Summer Reading Makes Me Sad
So Lila has asked us all here to write a piece about what we're reading this summer. As the former editor 'round these parts, I thought I'd jump in here first to get the ball rolling. Ok, here goes.
Despite running book clubs here for over a year, I'm actually pretty terrible at reading books. There are only so many pages I can read without wanting to click. I suppose it's because Google is making me stupid (or at least making my brain desire more interactive stimulation when it learns), but I usually read three or four books at a time and usually only get through one of those four.
A few days ago, I finally picked up Drew Westen's The Political Brain. It, and a few other books, have me kind of depressed.
As I've written here, I'm thinking a lot about information cocooning and the extent to which this wonderful internet that I love may be narrowing, not broadening our media consumption. So far, Westen's argument hasn't exactly been heartening. He basically confirms what you would assume about our ability to consume information that conflicts with our partisan desire: we rationalize and ignore the shortcomings of our own leaders and party but have no trouble at all seeing the flaws of our opponents. I'll be interested to see how much I can take that psychological idea and apply it to media consumption, but certainly things are looking pretty dark so far.
I'm also still working on two books we've had here at Cafe in the last month. I expected to read Shirky's Here Comes Everybody and feel re-energized about all the amazing prospects for organizing using the internet for social change. That's true, but there's also a clear dark side to "ridiculously easy organizing." Not all organizing is for what I'd consider social good.
And, Rick Perlstein's Nixonland is seriously long so I'll probably just be finishing it when I write this same post next year. So far so incredible though. It may have been pretty difficult for Nixon to organize people (my god that man spent a lot of time on the road), but he certainly didn't need to read Westen's book to realize that the political mind is rarely rational. While liberals were making "rational" arguments, Nixon was beating the crap out of them appealing to people's worst.
On the happy side, my girlfriend has convinced me to read Marley and Me, a book about a guy and his dog that dies. So I'm sure that will make me feel better.
Any predictions on which of the four I'll get all the way through? Believe it or not I'm guessing Nixonland.
Ask your girlfriend to read/re-read "The Incredible Journey" by Sheila Burnford.
June 30, 2008 9:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
Try Infinite Jest. Or the Baroque Trilogy. Seriously, the internets aren't killing your brain for longform matter. You just need better longform material because the internet gives you more choices.
Try out "Against the Day" by Thomas Pynchon. It's long, but written for a net guy.
You're not done with long books, you just demand more from them. That's okay. They're asking for your time.
June 30, 2008 9:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
Do you mean the Baroque Cycle by Neal Stephenson?
July 2, 2008 2:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
Right now, I'm reading Harold Schonberg's Lives of the Great Composers (much to my wife's shock and dismay, I've never read it before). . . and listening to those same composers on my ipod. It's turning out to be a very pleasant summer indeed!
My wife picked up some history of India (I don't remember which one, but I'll check once I get the ipod out of my ear) . . . that's next.
I guess the moral of this story is that you need to find a wife (or significant other of whatever sex you prefer) who likes books. . .
June 30, 2008 9:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
I have that! But she gave me a depressing book that made her cry on an airplane! I need some sort of happy book.
June 30, 2008 9:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
I read half of Drew Westen's book. For the most part, I agree with his concept. It seems after reading half the book I felt I got the point and lost interest in the details. It's a pretty simple idea and it didn't take much to convince that, while some of his examples are impractical, that democrats could benefit from paying attention to emotions in their efforts to persuade (and believe Obama did this more so than Hillary). I had some fun trying to implement it in my personal life as well... trying to notice people's emotional weakness and exploit it for my own benefit.
June 30, 2008 9:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
Free association on this topic:
Well I don't know about you but I don't read much of that fare. I'm not being an elitist, I'm just saying I feel I'm wasting my time.
The book club fare over here seems to be an inside baseball affair. The various authors and cognoscenti talk to each other and everyone’s eyes glazes over.
It isn't as if there is no more pressing things to talk about.
Maybe summer is reserved for a rest from the battle of the pens. I don't know.
As far as killing time I find the teevee to be a greater wasteland than I ever imagined it to be even a year ago. So I have little to do except for idle speculation.
Wesley Clark was right on the money with his comment that getting shot down in a plane does not for a foreign policy wonk make. But people have no humor. Getting shot down in a plane--in media land-- qualifies you for deification, especially if you spent five years as a prisoner of war.
Not to minimize the sacrifice that McCain has made in his life.There is a hint of what he must have suffered in his sad eyes. But as far as foreign policy experience is concerned I would not press the issue on those merits.
Yet Mr./Ms. America insist: McCain has foreign policy creds cause he got shot down in a plane and spent five years as a POW. Go figure.
Nevertheless Obama was wise to denounce the whole thing. There goes the whole plan to swiftboat McCain. [update, Clark himself refuses to apologize and Carville states the obvious].
Kerry was just as heroic in Vietnam as McCain yet they tore him to pieces successfully. Clark himself is a highly decorated military man. Is it because they are Democrats and Democrats give off the impression they are "nice guys" while Republicans give off the impression they are SOB's and when it comes to foreign affairs the American people always choose to go with the SOB? Probably.
When the American people shift their attention away from their own sense of superiority and look outward into the world, the first thought that comes to their minds is "let's go kick some ass".
Been thinking about the pundit industry (in the broad sense of everyone who has access to a mass audience to pontificate about what is right and what is wrong what is true and what is false, what is good and what is bad, etc...). First thing that comes to mind is this: given that almost everyone has an opinion on most topics, it is a hell of a great job to get paid for sharing yours with a sizable chunk of the American people.
Does that mean that what Pundits say has some special quality as to make it wise, or closer to the truth if not the absolute truth and those of us who listen should be grateful to soak it up? Not really. But why do we suffer "opinion makers for the masses" in the first place? Why not turn away?
Ahh well because, otherwise we feel we are not connected to the social fabric that makes up America.
More and more I'm gravitating towards the "drop out" strategy of Timothy Leary. Jut hold off on
the acid for me, reality is weird enough without the enhanced powers of hallucination.
Well. I have tried to read Madeline Albright and Zbigniew Brzezinski
But they are dishing out soporifics for the masses. There is little connection between what they say in their books from what they actually did/do in practice as members of the ruling elite. There is a virtue in NOT publishing even if you lose out in pecuniary emoluments.
Just a final thought. Am I the only one who misses transhuman?
July 1, 2008 12:12 AM | Reply | Permalink
I'm going to be reading several of the novels and short stories of Yukio Mishima, which I have wanted to do for some time, but have always put off.
I also just took a business trip to Montreal, which gave me an opportunity to practice some French, and has given me some new motivation to improve my French reading, which used to be pretty good but has grown rusty. So I have pulled out several French novels I have wanted to read for some time, and will be puttering around with them with my French dictionaries and grammar books at hand.
I'm also going to be attacking my usual piles of philosophy books and papers, and some science reading thrown in.
So literature, philosophy and science are on the agenda. I have no plans to read any history, and definitely no plans for politics.
Politics gives me no hope at all lately, and the more I engage in political discussion, the more loathsome, idiotic and futile the world seems to me. Lately, this country just strikes me as a nitwit freak show, filled with grotesque levels of avarice, violence, and willful stupidity. The presidential general election campaign also promises to one long insult to our intelligence. It's all too depressing, and I'm finding it increasingly difficult to care what happens on the political front. I need to take a break from politics to read some things that are more artistically and intellectually nourishing, maybe even beautiful, and that put me in touch with the less repulsive, barbarous and absurd aspects of existence. Maybe that will shake me out of the funk.
July 1, 2008 1:32 AM | Reply | Permalink
I dunno, Dan, is there really good literature that is in the end uplifting? :
These things being relative, perhaps more so than thinking about politics for some of us. :
This brings to mind what someone said about Tolstoy novels: they are all long, sad, and in the end everyone dies.
I am perhaps reading too much work-related stuff on my own time. But I did pick up a couple of books on science that I hope to get to this summer. I hear there are a few new and fascinating developments since I last took a science course, oh, 28 years ago or so. :
July 1, 2008 11:00 AM | Reply | Permalink
Well Dan, you just made Andrew look like Little Mary Sunshine in comparison.
:D
Maybe it's time to (re?) read Candide.
July 1, 2008 8:19 AM | Reply | Permalink
Yeah, I need to tend to my garden.
July 1, 2008 9:21 AM | Reply | Permalink
Many of the political BSO's (book shaped objects) that have been published recently could have their premise condensed to a 1500 word essay. Several of them have appeared here to be discussed.
However, the dynamics of the publishing industry demand that each of these thin reeds be blown up into a BSO so that it can be marketed and promoted properly. Hardly a one has a single new thought or idea, most are just rehashes of things that have been said before and recaps of history slanted to make the author's point.
One new book that doesn't fit the mold is "Moral Clarity" by Susan Neiman. It's a book which discusses the philosophical basis for ethical precepts, especially when one wishes to get away from the use of religious texts as unquestioning authority.
To make her point she uses the stories of Job and Sodom and Gomorrah as contrasting moral stances.
Unlike BSO's one actually has to read the whole book (slowly!) to get the author's full argument.
July 1, 2008 10:16 AM | Reply | Permalink
I saw that in the store and thought it looked interesting. Other stuff you've read that you would also recommend as being an improvement on the typical BSO? :
July 1, 2008 11:32 AM | Reply | Permalink
"Moral Clarity". Why is it that 'murder is wrong' is just astransparently true as 2+2=4 yet neither has a handy "proof" to back it up such as 'whater freezes at 0 degrees Centigrate' does?
July 1, 2008 3:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
Andrew, well, if you're guessing Nixonland, then I'm guessing Nixonland as well. :
Re the internet and whether it reinforces the tendency of users to seek out those with like-minded views and tastes, Cass Sunstein raised this as a possibility, but by no means a certainty, in his 2002 book Republic.com (the sequel, Republic.com 2.0, which I've not read, came out last August).
He has also written up social science research in his excellent book Why Societies Need Dissent, suggesting that when people with similar views congregate and interact, the tendency of the group is to adopt more extreme (more intense?) versions of those same views. The research also shows that a single dissenting voice raised in opposition can have a major effect on a group's processes and decisions.
So if one puts the tendency of like-minded individuals to congregate at particular sites along with the tendency for this to lead to more extreme or intense articulations or expressions of the views of its individual members held coming into the site, this pretty much gets one all the way to the "echo chamber" effect so notably on display in the political blogosphere.
There is no reason in principle, though, why sites cannot be created deliberately for those who want exposure to, and serious engagement with, a wide range of views. I've been told that realclear politics, for example, features a wide range of viewpoints. There may be others.
Whether such sites arise out of deliberate efforts by their founders or simply evolve that way out of the happenstance of who the early users happen to be, evidently they do exist. I have to wonder how stable they are over time, or whether they are vulnerable to being overrun by one point of view or another.
The internet can't make us want to seek out and understand diverse points of view and ways of life, or want to engage in a civil, open-minded way with those holding views or living lives we see as very different from our own. I don't know why anyone might have thought that it would tend to work that way in the main. (I'm not suggesting that you did, Andrew.)
One can observe similar tendencies in peoples' residential patterns. In many metropolitan areas around the US there are enclaves, seemingly fairly stable, where there is a mix of people of different races, ethnicities, or income levels. Think Cambridge, Massachusetts, or Takoma Park, Maryland or Arlington or Alexandria, Virginia (DC suburbs), or Oak Park or Rogers Park in Chicago (some of these have considerably more race and ethnic than income diversity). Yonkers just outside of NYC used to be somewhat this way. I'm not sure if it still is.
This may reflect that a minority of individuals have a strong desire for diversity along these dimensions in where they want to live. Otherwise such communities would not remain reasonably stable over time.
But most people seek out, to the extent their means permit them to do so, communities with people they think of as like themselves, along lines of race/ethnicity, and for affluent people, along lines of income/wealth as well. Real estate agents play a significant role in steering people in these statistically predominant directions.
The result is quite severe residential segregation by race, ethnicity and income/wealth in most of our metro areas.
If the proverbial Martian (one who knew what, say, visitors to this site know) were to come to our planet and observe where people live in this country, it might have difficulty distinguishing between residential patterns in parts of our metro areas and those that existed in apartheid South Africa.
Bottom line is more people seek out others they see as "likes" than "unlikes", whether it comes to where they live or the political points of view of people they hang out with if they happen to be politically engaged and active.
This for a long time has raised profound questions for me about the ability of our country to thrive on our diversity more than we let it hurt us, and on the longer-term health and durability of our society as the economic climate for the middle class becomes increasingly tougher in the decades to come. Not that I see us as a healthy society at present.
Segregation by residence, and self-segregation by political viewpoint, are both problematic to me in this regard.
I don't know why anyone might think we would work to understand those living in other societies when we don't do that so much in our own society and in fact many of those with means deliberately seek to separate themselves physically and in other ways from those they see as unlike themselves in threatening ways. Robert Reich referred to this phenomenon as "the secession of the successful." Gated communities and expensive, elite private schooling for those who are affluent are just two manifestations of this tendency.
My understanding is that author Bill Bishop may be touching on these or related issues in the upcoming book club discussion of his latest, The Big Sort.
Reading other posts in this thread, I felt I just had to do my part to contribute to the overall gloomy tone. :
July 1, 2008 10:54 AM | Reply | Permalink
I'm reading the Wheel of Time series by Jordan.
July 1, 2008 4:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'm re-reading Tor Norretranders’ The User Illusion. I needed reminding on something I had read in there a while back. Next on the list is Guy Claxton's The Wayward Mind.. However, a summer reading list without some Sci-Fi is a sick joke. Mine is Shery Tepper's The Margarets
July 2, 2008 1:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
as a PS, I loved Marley and Me. It made me cry too. But I loved it!
July 2, 2008 1:49 PM | Reply | Permalink