Jane Smiley's Blog

LETTERS TO THE FUTURE: I Didn't Try to Save You as Hard as My Opponents Tried to Destroy You

When I was alive, I thought I was trying to save you, but I didn't try hard enough, or at least, I didn't try to save you as hard as my opponents tried to destroy you. I don't know why they did that. I could never figure that out.

I Didn't Try to Save You as Hard as My Opponents Tried to Destroy You

When I was alive, I thought I was trying to save you, but I didn't try hard enough, or at least, I didn't try to save you as hard as my opponents tried to destroy you. I don't know why they did that. I could never figure that out.

LETTERS TO THE FUTURE: I Didn't Try to Save You as Hard as My Opponents Tried to Destroy You

The following post is part of a series produced by The Huffington Post and Letters to the Future, in conjunction with the U.N.'s 21st Conference of the Parties (COP21) in Paris (Nov. 30-Dec. 11), aka the climate-change conference. Letters to the Future is a project produced by the Sacramento News & Review, the Association of Alternative Newsmedia and the Media Consortium, in which a variety of writers, scientists, artists, and others were asked "to predict the outcome of the Paris talks (the success or failure and what came subsequently) as if writing to their children's children, six generations hence." To view the entire series, visit here. Join the conversation on Twitter with the hashtag #LettersToTheFuture, and follow @ParisLetters. For more information on the project, visit here.

Dear Great-Great-Granddaughter: Do you remember your grandmother Veronica? I am writing to you on the very day that your grandmother Veronica turned 7 months old -- she is my first grandchild, and she is your grandmother. That is how quickly time passes and people are born, grow up, and pass on. When I was your age -- now 20 (Veronica was my age, 65, when you were born), I did not realize how brief our opportunities are to change the direction of the world we live in. The world you live in grew out of the world I live in, and I want to tell you a little bit about the major difficulties of my world and how they have affected your world.

On the day I am writing this letter, the Speaker of the House of Representatives quit his job because his party -- called "the Republicans," refused absolutely to work with or compromise with the other party, now defunct, called "the Democrats." The refusal of the Republicans to work with the Democrats was what led to the government collapse in 2025, and the break up of what to you is the Former United States. The states that refused to acknowledge climate change or, indeed, science, became the Republic of America, and the other states became West America and East America. I lived in West America. You probably live in East America, because West America became unlivable owing to climate change in 2050.

That the world was getting hotter and dryer, that weather was getting more chaotic, and that humans were getting too numerous for the ecosystem to support was evident to most Americans by the time I was 45, the age your mother is now. At first, it did seem as though all Americans were willing to do something about it, but then the oil companies (with names like Exxon and Mobil and Shell) realized that their profits were at risk, and they dug in their heels. They underwrote all sorts of government corruption in order to deny climate change and transfer as much carbon dioxide out of the ground and into the air as they could. The worse the weather and the climate became, the more they refused to budge, and Americans, but also the citizens of other countries, kept using coal, diesel fuel, and gasoline. Transportation was the hardest thing to give up, much harder than giving up the future, and so we did not give it up, and so there you are, stuck in the slender strip of East America that is overpopulated, but livable. I am sure you are a vegan, because there is no room for cattle, hogs, or chickens, which Americans used to eat.

West America was once a beautiful place -- not the parched desert landscape that it is now. Our mountains were green with oaks and pines, mountain lions and coyotes and deer roamed in the shadows, and there were beautiful flowers nestled in the grass. It was sometimes hot, but often cool. Where you see abandoned, flooded cities, we saw smooth beaches and easy waves.

What is the greatest loss we have bequeathed you? I think it is the debris, the junk, the rotting bits of clothing, equipment, vehicles, buildings, etc., that you see everywhere and must avoid. Where we went for walks, you always have to keep an eye out. We have left you a mess. But I know that it is dangerous for you to go for walks -- the human body wasn't built to tolerate lows of 90 degrees Fahrenheit and highs of 140. When I was alive, I thought I was trying to save you, but I didn't try hard enough, or at least, I didn't try to save you as hard as my opponents tried to destroy you. I don't know why they did that. I could never figure that out.

Sadly,

Great-Greatgrandma Jane

A Thousand Acres

A Few Remedies for the Right to Bear Arms

Last night at dinner, my husband said, "There's no solution." We were talking, of course, about gun control, and it is true that the flood of guns and ammo into our neighborhoods and our nation is daunting. There is no solution. But the first thing I thought of was my mother and me, driving along back in 1954 in her 1953 Studebaker, windows closed, winter day, Mom's cigarette burning in the ash tray. Mom was a smoker. My grandfather was a smoker. My aunts were smokers. My uncles were smokers. I don't know any smokers now, not even my mom.



My mom was paranoid about my safety. That Studebaker was one of the first cars in the U.S. to have seat belts, and my mom made me put it on every time we drove (it went from the passenger's side to the driver's side, one long strip). She watched who I played with, and made me keep in touch. When she learned about secondhand smoke, she altered her smoking behaviors so as not to endanger her children, and she eventually removed herself from the thrall of the tobacco industry. Who says people can't learn?



There is no solution to the gun problem in the US, but there are remedies, and we should pursue all of them. Here are a few:



Here is a list of how much each of our elected officials got during this election season from the NRA. If your Congressman or Senator took funds -- in some cases a grand or two, in some cases as much as eight grand -- then, you and your friends may go to him/her, and say (since you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar), "Representative So-and-so, I will give you exactly what the NRA has given you this election cycle if you will sign a pledge to refuse all funds from the NRA." And write your check. If he/she refuses, then make sure everyone on the internet knows the terms of his/her refusal. There could be an anti-NRA super PAC that does precisely this. I am ready to join.



Do people you know invest in gun manufacturers? Mutual Funds you know? Investment banks you know? Is YOUR money invested in guns? Find out if it is. Refuse to invest in gun companies even if the stock is up (it is UP). Make sure those who invest in death are outed and shamed. Some will feel no shame (this is capitalism, after all) but some will. Every little bit counts.



Occupy the NRA. A nice non-violent protest at the headquarters of the NRA would be interesting. Stay off their property. Hold up large signs with pictures of shooting victims (you have thousands to choose from this year alone). Follow Wayne LaPierre every time he appears in public. I dare him to shoot you.



Never let Wayne or your gun loving friends forget how ridiculous NRA talking points are. Let's say a teacher has been packing heat in her classroom. Would she have worn a holstered gun on her hip everyday, including during recess? I doubt it. And a Bushmaster wouldn't fit into a locked drawer in her desk. So let's say she has a Glock in her desk, and the parents don't know about it, and a man pushes open the door and starts firing his high capacity multi-round weapon. She looks for the key. She unlocks the drawer, she aims, she fires. Everyone is saved. I doubt it. In 62 mass murders, no armed NRA member has ever once made a difference. Stop talking about it, Wayne.



Liability insurance. According to the Public Services Research Institute "the average cost of a gunshot related death is $33,000, while gun-related injuries total over $300,000 for each occurrence," some 4.7 billion smackers every year. You and I are paying for most of these costs. Freedom, it turns out, is not free, but gun owners usually don't have insurance, and so they don't pay! Every gun needs to be like every car -- you can't use it unless you have liability insurance. Attached to every gun, there must be a policy that the purchaser has to sign, acknowledging the dangers of his purchase and paying for them up front.



I suggest the same for high volume clips. You can have it, but you have to pay for the privilege. And your policy has to be renewed every year, and if you have cost the insurance company a lot of money, then your rates go up. Insurance companies really do not like to pay out, and they are good enforcers, much better than the federal government. And then there is your license -- your gun license, like your driver's license, should state whether you have any "points" -- accidental killings, accidental woundings, failure to pay your insurance premiums. The cops should be able to stop you and look at your gun license, just the way they can look at your driver's license.



It's pretty clear when you think about it that gun lovers have used the 2nd Amendment not only to threaten us, and in some cases to kill us, but also to mooch off of us -- they have their fun, and we pay. That part has got to stop. You can have your guns, but you have responsibilities -- you have to keep track of them, you have to pay their real costs, you have to understand and acknowledge the consequences of owning them. So far, being a responsible gun owner has been voluntary, not obligatory. Now it has to become obligatory.



These are a few of my ideas -- I invite you to add some of your own in the comments section.

A Few Remedies for the Right to Bear Arms

It's pretty clear when you think about it that gun lovers have used the 2nd Amendment not only to threaten us, and in some cases to kill us, but also to mooch off of us -- they have their fun, and we pay. That part has got to stop. You can have your guns, but you have responsibilities.

Divorce! It's Good for the Children!

When I asked my older daughter what she thought of my divorce from her father (she is 32), she said, "Do you really think I wish we had remained in that suffocating little four-person family?"

Noble Nobel Prize Winner Mario Vargas Llosa

We live in an age where many authors ponder their own experience over and over in styles that can be impenetrable, but Vargas Llosa looks at the world and writes about it with such wisdom that he doesn't fear being understood.

Nobel Nobel Prize Winner Mario Vargas Llosa

In May, 2009, at the New York press conference for the announcement of the Man Booker International Prize shortlist (I chaired the jury), I remarked that I considered Mario Vargas Llosa's 1981 novel "The War of the End of the World" "the book 'War and Peace' wanted to be." I was half joking of course (as always), but I did hope that somehow this line would land as a blurb on all future publications of "The War of The End of the World," because it was a novel that I had found to be so humane, so beautifully written, so wise, and so compelling that I thought it should take its place among the best of the best. Maybe now that Vargas Llosa has won the Nobel Prize, it will.



The amazing thing about "The War of the End of the World" is that it looks at religious cults and end-of-the-world figures in such an insightful way that the reader comes from the novel feeling as though the last word has been said about this subject. Perhaps the greatest pleasure of the novel is that men and women of all types -- soldiers, criminals, landowners, housewives, beggars, intellectuals, priests, believers -- and all social classes are viewed with compassion and interest. No character is dismissed or overlooked, and the result is a tragic celebration of a very human thing, the sweep of an avid belief through a society, and the change and damage it leaves behind. Is the Savior figure in this novel meant to represent Jesus? Or Jim Jones? Vargas Llosa isn't saying, and that makes it all the better.



Then I went on to Vargas Llosa's "The Bad Girl," a modern rewriting of Gustave Flaubert's "Madame Bovary." "The Bad Girl" is a much more worldly novel, a portrait of a young woman who, like Emme Bovary, really does not want to miss out on the world she sees portrayed in movies and fashion magazines, and will do anything, suffer anything, to join that world. It is told by her old friend, a man who will never be able to offer her what she wants. In other words, in style, subject matter, and theme, it could not be more different from "The War of the End of the World." And that is the joy of Mario Vargas Llosa's work -- he seems to be interested in everything, and to be able to illuminate any topic in a way that is appropriate to that topic. His moral compass is always working, but so is his empathy -- no point of view is so alien to him that he cannot understand it and portray it.



Vargas Llosa has had a long and productive career. Since the early 1960s, he's written seventeen works of fiction, thirteen works of non-fiction, and three dramas. Most of his books are serious and ambitious -- "The War of the End of the World" is almost six hundred pages, "Conversation in the Cathedral" is a bit longer, and "The Feast of the Goat" is four hundred pages. Some are funny -- "Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter." No pages are wasted -- he actually has a story to tell that is about the world, not about himself, in these many pages. And readers love him -- his page on Amazon is full of 5-star reviews.



We live in an age where many authors ponder their own experience over and over in styles that can be impenetrable, but Vargas Llosa looks at the world and writes about it with such wisdom that he doesn't fear being understood (there I go again, half-joking). I don't want to say here that Vargas Llosa is important, so you should read him -- the Nobel Committee has already said that. I want to say that reading his work is moving and enjoyable in a host of ways. The Nobel Committee has reminded us that we readers have something to look forward to in the next few months. I ordered some. You should, too.

"So Humane, So Beautifully Written, So Wise And So Compelling"

We live in an age where many authors ponder their own experience over and over in styles that can be impenetrable, but Vargas Llosa looks at the world and writes about it with such wisdom that he doesn't fear being understood.

Stop The Injustice: Free Gary McKinnon

The screaming injustice that is about to be perpetrated on Scottish computer hacker Gary McKinnon has taken another step toward the cruel and unusual.