Robert Lacey and
Danny Danziger.
The Year 1000: What Life Was Like at the Turn of the First Millennium. Little, Brown & Company, 2000.
Saturday, April 14, 2012
The Year M
The History of Coffee Houses in England
Ellis, Aytoun. The Penny Universities: A History of Coffee Houses. London: Secker & Warburg, 1956.
The coffee houses of England served multiple purposes, and this book is written to recognize their contributions and to observe three hundred years of coffee house history. Although written in many ways like a catalog, which makes progress through its pages a bit tedious, the book's author, Ellis, devotes each chapter to a specific aspect of the coffee house. Much of the history is documented although some of it is based on historical legend. From the origins of the first intoxicating sip of coffee in England, the coffee houses served as an early alternative to too much beer--the drink of choice that was destroying the health and well being of many in England. In its early days, the coffee house was open to (primarily) men from all walks of life--the poor mingling with the rich. Coffee Houses served as a safe haven for political discussion, became centers for the exchange of ideas and for civil debate--Dryden held court at a coffee house were the homes for the earliest journals--Addison and Steele were among those who brought their publications to life through coffee house debate (also see Habermas's Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere on the role of coffee houses and the rise of the early journal and development of cultural critique). Alcohol slowly found its way back into the coffee shop as did the charlatan in the form of quacks and highway men, but in our current times, the coffee house is a solid fixture as a community space conducive to both those seeking solitude and those preferring society.
If you have any doubt about the important cultural role of the coffee shop, find this book in a library near you (I came across this browsing the DA's at Van Pelt Library at the University of Pennsylvania).
The coffee houses of England served multiple purposes, and this book is written to recognize their contributions and to observe three hundred years of coffee house history. Although written in many ways like a catalog, which makes progress through its pages a bit tedious, the book's author, Ellis, devotes each chapter to a specific aspect of the coffee house. Much of the history is documented although some of it is based on historical legend. From the origins of the first intoxicating sip of coffee in England, the coffee houses served as an early alternative to too much beer--the drink of choice that was destroying the health and well being of many in England. In its early days, the coffee house was open to (primarily) men from all walks of life--the poor mingling with the rich. Coffee Houses served as a safe haven for political discussion, became centers for the exchange of ideas and for civil debate--Dryden held court at a coffee house were the homes for the earliest journals--Addison and Steele were among those who brought their publications to life through coffee house debate (also see Habermas's Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere on the role of coffee houses and the rise of the early journal and development of cultural critique). Alcohol slowly found its way back into the coffee shop as did the charlatan in the form of quacks and highway men, but in our current times, the coffee house is a solid fixture as a community space conducive to both those seeking solitude and those preferring society.
If you have any doubt about the important cultural role of the coffee shop, find this book in a library near you (I came across this browsing the DA's at Van Pelt Library at the University of Pennsylvania).
Sunday, March 18, 2012
How it All Began
Lively, Penelope. How it All Began. NY:Viking, 2012.
Lively's latest novel picks up a theme explored in one of her recent novels, Consequences--that is, the importance of a random event or action to shape the future course of multiple lives. The novel opens with Charlotte, an older but still very active woman, coming to consciousness after having been mugged and having her purse stolen. Because of her injuries she must move in with her married daughter, who in turn must cancel her plans to accompany her employer on a speaking engagement. Because of her cancellation, her employer asks his niece to accompany him. The niece sends a text to the married man she is having a casual affair with which is seen by his wife. The niece, in addition, neglects to bring tickets for her uncle's trip or the manuscript from which he plans to speak leading to his deep humiliation. Not all of the fall out from Charlotte's accident is negative but it is disruptive and life changing.
This novel, while exploring a weighty idea is also very funny. The niece's married man is a selfish, hapless man who is in the habit of having his cake and eating it too. The uncle/employer is a well known academic whose glory days are behind him. He is hopelessly out of touch with current scholarship but blithely carries on writing his memoirs and enjoying the self-serving attentions of a young disciple. Lively also takes a stab at investment bankers and their easy way with other people's money. Some of the characters move on, and some consider moving on but step back.
The narrator steps into the story as the novel concludes to consider the far reaching effects of the random actions of Charlotte's mugger, concluding simply that no man is an island.
If you haven't read any Penelope Lively novels, you might consider picking up Cleopatra's Sister, City of the Mind, and, most especially, Passing On.
Lively's latest novel picks up a theme explored in one of her recent novels, Consequences--that is, the importance of a random event or action to shape the future course of multiple lives. The novel opens with Charlotte, an older but still very active woman, coming to consciousness after having been mugged and having her purse stolen. Because of her injuries she must move in with her married daughter, who in turn must cancel her plans to accompany her employer on a speaking engagement. Because of her cancellation, her employer asks his niece to accompany him. The niece sends a text to the married man she is having a casual affair with which is seen by his wife. The niece, in addition, neglects to bring tickets for her uncle's trip or the manuscript from which he plans to speak leading to his deep humiliation. Not all of the fall out from Charlotte's accident is negative but it is disruptive and life changing.
This novel, while exploring a weighty idea is also very funny. The niece's married man is a selfish, hapless man who is in the habit of having his cake and eating it too. The uncle/employer is a well known academic whose glory days are behind him. He is hopelessly out of touch with current scholarship but blithely carries on writing his memoirs and enjoying the self-serving attentions of a young disciple. Lively also takes a stab at investment bankers and their easy way with other people's money. Some of the characters move on, and some consider moving on but step back.
The narrator steps into the story as the novel concludes to consider the far reaching effects of the random actions of Charlotte's mugger, concluding simply that no man is an island.
If you haven't read any Penelope Lively novels, you might consider picking up Cleopatra's Sister, City of the Mind, and, most especially, Passing On.
Proust and the Squid
Wolf, Maryanne. Proust and the Squid: the Story and Science of the Reading Brain. London: Icon Books, 2008.
Wolf provides a brief history of the shift from oral culture to written culture and traces the development of written language and reading. She explains the evidence supporting the adaptability of the human brain, how it has changed to enable reading, and how it differs for different writing systems, for instance, the different parts of the brain used for Chinese characters or Japanese kanji, for alphabets, and for syllabaries. Wolf also shows how complex and advanced the reading process is, pointing out that we expect children to learn in 2000 days, something that took 2000 years to develop. Because Wolf is a reading specialist, she also describes successful systems for teaching reading both to new readers and to readers who have fallen behind or have difficulty with the reading process. Wolf also devotes a section of the book to dyslexia and its varieties; the history of those with dyslexia, who often turn out to be among the more creative members of society.
In answer to Socrates' concern over the loss of memory and the over-reliance on and faith in words frozen in an unfixed form to the page, Wolf shows that the the shift to writing and reading freed the brain up for deeper and more critical thought.
Wolf considers how the brain will continue to adapt as our habits of reading change to focus on the shorter bits of information often turned to on the Web and the disruption of attention and focus through multitasking that often accompanies work on the computer as readers shift from the printed page to the screen. Wolf writes, "Ultimately, the questions Socrates raised for Athenian youth apply equally to our own. Will unguided information lead to an illusion of knowledge, and thus curtail the more difficult, time-consuming, critical thought processes that lead to knowledge itself?" and she asks, "[W]hat would be lost to us if we replaced the skills honed by the reading brain with those now being formed in our new generation of 'digital natives,' who sit and read transfixed before a screen?" (221).
She concludes that, "In the transmission of knowledge the children and teachers of the future should not be faced with a choice between books and screens, between newspapers and capsuled versions of the news on the Internet, or between print and other media. Our transition generation has an opportunity, if we seize it, to pursue and use our most reflective capacities, to use everything at our disposal to prepare for the formation of what will come next. ....Many of our children code-switch between two or more oral languages, and we can teach them also to switch between different presentations of written language and different modes of analysis" (229).
An interesting book with much to consider for readers, teachers of reading, librarians and other professionals working with and helping to develop readers, and lastly, but in no way least, parents who will be raising readers.
Wolf provides a brief history of the shift from oral culture to written culture and traces the development of written language and reading. She explains the evidence supporting the adaptability of the human brain, how it has changed to enable reading, and how it differs for different writing systems, for instance, the different parts of the brain used for Chinese characters or Japanese kanji, for alphabets, and for syllabaries. Wolf also shows how complex and advanced the reading process is, pointing out that we expect children to learn in 2000 days, something that took 2000 years to develop. Because Wolf is a reading specialist, she also describes successful systems for teaching reading both to new readers and to readers who have fallen behind or have difficulty with the reading process. Wolf also devotes a section of the book to dyslexia and its varieties; the history of those with dyslexia, who often turn out to be among the more creative members of society.
In answer to Socrates' concern over the loss of memory and the over-reliance on and faith in words frozen in an unfixed form to the page, Wolf shows that the the shift to writing and reading freed the brain up for deeper and more critical thought.
Wolf considers how the brain will continue to adapt as our habits of reading change to focus on the shorter bits of information often turned to on the Web and the disruption of attention and focus through multitasking that often accompanies work on the computer as readers shift from the printed page to the screen. Wolf writes, "Ultimately, the questions Socrates raised for Athenian youth apply equally to our own. Will unguided information lead to an illusion of knowledge, and thus curtail the more difficult, time-consuming, critical thought processes that lead to knowledge itself?" and she asks, "[W]hat would be lost to us if we replaced the skills honed by the reading brain with those now being formed in our new generation of 'digital natives,' who sit and read transfixed before a screen?" (221).
She concludes that, "In the transmission of knowledge the children and teachers of the future should not be faced with a choice between books and screens, between newspapers and capsuled versions of the news on the Internet, or between print and other media. Our transition generation has an opportunity, if we seize it, to pursue and use our most reflective capacities, to use everything at our disposal to prepare for the formation of what will come next. ....Many of our children code-switch between two or more oral languages, and we can teach them also to switch between different presentations of written language and different modes of analysis" (229).
An interesting book with much to consider for readers, teachers of reading, librarians and other professionals working with and helping to develop readers, and lastly, but in no way least, parents who will be raising readers.
The Hottest Dishes of the Tartar Cuisine
Bronsky, Alina. The Hottest Dishes of the Tartar Cuisine. New York: Europa Editions, 2011. Translated from the German by Tim Mohr.
Bronsky's novel takes place somewhere in Russia in the years leading up to and following the fall of the Soviet Union. Rosalinda and her husband Klalganow are of Tartar descent. Kalganow, who embraces the Soviet concept of the sameness of all people, chooses to disregard his Tartar past, while Rosalinda continues to embrace what she remembers of the Tartar language and food. Rosalinda calls her daughter by her Tartar name Sulfia, while Kalganow calls her Sonja. The novel opens with Sulfia telling her mother that she has become pregnant after dreaming of a man. Rosalinda, who narrates the novel, immediately sets about to abort the child. This sets the tone for the novel as Rosalinda compulsively takes charge of everything and everyone, most prominently her daughter and granddaughter, Aminat. Rosa excels at whatever she puts her mind to, but she is woefully unaware of the needs, desires, and feelings of those around her. Having decided that Sulfia is stupid and ugly she trusts her with nothing, including Aminat. Sulfia grows up cowed by her mother until she finally breaks away, not without trial and error, and finally finds herself successfully married, employed, and with a growing family. When she and her Jewish husband and in-laws decide to move to Israel, Rosa, this time inadvertently, disrupts the process throwing Sulfia's and Aminat's lives into tatters. As determined as ever, Rosa proceeds to do what she sees proper to repair the situation in ways that are shocking and disastrous.
Bronsky's novel is not just a comic story of a family in chaos and turmoil, perhaps mirroring the chaos in Russia at the time of the fall of the Soviet Union, but it is also a tragic story of a Russian woman who works within a system of deprivation and desperation to achieve what she considers to be success for herself and her family. She uses everything within her grasp to achieve her ends, whether it is her own good looks or the desires of a pedophile. She is at the same time cavalier and fiercely protective of her loved ones and she can't imagine that what she wants isn't best for them, or ultimately what they will want.
I was both put off and drawn to this novel. While one may never learn to like Rosalinda, one can understand her and see her personality and actions as a result of her environment just as Sulfia and Aminat are shaped by their life under the care and direction of Rosalinda.
When I had the opportunity to visit my daughter while she was living in Krasnoyarsk in (what I would call but is perhaps inaccurate) south central SIberia, We spent an evening with a 70+ year old woman who worked full time as a pathologist at the local hospital in Mariinsk (Марии́нск). She lived with her son and daughter-in-law and young grandchild in, what I found to be typical, a one bedroom apartment. Outside the apartment, this hardworking grandmother had an immaculate and productive garden. I asked how she worked, kept the household, and maintained this garden, she answered me that this was what all Russian women had to do. She invited my daughter and I to have dinner with her as long as my daughter made the salad and I cooked the fish. When we saw the fish we found it be the size of the table. I somewhat ashamedly said that I wasn't particularly skilled at cooking fish and I had no idea how to approach a fish this size. She gave up on both of us and cooked us a very simple but very nice meal that I will never forget. The next day I asked her about the fish and she said she was up all night cutting it up and cooking it bit by bit. Russian woman--practicality and endurance combined with hospitality and kindness.
I will look forward to reading Alina Bronsky's first book, Broken Glass Park (2010).
Look for Alina Bronsky's books at your favorite bookstore or library. My favorite libraries are the Free Library of Philadelphia and the Van Pelt-Dietrich Library at the University of Pennsylvania.
Bronsky's novel takes place somewhere in Russia in the years leading up to and following the fall of the Soviet Union. Rosalinda and her husband Klalganow are of Tartar descent. Kalganow, who embraces the Soviet concept of the sameness of all people, chooses to disregard his Tartar past, while Rosalinda continues to embrace what she remembers of the Tartar language and food. Rosalinda calls her daughter by her Tartar name Sulfia, while Kalganow calls her Sonja. The novel opens with Sulfia telling her mother that she has become pregnant after dreaming of a man. Rosalinda, who narrates the novel, immediately sets about to abort the child. This sets the tone for the novel as Rosalinda compulsively takes charge of everything and everyone, most prominently her daughter and granddaughter, Aminat. Rosa excels at whatever she puts her mind to, but she is woefully unaware of the needs, desires, and feelings of those around her. Having decided that Sulfia is stupid and ugly she trusts her with nothing, including Aminat. Sulfia grows up cowed by her mother until she finally breaks away, not without trial and error, and finally finds herself successfully married, employed, and with a growing family. When she and her Jewish husband and in-laws decide to move to Israel, Rosa, this time inadvertently, disrupts the process throwing Sulfia's and Aminat's lives into tatters. As determined as ever, Rosa proceeds to do what she sees proper to repair the situation in ways that are shocking and disastrous.
Bronsky's novel is not just a comic story of a family in chaos and turmoil, perhaps mirroring the chaos in Russia at the time of the fall of the Soviet Union, but it is also a tragic story of a Russian woman who works within a system of deprivation and desperation to achieve what she considers to be success for herself and her family. She uses everything within her grasp to achieve her ends, whether it is her own good looks or the desires of a pedophile. She is at the same time cavalier and fiercely protective of her loved ones and she can't imagine that what she wants isn't best for them, or ultimately what they will want.
I was both put off and drawn to this novel. While one may never learn to like Rosalinda, one can understand her and see her personality and actions as a result of her environment just as Sulfia and Aminat are shaped by their life under the care and direction of Rosalinda.
When I had the opportunity to visit my daughter while she was living in Krasnoyarsk in (what I would call but is perhaps inaccurate) south central SIberia, We spent an evening with a 70+ year old woman who worked full time as a pathologist at the local hospital in Mariinsk (Марии́нск). She lived with her son and daughter-in-law and young grandchild in, what I found to be typical, a one bedroom apartment. Outside the apartment, this hardworking grandmother had an immaculate and productive garden. I asked how she worked, kept the household, and maintained this garden, she answered me that this was what all Russian women had to do. She invited my daughter and I to have dinner with her as long as my daughter made the salad and I cooked the fish. When we saw the fish we found it be the size of the table. I somewhat ashamedly said that I wasn't particularly skilled at cooking fish and I had no idea how to approach a fish this size. She gave up on both of us and cooked us a very simple but very nice meal that I will never forget. The next day I asked her about the fish and she said she was up all night cutting it up and cooking it bit by bit. Russian woman--practicality and endurance combined with hospitality and kindness.
I will look forward to reading Alina Bronsky's first book, Broken Glass Park (2010).
Look for Alina Bronsky's books at your favorite bookstore or library. My favorite libraries are the Free Library of Philadelphia and the Van Pelt-Dietrich Library at the University of Pennsylvania.
Monday, February 13, 2012
Pity the Billionaire
Thomas Frank. Pity the Billionaire: the Hard-Times Swindle and the Unlikely Comeback of the Right. New York: Henry Holt, 2012
Reviewed by T. Hatch
Columnist, author, and former editor of the Baffler Thomas Frank asks the question, in his latest book Pity the Billionaire, how is it possible that the political Right thrived in the 2010 elections despite the economic meltdown of 2008? Why then were the trajectories of the 1932 and 2008 elections so different? One would think that the “newest Right” should have been as discredited as Herbert Hoover with no chance to win an election anytime soon. Yet, alas, they did.
Frank argues that the “newest Right” is something like a bunch of zombies in a cheesy Hollywood movie; the undead have amazing recuperative powers. In early 2009 the chattering class was presiding over the funeral of the Republican Party. By August of that year the Democrats were back on their heels playing defense at town hall meetings where health care reform was the topic. By 2010 the Democrats were in full retreat suffering a historically devastating defeat in the midterm elections. “If you had brought the world’s teenaged anarchists together in some great international congress and asked them to design an ideal crisis they could not have discredited market-based civilization more completely than did the crash of 2008” (p.26). Pity the Billionaire seeks to answer the question of why this counter-intuitive conservative resurgence in 2010 could have taken place.
The real genius of the newest Right has been to unleash the “cynical idealism of billionaire America” (p.44) on a country ready for its cold embrace. The brilliance of equating “we the people” with derivatives traders and convincing the victims of the great recession that not only would it be wrong and a form of “class warfare” to criticize investment bankers, but that they should show some sympathy for the beleaguered billionaire class, is not to be underestimated. This peculiar form of billionaire inspired populism maintains that markets are democratic systems with consumers and investors making their desires known through the naturally recurring phenomenon of price auction theory. Whereas market populism used to be the domain of the wealthy, now it is for the masses.
A significant part of Pity the Billionaire is basically an ethnography of the Tea Party Movement. The Tea Party is little more than the petit bourgeois white supremacist wing of the Republican Party. With their own cable news channel as a megaphone, and a corporate media that could not get enough of their eccentric act, they were effective in framing the issue as choice between a small business utopia and a government imposed socialism. Frank, who has read C. Wright Mills carefully, well understands that small business is useful to big business as a mascot for the ideology of utopian capitalism. Using small business folklore as the basis for a populist front is the preferred methodology of the corporate robber barons. In this respect the top down faux populism of the Tea Party represents this triumph of three decades of neoliberal ideology.
Whereas the top down construction of a phony populism was successful, the Obama administration’s efforts at bailing out the economy from on high, at the expense of multitude, were politically less so. F.D.R. worked to save and restructure the economy from the bottom up. Rather than placing itself at the forefront of the populist anger against Wall Street (breaking up the banks, stopping the foreclosures, jailing the criminals etc.) the Obama administration made itself the embodiment of cronyism, i.e., instead of another F.D.R. we got Clinton II. Not only was catering to Wall Street an act of moral cowardice it was a huge tactical error which allowed the Right to gather itself and quickly counterattack.
The delusions of the Right are situated in the shibboleth of an unfettered free market. However, Obama and the modern Democratic Party are equally delusional. The Democrats cognitive break with reality is not based on economics but emanates from the world of political science according to Frank. Their collective hallucination manifests itself in a “cult of centrism and compromise.” Like another tall gaunt politician of yesteryear, Obama must have imagined himself waving a piece of paper in the air proclaiming, “We have bi-partisan consensus in our time!” Frank states that “President Obama tries to stay on the good side of companies like Goldman Sachs and BP even as he desperately drives his hook-and-ladder around a world they have set on fire.” (p. 136) Fearful that he might be seen as a radical, Obama has dutifully carried the water for Wall Street.
Another explanation for the politically inexplicable may be that we were cheated out of seeing the full effects of the train wreck. The banking industry did not suffer the consequences of a collapse because the much maligned bureaucracy in Washington D.C. saved them. The deus ex machina of the federal government saved the ungrateful lords of Wall Street. As thanks, the Right has been able to shift the blame from the scene of the crime to Washington D.C.
Find this book (and place a hold on it!) at the Free Library of Philadelphia: McN 12336742 (at about eleven branches, and checked out or on its way to a branch to be checked out.)
Reviewed by T. Hatch
Columnist, author, and former editor of the Baffler Thomas Frank asks the question, in his latest book Pity the Billionaire, how is it possible that the political Right thrived in the 2010 elections despite the economic meltdown of 2008? Why then were the trajectories of the 1932 and 2008 elections so different? One would think that the “newest Right” should have been as discredited as Herbert Hoover with no chance to win an election anytime soon. Yet, alas, they did.
Frank argues that the “newest Right” is something like a bunch of zombies in a cheesy Hollywood movie; the undead have amazing recuperative powers. In early 2009 the chattering class was presiding over the funeral of the Republican Party. By August of that year the Democrats were back on their heels playing defense at town hall meetings where health care reform was the topic. By 2010 the Democrats were in full retreat suffering a historically devastating defeat in the midterm elections. “If you had brought the world’s teenaged anarchists together in some great international congress and asked them to design an ideal crisis they could not have discredited market-based civilization more completely than did the crash of 2008” (p.26). Pity the Billionaire seeks to answer the question of why this counter-intuitive conservative resurgence in 2010 could have taken place.
The real genius of the newest Right has been to unleash the “cynical idealism of billionaire America” (p.44) on a country ready for its cold embrace. The brilliance of equating “we the people” with derivatives traders and convincing the victims of the great recession that not only would it be wrong and a form of “class warfare” to criticize investment bankers, but that they should show some sympathy for the beleaguered billionaire class, is not to be underestimated. This peculiar form of billionaire inspired populism maintains that markets are democratic systems with consumers and investors making their desires known through the naturally recurring phenomenon of price auction theory. Whereas market populism used to be the domain of the wealthy, now it is for the masses.
A significant part of Pity the Billionaire is basically an ethnography of the Tea Party Movement. The Tea Party is little more than the petit bourgeois white supremacist wing of the Republican Party. With their own cable news channel as a megaphone, and a corporate media that could not get enough of their eccentric act, they were effective in framing the issue as choice between a small business utopia and a government imposed socialism. Frank, who has read C. Wright Mills carefully, well understands that small business is useful to big business as a mascot for the ideology of utopian capitalism. Using small business folklore as the basis for a populist front is the preferred methodology of the corporate robber barons. In this respect the top down faux populism of the Tea Party represents this triumph of three decades of neoliberal ideology.
Whereas the top down construction of a phony populism was successful, the Obama administration’s efforts at bailing out the economy from on high, at the expense of multitude, were politically less so. F.D.R. worked to save and restructure the economy from the bottom up. Rather than placing itself at the forefront of the populist anger against Wall Street (breaking up the banks, stopping the foreclosures, jailing the criminals etc.) the Obama administration made itself the embodiment of cronyism, i.e., instead of another F.D.R. we got Clinton II. Not only was catering to Wall Street an act of moral cowardice it was a huge tactical error which allowed the Right to gather itself and quickly counterattack.
The delusions of the Right are situated in the shibboleth of an unfettered free market. However, Obama and the modern Democratic Party are equally delusional. The Democrats cognitive break with reality is not based on economics but emanates from the world of political science according to Frank. Their collective hallucination manifests itself in a “cult of centrism and compromise.” Like another tall gaunt politician of yesteryear, Obama must have imagined himself waving a piece of paper in the air proclaiming, “We have bi-partisan consensus in our time!” Frank states that “President Obama tries to stay on the good side of companies like Goldman Sachs and BP even as he desperately drives his hook-and-ladder around a world they have set on fire.” (p. 136) Fearful that he might be seen as a radical, Obama has dutifully carried the water for Wall Street.
Another explanation for the politically inexplicable may be that we were cheated out of seeing the full effects of the train wreck. The banking industry did not suffer the consequences of a collapse because the much maligned bureaucracy in Washington D.C. saved them. The deus ex machina of the federal government saved the ungrateful lords of Wall Street. As thanks, the Right has been able to shift the blame from the scene of the crime to Washington D.C.
Find this book (and place a hold on it!) at the Free Library of Philadelphia: McN 12336742 (at about eleven branches, and checked out or on its way to a branch to be checked out.)
The Cracked Bell
Tristam Riley-Smith, The Cracked Bell: America and the Afflictions of Liberty. New York: Skyhorse Publishing, 2010
Reviewed by T. Hatch
Riley-Smith’s Cracked Bell is a breezy tour de force that at times seems like a panegyric to the “American Dream” which offers little original, or profound, in the way of insight or analysis.
Enough praise.
In the first instance the argument that the gap between the “American Dream” and the “American Crisis,” that cultural dissonance between the ideal of freedom and its more prosaic reality, which Riley-Smith cleverly analogizes with the crack in the Liberty Bell, is less than compelling. What are we talking about? The attempt to reconcile the divergence between nationalist ideology and everyday life is present in many societies. Implicit in Riley-Smith’s argument is the idea of American exceptionalism. What exactly is unique to the Americans then? Yes, the American consumer is primus inter pares among the consumers of the world but only by virtue of a convergence of accidental historical circumstances. Is the American public irrationally enamored of their beloved military? Clearly, yes they are. But, given the opportunity everybody loves a parade. It’s just that Americans have had the ability to spend more lavishly on theirs. It is hardly noteworthy then that Americans are overweight, under-educated, adore successful imperialism, and spend too much time and money at Walmart.
Noteworthy however are the various instances of an empirical misreading of history which betray a right-of-center political bias. Due to the confines of brevity I will restrict myself to three.
Riley-Smith writes that in the wake of Hurricane Katrina “A vengeful mob had taken over the Big Easy within hours of the thin veneer of law and order being removed.” (p.70) This “mob” in his view was made up of the angry and frustrated armed consumers of New Orleans’ underclass. They were also irrational insofar as “Few of the looters had homes in which to install the commodities and there was no electricity to power them. This was postmodern shopping, deconstructed to the point where it became a form of performance art – an end in itself” (p.70).
How about the “looters” who were taking bottled water and food from closed and abandoned stores merely for survival? What kind of postmodernist spectacle was this? And this talk of the “mob” is very much in keeping with the reporting by the corporate media in the immediate aftermath of Katrina. Ironically there is no mention of the “gangs” of armed whites making an exit from the city impossible or the police violence against unarmed Blacks. I feel that these offensive remarks by Riley-Smith should be immediately treated with both Michael Eric Dyson’s Come Hell and High Water: Hurricane Katrina and the Color of Disaster and Spike Lee’s documentary film When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts. The neglect and overt hostility with which the Black population of New Orleans was treated in the wake of Katrina was clearly much more about race than missed shopping opportunities; this seems to have alluded Riley-Smith.
On the subject of political correctness Riley-Smith argues that it came about as an attempt to counter the “excesses” of racism, sexism, and homophobia et cetera. He opines that “However, the phenomenon tends to reinforce these varieties of intolerance and introduces a new form of illiberal behavior that suppresses the public expression of views that are deemed beyond the pale” (p.229). Riley-Smith is certainly not alone in this type of irresponsible and risibly paranoid palaver which has continued more or less unabated for about twenty years now.
Is there a ministry of political correctness somewhere enforcing its dictates on those who are innocently engaged in a moderate and thoughtful discourse of racist, sexist, and anti-gay bigotry? Just like the mythical gerbils in hospital emergency rooms and soldiers returning home from Vietnam to be spat upon by anti-war protestors, nobody has ever met an actual victim of political correctness. Yet there are legions of actual victims of racism, sexism, and anti-gay bigotry making Riley-Smith’s false equivalency that much more pernicious.
As if to demonstrate that there are multiple ways to read history, Riley-Smith holds out Larry Sommers and his asinine comments about the inability of women to perform mathematics and engineering at a high level, reflecting something more than gender discrimination, as an example of left-wing intolerance. Ah, Larry the lefty. When he is not out marching in a May Day parade or organizing a general strike he’s practicing that brand of left-wing intolerance which makes any revolutionary proud.
As ridiculous as all of this is, Riley-Smith’s take on the American Empire - or if there actually is an empire - stands out as the most absurd part of this deeply flawed book. To examine the nature of U.S. imperialism what better place to start than the American Enterprise Institute. The AEI, which is widely regarded as the headquarters for the neoconservatives, is a dispassionate enough spot in Riley-Smith’s judgment to get at the essence of U.S. militarism. As evidence that there is not in fact an American Empire Riley-Smith sites neocon Robert Kagan. He identifies him as merely from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and neglects to mention his Skull and Bones affiliation or his connections to numerous publications including the Weekly Standard and Commentary. Nor does he let the reader know that as a co-founder of the Project for a New American Century (PNAC) he was a signatory to the now infamous letter to President Bill Clinton in 1997 urging immediate military action against Saddam Hussein (because of the threat that the dictator’s possession of weapons of mass destruction represented to the United States).
Riley-Smith proudly avers that for an anthropologist, as far as the possible existence of the American Empire is concerned, what is primarily of interest is not whether the empire actually exists but what the Americans think about the empire. Further, he considers it a paradox that “The champion of liberty is compelled to develop an engine of war to safeguard cherished freedoms at home” (p.211). What Riley-Smith calls a “paradox” one could label as hypocrisy; insofar as one is interested in imperialism from the viewpoint of those who support it, why not a discussion of rape from the perspective of the rapist?
Riley-Smith, not surprisingly, concludes his analysis with a statement that Americans possess the power to overcome the American Crisis and put themselves back on the path to the American Dream. This is a positively cheery way to describe an empire in decline.
Reviewed by T. Hatch
Riley-Smith’s Cracked Bell is a breezy tour de force that at times seems like a panegyric to the “American Dream” which offers little original, or profound, in the way of insight or analysis.
Enough praise.
In the first instance the argument that the gap between the “American Dream” and the “American Crisis,” that cultural dissonance between the ideal of freedom and its more prosaic reality, which Riley-Smith cleverly analogizes with the crack in the Liberty Bell, is less than compelling. What are we talking about? The attempt to reconcile the divergence between nationalist ideology and everyday life is present in many societies. Implicit in Riley-Smith’s argument is the idea of American exceptionalism. What exactly is unique to the Americans then? Yes, the American consumer is primus inter pares among the consumers of the world but only by virtue of a convergence of accidental historical circumstances. Is the American public irrationally enamored of their beloved military? Clearly, yes they are. But, given the opportunity everybody loves a parade. It’s just that Americans have had the ability to spend more lavishly on theirs. It is hardly noteworthy then that Americans are overweight, under-educated, adore successful imperialism, and spend too much time and money at Walmart.
Noteworthy however are the various instances of an empirical misreading of history which betray a right-of-center political bias. Due to the confines of brevity I will restrict myself to three.
Riley-Smith writes that in the wake of Hurricane Katrina “A vengeful mob had taken over the Big Easy within hours of the thin veneer of law and order being removed.” (p.70) This “mob” in his view was made up of the angry and frustrated armed consumers of New Orleans’ underclass. They were also irrational insofar as “Few of the looters had homes in which to install the commodities and there was no electricity to power them. This was postmodern shopping, deconstructed to the point where it became a form of performance art – an end in itself” (p.70).
How about the “looters” who were taking bottled water and food from closed and abandoned stores merely for survival? What kind of postmodernist spectacle was this? And this talk of the “mob” is very much in keeping with the reporting by the corporate media in the immediate aftermath of Katrina. Ironically there is no mention of the “gangs” of armed whites making an exit from the city impossible or the police violence against unarmed Blacks. I feel that these offensive remarks by Riley-Smith should be immediately treated with both Michael Eric Dyson’s Come Hell and High Water: Hurricane Katrina and the Color of Disaster and Spike Lee’s documentary film When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts. The neglect and overt hostility with which the Black population of New Orleans was treated in the wake of Katrina was clearly much more about race than missed shopping opportunities; this seems to have alluded Riley-Smith.
On the subject of political correctness Riley-Smith argues that it came about as an attempt to counter the “excesses” of racism, sexism, and homophobia et cetera. He opines that “However, the phenomenon tends to reinforce these varieties of intolerance and introduces a new form of illiberal behavior that suppresses the public expression of views that are deemed beyond the pale” (p.229). Riley-Smith is certainly not alone in this type of irresponsible and risibly paranoid palaver which has continued more or less unabated for about twenty years now.
Is there a ministry of political correctness somewhere enforcing its dictates on those who are innocently engaged in a moderate and thoughtful discourse of racist, sexist, and anti-gay bigotry? Just like the mythical gerbils in hospital emergency rooms and soldiers returning home from Vietnam to be spat upon by anti-war protestors, nobody has ever met an actual victim of political correctness. Yet there are legions of actual victims of racism, sexism, and anti-gay bigotry making Riley-Smith’s false equivalency that much more pernicious.
As if to demonstrate that there are multiple ways to read history, Riley-Smith holds out Larry Sommers and his asinine comments about the inability of women to perform mathematics and engineering at a high level, reflecting something more than gender discrimination, as an example of left-wing intolerance. Ah, Larry the lefty. When he is not out marching in a May Day parade or organizing a general strike he’s practicing that brand of left-wing intolerance which makes any revolutionary proud.
As ridiculous as all of this is, Riley-Smith’s take on the American Empire - or if there actually is an empire - stands out as the most absurd part of this deeply flawed book. To examine the nature of U.S. imperialism what better place to start than the American Enterprise Institute. The AEI, which is widely regarded as the headquarters for the neoconservatives, is a dispassionate enough spot in Riley-Smith’s judgment to get at the essence of U.S. militarism. As evidence that there is not in fact an American Empire Riley-Smith sites neocon Robert Kagan. He identifies him as merely from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and neglects to mention his Skull and Bones affiliation or his connections to numerous publications including the Weekly Standard and Commentary. Nor does he let the reader know that as a co-founder of the Project for a New American Century (PNAC) he was a signatory to the now infamous letter to President Bill Clinton in 1997 urging immediate military action against Saddam Hussein (because of the threat that the dictator’s possession of weapons of mass destruction represented to the United States).
Riley-Smith proudly avers that for an anthropologist, as far as the possible existence of the American Empire is concerned, what is primarily of interest is not whether the empire actually exists but what the Americans think about the empire. Further, he considers it a paradox that “The champion of liberty is compelled to develop an engine of war to safeguard cherished freedoms at home” (p.211). What Riley-Smith calls a “paradox” one could label as hypocrisy; insofar as one is interested in imperialism from the viewpoint of those who support it, why not a discussion of rape from the perspective of the rapist?
Riley-Smith, not surprisingly, concludes his analysis with a statement that Americans possess the power to overcome the American Crisis and put themselves back on the path to the American Dream. This is a positively cheery way to describe an empire in decline.
Monday, December 26, 2011
What's up for 2012?
Books I haven't managed to write about yet include Solzhenitsyn's In the First Circle, a book I was pleased to have read in the past few months, and found to be everything. I hope to follow this up with his last collection (I think), Apricot Jam and Other Stories. In November, I read The Art of Fielding, a first novel by Chad Harbach. Zen and baseball ... how can you go wrong? Set on the campus of Westish College, which is situated in the crook of the baseball glove that is Wisconsin, Harbach's novel is about mindlessness and mindfulness, the varieties and complexities of male relationships, the complexities of relationships, and a great and enjoyable read.
I'm looking forward to revisiting a favorite novel and reading new novels by favorite authors. I recently learned that Dean Bakopoulos is teaching at Grinnell College. I read his 2005 novel, Please Don't Come Back to the Moon when it first came out and it has stayed with me all of these years. I just received it and his newest novel My American Unhappiness as Christimas presents. They are both at the top of my list. I am also looking forward to Ha Jin's new novel, Nanjing Requieum, and David Guterson's new novel Ed King. Ann Patchett has a newish novel, State of Wonder, as does Umberto Eco. Jonathan Lethem and Stanley Fish both have collections of essays to be explored, and I'm thinking of dipping into Vladimir Sorokin's Ice trilogy, Peter Ackroyd's London Under, Alina Bronsky, The Hottest Dishes of the Tartar Cuisine, and R. Zamora Linmark's Leche.
Sounds like a happy New Year. Let the Favorite Books and Book Review know what you're going to be reading in 2012.
I'm looking forward to revisiting a favorite novel and reading new novels by favorite authors. I recently learned that Dean Bakopoulos is teaching at Grinnell College. I read his 2005 novel, Please Don't Come Back to the Moon when it first came out and it has stayed with me all of these years. I just received it and his newest novel My American Unhappiness as Christimas presents. They are both at the top of my list. I am also looking forward to Ha Jin's new novel, Nanjing Requieum, and David Guterson's new novel Ed King. Ann Patchett has a newish novel, State of Wonder, as does Umberto Eco. Jonathan Lethem and Stanley Fish both have collections of essays to be explored, and I'm thinking of dipping into Vladimir Sorokin's Ice trilogy, Peter Ackroyd's London Under, Alina Bronsky, The Hottest Dishes of the Tartar Cuisine, and R. Zamora Linmark's Leche.
Sounds like a happy New Year. Let the Favorite Books and Book Review know what you're going to be reading in 2012.
Sunday, December 25, 2011
A Visit from the Goon Squad
Jennifer Egan. A Visit from the Goon Squad. New York: Anchor Books, 2011.
R. Stuhr
As a Pulitzer Prize winner (and a "national best seller"), this is an already much written about book. In October, I heard Jennifer Egan read a chapter from this novel at the Free Library of Philadelphia. One of the qualities she talked about was the way each chapter shifts focus to talk about a character who appeared in a minor role in another chapter. At the time I was reading In the First Circle, which uses the same technique. So, I thought, well, interesting, but not new, Solzhenitsyn was way ahead of her. But, it was a good reading, and I bought a copy of Egan's book on my way out. I was not at all disappointed. The narrative, in the form of distinct chapters all connected by a consistent cast of characters, moves backwards and forwards in time. We see the characters from a variety of perspectives and at different points in their lives, but the spaces are not all filled in. Aging forever-young producers age and wither, as younger aspiring characters find their way into middle age. Some remain true to their ideals, others sell out, still others seek a settled life after years of wandering. The excesses of the seventies and eighties fade and evolve into the excesses of the 21st century. Along with fashions and fetishes, technology remains in a state of revolution reaching all ages, bringing people closer together while at the same time creating buffers to provide distance. In the culminating chapter, Egan takes her readers into a Shteyngartesque not-so-distant future, in which the youngest downloader on record is three months old, connect and transmit are no longer meaningful concepts, and words such as friend, real, change, and story are "shucked of their meanings and reduced to husks." Everyone is looking for something, and maybe it is something that they can see, hear, and touch.
If you haven't yet read this novel, find a copy at your local library or book store.
R. Stuhr
As a Pulitzer Prize winner (and a "national best seller"), this is an already much written about book. In October, I heard Jennifer Egan read a chapter from this novel at the Free Library of Philadelphia. One of the qualities she talked about was the way each chapter shifts focus to talk about a character who appeared in a minor role in another chapter. At the time I was reading In the First Circle, which uses the same technique. So, I thought, well, interesting, but not new, Solzhenitsyn was way ahead of her. But, it was a good reading, and I bought a copy of Egan's book on my way out. I was not at all disappointed. The narrative, in the form of distinct chapters all connected by a consistent cast of characters, moves backwards and forwards in time. We see the characters from a variety of perspectives and at different points in their lives, but the spaces are not all filled in. Aging forever-young producers age and wither, as younger aspiring characters find their way into middle age. Some remain true to their ideals, others sell out, still others seek a settled life after years of wandering. The excesses of the seventies and eighties fade and evolve into the excesses of the 21st century. Along with fashions and fetishes, technology remains in a state of revolution reaching all ages, bringing people closer together while at the same time creating buffers to provide distance. In the culminating chapter, Egan takes her readers into a Shteyngartesque not-so-distant future, in which the youngest downloader on record is three months old, connect and transmit are no longer meaningful concepts, and words such as friend, real, change, and story are "shucked of their meanings and reduced to husks." Everyone is looking for something, and maybe it is something that they can see, hear, and touch.
If you haven't yet read this novel, find a copy at your local library or book store.
Thursday, December 1, 2011
Swamplandia!
Russell, Karen. Swamplandia! NY: Vintage, 2011.
R. Stuhr
I had the good fortune to hear Karen Russell speak at the Free Library of Philadelphia on a cold, rainy Tuesday night in November. She was funny and self-deprecating and, although I've been saving as many pennies as I can as of late, I couldn't resist buying not only Swamplandia!, but her first collection of short stories, St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves (have not read this one yet). She chose to read an interesting segment of Swamplandia!--one that was central to the novel but was in many ways a diversion. Reading it out of context gave the uninformed little clue as to what the novel was about, and it startled me when I got to that section in my own reading of the novel. But having said that, the novel is much more serious in theme and tone than I would have expected from Ms. Russell's own demonstrated sense of humor. But this is just an observation and in no way a criticism. I was not disappointed by the book even though my taste tends to veer away from the gothic sagas of eccentric families raising their children without any of the usual mores and codes. I think of, for instance, Mosquito Coast by Paul Theroux. And yet, Russell does not forgive or absolve the parents for their neglect and ultimate abandonment of the children. What becomes of them, what they suffer, is serious and life changing. At the same time, we can recognize the desperation and helplessness and good if mistaken intentions of the parents. In fact, we never really learn the whole story or discover the paths that brought the parents together. How did the mother feel about her life? What did she give up and did she have regrets? What were her choices?
Swamplandia! has a dual narration. Segments are narrated in the first person by Ava, the youngest child, and other segments are in the third person. It was always a little jolting to shift from "he" to "I." Early in the novel, the family's tenuous existence catapults toward disaster after the untimely death of the mother. Kiwi, the oldest son, eventually leaves their island and Alligator park (the island and park are both Swamplandia) in the Florida Everglades to try to earn money to save the family from bankruptcy. The middle child, Ossie, a teenage daughter begins communicating with the dead, and Ava, barely in her teens, tries to fill the gap left by her mother. When the father leaves for a few weeks to take care of business (work a second job on the mainland), Ossie drifts off to seek a lover among the dead and Avis to find her sister with the swamp's "bird man." This is the most gripping and poignant part of the novel. The reader is no better informed as to the qualities of the bird man, whether or not he can be trusted and relied upon, than Ava is as she counts on him to help her find her sister and needs him in her state of complete abandonment by all members of her family. As they go deeper into the swamp in search of Ossie the landscape and Ava's situation become more terrifying.
In the meantime Kiwi has gone to the rival amusement park, The World of Darkness, and struggles in the world of minimum wage to earn something to send back to his family.
To say more would be to give too much away. Suffice it to say that Russell is an outstanding story teller, who keeps you turning pages, but gives your mind something to work with and ponder as you read. Her characters have depth and the lines and details of the plot are revealed through their interpretation of events.
Swamplandia! is available as a printed book to be checked out and also as an electronic book to be downloaded from the Free Library of Philadelphia.
Have you read anything you'd like to tell others about? Share it with them through the Favorite Books and Book Review Blog.
R. Stuhr
I had the good fortune to hear Karen Russell speak at the Free Library of Philadelphia on a cold, rainy Tuesday night in November. She was funny and self-deprecating and, although I've been saving as many pennies as I can as of late, I couldn't resist buying not only Swamplandia!, but her first collection of short stories, St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves (have not read this one yet). She chose to read an interesting segment of Swamplandia!--one that was central to the novel but was in many ways a diversion. Reading it out of context gave the uninformed little clue as to what the novel was about, and it startled me when I got to that section in my own reading of the novel. But having said that, the novel is much more serious in theme and tone than I would have expected from Ms. Russell's own demonstrated sense of humor. But this is just an observation and in no way a criticism. I was not disappointed by the book even though my taste tends to veer away from the gothic sagas of eccentric families raising their children without any of the usual mores and codes. I think of, for instance, Mosquito Coast by Paul Theroux. And yet, Russell does not forgive or absolve the parents for their neglect and ultimate abandonment of the children. What becomes of them, what they suffer, is serious and life changing. At the same time, we can recognize the desperation and helplessness and good if mistaken intentions of the parents. In fact, we never really learn the whole story or discover the paths that brought the parents together. How did the mother feel about her life? What did she give up and did she have regrets? What were her choices?
Swamplandia! has a dual narration. Segments are narrated in the first person by Ava, the youngest child, and other segments are in the third person. It was always a little jolting to shift from "he" to "I." Early in the novel, the family's tenuous existence catapults toward disaster after the untimely death of the mother. Kiwi, the oldest son, eventually leaves their island and Alligator park (the island and park are both Swamplandia) in the Florida Everglades to try to earn money to save the family from bankruptcy. The middle child, Ossie, a teenage daughter begins communicating with the dead, and Ava, barely in her teens, tries to fill the gap left by her mother. When the father leaves for a few weeks to take care of business (work a second job on the mainland), Ossie drifts off to seek a lover among the dead and Avis to find her sister with the swamp's "bird man." This is the most gripping and poignant part of the novel. The reader is no better informed as to the qualities of the bird man, whether or not he can be trusted and relied upon, than Ava is as she counts on him to help her find her sister and needs him in her state of complete abandonment by all members of her family. As they go deeper into the swamp in search of Ossie the landscape and Ava's situation become more terrifying.
In the meantime Kiwi has gone to the rival amusement park, The World of Darkness, and struggles in the world of minimum wage to earn something to send back to his family.
To say more would be to give too much away. Suffice it to say that Russell is an outstanding story teller, who keeps you turning pages, but gives your mind something to work with and ponder as you read. Her characters have depth and the lines and details of the plot are revealed through their interpretation of events.
Swamplandia! is available as a printed book to be checked out and also as an electronic book to be downloaded from the Free Library of Philadelphia.
Have you read anything you'd like to tell others about? Share it with them through the Favorite Books and Book Review Blog.
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