"Father Brown Stories," "Arguably," "Nigger," "Fifty Shades of Grey," "Around the World in Eighty Days," "Farmer Boy," and "This Is Herman Cain!"

Father Brown Stories, G. K. Chesterton
Arguably, Christopher Hitchens
Nigger, Randall Kennedy
Fifty Shades of Grey, E.L. James
Around the World in Eighty Days, Jules Verne
Farmer Boy, Laura Ingalls Wilder
This Is Herman Cain!, Herman Cain


Father Brown Stories, G. K. Chesterton


It's tempting to pity Father Brown, Chesterton's forgotten little detective.  While Sherlock is ever in style, the little priest is more overlooked by the moment.  Somehow, though, I think he would have preferred it that way, because it is Father Brown's unobtrusiveness that makes these stories interesting.  These are the two styles of detectivry, then: the flashy brashness of Holmes and Law and Order: Special Victims Unit, or the quiet effectiveness of Father Brown, Agatha Christie's Miss Marple, and classic Law and Order.

These stories are also almost all what I tend to think of as "fair" stories.  Their resolution depends on information to which the reader is privy: if you are clever and creative enough, you can think of the approximate solution.  This is the proper way to do a detective story, as opposed to the lazy writer's sudden revelation that the hero happened to pick up an additional piece of evidence, only revealed in the Accusing Parlor.  Such annoying stories are not mysteries at all, really: they are suspense stories.

The Father Brown Stories are fun and interesting, and would be particularly good for some light reading interspersed among some errands.  Take a look.


Arguably, Christopher Hitchens

This collection of essays by the late Christopher Hitchens can be described in one word: uneven.  Essays of surpassing intelligence or terrible beauty are mingled with tediousness and nonsense.  If these essays had been selected with more discrimination, both readers and Hitchens' image would be the better.

When Hitchens is good, he's very good.  His wit is sharp enough to shave an atom, and he lays out with it both judiciously and mercilessly.  In one example, he wryly speaks of his view of animal rights (not too great a fan), but also eviscerates their detractors:

Conversely, one of the most idiotic jeers against animal lovers is the one about their preferring critters to people. As a matter of observation, it will be found that people who “care”—about rain forests or animals, miscarriages of justice or dictatorships—are, though frequently irritating, very often the same people. Whereas those who love hamburgers and riskless hunting and mink coats are not in the front ranks of Amnesty International. Like the quality of mercy, the prompting of compassion is not finite, and can be self-replenishing.

Several authors fascinate Hitchens: Vladimir Nabokov, Edward Said, Omar Kaiyyam, W.H. Auden.  He quotes them, analyzes them, and in the case of Said, memorably attacks them.  His discussions range from a jolly ribaldry to the heights of abstraction, but he particularly shines in these literary contemplations.

One of the later essays, in particular, deserves special singling-out for praise.  "The Vietnam Syndrome," available here, is a discussion of the legacy of Agent Orange.  The outrage, simple and eloquent and burning, is almost enough to feel.

Unfortunately, there are many essays that fall short of this standard.  Some are simply mediocre, but others stumble badly in a few glaring gaps of understanding, as when Hichens is relating some of the saga of American slavery:

Until 1850, perhaps, the “peculiar institution” of slavery might have had a chance of perpetuating itself indefinitely by compromise. But the exorbitance and arrogance of “the slave power” forbade this accommodation. Not content with preserving their own domain in its southeastern redoubt, the future Confederates insisted on extending their chattel system into new territories, and on implicating the entire Union in their system.

I don't intend to defend the slaveholders, but Hitchens simply misses the purpose of their efforts to extend slavery: there was a delicate political detente on the matter, but the addition of numerous free states would lead to the passage of anti-slavery laws.  The slaveholding states were not eager to spread slavery, per se, but rather they thought it was necessary to keep a balance of slave and free.  They were still monstrously wrong, of course, but ascribing some sort of evangelical malice to the extension of slavery misunderstands their motives.

These sorts of mistakes are subtle, but at times they undermined my confidence in the author.  If you read this, keep a skeptical eye in your head, and watch for sloppy thinking.


Far worse than this, though, is an essay that is simply embarrassing, "Why Women Aren't Funny" (available here).  The only thing more grotesque than its overreach is the way in which this essay hamfistedly tries to club its point into submission with crude approximations of evolutionary psychology, a discipline that is perhaps most dangerous for the layman.

I recommend this book, but with reservations.  Pick and choose.




Nigger: the Short History of a Troublesome Word, Randall Kennedy

As far as I can see, there are two pressing questions when it comes to this word: how did a simple word for color turn into something derogatory, and is there any merit to the idea that it has been successfully reclaimed as an African-American cultural shibboleth?  Unfortunately, while author Randall Kennedy does address these questions at some length in this thorough exploration of all things "n-word," his answers are mixed and oddly incurious.  In the end, Kennedy is a careful chronicler of what is known, but goes no further than that.

Nigger's discussion of the history of the word is perfunctory, but illustrates the whole:

Nigger is derived from the Latin word for the color black, niger. According to the Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang, it did not originate as a slur but took on a derogatory connotation over time. Nigger and other words related to it have been spelled in a variety of ways, including niggah, nigguh, niggur, and niggar. When John Rolfe recorded in his journal the first shipment of Africans to Virginia in 1619, he listed them as “negars.” A 1689 inventory of an estate in Brooklyn, New York, made mention of an enslaved “niggor” boy. The seminal lexicographer Noah Webster referred to Negroes as “negers.” (Currently some people insist upon distinguishing nigger—which they see as exclusively an insult—from nigga, which they view as a term capable of signaling friendly salutation.) In the 1700s niger appeared in what the dictionary describes as “dignified argumentation” such as Samuel Sewall's denunciation of slavery, The Selling of Joseph. No one knows precisely when or how niger turned derisively into nigger and attained a pejorative meaning. We do know, however, that by the end of the first third of the nineteenth century, nigger had already become a familiar and influential insult.

The other question of importance, the acceptability of the word in certain contexts, is explored with somewhat greater insight.  For almost a full chapter, the author touches on the different sides of the question, from the firm disapproval of Bill Cosby for the word to its fluid omnipresence in Chris Rock's comedy.

Today a similar charge is leveled. Some entertainers who openly use nigger reject Cosby's politics of respectability, which counsels African Americans to mind their manners and mouths in the presence of whites. This group of performers doubts the efficacy of seeking to burnish the image of African Americans in the eyes of white folk. Some think that the racial perceptions of most whites are beyond changing; others believe that whatever marginal benefits a politics of respectability may yield are not worth the psychic cost of giving up or diluting cultural rituals that blacks enjoy. This latter attitude is effectively expressed by the remark “I don't give a fuck.” These entertainers don't care whether whites find nigger upsetting. They don't care whether whites are confused by blacks’ use of the term. And they don't care whether whites who hear blacks using the N-word think that African Americans lack self-respect. The black comedians and rappers who use and enjoy nigger care principally, perhaps exclusively, about what they themselves think, desire, and enjoy—which is part of their allure. Many people (including me) are drawn to these performers despite their many faults because, among other things, they exhibit a bracing independence. They eschew boring conventions, including the one that maintains, despite massive evidence to the contrary, that nigger can mean only one thing.

There are also some truly astonishing tidbits from history, such as this:

To discredit Abraham Lincoln, his racist Democratic party opponents wrote a “Black Republican Prayer” that ended with the “benediction”:
May the blessings of Emancipation extend throughout our unhappy land, and the illustrious, sweet-scented Sambo nestle in the bosom of every Abolition woman… and the distinction of color be forever consigned to oblivion [so] that we may live in bands of fraternal love, union and equality with the Almighty Nigger, henceforth, now and forever. Amen.

Such interesting discussions and anecdotes, however, occupy only a tenth of the volume.  The rest of it is devoted to endless, exhaustive, exhausting, pointless lists of misdeeds.  They are presented in what becomes a familiar format: Kennedy blandly describes some possible use of the word, then reels off between five and ten examples in scrupulous and legalistic detail.  When one example would suffice, he gives eight.  When two sentences could summarize the case, he uses twelve.  Compiled in such length and recited with such dispassion, Kennedy far overshoots any burden of proof - assuming we need any proof for the proposition that a judge who spouts slurs is probably a racist.  Instead, the reader is numbed.

That which is good and useful in Nigger would be better cut down to an intensely interested essay, rather than this novocaine text.  Skip it.


Fifty Shades of Grey, E.L. James

I have nothing to say about this book.  I couldn't finish it.  It fell into the very narrow but deathly dark pit of disinterest: far below mediocre but not hilariously awful.  It was dull.

It was as dull as used dishwater, two bubbles and a scrap of bread floating in it.  It was as dull as a long strip of last year's newspaper, loosely stuck to the side of the bin.  It was as dull as the slight stickiness left on a plastic soda bottle, long after the label is peeled off.

I advise you not to read it.



Around the World in Eighty Days, Jules Verne

Phileas Fogg, the protagonist of Jules Verne's 1873 description of a race around the globe, is a very boring fellow.  His sole occupation - for he has no job or family - is reading the papers and playing whist.  He speaks very little, although what he says is very intelligent and worldly.  He dines alone, all three meals, in the same place every day.  In an unintentionally tragic scene, we first see Fogg sitting alone at home, staring at the clock, waiting for it to be time to leave his house and go to breakfast.  He is a man singularly fixated on time and schedule, who spends all day reading the news of the world.

In other words, he is a man singularly well-suited for his trip around the world, which requires broad knowledge and an obsession with being in the correct place at the correct time.

It put me in mind of Sherlock Holmes, the star of dozens of stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.  1887's A Study in Scarlet introduces the good detective, and gives his nature, culminating in Watson's famous list:

1. Knowledge of Literature.—Nil.
2. Philosophy.—Nil.
3. Astronomy.—Nil.
4. Politics.—Feeble.
5. Botany.—Variable. Well up in belladonna, opium, and poisons generally. Knows nothing of practical gardening. 6. Geology.—Practical, but limited. Tells at a glance different soils from each other. After walks has shown me splashes upon his trousers, and told me by their colour and consistence in what part of London he had received them.
7. Chemistry.—Profound.
8. Anatomy.—Accurate, but unsystematic.
9. Sensational Literature.—Immense. He appears to know every detail of every horror perpetrated in the century.
10. Plays the violin well.
11. Is an expert singlestick player, boxer, and swordsman.
12. Has a good practical knowledge of British law.

Aside from  his pleasure in the violin and his recreational drug abuse, Holmes is also a very boring man.  He is strikingly unpleasant, vain, and fond of humiliating others.  But he is singularly well-suited for his own task: the detection of crime.

So what was it about this period in Europe that spawned the development of these sorts of characters who are so singularly - they might say "scientifically" - focused on isolated pursuits?  Phileas Fogg is not admirable in any other context that his single adventure, and indeed I found myself intensely disliking him by the end of the story.  Verne clearly intended for his level of reservation to be the character's flaw, extending it even to a puzzling coldness to the woman he grows to love, only to finally surmount the trait in the book's final act.  But it was far worse for me to see the hidden talents that Fogg had been laying fallow and squandering in his life of nothingness.  He is an expert horseman, sailor, marksman, traveler, and doubtless other pursuits.  He is just as skilled, if not more so, than his clever butler-cum-acrobat, Passepartout (French for "skeleton key").  But whereas Passepartout feels the glory of adventure and enchantment of travel, Fogg will not even bother to ascend to the deck of his steamer as it passes the wonders of the world, preferring to remain below, playing whist or staring at the wall (quite literally).

Don't mistake me: this is a rollicking good adventure story, and very amusing.  The racism and stereotypes are antique enough to be adorable, and the final twist has that perfect flavor of the nineteenth century: moderately clever and breathlessly declared.  You should definitely read it.  But I think that you, like me, will end up pitying Fogg's wife.




Farmer Boy, Laura Ingalls Wilder

I never read any of the Little House on the Prairie series when I was younger, nor did I ever see the television show of the seventies.  This book, the only volume of the stories that stands alone, tells about the childhood of Wilder's husband, Almanzo Wilder, in his ninth and tenth years as the son of a prosperous but hard-working farmer.  Overall, Farmer Boy was mildly funny and completely quaint - combined with its strong moral values and glimpses into history, it's a perfect book for children.  I completely understand why these books are beloved.

What I can't understand is why no one's ever mentioned the food to me.  By a wide margin, the most prominent feature of this book is the vivid richness of the gustatory descriptions.

Almanzo ate the sweet, mellow baked beans. He ate the bit of salt pork that melted like cream in his mouth. He ate mealy boiled potatoes, with brown ham-gravy. He ate the ham. He bit deep into velvety bread spread with sleek butter, and he ate the crisp golden crust. He demolished a tall heap of pale mashed turnips, and a hill of stewed yellow pumpkin. Then he sighed, and tucked his napkin deeper into the neckband of his red waist. And he ate plum preserves and strawberry jam, and grape jelly, and spiced watermelon-rind pickles. He felt very comfortable inside. Slowly he ate a large piece of pumpkin pie.

That is beautiful.  And the book is full of this!

Under the snow on the south slopes the bright red berries were ripe among their thick green leaves. Almanzo took off his mittens and pawed away the snow with his bare hands. He found the red clusters and filled his mouth full. The cold berries crunched between his teeth, gushing out their aromatic juice.

Farmer Boy didn't make me hungry.  It did one better: it made me want the good hollow belly hunger, only brought on by a day's work and tired muscles.

I recommend you take an hour and read this.   It's very short and it's for children, of course, but I think it's worth visiting as an adult.  Any book is worth reading when you can almost taste the pie.




This Is Herman Cain!, Herman Cain

There are two ways to provide a concise summary of This Is Herman Cain!, the autobiographical campaign book written by the Republican politician during his brief period of ascendancy this past year.  The first summary is rather kinder, so I'll do it first.

1.  This Is Herman Cain! is the charming account of an older man, thrilled with his unexpected moment in the spotlight and echoing with the powerful cadences of a black Baptist and the whimsical wisdom of a self-made businessman.  While misguided in its policy and strange in its emphases, it has an odd sort of delight about it.  The whole of the book is found in this paragraph of triumphal self-assurance, specious criticism of an opponent, and absolute naivete:

Twenty-five minutes later, having articulated my “Cain Doctrine” to the cheering, banner-waving crowd, without printed speech or teleprompter, because I don’t do teleprompters—I like to say I’m a leader, not a reader—I recalled the words of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and declared that when all the votes are counted on Tuesday, November 6, 2012, “We will be free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty! This nation will be free at last—again!”

The second summary is harsher, but far more accurate.

2.  This Is Herman Cain! is a hilarious, terrifying, and sad journey into the half-lucid ramblings of a man wildly out of his depth.  It is hilarious because of Cain's bizarre anecdotes, terrifying because the man was actually considered a serious candidate, and sad because people close to him were willing to let him humiliate himself.  The whole of the book is found in this paragraph of chilling banality:

The next morning I did a few interviews and relaxed. In the afternoon I took a nap and then had a bowl of soup before going over to the Peace Center.

This is a book that starts off badly and keeps getting worse, spiraling lower and lower at breakneck speed, like a suicidal hang-glider.  In a curious turn of events, the simple errors of fact are in the minority.  Usually political autobiographies are heavy on such errors, studded with only a few absurdities.  But in This Is Herman Cain!, whenever I saw a claim that was merely demonstrably false ("President Obama wrongheadedly betrayed America’s most steadfast ally in that region with his arrogant demand for the sovereign nation’s return to its pre-1967 Six Day War borders"), I sighed with relief.  That's only completely wrong, I would think.  It's not batshit crazy.  This paragraph is safe.

But few paragraphs were so spared.  And I have questions.

Herman Cain, why would you put a story in your autobiography about how your kindly old father once threatened someone?!

So Woodruff started giving my dad stock, and he was generous with that, too. One day he told my dad, “Joe Jones doesn’t think I ought to be giving you any stock, but I told him I was going to give it to you anyway.” To Joe Jones, Woodruff’s money was his money.
One day Dad said to Jones, “Mr. Jones, I’d like to see you outside for a minute.” They walked out to the driveway and Dad said, “Do you see this gun I’m carrying?”—Dad had a permit to carry one because he was with Woodruff—“Do you know how good I can shoot this gun?”
“No,” Joe Jones replied.
“I can throw a silver dollar up in the air and hit it four times before it hits the ground. That’s how good a shot I am,” my dad said. “If you ever tell Mr. Woodruff not to do something for me again, you’re going to find out how good I am with this gun!” He was joking, but my dad was unafraid: Nobody was going to mess with Luther Cain.

That's not funny!  That's not funny at all!  That's just a story about how your daddy once threatened to shoot someone!  Herman Cain, what is wrong with you?!

Or this:

Back in Atlanta, notwithstanding the usual sibling disagreements, Thurman and I got along well, enjoying all manner of adventures. Thurman loved to laugh and to make other people laugh. But sometimes his idea of a good laugh got us both in trouble. One Christmas, when I was ten and he was nine, our parents bought us BB guns as presents. We took the guns over to an aunt’s house and were playing outdoors when Thurman pointed his gun at our older cousin, Elizabeth. He told her not to move but she did move after daring him to shoot, so he shot her in the butt. Elizabeth was not really hurt but that BB did sting. Needless to say, Mom took the guns away from us and we never saw them again.

Why would you tell us that bizarre, pointless story?!  It has no bearing on anything!  What wildly irresponsible person read this book and allowed you to put it into print?!

At one point, Herman Cain talks about how terrible Obamacare will be (it was still in the future at this point), and how great American healthcare is.  And I can understand that policy position, if you're a Republican - it's mandatory.  But why would you include an anecdote about how you used the pull of your rich friends to get into treatment?!

She had already researched Sloan Kettering, in New York, and MD Anderson, in Houston, for me. She said, “Those are the top two in the country. Do you know someone that can help you get into MD Anderson?”
I said, “Yes I do. Boone Pickens, the oil magnate.” I called Boone Pickens, a good friend to this day.
He used to be on the board of MD Anderson and was a contributor, and he called the head of the hospital and said, “Herman Cain is not just another person trying to get into MD Anderson; he’s also a friend of mine.”

It's as if this rambling, incoherent mess is actually the result of Herman Cain's own brain fighting against him, trying to defeat him.  "Don't elect me," his brain is saying.  "I don't know what I'm doing!  Don't let me get near anything important!"

I just don't understand it.  Read this paragraph:

And that’s not what we the people want. I can tell you that everywhere I go as I campaign for my party’s presidential nomination, people are still in shock over President Obama’s demand for Israel to revert to its 1967 borders. Why? Because, like me, they are unabashedly pro-Israel. For instance, on Friday, May 20, 2011, the day after President Obama’s ultimatum to Israel, I was in Council Bluffs, Iowa, speaking at the Pottawattamie County Republican Party’s annual Lincoln Reagan Day Dinner, and every time I mentioned my support for Israel, the attendees stood up and cheered and applauded.
So why doesn’t President Obama get it?

Now I demand this: go out and search the world.  Speak to every person, from one end to the other.  Ring the town bells and call out even the old and sick, for we must interview them all.  Sit them down, and look them in the eye, and find me just one person who is unable to understand why the attendees at official Republican Party dinners might not agree with Democratic President Barack Obama.

This book is not a good book for business.  Herman Cain makes his decisions about his career based on purposeless, arbitrary goals such as "be a vice-president of something," later elevated to "be a president of something."  DIRECT QUOTES.  THOSE ARE DIRECT QUOTES.

So as CEO of Self, after several successful years as vice president of Pillsbury’s corporate systems and services, I knew that I had to dream higher: I had to dream of being president of something, for somebody, somewhere. And I decided to put that dream into action. Achieving that dream meant that I had to change careers.

This book is not a good book for politics.  Herman Cain makes his decisions about matters of policy by calling people with direct financial stakes in the result, and believes them without qualification or confirmation.

The president had insisted that under his scheme, the cost to restaurants would be only about two-and-one-half percent of their cost of doing business. I told Loretta that his observation was ludicrous. I knew that because I had consulted with the staff of the [National Restaurant Association], and they had found Mr. Clinton’s calculation to be mathematically incorrect.

And inexplicably there is an entire chapter devoted to the number 45, which Herman Cain believes is mystically significant to his life.

That isn’t all: Next year will be the forty-fifth anniversary of my college graduation. And in 2013, my first year in the White House, Gloria and I will be celebrating our forty-fifth wedding anniversary. I’m not a devout numerologist, but my mathematical training does cause me to recognize when numbers appear more than coincidentally. Isn’t it amazing how often 45 keeps popping up in my life?

Herman Cain, why did you write this?!  Why did they let you publish it!?  Are you trying to signal us that you're actually another, tinier man, trapped inside of a thick shell of Herman Cain that refuses to release you?!  Is this a cry for help?!  What happened to you, Herman Cain?!

The next morning I did a few interviews and relaxed. In the afternoon I took a nap and then had a bowl of soup before going over to the Peace Center.

"September 1, 1939," by W.H. Auden

I sit in one of the dives
On Fifty-second Street
Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade:
Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the bright
And darkened lands of the earth,
Obsessing our private lives;
The unmentionable odour of death
Offends the September night.

Accurate scholarship can
Unearth the whole offence
From Luther until now
That has driven a culture mad,
Find what occurred at Linz,
What huge imago made
A psychopathic god:
I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.

Exiled Thucydides knew
All that a speech can say
About Democracy,
And what dictators do,
The elderly rubbish they talk
To an apathetic grave;
Analysed all in his book,
The enlightenment driven away,
The habit-forming pain,
Mismanagement and grief:
We must suffer them all again.

Into this neutral air
Where blind skyscrapers use
Their full height to proclaim
The strength of Collective Man,
Each language pours its vain
Competitive excuse:
But who can live for long
In an euphoric dream;
Out of the mirror they stare,
Imperialism's face
And the international wrong.

Faces along the bar
Cling to their average day:
The lights must never go out,
The music must always play,
All the conventions conspire
To make this fort assume
The furniture of home;
Lest we should see where we are,
Lost in a haunted wood,
Children afraid of the night
Who have never been happy or good.

The windiest militant trash
Important Persons shout
Is not so crude as our wish:
What mad Nijinsky wrote
About Diaghilev
Is true of the normal heart;
For the error bred in the bone
Of each woman and each man
Craves what it cannot have,
Not universal love
But to be loved alone.

From the conservative dark
Into the ethical life
The dense commuters come,
Repeating their morning vow;
'I will be true to the wife,
I'll concentrate more on my work,'
And helpless governors wake
To resume their compulsory game:
Who can release them now,
Who can reach the dead,
Who can speak for the dumb?

All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky:
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die.

Defenseless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.

Caruba: he has his own special set of facts

Alan Caruba has a column out.  It's mostly the same standard dreck ("Increasingly, commentators have begun to describe Obama in psychological terms ranging from pathological narcissist to megalomaniac.") but he also makes a few interesting claims that are worth examination, since they're often repeated as fact by the right-wing.

Today, unemployment is at historic highs.

In what sense are they historically high? They were numerically higher during the early 80s, and they were higher for much longer during the Great Depression. Is there any way this statement is remotely related to reality?

Obama added five trillion dollars to the national debt, more than the combined debt since Washington held office

This is an absurd statement, and not based in any fact. In real wealth, the debt was nearly double its present level under FDR, remaining at such a level until the Eisenhower administration. Nor is it true measured as a percentage against GDP. And even in nominal dollars, it would be asinine to credit Obama with all the debt beginning from his first day in office.  And that's all ignoring, of course, the plain fact that Obama came into office during a recession.

The problem here, of course, is the phenomenon of epistemic closure: an audience and group of pundits in ideological lockstep who never venture outside of their bubble of agreement.  Caruba's cavalier falsehoods are so seldom challenged that he doesn't even bother with a patina of research.  Why should he go to the trouble?

Unfortunately, this produces sloppy thinking and discourages critical analysis, as memorably described in David Frum's "When Did Conservatives Lose Touch with Reality?"

When I asked Caruba about his strange nonfactual statements - what a less charitable person that myself might call "egregious lies" -  he replied:

@Alexander. Well, you hve your facts and I have mine. Apparently you are unaware of Obama's stimulus program, his opposition to cutting taxes, his war on energy, etc.

He has his own facts.  That actually explains a lot.

Porn and Video Games

The author of the legendary Stanford Prison Experiment, Philip Zimbardo, has a new book out with co-author Nikita Duncan about "The Demise of Guys." CNN blurbs it:

Is the overuse of video games and pervasiveness of online porn causing the demise of guys? Increasingly, researchers say yes, as young men become hooked on arousal, sacrificing their schoolwork and relationships in the pursuit of getting a tech-based buzz.

I'm a partisan in this fight, having grown up when both porn and video games were taking enormous strides forward, so my immediate gut reaction is to scoff.  But then I think of World of Warcraft.

Many games have been designed to be as addictive as possible, parceling out small rewards and trying to offer an endless game of full-quality repeats (most successfully done with puzzle games and shooting games), but World of Warcraft was a quantum leap forward. They took the model of MMORPGs that had been developed in games like Everquest, and dramatically improved on it to make a game that would make you want to pay for it every month.

A scaling system of micro-rewards was built into World of Warcraft, so that whether you spent a long time or a little time on the game, you'd be able to experience a steady and tantalizing series of illusory reward stimuli. While they still used the other mechanisms of enticement (exploration, socializing, competition, vicariousness), they relied most of all on the hamster-wheel cycle: small reward... small reward... small reward...all building to a visibly approaching BIG reward from one of the other mechanisms ("Now I can enter that dungeon!/Now I have this pretty hat!/Now I can kill that gnome!/Yay, I am a winner!") - but which was essentially just a numerical increase.  A sword that does more damage, a way to earn more money, a higher level: these are all just measurements of traits that are only relevant within the game itself.  In the extreme, you eventually arrive at Cowclicker - a game that did nothing but count your clicks.

I am not saying and I do not think that World of Warcraft is immoral, should be banned, or anything like that. Nor do I want to get into questions about redeeming value.  The game is simply the next and most logical step on the path of what I think "The Demise of Guys" is touching on: our increasingly virtual world is divorcing reward from real achievement. And that is something to which we and the next generations will have to adapt: we must be careful to base our self-worth on accomplishment, not rewards.

I have been thinking for a long time about ways in which our brains seem hard-wired to screw up. Technology has outpaced biology by such an exorbitant amount, it's not surprising. The most obvious example is our desire for sugar and fat, high-energy foods that have been historically rare, which are now so abundant that a majority of the population of the first world are becoming ill from their gorging. Similarly, humans aren't very good at judging probability and outcomes (test yourself), because a rough-and-ready snap judgment based on our biases has always been good enough for us.

The problem with these sorts of arguments we see in this book is their conclusions. I think it's short-sighted and just plain silly to try to deny that addictive video games and continually escalating sexual stimulus aren't having some negative effects - certain bizarre things are now considered erotic purely because of pornography ("facial" shots are one example). The problem is that the people who alert us to these problems often unimaginatively advocate for some form of control to hold back these cultural forces: limiting access to porn, tougher video game standards, etc. And while those things might work, I think history has taught us that there is no stopping an idea whose time has come.  You can shut down Napster, but file-sharing remains.  Technology advances.

Instead of trying to ban, we need to learn to employ one of our greatest skills as human beings, and intelligently adapt. "I have a level 85 warlock" has been, and must be, considered about the same as "I played checkers really well last night."  Activities that do not make us smarter and better (certain kinds of television, certain kinds of games, etc.) or that don't incorporate real achievement should be carefully considered in that light.

I know that these stimulus-barrage activities of porn and video games are never going to replace, say, intimate lovemaking, or chess.  But neither should partisans be as quick to scoff at the idea that they're having some effect.

Lolita and Games

One of the most interesting things about Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov's 1955 book (that surely ranks as among the greatest texts in English), is the prevalence of so many embedded games in the text.  For example, Humbert Humbert's ability to deceive himself is far more interesting than the simple grotesqueness of his pedophiliac cannibal-love, and this trait is what elevates the book beyond simple spectacle.¹  Certainly, there is ample spectacle: Humbert's pedophilia, the central mysteries of the book (what is Humbert's crime?  who "stole" Lolita?), and the lyric beauty of Nabokov's language are all interesting.  But the hidden truth behind Humbert's unreliable narration enfolds more within the text.  This book is not just for gawking.

The greatest delusion/game, and the one most broadly evident, is that Humbert thinks he was justified in his actions.  Early in the text, he engages in several attempts to defend pedophilia as a whole - and his own predations in particular.  Humbert draws crude comparisons with history and the rest of the world, protesting with pathetic erudition:

Here is Virgil who could the nymphet sing in a single tone, but probably preferred a lad's perineum. Here are two of King Akhnaten's and Queen Nefertiti's pre-nubile Nile daughters (that royal couple had a litter of six), wearing nothing but many necklaces of bright beads, relaxed on cushions, intact after three thousand years, with their soft brown puppybodies, cropped hair and long ebony eyes.

 Later and more crudely, after manhandling the child:

I felt proud of myself. I had stolen the honey of a spasm without impairing the morals of a minor. Absolutely no harm done. The conjurer had poured milk, molasses, foaming champagne into a young lady's new white purse; and lo, the purse was intact.

Most painfully and personally, Humbert attempts to tell the story of the first rape in a way that exonerates himself:

I am going to tell you something very strange: it was she who seduced me.

 This moment - the end of Humbert's nauseating attempts of pursuit and the beginning of his nauseating attempts of retention of Lolita - also marks the apogee of his defense of his actions.  The last few words of the chapter, referring to Lolita as a "wincing child," hint at the grimness hidden behind Humbert's obsession: even he does not believe he was anything less than a monster.  Increasingly and from this moment, theirs becomes an adversarial relationship.  Lolita is no longer prey, she is an enemy of "sullen fury" that extracts money and promises from him.  She would leave, but as Humbert admits at the conclusion of the first part, "she had nowhere else to go."

By the time they are settled and Lolita is attending Beardsley, Humbert is routinely using violence to enforce his will and constantly fearful she will escape, and he drops all pretense of love in his talk of her.  Every night, he reluctantly allows himself to admit, Lolita cries herself to sleep.

At the conclusion of the book, Humbert can no longer deceive himself about his actions, and he bitterly and reluctantly spits:

But the awful point of the whole argument is this. It had become gradually clear to my conventional Lolita during our singular and bestial cohabitation that even the most miserable of family lives was better than the parody of incest, which, in the long run, was the best I could offer the waif.

No longer able to squirm away from the truth, in the denouement Humbert yet realizes that he has revealed more than he intended.

At this or that twist of it I feel my slippery self eluding me, gliding into deeper and darker waters than I care to probe.

We might imagine that the process of revising would remove this ineluctable truth that Humbert's self-delusion let slip through, but Nabokov has taken care to establish, with included notes to editor "Clarence," that the manuscript comes to us unedited.  As we read the book, we are witnessing how Humbert's telling of his own story reveals the depths of his monstrous sin - even to his own eyes.

Another hidden truth and grim game of Nabokov's: Humbert does not love Lolita, or even especially like her.  This is not as obvious, but neither is it buried deeply.  It is one of the most cutting refutations of the close-minded idea that this is an evil book or a story of unconventional love.  It's not.  To Humbert, Lolita is "mentally... a disgustingly conventional little girl."  He condescends extravagantly on the rare occasions in which he offers her praise beyond her personal appearance.  No, his fascination with her is one of possession and enslavement.  He doesn't want to be with her, he wants to consume her.

My only grudge against nature was that I could not turn my Lolita inside out and apply voracious lips to her young matrix, her unknown heart, her nacreous liver, the sea-grapes of her lungs, her comely twin kidneys.

This is why she is, in fact, "Lolita."  This is not her name.  No one calls her that, except for Humbert.  Her name is Dolores or Dolly.  It is only to Humbert, in his depravity, that she is a Lolita: it is a label of ownership.

She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita.

A less grand and rather funnier hidden game of Lolita is that the entire text is a biting refutation of the work of Sigmund Freud.  In Strong Opinions, Nabokov's 1973 collection of interviews and letters to editors, one of his questioners asks him why Freud is so obviously a major theme of Lolita (Freud or his theories are mentioned a dozen times) considering the author's own well-publicized contempt for the "Austrian fraud."  Nabokov's response is his usual gruff dismissal, but the answer is that Lolita intentionally invokes Freudian theories by way of mocking them.

Freud posited the Oedipal complex, later expanded by Jung with the analogous Electra complex: a girl competes with her mother for the love of her father.  Lolita mocks this idea by offering up an equivalent situation (that "parody of incest") and illustrating the depths of horror that come from positing such a relationship as formational.  Obviously, neither Freud nor Jung advocated for such relationships, but Nabokov seems to have been rather unfairly implying an ideological crudeness in the theory.

What a marvelous book, and what a treasure trove of things to discover!

---
1.  As a side note, this is one of the problems with film adaptations of Lolita: they become all spectacle. Without Humbert's voice, we only see the raw events.  And while there may be some value in the shocking depiction of the rape of a child, it doesn't rise to the level of the book.

"In the Chloroformed Sanctuary": Tim Parks on Academic Criticism

On the blog of the NYRB, Tim Parks laments the process of academic criticism of literature. It's an interesting discussion, even if he does seem to be speaking from a place of ignorance ("The academic, though hardly well off, is more reliably salaried within a solid university institution." Ha! I wish!)

[T]hese pieces contain useful, almost “common sense” observations on the texts they are talking about. Yet this common sense is made to seem arduous through the use of unnecessary jargon. There is also a solemnity that combines with the ugliness of style to push the writing towards bathos. I suspect Davies’ metaphor of “twelve gaps” being “a seed” that “grew into roughly eight-hundred-and-twenty-five gaps” would have had Beckett laughing out loud.
...
What is in it for these critics? They stake out a field in which only a relatively small group of initiates can compete; their writing is safe from public scrutiny, it threatens no one and can do little damage; at the same time they may enjoy the illusion of possessing, encompassing, and even somehow neutralizing the most sparkling and highly regarded creations of the imagination.

Take a look.

"I Was There": William Deresiewicz on Vonnegut

A marvelous essay on the attractions of Kurt Vonnegut's writing and a spot-on assessment of the author's work is in The Nation this week.  William Deresiewicz and I differ slightly on ranking.  He feels Slaughterhouse-Five is the greatest, just above Sirens of Titan, and I consider the latter Vonnegut's greatest work.  But Deresiewicz's description of the author's prose is dead-to-rights:

The spareness hits you first. The first page contains fourteen paragraphs, none of them longer than two sentences, some of them as short as five words. It’s like he’s placing pieces on a game board—so, and so, and so. The story moves from one intensely spotlit moment to the next, one idea to the next, without delay or filler. The prose is equally efficient, with a scalding syncopated wit: “‘I told her that you and she were to be married on Mars.’ He shrugged. ‘Not married exactly—’ he said, ‘but bred by the Martians—like farm animals.’”

The freedom is stunning.

Check it out.

Ubuntu

About a week ago, I switched from Windows XP to a Linux distribution, Ubuntu.  I promise: this will be the only post I make on the subject.  People who drone on about their operating system are a public health hazard.

My little netbook was cheap, because I only wanted a minimal system that could do some basic things.  I don't run any resource-heavy programs or games, so why spend more money than necessary?  Unfortunately, there was one serious flaw I'd overlooked: because it didn't have an optical drive, it didn't come with a copy of Windows.  That meant that I couldn't ever re-install Windows.  And because even the stable and certain Windows XP eventually accumulates little errors and orphaned .dll files and whatnot, that meant that my computer's performance was doomed to a steady downward arc.  Careful maintenance - defragmenting and cleaning up - could delay the problem, but some problems can only be solved by a fresh install.  True techies can slow this decay, but I am just a humanities major.  Doom was approaching.

I depend on my computer.  I need it to write my thesis, access PDFs of articles, communicate, and assign grades to students.  So while I was very hesitant to make any major changes (what if everything goes wrong?!), neither could I just sit back and wait until the moment when a fatal error took down my graphics card and bricked the damn thing.

Last week, I got fed up waiting for the grindingly slow CPU, bogged down with two years' worth of detritus.  I decided the time had come to make a change.  I was going to move to Linux.

Linux is a free, open-source operating system that is widely popular among the technically-inclined thanks to its small footprint, low demands on resources, and famous stability.  Particularly over the last few years, several distributions (versions of Linux) had become popular for their ease-of-use.  The most formidable hurdle to any possible consumer of the system has always been the technical expertise required to manage Linux.  Because it's so customizable and modular, you have to be able to do a lot of the footwork necessary to get the programs and results you require.  Generally speaking, a grandmother could not sit down and get to work on Linux, as she might be able to do with Windows or Mac.

But times have changed, and one distribution in particular, Ubuntu, was widely reputed to be easy for novices to manage.  So one evening I backed up all of my documents, books, videos, and music onto an external hard drive, downloaded Ubuntu onto a thumb drive, and made the leap.

I was in unfamiliar territory.  Things were installing and widgets were popping up and all kinds of things were blinking.  The update manager was spinning and downloading and my accounts were syncing and basically stuff got out of control.  It wasn't until three hours later that my computer was updated and settled, with all my files migrated and everything working.

Since then, however, I've been very pleased.  Learning to use the terminal, the powerful command-line interface, has been the biggest challenge of all.  Most everything else has been fairly simple.  The programs I use (Skype, Calibre, VLC, and Chrome) all have Linux equivalents that work better than their Windows versions.  And my computer no longer grinds to a halt when I have more than one application working.  I have even learned a handful of new coding phrases to customize my new desktop.

All in all, it's been a smart move.  If you're in the same predicament, you should consider making the switch to Ubuntu or another distribution today.  Linux is ready for prime-time.

"The New Jim Crow," "Push," "Napoleon," "The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ," "Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality," "How to Write a Sentence," "The Post-American Presidency," and "The Overton Window."

The New Jim Crow, Michelle Alexander
Push, Sapphire
Napoleon, Paul Johnson
The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ, Philip Pullman
Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, Eliezer Yudkowsky
How to Write a Sentence, Stanley Fish
The Post-American Presidency, Pamela Gellar
The Overton Window, Glenn Beck



The New Jim Crow, Michelle Alexander

The New Jim Crow sets out to demonstrate that the criminal justice system of America has replaced the racist system of stratification that preceded it, Jim Crow, as well as the system of formal slavery that came before them both.  Michelle Alexander cites statistics, anecdotal evidence, and - most persuasively- flawless argument to draw our attention to the fact that every facet of American law enforcement now helps to oppress African-Americans in particular and minorities in general.  Her quiet outrage and methodical prose is not like the beat of a drum: rather, its careful progression lets us hear the vicious beat that has long been in muffled existence.

Every honest American citizen must confront the basic truth that young black men are in jail in numbers wildly out of proportion with their portion of the population.  For some people, this is explained by culture and poor choices.  For others (including myself) it was a lingering effect of racism and the result of damning poverty.  But Alexander presents a solid case that the enormous percentage of young black men who are either in jail or on parole has developed - consciously and unconsciously - as a way to control them and maintain their place at the bottom of the social scale.  Despite my skepticism, and my continued efforts to examine her arguments critically, Alexander's proof built in an irrefutable way.  Intentional or not, institutional racism exists in America to a shocking degree.

Serious, measured, and grounded, The New Jim Crow rips the comfortable cover off of this issue.  Since I read it, I have been unable to stop thinking about it.  If you're okay with that result, you should take a look.


Push, Sapphire

Lizzie says that this book is most interesting because of its contradictions.  It's written in dialect, so it should be dated and annoying by now, but it's not.  It's very short and clipped and includes some lousy poetry, but it's still very powerful.  And most of all, it's a grim sad story, but in some strange way amazingly uplifting.  As usual, of course, Lizzie is quite right.

While this is the story of a poor, obese teen mother, Push is less a chronicle of her problems and more the tale of her dreams.  Despite a level of hardship that would crush anyone, young Precious struggles to learn and better herself.  What makes her journey tolerable and even inspiring, though, is not her resilience or her determination.  While those are excellent qualities and necessary for anyone enduring a life of woe, a focus on Precious' obdurate ability to resist harm would have shortly become depressing.  Such stories have been written before, and can be best called stories of survival.  Push is a story of aspiration.


This is an important distinction, and one I didn't realize immediately, but it's at the center of why the book succeeds.  Even before she conceives of the desire to read and grow, we see that Precious is dreaming of a better world.  The opening scenes, of her sitting impassively in math class, are filled with her fantasies about marrying her teacher and living a full life.  Later that day, we learn about her dreams of becoming a movie and music star, and of living up to the goals espoused by Louis Farrakhan.  This is what keeps the book in a positive tone, despite her horrific situation.  Push is uplifting, because it is the story of a girl trying to raise herself in the world, and she brings us with her.

I recommend this.


Napoleon, Paul Johnson

Were you aware that Napoleon Bonaparte was a porcine, thuggish, rather dull man, who rose to his position thanks solely to historical coincidence and a few minor gifts like courage and a facility for mathematics, but who ultimately was the first racist totalitarian to pave the way for Stalin and Hitler?  In fact, it seems there was almost nothing good or compelling about Napoleon, except for the few positive personal qualities that must be dragged out of Paul Johnson by a team of mules.

One of the most curious facts about this book is that it omits almost all serious discussion of Napoleon's battles, except for Waterloo.  This is presumably because Napoleon won many of his battles, but lost in Waterloo.  Astonishingly, even Austerlitz or the battles of the Hundred Days preceding Waterloo are not covered in any depth.  Warfare that is still studied as a model for brilliant battlefield maneuvers does not rate more than a few paragraphs in Johnson's thin tome.

On the other hand, close discussion of Napoleon's autopsy and death does seem to merit some pages, with quotes discussing his "feminized" body "covered in a layer of fat" and his "small genitals" - even the final resting place of Les Invalides is mentioned with contempt for what Johnson considers its "vulgar" appearance!

The Duke of Wellington, on the other hand, receives nothing but fawning adulation; he is described without mention of flaws, but with plenty of adoring anecdotes.  It's not hard to see what earns him this worship: he was Napoleon's great foe, after all, which seems to earn Johnson's unmitigated praise.

I could understand if this text was, as it claims to be, a "skeptical" look at Napoleon.  Certainly, the great Frenchman has a posthumous mystique and cult about him, and remains such a subject of fascination that it's easy to forget that he seized power and went on rampaging wars that brought death to hundreds of thousands.  But Johnson's Napoleon doesn't balance the history or engage in sober assessment: he tries to tear down Napoleon in such an obviously vicious way that it sometimes defies reason.

We are told that Napoleon was without serious ideology or any real beliefs, but pursued power for its own sake and for the thrill of it.  Further, we are told that Napoleon was the first person to assume totalitarian power when he seized it from Barras and the other men of the totalitarian Committee for Public Safety, which had wiped out all other power in the country.  His assumption of power, Johnson tells us, would set an example for Hitler and Stalin to rise as ideological dictators.  But this is incoherent!  Napoleon did not create the dictatorship or wipe out the church and nobility, so he cannot be held responsible for those actions - especially when he later created nobility and welcomed back the church!  And how can we compare Napoleon, the man "without ideology," to Hitler or Stalin, who rose and ruled by ideology?

Johnson's obvious dislike for Napoleon verges on the ridiculous, and taints this book irredeemably.  This is unfortunate, because a short and skeptical history of the great man would have been very valuable.  But a reader finishing Johnson's book will be in some ways less informed than before they began.  "How," they might wonder, "Did someone so pathetic and vile command his armies to such victories and so terrify a world?"  This vision of Napoleon just plain doesn't make sense.  Seek a better biography, elsewhere.


The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ, Philip Pullman

The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ was a waste of my time, sad to say.  It's a shame, because it sounded very interesting.  Pullman is the author famous for a children's fantasy trilogy, His Dark Materials, justly celebrated for its inventiveness and the epic scale of its plot.  Unfortunately, his attempt here to rewrite the Gospels fails, on balance.  There are some redemptive traits, but they are few, and not found in the book itself.

Jesus, a vigorous young preacher, walks around the country and gathers disciples by calling for forgiveness and love, and rejecting any notion of an established church or his own divinity.  This particular Jesus gets no answer to his prayers, and so he is secretly contemptuous of God and doubts in the deity's existence.  He says all of the agreeable things, such as the Beatitudes ("Blessed are the meek.") and the Pericope Adulterae ("He who is without sin cast the first stone.")  He also says an altered version of some of the more disagreeable things.  In his Parable of the Ten Virgins, some of the wise virgins do share their oil, and it is this mercy that is the true Kingdom of God.  And this Jesus never multiplies loaves, he only demonstrates to the masses that they need only share and they will find they already have sufficient food.  He is a thoroughly human figure.

This is one of the few aspects of the book that works: it prompts us to consider the sort of Jesus we might have wished to exist - or rather, the sort of Jesus that liberal atheists like myself and Pullman might have wished to exist.  This Jesus rejects the things we find distasteful and the concepts that lead to future horrors, but emphasizes the best of Jesus' teaching.  Love your neighbor and help him, judge not lest ye be judged, etc.  At the least, this book does invite us to consider how we might rewrite the most influential figure in history to better suit our tastes.  It never did sit right with me that when Jesus visited the house of Martha and Mary, he condemned Martha for being responsible and kind.

This isn't the first rewriting of the Bible by an author interested in making it fit their ideology.  Most notable is Thomas Jefferson's The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth, which simply deletes all of the supernatural stories.  It's minimalist and wise, and probably bound to be the best.  Pullman's effort is better classed, though, with conservapedia.com's Conservative Bible Project, which "translates" the Bible into a form that better agrees with Republican orthodoxy.

Jesus is not alone, however, in The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ.  There is also his twin brother, Christ, an intelligent and bookish boy given to visions and eager to reshape the world.  Christ follows his brother and becomes a historian, writing down and strategically altering Jesus' story.  He is the one who corrupts the message, recording the Jesus with which we are familiar.  At the hand of Christ, Jesus becomes the son of God, prophecies his own death, and speaks harshly when Christ deems it necessary.  And when Jesus dies, Christ "appears" to the disciples as proof of a resurrection.

This formula becomes tired very quickly, even in this short book.  Christ, the narrator, is the focus of most of our attention, and he doesn't merit it.  Even the book's cleverest moment, when the parable of the Prodigal Son is revealed to be based on a childhood experience of the brothers', can't make the overall pedestrian "twist" into something interesting.

At the core of it, we're talking about a plot that can be summarized thus: "What if Jesus was actually two people, one of whom agreed with me and the other who was weak and corrupted the message?"  It turns out that this thin premise can't bear even the light weight of Pullman's hundred pages.  Avoid this.


Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, Eliezer Yudkowsky

I don't read much fan-fiction any more.  Too often, it has ranged from terrible to mediocre, and I eventually gave up.  Yet Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality is Harry Potter fanfiction, and it is good.

I was surprised, to be honest.  Fan-fiction usually falls prey to some of the many problems inherent in the genre.  Most significantly, it is almost impossible to find decent characterization since it generally relies on already-defined characters, lifted from another's work.  Thus, characterization requires some degree of successful imitation, a notoriously difficult task for a writer.  If you wish to write a new Captain Kirk story, your Kirk must believably sound like, or significantly depart from, the established character.

Because of this, the best fan-fiction seems to need some degree of distance between the original characters and the fan depictions.  This might be a distance of time, as with the successful Alan Moore depictions of Doctor Hyde and Alan Quartermaine in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.  Or it might be a metaphorical distance.  This latter is used in Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, with one significant change to J.K. Rowling's world producing a Harry Potter almost completely unlike Rowling's own.

In Yudkowsky's Potterverse, the terrible Uncle Vernon Dursley does not appear.  Aunt Petunia has instead married Professor Michael Verres-Evans.  After Lord Voledmort murders Petunia's sister and her husband, leaving an infant Harry behind, the boy is adopted and becomes Harry Potter-Verres-Evans.  He has a happy childhood, and is a prodigious prodigy in science, logic, mathematics, and philosophy.  He's also a bit of a self-righteous and anti-social tool.

This change in Petunia, and the resulting different Harry, ripples outward into an entirely different story.  Harry is sorted into Ravenclaw, never becomes friends with Ron, and proceeds to upend the entire magical world.

It's easy to see the genesis of Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality.  Yudkowsky, a rationalist and a bit of a pedant, read through the original series and was frustrated by a lot of strange elements and plot holes.  On his first day at Hogwart's, Harry Potter-Verres-Evans finds out about the existence of the Chamber of Secrets, and is shocked to think that anyone would ever think he might investigate it himself.  He rightly declares it to be not just reckless, but downright stupid - and of course, he's right.  Harry Potter himself caused or exacerbated many of the problems in the original series, and he frequently took idiotic actions that were prevented from disaster only because of the all-powerful Dumbledore.

The central question of this book, then, is this: what if Harry Potter was not just brave, but actually smart?

There's a bit of unfairness here, of course.  It's easy to plunk in a genius paragon, to mock the poor choices of his predecessor and scheme over the exchange rate of Sickles to Galleons.  But Yudkowsky also makes sure to include some genuine insights into each early chapter, as well as some lessons on the scientific method and fallacious thinking.  His analytic and meticulous consideration of the "natural laws" of magic and the Wizarding world combine with his strong skills of characterization to make the first half of this book a genuine delight.  And for the geeks among his readers, he also includes a wealth of references to the science fiction that both he and Harry Potter-Verres-Evans adore (most prominently Ender's Game).

The second half of the text (of what is written so far - it's unfinished) begins to drag, however.  Once Yudkowsky has run through his mental lists of "irrational things in the original" and "clever applications of thought to magic," he has to rely more on his own skills of creation.  These are a bit more limited.  One extended escape sequence, near the midpoint of the book, becomes truly unpleasant as it drags on and grinds on the reader as badly as any Dementor.

The preachiness of the book becomes more pronounced as it proceeds, which may or may not bother you.  Once the easy material is used up, such as the absurdity of using the Philosopher's Stone as bait for an evil wizard inside a school, Harry Potter-Verres-Evans turns his attentions to the archaic feudal world of noble houses and house elves, and the questionable ethics of torturing prisoners to death with monsters.  This actually parallels the original series' storyline of Hermione's obsession with the elves in an interesting way.  I admire and applaud the questioning seen in Yudkowsky's Harry and Rowling's Hermione, rather than the other characters' thoughtless acceptance of the order of things.  But at the same time, both crusades seem a little too shrill.

If you are an ardent Harry Potter fan or an ardent rationalist, I strongly recommend this book, though you might find some of the criticism a bit cutting.  I have high hopes it will recover from its downward slump when Yudkowsky finishes the last few chapters, but even if he doesn't, the first half is worth your time.  If you have not read Harry Potter, or read it only for escapism (not that there's anything wrong with that!), then you probably will just find this annoying, and should skip it.


How to Write a Sentence, Stanley Fish

I love Stanley Fish.  His books on literary criticism, Surprised by Sin and Is There a Text in This Class?, were central to how I began thinking about literature.  Just the other day, I wrote at length about how I would apply his ideas to my thesis.  My opinion is biased.  But even so, I loved this book.

Fish sets out here to try to communicate how sentences - and by extension, literature - works for the reader.  What makes some particular formulations of words powerful, witty, or funny?  He reviews such tools as opposition and coordination, touching only lightly on grammar in order to focus on analogy.  And after some discussion, he then elaborates on how the reader can create wonderful sentences of their own, before proceeding to a very close analysis of some of the most marvelous sentences one might ever find.

This book is written for novices of literature, those people who have never thought about why a sentiment sounds good or clever.  But don't be fooled into thinking this is a book of mechanics.  Instead, it is a work of passion: Stanley Fish adores good writing, and he pours his rapture straight onto the pages.  He admits to sounding precious, but his obvious enthusiasm overcomes his near-goofy words of praise, particularly when joined with his intelligent discussion of the workings behind the words.

How to Write a Sentence is very short, and so I recommend it for experienced readers, who will find some worthwhile contemplation and may enjoy the passion of it, and for novices, who might find their own enthusiasm kindled as they look behind the scenes of a good sentence.


The Post-American Presidency, Pamela Gellar

There are many ways to be wrong.  You might have incomplete information; you might have misunderstood your sources; you might have stumbled in your chain of logic; or you might just be dumb.  All of these have happened to me at one time or another.  But in The Post-American Presidency, Pamela Gellar manages to be wrong in all of these ways, simultaneously, in nearly every statement.  This book is a pulse-pounding exercise in malice, deceit, and foolishness.

You have to grow up in America to get America. Or you have to escape tyranny, oppression, and suppression and live the dream by emigrating to America. Obama is missing the DNA of the USA. It’s just not in him—through no fault of his own.

Gellar's intentions in the text, which was published in 2010, are to prove that President Barack Obama is evil.  She argues that he is pro-Islam and anti-Israel, pro-Africa and anti-America, pro-communism and anti-capitalism, pro-labor and anti-business and virtually every other breathless smear you might imagine.  It is the same sort of thing found ad nauseum on her blog, Atlas Shrugs - and indeed, the book reads like a blog, with chapters grouped around loose topics and discussed in seven-paragraph chunks, clunked under capitalized headlines: "GIVING UP AMERICAN SOVEREIGNTY FOR CLIMATE CHANGE?"

The most remarkable thing about Gellar's accusations, however, is not their mouth-foaming lunacy.  Instead, it is the fact that she doesn't even muster up any evidence at all to support them.  Each rant consists of a rough formula: she makes a broad declaration about Obama, quotes two or three sentences from one of his speeches out of context, and then brings in some analysis by former ambassador to the U.N. John Bolton or the American Enterprise Institute.  And that's the end of it, almost without exception.

Here's an example:

IN BARACK OBAMA’S INAUGURAL ADDRESS HE SAID: “WE ARE A NATION OF CHRISTIANS AND MUSLIMS, JEWS AND HINDUS, AND NONBELIEVERS.”
The displacement of the Jews from the second position after Christians in Obama’s listing had to be intentional. Then, just six days later, Obama restored the Jews to the second position, but after the Muslims: when the post-American president gave his first televised interview as president to Dubai’s Al-Arabiya News Channel, he made a point of calling America “a country of Muslims, Jews, Christians, non-believers.” In that order. The casual abandonment of the longtime workaday phrase “a Judeo-Christian nation” was portentous.

Let's look aside from the obvious rhetorical purpose of such a shift in language, and move on past the even more obvious point that items in a list are not necessarily in list of importance, and just focus on the fact that this is not evidence that Obama is attacking the Jews, or intends to attack the Jews, or anything like that.  This "evidence," which really is almost the whole of her "proof," is part of a sentence from a single speech.  It is almost impossible to use it to divine Obama's hidden agenda.  To try to do so would be stupid.  This book is stupid.  Quod erat demonstrandum.

When the book does present evidence, it is inevitably to prove a fallacious guilt by association:

And why was Obama’s mother taking Russian-language classes in 1960—the height of communist antagonism toward the West? Stanley Ann Dunham had no interest in becoming a diplomat.

The only conceivable use for this book is as a threat.  "Watch out, little Johnny, or you'll end up like Pamela Gellar."  If you see The Post-American Presidency on a bookshelf, back away slowly, and don't breathe in.  It might be communicable.


The Overton Window, Glenn Beck

Shocker: Glenn Beck is not a very good writer.  I will save myself some exasperation on this one, and be brief.

This book is sloppy, through and through.  It's evident in every way.  The plot, for example, is riddled with holes like a rotten stump:

“To put your busy mind at ease,” the old man said, “let me assure you that the trifling problem you brought us today is already put safely to bed. The story in the Post has been spiked, an eager team of computer sleuths is tracking down the source of your leak, and the memorandum itself is now being thoroughly and plausibly denied by its authors and blamed on an overzealous local bureaucracy somewhere in the barren Midwest. Who will be the culprit again, Noah?”

If the story has been spiked and quieted, then why do they need to thoroughly and plausibly deny it?

Even worse, there are basic errors of fact, often repeated by people on the far right (like Beck), but which don't stand up to scrutiny:

Social Security was the boldest Ponzi scheme in history until now.

Social Security, even now in its underfunded state, is projected to pay full benefits for the next 35 years, and 75% benefits thereafter.  It suffers from a shortfall, not a systemic error like a Ponzi scheme.

The writing is just as sloppy as the thinking  There's scarcely a metaphor in the book that isn't confused:

This had come as a welcome vindication for a young man who’d given up early on his own high ideals and drifted into the safe though stormy harbor of his father’s business.

It is generally accepted in oceanic metaphors that stormy is unsafe.

Often it's even worse, and the metaphor is so mixed as to be insensible:

In that author’s defense no arrangement of ink on a page could possibly hold a candle to the twists his actual day had taken, nor could any fiction likely lure his mind from this strange, beautiful character lying beside him, right there in real life.

How could ink hold a candle, no matter its arrangement on the page?

Sometimes the writing is so unclear that it requires a moment's parsing to even make sense:

If nothing else it would drive their critics on the left right up the wall.

"Left" as a metaphor for political direction, immediately followed by "right" as a metaphor for physical direction.  Splendid.

And the characterization... don't even get me started:

The big man looked up and seemed to take a bearing on a number of celestial bodies before ciphering a moment. “I’d say she’s nigh onto half-past four in the morning, give or take some.” 

I AM FROM THE SOUTH.  I ENJOY GRITS.  I DO NOT OWN A WATCH.  Y'ALL.

Do not read this book.  It is not enjoyable as thriller, alternate history, or romance.  The only people who could find this dreck worthwhile are those who require a fictional universe to reassure them that their political beliefs are correct, no matter how badly-written that justification might be.

Ideas for Classes

Classes I'd like to teach, someday.


ENGL480: Labelmaker

Kierkegaard famously said, "Label me, and you negate me," referring to the obliterating power of categorization on a person's individuality.  Much of contemporary literary theory is focused on genres and labels, such as feminist, post-colonial, fantasy, or postmodern.  This course will explore the power and danger inherent in such labels, and the associated expectations.  Primary texts will include Michael Chabon's The Yiddish Policeman's Union as a work of counter-historical fiction, Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar as a feminist text, J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit as a children's book and fantasy, and Robert Heinlein's The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress as a political and science fiction book.  A heavy engagement with critical theory will also demand an examination of the work of Edward Said, Julia Kristeva, and other prominent theorists.

ENGL353: Matryoshka

Thomas Carlyle's Sartor Resartus, Jose Luis Borges' short stories "Pierre Menard, author of Don Quixote" and "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius", and Vladimir Nabokov's Pale Fire, as works of deliberate obfuscation that function as larger puzzles. The reader's initial expectations are part of the author's plan of misdirection, eventually being turned around to a surprising final conclusion.  There are dangers and advantages in this approach, but it can turn a narrative into a metatextual game, as the reader's uncertainty and gradual realizations are anticipated by a careful inlaid plan.  The course will attempt to ascertain the mechanics of such writing, discovering the method by which the author builds their maze.

ENGL221: Grand Theft Classic

This course explores the liberal borrowing and rewriting in which playwrights have indulged from time immemorial, focusing on Aeschylus' The Libation Bearers, Seneca's Thyestes, Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus, Joseph Addison's Cato, and Jean-Paul Sartre's Les Mouches.  Seneca stole Aeschylus' dramatic conventions.  Shakespeare stole Seneca's plot.  Addison stole Seneca's characterization.  And Sartre stole almost the whole of Aeschylus' play.  What is the line between tribute and theft?  Can there be any true writing, or is there only rewriting?

ENGL314: Wikiliterature

The essence of scholarship is the determined expansion and dissemination of knowledge, but in a fluid and uncertain environment, can any work of reference be said to be "finished."  "Wikiliterature" will examine unfinished texts, edited texts, and ambiguous texts in order to decipher the gap between an author's intentions and his results.  Special attention will be paid to the various contradictory versions of Shakespeare's Hamlet, the metatextual ideas of Jose Luis Borges, and the critical theory of reader-response.  Students will also spend time learning how to contribute to Wikipedia, a contemporary example of a fluid text.