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Essay

A literary look at evolution

September 26, 2010
Essay, Philosophy, Science
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I have this idea that I need to get out of my head. I need to preface it by making the following disclaimers. I am an atheist. I have no interest in ‘proving’ any of the faithful that he is wrong. I am not asking anyone to reconsider his position, theological or philosophical. I simply wish to tell a story and ask a question, which admittedly is really an observation.

Here goes.

I think every religion seeks to place man within the cosmos, and this position embodies a contradiction. Generally, religions claim mankind is insignificant, needing the grace of a deity to make their lives meaningful. The contradiction is that a deity deign spend time on helping the ants find salvation.

In this context, and specifically in the  Judeo-Christian tradition, I made up the following. From my reading of the Bible, God sounds like a son of a bitch. Granted, I was more interested in the Old Testament, but there are enough militant statements in both Old and New Testaments speaking to man’s insignificance and need for God’s grace. God provides meaning to life. Fulfilling His desire gives purpose to man.

So, the story I concocted is that evolution need not be nemesis of religion. In fact, it would fit in magnificently (in a literary sense.  It is based on my interpretation of the character of the Almighty). One image I hear from Christians is that we are akin to children playing in the mud. Kids playing in the mud certainly can’t clean each other well. You need someone not in the muck. The analogous situation is that any creature less than God to grant purpose and meaning is a profane idea. If God does not exist, the false idol/prophet/holy man dispensing advice and using philosophy to give us purpose is like having one dirty child cleaning another. We need an omniscient being to become a cosmic referee, as it were.

In this context, evolution – in which the central principles are supported by a wealth of evidence from molecular biology research, fossil records, genome comparisons, the selection of antibody resistant microbes, dog breeders, and orchid growers, for example – simply underscores how insignificant we would be without God.

For example, we know that there is a record of life going back at least 500 million years. Humans share a genetic code that have similarities to apes, monkeys, dogs, mice, cats, lizards, birds, and fish. There is also a library of ape fossils where one can see semblance to human bone structures. After showing us that mankind is a part of the world around him, wouldn’t it make sense to show mankind that by possessing God’s grace (whether it be salvation, purpose, or insight), this trait allows man to transcend his status as animal? Doesn’t such a story imbue mankind with distinction conferred entirely by God, that without him we are in fact a bunch of great apes?

My observation/question to the religion-inclined is, “Can you show me where in the Bible you can refute this story?”

Since I did base this (OK, maybe I am guilty of trying to needle Christians) on a literary reading of the Bible, can you really argue whether my interpretation is so off base? What would you use as evidence, some passages from the Bible that I would be unlikely to use? How would you decide among all the existing creation myths? What are your criteria for dismissing Zeus and the Olympians but not Jesus, or Allah, or Yahweh, or the Buddha?

Franzen and Picoult, yet again

September 22, 2010
Essay
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Back when Oprah Winfrey selected Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections, I saw a distinct lack of graciousness from various authors and book critics. As I remembered it, the reaction was almost a dismay and outrage that she would drag a piece of literary fiction through the mud that constitutes the low-brow mainstream. There also seemed to be an undercurrent of snobbery as applied to Winfrey. She had chosen mainstream potboilers and melodramas; selecting Franzen had the appearance of Winfrey ‘trying’ to seem smart or high-brow.

As if a woman who built a billion dollar media company from nothing lacks the intelligence or emotional acumen to understand literary fiction. As if she needed to justify why she veered from choosing another mass-market novel about a broken romance or an issue. As if her business sense couldn’t translate into her appreciating Literature. As if she needed the pretension of reading Literature to convince anyone that she has a rich, considered inner life.

Franzen, I am sure, will take his new opportunity to address why the flap over the corrections. He had even made some statement about it already, blaming his lack of experience in dealing with the exposure. Sure. Whatever. I do give him some credit; I distinctly remember a lot of other people slapping down Oprah, but nothing so bad coming from him.

I continue to detect this vein of elitism coming various poison pens, today. This time, at least the arguments are carried by authors.

I will be clear here; I have not ever read a work of so called Literary fiction that was difficult in an intellectual sense. No words stump me; no metaphor goes unnoticed or misunderstood; no linguistic fireworks ever go unappreciated. I appreciate the talent, skill, and craft  going into beautifully constructed novels. I understand the themes and issues that are the reasons for an author to write. I love complex characters who straddle the gray of living in the world. I like denouement and dramatic closure, which I do not confuse with a tidy, happy ending where all problems are resolved (see Peter F. Hamilton’s The Evolutionary Void for this. This is a three volume space opera and contains a novel within a novel. There’s a lot going on. The series boils down to a happy ending, for everybody, in the last 2 or 3 pages. This struck a wrong note with me. But it’s still a fantastic read.) I also understand that writing fiction is not my forte.

A novel is never the intellectually difficult exercise that science is, for the reader. Literature isn’t rocket science. It isn’t even a social science. This is not a criticism so much as an observation. The novel embraces life in its messy, tangled glory. The scientist strives to tease out the role specific parts play in creating that mess.

Both are difficult, but in different ways. Literature is difficult as an act of creation; science is difficult in its comprehension. In Literature, all asides, digressions, and verbosity, when done well, contribute to the greatness of the work. In a way, writers make the text hard, but in an aesthetically pleasing way. In science, the descriptions and discussion are stripped bare, because the ideas, assumptions, and experiments are already convoluted. Each assumption is based upon a foundation of many other ideas, all linked to the strength of experiments addressing them. In many cases, the experiment at hand is to address some inadequacy and nuance in a previous paper that may open up new lines of inquiry. To make things any harder to understand is to waste a scientist’s time. Either way, badly written novels and scientific papers will accomplish the same thing: thrown at a wall in disgust and then ignored.

And the phrase ‘novel of ideas’ annoys me. Apparently these Literary authors – and the critics who set themselves up as professional connessiuer of Literature – have done a great job creating a sandbox from which genres are excluded. So we get stilted prose and writing about white, male assholes who behave badly, observe the shit leading to his situation, and then internalize all such snarky observations to himself while never making a mental connection with his (usually sexy) significant other. And so the true novel of ideas, found in science fiction, is ignored.

I am sure that I just conjured visions of space ships, phasers, droids, and Death Stars. The sci-fi I refer to is that branch known as  hard science novels – for example Stephen Baxter. This type of novel are fantastic extrapolations of current state of the art science. Admittedly, one-dimensional sci-fi read like either a Star Trek episode or a technical manual, but the best sci-fi actually examines the human condition in the context of new technological and social environment. It is an extension of the basic premise of what white, male literary authors write about. Instead of some recognizable human event, some sci-fi authors are interested in placing recognizable, human characters in unfamiliar confines (I think P.D. James’s The Children of Men is a good example of this). And yes, a Baxter novel, a William Gibson novel, a Charlie Stross novel, a Margaret Atwood novel and especially a Neil Stephenson novel provide more raw ideas than most literary novels hope to capture.

Even during my essay on Medium Raw, I was really thinking of this divide between what the so-called professional critics and “serious” chefs and what appeals to the public. I do find Literary critics and authors (and ultra serious chefs and food-writers) to be pretentious, as if what they do is so hard to understand (I recognize that it is hard to write a novel and to create new dishes. But to understand a novel or to enjoy food? No.) Theirs is elitism without merit. While talented, the degree to which their talent engenders appeal depends on the fancies of the buying public. This is true because everybody is selling to the public now, not a few pricey artisanal items to the extremely wealthy. The fact that some authors (or pop stars, or movies) get all the sales (or ratings) do not mean that non-blockbuster authors do no good. Of course they do. Unfortunately, most people focus on the big winners (like a Stephen King, or a James Patterson), but there ought to be enough good writers occupying the midlist and who are deserving of some critical analysis or exposure.

I think this is a point that Jennifer Weiner and Jodi Picoult were trying to make, in the Huffington Post interview . It seems ludicrous to assume that if an author makes money, he can’t possibly be good. By the same token, just because a writer continues to starve does not give him any status; sure, he loves writing and sacrifices for his art. But perhaps he continues to suffer because he is not all that good. As Koa Lani pointed out in her rebuttal, even if every author profiled fit the “white, male, from Brooklyn stereotype” that Weiner and Picoult satirized, it may be that profiled and acclaimed authors deserve the adulation. I do not see the two points as contradictory: 1) that mainstream literature probably won’t field as many impact novels and writers but they are there and 2) that generally, writers who get profiles deserve it, even if others who deserve the press do not get it.

What I find strange is that everyone accepts that there are so few good writers worthy of a professional connoisseur. Here’s the problem: I’m never sure whether the critics like a book sincerely or if it is a pose. When I was reading Bourdain’s Medium Raw, he made similar points about food critics. It seems strange to him that critics have a death watch culture, where, once a chef is proclaimed to be the best cook ever, everyone is now scrutinizing his every move, pouncing on the point when he began his slide. It really is just snobbery, rather than any sincere appreciation of the food, that drives these people. Just as these food critics wish to glow in the luster of their “discovery”, so too must they exact a tax on the fall from the summit of said chef. There are such enthusiasts and critics in every modality (movies, TV – from which the phrase “jump the shark” was derived, music – please see Nick Hornby’s Juliet, Naked, and books), and because they do not create, they nominate themselves as arbiters over those who do. As if an opinion of a book is somehow as important as the book itself or even a discussion of ideas contained within (the first point is discussed in Mark Helprin’s Digital Barbarism.) These poseurs wish to be the first to trumpet talent and the first to sound the end.

It wouldn’t astound me if critics are affected by what their peers think (no one wants to miss a Franzen or Lethem, and no one wants to coronate Nicholas Sparks, I presume.) Just as likely, perhaps critics just simply want to be contrarian (see the Roger Ebert vs. Armond White).

This isn’t necessary a bad thing, but it could help explain why the stereotype “white, male, from Brooklyn, and who teaches creative writing” is so well represented in Literary reviews. In Leonard Mlodinow’s The Drunkard’s Walk, he writes about the randomness of super-success. Not that the idea of good and bad is a crap shoot, but the fact that we can’t really predict why some books and movies do blockbuster business while others designed for that purpose go ignored. It is telling that one piece of research Mlodinow presented has to do with music and how it is ranked. Two cohorts of subjects were asked to rank songs. The difference between cohorts is that one cohort has no knowledge of how others ranked the songs, while the second did. The first cohort ranked songs as in distributed manner: the “likes” were spread over many songs. The second cohort had a “sharper” profile, where a few songs garnered high-rankings. Thus judging books by criticism or by sales might be a reflection of the herd mentality.

It is no secret that our opinions and evaluations can also hang on inconsequential details. The canonical stories come from orchestra auditions, where female performers are usually relegated to second-chair status – unless the auditions occurred with the performer behind a screen. Even among performers of relatively equal looks and talent (for whatever it’s worth, the researchers aimed to build the most homogeneous of sample sizes), the manner of dress and visual style could influence what evaluators think. If one listened to these performers without visual cues, he would be hard pressed to tell the difference (that was also an experiment in the study). It seems strange that we are all  so concerned with “the best”, when even the most informed opinion remain just that, an opinion. I am not sure if it is meaningful to make the distinction between the levels of good a writer achieves, because this evaluation depends so much on how the critic is feeling at that particular moment.

One final example; in other posts in this blog, I have tried highlighting the research of Dave Berri, who has done a bit of work documenting how even recognized experts in a field may not be using the right metric or standard for evaluating talent or productivity. In sports, we have all the pertinent information to judge such matters. However, it is difficult to make the same assessment for the worth of books, of music, of movies, of food, of wine, and so on. There are technical aspects to discuss, sure, but after some level of proficiency, it becomes a matter of opinion whether one book is better than another.

To the sincere critics who wish to look for something new, I would add the following thoughts. Because I feel strongly that my verdict on a book (good or bad) is irrelevant, I take pains to write simply about my engagement with the story, themes, ideas, and characters in a book. I pitch what I write here as taking part in a discussion; I prefer to call these essays about books rather than analysis or criticism. I try not to place the books in the authors’ context but in my context (within constraints.) I understand fully that what I say here is not authoritative and is merely an opinion. The most I hope for that you find my opinions thoughtful and an interesting point of view.

Less Than Zero

September 21, 2010
Essay, Goodreads
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Less Than ZeroLess Than Zero by Bret Easton Ellis
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

View all my reviews

I can see that this book is the spiritual ancestor of Lev Grossman’s The Magicians. Minus the man-whore scene. It differs from The Magicians in the way the character’s apathy is shown. Ellis literally shows us the things Clay does. He travels around LA in a stupor, home on Christmas break from college. He sees things and experiences. But the neat thing is that I still sensed his desperation, his need for contact and to feel, to break away from the decadence of his teenage life. Grossman took the opposite approach; the reader knows what Quentin feels. Regardless, both writers made successful portrayals of walking pieces of shit.

One other note: I have the same thought on reading this as I did Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. Both writers used simple syntax and grammatical construction. So much so that the book just drones.

<satire>It is a lot of monotony without any break and without any spark to life and life is boring and then my friends show up in their new Mercedes and where is my coke dealer but I would rather go out with my girlfriend but instead we go home and sit on her bed smoking pot. </satire>

At the time, I had thought Atwood’s point was to make her character seem limited in terms of her intellect, enforced by the patriarchal society. But then I saw that it was actually Atwood’s writing style. I have not yet read Ellis’s other books (American Psycho and Imperial Bedrooms are next), so I will find out if this drone actually served to underscore Clay’s being inured to life or if that’s Ellis’s writing style.

Peer review and blog style comments

September 21, 2010
Essay, Science
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There is a study, published on Aug. 10, in the British Medical Journal examining whether the articles published online, with comments, elicited any responses from the authors. There is a thoughtful blog post from The Scholarly Kitchen about this study. Article authors generally didn’t respond to critics, even if the critics were serious and wrote substantively on the matter. Interestingly, when the authors did respond, the critics were satisfied responses less than half the time. The editors of the journal generally accepted the authors’ rebuttal, and of course, it should be said that they did accept the manuscripts for publication.

The lead author of the BMJ study, Peter Gøtzsche, suggested that  the editors 1) may not be qualified enough to review the criticisms and and rebuttal and 2) have a vested interest in maintaining the reputation of the journal (i.e. defend the stance that the science they accept is high-quality.) I have this additional snarky observation. The critics may be especially unreceptive to the authors’ original paper and rebuttal because the original criticism stemmed from contradictions with the critics’ own work.

Just a thought.

I have a few other thoughts, and I would argue that we not judge the editors too harshly for, perhaps, mistakenly accepting “bad” science or perhaps not understanding the nature of the criticisms. There are actually acceptable reasons as to why some controversial papers get published.I have some insight into the editorial process; no juicy gossip or behind-the-scenes look at nefarious machinations, mind you.

I had applied to a scientific editor position at Neuron almost 2 years ago. There were two open positions and I came in, at most, “third” (and dammit, it was my dream job!) For the first stage in the application process, I had to review 2 papers from 7 categories, published in Neuron over year prior to the application deadline. I was to choose an example of a good paper and a weak paper (from the set of already peer-reviewed and published articles). I was also supposed to write about the neuroscience field, identifying authors whom I would invite to write a review (and I had to specify the topic) and where the next big thing will be (and who the leading lights are.) It was great fun to write, although I left myself only a week to do it (and of course I was working in the lab all that time.)

But I digress. Of the 7 fields, I can honestly say that I am an expert in, at most, 2 of the fields. And even then, that’s a stretch, because the fields were more general than a particular sensory system (I worked in olfaction) or even a technique (quantitative microscopy, epifluorescence and 2-photon laser microscopy). As one might guess, and as found out later, this is the norm for the editors there. The editors all have different backgrounds and at Neuron, and no one is asked to specialize. So every editor will be asked to triage manuscripts outside of their expertise and background. Presumably, this has the advantage of ensuring that editors remain aware of developments over a wide swathe of neuroscience.

I can’t say about other journals, but at Neuron, the editors have final acceptance/rejection authority. They decide whether the article is sent for review in the first place. Using the peer review, they of course defer to the expertise of the reviewers, but the editors’ job here is to be a disinterested party in unknotting the various interests reviewers and authors have. But the decision to accept a manuscript for publication is also determined by this amorphous concept of making a significant advance in the field.

There are several ways of looking at this: perhaps the researchers themselves ought to understand where their field is going and so are the best placed to assess where the cutting edge research is, or that that researchers have a vested interested to “sell” their research as hot – regardless of actual scientific worth, or that the editors are in no way prepared to decide on what constitutes a significant advance – as they no longer have direct experience with the difficulties and intractabilities of various experiments and models, or that the editors are in fact best placed to see what is a significant advance – by virtue of seeing so many good and bad manuscripts with overlapping topics from various competing scientists.

I am inclined to go with the fourth idea, that good editors can observe developing trends from manuscript submissions. And if you look over a year’s worth of articles, from one journal, I also could see blocks of papers with similar topics (or at least similar keywords.)

I think the stewardship/peer-review system works, although I am not opposed to the more open style of publication like the Public Library of Science (PLoS) journals. These latter focus more on technical soundness; the reviewers try to make sure that the experiments support the conclusions, as is the norm. However, no editors are in place to reject papers because of a lack of perceived significance. The idea is that scientists will eventually cite this paper heavily – or ignore it – depending on its actual value; it is assumed that the cream will float. Again, I have nothing against these different modes of publishing.

During my interview with Neuron’s scientific editors, we discussed our reasons for wanting to become editors and problems that may arise during the adjustment phase. One potential downside is that no longer will an editor be recognized as an authority on any subject, and rightly so. The editors would no longer be in the trenches, won’t be adding any new techniques to his repertoire. However, I defended the idea that editors simply replaced one expertise with another. As I said above, a good editor becomes an expert in spotting over-populated and under-served topics. And the nature of the beast is that they would in fact see many, many similar manuscripts. They have the luxury of establishing a baseline level of quality and significance.

Well, I didn’t get the job, but I remain sympathetic to their roles. I think there is a need for the so-called gate-keeper role. The fact that someone took the time to place a science manuscript in the context of all the work that has recently been done lends an imprimatur of worth. Of course editors do not get it right all the time. But one can at least count on Neuron, or Nature, or Science, or Journal of Neuroscience publishing papers that presumably compared favorably to some cohort of papers. That takes judgment, and the editors read the manuscripts that you may not have time for.

My point here is that editors can misjudge the value of a piece of science, but that is no reason to think they add nothing of value. They do not necessarily have to defend their choices, at least not at the level of single papers. Remember, just as the editors themselves may have idiosyncrasies, so do the readers that read the articles. The scientists themselves also have different intellectual sharpness, shall we say. But, over time, if editors do consistently “get it wrong”, then it would in fact be obvious. The room for subjective assessments of value can only go so far. Techniques converge at some point, even if the systems scientists work on differ. Each experiment generates a control for comparison, anyone wishing to extend work generally tries to reproduce results – to show that they are doing something right, and the level of citations are all spot checks for the soundness of the science. At some point, missing experiments or graphs, other scientists complaining about articles whose results cannot be replicated, or few citations become problematic for a journal trying to maintain its luster. And the scientists themselves can start to ignore the offending journal by submitting to competing journals.

But, at its most basic, one wouldn’t expect an editor to be aware of the details raised by critics. Simply, the details are probably only important to the investigators and deal with “procedural points” (as an example, do you really care that an animal “sniffs” rapidly not to gather more odor molecules to increase signal-to-noise but rather to attenuate background smells – in order to increase signal-to-noise? Or that this is something imposed by behavioral modulation rather than centrifugal modulation of the olfactory bulb? See Verhagen et al, 2007.)   I guess it is fair to say that editors are “big picture” people. With that said, perhaps there is some way the editors can facilitate the discourse that occurs in the comments-sections that are now de rigeur.

Medium Raw

September 19, 2010
Essay, Food
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I was talking to my sister in law about some gossip in Anthony Bourdain’s Medium Raw, when she stopped me and asked, rather sensibly, why I was reading him, when there are so many angles on how humans mediate their experience with food? And isn’t the whole book simply one man’s opinion? What worth does it have?  What could I have learned from the book? And finally, why him? I had the same thoughts while reading the book, and I think this line of questioning is a good outline for this essay.
Yes, there are more important topics about food that transcend the behind-the-scenes look at restaurants. For instance, can’t we talk about the (mis)management of fisheries, the shrinking variety of diet, the amount of land dedicated to sustaining our beef supply, the threat of monoculture to our future food supply, the use of transgenic crops, the class gap between nutritious food and fast food, the need to lower the amount of meat in our diet, the inability to mitigate starvation, the fact that subsistence farmers still have to make a choice between cash crops (poppy, tobacco, and coffee) and food crops, and the unequal distribution and cheapness of fresh water in the first world (and the scarcity thereof in developing nations).
Further, there are so many other more pressing issues, who cares if there are bad chefs and good chefs, whether food critiques and chefs trade favors for good reviews, and pornographic descriptions of food? This question, it seems to me, can be interpreted as, with so many pressing problems in the world, why is it that I am occupying my free time with entertainment, which, would include both high-brow and low-brow culture? This isn’t meant to be a slam; even as I was reading Medium Raw, I had thought the same. In the end, the book was a fun read, and I stuck with it. Simply, that was the pay off.
But the question is worth exploring. I suppose the answer I would have, in general, as to why I would spend time on any type of entertainment, whether it be  reading novels, watching movies, listening to music, going to concerts, or spending time with friends and family, is that experiencing something different may provide the mind with another type of agitation. When I seek out something different, I am hoping for chance opportunities to arise where new connections are formed between ideas where none had existed before. It’s also the same reason I would revisit something I did not like; I cannot assume that new ideas wouldn’t foment, or that it wouldn’t strike me in a new way. I don’t expect this to be an appealing answer for everybody, but it is my rationale for reading, essentially, trashy reading. Sure, I finished Medium Raw because it was fun, but I was certainly hoping to see some thing unique and perhaps an observation or two that alters some of the thoughts I already have connected in my head.
Yes, the book is one big opinion piece. However, it is clear that, whatever Bourdain’s experience or talents, he loves food and the people who prepare it. At his best, he provides observations about how kitchens work, providing actual details of things cooks do. He spends a chapter on career trajectories. He spends another chapter on a prep cook at Le Bernardin, responsible for turning whole fish into cuts that chefs can use. There is a fair amount of introspection about the nature of high-end food (there is a lot of waste; if the chef is honest, the high costs results from the throwing out less-than-perfect items.) There are some more observations about the types of local food available in Vietnam (it seems that’s his favorite food experience). He talks about some of the characters in NYC restaurants. He writes about food trends. He’s also realistic about the role and position food critics play in shaping public opinion; even someone of Eric Ripert’s stature, a 3-Michelin star chef, is aware of the need to play to this audience. Surprisingly, Bourdain and Ripert do not appear contemptuous or condescending and actually acknowledges that, to be successful today, one cannot reject them. In fact, it is a good thing to have a sophisticated audience who would buy this food. There’s even a nice chapter on the silliness of removing home economics when the focus should have been on forcing this education on both sexes. Instead, we are left with kids who can neither make sandwiches or balance a checkbook.
Bourdain is at his best when describing what he sees, how people do things, and what people have done. There are food porn aspects, like when he’s trying to give some vignettes of the places he’s visited and descriptions of how food tasted during his work with Food Network and Travel Channel shows.
Some annoying moments came when he twisted knives that he had stabbed in various people, way back in his other memoir, Kitchen Confidential. Kitchen Confidential was a tirade, here, he tries to reconcile his feelings and place his criticism in context. Surprisingly, this part didn’t  bother me so much. His take downs of Alice Waters and Alan Richman seemed cogent; mostly, he stuck with actions. He didn’t like what Waters and Richman did, and he let readers know it was. This point is worth mentioning because it was so… considered.
Look, of course what Bourdain thinks of either chef is pointless. He’s just trying to justify his feelings. I did like seeing him squirm, but on balance, if I lose it and decide take down someone, I hope I am level headed enough to stick to the facts. Bourdain could have done the opposite, simply running up a string of adjectives and insults. It is important to sort the statements he makes: Bourdain did juxtapose a series of actions that made a logical, coherent argument. This type of reasoning is distinct from simply calling names. I admired the way he wrote out the argument, even if I didn’t care for his conclusions. Despite these sections being too insular, I thought Bourdain spent a bit of time crafting his argument, which is all I  ask for.
It is worth noting that he tempered some harsh words was on the subject of vegetarians. This part rang hollow, if only because the following argument seemed so small given the insults he wrote in Kitchen Confidential. He argues here that  he gets annoyed at the way a vegetarian abroad would essentially be breaching etiquette and hospitality by refusing the standard fare of other cultures. In Kitchen Confidential, his rant was simply against an all-vegetables diet (and it was a string of adjectives and insults, not really a coherent argument). So it struck me as odd.
I think to sum up why I read Bourdain, and not someone like  Mark Ruhlman, is that I find Bourdain smart, funny, and a good writer. I enjoyed his take on food (I think Ruhlman, for example, is also smart and a good writer, but I didn’t take to his style. It was too serious and too sincere, lacking the joviality of Bourdain’s writing). Even if I didn’t care for some of the gossip, he engaged my interest. I am glad to read Bourdain because he has passion; he values food and the people who cook it. He wishes to treat their work as something worthy of meaning and deep consideration.
Why read a book of opinions and judgements? Well, Bourdain has an informed opinion about food. Finding out how he thinks is more important to me than his conclusion. This is the main reason I am blogging so much; I simply wish to write about the connections and thoughts I have, when I read. One way of teaching oneself is to explain something to others. Writing helps me organize my own opinions on something. My verdict of a book (whether it’s a thumbs up or thumbs down, whether it’s a “A” or an “F”) is besides the point. The thoughts evoked are much  more important. In much the same way, I wasn’t reading Bourdain to see which restaurants are worth making reservations for. He has the access to see experienced, well-respected professionals at work. He observes and reports, and by this, I gain a deeper appreciation for the art and craft. Yes, I do want to go to Le Bernardin, but only because Bourdain gave it a context that appealed to me.
There is also another point worth making: one doesn’t have to be immersed in a topic to write about it. It helps, but in the end, research, observation, and a sincere desire to learn and tell the story in a considered manner will carry one a long way.  The converse is that just because someone is an expert in the field, it does not necessarily make him the best person to write. Of course, I mean this in a fairly narrow way: chances are, that expert will be able to communicate to his colleagues. He may not have the skills to communicate to a different audience (that is, to laymen.) One could argue either way against Bourdain: he freely admits he could never cook as well as his friends (in terms of creating new dishes.) By his own admission he isn’t a Thomas Keller or Grant Aschatz, two leading lights of American cooking. But he has spent over 25 years cooking, so he isn’t someone who is merely enthusiastic about food. Depending on how one thinks of Bourdain, that’s a good thing or bad thing. I am writing here that I think this argument is irrelevant. The worth of Bourdain can be evaluated simply by the quality of his arguments. Good writing can come from anywhere.

The Jodi Picoult flap

September 9, 2010
Essay, fiction
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I came across a strange post from Lev Raphael, over at Huffingtonpost.com. He tried to correct something Jodi Picoult wrote in her dismissal of the New York Time book critics. Over Twitter and interviews, Picoult pointed out her feeling that the NYT critics are biased in whom they select for discussion. The most recent literary author deemed fit to print is Jonathan Franzen. [Picoult had also previously discussed this point with Jason Pinter and Jennifer Weiner at the Huffington Post .]

The controversy, such as it is, reflects the hardline stances and lack of nuance in media. It is a controversy made of nothing more than opinions that every side here is entitled to. Picoult admitted she never did a count of how often white, male writers from Brooklyn were reviewed and acclaimed. She was simply being snide. The NYT can publish on whomever they wish. And kibbitzers like Raphael and I can add our own bits.

The one tossaway line I wanted to focus on is Picoult’s line that book reviews ought to focus on popular literature, even more so than literary fiction.

The specific thing I wanted to write about is Raphael’s response to this statement. He noted that Jane Austen, for example, was not popular in her time. Readers gravitated to her and parted with money from their pocketbooks only after her death. Basically, Raphael was correcting the idea that Austen was “popular” during her life time.

I think Raphael misread this statement. Picoult wrote

… the books that have persevered in our culture and in our memories and our hearts were not the literary fiction of the day, but the popular fiction of the day. Think about Jane Austen. Think about Charles Dickens. Think about Shakespeare. They were popular authors. They were writing for the masses.

Picoult’s point is much simpler. The authors did not separate the idea of worthy, meaty big-L literature from writing something that was a smooth read, snappy, and contained plot. That is, there was no distinction made between novels targeted for the critics and for the masses. I have felt that this idea is missing in modern literature. I had always assumed that what we call the classics (and generally I place the fracturing of a consensus canon to post-Hemingway literature) grew organically from fiction of  the times. That is, critics could only select on what was published, and frankly, our forebears were extremely focused on what sells.  This seemed a happy middle ground, where the novels were written to appeal to the masses. Critics rode shotgun over this process, trying to cultivate some sense of sophistication in how readers were to receive and understand literature.

As B.R. Myers has noted, though, there has been a change in attitude among modern writers, codified by the elevation of the serious, difficult fiction above works that are written for the masses. Nevermind who decides this to begin with. I find it disjointed that we now look askance at books that are entertaining, as if somehow it cheapens the linguistic fireworks and ideas that might be contained (and Franzen makes the same point.)

To be clear, I am not writing that authors – both modern and past –  never gave a thought to their legacy. Of course they did, but above all, they wrote books that people (eventually) wanted to read. Everything else follows from that. There was no separation of purpose: they wrote for the sale, and if they had ego and pride, they wrote to last.

Even when Jonathan Franzen first made headlines with The Corrections, I found the discussion rather pretentious. Apparently, everyone was focused on how he was one of the first to capture a slice of society, in all its messy complexity. My first reaction was, did Wharton, Thackeray and Tolstoy not accomplish something similar? Upon reading it, after rolling my eyes at the requisite number of disjointed paragraphs and awkward phrasing, I thought the best thing about The Corrections was that Franzen wrote about a family of assholes, but that each person was an asshole in his or her own way. I thought Franzen’s technical mastery was in his characters*, since writing in distinct voices is hard.

*For an example of a less successful instance, see Orhan Pamuk’s My Name is Red (and just to be fair, the distinct voices may have suffered from translation, so I’ll spread the blame here to include Erdag Goknar, the translator.) My Turkish friend did feel the same way, although I need to ask if she read it in Turkish or the English translation. So Goknar may yet be taken off the hook!

The worse thing to happen to any field, let alone literature, is that things must be “difficult” to be worthwhile (and Franzen agrees!) The idea that modern physics is a mind-trip was mistakenly interpreted to mean presentation rather than the ideas being explained. Somehow, this type of thinking infected critics and writers alike. So we get difficult prose (something Myers expounded upon), obfuscating stories with barely a plot, poor character development, and less than imaginative ideas.

Using scientific papers, published in academic journal, is a poor method to show how difficult ideas can be conveyed simply. These papers  are short, and many scientists are poor in compressing complex information in a easily read manner. I would suggest anyone examine the books of Howard Hughes,  Robert Sapolsky, Dave Berri, Brian Greene, Daniel Dennett, and Jared Diamond for examples of how complex ideas and details can be presented in a straight-forward way.  It bears repeating: the difficult reading in science has nothing to do with the writing but in the ideas themselves. Obfuscation is the enemy. To properly convey nuance and technically complex experiments, one needs to be extremely concise and clear so that others can focus on the data and conclusions.

To my mind, modern authors deemed to be of the literary type do the exact opposite. They dress up simple plots (boy meets girl, girl protects self, man-as-boy-then-grows up) in “difficult” language that a satirist would sooner write in that style than to write a mockery. There are only so many plots. What I would focus on is good writing and that kernel of observation that separates one book from another. I wish I were an editor or a book critic; as it stands, I read about 5 books every 2 weeks. Even reading so few books, I have a sense of what passes for good writing (Robert Bolano + translator: good; Don DeLillo: not so good). I can honestly say that although, there are books  I found “difficult” to get through, it wasn’t due to my lack of comprehension or inability to grasp metaphors. No,  I have read their language and found it wanting. So much so that I sometimes question the intellect of the writer.

Part of this disconnect I have with modern literature may stem from my wanting to write like Wharton and Thackeray. Modern authors like Mark Helpern also appeal to me. I much prefer to read a novel and not notice the language until the epiphany in the middle of the book, when I ask myself, how exactly did the author write this? Prose can be complex and difficult, but I have no problem following the authors’ thoughts. Of course, one can fail spectacularly in writing in this style: the writing would become so one dimensional that it leaves little room to the imagination. At this point, the novel would pass into the realm of an essay.

I admit that I am probably being a curmudgeon by my attitudes against modern writers and their scattershot writing style, hoping that words dropped onto a page somehow stick. Impressionism works as a visual art  form, not so much for prose (a point discussed in Myers’s book.)

I’ll just end by saying that, at its most basic, I object (and I echo Picoult here) to the divide that modern critics and so-called literary writers created in viewing mainstream books as a distinct creature from literary fiction. I much prefer to be surprised and awed by the writing in an entertaining book than to be disappointed by a “literary” novel that neither entertained nor stunned me with its language.

Seems unfair…

September 5, 2010
criticism, Essay
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There is a recent flap, documented by Roger Ebert, regarding movie reviews of Inception, a Christopher Nolan film. The principals are Ebert and New York Press critic Armond White. It was generally accepted as a good movie. The Internet mob took issue with the few critics who panned the film. Ebert found himself defending the right of a negative review, provided that the review brought some insight that transcended a rating. The true issue is whether the critic was simply being contrarian, seeking to drive interest in his musings. Ebert also made the point that the mob mentality online is driven less by interest in the artistic quality of a movie than by the base desire to belong to a tribe. In this case, the tribe one joins have like opinions.

The short attention span promoted by web interfaces also feeds into the need for quick verdicts. Ebert and the contrarian critic both made the point that “me too” comments are drivel. There is a need for sensible and intelligent commentary. However, Armond inflames the discussion by saying that this commentary should only be supplied by gatekeeper critics. I think that this is the absolute wrong place to draw a line.

For one, the two are talking about movie criticism. It isn’t rocket science. There is very little basis in fact; most reviews worth reading seem to involve interpretation. I read through some of Armond White’s reviews; they appeal to me because he seems to engage the film as is. Sure, his verdict seems clear, but he treats the film as something worthwhile to discuss. Even in a simple actioner, such as Angelina Jolie’s Salt, White manages to find the political stance in the film to be atrocious, nevermind the plot holes and muddled action shots. The film has Jolie killing American CIA and FBI agents, who are bumbling idiots. White is outraged that this point of view, such as it is, isn’t explored in any way aside from being the backdrop for fantastic fight sequences.

White picked the wrong fight, I think. Commentary is open to anyone with who can see and can write. The additions that a professional writer offers pertain to facts about how the movie is constructed, access to the participants, and historical perspective and context. I have my doubts about the primacy of critics to the last item: perspective can come from anyone who has made intensive study of film. No one can see every movie made. In a sense, the fact that critics must choose among films open themselves up to the possibility that a dedicated amateur may actually know more than the critic in some limited sphere. This is the nature of the beast. Movies are made to be seen, and many people have access. I am not discounting the role of critics. I am suggesting that the difference between an amateur commenter and a professional critic is a matter of degree. The professional will in general have seen more films and read more and talked to more actors and directors than an amateur. They will generally have a better idea of the evolution of technical aspects of movie making, and of the philosophies governing how shots are framed, how actors and objects are blocked, and how edits are decided.

Despite the professional’s likely possession of an immense store of experience, it still  would not surprise me to see dedicated amateurs provide professional quality insight. One might think that since I am a scientist, I may actually exclude a few favored domains from this idea that an amateur can accomplish something useful. That is not the case. The history of science is littered with serious amateurs, who nonetheless gave much care in framing testable hypotheses, designed pertinent experiments, and had made careful observations and calculations about the data. Of course, the level of precision in gathering scientific data has increased due to both the quality of equipment and the wealth of scientific knowledge that requires integration. These factors limit a modern dilettante’s access to perform science.

But access to scientific literature remains, and in some cases has increased, from even 5 years ago (think of open access journals like PLoS One). There is much room for amateurs, and even scientists, to comment on fields outside of their specialty. As matter of fact, this is healthy, as it promotes awareness in the state of science as well as providing a shared basis for intellectual discourse.

What struck me as the wrong note, then, is that Armond’s dismissal of Internet commenters is that it smacks of elitism, rather than a defense of merit. Elitism assumes a position of superiority, while merit requires one to earn that privileged level. Only in form does Armond’s argument seem to defend intellectual discpurse. I would hazard that his type of discourse is the antithesis of intellectualism, calling for argument from authority and not through reason and rhetoric.

I have been a fan of the written Roger Ebert for sometime. I had always thought his written reviews conveyed a better sense of experiencing and watching the reviewed movie than his capsules on Siskel and Ebert or Roper and Ebert. Armond specifically decries this latter form of review, with simple descriptors followed by a thumbs up/thumbs down verdict. Thus, when I came across a toss-away line in Jacques Barzun’s From Dawn to Decadence, about how modern culture is sliding to its nadir because of a movement away from  dramatic tension and catharsis, I disagreed with him. The main issue isn’t whether Ebert is qualified or not. The issue is that, in the course of making a television version of a film criticism, the form provides constraints that, in essence, “dumb down” the review.

Ebert, and White, and Barzun, all come across as thoughtful people who are excellent writers and who are passionate about their subjects. Something is lost when these experts go in front of television cameras. As Neil Postman points out in Amusing Ourselves to Death, television isn’t bad because of a sinister TV and advertising executives. TV can be bad because the process that make compelling, watchable TV shows isn’t the same for what makes for a compelling book. Postman augments Marshall McLuhan’s statement that the “Medium is the message” by clarifying that the medium is crucial in framing how the message is conveyed. TV, and movies, generally require cuts, motion, changing camera angles. The setting needs to change frequently. Most importantly, speech cannot be in the form of lectures; they must be short phrases, captions for the attendant graphics and music. In short, this is the opposite of what occurs in textbooks or scholarly works – and even in magazine or newspaper articles.

Again, the point isn’t that TV has no redeeming value. The fact is that different media have different advantages and limitations. Such limitations would restrict even the most serious scholar who wished to elevate discourse. TV isn’t suited to intellectual discourse. How can 5 minutes of discussion, in a round table format, equal the depth in a few chapters of a history, or economic and political analyses? Thus, I found White to have picked the wrong fight. It isn’t that there are better critics than Ebert; White’s issue is, I think, with the television format.

On a final note, related to how TV changes the presentation, I will recount my conversation with a dancer. I had just met her, and since she told me she is a dancer, I asked her what she thought of shows like So You Think You Can Dance (one of my favorite shows.) Her complaint is similar to just about every afficionado who sees his subject thrown up on the screen: the television doesn’t convey the depth, the technique, and the nuances of the subject. She thought that the 3 minute dance segments did not convey the technical aspect of dance, one important component of which is that some pieces are long – stamina and attention are requirements. The voting system, by untrained audience members, skew votes to flashy choreography. Hip hop and modern dance pieces are favored (and I’ve rarely seen a true classical piece on the show.) This echoes some of the criticisms I’ve read about American Idol, political bully pulpits, and science shows. Interestingly, the New York Times had reported on how Broadway singers, directors, and producers were finding that audiences no longer applaud unless singers end with a big finish. They blamed shows like American Idol where all singers end on  a high note. Again, what plays well on television isn’t what works in theater, at a dance recital, or in a book.

The binary-Ebert is not the one I am familiar with. The Ebert I found wrote thoughtfully about film. As with White, I get the feeling that Ebert thinks that whether a film is good is besides the point. What is most interesting is whether there is some thought or emotion that the movie evoked. Ebert engages the movie as it is, veering away from measuring movies by some artificial Platonic ideal f what a movie should be.

Nick Hornby’s Juliet, Naked

May 19, 2010
Essay, fiction, Thoughts
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While I thought the movie Sideways was funny enough, it wasn’t a movie I would enjoy rewatching; I detested Paul Giamatti’s and Thomas Hayden Church’s characters, Miles and Jack, respectively, in that movie.  The one standout scene in that movie, for me, isn’t when Miles talked about how much he likes pinot noirs – which is just a self-pitying comparison between him and the grape. (That is, the care and cultivation needed for that grape to reach its full potential as a wine is the same care that a woman needs to give to him. Really. The effort expended on the grape is less aggravating, since the grape isn’t boorish and doesn’t talk back. Why should anyone, even his mother, spend that much attention on him?)

No, the scene that made me feel some sympathy toward Miles is his guzzling his prized bottle of wine (a 1961 Château Cheval Blanc), from a styrofoam cup, in a fast food restaurant, after he found out his ex-wife is pregnant. I believe that’s the occasion he was saving that bottle for, with them still being married and finding out they are expecting  (or nowadays, probably waiting until she gave birth and finished breastfeeding). In a nutshell, one can see that maybe the wife didn’t share all his interests, and that he had spent way too much time indulging in his own passion while not sparing any for his wife. It is sad, and seems a common affliction.

I am not the first to point out that a number of books and movies that focus on unattractive, compulsive, abusive, jerky men who luck into wonderful relationships with walking sex fantasies with a heart of gold and infinite patience. The writers are writing about their own desires, and these writers are all white, middle-aged men who, if we assume that these movies and books express their ideas about relationships, do not work at building friendships. These men sound like assholes.

And so we finally come to Juliet, Naked, the story of Annie, Duncan, and Tucker. Annie is an intelligent woman, stuck in a dead-end relationship with Duncan. Duncan is obsessed with a musician (Tucker) who disappeared during a tour; he was not seen nor heard from again. However, a core of diehard fans kept paying tribute to Duncan in the form of website and forum, trading in bootlegs and speculating about why Tucker turned away from the life of a rock star. They share stories about pilgrimages to locations deemed an important part of Tucker’s life.

As one imagines, the problem is not the compulsive behavior of these men, in the microscopic examination of every shred of public evidence of Tucker’s life. A major problem is in how these men feel Tucker owes them access to his life, to the point where fans try to intrude on his life.

However, I think a small part of the novel deals with  fan behavior; Hornby is gracious enough to recognize that some fans look weird and obsessive because most other people make them out to be weird. It is expected, until the advent of web based tools that let artists easily engage in self-promotion, that artists keep distance from their audience. I would suppose that artists would prefer that fans don’t talk back and certainly not to break into the homes of people who have some relationship to them.

At any rate, spending a vacation touring suburbs and bathrooms in the Midwest suggests that Duncan is a pathetic, infantile man who cannot move on. Of course, it also describes Annie, and her situation is even worse because she won’t or can’t leave Duncan, despite his problems being abundantly clear to her.

Things change in Duncan’s and Annie’s life when she opens mail intended for Duncan. The package contained a disc of unreleased material; it is basically a draft of Juliet, a record Tucker had released, and dubbed Juliet, Naked. Annie listens to it and concludes that the produced version is much better. This differs from Duncan’s view, and eventually their relationship breaks under the strain. Annie also writes out her thoughts about “Naked” on the Tucker fan site, managing to catch Tucker’s attention.

There are some interesting ideas here, mostly in how it is much easier to cultivate a relationship with someone who doesn’t reciprocate (in this case, it’s Tucker.) By traveling the same tour path as Tucker, by interpreting his music, and by doing everything short of treating Tucker like an actual person, Duncan and his compatriots can indulge in their pop psychology analysis of Tucker, of his drive and motivation. In short, fans like Duncan can project their own desires onto Tucker.

From my reading, Hornby’s books tend  examine the many different ways men engage in these one-sided relationships. It is much easier being a fan of a soccer team, ranking musicians, and generally being self-absorbed. Again, the idea of being a fan is to establish ones identity relative to the object of his obsession. It isn’t so much admiration as a mirror. The men interpret the art or the game or the players as they like (and it is their right), but it never seems as if they ever considered that the artist or the players may have their own views.

A major part of the work is in the idea of interpretation and how much an author has control over the nature of his works’ impact. There is one good bit with Duncan, towards the end of the novel. He meets Tucker and sees that Tucker isn’t the person Duncan has in mind. We also found out that these obsessives have staked a lot worship on the wrong information. They live on rumors about Tucker’s underground gigs, his supposed influence in production or writing of songs, and sightings of a person who isn’t even Tucker. So real Tucker doesn’t conform to Duncan’s idea of the man. We find out that Tucker also feels like that he can’t recognize the person he was anymore.

Tucker, it turns out, left music because he felt that his anguish over losing the love of Juliet, made tangible by his writing the songs on the record Juliet, was fake. He realized, while on tour, that he might actually love his new infant daughter more. That relationship may be more meaningful than young love. Perversely, he felt this feeling distanced himself from his own music, because whatever he wrote would be fiction. The music would no longer be authentic.

Duncan’s moment comes after this revelation. He argued the less creepy and more meaningful point that while an artist has his own motivations in creating a work of art, he cannot control how others perceive the piece or what meanings they take from it. Art inspires, but it is a mistake to think that it is an exact science in what feelings other take away. The important thing is that people take something from the piece, even if the artist loses touch with his own work.

This is the very argument I would use to justify me writing these musings about books I read. I was wrong to describe this blog as a series of book reviews. It is a collection of thoughts about books; ideally, I connect these ideas to themes from other books I read and, I hope, relatively novel thoughts I have based on my experience.

I would take the Duncan argument a step further; an artist shouldn’t feel inauthentic if his motivations and passions change. The sculpture, book, song, painting, photograph, or whatever, probably came from an authentic place, at the time the piece was created. If life happens and the artist feels differently later, what’s wrong with that? Why can’t he grow or regress? Why not author something new?

One final note: I suppose the Duncan argument runs a bit close to the post-modernist’s “textual analysis” justification. Everything is open for debate; meaning is in the eye of the beholder; there is no primary interpretation, thus ignoring the author’s own ideas, as if he has no idea why he created a work of art. This is a philosophical difference I am not reconciled with. I think that art should have some meaning or motivation. This comes from my finding art an absolute waste of time when the artist has no point of view. Rather, if his point-of-view is that he wants to say everything about everything, where symbols mean all things to all people, he says nothing at all. What I want from art is a particular thought, or feeling, something that convinces me that the author/painter/musician had something specific in mind. I don’t want to go to an artshow to look into a mirror, where I leave with what I  brought. I want to hear what the artist has to say, and think about it, and agree or disagree with it. With that said, of course individual interpretation has value; it’s just that I prefer it when the artist treats me with respect and has enough confidence in his own ideas to be specific. The problem is, this does require that an artist uses his vernacular to establish a framework for interpretation. That is, there is a so-called primary interpretation – that is, a true meaning – even if at a very skeletal level. Isn’t that the point of language, and, more generally, communication? Why write, speak or draw if the audience simply edits things on the fly to fit his own preconceptions? I do feel that interpretation is and should be constrained, and I do not respect artists who abrogate this basic responsibility.

Strangers on a Train and The Selected Stories of Patricia Highsmith

May 14, 2010
Anthology, Essay, fiction
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In many ways, Strangers on a Train is a much more satisfying work than Crime and Punishment. In broad strokes, both detail the guilt-wracked protagonists after each committed murder.  Guy Haines was browbeaten into committing murder, which seemed a questionable plot point. But what struck me as eminently believable was the way in which Guy’s mind grew distraught, even as his life continued apace.

I think it seems in vogue to write about murder as if any one of us can commit it. From my reading, Highsmith took the opposite thesis. People who kill are a little bit off. Charles Bruno is the son of a rich  man; he’s indolent and insolent. He is a little bit too close to his mother, and he probably harbors homosexual tendencies (it’s not weird now, but in the 50’s, it was). He certainly has a strong sense of the fantastical. He feels that Guy is the only person who can understand him and that they can escape together and recount their crime.
Guy and Bruno meet on a train. They talk, and Bruno senses some hint of tension in Guy. Guy has a wife whom he wishes to divorce – the very reason for the train trip – and Bruno has a father who apparently is an ogre. Bruno suggests what is the perfect crime, and has become a detective genre cliche. Bruno would kill Miriam, Guy’s soon to be ex-wife and Guy would kill Bruno’s father. The perfect crime, as the killers would have no obvious links to the victims, amounting to a random murder. Guy is disturbed and appalled by Bruno; I think he senses something is off-kilter about Bruno. Needless to say, Bruno is crazy, and decides to force matters and kills Miriam. Part of this might be because Bruno hates women. He says he hates his father because the father is an adulterer. But it turns out that Bruno’s mom gives as good as she gets, having her own stable of men to toy with. As another hint as to the fact that Bruno lives in his own head, he tells Guy that his mother is an example of the purity of women. Other evidence to show that Bruno is mentally unstable is that Bruno cannot leave Guy alone. He needs to drop hints to the detective who is following him. He involves himself in Guy’s life. In other words, establishing the connections that make it much easier to to link the two men.

What was interesting to me is how Highsmith handled Guy’s eventual descent into his own madness and commits murder. It is as if the motive is for Guy to shut Bruno up. Not necessarily to avoid being framed for a murder he didn’t commit, or that he wished to indulge in an animal behavior, but to kill so that Bruno would stop bothering him. Guy is portrayed as a depressed individual. He can’t take joy in his success. He is divorcing Miriam because she cheated on him, often. There is the element that Guy feels ill-used and played for a fool. He can’t be happy with his new girlfriend. He cannot confide in her, certainly not the murder but also very few other things.  It doesn’t take too much to disrupt Guy’s life, because he is already on the edge. He couldn’t be happy with his life before the murder, and he lets guilt take over after the murder. That is the one thing Guy can do extremely well – play martyr.

But I thought the best part of the novel was in how it slowly developed that others began to notice Guy’s odd behavior. It was a neat trick to portray it subtly, where others begin to see that something is not quite right with Guy. This is true especially in how Guy’s fiance notices that Guy goes from depression to something wilder.

In similar fashion, Highsmith’s short stories, in the collection The Selected Stories of Patricia Highsmith, show that she has little sympathy for humankind. Although there is a collection of character sketches that paint women in a terrible light (Little Tales of Misogyny),  in truth, no one came off looking too sympathetic. That’s not true; the collection opens up with a number of stories about animals that commit murder. Highsmith portrays these murderers as eminently justified. Everyone else is selfish, ugly, and dark. We see murder committed in cold blood, as an afterthought, for the joy of it, and from negligence and indifference. It’s impressive that, to my eyes, the stories are distinctive enough such that they don’t seem repetitive.

My favorite story is “The Romantic”. It is about a secretary who gets stood up on a date. Eventually, she starts going on made-up dates, where she sits and enjoys her time at a bar. She imagines the men she is waiting for. Knowing that these men will never show up, she feels liberated and happy.  She comes to realize that she very much prefers these pretend dates. So much so that when she is asked to go out on a date, she stands her date up. Her imagination gives her more satisfaction then men (and perhaps even other companions.) While it isn’t quite the slamming of the door in Ibsen’s “The Doll House”, I think it is a strong statement to make: Fuck them; I don’t need them.

How Lincoln Learned to Read

April 3, 2010
Essay, Thoughts
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I started reading this book because it was about education. My wife and I have 2 boys, one five-year-old and one 16 month old.  I’ve been thinking a great deal about their education. My wife and I are both scientists. We feel that while this line of work is intellectually rewarding, the road is hard. For one to reach the top, one has to make sacrifices. My wife and I are more interested in making sure that the boys grow up to make a comfortable living.

I would consider myself a lifelong student. I spent my 12 years in primary and secondary school. Four and a half years of collegiate learning (the extra semester came because I spent a yearlong exchange in Germany, and I decided to take some more courses to receive at least an International Studies minor). [This was followed] by 10 years of doctoral and post-doctoral training.

I have had the opportunity to learn in many settings. The modes of learning included both defined coursework and independent study. I did fine with both, although I think I had the advantage of being extremely interested in just about everything. So much so that on occasion I welcomed the structure imposed by instructors and their syllabus, plotting out a course of study that I may not have bothered with, on my own.

My graduate and post-doctoral work focused on olfaction, specifically on the physiology of olfaction as assessed using optical indicators of neural activity. I basically focused on recording brain responses in the “smell processing pathways” in the brain.

I didn’t have any affinity for the sense of smell. I applied to a neuroscience graduate program because I wanted to understand how the brain worked. It mattered not one wit whether the system was smell, taste, hearing, vision, or touch. I had a general question that I wanted to answer, and the specifics did not matter to me.

More recently, and this has some bearing on the book by Daniel Wolff, I had to find a second post-doctoral position because I decided that my skills were not marketable. I guess you can argue that I failed in convincing human resources that I can be productive for their company. However, it is also the case that biotechnology companies are not looking for a neurophysiologist who records in vivo neural responses using conventional microscopy. Instead, they look for electrophysiologists, scientists who do imaging in cell cultures, or deep tissue scanning using fMRI, CT scans, or PET scans.

Regardless, I couldn’t make myself fit into their bucket, and they weren’t willing to accommodate someone with my skill set and who could possibly bring something unique to their company.

The point is that I consider myself a professional student. Since I started my new post-doc in flow cytometry, I am learning new techniques, a new system, and getting to know the intimate lives of single cells. The strategy is simple: my boss has certain ideas he wants implemented. He left it to me to work out the specifics. So I am currently identifying attributes of my technique (UV spectroscopy), understanding the life cycle of a cell, identifying subcellular organelles, and learning how to make them stick to slides so I can look at them under a microscope. Most of these things I can find in published literature. The key thing is that I look for ways to combine my [new] technique ([involving] UV microscopy) and established ways of looking at cells.

In my previous post-doc, I had to determine the best way to preserve a “cranial window” through which I can look at brain responses, in the same animal, over a period of months. I adapted and extended previous work, and brought some newer techniques, to help me accomplish this goal. I also established a method to mimic natural breathing patterns in anesthetized mice, and so I had to learn LabView and MatLab to write software to control various devices and to analyze data.

So yes, I have some experience with learning new things.

And for the life of me I cannot think of a so-called best way for my boys to learn.

Thus I became interested in books like How Lincoln Learned to Read. It seems, from my reading, that the book confirmed  a few things about how kids learn. That is, it may not be clear until much later what exactly kids learned in school. Daniel Wolff took a snap shot of how 12 famous Americans were educated. He selected one child from each era and wrote about the formative years of each. Of course, these people may have become famous despite, and not because of, their education. One could tell that all of the young people were driven. Driven to achieve greatness, or driven to just do whatever it is that they became famous for.

In a way, the formal education was not all that important for each child. Some did in fact thirst for knowledge for its own sake. Wolff shaped his descriptions in terms of both pragmatic outcome and post-hoc analysis. We know where they ended up, so it becomes a way for us to interpret and identify the steps that led the children to their destiny. However, what he also noted was that the kids had the balls to chase the learning they needed. There is certainly an individualist streak, strongly evident in Lincoln’s and [Henry] Ford’s backgrounds; [both boys avoided farm work and] both boys were considered lazy for their time. [This was true given the focus of their times on the importance of farm work.] [Lincoln and Ford] were not layabouts. Lincoln read, and Ford tinkered. They learned what they wanted to know.

And even when the children were forced into limited opportunities for learning – such as for Thomectony, Abigail Adams, and Sojourner Truth – they did not let that education define them. They, as they should, got what they needed from books or their teachers, or even from their everyday observations. They did not let the limits of their so-called education prevent them achieving their ends.

Of all the characters, I felt the strongest affinity for W.E.B. Dubois, especially the view he took of education as uplift, in his younger days. A learned man is a rational man. The emphasis on books and abstract learning is the hallmark of civilization. Through reason and the sheer force of intellect and action, others cannot help but look past surface appearance to admire the man beneath. Education, simply, gives man and woman choice, so they do not have to sell their work cheaply.

But [the mass education] system seems broken to me. I have, and I hope this doesn’t turn readers off, thought for a long time now that education – and especially higher education – is not suited for everyone. I don’t think I am being elitist; I just happen to think that higher education is as useful to [most] people the way that knowing carpentry is useful to a plumber. It might be [handy] to know, but one certainly doesn’t require it to succeed in the job at hand. I will elaborate some more.

I’ve concluded that a university education is something that prepares students… to do research. For scientific research, the goal is to identify mechanisms underlying observed phenomena. The use may in fact not be obvious – this is more of the knowledge of the sake of knowledge [mode]. To me, it seems a destructive idea to [use] a university degree as a form of uplift. It cheapens education to the point that one thinks a degree is in fact a commodity to be bought. This cannot be further from the truth: to pay for an education should mean that one has decided that the resources of a university helps expand his knowledge, whether by working with specific machines and tools or with specific professors. This is active knowledge seeking.

The alternative is to think of college as a paid for experience, at the end of which one is conferred a piece of paper that acts as a passport to a job. In this mode, I can see how students and parents may impinge on faculty, outraged that the instructor dared to fail the lazy student. [I detest students who blame their own lack of academic success on the teacher wh odid not engage his interest], when in fact all they have paid for is access. The rest is up to the student to provide.

And so I was left with this: each of the subjects Wolff discusses had the common attribute of being presenters. These were all men and women who grew famous as politicians, orators, writers, or entrepreneurs. In a sense, each of these people excelled at internalizing and then espousing what they knew. Rachel Carson wrote about her Romantic-era like visions of her bucolic home, an ideal that was nowhere near the [reality] of her growing up near a glue factory. Elvis Presley spent time in school, sure, but he certainly did not shy from joining quartets or cutting demos. Ben Franklin, Helen Keller, and Andrew Jackson learned a fair bit about finding popular topics to write or talk about.

This theme, whether Wolff intended or not, has dovetailed with my own thinking about the type of education I want my sons to have. I think, most of all, they need to read proficiently. Not in the cheap post-modern way where all language simply reflects one’s preconceived notions and thoughts. No, I mean to read and to understand and internalize the writer’s point of view. To engage him honestly. The second thing would be to then tell an audience what he understood, and how he extends or refutes the idea. I think this second point is something that needs to be emphasized explicitly. By telling, one learns.

It is a bit of a cliche, in graduate school, that the best way to learn is to be forced to teach someone else. Only [by] actually thinking about the audience will one truly begin to understand. I have found the hard way that this is in fact true. One should aspire not to understand something, but to make it so that he can help a second person understand what he [now professes] to know. I realized I have been implementing this in a soft way. I keep asking my older son questions, helping him develop details to his stories. I am always amazed and gratified when he can put together sentences with subclauses, declaring a proper sequence of events.

Part of it is just joy in hearing him talk, in seeing him learn. [I] am glad to see that there are precedents for such [a] type of education.

Update 4/9/2010: Ick. I know blogs are meant to be fast, first drafts sort of posts, but I just can’t stand seeing obvious mistakes and not correct them. I placed the edits in brackets (I’m not sure if the strikethroughs I see in other blogs are real corrections or if it’s another tool to convey snide comments – I think usually the latter…. So, I am going with brackets.)