Uncool Greg

Lofty scholar in an autumn grove

A young friend sometimes writes or calls and challenges me with questions she has been asked in school. I love this quiz. Particularly I like when I don’t know the answer. I know I will soon learn something.

She stumped me recently: “What are the three possible purposes of an author?”

What do you think? My guesses included: to explain, to tell a story, to become famous, to leave something for the future, to make lots of money, to torture students, ….

After laughing at my increasingly desperate guesses, my inquisitor said,

“No! No! No! The three purposes of an author are to inform, to persuade, or to entertain!”

Oh.

I immediately replied, “You tell your teacher that there is a fourth purpose. Tell your teacher that Uncool Greg says there is a fourth purpose. It is a purpose that every author should have. Every teacher should have this fourth purpose when they talk to students!”

“What?”

“Tell her that the best authors make people think. The best teachers make people think.”

~ ~ ~

In subsequently poking around the interwebs, I found this “inform, persuade, entertain” formula frequently in lesson plans and advice to would-be public speakers. There’s surely a teacher who presented this as “PIE”.

I suppose my fourth purpose could be phrased “to persuade people to think”, like persuading them to exercise.  But there are differences. Of the examples I have in mind, persuasive writing often takes the form of advertisements, essays, or reports of correlations of eating french fries with acne. Persuasive writing allows questions so they can be answered. Thought-provoking writing raises significantly more questions than answers. Poetry that I like is rarely persuasive, but always thought-provoking. Persuasion aims beyond a mental state to action. I could aspire to blogging that brings tears, laughter, and riots, that launches ships and builds highways, that prompts people to heal disease and heal relationships. I have never been so eloquent.

But in provoking thought, I mainly just point out connections. It does take discernment to know how much to spell out, and what to leave to a particular audience. “Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things. Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me—put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you.”

Question: Could something not inform, not persuade, not entertain, and still make you think?

Yada, yada, yada

The 90′s sitcom Seinfeld purported to be, “a show about nothing”. Seinfeld‘s producers aimed for “no hugging, no learning.” Po-mo nihilism isn’t my cup of tea.  I guess I was expecting to be informed, persuaded, or entertained.  But millions of other people liked Seinfeld enough to keep it going for nine seasons plus awards.  For the few shows I did see, the situations made me think! Wouldn’t I respond to those situations differently than these people?

So, I was provoked by a show about nothing.  “What’s with that?” What the audience brings fills in gaps.  Gaps might be unplanned or artful.  Gaps can provoke thought. Indeed, the best persuasion leaves a gap that demands to be filled. “Brothers, what should we do?”

Last week I referred to a style of Asian landscape painting. I had in mind towering mountains, a misty void, then perhaps a tiny evidence of human existence. These draw you into the situation and out of yourself. (At one time I thought the trees and mountains were artistic distortions.  Eventually I found they were realistic.) Some art, instead of showing an explicit gap of fog, sky, or water, uses mirrors or other means to lead the viewer outside the frame.  What’s important is what is missing, or only hinted. Here’s a famous example by Manet.

A Bar at the Folies-Bergere

Where is the point of view? Perhaps from the right?  From the reflection in the mirror behind, we would guess that the bar maid is not interested in the artist/viewer, but rather in another man. So sad. But is that a reflection? Could the artist have poor technique? Is that another woman?  Is that man an alternate vision of the artist who does get attention from pretty girls?  Or is that a reflection of what the foreground girl is thinking?

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