Genres can be stern taskmasters, none more so than the thriller with its conventions of suspense that come variously from Aristotle, Poe, and Dan Brown. The action must unfurl from the novel’s inception and should be compressed to fit into a short time window. A web of intrigue should span the globe and reach the very highest vaults of power. Forces of darkness conspire to work against a sympathetic protagonist who must battle relentlessly, overcoming obstacles, solving puzzles, and usually saving the planet from wickedness or annihilation.

Taskmasters can coax mediocre work from the lazy and great work from the inspired. The trick is in mastering the conventions of genre with the required depth and confidence so that an author can turn the tables. The reason that Dan Brown sold 40 million copies of The Da Vinci Code wasn’t because he slavishly followed all the rules of the genre; it’s because he had years of erudition in his head that genre allowed him to organize in a coherent fashion. In effect, genre gave him a road map to follow but without a destination clearly marked out. He began with a dead body, but the dead body of a very interesting person — perhaps the greatest dead body in all of commercial fiction, a curator of the Louvre. This was the hook of all hooks, and Dan Brown has been justly rewarded.

So the convention appears to be: begin with a dead body. But an author must push beyond that simplistic formula and constantly probe the outer limits, such as Alice Sebold did in The Lovely Bones — with her dead body serving as narrator. Here the genre established a basic rule, but this basic rule in no way precludes fictional possibilities. A novel written in genre is still a novel, from its inception a playful medium to address deeply human concerns. Authors cannot allow genres to dictate action, to assume control of the novel. At the same time, when writing a thriller, an author can’t spend thirty pages dwelling on how his mother once kissed him good night as a child, as Marcel Proust did.

Which leads to another thorny problem: the relentless present of a face-paced thriller. The building of suspense resides at the heart of any good thriller. To find out what happens next is why readers turn the page, of course, and so action reigns supreme. But action without strong characters is thin gruel indeed, and here is where true artistry comes in, the ultimate challenge of genre that resembles a battle. Can the author bend genre in a way that allows for full creative expression without sacrificing pace?

The conundrum lies in delineating character while delivering plot twists and the other expected tropes. Gillian Flynn is particularly adept at filling in the backgrounds of her characters while maintaining the foot-falls of mounting dread. The vivid details of her small-town landscape in Gone Girl help fuel the action, showing that the world of her novel was fully realized. It’s a thriller, but very much rooted in lives we recognize. She didn’t let genre replace the hard work all novelists must do.

Genre can be liberating, in an artistic sense. To follow and break the rules at the same time can lead to moments of true serendipity. For me, it has elevated the concept of form, the actual structure of the novel, to become the most crucial element, because as in architecture, form follows function. The best architects use local materials and take advantage of natural topography, as Frank Lloyd Wright did with houses like Falling Water, which was built over a waterfall.

I look at genre in a similar way. A thriller, like a house, must have certain features: a bedroom, a dead body, a kitchen, a bad guy. But there is no limit to the possible arrangements of these tropes. In effect, the conventions of genre have opened up new vistas of form to explore, new ways of telling a story that demand much from me as an author. I feel free to take risks knowing that I must adhere to certain storytelling parameters of a thriller, while testing to see how much stress my experiments can take.

I fully expected Unreliable to fail, since I was adhering to and violating every convention of a mystery/thriller I could summon. Eventually I assumed it would collapse, and yet it never did because the familiar tropes I subverted maintained the structure. To paraphrase the Bobby Fuller Four, I fought the genre, but the genre won.

This article originally appeared on Signature.

Lee Irby teaches history at Eckerd College and lives in St. Petersburg, Florida. He is the author of the historical mysteries 7,000 Clams, The Up and Up, and Unreliable.

Live a Life Well-Read - Signature Reads

I was finding it really hard to be grateful for just about anything.

I’d been married just six months when my doctors gave me a terrifying health diagnosis. They informed me I had the same gene that caused my dad’s muscular dystrophy, a disease that crippled him in his forties and led to his death in his early sixties.

I was told I would show signs of the disease within a few years. I was only 35 and I had just married a man who loved climbing mountains and skiing and hiking and doing anything at all with a pair of two strong legs. We’d fallen in love on an adventurous trip in the Galapagos islands, hiked a small mountain to get engaged and had plans to spend the rest of our lives chasing after one another through rugged terrain around the globe. As we shuttled in between doctors appointments and saw specialists who drew what felt like a pint of blood at a time, I had a hard time looking at the bright side of things and enjoying my year as a newlywed.

Sometimes the universe has a better idea of what you need than you do. Just as I was at my lowest, I received an assignment to travel solo to northeastern India on a reporting trip — a voyage that would last almost three weeks.

Did I need to go all the way to one of the least-traveled areas of India to find out how important gratitude is for my marriage? Did I have to travel thousands of miles from home, in cars, trains, planes and boats to figure out that despite a shitty medical diagnosis my life was pretty goddamned sweet and that I should appreciate it.

It turns out I did.

The concept of gratitude weaves its ways into almost every facet of Indian culture and relationships. This doesn’t mean that Indians go around thanking everyone for everything all the time. Rather, the concept of gratitude in many Indian traditions is about giving earnest thanks, expressing humility towards someone and letting go of your own ego in order to cultivate more bliss and joy in our own life and others. It’s about feeling grateful instead of talking about it.

As soon as I landed, I immediately fell in love with India’s riot of colors and smells and her warm and welcoming people. Everything was brighter and more intense. It was hot and dirty and beautiful and exotic all at once.

I was quickly welcomed into a traditional home of a woman who belonged to the Mishing Tribe, an Assamese farming and fishing village where the houses stood on tall stilts to keep them safe from the frequent floods of the Brahmaputra River.

I stumbled, trying to climb the narrow ladder that led into the raised hut, using a long bamboo rod for balance. The simple room was meticulously neat, sarees carefully folded on a shelf over the bed, pots and pans precisely stacked in the corner.

Lae, a 45-year old woman with small eyes and a broad face offered me tea.

We began talking about life and the weather, politics and kids and husbands and marriage.

“What does it mean to be happily married here?” I asked her.

Lae squinted at me and laughed from her belly. “You westerners make marriage too complicated. Be happy for the things marriage gives you. We have our husbands. I trust my husband. We have our pigs and our goats. We have our children. We are happy. You want too much. Be thankful, because you never know what tomorrow will bring.” Strong words coming from a woman living on the banks of a river that regularly sweeps away entire villages in the blink of an eye.

“How do I show I’m thankful?” I asked Lae.

She looked at me as though she didn’t understand the question and I repeated it for the translator. Lae gave a small shake of her head. “You just feel it.”

Over and over the women I met in Assam kept telling me I had to seek a blessing for my new marriage and offer thanks for my husband at the Kamakhya Devi temple in Guwahati, a sacred place of pilgrimage for India’s 830 million Hindus, particularly for women. It was early in the morning when I began my walk to the temple, perched high on a hill. We passed women in brightly colored sarees walking to work, beggars laying prone and naked in the streets and boys play cricket in the gutter with a stick and deflated tennis ball. Street dogs with peculiar poise and confidence pushed their way past us as if they had somewhere very important to be. Voices and sounds blended together in a frenetic jumble that echoed through the narrow streets.

I asked one of the temple priests, a bald and spectacled man with a calming demeanor what most women who came to the temple asked the goddess for. Were they very specific?

“Most ask for a long and prosperous marriage and then give thanks for it,” he said with a wide smile.

“That’s it?”

He laughed. “What else do you need?”

To make my blessing I was given two small terracotta pots with candles in them and two sticks of incense. It was imperative, the priest told me, that I light two candles, one for my husband and one for myself. It was so dark inside the temple that I needed to use my bare toes to grasp for the edge of the next stair to keep from falling. My hands began to shake. I wanted to get this right. I wanted to truly give thanks for all of the wonderful things in my life. I wanted to mean it. I felt a tugging in my stomach and a stinging behind my eyes as though I’d burst into tears at any moment. When a baby goat nuzzled my foot I stumbled and dropped one of my candles, watching as the terracotta shattered onto the hard stone floor. A woman behind me clapped her hand on my shoulder and stuttered in broken English. “No. You cannot use that. No. Bad.” I squinted through the darkness and the smoke at the priest. “Just light one and think of two,” he whispered. “Feel gratitude. Don’t think about it.”

Closing my eyes, I steadied myself. Light one and think of two. Light one and think of two. Light one and think of two. I thought about all of the times Nick took off work to come with me to my doctor appointments. I thought about the long nights where he held me as I cried, scared about how long I’d stay healthy. Sometimes things don’t turn out as you imagined them and no marriage is without it flaws, but in the grand scheme of things mine was pretty wonderful.

As I moved the single flame closer to the inner sanctum the hairs on my arms stood on end and the single wick broke apart. It became two tiny flames flickering around one another.

This article originally appeared on Books for Better Living.

Jo Piazza is an award-winning journalist and the author of How to Be Married, on sale April 18, 2017.

Like many people my age or younger, I came to Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by way of the film adaptation: Ridley Scott’s 1982 masterpiece Blade Runner. The film still stands today as my favorite movie, so much so I gave my son the middle name of Deckard (Rachel being high on our list of names for girls, had fate taken us in that direction). An entire book could be written about the differences between Androids Dream and its on-screen counterpart–one need look no further than the titles to begin that discussion — but what continually amazes me, however, is how the two could be so different from one another and yet, simultaneously, so similar. I love them for completely different reasons, which is fascinating to me because it’s theoretically the opposite of the goal when it comes to adapting a book to the screen.

The adaptation is the one I always point to when people are fretting over the changes being made to a much-loved book in order to adapt it to the screen. Fans always seem to want the strictest, most literal interpretation possible. I say to them, and to you, “If the goal in adaptations was to be perfectly true to the source material, we wouldn’t have Blade Runner, or Apocalypse Now. Give it a chance.” Whatever the source is, sometimes adaptations leave us with two wonderful things, however vaguely connected.

Even though I first read this novel almost 20 years after seeing the film, it already held a special place in my heart for the simple reason that it inspired the movie. And yet right from the first page PKD draws you into something wholly unexpected.

Rick Deckard’s life is fascinating on every level. A professional bounty hunter who tracks down escaped androids, living in a dystopia that rivals anything Orwell wrote, argues with his wife about why she deliberately dialed an emotional state of despair on their mood organ. The discussion he and Iran have about dialing emotions is in equal parts hilarious, sad, and terrifying.

He then heads up to the roof of his home to tend to his electric sheep. A sheep that is his most prized possession, or would be if it was real. It’s not, though, and he’s living a lie by tending it. All his neighbors have real animals, as far as he can tell. This need to own an animal in a world almost completely devoid of wildlife is an undisguised reaction to the American obsession with cars: we compare cars, lust after better cars no matter which one you already own, even form clubs around certain historic or popular vehicles. There’s even a scene later on where Deckard is shopping for a new animal, and the sales tactics are right out of a car dealership’s playbook (true in 1968, and sadly unchanged to this day). And yet, like most everything in this novel, this concept of animal ownership goes much deeper than that. It acts as a doorway into the central theme of the story, which is that of empathy. The idea that feeling empathy as a pure instinctual reaction is what separates humans from ‘andys’.

Central to Deckard’s job is the ability to test a subject for this empathic reaction, using the famous Voigt-Kampff scale. In the film, the machine used resembles a strange sort of lie detector, using a large lens to examine pupil dilation. A window to the soul, literally. The device in this book is not so dissimilar, and while the movie version doesn’t dive too deeply into exactly what is being tested, the book offers a much more thorough and interesting examination. There are even other tests mentioned, competitors to the Voight-Kampff, or progenitors of it. Yet Deckard muses that this test, like those before, will soon be obsolete as new models of andys are able to fool the technique employed. With this Dick opens yet another thematic door, pushing the idea of a Turing test to a fascinating extreme. It is one thing to build a machine that can convincingly pass as human. It’s another thing entirely to lose the ability to detect any difference at all, to enter an arms-race of sorts between those who seek to build a convincing human replica and those who wish to still be able to know who is real and who isn’t. This ultimately calls into question what it truly means to be human, a theme as old and perplexing as any.

Such issues can be difficult to discuss in a purely realistic context, especially in our modern, polarized society. Yet through fiction like this we can. Which of course is a hallmark of great science fiction, and ultimately why we love genre so.

We allow the story and characters to draw us in, perhaps not even realizing until much later what we actually read. In this way–and I find this rather humorous–the novel is rather like the mood organ it describes.

There is something of a meta-theme here too, which leaves me in absolute awe as a writer. Dick manages to explore all these things, and with surprising depth as mentioned, and yet somehow he also manages to evade the kind of clarity Deckard himself seeks so desperately in the course of his job. Nothing is cut-and-dry in this book. It’s another aspect of the film I’ve always felt Ridley Scott captured perfectly, this lack of tidy explanations for the audience to digest. A rare and wonderful thing to find in a big budget Hollywood sci-fi film (something they almost ruined with the film-noir narration of the original release, thankfully later removed). Both Scott and Dick leave us to make up our own minds. Pick any element and for each insightful and thought-provoking observation made, you can find a subtle hole that calls those very conclusions into question. The contradictory scenarios and revelations, the sheer number of dichotomies presented, all keep you as the reader in a mental and, dare I say, moral tug-of-war. Even Rick Deckard, who seeks signs of empathy in those he tracks, becomes a hero so flawed that you find it more and more difficult to feel empathy for him.

What is so brilliant about this is the way this book leaves you, months or even years after reading, in a debate with yourself. And for my money, that is the calling card of truly excellent speculative fiction.

Now then, the time has come. Dial yourself a 929 on the old Penfield Mood Organ — complete surrender to the imagination of another — and enjoy.

This article originally appeared on Signature.

Jason M. Hough is the New York Times bestselling author of the Dire Earth Cycle: The Darwin Elevator, The Exodus Towers, and The Plague Forge, as well as the novella The Dire Earth. Hough was born in Illinois but grew up on the mean streets of suburban San Diego, California.

Although Sinclair Lewis is known to many as the author of such bestsellers as Main Street, Babbitt, and Elmer Gantry, he’s been rediscovered by a new generation for his dystopian and sobering novel It Can’t Happen Here.

Written in 1935, during the middle of the Great Depression and just prior to the presidential election of 1936, It Can’t Happen Here posits what would happen if, in a very contested election, with many people fearing what the future might bring, a man who promises he has all the answers and presents himself as an outsider and man of the people, wins the election. It turns out he’s a fascist.

The connections between that election and the campaign of 2016 are all too scarily clear. The novel presents several groups of people who have very different ideas about the direction the country should take.

The thoughtful but naive liberals, including the protagonist Doremus Jessup, a newspaper publisher in Vermont, expect that the democratic system will work the way it ought to and that the rights of citizens will be honored.

We also see groups of businessmen who claim to be patriotic and think that the best way forward for the country is to reduce income taxes, get rid of labor unions, and secure the peace by creating more weapons — just in case.

There is also the “League of Forgotten Men,” mostly white lower-class workers who feel that the system is set against them and want a change — someone who seems to know all the answers and wants to make America great again by restoring a golden past that never existed.

Buzz Windrip, the candidate who capitalizes on all this fear and anger, is a master of the media, using the radio as Trump used television and holding mass rallies. Lewis described him as “a boisterous and humorous speaker, an inspired guesser at what political doctrines the people would like…certain that some day America would have vast business dealings with the Russians.”

The plot has many parallels to the situation in our country today — and warnings for what might happen. Although folks in the novel and in today’s society say that fascism “can’t happen here,” once Windrip is elected, he demands that “he should have complete control of legislation and execution,” and that the Supreme Court cannot block his actions. He then proclaims martial law because of political unrest, and has more than a hundred Congressmen arrested. Freedom of the press becomes diminished, then extinct; Congressional investigations are stifled; the Minute Men, a private militia, become the enforcers of the new president; all political parties are abolished; strikes are forbidden; African Americans have their property seized, and they, as well as women, are “put in their place,” limited in what they can and cannot do.

Every thinking American should be reading It Can’t Happen Here to become aware of what a fragile thing our democracy is.

This article originally appeared on Signature.

Sally E. Parry is an Associate Dean in the College of Arts and Sciences at Illinois State University. She is the Executive Director of the Sinclair Lewis Society and editor of the Sinclair Lewis Society Newsletter. She is the editor of two collections of short stories by Sinclair Lewis and, with Robert L. McLaughlin, author of We’ll Always Have the Movies.

By Tom Blunt

There’s a certain aggressive tone somebody can take that will send me reeling far back into the past, guaranteeing that a hell of a fight is about to occur — or equally likely, that I’ll become frozen in panic until the moment has passed, and then spend days wallowing in anger and deep shame for not standing up for myself.

All that from a tone.

In learning how to rise to the occasion of conflict, those of us who are still haunted by Ghosts of Bullies Past eventually discover what our tormentors knew from the beginning: that anger can become an endless source of motivation in its own right — one that blots out reason, hope, and even love. It allows one to rationalize the loss of any friendship, any relationship. As recipients of abuse, we were given a terrific array of weapons; we carry them around with us as we walk through the world. Some carry their arsenal openly, others conceal it so well that you’d have to marry us, or be our child, to know that it exists at all.

I can’t say I wasn’t warned about this phenomenon. In the book Christine, which I read long before I was old enough to drive, Stephen King’s nerdy protagonist Arnie Cunningham becomes possessed by a spirit that’s just as violently antisocial in death as it was in life — but he was primed for this ghostly visitation by equally frightening physical run-ins with hoodlums in his shop class. In the end, it remains unclear whether one could have ever happened without the other.

Conversations about bullying in Stephen King’s books tend to revolve around Carrie — and perhaps for good reason, since it was his first novel, and at under 200 pages it remains one of the easiest for new readers to pick up. Its focus on female characters and themes was unusual for its time, and the movie adaptation became a worthy cultural institution in its own right.

Those who know King better will point out that the subject of bullying looms over a great many of his books — particularly the earlier ones, when the author himself was much closer in age to the protagonists of Carrie, IT, and yes, Christine. This may also partly explain why an entire generation of teen and pre-teen readers shoved aside more age-appropriate fare in favor of these unabashedly adult novels. They became a rite of passage among young bookworms, a call to arms in the great, culturally-sanctioned war between the oppressors and the oppressed.

Here’s the thing about King’s bullied heroes, though: they didn’t make it. In most cases they became monsters themselves, twisted by suffering and rage into unrecognizable figures, wreaking their vengeance less and less discriminately as their power grew.

Even those who managed to survive seemingly unscathed prove to be permanently wounded by it, carrying around an inner world still dominated by torment years or even decades later — literally haunted, in Freudian terms.

Due to the wave of LGBTQ suicides and other tragic events in the past decade, we’re awash in new narratives from authors and educators who are desperate to eradicate this social illness at its root, making bullying less socially acceptable for kids (and adults) to indulge in. Victims are urged to seek help, take the high road, and above all, hang in there. “It gets better!” the internet shouts in unison.

But that’s a half-truth: while your day-to-day experiences are likely to improve with time, you may not. Because of the long-term emotional damage caused by this kind of abuse, you may find that your trajectory through life has been altered in ways you won’t be able to appreciate for years, or even decades. As such, King offered teenagers in the ’80s and ’90s what today’s well-meaning authors do not: a view of the ugliness and anger bullies impart upon their victims, and the disfiguring effect that can have on everyone involved.

Carrie and Christine are the female/male bookends of this phenomenon, the latter being a formidably unpleasant read (and I mean that with love) due to the physical and emotional degradation of pretty much every character in the book. Just as in ‘Salem’s Lot and numerous of his other works of the ’70s and ’80s, King observes a post-Vietnam America that’s sagging at the seams: starkly segregated by class, status, race, and education, marred by social and economic unrest. Optimism is in short supply among young and old alike, creating fertile ground for all kinds of menace to take root, both real and supernatural.

Arnie Cunningham is hardly just a male stand-in for Carrie White, even if both of them are mainly glimpsed through the eyes of a “passable” popular main character (Sue Snell in Carrie, Dennis Guilder in Christine) who emerges from the high school political system with a sympathy for underdogs, trying to curb the violence they see being enacted in the name of vengeance (Dennis resorts to fisticuffs, but only in self-defense; Sue effaces her own popularity by sacrificing her prom date).

Anchoring his stories to a “safe” protagonist instead of the victims themselves might seem like a serious oversight at first, but it’s actually a diabolically clever strategy on King’s part — one also adopted by Judy Blume in her YA novel Blubber, which contains more sheer brutality per square inch of text than even most adults could stomach. It affords real-life victims a glimpse of the psychology of their oppressors, as well as all of society’s passive enablers. It also provides a long, hard look in the mirror, daring us to confront our own inborn ugliness, and how we, too might be inclined to react with disgust, contempt, and pity to those we perceive as lower in status. In the tragic fates of King’s “heroes,” we also see the longer-term risks of accepting a mantle of victimhood.

These are all perspectives likely to be obscured by a well-meaning, more sympathetic service to victims, but these days it’s no longer fashionable to veer from a script of encouragement and positivity. This is reflected in the most recent adaptation of Carrie, in which the dewy Chloë Grace Moretz stands in for the ultimate outsider — when even Sissy Spacek’s simple, wan beauty somewhat obscured Carrie White as she was originally conceived, heavyset and acne-afflicted. The casting of someone like Moretz is meant to ennoble the victim, win us over to her side more easily; what it actually does is fail to inspire any sincere empathy for the real “losers” out there, the ones who aren’t quite so easy to make over, whom society still dictates are fair game for abuse.

Just like Carrie, Christine‘s Arnie also gets a makeover as part of his revenge: as his beloved ’58 Plymouth Fury gains a stronger hold over his soul, his acne clears up and he begins to swagger through life with an eerie confidence, eventually catching the eye of the prettiest girl in school. King allows Arnie a character-arc that swings much wider than Carrie’s. Whereas you could say Carrie goes out on a high note, self-destructing at the apex of her newly-discovered beauty, Arnie’s metamorphosis continues for months, long after the favorable effects have given way to grotesque disfigurements. By the novel’s end, he bears more resemblance to the ’58 Fury’s deceased owner, Roland LeBay, than to the goofy honor-roll student he once was.

Exploring the effects of these changes, King takes quite a few jabs at adults’ blinkered view of social problems, showing how our feel-good policies of intervention and inclusivity persist in totally ignoring the way teenagers experience reality. “At heart most high school kids are about as funky as a bunch of Republican bankers at a church social,” he writes in Christine. “There are girls who might have every album Black Sabbath ever made, but if Ozzy Osbourne went to their school and asked them for a date, that girl (and all her friends) would laugh herself into a hemorrhage at the very idea.” He goes on: “What’s now is forever — ask any Republican banker and he’ll tell you that’s just the way the world ought to run…It’s only when you’re a teenager that you talk about change constantly and believe in your heart that it never really happens.”

The idea that we can overcome this kind of orthodoxy and social Darwinism with a campaign of rubber wristbands or sensitivity training will strike many young people as patently absurd — because it is.

As Arnie finally discovers an outlet for his pent-up anger (and Christine begins stalking the streets in search of revenge) King reveals what this outwardly-impressive transformation has wrought on his psyche: “Love is the enemy,” Arnie preaches to Dennis. “Yes. The poets continually and sometimes willfully mistake love. Love is the old slaughterer. Love is not blind. Love is a cannibal with extremely acute vision. Love is insectile; it is always hungry.” When Dennis asks what it eats, Arnie is locked and loaded with an answer: “Friendship. It eats friendship.”

King’s interest in the long-term effects of bullying and victimhood are in the text, not just the subtext. See the passage where Dennis’s father describes a tormented schoolmate from his own past, a young man channeled his pain into an obsession with model trains and then later committed suicide. “My point is just that good people can sometimes get blinded,” he tells his son, “And it’s not always their fault.”

Just as in domestic abuse, the psychological effects of bullying end up being passed along from person to person, from generation to generation, until they form a sort of diseased lineage — almost indistinguishable from a supernatural curse. These themes recur throughout more of King’s books than we can mention; the psychopathic schoolyard bullies in IT inadvertently became allied with an ageless evil, and decades later their leader resurfaces as the conveyance for IT’s retribution against the heroes. In The Stand, teenage social pariah Harold Lauder manages to survive a global pandemic — flourishes, even, shedding the acne and extra pounds that once marked him as an outcast — but the burden of Harold’s past humiliations leaves him spiritually malformed, and he’s easily twisted into the murderous puppet of mastermind Randall Flagg.

It would be nice to look back on all these books as mere artifacts from a time when displays of anger and obsession enjoyed a more comfortable place in our society, but if anything, technology such as cell phones and social media have inflamed these senses, emboldening us to speak and act ever-more impulsively, before a wider audience. In his own gruesome way, King anticipated the fates of young people like Matthew Shepard, Tyler Clementi, and Trayvon Martin. In his version of the stories, these boys might have been avenged by violent supernatural forces — but also, had they survived, the consequences of these monstrous acts would have become embedded in their identities, and the smiling faces we see in old photographs would have grown unrecognizable next to the burdens they went on to privately bear as adults.

Of the responses to bullying that have proliferated in more recent years, the only one I’ve heard that resonates with King’s messages is a speech given by Laverne Cox on the occasion of 2014’s National Coming Out Day. “Hurt people hurt people,” the trans actress emphasized, describing the damage wrought within the LGBTQ community by members who are still grappling with the effects of their trauma, and find themselves lashing out at allies as well as opponents. The same phenomenon repeats itself in the periphery of social justice movements such as Black Lives Matter, where it can be hard to gain a consensus on which hurts and injustices require the most urgent attention, and at whose expense. Meanwhile, elders and onlookers fret over all this contributing to a “culture of victimhood” — comfortably distracting themselves from confronting the evils in our culture that victimize people in the first place.

Deep down, mainstream society already knows that “hurt people hurt people,” and it is far more concerned with protecting itself from the Carries and Arnies of the world than with preventing any of them from being harmed. The proliferation of school shootings has interfered with our sympathy for high school students who exhibit the kind of disaffected behavior often exhibited by victims of abuse. Maybe we should call that empathy gap Miss Collins Syndrome, after the ill-fated gym teacher in Carrie. Kindness toward her troubled student didn’t end up saving her from being a target of Carrie’s blind wrath, did it? That’s where Cox’s wisdom twists out of our hands: “hurt people hurt people” can also be deployed as a warning of the dangers of associating with the damaged.

As we grow up, we are counted on to bear our burden calmly, silently, peacefully. Whenever persecuted minorities resort to protecting themselves in an organized way, such as the Pink Pistols or the Black Panther Party, we see that the sheer act of arming oneself in vigorous self-defense will be perceived by the rest of society as “radical,” a threat against the very “law and order” that failed to protect them in the first place. Even so, after this year’s massacre at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, the internet overflowed with 2nd Amendment defenders who insisted the tragedy could have been averted if the victims had been armed, their grief momentarily eclipsing their fear of young Hispanic men congregating in large numbers, equipped with firearms and alcohol.

Here we saw another side of that Miss Collins Syndrome: a critical lack of imagination for daily life as it’s experienced by the oppressed. Miraculously, these gun advocates were able to look past all the danger associated with being a young person of color, for whom brushes with law enforcement are already far more frequent and physically dangerous, resulting in a disproportionate number of arrests and much harsher sentencing — and yes, deaths. How could anyone prescribe gun ownership to one of these young men as a solution, knowing that later on, that gun’s presence could be used to justify the hasty actions of a police officer?

The Miss Collinses of the world do not have our backs, not in any meaningful way, and the Carries of the world know it. This was perhaps King’s starkest message to true outsiders, those for whom conformity is simply not an option: a little lipstick and mascara will not save you. The tools of the oppressor will not liberate you. Do not be fooled by those who try to convince you that they will.

Most abused people would still prefer to have a Miss Collins than be handled like toxic waste — the popular alternative in our paternalistic society, coolly reminding us that the effects of our abuse have made us irrational, and we can’t be trusted to know what’s good for us — let alone wield deadly force in self-defense. As our traumatic teenage years give way to adulthood, we see how the lingering psychological effects of our abuse are stigmatized and selected against, in social and professional environments alike. Our nation’s collective disinterest in providing adequate mental healthcare drives this point home as well: now, just as then, you are on your own.

This gives members of all marginalized groups, who are more likely to be singled out for unwanted attention from a young age, something to ponder as they strive for equality: who are we capable of becoming, once we are no longer oppressed? Or for those who can bear to ask it: who might any of us have become without our bullies?

The pat, polite answer is that we must be grateful for past hardships, because they’ve made us who we are today. No one wants to look you in the eye and admit that your life really might have turned out better if it hadn’t been for all that unpleasantness. As far as anti-bullying slogans go, “What’s Done Is Done” is a much harder one to rally celebrities around.

King’s honesty-disguised-as-fiction isn’t the kind medicine that will help everyone, but it did convey a potent message that still commonly eludes those who have the luxury of no longer being teenagers: anger is timeless. It pulls you out of the present, it erases your hopes for the future. Remember, Arnie’s beloved Christine was able to repair herself by running the odometer backwards — becoming whole again and stronger than ever, but more blindly malevolent with each pass.

In the hands of her original owner, a hardened bully, this anger was kept at a simmer, producing a slow-burning contempt for all society. In the hands of a defenseless victim, however, it boiled over into homicidal rage.

Those of us who read these books early, and often, saw the warning in them and have spent our lives since then finding ways to avoid paying our own anger forward, mitigating the damage so we can find a happier ending.

Just a story about a haunted car, you say? Our kids know better, even if we no longer do.

This article originally appeared on Signature.

Tom Blunt has been a producer and host of numerous entertainments in New York City, including a film-inspired variety show called “Meet The Lady” for the 92nd Street Y. He has written for sites such as The Awl and New York Magazine; his crackpot cinematic theories have been cited in The Guardian and IFC News.

When Bram Stoker discovered Walt Whitman, he was a young man only just beginning a literary career that would eventually create one of the most enduring and lucrative characters of all time. At the time, Stoker was beginning to cut his teeth as a literary critic, dissatisfied with theater writing in Dublin and publishing his reviews for free in the Mail.

Stoker was also sharpening his critical skills in literary salons and among friends by defending Whitman, whose poetry was beginning to creep across the Atlantic to condescending reviews. The iconoclastic poet spoke to the young writer so intimately that Stoker found himself defending him whenever necessary and recommending him whenever possible.

Writing reviews, reading and defending Whitman, and publishing his first short stories all seem to have been stirred in the same boiling pot in Stoker’s twenties. Stoker felt so overwhelmed, and his first letter to Whitman was so personal, that it went unsent for four years. When he did finally send it, he enclosed with it another letter about his miniature crusade to enlighten his countrymen to Whitman’s gospel.

This article originally appeared on Signature.

Nathan Gelgud is an illustrator who lives in Los Angeles. Clients include Paris Review, Grantland, Nike, Penguin Random House, and the Brooklyn Academy of Music.

Writing is, as a general rule, hard. Defining yourself as a writer can be even harder. Sure, there are other difficult practices like law and medicine out there, but a person becomes a lawyer or a doctor when he or she passes a series of exams and graduates from a certain school. Writing doesn’t always work that way. There aren’t tests to study for and facts to memorize. Where are we supposed to learn how to write?

From grammar rules to publishing advice to personal narratives, the books below on writing reveal in intimate detail the ins and outs of what it means to call yourself a writer. Sometimes harsh, sometimes funny, but always honest, they can be thought of as a kind of syllabus for writing. Whether you’re an aspiring artist working on your first drafts or a seasoned veteran in the publishing world, these are some of the best books on writing with insight and wisdom that can support you throughout every stage of your writing process.

The Forest for the Trees by Betsy Lerner

For both established and prospective authors alike, the publishing house can seem like a jungle. Luckily, Betsy Lerner is here to lead a safari, citing her vast collection of experiences as an editor as her field guide. The Forest for the Trees motivates writers by helping them get over their fear of the unknown. It’s less about taming the wilderness and more about facing the demons of self-doubt and sloth that live in every person’s own mind.

The Elements of Style by William Strunk and E.B. White

William Strunk and E.B. White’s The Elements of Style is so widely known that we’re sure you already have a copy, but of course we had to mention it. The only style guide to ever appear on a bestseller list, this book should be your go-to if your writing is in need of an infusion of clarity. Plus, this particular edition is illustrated by Maira Kalman, adding a visual element of style to the classic.

Story Engineering by Larry Brooks

Larry Books turns a technical eye to the writing process in Story Engineering. If you don’t properly plan out your story prior to setting pen to paper, he argues, your storytelling won’t be as effective as you’d like it to be. To remedy this, he takes readers through six core elements of storytelling: concept, character, theme, story structure, scene construction, and voice.

Naked, Drunk, and Writing by Adair Lara

Adair Lara’s Naked, Drunk, and Writing is a must-read for any memoirist or personal essayist. With experience as a teacher, editor, and, of course, writer, Lara’s know-how will help readers through problems like how to face your family after they’ve read your work and how to find an agent who will fight for you. The perfect mix of tough love, comic relief, and passion, Lara’s book is invaluable for anyone who needs a little help telling their story.

How to Write a Damn Good Novel by James N. Frey

James N. Frey’s overarching guide will be of use to both the novice and the seasoned, published writer. He provides advice for how to overcome writer’s block and fear of the blank page, how to turn a critical eye to your own writing, and more. Frey’s book is one to keep within arm’s reach while writing, to grab during those moments when you need to take a step back from your work and get back to basics.

Bird by Bird: Instructions on Writing and Life by Anne Lamott

Anne Lamott knows from writing. She’s the author of seven novels (with one on the way) and nine works of nonfiction — many of them bestsellers. In Bird by Bird, her 1994-published book on the craft of writing, Lamott addresses how to get started, accepting the shittiness of a first draft, writing groups, writer’s block, how to know when you’re done and more. Her words, advice, insight are priceless.

If these books are whetting your writing palette, download our free writing guide for all the basics to get you started.

Poemcrazy: Freeing Your Life with Words by Susan G. Wooldridge

Though some may be able to simply sit back and pull a poem from thin air, that’s not the case for most. Writing workshop leader Susan G. Wooldridge taps into her own experience writing and helping others write to share this compilation of prompts, ideas, and more. Poemcrazy is a guide that any budding poet will find valuable.

The Writing Life by Annie Dillard

Annie Dillard, winner of the 1975 Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction for her book Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, published The Writing Life in 1989. In this book, Dillard presents a unique view on what it means to be a writer in a way that is accessible and relatable to both amateur and seasoned writers. It’s no wonder that Maria Popova calls the book “timelessly wonderful.”

The War of Art: Break through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles by Steven Pressfield

In the creative process, oftentimes it is our own inner self who acts as our worst enemy. When up against self-doubt, the little naysayer in the back of your mind, how does one overcome and move past it? Steven Pressfield, author of The Legend of Bagger Vance and a number of other novels and eight works of nonfiction, addresses this very question in The War of Art.

Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art by Madeleine L’Engle

Madeleine L’Engle has mastered the art of weaving faith into fiction. In Walking on Water, the late author explores what it means to be a Christian artist, and touches on the influence of science on her writerly life. This is, truly, a book that will hold appeal for writers and readers alike, as it sheds light upon the mind of one of this last century’s most talented writers.

On Writing by Charles Bukowski

Charles Bukowski was a legend in his own time, and has left behind a legacy that will live on for as long as the English language does. In On Writing, take a deeper look into this complicated, brilliant writer’s mind through his correspondence with publishers, editors, friends, and other writers. And be prepared, of course, for Bukowski’s oft-hard-to-take honesty.

Story Genius: How to Use Brain Science to Go Beyond Outlining and Write a Riveting Novel (Before You Waste Three Years Writing 327 Pages That Go Nowhere) by Lisa Cron

So much of writing is creativity. But let’s not forget about the scientific piece of the puzzle. In her new book, Story Genius, story coach Lisa Cron addresses just that, examining the role that cognitive storytelling strategies can play in writing — and how you can put them to work for yourself.

A Poetry Handbook by Mary Oliver

Imagine if you could get help with the very basics of writing poetry from a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet? Fact is, you can via Mary Oliver’s book A Poetry Handbook. The handbook is written in a way that makes it a perfect resource for both teens and adults as they start on their poetry journey — and is a useful refresher for veteran poets as well.

A Million Miles in a Thousand Years by Donald Miller

The ultimate question that Donald Miller asks of his reader in this account of the turning of his book into a movie is, “If life is a story, what kind of story are you living?” After falling into a slump following the success of his book, Miller embarks on a series of projects and adventures so that his story can be as rich and full as possible. Along the way, he discovers that if his real life is meaningful, his stories will be, too. This book will inspire you to not only write the story you’ve always imagined, but also to live it.

Writing Tools: 55 Essential Strategies for Every Writer by Roy Peter Clark

What started out as a series of blog posts ended up being one of the most useful and extensive writing guides on the market. More of a practical how-to than a self-help book, the chapters of Roy Peter’s Clark instructional range in topic from “Begin Sentences with Subjects and Verbs” to “Create a Mosaic of Detail to Reveal Character.” Equally useful for writers and editors, Writing Tools empowers the reader to turn good writing into great writing.

On Moral Fiction by John Gardner

Morality and art have a complicated relationship, but John Gardner faces it fearlessly in this book-length essay. By Gardner’s way of thinking, all real art is moral, but morality doesn’t necessarily have to do with codes of conduct and submission to a Higher Power; it is the ability of art to point to some human value. The harsh lines he draws to distinguish “art” from “not art,” may frustrate some, but even in that case, this book’s ideas stick in the reader’s head.

Still Writing by Dani Shapiro

Dani Shapiro offers this deeply personal account of her experiences as a writer in a book that is equal parts diary, advice column, and narrative story. She tells of her own success and failures always with candor, sometimes with humor, and never with regret. Still Writing is a book for both the novice writer and the seasoned veteran, as it will remind all of its readers why they are, indeed, still writing.

First You Write by Joni Rodgers

Joni Rodgers’ autobiography was published by HarperCollins and became a New York Times bestseller — the writer’s dream, yes? So, then, why did she publish this book with an independent publisher? In First You Write, Rodgers reminds writers why they dedicate themselves to the craft in the first place, including herself. Anyone interested in both writing and publishing would be wise to read this humorous mini-memoir.

Writing Past Dark by Bonnie Friedman

Bonnie Friedman’s Writing Past Dark is an emotional and psychological writer’s guide. She doesn’t discuss structure, character, or plot, but rather envy, guilt, and writer’s block. She focuses on the hardships of the writer’s life, drawing from personal anecdotes of her own and of historically famous authors (even Shakespeare could get jealous — he said so himself!).

Several Short Sentences About Writing by Verlyn Klinkenborg

Verlyn Klinkenborg offers an interesting challenge to the reader in his book: forget everything you have ever been taught about writing. Rather than composing his essay in paragraphs and chapters, Klinkenborg employs a more poetic style of prose. He uses simple sentences in succession to demonstrate his point: that the sentence itself is the most basic element of writing, and that each sentence should do its fair share of work. Put expectations aside before you pick this one up, and you just may find yourself scribbling sentences on the backs of receipts before you know it.

On Writing by Stephen King

If you’ve ever read a book by renowned American horror novelist Stephen King, you’ve probably wondered just how he comes up with his ideas. For the answer, look no further than On Writing, King’s memoir where he describes his writing process, including anecdotes about how he started some of his most iconic stories. In addition to recounting his personal experiences, he dedicates a whole chapter to grammar and offers his advice on form. It’s a great read for anyone in need of inspiration, and how better to make you pay attention than Mr. King?

Telling True Stories: A Nonfiction Writers’ Guide from the Nieman Foundation at Harvard University by Mark Kramer, Wendy Call (editors)

Every year, America’s most prominent journalists and nonfiction authors gather at Harvard’s Nieman Conference on Narrative Journalism. Consider this compilation of advice from editors Mark Kramer and Wendy Call the “we attended so you don’t have to” summary of the conference. It’s a Best Of from the best of, and each essay is packed with amazing writing advice that will help hone your narrative voice and exercise it so it is stronger than ever. Featuring writing from Malcolm Gladwell, Nora Ephron, and Tom Wolfe, Telling True Stories is essential for a writer who wants to learn from some of writing’s heaviest hitters.

The New New Journalism: Conversations with America’s Best Nonfiction Writers on Their Craft by Robert Boynton

Sometimes, you just want your favorite writer to sit across a table from you and answer some basic questions. In The New New Journalism, Robert Boynton gets to do just that. Set up in Q&A format with each author he interviews, The New New Journalism explores writing styles of the past and present and how they compare to one another. And despite its intense focus on journalism and reporting, it’s just as relevant to aspiring novelists as Communications majors working on their theses.

The Writer’s Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers by Christopher Vogler

Movie lovers will appreciate this book from Christopher Vogler. He exemplifies his writing tips with movies, a practice that makes this instructional especially helpful for screenwriters. Having received praise from writers and directors such as Darren Aronofsky (Black Swan) and Bruce Joel Rubin (Ghost), The Writer’s Journey can boast its status as an essential to anyone looking to write the next Oscar nominated film. It’s also an excellent field guide for a novelist stuck in a plot maze and desperate to get out.

On Writing Well by William Zinsser

Today, everyone has to do at least a little bit of writing to make it through the day. E-mails, text messages, and even social media posts are all forms of writing that are, ostensibly, going to an audience. So, why not make the writing some of your best? William Zinsser’s On Writing Well is for the writer in all of us, whether you’re dreaming of a Pulitzer or just trying to talk to your boss. It’s a straightforward, easy read, and by the time you’re done, you just might be able to talk about those “strong written communication skills” on your resume.

Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg

Natalie Goldberg is a devout practitioner of Zen Buddhism, and it certain comes through in her book Writing Down the Bones. Goldberg explains how her spirituality has informed her writing. Her tone is encouraging, but she is by no means trying to say that what works her will work for every writer. She simply writes on her own experience, offering simple advice to the reader in the form of short chapters. Writing Down the Bones will help you take a deep breath and keep writing, and isn’t that all writers really want to do, anyway?

The AP Stylebook

Behold, the writer’s holy grail. Some of us live and breathe by the rules presented in this book, and still others consider them to be more guidelines than rules. No matter where you land on the spectrum, we’d bet that you’ve got a copy of this in your house somewhere, whether you know it or not. The grammar and punctuation guidelines presented in the book are the most widely used of any other stylebook, and this is the book you should turn to when you’re unsure of where to stick that comma.

This article originally appeared on Signature.

That chill felt by writers at the sound of the words “National Novel Writing Month” is more than just a brisk fall wind.

For seventeen years running, November has become a time of year associated with procrastination, scrawled notecards, and word-counts in the glorious tens of thousands — the literary equivalent of a Tough Mudder challenge.

But no need for you to toil alone, or unaided. Those who return for NaNoWriMo year after year end up exchanging tips as well as battlefield stories. For example, New York City actor and producer Amy Lee Pearsall, whose participation hasn’t necessarily been continuous (“I’ve finished four times,” she told us. “I’ve begun more times than I can count”) but has become an essential part of her evolution as a writer, and so has the community that’s sprung up around the event.

For 2016’s crop of aspirants, further help is on the way. We’re proud to introduce your new Ultimate Guide to Writing Advice, a downloadable booklet which great writers like Una LaMarche and Charles Baxter have stuffed with years’ worth of experience, condensed into a few practical lessons that will benefit anyone preparing to hurl themselves into the creative wilderness, facing what Andy Weir refers to here as “The Tyranny of the Blank Page.”

In the remaining weeks, there’s still time to give your writerly sensibilities more thorough overhaul — Anne Lamott’s remarkably candid Bird by Bird, for example, is a non-judgmental tour through the spasmodic and naturally disorganized mind of a writer. Cartoonist and writing instructor Lynda Barry’s What It Is similarly plumbs the murky depths of your stifled genius, revealing not just the how of writing but also the why. For those who who aren’t easily intimidated by others’ success, Stephen King basically slayed this genre with On Writing, proving himself to be a thoroughly unpretentious expert on the subject of slapping down words on the page.

But as the hour of your first marathon session grows near, it’s the nervous company of your fellow NaNoWriMo aspirants from which you’ll draw the most comfort. Below, Pearsall elaborates on her experience in the trenches; between her observations and our Guide’s cadre of writing instructors, you should be able to register for the event with total confidence.

What did you end up writing for your very first one?

It was a story loosely based on something that had happened in my own life. It was terrible. And first drafts are always terrible, but this was really bad. I’m not sure I would have ever done anything with it. My participating in NaNoWriMo that first time was more an exercise in proving to myself that I could crank out 50,000 words toward a novel in a month. The good and bad news was the draft was destroyed when my hard drive crashed. So — yeah. I lost my first novel to technology.

Now that it’s become something you do regularly, do you find yourself thinking or pre-writing in advance about subjects you want to write about?

I keep a log of story ideas now. Historically, I’ve been what you would call a “pantser,” or someone who writes by the seat of their pants. I might have had a general idea of what I was going to write, but other than that, whatever landed on the page that day was what happened. More recently, I’m finding that I prefer to roll with a rough outline on index cards. It’s still kind of “whatever happens,” but jotting things down on cards seems to help me focus the story. An added plus: if I don’t feel up to writing a given scene on a certain day, I can flip through the cards and write another scene. It’s out of order, but I can keep up with my word count. (Everything gets fixed in post, right?)

What is it about the experience that has drawn you back in, time after time?

Writing is a solitary pursuit. There’s power in the knowledge that there are people all over the world tearing their hair out over the creative process at the very same time that you are. There’s also something about setting a goal with a deadline and making both public that adds an element of accountability.

If you could go back and coach yourself as a first-timer, what advice would you give?

I finished my first time out, so I’m not sure what else I would say to myself other than “back up your stuff.” To anyone else trying it for the first time, I would say the goal is just to write 50,000 words toward a shitty first draft (in NaNoWriMo parlance, a SFD). You’re not going to write War and Peace. No, you’re really not. Just write the story you have to tell. Get the words down. No editing on the first pass, no second guessing, just get the hell out of your own way.

Are you involved in the NaNoWriMo community, or have friends that you bond with over this pastime?

For NaNoWriMo 2009, I hosted a weekly write-in at a local restaurant in northern Manhattan, and I publicized it on the NaNoWriMo community boards. There were four of us who showed up every week, and we all crossed the finish line. I loved having that in-person camaraderie, even if most of the time we were silently tapping away. It was not without its challenges, though. The manager of the restaurant didn’t want us taking up a big table with laptops, in spite of the fact I had the support of the owner. It might have been a pursuit better suited to a coffee shop, but there were none in the neighborhood at the time. Even then, I wanted to do it over a brunch cocktail and a bowl of chili. I don’t think I was asking for too much.

Are there any tricks you use to make sure you hit your regular word count, or keep yourself committed through the whole month?

It has helped me personally to make the commitment to write an hour a day. Once I get started, I will very often write for longer than that. If I start out thinking, “I’m going to write 50,000 words,” I’m dead in the water. Overwhelm kicks in, and it’s just the worst. If I can maintain a daily target of 1667 words, which is about three pages, I’m doing just fine. I’m not going to lie — sometimes that doesn’t happen. There’s always one or two days where I’m madly trying to make up 5000 words, because life gets in the way. There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s just part of the process, and that’s what coffee is for.

How do you feel you’ve grown as a writer because of this experience? How do you feel about the body of work you’ve produced because of NaNoWriMo?

I think that the fact that I can say that I have a body of work and that it’s a direct result of participating in NaNoWriMo speaks for itself. Now, whether or not anyone will ever see that body of work — that’s another issue entirely.

This article originally appeared on Signature.

Tom Blunt has been a producer and host of numerous entertainments in New York City, including a film-inspired variety show called “Meet The Lady” for the 92nd Street Y. He has written for sites such as The Awl and New York Magazine; his crackpot cinematic theories have been cited in The Guardian and IFC News.

Think about every bully you can remember, whether from fiction or real life. What do they all have in common?

For the most part, they don’t read — and if they do, they probably aren’t ingesting much literary fiction.

This isn’t just snobbery, it’s a case that scientists are slowly building as they explore a field called Theory of Mind, described by Science Magazine as “the human capacity to comprehend that other people hold beliefs and desires and that these may differ from one’s own beliefs and desires.” In an abstract published by the magazine in 2013, researchers found that reading literary fiction led to better results in subjects tested for Theory of Mind. That same year, another study found heightened brain activity in readers of fiction, specifically in the areas related to visualization and understanding language. As Mic explains: “A similar process happens when you envision yourself as a character in a book: You can take on the emotions they are feeling.”

More recently, Trends in Cognitive Sciences reported more findings that link reading and empathy, employing a test called “Mind of the Eyes” in which subjects viewed photographs of strangers’ eyes, describing what they believed that person was thinking or feeling (readers of fiction scored significantly higher). It turns out that the narrative aspect of fiction is key to this response. From the study: “participants who had read the fictional story Saffron Dreams by Shaila Abdullah … were found to have a reduced bias in the perception of Arab and Caucasian faces compared to control subjects who read a non-narrative passage.” More plot-driven genre fiction doesn’t seem to have the same effect.

None of this will be terribly surprising to lifelong readers, for whom these empathy-enhancement adventures have always been part of the appeal. However, since reading is widely considered to be just another form of “entertainment,” the specifics of what we read are often considered to be just a matter of personal taste, from childhood onward. Literacy itself has proven key to a person’s ability to function in modern society, even if all one ends up consuming are tweets or news headlines; there has also been pushback from proponents of new media against those who are tilting at windmills (to draw a reference from literary fiction), hampering our civilization’s advancement by clinging to older forms of mass-communication. How will these conversations change if science can prove that certain reading experiences are crucial to the development of the human conscience?

Applying these findings will be ultimately akin to sending everyone in America back to middle school, where our kids are traditionally exposed to mankind’s most essential life lessons. Difficult humanitarian issues like slavery and the Holocaust are first introduced through literature, laying a moral foundation for the more probing history curricula that will (hopefully) follow in high school. For example, the true value in The Diary of Anne Frank as a teaching tool isn’t in its description of historical events, but in the window it opens to another child’s fears and concerns for herself and her family as those events unfold. The Newbery-winning novel Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry challenged kids to revisit gritty facts about racism from the South during the Great Depression, seen through the eyes of a nine-year-old girl — including a chapter where another character is tarred and feathered.

Nor does an entire race or religious group have to be at stake for these lessons to pack a punch. Despite the swirl of attention around the issue of bullying, and the requisite wave of books tackling the subject, it remains hard to improve on the lessons imparted by Judy Blume’s Blubber, a queasy masterpiece of social anxiety that debuted in 1974 — the same year as Stephen King’s Carrie, which spares readers from trying to figure out which book owes more to the other in terms of inspiration.

Instead of going the obvious route and selecting a bullying victim as her protagonist, Blume tethers the perspective to a kid in the Mean Girl camp, one whose increasing discomfort with the treatment of a fellow classmate (cruelly nicknamed “Blubber”) ultimately causes estrangement and shifting allegiances in her own tightly-knit group of friends. By constructing the story this way, Blume plays to the ambiguities that a child might recognize from real life; instead of pushing an agenda of acceptance, she simply follows tyrannical and exclusionary behaviors to their natural conclusions. To readers, the way forward is clear.

Mary Downing Hahn adopted the same strategy in 1983 with Daphne’s Book, a YA novel centered around a girl at the periphery of a clique of “popular” students. Her self-preservation instincts require her to fanatically avoid association with the shy, artistic outcast named Daphne (known to the other kids as “Daffy Duck”), so class anxieties abound when the two are paired for a school assignment. Hahn’s book goes one step further than Blume’s, exploring the kind of home environment that might contribute to another student’s awkwardness at school — in Daphne’s case, living in poverty in the custody of a mentally ill grandmother. Viewed from afar, Daphne remains a subject of pity and scorn; up close, she is worthy of compassion and even admiration. Magically, skillfully, the author urges young readers to question the impressions they form about each other based on the superficial contact they have with each other at school, or out in public.

These are mind-expanding experiences for a young person, in which the sort of commonplace prejudices and moral blind spots they’ve encountered on the playground (or at home) are proven to become matters of life and death when writ large across society. Viewing events from someone else’s perspective, following along as they suffer, make mistakes, and are forced into hard decisions that affect others beyond themselves — these are already the core of literary education, but the new spate of scientific findings suggests we may not be working hard enough, or for long enough, toward instilling future generations with a profound appreciation for human life.

This is also the time when young people are meant to develop a deeper appreciation for mankind’s relative place in the grand scheme of things, including our custodianship of the planet and our uneasy relationships with its other inhabitants. Shedding tears over the deaths in Fred Gipson’s Old Yeller or Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings’ The Yearling is an unforgettable rite of passage, one that hardly qualifies as mere “entertainment” and sets the stage for a lifetime of difficult questions about the hierarchy of social and familial obligations. In classics like Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time, these questions are expanded to include an entire universe of beings, with whom we may not even be advanced enough to communicate.

But quite simply, if you don’t read the books, you don’t obtain these benefits. Having encountered few worlds outside your own, you won’t extend as much effort contemplating how other people (whether real, imaginary, or historical) experience reality, nor will you be as willing to believe their claims about that experience — although you’ll certainly expect them to believe yours.

What’s more, this research suggests that if you don’t persist in reading literature into adulthood, anything you may have gleaned from walking in another person’s shoes may fade with time. This atrophy very likely results in that phenomenon we encounter so often in arguments about politics or urgent social issues, in which people assume they’re more compassionate and open-minded than they really are.

This brings us back to the original question, the one about what all bullies have in common. Bullying behavior is not exclusive to ignorant people, but there may be more to the stereotype about getting picked on by the class dullard — or the grownup s/he becomes — than we may have ever realized.

However, properly combating that issue forbids us from indulging in elitism. More than anything, these new scientific findings appear to underscore the importance of reaching these kids at all costs. There are myriad factors which may limit a child’s early reading experiences — developmental delays, home and environmental issues such as abuse and poverty. The organization First Book fights the latter by placing brand new books in the households of disadvantaged kids (from their website: “In some of the lowest-income neighborhoods in the country there is only one book available for every 300 children”). It doesn’t help that literary proficiency varies widely even among gifted students, and the de rigueur advancement of grade-levels through standardized testing guarantees that a great many of these children actually will be left behind, or made to feel that way, during a phase that’s key to the formation of identity.

When it comes to adults, the outlook is harder to ascertain. Overall book readership is definitely down, though complex narrative storytelling is available in a wider range of forms than ever (such as TV and video games, both of which were shown to affect empathy test results). More Americans than ever are seeking a college education, and that will usually coincide with more exposure to literature. However, unless this cultivation of empathy becomes recognized for what it is and pursued as a lifelong interest — on par with physical fitness or mental health awareness in terms of personal hygiene, as well as a prerequisite for civic participation — the effects will gradually give way to the immediacy of one’s own firsthand experiences, weighted with the prejudices and confirmation bias that are bound to accumulate over time.

Fiction can’t be our end-all tool for building empathy — there can be a real harm to filtering every single real-world event through a dramatic lens, spinning stories that suit our preferred narrative while ignoring input from those who lived it firsthand. Even so, particularly since the 20th century, fiction has provided a voice for people who would have otherwise been all too easy to ignore. When masterful storytelling aligns perfectly with a humanitarian payload, the effects will be felt around the world, transcending genre or political agenda. It’s no accident that decades after it was published, Toni Morrison’s juggernaut Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Beloved, which explores the personal, physical, and metaphysical effects of slavery, is still taught in university departments as various as History, Sociology, Women’s Studies, African American Studies, Religion… and yes, English Literature.

While picking up a book will never be a replacement for face-to-face encounters with actual humans, in terms of beating back the apathy and entropy that persists (and even flourishes) under these unique 21st-century conditions, this avenue of scientific research must be taken quite seriously. Redundant as it may sound to anyone who has recently found themselves in contortions of profound emotional discomfort over a purely made-up scenario, this extremely old technology could prove to be the most powerful and readily abundant weapon we’ve got.

This article originally appeared on Signature.

Tom Blunt has been a producer and host of numerous entertainments in New York City, including a film-inspired variety show called “Meet The Lady” for the 92nd Street Y. He has written for sites such as The Awl and New York Magazine; his crackpot cinematic theories have been cited in The Guardian and IFC News.

By Scott Porch

You know the big names. George Washington, Cleopatra, etc. Important writers have written important books about them that have sold millions of copies and won major awards.

In five best-selling books — Isaac’s Storm (1999), The Devil in the White City (2003), Thunderstruck (2006), In the Garden of Beasts(2011) and Dead Wake (2015) — Erik Larson has eschewed history’s A-list of the famous and the powerful for that next tier. Instead of retelling the exploits of gods and kings, he finds stories that can still surprise you.

Larson’s heroes aren’t obscure — they’re important; they did stuff; they have Wikipedia pages — but they’re unfamiliar enough to surprise you and unburdened enough with Very Important Things You Must Know to be characters who are historical figures instead of the other way around.

His books have a beginning, a middle, and an end. They have foreshadowing and character development. They have humor and suspense. There are costumes and set pieces. They are, in every practical sense, literary historical novels. They aren’t novels insofar as they are researched retellings of actual historical events, but Larson chose the topics because of their novelistic qualities.

For academic historians who look to shape our thinking about history or readers who seek out history to organize and understand it, that may sound like a dodge or a missed opportunity. Larson knows that. He knows that and he’s not disparaging of academic historians or the work they do or the importance of it or the motivations of the people who read it.

But that’s not what he’s doing.

Larson’s histories are yarns. They’re good stories. They’re novels — with endnotes.

“Dead Wake isn’t a definitive history of the sinking of the Lusitania,” Larson says. “My intent was to create a rich, visceral sense of what it would have been been like to be aboard that ship — to put people there — and not to tabulate how many passengers were aboard from England vs. America vs. France.”

In an hour-long interview at The Brice hotel in Savannah before speaking to a capacity crowd at the Savannah Book Festival, Larson talked to Signature about his five books, how he found those stories, his approach to writing history, and one of the books he didn’t write.

SIGNATURE: I don’t want to fasten a throughline on these five books if there isn’t one there, but is there an idea running through these books that you see?

ERIK LARSON: I think hubris is a big part of it. In Isaac’s Storm, Isaac thought he knew everything there was to know about hurricanes, and he didn’t.

SIG: It was certainly an element of The Devil in the White City.

EL: Right, because of Burnham.

SIG: I was going to say Dr. Holmes.

EL: Right, both really. In Thunderstruck, there was definitely Hubris on the part of Marconi. For In the Garden of Beasts, it was Hitler. And withDead Wake, it was Captain Turner and everyone feeling like nothing bad could happen to a big ship in that era and that a submarine was an inconsequential enemy. It’s all hubris, but it’s hubris broadly construed.

SIG: Is that something you only see looking back, or is that something you saw in each book?

EL: I see that looking back. When I’m considering an idea and there is an element of hubris involved, I generally feel comfortable that it’s going to be a good story. Pride goeth before a fall. It’s an element of a lot of big stories.

SIG: You’ve gone to novelistic, closed-ended stories rather than something more expansive like a biography of George Washington. Is that because you like a beginning and a middle and an end, like a novel or film?

EL: The reason I choose the stories I choose — and it’s why it takes me so long to find ideas — is that I’m looking for that very thing. I want an idea that begins, I want a middle that is compelling and will bring readers along, and I definitely want an ending. You could call it thin-slice history. It’s not my intent to write definitive history. Dead Wake isn’t a definitive history of the sinking of the Lusitania. It’s my account.

SIG: What would it be short of a definitive account?

EL: I think it comes down to intent. My intent was to create a rich, visceral sense of what it would have been like to be aboard that ship — to put people there — and not to tabulate how many passengers were aboard from England vs. America vs. France. Nor was it my intention to detail the long diplomatic saga that followed the sinking of the Lusitania, which was long and tedious. That would be the definitive history of the Lusitania.

SIG: You’ve written two kinds of books — the alternating, A-B-A-B book and the overarching book. Do you think in terms of where to put the camera? The story is on this person’s shoulder or these three people’s shoulders?

EL: You’re always aware of the metaphorical camera. Anytime you look at someone in detail, you’re putting the camera on that person. What I typically look for is one or two or three really strong characters who will hold the narrative throughout the work. In the case of Dead Wake, it was Captain Turner and Walther Schwieger, the submarine captain. There are some other characters who are in the book mainly because they left detailed account of the sinking, so the camera goes to them for that period.

SIG: How far do you get before you say the story is there?

EL: It varies. In the case of Dead Wake, I had to do a lot of advance research. It’s such a heavily done thing that I had to make very sure I could provide something new to the story. There’s always a point where a story starts to resonate — where it becomes like a tuning fork and you’re in sync with it.

SIG: Have you bailed on something that you thought was a book?

EL: I just bailed on one. I spent six months on the book proposal. As soon as I hit “send” to my agent, I thought, I don’t like it. I don’t want to do this book. I killed it and I have no regrets.

It’s still too fresh, and I’d rather not talk about it. There was an earlier book I wound up not writing that I can tell you about. In the midst of the worst of the California drought a few years ago, I thought I would do a book about William Mulholland, the head of the L.A. Department of Water and Power.

SIG: I think there’s a fairly recent book about that, right?

EL: I’m coming up to that. [Laughs.] I was not going to rehash the water story. I was going to write a book about the failure of the St. Francis Dam. Mulholland was at the peak of his career and was the most powerful man in the West. He built this dam, and it was deeply flawed. One night in 1928,the dam broke. It killed 500 people. There’s a glancing reference to it in the movie Chinatown. There were a lot of great elements. The D.A. tried to put Mulholland on trial for murder. The D.A. was corrupt and hated Mulholland.

I wrote the proposal. And I don’t know what it was, but it just lacked heart. I spent months on the project and it had all the right elements, but it just wasn’t doing it for me. I was sure somebody else could write a great book about it. And I was glad I didn’t write it. About six months later, I saw that Les Standiford’s Water to the Angels about the L.A. water system was about to come out. I felt like I had dodged a bullet.

SIG: The records weren’t there? You just lost interest?

EL: The records were there — trial transcripts, everything. To this day, I can’t tell you what it was. It didn’t keep getting better the more research I did. I just didn’t stay interested.

***

SIG: What was the first kernel of The Devil in the White City?

EL: In 1994, there was a great book by Caleb Carr called The Alienist, which I loved. It was a fictional account of a serial killer in New York in the 1800s. When I finished reading the book, I had this powerful sense of old New York and just wanted to stay there. I thought it would be interesting to write a nonfiction book about a murder and try to evoke the past through that.

SIG: And true crime wasn’t something you had done to that point, right?

EL: Right, and I don’t even consider The Devil in the White City true crime. I was trying to do something like the book equivalent of the movie “Gosford Park,” something full of manner and custom and characters. I found the murder of William Marsh Rice, who was the founder of Rice University. He was killed in New York by his valet and an unscrupulous lawyer. They were going to poison him using bananas laced with arsenic over a long period of time so it could never be traced back to them.

Then there was a hurricane in Texas. William Morris Rice wanted to liquidate his fortune and send it to Galveston to help rebuild the city. The plotters found out he was going to spend all of his money, and they killed him. It was the first murder in history with a hurricane as the proximate cause. I stumbled across this headline in the New York World that said there were 3,000 people dead on the coast of Texas, and I thought, Really? That can’t be true. I had never heard of anything like that. It was actually more than 3,000 people, and that became Isaac’s Storm. After I finished that, I started thinking again about a murder book. I got a book called The Encyclopedia of Murder.

SIG: You were going through the encyclopedia looking for a murderer?

EL: [Laughs.] Exactly. I came across H.H. Holmes at some point, and I was not interested. I didn’t want to do crime porn. I wanted to do “Gosford Park.” There was a reference in the Holmes section about the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893, which I knew nothing about. So I started reading about the Chicago World’s Fair, and that was the trigger. I was reading this really boring historical monograph. It was like a Marxist, feminist deconstruction of the Manufacturer’s Building at the World’s Fair. Boring, right.

SIG: It sounds boring.

EL: The nice thing about academic historians is that even they know when something is sexy. They put it in the footnotes. They’re trying to get tenure, so they put that stuff in the footnotes. As soon as I started reading the footnotes, there was a single fact that really made me take notice: Juicy Fruit gum was introduced at the World’s Fair of 1893. This fair was really something. It was the juxtaposition of this act of civil goodwill — the fair — versus a murder. It was the darkest of the dark vs. the lightest of the light.

The title The Devil in the White City came to me within the first twenty-four hours and stuck with me. That’s not to say that I had a lot of confidence in the book. On the eve of publication, I was pretty sure that my career was over.

SIG: Why?

EL: The dual narratives never touched, which broke all the rules.

SIG: Did American Horror Story consult you on the H.H. Holmes character?

…continue reading the full interview on Signature.