In response to queries from Allen Esterson:
> Beth wrote:
> >So I recommend that Stephen Black tell the library to keep the
> >order for Slater's book. I think it's going to be an interesting read
> >and not the piece of trash we've been led to expect.
>
> Hey, Beth, I don't recall anyone saying Slater's book is a piece of trash,
> only that it evidently contains errors and that one should read it with
> considerable caution, a view I came to on the basis of reading/hearing
> extensive extracts from the book before I'd read a single word of
> criticism of it. (See my previous message on this.)
True, using that phrase probably demonstrated my American infatuation with
hyperbole, and "trash" was inserted by me alone.
> Beth, you quote Slater's writing, "This much we presume we know:.[.]", but
> I don't see any specific disowning of the account she presented (above).
> Can you confirm that she did so? ("This whole thing has gotten woefully
> out of hand" is obviously completely inadequate for that purpose.)
Slater disowns the fabricated account several times throughout the chapter.
Early in the chapter she writes how she typed "B. F. Skinner" into a search
engine and got thousands of hits, much of it trash (there's that hyperbole
of mine again) but also including one about Deborah Skinner, with a picture
of her, and Deborah's words:
"'My name is Deborah Skinner,' the caption read, 'and my suicide is a
myth. I am alive and well. The box is not what is seems. My father is
not what he seems. He was a brilliant psychologist, a compassionate parent.
I write to dispel the legends.'
"Legends. Stories. True tales. Tall tales. Perhaps the challenge of
understanding Skinner's experiments will be primarily discriminatory,
separating content from controversy, a sifting through. Writes psychologist
and historian John A. Mills, '[Skinner] was a mystery wrapped in a riddle
wrapped in an enigma.'
"I decided to wade in, slowly."
Slater then interviews Bryan Porter, "an experimental psychologist" who
clarifies Deborah's "doing fine, really."
Then she connects with Skinner's other daughter, Julie Vargas, a professor
of education at the University of West Virginia:
"My sister is alive and well," she says. I have not, of course, even
asked her this, but it's clear many others have; it's clear the question
tires her; it's clear she knows that every query about her family begins and
ends in the sordid spots, bypassing entirely the work itself.
"I saw her picture on the Web," I say.
"She's an artist," Julie says. "She lives in England."
"Was she close to your father?" I say.
"Oh, we both were," Julie says, and then she pauses, and I can
practically feel things pushing against the pause - memories, feelings, her
father's hands on her head - "I miss him terribly...He had a way with
children," she says. "He loved them...He used to make us kites, box kites
which we flew on Monhegan, and he took us to the circus every year and our
dog, Hunter, he was a beagle and Dad taught him to play hide and seek. He
could teach anything, so our dog played hide and seek and we also had a cat
that played the piano, it was a world," she says, "...those kites."
Julie then goes on to tell Slater:
"You know, if my father made one mistake, it was in the words he chose.
People hear the word 'control' and they think fascist...He was a pacifist.
He was a child advocate. He did not believe in ANY punishment because he
saw firsthand with the animals how it didn't work. My father is responsible
for the repeal of the corporal punishment ruling in California, but no one
remembers him for that."
I think that if Slater herself made one mistake, it was that she chose the
wrong words, inserted the suggestion of this silly myth, and in an awkward
way worded her description of how others think it. She even suggested at
first that there was a hint of something fishy in Porter's description. But
then she meets with Julie Vargas, they go to the house where Skinner died,
and Slater makes it clear she understands she's in the presence of
brilliance and history.
In the end, Slater denies that the story is true three different times: in
her early Web search, after talking to Porter, and after talking to Julie
Skinner Vargas.
So I hope this clears up Slater's name, at least on TIPS. There IS a lot of
literary self-insertion in the story, but that's the way Slater writes. She
brings her own history to her writing, and readers who are familiar with her
writing expect this. She is not writing a third-person biography of
Skinner, but rather just describing what her experience was when trying to
find out the story of Skinner.
Beth Benoit
University System of New Hampshire
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