On not thinking

Chances are, you've heard about Blink, Malcolm Gladwell's recent book on "the power of thinking without thinking." The man's become famous lately. I feel like I see or hear about him everywhere. And this is in spite of (or more likely because of) the fact that his argument about split-second thinking is pretty controversial. (Check out here, here and here for some of these mixed reviews.)

The book is an intensely fast read, well in keeping with the idea of taking in information quickly. And Gladwell's argument is best put when he explains that certain people are able to make snap judgments accurately b/c they know which pieces to keep and which to ignore among the flood of information and perceptions we are constantly receiving. To do this, though, you have to have a LOT of experience - intuition is built on expertise. So in effect he is saying that "blinking" is great, and you can trust your gut, as long as you have that basis of unconscious information to tap into. Or something. At any rate, he meanders around his argument, providing lots of fascinating anecdotes, but not really convincing me of anything except that he's a good storyteller.

The End of Poverty

Mixing it up a little bit, I decided to raid Michael's bookshelf (well, pile really) and grabbed The End of Poverty, by economist Jeffrey Sachs. I'm just reading excerpts, but it's enough to grasp the core of the book. He explains the root causes of poverty in the third world, exonerating many of the reasons given by liberals - making me a little uncomfortable with his analysis, but willing to buy in, since he isn't justifying the things we did wrong in the past, just arguing that there's more to the problem. Namely lack of access to technological change, and how both growth and stagnation spiral until you have a stratified world.

Then, and this is the part I'm reading now, he does a little tour of the world, with short chapters on his role in saving (or trying to save) the economies of various countries. Unsurprisingly, this reads like a memoir replete with name-dropping and transitions between false humility and utter pride. That's okay though - I want to know about how Poland's economy transitioned from Iron Curtain to free market.

Next, he's going to do something with the millenium and 9/11 - I'm curious to see what - and make the radical argument that not only do we have to solve poverty, but we actually can do it. And in twenty years. It's "our" (meaning his, not my) generation's challenge.

I am heartened by the fact that Sachs sees the impoverished as people, not just numbers. And that he believes in the free market, but sees a role for governments and institutions in breaking the cycle of poverty. And I hope that he is going to do what he says, provide a step-by-step plan to ending poverty. (It will be interesting to see how "liberal" and humanitarian this is, and also how well it meshes with last week's G8 discussions. I know he believes in debt relief.)

Oh, I forgot. Foreword by Bono. He's kind of a funny writer. But he is lavish in his praise for Sachs, and credits him for providing the kinds of insight and knowledge that have made the rock star a credible speaker for third world debt reduction.

The Five Obstructions

Not a book, but going in here nonetheless. I was surprised at how much I enjoyed this movie by Lars von Trier (and Jorgen Leth). It's a little bit documentary, a little bit film theory, a little bit sadism, and a healthy dose of creativity under pressure. von Trier has Leth remake the latter's 1967 film The Perfect Human (which is a fun film in and of itself, and available in its entirety as a special feature on the dvd) four times, each time adding an "obstruction," one or more rules that Leth must follow. The resulting efforts are recognizable as children of the first film, but depart from it in extraordinary ways. Watching von Trier try to trip up Leth is its own drama. von Trier is a leading voice in the
Dogme 95 movement which aims to reestablish the purity of filmmaking through its own obstructions:

The essence of Dogme95 is to challenge the conventional film language – in order to make authentic films, in search of the truth. This implicates cutting out the usual aesthetic means of adding sound, light, make up, “ mise en scene”.

(One could argue that these are their own artificialities, but nevermind that here.) While Leth isn't beholden to these rules, the idea of getting at something true through imposed hardship is certainly a theme recurrent in von Trier's actions.

In short, fascinating to watch and really rather witty.

Guilty Pleasures

I spent a day reading Tracy Chevalier's The Lady and the Unicorn. Like Girl with a Pearl Earring, it's a fictional account of the creation of a great work of art - in this case, a series of tapestries. Also like the other book, it's about a time and place most Americans don't know much about, in this case late 15th century France and what would become Belgium. The women are surprisingly sassy and modern - is this anachronistic, or is it more true? Among the nobility, at least, the traditions of courtly love and all the extramarital play involved may have still had traction.

No one will accuse this novel of being great literature. But it's pretty, and I think it plays a useful role in bringing history to an audience that isn't used to digesting it. Chevalier is good at the details of the creation of art. She explains the weaving process and how many artists are behind such a complicated piece of artwork. Little details, like the need to sew together the slits that form when switching from one color to another. So mock me if you must, but there is room in everyone's reading life for something a little lighter, playful, romantic.

The Gate of Angels

I can't remember the name of this author - Penelope something (I am too lazy to look it up now but will do so and correct this later) - but it is our latest book club selection. I finished it yesterday for tonight's reading. Michael is hopefully going to read it during his lunch break. It is super short, but was hard to get into. It started to flow better after the first 50 pages of so and comes together in the end pretty well.

The setting is Cambridge (England), 1912. The main characters are a young physics fellow in one of the colleges, and a nurse-in-training. The author is big on description - especially of flowers, it seems - and creates vivid scenes. I feel like the pre-war years aren't that common in historical fiction, so it's nice to get a picture of that world, on the crux between old and new. However, the plot and characters are kind of sketchy. I felt bemused.

Also, I am coming to the conclusion that the librarian in our book club and I have different tastes in literature. Which is okay, but it does mean that perhaps I should be making more recommendations. Take it over.

David Sedaris ... Naked

I wasn't really into the idea of David Sedaris when I first heard about him. I think it was around the publication of Me Talk Pretty One Day, and apparently the faux bad grammar got to me. I enjoyed his articles in the New Yorker but even so wasn't interested in reading the books. Then I "joined" the Stanford Sunday Salon, and the book for this month was Naked. I definitely can't complain. He is witty, bizarre, self-depricating; his family is crazy but in a sassy way. He's had a lot of wacky adventures, which I found a little unbelievable, but then I'm young and sheltered. All in all a fun read.

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Jonathan Safran Foer makes me mad. Or jealous, rather. I want to be a wunderkind author. On the other hand, I wouldn't have wanted to face the expectations he must have been staring at following Everything is Illuminated. ELIC is a good sophomore effort, and he didn't shy away from taking on something big, in September 11th, although he did protect himself a little by couching himself in the guise of an odd and grieving little boy.

I liked this book. I liked and wanted to protect Oskar, just as I felt for his namesake in The Tin Drum. JSF is talented at exploring the ways that people who love one another deceive and/or misunderstand each other. The members of the Schell family reach out to each other in funny ways and reciprocate another's plea within the overwhelming paradigm of his or her own individual pain.

Life is hard. But it is also incredibly touching.

The Plot Against America

To begin, I'd like to offer one piece of advice: be thoughtful about bringing hardbound books to the beach. Expect (especially if it's windy) that sand will get between pages and everywhere else.

Anyway, I read the new(ish) Philip Roth on a camping trip. It was so idyllic - and in some ways very middle-America too - that it made for an interesting backdrop while reading a dystopia of the 1940s. Overall I was extremely impressed by the novel, and enjoyed it much much more than the other book of his that I've read, Sabbath's Theater. Roth is convincing as a 7 year old version of himself, and touching too. The grand arc of the plot is a little weak though. Provided, yes it seems fantastical (but no more so than some of what's happened in recent American history), but I was able to suspend my disbelief until the last two chapters. Then everything lost coherence. I think this was Roth's intention, but still, it left me confused and unsettled. (Again, pretty sure this is intentional, but I still would have liked a little more closure. Oh well.)

Politics & Plays

Not a book review, but sufficiently similar that I think it belongs here...

I've been collecting programs in the last week. Friday was Chloe's culmination event for pre-school, and last night was the annual spring fundraising dinner at work. Saturday, we went to the Tamarind Theatre to see The Eyes of Babylon, a one-man autobiographical show about a gay Marine's experience in Iraq. Jeff Key, the writer-performer, fulfilled a life-long ambition when he joined the Marines in 2000, at the age of 34, going back in the closet to do so. His naked (sometimes literally) performance challenges whole sets of assumptions about what it means to be: gay, in the military, Southern. It problematizes simplistic views on either side of the political spectrum of what's happening in Iraq - sure, he's in Shiite southern Iraq, and sure, he's a gay actor in Los Angeles so he's probably pretty liberal, and sure, he came out last year to leave the military. But it's complicated, as all things are. In addition, he evoked how foreign things were here in the aftermath of September 11th, in my mind the most serious indictment of how far we've swerved off course in the past 3 1/2 years. And there's a love scene that's so unexpected, so touching, that it still makes me warm inside. Babylon is disarming, challenging, and entirely human.

Sunday took us up to Topanga, to the Theatricum Botanicum, for a series called Botanicum Seedlings, which consists of readings and workshops for plays in progress. It's a way of cultivating playwrights. The reading we saw was of Matt Pelfrey's An Impending Rupture of the Belly, a satirical reverie about a modern-day Willy Loman. In a world consumed with threat, danger, and consumption, can the wussy man survive? Or will he snap? I liked the reading format. Stage directions read, instead of witnessed, props half-assed, or missing. Actors carrying their scripts. Very minimalist. I personally think they should keep the show under-produced like this. As for the play itself, it was very biting and amusing, and certainly topical. But I don't know that it ever really connected with me. It'll find an audience though.

Plays are great fun. And plays, much more than novels, place great premium on being witty. I appreciate that.

Dangling Man

This month's book club selection, courtesy in part of Michael's suggestion to honor the late Saul Bellow. I was a little nervous as I really didn't much like Henderson the Rain King (in fact, it made me like the Counting Crows song a little less for quite some time). And after last month's meeting which was largely (and sadly) a bashing session of Barbara Kingsolver, I was wanting something I could really get behind. The first twenty pages of the book confirmed a lot of my fears. It was meandering and boring, and I couldn't really tell what was going on. I put Michael to sleep twice reading it. Luckily, he acknowledged first that this was not a book for reading aloud and took matters into his own hands. Leaving me to catch up. Which I am now doing. Actually, I should be finishing it right now, but am blogging it instead. At any rate, it's gotten much better, although I don't at all see how it's going to wrap up in 50 pages.

The "dangling man," by the way, is our hero and journal-writer, a Chicago resident in the midst of WWII who is essentially sitting around waiting to be drafted. This has been going on for some time now, due to Army confusion and bureaucracy (and a Canadian birth certificate) and in the meantime he has left his job and become alienated from those around him. He dangles, waiting...

We truly are bowling alone

The book has me partially inspired, and feeling pretty good about where I stand in relation to civic participation. In fact, I marched on a picket line for the first time the other day, and while definitely feeling out of place, was truly warmed by the power of solidarity. On the other hand, I'm also acutely aware now of any and all areas in which my social capital is deficient. Michael and I have had several talks about this in the past week. (Also a little sad: Putnam reverses some on his evangelicals argument, which I had found really fascinating.)

Upshot: the book might be a little dated at this point, and I'd be curious to see a new foreword or any "five years later" analysis of where we are. But still a good read, especially for those of you who don't mind repetition (or are good skimmers) and even more so for people who like graphs and statistics.

Have I been reading lately?

I think I have.

In fact, I remember finishing Fontanka 16, another entry on my age-old books to read list. It's a history - pretty readable for an academic work - about the secret police in tsarist Russia. There are lots of biographies and sideplots to keep the thing moving. But I think I expected it to provide more insight into the Cheka, NKVD, OGPU, KGB (etc) than it did.

Right now I am trying to read Robert Putnam's Bowling Alone, another long-time curiosity. It seemed especially relevant to read about the decline in civic participation since my job is all about improving civic education. But it is sloooow. It just started to pick up a little bit though. Fun fact: there is a high correlation of religious participation and civic participation. If you are active in a church, synagogue, mosque, etc., you are more likely to volunteer and join committees, vote, and what not. Even if you take out the church-specific involvement, you're still more likely to be civically engaged. I had had my suspicions about this growing up, when I envied my religiously active friends the community and social capital they were developing. However, and this is the part I find fascinating, it doesn't hold true for evangelical congregations. Members of these groups are likely to be highly active within their religious community, but there isn't crossover into other outlets of civic participation.

Anyway, I think I need to take a break from non-fiction sometime soon and switch to some fun books. (On the other hand, current fiction reading, book club selection Dangling Man by Saul Bellow, is no more engaging than the above selections.)

Periodicals

Newspapers and magazines get in the way of reading books. I spent my weekend primarily reading. But only managed about 20 pages of an actual book. The rest was the LA Times and the New Yorker. I'm not really complaining, but have noticed that this trend is going to get seriously in the way of regular blogging. (Work is also a problem, since there's 30 hours of non-reading time too, but that's unavoidable.)

The Winter Zoo (and more on The Bean Trees)

The Winter Zoo, by John Beckman: do not bother reading this book. Back in the day (i.e. second half 2002) there was a minor spate of books on Eastern Europe right after the fall of communism. The best of these books were Everything is Illuminated, Prague, and The Russian Debutante's Handbook. In some or another review of this trend, Beckman's book came up, and it was the one I never managed to get around to. And I kind of wish I hadn't.

There's a pretty serious amount of deviant sex in the book: cousinly love, statutory rape, pornographic photography, lots of girl-on-girl action, and a free for all orgy. And it seems at first like the sex belongs - that there's a reason for it. But there's not, most of it is just for titillation, as far as I can tell.

I feel mean being this negative, so I'll stop here. The other books I mention are all great and I highly recommend them. But stop before you get to Poland and The Winter Zoo.

[UPDATE: Rahul makes a good point in his comment below. My problem with the sex is not that it was "deviant", or that it crossed lines, but that Beckman seemed to just be looking for ways to try to shock the reader. It didn't work, it just got old. Also, hi Rahul!!! It's nice - and a little scary - to think that someone is actually reading this...]

As for The Bean Trees, we finished just in time for tonight's book club. I have no idea what I'm going to say. I liked the rendering of the toddler's baby talk? If the aforementioned novel had too much sex, maybe this one had too much sexless romance? The book is nice, and sweet, but didn't really provoke much of a reaction from me.

The Bean Trees

We've been reading Barbara Kingsolver's The Bean Trees before our book club meeting next week. Like the great big nerds we are, Michael and I have decided to read our club books together - aloud. And since I can do a pretty ridiculous Southern accent on accident (and also b/c this book is so a chick book) I have been doing the reading.

Anyway, I want to save most of my witty thoughts for the meeting, but I'll offer this: even though Barbara Kingsolver was huge on BART a few years ago (Poisonwood Bible mostly), I never really considered reading her. I'm not overwhelmed, but not disappointed either. It's genial, you might say.

Favorite character: Turtle, the toddler
Biggest disappointment: I think I'm wrong on the lesbian prediction I had around page 35. I could still be right though... but I doubt it.