Reading from The Maximum Security Book Club and Q&A at the Enoch Pratt Library on June 15, 2016, with (l to r) JCI Scholar Vincent, Baynard Woods, Correspondent for the Guardian and writer for the City Paper, Glennor Shirley, Maryland State Prison Librarian, and JCI Scholar Mikita Brottman. You can listen to interviews with Mikita and Vincent at:
Midday with Sheilah Kast, WYPR, June 13 2016
“Roughly Speaking” with Dan Rodericks, Baltimore Sun, June 15 2016
Guest post by Shane Barnett
We were honored to have Professor Paul Jaskunas from MICA present to us the first chapter of his novel “Cybelle” this past Tuesday, a story about the coming of age of a rural West Virginia girl battling to overcome mediocrity. In his first chapter, Jaskunas illustrates the struggle of Cybelle to maintain her dysfunctional family while still managing to meet the demands of college so that she can attain the means to her lofty aspirations. So far, “Cybelle” is a somber story of the personal struggle that so many of us daily face. Such is life.
Professor Jaskunas captivated his audience with his soft-spoken narration of the very intriguing depths of female nature, dealing with men and sex and where these things can lead when haphazardly approached. The story so far seems to be a description of the age-old inter-relationship of woman to man in using her assets to obtain the security she needs for survival, as she tries to overcome her dependence upon him – a vicious cycle of give-and-take that so often is our existence.
Our class became a panel of critics full of questions and suggestions for the author. We wanted to know why he does what he does and how he does it. We wanted him to tell us more. What does Cybelle look like? Where is her story headed? Is she destined for success and the proverbial happy ending, or failure and tragedy? We did our best to exhume the details from the mind of our subject in order to ascertain the motive for his composition and the objectives for his forlorn heroine. From what I can gather, Cybelle has a long hard road ahead, but where that road leads has yet to be seen, even by Jaskunas himself, as he leaves us with awesome insight for our own development of plots and characters. “Let your characters be as chemicals in a scientific experiment … create conditions for them and see what reactions ensure…”
Good luck, Cybelle!
We finished the class by watching the 1954 animated version of Animal Farm, directed by Joy Batchelor and John Halas, which is an interesting movie in its own right, but a very watered down version of Orwell’s allegory. I’m sure none of the men 
were surprised that the ending of Animal Farm was depressing, but possibly some were disturbed to realize just how terrible things finally got. But I have to say, most of the animals were asking for it. They followed the pigs blindly and naively; they didn’t pay attention to what was going on around them; they trusted that Napoleon had their best interests at heart, they forgot the past, and they didn’t look out for themselves.
At the beginning of Chapter 10, years have passed since the rebellion. Many of the animals involved in it are dead. Most of its ideals and promises are dead as well. The younger animals simply accept Napoleon’s historical account and the way he runs the farm. They are now far worse off under Napoleon than under Mr. Jones. The windmill, before it’s exploded, is used to mill corn and increase profits. The pigs, under Napoleon, have become worse than the humans. The commandments have been changed so that the pigs are considered superior to the others.
This is a very cynical story. Orwell seems to be suggesting that all power corrupts. There’s no way out. In our own lives, we can either join the pigs, and become corrupted, or go on quietly with our own lives, and be led blindly and naïvely. There is a moment of potential enlightenment when seems as though thing
s could be turned around when Boxer is taken away to the slaughterhouse, and Benjamin has a heroic moment when he tries to mount a rescue operation. But in the end, even Benjamin is cynically resolved to the disastrous fate of pig rule.
There can be no actual hero on Animal Farm because totalitarianism eliminates all heroism. There can be no daring individual acts because all such acts end in death. On Orwell’s Animal Farm, it may well be that cynicism is not just an optional disposition; it is a duty. It is the only possibility of opposition. It’s the realist’s version of hope, the only disposition that can penetrate beyond the implacable barriers of oppression. The cynic does not accept power, but nor does he accept the tyranny of the status quo. As usual, another depressing book to end the course.
Animal Farm is starting to get depressing, but I think we all predicted that. And not all the animals are having a hard time. As top pig, Napoleon is in the pink. He’s even going to market and bringing home the bacon. By the end of these two chapters, Napoleon’s regime is definitely worse than that of Mr. Jones. As Napoleon’s 
henchman, Squealer circulates disinformation, blaming everything bad that happens on the absent Snowball. He also accuses certain animals of plotting secretly with Snowball, which is obviously untrue. What makes matters worse is that the animals admit it, internalizing their self-hatred. Napoleon doesn’t even have the decency to give them a fair trial; he just has them taken round the back of the barn and the dog rip out their throats. So much for Commandment Six, “No Animal Shall Kill Any Other Animal.”
These two chapters are important because they show how the animals are being manipulated into following anything Squealer claims Napoleon has said. The animals are so obedient that they don’t even realize how gullible they are. The truth is, they’re so used to having someone else think for them, that they don’t even consider objecting. They just assume Napoleon is right all the time.
Although he uses the word “Comrade” and uses the inclusive “we,” Squealer is starting to speak in a formal way, beginning to isolate himself from his fellow beasts. No longer is he an everyday pig. Though he denies that the top pigs have power over the others, his speech, charisma and closeness to Napoleon all give Squealer implicit authority.
For example, when Squealer bans “Beasts of England,” he says, “In ‘Beasts of England,’ we expressed our longing for a better society in days to come. But that society has now been established. Clearly this song has no longer any purpose.” When he says “we,” he sounds as though he is speaking on behalf of the other animals, but he is also assuming that they all feel the same way. He is not open to disagreement or protest. He pretends to be a “pig of the people” but is actually authoritative and hard headed.
Although the book may be getting depressing, I’ve got a lot to look forward to. I really love hearing the men’s responses to this novel, because they’re so complex and interesting. I’m used to listening carefully to the thoughtful responses produced by Mr. Arey, for example, and Mr. Doyle, and Mr. Simpson, but last w
eek I wasn’t prepared for Mr. Barnett’s paper. There was really too much for me to take in just by sitting listening to it—I had to take a copy home and read it again. And then there was Mr. Drummond’s impressively close reading. He gets right in there and turn the words themselves into a code to be cracked, creating mysteries he alone can solve. The progress of the pigs may be disheartening, but that of this group is just the opposite.
The men were not in a good mood today – and understandably so. According to a recent memo, the new DPSCS Secretary has decided that, from December 1, in order to curb the passing of contraband, there will be no more physical contact during prison visits–no touching, no kissing on the mouth, no hugging. What will this mean for the fathers of young children? Men with elderly parents? Newly-married couples? It’s difficult to imagine.
Though not, perhaps, for George Orwell. Our final book of the semester is Animal Farm. Officially, it was Mr. Drummond’s choice, but a number of the men mentioned they’d heard about the book and wanted to read it. A couple of them, like me, had read it a long time ago but were happy to read it again. I introduced the book in class and discussed Orwell, his life and work.
In a way, I wish I hadn’t brought up the notion that Animal Farm is an allegory, because although it’s interesting (and to some degree inevitable) to think about it allegorically, I also think there’s a lot to be said for paying attention to the story as a story. We began reading the book aloud in class. Comments made by Mr. Simpson and Mr.Barnett brought to my attention the fact that these animals are already domesticated and institutionalized. Their revolution is already doomed to failure. The very concept of revolution, in fact, is a human concept. Animals don’t get together and rebel. In the wild, different species are natural enemies (and a lot of these species are actually man made hybrids and don’t even exist in the wild).
It was interesting to discuss Orwell’s prose. The pictures he paints are vivid enough to make Mr. Arey laugh out loud, which is a good touchstone in my opinion, though it that doesn’t seem to take much. The prose is almost invisible, but in a different way from Steinbeck and Hemingway’s prose. Hemingway’s sentences were so short, they called attention to themselves; Orwell’s never do. “Good prose is like a window pane,” wrote Orwell in an essay entitled “Why I Write,” meaning that good writing should allow you to see straight through to what is being said, without getting in the way. It should be clear and transparent, and allow you to see what is happening on the other side. Although some of the language here may be slightly technical or a little archaic, it’s generally perfectly clear.
The attack from Mr. Jones and the other farmers is the first sign that the animals are going to have divided loyalties. This probably won’t be the only attack from the humans, so there’s going to be a need to concentrate on defense. But there’s also a need to keep their own ranks in order. And then there’s Snowball and his Utopian windmill. If it works, it could lead to a three-day working week—and Snowball’s a smart pig. But Napoleon seems even smarter, since he’s managed to privately train a pack of savage attack-dogs as his own private army to run Snowball out of town. Snowball is quickly forgotten, and before long the windmill is being discussed again, only this time it’s Napoleon’s idea.
The men noted that the pigs are taking advantage of most of the other animals on the farm, realizing that they’re basically very good, but very gullible. Nobody has any real access to information, so rumors fly around and nobody knows who to trust, or even what really happened during the Battle of the Cowshed. The situation is in flux, and all the animals are anxious and excited, and in situations like this, manipulators can take advantage of the weak. It’s notable how dumb and ignorant so many of the animals seem, how much they’re at the mercy of the pigs, who are the only ones with any real knowledge, since they’re the ones who can read and write. And of course, the pigs are on top because the revolution was started by one of their own: Old Major, the heroic pig who revived the philosophy of Animalism.
If the pigs represent political leaders and the animals represent the ordinary people, Orwell does not have an especially good opinion of either. With this cast of characters—and with attributes like greed, selfishness, fear and hunger for power—it’s difficult to imagine any political situation actually working. No wonder we’re in such a mess. In reality, animals seem to govern themselves much better than we humans do.
Our second book of the semester is Mike’s choice: Ernest Hemingway: The Old Man and the Sea. I have to say: Hemingway is the kind of author I think of as another “man’s” writer. 
Like Steinbeck, it’s all externals, action, physical details. This is another book I’m going to be suffering through. I hope everyone else enjoys it enough to make my pain worthwhile.
Last summer, I read a book by Edith Wharton, a nineteenth century American writer, called The Reef. Towards the end of this novel, the female protagonist, Anna Leath, begins to realize that she has highly ambivalent feelings about the man she’s engaged to, whom, she’s just discovered, has had an affair with the family’s governess. Of Anna, Wharton writes:
“She recalled having read somewhere that in ancient Rome the slaves were not allowed to wear a distinctive dress lest they should recognize each other and learn their numbers and their power. So, in herself, she discerned for the first time instincts and desires, which, mute and unmarked, had gone to and fro in the dim passages of her mind, and now hailed each other with a cry of mutiny.”
I remember, when I read this passage, being so moved and impressed by it because it’s a perfect example of exactly the kind of thing I look for and love in a fiction writer – the ability to capture and express those psychological moments that are central to human life and relationships.
This may sound like a roundabout way of why I don’t like Hemingway and Steinbeck, but in fact I’m working very hard as I read to understand why this kind of writing does so little for me, and why I find it so empty.
In our discussion last week, Josh said, “men are visual creatures.” It’s certainly true that, in general, men respond to visual stimulation more readily than do women. The men in the group may enjoy this book because it’s so visual, and the characters so elemental, the story so simple and mythic: man and boy versus the elements. I’m not a visual person, however. What I look for is psychological insight and unexpected language, and this book has neither. Nor did the last one. Again, I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with the book – it just doesn’t have what it takes to get me going. There’s an old man, and there’s a big fish. But it’s not enough. Moby Dick, another story of an old man and a big fish, is much more interesting to me because there’s a lot of psychology involved (and some interesting secondary characters). But here, there’s just a man and a fish. And I’m not hooked.
I’m writing this paper while lying in a hospital bed in the Emergency Room at MedStar Mem
orial Hospital, where I was sent this morning after consulting the doctor about my knee. It’s not an injury, she said, but an infection, which makes sense now I think about it. Let’s hope they don’t have to amputate. The guy in the next room has gangrene in his foot.
Anyway, back to Of Mice and Men. I don’t know if I believe, as Mr. Gross does, that a book can be reduced to a single moral or message, but I know that’s what he wants from me. If I had to sum up a moral or message for the sake of argument, it would be “True loyalty means protecting your man at any cost, even the cost of his life.” By shooting Lennie in the back of the head, George is committing the supreme act of loyalty, because there’s no question that if he were found, Lenny would be shot on the spot by Curley in an act that would easily be defended after the murder of Lenny’s wife (and maybe this is the reason why Steinbeck never lets us get to know her well—if we knew her and sympathized with her, we might not have such sympathy with Lenny). I wonder if George will get away with his act with impunity, however. Slim understands and isn’t going to tell on him, but if anyone else found out what he’s done, wouldn’t he be arrested for murder? (George, after all, doesn’t have Curley’s privileges.) Lenny’s body may disappear into the swamp and never be found, but still, George may have to go on the run for a while.
Reading the book for the second time with the men made me see things I hadn’t seen before, including how carefully structured it is. I didn’t make the connection, the first time I read it, between the shooting of the old dog and George’s execution of Lenny. I think there’s no doubt that George does the right thing. He’s a good shot and Lenny doesn’t know what’s coming to him. He goes to his death thinking about his rabbit farm, and his death was no doubt instant. It’s difficult to imagine how George will get along without him. In some ways, I think an enormous burden will be lifted from his life. But he’ll probably miss having Lenny around, not least for the money Lenny could bring in. It’s difficult to imagine George being able to develop another friendship with a “normal” man. Whatever else you could say about him, Lenny was special.
In closing, I wouldn’t say I really enjoyed reading Of Mice and Men, or that I came to a new appreciation of Steinbeck, but I did get more out of it than I expected, and I can see there’s more going on beneath the surface, and within the structure, than I initially believed.
By the way, the doctor just came in and said I have a superficial infection under the skin and it’s probably nothing—all I need is a course of antibiotics and a bandage. I feel completely disappointed. I’m always hoping for something dramatic and morbid, even if it’s my own expense. Would I have preferred it if he’d come into the room with a shotgun and told me he had to put a bullet in the back of the head? Perhaps I would.
This semester, we’re trying something different in Advanced Literature. After putting the men through Conrad, Melville, Poe, Shakespeare, Nabokov, etc., I’ve decided to turn the tables and let them select the books for a change. The book we’ve started with is Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck, chosen by Mr. Gross. The book is really not a favorite of mine. I don’t like Steinbeck’s sentimental idealization of the poor, nor do I lie his action-oriented plots. I find his work very macho, and I complained about it in class.
Later, I regretted my complaints, especially knowing how much the book means to Mr. Gross. Now that I know how important it is to a man whose opinions I respect, I’m going to work a little harder to go beneath the surface and lay aside my knee-jerk reactions. After all, I believe (or I like to believe) that’s what a lot of the men did with some of the books I chose, like the Edgar Allan Poe stories that drove Mr. Fitzgerald so crazy, or Lolita, which so many of the men found so difficult to read because of their distaste for Humbert Humbert. But they knew the book meant a lot to me, so they struggled and went ahead despite their distaste, and many of them ended up finding something memorable in these books. Or, at least, they said you did. I hope they did. I like to think they did.
So when reading Of Mice and Men, I thought to myself, what does Mr. Gross see in this book? What does Mr. Peters see? And when I tried to see it through the men’s eyes, I found there was more going on in the story than I previously wanted to acknowledge—even, as Mr. Arey pointed out, psychologically.
In the scene we read this week, Lennie lets Candy in on his and George’s plan to retire on their own farm and breed rabbits, and it turns out Candy’s actually got savings of his own and asks to join them. The plan that had always been a fantasy suddenly, for a short while, comes to life and becomes real. Curley’s wife always seems to be hanging around Slim, and Curley loses it. Slim stands his ground, so Curley turns on the guy who seems to be the underdog—the big dumb semi-mute Lennie. This is when we see Lennie in action. He may not be smart, but he’s as strong as an ox and as stubborn as a bulldog. Once he starts, it’s almost impossible to get him to stop. He’s almost like an animal in that sense–dangerously unpredictable.
This section shows us how tough these men have it. Like Candy’s old dog, they go on until they die, with no one to put them out of their misery. We sense the misery and physical pain of the workingman’s life, the male competition and camaraderie, with no entertainment but drinking and fighting, playing cards and tossing horseshoes. In this sense, the bond between George and Lennie seems to be vital and unusual. They protect each other, rather than competing. George could use Lennie like a tool, but instead he tries to look after him, to stop him from getting into trouble. They both need each other, and have come to rely on each other. But George has something that Lennie doesn’t have, and that’s someone to look after and care for. Looking after Lennie gives meaning to George’s life. Lennie copies George in every way, which is why he’s always looking for his own creature to care for – whether it be puppy, mouse, or rabbit. It seems ironic that in his own mind, Lennie sees himself as a gentle, vulnerable creature, easily hurt. In this section, we see how to others, he can suddenly become terrifying.