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Catty alert: reading Curtis Sittenfeld's fictionalized boarding school expose (damn html: how do I make accents?) has kindled in me my inner teenage queen bee bitch. Sure, I can identify with her alter ego, the awkward scholarship recipient Lee Fiora, but it's really more fun to be one of the members of the "in" crowd.
But really Curtis, just because you have an unusual name for a female, and just because the rich do occasionally have some crazy names (Apple? Paris and her former fiance Paris? Blanket?!?) doesn't mean that all rich people have crazy names. I'm only through Lee's freshman year, and have already met Aspeth, Little, Gates (female), and Cross. Really?!
On a serious note, I think Sittenfeld has interesting things to say about the high school experience and particularly about class matters. And as another Stanford alum, I think we both saw how wealth bubbled under the surface. She has a great line about how "there were different kinds of rich... There was normal rich, dignified rich, which you didn't talk about, and then there was extreme, comical, unsubtle rich - like having your dorm room professionally decorated, or riding a limousine into Boston to meet your mother - and that was permissible to discuss."
It was like an observation that I always knew but had never quite gotten around to making. This, rather than the satirical commentaries on boarding school life, are what have made this book strong thus far. I hope that as the novel continues I get more of the good stuff and less of the ridiculous...
(Also, regarding heroines named Lee: I have a hard time disassociating this Lee with Maggie Gyllenhaal's wonderful Lee in Secretary. I loved the movie - the short story it was based on proved to be a big disappointment.)
The above is the after-the-jump title for an excerpt of Nelofer Pazira's memoir A Bed of Red Flowers: In Search of My Afghanistan printed in the LA Times over the weekend. It's not fair, really, but her love letter to her father's library does recall Azar Nafisi's blockbuster of a few years back. Anyway, it's a beautiful elegy. The smuggler insists we cannot take even a piece of paper with us, let alone books. Even if we could take a couple, which ones would I choose? I think of Mohammad Hajozee's essay that describes a young woman in a flower shop sorting and separating flowers for two bouquets, one for a wedding, the other for a funeral, having to decide which will end up in the hands of a bride and which will lie over the dark soil of a grave. I understand this. Perhaps it will be easier not to take any at all.
Finally, a book to review! I just finished Muriel Spark's A Far Cry from Kensington, a 75 cent find at a library book sale. If I've read Spark before, it was in a high school English textbook, which is barely reading at all, often enough, so it was a joy to discover her.
The narrator reminisces from several decades remove on her time in 1950s London as a young war widow living in a boardinghouse and working in a series of odd publishing jobs. She's a fascinatingly strong character, but not overt about her strength. No nonsense without being stern. And she relates her history and her community of coworkers and fellow boarders warmly, matter-of-factly, and sympathetically all at once. I almost felt as though I, the reader, were like a granddaughter, or rather a young researcher seeking an oral history.
None of what I've written really explains why I (punning on the title) decided to stress how unique this novel struck me as being. Maybe it's Spark's voice - that oral history quality. Even more so, she doesn't force feelings or reactions on you, allowing you to take it in however you so choose. It's cerebral, a bit, but not demanding. In that way perhaps a bit like the main character herself. If the rest of Spark's work is of the same vein, I will have found myself a new author.
... life events have gotten away from me, and taking away from both reading and blogging time. But I hope to have more time for both as we transition from late summer into fall. But I have been reading a little.
Earlier this month, our book club discussed Tobias Wolff's Old School, a fictionalized memoir of life at a tony boarding school in the 60s. The whims of teenage star crushes are illuminated in loving detail, and Wolff notes the class tensions simmering below the surface for a scholarship boy. Plus great sendups of Robert Frost, Ayn Rand, and Ernest Hemingway. A read that manages to be fun and light as well as thoughtful.
Right now, I'm working slowly through another short read, this one by Muriel Spark. More on that as I move closer to finishing...
Maybe not that new, actually, but I've been out of it. My recent absence attests to that. But the Google backlash has maybe begun? This week, the lamely titled "Current" section of the LA Times takes on the latest class action suit against Google... by a group of authors no less.
Xeni Jardin, BoingBoing editor and apparent gadfly is "Current's" blog correspondent, reporting in about online trends for the sad folks still reading the dead medium of newsprint. So clearly, you'd expect her to have a technophilic perspective. And she does skewer the Authors Guild and other writers for claiming that Google's attempt to create"the world's most ginormous digital card catalog" will irrevocably damage the meaning of the copyright. Google is copying with commercial intent (as it will sell ads on its search pages) and authors who do not want to be included have the burden of opting out.
But as Jardin notes, Google makes things (websites, and eventually books) easier to find, and "any product that is more easily found online can be more easily sold." Another great quote, from an anonymous author who spoke to Jardin, "fear of obscurity, not digital indexing, is what keeps most authors awake at night."
I for one think it's awesome that Google is compiling this amazing source of knowledge. It's like the Alexandria library or something. And I admit to a little bit of school pride in knowing my alma mater is among the chosen sites (of course, it's also the alma mater of the Google founders too, so not that surprising). I have benefitted from the openness of libraries - both the LA Public Library's exchange program that sends the equivalent of a branch library through its system every day, matching book with reader across the city; and from the DC college consortium, which allowed me to check out books not available at Georgetown, but in plentiful supply at Catholic University or George Mason. Continuing the trend of making books more accessible to readers should be every author's goal.
The LA Times provided its seasonal preview of upcoming books, noting the return of some favorite authors. Since the link won't last forever, here are some of the books I am looking forward to:
- Joan Didion's memoir of losing her husband and almost losing her daughter, The Year of Magical Thinking
- Salman Rushdie' s Shalimar the Clown (I need to read more of his work in general)
- Barbara Ehrenreich has another undercover expose of working America, this time as a white-collar worker
- Simon Winchester (he of The Professor and the Madman on the making of the OED, an awesome nerd book) has a "geologic and cultural history of the quake that changed the face of California, giving rise to many of the myths by which we define ourselves."
- And Margaret Cho and Zadie Smith also have new books, taking on culture in America in different ways
Should be yet another busy season for reading. As it should be...
Samina Ali's first novel, and I'm curious to know how autobiographical it is. Like her protagonist, Layla, Ali grew up in both India and the US - and she has a lot to say about how living in two worlds can mean you belong in neither.
This is in many ways a crushing novel. Ali is harsh on her characters, and particuarly unforgiving of the way that they allow tradition and religion to dictate their actions even at the cost of hurting loved ones. Layla suffered a lonely childhood, dedicated to easing her mother's troubles; at age 20, all she wants is to belong, to have a home - badly enough to acquiesce to an arranged marriage. Everyone has secrets that threaten societal rules - particularly both Layla and her husband-to-be - and efforts to keep these secrets cause a great deal of (unnecessary, to my areligious and Western mind) pain.
And yet Ali is lush in her description of India, despite the misogyny and terrible religious strife (Layla's family is Muslim, but tensions with Hindus play a significant role). Layla strongly considers staying, making her home and becoming fully Indian.
In the end, Madras on Rainy Days is an indictment of the clash of old and new, tradition and modernity, East and West. Each threatens the other, and yet, with a couple days remove, I would like to sense that there is some hope of reconciling the two in a way that preserves the best aspects of both.
***Re: New Orleans. I know that many of the few of you who read this blog don't have much to spare, but I urge you to give whatever you can to the relief effort. Good thoughts, prayers, blood, cash, time, whatever. The Red Cross is a good place to start, but so is the Louisiana SPCA - trying to save abandoned pets and hopefully reunite them with their owners - and Planned Parenthood has lost all the clinics in the affected area and are raising money to provide services and rebuild. Habitat for Humanity hopes to begin building homes for those left homeless by the end of the month. I'm reminded of Rudy Guiliani in the aftermath of 9/11 saying that the devastation will be worse than anything "we can possibly imagine".... But we can make that so much better.
I guess I'm kind of over this book, because I can't think of anything else interesting to write about it. I think I waited too long after finishing it to get back online. Anyway, you should all read Rahul's comment to the previous post. He makes a lot of good comments about how crowds get hijacked - something I wish Surowiecki did a better job explaining how to avoid.
Nonetheless, here are a couple more comments/recaps that I missed last time around:
*The "four conditions that characterize wise crowds" are: diversity of opinion, independence, decentralization, and aggregation (p 10). When these are missing, you end up with stock bubbles, sheep-like crowds okaying a war in Iraq, etc.
*Football teams should practically always go for it on 4th down instead of punting. Coaches don't make that call b/c of both tradition and aversion to risk. (Also a factor, I think, Monday-morning quarterbacks)
*Surowiecki notes that the sciences are more collaborative than the humanities. It's an intriguing point, and I think would certainly disturb many of my former colleagues and professors. But his main evidence is the fact that many papers in the sciences have tons of co-authors and there's an emphasis on getting information out. I think the humanities collaborate in a different way - certainly I think that the concept of a "crowd" of scholars eventually reaching a wise conclusion isn't as prevalent.
I guess that's about it. I reiterate my earlier point about how much I like Surowiecki. He's a great writer. Two things I take away from the book: 1 - keep reading his columns in the New Yorker and anywhere I can find them; and 2 (the real one) - aim to pose the unpopular opinion from time to time instead of going along with the group. Value debate over consensus - at least sometimes - and get as diverse a group as possible to maximize the group's ability to make a wise decision. All obvious, but it's easy to forget them.
James Surowiecki - The Wisdom of Crowds
or, as Michael likes to call it, The Opposite of Blink. (Though it should be said that Gladwell and Surowiecki are colleagues at the New Yorker, and the former provided a blurb while the latter praises The Tipping Point in his book.) I think the argument of the book is relatively self-evident: crowds as a whole end up making smarter decisions than individuals. When they don't, there are things they could have done differently to make smarter choices - if they know those strategies, they can make them work again.
It's a pretty upbeat book, if you think about it. Crowds tend to make the right choices in the end, particularly if you define a crowd as a market or some other virtual, not physical, entity. Just as Gladwell wants to help us harness the power of our unconscious, Surowiecki wants to help us recognize and appreciate the power of our collective (un?)conscious.
This is another in-progress review, so I'm mostly going to leave it at that. Surowiecki's "Financial Page" columns in the New Yorker have always made me happy. (I'm going to try to remember to come back and link to a couple of archives if I can find them.) He's such an elegant writer, good at interweaving story and theory. And I appreciate his ability to change my mind on Starbucks. While they may indeed be a corporate behemoth, they - by creating a market for fancy coffee drinks that didn't really exist before - actually grew the market for small independent coffee houses, of which there are more now than there were in pre-Starbucks days. So I can drink my frappuccino without feeling too guilty, as long as I patronize the indie places too. (Hurrah for justification.)
Anyway, Surowiecki is awesome.
I waited too long, and now you have to pay for the LA Times link, but I am totally excited about reading this book. (Not as excited about what a big nerd that makes me.)
Before I wanted to be a historian, I was really into translation. Learning language made me realize what an artistic - and important! - task it is. Doomed to failure in some respects, open to all sorts of possibilities in others. But I'm getting ahead of myself. The book is If This Be Treason, a memoir by prolific translator Gregory Rabassa. Reviewer Michael Henry Heim, on Rabassa's "commitment to ... cultural mediation as represented by translation:"
Much as he argues against the notion of translation as a betrayal of the original - and he does so with great gusto - he is also perfectly willing to concede the point: In the end, what matters is not so much that a work comes through the translation process unscathed as that it enriches the culture it enters. Even if translation is treason to the original, he argues, we should make the most of it."
I liked it. It's nice to be nervous reading a book, and to be rooting for the characters, to be embarrassed for them. I almost hate that I can't ruin the ending for you, because it's a pretty exciting one. But I can be patient and wait for you to read the book yourself...
I'm currently reading A Changed Man, by Francine Prose. It got a lot of attention in newspaper reviews, as it's about a neo-Nazi who has a change of heart and flees to Brotherhood Watch, run by a renown Holocaust survivor. His stated goal: "to help keep guys like me from becoming guys like me" (fortunately, he knows how cheesy a line that is). For the head of the organization and his adoring development director, this is a miracle that can get them the publicity (and money) they've been needing. So our divorcee development director takes him in.A little far-fetched, I admit.We are treated to in depth looks at the minds of Vincent, the former racist; Meyer Maslow, world-famous but narcissistic survivor; Bonnie, his acolyte; and Danny, her teenage son. Prose is brilliant at showing the constant mental dialogue that runs through all of our doings and interactions with others. The characters are, like most of us, incredibly perceptive about some things, and utterly oblivious to others. They become intensely real.I find myself rooting for these characters. But I'm suspicious. I'd like to have a happy ending, but I don't really see that happening. How can it? How cliche? And yet... wouldn't it be something for even "serious" fiction to be light-hearted about its endings from time to time?
on Jared Diamond's tome... I have a lot of jumbled thoughts and reactions to this work. I've decided therefore just to list them, instead of forming a coherent narrative review. (Not like my posts are ever particularly coherent.)
Overall: thumbs up. His case histories are interesting, and his last chapter ties past and present together quite well. Despite the differences among each earlier society and between them and our own, it's clear that we have plenty to learn in order to avoid the same fate. Also, man he has a LOT of friends in places and companies all over the world. Similar to my graduate advisor. But onto the thoughts:
*What is it about Easter Island that people find so fascinating? I think it's haunting somehow, but I wonder if "ghosts" of other civilizations are ever jealous.
*I started to think about life cycles of cities, societies, and civilizations. We like to think of history as having "sped up" but I wonder if that's really accurate.
*How big is my footprint? I thought of this quiz while reading. When I think of how much of the world we are unsustainably mining... I sort of think we must be insane. On a happier note, sort of, the quiz says that we'd only need two planets if everyone lived like me (three times fewer than the average American). But then we don't have two planets, that I know of, which brings me to my next point...
*How do societies learn to think sustainably? Although everyone's favorite, Easter Island, has gotten a lot of attention in reviews (mainly I believe b/c it's at the beginning of the book and was all that some readers got to) Diamond provides examples of societies that did learn to think sustainably, by enacting religious laws to save land, or reconceptualizing their identities to line up with environmental realities. I guess one would have to find the "tipping point" for such a shift.
*As far as specific societies, I found the suggestion that the pressures from overpopulation helped precipitate the Rwandan genocide provocative and intriguing. And he has a few pages to devote to his hometown and mine, Los Angeles (pp 499-503). Surprisingly for those who love to bash the Southland, despite our bad environmental rep, Diamond says that our myriad problems still actually have us in pretty good shape comparatively. (So there.)
In closing, this is a big book. I think there is much to be gained from reading the whole thing, digesting all the different societies, applying them to the present. However, he can get a little long-winded, especially about industry stuff. So I would say it's okay to pick and choose chapters, or to skim over the boring stuff. Diamond's pretty good at putting flashing signs around his main points, so you won't miss much.
While I'm finishing Collapse and sorting out my feelings on it, another article on books for amusement:
The LA Times reports on those poor "book people" who collect and collect and collect.
For the bibliophile, what to do with the books is life's central decorating issue, an ongoing discourse, a debate, and often an outright décor war, between aesthetics, the practicalities of storage and the consuming mindlessness of passion.
The roots of that passion are simple. To these readers, books aren't mere objects but possessions that carry intensely personal memories: where they were purchased, who the reader was while reading them, how they changed his or her life. They carry a weight of history.
Exactly. Except, unlike some of the people in this article, I am able to distinguish between the truly weighty and the peewee. The latter, I move on out. Even so, I face the same dilemma discussed in the article: where to put books when you have a lot of them. I'm always wondering "How come other people's homes look so spacious and clean? Oh, because they're missing all the books."
Regardless of whether you consider the horrors in Darfur to constitute genocide, there is clearly no excuse for them, and the U.S. truly ought to be doing more to protect the lives of hundreds of thousands of Africans. If interested, you can sign Africa Action's petition to President Bush here.Also, the situation in Niger looks really bad. Read LA Times coverage of it here and here. To (misguidedly, I'm sure) connect it to reading, this situation is precisely what Cause Celeb's Rosie is trying to prevent. I mention this in part to again argue how deft Helen Fielding can be at mixing the very serious and the absurd. But more to the point to point out how often famine in Africa has periodically caught the attention of the West, and yet how we ignore the moves that could prevent it in the first place.In Darfur and in Niger... we say "never again" far too often. It would be nice if we really meant it.
