Expository Writing: Shaping Information Diane Ackerman

4People . . . camps: Though Orwell is decrying all totalitarian abuse of language, his examples are mainly pointed at the Soviet purges under Joseph Stalin. — Eds.

5One can cure oneself of the not un- formation by memorizing this sentence: A not unblack dog was chasing a not unsmall rabbit across a not ungreen field.

The Writer at Work

George Orwell on the Four Reasons for Writing

As the preceding essay shows, George Orwell spent much time considering the art of writing. He believed it was of the utmost po­liti­cal importance to write clearly and accurately. In the following passage from another essay, “Why I Write,” Orwell considers a more fundamental aspect of writing: the reasons behind why people write at all. You may observe that he doesn’t list the reason most college students write — to respond to an assignment. Why do you think he omitted assigned writing? Can you think of other motives he doesn’t take into account?

Putting aside the need to earn a living, I think there are four great motives for writing, at any rate for writing prose. They exist in different degrees in every writer, and in any one writer the proportions will vary from time to time, according to the at­mo­sphere in which he is living. They are:

1. Sheer egoism. Desire to seem clever, to be talked about, to be remembered after death, to get your own back on ­grown-­ups who snubbed you in childhood, ­etc., ­etc. It is humbug to pretend that this is not a motive, and a strong one. Writers share this characteristic with scientists, artists, politicians, lawyers, soldiers, successful businessmen — in short, with the ­whole top crust of humanity. The great mass of human beings are not acutely selfish. After the age of thirty they abandon individual ambition — in many cases, indeed, they almost abandon the sense of being individuals at all — and live chiefly for others, or are simply smothered under drudgery. But there is also the minority of gifted, willful people who are determined to live their own lives to the end, and writers belong in this class. Serious writers, I should say, are on the ­whole more vain and ­self-­centered than journalists, though less interested in money.

2. Aesthetic enthusiasm. Perception of beauty in the external world, or, on the other hand, in words and their right arrangement. Plea­sure in the impact of one sound on another, in the firmness of good prose or the rhythm of a good story. Desire to share an experience which one feels is valuable and ought not to be missed. The aesthetic motive is very feeble in a lot of writers, but even a pamphleteer or a writer of textbooks will have pet words and phrases which appeal to him for ­non-­utilitarian reasons; or he may feel strongly about typography, width of margins, ­etc. Above the level of a railway guide, no book is quite free from aesthetic considerations.

3. Historical impulse. Desire to see things as they are, to find out true facts and store them up for the use of posterity.5

4. Po­liti­cal purpose — using the word “po­liti­cal” in the widest possible sense. Desire to push the world in a certain direction, to alter other people’s idea of the kind of society that they should strive after. Once again, no book is genuinely free from po­liti­cal bias. The opinion that art should have nothing to do with politics is itself a po­liti­cal attitude.

Katha Pollitt

Why Boys Don’t Play with Dolls

Katha Pollitt was born in 1949 in New York City and is considered one of the leading poets of her generation. Her 1982 collection of poetry, Antarctic Traveller, won a National Book Critics Circle Award. Her poetry has received many other honors and has appeared in the Atlantic and the New Yorker. Pollitt also writes essays, and she has gained a reputation for incisive analysis and ­persuasive argument. She contributes reviews, essays, and social commentary to numerous national publications, many of which are collected in Reasonable Creatures (1994). Her 2001 book, Subject to Debate: Sense and Dissents on Women, Politics, and Culture, draws on her ­twice-­monthly column in the Nation, where she has been a writer, associate editor, and columnist for more than ­twenty-­five years. “Why Boys Don’t Play with Dolls” appeared in the New York Times Magazine in 1995.

Pollitt thinks of writing poems and po­liti­cal essays as two distinct endeavors. “What I want in a poem — one that I read or one that I write — is not an argument, it’s not a statement, it has to do with language. . . . There isn’t that much po­liti­cal poetry that I find I even want to read once, and almost none that I would want to read again.”

It’s ­twenty-­eight years since the founding of NOW, and boys still like trucks and girls still like dolls. Increasingly, we are told that the source of these robust preferences must lie outside society — in prenatal hormonal influences, brain chemistry, genes — and that feminism has reached its natural limits. What ­else could possibly explain the love of preschool girls for party dresses or the desire of toddler boys to own more guns than Mark from Michigan.¹

True, recent studies claim to show small cognitive differences between the sexes: he gets around by orienting himself in space, she does it by remembering landmarks. Time will tell if any deserve the hoopla with which each is invariably greeted, over the protests of the researchers themselves. But even if the results hold up (and the history of such research is not encouraging), we don’t need studies of ­sex-­differentiated brain ­activity in reading, say, to understand why boys and girls still seem so unalike.

The feminist movement has done much for some women, and something for every woman, but it has hardly turned America into a playground free of sex roles. It hasn’t even got women to stop dieting or men to stop interrupting them.

Instead of looking at kids to “prove” that differences in behavior by sex are innate, we can look at the ways we raise kids as an index to how unfinished the feminist revolution really is, and how tentatively it is embraced even by adults who fully expect their daughters to enter previously ­male-­dominated professions and their sons to change diapers.

₅

I’m at a children’s birthday party. “I’m sorry,” one mom silently mouths to the mother of the birthday girl, who has just torn open her ­present — Tropical Splash Barbie. Now, you can love Barbie or you can hate Barbie, and there are feminists in both camps. But apologize for Barbie? Inflict Barbie, against your own convictions, on the child of a friend you know will be none too pleased?

Every mother in that room had spent years becoming a person who had to be taken seriously, not least by herself. Even the most attractive, I’m willing to bet, had suffered over her body’s failure to fit the impossible American ideal. Given all that, it seems crazy to transmit Barbie to the next generation. Yet to reject her is to say that what Barbie represents — being sexy, thin, stylish — is unimportant, which is obviously not true, and children know it’s not true.

Women’s looks matter terribly in this society, and so Barbie, however ambivalently, must be passed along. After all, there are worse toys. The Cut and Style Barbie styling head, for example, a grotesque object intended to encourage “hair play.” The ­grown-­ups who give that probably apologize, too.

How happy would most parents be to have a child who flouted sex conventions? I know a lot of women, feminists, who complain in a comical, ­eyeball-­rolling way about their sons’ passion for sports: the ruined weekends, obnoxious coaches, macho values. But they would not think of discouraging their sons from participating in this activity they find so foolish. Or do they? Their husbands are sports fans, too, and they like their husbands a lot.

Could it be that even ­sports-­resistant moms see athletics as part of manliness? That if their sons wanted to spend the weekend writing up their diaries, or reading, or baking, they’d find it disturbing? Too antisocial? Too lonely? Too gay?

Theories of innate differences in behavior are appealing. They let parents off the hook — no small recommendation in a culture that holds moms, and sometimes even dads, responsible for their children’s every misstep on the road to bliss and success.

They allow ­grown-­ups to take the path of least re­sis­tance to the dominant culture, which always requires less psychic effort, even if it means more actual work: just ask the working mother who comes home exhausted and nonetheless finds it easier to pick up her son’s socks than make him do it himself. They let families buy for their children, without too much guilt, the unbelievably sexist junk that the kids, who have been watching commercials since birth, understandably crave.

But the thing that theories do most of all is tell adults that the adult world — in which moms and dads still play by many of the old rules even as they question and fidget and chafe against them — is the way it’s supposed to be. A girl with a doll and a boy with a truck “explain” why men are from Mars and women are from Venus, why wives do ­house­work and husbands just don’t understand.

The paradox is that the world of rigid and hierarchical sex roles evoked by determinist theories is already passing away. ­Three-­year-­olds may indeed insist that doctors are male and nurses female, even if their own mother is a physician. ­Six-­year-­olds know better. These days, something like half of all medical students are female, and male applications to nursing school are inching upward. When tomorrow’s ­three-­year-­olds play doctor, who’s to say how they’ll assign the roles?

With sex roles, as in every area of life, people aspire to what is possible, and conform to what is necessary. But these are not fixed, especially today. Biological determinism may reassure some adults about their present, but it is feminism, the ideology of flexible and converging sex roles, that fits our children’s future. And the kids, somehow, know this.

That’s why, if you look carefully, you’ll find that for every kid who fits a ste­reo­type, there’s another who’s breaking one down. Sometimes it’s the same kid — the boy who skateboards and takes cooking in his afterschool program; the girl who collects stuffed animals and ­A-­pluses in science.

Feminists are often accused of imposing their “agenda” on children. Isn’t that what adults always do, consciously and unconsciously? Kids aren’t born religious, or polite, or kind, or able to remember where they put their sneakers. Inculcating these behaviors, and the values behind them, is a tremendous amount of work, involving many adults. We don’t have a choice, really, about whether we should give our children messages about what it means to be male and female — they’re bombarded with them from morning till night.

The question, as always, is what do we want those messages to be?

The Reader’s Presence

1. ‑Pollitt notes in her opening paragraph that “it’s ­twenty-­eight years since the founding of NOW, and boys still like trucks and girls still like dolls.” What does Pollitt identify as the competing theories to explain these differences between boys and girls? Which theory does Pollitt prefer, and how does she express her support of it?

2. ‑As you reread the essay, consider carefully the role of the media in upholding the status quo with regard to differentiated roles for girls and boys. As you develop a response to this question, examine carefully both the media directed principally to children and the media targeted at adults. In the latter category, for instance, Pollitt refers to the media version of scientific research studies into gender differences (paragraph 2) and alludes to pop­u­lar books that discuss the differences between men and women, such as Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus, and You Just Don’t Understand (paragraph 12). Drawing on Pollitt’s essay and on your own experience, identify — and discuss — the specific social responsibilities you would like to see America’s mass media take more ­seriously.

3. ‑How would you characterize Pollitt’s stance toward today’s parents? What are some of the reasons she gives to explain parents’ choices and actions? Consider Pollitt’s argument in the light of Bernard Cooper’s essay “A Clack of Tiny Sparks: Remembrances of a Gay Boyhood” (page 121). How does Cooper’s account of his parents’ attitudes compare with Pollitt’s portrait of parents? Do a similar comparative reading of Pollitt’s polemic and Adrienne Rich’s portrait of her parents in “Split at the Root: An Essay on Jewish Identity” (page 228). What general points about childrearing can you draw from the contrasts and commonalities between the essays? How does parenting figure in the transmission of beliefs and practices in America, according to these authors?

Joe Sacco

Through Other Eyes

Joe Sacco (b. 1960), who calls himself “a really good cartoonist who does journalism,” was born in Malta, raised in Australia, and later emigrated to the United States. Graduating with a degree in journalism from the University of Oregon in 1981, Sacco lived for some time in Germany and then traveled to the Middle East as a “comics journalist” to document the lives of Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip. His comics from this period ­were collected as Palestine (1996), for which Sacco won the American Book Award. He later traveled to Bosnia to chronicle the deadly conflict among Serbs, Croats, and Muslims in comic books including Safe Area GoraŠzde (2000), The Fixer (2003), and his latest, War’s End (2005).

Describing his commitment to his unique combination of comic art and journalism, Sacco told an interviewer, “I am interested in what people care about, what they think about, and this gives me an ability to enter the world they live in.” The following selection from Palestine takes place after Sacco has spent considerable time living among Palestinian refugees; in “Through Other Eyes,” his encounter with two Israeli women helps him enter their quite different world.

The Reader’s Presence

1. ‑How do Sacco’s views of the Old City and the market differ from those of Naomi and Paula? Do you think the women’s fears of going to the market are rational? Why or why not? Does Sacco find their fears reasonable at the beginning? Does his opinion change?

2. ‑Sacco includes himself as a character in all of his journalistic comics. Do you think this makes his journalism less objective? Would you prefer more objective coverage of the events in “Through Other Eyes”? Why or why not?

3. ‑Examine the way that Sacco portrays himself and Paula in the market. Then look at the portion of Marjane Satrapi’s “The Socks” in which the police arrive at the party (pages 268–270). How does each graphic writer describe the chaos and fear of the scene? How are the portrayals similar and different?

The graphic Writer at Work

Kristian Williams on The Case for Comics Journalism

Joe Sacco draws comics — or graphic novels, as serious examples of the genre are commonly called — but he is also a journalist. Unlike many more traditional journalists, however, he is a character in his own books and so clearly a part of the stories he covers. In this excerpt from “The Case for Comics Journalism,” an article published in the Columbia Journalism Review in 2005, Kristian Williams examines how work like Sacco’s can provide the “voice and meaning” that many readers long to find in news stories.

Of course, ­comic-­book journalists face many of the same difficulties as those working in more conventional media — questions of bias, unreliable sources, language barriers, and ethical dilemmas. But their strategies for resolving them are quite different from those of standard newspaper reporting or broadcast journalism.

In Palestine: In the Gaza Strip, Joe Sacco remembers a conversation with two Israeli women. One asks, “Shouldn’t you be seeing our side of the story, too?”

He reflects: “And what can I say? . . . standing there with two girls from Tel Aviv, it occurs to me that I have seen the Israelis, but through Palestinian eyes — that Israelis ­were mainly soldiers and settlers to me now, too.”

He invites one of his new friends to the Arab market, to show her the Palestine he has seen. Instead, he discovers that walking beside an Israeli, surrounded by Palestinians, her fear is contagious. The Palestinians, who have been so kind to him, whom he has lived among for weeks, suddenly appear strange and hostile. Sacco feels himself near to panic. It is an enlightening moment. However briefly, he does see the conflict from the other side, and he realizes that the Israeli experience is not just about seizing land and conducting raids, but also about the quiet ­tension — the trepidation of a young woman walking through the market. Such ambivalence fits well with the complexities of the Palestinian territories.

Sacco recognizes that his perspective has been limited, perhaps even compromised, by his immersion into Palestinian life. More traditional correspondents covering the Israeli–Palestinian conflict might have the same insight, but are largely unable to deal with it in their stories. Sacco, meanwhile, does not deny the reality of what he has seen, or try to balance it by staying with settlers or embedding with the Israeli Defense Forces. Nor does he apologize for his views, even with their blind spots and contradictions. Instead, he shows us what he has learned — including those elements that frustrate any easy conclusions. “What I’ve seen before my eyes,” Sacco tells me, “isn’t often balanced.”

In comics journalism, more so perhaps than in any other medium, the reporter’s role is consistently emphasized. He is often present, not merely as a voice or a talking head, but as a moral viewpoint and as a participant in the events described. “You become part of a story if you’re a journalist,” Sacco says. “I mean, you can try to write yourself out of it, but you become involved. I think it’s more honest to show that your involvement affects people.”

As the reporter comes into focus, we see that he is not a neutral conduit for news and information, but a person like ourselves — a fallible human being, vulnerable to bias and ignorance and error. By acknowledging his own humanity, the writer can encourage the reader to think critically about what he or she reads.

Comics are well suited to that role because of the inherent narrative properties of the medium. They are not merely illustrated stories, or pictures matched with commentary. Instead, the narrative relies on both the words and the pictures; meaning is produced by the interaction of image and text. Yet each element remains to some degree in­de­pen­dent of the other. For this reason, and because several sets of ­text-­image blocks can appear side by side on the same page, comics are well suited to represent the fragmentation of experience during crisis, or the incommensurable views of opposing sides in the midst of conflict, or the kaleidoscopic chaos of a desert carnival like Burning Man.

Moreover, by mixing written words and images, comics have the inherent ability to juxtapose a literal retelling and artistic symbolism, or conversely, symbolic language and repre­sen­ta­tional imagery. . . .

The in­de­pen­dence of the words and the pictures allows for an overlay of subjective and objective storytelling. Tensions between the written word and the image can be used to highlight uncertainties, ambiguities, and ironies that other media might inadvertently play down or deliberately ignore.

All of this suggests, simply, that comics open possibilities for journalists that are less available in other media. And perhaps more importantly, they add to the options available to readers, who have lately demonstrated a hunger for voice and meaning in news coverage. Witness the proliferation of blogs and the continued popularity of zines. Like zines and blogs, comics drop the pretense of detachment and emphasize perspective. Furthermore, comics are visually engaging and famously easy to understand. They are, as Sacco says, “inviting. It looks like an easy read.” After all, as everyone knows, even kids read comic books.

Eric Schlosser

Why McDonald’s Fries

Taste So Good

Eric Schlosser is a correspondent for the Atlantic. His articles and essays about contemporary America have won numerous journalistic honors and awards, including a National Magazine Award for an article he wrote on marijuana. His latest collection of essays, Reefer Madness: Sex, Drugs, and Cheap Labor in the American Black Market (2003), examines the country’s underground economy. Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the ­All-­American Meal (2001), Schlosser’s controversial and influential first book, prompted a reexamination of practices in the ­meat-­pro­cessing industry.

Of writing Fast Food Nation, Schlosser said, “I care about the literary aspects of the book. I tried to make it as clear as possible, and make it an interesting thing to read, but I sacrificed some of that, ultimately, in order to get this out to people and let them know what’s going on.”

The french fry was “almost sacrosanct for me,” Ray Kroc, one of the found­ers of McDonald’s, wrote in his autobiography, “its preparation a ritual to be followed religiously.” During the chain’s early years french fries ­were made from scratch every day. Russet Burbank potatoes ­were peeled, cut into shoestrings, and fried in McDonald’s kitchens. As the chain expanded nationwide, in the ­mid-­1960s, it sought to cut labor costs, reduce the number of suppliers, and ensure that its fries tasted the same at every restaurant. McDonald’s began switching to frozen french fries in 1966 — and few customers noticed the difference. Nevertheless, the change had a profound effect on the nation’s agriculture and diet. A familiar food had been transformed into a highly pro­cessed industrial commodity. McDonald’s fries now come from huge manufacturing plants that can peel, slice, cook, and freeze two million pounds of potatoes a day. The rapid expansion of McDonald’s and the popularity of its ­low-­cost, ­mass-­produced fries changed the way Americans eat. In 1960 Americans consumed an average of about ­eighty-­one pounds of fresh potatoes and four pounds of frozen french fries. In 2000 they consumed an average of about fifty pounds of fresh potatoes and thirty pounds of frozen fries. Today McDonald’s is the largest buyer of potatoes in the United States.

The taste of McDonald’s french fries played a crucial role in the chain’s success — fries are much more profitable than hamburgers — and was long praised by customers, competitors, and even food critics. James Beard loved McDonald’s fries. Their distinctive taste does not stem from the kind of potatoes that McDonald’s buys, the technology that pro­cesses them, or the restaurant equipment that fries them: other chains use Russet Burbanks, buy their french fries from the same large pro­cessing companies, and have similar fryers in their restaurant kitchens. The taste of a french fry is largely determined by the cooking oil. For de­cades McDonald’s cooked its french fries in a mixture of about seven percent cottonseed oil and 93 percent beef tallow. The mixture gave the fries their unique flavor — and more saturated beef fat per ounce than a McDonald’s hamburger.

In 1990, amid a barrage of criticism over the amount of cholesterol in its fries, McDonald’s switched to pure vegetable oil. This presented the company with a challenge: how to make fries that subtly taste like beef without cooking them in beef tallow. A look at the ingredients in McDonald’s french fries suggests how the problem was solved. Toward the end of the list is a seemingly innocuous yet oddly mysterious phrase: “natural flavor.” That ingredient helps to explain not only why the fries taste so good but also why most fast food — indeed, most of the food Americans eat today — tastes the way it does.