Words, words, words. That's what we're made of. Herewith some of my thoughts on what we're doing with them.

So you want to change the world, my friend?

You've got to get them to listen first.

I don't know how it was where you grew up, but when I was a kid in school, we had Show and Tell. It was our introduction to the art of communication. Show and Tell worked like this: You brought something from home – say, a cool shell you picked up at the beach, or a postcard somebody sent, or that neat arrowhead Granddaddy found out by the old Indian graveyard. You showed it, and you told about it. Sometimes it was lame. You pretty quickly found out what little girl's mother was teaching her to be a pretentious snob. (And this is my cousin Varina's china pattern. There were 200 people at her wedding reception.) But sometimes, it was cool.

I had a big lesson in audience perception back in first grade. A visiting relative had bought me a little 'pipes of Pan' – funny thing, bright orange, made of wax. It made a pleasing sound, and I played little tunes on it. I decided to bring it in for Show and Tell.

I made my little speech about it, played a short tune. My teacher, wanting to keep six-year-old hands occupied with school tasks, set my 'flute' on a window ledge (out of the sun – she was inexperienced, and a terrible teacher, but she knew at least that much science). Class went on.

I got the shock at 3 p.m., when I went to pick up my Show and Tell item. My 'flute' had been gnawed on   – the wreckage displayed forensic evidence in the form of numerous bite patterns indicative of marauding deciduous teeth, belonging to kids who (unlike me) knew that my Show and Tell objet was not a musical instrument, but a snack. An unhealthy, sugary one, at that. Not being prone to put everything I picked up into my mouth, it hadn't occurred to me.

I was devastated. My teacher said it was only natural – I told you Miss Pepsi¹ was a terrible teacher. I went home in tears. My mother (smarter than Miss Pepsi) consoled me with the thought that not everyone was interested in abstracta, such as music. Pearls before swine, and all that.

Points of lesson:

1. Know your audience.
2. Figure out how to keep them from eating the lesson materials.

Number one is easy. Number two is harder than you think.

I sympathise with Upton Sinclair, the hard-working muckraker. [Hint for aspiring writers: Sinclair pounded out 30,000 words a week   – on a typewriter   – even while attending City College in New York. He had mouths to feed.] When Sinclair went undercover on an assignment in the Chicago stockyards, he found out more about the meat-packing industry than anybody ever wanted to know. Teddy Roosevelt didn't take the word of a socialist, so he sent his own people to investigate.

They came back and said they could verify all the stories except the one where the dead employee got turned into lard.

The result? The creation of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. No more rats in the sausage. (We hope and pray.)

Was Sinclair happy? Nope. He wanted people to join the Socialist Party, not worry about sausages. He said in disgust, 'I aimed at the public's heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach.' See what I mean?

Sinclair's writing is so powerfully effective that I won't recommend him – at least, not to the faint of heart or weak of stomach. His tale of suffering Lithuanian immigrants is gut-wrenching. But we can learn from him. In Chapter 19 of The Jungle, Jurgis has just got out of jail, only to find that his wife is having a difficult labour. He runs to 'Madame Haupt, Hebamme'. There he enters into desperate haggling to convince the midwife that he will pay her when he can. He doesn't have 25 dollars. Finally, she agrees to come: 'I might as vell go mit you for noffing as vot you offer me, but I vill try to help you.'

Here is Sinclair's description of what happens next:

They came at last to the house, and to the group of frightened women in the kitchen. It was not over yet, Jurgis learned – he heard Ona crying still; and meantime Madame Haupt removed her bonnet and laid it on the mantelpiece, and got out of her bag, first an old dress and then a saucer of goose grease, which she proceeded to rub upon her hands. The more cases this goose grease is used in, the better luck it brings to the midwife, and so she keeps it upon her kitchen mantelpiece or stowed away in a cupboard with her dirty clothes, for months, and sometimes even for years. – Upton Sinclair, The Jungle, Chapter 19.

That saucer of goose grease sort of says it all, doesn't it? Go and do likewise.

The important part of Show and Tell is: Show. Then Tell. Don't lecture the reader. Make the reader hopping mad. Or sad, or happy, or excited...

Another truly great Show-and-Tell man was Theodore Dreiser, the son of a German immigrant and a Mennonite lady from Ohio. Dreiser was another socially committed writer active around 1900. His Sister Carrie shocked people because it was pretty frank about how far human behaviour deviated from smug Victorian conceptions of morality. What I'd like you to notice here is how well Dreiser shows us what turn-of-the-century capitalism was like.

In this excerpt, Carrie is being upwardly mobile in New York City:

In all Carrie's experience she had never seen anything like this...There was an almost indescribable atmosphere about it which convinced the newcomer that this was the proper thing. Here was the place where the matter of expense limited the patrons to the moneyed or pleasure-loving class. Carrie had read of it often in the "Morning" and "Evening World."...The common run of conventional, perfunctory notices of the doings of society, which she could scarcely refrain from scanning each day, had given her a distinct idea of the gorgeousness and luxury of this wonderful temple of gastronomy. Now, at last, she was really in it. She had come up the imposing steps, guarded by the large and portly doorman. She had seen the lobby, guarded by another large and portly gentleman, and been waited upon by uniformed youths who took care of canes, overcoats, and the like. Here was the splendid dining-chamber, all decorated and aglow, where the wealthy ate...What a wonderful thing it was to be rich. – Theodore Dreiser, Sister Carrie, Chapter 32: 'The Feast of Belshazzar'.

Notice the 'temple of gastronomy'. Instead of lecturing us on the evils of 'those people', Dreiser shows us what was attractive about a high-end restaurant of the day. No amount of rant would have had the same effect. Sister Carrie will make you so mad about social inequity, you'll want to get into your tardis just to go back and give Andrew Carnegie a black eye. That's the way to do it.

So what am I saying?

• Show. Then Tell. Think like a scriptwriter. Make your characters act it out.
• Pick the telling detail – the saucer of goose grease, the temple of gastronomy. Focus our attention.
• Make us see it. Make us hear it, smell it, feel it. Then we'll react.
• Think like a camera. Show us what to look at – but don't let us see you doing it.

And maybe – just maybe – the reader will get the point. Hopefully before he eats the message.

Dmitri Gheorgheni

22.08.11 Front Page

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