This is turning out to be disappointingly heavy sledding. Maybe because the whole thing feels too much like a cerebral exercise -- the characters are This is turning out to be disappointingly heavy sledding. Maybe because the whole thing feels too much like a cerebral exercise -- the characters are there just as a means of exploring the fallibility of memory, not because there's a story that needs to be told.
I like a good story myself.
Update: 2 months later.
Oh dear. This "critically acclaimed" "novel of ideas" turns out to be just the kind of book that exposes me for what I am. The kind of reader who finds a certain kind of serious "novel of ideas" to be essentially unreadable. I like Rosecrans Baldwin (for reasons I'll explain below), I could see him straining to write a serious novel that would receive critical acclaim, I was rooting for him to succeed. And possibly, for some subset of discerning readers, he has. Those readers will need more patience than me. I found the characters uninteresting, the structural devices a little too forced, and the prose was way too solemn for my taste.
Here's the thing. While he was writing this novel, Rosecrans Baldwin spent 18 months in Paris working for a French ad agency. He documents this (often surreal) experience in a much looser, almost gossipy account called "Paris, I Love You, But You're Bringing me Down". That book is terrific -- in it, he manages to nail the absurdities of Parisian life hilariously.
I hate to say it, but the book that was presumably written as a diversion ended up being far better than "You Lost Me There". Not an entirely fair judgment, of course, since I never did manage to finish that earnest "novel of ideas" (insert weak "He lost me there" jokelet ad lib).
I am, of course, a confirmed philistine*, and your mileage may vary.
*: Despite my philistine status, I make no apologies for holding all authors to the minimum standard of writing a book that the reader will actually, you know, want to keep reading. Because of its failure to meet that standard, I can only give "You Lost Me There" one star....more
This seems like a stunning misstep by the normally brilliant Steven Pinker. His ability to write with extraordinary force and clarity has been demonstThis seems like a stunning misstep by the normally brilliant Steven Pinker. His ability to write with extraordinary force and clarity has been demonstrated repeatedly in two separate areas of expertise -- linguistics and cognitive science. Unfortunately, the brilliance of his earlier books in those areas is nowhere in evidence in this regrettable dog's breakfast of a book.
I found it almost unreadable - poorly argued, undisciplined, self-indulgent, and - despite its grotesquely bloated length (800 pages) - support for its main thesis is woefully inadequate, dependent on a highly selective interpretation of existing data and completely unconvincing. Pinker can sling the statistical jargon (Poisson processes, power laws, the gambler's fallacy, the Gini coefficient) like a pro, but all the jargon in the world cannot make up for his recurrent habit of over- or mis-interpreting data whose limitations he consistently glosses over.
The jacket cover breathlessly promises "more than a hundred graphs and maps". Any graph is open to misinterpretation. Three of the most common ways of doing so are (i) selective interpretation (ignoring or explaining away the data that don't fit one's preconceived ideas) (ii) inappropriate extrapolation beyond the range of available data and (iii) failure to acknowledge the data's limitations, such as likely sources of bias, or extreme sparsity of information.
Pinker commits each of these errors, with such numbing frequency that one loses all respect. We are seriously asked to draw conclusions from a graph of the "rate of battle deaths in state-based armed conflicts between 1900 and 2005" (Figure 6-1) while being instructed to ignore the figures for the first and second world wars. After all, "the world has seen nothing close to that level since". This kind of rubbish insults the intelligence. Or you could look at Figure 7-28. Lest you be distracted by the actual data, Pinker has helpfully superimposed some very impressive looking solid lines documenting his cheerful belief in the rise of vegetarianism. These are much darker than the actual data points, presumably in the hope that the reader might be distracted from noting their complete lack of fit to the data. Worried about racially motivated killing of black people? Here are the yearly data (number of such killings) from 1996 to 2008:
5,3,3,4,3,3,3,4,1,2,1,1,1
Pinker's gleeful trumpeting of a five-fold reduction seems to rest on a pretty flimsy foundation to me. Not to mention being a little premature.
But nothing as inconvenient as facts, or their absence, can stand in the way of a man who has already decided he knows the answer. The threat of nuclear holocaust? Exaggerated, because - as any fool can see - nuclear weapons have never been used in wartime since Hiroshima and Nagasaki. One imagines this argument must be of great comfort to those who survived those particular "anomalies". Just as Pinker's breezy insistence that the only meaningful way to interpret the number of people killed in a given conflict is relative to the world's population at the time is surely meaningless to anyone who has lost a family member in battle. It's at best breathtakingly insensitive; some would find it deeply offensive.
To anyone who respects the scientific method, this is a horrifyingly bad book, one which completely obliterates Pinker's credibility. Don't waste your time....more
I considered putting this on the "intellectual con artist at work" shelf, but that wouldn't be quite fair. It's not you, Doctor Pennebaker, it's me. II considered putting this on the "intellectual con artist at work" shelf, but that wouldn't be quite fair. It's not you, Doctor Pennebaker, it's me. I have no doubt that the research reported on in this book is genuine, if only because of its excruciatingly tedious nature. Frankly, it's hard to get excited (or even to stay awake) about work that uses word-counting as its primary tool, particularly given Doctor P's fawningly enthusiastic invocation of factor analysis as a legitimate statistical method. Even a reader willing to overlook this (serious) deficiency is likely to be bludgeoned into a state of anesthetized indifference by the pedestrian prose and the sheer banality of the conclusions.
It probably didn't help that I read this book immediately after finishing "Thinking Fast and Slow". Daniel Kahneman's clear, careful, measured exposition reminds us that work in experimental psychology can be reported with lucidity and elegance. The mix of anecdotal evidence, statement of the bloody obvious, and somewhat dubious over-generalization found in this book has to be considered a disappointment. And the whole obsession with pronoun usage seems entirely overblown, and not at all convincing.
Upon reflection, and after reading Trevor's excellent, take-no-prisoners review, (http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...) I have to agree with his assessment and downgrade this to a single star. I will spare Pennebaker the indignity of the "intellectual con artist at work" shelf, if only because I kind of feel sorry for anyone whose life work involves research as pathetically boring as his appears to be. ...more
This piece of pig manure is a good illustration of the dangers of following recommendations found on amazon.com. Described as a "comic novel" set in mThis piece of pig manure is a good illustration of the dangers of following recommendations found on amazon.com. Described as a "comic novel" set in my homeland, it has about as much wit as a lobotomized goldfish and lards on the blarney factor to nauseating excess. Other defects include lack of a discernible plot, grievously bloviated prose, and characters that don't even achieve the status of caricature. The following paragraph exemplifies its glaring inanity:
Remember the day he saved the four sons of Maggie Kerwin and the two sons of Sally Fitzgibbon, with their boat going down in the storm sent from the north. ... Lost in the waves and found and lost again, with the mountains falling right on top of him. Remember the seething water hissing at his valor, raging that he should defy them all -- the waves, the rocks, and all the nibbling fishes below. This was the day he dived down and brought up the four sons of Maggie Kerwin and the two sons of Sally Fitzgibbon, and only him still able to holler. And remember the rescue of Hanrahan's goat with the barn burning, and Kate's cat plucked from the high branches of the oak, and his clothes ripped open for all to see. Forget that his words were made of the night air and that he had the gift of transport like none other before him or since, that his closed eyes and open mouth were the surrender of all this world.... Remember what's there to remember and forget what's there to be forgot.
Kitty's face had turned from flesh to stone.
And so on, regrettably, until the reader throws up in his own mouth at the unmitigated dreadfulness of it all.
This style of writing might reasonably be termed "Blarney quaint". In my experience, most native Irish people find it ridiculous, borderline offensive, and incredibly annoying, while a surprisingly high proportion of non-Irish readers react positively (the word "charming" is often invoked).
This book was a "Washington Post Book World Best Book of 2008", and is the first volume in a so-called "pig trilogy". The mind actively boggles.
..... and all the nibbling fishes below. dear god....more
I figure I might as well give the Lydia Davis translation a try, just to keep ol' C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin honest. Truth is I'm suchI figure I might as well give the Lydia Davis translation a try, just to keep ol' C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin honest. Truth is I'm such a dork that reading parallel translations is my idea of fun. Particularly helpful in staving off boredom when there's not much action to speak of (unless you consider turning over in bed action, you omphaloskeptic little milquetoast, you)...more
This is another one for the "What were they thinking?!?" shelf. Doubly so, in fact. It's not just another lapse by the Booker selection committee, whoThis is another one for the "What were they thinking?!?" shelf. Doubly so, in fact. It's not just another lapse by the Booker selection committee, whose judgements we already know to take with a large grain of salt. But to be let down so abominably by Dame Iris, someone we know is capable of writing interestingly, though sometimes at the expense of prolixity. Regrettably, in "The Sea, The Sea" we see her giving free rein to her multiple vices, with little of the compensatory acuity that is there in some of her earlier books.
Poor writing choices all around. Or at least none that favors the hapless reader. So we are treated to the first person narrative of a monomaniacal narcissist. One who is delusional (sea-serpents haunt him when he swims) and who seems intent on tormenting us with the weird details of every bizarre meal he fixes for himself in his crumbling 'squalid to a degree only an English person would tolerate' surroundings. This kind of thing:
"Felt a little depressed but was cheered up by supper: spaghetti with a little butter and dried basil. (Basil is of course the king of herbs.) Then spring cabbage cooked slowly with dill. Boiled onions served with bran, herbs, soya oil and tomatoes, with one egg beaten in. With these a slice or two of cold tinned corned beef. (Meat is really just an excuse for eating vegetables.) I drank a bottle of retsina in honour of the undeserving rope."
i don't know about you, but a few paragraphs of this kind of drivel brings me to the end of my rope. Even if I could forgive Dame Iris and her editors for the astonishingly boring catalog of the dietary whims of a narcissist, those parenthetical comments ("basil is of course ...) are quite simply unpardonable.
Forty pages in. Not another character in sight? Righty-ho, then! Time to bale. Or bail.
In the words of a more talented reviewer than I: "This is not a book to be put aside lightly. It should be thrust aside with great force. "
In some hideous corner of the library of the damned, a doomed subcommittee is being forced to weigh the question: "The sea, The sea" represents a more shameless crime against innocent readers than "The infinities"; discuss.
Iris, Iris, Iris.... How the mighty are fallen....more
Reading "Stoner" gave me another one of those parallel universe experiences. In the goodreads universe, where everyone else lives, this is apparently Reading "Stoner" gave me another one of those parallel universe experiences. In the goodreads universe, where everyone else lives, this is apparently a much loved and lauded book. Heck, those good folks at the New York Review of Books tell us it's a classic. And has this to say about the main protagonist:
William Stoner emerges from it not only as an archetypal American, but as an unlikely existential hero, standing, like a figure in a painting by Edward Hopper, in stark relief against an unforgiving world
I'm sorry, but that's just a crock, even allowing for reviewer hyperbole. The very best that you could manage to say about Stoner is that he's a wraithlike nebbish who manages to glide through this dismal story without leaving an impression on anyone, least of all the reader. People seem to admire John Edward Williams's writing. The thing that baffled me is how any author can use so many words to write about a character and end up describing someone who is utterly devoid of a single distinguishing trait, or even a semblance of a personality.
Stoner is a stick figure who, over the course of the book, gets to interact with other stick figures (the resentful wife, the condescending academic colleagues, the college friend with a lust for life who gets mowed down before his prime in the Great War, etc etc ad bloody nauseam) as they act out standard plot #24*. Now I know the number of plots is finite, so it might seem unjust to fault an author for serving up the same story yet again. Fair enough. But it's considered good sport to mess with the template a little bit, to inject one's own authorial "spark", to add *something* to make the story rise above the generic template. Maybe you take the A.J. Cronin slant and stir in a little rage against the system. Or you might just add a big ladleful of chicken soup for the soul and give the story a Mr Chips vibe. What you can't do, and hope to keep the reader's interest and sympathy, is just trot out the bare-bones generic version of the tale, with no embellishment**. But this is exactly what Williams has done here. What's the point?
I wasn't looking for much. Hell, I'd have settled for the odd chunk of snappy dialog. A sense of humor. Anything at all, really. But even the most basic dialog seems to exceed Williams's capacity, and decent characterization eludes him completely.
Anyway, the bottom line is that, in my universe, this book was bleak, predictable, excruciatingly dull. Like one of those dreadful Thomas Hardy books where everyone is miserable all the time, but without the local color. One star, maximum. Though it isn't quite dreadful enough to earn a slot on the "intellectual con artist at work" shelf.
(Story #24: Intelligent {farmboy/kid from slums/juvenile delinquent/will be played by Matt Damon in the movie} transcends hardscrabble background to be first in the family to attend college. Lurches into an unfulfilling marriage that ends up making everyone miserable, teaches college, is left wondering if that's all there is. Alienation everywhere you look.)
**:Several authors have written intelligently within the framework of the "academic novel" (Francine Prose, Jane Smiley, James Hynes, Kingsley Amis, among others), even managing to be funny. But those are authors with, you know, discernible intelligence, an affliction which John Edward Williams has apparently been spared.
I just read David K's excellent review and realize that I am a hero, albeit a "Master and Margarita"-loving hero. So be it.
RATED IN CATEGORY "BOOK" : 1 STAR RATED IN CATEGORY "SLEEP AID" : 5 STARS
I acknowledge that many goodreads reviewers profess to find this book "fascinaRATED IN CATEGORY "BOOK" : 1 STAR RATED IN CATEGORY "SLEEP AID" : 5 STARS
I acknowledge that many goodreads reviewers profess to find this book "fascinating". I understand that it is regarded by some as an "American classic". There is something distinctly impressive about George R. Stewart's sheer stamina.
What I cannot do, based on empirical evidence from extensive trials, is read more than a page of this book without lapsing into prolonged, profound slumber. It may be the most boring book ever written.
On the plus side, the book's soporific effects are remarkably consistent, with a median time to sleep onset of just under a minute. The side-effect profile is quite favorable, with no potential for addiction, or adverse drug interaction with other therapies. The most prevalent adverse effect observed in trials was chronic bruising of the reader's ankle, the most common site of impact when the book slides from the subject's grasp at the moment of sleep onset. Use of the product near an open flame is a distinct fire hazard and is contraindicated.
My experience with this product suggests that repurposing it as a sleep aid, for subjects with mild to moderate insomnia, represents a practical option well worth considering. Viewed as a potential remedy for subjects experiencing insomnia, the risk-benefit ratio is quite favorable.
If you have difficulties falling asleep, and worry about Ambien-induced "sleep-snacking", "sleep-driving" or - God forbid - "abnormal thinking", or the addictive potential of benzodiazepines, you might want to consider "Names on the Land" as an inexpensive, safe, surprisingly effective alternative. I imagine that an audio version of the therapy would be equally efficacious. ...more
Truth in Reviewing: I didn't finish this, didn't even make it to page 100. But I read far enough to know that I really WARNING --- FIZZY GRAVY ALERT!!
Truth in Reviewing: I didn't finish this, didn't even make it to page 100. But I read far enough to know that I really just had no desire to punish myself further. Crews mines the seamy underbelly of the white trash south for yuks, and it's funny for a while. But subtlety is not part of his arsenal, so things just get weirder and weirder, until you're in a universe so bizarrely warped, you wonder what the point of reading on might be.
So I could (barely) forgive him the megalomaniac head of Soaps for Life, who terrorizes his door-to-door salesforce with Hitlerian zest. I thought I could forgive him giving The Boss a harelip and a huge Napoleon complex. Until one too many sentences like this:
"I always have na use a whip na drive all nu people about nike beasts, and nu have na nerve na nell me nure late because nu stayed out nair and sold of nure own free will?"
By the time the book's (anti)hero, Hickum Looney (yes, really), undergoes ritual humiliation by the rest of the Soaps for Life salesforce, culminating in his being stripped only to his skivvies, causing him to lose control of his bowels, left to drag his bescumbered body through the 90-degree heat in search of his car -- well, by then, I had my doubts.
The clincher was having Crews mention at least four times in a couple pages the motions of Hickum's wrinkled, shrivelled member during this car-seeking odyssey, not neglecting to remind us of the 'black crusty streaks' ....
Look, I love a book that mixes eschatology and scatology as much as the next guy. But it's a delicate balance, Harry. One which you singularly failed to achieve here. Unless you were trying to work out some deep toilet training issues of your own.
Life is way too short for this kind of lientery....more
Well, seven chapters (80 pages) in, I have to acknowledge that I find Beevor's book pretty much unreadable. It's a combination of poor organization (iWell, seven chapters (80 pages) in, I have to acknowledge that I find Beevor's book pretty much unreadable. It's a combination of poor organization (it's hard to figure out at any given point where he is going with things - he makes detours from a purely chronological account for no apparent reason) and excessive, mind-numbing detail in places. A typical sentence:
Between 5 and 12 March he (Mola) had meetings with other key conspirators: Orgaz, Goded, Ponte, Kindelan, Saliquet, Franco, Galarza, Fanjul and Rodriguez del Barrio.
NO!!!! Please don't give me the names of all 9 key conspirators! This is not a level of detail I want, or need, to know. It just bogs down any hope of keeping up a readable narrative flow.
What I'm saying is that Beevor, perhaps in pursuit of "completeness" (whatever that might be), ends up providing a level of detail that I found simply indigestible.
Officially packing it in. Fortunately, the other book I'm reading, by Paul Preston, is far more readable.
Note: this is obviously not a judgement on the scholarship or content of the book. It just doesn't meet my needs.
In response to several thoughtful comments that take issue with the nastiness of my initial review, I have come to the Further update, June 19th 2012.
In response to several thoughtful comments that take issue with the nastiness of my initial review, I have come to the conclusion that the comments in question are essentially correct. Please see my own response in comment #32 in the discussion. And thanks to those who called me on this, apologies for my earlier vitriolic responses. In general, I try to acknowledge the validity of other opinions in my reviews and comments, something I notably failed to do in this discussion. I should have been more civil, initially and subsequently.
Update:
WELL, CONGRATULATIONS, PAUL AUSTER!!
I wouldn't actually have thought it possible, but with the breathtakingly sophomoric intellectual pretension of the final 30 pages of "City of Glass", you have actually managed to deepen my contempt and loathing for you, and the overweening, solipsistic, drivel that apparently passes for writing in your particular omphaloskeptic corner of the pseudo-intellectual forest in which you live, churning out your mentally masturbatory little turdlets.
Gaaaah. Upon finishing the piece of smirkingly self-referential garbage that was "City of Glass", I wanted to jump in a showever and scrub away the stinking detritus of your self-congratulatory, hypercerebral, pomo, what a clever-boy-am-I, pseudo-intellectual rubbish from my mind. But not all the perfumes of Araby would be sufficient - they don't make brain bleach strong enough to cleanse the mind of your particular kind of preening, navel-gazing idiocy.
All I can do is issue a clarion call to others who might be sucked into your idiotic, time-wasting, superficially clever fictinal voyages to nowhere. There is emphatically no there there. The intellectual vacuum at the core of Auster's fictions is finally nothing more than that - empty of content, devoid of meaning, surrounded with enough of the pomo trappings to keep the unwary reader distracted. But, if you're looking for meaning in your fiction, for God's sake look elsewhere.
And, please - spare me your pseudoprofound epiphanies of the sort that the emptiness at the core of Auster's tales is emblematic of the kind of emptiness that's at the core of modern life. Because that brand of idiocy butters no parsnips with me - I got over that kind of nonsense as a freshman in college. At this point in my life I expect a little more from anyone who aspires to be considered a writer worth taking seriously.
Which Paul Auster, though I have no doubt that he takes himself very, very seriously indeed, is not. This little emperor of Brooklyn is stark naked, intellectually speaking.
The only consolation is that I spent less than $5 for this latest instalment of Austercrap.
Gaaaah. PASS THE BRAINBLEACH.
Earlier comment begins below:
My loathing for the only other of Paul Auster's books that I had read (the Music of Chance) was so deep that it's taken me over ten years before I can bring myself to give him another chance. But finally, today, after almost three weeks of reading only short pieces in Spanish, my craving for fiction in English was irresistible, so I picked up a second-hand copy of The New York Trilogy in the English-language bookstore here in Guanajuato.
So far so good. I'm about three-quarters through the first story of the trilogy and I'm enjoying it, without actually liking it, if that makes sense. Auster seems to owe a clear debt of influence to Mamet - there's the same predilection for games, puzzles, and the influence of chance. Thankfully, the influence doesn't extend to dialog, which Mamet has always seemed to me to wield clumsily, like a blunt instrument. Auster is more subtle, but he still holds his characters at such a remote distance, it gives his writing a cerebral quality that is offputting at times. Thus, one can enjoy the situations he sets up and the intricacies of the story, without quite liking his fiction.
Who knows, maybe I will feel differently after I've read all three stories?...more
I've tried three times now, and I just cannot make it past the first 60 pages of this book. It's because I know that the author is just waiting to sanI've tried three times now, and I just cannot make it past the first 60 pages of this book. It's because I know that the author is just waiting to sandbag me with that warm and fuzzy, heart-warming message about the redemptive power of reading and literature. But the setup is just too damned creakily trite that I can't even begin to care. The people in this book aren't characters, they're devices for the author to exploit to get that heartwarming message across.
Funny thing, isn't it? When an author's manipulations become too manifestly obvious, it triggers resistance in the reader.
It did in this reader, at any rate. But at least I can move it off my 'currently reading' shelf....more
The title pretty much sums it up. Having finished "The Eyre Affair" back in September, I was sufficiently fired up to buy this one, the second in the The title pretty much sums it up. Having finished "The Eyre Affair" back in September, I was sufficiently fired up to buy this one, the second in the Thursday next series. And immediately bogged down, about 70 pages in. He keeps bringing the clever cutesiness, but its charms begin to wear thin. The characters are brittle, and there's a cumulative lack of coherence to the world he creates that is starting to annoy.
Time to put this aside for later consideration. Right now, I have way too much stuff in my queue that is infinitely more tempting....more
OK. Fine. I said my February reading project was going to be "Infinite Jest" and RoTP. So I'll give this another shot. Provided you all promise to givOK. Fine. I said my February reading project was going to be "Infinite Jest" and RoTP. So I'll give this another shot. Provided you all promise to give "Ulysses" another chance.
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