Category: Books

Over the weekend, I read The Ladies Auxiliary, a novel set in the Orthodox community in Memphis.
A young widow moves into town with a young child. Batsheva is a convert whose husband had grown up in the Memphis community. She moves in because she wants to participate and raise her child in the warm, close observant community that her husband grew up in. But she doesn’t fit in. She wears gauzy clothes and bangles. She paints abstract paintings. She sings loudly and with spirit in synagogue. She doesn’t cook. She’s earnest about seeking meanings in Jewish ritual.
After initial caution, the community slowly warms to her, and she’s invited to teach art to the sullen and surly teenage highschool girls. Things go awry when she becomes close to the girls, who are rebelling against the community’s strict norms, and to the Rabbi’s 22-year old son who is having a crisis of faith. The community bands together to blame the outsider for the cracks in the community facade.
The book has an insider’s description of the hybrid styles of Memphis Jewish life — the lavish eastern european/southeastern american cooking, the modest yet ostentatious frum-southern belle dress code. The book portrays the universal insular, gossip-ruled, iron-clad norms of small town life, enforced by particularly Jewish-flavored anxieties about keeping community boundaries by maintaining the appearance of observance, avoiding the “bad influence” of the outside world, and defining parental success by the observance level of their children.
The author’s portrait of the Memphis Jewish women at various, nuanced levels of insider and outsiderhood rings very true to me. There are women who embody and enforce the values; women who live them by subordinating their opinions to the group, and women with unresolved tension about keeping up the appearance of observance, happy family life, and wanting outlets for creativity and initiative. So does the clash between the culturally conservative, emotionally restrained Memphians and the spiritually and culturally expressive and exploratory New York, neo-Hassidic Carlebach community where Batsheva learned her Judaism.
The portrait of the outsider has a bit of insider bias. Batsheva led a geographically and spiritually rootless life before finding Judaism. After conversion, she has little contact with her parents or former friends. Yet she is portrayed as having grace, self-confidence, and the wisdom of her experience and intuitions, though she is rather tone-deaf to her affect on others, and has no political skills other than native trust and friendliness.
A more plausible outsider would either be less emotionally stable — manipulative, mercurial, erratic. Or alternatively, more grounded, with stronger ties to her family, to friends from the Carlebach community, to college and art-world friends; and a few more political skills.
My cousin lives in the Memphis Orthodox community. She recommended the book. I’ll ask her what she thinks. Being a work of fiction, it dramatizes and exaggerates the truth, but the caricature rings true to me.
This portrait of Memphis is why I don’t go there often and don’t stay long. The cultural categories I fit into are “eccentric”; in a community that has little tolerance for eccentricity; and “bad influence”.
Metrics of eccentricity include being a female entrepreneur and political activist, in a world where public life is for men, and women keep to their place, which can include heavy behind-the-scenes influence, but no direct public voice. Female intellectualism is considered quite odd and somewhat absurd. A single woman in her thirties is considered deeply suspicious, or is disregarded entirely.
Metrics of bad influence include friends and associates of various ethnicities, religious and sexual preferences; libertarian principles about others’ choices, and personal religious and sexual preferences that are rather conservative by American coastal norms but radical in the Jewish Bible Belt. OK as long as they’re not spoken in public; you don’t want to stay around long enough to have people find out what you think; or alternately, get in the habit of keeping up appearances.

Pundits on the right and left agree that civilization is a perilous state of decline, although they disagree about why.
* A permissive, hedonistic culture has led to pervasive moral degradation, irresponsibility, and the collapse of traditional family values
* Rampant destruction of the earth’s resources is leading to imminent collapse of the planet’s ability to sustain civilization
In The Idea of Decline in Western History, Arthur Herman traces three hundred years of history of the idea that Western civilization is on the verge of collapse.

Continue reading “The Idea of Decline in Western History”

Just read Beyond Fear, by Bruce Schneier, the computer security expert. Schneier describes his method for evaluating and countering security threats, and applies them to the policies in place responding to September 11.
One of the things that I really like about Schneier is that he asserts that most people are moral and ethical, even as he analyzes the vulnerabilities of systems to attack.
One reason that I had avoided the security topic in the past is that the conversation seemed to be driven by Tom Clancy-style paranoia. People who talked about security had a typical introductory spiel explaining that the world is a much more dangerous place than most people assume; security professionals live on the edge; protecting the unsuspecting flock from the terror that lurks outside, using complex, secret knowledge. Security experts portray a glamorous image of a elite, living in a world of fear, and attempting to impart that frisson of terror to their audience.
By contrast, Schneier presents a sensible and logical way of looking at risks, protection strategies, and trade-offs. He makes a cogent argument that it is important to have security professionals with practice recognizing situations that are rare to most people. He presents the complexity involved in analysis and defence. And he puts those risks in context; he portrays a world in which serious danger is not wholly preventable, but subject to mitigation, and mostly rare.

Robin Dunbar has a chattier take on the evolution of language than Terence Deacon. Dunbar, a primatologist, makes the case that human language evolved because it helped humans survive in larger groups than other primates. You can chat with several people at a time, but you can only pull the bugs out of one other critter’s fur. Group size helped humans avoid predators, as they moved down from the trees into the savannah.
Dunbar’s explanation seems more compelling than Terrence Deacon’s (that symbolic communication evolved to signify the sexual ownership of females in mixed-gender groups). Co-operation kept early humans fed and kept them from being eaten every single day; survival is a pre-requisite to passing on one’s genes. Pair-bond status disputes happen a lot less frequently than eating.
Neither theory is easily provable; both theories lie somewhere on the continuum between science and origin myth.
Meanwhile, both books explain fascinating science, while telling their origin myth for language. Dunbar explains human communication in the context of communication patterns among other primates. Deacon explains language in the context of the science of language processing in the human brain.

The Symbolic Species, by Terence Deacon, argues that language and the human brain co-evolved; and that the understanding of symbols is the primary differentiator of human language and human intelligence. The book doesn’t prove either major thesis. But it includes fascinating research and compelling sub-arguments about the nature and evolution of human language along the way.

My favorite section of the book is Deacon’s argument against the Chomskian thesis that the brain is hard-wired for language processing. The book surveys decades of research on language deficiencies caused by brain damage; and recent imaging studies on language processing in healthy brains.

If language was hard-wired, than one would expect that universal features of languages would be implemented in similar regions of the brain. The noun-verb pattern is universal. However, the noun-verb distinction is implemented differently in different languages (some languages use word order; other languages modify the words themselves).

It turns out that the different implementations of grammar utilize different sections of the brain to process nouns and verbs. Therefore, says Deacon, grammar-processing isn’t universally coded in hardware. The brain is designed for language at a different level of abstraction than firmware modules.

Another fascinating section of the book argues that what distinguishes humans from other animals is our ability to understand symbols. Deacon reports a fascinating series of experiments with chimpanzees, showing how chimps have a devilish time doing things we find very easy. Chimpanzees find it nearly impossible to set aside immediate evidence and apply a more abstract understanding.

If you put two piles of candy in front of a child, he will choose the larger pile. But if the larger pile is then given to another child, the first child quickly learns to choose the smaller pile. Chimps never figure this out (although they can learn to choose the number 3 over the number 2). With the pile of candy in front of them, they are overwhelmed by impulse to choose the larger pile.

Deacon tells an interesting “just so story” of the origin of the symbol in human evolution. Humans tend to live in groups, and most often have a pattern of pair-bonding. This is a most unusual combination in the animal world.

In animal species where males contribute to providing for the offspring, there are two basic social patterns. Either the animals pair-bond — in which case the pair lives in isolation — or the animals live in groups, in which case polygyny is the norm. Unless a pair is isolated from the group, or the male has exclusive access to a harem, there is no way for the male to be sure that the young he is providing for carry his genes.

Deacon’s thesis, essentially, is that the wedding ring and the wedding ceremony are the original symbols. Humans invented an abstract symbol and group ritual to mark the fact that a woman is the exclusive sexual property of a man. This allows humans to live co-operatively in groups (which enables more efficient hunting and gathering).

But, to get here, Deacon skips over alternative explanations of the same evidence. The ability to see beyond immediate evidence to consequences remote in time and space can be explained as easily as the foundation of storytelling. Stories have plots — chains of causal relationships that are not visible to the eye. “The saber-toothed tiger over the second hill killed Oog and injured Gah.” And stories turn on character motive — predictions of behavior based on traits and interests. “Chah stayed at the fire and made excellent grain porridge because she does not like to pick eek-berries.” Stories are key to success in hunting, gathering, and transmitting knowledge of tools.

An alternative theory is posed by Robin Dunbar, who argues that gossip was a driving force in the evolution of language. Gossip is language that is used socially, to assess the reliability of social and sexual behavior, and to transmit social norms.

In arguing for the primacy of the symbol, Deacon skips right past other facts he cites. The nerves that go to the frontal cortex travel through limbic areas. This physical fact is a fascinating explanation of art, which combines intellectual stimulation — formal patterns and esthetic properties — with emotional stimulation. Similarly, human decision-making combines reason, pattern-recognition, and gut feeling.

Dunbar is better at marshalling evidence about the unique properties of human language than explaining their cause and origin. Deacon himself argues that language is overdetermined; there are so many advantages that it’s hard to tell what came first. But we’re humans, so we search for causes and tell origin myths, even when we’re using the tools of science.

Also, the bias toward the abstract may influence Deacon’s writing style. Deacon is charmed by the human ability to decode abstractions and process complex sentences; the book could be made easier to read without loss of information, complexity, or meaning, if Deacon weren’t quite so fond of abstraction.

One difficulty for a layperson reading the book is that the book assumes a medical student’s knowledge of brain anatomy. The book uses many terms for brain components, and employs illustrations pointing at brain regions. It would be helpful for the book to include a mapset of the brain and its components, the same way history books often provide a set of reference maps and timelines.

If you’re interested in the topic, read the book. It’s fascinating, though it has flaws and it’s not light reading.

I heard Pamela Ribon read from Why Girls are Weird” at Book People the other week. Ribon read one piece on the twisted things little girls do with Barbie dolls; another on the indignity of eavesdropping on an ex-boyfriend with his new sweetie from behind an end-cap display in a supermarket.
The reading was lively, off-color and very funny (she kept apologizing for reading the R-rated bits standing next to the kids section of the bookstore). Ribon is a sketch comedy performer and it shows; the sketches catch and exaggerate the dramas of life shaped by pop-culture. It was infinitely better than the usual, pause, breathy, pause, dramatic, pause, intonated, pause, style that infects book readings.
As Prentiss points out, “Why Girls are Weird” may be the first epistolary novel based on the web journal form. The novel is based on a journal Ribon kept when she was living in Austin and working as paratechnical slacker during the dot-com boom.
The journal entries are fictionalized versions of the main character’s life. For example, she writes as if she were still dating her ex-boyfriend. The plot is driven by the understandings and misunderstandings that occur when she meets people in real life who know her through her web journal. The book’s emotional core is the weird mixture of honesty, selective disclosure, and fiction that makes up first person web writing.
The good things about the book are its comic sketches and the exploration of the dramatic possibilities in writing a web journal. As a straight-up novel, it’s off-the-shelf romantic comedy. The protagonist starts self-involved and doesn’t get much wiser; the romantic interest and gay best buddy are painted by the numbers.
Ribon left Austin to seek fame and fortune in Los Angeles, writing for TV and movies. She enjoys writing the journal and the novel because nobody asks her to make endings happier and characters more blonde, unlike producers in LA. After the reading, I bought the book, hoping that book-readers can keep her fed and free from obligatory blondness.

Cory Doctorow is an amazingly fast writer. I’ve watched him blog conference talks and leave contrails. I wish he’d written this book a bit more slowly.
“Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom” imagines a utopia where death has become obsolete — upon fatal injury, a new body can be cloned, and the mind restored from backup. Scarcity has been eliminated, and money has been replaced by “whuffie” — the sum of a person’s reputation.
The story cleverly explores the consequences of these premises. In the main story line, the protagonist seeks revenge for his own murder.
The absense of death and scarcity makes people free to devote their lives to art and fun. The story is aptly set in Disney, pinnacle of creativity and surface cheer. Yet the lifelong pursuit of entertainment and art doesn’t solve existential conflicts or give people the adversity they need to grow up. The reputation economy creates a culture in which people are excruciatingly politic and upbeat, even as they betray each other and commit dastardly deeds for the sake of whuffie.
I enjoyed the way the book dramatized the consequences of the premises. But the novel might have been richer, if the author had taken more time.
The Disney utopia wants a bright, shiny, eery atmosphere; a sort of pastel noir. The surgically constumed characters and mind-possessing rides could be really creepy. Too often, the book describes the effect without creating the feeling.
With its characters, too, the book tells more than it shows. The protagonist is a creative slacker who’s on his third adulthood — changing channels through wives and lives. This is how the book describes his feelings about dating a much younger woman: “my girlfriend was fifteen percent of my age, and I was old-fashioned enough that it bugged me…I was more than a century old, but there was still a kind of magic in having my arms around the warm, fine shoulders of a girl by midnight.. I’d been startled to know that she know the Beatles.” Maybe the book’s making the point that a century of entertainment hasn’t made the protagonist grow up. But there are subtler ways of portraying the age distance.
My favorite aspect of the book is the dramatization of contemporary, wired life.
Characters have brain implants that give them instant access to information about the world; and send silent messages to each other using a wireless brain interface. People’s lives depend on backing up their brain regularly, yet they’re still tempted to prioritize urgent deadlines over backups and system maintenance.
Cory’s captured the psychological effect of constant connection to Google, email and instant messaging, utter dependence on digital data, and the perilous personal consequences of system crash without backup.
Anyone who’s worked in a highly political organization will recognize the endless rounds of socialization required for decisions, and the cheerful delusion zealously maintained in the face of disaster.
In summary (for Peterme, who always asks if I liked the book), the book meets the criteria for a good sci-fi novel; exploring ideas by extrapolating them to a future extreme, while satirizing contemporary culture. The book could have been richer and deeper; I hope that Cory slows down a bit for the next one.

Last week, I read The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin.
Given recent discussions about identity and anonymity on the internet, it was Franklin’s often wrote social and political commentary under pseudonyms.
He began writing under assumed names as a teenager, when he wrote letters to the editor in the guise of an older woman. Richard Sauders, the nominal author of Poor Richard’s Almanac, was a pseudonym.
That sort of pseudonymity would be harder to pull off today. It caused an uproar when a novel about Bill Clinton’s political campaign was published by an author who was obviously a campaign insider. Some of Franklin’s pseudonymous writing would be considered unethical hoaxes by today’s standard.
Franklin was a businessman, then a politician and diplomat. It was unwise to insult customers and political allies under his own name. He used pseudonyms to write words sharper than he was willing to sign.

The Tipping Point is a catchy book that explains how social epidemics work.
* epidemics don’t spread gradually; instead, there is a tipping point that turns a small trend into a mass phenomenon
* small changes can have big results in the outcome
* several types of people: salesmen, connectors, mavens; play important roles in catalyzing epidemics
The exposition isn’t rigorous but the writing is memorable. Gladwell has lively stories and catchy names for the roles people play in spreading epidemics. Stories about Sesame Street and Bernhard Goetz provide colorful illustration for the idea that small changes have a big results.
The lack of rigor bothered me less than it bothered Peterme. The book has footnotes, so readers who want more rigor can go find it.
One peeve with the book is that Gladwell questions common theories of gradual social change; yet takes the cultural constructs of our society for granted.
* people want to be “cool”
* fashion trends begin with the self-expression of outcasts and are popularized through the efforts of mass marketers
* teenagers inevitably experiment with dangerous activities like drugs and smoking
These things are socially constructed. Many of the problems of teen culture can be explained by a social structure where teens can’t do anything useful, and forces them to “spend years cooped up together with nothing real to do.”
Mass marketing is a modern invention; do the same dynamics apply to pre-modern social trends: the spread of religions, technologies, languages?
This reaction isn’t a criticism of the book. It’s a compliment that the book is so memorable that it invites readers to think about whether its ideas apply in other domains.

Emerson among the Eccentrics is a biography of Ralph Waldo Emerson and his cadre of Transcendentalist friends. It’s one of the better non-fiction books I’ve read in a while.

Continue reading “Emerson Among the Eccentrics”