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
Lethem's boundless self-obsession and whiningly persistent neediness make this collection impossible to get through, despite the presence of an occasiLethem's boundless self-obsession and whiningly persistent neediness make this collection impossible to get through, despite the presence of an occasionally decent essay. But the guy's total narcissism just creeps you out after a while. Doesn't he have any friends? Or a decent literary agent? Someone to point out to him that the world might not have been thirsting for his pompously self-important post 9/11 musings, or his pathetic extended whine in response to a negative review by James Woods? Or his adolescent tastes in music. That publishing every scrap of text on his hard drive in a bloated omnibus collection just makes him seem pathologically narcissistic?
Dude. Just SHUT THE FUCK UP already. What makes you think we care?...more
This was embarrassingly bad, and the news that it has met with broad critical acclaim is infinitely depressing. Take two "damaged" stick figures, defiThis was embarrassingly bad, and the news that it has met with broad critical acclaim is infinitely depressing. Take two "damaged" stick figures, define each only in terms of their 'abnormality', surround them with the standard tableau of distant parents, cruel classmates. Make liberal use of facile, offensive stereotypes, for instance that the only conceivable career option for the emotionally retarded male basket case is to become a mathematician. Because this will allow you to sprinkle in some mumbo-jumbo about prime numbers which will then be taken for some kind of hugely deep meaningful symbolism.
Really, people? This write-by-numbers dreck actually appeals to you? Or did you just give it stars because the author is young and cute? That, at least, I could understand.
This book is formulaic pretentious drivel. My actual rating is closer to zero stars....more
The bookshelves constitute the review. Though I paid only $2.98 for this smug little nugget of crap, I'm tempted to sue the estate of Muriel Spark jusThe bookshelves constitute the review. Though I paid only $2.98 for this smug little nugget of crap, I'm tempted to sue the estate of Muriel Spark just on principle. The characters don't even rise to the level of caricature; they are stick figures that Dame Muriel pushes around her chessboard for a while. Until she can't be bothered anymore. The mystery is why she bothered at all. Surely she didn't need the money, and why would she choose to have this piece of mincingly clever dreck be her last "novel"?
I appear to be in a minority of one on this book. So be it. But this is really nothing more than a case of a talented author phoning it in. Muriel Spark's conversion to Catholicism and its effect on her writing are well documented. Somewhere during that conversion process she should have learned the meaning of shame. Because this is a book to be ashamed of.
I could allow my righteous indignation to sputter on for several more paragraphs, but I think I've made my point. There is nothing in this book that merits your attention. ...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've read somewhere that the main thing a novelist needs to accomplish in the first 10% of a story is to convince the reader to keep reading. John BanI've read somewhere that the main thing a novelist needs to accomplish in the first 10% of a story is to convince the reader to keep reading. John Banville obviously does not feel bound by this advice. Hell, no, with a kind of oblivious arrogance that might almost be admirable, if it weren't so irritating, he launches this grotesquely overwritten galley of pretentious claptrap, and let the reader be damned!
The domineering patriarch lies dying in the upper chamber. Assorted members of the family he's mistreated over the years are fluttering around ineffectively. Also fluttering around is the omniscient narrator to beat all omniscient narrators, Hermes, whose pappy Zeus may or may not be ravishing the in-laws, while Pan ......
Oh, never mind. Who can be bothered? Reading the reviews of other goodreaders, I notice that there is a certain type of reader that Banfield spurs on to a kind of semi-ecstatic, hagiographic logorrhea. I suggest you read their reviews, which are among the funniest things I've read in months.
Life is too short. I gave it 60 pages. That's enough.
Upon winning the Booker Prize in 2005, John Banville commented that "it was nice to see a work of art win.... There are plenty of other rewards for middle-brow fiction. There should be one decent prize for real books."
This pretentious git* is president of his own fan club. The fact that I think his writing is ridiculous bloviation aspiring to be high culture won't worry him a bit. But don't say you weren't warned.
*: the fact that he's a countryman of mine seems to make it worse, somehow....more
Oh Lord, no. This is just not my cup of tea at all, thanks very much Doctor Holt. The eery detachment. Isolation and imminent apocalypse. The spooky BOh Lord, no. This is just not my cup of tea at all, thanks very much Doctor Holt. The eery detachment. Isolation and imminent apocalypse. The spooky Borgesian narrators, barely recognizable as human. The recurring failure of characters to connect.
Yes, yes. It's all very accomplished. But one feels that one is being told these stories by a robot and hearing them through layers of cotton wool. Terrence Holt is a practicing M.D. at UNC Chapel Hill -- given the preternatural detachment he shows in these stories, it makes you wonder about his bedside manner. Actually, given that rugged photo of him on the old yacht and the info that he's a contributing editor for Men's Health, I know he'll never be my doctor.
[image]
So what is it that I didn't like, besides the general eschatological tone, the apocalyptic foreshadowing, the portentous invocation of assorted Greek and Egyptian deities, the breakdown of human contact? Well, let's take a closer look:
O Λoγoς!: It's just Poe's "Masque of the Red Death" updated with a Borgesian tic, and a title that manages to span two languages, neither of them English.
My Father's Heart: Dude keeps Daddy's heart beating in a glass jar on the mantel. Didn't Roald Dahl already do this one, with considerably more wit and without overdosing on the doom and gloom? Unoriginal and boring.
Charybdis: This is the "Major Tom" story. Dude trapped on a mission to Jupiter; accident nixes return. Serial ship's log entries, each with a complete lack of affect. The possibility that these entries are actually being generated by the ship's computer HAL cannot be ruled out. Either way, why should anyone possibly care?
A few more outer space episodes...
It will come as no surprise to find that the last story in the collection is called "Apocalypse".
It's possible that the 80-page novella that rounds out the collection and gives it its name will redeem the general pretentious bleakness of the remaining stories. But I seriously doubt it.
These stories are not what I look for in a good short story. Your mileage may vary.
Reader, beware! With all the sweaty desperation of a couple of cheap strippers, here comes the distinctly unsavor You gotta have a gimmick
("Gypsy")
Reader, beware! With all the sweaty desperation of a couple of cheap strippers, here comes the distinctly unsavory father-and-daughter vaudeville team of David P. and Nanelle R. Barash, bumping and grinding towards you, tipping you a leering wink as they try to lure you with their patented gimmick - the special high-tech e-vo-lution-ary reading lens.
Gentle reader, run for your life! It's not just that this pair of brachiate mouth-breathers have nothing of interest to impart. Much worse, they are possessed of a sensibility so crass, a vocabulary so crude, cognitive deficits so far-ranging, that time spent in their company cannot end well. The severely limited cognitive ability of this pair can accommodate neither complexity nor subtlety, nor nuance of any kind. Which renders those fancy "evolutionary" lenses they are peddling as reductive as a pair of cheap 3D glasses from a 1950s creature feature.
Men just want to screw as much pussy as they can get away with, women are just looking for a sugar daddy who will provide for their babies, and blood is thicker than water. Because, as the Barassholes so charmingly explain: "Females are egg makers; males are sperm squirters."
And there you have it folks. In that crassly reductive nutshell you have the entire Barash key to literary interpretation. Sprinkle in assorted references to rutting stags battling it out for dominance, peacock's tails and other elaborate courtship rituals, repeat the terms "gene", "DNA" and "evolution" often enough to keep the humanities folks guessing - and they got themselves a gimmick!
The Barasshole's opinion of their readership is apparently not very high. They take care to point out that the "American writer Kate Chopin"'s name is pronounced like "that of the renowned composer". And the blindingly obvious is pointed out with numbing frequency:
"Aha!" says the reader: a mother helping out her own offspring. "Aha!" says the evolutionary biologist: genes helping themselves.
In other breaking news, parents find the death of a child incredibly upsetting. Oh, and the bond between a step-parent and a child is often more problematic than that with the child's natural parent.
So Othello is reduced to an enraged silverback, lashing out to maintain his alpha male status. Lady Dedlock seeks out her illegitimate daughter to effect a joyous reconciliation. The Dursleys are mean and spiteful to the stepchild Harry Potter. See how simple it is? Genes explain everything. All of literature is made clear viewed through the awesome prism of evolutionary psychology. The genetic advantage that accrues to the house of Atreus by having Agamemnon kill his daughter Iphigenia would be what, now? The stupidity and arrogance of these authors is simply breathtaking.
Equally disturbing is their vulgarity. The analogy of strippers in a titty bar is not inappropriate - the kind of leeringly reductive "analysis" that this knuckle-dragging duo specializes in leaves the reader feeling coarsened, if not actually violated, and in need of a cleansing shower. Other crimes to be found in this book include assorted atrocities against the language (please don't make me go into details), as well as a disturbingly cavalier tendency to blurt out complete plot details of books the reader might still have been planning to read.
This book is deeply offensive and insulting to the intelligence. These people need to be stopped.
This book is an incoherent mess. Buried somewhere among the thickets of impenetrable prose, run-on sentences and sundry atrocities against the EnglishThis book is an incoherent mess. Buried somewhere among the thickets of impenetrable prose, run-on sentences and sundry atrocities against the English language is a semi-decent idea. But Alfred W. Crosby sorely lacks the skills to bring it to light.
It's rare that a book can actually make me flinch, but AWC managed it on every other page. Two sample paragraphs convey the flavor of the writing:
Pantometry is one of the neologisms that appeared in increasing numbers in the languages of Europe in the first half of the second Christian millennium, words summoned into being by new tendencies, institutions, and discoveries. Milione and America are others. A general surge of more in the 1200s rendered a thousand thousand obsolete and inspired a convenient replacement: milione. Columbus and Amerigo Vespucci and the like created the need for America two centuries or so later. These words were sparks thrown off by the wheels of Western society veering and grating against the sides of old ruts. The veerings and gratings are the subject of this book, but first we must examine the ruts, that is to say, the view of reality that most medieval and Renaissance Western Europeans accepted. We can begin by putting aside the word rut.
The raison d'etre of this book is to describe an acceleration after 1250 or so in the West's shift from qualitative perception to, or at least toward, quantificational perception. Most particularly, we want to ferret out the source of that acceleration. The latter half of the assignment is daunting, and before we begin we must discuss just what we are looking for lest we convince ourselves we have found it before we get to it.
This is "scientific" writing at its worst - bloated (inclusion of the neologism "America" has nothing to do with the point he is trying to make; the second paragraph could be written simply as "This book aims to describe an acceleration in the West's shift from qualitative to quantitative perception that occurred after 1250, and to pinpoint its source"), meandering (what does that third sentence mean, anyway?), and inelegant to the point of ugliness ("quantificational"?, that hideous "wheels and sparks" metaphor, with its dreary corollary, that the book is about "veerings and scrapings".
The book is easily twice as long as it needs to be, and there is much meandering, repetitive bloviation which tends to obfuscate, rather than illuminate, whatever argument the author is trying to make. His credibility is not enhanced by glib, fanciful, and largely inaccurate characterizations of the nature of mathematics and of science. Although he acknowledges the central role of commercial and related accounting activities as an impetus towards improved measurement, he stints it implicitly by giving it only 20 pages of text, while devoting fully 60 pages to music and painting as stimuli. This seems frankly skewed, as does his failure to discuss scientific developments in an adequate fashion.
But this is an author who has no evident understanding of mathematics or the scientific method, who is unable to distinguish between true progress in mathematics, numerology and mathematical mysticism. This leads to paragraphs like the following:
"India, the home of Buddha, has produced and continues to produce a disproportionate number of brilliant pure mathematicians. The West has produced most of the good applied physicists, engineers, and accountants. (This may or may not be true of late, but I am speaking historically). One of history's most interesting problems is the question of why."
It is impossible to take this kind of sloppy rubbish seriously. This is a bad book, by an extremely mediocre 'scholar'.
This is the second collection of "short stories" by Lydia Davis that I've tried, and it will be my last. The other collection, "Samuel Johnson is IndiThis is the second collection of "short stories" by Lydia Davis that I've tried, and it will be my last. The other collection, "Samuel Johnson is Indignant" had enough flashes of genuine wit to make it almost tolerable, despite Ms Davis's predilection for microscopically short "stories" (sometimes no more than a sentence long) and a preternaturally detached prose style. The kind of writing that garners raves from the usual suspects - "The best prose stylist in America" (Rick Moody), "one of most precise and economical writers we have" (Dave Eggers), "few writers now working make the words on the page matter more" (Jonathan Franzen).
Well, allow me to differ, Herr Franzen. "Break it Down" is as dismal a collection of bleak, emotionally constipated, tales of misery as I've had the misfortune to read in the last ten years. And let's be clear, Ms Davis's trademarks - "dexterity, brevity, understatement" - are not necessarily virtues. Not when they lead to passages like these, which are ubiquitous
"She stands over a fish, thinking about certain irrevocable mistakes she has made today" "My husband is married to a different woman now, shorter than I am, about five feet tall, solidly built. Next to her I feel bony and awkward .." "I moved into the city just before Christmas. I was alone, and this was a new thing for me. Where had my husband gone? He was living in a small room across the river, in a district of warehouses." "He said there were things about me that he hadn't liked from the very beginning." "Though everyone wishes it would not happen, and though it would be far better if it did not happen, it does sometimes happen that a second daughter is born and there are two sisters. Of course any daughter, crying in the hour of her birth, is only a failure, and is greeted with a heavy heart by her father.." "She can't say to herself that it is really over, even though anyone else would say it was over, since he has moved to another city, hasn't been in touch with her in more than a year, and is married to another woman." "The fact that he does not tell me the truth all the time makes me not sure of his truth at certain times, and then I work to figure out for myself if what he is telling me is the truth or not, and sometimes i can figure out that it's not the truth and sometimes I don't know and never know, and sometimes just because...."
Oh Christ, why don't I just slit my fucking wrists right now? It would surely beat reading this kind of drivel. At a guess, at least half of the 34 'stories' in this book consist of a 3rd person or 1st person narrative, centring on a clinically depressed doormat of a woman either in, or trying to recover from, a toxic relationship with a man who psychologically abuses here. None of these women has a name - they are all just "she". And Davis writes about them with a detachment that borders on the clinical.
In contrast to Jonathan Franzen, I can't imagine how a writer could make the words on the page matter less. The dreary 'stories' in this volume adhere to the dismal prevailing conventions of the late 1980s - tales of narcissistic or bipolar protagonists in which nothing much ever happens, served up in a kind of minimalist prose with that knowing ironic detachment. The kind of tripe that drives me up the wall, in other words.
(on edit, after posting this review: I notice that many of my good friends here on GR don't share my opinion - well, bring it on, Jessicas!)
I just found out that she was at one time married to Paul Auster. Why am I not surprised? ...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
Bret Easton Ellis is an author who makes the (otherwise inexplicable to me) concept of the Finnish sauna appealing. After reading his vile 'brain'-droBret Easton Ellis is an author who makes the (otherwise inexplicable to me) concept of the Finnish sauna appealing. After reading his vile 'brain'-droppings, I wanted to spend hours in an intolerably hot humid cabin, there to sweat and be beaten with birch twigs until all of the vileness I had absorbed from contact with this dreck had been purged from my system.
I truly have a hard time understanding how anyone could consider this book brilliant. But then I also have a hard time understanding why people flock in droves to suffer the latest lientery with which Chuck Palahniuk continues to bescumber his readership.
Sometimes vileness is nothing more than that. There is no pony here - just a heap of stinking album graecum....more
Who knew jellyfish could write? I'd use the word "emasculated" to describe the author of this pathetic "short history of Chile" if it weren't obvious Who knew jellyfish could write? I'd use the word "emasculated" to describe the author of this pathetic "short history of Chile" if it weren't obvious that to do so would be a grievous inaccuracy. Sergio Villalobos Rivera never had cojones to begin with. Hell, on the evidence, SVR doesn't even have a backbone. Which may warrant the creation of a new bookshelf in my collection - one for "written by invertebrates".
OK, OK. Let me back up. All I was looking for was a "brief history of Chile", as the title of this execrable "book" promised. Enough to get me oriented, so that I wouldn't feel like a complete tourist-dickhead during my weeks here in the hellhole that is Santiago. Enough to distinguish Ambrosio O' Higgins from his progeny, Bernardo. And maybe to figure out just why the latter is known all about town as "El libertador", even to the extent of having Santiago's main drag named after him. (Understanding why and when the O' Higginses left Ireland would have been lagniappe, as would any available information about Viscount Mackenna, after whom the street where my school is located is named).
Now, believe me, I understand completely that your average goodreads member probably gives a flying Wallenda about the history of Chile. (Though if you were a U.S. citizen of voting age back in 1973, you might want to ask yourself if such insouciance is wholly justifiable, know what I'm saying?). But please bear with me here. If I don't get some of the incensitude that this "book" has provoked off my chest, I may just blow a gasket. And I shudder to think what Kaiser Permanente's coverage of gasket replacement in a Latin American capital might be.
What's so appalling about this book? Well, everything, really. Here's a short list:
* Despite its 200-page length, it's virtually devoid of information. There's a plethora of generic, meaningless, illustrations which help to take up space, but add nothing whatsoever. Examples: page 78, woodcuts of "mujeres chilenas" in quasi-national garb; page 73, drawing of generic pirate ships; page 66, peasants using wooden ploughs; page 67, a generic grain mill; page 117, drawing of a gentleman in the costume of the era; page 124 drawing of an impoverished peasant; page 114, a ball in the governor's palace; page 93, woodcut of the "building of the tribunal of the consulate", page 58, daily life under the conquistadors. Any of these freaking illustrations could be inserted into the history of any 'brief history" of any Latin American country and nobody would be any the wiser.
* Such text as there is in the book has the texture of cotton wool. Cliche follows platitude follows cliche follows platitude. After a couple pages, you have to stop, because you can actually feel your brain rotting inside your head.
* that spineless quality, alluded to earlier. the fall of the government of Allende is dispatched in less than a paragraph. the atrocities that followed under Pinochet get fewer than 3 lines, including the desultory observation that "more than 3000" people died. The closest Sergio ("Medusa") V-R comes to expressing anything approximating a point of view is to allow that the political situation in 1973 was "very confusing".
"Bah, humbug!", say I. If you are incapable of formulation an opinion, motherfucker, then you are not qualified to be writing history books.
On the plus side, I only paid $8 for this piece of basura. But, to put it another way - I PAID 8 DOLLARS FOR THIS PIECE OF TIME-WASTING RUBBISH?
Caveat lector. If, for whatever reason, you are interested in learning more about the history of Chile, be assured you won't find anything pertinent here.
Gaaaaah! Fade, to the sound of gaskets blowing....
What an overhyped addition to the already overcrowded "20-something inspects navel, whines unattractively, and expects the world to care" shelf this wWhat an overhyped addition to the already overcrowded "20-something inspects navel, whines unattractively, and expects the world to care" shelf this was....more
(If you loved "Future Shock", and "The Celestine Prophecy" changed your life, this is the book for you)
But, wait! All those 5-star revi FUTURE SCHLOCK
(If you loved "Future Shock", and "The Celestine Prophecy" changed your life, this is the book for you)
But, wait! All those 5-star reviews gotta count for something, right? Well, let's take a look.
"We will have the requisite hardware to emulate human intelligence with supercomputers by the end of this decade."
Really, Ray. How's that coming along? You've still got a year, two if we're charitable. But, even despite the spectacular vagueness of the claim, things are hardly looking good.
"For information technologies, there is a second level of exponential growth: that is, exponential growth in the rate of exponential growth".
A breathtakingly audacious claim. Without a scintilla of evidence provided to justify it. Graphs where the future has been conveniently 'filled in' according to the author's highly selective worldview do not count as evidence, and are nothing more than an embarrassment. But then, most of the graphs in this book do not bear up under close scrutiny - their function is more cartoon-like. Even Kurzweil's more apparently reasonable claim - that of exponential growth at a constant rate - rests on a pretty selective framing of the question and interpretation of existing data.
"Two machines - or one million machines - can join together to become one and then become separate again. Multiple machines can do both at the same time: become one and separate simultaneously. Humans call this falling in love, but our biological ability to do this is fleeting and unreliable."
Say what now?
From a technical standpoint, as far as biotechnology is concerned (which is the area I am most competent to judge), there's hardly a statement that Kurzweil makes that is not either laughably naive or grossly inaccurate. Assuming that, indeed, drug delivery via nanobots and the engineering of replacement tissue/organs will at some point become reality, Kurzweil's estimate of the relevant timeframe is ludicrously optimistic. A relevant example is the 20 years it took to derive clinical benefit from monoclonal antibodies -- the rate-limiting steps had little to do with computational complexity. So the notion that, in the future, completely real biological, physiological, and ethical constraints will simply melt under the blaze of increased computing power is fundamentally misguided.
From a statistical point of view, things are no great shakes either. His account of biological modeling is such a ridiculous oversimplification it defies credulity. I'd elaborate, but frankly, the whole sorry mess is just starting to irritate me.
Given the density of meaningless, unsubstantiated, and demonstrably false statements in the first few chapters, it's hard to see the point in continuing. If one actually reads carefully what he's saying, and assumes that he is assigning standard, agreed-upon, meaning to the words he uses, then several possible reactions seem warranted:
* that sinking feeling that one inhabits a universe that is completely orthogonal to those who gave this a 5-star rating * heightened skepticism and aversion to Kool-Aid * bemusement at the gap between Kurzweil's perception of reality and one's own - in particular, the evident moral vacuum in which he "operates", as well as apparent ignorance or indifference to the lot of the vast majority of the planet's inhabitants * wonder at the sheer monomaniacal gall of the man
Grandiose predictions of the future, the more outlandish the better, appear to have an undiminished appeal for Homo sapiens. For the life of me, I have never been able to figure out why.
There are exactly two faintly positive things I can say about this book, so let's get them out of the way.
i. It was mercifully short. ii. It wasn't quiThere are exactly two faintly positive things I can say about this book, so let's get them out of the way.
i. It was mercifully short. ii. It wasn't quite dreadful enough to go on the 'utter dreck' shelf, though its brevity may have been a key mitigating factor.
Although it didn't quite make the 'utter dreck' cut, it was an overhyped, forgettable waste of time. One of those books where, when I read the glowing reviews it has garnered from others, I feel that maybe I live in a parallel universe. I mean, look at everything that the book has going against it:
* it's a first person monolog by Bennie, a writer and translator * Bennie takes a look back at the mess he's made of his life * he's a failed poet * a failed alcoholic poet * who suffers from terminal omphaloskepsis (OK, no more airport jokes, I promise!) and logorrhea, a combination that bodes ill for the reader * Bennie has poor impulse control, which unfortunately leads to * way too many barroom brawl scenes, which are nowhere near as fascinating as the author appears to think; * introducing New Orleans as a backdrop to spice things up might have worked for John Kennedy Toole; here it smacks of sweaty desperation * Bennie done his woman wrong; calling her Stella and giving him a locked-outside-the-house-drunk-in-the-alley-scene goes well beyond sweaty desperation and crosses right over into bankrupt imagination territory * Bennie done wrong by his daughter too. And by his second wife. But I think we could have guessed that * padding out Bennie's tale of woe by including big chunks of the book he is translating (from Polish), giving a second narrative that unfolds in parallel, sounds like a real neat idea in theory * but all it did was muddle a story that already had way too many flashbacks even more
The "trapped in O' Hare" aspect of the book is appropriate, however. Because the sensation I had the entire time reading it was the overwhelmingly claustrophobic feeling of being trapped next to a drunken, boorish loudmouth, intent on boring me with every last insignificant detail of everything that had ever happened to him in his insanely uninteresting, fucked-up cliche of a life.
There must be something wrong with me that I actually finished it.
(Bold type indicates a word, phrase, or cliche I've always wanted to use in a review)...more
A sloppily written, profoundly irritating, book. Brohaugh obviously believes himself to be enormously witty; in fact, he's a crashing bore.
Nothing to A sloppily written, profoundly irritating, book. Brohaugh obviously believes himself to be enormously witty; in fact, he's a crashing bore.
Nothing to see here folks. Trust me. Unless you'd care to witness the usual suspects* poked and prodded by someone who is neither particularly bright nor articulate, and whose writing style is strongly suggestive of ADD, do yourself a favor and give this dismal effort a miss. There is nothing in this book that hasn't already been discussed, with far greater wit and insight, by Bill Bryson and Richard Lederer, among others.
The only thing even remotely noteworthy about this book is Mr Brohaugh's stunning lack of any semblance of wit.
* You know: those fake etymologies for 'posh', 'golf', and 'f**k'; the usual defense of split infinitives, singular data and criteria; several amazingly banal observations along the lines that a peanut is not a nut, there is no toe in mistletoe, no cow in coward, and so on at tedious length. All delivered in smirkingly dreadful prose.
Updated review on November 2nd
I generally enjoy books on English word origins and usage - this book was a notable exception. The author covers generally familiar terrain - the kind of material that one might reasonably expect in a book of this kind. This means, of course, that it has also been covered by several other authors already.
Roughly speaking, the material in Brohaugh's poorly organized book falls into two categories - discussion of word origins and advise on usage. Virtually all the etymological material has been discussed, more clearly and with far greater insight, in David Wilton's excellent "Word Myths : Debunking Linguistic Legends", and by Richard Lederer, as well as on a variety of word-related websites. As far as usage is concerned, one would do infinitely better to consult the excellent Garner's Modern American Usage, or Martha Brockenbraugh's hilarious "Things that make us Sic".
As a guide to usage, Brohaugh's book is completely unhelpful. For one thing, as a kind of extended, stream-of-consciousness rant, it lacks any kind of organization, structure, or discipline. Then, sentences like the following are regrettably common: 1. 'And a nother thing' is not necessarily bad grammar. 2. 'Giving someone a kudo' is not bad English. 3. 'I am here to defend the downtrodden, the outcast, the hopefullys and the ain'ts and the possessive it'ses and the banished double negative'.
To which I can only point out that 1. Yes it is. 2. Yes it is. 3. here the author is just being unhelpfully provocative, since he never offers any kind of coherent defense for it's as a legitimate possessive form.
Ironically, the results of Brohaugh's professed disregard for the rules of English usage are evident on every page of this rambling, poorly written, idiosyncratic rant. Whole sections are completely incomprehensible - for instance, the page and a half of text following the bizarre statement that Z is not the final letter of the alphabet, or the five rambling pages (188-193) about vowels.
Brohaugh's undisciplined prose is not improved by his insistence on scattering a variety of words of his own invention, along the lines of "bullshitternet", "babblisciousness", "catapostrophe", and "persnickitor", throughout the text. A kind of juvenile belligerence, aimed preemptively at anyone who might disagree with him* is the straw that broke the camel's back for me, and convinced me that this is not a book that deserves to be taken seriously.
*: He refers to them as "persnickitors" and offers the following defence against their "whining". "Stop your crying or I'll give you something to cry about. If you're going to play by those rules, let's follow them to their logical conclusion. In other words, we are here going to fully exercise to the fun game of Xtreme Etymological Stasis (sic)." The preceding sentence could mean almost anything, of course, but in practice it appears to amount to nothing more than the tired old trick of ascribing (incorrectly) an exaggeratedly extreme position to anyone who dares to disagree with the author, then using that extreme position as a straw man to attack. ...more
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 knew it was time to leave the corporate world when our vice-president, a friend who had been a truly smart woman when we first started to work togetI knew it was time to leave the corporate world when our vice-president, a friend who had been a truly smart woman when we first started to work together, bought 300 copies of this trendy 2006 business fable* (involving penguins and melting icebergs) for the entire division.
Not entirely coincidentally, the day that the invitation to the offsite meeting for an all-day training exercise based on the book showed up on my calendar, was the day that I gave notice.
I got out of there just in time. Another couple of weeks and I'd have been dressing up as Fred the visionary penguin, baking under the soul-destroying glare of the fluorescent lights of the Sequoia room in the South San Francisco Embassy Suites. And believe me, I have paid my dues as far as abusive corporate training sessions are concerned:
(*: Can you guess which expert on dairy products writes the foreword to the parable of the penguins? Hmmm. Can you?)
People who don't work in the corporate world often succumb to the temptation to believe in wild conspiracy theories about plans for world domination by evil corporate overlords. I don't lose much sleep over such theories. It's not that I think the corporate wannabe overlords are benign. I just ask myself how much domination can we expect from an executive class that tries to instill loyalty by humiliating employees through forcing them to attend motivational offsite meetings based on this kind of drivel.
One of the blurbs on Amazon tells us that some upper manager type in the Department of Defence snapped up 400 copies. I don't know if I should feel more, or less, secure as a result....more
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