Somewhere in the middle of this book I had begun to think that Circe was a simple instrument for playing back the popular stories of Greek mythology in a short, indulgent form.

Circe, The Greek's Greatest Hits, a mixtape by Madeline Miller.

The writing is pretty and elegant (e.g. Aeetes describing his godhood as a column of water, Helios's regality, etc. gotta come back and edit in actual quotes, but don't have the text with me); the stories are familiar (e.g. Prometheus, Icarus, The Minotaur); the perspective (i.e. Circe's) feels alternative and thus fresh, but not, initially, profound. Circe is delicate and humble, and her sympathy allows the familiar stories to be told in a human, relatable way; as opposed to through the cold but momentous ethics and morals that dominate Greek mythology's traditional presentation. Given this, the book would be totally light and entertaining, but only if my described simplicity was thorough.

Look harder, Simba.

By the end of the book, when Circe realizes her true self, the entire undercurrent of her story -- the framework for all the other stories told within it -- suddenly stops being an undercurrent, and the proceeding wave of cohesion and comprehension crashes in epiphany. A stitch sewn loosely and slowly through sparse fabrics, starting with Circe's treatment of Prometheus, is cinched taught revealing a whole comprised of pieces you didn't realize were related, and it is a wonderful, proud moment to be human.

Circe is unique in that she empathizes with mortals.  While other Gods go on in their monotony, she yearns, she hurts, she doubts, she feels responsible. Grandmother rolls her eyes at another nymph asking for help with a mortal love. Helios's hall loves the gossip over Scylla's transformation, but in a petty decadent fashion. Even Aeetes, who initially consoled Circe with his comradery, becomes entranced with his endless pursuits of goalless greatness and novelty. Buy Circe continues to care. Why? Why would a god care? How could a god care? These are the questions that the book asks.

On an infinite timeline, all subplots are insignificant. It follows that, to an eternal god, everything is trivial. Significance founded on triviality is vain and pointless. No wonder the gods obsess over gossip, simple pleasures, and ranks among one another. They crave illusory novelty because true meaning is beyond them. Nothing is precious. Everything is of equal priority, and so everything is either a game or a blind expression of their singular, specific, axiomatic, self-demonstrating natures. Helios drives his chariot, Athena moves her pawns, Hermes plays his tricks, Zeus sits on his throne, the lesser gods rule their more meager kingdoms. No one asks why. Except for Circe.

Why did Prometheus decide the wrath of Zeus was a fair price for the mortals' salvation? Why did this defiance feel transcendent and righteous? The divine sacrifices himself to save mankind from its own fragility. Because they're worth it. (Everything old is new again.)

But so anyway, Circe is initially concerned with love and pity for Glaucos, and maybe you could write this off as nativity. An eternal god needs to start their eternity somewhere, and so before they become jaded and are made cynical they have to ask the initial, obvious questions. Why can't I marry this man I love?! I don't care if he's the first I've ever loved, this is the real deal! Adolescence. A few thousand generations will beat that right out of you. Except Circe weaves a persistent guilt into her core by creating the monster Scylla, and so forever has to integrate the knowledge of others' suffering into her existence. She empathizes, uniquely.

Then she graduates from indirectly affecting the lives of mortals to being explicitly involved. She helps birth the Minotaur, whose wrath she feels responsible for. She relates to Ariadne, sorry she has such uncaring parents. She mingles with Odysseus, taking comfort in his company, learning his faults, and missing his absence all the same. She learns the lessons of motherhood, the endurance of a child's needs and their simultaneous fleeting dependence. More...

At the end of all of this, her first complete pass through the struggle of living affairs, she has a choice. (a) The passive and popular: to continue with the periodic routine and undoubtedly become bored with the tedium of fleeting concerns. Or (b) something else.

And so she chooses to become mortal herself. Those last few lines of the book, where she's describing her ideal and you know it must be her inner truth, and that she's willing qualify all the inevitable tragedy as significant, just for the chance at also qualifying the slim amount of good that might be offered, too. "I have a mortal's voice, let me have the rest." ...among all those other beautiful lines.

What an empowering idea. The meager shall inherit the earth indeed.

Also, from a technical theological perspective, this book got me thinking about the lineage of gods. About how The Olympians were a sort of refinement of The Titans. Gods were the models of the world. And as our understanding grew, they gave way to more powerful, general concepts. The crude titans, Time, Moon, Sun, etc. Giving way to more abstract and generally applicable concepts, Power, War, Messenger, Beauty, Bounty.

In a way, it becomes obvious that the next step would be a single god of Greatness, cue the old testament. A series of refinements ending in a point. And yet, all these endless "gods" are bound by their eternity, as described above. Their greatness is defined relative to a time, and thus becomes brittle as times change. And the world is constantly changing, and so absolute claims (i.e. the word of god(s)) eventually become inaccurate, even in the abstract (abstractions just take longer to wear out).

You need pure dynamism to answer this question. You need a means for changing claims over time. Rationality and creativity, and a machine to embody them. You need the human race, passing its knowledge down and refining it generation after generation, fallible but adaptable. Us being an instance of a more general god: Evolution. The ever expanding (i.e. refining) container of the gods (i.e. models of the world, explanative ideas) themselves. A fractal, recursive explanation of explanation.

In transcending nature and learning to abstract instead of intuit, we've simultaneously doomed ourselves to an unpredictable but exciting future, as opposed to a predictable, endless oscillation of animal instinct mixing with indifferent natural order. The garden of eden sounds a lot like Helios's halls for those who would prefer to passively behave and feast. But I want to feel and wonder.

And so Adam bit and Circe drank.

I wanted this book to be more. I thought its reputation meant it was more than just a time-passing novel, and perhaps it'd be something of a psychological dissection. Like, maybe this was the book that would get into the details and provide the palpable empathy of what it was like to be a slave, and further what it was like to participate in the actual underground railroad.

Maybe it'd describe the atrocities in independent and full color detail. Where a high school education might tell you that people were brutalized, dehumanized, whipped, lynched, etc. a novel has the potential to build a relationship between you and its characters, and then describe single events in gruesome detail. It's these single, specific descriptions that allow a reader to feel the situation, and hurdle over our own cognitive biases -- e.g., diffusion of responsibility, paradoxes of scale in empathy. e.g., see Dave Chappelle brief but powerful description of Emmett Till in I forget which one of his most recent comedy specials. His describing Emmett's mother's bravery and audaciousness is more moving than any third person generalization.

Or what about the complicated competing priorities of the slaves who didn't try to escape? The insidious push, at the threat of gun and whip, from thinking about progress and the future of a diverse community and rich culture, into thinking about the survival of single days and the humble maintenance of a forced ghetto. Viktor Frankl and Solzhenitsyn come to mind, and Cora could of been the equivalent for the partial genocide of African autonomy. "Partial", not in the sense of apologizing for the slavers by noting they weren't as greedy as they could've been, but "partial" because those people didn't manage to take all of Africa, when they sure as hell would of if they could. And also "partial" because of what they did take they weren't able to extinguish completely, the soul of those cultures being too strong to squash. It's this resilience that's interesting. That's the story. Instead, Cora is an outcast among outcasts. She makes her decisions in what seem like brief reflexive spurts, and thus doesn't represent any larger group or its hypothetical spirit of perseverance. Is this then meant to be the moral? I don't think so...

The Underground Railroad neither built those kind of relationships nor described those kind of details. 300 something pages later, I don't have any personal connection to Cora except for the sympathy I'd give to any human despicably treated.

Or maybe the book'd go into describing, in painful paradox, the kind of mental gymnastics that were needed by the white race of the time in order to justify such an absurd treachery as slavery. But not just in some caricatured political cartoon kind of way, but in the steel-man kind of way. Build up both sides of the argument, and lay the groundwork for empathy with the kind of (false) axioms that allowed slavery to be justified. Something like how the results of the Stanford Prison Experiment apply at scale to the times of slavery and the minds of the slavers. From that strong foothold, we can really dismantle and disempower the psychology that allows for racial prejudice.

Instead, you get a brief Scooby Doo description of a typical lazy-minded, all-too-comfortable, greedy set of villains. And obviously there were a lot of villains back then, but their characters were more complex than the dastardly drunk who liked to beat his property with a cane he carried for status instead of crutch, full stop. Leonardo DiCaprio's character in Django Unchained was both more sinister and more nuanced, and thus interesting, and that movie was meant to be an over the top drama, not a semi-historical fiction.

Ridgeway was the beginnings of such a sophisticated and explanative character, and the only one at that. Compare him to the Plantation owners themselves, who probably should've been such characters but were too busy whoring and drinking in single sentences, and yet Ridgeway also only showed his head (and what was inside of it) a handful of times.

Or maybe a description of the painful and conflicting ethics that must've tormented abolitionists trying to balance their responsibilities to themselves and their families over their responsibilities to doing Go(o)d's true work (e.g. ridding the world of slavery).

The attic owning family was so lightweight as to be a joke, Cora's time spent with them vaguely reminiscent of Anne Franke with so much less of the personal reflection that could've been used to build ties between Cora and the reader and describe the modernly impossible situation of that kind of confinement and lack of basic accommodation. Instead, rather than use Cora's confinement as a means for reflection, the author goes out of his way to have a literal hole in the wall that happens to point directly at more outside horror. Why even bother putting her in the confined attic then?

The background of Ethel and her husband's internal decision making was literally an afterthought of the entire scene, reduced to Ethel's petulant pouting about the entire scheme, and crazed disowning of the entire thing when faced with the potential of being murdered for her righteous but stigmatized participation; and her Husband's wanting to be like his daddy, whose (i.e. the daddy's) provided inspiration was summarized in a single page that started with him leading a typical and uneventful life, and ended in him admitting to his son on his deathbed that he was secret abolitionist all along and demanding he carry the torch. Wow! What a twist! Compelling stuff! Sigh...

Or maybe, make the book a disappointment to readers and demonstration of the true injustice of institutionalized slavery. Maybe Cora gets caught and actually sent back to the plantation, with no further description other than that she was received and the bounty paid, the magnitude and horror of her punishment left undescribed and thus boundless. The end. You thought this was an epic fairy tail? Real life is cold. Slaves and their descendants knew and know that, and it's about time you did too, reader.

But no, Cora ends up scott free after miraculously disarming her captor. Fine. This might work if the story were a testament to the efficacy of the actual underground railroad, as a reinforcement of historical fact...

BUT THEN WHY IS THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD AN ACTUAL IRON AND COAL RAILROAD?

Just for a fantastical spin? This seemed like an arbitrary and pointless fictional plot device injected into an otherwise based-on-the-truth story. It neither (a) acted as a hypothetical for what could've been if the railroad were literally more efficient and thus effective, perhaps then contrasting this alternative reality against actuality in an interesting way that'd inspire the reader to think differently (e.g. have faith in future grassroots organization when faced with overwhelming adversity). But the railroad wasn't any faster and didn't have any more throughput. So dead end there.

And nor did it (b) iconify the power of the in-real-life railroad of people. Further, the mystery surrounding the in-book railroad wasn't described or explained or related to anything, save one spineless piece of zen-style wit-by-ambiguity, "no one knows who laid the tracks", "we all laid the tracks", "the tracks were in our head all along". Is the camera going to pan out to Mr. Rogers closing the hardcover and saying goodbye?

The only result I can see following this whimsical addition is that some less familiar future reader takes it as actual, factual reference; and walks away thinking that's how the world was.

What a frustrating and seemingly punchless gimmick. Especially so because, to someone with an interest in serious science fiction and the self-consistency it requires, it's such a ridiculous and unserious premise in the first place. Here I am trying to hold the entire social dynamic of slaves and slave owners and abolitionists in my head all at the same time, while simultaneously knowing one of the pervasive psychological and sociological tensions of the era is the fact that the slaves outnumber the white public, slave owners and non-, and that they, the slaves, might revolt in organized mass at any moment, and the whites don't know how much potential is in that powder keg, and the slaves... who knows what they think, 'cause that's left undescribed as well, the story focusing more on a handful of loaner individuals...

And both in the book and in reality, the slaves didn't revolt in mass, which is perhaps a tragedy in itself, and the book goes out of its way to note this very fact. But then it goes ahead and adds this arbitrary piece of fiction -- that the railroad was actual tracks and steam engines -- implying that the very same people who couldn't or wouldn't revolt, for whatever reason, could organize and fund a massive engineering project -- laying a literal railroad -- a project which requires much more capital and motivation and secrecy as, say, putting together a machete wielding militia and a corresponding strategy to emancipate their brothers and sisters or die trying.

Not to mention the fact that the slave catchers and reactionary nationalists are constantly and fruitlessly looking for the railroad, which is kept hidden by people's cellars and bushes and welcome mats, but they can't hear steam engines working underground in the middle of the night...

But, Adam, it's a novel. Suspension of disbelief. The symbolism is more important than the mechanics... Except, as I said, there wasn't any functional symbolism I could detect, and you shouldn't make such consolations of consistency if, without them, you could achieve the same thing.

The author unwittingly introduced two huge deus ex machinas-- one for the slaves to revolt with and one for the racists to dominate with -- and then didn't use either. Grrrrr.

For what it was worth, I did find myself appropriately disgusted at the atrocity of slavery and the briefly described specific sins that were committed onto Cora and others. But I felt these emotions no more than when I learned the basics of slavery in high school, or after watching any decent, honorable movie whose setting took place back then. But I give myself more credit for providing the required imagination than to the work for providing adequate illustration.

You're better off reading Fredrick Douglas directly than expecting much from this book.

War is abstract for people like me.

Occasionally I'll watch Mark Wahlberg kill terrorists over a beer, and that's only ever during the downtime between bouts at work, a place where I'm saturated with idiosyncrasies that are even further removed from politics and culture and the contention they stir up. Bush's got his mission, Obama's sending drones out, Trumps doing Syrian things, I'm thinking about whether the corporate software I write could be 7% faster and if I should eat eggs for dinner or go shop for proper groceries.

So when I think about war and ideology, it's easier for me to default to fantastic reductions. The Nazis are evil aliens and good always prevails, rock beats scissors and America will save the day through pure will and righteousness.

But that's childish thinking. The details of the mechanics in play are much more nuanced and a precise investigation of them is, if anything else, extremely interesting and involved.

The Naked and the Dead is that investigation, at least for WWII.

At first I thought this book was a bit rough. It starts out with what feels like this exaggerated character: a quiet loner type kid, with synesthetic skills in visualization and spatial awareness, develops into this fantastic mathematician simultaneously obsessed with his extraordinary work, yet casually involved in multiple prodigious side projects, and also socially capable and involved in enough personal relationships to sleep around with half a dozen distinguished women, taking the occasional hit of acid for good measure. It's a wild ride believing that all of it is possible for one person, but at some point it comes off as incredible. Or maybe I'm just hanging around in the wrong crowd. In any case, if you let it the story is dramatic and exciting, i.e. fun.

But then the book progresses and you see this character's greatness metastasize: his once elegant and casual mastery of so many domains begins to fall in on itself, the growth unsustainable. Milo's extravagance in everything but the material world looses fuel and hits the wall of his own immovable (yet limited) ethics. And it's here where the book not only redeems its initial exaggerations, it justifies them. It shows what happens when a certain level of idealization reacts with reality. How absolute ambition can corrode, and what that price pays for. "History is merciless, Hans. That’s the truth you and I both know. The struggle doesn't matter. The struggle vanishes. What remains is the work, and the work either stands or falls." Yes, Milo, but you're human, too. How do you optimize a inherently limited body to produce perfect and original work?

But it's not only about being inside Milo's head, there's also a deeper layer: how do other people cope being involved in such a person's life? Milo's wife, his children, his mistresses, his enemies, his colleagues: how do these people develop? It's in these relationships that the book becomes nuanced. One of the better techniques of the book is how subtly and believably it investigates and winds together both (1) the singular, internal, personal struggle and yield of ambition, and (2) how that greatness might affect other people exposed to such an inconsiderate daemon.

One of my favorite, brief descriptions in the book was made by the contrast between Milo's type, Earl Biettermann's, and Milo's Princeton colleagues'. Milo seems to be principled and skilled, but lacks a certain level of diligence brought on by his frustration with the luck component of the creative process. There are several paths to take, each one of which might be longer than you have to offer, and that's unfair and arresting; yet he's compelled to take one anyway. Biettermann, on the other hand, seems to have an inexhaustible self control, but lacks some of Milo's skill and also considers the luck aspect of solving great problems disqualifying. Instead, he devotes himself to the material, milking a known well for what it's worth, impressed by how above average he can be, but still pained by the lack of satisfaction and meaning in what he chooses to do. In a way, Biettermann is jealous of Milo's silly pursuits, because even if they're futile, they still have the chance of being meaningful. He justifies this by trying to discredit Milo's accomplishments, and thus prove the futility of how they were achieved. And yet, ironically, as much as Biettermann is not Milo, Biettermann's cynicism reflects Milo's own inextinguishable doubts about the work he has done and what he might (not) be capable of. You can't win!

And in between these two extremes, you have Milo's Princeton colleagues. A few excerpts:

"Andret’s senior colleagues seemed to disagree over every imaginable issue, from whether the honor code allowed an undergraduate to remove an exam book from the classroom to which drinks would be served at the fall-semester mixer. Each item was approached like an affair of state." And, "There seemed to be no question too small to generate a half hour of steady opposition." Compared to Milo's own behavior, "The methodical approach itself, somehow, had become an end. The hours of thought. The incremental charting and drawing. As though by performing them both, even for brief periods, he could systematically check off the set of steps that would in time deliver a solution. Like a man moving a load of gravel with a wheelbarrow. He knew this was absurd."

He knew this was absurd! That's the key. This type of insipid academic, people whose birth-won talents and trivial obstinance have gotten them so far in society, but no farther: these types pollute the sanctity of the ultimate and difficult questions of the world. These types are disgusting in a way, and yet they're all too often lumped together with great minds. And but well, while it is indulgently satisfying to discriminate them into what they are, they and their methods also represent a driving fear within the mechanism of both Earl and Milo's minds. Mile and Earl, great talents, know they could coast and rest easy, and yet doing so is repulsive to them. They know that such an existence is a siren song, and would ultimately extinguish any direction to life. Another catch 22, or is it? Maybe there's some Zen in being able to accept a homeostasis of ability and work.

This seems to be what other character's in the book ask; Milo's Wife, Helena, for instance.

"Of course, theirs must long have been an abysmal marriage, or at least one predicated on a particularly despairing seesaw, at one end of which Dad had stacked every ounce of his logical brilliance, his highly purified arrogance, his Olympian drinking, his caustic derision, his near-autistic introversion, and his world-class self-involvement, and at the other end of which my mother had placed her two modest parcels of optimism and care. And perhaps a third: her humor. Even amid the decline of their marriage, she maintained her mild, tardy habit of one-upping his banter in a softly offered voice, after a long pause, that was like a tennis player reaching a ball just before the second bounce."

Here you see a different kind of ambition. Something more saintly, less articulated, but just as well embodied and real. What does it mean to see such an intellect as Milo's while knowing that you yourself are not bound just by luck, but by skill as well? The thing is, the answer to this question seems to be encoded in Helena's not ever asking it. Rather, for her, a work's persistence through time is irrelevant; it's the connections she has here and now that are undeniable and undismissable. (Ironically, the persistence of art work in the world can be conceived as the legacy of such connections, and this is what Helena focuses on. But anyway...) Her compassion deposits itself onto her husband and children and later her grandchildren directly from this foundation of inherit connection with these people. She's a lover, but not simply or romantically. "Love at this stage is all kinds of things, not the least of which is pity.”

And so we have set up another kind of balance. A life real and tangible, sacrificed for a shot at the graceful and pure. And the dismissal of frivolous utopias for what's here and now. Milo and Helena. Mathematics and Physics.

Can you compromise these two? Is there somewhere to sit between them? Milo's Children, and then his grandchildren seem to ask that question and then answer it in varying degrees.

At first, Milo's son Hans came off to me as the same type of incredible as his father first did. This kid rolls MDA twice a day, everyday, for months (years?), without reprieve, and barely gets a headache. What? Come on... Also, the use of Hans and his sister Paulina to expand on Milo's misogyny seems a bit one dimensional and inconsistent. At least Milo's relationship with Helena is this battle between competing forces, mentioned above. And his abuse of other women for his own benefit is at least transactional, and thus understandable (which goes without saying is different than acceptable). He doesn't regard his mistresses talents, even though all of them seem to be talented in some extraordinary way, because he's with them for relief. But Milo's disregard of Paulina seems just plainly ignorant. Her talent is obvious and consistent with his own goals, he has no sexual relationship with her at all, and Milo is supposedly profoundly logical. Why ignore her? Maybe the point is to show he's developing into somewhat of a simple prick, and that is effective and reasonable, but also that contradicts how fluid and composed he can be about other things, right up until his death. "I understood suddenly that his misshapen intellect had narrowed the world to a deadened, claustrophobic slit."

There's also Cle and Hans's children who flesh out all of the above further.

Great read.

Identity Politics, as a title and as an argument, has been exhausted for me. I didn't really have a horse in the race, and was and am interested in other things. I'm in a privileged position, sure -- not that I accept, blindly or meekly, all the handicaps of empathy and understanding that that work is supposed to damn one to. But I do realize that my experience is different and easier than others'. As are most my friends', regardless of their group affiliations, self-ascribed or otherwise.

But back in 2015 when I saw Nicholas Christakis being screamed in a Yale University courtyard, I was disgusted and embarrassed. Perhaps naive to a larger narrative, but aware enough to know that what happened to him was wrong. I started to pay attention to the arguments being made by those who would use Identity Politics as a pejorative label, and I found their arguments compelling. But I also found it painful to let go of my sympathy for those who actually were being prejudicially oppressed.

Why bring any of this up? Because I feel like Mr. Baldwin got right down to where this entire discussion cleaved. What's now being discussed as primarily a systematic, political, corporate, organized problem, Baldwin discusses as a psychological problem. It's lower level. Individual. And that makes the whole discussion all the more digestible and compelling. And I don't think saying that problems of race being psychological diminishes their impact at all. I'm not trying to trivialize things or say that there aren't problems of an organizational level. But the distinction is important.

White Superiority and Black Inferiority as a states of mind, both.

Other details I want to discuss... Still have a few pages left.

It's 220am, months after I first picked this book up (again, for a third attempt) and I've finally finished the thing. First thing I did was Google "ending explained" 'cause I'm dumb, and I get to an explanation written by Aaron Swartz -- an idealist programmer I used to follow, who killed himself after a dramatic copyright legal battle. So that's weird. And Swartz's concise explanation of the plot, which I make the distinction by mentioning "the plot" so as to contrast against all the themes of and observations made within the book, which are seemingly more significant and yet also frustratingly disconnected from the plot (or the veneer of the plot), Swartz's explanation of the plot is completely foreign to me and yet seems right. Like he saw connections I did not, and thus extracted a sound story out of the thing where I didn't. So maybe I'm dumb. But reflecting back, I don't see how you can understand the plot of this thing without having read it more than once, given how non-linear so much of it is. So I'm meant to read this brick more than once? That seems pretentious on the author's part.

But then again: here I am analyzing how the book worked and what it did for me, which is a category of thought, a style of postmodern analysis talked about in the book. And so I can't help but wonder if this frustration is the very thing DFW tried to evoke. And so now I'm left thinking the thing is brilliant regardless of how much seemed to go over my head.

Similarly, for all the times I've bitched about reality TV being lowest common denominator garbage, or single dimension drama being predictable, here's a book which is sophisticated enough to keep me interested and engaged and confused due to my own lack of ability, i.e. something I've been craving and also the point of The Infinite Jest (the film for which the book is titled) itself. So there's another effect, which at first I thought was too on the nose when I noticed it, but now that I'm sitting here frustrated, feels like it worked. And so again, I'm left thinking thing plot is a brilliant mechanism.

Grr...

Rambling, 'cause I'm exhausted.

Then there's all the themes and psychological explanations that cut deep.

More to come...

At just over 400 pages in an abridged form, The Gulag Archipelago took me over a year to finish. The way I took it in, it's a difficult book, and I've probably forgotten more than I currently remember.

Digression: I need to start taking notes as I read, especially with books like this one: academic books, books you're responsible for reading not because they're fulfilling or gratifying, but because they're informing. Informing in either a direct sense, as in the information is scarce and important and a lesson for how to or not to act; or in a derived sense, as in the information shows how other people are thinking about an important topic. Regardless, instead of taking notes and reading thoroughly I end up reading leisurely and out of curiosity instead of duty. It's ineffective and lazy of me. Credit for reading, but no retention. Anyway...

I see The Gulag Archipelago as having three significant characteristics:

The historical content: a high-level account of the Gulag prison system. How it was instantiated, how it was maintained, how it operated, what it produced. Empirical, physical facts about Stalin's Communism.

The psychological content: a low-level account of the people being churned through this political, ideological machine: prisoners, stoolies, guards, orthodox communists, criminals, men, women, children. How it changed people's intentions, how it informed people's decisions and conducted their speech.

The format itself: a certain kind of rhetoric and composition that ends up needing to be deciphered because it's both (a) fragmented, piecemeal and (b) translated Russian.

Number three, the format, is important because this rhetoric can obscure the facts and their effects. At times you get these long-winded poetic analogies in the middle of some description, giving one the impression that if only you were already directly familiar with the Gulag or Mr. Solzhenitsyn's experience before hand, that then these emotional descriptions would be effective and obviously necessary. A catharsis and emotional layer to the undeniable. But so much of the tragedies of communism -- not to mention fascism and the World War Two era in general -- are incredible and fantastic to the peaceful, young, and naive Western middle class of the 2000's (e.g. me). For us, a linear, deep explanation is what, I think, would be effective at imparting a moral and understanding how that moral is achieved as well as how it can be destroyed. Instead, Solzhenitsyn's book can come off as a ramble in its given format. It seems to prefer breadth to depth and anecdote to citation.

That's not to say I don't believe him, or that what he wrote isn't useful or important, or that any of these criticisms, should you agree with me, are inexplicable or the result of a lack of talent or integrity. To be imprisoned in concentration camp for years and to not only retain enough information to write this book but to also to retain the will to write this book is awesome and amazing. Aware of how ridiculously understated this is: I would've been broken by much less, much sooner. What perhaps partially redeems my interpretation is that Solzhenitsyn admits the fault in his post scripts, and credits it to exactly what you'd expect: that he had to recall memories and gather sources created during an ultimate oppression and absolute stress and then write that information down in some kind of legible order years after it occured, all in secret. It's impressive and inspiring and makes you feel like shit for not being even a fraction as honorable.

On to the content, starting with the historical description (what I called Number 1 above).

The most important thing you can learn from this book is that the tragedies of WWII and despots and fascists and communists are not simply explained by pointing to a single socio-path and claiming he had absolute limitless power. Power so intense that no matter how good and plenty the people under him, people who are compelled to do the right thing, were no match for his omnipotent effort towards evil. Instead, you learn the reality of the horror is a much more sophisticated and insidious thing. It's a corruption of the people themselves, the whole of the people, by a combination of an orthodox following of an ideology and a fear to break from the dogma. This combination is then seized on, slowly punishing the dissonents, until all that is left is the orthodox, making what once might've been considered a moderate perspective all of the sudden radical. The new concentration of orthodox is all the more fervent about punishing the radicals, which leads to another new definition of "radical" itself, and concentrates the orthodoxy further. And so the feedback loop continues and intensifies. From this perspective, the totalitarian leader isn't the linchpin of the oppression but rather the catalyst, the spark. A beginning point for a crystallization that spreads like a slow cancer, as opposed to a violet gunshot that does all its damage in an instant.

Guards become desensitized as the work becomes ubiquitous. The work becomes ubiquitous as the opponents to the ideology become more villainous. The opponents become more villainous as the machine squashes more moderates. Else, and else.

Then there's the psychological analysis, observations similar to those made by Victor Frankl in his Man's Search for Meaning. How do people react when all hope is lost? How does despair manifest? How does it galvanize people? How important is freedom? How brave can people be? What kind of cruelty and harshness can people endure? What kind of organization and tribal governance develops when conditions reduce people to animals, and why does it develop? How well can people hold on to their humanity?

...

In summary: Viktor E. Frankl takes extraordinary psychological insight and applies it to (and beyond) his incredible experiences within several concentration camps.

Are you still allowed to call Holocaust tragedies incredible? The scope and the extremity of the events are hard to believe from the perspective of the widespread peace and prosperity of a different generation and geography, and yet those horrors are also so widely discussed and broadly verified as to be undeniable. Truth is stranger than fiction and more intense, too. The point being: the whole of what happened takes serious work just to imagine. The events are layered and sophisticated and nuanced, but your mind wants to wrap the whole thing up neatly as "nightmare". Period. Nazi's are devils. The holocaust is hell. What then happens when you start to unpack? Turns out there's more there to be learned. So this book isn't another list of horrors. It's more specific in its goal and general in its history.

If your eyes are squinting and suspicions intensifying, don't get me wrong: the above preface isn't some hedge before an apologist argument. Neither I (nor Frankl, obviously) argues the Holocaust wasn't that bad or that Nazi's were good. But maybe the main lesson of the holocaust was less "don't be sadistic and evil" and more "meaning and purpose are the bedrock of existence". Perhaps that's apples and oranges, or perhaps those two points are more linked than we give them credit for.

Anyway, Frankl doesn't dwell on the above. That's just me rambling. Frankl's more concerned with the individual human being. What keeps him going?

Frankl's answer: To find meaning for your life and to follow through with the pursuit of that meaning. It sounds like a platitude in summary and especially coming from my armchair. But coming from Frankl, described through examples from what got people through concentration camp conditions, it's a spoon fed epiphany.

Some random points:

He distinguishes between disease like neurosis and lack of meaning. Being depressed, sad, or afraid as a result of anxiety over spiders is disease like. Feeling those ways because your don't find meaning  in your job is normal. The solution is to find that meaning. The attempt to find and fulfill that meaning is what makes us human.

Pleasure and meaning are not the same thing. You can find meaning in suffering. Implicitly, suffering with meaning can be preferable to pleasure without meaning. Think about that in the context of post-automation consumer-driven pop-culture.

We aren't owed anything. Fulfillment isn't a gift offered to you. It is fought and worked for.

...

I don't know. I'm about 50 pages into this book, and so far I've got mixed feelings. Australia seems so far boring even to the Author. Slow trains. Bad beer. Empty landscape. Idiot company. Tell me how you're coping in said environment. If you're going to drink beer, go full Bukowski. If you're going to describe the area, go full Bryson. If you're going to be bored, make me feel it because I'm there with you, not 'cause your book has me staring out of my own window.

"Alice Springs is a quiet town of 12,000 souls, similar to many towns of that size in the American West, although not so blatantly ugly. Tourism, cattle ranching..." Well there's a hell of a description. How is it ugly?! Why is it important that its ugly?! Might as well give me it's dimensions, in both imperial and metric, to be thorough.

The aborigines are all drunken idiots. Fair enough. I'm fine with having opinions, good and bad, on culture. But seems a little weakly justified. You walked through a few towns and saw some Abos pissed in the gutter. Ok. You can walk through most college towns and see frat idiots in the same position. If you're going to bother describing the people, go out of your way to talk to them a bit! Instead, all we hear is anecdotes and broad statements from the rednecks Abbey's hanging out with. Which is fine. But it's not fair. So now I know how they, the rednecks, feel about the indigenous folk, but are they right about 'em? Go find out and report back! Nope. Back on the train.

This woman was wearing a skirt. That one had great legs. Good. I love women, too. DESCRIBE A FREAKING RELATIONSHIP! Even if it's adulterous, even if it's simple. I don't care. If you're going to bring it up do more that dedicate one paragraph to describing how a tourist girl with legs look better than a middle aged man with a camera and a bad hawaiian shirt. No shit. Literally: "My attention was caught by a pair of smooth brown thighs in short shorts... [5-10 sentences]. She allowed me to buy her a drink that evening... we said goodbye...". Amazing.

There have been some gem epigrams in here. At the moment, too frustrated to go back and find them. As a boozing, hunting, women-loving, outdoors-man myself, I had a lot of expectation for this book, my first of Abbey's. So far, not all that impressed. Then again, when you're pissed off, everything looks grey regardless. Maybe I'm just cranky.

Going to try and write thoughts on this as I finish each essay, having learned from past compilations that I tend to lose my perspective of the earlier stuff as I move through the later stuff.

Big Red Son

Reminds me of a Hunter Thompson piece. I think that's what DFW is going for. It's like his version of Wearing and Tearing, Led Zeppelin's attempt to show they could be punk too, if they wanted. DFW seems to have less contempt for his contemporary than Robert Plant. You get the impression that his focus on Gonzo porn-man, Max Harcore, was actual some kind of meta-reference to the style of investigation used in Big Red Son, too -- which, as far as technique goes, is right up Wallace's alley.

Anyway, that's all style stuff. Content wise, this hits home. Porn is horrible, everywhere, and has an unspoken eye-rolling crass acceptance. People tend to think of it somewhere between a dull, inevitable habit and immoral, cultural bankruptcy. I started (puberty?) thinking the former. I've since moved more toward the latter. It dilutes life. It induces solipsism (can you tell I've been reading this guy a bit?). And David gets right up behind the source of it and shows it for what it is: sad, shallow, annoyingly self-obsessed in a sort of pseudo-celebrity way, and worse of all witless. There's nothing less sexy than predictable. There's no worse turn off than boredom. The AVNs seem to be the distillation of all this. What's left if everything is material?

I think it's all better understood less from a puritanical, dogmatic perspective, which tends to ring oedipal and pearl clutching, and more from a Brave New World, entertainment is eating everything perspective; you know, the topic for which David Foster Wallace is the latest patron saint. It's not just porn, but it seems like porn seems to be the basement of this particular race to the bottom. It's the ultimate titillating vanity, kind of by definition. Advertising. Instagram. Sex, guns, and drugs based TV shows and movies. It's all of the same cloth, just of varying intensity.

I'd be interested to see him contrast pornography with sex-positive attitudes about life and relationships. I'm not sitting here promoting prudence, and I don't think he is either, but that part of the question is left unanswered. "Sex is good" is probably a safe statement. But prostitution seems to be abuse of the concept. If you factor out that abuse what's left? That's not rhetorical. There's something left, for sure. Be an interesting contrast to write down. Thinking about it, maybe DFW wasn't the guy to do it anyway. Need someone more sensual and less cerebral. Too late now. Thankful he got to write what he did.

Certainly The End of Something or Other and Some Remarks on Kafka's Funniness

Reading these essays was similar to reading Orwell's All Art is Propaganda. They're somehow engaging reviews of authors I haven't read, John Updike and Kafka, distilling down criticisms and reactions to specific writing into morals and topics of general interest. Like Orwell, Wallace seems to make this kind of an effort worthwhile and fun, which doesn't seem possible at first glance of the original just-mentioned premise. Not much more to say. Seems like Updike is a dick. Seems like Kafka's someone I need to read. How is it that I know Kafka is the guy on Bureaucracy, but don't even know the title of one of his books. Shrug. The roadmap of hyperlinks in all these peoples' work is one of the most fun things I've discovered and attempted to explore.

Authority and American Usage

This has been my favorite of the bunch so far. Again, surprising. An essay reviewing and elaborating on a book about the usage of American English sounds completely unappealing. Yet it appealed. And hard.

First off, DFW is prophetic: this guy calls the entire Identity Politics conversation, currently popularized on certain media, a decade before it started? But then he goes on to shade in all the complimentary pieces to that argument, again all the more impressive given he seems to have done all this thinking in isolation (at least from the contemporary players). How dogmatic prescription works both ways. Reduced (heavily): Political Correct language is prescription in liberal form, frustration with deviation from WASP approved Standard English is prescription in conservative form. Both the prescriptions themselves and the conclusions drawn from deviance from those prescriptions are vapid, implying that the appearance of political change (in either direction) can be substituted for substance. And it goes on...

The View from Mrs. Thompson's

Summary: View of and from a midwestern town during September 11th, 2001. Interesting 'cause it's candid and personal. Not really about patriotism, catharsis, or grief, but more about the things that passed in front of DFW's eyes in Indiana, and how those things relate to being human.

How Tracy Austin Broke my Heart

Summary: Prodigious tennis star writes a memoir that ends up being insipid and meaningless. DFW describes his frustration. The description ends up being entertaining and relatable, but the conclusive question raised is the most interesting part of the whole thing: is part of being a star athlete having the ability to clear your mind of inner, critical dialog? or rather lacking the ability to have that inner conversation in the first place? And is this inability simply then reflected in the writing? Or is there a further secret. Who knows? How could you know?

Up Simba

Summary: DFW, hired as a Rolling Stone journalist, follows the McCain campaign around during the 2000 election. He tells the story of the campaign, the people around it, and the man himself, ignoring the political positions/policies being promoted. What's revealed is a meta-truth (shocker, for DFW) of what politics boils down to, how it's related to character, and how we perceive all of that. How that individual perception shapes the world is left unaddressed.

Once again this guy gets right down to the heart of something fundamental and seemingly unanswerable.

He starts by talking about the impossibly horrible and difficult to sympathize with situation -- difficult only because it's so unique and inaccessible that our civilian sympathy falls short, retarded by lack of experience -- of McCain's experience as a POW. Of his refusing release for the sake of a Code which says POWs must be released in the order of capture, despite the fact that McCain has been tourtured by way of being stabbed (in the crotch) and ceaselessly beaten (breaking multiple bones) all after having ejected from a plane in such an extreme circumstance that his arms and leg were already ravaged and broken, not to mention being in a foreign prison away from home. How all of this demonstrates, rather than claims, an incredible integrity and discipline.

He then goes on to describe the campaign in Mr. Notices Everything detail, illustrating tactics and practices and the minute movements that together add up to the performance us civilians know as Politics. The question asked is: if these movements are human, how do we come to find politics so robotic and perverted?

Well, it would seem part of the reason is there being a difference between a leader and a salesman (the author's distinction, not mine). What a brilliant and succinct cleavage. A leader inspires, with a detectable selflessness; building something bigger and more important than what might directly benefit them. We voluntarily give leaders our attention, patronage, following; as opposed to an appointed authority, which we follow out of structure. A salesman, on the other hand, might be benevolent and similar, but is always motivated by their own bottom line. 21st century marketing culture has made us cynical and precisely tuned to recognizing salesmen, and we see them everywhere in everyone. We can't help but know all politicians are salesmen.

And yet, here's McCain, detailed by Wallace to the extreme in a way that teaches the reader how politicians operate and work. The paradox being: we want to believe he's like every other Washington, his actions calculated to produce an effect: winning. We roll our eyes at his sound bites, etc. like we've done all other politicians since mass-marketing.

BUT!, with McCain, you can't ignore the fact that he turned down release from impossible-to-bear hell out of principle. Paradox. Which, then, interpretation of his campaign is the valid one? Is he a politician looking out for #1? Or is he an honorable character trying to do something good for his country? We don't know. This question goes beyond policy. It's about authenticity and whether it can be assumed in the political process. Checks And Balances, a la high school social studies starts to sound familiar...

BUT! again, it might not matter as much which is true -- is he a salesmen or a leader -- as which you decide to have faith in. That sounds a bit post-modern, I guess. Curious, yet again. Do you pick a side until the truth reveals itself through new evidence? Or do you dissolve into apathy, considering everything an interpretation, the truth itself an impossible to touch illusion? AHHHHH. I don't know, man...

The author says it better than me, but damn what a powerful thing to think about, all the more-so because it's not an invention or a tool, but a flesh-and-blood example acid-burned onto the wall, direct from high-fidelity, non-fiction, reality.

Consider the Lobster

I forgot to write something in response to this, and now I feel like i've forgotten too much of it to comment in a way that'd be either interesting to me later, like a journal entry; or interesting to anyone else, as a proper review or reaction. A tiny bit of irony, given that I decided to write these reviews individually, piecemeal to avoid this issue.

Joseph Frank's Dostoevsky

Another one. Jesus. How does this guy make such a gripping set of points about an author I've never read? Part of me feels, has felt throughout reading DFW, that I need to mention Jordan Peterson. (The other part of me feels like I'm pigeonholing DFW and also bringing up someone else out of context, but the point isn't to just gawk at how similar the two are in a fanboy kind of way. The point is this:) Peterson's the guy who got me interested in Dostoevsky (among other people and ideas (e.g. postmodernism)), and for a long while Peterson's ideas were so unique and fresh to me that I thought he was some kind of singular muse-genius that had distilled mystical wisdom into modern language. While I still think he's a genius, as I've read DFW, Orwell, and others I'm hearing the same points Peterson's made over and over, and further in the same language he uses. So now I realize that Peterson isn't alone, but a participating and fruitful member of this academic group, exploring these ideas. Yay me. Not all that interesting of a realization I guess, except the reason I think Peterson's relevance is worth mentioning is that I don't understand how all of these ideas seemed so far away and unarticulated just 1-2 years ago, and then somehow after he crystallized it all, I end up finding DFW and Orwell's essays. The information had been organized years before, and yet it's taken Peterson's popularity to bring them back into the mainstream (for a lot of people). That's an odd dynamic that I'd like to better understand.

That digression aside, what about Dostoevsky? Well it seems the main takeaway is that of what makes a modernist a modernist, and that seems to be the ability to be serious about a subject and get away with it; to not be mocked for being sentimental. Dostoevsky, or so it's said, was the guy for this. He printed archetypes, or so it goes.

I don't have much else to say, having not read him, but it seems to me by way of contrast with the current culture's lack of seriousness and idolization of irony -- which maybe I'm drinking too much DFW kool aid, but it's a criticism I can't help but nod my head with in agreement -- like Dostoyevsky is a X that marks the spot for what I'm looking for. Scary to think that might be a slippery slope towards becoming religious in some loosely defined way.

Host

First, a bit about the format and intention:

This essay seemed to lack the meta-analysis or pointed-out outer significance that DFW is known for, although there's a lot of interesting stuff in here which gets you thinking about the types of arguments and opinions you end up wishing DFW would've fleshed out and expressed. However, just 'cause I wanted the essay to be done in a certain way doesn't mean I'm owed that. Without looking it up, it feels like the piece was commissioned as a biography and all these parenthetical notes (weirdly formatted in a way I don't know I appreciated as it comes off more as a look-how-bleeding-edge-innovated-I-can-be gimmick, rather than a better way to reference tangential information (e.g. as compared to the author's typical footnotes)) are Wallace's personal yellow legal pad notes that were decided might make an interesting unedited piece after the fact. Does that observation imply anything about the content of the essay itself? Not really, but it's how I feel the thing was built which hypothesizes why things are the way they are.

Ok, back to the content:

The overarching implied point of the whole essay, and also more interesting than any trivia about radio, the host, or the specific topics he's discussed on the air, is that the news media is a business misunderstood as a public good. And because it's a business all kinds of kooky shit can and does happen, kooky shit that doesn't have obvious moral value. Mr. Zeigler's career and style seem to be an examples of this. Does his advertisement funded form of entertainment, using the news as fodder, end up doing good or bad? This is the question you want Wallace to ask, and he seems desperate to, but that's not the point of the essay, and so... sigh. (The question is slightly different from the question he's more famously associated with: whether the distraction of entertainment is good for the individual.) You also want Wallace to go into his typical investigation of authenticity and responsibility as a function of selfishness. Does Zeigler care about the truth as far as it steers the world in the right direction or as far as it steers the station's revenue in the right direction? Is it possible to figure that out?

K. That's it for Consider the Lobster. Good stuff.

Originally got this and thought it was a coffee table book. Nothing more than eye candy. But I later found out that there were actual stories in there and read through 'em, nine in total. Each one is supposed to be about a different type of cabin build (e.g. reclaims, from scratch, geometric, treehouse) but the form ain't all that important. The stories are more about people deciding they're going to do a project and then following through with that project. In any case, they're more or less there to put some structure behind all the gorgeous inspiring pictures in the book, and as far as that goes they do their jobs well.

Inspiring. Gives me ideas for what to do with the next up-and-coming decade of my life.

This chick is great.

The fact that this was published in '78 is incredible. It's still appropriate, and given the atmosphere of nothing meaning anything and all trends being subjective and personal, it's refreshingly harshly and unapologetically opinionated. Plus it is hilarious. What more do you want?

Taste exists and it means something. Who would've thought?

Some of the chapters read back like shallow, played stereotypes, but you also get the opinion that Fran might've minted said perspectives, not to mention she lays 'em out with style as opposed to leaning on the Buzzfeed-esq glittery crutches of click-baiting titles, fast editing, and faux-hipster mass appeal. You also get the idea that these stereotypes actually applied during the time she wrote, as opposed to later when said ideas were more likely used to either progress the NY brand people are so desperate for or write episodes of Friends.

Other chapters are so specific, cutting, and relevant you can't help but actually laugh out loud. It's inspiring. It's like: once you allow yourself to have a even simple opinions, you also allow yourself a foundation to build more sophisticated ideas. And once you have that, life has some fucking flavor to it. It's the antidote to boredom.

And then on top of it all, the prose is fun. It's sardonic and pretentious. Elegant, wordy, descriptions of relevant trivia. Who talks like this? No one. Except writers. Which is the joke. And it doesn't (really) get old.

I'm a sucker for this kinda' stuff, but even beyond that this book is excellent.

It's so refreshing to read something earthly and bounded, something with conviction, something that makes an attempt at saying here is a section of the world and here is how it works, measuring its success by the fact that there's a large audience of people who agree. A lot of what I read tends to be critical, nuanced, deconstructing, questioning. The latter kind of stuff feeds and grows my cynicism. London's kind of stuff gives me a, seemingly shared, sense of direction. It makes you feel less alone.

I realize this is a pretty typical and had argument: Realism vs. Postmodernism. But none the less, to see and feel both sides is interesting and relieving. London is a heaping serving of real.

This is my second of his books, the first being White Fang, and I loved both. The way he describes conviction and instinct is so vivid and relatable. The balanced teetering between civility and the law of the wild. You see this divide in Buck, and you can see it in yourself if you've ever spent some time in an office wishing that instead you were hiking the Appalachian Trail. London also isn't too terribly naive in his romance: the woods have dangers, hard work comes at high cost and high reward, life bleeds. And yet suffering, when coupled with purpose -- the purpose of getting there, of surviving both exceptional and universal burdens of all sizes, of fulfilling the instincts inspired by the sophisticated, complicated yet absolute, existing, shared, evolved environment -- it's worth it.

Granted, Jack's time and burdens have passed to a degree. What are our burdens, now? How do we find relief from them? How do we find fulfillment in spite of them, through them? These are the open questions. The modern response is to say that the answer is different for everyone, and leaves it at that, not bothering to say who comprises 'everyone' and what they might need. What are those groups' stories and characters? What of their backgrounds is relevant to The Big Questions, and what does it say of their proposed Answers? Jack London implies that these distinctions exist, even if we're shitty at making them. That gives me hope.

Maybe the reason for that is that, in the past, the burdens were more universal, and thus easier to share. When there's no food, everyone gets hungry. But as time has gone on, the root problems coupled with technology-provided, time-tested solutions have yielded an large breadth of branches, large enough that we mistake it for infinite. But does that mean there's nothing left to say about the world other than, "it's complicated?". I don't think so.

Is it somewhat ironic to dissect a piece of realism? Does a review or reaction count as a sort of meta-fiction itself? Fuck it, back to the subject: the woods, animals, hard work, manifesting destiny, pride in purpose, voluntarily carrying the weight of a job. These are things I have respect for, and Jack London explodes them from singular, general concepts into a beautiful set of colorful descriptions. I don't have the words, but he does. Read the book.

This took me forever to finish, it ending up as my in between book, the one I'd pick up and read a few pages of when I wasn't focused on something more interesting. As a (pretty common) rule I try not to put down a book until I've finished it, but every now and again one slips through, barring me not also damning it as worthless (which is rare). Is this a weird habit? To be in one way principled, to the point of dogma, about finishing what I've started, but then also to have a stack of books, months untouched, that I've convinced myself I'm still reading? What's that say about me? Shrug. A little tidbit. (Also, I treat these reviews like journal entries.)

Anyway, I finished the second half or so in one big gulp, and now I don't know why I ever put it down.

Walden is canon among the vagabond hippy types. I first heard about it in Sean Penn's Into the Wild where the main character quits life after graduating college to go stomp around America. I heard it again in various interviews with people involved in the #VanLife crowd. Funny how books and ideas tend to form these clusters of relevance. You start following a branch of thought and all the sudden you're in what seemed like obscure territory when looked at from the surface, but after having dived deep you realize it's all familiar and connected. I hear two different sources recommend the same thing, and I realize it's my perception that's got them marked as different, and that personal dissonance is what lights my fire to learn more. Here's a connection I have yet to make but is apparently substantial. So I read the book.

The sentiment of Walden is all about personal exploration. Get rid of the status quo, go down to the minimums, and see what you find. I like to think that in the modern this kind of a thing would be described as a dopamine reset. Rest all your sensors so you can use them to once again navigate. I'd love to try it. And in the meantime, see what you see. Thoreau saw a lot. Some arbitrary highlights:

1. The description of the black and red ant war. The way he analogies it to humans. He trivializes and sanctifies it at the same time. Great stuff.

2. The description of red squirrels as happy-go-lucky manics. If you've ever hunted in the North East, you'll know he gets it spot on.

3. His description of routine as rutted trails, hard to get rid of. And his going to say leaving is the equivalent of starting a new life, something that can be done several times with one body.

4. He's distinction between blind patriotism and patriotism for a system that has, practically, brought to life benevolent potential. i.e., loving the land, but being ignorant to what makes the land exceptional.

I also like his balance for the abstract and concrete. There's so many vivid descriptions of real yet rare stuff: stoves, wood piles, walks, animals, etc. And then at the same time, there's a lot of sophisticated, well founded moral in here too.

Walden needs an update, though. As a piece of history, as the starting point for more modern sentiments and the actions they inspire, it's interesting and sacred, for sure. But it's hard to parse. It's written in a very lyrical, common language; but a lot of it is language we don't use anymore. So if you're looking for a modern guide on how to live in the woods, or an explanation for why you should, then this might be a bit tough to crack. However, if you want to know where it all started, and get a sense for what a diligent, focused, independent soul did when breaking free from a rigidity since past, this is the book.

Anyway, some random thoughts...


On the Civil Disobedience essay: it makes you wonder when, across different time periods of seemingly drastically different setting, you start to hear the same arguments being made against or for government. Thoreau makes a classic libertarian plea that sounds almost identical to the group's current canon, but, at least to the naive me it seems that, obviously the government of his time was way smaller and slower than today and obviously the amount of duty felt and practiced by the individuals of his time was necessarily higher simply by the times lack of convenience and technology, character of the people aside.

And yet here we stand however later, with an undoubtedly more hospitable country than the savage times before medicine and plumbing and roads were taken for granted, making the same -- for whatever reason compelling! -- pleas. It's all very confusing. Are these perspectives artifacts of a yet to be understood higher-level mechanism? I don't know...

Originally got this and thought it was a coffee table book. Nothing more than eye candy. But I later found out that there were actual stories in there and read through 'em, nine in total. Each one is supposed to be about a different type of cabin build (e.g. reclaims, from scratch, geometric, treehouse) but the form ain't all that important. The stories are more about people deciding they're going to do a project and then following through with that project. In any case, they're more or less there to put some structure behind all the gorgeous inspiring pictures in the book, and as far as that goes they do their jobs well.

Inspiring. Gives me ideas for what to do with the next up-and-coming decade of my life.

Another set of independent pieces behind a single cover. How do you review? I'll just react.

I started reading this book after making it about 70 pages into Infinite Jest for the second time. I couldn't break past the static friction of the thing, which didn't quite make sense to me given (1) DFW is renowned by people I respect and (2) I've gotten sucked in by many of his in-person interviews and speeches (e.g. through digging holes in YouTube). He's smart, interesting, and capable. Why don't I get this supposed and heavy-as-a Bible then? Why can't I find it interesting? It -- Infinite Jest -- never seemed to get started. All the digression and verbose description seemed pointless and indulgent when held up against what felt like was going toward being a non-story. It was like: here's all these images. Hope you like them! The end... So what did I do: I Googled it. What am I missing? Some post on Quora suggested that before attempting the monolith, a prospect DFW fan should first read this collection, Girl With Curious Hair. Slowly wade into Mr. Wallace's works. I took the advice and was blown away.

He leaves you stunned with these laser-precise yet delicate and relate-able descriptions of culture and what it means to be human, and they're simultaneously strongly opinionated and prophetic. He takes a stand that turns out to be observably accurate. What I mean by that is, it's hard to find holes in what he says and it's hard to reflect on where exactly you're suspending your own disbelief, even though so much of the work is obviously incredible. e.g. LBJ wasn't gay.  He's so smart, it leaves me intimidated to say anything other than that fact that I was so impressed. In any case, since it's my party here, I'll try anyway:

First, the frustration: sometimes I wonder if he's trying to be too smart for his own good. Does Westward The Course... actually tie up nicely and say anything at all? It might underneath the tangled knots of recursive structure, the heaps of 100 dollar words, the bouncing back and forth between painfully illustrated scene and -- ironically? -- self-aware explanation. You get the impression that it might be a parody of meta-fiction. A story about a story about a story about a... Take it seriously, make it to the end, and DFW proves his point: you're jerking yourself off. Quit it and say something relatable, inspirational. But that seems too continent an explanation for me. More likely I'm either too dumb to get the joke or too dumb to understand the sophistication. e.g. I'm interested in an explanation of post-modernism and advertising and religion, the story seems to involve these themes, and I don't know what the fuck happened in this "story". His fault or mine?

There's also a tad too much of everyone seems to be a writer in his stories, both explicitly with characters that are actually writers or more generally academics, and implicitly with janitors that happen to have read all of Dostoyevsky and would love to tell you about him and his opinions on metaphysics if they weren't having their neck breathed down by a boss about those stale urinal cakes.

But every other story in the group was a 10. The title story was my favorite. It's so brutal. It reminds me of Blue Velvet. I'm an engineer by education and trade. Am I allowed to compare things to David Lynch or does that get eyes rolling? A digression: I feel like I've picked up the scent of an art-student cliche I was never inoculated against. Or maybe that thought itself is some self-imposed everything-is-absurd opinion worthy of Mr. Wallace's reputation for criticizing. Shrug. It reminded me of the fucking movie, and they both gave me the creeps in revealing, interesting, worthy way.

The Jeopardy story too. Ouff, I feel like just hearing someone take a stance on what make another person gay, or sexual, or attract-ive/-ed is so risky it has to be interesting. And further the way he dissects the interaction between people. "Say the whole point of love is to try to get your fingers through the holes in the lover’s mask. To get some kind of hold on the mask, and who cares how you do it." Jesus, that's perfectly concise, affecting, important, defining. Going further to the despair of thinking you've found out that people's masks don't actually have holes. Truth or solipsistic delusion? What a heady fucking question.

The LBJ story. "Never elaborate". When I read Hemingway, I know I'm reading Hemingway. And so Gregory poured the vermouth and then he drank the vermouth and the vermouth was was good. But with DFW, he seems to be able to put on completely different hats at will. There's definitely a garnish of a consistence on top of it all, but you get the feeling he's in control. That sort of redeems Westward The Course... for me. Back to that, yea: it seems possible he did what he did on purpose or maybe that it wasn't meant for readers. Maybe it was just an exercise or for fun.

Anyway, go read Girl with Curious Hair.

Best metaphors and imagery in the business. Funny, sexy, fun, smart. Gets a little loose at the end, but interesting and worthwhile. Reminds me of American Gods.

What one thing can you say about a set of mostly independent essays? It seems you're obligated to either (1) give a general opinion on Orwell, himself; or (2) talk about the essays' independent points in succession, perhaps finding and commenting on common threads that join two or more of them.

OK, so... Orwell is great.

Moving on, here's a few things I found interesting:

Firstly, a lot of these essays are criticisms of popular literature from Orwell's era: books I haven't read. And somehow, even with not having read those books, Orwell's criticisms of them leave you unblinking as you turn the pages. He'll take an author, distill him and his work down to something fundamental -- something that transcends the fashion of the time, or the works themselves -- then criticize that.  That Orwell can do that is amazing.

Secondly, in doing the above and for the first time in my life since I've started forming a rooted (as opposed to fashionable) political opinion, he exposes patterns of modern political thought as predictable and tried, and he does so practically, empirically. He doesn't say history repeats itself, he explains the politics of a time past which the reader can then compare to now. Conclusions aside, his criticism of WWII era British pacifists is almost identical to that of the current criticism of Middle Eastern terrorist apologists. And his take on sainthood, the difference between God and Man, has a lot of power in explaining the divide between the modern right and left.

It's so eerie how similar some of his observations are that you tend to think maybe we're not so much a decadent society, since if Orwell could have the same things to say decades ago, and we're still here, then doesn't that kind of make the point that we're not going to hell as quickly as or in the way that the doomsday professors claim? Surely the modern, popular fears of nuclear winter or new-school totalitarian regimes are justified, and there's also reason to believe these threats are worse now than before if for nothing other than scale -- Nazi propaganda would've thrived on the internet, bombs are bigger and more plenty than before. But, you also get the feeling, reading this stuff, that there's always going to be a certain element of paranoia and overstated risk and exaggeration among critics. These risks are crises, but perhaps dealing with them is just a part of how the world turns, and perhaps we're better at dealing with them than we give ourselves credit for. Or maybe we're playing Russian Roulette, and just because people have been complaining about it for years without there having been a human-project stopping catastrophe, doesn't mean there isn't a bullet in the chamber.

(Note: I'm not saying world wars and despots and tragedies haven't happened or that they weren't horrible. I just wonder how much of this stick waving has actually either (1) described their causes or (2) helped to prevent future, more absolute issues; or bring the current ones to an end.)

Moving on again, he talks about sloganism which got me thinking about how memes and tweets are essentially the same thing: shallow germs of thought that tend to be emotionally charged, require tribal context, and don't attempt to solve or explain problems, but rather they snowball problems.

Another gem: his criticism of Dali as absurd and immoral, regardless of the fact that he's talented. I've never thought to divorce the two ideas before. A Perfect Storm sort of speak.

Anyway, random thoughts for future me and whoever else might be interested.

I read this book back to back with Anthony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential. I am a fan of Anthony Bourdain, and with his book I knew what I was getting into. Marco, however, I hadn't heard of before, but I came out of Kitchen Confidential hungry for more. Bourdain had nodded to White in his book, and Amazon had good reviews of The Devil in the Kitchen, so I rolled the dice and went in blind.

I was excited to read another story of a interesting chef, specifically in what I presumed would be a fresh context -- compared to Bourdain's and my own younger-still era, maybe Marco's story would give me some clue as to what it'd be like to do things in England however long ago. Maybe his story would be a little more polished than Bourdain's harsh past and haphazard career. Maybe Marco's intentions would yield an interesting story.

Nope.

This book reads like one big brag, peppered with one sided anecdotes of immature, shallow conflicts that you get the sense Marco is still bitter over. If you think someone's an asshole they might be, but if you think everyone's an asshole then you might be.

At some point in the book Marco describes himself as petulant. I think he meant it as a hedge of humility, but the entire book reads like it was written by some frat boy all in one go, then chucked at an editor to clean up the mess.

There's no context, no depth; just him describing these shallow fights and showboating in ways that read back like big-fish bar stories. "You shoulda seen the guy, he was huge; and I really gave it to him!" Sips another bit of a light beer and turns to the next stranger willing to listen, wide eyed and ignorant to how he's being received.

Ok. Where's the setup? Where's the believable balance? You won every fight? You were an ungrateful asshole and everyone deserved it ? You chinned every enemy, and charmed every woman? All you did was work really hard and eventually got those three stars? Did you know he wanted three Michelin stars? If not, you'll be reminded every chapter.

The thing is, Marco's accolades and his tenures and his proteges are indisputably there to look at. He actually did get those three stars. There's a picture of him holding the bar-tale fish, sort of speak. Well then why does this story chop by with little boyish bouts of rage and woo? You get the sense that there is more of a story there, and if you've read Bourdain's book -- especially recently before or after reading Marco's -- you know that those details can be enlightening and interesting!

Enough bitching. It's not all bad. You do get somewhat of a sense of what cooking in the 70s and 80s England was like. And the little out-quote tips inlined in the story are delicious, informing, and practical. When Marco is talking about cooking, in detail, in specific, it's worth paying attention to. I just wish the crap about elite friends and celebrities and fights was either richer or cut. The in-between is frustrating.

This book is a kick to the stomach. It’s a contrast against the candy of pop culture and muzak and advertisement. And it’s also a contrast against the typically inspiring and relatable work of the proceeding Beatniks.

Naked lunch is disgusting, but perhaps it’s not meant to be enjoyed. That might’ve been my mistake. This isn’t epiphany or interesting outskirt experience by way of drugs. This is chaos and delirium by way of drugs, described in somehow articulate, if not also chaotic, poetic detail. And that is impressive and worthwhile, but it’s no Dharma Bums. Is it a warning? It is it an invitation? Is it someone else's catharsis, not meant to be read, but required to have been written? At minimum, it teaches the lay marijuana civilian something about what kind of chaos is possible in the world, in the individual.

I remember reading Waiting for Godot and getting to the hanging masturbation scene. There the act seemed metaphorical. Sex and death, both relatable, both real, both inspiring, held up against the light of nihilism, only to be found also empty. But in Naked Lunch you get the impression that Burroughs might’ve actually seen some of this shit, maybe even participated. Is that what’s down there, beyond the fishbowl and into the ocean? Both books were published 6 years apart, apparently, some 60 years ago. Coincidence? Apparently Waiting for Godot’s author Samuel Beckett and William Burroughs met at some point. So coincidence, I guess not.