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Between Cisco and Sujud: Earning Your Livelihood, Taking Benefit from the Corporate Lifestyle
A Lecture by Suhaib Webb | Transcribed by Fuseina Mohamad
Allah mentions the ruling on seeking a livelihood at the end of Surah Al Jumu`ah, "And when the prayer has been concluded, disperse within the land and seek from the bounty of Allah, and remember Allah often that you may succeed." (Qur'an, 62:10) After you have finished the prayer, go search out the fadl (blessings) of Allah. Here this means work, as in a livelihood. The ulema (scholars) said that seeking a livelihood could have the following rulings:
- Waajib (obligatory) for somebody who has to, fulfill the basic needs of life
- Recommended for someone who is not sure about his livelihood: does he have enough to make ends meet? It may be that seeking another job is recommended.
- Makrooh (discouraged); if the person doubts that what he or she is doing is halal (permissible) or haraam (forbidden)
- Haram (forbidden); if somebody seeks a livelihood from the forbidden things which Allah and His Messenger salla Allahu `alayhi wa sallam (may Allah bless him and grant him peace) prohibited or it is earned in a way that harms others.
But the general ruling on seeking a livelihood is ibaha (permissibility) or waajib. For someone who has to seek a livelihood to fulfill the basic needs of life, this is an obligation on the person.
The Proof for this is the statement of Allah,
"And it is He who created every thing upon the earth for you."
Umar (radi Allahu `anhu – may Allah be pleased with him) one day came into the masjid of the Prophet (s) and found two young people, young men. They were sitting in the masjid of the Prophet (s). He asked them, "What do you do?"
They said, "We are from those people who worship Allah."
Umar (r) said to them, "No, where do you work?"
They said to him, "We don't work. We're just righteous people who just make dhikr (remembrance) of Allah. We're alhamdullilah (all praise is due to Allah) those people whom Allah chose to be close to Him."
Then Umar said to them, "Wait one minute." If Umar says to you "wait one minute" that means duck and cover. He came back with a stick and he began to hit them and he said, "Go work somewhere. Go find a job."
So sometimes we find in our Islamic discourse, especially after the age of the righteous generations, when there was a mixture of foreign philosophies with some Islamic theology, that there is the understanding that being a successful person or being someone who works hard to be successful is something that we should be ashamed of. It is not something that we should be proud of – something that we recognize as a blessing from Allah. But Allah says rizq (provisions) al fadl (blessings). In Surah Al Jumu`ah He calls provisions fadl min Allah: "Seek from the blessings of Allah" (62:10), meaning wealth and provisions are from His blessings.
The Prophet (s) said in a sound hadith to Hakeem ibn Hizaam ibn Khuwaylid, "Hakeem, the upper hand is better than the lower hand." We look at the Companions of the Prophet (s). What made them unique people is that they were successful. Many of them were successful in this life and successful with Allah. So, for example, if you take the ten who were promised paradise by the Prophet (s) and implant them in today's society they would be on Forbes' list of the 50 richest people. They were successful people, and because they were successful people they were able to help the Prophet (s) more than anyone else.
The best example is Abu Bakr (r) because his property and his money gave him transcendence, so he was able to free the slaves, he was able to give charity, and he was able to donate to the battles of the Prophet (s). In fact, the day after he became khalifa (caliph), Umar (r) saw him walking to work.
Umar said, "O Abu Bakr, where are you going?"
He said, "I have to work."
Umar said, "You are the khalifa of the Muslims. How are you going to work? You're going to be busy."
Abu Bakr said, "I have to have a livelihood." And this is how the salary of the khalifa was initiated because Abu Bakr still wanted to work.
Abdul Rahman ibn Awf (s), one of the ten promised paradise by the Prophet (s), when he migrated to Medina, as related by Imam Al Bukhari in his collection, came and gave salaams to the Prophet (s) after he arrived in Medina. The Prophet (s) said to him, "Where are you going?"
Abdul Rahman (r) said, "I'm going to the markets." Why? To get busy, to develop some type of sustainable income for himself. The Prophet (s) did not rebuke him. The Prophet (s) did not refute or rebuke him for going to the markets because he knew that Abdul Rahman ibn Awf wanted to get married to an Ansari woman and needed to settle his affairs so we gather from this that that working and making an income is permissible.
Even those people who made hijrah (migrated) to Medina, we see in the Quran and also in the hadith of the Prophet (s) that there was some effort to help of them financially with their hijrah when they arrived in Medina, such that the Ansari who was helping Abdul Rahman ibn Awf said to him, "I will give you one of my houses." They didn't go without any type of economic promise or hope of economic benefits, although they struggled.
One of the reasons that we look at the companions of the Prophet (s), is because they represent the balanced model that we need today. There is the story of the Imam who played soccer and was fired from his position of Imam. So he asked his community why. They said because holy men cannot play soccer.
What kind of understanding do these people have about Islam? Subhan'Allah (glory be to Allah), it's a very strange understanding of Islam. So his job is to eat biryani and mansaf, and die before he's thirty-six because he doesn't exercise? Then we say rahimahu Allah, kana rajulan salihan wa lakinahu kana yakul biryani kathira (may Allah have mercy on him, he was a good man). When he dies we say, "Oh he was a pious man but he ate a lot, masha'Allah."
Maybe we think that the Prophet (s) encouraged poverty when he said "Allahuma ahyini miskeenan, O Allah resurrect me poor." This du`a' (supplication) is sometimes used by people to say that the Prophet (s) discouraged people from seeking a livelihood. But as the Sh. Tahar Rayan taught us, what the Prophet (s) means here is "Resurrect me muftaqiran ilayk (reliant on You)." Resurrect me so that when I am resurrected the only reliance I have is on You. We have the term miskeen which is literally somebody who does not have any property and so on and so forth. But also we have the term miskeen for the one who relies on Allah, trusts in Allah alone, and this is the one the Prophet (s) meant.
What other proofs for this to do we have? The statement of the Prophet (s) when he said the best property is the property of the righteous person. And we have his companion Abu Talha Zaid ibn Sahal when he gave his garden for the sake of Allah. Allah said you will not attain bir (righteousness) until you give from what you love (3:92). Abu Talha said, "I love this garden," so he gave it fi sabil Allah (for the sake of Allah).
Anas ibn Malik, the narrator of this hadith in al-Muwatta, says this was from the most beloved of Abu Talha's property. So Imam al Baji al Maaliki, the great scholar, in al Muntaqa he says that it is acceptable for someone to love his property, though there are conditions for that love. He described one of the greatest companions of the Prophet (s) Abu Talha saying that the most beloved thing to him from his property was the garden, and this wasn't to debase himself but this was to state the reality of that person.
Aisha bint Abu Bakr (radi Allahu `anha – may Allah be pleased with her) used to love to wear under her jilbab a red saffron colored dress. She used to like this color because it was a beautiful color. Sometimes we think that the companions of the Prophet were walking around in rags because they wanted to. No, the poverty of the Prophet (s) and the poverty of his companions was due to circumstance, not choice.
Imam Abdul Rahman ibn Al Jawzi al Hanbali had a very strong, very sharp tongue. He said, "Those extreme people if they knew that the Prophet loved to wear the Yemeni dress (which is a very comfortable type of dress) and he loved nice perfume and he loved sweetmeat, if they knew this they would apostate and leave Islam." He said because they made Islam so difficult they would not be able to fathom how the Prophet lived his life very simply.
As ibn Qayim mentions in Zad al Ma'ad—a four volume masterpiece about the Prophet—he said the Prophet (s) was very simple. Whatever somebody gave him, he would wear it as long as it was not something forbidden by Allah.
Among the great students of the companions of the Prophet (s) some of them were poor because of circumstance and some of them were rich. A good example is the grandfather and the father of Imam Maalik. They were people who had good wealth. Imam Maalik used to wear the clothes of a king when he related hadith. He would send his servants to the people and they would ask them, "Do you want to learn hadith or Islamic law?" They would say to him or her, "We want to learn Islamic law." Then Imam Maalik would come out immediately. But if they said, "We want to learn from the hadith of the Prophet," Imam Maalik would go make ghusl, put on 'ud (incense), put on the best clothes he had, then come and teach hadith.
People actually used to chastise him. Some ascetic people wrote him letters and they said to him, "Why are you dressed like that? Why do you look nice? You should be more pious, you should be like this…"
And his response is interesting. He said, "What you are doing is khayr (good) and what I am doing is khayr (good). Khalas (finished), leave me alone."
Many of us know Imam Abu Hanifa as a teacher and a faqih (expert in Islamic jurisprudence) who used to relate hadith on behalf of the Prophet. But if you wanted to buy silk in the city of Abu Hanifa the best place to buy silk was his shop that he ran with his brother. So even though he was an Imam he still had his business; he still made money to be sufficient.
Imam Ahmed ibn Hanbal once was asked, "If somebody has a hundred thousand dinar can he be from the people of zuhud, can he be a pious person?"
Imam Ahmed, who was the strictest of the four as far as being a person of zuhud (asceticism), said yes as long as the person doesn't put love for that money in his heart. And this is a strict person.
Imam Ahmed also noted that the qualties of a mufit are five; one of them is that he should earn enough to keep himself self sufficient.
al-Shaf'i used to say, "If I'm busy with the basal (onions), I cannot think about the masail (issues at hand)."
Imam Abu Hamad al Ghazaali, who died 505 after hijri, many times people see him as the archetype of the ascetic personality. But once he lamented, "Ya salaam! (O peace!) There are some people, they made everything haraam and everything difficult on the people until the only thing that you can find halal to eat, if you follow the opinion of these people, is the grass on the ground." And then he chastised them. He said, "What is wrong with these people? Why did they make the religion this way?"
So the question is what is zuhud? What does it mean to be a person who is a zaahid? And how can we gain this understanding of az-zaahid? Is it a condition related to the physical or to the internal?
As with most of the scholars, ibn Qayim mentioned, in Madarij al Salikin and others, zuhud doesn't necessarily have to do with how much you have, but zuhud deals with how you handle what you have. Being in corporate America and working in corporate America has nothing to do with your piety. It has nothing to do with your piety. The Prophet (s) said that taqwa (piety) is here, pointing to his heart.
Some people came to me and they said, "Oh you are much more pious than us."
I said, "Why?"
"Because you sit in the office all day and you read books, and you don't go out, and you don't mix with this and that. Masha'Allah."
I said, "That's not piety, man, that's luck. That's qadr (Allah's decree)."
But the scholars used to say something interesting about Umar ibn Abdul Aziz. They said that they respect Umar ibn Abdul Aziz more because he had the propensity to do wrong and he did not do it. He had the chance to do wrong and he did not do it. That's why Umar ibn Abdul Aziz is respected more than others. Those zuhadaa, those people who used to sit in their offices away from the people, they said, "By Allah we respect Umar more then we respect ourselves." Why? Because he had temptations in front of him and he controlled himself and left the evil things for the sake of Allah.
Another point is where did the Prophet's companions settle after the time of Umar (r)? Umar kept them in Medina, but after the time of Umar (r), the majority of the companions of the Prophet went where? To the caves? To the mountains? They went to the major urban centers of the world: Kufa (Iraq), Basra (Iraq), Sham (Syria), Masr (Egypt). They went all over the world to the major cities, except for a few of them, and they engaged the people. That's how Islam spread. And when they went to those places were Muslims the majority or the minority? Nobody ever thinks about this. Islam was still a minority, but they functioned within the society, brought benefit to the society, and by them, the Companions of the Prophet, Islam spread. By dealing with the people. By engaging the people.
And that's why when Umar was asked who is the best person: the one who flees from the people or the one who mixes with the people, he said the one who mixes with the people. He said the one who mixes with the people are those Allah has tested.
So my point is, sometimes I notice that people feel an inferiority complex because they are in a professional field. Wallahi (by Allah) you should not feel this way. Your example, all of you, is like those Yemenis who went to Malaysia. How did they spread Islam in Malaysia? It was through business. Through dealing with the people, engaging with the people. We are not going to spread Islam through an Imam who sits in an office. Islam is not going to be presented to the people in America if a reporter comes to one of our religious leaders in the community and interviews him on TV and he says, "Islam means peace. Muslims are good people. We don't do anything wrong, we're a constitutional religion," and so on and so forth, and they have no one to talk to or to see. So, by Allah, to some degree I envy you, because you're able to interact with the people.
14 Comments
Jazak Allah khyran …it is such a beautiful atricle ..
hope it will be applied in the middle east espcially in Egypt..
also i would be grateful if you post some creative means or approaches for da'wa
it will help us alot esp. in our College …. -
jazak'Allahukhayrn for the transcript…
I just wondered if anyone knew about the rulings or permissibility of women working..
Some say that if there is no need to work then they shouldn't be in the work place at all. That even in some fields like medicine there will always be other women working so the practicing sisters don't need to do it (I'm referring to living in the west and working).
Personally I find work a valuable means by which I interact with many non muslims and by showing them I'm a caring, honest health professional it speaks volumes even though I'm wearing hijaab and jilbaab.Since my children came along I have managed to reduce my hours to just two sessions a week alhamdulillah and that way it doesn't interfere with domestic responisibilites.
Asalamu alaykum,
Scholars noted that if the Prophet (sa) witnessed an action and did not forbade it, nor openly encouraged it, then it is considered permissible.
Scholars differed concerning a woman working:
1. Some held that it was permissible in the face of a necessity. This is based on the fact that the daughter of Shu'aib went for water and said, "Our father is an old man."
2. Other's held it to be permissible based on the number of reports that the wives of the Companions worked outside their homes. A common example is the sound narration of Asmah, the daughter of Abu Bakr, when she was carrying water on her head the Prophet did not censure her.
Both groups of scholars agree on some general conditions:
1. Her husband/wali's approval (unless her situation is such that she must work)
2. The potential income is not haram, or the work place haram
3. She is not put in a situation where she would compromise her faith or morals
4. She is not alone with a strange man
5. It would not harm her family and her responsibilities at homeAllah knows best
Alhumdulillah, great lecture Shaykh
luvs it. can't wait for part 2! pls transcribe all ur talks. thanx
This is a great post that should be shared with every Muslim in America. And few scholars take on this topic with such honesty and fidelity to the texts of Islam and the actions of the Companions, something all khateebs should read before they make statements on the membar that cast down peoples work- it is part of our religion to strive to earn a living!
Jazakum Allah Khair, waiting for part 2
Salam aleikum Shaykh Suhaib,
I read this and it didn't sit well with me. I think at mainly you were talking to Middle Eastern mentality, the messed up free-loader mentality in poverty stricken Muslim countries, and generally speaking to the masses of Muslims. So I can understand the audience you wrote it for, but I have some concerns and questions:
Is Zuhd in Corporate America possible? Is it only possible, as the slant of this article states, when you have wealth? What exactly is faqr? I don't fully understand asceticism but I wonder…did it ever exist in North America? Does it still? Are we better off being rich and thereby trying to improve the image of Islam by pursuing media control? How does that compare to other rich Muslim communities in the ummah, now and in the past?
Overall, this seems to be sending the message there is nothing wrong with piling up wealth and anyone who would try to escape this, well, they are just plain crazy. This seems really biased, and I recognized too many of the narrations, quotes and references, because I've heard them from other American speakers, and that makes me concerned collectively, the shaykhs seem to call to the pursuit of the dunya. From the little I know, extreme poverty is not encouraged, such as begging, but zuhd and poverty is encouraged enough to be sufficient for one's bodily rights and rights the family has upon oneself, i.e. searching for work and pay day to day, and not exceeding that should on day and it be a cause of trial on Yawmul Qiyamah for it.
So returning to my main question:
How can we achieve the reality of zuhd nowadays? Especially considering the make-up of our society and how the economy and employment works…? Labor work comes to mind, yet most Muslims today are educated, professionals…All to often we hear comments about moderation and not going to the extreme, and also of how zuhd is in the heart, one can have it without enduring poverty but I wonder how much pushing this line of thinking is just an excuse poised by shaytan's whispers?P.S. I'm also irked about you encouraging "corporate america" because that is what has resulted in the military-industrial complex that fuels American oppression overseas, the prison-industrial complex which fuels racism, crime and inequities in the system, economic problems, etc. but thats a different discussion for another time.
Assalamualaikum bro,
I'm waiting for the Sheikh's reply to this but was curious what part "[sent] the message there is nothing wrong with piling up wealth and anyone who would try to escape this, well, they are just plain crazy"?
wa alaykum al-salam wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh,
Dear Dawood:
I'm saddened to see someone like yourself rushing to such conclusions. I'm not sure how much, and how well, you read the post? It was not written, as you noted above, nor was it given overseas. It was a speech given in the heart of San Jose, Ca.
I would encourage to read it again, along with part two, and then provide your feedback. I can say without any doubt that you have not understood what was said.
Salam Shaykh Webb,
I know this article is a couple years old, not sure you'll have time to respond.
I was wondering this as well, its something that kind of has been in the back of my head, similar to what Dawood said. Which is like, you were making an analogy that working in corporate America/professional fields is a blessing, cuz similarly thats how islam spread back in the days like in Iraq for example…
But at the same time, what if those companies you are working for and directly/indirectly contributing to mass oppression in Muslim countries? Worldwide riba, etc. Of course Islam is an understanding religion and we can't be hermits, but same time always wondered about this.
Back in the days, I'm (assuming) those places the early Companions went, were not trying to destabilize their own home countries…by being cogs in the wheel aren't we contributing in some way to our own civilizations demise (not that I exactly view it in a 'the clash of civilizations' manner.
Would appreciate some guidance as I feel the inferiority complex which you speak of (if I understood it correctly, feeling alienated from society due to trying to guard oneself from the fitnah)
Thank you for the wonderful website.
Qas: this line really made me question since it is opposite to what I've learned: "No, the poverty of the Prophet (s) and the poverty of his companions was due to circumstance, not choice."
SDW: My mistake, I thought it was written. Should've picked up on that, since Part II sounded much like an old talk of yours.
Tbh, I don't really have a conclusion. I'm just wondering…
My question is basically, just asking about how can the poverty, abandonment of the dunya Sahabas like Abu Dharr al-Ghifari willingly preferred, can be achieved in North America? If you could perhaps address that in the future it would be nice, since this is simply something I am wondering about. You could maybe address it here: http://forums.almaghrib.org/showthread.php?t=38503
3 things our shaykhs rarely ever talk about:
-Jihad (thereby indirectly encouraging terrorism…)
-Zuhd and Poverty (the undeniable type in early Islam)
-Ahlul BaytThere could be many reasons why they don't…but they are major themes in our religion that get very limited discussion- if none at all.
Asalamu alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh,
Again it seems that you are not in touch with many things that are happening on the ground nor have taken a fair look at the body of work many students and scholars are putting out?
-Jihad (thereby indirectly encouraging terrorism…)
A number of concepts from Hijrah to misundestood texts (dar al-Harb and so on) are found here on this site, the Ilm Fest this year dealt with this topic directly, over the last 4 years I recorded a total of around 10 hours of material, presented in front of a large number of Muslims in three different states addressing this and I know that Imam Zaid and others, Dr. Jackson, have as well. We are planning on translating some current fatwa on this in the future.
-Zuhd and Poverty (the undeniable type in early Islam)
It was dealt with in this article below and, unless your forgot, a lecture I did based on the work of Ibn 'Attaullah that you praised, and more recently 2 series of free lectures given here: Muhasibi's text (7 hours) as well as Ibn al-Qayim's ighthat Lafhan. Last year I read Muhasibi's text in almost every halaqa I taught in Egypt.For the correct understanding of zuhd see Ibn al-Qayyims madarij al-salikin as well as muhasib's text mentioned above.
-Ahlul Bayt
You got me on that one. Although I did series on Mothers of the Believers a few years ago, I know that a number of sheikhs have talked about this and witnessed this while back in the states.One thing to remember is that it is always easy to point the finger at others. Know that none of us can handle everything. Perhaps you should take up these important ideas, develope them and work to increase people's unerstandings?
Well, you know a wannabe student of knowledge like me will always ask for more ilm.
Jazaka Allahu khayran for everything.
This resonates with me. I have long thought this, that people who actually go forth and earn a livelihood where they can, or use their talents to fulfil some kind of field of knowledge whether in academia or corporate (yes, in the corporate world there is need for the intellectual) – and you never know which science will turn out to become a fardhu kifayah, that's what 'blue sky' science is for – is the more tested in their faith, as they mingle with non-Muslims, mingle with colleagues from other countries, other towns, have to learn about different issues, compared to people who only work in limited fields, or purposely avoid anything that might cause them to be tested in life and perhaps fail.
I mean, when you get tested more, sometimes you're not going to score well all the time, but that's how you're going to move up to the next grade, you know. Like in school. But that should be ok. You get nowhere if you only take first grade tests your whole life. Right?


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on January 27, 2010 Source: Policy Dialogue on Entrepreneurship
When President Barack Obama called for sweeping new restrictions on the ability of commercial banks to make a variety of investments, some started worrying that the restrictions could include investments in community development venture capital (CDVC) funds.
The Wall Street Journal reported in "Bank Rules Could Sink Community Development VC Funds" that such effect would be ironic at a time when job-creation is at the top of the administration's agenda. "The funds make equity investments, ranging from a few hundred thousands of dollars to a million or two, in companies in low-income urban and rural areas." "Unlike typical venture-backed start-ups that have few employees, these are often manufacturing and service businesses that create much-needed jobs in areas that mainstream VCs tend to ignore," told Kerwin Tesdell, president of the Community Development Venture Capital Alliance (CDVCA) to the WSJ.
The CDVCA announced that it will be working to fashion an exemption for investments made in furtherance of a bank's CRA responsibilities.
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In "What Moves Us," a Tapestry of Faith program
Nothing is so hard as to root out bad passions, to be upright, at whatever the cost, and to be benevolent and charitable under all provocations and difficulties. — William Ellery Channing (1780-1842)
This workshop introduces William Ellery Channing's Theology of Emotional Struggle and invites them to test the relevance of Channing's theological assessment of emotional struggle for our own Unitarian Universalist faith today. Channing has been called "the single most important figure in the history of American Unitarianism" and recognized as the man who gave "the liberal Christians of his day a party platform." He was the celebrated minister of the Federal Street Church in Boston for 39 years, and a renowned man of letters whose essays, sermons, and discourses during the 19th century sold more than a 100,000 copies in Europe and America. Channing affirmed human beings' kindred nature with God; he said we "know God through our own soul;" he celebrated our "likeness to God," and confessed he met "perpetual testimonies to the divinity of human nature." Channing's theology was a rational celebration of our rational nature. We celebrate his legacy to us as part of our rational liberal faith tradition. But we do not often peer behind his rational faith to examine his theological understanding that the route to moral perfection was through control of emotions. Channing believed that our ongoing personal, internal struggle to gain control over our tumultuous emotions, immoral feelings, wanton desires, and inappropriate physical passions strengthened our moral character. Emotional struggle, Channing insisted, was a major way to develop the moral perfection of our character. A spirit founded, in part, on the "crucifixion of selfish affections," Channing insisted, animates the "real beauty of religion" and all its harmonious sentiments, views, and desires. How do we reconcile the extraordinary positive message we take from his celebration of rational human nature as divine with his harsh pronouncements against his own unwanted emotional struggles and his harsh treatment of his own body that made him an invalid for life? What can we learn from Channing's theology of emotional struggle that is informative, insightful, and productive for faith development of our head and our heart today?
Before leading this workshop, review the Accessibility Guidelines for Workshop Presenters found in the program Introduction.
Preparing to lead this workshop
Read the William Ellery Channing entry in the Dictionary of Unitarian and Universalist Biography. Read Handouts 1 and 2 and Leader Resource 2. Use the questions that follow to help you understand the passages in Handout 2 and Leader Resource 2. You may wish to write your responses in your theology journal.
Handout 2
Leader Resource 2
Section I
Selection II
Selection III
For more information contact email@example.com.
This work is made possible by the generosity of individual donors and congregations. Please consider making a donation today.
Last updated on Wednesday, February 20, 2013.
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It's in our own backyard and if you've never visited Lion Country Safari, you're really missing a special local spot. Now, there's one more animal at the facility, a new giraffe. This place really is worth checking out with family and friends. Check out more on the new giraffe from palmbeachpost.com including video by clicking here
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The Recruiter's Role | |
Canceling or Placing a Position on Hold | |
In addition to helping you find the best candidates for your open positions, your Recruiter is also a valuable resource who is available to answer your questions about Vanderbilt policies and procedures and state and national employment requirements. Your Recruiter can offer recommendations and information that will help insure that you are in compliance with the regulations monitored by the Opportunity Development Center (ODC). They may also be considered your doorway to Human Resources, providing contact information and insight into additional services. Don't hesitate to make use of the knowledge and skills that are available to enhance the employment experience for you and your staff.
Quick Summary of Recruitment Procedures
- Hiring Official - Completes PMF and forwards for appropriate signatures. PDQ should also be completed for creating new or reclassifying existing positions.
- Recruiter – Receives PMF, contacts hiring official if clarification of needs is needed, enters position into Recruiting Solutions and posts position on Vanderbilt Jobline
- Recruiter – Screens applications and recommends best candidates for the position to Hiring Official by forwarding candidate information
- Recruiter- Completes SAR for all candidates not forwarded to hiring manager
- Hiring Official– Reviews applications received and schedules interviews with those in whom he/she is interested. Those Hiring Officials who have received Targeted Selection training should discuss with the Recruiter the role the Recruiter will play in the interview process.
- Hiring Official - Redirects candidates who attempt to apply directly to department to complete online application through HR
- Hiring Official - Notifies recruiter if more applications are needed.
- Hiring Official – Notifies candidates in whom he/she is NOT interested that they are no longer being considered for position (email or letter through post)
- Hiring Official - Selects candidate to hire
- Hiring Official – Requests salary recommendation from Recruiter for candidate whom he/she is considering hiring
- Recruiter– Completes salary recommendation – responds with results to Hiring Official
- Hiring Official – Obtains references on candidate including most recent VU supervisor if candidate is current or past employee
- Hiring Official - Notifies Recruiter to begin background check if offer of position to candidate is inevitable
- Recruiter - Obtains signed Background Consent Form from candidate
- Recruiter – Begins background check – notifies Hiring Official with results when completed (if does not pass, Hiring Official moves to next candidate – Recruiter will notify non-eligible candidate)
- Hiring Official or Recruiter – Makes offer to candidate (conditional on results of background and reference checks)
- Hiring Official – Notifies Recruiter of new employee's Start Date
- Hiring Official – sends PAF to payroll, arranges for Orientation for new hire
- Recruiter – Closes position
- Hiring Official – Completes online SAR for all candidates whose applications he/she has received from Recruiter.
- Recruiter – Archives position
- Recruiting cannot begin until a signed PMF has been received by the Recruitment Department
- A copy of the signed PMF will be forwarded to the Hiring Official when it is received by Recruitment
- Applications will automatically be sent to the person initiating the PMF unless otherwise specified on the form. If someone other than the initiator should receive the applications, his/her name should be noted beside "Reports to Staff Position" on the PMF form or written under "Special Requirements" at the bottom of the form.
- The electronic SAR will be listed under the name of the person who receives the applications.
- At the recruiter's discretion, a position may be held from posting until an appropriate job description is provided. Providing your own job description will help ensure that you receive more appropriately qualified applicants and will make your position stand out from others with the same title. It will also limit the applicants sent to you by your recruiter to only those who truly meet the description you provide.
- If a position does NOT have a schedule of 1st shift, Monday-Friday it is advantageous to note the hours and days on the PMF so that they may also be posted with the job description. Doing so may save a great deal of time by deterring candidates who are unwilling to work 2nd or 3rd shifts, part-time or on weekends from applying.
- All open positions must be posted for a minimum of 5 calendar days prior to an offer being made to a candidate. This includes any term or temporary positions that will last for 3 or more days.
- With few exceptions, recruiters will include "Apply-by Dates" on job postings. These dates indicate to the candidates the last day on which applications will be accepted for a position and act as notification to candidates of a limitation to each job opportunity. The Apply-by Date is determined by the Recruiter and is based on past experience of time needed to receive a fair representation of available candidates. Suggestion: If specific conditions exist where the length of posting makes a difference to the Hiring Official, he/she can note on the PMF the number of days the position should be posted (must be at least 5). If at the end of the posting period, an appropriate candidate has not been found, the Apply-by Date can be extended.
- Vanderbilt policies on minimum requirements for any position cannot be changed in the job posting. However, preferences can be listed to your specifications. For example, Vanderbilt requires an Office Assistant IV to have a high school education/GED and 3 years of experience. To this information you could add, "Some college strongly preferred" in order to draw the applicants you want.
- If details within a job posting need to be changed, the 5-day posting requirement must start over.
- For each day that a position is posted, the number of applications received increases. If a Hiring Official fills a position, wants to put one on hold or needs to cancel it, the Recruiter should be notified immediately. This helps keep the Recruiter, candidates and hiring managers up to date on the status of the position as well as maintaining accurate records required by Vanderbilt.
Screening and Viewing Applications
- Applications are screened by recruiters to insure that the Vanderbilt minimum requirements for the position are met by the candidates, that the information available indicates that the candidate has the work ethic valued by Vanderbilt, and that Hiring Officials have access to the best of the candidates without being overwhelmed by applicants who are not qualified for the position, not eligible for hire, or not a "top" candidate. Suggestion: If the applications you receive are "missing the mark," tell your Recruiter! The better the Recruiter's understanding is of your needs, the smoother the process is for everyone involved.
- Most candidates will include resumes with their applications. However, not all will do so. If you find a blank resume attached to the e-mail sent to you by your Recruiter, try opening the second attachment that should also be included. It will be a copy of the completed application and will have information about past work experience and education. Surprisingly, it is often in-house candidates that do not include a resume and they are often the most qualified for open positions.
- Additional information about any candidate is often available in the body of the email that you receive from your Recruiter. Before going straight to the resume, scroll down the email page to view references, interview notes, and/or brief notes directly to you from your Recruiter. This information can often make a significant difference in your understanding of the candidate.
- After reviewing the resumes referred by the Recruiter, Hiring Officials who have completed the Targeted Selection training should contact their Recruiter with the names of those candidates they wish to interview. The Recruiter will then conduct an interview with each of these candidates using the Targeted Selection method of interviewing. The Hiring Official and the Recruiter should discuss the dimensions to be covered by the Recruiter. Results of the Recruiter's interviews will be forwarded to the Hiring Official with further discussion occurring as needed.
- At the Hiring Official's request, Recruiters will provide or arrange for a salary recommendation for any candidate. A copy of the candidate's resume and the position for which they are being considered will be needed by the Recruiter to perform this function.
- Salary recommendations are based on education, experience and job requirements in addition to the internal equity of the department and University/Medical Center as a whole. Quality of skills, experience and education is also considered. Based on these factors, the Recruiter will provide a salary range within which the Hiring Manager can decide upon an offer for the candidate. If a recommendation does not meet the salary a Hiring Official would like to offer a candidate, possible changes in the recommendation should be discussed with your recruiter.
- Specific steps for completing electronic SARs can be found at http://hr-test.vanderbilt.edu/temp/toolbox/SAR.htm
- The completion of Self-Audit Reports (SARs) is required by ODC and used as evidence that the hiring practices mandated by the government have been followed and meet EOE and Affirmative Action requirements. Neglecting to meet this requirement could result in restrictions, large fines, or ultimately, the loss of funding.
- The department is responsible for completing an SAR for every application/resume that the department views. To ensure that all recruitment and hiring requirements are met, any candidate that approaches the department directly must be asked to complete either an online application or a hard-copy application which can be obtained at any of the Vanderbilt Recruitment Offices.
- A completed SAR is due on every position within three weeks after a position has been closed. After three weeks, the position will be archived which will render the online SAR inaccessible to the Hiring Official. If this occurs, paper SAR forms must be obtained from the Opportunity Development Center (ODC) and mailed back to them upon completion.
- A User Name and Password are required to access each Hiring Official's SAR account online. These can be obtained from your Recruiter. Many Hiring Officials have multiple SAR Accounts, one for each division or center for which they hire or have hired in the past. Each will have its own User Name and Password.
Canceling or placing a position on Hold
- Canceling or placing a position on Hold may be necessary for several reasons. Please discuss the action with your Recruiter to determine the best course of action.
- If a department decides to reclassify a position after it has been submitted to Recruitment, the original position must be cancelled. Please notify your Recruiter as soon as possible if this situation occurs so that no further applications are received for a position that no longer exists.
- A position may be placed on Hold if a department wants to postpone the hiring of any candidate. However, no position may remain on Hold for an extended period of time. As positions on Hold still have to be managed by the Recruiter, it is up to the Recruiter to set the period of time that he/she will keep a position on hold. This period is usually between 2 and 3 months. After the set period of time has passed, the position will be cancelled. When reactivating a previously opened position is not an option, a new PMF must be submitted.
- Background Checks are required on all employees who are hired into Medical Center staff positions and into University Administration staff positions from outside of Vanderbilt. Background checks are required for some in-house candidates. Discuss the details of the transfer with your recruiter to ensure that procedures are followed correctly.
- Background Checks obtain information on Education, Social Security, and criminal convictions.
- Background check consent forms may be faxed or emailed by recruitment to the candidate or may be picked up at the HR Express Office. The completed form contains personal information and should be faxed or hand delivered only to Recruitment by the candidate. It should not be returned to the hiring department.
- The process for completing a background checks takes an average of 3 days for non-international candidates. Verifying the education of international candidates can often be a lengthy process. If a copy of the candidate's diploma, translated to English when appropriate, is provided to Recruitment, it may be accepted as conditional verification of required education so that the hire of the candidate can move forward. Official verification is still required and will be pursued by Recruitment.
- If an employee is hired without first passing a required background check, that employee is required to complete a background check upon discovery of the ommission. If information that indicates the employee is ineligible for hire is obtained, the employee must be dismissed from their position immediately. Instructions on how to appeal this decision will be provided to the employee.
Vanderbilt University is committed
to principles of equal opportunity and affirmative action.
HR Express 2525 West End Ave Suite 218 Nashville TN 37203 Hours M-F 7:30 - 5:30 Last Updated: October 19, 2009 |


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Reviewed Creamed Spinach
Nov 30, 2010 in Food Network Community Toolbox on FoodNetwork.com
"One of the comments posted earlier mentioned that "they didn't remember to drain the spinach"....well the directions do not tell you to do so. I agree with the post that it did not reduce and there was still too much liquid after cooking MANY extra minutes. However, the taste was good...just not the consistency."


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Couple Rejected: Will Christians Be Allowed to Provide Foster Care in England? Comments
What happened to Eunice and Owen Johns this past week concerning their participation in foster care is ominous. What is next for Catholics and other Christians if this trend continues? We are in the throes of a Cultural Revolution involving two competing visions of the human person, human flourishing, the true nature of marriage - the family and society founded upon it - and the definition of the common good. These two visions of the ... Continue Reading
21 - 30 of 38 Comments
3 years ago
The church needs to support the marriage if any two consenting adults. They need the same support guidance and wisdom hetero couples do. And we do need to be concerned about how Catholic parents would react to a gay child. These children have already been through so much the last thing they need is more insensitivity. Don't buy into the hype that gays are not committed couples because it's not true.
3 years ago
Time and Time again the Catholic Church addresses the question of homosexuality and time and time again the world never gets it and probably never will.
God has given us a plan in life to follow and that is what we Christians follow.
By the way Rob the church has always been young even from the beginning.
Even science recognizes that she was right when it came to the fact that they always held we had only one set of parents Adam and Eve. The Scientific community theorized we had several sets and well they were proved wrong.
I stand by the church that she will be right about her view on the dignity of Same Sex persons as well in her Pastoral Care.
If you get a chance go to EWTN and click on their youtube link on their webpage: Scroll down to Life on the Rock series with Father Paul Check re: Courage Apostolate. Looks pretty uptodate to me what the church teaches on the dignity of Same Sex persons.
God Bless. -
3 years ago
I'll be quite honest, I don't exactly agree with Church teaching about homosexuality. But this is just wrong! First of all, they have a good track record. Is the court going to go after the 15 kids they raised and examine them for "defects"? Are they going to restrict the freedoms of those kids because they've been "corrupted"? Second of all, the court is being unfairly selective here. Do the courts examine each foster family for attitudes "inimical to the interests of children"? Perhaps they soon will. And perhaps "regular" families are next; will kids be taken away from their parents? I hate to say it, but I'm not sure my liberal companions will have the sense to say "Hey, wait a minute now..." even at that extreme point.
3 years ago
From The Scotsman (Edinburgh): "Eunice and Owen Johns, from Derby, went to court after a social worker raised concerns when they said they could not tell a child a "homosexual lifestyle" was acceptable." I applaud the Johns for sticking to their beliefs. In this particular case the Johns were applying for an application to provide foster care in Scotland. The state has mandated that one cannot talk against a homosexual lifestyle if you are going to provide the paid service of foster care for the state. It's a big leap to go from that point into believing that the state would mandate the beliefs of children in the home of their biological parents. It's an even bigger leap to see this sort of legal precedent happening in the US (which is one reason why such activity is so alarming to Americans.) Remember, Scotland (a member of the UK) has a history of secularization dating back to the founding of the Church of England. I also question the John's decision to abandon foster care over this point. Many of us don't openly advocate our Christian beliefs on our jobs for fear of losing them... yet we find ways to make Christ visible though our example. Wouldn't it have been far more valuable for the John's to have accepted this caveat as part of the job and then provided foster children with a loving Christian home? So they have to stay silent on one issue... a small price to pay to bring the love of Christ to an abused, neglected or abandoned child. Honestly, my personal experience has been that the more people "talk the talk" the less likely they are to "walk the walk." You know who the Christians are by the way they love, the way they speak, the way they treat others. I think everyone loses in this story.
3 years ago
The legislation about this adoption homosexuality etc is passed in the Parliament. It shows that majority of the parliamentarians are against the morality taught by religions specially Christianity and that they believe in the sanctity of all sexual perversions. According to me there is pure madness and extreme desire for sexual pleasures without restrictions in the minds of large number of people. They will serve as the demolishers of present civilization They will remove or abandon words like marriage, sacredness of family etc from the dictionary
3 years ago
it's coming and already here. A photographer (female) in Arizona I believe, was called by a gay couple wanting her to photograph their civil union ceremony. She told them they would be better served by someone else. After pushing, she said her Christian beliefs would not allow this. They sued her and and the state fined her under the equal protection clause included in the civil unions laws. It's coming. The so-called gay marriage rate is 2% of 3% of the population. That's 2% of gays actually marry and only 3% of the population is gay. The average length of a so called gay marriage is 18 months. The amount of domestic violence is huge. We are taking state regulated foster care classes. The things they ask are laughable when you consider stability of the home. There is no such thing as this in the gay culture. The media likes to paint is as rosy, it's not. These laws will just encourage kids and others to experiment because it 'appears ok' and we will see an increase in same sex activity, just like when abortion was made legal. Remember the Aids crisis they tried to scare me with when I was in 9th grade. I never got it and neither did hardly anyone I know or hardly anyone in the country. Why? It was pervasive in the gay culture, not in the hetero culture. I only wish someone would have told me that being chaste as the 100% solution to not getting aids really. Very few are from blood transfusions statistically. No society in history that allows so called gay marriage has ever survived. If you think it has, name one. This isn't about religioun, it's about natural law. How exactly does this culture think it will procreate? Oh, I guess we'll just use test tubes. Why not, all rules are out the window anymore anyway. I will cling to my God and my Church...The Church!
3 years ago
I am not surprised. England has long been sliding down the slope of diluted values and morality. Many years ago my father was visiting England for business. On his way to his destination he grabbed a cab. When the cab driver, who was an older gentleman, realized my Dad was an American, they started talking. In short he said two things. 1. He expressed how thankful he was for our country's involvement during WWII. 2. He said the younger generations had NO CLUE and didn't even care. They had already forgotten. So what does this have to do with this article? It illustrates a loss of vales in only 1-2 generations. Anyone with half a brain knows that our grandparents (yes, I'm in my 30's) where the GREAT generation. They sacrificed and made things better for us with their blood and hard work. What future can a country have that forgets its past and its values? Today, England it the Atheist hub of the world so can we really be surprised by this ruling? It is sad, but let us learn from this and not be complacent. Instead, let us make sure it does not happen here in the U.S. And of course, let's pray for England. On a positive note -- they said the Pope would be treated horrible when he visited, but in fact, he was welcomed warmly. There is always hope.
3 years ago
Davide, I fear you may be right when the socialist nanny state becomes more powerful. Rob, the Catholic stance is not homophobic, the Cardinal's letter clearly stated that homosexuals should be treated with compassion.
The following web-link may illustrate who's in control and where we are headed: http://www.drjudithreisman.com/archives/2010/09/according_to_ki.html - "The sky is the limit" as they say, but in our case I suppose that hell is the limit. -
3 years ago
Rob, you do not belong here. You have time and again shown your hate for the Catholic Church. A child is not born a homosexual. Just like a child is not born a thief. A thief becomes a thief by stealing. A homosexual becomes a homosexual by performing perverted sexual acts. Before you post, you need to re-educate yourself about what it is exactly that God wants from his creation. And for you to spew your mis-informed opinion in this forum is not good for you or anyone else. Again, Rob, you do not belong here. For it is written: "But I now write to you not to associate with anyone named a brother, if he is immoral, greedy, an idolater, a slanderer, a drunkard, or a robber, not even to eat with such a person. For why should I be judging outsiders? Is it not your business to judge those within?" (1 Cor, 11-12) You Rob, are within, and it is our responsibility to remove you. We have confronted you at least once regarding your slandering and the like. And on your way out, May God have mercy on you and bless you.
3 years ago
Looks like the Christian 'infection' will no longer be tolerated by those who sit on raised dias, in state built temples, wearing Priestly robes. Embedded in the symbolic evidence of their own hypocrisy Judges cannot see that they have become a religion onto themselves? Modern justices are blind! Perhaps we better begin realizing we have no place in their order and start looking for an existence apart from their world lest we share in Babylon's chastisement.
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Carolina Summer Institute In Auditory-Verbal Therapy
Now in its seventeenth year, the Carolina Summer Institute has provided training in the principles and practice of Auditory-Verbal Therapy to over two hundred professionals from around the country. Registration opens 2/1/2014
When |
Jun 14, 2014 12:00 AM
Jun 20, 2014 12:00 AM |
Where | CASTLE |
Contact Name | Hannah Eskridge |
Contact Phone | 919-419-1428 |
Add event to calendar |
vCal iCal |
Join us for the 17th annual Carolina Summer Institute. Our institute consists of online coursework to complete prior to attendance, workshop based learning on site, along with hands-on coaching instruction in the practice of Listening and Spoken Language therapy with Certified LSL instructors.
This year's Institute will provide instruction and training to audiologists, speech-language pathologists, and teachers of the deaf who wish to develop their skills in Auditory-Verbal Therapy, a listening and spoken language approach for children with hearing loss.
Topics to be covered include, but are not limited to:
- Planning and Implementing the Auditory-Verbal Session
- The Development of an Auditory Feedback Loop: Strategies for Speech Babble and Critical Elements
- Beyond Input: Strategies for the Elicitation of Specific Vocabulary and Language Targets
Training will occur through online reading & assignments, lectures, discussions, videotape analysis, self-study and hands-on practicum experiences with children who are enrolled in Auditory-Verbal Therapy and their families.
Now in its seventeenth year, the Carolina Summer Institute has provided training in the principles and practice of Auditory-Verbal Therapy to over two hundred professionals from around the world.
For more information, please contact Hannah Eskridge, MSP, CCC-SLP, LSLS Cert. AVT at 919-419-1428, email@example.com
The deadline for application to the Institute is Friday, March 15, 2014. Participants are encouraged to apply as early as possible to be considered. Applicants will be notified of their acceptance into the Institute by Friday, March 21st, 2014.


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Hello Everyone,
Here is the recap of the March 3 edition of Rocky 104.9 and Rocky 99's weekly local music program, "The Homegrown Rocker," which airs every Sunday night from 8 to 10 PM on WRKY-FM (www.rocky1049.com) and WRKW-FM (www.rocky99.com).
During the 17th annual Millennium Music Conference last month, the "Homegrown Rocker" invited showcasing bands and musicians at the conference to submit their recordings into a special drop box at the trade show. At the close of the business portion of the conference and trade show, we randomly selected one of the recordings, and the band or artist who submitted that recording won an instant guest appearance on this week's show! The winners were Brooklyn, New York-based band project Spice Hound Music Co. (http://spicehoundmusicco.bandcamp.com/). During this week's show, we spoke via phone with David Askaryan and Zach Hopper about Spice Hound Music Co., and learned about the project, its origins, and its music. We featured songs from their CD, The Revival, and one lucky listener called in to win her own copy! Along the way, we debuted new songs from Nobody's Heroes, Mileunder, The Late Ancients, The Great Socio, Inside Out and Ground Resonance. We also updated "Local Music News," and reviewed Dani Hoy's TropiGal CD in "The Professor's CD Corner!" And for this week's "Local Music Flashback," we played "Bracing" by Edison, from their 1997 CD Picture Postcard – the first song played when this program debuted on a now-defunct Altoona radio station 15 years ago this week! Yes, this week marks the "Homegrown Rocker's" 15th anniversary on air!
Here is this week's playlist:
THE SITCH – "Run for Your Life"
GYPSY CARAVAN – "Making It Real"
SPICE HOUND MUSIC CO. – "Some Things Money Shouldn't Buy"
NOBODY'S HEROES – "Seize the Day"
SPICE HOUND MUSIC CO. – "What I've Gotten Myself Into"
TED McCLOSKEY – "Just Want to Disappear"
SPICE HOUND MUSIC CO. – "White Collar Blues"
MILEUNDER – "Spacegirl"
THE LATE ANCIENTS – "The Muse"
THE GREAT SOCIO – "Hurricane"
INSIDE OUT – "Giving Myself Away"
GROUND RESONANCE – "Cry"
SPICE HOUND MUSIC CO. – "The Revival"
DANI HOY – "Drunk on Mallory Square"
SPICE HOUND MUSIC CO. – "Redemption Song"
EDISON – "Bracing" (1997, Local Music Flashback)
SPICE HOUND MUSIC CO. – "The New Sensation"
SPICE HOUND MUSIC CO. – "Farewell"
On our next program, we welcome a new area band into the studio. Brand New Wings features former members of Bad Daze, Green Eggs and Teenage Girls. We will meet the members, find out what they bring to live stages, and hopefully hear some recorded music from this new project! We will again update "Local Music News," dig another song by a past band or artist from the archive for a "Local Music Flashback," and review Ninetail's The Vultures Are Circling CD in "The Professor's CD Corner!" Brand New Wings makes their brand new debut on the "Homegrown Rocker" next Sunday night!
And the "Homegrown Rocker" is available for digital download off either Rocky website after each and every show. Just check on either (www.rocky1049.com) or (www.rocky99.com) and download your copy of the show! If you live beyond the signal range of Rocky 104.9 and Rocky 99, you can now download west-central PA's longest-running local music show!
Upcoming guests and specials include:
JUNE 16 – FATHER'S DAY SPECIAL w/BORN & THE BEANSTALK
For regular updates on what is happening on the area music scene, pay a visit to Rockpage (www.rockpage.net). Rockpage features band links, a message board, "Homegrown Rocker" updates, live show and CD reviews in "JP's Corner," and other local music scene information.
Bands and artists interested in having music aired on "The Homegrown Rocker" are invited to send their broadcast-quality recordings to: WRKY Radio, One Forever Drive, Hollidaysburg, PA 16648; ATTN: Jim Price. Or drop the recordings off at the station during regular business hours, Monday-Friday 9 AM – 5 PM. You can also email me with inquiries about the show at email@example.com.
Jim Price
In Local Music News…
Two benefit concerts are in the works for next weekend on area stages. Next Saturday, Pellegrine's presents a benefit concert to raise money to help Krista Kyle, who is battling breast cancer. That show will start at 4 p.m., and feature the Backyard Rockers, plus other acts to be announced. There will also be door prizes and baked goods for sale.
Next Sunday, 30 Something will host a benefit concert in memory of the venue's former doorman, Cory Slick, who lost his life in a vehicle accident last month. Proceeds from that benefit will go toward a scholarship fund for Cory's surviving daughter, Chelsea. That show will begin at 4 p.m., and feature performances from Klockwick, Bite the Bullet, This Albatross, Left For Dead, Bad Daze Rob, Satan and the Minions, and Hair Force One. Donation at the door will be $5.
A former Altoona dance party band favorite will be reuniting next month for the annual Jeff Wallack Memorial Show. Xeno – who graced Altoona area stages in the late 1980s – will reunite onstage on Saturday, April 13 at Pellegrine's as part of this year's concert, held in memory of popular Altoona area guitarist Jeff Wallack, and raising money for a scholarship fund in his name. The expected reuniting Xeno lineup will feature singer Paula Glunt, keyboardist/singer Fran Hite, guitarist/singer Rick Wertz, bassist Randy Rutherford and drummer Beau Saller, with special guest Bob Scholl on saxophone. More details about this year's Jeff Wallack Memorial Concert will be announced soon.
A piece of music by State College favorite Ted McCloskey will soon appear in a national television ad campaign for Honda. Ted's song "Just Want to Disappear," off his latest CD The Last of the Pin-Up Girls, was selected to be used in the campaign. Further details as to when the commercials will start airing will be announced soon.
HGR recap 3/3/13 - Spice Hound Music Co.


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Video Games Do Matter: Questions for Tom Bissell
Aside from a short trip down the rabbit hole with Sid Meier's world-building sim Civilization III back in the late '90s (see below), I've largely let the last two decades of video game culture pass me by. Not really out of distaste or even disinterest--I think in part I was (and still am) afraid of what would happen if I let myself get swallowed by the machine. Would I still be a functioning member of society? Would I ever read a book again? Nevertheless, I could tell from a distance that things were developing there in a way that went beyond the arcade games and fat-pixel consoles of my youth. I remember meeting Austin Grossman after his first novel, Soon I Will Be Invincible, came out to great acclaim and being surprised to hear that he considered video-game writing his real art form.
So I immediately perked up when I noticed Tom Bissell's new book, Extra Lives: Why Video Games Matter on the horizon. Bissell's is one of my favorite bylines to see: he's a superb reader and critic, but equally driven to get out and engage directly with the world, which has made his books Chasing the Sea and The Father of All Things compelling amalgams of reporting, history, and memoir. No matter what he's writing about (even Tommy Wiseau's The Room in the current Harper's), you always get the feeling that something is at stake for him in the outcome: he's putting himself on the line. And though you might not expect it from a book on the narrative aesthetics of video games, that's the sense you get from Extra Lives too: he's found himself drawn hungrily into the worlds the games create, and it matters to him deeply to understand why (and to imagine how those worlds could be made even more compelling).
He came by our offices a few weeks ago to talk about the book, and it turned out to be one of the most enjoyable discussions I've had in some time. The book had me convinced of the potential value of this form of storytelling, but talking to him made me even more so. If it was even conceivable to bring an Xbox into my house, I'd probably be playing GTA IV right now instead of typing this... (I also got to take his picture in front of one our office ornaments: a blown-up copy of his NYTBR cover review of Rory Stewart's The Places in Between, a book that's one of my favorite discoveries of my time here. In my memory I had always given myself credit for sussing it out alone, but it may well have been Bissell's excellent review that first turned me on to it, as it did for so many other readers.)
You can listen to our interview in three parts below, or read the full transcript after the jump:
Amazon.com: When we say "value," we're not talking about the sort of increases-your-eye-hand-coordination argument that's often made in favor of video games. This is really an aesthetic claim that you're making.
Bissell: Yeah, I think there's a number of games, maybe not many, certainly not as many as I would like, but there are a number of games that have really given me a first-class aesthetic experience. Sometimes that experience is very kinetic and intense, sometimes that experience has been flummoxing and troubling, and sometimes the experience has been mainlined joy. Games can enchant, they can disturb. There's just some really first-rate storytelling experiences out there for people.
The problem that games have is that you have this rather large stumbling block of the interface. It's a tough thing for people that are conceptually inclined to think that maybe there's something interesting going on here, but to give them a controller and ask them to figure out what is essentially a foreign language is tough. It's a hard thing for people to overcome.
Basically every argument that we hear made against the video game experience has been made against any new popular medium that has emerged. You look through history at the people that have opposed--like the rise of the novel in the late 1800s. People warned young women about spending all of their time out of sunshine and without meeting young men, wasting their time reading these frivolous romances. And their talking about books by, like, Thackeray and stuff like that, you know? So this stuff is so obviously cyclical, so obviously born out of ignorance that the people have for the medium's value. Every medium that manages to mean anything to people develops its own traditions and its own integrity and its own authenticity, and games are already an authentic aesthetic experience for millions of people. Some of those people have a slightly more considered view of the form than others, but that doesn't mean they're all without value.
The kinds of games I'm interested in, or the kinds of games I want to be interested in, are games that push the form forward, and are slightly more inclusive of the human experience, let's say. I don't know--I enjoy my time playing games, until I don't, and then I stop playing.
Amazon.com: A little background on you: you started as a fiction writer mainly, and worked as an editor, you've written two semi-autobiographical nonfiction books, you've lived in Uzbekistan and Estonia and Las Vegas and Vietnam and Portland. Is it safe to say that you're restless?
Bissell: I'm someone who likes novelty, who seeks out the unfamiliar, so in a certain sense my interest in games just grows out of that. Games are really the only entertainment experience that gives you a preassembled world in quite the way that games do. Novels give you a preassembled world, but the entry into that--novels give you lots of things that nothing else can, this is not to diss novels at all. I love fiction like a brother. But there is something about the game experience, of being in a world that is disinterestedly functioning around you, that you don't get from other mediums. And it's the thing I love about the medium the most.
Amazon.com: Yeah, when you think about yourself inside of a novel--people often talk about how the reader helps complete a novel. But the game player helps complete the game in a very different way. What's your sense of yourself in a book, or inside a game?
Bissell: Well, novels are one of the most vigorously interactive art forms of all. There is no novel without a reader. The reader is the casting director, is the director, the camera, and the writer is kind of the lens, let's say. And that's a great feeling too. You know how when you stumble across something in a piece of fiction that you've thought a lot about but you've never been able to put into words exactly quite that way, and that feeling of recognition you get, the psychological joy of feeling someone as they leap off the page and become a real person, that feeling of telepathy that you get from really great fiction. That's all stuff that only fiction can do, and it's all stuff that makes fiction fiction.
But there is also stuff that only games can do. And one of these things is this feeling of being in a world, or playing a story, and you're observing a character that you're also controlling. People misunderstand this aspect of the game experience more than any. People assume that people play games for this childish power fantasy in which you inject yourself into the game world to triumph over a monster. That is not how I, or a lot of the serious gamers I know, view these experiences. We view these experiences as interactive. You're not in the story yourself. You're controlling a character in it. To me games are sort of like acting in a way. You try to behave in ways that this character, as you understand him or her, wants to behave. That's a cool thing, and it's a kind of interactivity that only artists have been able to enjoy. Video games are bringing that sort of experience to civilians, and I love that about games. And so there's this feeling when you have a great game that you're inside the story and you're actually maybe even changing it from moment to moment. And obviously games can't really do this to the degree that we want because technologically it's just too difficult. Games create the illusion of agency, and if they manage to do a particularly skillful or elegant job of communicating the illusion of agency, then that is a feeling that you have that you're no longer--the wall between what the fiction is and the reality just kind of slips away and you're not holding a piece of plastic, staring at a flatscreen. You're riveted into the world. And that's what games do that I find really beautiful and really promising.
Amazon.com: Speaking of seeing yourself as a character in a game, I think when you get to design your character you usually choose to be a woman.
Bissell: I do.
Amazon.com: Which actually I find myself choosing when I play games too. It's like "Madame Bovary, c'est moi," as a gamer?
Bissell: I just did an interview and someone said, "Oh, you just like doing that 'cause you like looking at hot women." And I actually got a little mad, because it's not about that at all. What it does for me is it actually adds an additional layer of fiction onto the fiction. So the thing that I like about games is controlling and observing a fictional character. Making the character a different gender that I am actually puts one additional degree of remove for me. It's a way to intensify one of the core pleasures of the gaming experience for me, just being. There's nothing really genderishly subversive about it. There's nothing transsexual about the urge--there's nothing sexual about the urge. It's just an additional degree of intensification of what I find to be the core pleasure of the game experience.
Amazon.com: I'm sure you could look at fantasy in the same way. The word "fantasy" has so many negative connotations, but fantasy literature or fantasy games--being an elf, it's not that you want to be an elf, it's that being an elf is so clearly different from you, and there's a pleasure in that.
Bissell: Exactly.
Amazon.com: You've played games all along--
Bissell: I had a lull, from about 22 to 28. I sort of dropped out.
Amazon.com: When you were a literary person, developing as a book person?
Bissell: Yeah, I think so. Games just stopped being interesting to me. And then, you know, I started playing games with friends, usually played social games, shoot-em-ups, stuff like that, beat-em-ups, just games that you play with your friends and throw popcorn at each other while you're playing. And then in like 2006-2007, some games started coming out that I felt were really formally and conceptually interesting, really sophisticated, really cool. And then that's when I guess the seeds of this book were planted. I thought, this is new, this is storytelling of a sort that has--it was drawing from film, it was drawing from previous games, and it was creating something that felt to me really new.
Amazon.com: I want to talk about a couple of those games, but one thing I thought, as not much of a gamer, but who played a lot of games back in the 80s--
Bissell: Tell your Civ story--[a reference to a tale I told him earlier, one my wife enjoys reminding me of, about the time we were visiting New York and I spent untold daytime hours playing Civilization III in the basement of my friend's bar with nothing but a bag of bialys at my side while she and her friend toured the world's greatest city. But I built cities!]
Amazon.com: Well, I was going to go further back than that. I was in a retro video game bar the other day, playing some of the games I used to play, and what I loved, and that I don't see that often now, is really abstract video games. I loved that you brought up Tempest [in the book], which I consider one of the most--I'm terrible at it, but I consider it incredibly beautiful, and because of its abstraction. It seems like games have gone towards realism because they can now, but I'm curious where you think that side of gaming--does it live, these days, or is it all about creating the most realistic world that we can.
Bissell: No, there's still tons of games along the abstract, Tempest line, and I like playing those games. There's a game called Spacedraft Space Giraffe that's on Xbox Live that's really fun, that I like. There's a few others. There's a game coming out called Limbo that is a little bit more abstract--it's a platformer but it's really dark and weird. But the hard thing is those games are hard for me personally to write about. I don't know how you write about Tempest, other than saying, "This is trippy and weird and I want to keep playing it." It's like one of the things I've been saying during the media for this book is that for me, it's easier for me to write about "The Last Supper" than it is to write about a Rothko painting. That doesn't mean I think "The Last Supper" is a better painting than the Rothko painting, but it means for me I can't really discuss the Rothko painting because I just don't think in those terms. And there are people who can write about abstract art really well. I'm not one of them. I have a hard time writing about abstract video game playing, which isn't to say I don't enjoy it.
Amazon.com: Which leads to another question I had: you talk a lot about storytelling--and some of the deficits of storytelling--in video games, and a lot of it comes back again to the writing. The writing is often terrible and has historically been an afterthought. Part of me thinks, well, why should writing even matter in a game? Maybe it should be like the monolith in 2001: aliens aren't going to look like us, they're going to be this totally different, incomprehensible thing. And maybe games--why do they need to be like novels, why do they have to have writing at all?
Bissell: They don't. And there's probably really valuable game experiences that you can work out of that model, absolutely. For me, the kind of games I'm most interested in are traditional storytelling experiences. Which isn't to say "traditional" in the way that movies work, or the way that [novels work]. I understand that those traditional characteristics of narrative are completely unworkable in the video game medium. But the thing I long for in the gaming experience is a story in which everything the characters say to each other feels beautiful, or true, or surprising. And the way people interact with each other doesn't feel like an nth generation Xerox of an action film. And even you can have action games that have characters--so often in games I feel like when designers get to a character that feels like a movie character they're like, "We're done! Great! We made a shitty imitation of a character from an action film." And that just frustrates the heck out of me as a gamer. I just don't feel like anybody ever--not anybody, there's lots of people who do this--but I feel it's much more rare for game designers to strive for a conceptual originality around things like character and things about, like, how interesting dialogue is allowed to be in games.
So this is my argument: If you have a game that's, say, a shooter--I like shooters--if you have a game that's about shooting everybody, the scale is sort of tipped toward the shooting. And the talk, and the banter, and the "story" in the shooter game is going to stink because all of the juju has gone into making the shooting exciting. Well, how about a game in which the scale were the opposite? A game that had shooting elements, with characters that were incredibly interesting and compelling, and that if one of these characters was hurt, and if you make it an irrevocable part of the game mechanic that if you lost one of these people throughout the game, they were gone, well then the shooting feels that much more tense, really. Doesn't it? A game that involves shooting that didn't involve these set-piece battles that have a beginning, middle, and end and then a blast of music at the end of it.
These are the kinds of game experiences that I think are really cool to think about. And that's why I'm just frankly desperate for better, more dramatically skillful storytelling in games. It's not that I want games to have more story, because no one wants story-heavy games that have no gameplay. Gameplay is the central aspect of the game experience. But if you're going to have a game that does tell a story, tell the best, most sophisticated version of it you can, in ways that are appropriate to the medium. That is what I champion, and that is what I long for as a gamer.
Amazon.com: Let's talk about a game you love: Grand Theft Auto IV, a legendary, notorious, beloved game. What did you love about it, and when did you stop loving it?Bissell: What I love about Grand Theft Auto IV, more than anything, is that it's funny. It's really funny. And the satire is pretty sophisticated. When you listen to the radio stations, for instance, and you're driving around. I love the sense that there's like six hours of music on these 13 different radio stations in Liberty City. I don't know if it's 13 or maybe 16. It's a lot anyway. And the feeling that, you know, you've just jacked a car, you've lost the cops, you're driving down the street, you're going over the Algonquin Bridge from Algonquin into Broker, and the Who comes on: "Pinball Wizard," or "The Seeker"--"The Seeker"--and you're listening to "The Seeker" and the sun's going down and you just have this feeling of "My God, this is a world," and everything just sort of clicks into place, and you just feel this beautiful flow, this transcendent feeling of, the game has just done something beautiful, and it didn't do it because it was scripted, it did it because of the systemic opportunities that the game allows players to play around with and experience. And so the experience is mine. It's mine, that's not anyone else's.
And the characters are great. They're funny, they're savage, they're terrible, they're brutal. And I love the story even though as a piece of storytelling it has a lot of the problems that a lot of game storytelling does. I just like this character of Niko Bellic, this guy who's just basically a thug but has some better angels of his nature, and I love the game's theme of "Can he overcome his nature?" And playing the game and finding out if he can, and then at the moment of truth realizing that you're given the power to determine whether or not he can, at a difficult moment. That's a great gaming experience, really is. It's really powerful. And if people are unwilling to entertain how that could be powerful then I don't really have much to say.
Amazon.com: But it's a game that you eventually had to say goodbye to.
Bissell: I was playing this in the aftermath of my last book, The Father of All Things, that underperformed commercially in a way that felt kind of heartbreaking. And I sort of retreated into the darkness for a while, and one of the things I brought with me--I was living in Estonia, and I was first doing a little bit of cocaine and then soon enough I was doing a lot. And then soon enough I was doing a lot and playing a lot of GTA and spending absurd amounts of time by myself. And the game just kind of became the place that I went. And the great thing about it is that the game also helped me out of that place, and I kind of figured out somethings about games, and myself, and compulsion while playing it. The game almost ruined me, and it fixed me.
Amazon.com: The book itself, it has elements of criticism, of reporting, of memoir, and there's a bit of an addiction memoir arc. I think of people think of video games as being addicting in their own way, and it was very interesting, that interplay between the drug and the game: that the game has some aspects of the drug, and clearly they feed off each other, but yet the game is different from the drug.
Bissell: Yeah, and I don't want to condemn either. I'm not interested in demonizing drug abuse. Not to say I want to champion it, but I think there are all sorts of reasons people do those things, and I think lots of people abuse drugs more or less responsibly. I turned out not to be a person who could.
Amazon.com: At least when GTA was in the room.
Bissell: At least when GTA was in the room. But "addiction" is not a word I use anywhere in that piece. To me that doesn't seem like an accurate word to represent the quality of my experience with either of those things. Maybe it is, to other people, but to me it doesn't feel like that word fits.
Amazon.com: "Compulsion"? Is that a better word, at its worst, I guess?
Bissell: Yeah, maybe. And there's an element of transcendent self-destruction. I don't want to ennoble it, but a lot of those elements are what make you write, frankly. We're all composed of black and white strands that wrap around each other.
Amazon.com: So how do game playing, and writing, and reading--how do those fit in your life right now? You mention in the book that you read a lot less than you used to, partially because you're playing games.
Bissell: I do. Yeah, I'm not going to dress this up. I'm not going to deny this. I just read Nick Carr's book, The Shallows, and I think he's right, he's absolutely right, that electronic media makes you less able to engage with dense, literary work. Period. It's not a positive thing, it's not a negative thing. It's a thing. And my literary inclinations have survived, certainly, my increased gaming interests. But they're not the same. They shouldn't be the same. I don't really have a good answer to this, other than that I'm waiting to see how this works out. To be perfectly honest, I'm more interested in the video game medium, theoretically, than I am in fiction. Right now. I am. I fully anticipate that will at some point change. But right now I'm just more interested in this medium, for its potential and for what I could possibly do in it, and how I could possibly direct it as a critic or as a person who's writing a game himself now. I find that exciting. I still love fiction, I don't want anyone to misinterpret this, but at this point in my life I'm going to go down this path and see where it goes.
Amazon.com: Yeah, I feel like the novel has this place in our culture--a lapsed place maybe--as the grail that a storytelling artist should follow, but even in your career as a writer you have written nonfiction, after starting off mainly writing fiction. Was that a similar path for you, that you wanted--you've written novels that haven't been published--
Bissell: I sure have!
Amazon.com: --but the subjects that actually maybe drew you even more strongly were actually nonfiction, and then games--these different ways of telling stories that aren't the one we're supposed to be drawn to the most.
Bissell: Yeah, I'm like a--when it comes to story consuming, I have satyriasis. I like them in every way they come. I like nonfiction stories, I like fiction, I like video game stories. I just love stories, and I'll take them any way you want to give them to me. I still write short fiction. I still write short stories a lot. I'm much more interested in the short story than I am in--I don't even know if I will write a novel. I like short stories to write. Oh hell, I'll probably write a novel some day, but I write nonfiction books and I write stories. That's just what I do. And that's kind of a tough marketing nut to crack.
Amazon.com: They're all tough.
Bissell: They're all equally tough. I don't know. I love the novel. I think the novel is the supreme achievement of the human mind, probably. Really, I do. I do believe that. And my having been able to publish one certainly doesn't change that opinion. In fact it probably only intensifies it. But I think games are a completely viable medium to tell stories in. And stories that are not meaningless. They're not mindless.
Amazon.com: The book has two different endings. There's the main part of the book, which ends with your chapter on GTA. It's almost cathartic--you feel very wrung out after that chapter, as you probably did. But then you have an afterword, which is mainly an interview with Sir Peter Molyneux, a game designer. And his last line is not bittersweet in any way: "We are going to have real life. We are going to have real characters. We are going to have real drama. We are going to change the world and entertain in ways that nothing else has before." Do you feel those two--the bittersweet, exhausted side of the story, and then this totally wide-eyed, can't-believe-we're-on-the-cusp-of-this feeling as well?
Bissell: It was important to me to end the book that way because I hate starry-eyed game champions. I think it's an unviable position to have, because the only way you can really accept a medium on its own terms is to acknowledge every single color in the prismatic span of it. And so games led me to a dark place, and yet I look ahead and see what games I'm interested in are trying to get to, and it looks like Oz to me. And I want both those things, and I wanted the book to have both things, because how can you see anything unless you're looking at the whole thing?