Books and literature – Page 30 – a sibilant intake of breath

Slaughterhouse-Five

Kurt Vonnegut‘s Slaughterhouse-Five is a refreshing and enjoyable book, despite the often macabre subject matter. It reminds me strongly of both The Life of Pi, insofar as it refrains from interrogating its own fantasies, and Robert Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land, due to the style of language and presentation of characters.

The book is mostly about an American named Billy Pilgrim who participates in the Second World War (though he never fights), witnesses the firebombing of Dresden, and subsequently becomes an optometrist. He either goes mad or genuinely begins to travel through time, experiencing his own life in a random series of vignettes. The story’s narration is unobtrusive, though it sometimes has a self-referential feeling. The language is clear, simple, and poignant.

Free will is a major topic of concern in the book. The aliens who Billy Pilgrim thinks he encounters are able to see back and forth through time, and believe that all actions necessarily unfold in a certain way. This leads to a kind of fatalism where the inevitability of war and death is somewhat tempered by the ability to experience the better periods prior to those things at will. Arguably, Pilgrim created this idea in his madness after being broken by war (or brain damaged in a plane crash). Possibly, Vonnegut is trying to satirize the idea that wars and actions are inevitable; that is certainly suggested by the way in which the end of the universe is described, as the inevitable result of a rocket fuel testing experiment conducted by Pilgrim’s aliens. Pilgrim’s overall haplessness – as well as the thoroughly unheroic portrayal of other soldiers – certainly counter some of the more common war myths of valour and meaningful sacrifice. The refrain of the whole book, usually following a brief description of some incident of death or cruelty, is simply: “So it goes.”

Appropriately enough, given how the narrative jumps around in time, my first experiences of the book came in the form of reading random bits and pieces every once in a while. It’s not an approach that I generally adopt with books, but it worked uniquely well with this one. Reading it straight through definitely gave more of an overall picture, but the book couple be chopped up and re-ordered in any number of ways without a new reader finding it at all suspicious.

Overall, I really appreciated Vonnegut’s style and language. It shares many similarities with the early science fiction of Heinlein and Asimov: a crispness of language and compassionate voice. It makes me want to read more of his work.

Hell and High Water

Joseph Romm’s Hell and High Water: Global Warming – the Solution and the Politics – and What We Should Do might be fairly described as an American version of George Monbiot’s Heat. It describes much less intrusive means for responding to the threat of climate change, as well as being more tailored to American politics. It is also less ambitious that Monbiot’s work, since it aims at the stabilization of atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gasses (GHGs) below 550 parts per million (ppm) rather than 450.

The book is basically divided into two sections: one of which describes the nature and extent of the threat posed by climate change and one talking about solutions. The book is very explicitly focused on what climate change will do to Americans. Romm argues that too much coverage has focused on effects in poor countries, leading Americans to think the impact of climate change on their lives will be minimal.

Romm talks a great deal about how groups opposed to GHG regulation have created and funded a group of irresponsible ‘experts’ trying to convince the general public that major disagreement still exists about the reality and probable impact of climate change. He is very critical of the media, particularly for giving equal attention to the conclusions of a few oil-funded crackpots, compared with those of the enormous majority of scientists and all major scientific assessments.

I have some quibbles with some of Romm’s technological recommendations. I think he is a bit overconfident about the rapidity with which carbon capture and storage and cellulosic ethanol might be deployed. That said, the vast majority of what he says is correct, well defended, and similar to the thinking of others who have considered the questions seriously.

One notable omission from the book is emissions associated with air travel. At no point are they mentioned, either as a problem or an area where policy could yield improvements. As Monbiot effectively highlights, emissions from air travel are among the toughest to address, not least because lots of well-off people who consider themselves environmentalists and support good environmental policies nonetheless want to be able to jet off to South Africa or New Zealand.

Overall, Romm’s book is informative and accessible. He does a good job of bringing the issue home for Americans – de-emphasizing issues like the preservation of nature and international fairness – and emphasizing why they, personally, should be worried. Certainly, the kind of climatic impacts projected by the IPCC for 2030 or so are enough to make any reasonable person extremely nervous. He is right to say that, in a world where GHG concentrations are 650 ppm or more, climate change will be the issue being dealt with by all governments. Equally, he is right to point out that concentrations of that magnitude have a very serious risk of pushing us into a self-reinforcing cycle producing temperature increases of more than 5˚C globally and sea level increases of 25 metres or more. Hell and high water, indeed.

A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines

$Branches over Dow\'s Lake, Ottawa$

Janna Levin’s book is an odd one: written about two mathematicians, focused on mathematical ideas, but with virtually no specific mathematical discussion. The book dances elegantly around the real meat of the lives of Alan Turing and Kurt Godel, but shows it all from the perspective of an outsider focused on emotions. This is freely admitted in the concluding notes:

The depth and magnitude of both Turing and Godel’s ideas are only barely touched upon here.

While this is a novel and not a reference work, one nonetheless feels that Godel and Turing would think it captures mostly what was not essential about their lives.

Putting words and thoughts into fictitious forms of historical figures is always a dangerous business, because it carries with it the false precision of reasoned invention. The danger that the speculation could be wrong is constant, so the book takes on the feeling of a friend-of-a-friend story, while maintaining the trappings of an omniscient direct account. The book also fixates far too much on apples, in an attempt to set up the story of Turing’s suicide.

The book’s strength lies in conveying the tragedy and isolation that seems to be the burden of most of the greatest mathematicians. The contrast between being able to perform mental feats beyond the capacity of almost everyone, while being largely unable to perform the basic actions of a normal life, has long been rich material for writers. In this sense, Turing comes off much stronger; by the end, the account of Godel’s life is both pathetic and pitiable. At least Turing is driven to suicide by the homophobic cruelty of others – Godel just stumbles into it through deepening paranoia.

While the book made for satisfying reading, I much prefer the math-related non-fiction works of Simon Singh. His Code Book includes an admirable description of the breaking of Enigma. In Fermat’s Last Theorem Singh also does a good job of telling about the lives of mathematicians, without ignoring the math. Something comparable on Godel’s incompleteness theorem would make more satisfying reading than this novel.

Climate change and the gom jabbar

In Frank Herbert’s Dune, the protagonist is tested using a machine that “only kills animals.” His hand is placed in a box that simulates the appearance and sensation of having it horribly burned. He is told that he will be killed if he pulls the hand out. The test is to see whether he can overcome his primal reaction: whether he can exercise will over instinct and live. At least according to those who administer it, this is what distinguishes ‘humans’ from ‘animals.’

In some ways, climate change is like a Gom jabbar for all humanity. We are now aware of the needle threatening our collective lives. We know that continuing to act on the basis of instinct will lead to our doom. The question is whether we possess the fortitude to endure what is difficult, in order to avoid what is lethal.

The Tetherballs of Bougainville

Virtually every page of Mark Leyner‘s book made me want to reach out and strangle the insufferably pretentious protagonist: a compulsion that sat awkwardly beside the way in which the author of the book has intentionally conflated himself with the central character (nested several times), even imbuing him with his own name. The Tetherballs of Bougainville is an absurdist collection of miscellanea. It cannot really be called satire because it doesn’t have enough direction to constitute a criticism. If anything, it both glorifies and mildly rebukes the emotional shallowness and obsessive character of society, as perceived by Leyner himself. The book can be funny, when one is in the right frame of mind, but it most frequently struck me in the way Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas did the few times when it came across as crass and monstrous, rather than comic and off-the-wall.

The self-referential plot betrays the abject narcissism of the protagonist. In the opening section, a straightforward narrative of his father’s unsuccessful execution is presented. The second section consists of a screenplay written for a contest mentioned in the first. Again, author/protagonist Leyner is at the centre of the narrative. The same is true for the extended review of a fictional movie read by the Leyner character in the screenplay. The non-existent film is described at great detail, and also features Leyner as the protagonist. Screenplay Leyner, reviewing the non-existing Leyner-starring film judges it as “a movie that consistently subordinates meaning to titillation. And it is a movie that perpetually teeters between puerile perversity and puerile sentimentality.” It seems that author Leyner was hoping to achieve something similar with the book as a whole.

In the end, this book feels like the product of a high school student trying way too hard to be clever: writing impossibly detailed (though not error-free) dialogue as a kind of intellectual fantasy fulfillment. Nobody has the real-life inability to expound upon minutiae so extravagantly and tirelessly. In that sense, the book reminded me of The Gilmore Girls: it had the same tendency to replicate the idealized conversations of ex-Ivy League screenwriters. Leyner’s work is dramatically more explicit and tries to be more disturbing – the most successful attempt being an anatomically ludicrous by nonetheless revulsion-producing scene involving a woman without a cranium – but it has that same feeling of over-eager whiz-kiddery behind it.

Dark comedies

I first experienced Jhonen Vasquez‘s work in the form of Johnny the Homicidal Maniac: a darkly comic feature of my high-school days. Johnny is insane and believes he needs to keep a wall in his house painted with fresh blood so that demons do not push through from the other side. On the basis of that, you might wonder why Nickelodeon decided to produce a children’s television show created by the same man. Invader Zim is not nearly as dark as Johnny – though it definitely has its moments – and I think it is funnier overall. In one episode, the megalomaniacal alien Zim is concerned that a human nurse will uncover his secret identity as an alien because he lacks human organs. His solution is to start stealing them from his classmates in a macabre and hilarious episode called “Dark Harvest.”

The series is worth watching just so that you can exchange the most hillarious lines with other devotees.

For those already enamoured with Zim it is worth noting that you can buy every episode on DVD for $29.59. At that price, it may soften the rueful chastisement embodied in the angry fist you wave at those $70 seasons of The Sopranos. They even had the gall to split series six in two parts, so they could rob people twice…

Lady Chatterley’s Lover

In many ways, Lady Chatterley’s Lover reminds me of Anna Karenina. Each uses a relatively straightforward narrative as a means of conveying philosophical positions about the changing nature of the world – often through nakedly analytic passages. Chatterley seems largely concerned with the question of how to endure in an unnatural world: how to persist in humanity despite the challenges brought by capitalism, industry, and global interconnections. The major conclusion seems to be that the best one can hope to do is opt out, rejecting societal expectations and returning to some kind of natural intimacy with a fellow refugee.

At the heart of the book are contrasts between situations and personalities: between coal mines, the literary world, high society, and a simple pastoralism. Also, between Constance’s crippled husband and her intentionally unsophisticated lover; between Constance herself and her sister; between Constance and Mellors’ relationship and that between her husband Clifford and his nurse and confidant. By setting these things against each other, Lawrence gains both an opportunity to share insight and a platform from which to issue condemnation. Usually, the crime a person or situation stands accused of is being compromised in nature and inauthentic. Constance’s return to authenticity is thus a triumph, even if it does little to alter any of the societal forces that led her initially to a hollowed-out life.

The book also has a certain ecological concern, though more in the spirit of a lamentation for the passing of pastoral life than in the form of an argument for social reform and improved behaviours and conditions. The coal mines are condemned – and the kind of lives that the miners have built around them – but the situation is treated as one almost fated. Similarly on the issue of class separation, some negative aspects are identified, but the book never really rallies for reform. It is all about individual resurrection despite society, not any hope that society might change so as to better foster and accommodate authentic individuals. Connie chooses to withdraw from her place in society, though never considers sacrificing the automatic income that makes her an aristocrat to start with: an income as tied to the stratification and industrialization of society as Clifford’s coal wealth.

No short review can cover all the insightful flourishes that pepper the book, arising, as they do, from a slightly odd omniscient point of view that happily flits through characters both major and minor. The books is intriguing, convincing, and clearly written. To a greater degree than I would have expected, it also speaks directly to some of the major tensions in the modern world. Though a venerable classic of literature, it is in no sense dated.

In Defense of Food

Having recently read and enjoyed Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma, his newer book caught my eye this morning. I had seen a review contrasting it negatively with his prior work, but decided to take the plunge anyhow. I am glad I did. While there is less value added in terms of general knowledge, it is a much more practical guide to how the realities of contemporary food production affect the choices of conscientious modern omnivores.

The book does an excellent job of combining a good breadth of consideration with the production of manageable advice. Opening with “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants,” it elaborates those simple sentiments into a pretty good set of suggestions. Critically, ‘food’ refers only to things that would be recognized as such by people from a few hundred years ago. After going through the decidedly unnatural list of ingredients for a loaf of bread, Pollan declares that:

Sorry, Sara Lee, but your Soft & Smooth Whole Grain White Bread is not food and if not for the indulgence of the FDA [in not longer requiring the use of the word ‘imitation’] could not even be labelled “bread.”

Pollan does an excellent job of critiquing food science and the ‘nutritionism’ that reduces the complex chemistry of food and eating to simple affirmation or condemnation of individual chemicals and chemical classes, such as saturated fats. He provides a compelling description of the nature and evolution of the Western Diet, as well as the societal and economic reasons for its emergence and the health consequences that emerge from it.

In addition to discussing what to eat, Pollan provides some good tips on how. Basically, he suggests that people return to forms of eating more rooted in culture. Constant snacking, eating alone, and consuming massive portions are problematic even if the foodstuffs in question are relatively good. He also endorses gardening and cooking from scratch as ways of weeding out non-foods while also gaining more appreciation for the relationships involved in growth and eating.

Pollan provides a list of 24 bits of concise (and sometimes counterintuitive) advice. He provides some good tips on where and how to shop (avoid the centre of supermarkets – stick to the unprocessed foods at the edges). I was particularly delighted to learn about the strong case for how a glass of wine with dinner can do a fair bit to promote cardiovascular health. Since reading his previous book, I had already made some pretty significant dietary changes. Barring the occasional pot of Knorr soup, I have eaten virtually nothing that wasn’t “food” as he defines it. I have also been thinking a lot more about what I eat, where it comes from, how I prepare it, and so forth. Overall, the process has been meaningful and enjoyable.

It is pretty rare for me to buy a book and read it though in a day. The fact that I did with this one demonstrates both how engaging and accessible it is. For those wanting some sound dietary advice, rather than a more extensive discussion of the nature of various food systems, this book is well worth examining. I am planning to foist my copy onto as many people as possible.

Sensitivity versus throughput in reading

At some point in the past five or six years, skimming became my default form of reading. Depending on the material, as little as a few seconds per page might be devoted to initial assessment. While this does allow for a person to process much more information, there is an extent to which it forces the atrophy of close reading ability. It seems as though the skills for processing an 80 page document in and hour and the skills for engaging with a dense poem are not only different, but may actually exclude one another.

There is no question about which of the two skill-sets is most useful in academia or information-focused work environments. At the same time, it is always somewhat tragic to lose a skill – especially when it is easy to recall a time when densely packed writing was often an intriguing mystery to explore, rather than a nuisance to be untangled.

Do other people feel the same way about the relationship between the volume processing of information and the precise examination of small samples? If so, is there anything that can or should be done?

The failure of liberal dreams for Afghanistan

Sayed Pervez Kambaksh’s death sentence is a compelling demonstration of how thoroughly the west has failed in Afghanistan. The death sentence was issued by an Afghan court in response to the allegation that Kambaksh had downloaded and distributed a report about the oppression of women. This is not the first time a death sentence has been issued for blasphemy in Afghanistan since the imposition of the Karzai government, but it is a pretty egregious case. Yesterday, the sentence was confirmed by the Afghan Senate.

Is the whole point of the war in Afghanistan the replacement of one brutal band of thuggish warlords with another? Admittedly, the present government is better than the Taliban was, but that is hardly a ringing endorsement. Canada is considering an ever-more long term commitment to the protection of this government while, at the same time, we cannot trust them not to torture detainees that are transferred to them.

What is to be done in response? Do we become hard-headed realists, asserting that aiming to empower women or promote human rights was never a realistic or appropriate aim of the war in Afghanistan? Supporting a government just because they seem relatively pliable and seem to say the right things about cracking down on groups that worry us is certainly a practice with a long history. That said, it isn’t a very successful one. After all, it is why the west armed the Mujahideen in the first place (not to mention the Pinochets and Musharrafs of the world). Do we become isolationists, then, despairing of our ability to effect any progressive or worthwhile change in the world? That doesn’t seem practically or morally tenable in a world as interconnected as ours has become.

Perhaps all we can do is become a bit more cynical and a lot more critical about the supposed justifications for interventions. Rather than aspiring to replace oppressive societies with somewhat better ones, perhaps we should admit that overthrowing governments – however awful – will normally lead to horribly broken societies. That is not to say that it is always the worst option available. A horribly broken society is better than one in which an active genocide is occurring. With such exceptions admitted, it does seem as though the dream of a transition to liberal democracy through military intervention has been essentially invalidated by the experience of western states in Afghanistan and Iraq since 2001.