There was some kind of trouble with the horses.

I knew this because part one of the novel is called “Trouble with the Horses.” Indeed, by the time I had finished reading the first two pages, I had learned quite a lot—considering the limited number of words there—about certain troubles involving certain horses. And then, to underscore what I had learned, the narrator of The Sisters Brothers ends his initial, little, two-page section by informing me, “This was the trouble with the horses.”

I had to admit—the situation RE the horses did seem troublesome. And in more ways than one.

But so as not to spoil the read for you, let’s talk more generally about The Sisters Brothers. What a delightful title, for a delightful novel, with a delightful cover!

The title refers to the two main characters: brothers whose last name is Sisters. Ha!

The novel is a literary Western. It’s set in 1851, in Oregon Territory and California, during the gold rush; but this is no ordinary shoot-’em-up. It’s too quirky, too comical, too ironic, and too sweet. Ha!

The cover of my paperback copy shows a daguerreotype, circa 1852, titled Portrait of two young men. The two are wearing the old-fashioned suits and hats of the era and holding weapons and glasses of hard liquor. It’s a stunning image, but its most interesting feature is the blood-stained bullet hole in one of the young men’s vests. The Wild West, indeed. Ha!

Though it’s a stunning and historically authentic cover, the image doesn’t match the descriptions of the characters in the book. But that’s all right with me. What sits less well with me is the sticker.

Upon pulling the book from the bookstore shelf, I noticed a circular sticker on the cover that read “SOON TO BE A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE.” This, from my irredeemably literary perspective, was something of a turn-off. However, I persevered in buying the book, since I had read good things about it and its author, Patrick deWitt.

Upon arriving home, I peeled off the sticker: and, lo and behold, guess what was underneath? A circular icon that read “SHORTLISTED for the MAN BOOKER PRIZE.” Whoa—now we’re talking! That’s my favorite literary award! The book would have been a shoo-in for my cart (that is, my arms), had it been visible. But such is our world, that the preferred advertisement for a book is not its recognition by a highly regarded literary award, but its transformation into a new work, in another art form, that may well turn out to be so different from the original as to hardly merit the same title.

That being said, the reading experience was cinematic. It is a book that is eminently worthy, in my opinion, of both prestigious awards and Hollywood.

Have you had any trouble with horses lately?

The inquisitive one dug some sunchokes out of the ground, washed the dirt off, and placed them on a cutting board.

Well, you can guess the rest of the story.

A few weeks ago, a reader of this blog sent me the following message:

I very much appreciate the question, and I would like to attempt an answer today. For a long time after receiving this message, I could not think of how to answer it in less than a full-length book. Mounting a comprehensive defense of the humanities would result in a huge (and probably staggeringly boring!) treatise.

I would have to go through each discipline—not just literature, philosophy, and history, but also visual art, linguistics, religious studies, theater, women’s studies, modern and ancient languages, classics, music, anthropology, et cetera—and detail all the ways in which they are useful to humankind. Yes, dear reader, listen to me spout forth: communication skills are essential to maintaining healthy relationships and sharing ideas with others; and art provides a bulwark against existential despair and empowers the disenfranchised; and studying the past sheds a powerful light on the present and future; and philosophical and religious ideas help people think about old dilemmas in new ways; and so on.

I am yawning already!—not because these topics aren’t interesting, but because the humanities don’t need justification at this juncture in history. Their worth was established long, long ago. Think of the flourishings of Ancient Greece and, later, the European Renaissance, as well as flourishings of art and technology in non-Western civilizations. Great cultural moments bring together advancements in both the arts and the sciences: they have always gone hand in hand. As a result, most of today’s great universities still combine these foundational disciplines into one large “college of arts and sciences.”

We may as well mount a shiny new defense for the roundness of the earth, or the evolution of species, or the dangers of smoking, or the virtues of calling your mother every once in a while.

Don’t get me wrong; these things all needed to be defended, at some point. And we should not take their defense for granted. If there is a serious debate going on about whether it’s virtuous to call your mother every once in a while, and there are complicating facts and factors on both sides of the argument, and the best scholars in the world are concerned with getting to the bottom of this issue—why then, by all means, mount your defense! Write that treatise!

But here’s what I suspect is really going on, behind the scenes of your question. It’s not our society’s foremost thinkers who are debating the usefulness of the humanities. It’s your bitter uncle Rusty who tries to engage people in false debates during family gatherings, so he can prove what a deep thinker he is. It’s muckraking radio commentators who make a living getting people riled up about nonissues, while ignoring the truly important questions. (Getting to the bottom of the important questions might cause some tycoon to lose money.)

One summer break when I was an undergraduate, I went hiking with some friends from high school. Enamored with the beauty of the swampy, forested area through which we were walking, on a cute wooden platform, and thinking about my indecision about whether to major in biology or English, I suddenly cried out, “Oh, I’d love to know the names of every one of these plants!”

One of my friends, who was studying engineering, replied, “That’s stupid! What good would knowing the names do? The important thing is to know what the plants are useful for. Their names are irrelevant, and learning them would be a waste of time.”

As the insecure young woman I was at the time, I had no reply. I was stunned. I felt ashamed for having said the wrong thing (though I shouldn’t have). But I did make one good decision in the aftermath of the event: I stopped hanging out with that person. In retrospect, I think that’s the best decision I could have made. What was I supposed to do, mount a defense for the existence of language?

Interestingly enough, this brings me back to Brené Brown. Here is what she writes in Dare to Lead about judging others:

“Based on research, there are two ways to predict when we are going to judge: We judge in areas where we’re most susceptible to shame, and we judge people who are doing worse than we are in those areas. So if you find yourself feeling incredibly judgmental about appearance, and you can’t figure out why, that’s a clue that it’s a hard issue for you.”

So what was going on with my friend? I suspect, based on what I know about his background, that he was under constant, intense pressure while growing up. He was expected to work part time while in high school to help support his family, and also to perform at a high academic level so he could get a scholarship to a good college and work toward a degree that would guarantee him a high-paying job. Meanwhile, there I was, a walking, talking placard for the arts, whose daddy was paying her way through an expensive school, just so she could dither around in indecisiveness about whether or not to major in literature. From his perspective, I probably seemed to be doing worse than him in the area of striving to get a high-paying job; and he probably felt insecure about his ability to measure up and actually one day get that job. So he made his judgmental remark about language.

If you know someone who looks down on the humanities, try not to take it personally. It’s not about you. It’s not even about the humanities. It’s about a fear of not measuring up.

If Uncle Rusty tries to engage you in any more “friendly debates,” it’s important to tell him clearly to stop, or else you won’t hang out with him anymore. Then stick to that. My story about my high school friend is only the least dramatic of instances in my life where I had to take that hard line—even with people very close to me. I learned the hard way, unfortunately, that not setting such boundaries is detrimental to my physical and mental health.

This might seem harsh, but as someone who reads and writes for both a vocation and an avocation, and who, as a result, both earns money to live on and enjoys the benefits of art and creativity and communication and curiosity, I can’t let people try to shame me into thinking that what I do is not worthwhile. If I had to spend all my time continually justifying the value of the humanities, and the rising of the sun in the east, and the whiteness of snow, and the aliveness of Elvis (well, maybe not that one!)—I wouldn’t get anything else done. Let’s not waste our time rehashing the logic behind old truths that everyone already agrees with, deep down, underneath the screen of fear.

Of course, if Uncle Rusty wants to ask you a genuine question about your humanistic pursuits (your writing, your philosophical ideas, what you learned from the last history book you read, etc.), and listen to your answer, and perhaps share with you something he’s passionate about, that’s different. In that case—let’s get this party started, Unc!

Do you have a question you would like me to answer in a blog post? If so, send it to me in a private message. Thanks again to the author of today’s question!

The following is a true story about if vs whether grammar pitfalls that can happen in business communications.

The First Email

A few weeks ago, one of the leaders of the company I work for sent all employees an email announcing an upcoming company event and listing possible dates on which it might be held. The leader also wrote this:

“Please let me know if you have any known conflicts.”

This sentence, being an “if statement,” is equivalent to the following:

This type of statement expresses a logical condition. If this, then that. Conditional statements say nothing about instances in which the condition is false, only about instances in which the condition is true.

I checked my calendar and ascertained that I did not have any known conflicts. Thus—according to the grammar of the sentence—the rest of the statement (about letting the leader know) did not apply. I figured that the leader did not want an inbox full of emails saying “I have no known conflicts.” The leader wanted to know only about cases in which there were conflicts, thus avoiding superfluous emails.

So I did not reply. I wasn’t—I swear!—just pretending not to understand the sentence, to prove what an awesomely fastidious grammar queen I am. I really thought I was doing what was wanted of me.

The Second Email

A week later, the leader sent out a second email:

“Just a reminder that we would like to know if you have any known conflicts. . . . If you’ve already replied – thanks and no need to send again.”

Like the sentence in the first email, these sentences, grammatically, indicate conditions:

I did not have any known conflicts, so the rest of the first sentence did not apply to me. I also had not already replied, so the rest of the second sentence did not apply to me, either. Strictly speaking, then, there was no need to reply.

Analysis: Should the Leader Have Used If or Whether?

However, being the twenty-first-century English speaker that I am, I know that the word if is commonly colloquially used in place of the word whether. Unlike if, which indicates that there is a condition with only one option (only one “then” to follow the “if”), whether indicates that there are two options (and does not indicate a condition).

If the leader had, in fact, mistakenly used if instead of whether, the sentence in the first email would be equivalent to this:

This statement is not conditional, and it indicates two options. No matter which instance is true—whether I have any known conflicts or don’t have any known conflicts—I should let the leader know.

The second email is trickier. If the leader had mistakenly used if instead of whether in both sentences, we would get this:

The first statement expresses the same thing as in the first email when if was changed to whether (i.e., I should reply no matter what). The second statement does not make sense. If you have not already replied, it is not possible to do so again. This statement doesn’t make sense because the leader was expressing a condition, and so if was, indeed, the correct word choice. To avoid confusion, whether technically should have been chosen in the other two sentences—that is, if the leader did not intend to express a condition, but rather two options.

That was the conclusion I came to, anyway, upon receiving the second email. So I replied. I guess that was an appropriate response, since the leader wrote back to me with “Thank you!”

Note for the Record

I did not, while reading the emails and deciding whether to respond, have intricate thoughts about conditional statements, two options, and so on; my thoughts and actions happened more organically than that. It was only in writing this blog post that I was able to piece together the exact grammatical reasoning behind my comprehension (or lack thereof!) of the emails.

A Little If vs Whether Grammar Quiz

Here’s a little if vs whether grammar quiz. In the following grammatically correct sentence, what is the conditional statement? What is the statement that is not conditional and indicates two options?

It has happened every time. While each of Brené Brown’s books builds upon her earlier ones, and much information is repeated, each successive volume has brought me a great new gift. Each has brought me old gifts: reminders of the secrets I learned previously and perhaps lost sight of, or left unintegrated into my current life. And they bring me new gifts: truths I had not realized before, about human nature and about myself.

I would like to share the best new gift I received from reading Brown’s most recent book, Dare to Lead. It’s a research-based lesson about values, including instructions on figuring out what your own values are. Here’s some information that Brown shares about values:

“We have only one set of values. We don’t shift our values based on context. . . . The research participants who demonstrated the most willingness to rumble with vulnerability and practice courage tethered their behavior to one or two values, not ten.”*

One or two?! That’s not very many. Can you name your one or two core values, off the top of your head? I couldn’t. Sure, I could come up with ten or twenty values that I hold dear; but I had no idea which one or two of them I prioritized—or should prioritize, if I want to stay true to myself.

So Brown’s next move was helpful for me. She provides a list of dozens of values and encourages the reader to circle those to which he or she feels a particularly strong personal connection. I circled 17 of them. Then, she says, force yourself to select the one or two of these that are most essential to who you are. To my surprise, I immediately knew which two they were. It wasn’t nearly as hard as I thought it would be. Brown has posted her list of values online here. I invite you to take these steps for yourself, right now, before reading the rest of this blog post. (She welcomes you to write in your own values if you think of some you like better than the ones listed.)

Did you do it? Did you learn something about yourself? Here’s what Brown says she learned about herself upon doing the exercise (she always does what she asks her readers to do):

“My two central values are faith and courage. I hated not circling ‘family.’ But as I dug in, I realized that while my family is the most important thing in my life, my commitment to them is fueled by my faith and courage.”

Something similar happened to me. My two core values are truth and wisdom. I hated not circling “creativity.” But I realized that, for me, being creative is not an end in itself. I don’t engage in creative writing for its own sake, but in the service of truth and wisdom. (Another creative writer might feel differently about this, and that’s okay!) I also hated not circling “curiosity”—but again, my curiosity is due to my search for truth and wisdom, not the other way around.

It was also a profound experience to think about the difference between truth and wisdom. I truly could not choose one or the other of these values; for me, they are intertwined like yin and yang. Seeking the truth can be a lonely—even toxic—endeavor, if not tempered by wisdom. And seeking wisdom can lead one astray, if not tempered by truth. Truth is facts; wisdom is knowing how to act in light of those facts.

At this point in Dare to Lead, Brown provides further information about values, as well as more exercises for the reader to do. Her goal is to help the reader not only identify his or her one or two core values, but also act in ways that are consistent with those values. I found all of this immensely useful, as well: do check it out if you get a chance.

What are your one or two core values? Tell me which ones you selected, if you feel comfortable sharing them. I’m so curious to know which ones you chose!

*Rumble with vulnerability is Brené Brown-speak for having hard conversations in which you put yourself out there and express yourself honestly, while being openhearted and generous with your interlocutor(s).