Tuesday, October 15, 1996
BOOK:
Bly interweaves stories with commentary on growing up, values
and imaginationBy Susan Lee
Daily Bruin Contributor
Everyone knows the story of "Jack and the Beanstalk." He was a
poor boy living with his mother who chanced upon three magical
beans and became an overnight success.
Then again, maybe not. Perhaps Jack was just another product of
a fatherless society who escaped through sheer luck and street wits
to finally kill the greedy giant who had sucked away all of his
possessions. Of course, Jack then ends up living happily ever after
with his mom.
Though the short tale comes to an end, it’s only the beginning
to Robert Bly’s "The Sibling Society." Those who always thought
there was more to the "Beanstalk" tale will more than appreciate
Bly’s usage of the story to illustrate his viewpoints. They can
hear more from the author on Saturday, when Bly will appear at
Ackerman for the Renaissance 2000 symposium.
The lure to "The Sibling Society" lies in Bly’s ability to
deftly intertwine various folk stories, poems and myths both
familiar and unfamiliar with great dosages of social commentary.
Stories, Bly says, are to learning as the atom is to science.
Bly claims that today’s adults are nothing more than aging
adolescents. Instead of being mature, the adults of today have
settled into an adolescent state where they behave like greedy,
fighting siblings with no respect for responsibility or authority.
He writes that people watching the faces of baseball fans in the
1920s will notice more maturity in the "men and women who knew how
to have fun but had one foot in Necessity." Therefore, Bly asks,
what kind of society are our children being brought up in?
"Half the grown-ups I know are adolescents," Bly says. "So that
got me wondering how many fields we do have in which people are
adolescents. The book just attempts to make sense of the whole
thing. Maybe 20 years ago, a book called ‘Manchild: A Study of
Infantilization of Man’ said that the most adult people in the
world are Eskimos because they live with so much limitation and
strangely, this helps them become true adults."
By including various stories and parodies throughout "The
Sibling Society" to make a point, Bly picks up where he feels
society has left off by beginning the interpretation of
storytelling. He chooses cultural figures from both the past and
the present and writes in a carefree style that makes his
discoveries clear to readers.
Divided into four sections, Bly’s book takes pokes at the
decline in imagination. Whether overexposed to television or to
computers, Bly feels we have substituted these media carriers for
the entertainment of the past (i.e. playing and storytelling).
Though he offers no concrete social solution, he does promote some
basic ideas which have been lost in today’s hustle-bustle society.
Greed is bad. Values need to be re-established. Our elders should
be honored. People need to figure out who they are. Children need
families and parents need to become more responsible. And the
socialization of young males in the absence of fathers and mentors
needs to change.
As a commentary on society, "The Sibling Society" is both
engaging and insightful. However, as standard beach-reading fare,
the book might fail to keep college students interested in every
aspect.
While there are wonderful metaphors and lessons to be learned
from Bly’s writing and the book is interesting at times, it is not
a page-turner. Of course, it comes as no surprise that a book
without sex, violence or lies might fail to live up to the
expectations of the average college student. (And that’s not to say
that college students don’t read enlightening books. They do.)
But with the advent of more visually stimulating images and
concise answers, the attention span of our generation has dwindled
to the point where reading becomes a chore. In an age where a
textbook-type reading becomes little more than homework, it’s hard
to appreciate any type of social commentary.
As an author, the 69-year-old Bly understands this. Though he
worked on it for 3 1/2 years, making himself write at least 1,000
words each day and reading an enormous number of books, he realizes
that the material in his book is difficult to take.
"You see, writing ‘The Sibling Society’ wasn’t pleasurable," Bly
says. "It’s like social work in that it’s trying to speak to the
whole culture. It’s not a pretty picture and a lot of people don’t
like it."
Many of Bly’s criticisms centers around the media world Â
especially television. In a generation raised on television and
computers, the very things that Bly cites as the cause of the
degeneration of imagination have provided the most important news
in our lives. Both television and computers continue to socialize
mass quantities of children. Bly argues that a child’s brain simply
cannot mature in front of a television since TV offers very little
sensory interaction. Perhaps that’s where the problem lies.
"In 10 years, it’s really scary because kids will call the ’90s
the ‘good old days when things were really calm’ when in reality,
the violence in our culture is fast becoming more and more
unbelievable … it seems to be we’re going towards a more
(downward) society unless we stop ourselves," Bly says.
In order to solve these problems, Bly feels one answer lies in
appreciating our past: "It is an adult perception to understand
that the world belongs primarily to the dead, and we only rent it
from them for a little while … they created it, they wrote its
literature and its songs, and they are deeply invested in how
children are treated because children are the ones who will keep it
going."
Known for his storytelling abilities and previous books like
"Iron John," Bly will speak at the symposium, held in honor of the
death of one of his former mentors, the Indian guru Sarkar Friday.
In his opinion, Sarkar was great because he "wouldn’t teach
meditation unless you were willing to become an adult and do
something like social work in return." Following this example, Bly
has contributed a new and well thought-out commentary on today’s
society.
Grade: B
BOOK: "The Sibling Society," published by Addison-Wesley.
$25.00. Robert Bly will be in Ackerman Union Saturday for the
Renaissance 2000 symposium.