To the Editor:
Re “For a Novelist, Living Should Be Enough ‘Lived Experience,’ ” by John McWhorter (Opinion, Oct. 29):
“Lived experience” is a dangerous standard for excellence (or legitimacy) in any of the arts. One mark of greatness is the ability of the author, poet, playwright or artist to enter imaginatively a life she or he has not lived.
Toni Morrison had studied — but not lived — the experiences of Margaret Garner, whom she reimagined in her novel “Beloved.” Tolstoy could not possibly have lived the experiences of Kitty, nursing her husband’s dying brother in “Anna Karenina.”
The same holds for other art forms. The visual artist Kara Walker did not live through the oppression of enslaved women and men that she depicts in her graphic silhouettes. Nor had Michelangelo experienced the sorrows of Mary, grieving over the body of her dead son, depicted so tenderly in each of his three Pietàs.
If we could make art only out of our own direct experience, the only art forms would be memoir or first-person narrative. That rules out most novels, poems, plays, movies, paintings, sculpture, prints.
What an impoverished world that would be!
Margaret Adams Parker Alexandria, Va.
To the Editor:
Kudos to John McWhorter for this essay. My book club recently read Stephen Crane’s short novel “Maggie: A Girl of the Streets.” This is a perceptive, moving and insightful story about a young Irish girl in the Bowery in New York City around the turn of the 20th century who falls into prostitution.
My thought after reading the novel was that talk around lived experience and charges of appropriation were nonsense. Crane should have had no right to create this story that so movingly captures the plight of this young woman because he had no lived experience as a woman?
For November we are reading another Crane book, “The Red Badge of Courage,” a novel about the Civil War. Crane was born in 1871, six years after the Civil War ended, and yet it is considered an American masterpiece.
When a book appears with the marks of a great writer — an eye or an ear for human experiences that he or she has not lived — that is the work of a creative genius. Mr. McWhorter is right on. As he writes, “The literary world needs to get over it.”
Ruth Silverman Merrick, N.Y.
To the Editor:
As a novelist, I guess I’ve been getting away with murder for years, writing from the point of view of Eurasian tycoons, Russian duchesses and even Albert Einstein. But once “cultural appropriation” started to tighten its deadly grip around literary liberty, I had several touchy discussions with my agent about what I could now write, and sell.
If I was supposed to write from my lived experience only, I was going to be relegated to writing about middle-class white guys, from the suburbs of Chicago, drinking cold coffee and sitting at desks with a cat draped around half the computer keyboard. And that — my lived experience — was precisely what I was trying to forget.
So imagine my joy when I discovered that none other than Toni Morrison had advised her own writing students at Princeton to ditch all the autobiography and “think of somebody you don’t know,” adding: “What about a Mexican waitress in the Rio Grande who can barely speak English? Or what about a grande madame in Paris?” and urging them to “imagine it, create it.”
For years, that formula — that freedom — has been what’s inspired not only me, but also virtually every other writer I know.
Robert Masello Santa Monica, Calif.
Susan Collins’s Comeuppance
To the Editor:
Re “Collins, Who Seemed Invulnerable, Blames ‘Trump Tsunami’ for Defeat” (news article, Nov. 6):
After losing her bid for re-election to the Senate, Susan Collins told The New York Times, “I was caught up in the Trump tsunami.” The facts say otherwise.
As a senator from Maine, Ms. Collins voted to confirm the appointments of John Roberts, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. Justices Alito, Gorsuch and Kavanaugh (along with Justices Clarence Thomas and Amy Coney Barrett) decided to overturn Roe v. Wade, Justice Alito and Chief Justice Roberts joined the majority opinion in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, and all four justices Ms. Collins endorsed repeatedly abandoned the court’s role as an equal branch of the federal government, handing unprecedented power to President Trump.
Ms. Collins voted against the president’s Big Beautiful Bill, but her yes vote on a procedural measure to advance that bill on the Senate floor has been overlooked. The bill’s passage led millions of hard-working Americans to lose their health insurance.
Ms. Collins failed to use her leverage as chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee to stop President Trump from prolonging America’s war with Iran.
Both before and after the pandemic, Ms. Collins did not hold any town hall meetings.
Later in her tenure, Ms. Collins did not respond to my phone messages, emails or letters. I cannot be the only constituent to make such a claim.
Ms. Collins was not caught up in the Trump tsunami. Ms. Collins was caught up in a tsunami of her own making.
Brendan Robb Portland, Maine
The Democrats’ Challenge
To the Editor:
Re “Jeffries, With Strong Majority, Cautiously Considers Big Ideas” (front page, Nov. 9):
Both parties tend to overreach badly when they get an electoral mandate. And when they do, it almost always backfires in the end. With the cautious and measured Hakeem Jeffries set to be in charge as House speaker, the Democrats are far less likely to make that mistake this time around.
Of course, there’s also the danger that they could underreach. Which is its own kind of trap, and probably wouldn’t be so great, either.
Nancy Stark New York
A.I. in Classrooms? Not So Fast.
To the Editor:
Re “A.I. School Sped Up Teaching, but Many Students Fell Behind” (front page, Oct. 26):
As the head of a school for students with dyslexia and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, I know that artificial intelligence is a potentially powerful tool in assistive technologies like audiobooks, speech to text and live transcription. But as some parents of children in Alpha School, the national network using A.I. to teach students, have learned, potential isn’t reality.
I worry that Alpha’s goal of reaching one billion students through its A.I. tutor focuses too much on its bottom line, rather than on teaching students both the required subjects and the interpersonal skills to be productive citizens.
A recent study by Common Sense Media found that more than four in 10 young people surveyed (ages 9 to 17) weren’t having A.I. safety conversations with parents or teachers. That’s millions of children using A.I., most likely without anyone monitoring or giving supervision or guidance.
The risks to these young people are real: A.I. can easily be a substitute for companionship and the skill building necessary for healthy, reciprocal relationships — the greatest predictor of student success, regardless of a child’s learning profile.
While an A.I. platform may make students feel capable and clever, its goal is to keep users talking, typing and tethered — exactly the opposite of healthy learning and relationships. It’s why our schools and teaching must remain, at their core, deeply connected and human.
Sherri Helvie New York The writer is the head of school at the Gateway School in Manhattan.
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