Dogwhistles and Figleaves

A while ago, I reviewed Jennifer Mather Saul’s Dogwhistles and Figleaves (Oxford UP, 2024) for Choice. It occurred to me that the timeliness of the book warranted a longer discussion and this it.

Saul is a philosopher at the University of Waterloo who has written extensively on lying and here she addresses the way in which racist expressions and blatant lies change, and have changed, the fabric of public discourse. The thesis of her book is summarized in its subtitle: How Manipulative Language Spreads Racism and Falsehood. More specifically, Saul connects to two increasingly pervasive aspects of recent public/political discourse: the spread of explicit racism and the normalization of blatant falsehoods. She argues, convincingly I think, that two phenomena reinforce one another.

She begins with racism and racism dogwhistles—coded appeals to racism or other hate speech. Saul develops her position in classic philosopher-style, advancing and refining various definitions and illustrating them with real life examples. She gives a good (though perhaps too long) typology of dogwhistles including covert ones (states’ rights, ghetto, bad hombres) and overt (88, triple-parentheses) ones as well as unintentional ones (terms like urban.

Figleaves, in turn, are rhetorical strategies for attenuating—covering over—the racism of the dogwhistles. These include expressions like “That’s not what I meant,” “You’re reading too much into my words,” “You are being too sensitive,” “I didn’t mean it that way” or “I was joking” or phrasing like “until we can figure out what’s going on.” They cover up the appeal to racism even though many people know what’s underneath.

As you may have guessed from the examples, Donald Trump plays a big role in the discussion. Though he is not the only figure to employ the dogwhistle plus figleaf method of gaslighting, he is the source of many of her examples.

Central to Saul’s book is a typology of racism, which includes institutional racisms, individual racism based in beliefs of superiority/inferiority, and racism based on attitudes and stereotypes. Also important is the way that social norms concerning racism segment a population: there are groups of norm opposers (overt racists), strong norm supporters, and a group who might be characterized as “doubters.” The norm opposers like neo-Nazis embrace the racisms of the dogwhistles; norm supporters see it for what it is and call it out. Potential doubters are those who might be persuaded that a dogwhistle is not racist based on the use of figleaves. To the extent that figleaves change the perception of racist expressions for potential doubters, more racist discourse occurs and the norms will shift, allowing racist speech to be normalized.

Jennifer Mather Saul

The second part book concerns falsehood, noting that today’s deceptions are more pernicious than much previous political lying by politicians like Johnson or Nixon. The idea of a “credibility gap” is no longer newsworthy, but expected. Saul explores how it has become acceptable for politicians to say things that are totally at odds with the truth and how figleaves like “I’m just asking questions” or “A lot of people are saying” or “I saw a report on television” have allowed lies and conspiracist claims to become part of mainstream discourse and to drown out other less sensational topics. She touches on lies ranging from birtherism to QANON to Covid to the Great Replacement to crowd sizes and the nature of the January 6th insurrection. To these we could now add the lie that immigrants in Ohio are “eating the cats.” Saul argues that while it may not be that conspiracy theories are on the rise (they’ve always been with us), extreme conspiracy theories are playing a greater role in public discourse, especially of national political figures and even parties. The result suggests an eroding of the belief in previously credible institutions and in truth itself.

Saul sees the potential solution in what she calls “inoculation,” public education about the ways in which dogwhistles and figleaves infect the body politic. So far, there is no widespread plan for such an inoculation and the institutions that might do such work (the media, academe, professional in government and law) are being undermined and attacked.

Everyone should read Dogwhistles and Figleaves. Saul’s style is generally accessible but one error needs to be pointed out: in the discussion of conspiracism, RFK, Jr., is referred to as JFK, Jr. (p. 153). And stylistically, I believe the leaves in figleaves should really be leafs, because they are non-literal.

 

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What I’m Reading

Clete by James Lee Burke

I’m a big James Lee Burke fan—he’s one of the few writers that I buy in hardcover and this book, the 24th in the Dave Robicheaux-New Iberia series cemented his spot at the top of my list.  The focus is not on Robicheaux, but on his former partner, Clete Purcel, who usually plays the id to Robicheaux’s superego.

There’s plenty of action—starting with a group of drug thugs ransacking Clete’s car and the plot careens onward from there – with antisemitic drug killers, corrupt cops, wealthy schemers, and more.   The key to the story though is the fleshing out and reversal of the Robicheaux-Purcel relationship.   Clete is no longer the boozy knight errant—the id to Robicheaux’s superego, but an equally damaged and complex character.  We see a new Clete, who had always been there.

Burke’s mysticism is present in the book. It’s an aspect of his writing that can be puzzling or frustrating at times, at least to me, but here we see the visions through Clete’s eyes (or his mind’s eye) and they are no longer a feature of Robicheaux’s psyche and religiosity, but a reflection of the eternal nature of good and evil.

Clete is not for everyone, but I think it’s one of Burke’s best.

Honey by Victor Lodato

Everyone should read this book. For my money, Victor Lodato is right up there with Burke, but with a focus on empathy and understanding rather than violence and evil.   He manages to put himself in the minds of the unlikeliest characters–here an octogenarian returning to her New Jersey roots.  You’ll come away looking a people in a different light.

You can check out my interview with Victor here.

Devils Island by Midge Raymond and John Yunker

You can find my review here in Ashland. News

In “Devils Island,” Midge Raymond and John Yunker bring together exotic locales, environmentalism, and murder in a whodunit with a sharp psychological edge.

The “devils” on Devils Island ostensibly refer to Tasmanian devils, large carnivorous marsupials who are in danger of extinction due to a facial tumor disease. Could they kill a human? Would they? [More]

 

The Ministry of Time: A Novel by Kaliane Bradley

I was attracted by the buzz around this book and wasn’t disappointed.  It’s part science fantasy, part dystopian thriller, and part romance, all of which come together nicely.  The key concept: that people close to death in another time can be traveled to the present – through a mysterious door.  It’s an interesting idea that that the author doesn’t try to over explain either or that she never quite explains enough (depending on your perspective).   The thriller aspect has to do with the bureaucracy and   infighting surrounds the time door (some of which is cross-temporal). The romance and relationships evolved naturally and there was an interesting theme of travelers out of place learning to fit on, or not.

The ending felt a bit rushed, but it had a nice twist which I didn’t see coming.

2034 and 2054 by Elliot Ackerman and James G. Stavridis

I saw my wife breezing through these and gave them a try.  Both were good propulsive stories, 2034, about the start of a cyber-cum-nuclear war between the US and China was compelling and through provoking (with an octogenarian Vladimir Putin just offstage).   We see the role that leadership and individual history plays in creating and avoiding war and the potential role of nations like India and Iran in bringing too proud nations to the table.   2054 brings back some of the same characters and adds some new ones as nations and corporations search for the Singularity and remote genetic editing becomes a weapon of assassination.  It’s less compelling—more of a politic thriller (insurrection, impeachment, etc.) than the tenser 2034 and the characters are less compelling.  But both are worth reading.

 

The KGB Plays Chess: The Soviet Secret Police and the Fight for the World Chess Crown

Chess is a rough game—recently a player tried to poison her rival by spreading mercury on the chess board; she was caught.

There’s the Magnus Carlsen-Han Neimann imbroglio too.  But for sheer chicanery it’s hard to beat the Soviet secret police.  The KGB Plays Chess:The Soviet Secret Police and the Fight for the World Chess Crown by a quartet of authors: Boris Gulko, Victor Korchnoi,  Yuri Felshtinsky, and Vladimir Popov tells the story of the KGB’s role picking favorites in the chess world and trying to ensure their success.  Gulko and Korchnoi are well-known players – Gulko and his wife the Women’s Grandmaster Anna Akhsharumova, were prominent refuseniks during the 1970s and 1980s, persecuted and final allowed to emigrate after Glasnost.  Korchnoi played two world championship matches against Anatoly Karpov with the KGB arrayed against him and even planning his possible assassination.  Yuri Felshtinsky is a Russian-American journalist and historian, who contributed a (fairly academic) discussion of KGB influence on sport in general.… , And Vladimir Popov was a Colonel in the KGB from 1972-1991, whose personal archives include copies of KGB case files.

Much of the book focuses on Gulko’s tragic story.  Kornchoi’s story, told in depth elsewhere, gets less ink. And there is plenty about the KGBs role in sports more generally and inside information on KGB favorites and informers and those who resisted the KGB.

According to the book, Anatoly Karpov was a agent (code name “Raul”) who was continually aided by the KGB. And the book names various others said to be informers or agents, including Tigran Petrosian, Lev Polugaevsky, Rafael Vaganian, and Eduard Gufeld, as well as former FIDE President Florencio Campomanes.

The book suffers a bit from having four different authors and styles and would benefit from better documentations rather than mere recollection. But it is a good roadmap to some future historian’s study of state-sanctioned fixing in chess for political and ideological reasons.

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An Interview with Midge Raymond and John Yunker, authors of Devils Island

John Yunker & Midge Raymond

Midge Raymond is the author of My Last Continent and the short-story collection Forgetting English. Her writing has appeared in TriQuarterly, Bellevue Literary Review, the Los Angeles Times magazine, Chicago Tribune, Poets & Writers, and other publications. Midge has taught at Boston University, Boston’s Grub Street Writers, Seattle’s Hugo House, and San Diego Writers, Ink. Her novel Floreana, a murder mystery set in the 1930s in the Galápagos Islands, is coming in 2025.

John Yunker is the author of three full-length plays (Paleo, Meat the Parents, and Species of Least Concern), and the novels The Tourist Trail and Where Oceans Hide Their Dead. He is the editor of the Among Animals fiction series as well as the essay collection Writing for Animals and the marketing books Beyond Borders and Think Outside the Country. His plays have been produced by theaters in Florida, Kentucky, Louisiana, Oregon, and Washington DC.

Midge and John are the co-founders of Ashland Creek Press. Devils Island is their first coauthored novel.

EB: How did you come up with the idea for Devils Island?

MR & JY: Several years ago, we traveled to Australia, where we embarked on a four-day, once-in-a-lifetime “glamping” trip on a remote island off the coast of Tasmania. We traveled with two guides and three other couples, most of us strangers to one another. At one point, upon learning John and I were both writers, our companions joked about whether we would one day write about them—and of course, we joked back that we probably would.

And then, not long after we returned, the joke turned into an idea. Although our trip was in all ways just about perfect, John began thinking that the setting (middle of nowhere), the animals (endemic and endangered species), and the island’s history (a former convict settlement that now plays a major role in preserving the endangered Tasmanian devils) provided a dramatic backdrop for a mystery. And so we set out to write one.

EB: I was intrigued by the actors Jane and Brooke and the structure of the story into acts. I know John has written plays, but have either of you acted on stage?

MR & JY: John acted on stage in high school productions, and Midge appeared in a filmed version of one of John’s short plays. Otherwise, our acting has been limited to our book trailer and a PSA about saving typewriters. But of course, by living in Ashland, the theater has naturally found its way into our work.

EB: Brooke and Jane had an odd relationship. How would you characterize it?

MR & JY: At one point Brooke considers that their friendship might be a folie à deux, a type of “shared madness.” Despite being competitive and keeping secrets from each other, they also see the world and understand each other in ways that no one else does. One might characterize their relationship as codependent, and—because they bring out the best, and often the worst, in each other—it’s also quite dramatic.

EB: The characters were quite real to me. Who was your favorite?

Devils IslandMR & JY: We have a fondness for the naturalist-turned-guide Kerry, who is a firsthand witness to the suffering and possible extinction of the Tasmanian devil. She feels powerless to stop it, no matter how hard she works—and then, when she takes a “break” to lead hikers on this trip, things go terribly awry. So you can’t help but sympathize with her. But then, despite her history and this disastrous camping trip, she discovers the depth of her own strength along the way, and by the end of the journey, things are really looking up for her.

EB: You’ve been to Maria Island, the model for fictional Marbury Island. What was your experience like?

MR & JY: The trip was our first guided, multi-day hike, and we didn’t know what to expect. We chose Maria Island for the wildlife—though we didn’t see the elusive Tasmanian devils, we knew they were around—and we did see wombats, Cape Barren geese, echidnas, wallabies, pademelons, kangaroos, kookaburras, yellow-tailed black cockatoos…and so much more. The hiking and camping itself was smooth sailing, with great companions, guides, and weather. But, being writers, it wasn’t hard to imagine things going terribly wrong—especially in such a remote location.

EB: I have to ask about the writing process. How did that work? Who did what? And were they any places where you couldn’t agree?

MR & JY: John had the idea to set a mystery on a faraway island, and together we brainstormed the story until we had a direction to get us going. Much like the fictional travelers, at first we weren’t quite sure how it would end! John would write a skeletal first draft and pass it along to Midge, who would flesh it out and send it back—and so on, chapter by chapter, until we figured out the ending and finished the first full draft of the book. So in the end, we each wrote and/or revised just about every word.

Regarding disagreements, we certainly had some vivid discussions! But in the end, we always managed to come up with what made sense for the characters and the story. It helps that we were on the same page, so to speak, about the overall story—the themes and characters and tensions. This made it easier to get through some of the details we got stuck on or disagreed on.

EB: Do you have a further fiction collaboration in mind?

MR & JY: We’ve finished another mystery, FIRE SEASON, set in Southern California, about a couple who moves across the country for a fresh start, only to encounter a dead body on a nearby trail who turns out to be someone with connections to long-buried secrets of the past. And we’re also working on another, set in the San Juan Islands in north Washington State, near the Canadian border.

EB: Thanks for talking with us. I really enjoyed Devils Island.

MR & JY: Thank you!

 

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An Interview with Victor Lodato, author of Honey

Victor Lodato (photo by François Robert)

Victor Lodato is a novelist, playwright, and poet. His first novel, Mathilda Savitch, was called “a Salingeresque wonder” by The New York Times and won the PEN USA Award for Fiction. Victor’s second novel, Edgar and Lucy, was called “a riveting and exuberant ride” by Cynthia D’Aprix-Sweeney in The New York Book Review.

Victor Lodato has received fellowships from The National Endowment for the Arts, The Princess Grace Foundation, The Camargo Foundation in France, and The Bogliasco Foundation in Italy, and he has been a Guggenheim Fellow. His work has been translated into eighteen languages, and his stories have been published in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Granta, and Best American Short Stories.

His most recent novel is Honey, published in 2024 by HarperCollins.

Mona Awad, author of Bunny, called it a “a brilliant feat of empathy, style, and transcendent beauty,” and Javier Zamora, the New York Times bestselling author of Solito, calls the book’s protagonist Honey Fasinga “fierce, complicated, and out-of-this-world sharp both inside and out.”

Victor Lodato lives in Ashland, Oregon and Tucson, Arizona.

Ed Battistella: Congratulations on Honey, which I really enjoyed. What was it like for you to write in the voice of an 82-year-old woman? How did you put yourself in Honey’s mind, body, and situation?

Victor Lodato: It’s an interesting question because, in the past, I’ve often written from the perspectives of children. Writing in the voice of a child is very liberating, because I don’t have to pretend that I understand everything about life. I can use a young protagonist as a way to discuss the ways in which the world still baffles me.

Perhaps the leap from child narrators to an octogenarian had to do with the pandemic, which, like many of us, had me taking a hard look at mortality. A few older women from my family died early in the pandemic. And I suppose, in some ways, Honey is a tribute to these women.

Growing up, the men around me were often just these mumbling shadows. When I think about my childhood, the people who come forward into the light are the women. They’re the ones that made me who I am, so it feels very natural for me to write from a female perspective.

EB: Did writing Honey change your perspective about aging, or life, or family?

VL: Honey, for me, is as an avatar of fabulousness—a role model on how to age with vitality and grace. We live in an ageist society, and I was interested in portraying an older person who comes across almost as a kind of superhero. In many ways, through Honey, I give the working-class women of my family the life they could never have achieved due to their lack of education and social status.

EB: This is your second novel set in New Jersey, and Edgar and Florence Fini of Edgar and Lucy play a role here. Should we be looking forward to more books set in Ferryfield, NJ?

VL: It’s very possible. As a novelist, I feel like my trajectory has been different than that of many other novelists, who seem to draw from their own lives in their first books. I grew up in New Jersey but set my first book in New England. It seems that with each subsequent novel of mine, I move closer to home. Time and distance, I suppose, have allowed me to see the past more clearly, and therefore to more effectively write about it.

EB: There were a lot of times as I was reading where I stopped to marvel over a sentence, like “In a bid for decorum, she moved slowly, a bride stalking the altar,” just to name one. What’s your revision process like? Did you continually go back and revise sentences again and again until they are just so?

VL: When I’m working on a novel, the rhythm of the sentences is essential to me.  It’s not about music for music’s sake, but rather a way of tapping into the movement of a particular mind, a particular way of being.  So, yes, I do work very hard, revising often, to get things just right.

EB: Early in the book, when her grandnephew Michael visits, Honey thinks that the new generation lacks even a “pretense of civility.” It seems to me that Honey struggled to balance civility and responsibility with an escape into melancholy. Did you have that tension in mind for her?

VL: As I came to understand Honey as a character, I did see that as an interesting tension. She’s getting older, and she’s had a hard life in many ways—and so, as the book begins, she’s wondering: does she want to be done with “this pageant of tomfoolery called life” and throw in the towel, or does she want to continue to fight for what she believes is right and for what she desires?

Another interesting aspect of her character, I think, is the tension between her fury and her compassion. Throughout her life, Honey has attempted, by way of various spiritual disciplines, to rise above her anger about the past, and to find equanimity. For much of her adult life, Honey believes that she’s worked out all her anger; but when, after many years, she comes home to see her family, and witnesses how much toxic masculinity remains, she realizes that she’s still furious. Honey’s challenge is whether to forgive and forget, or to say enough and finally raise her fist. The book considers the limits of compassion in a violent world.

EB: I particularly liked how you had Honey both adopt a new family and come to terms with her actual relatives. Is family something to be created or endured?

VL: Honey’s story of escaping New Jersey and reinventing herself through art is sort of my story, too. I feel like it’s hard to write a novel that isn’t about a family, whether it’s a biological one or a created one. Most of us have two families—the one we’ve come from, and the one we’ve created. We’re always part of two worlds, and this makes for interesting humans—and for interesting characters.

EB: Art was a different sort of escape for Honey and I wanted to ask about Nathan’s art. Was his work, the large painting with the child witnessing the dog attack, based on a particular painting you’d seen?

VL: No. All of Nathan’s art is imaginary—paintings I made in my mind. To give you some background on my relationship to visual art, I should tell you that I’ve lived with a painter, on and off, for about thirty-five years. Art has long been a part of my life. The painter that I live with is color blind, and so when he brings a painting home from the studio, I’m often the seeing-eye dog. He’ll say, “Look at this, what do you think?” and I’ll say, “Well, there’s a lot of green right here. If you mean the face to be green, that’s fine.” He’ll say, “No, I didn’t mean it to be green. Show me exactly where the green is.”

EB: Let me ask about the ending. When did the ending come to you? Did you have it in mind when you began the book or did it emerge along the way as Honey’s character developed?

VL: Another great question. The ending came to me late in the process. In earlier drafts, the novel ended on what is now the penultimate chapter. But it kept bugging me, this way—and I realized that it was because I had given the wrong character the final scene. The way the book ends now is more emotionally satisfying, I think; it also completes the dramatic arc of the story more effectively.

EB: Thanks for talking with us.

VL: Thanks, Ed. It’s always a pleasure to speak with you.

 

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