The New Yorker's Quaker moments

This summer, in a rare event, two consecutive issue of the New Yorker magazine made passing reference to Quakers.

As a Quaker, I found it strange to see them and yet, in context they seemed to provide a snippet of tantalizing, off-hand insight about Quakers for New Yorker readers.

The first reference was in a piece about Radical Feminists and their exclusion of transgender females as not really being women. The Quaker reference happened to be to action taken by my own Quaker meeting here in Portland. Our meeting at first agreed to rent our meeting house to the Rad-Fems group, but after transgender members of our meeting objected, the meeting decided to cancel the rental, stating that to rent to the Radical Feminists would be hurtful to our trans members.

From my knowledge about how the decision was reached I know that an entire article could have explored the Quaker decision-making process and how inadequate it can sometimes be even as it seeks to be “spirit-led.” For an excellent book on the subject, see “Beyond Majority Rule” by Michael J. Sheeran, who happens to be a Jesuit priest.

The second reference was more remote, but more profound, though terse. It was a sweeping statement by Malcolm Gladwell in an article (“The Crooked Ladder” in the August 11 & 18 issue) about how Mafia families over generations strive for respectability and ultimately leave their illicit histories behind.

The Mafia may seem a long way from Quakers and their "Godfather" George Fox (see portrait to the right), but here’s the passage that caught my eye:

“Six decades ago, Robert K. Merton argued that there was a series of ways in which Americans responded to the extraordinary cultural emphasis that their societies placed on getting ahead. The most common was “conformity”: accept the social goal (the American dream) and also accept the means by which it should be pursued (work hard and obey the law). The second strategy was “ritualism”: accept the means (work hard and obey the law) but reject the goal. That’s the approach of the Quakers or the Amish or of any other religious group that substitutes its own moral agenda for that of the broader society…”

I suppose all spiritual groups (I hesitate to call Quakers a religion) feel misunderstood. Many, like the Quakers themselves, are diverse in how they follow their spiritual paths. One could fairly ask whether they understand themselves in their entirety. Without going into detail, I’ve adopted the saying that “If you have talked to one Quaker about the Quaker Way, you have only talked to one Quaker.” There are others, so many others, with so many other ways to describe what it means to be a Quaker.

So Gladwell is on shaky ground, and, on one point, dead wrong. Quakers are well known for NOT obeying the law when they find laws unjust. Civil disobedience is part of their arsenal in the “Lamb’s War” for peace and justice. Some Friends resisted war taxes, some sat-in in the South in the ‘60s, many have been conscientious objectors, some illegally assisted runaway slaves in the mid 19th Century. The list is long.

Still, Gladwell shares an underlying truth, which is visibly evident in the way the Amish live their lives, and less so in “The Quaker Way.” Each does indeed have its “own moral agenda.” The “American dream,” as generally understood (materialistic, individualistic, nationalistic), is counter to the Quaker “testimonies” of simplicity, peace, integrity, community and equality.

As interesting as the article about the transformation of crime families was, it seems to me that a more compelling story is that of groups that choose to follow their “own moral agenda.”

Both New Yorker stories hint that Quakers (and Amish) go about doing just that. The broader American culture could use more than hints.

Journalism is dead! Long live journalism!

This week’s New Yorker has a challenging article by Eric Alterman titled “The Death and Life of American Newspapers.” With references to Walter Lippman, John Dewey and Arianna Huffington, he tries mightily to advance the obvious story that the days of newspapers (and traditional journalism) are numbered.

Alterman argues that the new news medium, the internet, is a kind of Vox Populi, or as he describes it, “a fractured, chaotic world of news, characterized by superior community conversation but a decidedly diminished level of first-rate journalism.”

The demise of the old print journalism will mean, he asserts, “the loss of a single national narrative and agreed-upon set of ‘facts’ by which to conduct our politics. News will become increasingly ‘red’ or ‘blue.’”

Of course, as he notes, that was the case in the 19th Century, when the press was truly partisan. A few papers retain their partisan names. Just down the road from here, The Albany Democrat Herald still touts a political label. It isn't alone.

It wasn’t until the formation of news-gathering cartels, (telegraph) wire services like the Associated Press, just prior to the Civil War that the notion of so-called objectivity began to emerge. The wire services, because they supplied news to newspapers of all political stripes, had to be “objective” and offer a "national narrative."

We should welcome the resurrection of “conversational journalism.” There’s still not enough of it, even on the internet. Take this blog for example. Some 50 people read it but few comment. When they do, the conversation begins.

Recently I had an extended, spirited exchange with an anonymous correspondent (who ultimately identified himself.) It was rough going at times but each of us forced the other (and our readers) to think to the next step.

It was quite different from having a traditional journalist try to mediate differences through “objective” reporting. I’ve been in that mediating role and still am on my on-line Hillsdale News. As journalist you try to pose the questions each side would ask of the other. Unfortunately, that takes you only to the first level. The debate, such as it is, usually stops there, either because of space limitations or perceived reader exhaustion.

But a conversation pushes on. The discussion goes deeper. The on-line reader, of course, can break away to see whether this statement or that is true by searching the web, and then dip back into the discussion and even enter with a new set of facts and a different perspective (Yes, there are more than two!)

So the internet widens and deepens journalism. At its best, this is “participatory, conversational journalism” or even “democratic journalism.” It’s a far cry from the “traditional” journalism that is dying with each passing day.

Journalism is dead! Long live journalism!

A literary coincidence

Cathy Zimmerman, a good friend, a prodigious reader and a skilled writer, recently passed on some books to my wife, Diane, who in turn dealt out a couple to me. Last night I picked up one from the unstable, looming pile next to my bed.

It immediately seized me. “So Long, See You Tomorrow” is by William Maxwell. Many of you may know the book and the author. I didn’t, although the name “William Maxwell” was vaguely familiar. Then again perhaps I had merely met a William Maxwell once; it is a common enough name.

According to Diane, Cathy had said the book was a murder mystery. Well, it is, sort of. It’s mostly a reminiscence artfully constructed around a murder. The murder hovers over deftly etched descriptions of life and relationships in a rural Illinois community at the beginning of the 20th Century.

Today I planned to read more of the book after returning from a leisurely errand downtown. In the Pearl, I chomped through a Westphalia ham sandwich, sipped coffee from a paper cup and nibbled on oatmeal-raisin cookie at Whole Foods. Then I wandered around Powell’s but managed to escape without buying anything (I was looking for “Thomas Paine and the Promise of America," but, oddly, they were out of it). I rode the trolley back to a leisurely walking distance to my car, which I had parked on a northwest Portland side street.

Driving home I flicked on NPR and got Terry Gross, always chancy. I thanked the gods that she wasn’t fawning over the lead bass player of a heavy metal band. Instead, she was in mid-interview with some elderly, somewhat feeble-sounding gentleman who got my attention with a reference to E.B. White and his times with other New Yorker writers. The old man allowed as how he still wrote with a typewriter, adding that he and modernity had reached an accommodation. He was enjoying being in his 80s, he said, and had even surprised himself recently by running to catch a prized, available cab. His running hadn’t been all that fast, he admitted, but it was fast enough. He got the taxi before someone else did.

The interview wound down, and Gross closed out with “Thank you, William Maxwell, for allowing us to visit with you.”

William Maxwell.

The same William Maxwell whose book awaited me at home.

The interview had been conducted in 1995, five years before Maxwell’s death in 2000. It was being replayed to honor the centenary of his birth. An anthology of his work is being published for the occasion. Indeed, there is a growing sense among literary historians that Maxwell, who wrote six novels and was fiction editor at the New Yorker for 40 years until 1976, was among the great writers of the 20th Century.

Once home, I searched the web and learned that this passed-along “murder mystery” won the National Book Award for fiction in 1980.

Excuse me, now, I have a book to finish.