Every year there's always one non-fiction book that the entire literate world raves about and that I hate. In 2009 it was Richard Holmes's "The Age ofEvery year there's always one non-fiction book that the entire literate world raves about and that I hate. In 2009 it was Richard Holmes's "The Age of Wonder", the following year it was "The Emperor of All Maladies".
Universally admired, winner of a Pulitzer prize, this book annoyed me so profoundly when I first read it that I've had to wait almost a year to be able to write anything vaguely coherent about it. The flaws that I found so infuriating a year ago seem less important upon a second reading. Though I still think it is a poorly conceived book, executed in a manner that lacks all restraint, it's nowhere near as terrible as I remembered.
As I recall, the aspects of the book that most annoyed me were:
(a) the author's anthropomorphism of cancer -- a stupid, unhelpful, and ineffective metaphor. In general, I detest this practice of attributing personalities to diseases. Perhaps it's a necessary psychological strategy for oncologists. But it's particularly inappropriate in the case of cancer, as it perpetuates the incorrect belief that cancer is a single disease, as opposed to a "shape-shifting disease of colossal diversity". For the same reason, it makes little sense to speak of a "war on cancer", as if it were a sentient villain with plans for world domination, one that can somehow be vanquished if we just find the magic formula. Mukherjee correctly deplores this view as simplistic and reductive, but he then proceeds to adopt it hook, line, and sinker. It's a baffling and unfortunate choice, because its inherent deficiencies lead to a kind of narrative incoherence, as well as a damaging lack of clarity about the nature and scope of the book. It's a symptom of Mukherjee's vagueness of purpose that he often refers to the book as a "biography of cancer", as if that phrase had meaning.
(b) A complete, fatal, inability to leave anything out. There is a certain type of non-fiction writer who seems hellbent on inflicting everything he or she learned while researching the book on the misfortunate reader. No detail is spared. Everyone the author spoke to during the five years researching the book gets a mention, it would seem. As do a bunch of dead folks, some of them very dead, not all clearly particularly relevant.
If, by doing this, the author is trying to impress with the breadth of his research, then he fails. Leaving everything in is the simple, intellectually lazy, option. Where non-fiction is concerned, the reader has a right to expect the author to take the trouble to shape his material into some kind of coherent whole, recognizing that while some details are critical, others are not, and pruning accordingly. All too often, though, authors forget this. Their enthusiasm about the subject leads them to lose perspective: "the reader needs the whole story and will be thirsting for all the gory details; it would be criminal to leave anything out".
Well, actually, NO. We want you, the author, to point out to us what's important and what's not.
(c) The author includes stories of his own patients' experience with cancers of various types. I have nothing against this per se - it's entirely sensible to do so. However, it requires delicacy and finesse to report on his patients' stories without seeming exploitative or emotionally manipulative. Writers like Jerome Groopman and Oliver Sachs regularly navigate this terrain with grace and sensitivity. Mukherjee, a much less experienced writer, repeatedly crosses the line into bathos and melodrama. The language is overly dramatic; one senses also that Mukherjee succumbs to the oncologist's fallacy of believing that cancer is intrinsically "worse", or more serious, than all other ailments. Actually, I guess that's already evident from the book's title.
(d) He has a particularly unfortunate habit of prefacing each chapter with at least one "literary quote", and when the book reaches a new section (there are six in all), he tends to go hog wild and give us a whole page of quotes. These seem like a minor distraction at first, but their cumulative effect is to leave the reader with the impression that (i) it is very important to the author to let the world know that he is a well-read, Renaissance dude (ii) chances are the author is a bit of a poser. The bard, the bible, St Thomas Aquinas, Sophocles, Kafka, Hegel, Voltaire, Plato, Sun Tzu, and William Blake are all mined for a portentous snippet or two about mortality and the evils that the flesh is heir to. Not to mention Gertrude Stein, Jack London, Czeslaw Milosz, W.H. Auden, Hilaire Belloc, D.H. Lawrence, Lewis Carroll, Conan Doyle, Italo Calvino, Woody Allen, Solzhenitsyn, Akhmatova... . Using just the right quote to frame an argument, or introduce a topic, can be an extremely effective device, but its effectiveness diminishes rapidly with overuse. One gets the distinct impression that the author ransacked some quotation website in the mistaken idea that sprinkling them copiously throughout the manuscript would magically confer some kind of gravitas. I reached my eye-rolling moment on page 190, introducing part three, when Doctor Mukherjee felt impelled to quote T.S. Eliot:
"... I have seen the Eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker. And in short, I was afraid."
(e) As I mentioned, I think the structure and organization of the material leaves much to be desired. The writing is generally adequate, if a little verbose, though one tic of the author's drove me nuts. Each of the apparently infinite number of characters in the book is introduced in Mukherjee's characteristically breezy style, then immediately fixed in amber by means of a trio of adjectives. Accurate information about the personality and character of many of these historical characters being limited, one suspects that these adjective triplets may well have been chosen at random from a thesaurus. This kind of thing:
childless, socially awkward, and notoriously reclusive wealthy, politically savvy, and well-connected wealthy, gracious, and enterprising ambitious, canny, and restless self-composed, fiery, and energetic proud, guarded, and secretive flamboyant, hot-tempered, and adventurous cool, composed, and cautious intellectual, deliberate, and imposing charming, soft-spoken and careful outspoken, pugnacious, and bold impatient, aggressive and goal-driven brackish, ambitious, dogged, and feisty suave, personable, and sophisticated (impeccably dressed in custom-cut Milanese suits) brilliant, brash and single-minded laconic and secretive, with a slippery quicksilver temper
Obviously, Dr Mukherjee is an adherent of the "Adjectives are Your Friends" school of writing. If this kind of tic bothers you, be warned that it really runs rampant in this book. In the general scheme of things, it's a minor detail.
Enough caviling. What has the author accomplished in this book? I think he has written an overly detailed*, partially complete**, suboptimally organized*** account of the evolution of our understanding of cancer and the development of treatment options to counteract it. The result is a very readable account, though I imagine some of the second half of the book may be hard for non-scientists to understand. In general, he seems to get things right, though there are a few lapses -- most notably in his discussion of the use of mustard gas in WWI. I can find no corroboration of his statement that "in a single year it left hundreds of thousands dead in its wake"; one wonders if he may have confused 'casualties' with 'fatalities'. His ability to explain biomedical ideas in terms a layperson can understand seems decent, though not exceptional. I don't think the writing is of a caliber that deserves the Pulitzer prize, but what do I know?
*: "overly detailed" - to give just one example, was it really necessary to devote a page and a half to reviewing Lister's introduction of antiseptics? And in a book which appeared to be focused on diagnostic and therapeutic options, why devote 40 pages to the link between smoking and cancer with the emphasis firmly on the legal and regulatory aspects? **: eye-glazing detail about kinase inhibitors, but nothing about anti-angiogenesis agents (Avastin was approved around 2003, as I recall, so it's clearly well within the time horizon) ***: a person could get whiplash from all the zipping up and back down the historical timeline, for no obvious reason.
Thank you. Now that I've got that out of my system, I feel much better....more
There are flashes of charm in this book, counterbalanced by some very tedious patches indeed. Elif Batuman is apparently well-connected enough to haveThere are flashes of charm in this book, counterbalanced by some very tedious patches indeed. Elif Batuman is apparently well-connected enough to have Roz Chast do the artwork for the book cover. She also seems to have a remarkable talent for self-promotion. This book has generated a considerable amount of buzz, and some near-hagiographic reviews.
I don't quite understand why. If one wanted to view things uncharitably, Ms Batuman spent seven somewhat aimless years as a graduate student in comparative literature at Stanford without ever really figuring out why she was there. She did prove quite adept at ferreting out travel grant money, which she used to make various trips to Russia and other former Soviet republics. This book is essentially a travel memoir - the record of those trips. Like most travel memoirs, it is interesting only in spots. Two of the book's seven chapters are quite well-written and manage to sustain the reader's interest (the author's attendance at a conference about Tolstoy held at the Tolstoy estate, a trip to Saint Petersburg to visit a reconstruction of an ice palace first built in the reign of Catherine the great).
But that's as good as it gets. Ms Batuman once spent a dismal summer visiting Samarkand. Inexplicably, she insists on telling us all about it. In excruciating detail, spread over three chapters. It takes up almost half of the book and is indescribably tedious. As a general rule, other people's travel memoirs are most interesting when things go wrong, but Ms Batuman's account of her summer in Samarkand almost made me stick pencils in my eyes, just to make it stop. Fortunately, the Kindle has an off switch. Two other chapters, the author's ruminations on Dostoyevsky prompted by a trip to Venice and an account of a conference devoted to Isaac Babel that she helped organize at Stanford, were readable, but not particularly interesting. Ms Batuman, or her editor, should have realized that departmental gossip, though it might be catnip for graduate students, is of almost no interest to anyone else.
One point needs to be addressed. Elif Batuman does not want you to think of this book as just a collection of travel pieces. Seven years in graduate school have apparently given her higher aspirations. So she places this really bizarre section at the end of her introductory chapter, in which she essentially seems to be claiming profundity by association. This kind of thing:
What if you read "Lost Illusions" and ... you went to Balzac's house and Madame Hanska's estate, read every word he ever wrote, dug up every last thing you could about him - and then started writing? That is the idea behind this book.
Say what now? Is Ms Batuman suggesting that simply attending a conference on Tolstoy held at the Tolstoy estate will provide deep insight into his work, or magically improve the quality of one's writing about Tolstoy? This seems charmingly naive, not to say stupid. Or is she just trying to assign some kind of retrospective meaning to her seven years at graduate school?
At any rate, the book is studded throughout with Batuman's assorted drive-by thoughts about various authors, most of them Russian. These are largely innocuous, with the exception of her "analysis" of Dostoyevsky's "The Possessed", which is an embarrassment from start to finish. A plodding, blow-by-blow summary that stretches for pages, is followed by a summary of what her Stanford professor told the class about it, leading in to her infatuation with charismatic classmate Matej, a smouldering Croatian cliche straight from central casting whose "narrow glinting eyes and high cheekbones" cause her to lose control altogether:
"a long-limbed, perfectly proportioned physical elegance, such that his body always looked at once extravagantly casual and flawlessly composed".
Matej alternates between smoldering and brooding, reducing his classmates (male and female) to a state of drooling concupiscence, eventually triggering some kind of epiphanic advance in Batuman's understanding of "The Possessed" (was the trigger his two-pack-a-day habit, the discovery that his great-uncle was a cardinal, or just the shock of finally landing him in bed?) It's to Batuman's credit that her discussion of "The Possessed" avoids the usual mind-numbing academic jargon -- an unfortunate side effect is that its utter banality becomes impossible to conceal.
I cannot agree with those more enthusiastic reviewers who suggest that Batuman offers particularly keen insights. She clearly enjoys reading, but is not especially adept at engaging the reader's enthusiasm. Unless you have a particular interest in obscure Uzbek poets, or the tedium of life in the former Soviet Union, this much-hyped book is likely to disappoint you. ...more
Normally I'm not beguiled by first-person narratives, especially when the voice is that of an obnoxious boorish narcissist. Mykle Hansen's HELP! A BeNormally I'm not beguiled by first-person narratives, especially when the voice is that of an obnoxious boorish narcissist. Mykle Hansen's HELP! A Bear is Eating Me! is an honorable exception. Despite having a protagonist of unparalleled loathsomeness, unblemished by even a hint of concern for others or a scintilla of self-awareness, this book charmed the pants off me. The title is sheer genius, and completely accurate. As the story opens, its truly despicable antihero, Marv Pushkin lies pinned under his all-terrain vehicle somewhere off-road in Alaska. The rest of the 120-page story is structured as an ongoing monolog from Marv to the reader.
If you think about it for a second, you realise that Mykle Hansen set himself a nearly impossible challenge. A first-person narrative in the voice of a complete jerk that still manages to engage the reader is a pretty tall order. I'm happy to report that the author rises to the occasion, magnificently. I read H! ABiEM! in a single afternoon. It was hilarious. And written so smoothly that you ask yourself "how did he do that?"
Lying trapped and helpless isn't the only trial Marv has to survive. There's that angry bear whose cub he ran over with his Rover who takes revenge by gnawing off his extremities. He also suffers several hallucinatory visitations, both human and ursine, as he self-medicates to counter the mounting pain. This makes him the quintessential unreliable narrator.
The character of Marv works as a (hilarious) caricature, but the thought does occur that Hansen may have sacrificed the potential for greater emotional impact by making him so relentlessly loathsome. Most readers will be ambivalent on whether to root for the bear or for Marv. Scrooge's four ghostly visitors ultimately cause him to undergo a change of heart. Lear's misadventures in the storm teach him compassion and effect a reconciliation with Cordelia before he dies; Gloucester learns to see more clearly as a result of his blinding. HELP! A Bear is Eating Me! is not a story of growth and redemption. But so what? It's brilliantly realised and genuinely funny.
Before reading this book I was not a fan of Rebecca Solnit. Upon the insistent recommendation of several friends who rarely steer me wrong, a few yearBefore reading this book I was not a fan of Rebecca Solnit. Upon the insistent recommendation of several friends who rarely steer me wrong, a few years ago I bought a copy of her earlier book about Eadweard Muybridge ("River of Shadows") and found it completely unreadable. I could sense that Solnit was smart, but it was as if she were speaking in tongues - wading through her prose was sheer torment. So I ditched it.
About a month ago I heard her speak about this latest book on a local radio program and she was so incredibly smart and passionate and articulate, and her thesis was so appealing, that I felt compelled to give her another chance. A Paradise Built in Hell was well worth it. It's an extraordinary book -- fascinating, thought-provoking, and ultimately persuasive in supporting Solnit's thesis. And although her style is still somewhat undisciplined, and the material could have been more tightly organized, I found these aspects less annoying than in the previous book, probably because they seemed to be primarily a manifestation of her infectious enthusiasm for the material.
Viewers of "The History Channel" will be familiar with its habit of broadcasting a regularly scheduled "Apocalypse Week", during which they attempt to goose the ratings by scaring the bejasus out of their viewing audience. A typical day's programming during Apocalypse Week takes one possible way in which the world might end (megavolcano explosion, meteor impact, nuclear holocaust, deadly plague, climatic catastrophe, the Rapture, Armageddon as prophesied in the Book of Revelations, insert your own favorite apocalyptic nightmare here ...) and develops it in depth. The cynicism and idiocy with which these scenarios are fleshed out cannot be overstated (e.g. alleged "experts" pontificate on whether emergency services are likely to be overextended, or whether planes will fall out of the skies, in the immediate aftermath of the Rapture; or the apocalypse is linked to the prophecies of Nostradamus, or the Mayan calendar; boundless idiocy runs rampant). Certain themes are common to all apocalyptic scenarios, however- in particular, a complete breakdown of the social order, with people reverting overnight to atavistic stereotypes, resorting to looting and hoarding as they fight tooth and claw for limited resources. This projected behavioral model is also popular with government and law enforcement agencies, e.g. to justify the aggressive intervention by armed law enforcement personnel with broad powers and orders to shoot to kill (think of the official response to Hurricane Katrina). It's based on a depressing and frightening view of human nature.
In A Paradise Built in Hell Solnit mounts a spirited argument that this pessimistic view of how people respond to catastrophe is fundamentally wrong. Instead, she argues, disasters are far more likely to bring out the best in people -- there is a natural desire to help one another, which is actually easier to put into action, given the relaxation of social barriers that often prevails in the wake of a disaster. You might go for years just nodding at that neighbor across the street, but after the earthquake/fire/blackout the two of you may just end up having a real conversation.
Solnit grounds her argument in five specific case studies:
* the San Francisco earthquake of 1906 * the 1917 explosion of the munitions ship Mont Blanc in Halifax, Nova Scotia * Mexico City's 1985 earthquake * the World Trade Center attacks of 2001 * Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath.
There were instances where a bad situation was made worse when those in power, through fear or panic, resorted to extreme and unwarranted measures (General Funston's imposition of de facto martial law following the SF quake, where soldiers were given license to shoot to kill anyone who did not cooperate satisfactorily; FEMA's and law enforcement's response after Katrina, where citizens were treated as likely criminals rather than people who needed to be helped). The fear-mongering narrative of barely contained pandemonium often finds traction with the media, but is rarely accurate. By detailed examination of the five case studies, Solnit makes an extremely convincing argument that the "natural" response to disaster is increased cooperation, a sense of solidarity and future possibility, indeed a degree of exhilaration among most survivors.
All five examples are interesting, but her discussion of the WTC attacks and Hurricane Katrina stand out as exceptionally measured, thoughtful and thought-provoking.
This is an extraordinary, wonderful book, which I recommend to everyone....more
Of all the anthologies appearing annually under the "Best American" rubric, the one whose quality appears most highly dependent on the particular choiOf all the anthologies appearing annually under the "Best American" rubric, the one whose quality appears most highly dependent on the particular choice of guest editor is the "Best American Essays" collection. Just compare the 2007 and 2008 collections, edited respectively by David Foster Wallace and Adam Gopnik, to see just how much difference a guest editor can make (DFW leaves Gopnik in the dust, unsurprisingly). So I was somewhat reassured to see Christopher Hitchens as this year's invited editor. After all, Hitchens can be regarded as a kind of literary Simon Cowell -- someone who projects the image of being way too self-satisfied with his own gleefully obnoxious persona, but who's nonetheless possessed of reasonably good judgment, with a refreshing unwillingness to suffer fools gladly. Although one might be repelled by his personality, the chances of his serving up a plateful of dud essays seemed remote. At the very least, he seemed likely to have high editorial standards and a broad range of interests. So I had high hopes for this year's anthology.
Which were, unfortunately, not quite met. The 2010 collection of "best" essays is not a complete failure. Many of the contributions are excellent, though there are few that I would classify as outstanding (Steven Pinker's "My Genome, Myself" is an honorable exception, though I had already read it twice - in the NY Times when it first appeared, and in the 2010 anthology of Best American Science Writing; James Woods's New Yorker piece on George Orwell, "A Fine Rage", also shines, as does Jane Churchon's exquisite "The Dead Book"). But there were many pieces that simply failed to take off, in that the reader could only observe the writer's passion for his subject, but was never moved to share it ("Brooklyn the Unknowable", "Rediscovering Central Asia", "Gettysburg Regress" all proved too soporific for me to finish). And I remain puzzled as to the reason for including the longest essay in the collection, a 24-page profile of former Washington DC mayor, Marion Barry, whose relevance in 2010 would appear to be non-existent. Retired ophthalmologist John Gamel's beautifully written piece "The Elegant Eyeball" was spoiled for me by being about a decade behind the times as far as available treatments were concerned. I thought Zadie Smith's recent essay collection Changing my Mind was astonishing, but "Speaking in Tongues" is not the essay I would have singled out for inclusion here. Fans of David Sedaris will be more delighted than I was by inclusion of his piece "Guy Walks into a Bar Car", but my Sedaris-fatigue is well-documented, so your mileage may vary.
A breakdown of essay by general topic/type is revealing:
# of pieces concerned with writers/writing - 8 of 21 # of pieces that are autobiographical - 10 of 21
Even allowing for some double counting between those two categories, that's still an awful lot of navel-gazing for a 250-page volume. And this is ultimately what prevents this collection from being anything more than adequate. Perhaps if writers understood that the world of writers and writing is nowhere near as infinitely fascinating to the general reader as it apparently is to them, there would be a greater chance of producing an anthology of pieces that are genuinely interesting.
I thought Christopher Hitchens might have the breadth of vision to produce a genuinely dazzling collection this year. I was wrong. The 2010 anthology is not an embarrassment. But neither is it particularly exciting.
Like, omigod dudes and dudettes!!! This book is pants-crappingly awesome*.
Over the past few days the smart folks on GR have been engaged in an onLike, omigod dudes and dudettes!!! This book is pants-crappingly awesome*.
Over the past few days the smart folks on GR have been engaged in an ongoing discussion of Richard Powers, in particular the reputed-to-be-remarkable Galatea 2.2. "Ah", I think to myself, "I missed the whole Bolano bandwagon, but here's a chance to make up some ground - I'll order Galatea 2.2 and then I can maybe slip a few pseudo-profundities into the discussion so I can appear smart by association". (This being goodreads, contributing to the discussion when you haven't read the book is a very risky strategy - these are the smart kids after all). So I log in to Amazon, submit my order, and through the miracle of FedEx, my very own copy of Galatea 2.2 is right there, just waiting for me to crack it open.
It was a good plan, and would have worked just fine, had I not included "Everything Explained Through Flowcharts" on the same order. It was a bit like unpacking the new Soloflex machine you'd ordered, only to find that someone had thoughtfully included a crack pipe with a week's supply in the package. What's it going to be? Edifying Galatea 2.2 or a hit of delicious literary crack?
I'm ashamed to confess, that was eight hours ago. There has been ample opportunity to set the crack pipe** aside in the interim. But why would you? Because, I mean, it makes no sense to read the Powers book until I've absorbed all of the wisdom that Doogie Horner has packed into this work. A work of sheer fucking genius, I might add.
Ultimately, my contribution to the ongoing Galatea 2.2 discussion can only be more insightful, more incisive, once I've fully absorbed the insanely comprehensive taxonomy of heavy metal band names, the stunningly complete exegesis of movie heroes and villains, doomsday scenarios, superpowers, designer paint names, casual and fast-food dining. How did I manage to survive this long without having access to the "equivalent health effects of deadly fast food" chart (sample entries: Carl's Jr. Double Six-Dollar Burger = nail hammered into your pancreas; Bloomin' Onion = bullet)?
If you need further convincing, you can find a sample from the book at this link .
Or you could just take my word for it. THIS BOOK IS SHEER GENIUS FROM START TO FINISH.
*: I realize that this particular phrase has been trademarked by a certain GR reviewer in Indiana, and possibly by Spike TV, but it's really the only possible descriptor here. **: For younger readers, or those unskilled in discerning sarcasm - please note that "crack" is being used as a metaphor throughout this review. There is no actual crack pipe - i have never smoked crack, and neither should you. In the immortal words of Whitney, 'crack is wack'....more
Generally I'm a sucker for books about books, so I expected to like this more than I actually did. But, although Allison Hoover Bartlett writes well, Generally I'm a sucker for books about books, so I expected to like this more than I actually did. But, although Allison Hoover Bartlett writes well, she never quite managed to convince me that this book was anything other than a magazine article that got out of hand. John Charles Gilkey, the serial book thief at the center of the story, is not completely dull, but he's not as interesting as the author seems to believe and certainly not interesting enough to warrant a 250+ page book. I think that the time and energy Bartlett spent in researching the topic caused her to overestimate its general appeal. She's not the first non-fiction writer to fall into that particular trap, and I'm sure she won't be the last.
(A tip to all non-fiction authors: IT'S NOT ABOUT YOU. If you notice that you are starting to a take a prominent role in the story, it's a dead giveaway that your story may be getting away from you. In olden days there was this priesthood of people known as editors who would step in and point this out to you, to save you from yourself. Sadly, this kind of editor (intelligent, engaged, firm) appears to have gone extinct, so let me say this explicitly here. If you're writing non-fiction, please stay out of the picture. Repeatedly insinuating yourself into the narrative will not make me like you more - instead it's likely to reduce the quality of your reporting and irritate the hell out of most readers. So, unless you're Richard Feynman, resist the temptation to make yourself a character in the narrative. We all have a boundless need to be liked; please don't pander to yours by gatecrashing your narrative). Allison Hoover Bartlett's failure to resist this temptation weakens this book significantly, though not fatally.
The failure of the book to ignite my interest stems from something that was essentially beyond the author's control. The problem is that John Charles Gilkey's kleptomania is the only faintly interesting thing about him, and it's not as fascinating as you might think. According to the jacket blurb, "Gilkey steals for love -- the love of books". This is accurate, strictly speaking, but it's also highly misleading. His obsession centers only on books as status objects and has nothing whatever to do with their intellectual content or with the joy of reading. He could just as well have focused his energy on stealing collectible paperweights. Or Pez dispensers. The realization that Gilkey steals books, not because he wants to read them, but because he thinks they will enhance his status, is ultimately what made this book fall flat for me. Despite Bartlett's borderline obsession with her subject, for me the book amounted to little more than a meandering account of the petty misdeeds of a small-time, singularly uncharismatic, drifter. When the account eventually just petered out, it came as a relief.
I'm making it sound worse than it is. Bartlett writes fluidly and the story is not completely without interest. It was just far less interesting than I'd expected ...more
Only four stars this year. It's still good stuff, but there was a little too much self-conscious cleverness in the shorter entries this year. So not aOnly four stars this year. It's still good stuff, but there was a little too much self-conscious cleverness in the shorter entries this year. So not as awesome as previous entries in the series.
Plus, I am so over David Sedaris, which might have had something to do with it. Would it have killed him to write an introduction that actually made reference to the damned book? Mr Sedaris, like some other regular contributors to "This American Life" suffers that rare problem of living an over-examined life. Myself, I lost interest at least two books ago.
It's still one of the best damned anthologies around, though. ...more
I'd been consciously avoiding this book. It seemed to be ubiquitous there for a while, jostling for position among my Amazon recommendations, enjoyingI'd been consciously avoiding this book. It seemed to be ubiquitous there for a while, jostling for position among my Amazon recommendations, enjoying pride of place on the "Our staff recommends" shelf at various physical bookstores, just generally trying to ingratiate itself into my shopping basket. I resented this, so I would find excuses not to buy it - I'd already read half a dozen books on this topic within the past couple of years, the author looked like a precocious teenager with attitude, this was his second book already (clever bastard!), I didn't like his essay in the recent Science writing anthology, etc etc etc. But finally, at the San Francisco yuppie Borders going out of business sale, I broke down and put it in my basket.
I still think that recent essay was weak. But this book is terrific. (to be continued)...more
This annual selection is generally a good bet, though there have been some recent bum years (http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...). Series editor This annual selection is generally a good bet, though there have been some recent bum years (http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...). Series editor Jesse Cohen minimized his risk this year by prevailing on Jerome Groopman to serve as guest editor. Dr Groopman's own science writing is familiar to readers of the New Yorker; he is also author of several best-selling books. For me, seeing his name on the cover of this anthology was an immediate guarantee of quality - I'm pleased to say that the collection lived up to my expectations.
In his otherwise excellent introduction Dr Groopman introduces the metaphor that the book might be thought of as a "symphony of science". It's not a particularly fortuitous choice (one suspects it may have been forced on him by the series editor), but he struggles gamely with it to the bitter end. I prefer his introduction to a previous, similar, anthology (http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/33...), in which he laid out his criteria for inclusion:
"the articles ... have novel and surprising arguments, protagonists who articulate their themes in clear, cogent voices, and vivid cinema. They are not verbose or tangential. They are filled with simple declarative sentences. ... I suspect none of the articles was easy to write. Each shows a depth of thought and reporting that takes time and considerable effort."
These are admirable criteria, indicating an editor who keeps the reader's welfare firmly in mind. And, with very few exceptions, the articles in the 2010 anthology satisfy them, so that the collection is accessible, thought-provoking and fun to read. I came away with the impression of a slight bias in favor of biomedical research (only weakly confirmed upon closer inspection of article categories), and a relatively narrow spectrum of sources:
New York Times : 5 New Yorker : 3 Science : 3 Salon.com : 2 Wired : 2
and one each from The Atlantic, The Boston Globe, Harper's, Discover, The Nation, The New York Review of Books, Scientific American, and Science News.
This reliance on sources from what might be termed the "north-eastern establishment" prevented me from awarding a fifth star - one thing I look for in this kind of anthology is to be led to articles I might not otherwise come across, and on this criterion Dr Groopman let me down. But this sin of omission was a relatively minor disappointment, given the high quality of the articles that were included.
Some of the contributors are famous scientists(Steven Pinker My Genome, My Self, Steven Weinberg The Missions of Astronomy), some are established science writers (Elizabeth Kolbert, Benedict Carey, David Dobbs), all but a few* contributors write clearly and engagingly.
My favorite articles were Elizabeth Kolbert's contribution about the link between climate change and the extinction of entire species and Sheri Fink's account of the agonizing triage choices that hospital staff faced after the onslaught of Hurricane Katrina. But there were at least a dozen other articles that were strong contenders.
This is an excellent anthology, which I have no hesitation in recommending.
* : I read Daniel M. Wegner's How to Think, Say, or Do Precisely the Worst Thing for Any Occasion three times and found it as devoid of substance on the third reading as on the first. Jonah Lehrer's The Truth about Grit had the blindingly obvious message that perseverance is necessary to succeed in science, but ran for almost eight pages and resorted to such unfortunate verbiage as "a gritty person might occasionally eat too much chocolate cake, but they won't change careers every year". ...more
"Proofiness" by Charles Seife is a well-intentioned book that suffers a definite crisis of identity. The jacket blurb aFINAL REVIEW: October 23, 2010
"Proofiness" by Charles Seife is a well-intentioned book that suffers a definite crisis of identity. The jacket blurb and author's introduction promise a guided tour of the seamy underworld of statistical malpractice, that is, an account of the most common ways data are misrepresented or misinterpreted in the media, either through carelessness or because of a deliberate effort to mislead. Seife is not the first author to consider the issue of misleading data analysis; his book carries on a tradition that dates back as far as Darrell Huff's "How to Lie with Statistics", with contributions from Edward Tufte ("The Visual Display of Quantitative Information"), or last year's excellent "The Numbers Game: The Commonsense Guide to Understanding Numbers in the News, in Politics, and in Life" by Michael Blastland and Andrew Dilnot.
There is a major gap between what "Proofiness" promises and what Seife actually delivers. The first hundred pages are roughly what one might expect: graphical deception by use of misleading labels or scales, comparison of apples and oranges (e.g. dollar amounts unadjusted for inflation, absence of an appropriate control group, regression to the mean), cherry-picking of data, the tendency to interpret mere random variation as systematic, nonsensical conclusions obtained by extrapolating beyond the range of observed data, overstatement of the precision of measurements, the way in which humans are hard-wired to misinterpret risk and deal poorly with calculations involving risk. Seife's exposition of these topics is lively and clear (with the major caveat discussed below). About halfway through the chapter on risk, however, he makes a major detour. His discussion of the malfeasance of those involved in the Enron debacle, the Bernie Madoff pyramid scheme, the failures at AIG, Citigroup and other institutions, and the subsequent bailout efforts has almost nothing to do with statistical trickery, focusing instead on the public policy and regulatory issues raised by the financial meltdown.
The next chapter, "Poll Cats" does return to the issues involved in conducting accurate sample surveys and presenting the data appropriately, with a reasonably clear discussion of systematic error versus random error. However, the following two chapters, "Electile Dysfunction" and "An Unfair Vote", taking up some 80 pages, really have little to do with data-related issues. Instead they provide a review of events surrounding the Florida vote count in the 2000 presidential election, the six-month circus that took place before Al Franken was eventually declared winner in the 2008 Minnesota Senate race, and a review of historical and present-day gerrymandering efforts whenever congressional redistricting comes up for discussion. Not that Seifen's review of the relevant events, and the issues they raise, is not interesting - it just seems to belong in a different book, as does the appendix in which he discusses electronic voting. In making this criticism, I take the view that fraud, malfeasance and corruption stemming from poor public policy, faulty regulatory mechanisms, or inadequate enforcement of existing protections, really are subjects for a different kind of book than that initially described by Seifen. Though the author does return to his initial remit in the final two chapters (discussing abuse of probability and statistical arguments within the judicial system, and for propaganda purposes), overall the book does not make a coherent whole.
The caveat mentioned above, regarding Seife's exposition methods, is a major one, and prevents me from giving this book my endorsement, despite its good intentions. It's evident right there in the book's faux-cute title, "Proofiness". I wish I could say that the author offers a rigorous definition of exactly what he means by this invented term, but he doesn't. It remains unhelpfully vague throughout the book. Sadly, it's not the only example of authorial neologism run amok. "Disestimation", "Potemkin numbers", "randumbness", "regression to the moon", and the horrendous coinage "causuistry"; each of these is a neologism that adds nothing to the discussion. Many of them lack a clear definition, or when a definition is offered, the term just seems to muddy the waters. For instance, Seife uses "disestimation" to mean "overstatement of the precision of a number or measurement", indicating an error related to precision. But the 'dis'-prefix clearly suggests a systematic error, as does the parallelism with "misestimation", which statisticians routinely use to indicate a systematic error. And while one applauds the author's efforts to educate his readership about the error of mistaking correlation for causation, the term "causuistry" is simply an abomination. I'm not sure where this recent trend for authors to invent their own faux-cutesy terminology, where none is needed, originates (possibly Malcolm Gladwell bears some of the responsibility), but I wish it would end.
Though I am sympathetic to the author's stated aims, his execution was such that I cannot endorse this book. A better bet would be "The Numbers Game: The Commonsense Guide to Understanding Numbers in the News, in Politics, and in Life" by Michael Blastland and Andrew Dilnot.
One of the benefits of retiring from my career as a statistician is that I no longer feel it's my personal responsibility to alert friends and colleagues to the myriad ways they are being misled or deceived by the kind of abominably poor summarization of data that's pretty much the norm these days. It's just as well - who wants to be that guy, the crank at the table who people start to inch away from surreptitiously, avoiding eye contact all the while?
Not that I endorse misleading or deceptive data presentation - far from it. Now more than ever, as we all struggle to make sense of the avalanche of information that constantly assails us, the capacity for critical, intelligent interpretation is vital. So it's important to be able to see through the most prevalent fallacies in data interpretation, not to mention data presentation strategies deliberately intended to mislead.
Sadly, just mentioning the word "statistics" has a demonstrable eye-glazing effect on all but the nerdiest adults. This latest book by Charles Seife has the laudable goal of overcoming the MEGO* reflex and educating the reader about some of the most common types of statistical malpractice out there, continuing a tradition established by such authors as Darrell Huff ("How to Lie With Statistics"), John Paulos ("Innumeracy") or the authors of last year's highly successful "The Numbers Game" (Michael Blastland and Andrew Dilnot).
I will write a more complete review of this book in due course. For now, I can only remark that, although I was completely predisposed to like it, Charles Seife has already committed crimes against the language that are regrettable, to say the least. The hideous coinage "Proofiness" is an obvious example; the abominable term "disestimation" is another. It remains to be seen whether these lapses are merely aesthetic, or whether Seife is guilty of the greater sin of coining faux-cutesy terms with definitions so fuzzy that they're meaningless. **
* MEGO = "my eyes glaze over" ** a Gladwellian tic that has, unfortunately, been widely copied.
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'm the product of an Irish Catholic boarding school for boys. In September 1968, at the tender age of 11, I left the warm (over-)protective bosom of I'm the product of an Irish Catholic boarding school for boys. In September 1968, at the tender age of 11, I left the warm (over-)protective bosom of home and family -- not just one, but two grandmothers, and a housekeeper to fuss over me while my mother saw patients -- and became one of the 80 or so boys in the first year class at a Franciscan boarding school, about 25 miles north of Dublin, and 160 miles from home. The experience, particularly the first year, was incredibly brutal*. But it was also entirely necessary, and completely transformative. I can trace back almost all of what I consider to be my defining character traits to that first year at Gormanston. I wouldn't consider the time I spent at boarding school the "best years" of my life, but it was definitely formative. The survival strategies I learned there pretty much set the pattern for the rest of my life.
So I approached Skippy Dies with reservations, and a certain amount of trepidation. The defining characteristic of life in a boys' boarding school is tedium - would Paul Murray be able to capture the tedium accurately and still write an interesting book? Would reading it stir up a bunch of memories best left undisturbed? And could the book possibly live up to the considerable hype that it has generated?
It turned out to be pretty amazing. Paul Murray does indeed get boarding school life down right - he completely nails it. His more significant accomplishment is to have written a book whose appeal transcends the specificity of its setting. Skippy Dies is a sprawling, ambitious doorstopper of a book, with an extensive cast of characters (jocks, nerds, priests, lay teachers, parents, drug dealers, psychopaths), not unlike a Dickens story. Fortunately, Murray has the skill to bring these assorted character to life and to tell a story that grabs and keeps the reader's interest.
The main focus of the book is to present the events that led up to the death of 14 year old Skippy and to explore its effect on the school community. Along the way, Murray considers a huge variety of disparate themes, ranging from string theory to ancient Irish burial mounds to trench warfare in World War I. Not to mention the pervasive adolescent obsession with sex. At times it seems as if these are mere digressions in a book that's already quite hefty, but the author knows what he's about, and pulls the various threads of his tapestry together to a powerful and satisfying conclusion. With so many balls in the air, you keep expecting him to crash and burn, but he doesn't -- the writing is superb throughout, the story never flags, you don't want it to stop and are a little bit sad when it does.
What do we ask of a good novel? A question with as many answers as readers (a pointless question if you live in Toronto and are called Buck). I take a slightly old-fashioned view. If an author can create a vividly imagined world, make me care about his characters, and tell a good story that moves me, then I'm a happy camper. Paul Murray does all of these things in this terrific book, and does them so brilliantly that the story transcends the specificity of its particular milieu. Other reviewers have suggested that the book is likely to appeal only to male readers - I couldn't disagree more.
This is a terrific book. The Man Booker judges should hang their heads in shame for their failure to include it on this year's shortlist.
*factors that worked against me included my age (at least 2 years younger than anyone else in my class), my generally spastic performance at all sports (even more unforgivable was my unwillingness to even pretend to care about sports) and - fatally - showing up on the first day only to realize that I was the only kid in the school still outfitted in short pants. I might as well have had a "KICK ME" sign around my neck - my mother carried her guilt about this rare misstep with her to her grave.
Random demonic possession is a problem in the slightly altered reality in which "Pandemonium" is set. Various archetypical demons (Truth, Captain ValiRandom demonic possession is a problem in the slightly altered reality in which "Pandemonium" is set. Various archetypical demons (Truth, Captain Valiant, the Angel of Death*, to name a few) are showing up, hijacking the bodies of randomly chosen hosts and disrupting public order by behaving demonically. Collateral damage to the unlucky host can be anything from mild trauma to death. Nobody really understands what is causing this epidemic of demonic possession which has spawned a plethora of "demonologists" in a broad assortment of flavors. Jungian psychologists, neuropsychologists, priests, psychics, mediums, and various other charlatans all have suggestions about the best approach to exorcism, but not much success.
The issue has become urgent for Del, Pandemonium's first person narrator. At age six, Del was taken over by a demon called Hellion (kind of a scary, more dangerous, version of Dennis the Menace). Though he seemed to make a full recovery, recent events suggest that the demon never left. The story follows Del's efforts to get to the root of his problem through to its ultimate resolution.
Demonic possession is well outside my usual reading beat, but this book seemed to be attracting a lot of positive attention, so I thought I'd give it a shot. Overall verdict: I thought "Pandemonium" was a fairly decent story, but nothing exceptional.
Strengths Daryl Gregory writes well. Pacing was good. Decent plot with a reasonably satisfactory resolution. COMPLETELY VAMPIRE-FREE!!! PALINDROMES!!! It's short.
Weaknesses The alternate reality that is the setting for the story is not particularly convincing. The development is a little perfunctory - Gregory keeps a tight focus on Del's story arc and doesn't really explore his premise beyond what he needs to resolve Del's situation. At times the exposition was a little too oblique - key plot developments were not always clear, or details were blurred. The little in-joke references to Philip K Dick, AE van Vogt, and the like may delight SciFi aficionados, but they sailed right over my ignorant head. COMPLETELY VAMPIRE-FREE!!!
*Writers probably can't ever ditch certain fundamental aspects of their style. With DFW it's the slightly manic, ever-looping aScattered observations:
*Writers probably can't ever ditch certain fundamental aspects of their style. With DFW it's the slightly manic, ever-looping association of ideas as his brain connects his current thought to stuff you would never have imagined. Franzen seems unable to dodge the unevenness trap - brilliant for long stretches, interspersed with material that is either preachy, superfluous, or both.
*Less powerful than "The Corrections" because his characters are less universal. Arguably they are all stand-ins for Franzen's own concerns and insecurities. Which are not uninteresting. But neither are they super-interesting.
*Why are they all so uptight? Even when kicking over the traces, nobody seems to be having much fun.
*So much emphasis on life's constraints and limitations. A "great" book/author should leave us with a heightened sense of life's possibilities? (Should it?)
*Despite the superficially broad canvas, at the 400-page mark it feels really, really claustrophobic.
*Clear pluses - writing is smooth; invariably, just when you feel you'll never get out of a particular dull patch, Franzen delivers something that's not just good, but kind of awesome.
It's hard to provide a coherent summary. In its favor, "Freedom" is a very enjoyable read, it's structured very smartly (though this is obvious only in retrospect), and benefits from Franzen's ability to nail aspects of the culture with enviable precision. Its mixture of small-scale concerns (the Berglund family dynamics) with larger societal issues is laudable, ambitious, not entirely successful, but certainly a worthy and interesting effort. It does suffer from some of the Franzen tics mentioned above. The variation in quality (some characters are superbly realized, others remain flat), occasional bloating (Franzen's particular hobby-horses relating to the environment and population control get quite a workout), and restriction in focus (to a very narrow section of white, upper middle class intellectuals and their concerns) prevent it from being a great novel. There's also that sense of claustrophobia, bordering on joylessness, that hangs over much of the central part of the book, though this is mitigated somewhat towards the end, which was surprisingly powerful and quite moving.
It is, nonetheless, a very good novel. Franzen cannot be blamed for the extraordinary hype that it has generated, and it shouldn't be held against him. Though I don't think "Freedom" quite matched the brilliance of "The Corrections", it's still one of the best books you're likely to come across this year.
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