Dashing: Chuck Klosterman's "I Wear the Black Hat"

My interactions with Chuck Klosterman's writings have been pretty up and down, and upon review, I'm amazed to discover that I've never written about any of his books. When I was in my early twenties, I was completely blown away by Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs, his breakout collection. On the surface, the essay seemed like standard deconstructions of culture, but were infused with terrific humor, fantastic connections between seemingly random ideas, and the realization that Klosterman wasn't a pseudo-intellectual: his fascinations and knowledge did run in fantastically different directions. Since 2003, I've admired him, even if his occasional forays haven't held much meaning for me. One of my long-standing assessments has been: I love Klosterman, but hate him for spawning dozens, if not hundreds of writers who try to emulate his style. I was disappointed by Killing Yourself To Live, an account of his travels and thoughts on various music deaths; perhaps I was just hungry for a variety of subjects. I've pretty much avoided his interactions with Malcolm Gladwell, a writer I've had problems with for awhile. I've never had any real desire to read his two novels. And I never got around to Eating the Dinosaur, his 2009 collection. So while I'm nowhere near being on top of his collected writings, I'd still consider myself an admirer of his work, and this has increased a lot with my recent reading of I Wear the Black Hat: Grappling With Villains (Real and Imagined). The title is apt: Klosterman writes about the idea of villains from historical, cultural, and philosophical angles. I went into the reading with high hopes, since his focus on a sometimes abstract idea (villainy) would conceivably allow him to move among a range of subjects. I was correct, and this newest book came the closest to emulating the feelings of awe and discovery that I felt as young twenty-something reading and re-reading Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs.

In the book's introduction, Klosterman sets up the reasoning in his standard fashion: as a teenager, he listened to a Metallica cover of a song by the British band Diamond Head that included the lyrics "Am I evil? Yes I am. Am I evil? I am man." As an adult, he reflects and considers the nature of evil, empathy, and image from the inside and the outside.

"I am typing this sentence on an autumn afternoon. The leaves are all dead, but still tethered to the trees, waiting for a colder future. Outside my living room window and three floors below, people are on the street. I vaguely recognize some of them, but not most of them. I rarely remember the names or faces of nonfictional people. Still, I believe these strangers are nonthreatening. I supposed you never know for certain what unfamiliar humans are like, but I'm confident. They are more like me than they are different: predominantly white, in the vicinity of middle age, and dressed in a manner that suggests a different social class than the one they truly occupy (most appear poorer than they actually are, but a few skew in the opposite direction). Everyone looks superficially friendly, but none are irrefutably trustworthy. And as I watch these people from my window, I find myself wondering something:
Do I care about any of them (Klosterman 2)?"

The opening essay explores three wildly different topics, but Klosterman manages to keep even seemingly divergent ideas grounded into a single narrative. It begins with what could be the most typically villainous act (tying a woman to railroad tracks, a narrative device first introduced in silent cinema), before exploring Machiavelli's philosophy (and the possibility of The Prince being a satire, which I've heard before and find very fascinating) to what truly constituted the late Penn State football coach Joe Paterno's downfall. More so than I remember from his previous writings, Klosterman explores a vast number of gray areas. However, he's uninterested in rehashing old arguments. The media hurricane surrounding Paterno and the Penn State sex abuse scandal was its own entity, and Klosterman isn't going down that path. He uses Paterno as an example for his overall thesis, and manages to create a very apt definition of villainy. It's paired with an assessment of Nike CEO Phil Knight, who eulogized Paterno at his funeral with some poor remarks.

"All those imperfect denouncements are easy. But Paterno's vilification is harder. A handful of media bottom-feeders reveled in his fall, but only to play to the trolls. No normal person wants to hate a dead man he once admired. It feels abnormal and cheap. But what's the alternative? Paterno knew what was happening and chose to intellectually avoid it. He had to choose between humanity and sport, and he picked the one that mattered less. On the day he was finally lowered into the ground, his most adamant defender was the aforementioned Knight, a man who allowed Indonesian children to work in sweatshops so that he could sell $120 basketball shoes to fat American teenagers who didn't play basketball. And then--six months later--even Knight rescinded what he'd said. It was not a good look.

The villain is the person who knows the most but cares the least (Klosterman 18)."

A long chapter is devoted to President Bill Clinton in the aftermath of the Monica Lewinsky scandal. In this chapter, Klosterman weighs the various players, all of whom took turns as victims and villains in the dragged-out process. Later in the book, Klosterman declares himself as apolitical, and in assessing this overtly political scandal, he is true to his word. He's opinionated yet impartial, and manages to write intelligent passages about human sexuality, power, and politics without pointing any fingers, at least not in a biased fashion. Returning to my previous comment about gray areas, Klosterman's views on the position of the Presidency is a perfect look at how every President, Democrat or Republican, is in a position to veer into textbook villainy.

"So this is what people said: 'It's not the sex. It's the lying.' Which was totally idiotic and completely untrue.
Presidents lie all the time. Really great presidents lie. Abraham Lincoln managed to end slavery in America partially by deception (In an 1858 debate, he flatly insisted that he had no intention of abolishing slavery in states where it was already legal--he had to say this in order to slow the tide of secession.) Franklin Roosevelt lied about the U.S. position of neutrality until we entered World War II after the attack on Pearl Harbor. (Though the public and Congress believed his public pledge of impartiality, he was already working in secret with Winston Churchill and selling arms to France.) Ronald Reagan lied about Iran-Contra so much that it now seems like he was honestly confused. Politically, the practice of lying is essential. By the time the Lewinsky story broke, Clinton had already lied about many, many things. (He'd openly lied about his level of commitment to gay rights during the '92 campaign.) The presidency is not a job for an honest man. It's way too complex (Klosterman 119-120)."

Of course, I'd be disappointed if Klosterman wrote a book and didn't touch upon professional basketball. In a particularly illuminating chapter, he presents the public and private images of various athletes, and the one I found most affecting was Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. I never realized that Abdul-Jabbar has been viewed as a villain or as disliked figure: he's now universally beloved for his non-basketball work, and he retired as the NBA's all-time scoring leader; and as Klosterman and Bill Simmons have pointed out, his cameo role in the movie Airplane! worked so well because he lampooned his image at a time when people didn't realize he had a sense of humor or a more complex side beside that of a basketball great. Klosterman explains why and how Abdul-Jabbar was viewed as a villain, and how time has made this designation wrong. It proves that concepts and definitions can be wide-ranging, even for people (in this case, me and my overall view of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar) who don't assume a person can be classified in a specific fashion.

"As he's moved into the winter of his life, Abdul-Jabbar has grown conscious of his image and has tried to evolve into a conventionally nice celebrity--which is disappointing on two levels. He has grown more patient with interviewers, partially because they have migrated to his side: It seems increasingly absurd that this intelligent, well-spoken, socially conscious person who is the all-time leading scorer in the history of basketball cannot get a job as an NBA head coach, simply because he's not super friendly. He had a cancer scare in 2008, so that generated some warranted sympathy; as an author, he's probably done more for the lost history of twentieth-century African-Americans than every other athlete combined. He made a cameo on a sitcom starring Zooey Deschanel, and it's so goofy and superfluous that only a jerk could criticize the decision. Muslims don't drink alcohol, but Kareem still endorsed Coors. If he's a villain, he's the best possible kind. Still, there are parts of his personal history that will never evaporate. He may ultimately be remembered more affectionately than anyone would have guessed in 1980, but that turnaround will always be framed as a surprise. He played the game, but he didn't play The Game. He refused to pretend that his life didn't feel normal to the person inside it, and he refused to pretend that other people's obsession with abnormality required him to act like the man he wasn't (Klosterman 173-174)."

These are just a handful of the essays presented. There are some that I enjoyed, even if I was detached from the subject (I think I can name two, maybe three Eagles songs, but enjoyed his take on the band's evolution). There are some obvious subjects--The Oakland Raiders, O.J. Simpson, and Adolf Hitler, to name a few--but again, Klosterman doesn't go the obvious routes. He digs, he opines, and he ultimately draws new conclusions on the nature of villainy. I'm sure more than one person has dubbed Klosterman a "pop culture critic," but that label really doesn't highlight his writing skills. He can be funny without being forced, and he can take on subjects that have been driven into the ground and write about them uniquely. His goals have stayed the same, but there's a definite growth here. For such a fast read, I Wear the Black Hat remains true to its thesis, and no matter how many different directions the essays go in, it never feels like Klosterman is rambling. As a reader, this book gave me everything I had hoped for and more. I think it's only appropriate that I eventually return to Klosterman's older works, even his novels, to give my opinions a more well-rounded foundation. For the scores of imitators he has given birth to, he remains an original thinker, blurring the lines between intellect, assumptions, and, most importantly, the notion of deep thought and expanded essays in an era of quick blurbs and bite-sized writings that try to pass themselves off as deep and stimulating.

Work Cited:
Klosterman, Chuck. I Wear the Black Hat: Grappling With Villains (Real and Imagined). Copyright 2013 by Chuck Klosterman.

Book Forms: "How Literature Saved My Life" by David Shields

"What I believe about memoir is that you just happen to be using the nuts and bolts of your own life to illustrate your vision. It isn't really me; it's a character based on myself that I made up in order to illustrate things I want to say. In other words, I think memoir is as far from real life as fiction is. I think you're obligated to use accurate details, but selection is as important a process as imagination."

I stumbled upon this quote as I reviewed my essay on David Shield's 2010 manifesto Reality Hunger. I don't remember if Shields wrote this himself, or if it was one of the hundreds of quotes culled and reused from other sources. However, it's an apt introduction to a look at his latest book, How Literature Saved My Life, a work that is almost jarringly straightforward when paired with his often-criticized, often-praised previous work. I'm not sure if this newest book is a personal endeavor for Shields or a sort of backlash against the people who heavily dismissed his manifesto. To recap: in 2010, Shields made the claim that current literature was dead, and would eventually be replaced by memoirs, essays, and collages/remixes/sampling. Three years later, the novel is still alive and well, balanced between experimental artists and contemporary writers who are able to explore reality and create complex sociological conversations within the "confines" of a standard narrative. Today, the question is whether or not the short story has a future, but I imagine that in 2016, that form will be fine, and we'll be wringing our hands over another form (I often wonder if poetry have this problem). If all of this seems like I'm picking on Shields' argument, I'm not. As my link above shows, I loved Reality Hunger, even if I disagreed with some of his assertions. That's what made it such a satisfying experience--he formed his arguments and opinions very carefully and confidently, creating a work that truly meant to foster discussions rather than bitter arguments. In How Literature Saved My Life, Shields creates a sort of autobiographical manifesto. This isn't the writing of a person who hates or dismisses literature, but of someone with a major debt to how the form has changed and shaped him. Sure, there may be some embellishments, but the statements are refreshingly honest.

How Literature Saved My Life is written with progressions, but also goes back and forth between passages of memory and critical analysis of various texts, not so much to provide written examples of how literature reflects the reality of life (Shields is too smart to take such an obvious path), but to provide ideas he can shape into his account of his development. He mentions the reaction to Reality Hunger, but also writes many passages that reflect how art and memory are not concrete:

"Yeats said that we can't articulate the truth, but we can embody it. I think that's wrong or at least beside the point. What's of interest to me is precisely how we try to articulate the truth, and what that says about us, and about 'truth (Shields 133).'"

Shields' memories are painstakingly precise, and when he pairs them up with passages from literature, he's not going for the obvious links. Yes, there are dozens, probably hundreds, of literary memoirs out there, books on literature as life, on writing as therapy, on the world explained through select texts, etc. But Shields aims for an atmosphere of reality. This isn't a love letter to literature so much as it's an intense account of literature illuminating the truth about various life events, not just for Shields, but for everyone. For anyone who considers him/herself a writer or a serious reader, it's inescapable.

"As a nine-year-old, I would awake and spend the entire night sitting cross-legged on the landing of the stairs to my basement bedroom, unable to fathom that one day I'd cease to be. I remember being mesmerized by a neighbor's tattoo of a death's-head, underneath which were the words 'As I am, you shall someday be.' (Now, do I yearn for this state, the peace that passeth all understanding? What if death is my Santa Claus?) Cormac McCarthy: 'Death is the major issue in the world. For you, for me, for all of us. It just is. To not be able to talk about it is very odd.' I'm trying to do a very un-American thing here: talk about it. Why? Pynchon: 'When we speak of 'seriousness,' ultimately we are talking about an attitude toward death, how we act in its presence, for example, or how we handle it when it isn't so immediate (Shields 100).'"

Mixed in within longer passages are some beautiful vignettes, none of which are throwaway memories, but rather essential pieces to Shields' longer goal.

"Entering St. Francis Hospital to receive some not particularly crucial test results, I thought What the hell and crossed myself. A beatific nun passed me and said, with astonishing intensity, 'Good morning'--as close as I'll ever get to religion (Shields 118)."

"The question I've been trying to ask all along

Do I love art anymore, or only artfully arranged life (Shields 183)?"




I can't imagine How Literature Saved My Life will generate the same attention (or, more appropriately, the same controversy) as Reality Hunger, but I can see people familiar with Shields reading this and pausing. However, the reader needs to realize that definitions are flexible. This isn't a book that merely defends the novel, but takes into account the written word in all of its forms--novels, stories, documents, and essays. In one of the more compelling sections, Shields records "Fifty-Five Works I Swear By." Some of these are novels and some are even television shows (Curb Your Enthusiasm). To use a very tired phrase, Shields explores these works in small snippets, but shows how they've been life-affirming for him. He's almost intimidating as far as how well-read he is, and he gets inspiration out of some very different texts. This isn't a "Top Fifty-Five," and he never claims that readers will reap the same benefits out of these works that he does. Also, some of the descriptions are intensely short and say nothing about the text except for a brief explanation. Like anyone, I imagine that Shields came to this list after years of trial and error. In my own case, my "favorite writings" have drastically fluctuated over the last ten years or so. I get the impression that Shields doesn't care what anyone thinks of this list, but at the same time, he's not disregarding the reader's feelings--it's just fiercely personal.

"Charles Lamb, Essays of Elia. The freest form: the essay.
Philip Larkin, The Whitsun Weddings. Both poetry and the essay come from the same impulse--to think about something and at the same time see it closely and carefully and enact it. An odd feature of poetry is that it's all 'true': there's no nonfiction poetry and fiction poetry. Whether it's Larkin or Neruda, it all goes into the poetry section of the bookstore (Shields 149)."

And as with Reality Hunger, I disagreed with some of Shields' opinions. Perhaps this is just a difference in opinion, but even if I understand where Shields is coming from, I can't get behind assertions such as

"The undergraduates I teach are much more open to a new reading experience when it's a blog. I know there have to be a hundred complex reasons as to why that is, but none of them change the fact that un- or even anti-literary types haven't stopped reading. They just don't get as excited about the book form. The blog form: immediacy, relative lack of scrim between writer and reader, promised delivery of unmediated reality, pseudo-artlessness, comedy, naked feeling (Shields 168)."

Nor was I drawn to detailed accounts of his early sex life. The autobiographical details are brutally honest, always tied into the text and his points, but I found myself less concerned with Shields as a person and more interested in Shields as a literary critic. In a way, despite his coming to a relatively satisfactory conclusion, How Literature Saved My Life reads as an artist's struggle with what defines art, especially in literary forms. As his two latest books show, the definition of the novel and the written word can be expanded to include a dizzying array of ideas, but the beauty comes from the constant bending, breaking, and re-imagining. When Shields ventures into old age, I can see him writing a follow-up to this, and his opinions might very well be different then. For as much as he strives for concrete answers about literature's place in today's world, he arrives at no definite assertion. And I think he knew this going in, but as any writer/reader can tell you, it's impossible not to try. I admire Shields' devotion to the subject, even if I disagree with him. Again, it's about discussions and ideas, not any face-off between ideologies.

Work Cited:
Shields, David. How Literature Saved My Life. Copyright 2013 by David Shields.

The Deaths and the Rumors: Katherine Boo's "Behind the Beautiful Forevers"

Katherine Boo's Behind the Beautiful Forevers has been on my radar for over a year. I read the jacket description when it was published, and the subject matter was compelling, fascinating, and most importantly, seemed to be focused on true reporting. As my reading log grew more complicated and strained, I kept putting it off, and the more I waited, the more recognition, praise, and awards were heaped upon it. I'm often wary of books with far too much breathless praise, since I'm more likely to be disappointed when I finally wipe away the blurbs and get into the actual writings. However, I'm pleased to note that the book is truly worth the hype. In exploring the workings and personalities contained within a Mumbai slum, Boo has created a microcosm of poverty-stricken areas all over the world. This isn't done with excessive, lavish emotions or pandering. The citizens in Annawadi, a makeshift "city" near the Mumbai airport, have good and bad personality traits, and their lives are presented from various angles. Behind the Beautiful Forevers might very well define the stark divide between wealthy and poor citizens in the world, much in the same fashion that Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickled and Dimed explored American poverty in a time when the subject wasn't on the radar as much as it is now. And amazingly, Boo's book fits a description that I tend to shy away from: it's a work of non-fiction that often reads like a novel, but without sacrificing details or relying on embellishments. There's such an emotional diversity that the events and people are part of a complicated story. However, one has to realize this is true, and is the result of problems that need immediate attention everywhere.

Annawadi was founded in the early 1990s by laborers working on a Mumbai airport, and what was supposed to be a temporary spot morphed into a slum populated by thousands, in the shadow of wealthy travelers and lavish hotels. The founding is told with minor details, but enough to paint a vivid picture. This is one of Boo's strengths as a journalist--as I mentioned before, there's no embellishment. Even in the most casually detailed scenes, there are many small details that allow the reader to realistically visualize the unfolding scenes.

"The slum had been settled in 1991 by a band of laborers trucked in from the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu to repair a runway at the international airport. The work complete, they decided to stay near the airport and its tantalizing construction possibilities. In an area with little unclaimed space, a sodden, snake-filled bit of brushland across the street from the international terminal seemed the least-bad place to live.

Other poor people considered the spot too wet to be habitable, but the Tamils set to work, hacking down the brush that harbored the snakes, digging up dirt in drier places and packing it into the mud. After a month, their bamboo poles stopped flopping over when they were stuck in the ground. Draping empty cement sacks over the poles for cover, they had a settlement. Residents of neighboring slums provided its name: Annawadi--the land of annas, a respectful Tamil word for older brothers. Less respectful terms for Tamil migrants were in wider currency. But other poor citizens had seen the Tamils sweat to summon solid land from a bog, and that labor had earned a certain deference (Boo 5)."

The reader is introduced to a number of the Annawadi citizens. Some of the primary people are Abdul, a young Muslim trash scavenger; Fatima, known as One Leg, a promiscuous, vengeful figure who suffers a terrible accident that leads to a ludicrous criminal trial; Asha, a hungry political hopeful who attempts to rule Annawadi by coercion and for financial gains; and Manju, Asha's daughter, a beautiful young woman trying to make the best of her circumstances with the hope of gaining entry into college. Boo's writing clears up quite a few misconceptions about non-American slum life. While all the residents are poverty stricken, some are better off than others. There are cellphones and televisions inside some of the huts. The fact that Manju is able to consider a college education despite her surroundings means that a glimmer of hope envelops some of the residents. Some are merely content to dream of better squalor. Throughout, there are sad refrains familiar to Americans: the crippling divide between wealth and poverty means that virtually all the people in Annawadi are doomed to lives of intense work with little benefit. Some medical setbacks and fears are met with dismissive replies to pray, with the hopes that god will provide. And even the slightest problem can set a citizen into unimaginable debt.

The book's title comes from a terribly misplaced piece of advertising on a wall outside Annawadi. Boo mentions it almost as an aside in a piece about Sunil, one of Abdul's fellow scavengers:

"It interested him that from Airport Road, only the smoke plumes of Annawadi's cooking fires could now be seen. The airport people had erected tall, gleaming aluminum fences on the side of the slum that most drivers passed before turning into the international terminal. Drivers approaching the terminal from the other direction would see only a concrete wall covered with sunshine-yellow advertisements. The ads were for Italianate floor tiles, and the corporate slogan ran the wall's length: BEAUTIFUL FOREVER BEAUTIFUL FOREVER BEAUTIFUL FOREVER. Sunil regularly walked atop the Beautiful Forever wall, surveying for trash, but Airport Road was unhelpfully clean (Boo 36-37)."

Women and children dominate the landscape, since the majority of the grown men mentioned are either addicts, drunks, or criminals. Even the women and children who resort to extreme measures to provide do so with a sense of logic and a need for survival. But as I said earlier, the subjects are treated honestly and realistically. During my reading, I often had the same feelings I had when watching, of all things, the documentary Murderball. In that film, disabled athletes are shown as people, not objects of sympathy or patronizing. Some of the featured people were arrogant and unlikable. Boo shows that relationships within slums are sometimes no different than anywhere else. The reader is in tune with the plight of the residents, but sometimes on an individual level, the reader is likely to be repulsed by some of the actions. The main climax of the book involves One Leg's self-immolation following a neighborhood dispute. Despite committing this act herself, she claims she was driven to do so by Abdul and his parents. While this is a ludicrous accusation, remnants of mysticism still permeate Indian life. There are whispers of witchcraft and the potential for One Leg to haunt the family following her death. This brazen act ties together a lot of the issues and complications in Annawadi: neighborhood strife; religious and supernatural beliefs; the danger of the Indian jail and court systems; and how an accusation can quickly lead to a remaining life of shame, destitution, and ostracizing, even in the face of complete innocence.

"Kehkashan shrieked. The brothelkeeper was the first across the maidan, three boys fast behind, throwing their weight against the door until it broke. They found Fatima thrashing on the floor, smoke pouring off her skin. At her side was a yellow plastic jug of kerosene, overturned, along with a vessel of water. She had poured cooking fuel over her head, lit a match, then doused the flames with water.

'Save me!' she shouted.

The brothelkeeper tensed. Something low on Fatima's back was still burning. He grabbed a blanket and smothered the flame, as a vast crowd formed outside the hut.

'All day these Muslim garbage people have been fighting so loudly.'

'Didn't she think of her daughters before she did this?'

'She's okay now,' the brothelkeeper announced, rolling away some cooking pots he'd knocked on top of her in his haste to extinguish the fire. 'Alive, no problem!'

He pulled Fatima up. When he let go, she flopped back down, howling.

People took not of the upturned vessel of water.

'She's a fool then,' said an old man. 'She wanted to burn herself a little, create a drama, and instead she burned herself a lot.'

'It is because of these people that I have done this,' Fatima cried out, her voice astonishingly clear. Everyone knew which people she meant (Boo 95-96)."




While Annawadi can reflect poverty all over, Boo's Author's Note shows why this specific area is such an important necessity for documentation: "I quickly grew impatient with poignant snapshots of Indian squalor, the ribby children with flies in their eyes and other emblems of abjectness that one can't help but see within five minutes of walking into a slum (247)." This sentence alone might seem harsh and cold, but's not: Boo goes on to explain her desire to explore and document outlying factors, such as the political and social beliefs and works of the surrounding country, and how possible it would be for a poor child to grow up with better circumstances. Images of poverty are stark and stomach-churning, but quick, visceral reactions can be misleading. Aside from the jacket photo, there are no photographs included in the book--Boo rightfully makes the writing convey the images, rather than immediate sensory reactions to the wholly different visual. In a shocking (but a likely more prevalent scenario than most Westerners realize) passage, she shows how schools in the area clean up their act when visitors or human rights workers are expected. Things are cleaned, happy faces put on, and dutiful reports are sent back to the rest of the world. Begging is even a complicated act. One of the boys attempts reverse psychology, refusing to look needy for tourists, instead hoping that they'll take his demure appearance as more deserving than outright pleading.

I sometimes don't pay close attention to bylines in The New Yorker, so I'm sure I've read a good handful of Boo's writing without realizing it. I'm still amazed at her writing style. She's a dedicated journalist and anthropologist, and her keen observations lead this to be a novel-like report. Aside from her personal notes in the epilogue, she's an invisible figure, keeping the attention on the slum's people and events rather than her own presence. Simply put, the world needs more reporting and explorations like this. The developed world has been exposed to countless images and reports of poverty, but centralized, personal accounts from areas a reader would likely never know about outside of a book illuminate a variety of needs. This isn't a snapshot, a heart-tug, and a call for a five dollar donation. It's a grim plea for changes in how the world views and deals with poverty. When a destitute slum is a walk away from opulence and thrives on the trash produced by said opulence, something is dreadfully wrong. Since Boo is such a neutral reporter, I was left longing for her opinions, even though her opinions are not the point of Behind the Beautiful Forevers. She doesn't judge, she doesn't "play favorites." I would venture a guess that she has strong opinions on how to tackle this kind of divide, but then again, so does everyone else, so she wisely avoids moralizing. This book is vastly compelling, shocking, and necessary. Sadly, these accounts are still waiting to be told all over the world, and this kind of reporting is a step in the right direction, starting many conversations about how to bridge the haves and the have-nots.

Work Cited:
Boo, Katherine. Behind the Beautiful Forevers. Copyright 2012 by Katherine Boo.

Scientific Revolutions: Neil deGrasse Tyson's "Space Chronicles"

While I don't do this on a level that would result in a Jonah Lehrer-esque scandal (even if this platform was bigger), I do have a tendency to repeat myself occasionally with some of my posts. I've made more than a few mentions of a passion for small presses, my general disdain of the phrase "write what you know," and my lack of a voice for poetry critiques, to name a few. I bring this up because this review of Space Chronicles, Neil deGrasse Tyson's latest collection, follows a trend of coincidental readings, in the sense of my inadvertent readings that manage to connect to another piece of writing or a story in the news. I even went so far as to do a search on this blog for the word "coincidence," and thankfully, I haven't used it as often as I thought I did. My first reading of a full collection of Tyson's work came just days before the Curiosity rover landed on Mars and dispatched new images of the planet's surface. Dr. Tyson's essays continually reaffirm the reasons why space travel and exploration is necessary--he documents reasons from the practical (inventions meant for space travel tend to have everyday applications), to the philosophical (a limited world view shows a serious lack of human ingenuity). I've occasionally caught his interviews on television, but sitting down with one of his books has highlighted a lot of things I never knew, and I found myself especially taken with his balance of academic science and thoughts on the contemporary world.

I've long deplored the tendency for some writers to "dumb down" material, either to make a subject more palatable or to condense what should be longer thoughts into a sort of soundbite. Dr. Tyson doesn't do this, at least throughout the essays featured in Space Chronicles: anything that's scaled back is done so out of necessity, since astrophysics in its complete form is a challenge to even the most studious people. However, even when equations and ideas are put into lay forms, Tyson doesn't hold back on the bigger pictures, nor is anything changed to make it "more exciting." In his view, space and science are exciting enough in their own right, and anyone who needs the subjects to be made more compelling is seriously lacking in imagination and scope. We need more emphasis on education and study, not less. The beauty of Tyson's writing is ability to take any area of science and tie it into both cosmic and human-based areas. While I'm sure he and other scientists get tired of being asked about the possibility of life on other planets, the subject does have real world applications. Even the potential for our earth-based communications being intercepted by other life forms is explored logically, even if we still don't have any proof of this happening:

"Time for a reality check: We live within ten light-years of the nearest known exoplanet--that is, a planet orbiting a star other than the Sun. Most catalogued exoplanets lie more than a hundred light-years away. Earth's brightness is less than one-billionth that of the Sun, and our planet's proximity to the Sun would make it extremely hard for anybody to see Earth directly with an optical telescope. So if aliens have found us, they are likely searching in wavelengths other than visible light--or else their engineers are adapting some other strategy altogether (Tyson 28)."

Within these essays, there's a lot of discussion about space exploration as a political act. Tyson makes a few references to John F. Kennedy's speech about putting a man on the moon by the end of the 1960s. It would be nice to think that this was done out of a need to educate and explore outside Earth's orbit, but really, it was politically motivated as a move to win the Cold War (note: the book is a collection of previously published articles and transcripts of Dr. Tyson's speeches, so while some ideas are repeated multiple times, it's due to the format, not out of faulty writing or editing). This is a grim reality check, but the atmosphere at the time made this so. The idea of colonizing and exploring space for military or political purposes is saddening, but there's hope that the future will bring said exploration out of common, humanity-based mission. In a podcast transcript with Julia Galef and Massimo Pigliucci, Tyson explains the reasoning behind Kennedy's speech.

"NDT: A few paragraphs earlier in that same speech, Kennedy says 'If we are to win the battle that is now going on around the world between freedom and tyranny, the dramatic achievements in space which occurred in recent weeks should have made clear to us all, as did the Sputnik in 1957, the impact of this adventure on the minds of men everywhere, who are attempting to make a determination of which road they should take.' This was a battle cry against communism.

MP: It was a political statement.

NDT: Period. He could have said, 'Let go to the Moon: What a marvelous place to explore!' But that's not enough to get Congress to write the check. At some point, somebody's got to write a check (Tyson 79)."

He also debunks a lot of myths about the cost of NASA. The average citizen assumes the organization eats up a lot of tax dollars. This is true in theory, but the money is generally spread out over several years, even decades, and amounts to a fraction of the country's spending. However, as the Curiosity rover attention has shown in recent days, the majority of Americans are very supportive of the technology and goals of NASA, since, even subconsciously, it represents a collective need to explore and a desire to know what's out there. And as far as costs? Samples from Dr. Tyson's Twitter feed (@neiltyson) are placed throughout the book, including this one:

"The entire half-century budget of NASA equals the current two year budget of the US military (Tyson 209)."

And going further, the history of space exploration is fraught with setbacks from political and religious mindsets. When Tyson's writing becomes opinionated, it's not out of a desire to rile anyone up or cause friction, but rather to highlight the realities behind regressive beliefs. While some of his statements will surely tick off some, his words are a plea for education and discovery instead of humanity remaining in the dark on what's possible. He doesn't single out a specific belief, but after explaining how the Arabic world used to be the pinnacle of discovery before fundamentalist religion took over, he states:

"Today among fundamentalist Christians as well as Hassidic Jews, there is a comparable absence. When societies and cultures are permeated by nonsecular philosophies, science and technology and medicine stagnate. Putting warning stickers on biology books is bad practice. But if that's how the game is to be played, why not demand warning stickers on the Bible: 'SOME OF THESE STORIES MAY NOT BE TRUE (Tyson 206).'"

The majority of the pieces in Space Chronicles are very educational, especially for someone who genuinely wants to learn more about the various subjects. It's not all about the political and sociological side of space exploration. For example, Tyson devotes a chapter to the study of ballistics, a word used quite often outside of scientific circles, but given new meaning with a look at the physics and reality behind it.

"Whenever you're going ballistic, you're in free fall. Each of the stones whose trajectory Newton illustrated was in free fall toward Earth. The one that achieved orbit was also in free fall toward Earth, but our planet's surface curved out from under it exactly the same rate as it fell--a consequence of the stone's extraordinary sideways motion. The International Space Station is also in free fall toward Earth. So is the Moon. And, like Newton's stones, they all maintain a prodigious sideways motion that prevents them from crashing to the ground.
A fascinating feature of free fall is the persistent state of weightlessness aboard any craft with such a trajectory. In free fall, you and everything around you fall at exactly the same rate. A scale placed between your feet and the floor would also be in free fall. Because nothing is squeezing the scale, it would read zero. For this reason, and no other, astronauts are weightless in space (Tyson 119)."

Tyson has made a name for himself in the last decade for his rare position of being an astrophysicist with a large public following. However, while reading these essays, I found myself forgetting about him as a commentator and focusing on his exploration of scientific ideas and hypotheses. This goes to show that he's not coasting on his status as a public figure, and, as he notes, when he's recognized in public, people always engage him in discussions about space, which proves that the human need for discovery and knowledge outweighs his "celebrity." Granted, not all of us can comprehend and understand the mathematics and physics behind his field, but Tyson is still doing everything possible to promote education. America is still seriously behind most of the developed world in producing scientists and engineers, and Tyson's mission to keep science and astronomy in the public eye is partly done to inspire younger generations to keep the passion alive. Tyson's words are powerful, and there's always going to be a bigger picture. I'm closing with the final statements of his epilogue, which have been making the rounds on a few internet memes. However, I've read this passage multiple times, and it manages to highlight the diverse implications of knowing more about the galaxies. This review of Space Chronicles provides a mere sample of where Tyson's vision and beliefs go, but physics is not always limited to academic fields--there are so many other implications that can be made, and there's so much more education and progress to be conducted. But we as a species need to act faster and get our priorities straight.

"During our brief stay on planet Earth, we owe ourselves and our descendants the opportunity to explore--in part because it's fun to do. But there's a far nobler reason. The day our knowledge of the cosmos ceases to expand, we risk regressing to the childish view that the universe figuratively and literally revolves around us. In that bleak world, arms-bearing, resource-hungry people and nations would be prone to act on their 'low contracted prejudices.' And that would be the last gasp of human enlightenment--until the rise of a visionary new culture that could once again embrace the cosmic perspective (Tyson 261)."

Work Cited:
Tyson, Neil deGrasse. Space Chronicles. Copyright 2012 by Neil deGrasse Tyson.

A.J. Jacobs: Social (Anxiety) Sciences

With the exception of The New Yorker, I don't read enough magazines, or at least enough of the same ones, to be able to pick a columnist whom I follow closely or admire. While this idea is slightly pessimistic, I can easily rattle off a few magazine writers who irk me more than they educate me (Malcolm Gladwell and James Wood come to mind very quickly). However, there are exceptions to this: for years, I have admired Tom Carson's film essays in GQ, and Zadie Smith's occasional writings for The New York Review Of Books have been, in their non-cliched definitions, equal parts illuminating and challenging. For the past few months, I've been making mental notes to read more writings of A.J. Jacobs, an editor/writer for Esquire. I've taken in various handfuls of his columns over the years, and in that time, he has published three books: The Know-It-All, The Year Of Living Biblically, and, most recently, My Life As An Experiment. At first glance, Jacobs doesn't seem to be the type of writer that one could analyze for a full-length review. However, I found a lot of pleasant surprises in My Life As An Experiment, as well as a few essay themes that I would personally like to see more writers attempt.

Jacobs is an excellent contemporary representation of the old adage: "it's not what you say, but how you say it." In regard to other writers, I've mentioned in the past how I've enjoyed a given book or piece or writing, but could not help but wonder how terrible it would be had it been written by another (read: lesser) writer. My Life As An Experiment is a collection of essays documenting Jacobs's attempts to apply sociological experiments to his own daily life: he does a nude photo shoot for Esquire (at the request of actress Mary-Louise Parker, who wants him to feel the vulnerability and objectification that women feel during nude pictorials); he outsources daily tasks to a team in India; he applies George Washington's moral code to his own activities, and so on. With few exceptions, these experiments could be done by any writer. Jacobs manages to elevate himself beyond the basic label of humorist with some timely phrases and understandings. For example, I remember reading the essay "My Life As a Beautiful Woman" when it first appeared in Esquire. In this piece, Jacobs sets up an online dating profile for his son's nanny, helps her write her responses, and in the process, explores some of the less-than-favorable techniques of men in the dating world. But one of the opening paragraphs has stayed with me, and reading it a second time, it maintains its subtlety and humor.

"No one can believe quite how beautiful my nanny is. Among our friends, my wife's sanity is questioned about twice a week. Michelle [the nanny] is so enchanting, my wife has actually given me permission to have an affair with her, a la Curb Your Enthusiasm. Of course, she made the offer only because she knew there was no chance Michelle would ever be interested. Michelle is too sweet, too Catholic, too loyal, too young. It's like giving me permission to become a linebacker for the Dolphins (Jacobs 160)."

Going back a little farther to his introduction, my appreciation for Jacobs's style is also based on a belief that he and I happen to share. As I've mentioned many times, I've long despised the old rule of "write what you know," since I've also long championed the idea that writers (and really, people in general) should never stop educating themselves and doing their best to gain insights into ideas, places, and people. "Write what you know" should mean "write what you now know," not "accept being limited in your scope." Granted, most writers don't have the means to drop everything to immerse themselves in a new culture, but this can be done in smaller ways.

"But I'm addicted to these experiments. I've come to believe that if you really want to learn about a topic, you should get on-the-job training. You should dive in and try to live that topic. If you're interested in Rome, you can look at maps and postcards and read census date. Or you can actually go to Italy and taste the pesto gnocchi. As the old saying goes: To understand the Italians, you must walk a mile in their loafers.
You have to be interested in the topic. That's rule number one. If you aren't passionate, it shows. But if you are committed to the possibility of change, then there's nothing like it (Jacobs xii-xiii)."




The other theme that I admire is how, whether intentionally or not, Jacobs's essays are also explorations of masculinity. In one of the intentional pieces, "Whipped," Jacobs attempts to placate his wife at every turn, to appeal to her every whim. The essay has the occasional turn into the tired "battle of the sexes" motif that has been beaten into the ground by every magazine, television show, and comic strip throughout history. However, instead of just playing it for laughs, Jacobs injects an impressive amount of research into the topic, making a normally tired subject just a bit more thought-provoking. Like any good researcher, Jacobs offers a lot of secondary sources for further reading.

"In fact, wifely obedience was pretty much synonymous with marriage. Confucius defined a wife as 'one who submits to another.' [Stephanie Coontz, author of Marriage, a History] writes that ancient Romans opposed gay marriage not because of homosexuality, which they had no problem with, but because 'no real man would ever agree to play the subordinate role of a Roman wife.'
Throughout most of history, I'd be seen as a traitor to my gender (Jacobs 184-185)."

There's a fair amount of science, too. Arguably the best essay in the book is "The Rationality Project," in which Jacobs attempts to avoid every sociological, psychological, and cognitive bias that he can think of; naturally, given human nature, this is virtually impossible. As Jacobs identifies the dozens of everyday biases "Source Amnesia," "Confirmation Bias," and "The Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy," to name a few, it becomes difficult to avoid applying such mental tics to everyday activities and consumptions.

"What makes news? The unusual and the spectacular, which by their nature distort reality and pervert our decisions. You read headlines like 15 KILLED IN PLANE CRASH IN WYOMING. You don't read headlines like ANOTHER 2,000 DIED OF HEART DISEASE YESTERDAY. This leads to the Availability Fallacy. Our lazy mind gloms on to the most vivid, emotional examples. When we think of danger, we think of hideous plane crashes or acts of terrorism, even though boring old cars kill eight-four times more people (91)."

My Life As An Experiment has its share of occasional stumbles. "My Outsourced Life," for example, could have been elevated with more citations or personal opinions as to how outsourcing has affected the current American economy. "What Would George Washington Do?" would have worked much better has a strictly historical essay, although Jacobs's attempts to live by Washington's moral code does provide an occasional chuckle. However, even that fault is a highlight of Jacobs's skills as a writer. I'm currently between major reading projects, and opted to read this book as a sort of "break" between other essays and books. This is not meant to be an insult to Mr. Jacobs, but I wasn't expecting the wealth of research and intelligence that went into these essays. It's easy on the scholarly aspects, but provides just enough to warrant further research and studies for anyone who is so inclined. My admiration for his style has increased, especially with his gentle nudges to his readers. He's subconsciously urging us to learn more, and with the well-placed information he provides, his writings are infused with just enough outside information to satisfy a casual reader, but also to satisfy people who want substance, even if they view this as a "casual read."

Work Cited:
Jacobs, A.J. My Life As An Experiment. Copyright 2009 by A.J. Jacobs.

Turning On the Lights: "Sex At Dawn"

As a freshman in college, I took an introductory psychology course that came with a fairly standard textbook and a fairly eccentric professor, both of which combined to make the course strictly introductory and not instilling an immediate desire to take more psychology electives, at least from what I took away from the class. However, one of the professor's offhand remarks on the textbook was very true: the chapters on human sexuality, while well-written for the most part, and intended for college students, had a dose of humor infused with the lesson plans. The only particularly "humorous" passage that I recall explained how women can achieve multiple orgasms until little things like a persistent telephone take their mind off the task at hand; the effect was one of a nervous parent attempting to ease the discomfort of talking with a child about sex. Of course, most books about human sexuality tend to take tones of either consistent humor or consistent seriousness. Thankfully, as I read Sex At Dawn: The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality, I found that the writing styles of authors Christopher Ryan and Caclida Jetha to be humorous when needed, yet treating the subject with complete scientific curiosity and journalistic research. To put it another way, the book treats sex as what it is: a part of the human condition, and no more in need of diffused tension than a look at modern eating habits or fashion styles.

Surprisingly, Sex At Dawn experienced little to no immediate backlash when published last summer, which is surprising since its central themes show that even the most innovative early sex researchers were hampered by societal constraints (not very shocking), and that evolution and current studies of ape behavior (and of cultures not exposed to Western ideals) show that monogamy is not ingrained in our genetic makeup (a hypothesis sure to shock and provoke many people). Ryan and Jetha make it clear that they are not dismissing monogamy; rather, history has shown, from sex scandals to mating behaviors, that the idea of life-long partners struggles against our deep-seated desires. The early sex researchers, most notably Charles Darwin, had little true knowledge about sex, and the combination of inhibitions and general unease of the subject has had drastic consequences throughout history. A majority of what Ryan and Jetha discuss might seem like common sense, but in world history, misinformation has often reigned supreme.

"If women were as libidinous as men, we're told, society itself would collapse. Lord Acton was only repeating what everyone knew in 1875 when he declared, 'The majority of women, happily for them and for society, are not very much troubled with sexual feeling of any kind.'
And yet, despite repeated assurances that women aren't particularly sexual creatures, in cultures around the world men have gone to extraordinary lengths to control female libido: female genital mutilation, head-to-toe chadors, medieval witch burnings, chastity belts, suffocating corsets, muttered insults about 'insatiable whores,' pathologizing, paternalistic medical diagnoses of nymphomania or hysteria, the debilitating scorn heaped on any female who chooses to be generous with her sexuality...all parts of a worldwide campaign to keep the supposedly low-key female libido under control (39)."

Anxiety about sex can be attributed to religion, society, and to an extent, politics, but the book only points fingers and criticizes people's beliefs on sex only when it leads to problems (which, sadly, it almost always does). One of the many tribes and societies documented in Sex At Dawn is the Mosuo tribe, people in a Chinese region in which sex is simply part of their culture, with no shame or stigmas associated with male and female sex drives. However:

"When even these heavy-handed tactics failed to convince the Mosuo to abandon their system, [Chinese] government officials insisted on bringing (if not demonstrating) 'decency' to the Mosuo. They cut off essential deliveries of seed grain and children's clothing. Finally, literally starved into submission, many Mosuo agreed to participate in government-sponsored marriage ceremonies, where each was given a 'cup of tea, a cigarette, pieces of candy, and a paper certificate.' But the arm-twisting had little lasting effect. Travel writer Cynthia Barnes visited Lugu Lake in 2006 and found the Mosuo system still intact (130)."



(Cacilda Jetha and Christopher Ryan)

While sobering practices and statistics are unavoidable, it's balanced with utterly fascinating looks at ape behaviors that offer insights into our own sexual impulses (as the authors state: we're not descended from apes, we are apes). Chimpanzees have often been the standard model for studies on human behavior, especially with such a close DNA match, but the bonobo offers a much stronger case to being a link to our ancestral sexual and interactive behaviors. Without "dumbing down" the source material, Ryan and Jetha cite excellent case studies, highlighting genetic similarities that are often overlooked or dismissed.

"It seems that [anthropologist Helen] Fisher, who shares our doubts about other aspects of the standard narrative, is about the reconfigure her arguments concerning the advent of long-term pair bonding and other aspects of human prehistory to better reflect these behaviors shared by bonobos and humans. Given the prominent role of chimpanzee behavior in supporting the standard narrative, how can we not include the equally relevant bonobo data in our conjectures concerning human prehistory? Remember, we are genetically equidistant from chimps and bonobos. And as Fisher notes, human sexual behavior has more in common with bonobos' than that of any other creature on Earth (73)."

There are scores of other passages and examples of both primate and human case studies regarding sexuality, but no amount of scientific data or proofs can overcome the contemporary hesitation to discuss sexuality in an open, thoughtful environment. Yes, major strides have been made, but the notion of living in heavily sexualized society still has a lot to overcome, and Sex At Dawn does its best to prove that our "urges" are not something to be repressed or confused about, but simply part of our physical and psychological lives. However, this is easier said than done. The more solemn historical data presented in the book shows that even in modern times, areas of sexuality are still misunderstood or deemed too "taboo" to seriously discuss.

"But still, the war continues. As recently as 1994, pediatrician Jocelyn Elders was forced from her post as Surgeon General Of the United States for simply asserting that masturbation 'is part of human sexuality.' The suffering caused by centuries of war on masturbation is beyond calculation. But this we know: all the suffering, every bit of it, was for nothing. Absolutely nothing (287)."

Not for scintillating reasons, Sex At Dawn is an excellent work in a book world dominated by obvious sexual inquiries. Ryan and Jetha aren't exactly advocating graphic sexual discussions at every dinner table and coffee shop in the world; however, these ideas need to be explored and understood. There is simply a lot of fear, and people have a lot of questions (for example, as a child, my grandmother told me a story about nearly being hit by her own mother for simply reading a newspaper as a young girl and asking what the word 'rape' meant). Ryan and Jetha strike a fine balance between the scientific and the sociological, and for a subject that almost inevitable brings up a select group of emotions, their writings and hypotheses are truly grounded in their own fascination with sex's science and history, and it's difficult to not be equally impressed by the work that anthropologists and psychologists are doing to facilitate knowledge and open dialogues. Their style is witty and engaging, but without sacrificing journalistic explorations and immediate attention to the specific issues.

Work Cited:
Jetha, Caclida and Ryan, Christopher. Sex At Dawn: The Prehistoric Origins Of Modern Sexuality. Copyright 2010 by Christopher Ryan and Caclida Jetha.

"Ill Fares the Land:" Tony Judt's Tough Love

My readings of the late Tony Judt (1948-2010) border, quantity-wise, on the very slim. I've taken in a handful of his essays this past year that were published in The New York Review Of Books, and despite having a lot of catching up to do, his writing style lends itself to a range of feelings. To use a poor metaphor to describe a fine essayist, my introductions to Judt's work was like my introduction to fine scotch. Both educations started off tentatively until the nuances came to fruition, and they took a little bit of time. Judt was a public intellectual in the truest sense, rather than taking the normal pattern of being a talking head. He proved himself to be one of those rare writers with the ability to express complex views while both making them accessible and not dumbing down his tone or language. While it might have made sense to read more of his essays, and therefore gain a better, deeper understanding of his themes, I decided to read Ill Fares the Land, the final book published in his lifetime.

Ill Fares the Land is a rather philosophical look at the sociological, political, and financial woes that have been defining the twenty-first century as of late. This very basic synopsis might make a potential reader take a step back, given that there are literally dozens, if not hundreds of books available that have made attempts to outline or "solve" the American setbacks. Also, much like the political "discourse" as of late, a great too many of these books are carbon-copied conservative screeches and scare-mongering. For a book that has received quiet attention, some of it critical in the past few months, I was struck by how, even with liberal leanings, Judt's writing casts equal blame on both the Left and the Right for the state of the world today. However, said blame never falls into outlandish accusations or name-calling. Judt gives his opinions, but does so with some much-needed constructive criticism. Even from the beginning, the reader gets the feeling that Ill Fares the Land will be an impassioned plea rather than a fall into ridiculous antics. Judt manages to critique both sides in one carefully crafted thought.

"We cannot go on living like this. The little crash of 2008 was a reminder that unregulated capitalism is its own worst enemy: sooner or later it must fall prey to its own excesses and turn again to the state for rescue. But if we do no more than pick up the pieces and carry on as before, we can look forward to greater upheavals in years to come. And yet we seem unable to conceive of alternatives. This too is something new. Until quite recently, public life in liberal societies was conducted in the shadow of a debate between defenders of 'capitalism' and its critics; usually identified with one or another form of 'socialism.' By the 1970s this debate had lost much of its meaning for both sides (Judt 2-3)."

Even in the midst of his histories, examples, and suggestions, Judt makes a recurring theme of the fact that, no matter how saccharine this sentiment may be, we're all in this together. People will always have their own political leanings, the pursuit of wealth will always lends itself to greed and divided classes, and so on and so forth. But, for anybody even remotely interested or concerned about the state of intelligence and communication, Judt's simplicity carries a major punch. From Curtis White to Charles Pierce, I've written about many books that (rightly) decry the lack of intelligence in America's population and mainstream. Judt takes this down a timely path, implicitly decrying the lack of intelligence, but more explicitly decrying the lack of true discourse and discussion in today's political world, especially with all of the problems facing everyone.

"Our disability is discursive: we simply do not know how to talk about these things any more. For the last thirty years, when asking ourselves whether we support a policy, a proposal or an initiative, we have restricted ourselves to issues of profit and loss--economic questions in the narrowest sense. But this is not an instinctive human condition: it is an acquired taste (Judt 34)."

Ideas like these are what elevate this book above the fray; Judt explains that the focus needs to be on human rather than strictly financial levels. However, the financial world needs a lot of work. Using outside quotes and his own views, he states the obvious, yet overlooked, realization that a financial system that consistently widens the gap between the wealthy and the poor is a troublesome system, not one that deserves a shrug and a claim that "oh well, that's capitalism for you...if you don't like it, too bad." He offers his sentiments on the restructuring/redistribution of wealth, but also goes to the basics: economics and finances can be confusing to a layperson (I personally consider myself an excellent example), and not much has been said for more education and understanding of these issues. Again, his writing highlights thoughts that should be common sense but all too often get clouded over.

"Behind every cynical (or merely incompetent) banking executive and trader sits an economist, assuring them (and us) from a position of unchallenged intellectual authority that their actions are publicly useful and should in any case not be subject to collective oversight. Behind that economist and his gullible readers there stand in turn participants in long-dead debates (Judt 105)."



Judt does an excellent job of balancing out his examples. The focus is on the United States, but he does offer historic examples of good and bad financial situations in England, Ireland, and China, to name a few. It goes along with his notion that our current situation simply needs the possibility of what might be outlandish restructuring. At the very least, people need to be open to discussing and thinking about other avenues of change, or other ways of addressing them. If any other public system (he tends to favor and sometimes rely too heavily on the example of public railways) were faltering, it would be relatively easy to address the problem and fix it. But with societies, the ever-growing poor class, and the divide in political life, finding answers can be daunting. However, despite his ease at offering tough, honest condemnations of all political avenues, he does reserve, towards the end, a searing look at the right-wing path and the way discourse is done in that specific arena.

"The perverse effects of this suppression of genuine debate are all around us. In the US today, town hall meetings and 'tea parties' parody and mimic the 18th century originals. Far from opening debate, they close it down. Demagogues tell the crowd what to think; when their phrases are echoed back to them, they boldly announce that they are merely relaying popular sentiment (Judt 172)."

Ill Fares the Land is just as much a written critique of expression as it is of the way society is being run. The above example aside, Judt's argument is that we need to go beyond the traditional paths, as well as explore certain models in their true definitions instead of their twisted meanings in modern discussions (socialism, for example). He's not shy about his opinions, but is also understanding that a lot of people will sit back and assume that everything will right itself again. Divisions between people will always remain, but as he states so eloquently, if they keep growing more strained, the problems that face everyone will only be more divisive. The idea of community has been lost, and its repair is just as, if not more, important as the repair of economic fractures. However, after time, it becomes all too apparent how tightly linked these intangible ideas are.

"If we remain grotesquely unequal, we shall lose all sense of fraternity; and fraternity, for all its fatuity as a political objective, turns out to be the necessary condition of politics itself. The inculcation of a sense of common purpose and mutual dependence has long been regarded as the linchpin of any community. Acting together for a common purpose is the source of enormous satisfaction (Judt 185)."

Another quote from a vastly different source also works as an appropriate closing to these ideas. In an old Calvin & Hobbes strip, in which the two discuss human nature, Calvin asks: "Do you think we'll get smarter?" Hobbes' reply? "That's one of two possibilities."

Work Cited:
Judt, Tony. Ill Fares the Land. Copyright 2010 by Tony Judt.

Idio(t)syncrasies

Since I'm currently planning some longer projects, I was recently looking for something quick to read, and I stumbled upon Charles P. Pierce's Idiot America. The book jumped out at me for a few reasons, and seemed to confirm an earlier hypothesis that I read about a few months back. I try to balance my readings of fiction and non-fiction, usually with a ratio of about 2:1. The full title is Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue In the Land Of the Free, so naturally it kept with my normal interests in studying intelligence and learning, with a strong dash of contemporary American culture mixed in for good measure. There is a left-leaning political bent, but saying that this book is about politics is like saying Pulp Fiction is about boxing. I knew this going in, and the aforementioned hypothesis came from an article in The New Yorker a few months ago. With such a recent wealth of political (right or left) mediums, from books to blogs to television and radio shows, the seemingly understandable assumption that information from all angles could lead to people becoming well-rounded is considerably false. I'm implicating myself in my selection of Idiot America, but people will naturally gravitate towards authors and forums that they know support their given beliefs. I'm sure that Pierce had a number of critics of this book, but I found that, despite my expectations of the subject matter, he highlighted certain ideas and definitions that go beyond simplified "people on the right are wrong."

Right away, and continuing throughout the work, Pierce stresses that it's possible (contrary to what some may believe) to be a liberal, a critic of certain segments of American life, and still be patriotic. He takes care to differentiate between the notion of "idiots" and "cranks." According to him, there's nothing wrong at all with people sharing far-fetched, even downright crazy ideas, provided that said ideas don't eventually take root and become common beliefs or national causes. Being a crank is protected by the First Amendment, and Pierce thinks that this is something to be celebrated.

"This is a great country, in no small part because it is the best country ever devised in which to be a public crank. Never has a nation so dedicated itself to the proposition that not only should people hold nutty ideas, but they should cultivate them, treasure them, shine them up, and put them right up there on the mantelpiece. This is still the best country ever in which to peddle complete public lunacy. In fact, it's the only country to enshrine that right in its founding documents (Pierce 27)."

The above quote may very well sound like pandering to some, but Pierce is right. In some countries, outlandish ideas could have very dangerous consequences. However, when the "nutty ideas" are disguised as common sense, then they move from being the ideas of mere cranks and into the foundation of Idiot America. According to Pierce, the three foundations of Idiot America are: "1.) Any theory is valid if it sells books, soaks up ratings, or otherwise moves units. 2.) Fact is that which enough people believe. Truth is determined by how fervently they believe it. 3.) Anything can be true if someone says it loudly enough." This is where a lot of the critique of the right comes into play.

There are many ways in which this could go, and Pierce covers quite a few of them. His best analysis (or rather, critique) comes from the battle over the teaching of intelligent design. While this may seem commonplace, given that it's been written about and dissected numerous times by numerous sources, it takes on new meaning when applied to the above hallmarks of Idiot America. The current battle over secular policy and the ever-growing Christian right is not new. Once of Pierce's favorite sources is President James Madison and his writings/opinions on freedom of speech and the separation of church and state.

"Citizens had a right to follow any religion they wanted, Madison wrote. They had a right to follow no religion at all. The primacy of the individual conscience was paramount. His language was unsparing. Religion established by the state is of necessity corrupted. Madison 'argues that religion will best support morality if it is free and pure, working up from its independent and spontaneous roots,' observes the historian Garry Wills. Moreover, Madison contends, the commingling of religion and government is inevitably a recipe for civic discord (Pierce 129.)

Other subjects are covered in great detail: the travesty that was the Terri Schiavo circus, the debate between the realities of global warming and global warming deniers, and the aftermath of Operation Iraqi Freedom. However, Pierce's most scathing criticisms go after the rise of conservative talk radio, and how it has shaped the current political landscape.

"Talk radio was the driving force in changing American debate into American argument. It moved discussion southward from the brain to the Gut. Debate no longer consists of thesis and antithesis, moving forward to synthesis; it is now a matter of choosing up sides, finding someone on your team to sally forth, and then laying the wood to each other in between commercials for male-enhancement products.
Talk radio provides a template for the clamorous rise of pundit television and the the even swifter interactivity on the Internet. And, because the field of play has moved from the brain to the Gut, talk radio has helped shove the way we talk to each other about even the most important topics almost entirely into the field of entertainment (104)."

That last word is the most important: entertainment. The landscape (not just on talk radio) reduces important topics to mere soundbites, and as Pierce warns, it's not just the spread of wrong ideas that is dangerous, it's the notion that intelligence is being replaced by stupidity and pandering. People have a right to believe what they want, but the mass simplicity and ignorance spewed by Glenn Beck and Michael Savage are being accepted as truth by a large segment of the populace. On a side note, it's quite telling (for both sides of the political spectrum) that in the same year, 2009, Pierce published Idiot America while Glenn Beck published a book called Arguing With Idiots.

Subject matter aside, I found Pierce's writing style to be quite effective. His research and journalism are strong, but he's best when introducing the stories that shape his themes. He never embellishes his descriptions, but crafts them so they almost read like a sort of storytelling, which in some hands could be very poor. However, Pierce focuses on details, without going overboard, but laced with great creativity. At times, I found myself pleasantly lost in a great narrative while at the same time never forgetting that this is a non-fiction work.

"The Chukchi Sea is a southern child of the Arctic Ocean. The great Pacific storms that barrel through the tropics and then swing north to devastate China and Japan keep coming, roiling and merciless, until they spend themselves in the Chukchi, battering against the hard barrier islands in the far northwest of Alaska. The storms roar themselves hoarse, having finally found a place as implacable as they are. This is where typhoons come to die (Pierce 195)."

Idiot America , as I mentioned before, has its share of critics, and I imagine that a lot of them haven't actually read the book. However, I'm guilty of that too; I criticized Michael Savage on the basis of articles, not the actual content of his political books. I plan on following Pierce's writings and articles in the future. He's a contributor to Esquire magazine, which, along with GQ, can be an overlooked source for well-written, compelling articles. Pierce, like his target audience, is not afraid to let his opinions be known. However, unless the situation calls for it, he's not needlessly angry or insulting. He gives strong examples of past and current cultural problems, and his overall style speaks of something that he says is lost nowadays: common sense. But most importantly, Idiot America is a call for intelligence in discourse, a call for less shouting and more research. People will always disagree on something, but arguments can be thought-provoking instead of crumbling into idiotic name-calling and the spread of false ideals.

Work Cited:
Pierce, Charles P. Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue In the Land of the Free. Copyright 2010 by Charles P. Pierce.

An Epistolary Essay

Dear Readers:

I'm crafting this post as a letter in order to keep up with the format of the two pieces I'll be discussing and citing. While this does function as one of my standard review/response pieces, I'll be sharing some of my personal beliefs, ranging from the religious to the political. I do my best to keep Chicago Ex-Patriate away from strictly opinionated tones, but the nature of this piece requires some personal statements. In the past month, a lot of media attention was devoted to the Texas Board of Education's revisions to textbook content, with a majority vote calling for a more Christian and conservative point of view of history. If my recent readings are still correct, the final approval will be ratified in May. Dr. Don McLeroy, the conservative leader of the Texas school board, was the face of this controversy, and his re-appointment was recently voted down by the Texas State Senate. However, the uproar over the curriculum dominated the news, in both liberal and conservative mediums. The separation of church and state (Dr. McLeroy is a Creationist Christian) seems to be continually undermined, and led to my reading of the 2006 work Letter To a Christian Nation, by Sam Harris.

Harris poses his work in the literal sense, crafting a slim letter aimed at Christians in the United States (and, by extension, any religious fundamentalists). Personally, I'm an atheist, and having recently finished Harris' work, I've completed the "big three" of atheist bestsellers, including Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion and Christopher Hitchens' God Is Not Great. I've never been ashamed of my beliefs, but I've also never been one to trumpet them avidly; a self-righteous non-believer can be just as insufferable as a self-righteous religious person. Letter To a Christian Nation reads like an edited version of The God Delusion, both in size and vitriol. Harris doesn't sugarcoat any of his assertions, but compared to Hitchens, he's a lot more tactful. For the purposes of this essay, I'm focusing on select passages, ones that reiterate the intermingling between church and state.

"The Ten Commandments are also worthy of some reflection in this context, as most Americans seem to think them both morally and legally indispensable. While the U.S. Constitution does not contain a single mention of God, and was widely decried at the time of its composition as an irreligious document, many Christians believe that our nation was founded on 'Judeo-Christian principles.' Strangely, the Ten Commandments are often cited as incontestable proof of this fact (Harris 19)."

Christians are a majority in this country, and President Obama's mention of "non-believers" in his Inaugural Address would have been unthinkable even ten years ago. I have no problem with people using religion personally, for personal guidance or stability. But when it becomes a supplement for public policy, medicine, and science, then it becomes problematic. The Bible was a text written by men, and has had amazing influence on the history of literature. This has been said thousands of times in much more expanded manners than this, but it's not an infallable text. Morality, goodness, and respect are inborn traits, just like hatred, evil, and disrespect.

"While we do not have anything like a final, scientific understanding of human morality, it seems safe to say that raping and killing our neighbors is not one of its primary constituents. Everything about human experience suggests that love is more conducive to happiness than hate is. This is an objective claim about the human mind, about the dynamics of social relations, and about the moral order of our world. It is clearly possible to say that someone like Hitler was wrong in moral terms without reference to scripture (Harris 24)."

Letter To a Christian Nation is timely in regards to the Texas debacle, but a recent article, from an unlikely source and author, works as a terrific companion to Harris' work. In the May 2010 issue of GQ, editor-in-chief Jim Nelson devotes his monthly letter to Dr. McLeroy and the Texas school board. Before I continue, I want to stress that I'm not assuming that Harris and Nelson share the same beliefs down the line. Nelson heavily advocates the separation of church and state and critiques McLeroy's creationist views. However, in his letter, he makes no assertions that he's an atheist. I'm linking the two writers on the basis of subject, not on the basis of personal beliefs.

(Jim Nelson, GQ Editor)

"Last year, [McLeroy] tried to get his creationist theories put into science books, based on his firm belief that God created the earth in six days, not that long ago--somewhere between 6,000 and 10,000 B.R. (Before Reagan). You can argue with this guy if you want, but you will be on the wrong side of history. He'll make sure of that.
So what's American history gonna look like? Whatever Dr. McLeroy and his devout following think it should look like. Which is to say, very Christian. In an interview with the Times, McLeroy summed up his view of history this way: 'There are two basic facts about man. He was created in the image of God, and he's fallen.'
Any questions (Nelson)?"

The difference between Harris and Nelson is obviously the tone--Nelson gets his points across directly and eloquently, but dashed with humor. These are serious issues--the Christian right believes that ancient doctrines are facts--, but like a lot of somber events in this country, sometimes it helps to sit back and laugh at the incredulous happens, even if the Texas school board's rulings will branch out to textbooks across the country (the state, being the largest buyer of schoolbooks, has the strongest say in what (and how) information is presented).

"And poor Jefferson? The school board doesn't much like him. He loved his country, but apparently he didn't love God enough. Old Commie Jefferson got written out of study of the great Enlightenment philosophers, because, well, he argued for the separation of church and state, and according to the new dental view of history, that wasn't very American of him (Nelson)."

Another angle is that the debate is an insult to intelligence as well as secularism. Scienctific discoveries are still being questioned in the face of religious dogma. Throughout history, science has had its share of missteps (phrenology, scientists associated with Big Tobacco), but to disclaim evolution and world history, and by extension using the same principles as the foundation for education, is as big a travesty. During the 2008 Presidential race, John McCain was criticized for stating that the United States is a Christian nation. Sadly, he was right. Religion and science aside, it's still shocking that intellectualism is often viewed as a problem instead of a solution. I'll close with Nelson's closing statement, which sums up an opinion that should be the norm in the United States, but will probably never be in some areas.

"No thanks. I'll stick with the eggheads and Enlighteners of the world. In fact, I wish they'd get more riled up--that the smarty-pants and Darwinian geeks and wise separators of church and state would rise up in Texas and take control of history. Jam it down their throats!"

Works Cited:

Harris, Sam. Letter To a Christian Nation. Copyright 2008 by Sam Harris.

Nelson, Jim. "No President Left Behind." GQ Magazine. May 2010.

The Heart Of the Matters

The current economic and ecological crises are, to put it mildly (not that one should), problematic in more ways than one. These issues are visible in a few ways, one of which is the understanding that everyone, qualified or otherwise, has his or her own solutions, opinions, and occasional agendas. The rise of political divisions in the United States, coupled with the Information Age, has made analyses, critiques, and news almost literally dizzying. I've never been a fan of soundbites,especially ones that are intended to be substitutes for actual learning. However, more in regard to the economic/banking collapses, I've found myself relying on the most basic definitions and summaries. Despite having read numerous articles (thank you, James Surowiecki--I follow you as best as I can), I'd probably fail a simple economic vocabulary test. These admissions aside, I was excited to read Curtis White's The Barbaric Heart, an almost too-brief, stern look at our current mindsets on these issues, written by a self-admitted non-scientist/economist.

The staggering number of books on these problems would probably make even the most dedicated reader wary of a new publication, even one penned by an expert. However, as indicated by his 2003 masterpiece The Middle Mind, White is an intellectual force who, sometimes by sheer will alone, makes hypotheses that are stunning and accurate. He leans to the left, yet is one of those rare voices unafraid (or, more accurately, insistent upon) of lambasting people on either side of the political spectrum. In The Middle Mind, he states that a lack of true thought and ingenuity is dangerously killing the American imagination; in The Barbaric Heart, extensions of these mind faults could end up literally killing us.

To highlight this, he uses a metaphor that may seem obvious at first glance, yet reveals a lot more with a little definition:
"The rhetoric task that confronts the Barbaric Heart is to persuade us that there are times when crime becomes a necessity. This is usually the job of politicians, the perennial flaks for barbaric purpose. The 'virtue of necessity' is also the argument of Cold Warriors, who discover that in order to confront evil (fascism, communism, Baathism, the villany du jour) they must become a little like it (White xviii)."

This notion of a barbarian goes beyond the violent acts of plundering and pillaging; it highlights the scary realization that despite the grave error of those ways in modern understandings, the participants feel that they are doing good when in fact they are doing the most evil and damage, whether this be to civilians or to the actual environment. Applying the metaphor to today's climate, this mentality doesn't mean the destruction of villages, but the utter decimation of our economy and surroundings. White asserts that it's easy to criticize corporations and the almost mythical idea of greed, but he stresses that they are not fully to blame. Everyone, from corporations to individuals, needs to completely overhaul their lifestyles and understand that much more is needed than good intentions and a coat of green paint.

"Corporations are mostly powerless to be anything other than what they are. I suspect that far from being perverse merchants of greed hell-bent on destruction, these corporate entities are as bewildered as the rest of us...[they] simply have other priorities that are to them not only duties but virtues. They are the ancient tragic virtues of the Barbaric Heart (White 42-43)."

Another stunning theory by White is the revelation that even the most dutiful environmentalists and recyclers are fighting a losing cause, since to truly see any changes in the destruction of the planet, the corporations would have to completely and systematically change how they go about their business. But, as he implies, even the most ardent supporters of a green economy have a lot of soul-searching left to do.
"Environmentalism in the United States has the habit of looking outward to the corporate and political culprits it wishes to defeat, as well as to places it wishes to preserve, and the institutions and organizations it hopes will help it. But it too rarely looks inward to the fact that what precedes environmental degradation is the debasement of the human world (White 55)."

To highlight his opinions, White follows the same route that he did in 2003, citing an excellent range of historical and literary texts, from Edward Gibbon to Walt Whitman. To escape this human suicide, he urges people to go back to the basics, to embrace ideals that come from sources that may not be obvious sources of environmental solutions: philosophy, the arts, and religion. Thankfully, he doesn't support or name any specific religious philosophy, but mentions it as a whole as a way to shake people out of their complacency, understanding that religion has such a hold on a lot of people. In order to get more people thinking about solutions, even a religious twist would be beneficial.

"What we need is to begin working toward an alternative to capitalism that, as many have argued, functions as a no-growth or steady-state economy. And in very limited ways the new emphasis many communities are placing on 'local' economies and on walkable cities is already doing this. But I don't believe that we can get to this non-capitalist place without also providing for a mode of thinking and being in the world that is, I don't have a better word for it, spiritual but spiritual with no illusions (White 157-158)."

As was the case with The Middle Mind, White's arguments and critiques are effective because, despite his goal of being somewhat insulting, they are done with the intention of igniting debates and thought, rather than the usual political oratories of shouting and intelligence insults. He wants people to be more intelligent, and metaphorical slaps in the head are needed sometimes. His writing style is a sly combination of humor, dutiful reporting, and academic flourishes, all in the name of optimism. His obvious understanding is that not everyone will agree with him, but with any call to action with environmentalism, something needs to be done, and quickly at that. Sadly, we may not be ready to change our ways of life, or may do so when it's too late. This closing citation may be depressing, but hopefully writings like these will shake us out of our hand-wringing and lead to positive changes in the world. I also find it to be equally defining of both sides of the environmental issue, both the people who feel that they're doing what they can to combat it, and the people who claim that it's a myth and mere scare-mongering.

"The Barbaric Heart is a pure emptiness, an emptiness that doesn't know itself as empty. It is an emptiness that has turned upon itself. It is a moral black hole. It is a mouth that chews. It eats what comes before it. It is a self-destroying hunger. It is a permanent state of war against all others but also, most profoundly, against itself. One part violence, one part plunder, and eventual anguish and regret (White 15)."

Work Cited:
White, Curtis. The Barbaric Heart. Copyright 2009 by Curtis White.