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Rain in the Doorway, by Thorne Smith
Years ago, a discussion on r.a.b. caused me to track down used copies of several Smith novels: Topper, The Night Life of the Gods, Topper Takes a Trip, and this one. I read the first two a while ago, and the last two recently. This one in particular was a slog. It's one of the most interestingly disastrous novels I have ever read.
First, a plot summary. Our Hero, Hector Owen, third generation lawyer, is on the skids. His wife is cheating on him openly. His only clients are about to go find other legal assistance if they can only track down a missing heir to sign on the dotted line. It's raining. His wife is late. He's approaching middle age, short-to-average height, no particular looks, stodgy, steady and horribly, horribly dull. And the economy around him is, by all indications, a lot worse off than he is, which make his prospects even grimmer. A lot like many other Thorne Smith Heros.
As he waits in the doorway of a bizarre department store, he contemplates finding some floozy to make a night of it with, something he hasn't done in a long, long time. But before he does, and before his wife arrives, the door behind him opens, and a hand grabs him by the shoulder and drags him inside.
Inside is a world unlike any he's ever imagined. The employees readily abuse customers. Thieves steal diamonds and no one stops them. The mechanical toys are all pre-broken. The book department includes a Pornography Section. The partners won the store in a poker game and spend their days in a drunken stupor. The women doing a fashion show by the pool only mind if you grope them while they are busy doing something else. If you're thinking screwball comedy, you're thinking of Smith's other works. This is More So.
Owen tags along, helpless, whether due to despair, drunkenness or delusion. But where Smith generally sneaks in a tiny amount of social commentary, mostly of the, live it up you might as well variety, he bludgeons the reader with it in this novel. Here are some examples.
Mr. Owen found himself caged behind four counters. He was literally surrounded by books. As far as his gaze could reach, there were books and still more books. The mere thought of reading even a fraction of them numbed his literary faculties. All the books in the world seemed to have been gathered into that department. He found himself unwilling to open the cover of even one of them. He thought of giant forests denuded for the sake of these books; of millions of publishers and editors crushed beneath the weight of their spring and fall lists, of numberless bookstore owners resorting to theft and murder or else going mad in their efforts to keep from sinking in seas of bankruptcy beneath the steadily rising tide of current fiction. He thought of haggard-eyed book reviewers turning their bitter faces to those strange and awful gods to which book reviews are forced to turn in the affliction of their tortured brains. He heard those abandoned men calling in loud voices for a momentary recession, at least, of the soul-rotting flood of books. He thought of authors, and his heart was filled with indignation against that indefatigable, ever hopeful tribe of word vendors. If it wasn't for the diligence of authors, so many hearts would remain intact and so many hopes unblighted.
No, not about Amazon.com or a Barnes & Noble Superstore. The book department in a Depression Era department store. Whoa. Authors appear at the counter to ask after their books. They are ridiculed by the staff for pretending to be customers. A somewhat incoherent woman appears looking for something for someone else and is wilfully misunderstood. In the course of this, our Hero gets to know Our Heroine, Honor Knightly, aka Satin. On her nightly? Nightly honor? The honor of a knight (she does rescue our hero, we eventually realize)? Satin? Because of her skin, or Satan? What the hell kind of a rescue is this, anyway, particularly when her brother Tom is found abed with Mrs. Hector Owen, in a moment bearing a slight resemblance to the point when Hector wakes up in bed with his three partners wives. But I get ahead of myself.
Eventually, the partners and Mr. Owen go to a Kiarian (I have to assume this is Kiwanis meets Rotarian) luncheon. Happily, a man about to repeat that hoary bit about it's not the heat, it's the humidity is downed in a single blow with a blunt object. That cheered me up no end. The partners proceed to hector (Hector? No, Mr. Larkin) the speaker, primarily by setting his beard on fire. It is put out in the soup, leading to a multi-page discussion of soup-tasting which I harbored a strong suspicion was about oral sex, but eventually had to give up that theory because it was a poor match over the entire passage. Pity.
They return from the luncheon to watch the fire they set (they didn't stop at the beard. Oh, no) from the roof. They see uniformed troops and the following is told us by Major Britt-Britt, one of the partners.
"They never fight, those soldiers," The Major explained regretfully. "Can't get them to fight. You see, we've changed our mind about fighting here. Decided to give it a miss. Only sworn and accredited pacifists are allowed to join the army. When other nations get mean about things, our standing army of pacifists can talk them deaf, dumb and blind before they can even get mobilized. Of course, a lot of sweethearts, wives and mothers don't like the idea. They can no longer heroically sacrifice their sons, lovers, and husbands for the sake of their country. So many women are such gluttons for death and bloodshed. Frankly, I don't see a thing in it, and I've killed lots of men in my time. It's a thoroughly ill-tempered occupation. In the place of sacrificing their men folk we allow women a little more latitude in betraying them. We don't even call it betraying any more -- merely changing their luck. Naturally, we must have soldiers, bands, and unifroms. Such things fill a fundamental craving. I like a parade myself as well as the next."
Don't say you'd like to go there. He's talking about pre-WWII US policy and he's awfully bitter about it. The next bit is about graft, and how they've institutionalized it. Hmmmm. At least they lock the Prohibitionists up in this world. Makes a helluva lot more sense to me than what we're doing.
While in this happy world, lines of credit can be procured by bullying bank presidents and theft is laughed off because the stolen items are criminally overinsured, there is a depression on, and it has had an effect. On hotel policy.
"Haven't you any rooms without women?", Mr. Owen asked rather hopelessly.
"None for gentlemen, sir," said the clerk blandly. "It's a depression measure, you know. The hotel provides accomodations for certain members of our indigent female population while they in turn provide companionship for our male guests. We consider it an exceptionally sensible arrangement."
"I don't know how sensible it is," observed Mr. Owen, "but it certainly is good and immoral."
"Not necessarily, you know," replied the clerk. "Some men enjoy being read to, or waited on, or entertained in various other ways. It's merely a matter of individual preference."
The clerk waxes philosophical on how this town differs from others only in making what is normally a vice into a virtue. He doesn't comment on Mr. Owen's difficulty dealing with a world in which what he is accustomed to being forgiven becoming mandatory. Inevitable. Unavoidable. As appalled as one has to be at the depiction of women in this book, one can't help but notice that it is Mr. Owen who is repeatedly violated, both in his world of origin, and this fantasy, looking-glass land he has been yanked into.
I shall pass over Mr. Owen's adventures in his double room, double bath with two women supplied and the two extras who have been stalking him, Satin and Madame Gloria, who is his for life and expects to be taken care of. There is a particularly funny bit where he winds up wrestling a couple of naked soapy women. But I shall pass on, nonetheless.
Satin takes Hector up to the music department to hear her play the organ (groan), a spiritual moment for both of them. After playing for a few moments, she pauses to talk to him about herself and what kind of relationship they might have.
"What's all this noise about sex, anyway? Why make it a vice and keep it in the dark? It's an amiable gesture, after all. Why not makes nerves a vice, or egotistical talking, or patriotic speeches, or spying on one's neighbors, or interfering with one's personal liberty, attempting to supervise a person's conduct, or any number of things beside which sex is a mere flash in the pan.
If we can assume Satin is Smith's mouthpiece, I think he has mostly gotten his way. Not entirely, and we might any moment slip back into the dark, what with the current administration, but we can hope.
And so we pass through the remaining bits in the book. The acquisition of Minnie, the preserved (dead) female sperm whale and her peregrinations in the partners desperate attempt to divest themselves of her (at one point, they contemplate blowing her up, foreshadowing that Dave Barry column). The divorce proceedings (the partners weren't married and it's quite clear nothing happened with Hector but it sure looked impressive, all three women in bed with Mr. Owen with Satin looking on. Okay, snoring one bed over).
In the end, the store burns to the ground. Satin, Hector and the other partners enter the blaze to recover their stash of booze (the rest of the building and its contents being ensured, they are not concerned about that loss). Satin and Hector are trapped, and exit by the door he once entered, pulled by Mr. Larkin. They return, then, to that depressed land of origin.
He's forgotten, of course. Did it happen? Hard to say. As with other Smith novels, a clear implication of a mental break is supplied, without committing to the unreality of the fantasy. More importantly, Honor Knightly lives up to her name, accompanying Mr. Owen home, to find Lulu, Mrs. Hector Owen, in bed with Honor's brother, Tom. Not satisfied with screwing Owen out of his living, Tom is also screwing Lulu. But Satin is the missing heir, and not about to screw (well, not in that way, anyway) Mr. Owen. So ends this entry.
In some ways, this most Thorne Smith novel is entirely different from all other Thorne Smith novels. Quantitatively more surreal and the vast amount of bleak social commentary take it out of the realm of safe escapism and move it into the realm of Satire -- very Juvenalian Satire at that. But the parade of drunken escapades, while entertaining, and suggestive, even thought provoking, is ultimately unsatisfyingly incoherent. The pieces never came together for me.
But I think I just might keep this novel on the shelf for a while, and reread it later. A strange book indeed.
The List, by Steve Martini
Fair warning: I only got 75 pages into this one. Here's what happened. Mediocre in italics action sequence with a remarkably crappy weapon (9 mm Beretta. Who the fuck would carry one of these? Someone tells me it's standard USNavy issue these days, so maybe that's his background.) and outdated equipment. POV character is female, and I had little respect for her. Her best friend, also female, battered wife, likes sex, picks guys by expected penis size. What's wrong with that? Well, any one part would be fine, but the combination suggests that women who like sex are bringing trouble upon themselves. I don't think the author intended that, and that just makes it worse. POV character is an associate at a law firm. A new partner is African-American, made partner so he can do the dirty work when it comes to shafting the help (primarily minority) while defusing their opposition. I'm not saying this is totally unrealistic. Sadly, it happens (just like the victims of battery with a high libido and poor taste). But why pick this reality to depict? Most importantly, however, while it is true that a published author who doesn't sell well may have to resort to trickery to get published again (witness Robin Hobb and Kate Elliott), the shenanigans engaged in by the POV character within the first 75 pages defy belief -- or respect, or whatever. I just couldn't bring myself to give a shit about any of those people, so I've abandoned attempts to finish this.
Rats, Lice and History: the Biography of a Bacillus: a Bacteriologist's Classic Study of a World Scourge, by Hans Zinsser
Fair warning: I've abandoned the book halfway through at about page 140. I probably won't sell this back to a used bookstore. Assuming my friend upstairs has indeed acquired a shredder, I plan to borrow it to remove this particular instance of evil from the planet. I'm sure it is well-represented in a library near you. Just don't encourage anyone to reprint this further by actually purchasing a copy new. Please.
Where to begin? First, this is another one of those annoying books which rambles endlessly and largely incompetently on a wide variety of subjects. Worse, he spends a godawful amount of time at the beginning trying to justify that behavior. His assessment of contemporary literature and literary criticism is naive at best. His politics are unforgivably conservative, even for a German-American in the US of the mid-30s. And believe me, I will go on.
What's interesting about this book -- what kept me around for over 100 pages? Well, very early on, he mentions "a nationalism of species against species", a use of the word nationalism I had thought to be a relatively recent invention, which I encountered in Horizontal Society by Friedman. On the same page, he uses the quoted term kiddies to refer to children, again, a usage I thought more recent than the mid-1930s.
What is more expected of the time period is the use of the racist term yellow, a few pages later, with respect to how an epidemiologist who behaved in the manner depicted in Arrowsmith would be perceived by contemporaries.
Some pages later, we return to a surprising foreshadowing of the future. A paragraph about how each generation of scientific explorers is made up of zillions (not his word) of differentiators, mapping the territory for the next great integrator sounds amazingly Kuhnian.
Then again, not long after, an obnoxious footnote to the first use of the word saprophyte (a plant, or plant-like organism which consumes the dead): "If the reader does not understand this word, it is too bad.". He doesn't translate his french -- fine. He says up front he won't be crediting anyone. Whatever. But a footnote that gives the bird to the reader strikes me as gratuitous.
The next few pages cogently argue the case for decreased virulence in successive infections of a given population. Bizarrely enough, however, he does not stop at lamenting successful treatments for diseases that might once have decreased in this way. No, in the next footnote, he says: "This (the successful treatment of syphilis with arsphenamin) might be a loss to civilization: it has often been claimed that since so many brilliant men have had syphilis, much of the world's greatest achievement was evidently formulated in brains stimulated by the cerebral irritation of an early general paresis." He says he'll avoid further details about contemporaries to avoid the legal hassles. First, the much greater discoveries of ensuing generations put the kibosh on this theory. More importantly, what a cruel conclusion even if justified! Would not a slower rate of progress be worth an increase in the quality of life and longevity?
Given Zinsser's inclination to comment on everything, his national background and the times, it would be bizarre if he had nothing to say about the contemporary heinous events in Nazi Germany. His first outing is to note that in the wake of the World War, famine, disease and hopelessness like that of the Middle Ages produced similar treatment of Jews. His second outing is much more disturbing. In his analysis of diseases described in the Bible, he mentions a plague delivered by Jehovah to the Philistines of Ashdod, who had just recently stolen the Ark (the gold thing, not the boat). "This is the sort of thing, of course, which -- throughout the ages -- has led to what in modern terms we speak of as "Nazi movements."". Holy fuck. He just said that the reason Jews are the targets of genocide is because of what the Bible says God did on their behalf? How does that make sense? And, as it manifestly does not, without going well beyond the bounds of Zinsser's words on the subject, we are forced to conclude that Zinsser thinks the Jews brought all their suffering upon themselves. Horrid.
Think you I conclude too much based on two passages? Here is a third: "There is repeated evidence in Biblical history that the fair (sic) competition of other nations with the Jews was always rendered a triumph for the Hebrews by the interference of what, to the others, must have seemed a biased and relentless God." I note here that virtually all cultures depict their God or gods as stepping in on their side quite ruthlessly. The Jewish Bible is noted for including the many times the Jews got their collective ass kicked -- notable, in that most annals of other cultures do not include those kinds of embarrassments. Back to the bigot: "We wonder whether this does not lend a great deal of justice to the opinion of Houston Stewart Chamberlain, who explains anti-Semitism entirely on the basis of a clash between relgions." So why pick on non-practising Jews? Most pogroms did, including the Nazi attempt at genocide. "Jewish teachings were widely spread in the ancient world, and if the atrocious vengeance of God on all who opposed the Jews -- who apparently were no lilies in their relations with others -- were believed, hatred and resentment would be easily understood." Of course, none of this addresses my point above about how everybody had the same kind of propaganda. A purer form of blame the victim for persecution would be hard to find.
Zinsser takes swipes at family medical practitioners which conservatives now would likely agree with, replacing with alternative therapies. Fine, whatever. Let's move on to the racist aspects of Zinsser's bigotry. Apparently, according to him in more than one spot in the book, smallpox came to the Americas largely through the actions of Negros. "A Negro from the ship of Narvaez carried smallpox ashore, and over 3,000,000 Indians are said to have died. Negro slaves, indeed, quite possibly played a considerable role in the rapid distribution of the pox throughout the new continent."
Ignoring, for the moment, whether the facts of the matter are accurate (they probably aren't), why the hell tell this story, and further, why draw that moral? Who was responsible for the Negro slave being there? Not the slave, that's for damn sure. And who was responsible for the slave having the pox? Not the slave, again. But look at the structure of tale. Who is to blame? Creepy, Zinsser, very, very creepy.
Hans, who is enamored of the Roman state and its dominance of so much of the world for so long, sees its fall in the struggle between Vandals and Suebians, comparing that to a mayoral contest between La Guardia and O'Brien. Watch it, buddy, your prejudices are showing.
I considered sticking around to find out whether he would amplify his comments on how the plague (bubonic) reduced in severity as rat population migration was reduced through changes in cellaring practice and so forth. However, he doesn't believe this connection is compelling. I couldn't believe he'd come back to it in a useful manner. So, after one round too many of bigotry (I didn't even mention his belief in the cycles of history, and how that proves that Roosevelt's depression era programs were fundamentally misguided), I have set Hans aside. He is for the shredder. Don't go near this asshole. You can go read a Laurie Garrett book if you really need to.
The Virus Within, by Nicholas Regush
I am sooooo glad I didn't buy this. I found this on the shelf at Elliott Bay Books the same night I saw Dement's The Promise of Sleep (excellent and worth reading, rereading and periodically consulting). I bought Dement. I noted Regush for a library trip. That was the right choice.
If you are interested in the possible involvement of HHV6, variants A and B, in AIDS, MS, CFS, etc. you're really better off reading what the medical establishment has to say on the subject. Really. Regush gushes. He spends a lot of time on personalities, and his attitudes there are ridiculous. My favorite bit for exposing his foolishness is when he describes Knox as a single mother of 5, with a monster schedule, who doesn't understand how overcommitted she is, because everyone around her is trying to help out, including her ex-husband who watches the kids in the afternoons. Hello? Wouldn't that man also be known as the father of the kiddies? Get real. Near as I can tell, she was sharing custody and dad was doing his job.
Surfing the web suggests that Regush makes a living suggesting that people like Duesberg and others in the are we really sure HIV causes AIDS camp actually have some scence to back them up. In the absence of that, he's written a book suggesting that a Herpes virus, one variant of which infects pretty much everyone, is the cause of all kinds of diseases which involve compromised immune systems (hence, AIDS, MS, CFS, etc.). Whatever. By the end of the book, one gets the distinct impression that people are catching this dread disease from themselves (endogenous virus). Boo.
While I'm confident that HHV6 makes a small number of people very, very, very ill, and, when inappropriately managed, kills a large percentage of that small number of people, I have to take issue with the ethics of an author who raises questions regarding the active polio virus (he's riding the maybe it caused AIDS by infecting a ton of people with SV40, a variant of SIV, known to be related to HIV). First of all, he isn't conveying adequately the relative risks, and the scare tactics will tend to discourage people from vaccinating children, a crappy idea in all respects. Second, I don't understand how someone can intellectually juggle the idea that HIV isn't causing problems, but SIV somehow, by dispersing through the population in the late 1950s, is responsible for AIDS (by mutating into HIV). One or the other, Nicholas. Not both.
Don't waste your money or, as it happens, your time.
The Edges of the Field, Singer
Let me begin with my recommendation: buy it. I got it at the library, and I may yet go purchase a copy. Note 21 in chapter 2 (I think) is my new reading list. Great stuff.
This slim volume reflects Singer's extensive reading and extensive thinking on property as a social institution. He considers Americans: self-reliant, hopefully not to the extreme of solipsism. Compassionate, but our public policy does not currently reflect that compassion. He tells the tale of Malden Mills, the orthodox owner of which rebuilding, rehired, and paid while rebuilding, after a fire. He could, because it was a private company. A public company, fearing shareholder lawsuits, is compelled to hyperfocus on short term profits. A whirlwind tour of largely progressive solutions to this issue can be found in note 21.
Singer tells us about Pullman Village, a company town ruled illegal. Not all forms of property are legal. A rapid review of quitrents and other feudal practices, limitations on who can own property and slaveholding ensues, emphasizing how property changes to reflect societal mores.
An evaluation of Jewish and, to a much lesser degree, Xtian and Islamic ideas of properties is included. Why was Noah stuck in the ark so long? By learning to care for others, he would develop as a moral being. Owning and caring for animals and learning their feeding schedules enabled him to develop empathy. Abraham needed no such lesson, advocating for the citizens of Sodom and Gomorrah. The sin of Sodomy is presented as attack (rape, robbery) of protectorless travelers. (The text supports this well, and this interpretation makes Lot look much less nasty for offering his daughters up. He knew his neighbors weren't interested.) Elimelech (Naomi's husband) and his sons were punished for leaving Israel during a famine, taking wealth that might have helped those less well off than themselves (which reminded me of Le Pacte des Loups). Gleaning and the Jubilee are discussed.
A chapter on media representations covers The Full Monty, Brassed Off, Big Business and Rent.
Slim, concise, well-researched and a pleasure to read, I cannot recommend this one highly enough.
Ritual of Proof, Dara Joy
My sister introduced me to the ridiculous, unbelievably heterocentric (possibly homophobic), yet still somehow entertaining novels by Dara Joy. Her depiction of a Really Bad Day in Knight of A Trillion Stars, and a science fiction convention in the same novel, are probably my favorite bits by her, but I've gotten a kick out of nearly everything I've read by her (the bit where the heroine bashes the hero on the head with a water jug in Tonight or Never is particularly priceless). She engages in a very limited amount of fiddling with gender conventions in many of her novels, but this one takes it to a whole new level.
The backstory is: the good ship Neofem, womanned exclusively by, er, women, colonizes a planet. For the first few generations, they inseminate themselves with stored sperm, or the harvested sperm of male children who are killed shortly thereafter. Eventually, the colony decides that's a pretty rotten way to treat their own children and they allow the boys to grow up, but they remain distinctly second class citizens. By the time of the action, a Regency like society has been developed, based on novels brought by colonists, now shrouded in secrecy and hidden away in vaults.
Our heroine has no interest in marriage. Our hero, ditto. So far, the conventions have been maintained in reverse. The primary villain is after our hero. The villain has it in for our heroine. Ditto. Our heroine toys with our hero, falls for him, rescues him, marries him, deflowers him. Yes, Virginia, the virginity fetish of Regency novels and the Edwardian and Victorian eras is indeed preserved, complete with genetic engineering to create a hymen-like "veil" over the penis, dissolvable only by female muscles and juices during intercourse. And if you don't do it thoroughly the first time, it grows back and is even more painful the next time. Wow. The kind of thing women chuckle at, but men cringe at.
The novel as a whole is, as is typical of the author, pretty mediocre. But two things are worth mentioning. One, a motif historically limited to extreme feminist fiction is apparently legit fodder for romance novels. Two, someone finally came up with a viable way to invert the virginity fetish. Very, very disturbing. Go Dara!
Published in hardcover, I got it at the library. I recommend that you wait for paperback, or borrow a copy.
The Media Equation, Byron Reeves and Clifford Nass
I saw Nass on UW TV the other evening, and dug up this popular rendition of a series of experiments conducted by Reeves and Nass over the last decade or so. The idea is inherently plausible (if it speaks, responds, moves, etc., we'll probably treat it as if it were a person, or at least as if it had personality, which is not to say we anthropomorphize it), but has not, to my knowledge, been explored in detail previously. It's always nice to run into people who bother to point out how trivial most personality characteristics really are. Beyond that, it's really nice to run into someone with the studies to back up the hypothesis that auditory fidelity is far more important than visual fidelity.
They cover a large amount of ground in a highly repetitive manner. Here's what people do with people. Here's why we don't expect that to apply to people dealing with media, computers, etc. Here's what we predict. Here's our method. Here are our results. The bummer is that second bit: why we don't expect that to apply to people dealing with non-people. Most of what they say strikes me as ludicrous. The good news is, when I rewrite those bits in my head to be more reasonable, the result supports their thesis even more strongly. That makes it a quibble.
I got this at the library. It's probably worth the purchase price, but as a Cambridge publication, might not be all that easy to find.
Sleeping with Extra-Terrestrials: The Rise of Irrationalism and Perils of Piety, by Wendy Kaminer
I got a huge kick out of I'm Dysfunctional, You're Dysfunctional when I first read it. When I flipped through it recently, as part of the ongoing library purge, it went out to a used bookstore along with It's All the Rage and True Love Waits. Is it because I've gotten older?
Kaminer claims to have modified her style (more or less independent chapters in books on a theme so they can be read independently, since that's what certain readers who make her cringe say they do anyway). I don't see it, unless she modified it before she wrote those mentioned above (unlikely, since that's a chunk of her book-length oeuvre). This outing hangs together even more poorly than True Love Waits, particularly when compared to I'm Dysfunctional, her book-long rant on why 12-Step Programs constitute a democracy threatening urge to accept tyranny, and It's All the Rage, on why capital punishment is a crappy idea.
Channelers, Multiple Personality Disorder, accusations of satanic cult memberships, recovered memory cases, junk science in general, the Net, and the religious right somehow all share an increased tendency in American Society to Irrationalism. The connections are tenuous. The case that anything has changed is not only not compelling, it's risible in spots. Well, it's hard to laugh sometimes, because definitions of words like "love" are used one way by the people she reports on and she imposes other definitions entirely, as if that were on the One True Meaning, with no further consideration at all. You can get away with that with something like the referent for quantum mechanics, but I don't think you can with a word like love. It constitutes coercive rhetoric of the worst sort.
I bought it used. It was too incoherent to be useful. It had its moments. The rest was a slog. If you're looking for a pragmatic assessment of these groups and ideas, or a template for understanding their political tendencies, influences or agendas, you won't find it here. As analysis, it's disturbingly conservative for someone who clearly considers herself leftist. She notes that junk science is a term used by right-wingers advocating tort reform, but leaves it at that, plus a sentence or two (and she has a chapter on junk science). Will she be writing for Reason the next time I check? Yech. Your call. I vaguely regret finishing it. I would have been better served rereading William James's The Varieties of Religious Experience instead. He didn't whine about the Net putting an end to the avoidance of split infinitives. Whatever.
One Market Under God, Thomas Frank
My first reaction was, Yay! He's covering the same ground as Total Propaganda, but with political context. At the time, I hadn't yet gotten rid of Edelstein, so I pulled it out and looked through it again, and that reaction is accurate.
Frank's focus is on business literature. Not econ textbooks (although I feel certain he could do a useful number on those as well). Business literature by the likes (or ilk) of Tom Peters. Things like Who Moved My Cheese. He has worthy targets, and he's generous with the ammo. I was toying with the idea of buying 20 copies at a discount and giving them to everyone who would stand still long enough, as I did years ago with the (as it turns out) far superior Eternal Hostility.
Alas, Frank's book is long, screechy and spends more time on textual commentary than I believe is, strictly speaking, necessary or useful. Furthermore, as (justly) appalled as he is at people dissing critics of all sorts (political, societal or literary) as "elitist" or "cynical", one does get the impression he's kinda surprised to discover that workers forced to read Who Moved My Cheese accurately perceive it as at least a threat, and probably a softening up attack.
It isn't clear whether Frank is trying to get business (or business writers, or journalists or newspapers) to reform their wicked ways, before they destroy the environment which allowed them to make so much money (and not just the "natural" environment, either). Or whether Frank is trying to convince workers to rise up and take open, direct political action against those who would reduce them to developing nation peons. It is so unclear, it affects the lucidity of his argument. I bought this in paper. It's long. It's screechy. It has some useful analysis, but Frank's kinda annoying. If this is the sort of thing you like, maybe you'll like it a whole lot. Otherwise, it's a slog. Your call. Maybe you can find my copy used.
For Common Things, by Jedediah Purdy
Purdy was quoted to good effect by Singer above. I am so glad I got it at the library. He has a lot in common with Kaminer. He doesn't like the fascination with angels. And a lot in common with Frank. He doesn't like Fast Company, or Wired. Raised by a couple reclusive hippies who retired to West Virginia to homeschool their children, they produced a young writer who superficially seems not to be racist or sexist, but in practice is an atavist -- American Victorian, with suggestions of Romanticism. He quotes de Tocqueville, Wilde, Emerson, Thoreau, Frost, Wendell Berry, Stegner and Montaigne. He quotes no women other than his mother (and that not a direct quote) and the occasional author of angel books and/or articles in the magazines mentioned already, until the tail end of the book. As he's spinning on the subject of paying attention to stuff, especially genetic manipulation, he mentions Mary Shelley and her "curiously relevant" work Frankenstein. Why she would be curiously relevant, when apparently dead white men are obviously relevant, is suggestive. Purdy got sucked in by the concept of virtu (altho he never uses that word, the idea that anything worth doing should be done well, or not at all is pervasive in this book) and hasn't yet been spat back out. He dances around the fact that irony is (a) an antibody response to pervasive propaganda and (b) a lot of ironic stances in media are actually coded subversive critiques of our society. Unfortunately for all of us, not often calls to simple action. I don't like Purdy. I don't like Purdy's ethos. I suspect I don't like his politics, but he doesn't like politics and instead advocates engaging in the political process because otherwise the assholes will take over the world, so it isn't obvious what his politics really are. And I get the overwhelming impression that he thinks the real purpose of politics is to keep the world ticking along well enough to let us all go back to being literary snobs. Empyrean my ass. If he'd just said celestial, we'd have all known what he meant. Twit. Don't waste your time. You'd be better off subscribing to Adbusters. Or rereading Singer.
The City in History, by Lewis Mumford
I'm a big fan of Jane Jacobs, and Mumford was a complete ass about her book Death and Life of Great American Cities, so I am biassed against him.
That said, he's on the side of the angels in so many ways. Opposed to unreconstructed capitalism, the Vietnam War, and Plato's Republic, it's really a great pleasure to read him rag on someone I particularly dislike. Even if he does go on. And he does go on. Over five hundred pages.
The first hundred pages, like every opening summary of pre-written-history story of people, are irritating. Partly this is because he has some noxiously Jungian sexist ideas. Also he has retained that mid-century mode of speech that involves a lot of "Man has done this and is this other thing and Man aspires to yet another thing and Man, oh, Man". Mostly it's because some things have been learned in ensuing decades that I'm betting he didn't know about. The rest of it is because he tends to put function fairly late in any analysis.
The last hundred pages are interesting, because he's predicting stuff, and talking about predictions he made thirty years before that came true. I get the distinct impression, when he talks about invisible cities (so Calvino -- not) and library loan programs, that this man would have adored the Net. And he would have been appalled by, but not surprised, by the white flight that occurred in the decade after this book was published. I understand he lasted until 1990; I'll have to take a look around to find out what he had to say about it at the time.
The middle three hundred pages are historical, and vary extensively in quality, both in terms accuracy and compelling argument. I have the usual round of issues with vocabulary. Who is served by saying "erethism"? I'm not even sure the phrase visual erethism makes sense (actually, I'm pretty sure he's mixed sensory modes here, rarely a good thing). He liked the word "sordor" a lot, and I think we can mostly work that one out based on "sordid". But at the end of the day, if I can think of a synonym that would have served as well and, in addition, is more commonly used, I question the author's choice. I think in both cases he was trying to sneak a very subjective judgment by, while appearing objective and precise. Yeah, right.
While the Circus Maximus has since been excavated (well, still being excavated, as near as I can tell), I don't think we've ever found out what the window panes were made of at Knossos. My money is on some form of oiled paper or plant product. I was absolutely appalled to read about the carnaria in Rome, particularly that they were still viscous and stinky after two thousand years. That is just nasty beyond belief.
Mumford saw early on that the suburb and the automobile were a lethal combination that would all drag us down a road broken by L.A. unless we fought hard against it. His solution, I am afraid, is not compelling (or, really, all that clear). He wants the city to control its land, through ownership and long leases, or through extensive use of condemnation. He wants density not to exceed a hundred or so persons per acre. He wants mass transportation, railroads, walking and cycling -- but appears to dislike subways and elevated trains. Hmmm. He also believes in the beneficial properties of sunlight and fresh air, which I can't argue against too strenuously, but others have written convincingly on the dangers of certain kinds of parks and playgrounds.
Would Mumford have backed the Seattle Commons? I harbor a strong suspicion he would have. While I like Volunteer Park, and willingly walk through it alone after dark, I know it's a city landmark that is inherently difficult to maintain the safety of. The Interterlaken park system down the hill from my condo is substantially worse in many respects. Green Lake is my idea of a great park: mixed use, thin, huge amounts of eyes on it all day long, and for an interesting chunk of the evening. But I think Mumford would hate my city, based on the raw numbers of open space. He'd particularly hate Ballard (which I sometimes regret moving out of).
"Moderate speed, quiet, ease and compactness of parking -- these are the characteristics of a town car." I'm not going to argue. These, also fuel efficiency and spacious cargo room, to prevent the temptation to move up to a larger car, are what I look for in a car. But he has accepted a car-per-family rule. Why? Because he actually hates cities. He likes towns well enough, but cities make him buggy. He'd rather get rid of them. I like cities. And in a real city, a car not only shouldn't be necessary. It should be a major nuisance to have about. I have not yet moved close enough to the core of a big enough city to enjoy this nirvana, but someday, someday.
In the meantime, I walk a lot, ride the bus a little and dream of tiny personal transportation.
Most damning, however, is Mumford's belief that the problem isn't industrialism or pollution, but rather the concentration of polluting activities. Dude, they're just as polluting in toto when spread out over the countryside as they are when all stuck in one place. The illusion that nature can deal with this crap has been exploded repeatedly. It's better to concentrate it (to reduce the area affected) and then work on using noxious outputs as inputs to other stuff, an activity rendered much simpler through proximity, in general, and which is easier to motivate when the polluters are visible.
Star Maker, by Olaf Stapledon
I think everyone familiar with this book knows it's a terrible novel, like most Utopias. It's not a terrible book, however, largely because it covers a lot of different worlds. I swear the first 60 pages were ripped off wholesale by Niven and Pournelle for A Mote in God's Eye. L'Engle and Duane use the living-stars-are-angels idea, altho that may well have an earlier antecedant than Stapledon. The identification of deity with artist, and the analysis thereof that dominates the last section of the book is explored in much more interesting ways in Sayers' The Mind of the Maker.
I'd have felt a lot better if the Star Maker had been immanent or personal and transcendant. Stapledon's attempt to make sense of all three simultaneously works for me about as well as most Catholic theology. That is, not at all, really.
I have some quibbles with the world building. First and foremost, children of two sexes predominate, even in the cloud-like matings. This in a work that includes arachnoids, icthyoids, starfish critters and living boats. We can all think of additional possibilities. Why did the author so limit himself? The dualism turns out to be thematically relevant, in that the Star Maker consciously splits himself into good and evil in creation, but that's just nasty if you map it onto the sexes. Further, since his crowning creation is identified as female, that suggests that the critters (the viewpoint character and other important characters are male) are constantly worshipping an absent and neglectful father. Hmmm. This says more, likely, about the pathology of the author's family of origin than anything else. Secondly, and further support for this thesis, the women are always the custodial parent, even in the symbiotic relationship (the male of the symbiotes raises the female's kids -- by definition not his own, since they are of different species). Plenty of evidence in biology to support alternate family structures (custodial fathers, fathers who are primary caretakers and feeders of young). Stapledon uses an avian feeding structure in the world of Other Men, but the women seem to be the only one feeding, which doesn't match the avian pattern all that well, so claims that he just didn't have a chance to know better are implausible.
I conclude from this either an overt theme (god is a father, and an abusive one at that, but as the victims of his abuse, we love him and can't really stop and really all god needs is the love of a good woman) or an unexamined bias on the part of the author. Take your pick. I find both equally distasteful.
Next up: what's with the dry-land-centrism? There's a whole bit about how science and exploitation of resources can't develop underwater, which disrupts the symbiotes and takes a while to overcome. But the thesis makes next to no sense, even using '30s science and science fiction as a guide. (But I kinda liked the critters who communicated via farts.)
If you're into that old school sensawunda shit, this has it. Piled higher and deeper. But the story which ties it together (the telepathic/astral projection of our hero and a bunch of other critters from other times and places, zipping hither and yon to try to make sense of it all, spread the gospel of hypercosmic communitarianism or whatever) is uninvolving and (as noted above) probably pathological. Don't like that word? I'm calling Stapledon a sick fuck, who shouldn't be allowed to influence the unready. The exclusion of female characters, much less female viewpoints, weakens the work further. Further, in every conceivable way, the viewpoint character treats physical needs, passions, etc., as tedious irrelevancy to the main narrative, altho in the end, they draw him back home, where he is happiest, away from the hyperabstraction of his cosmic adventures. This contrast could have been dealt with so much more effectively if more openly.
Worst of all is that last section, which probably should have been titled, I, Worm. The groveling and abasement is icky, to say the least. Then that transformation to butterfly only to be shot down by dad. Bleah. He repeatedly says he's over anthropomorphizing in depicting his experiences, but that's the least of his worries. Star Maker is as abusive as the OT Yahweh is often accused of being. If you're going to anthropomorphize, Stapledon, why can't he at least be a stand-up, decent, involved parent? Alternatively, just come right out and hate god. The one you created surely deserves it.
Reviews on Amazon run a gamut from bad-novel (no story, no characters, no anything) to changed-my-life. Both have their merits. If you're interested in the history of science fiction and/or conceptions of the godhead-as-artist, this is a worthy entry. Otherwise, I can't help but think you'd be better off rereading E.E. "Doc" Smith. I'm still wondering if those wandering intellects encountered by (and, I think, eventually joined by) Duquesne are the major characters from this work.
The Tipping Point, by Malcolm Gladwell
Maybe I just don't like books anymore. Is that possible? Nah. I just don't want to own them in such quantities as I used to. Here's another example of a book I got at the library, and am oh-so-glad-I-didn't-buy. But I am glad I read it. Gladwell believes in magic. If Kaminer wants to pick on the irrational, she should target him, first. Why?
Well, in his tale of Goetz and the decline of crime in NYC, he treats very dismissively important economic components, saying that while the economy improved, NYC's economy improved less than other places, but their crime rate dropped more precipitously. As if that's all there was to it. What he failed to notice was how bloody much money Guiliani and company spent (more in debt now than ever before, even that time they went bankrupt, sort of) hugely in the city during the years the crime rate dropped. Yet somehow, it was specifically going after farebeaters and windshield washers that made the difference. I don't think so.
He's taken a bunch of interesting research, misapplied it to a lot of other areas, underplayed important economic and political trends, trivialized some crucial demographic changes and come up with the following theory. (1) Everyone thinks change happens gradually. (2) It doesn't. (3) Therefore, Band-Aid solutions to major social problems are in fact the Best and maybe the Only solution to major social problems.
Don't get me wrong. Band-Aids are great. But Band-Aids are for small cuts, maybe a small burn or blister. They aren't for broken bones, chronic disease, AIDS, etc.
Don't read this book if you're suggestible. It'll damage you. And whatever you do, don't give this guy any more money than he already has. He's irresponsible.
The Future of American Progressivism, by Roberto Mangobeira Unger and Cornel West
What a lot of whinging on about the state of something-or-other this month. I often said, back in 1998 or so, that there was nothing wrong with our society that a good long recession wouldn't cure. Rumor has it commute times in the Bay area have plummeted. I know rents are down all over. I didn't really mean it. I intended to draw people's attention to how much of what annoyed them was a direct result of prosperity for more people. I used to often say that it was 1929. Now I say it's 1930, and periodically feel depressed myself when I think about how long it took to hit bottom that time around. Unreconstructed capitalism stinks, but that's an observation easily derivable from this month's reading list.
Finally, safe, affordable teleportation would solve many, but not all, of our problems. But some of this month's reading suggests it would merely expose us to more difficult ones. Do you believe Stapledon? Or his more optimistic imitator, Niven?
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Copyright Rebecca Allen, 2002.
Created February 1, 2002 Modified December 9, 2002