Sherman Alexie

Grammar’s important to good writing in the same way appropriate dress and personal hygiene are important to interpersonal relationships: if someone is oddly dressed or in need of a wash, it may be hard to penetrate the facade to find the person. Similarly, if grammar is off, it may be difficult to understand what is being written.

But good grammar without good ideas is not worth anyone’s time, which is why I’m always happy when good writing is shown by science to be chock full of good ideas.

While Shakespeare lacked the math to calculate a Lorentzian coordinate transformation, he would have felt right at home with Einstein’s relativistic understanding of  how space and time are linked, an idea that Rosalind explains to Orlando in As You Like It, Act 3, Scene 2, when she tells him how time varies in the forest: “. . . Time travels in divers paces with divers persons. I’ll tell you who Time ambles / withal, who Time trots withal, who Time gallops / and who he stands still withal.”

And now we have confirmation in The New York Times, 2/15/2011, that Sherman Alexie captured essential truths about bullies in The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. The best friend of Arnold Spirit, Jr., the narrator and hero of this memoir-novel, is Rowdy, a bully who beats up everyone, including Junior. But when Junior leaves the reservation to attend Reardan High School, he’s ridiculed by a group of bullies led by Roger, “the Giant” (64).

Since Junior has already instructed us in the 11 Spokane Indian Rules of Fisticuffs (61-62), we know that a fight is inevitable when Roger says to Junior the most racist thing that Junior has ever heard in his life. So Junior knocks Roger on his ass.

“‘You punched me,’ Roger said. His voice was thick with blood. ‘I can’t believe you punched me’” (65).

But then Roger surprises Junior by not retaliating, thus violating the Spokane Indian rules, which is surprising even though Roger is white.

As Roger walks away, Junior calls out in confusion:

“Wait,” I called after Roger.

“What do you want?” Roger asked.

“What are the rules?”

“What rules?”

I didn’t know what to say, so I just stood there red and mute like a stop sign. Roger and his friends disappeared.

I felt like somebody had shoved me into a rocket ship and blasted me to a new planet. I was freaky alien and there was absolutely no way to get home.

According to the article by Tara Parker-Pope in The NY Times that reports on research done at UC Davis, Roger is following  rules that specify how bullying is used to increase status to a point but shouldn’t be taken too far lest the bully lose status, the reasoning being that if one is already at the top, as Roger is, one has less to prove. Rowdy, on the other hand, is at the bottom of the status pyramid and has nothing to lose by taking his bullying too far:

Highly publicized cases of bullying typically involve chronic harassment of socially isolated students, but the latest studies suggest that various forms of teenage aggression and victimization occur throughout the social ranks as students jockey to improve their status.

The findings contradict the notion of the school bully as maladjusted or aggressive by nature. Instead, the authors argue that when it comes to mean behavior, the role of individual traits is “overstated,” and much of it comes down to concern about status.

“Most victimization is occurring in the middle to upper ranges of status,” said the study’s author, Robert Faris, an assistant professor of sociology at U.C. Davis. “What we think often is going on is that this is part of the way kids strive for status. Rather than going after the kids on the margins, they might be targeting kids who are rivals.”

Educators and parents are often unaware of the daily stress and aggression with which even socially well-adjusted students must cope.

. . .

The researchers used . . . data to construct complex social maps of the schools, tracking groups of friends and identifying the students who were consistently at the hub of social life. “It’s not simply the number of friends the kid has, it’s who their friends are,” Dr. Faris said. “The kids we’re talking about are right in the middle of things.”

Using the maps, the researchers tracked the students most often accused of aggressive behavior. They found that increases in social status were associated with subsequent increases in aggression. But notably, aggressive behavior peaked at the 98th percentile of popularity and then dropped.

“At the very top you start to see a reversal — the kids in the top 2 percent are less likely to be aggressive,” Dr. Faris said. “The interpretation I favor is that they no longer need to be aggressive because they’re at the top, and further aggression could be counterproductive, signaling insecurity with their social position.