Eternal Relevance of The Iliad”, I sometimes say: read it because it’s not relevant. The human experience is so much bigger than here and now.” 

By Imani Nyame

This article was originally published in the Washington Independent Review of Books here.

In her debut novel, River of Crows, the first installment in the Arcanium series, Canadian author N.P. Thompson takes readers into the magical and dangerous world of Arcania, where 12-year-old Ty Baxter forges life-changing friendships as he takes on responsibilities quite frightening for such a young boy. Inspired to write the series as a way to give middle-grade readers substantive stories all their own, Thompson has nonetheless crafted a narrative that will captivate bookworms of every age.

Among other things, the Arcanium series explores the symbolism of different animals, including crows, wolves, and serpents. What do crows symbolize for you?

Where I live in Ottawa, Canada, there is a huge flock of crows that roosts near one of the hospitals throughout the fall and winter. Every morning, you can see them fly across the sky in long, waving rivers as they head out to the edges of the city to search for food. And every night, the process reverses itself, and you can watch those same rivers going the other way as they all fly back to that central roost for the night. It’s just a beautiful thing to see, and I’ve been known to drop whatever I’m doing at the time to just stand there watching that river of crows cross the sky.

In terms of the books, though, the crows are very much a symbol of pain and fear and loss. The villain in the books, Gideon Blackthorn, has a personal army of enchanted crows that are completely loyal to him. A great many of these crow-soldiers are kidnapped children that Gideon has transformed into birds and then enslaved. So, the people of Arcania have a very complicated relationship with these crows — they’re utterly terrified of them, but they’re also afraid to fight them because harming the crows could mean harming transformed children who cannot refuse Gideon’s orders because they’ve been enchanted to obey his every command.

But I went with crows because they’re so fascinating. They do have an ominous mythos around them, and a lot of old tales from all around the world present crows as harbingers of death or evil. But in reality, they’re also really smart birds. I loved that duality. It made them perfect for the story I wanted to tell.

Did any particular YA fantasy novels inspire the Arcanium series?

I think, throughout my life, the books that I’ve most enjoyed as a reader are the ones that have an ensemble cast where even the secondary characters are so well fleshed out that they feel as real as the main character does. I really loved David Eddings’ Belgariad and Mallorean books for that. I also read them because that world had a very richly defined history that occurred long before the story that was currently being told, and I think that helped to make that whole story feel so real, so compelling.

I really enjoy having more than one character to get attached to and root for, and I love exploring how everyone’s different personalities and unique talents can both cause some friction within the group and also help make the group stronger. I guess that’s probably why my books are told from multiple characters’ points of view. Ty is the main character, so you mostly get things from his perspective, but you also get to experience the world through other characters’ eyes — even the villains’, at times.

What was your favorite part about writing this book? And why do you feel drawn to YA novels?

My favorite part of writing the first book was watching the friendships growing between all the kids — they are all so different, but they’re very much a team…In my writing, I seem to be drawn to that grey area between middle grade and young adult. When my oldest was small, he was reading far above his grade level, and I had such a hard time finding books that were both age-appropriate but also geared toward a more advanced reader who wanted a more complex and nuanced story. I think maybe my love for this niche came from that time — wanting to write the kind of book I wished I could find for him. One of the most appealing things I find about writing for this age range is that we can help kids explore some of the really big things in life. We can show that the world can be dark and scary and unfair sometimes — because it absolutely can be, and hiding that fact from kids does them a disservice, I think. But, through stories, we can help kids understand how to process and deal with that and find agency in a world that sometimes makes us feel like we have none.

In what ways does the world of Arcania reflect reality?

Stories are one of the best methods we have for getting us to really think about what’s happening in our own world and how we want to shape it. The bulk of River of Crows was completed in the years immediately following America’s 2016 election and, from a non-American perspective, I think a lot of us who had never really paid much attention to politics before suddenly found ourselves taking a much closer look at what was happening in our own countries. I think a lot of the more political themes in the book were born out of that. There is also an environmental theme woven into the series that is just hinted at in the first couple of books but which becomes more prominent as the series progresses. Beyond that, there’s a very diverse cast of characters because the world is diverse. And I wanted that diversity to be the norm in Arcania.

What’s next for you?

My main focus for the foreseeable future is to finish the Arcanium saga, and then I have another series planned around a new world and new set of characters. Book three of the Arcanium, Stone of Serpents, should be out this spring. Book two [Mirror of Wolves] ends on a pretty significant cliffhanger, and Stone of Serpents picks up right where it left off. There are some major twists with this one that are going to change everything for our intrepid Team Arcania, and it’s really going to shake all of these characters up and affect their relationships with each other as they head into book four.

By Samantha Neugebauer

This article was originally published in DCTRENDING, here.

David Brooks likes asking questions, and last week at Sixth and I, he shared some of the questions he’s been thinking about with an attentive audience. His current ponderings include: What kind of attention should we give others? How can we improve at making people feel seen, heard, and understood? And how do you serve a friend who is in despair? Among his other titles and many accomplishments, Brooks is a columnist for The New York Times, a contributing writer at The Atlantic, and the author of the new book How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen, a guide to some of these questions and the art of truly knowing another person. 

Brooks dispensed a mixture of biography, self-deprecating humor, and practical advice for building relationships in what he calls our ‘harsh times.’ Beginning with anecdotes from his childhood, he explained how he wasn’t naturally chatty or emotional. “In our family,” he explained, “it was think Yiddish, act British.” In fact, throughout his childhood and a good portion of his adulthood, he was aloof. As a student at the University of Chicago, he joked, “I was fine living up in my head and not down in my heart. Those deep people were sad. I was shallow and doing just fine.” This trait served Brooks well as a journalist, but eventually, a noticeable conversion came, and he became more in touch with his emotions and more invested in his community and relationships. Yet, as he saw it: “As I was becoming a better human being, America was doing the opposite.”

Nowadays, he claims there are people all around us who feel invisible, unseen, and misunderstood. “There’s an epidemic of invisibility,” and “human beings need recognition,” he explained. He backed up his observations with statistics about American loneliness, such as how results from one survey show that 54% of Americans say no one knows them well. There are also significant increases in depression and suicide rates, in particular, amongst teens.“Persistent feelings of sadness and hopelessness” have risen from 26% in 2009 to 44% in 2021, Brooks states. What also worries him is how loneliness leads to sadness, which leads to meanness and dehumanization.

Brooks has a lot of thoughts on how we got here, but at this Center for the Arts, he was more focused on what each of us can do in our lives to improve circumstances. He believes many of us no longer have the social skills to foster deep intrapersonal and community relationships. Fortunately, these skills can be taught “just as easily as you can learn tennis.” For starters, Brooks says, we have to begin asking each other better questions, which is initiated by taking a hard look at how we speak with people. Brooks divides the world into ‘Diminishers’ and ‘Illuminators.’ In How to Know a Person, he explained:

“Diminishers make people feel small and unseen. They see other people as things to be used, not persons to be befriended. They stereotype and ignore. They are so involved with themselves that others are not on their radar screen. Illuminators, on the other hand, have a persistent curiosity about other people…They shine the brightness of their care on people and make them feel bigger, deeper, respected, lit up.” Brooks provided many examples of Illuminators. The novelist E.M. Forster, for instance, was said by his biographer to possess an “inverse charisma,” which gave off “a sense of being listened to with such intensity that you had to be your most honest, sharpest, and best self.” To become Illuminators, Brooks suggested some classic ideas, such as majoring in the liberal arts and reading, but for folks who may already consider themselves readers, what can we do to improve? It’s clear (to me) that reading isn’t enough, or maybe the way we read now isn’t enough. Brooks recommended that we get out of “broadcast mode.” Essentially, we’re speaking more than we’re listening and asking questions. In Brook’s mind, we must see every person as a mystery and remember that every person is smarter and more interesting than us in some way.

“Ask people about their childhoods,” Brooks advised, “People love talking about their childhood.” Or, instead of asking people why they believe something, ask them how they came to believe something. By doing this, you’re asking others to tell a story. “Being a loud listener” is also key; this means that you ask people to set the scene when sharing stories, making them not just a witness to their lives but also an author. If some of these tips seem basic, it’s because they are. But it’s also true that many people don’t ask other people good questions throughout the day. “30% of the country asks questions,” Brooks stated, “and no that’s not a statistic!” But could it be? Brooks says that most of us aren’t as good at reading people as we think. 

Near the evening’s conclusion, Brooks drew on the wisdom of educator and activist Parker J. Palmer, who observed that “the shape of our knowledge becomes the shape of our living; the relation of the knower to the known becomes the relation of the living self to the larger world.” In other words, if you look at the world with generous eyes, the world is generous, but if you look at the world with judgment or fear, the world is full of judgment and things to be feared. Brooks may be full of questions, but perhaps it’s questions themselves that offer a possible remedy for a society divided by fragmentation, injustice, and a surfeit of broadcast mode.

Samantha Neugebauer is based in Washington, D.C., where she is a 2022-2023 D.C. Arts Writing Fellow with Day Eight. She works as a research assistant for Georgetown University in Qatar and a learning support specialist. Previously, she taught at Johns Hopkins and NYU in Abu Dhabi.