Margaret Atwood - Year of the Flood

Have you read Oryx & Crake yet? Well you have until September 22 to pull your head out of your ass and digest it. And while you're at it start taking survival courses because, if civilization continues to head in its current direction, we'll all be needing them. Atwood's near future feels a lot like the one whose soundtrack was written by GodspeedYou!BlackEmperor.

The coasts have drowned, deserts have expanded, urban zones have devolved into ghettoized brownfields and the upper echelons of society dwell in fear behind the heavily-surveiled walls of scattered corporate compounds. Governments are no longer relevant, if they even exist. Here, in the compounds, the brains work towards creating a plasticized, genetically-altered "utopia". To anyone who has read Oryx & Crake this landscape and the horror of the book's finale is all too familiar.

While Jimmy and Glenn (of O&C notoriety) play out their destinies in the compounds, out in the "pleeblands"—the decimated, near-anarchic urban wastes—the tales within the Year of the Flood are being fleshed out. They reveal, over the course of twenty-five years, the first-person accounts of several people affiliated to various degrees with God's Gardeners, a religious sect whose leader, Adam One, has perfected a sort of squatter-punk synthesis of deep ecology and gnostic christianity. The gardeners are trying to preserve an unadulterated human relationship with nature and its mysteries, however misguided it may at first appear, though they may be the last hope when the technological world collapses.

Margaret Atwood, being Margaret Atwood, is going to make you think and at the same time make you incredibly uncomfortable with your own beliefs. Think religion is a sham and a waste of human energy? Prepare to loathe Adam One for his blatant hippie charlatanism whilst agreeing with some of the more radical tenets of the gardeners and the revelations of their theology. As an atheist who makes solid attempts to live in an ecologically-sound manner, this all gave me fits.

Fits are all well and good, but what about the causes of this near-future societal and natural collapse? Humans are clearly to blame, but not necessarily for the reasons so many would argue presently. Sure, warnings about climate change went unheeded as did those of overreliance on technological innovation to solve human problems. The main culprit of our problems has been an inexhaustible hubris; that we think we can outsmart and manipulate nature as we study its ways. There is clearly value in learning, studying and admiring nature and its processes, but it's when we begin to think we can control for an outcome we desire that the hydra appears.

Just as today too many people have an uncomfortable—if not downright hostile—attitude towards the presence of chaos in nature, Atwood's future of the "waterless flood" (which is better understood if you're already familiar with Oryx & Crake) is a security nightmare on account of this obsessive-compulsive disorder, much like if the first world suddenly plunged into the third. Frankly, the scenarios outlined here don't seem that far-fetched because there's no reason why it won't happen. Do-gooder organizations are constantly trying to plan for this type of future, but this future cannot be planned for and that is THE problem to which humanity has to acclimitize.

The easiest thing to do, of which I'm certainly guilty, is to laugh and shrug off the corny pseudo-religio-environmental spiritualists because most of their philosophies are half-baked and specious. However, as is clear with God's Gardeners there is merit in such philosophies (hence a major reason why religions are still around) because they allow people to act even when they don't fully understand why they're acting. If this makes sense then it should be clear why I was having fits and yet loving this book at the same time.

I'm not sure the last time I felt so completely intellectually challenged by a book that, simultaneously, so fully entertained me. There is constant action—often with disgustingly violent outcomes—and the ending never gives itself away, suspense building until the finale. This "review" does so little justice to a book that I hope receives major plaudits when it hits shelves. We were lucky enough to get an advance copy at work and I took my time reading it because I didn't really want it to end. I just read Oryx & Crake a few months ago and that blew me away. Now this arrives as a sort of companion volume. I'm not sure how they're going to market it, but it stands alone as a novel and there doesn't seem to be any indication that it will be marketed in connection with O&C.

So mark your calendars for September 22. I have to stop rambling because this will just get more and more disjointed if I continue. Margaret Atwood, you are an absolute genius. The type of genius that crushes my spirit by writing the best goddamn book (fiction or poetry) possible that, yet, inspires me to wrack my brain for something 1/10 as worthwhile and hope it means something to someone. Bravo. Again.

Dave Cullen - Columbine

For those who are not aware, today is—besides International Weed Smoking Day and Hitler's Birthday—the 10th anniversary of the "incident" at Columbine High School. It's an odd trifecta of coinciding anniversaries and, added to the gloomy weather here, unhelpful in distilling any sort of positive vibes from the day. This particular Columbine anniversary also means that it's been ten years since I graduated high school, as I was also a senior when Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold attempted to "out-mayhem" Tim McVeigh's demolition of Oklahoma City's Murrah Federal Building.

What? Did you just ask me to define "out-mayhem"? Why didn't I just call it a "school shooting" like so many people have done for the past ten years? Well, I'll leave the nuts and bolts of this to journalist Dave Cullen, whose new, exhaustively researched book, Columbine explains nearly everything you could possibly want to know about this seminal closing event of 20th century America. I say "nearly everything" because there are some things nobody will ever know about this, but Mr. Cullen seems to know all the rest.

Having come of age during a period of media-induced fear and hype over school shootings I'm sure I'm not alone in being a bit morbidly fascinated with them. Combine that with my sociology background and picking up this book was a no-brainer. I had done some minor researching into Columbine a year or so ago and it was Cullen's original stories for Slate that initially caught my attention (though I didn't make the connection when I first picked up the book) and had me thinking differently about the whole ordeal. Columbine wasn't a school shooting perpetrated by some disaffected loners; this was a botched massacre whose plan was hatched by one popular, intelligent—though psychopathic—kid with an intense hatred of mankind and his suicidally unstable friend.

The evidence for this is now overwhelming, but it wasn't easy unearthing it. Though Cullen was there from the beginning, he outlines how the county sheriff mangled the investigation and did a similarly poor job trying to cover up that fact. Many myths surrounding the shootings that are still taken as gospel are exposed to extreme scrutiny and none of them survive. The mass media—a few local papers excepted—did an incredibly poor job of separating facts from a good storyline and it was those early mistakes faulty judgment that spiraled chaotically into the school shooting narrative familiar today.

Cullen's book is valuable not only as a history of the actual event and a record of all the threads that became knotted this day ten years ago, but also as social reading of mass media and information dissemination. The narrative took on a life of its own that defied clearly contrary evidence and fed back into the ongoing tale of sterile, fearful suburbia. Utilizing the personal effects of the two killers, Cullen revealed the true nature of Eric and Dylan, the psychopath and the seeker who practically dared the folks around them to discover their heinous plot. The two who, because of the faulty profiling of the "school-shooter type", were able to plan their attack because, frankly, most people never suspected them as the loners ready to snap (one mother, whose warnings were ignored, excepted).

Columbine is one of the best non-fiction works I've read in a while and there's little doubt that Cullen poured all his energy into making it a work of art. His portraits of all the involved parties, from the parents to administrators to teachers to fellow students to law enforcement, are sympathetic and caustic in all the right proportion. And while there are clearly parties that are more at fault than others, Cullen never sinks to any immature blame games. The descriptions of psychopathy are engrossingly chilling and the pain of all the affected families and individuals bites the reader no matter how much you try and disengage. A commendable achievement in journalism and a noteworthy work of social history.

Joseph O'Neill - Netherland

I finished O'Neill's Netherland about a week ago but hadn't had time to write anything on it here. Too many folks have written reviews of it already, and, frankly, I'm feeling a bit lazy today (saw Witch last night, more will come on that later) so I'm not going to post any real review of the book.

What I will say is that I enjoyed it immensely, particularly the portrait O'Neill paints of some under-the-radar neighborhoods Brooklyn. The story itself is enjoyable and you'll learn more than you ever thought you would about the sport of cricket.

If you need any extra motivation to pick this up, just today the PEN/Faulkner Foundation named it the winner of its annual $15,000 prize. (I could really use fifteen grand, so Mr. O'Neill, if you're feeling generous and looking for a worthwhile charity, I know a good one right here in Brooklyn. Don't worry, I won't spend it on weh-weh.)

Anyway, go read this book.

2012 Redux

A little over a year ago I reviewed a book in these hallowed electronic pages called 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl. That review mainly consisted of an ad-hominem attack on its author, Daniel Pinchbeck, for which I am marginally regretful. Not because the book is good, or its ideas are worthwhile, but because I failed in my objective to shine light on a tremendous pile of stupidity and, instead, flinged mud at a messenger. At the time an opportunity arose in which I could (and should) have criticized convoluted new-age spiritual garbage, but I got lazy faced with the prospect of actually having to re-read the book to really pick it apart and expose its lack of merit.

Fortunately all I got was a weak type-lashing from the author in my comments scolding me for being a bad boy. Unfortunately, the beast has returned, new tome in hand culled from the vast storeroom of vacuity that is his website. Titled Toward 2012, it's clear Pinchbeck has a fetish and is determined to mine it for all it's worth, presumably until three years hence, when Y2K happens all over again. Dwight Garner just reviewed this for the NYTimes and, while much subtler than I in his criticisms, pretty much labels the book a steaming pile. But first he had to provide some context and so blurbed Pinchbeck's previous book thusly:

In a previous book, “2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl,” Mr. Pinchbeck seemed to want to have it both ways about earth’s fast-approaching deadline. He didn’t entirely dismiss the possibility of Armageddon, but he used his book as an occasion to urge humanity to come together to stop global warming and heal the planet in other ways. Maybe, you know, we can head this bad juju off at the pass. Mr. Pinchbeck also wrote about crop circles, alien abductees, experiences with poltergeists, ingesting psychedelic mushrooms and practicing “new ideals of erotic freedom,” but never mind.

I read that and laughed, reminded of exactly how far removed from any rational thought this material is. The mention of "new ideals of erotic freedom" nearly made me lose my coffee all over this keyboard, since it was belittling Pinchbeck's views on that topic in particular that got me in trouble in the first place.

Seeing this review on the screen as I set myself up here at work this morning got me thinking about people close to me who go in for this sort of thing (Garner does mention "woo-woo friends" in his review). It makes me a bit depressed to know people are desperately reaching for meaning in a universe devoid of any such enduring thing and, thus, cling to outrageous anti-scientific and pseudoscientifc claims in books such as Pinchbeck's.

Just yesterday Scientific American posted a story, "Finding Control In Chaos", whose subtitle read: Feeling helpless leads to see nonexistent patterns. The article is short, I recommend reading it, but the ultimate point is that test subjects imposed fictitious order on situations in which they lacked control. I've found among people who are into new-age or vaguely spiritual "philosophies" that acute lack of control over their place in the universe and an intense desire for meaning to show its face.

This isn't a rare phenomenon by any stretch. In fact, it's probably the default human setting as far as anyone has determined. Our imaginations are a wondrous tool, but to deny ourselves the use of our rational functions is as criminal as denying our imaginations for rigid logic and order. We have the capability for dialectical thinking, for synthesizing our logical functions with our imaginative capacities. It would be to humanity's benefit for us as individuals to take advantage of this. Wallowing in shallow pools of pseudoscientific drivel and spiritual horseblather is a waste and proponents of this kind of thinking should be seen as the hucksters and contemporary snake-oil salesman they are.

Books In Review...Sort of

A few people had asked me to do a little feature on my best books of 2008. It's a sensible request given that I work in a bookstore and sometimes post about books that I've read or am reading. Putting together a quality post about new books in the same way that's done with music is a different order altogether though. Why? Because I tend to not read new books when they come out with the same frequency that I find new music. Most of what I read during the past year was "catch-up" material, classics and whatnot that I'd never had a chance to read. I don't even bother trying to stay abreast of "new, up and coming" authors (and I'm barely able to do that with bands/musicians).

Nevertheless, I did read a couple new books this year that I really enjoyed. Both of these I did "reviews" of: 2008 Booker Prize winner Aravind Adiga's The White Tiger and Salman Rushdie's The Enchantress of Florence (I also happened to read Midnight's Children about a month ago and it surpasses the glowing review I gave to Enchantress...). The other day I started Joseph O'Neill's Netherland (which made the NY Times "Top of 2008" list) and I like what little I've read so far. I also read the first story in Jhumpa Lahiri's new short story collection Unaccustomed Earth. The prose was elegant and the story exquisitely crafted, but overall incredibly depressing and gushing with sentimentality. Not really my kind of material, though I wouldn't mind being blessed with her gift for diction.

It's really one of the paradoxes and conundrums the modern role of publishing that someone who works in a bookstore and writes doesn't really read contemporary fiction, somehow expects to have a future in this business. Then again, people seem to fall all over themselves to buy the latest David Sedaris or Chuck Klosterman or some new age claptrap or mystery/thriller pablum. I write poetry and barely anybody reads that anymore, including myself. I could hardly name you any new, worthwhile poets to check out, yet for whatever reason I hope to find myself in their company. Well, really I don't think anybody wants the company, we desire to exist on the next step above. And we all clamber like the living dead over one another to enter creative writing programs. Madness I tell you, pure madness.

One good piece of advice that I feel entitled to give, however, is "Go Read!" Seriously, go buy some books and read. Forget tv or movies or whatever for a while. We're dying a slow, agonizing death and we word-lubbers aren't going to be the only ones who rue the day publishing dies. It's the one thing I'm bound to get sentimental about.

The Cleansing Sting of Economic Collapse

The other day I was shelving books at work and came across Marshall Berman's All That Is Solid Melts Into Air. It was the subtitle, "The Experience of Modernity," that actually caught my eye, as I tend to gravitate toward any work that demonstrates a willingness to explore our epoch's deepest paradoxes. During my short stint at The New School For Social Research, we had to take a core curriculum class called, "What Is Modernity?" Since then I've been endlessly fascinated with definitions of modernism, postmodernism and the debates between adherents and critics of both. (Personally, I'm of the belief that "postmodernism," or the postmodern condition," is merely a minor stage of the "modern" era, but I don't have the room to explicate all this here.)

I wasn't sure what to expect from Berman's book, since it's shelved in the Literary Criticism section, but flipping through I immediately had to sit down and start reading (a luxury I actually have at work). Part One focuses on Goethe's Faust as the premier work that spans the fissures out of which the modern era has grown. Unfortunately, I've never read Faust, though as soon as I have time I'm doing so. Most people are familiar with the terms "faustian" or "a faustian" bargain, but Berman points out that all too often those terms are used poorly and in situations that don't quite fit the allegorical mold. Anyway, that's not what I'm writing about at the moment (though with some more time to think, maybe I will in the future).

While I was intrigued by Part One and stormed through it, I was really looking forward to reading Part Two, which revolves around The Communist Manifesto. I can't tell you how many times I've read this work, and my own copy (in The Marx-Engels Reader) is highlighted and marked up beyond recognition. Berman's take on it is fascinating, and now I'm going to have to read it all again. He describes it as the first true work of art of the modernist period despite the fact that it is all but ignored when works of Marx's contemporaries—like Baudelaire, Flaubert, Kierkegaard, Dostoevsky—are discussed.

Berman notes that Marx was stunningly prescient in envisioning the course of the bourgeois project. In fact, Marx, more than any of capitalism's cheerleaders, makes the case for the world-altering power of capital and its never-before-seen ability to liberate people from the binds of previous social and religious systems. Capitalism was (and is) notoriously unstable, though while Marx saw this as virtue, it was a facet that the major proponents of the emerging system kept shushed in the corner, out of the spotlight.

To this day you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone writing about the transformative glories of capitalism with the same poetic gusto with which Marx wrote. However, Marx believed that this transformative power, this era in which "all that is solid melts into air," would lead to continuous revolutions and the rise of a new kind of man. As capital must always expand, it must always destroy to clear room for newer, more efficient methods and products and ideas. This was the major paradox of Dr. Faust's activity in the world as well as something the Futurists would embrace just prior to WWI ("We want to glorify war - the only cure for the world"). Capitalists have always been the world's truest nihilists in this regard.

Still only in section 2 of Part Two, Berman touches on Marx's "theory of crises." Here, suddenly, the theoretical, the allegorical, the metaphorical all peeled away to today. Berman's words from 1982 display Marx's words from 1848 which mirror 2008. (Call it synchronicity, coincidence, whatever, but when I got home and opened my Marx-Engels Reader, my bookmark was on p. 445, the second page of Marx's "Crisis Theory". This book has been in a box for months.) This is what he writes, on page 103:


Here we are in the midst of a growing worldwide economic depression. And you know what? Millions of people are frightened, but I'm not. People are scared because they've tried to build comfortable lives in an uncomfortable world. There is no rest, no respite. Capital will not let you rest, because if you do, it will destroy you like every other obsolete barrier it faces. Your future will become like that Philemon and Baucis, consumed in cleansing fire to make space for the new tower.
I hardly consider myself an apologist for capitalism, but it has its virtues. I admire the Futurist project for its liberating lack of sentimentality and its nihilistic dedication to destroying the obsolete. Of course, this always means that once all those old traces have melted away, one must find a new solid to burn for fuel. But there is plenty of shit that capital has produced that many of us would love to burn, clear away, to make room for something better. (And if you're averse to the concept of burning, think of it as dismantling and recycling the usable elements.)

So here's to a new year of destruction and creation, of Shiva Nataraja triumphantly dancing upon the defeated dwarf of ignorance.

John D. Barrow—New Theories of Everything

Back in early June, I had made note of some thoughts I had (yeah, it happens) about the search for a "Theory of Everything". I try to keep abreast of current work in cosmology and high-energy physics, particularly if new work appears that's crafted for the education of the layman, "because that's who I am, and that's who I care about." Anyhow, I made the notes regarding the nature of what a theory of everything actually is. Fundamentally, it's a religious pursuit undertaken by ostensibly secular physicists and mathematicians. Why do I call it a religious pursuit? Mainly because in order to reduce the workings of the universe to a comprehensible, elegant mathematical function one must know far more than I think we're capable of understanding (i.e.; initial conditions for the grand event that birthed our universe).

Now there are reasons why I don't think we can know these, and that's where Cambridge mathematician/cosmologist John D. Barrow comes in. New Theories of Everything is an update of a book he wrote in 1991 and provides incredibly clear explanations for a vast array of mathematical and cosmological concepts. (As in frightening, geniusesque clarity.) It's exactly the high-end pop-science book I've needed to read for a while, because while Barrow's grasp of physical phenomena is tight, his deep knowledge allows him to be critical of certain directions many of his peers are taking.

The main premise of the book revolves around the idea that there is no reason to think that the physical properties of our universe can be distilled into one mathematical function. While our universe may have a mathematical skeleton, there are many aspects of its existence that are chaotic and non-linear and other aspects (think closer to home à la the arts) that don't seem to have mathematical explanations at all. Without knowledge of the exact states of initial conditions of these chaotic phenomena we have no way of predicting how future states will turn out (thus negating the ability to confirm the accuracy of an equation or experiment). Symmetry breaking also gives theorists headaches for similar reasons, but I just mangled that last explanation so I'll leave this one for the expert (read the book) to flesh out.

Lastly, I must mention—and I'm cutting this review off because I'm obviously not a physicist and I've also been enjoying some scotch—this book left me a bit baffled. Not by the content per se, as it was expertly explained and I highly recommend reading it, but by the author himself. You see John D. Barrow is a religious man, of a specific christian denomination. Now it may be obnoxious of me to go down this path, but after reading such an obviously brilliant explanation of some of the most conceptually difficult material for humans to comprehend, I cannot help but wonder how its author holds such traditional christian beliefs (i.e.; that jesus our savior, the viability of the trinity, etc.) and is able to reconcile them with all he knows of our universe—not to mention the possibility of an infinite multiverse of which our universe is only one small bubble. I find this realization more troubling and difficult to comprehend than the ideas of infinity or nothingness. But maybe I'm the weird guy.

Anyway, regardless of my ever-dyspeptic responses to the continuing presence of nonsensical religious beliefs in today's world, read this book if you have any interest whatsoever in quantum phenomena, chaotic systems, universal origins, multiverse theory, string theory and any aspects of mathematics. The latter almost always forms a stumbling block for laypersons and Barrow's ability to explain various mathematical concepts made me want to strangle all the terrible math teachers I had growing up who never explained a single fucking thing.

fin.

The White Tiger—Aravind Adiga

This year's Man Booker Prize-winner is Indian-born debutant novelist Aravind Adiga. The simplest summary of The White Tiger will tell you that it's the story of entrepreneur (and murderer!) Balram Halwai; a tale that reveals the conflicts underlying contemporary Indian society as it strives towards 21st Century technological and economic superiority. But of course that's the nutshell version.

Adiga has produced a panorama of modern India in the foreground of which narrator and protagonist Halwai "rises" from a lower caste to become a successful businessman. I qualify the term "rises" because it is a conflicted and controversial notion in a multifaceted nation still mostly understood in the West according to aged stereotypes. This isn't the crunchy India of spiritual enlightenment and millenia-old cultural tradition. Those attributes are present, of course, but any discussion of India today is incomplete without recognition of South Asian political realities and the tension between social classes; the entrenched and rigid markers of status that have been slowly breaking down over the past half-century. Adiga brilliantly displays the conflict—particularly salient among the lower classes—between adhering to family and tradition (the social world found here in "The Darkness") and attempting to create a life as a successful individual in a technologically advanced democratic society.

The India that the narrator inhabits is disgustingly corrupt, bigoted and backward-looking; characteristics highlighted ever more by the growing influence of American-style malls, pristine Bollywood shlock and the remnants of English colonialism. For Indians like Balram Halwai who attempt to supercede their anonymous (his parents actually don't bother to name him, simply calling him "boy") upbringings in "middle" India, there is almost no trickle-down of wealth from the upper strata of society. Halwai really only achieves success because he is an adept observer and learns how to undermine his bosses and understand the proper etiquette of corruption.

What makes the tale of the White Tiger ever more salient to a Western reader is not so much how Adiga portrays the many facets of Indian society for the uninitiated, but how he is able, as a child of both East and West (he spent some youthful years in Australia and attended university in England and the US), to critique modern democratic technological society as a whole. Adiga has not focused his criticism solely upon his native, growing India; the more abstract targets are supposedly "democratic" societies that tout their cultural breadth, scientific prowess and economic advancement as proof of their superiority. The past eight years of the American experience have demonstrated the fallacy of such beliefs. Adiga has situated his novel in a "new" India, but the themes he presents are as salient in modern America (and probably the UK, France, etc. as well) with our extensive poverty, crumbling infrastructure and corrupt—however hidden—politics.

After the electoral events of this past week, this novel only becomes more curiously topical. While detailed explanation of what I mean would be far too long for me to present here, the short of it revolves around the idea that the future is "browner", "darker" than most would have believed before November 4, 2008. Obama's Presidency-elect is a marker of future directions that Mr. Halwai hints at in his letters to the Chinese Premier that frame the novel's narrative. The era of White/Christian/Western (read as conservative, traditional Aryan Hindu in the novel) hegemony is coming to a close, though its effects will continue to be felt for some time and the actual changes that will occur in the world are impossible to predict. Halwai's "liberation" in the novel is one manner of portraying how these changes may occur, but as the author has stated, it is still fiction. Social upheavals have their newsworthy markers, though the tangible effects are more often arise through slow, painful, ambiguously moralized rendings. I'm not positive if this is what Mr. Adiga intended with this brilliant work, but it's the sea in which Balram Halwai's eventual prosperity left me floating.
____

addendum: In light of what I wrote above, this article in today's NYTimes Week In Review presents an interesting snapshot of Mumbai. While The White Tiger takes place in Delhi, Bangalore and several small villages, the details here give a good bit of context for Adiga's story.

Salman Rushdie - The Enchantress of Florence

I'll just go ahead and say it: Rushdie's latest is one of the most enjoyable books I've ever read. It just might be the greatest I've ever read (though I'm not keeping score). Equal parts historical fiction and illusionary dreamscape, I found myself as enchanted by this read as those inside were by the Qara Köz (Lady Black Eyes).

The Enchantress of Florence weaves together fictionalized accounts of the lives of the Mughal Emperor Akbar the Great, Niccolò Macchiavelli, Antonin Argalia (Argalia the Turk) and Amerigo Vespucci's cousin, Agostino. Extensive research was conducted to delicately place each of these men in space and time—Renaissance Tuscany and Mughal India—so that their historicity provides the backdrop upon which the existence of a mysterious lost Turkic princess unfolds. While it undoubtedly takes talent to develop complex characters who exist only in the imagination, to breathe life into long-passed historical figures is an even more noteworthy accomplishment.

Recent readings in eastern philosophy (by way of modern physics, no less) illuminated more of this text than I think I would have otherwise discovered. The ancient vedic concept of maya plays a major role in the story of the Mughal Emperor, Akbar. The Western translation of this word as "illusion" tends to lose the nuance of the concept; as opposed to, say, a figment of the imagination, maya should more accurately be viewed as an outlook that deceives reality. Sure, Akbar's most beloved queen is certainly imaginary, but she is as much a part of his conception of the world as any actual physical entity. Our eyes play tricks on us and we interpret the world through our senses. Senses can be deceived and what constitutes "reality" may be far more than what our senses perceive.

Concepts like maya have not been a part of Western philosophy at all, and so when our reality deceives us we have often blamed them on the work of some outside actor instead of seeing them as a natural part of our universe, our human existence. Pre-Enlightenment Europe was continually privvy to witch-hunts and inquisitions that sought to find the living causes of our own misfortune and fate. The mind/body divide is present in Florence, but not in the seat of the Mughal Empire, Sikri.

What Rushdie is able to do in this novel is demonstrate the same-ness of these two approaches to understanding our existence. Though others may purposefully deceive us, just as often we are to blame for deceiving ourselves in our feeble attempts to explain what evades. However helpful human religious outlooks may be in navigating daily existence or providing meaning for events, the answers are always illusory and deceptive. The rogue traveller and storyteller Niccolò Vespucci—the Mogor dell'Amore, the "Mughal of Love—endears himself to the emperor, Akbar, with his near limitless ability to understand his environments and intellectual uncanny. Ultimately, he is undone by his own tale, for he has an important fact wrong and Akbar knows the truth. Of course, even this truth hides another story.
~~~~~~
Literary themes aside for a moment, I just read the review in the NYTimes and thought the critic totally missed the point. Then again I'm a complete fiction novice and thought the magic and imagination quite charming. (full paradox disclosure: I play D&D and I loathe Tolkien) Anyway, for a rationalist non-fiction reader to be so enchanted by such a book must mean something, right? Well, even Mr. Gates concedes that it helps to be in the right mood to enjoy this, so presumably he was in a foul mood. Naturally, as a student of history I was caught up in the settings and historical figures and didn't let any "claptrap" bother me. What can I say, sometimes I'm in a good mood and this book helped keep me there.

Now, More Internet @ Work!

Sorry I haven't been posting about anything lately. I've been hard at work on a few projects and, with my move to my new apartment completed, I now lack internet until it gets set up there. On the upside, we have a newly connected computer at work, so I can kill bits of the fourth dimension just like I'm doing right now.
Speaking of dimensions, I'm a bit pissed because I was about halfway through Michio Kaku's Parallel Worlds when somebody stole that book from the store! Fuck you, thieves! So in it's place I started to read Kaku's previous book, Hyperspace. Figures people would buy both copies in the space of a week. So now I have no Kaku!
Now back in college we used to do a bit of thievery, which I don't condone, but I know folks do it. Thieves make me feel old and crotchety now. Humbug, you swine! I want to read about higher dimensions and here you are swiping paper! Then again, by the oddities of quantum mechanics, the book may have just disappeared into another dimension or somewhere else in our universe in a wormhole of sorts. Highly unlikely, but still possible, nonetheless.

This is for Satan!...or Odin!...or someone...

Lords of Chaos: The Bloody Rise of the Satanic Metal Underground - Michael Moynihan & Didrik Søderlind



I had been eyeing this book at work for some time now and finally picked it up this past week. As far as any book on "metal" is concerned, this is surely one of the best and most thoroughly researched. Black Metal is a subgenre whose reputation far outsizes its reach. I would bet most people know little about it and the scene itself isn't particularly large, but
it has a prominent (short) history of murder and destruction. I'm not aware if author Michael Moynihan has a direct connection to the scene itself, but I do know that he moved in some odd musical circles and may have far-right connections that go unacknowledged in the book. Søderlind is apparently a former music writer from Norway and doesn't have any such connections it seems.
In terms of the content of this book, the history is exhaustive with profiles of the major personalities involved with black metal since its inception. The material, though probably shocking to many, is presented quite even-handedly and the major figures aren't spared critique. Reading this is worthwhile for just the history of the fledgling Norwegian scene and the subsequent terror waged through church-burnings, a few murders and right-wing political action.
It is this latter story, though, that is most open to critique here. While there is no doubt that many figures in black metal have rightist views there is no profiling of characters who do not espouse such views. Whether this is a conscious move on the part of the authors to exclude such remains unknown. There may just not be anyone vociferously leftist within the scene's ranks to bother reporting (and let's face it, BM is too extreme for moderate personalities). It is true that the martial/medieval aesthetic and raw power of the music excites those with affinities towards power and violence. Thus, there is a natural fascistic connection that can be made.
As well, some of the folks discussed in Lords of Chaos are claimed to be "intelligent", I can't help but object as many of their ideas are clearly nonsensical and betray an incredible sociological ignorance. For some, an adolescent "satanism" matured into political doctrines based on pagan/heathen Nordic legends imposed on modern circumstances. Clearly some of these men (as most of them are) have difficulty discerning reality from fantasy. I think the authors could (and should) have been more critical of some of these views, (though I'm sure the book would have ended up much longer if they had followed through with this) and their failure to do so has led some to wonder if this is a veiled or subtle attempt to sway readers to rightist opinions.While I would not say that far right opinions are necessarily glorified, they certainly could have been more effectively critiqued. It is the lack of critique in this regard that betrays possible rightist sentiments of (one of) the author(s).
On a whole, however, I'd say that this book is definitely worth checking out for anyone interested in metal, in Nordic mythology or in rightist politics as a movement.

The Shape of Nihilism to Come

"The favourite formula was to declare that 'spiritual' - for the naive primordial opposition of spirit and matter was still accepted in those days - had not kept with 'material' advance. This was usually said with an air of moral superiority to the world at large. Mostly there was a vague implication that if these other people would only refrain from using modern inventions so briskly, or go to church more, or marry earlier and artlessly, or read a more 'spiritual' type of literature, or refrain from mixed bathing, or work harder and accept lower wages, or be more respectful and obedient to constituted authority, all might yet be well."

- H.G. Wells, The Shape of Things to Come

This week at work I picked up H.G. Wells' The Shape of Things to Come as I put down David Ramsay Steele's Atheism Explained. The latter of these is actually a fantastic read for anyone who is interested in the philosophical underpinnings of atheism and doesn't wanted to be ranted at by Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens. Arguments and (a)theological currents I hadn't been privy to or thought of filled this book to the point where I had to put it down. Essentially it got boring because, let's face it, there are no plausible or logical arguments for God and once you've read nearly 200 pages of debunking various arguments, things start to repeat and get a bit stale. Wonderful effort, though, and provides great answers to folks who get badgered by religious people about why they don't believe.


As for Mr. Wells, he was a genius and a prophetic bastard to be sure. I think I had mentioned in a recent post my ongoing struggles to understand and get a grasp on postmodernism and the postmodern condition. I had finished Terry Eagleton's The Illusions of Postmodernism, a critical yet even-handed examination of the "phenomenon" currently en vogue, at the same time I completed Turgenev's Fathers & Sons. At some point in my mind nihilism and postmodernism entwined and I've been gasping for air ever since. I bring up Wells, and the quote above in particular, because he was a good thirty-odd years ahead of the curve with some of the descriptions of what has come to define our contemporary modernity.


Right now I'm working out some of the interconnections I'm finding between the nihilism found in postmodernism, the supposed nihilism that follows the death of God (i.e.; the Nietzchean conception), and Turgenev's conception as portrayed in Fathers & Sons. Of course, this is material that would probably fill some huge volume, so I'm not even going to attempt it here, but I'm excited about the possibilities that Wells has set up in his own "history of the future" and how it might interact with what's in my head already. That's something I'll post on when I get there.

Rootless Rooted To This Router

I'm currently sitting in my room listening to self-selectable internet radio, reading a fantastic discussion on humanity and placelessness, and ruminating on critiques of postmodernism that I've been reading at work. In the past seven years I've lived in nine different apartments and I'll be moving again at the end of March (most likely and hopefully), hardly ever getting the chance to settle in before having to up and out all over again. Regardless of where I live, though it seems, I can tune in to knowledge and information distributed across vast times and spaces. At any time I can (and often choose to) disconnect from my surroundings and envelop myself in a world that I seemingly make for myself. Of course I'm not going to get into the real pros and cons of such a situation.
But what I really wonder at this moment is how I'm not supposed to feel separate and disoriented, without narrative and only the most tenuous grip on what could be considered "true" or "real." As much as these attributes seem to define the postmodern condition I can hardly help but heap barrels of disdain upon what amounts to little more than intellectual criminality and cultural hogwash.
None of us should really be posting inane diary entries for anyone around the world to read, but after spending most of our lives (at least those of us under 30 or so) being dictated to by every conceivable form of media, we'd love for somebody to listen to us for just a minute, please! If everyone else's bullshit opinion is valid and credible, surely my "educated" opinion is worthwhile, too, right?
Well, probably not generally speaking. But until we have the intellectual courage to move and think beyond tired, lazy, paralyzing postmodern theoretical drivel I'm afraid we as a technologically-connected segment of our species are confined to remain captives of this spectacle. In the meantime I've been trying to muddle my way through critiques of this state and try to make sense of a diffuse body of purposefully obfuscating, jargonistic theory that will probably only be really understood when we're dead.
So far I've found these two books really enlightening and helpful:

Christopher Butler - A Very Short Introduction to Postmodernism
Terry Eagleton - The Illusions of Postmodernism

Both explain the pros, cons, ambivalences and context of all this mental buggery. If you can relate to anything I just wrote and need help clearing your mind, I think these books are a great place to start.

It's the 19th Century All Over Again...Again

I'm really on a latter-1800s kick at the moment: I finished Huysmans' The Damned last week, Zola's Germinal yesterday and just today began Turgenev's Fathers & Sons. Another way of putting it is that I'm catching up on some classics, but really, it's just this period that's having a huge effect on me. One of the major themes of the period (and these three novels do a great job of covering the disparate attitudes) is the struggle between the dawning age of science, mechanization and industry and the fading world of religion, metaphysics and romanticism.

It almost seemed for a while...well, let's face it, for most of the 20th century, that the scientific age of modernism had definitively triumphed. The world wars, communism, the rise of the technological era: for a large part of the world that romantic, metaphysical age had long since passed into history. Now I don't know if this is just a curiously American thing, but in reading these novels (as well as other bits of research) and following current events you'd be hard-pressed to convince me that we have thoroughly sloughed off the skin of the pre-industrial era. Sure, we're technologically advanced, but we're also ridiculously religious and too many people have failed to accept the non-divine revelations even of Darwin.

There is the other possibility that we've completed a circle and the scientific, progressive attitudes and successes they have brought have been turned upside-down by those who fear the soulless-ness of our modern (some might say post-modern, i don't know) age. There's a deep yearning for some return to metaphysics, some sort of spiritualism that pervades this place and I fail to be able to determine the source(s) of it. In the meantime I find myself running aghast towards other ages to find analogues, examples of this happening in the past to understand the cycles, why this is all repeating itself. For the most part things always repeat themselves and all the early religious systems recognized this (particularly the Hindu/Vedic systems), but twas all destroyed by the linearity of Christianity...

Before I ramble off into the moonlight, the original intent of this post was to write about Germinal, but I don't think any succinct reply is possible with regard to such a dense, overpowering masterpiece. The truths it contains remain relevant in our age, which says as much about Zola's awareness and ability to convey his time as it says about the failings of the industrial systems that have uplifted some segments of the world's population. Maybe the truth behind these novels lay in the dystopia of the present, the possibility of the future and the romance of an idealized past (made possible by our selective memories and amazing ability to forget). Our myths retain their power because our lives cycle, maybe spiraling ever so slightly outward, but always treading close enough to the old, worn paths that it's impossible to lose them. We try desperately to create anew without the ability to truly move away and that's why we, as a people, as a civilization, remain perpetually torn at this event horizon.

Friday's Always A Good Day For Some Sabbath

I've neglected writing (and I mean really writing) the past few days for a few reasons, the main one being that my brain has been so incredibly jumbled with thoughts that I have failed to get any structure underneath or behind them. Wednesday I got a whole bunch done, primarily finishing J-K Huysmans' The Damned (Là Bas) and making an ultimately successful trip to the Met.

I guess it makes sense to start discussing the book, but I really have no idea where to start. For starters I thoroughly enjoyed the read; Huysmans' prose is phenomenally descriptive and entrancing (apparently that is a word!), bordering on the "otherworldly". I only vaguely know what I mean by this latter description, but I think it stems from the characters inhabiting a social environment far removed from the mainstream fin-de-siècle Paris in which the story is set. Detest of the modern world has lead these few characters towards infatuation with a form of "romantic medievalism" and Catholic Mysticism (otherwise known as Western Occultism). Huysmans based the main character, Durtal, on himself, and the pessimism mixed with Catholic occult obsession foreshadows the author's eventual adoption of Catholicism.

Though I am a lapsed (or shed) Catholic by upbringing, I do find elements of the occult rather intriguing: the history of symbolism and saints and sacrilege. Huysmans dutifully researched for this book and, actually, the core plot device is the production of a biography of Gilles de Rais by Durtal. I highly recommend looking into this character (I'm not going to spoil any fun here!) because he is quite interesting on his own, regardless of how his story is woven into the novel. Ultimately, what drove people crazy about this book when it was published was the description of Satanism, its rites, its culture and its connection with the hierarchy of the Catholic Church.

While it may seem that I am not the type of person that would go for such an un-Naturalist work like this (and I'm a bit surprised myself), the pessimism of the main agents, their dialogue and what moves them through life transfixed me in a manner that left me ready to return to the dark ages of magic and occultism and saintly miracles. Possibly within all of us there are seeds of romanticism and assorted wonderments that need feeding. They counter the extreme rationalism of our wired world of glass and missiles and plague. Perhaps I abhor so much new age rubbish because of the methodology and not so much because of the nature of what may be unknowable to our instruments and material tools...

Hans Memling The Last Judgment 1467-71

Oh, If Only I Knew What He Was Talking About

Brian Greene - The Elegant Universe

Alright, this is going to be a bit of a bullshit post, if only because I finished this book a week ago. I had a great post in my head, but my internet was spotty and I failed to write anything down or take notes for myself. That was stupid of me, though certainly not the first time that's ever happened.

With that caveat in mind, here's the main point (I think) I wanted to make last Monday. As much as any book on string theory can be, The Elegant Universe is a winner. Greene boils down the essentials in an incredibly simple fashion with easy-to-understand and insightful analogies. String theory is mind-bogglingly complex; it stretches beyond what most humans are capable of imagining (and that includes many of the involved scientists). Without knowing the math behind all this, it remains difficult (in my opinion) to perceive this microscopically small world, so I commend Dr./Prof./Mr. Greene for his efforts in trying to make all this accessible to the layman. I can't possibly begin to describe this world here and it would be a crime for me to try. Realistically, I need to reread whole chapters at some point because there is so much that I had to skim through because I simply did not understand what was going on.

My own ignorance notwithstanding, what I found lacking in this work was some of the storytelling. A good deal of the book is devoted to the history and development of string theory, Greene lays down the foundations of 20th century physics as it relates to the most modern conceptions of how the world has begun to appear to modern theorists. However, in an attempt to ground and humanize many of the "characters" here, the main story tends to drag; details of the lives of these (mostly) men and their situations come at the cost of attention to the flow of ideas. I guess that would be my only critique, as I found my attention wandering about 3/4 of the way through when that should really be where things are picking up steam and careening towards a conclusion. This isn't to say that Greene is a terrible narrator, but I think some editing of the storyline could have helped me keep focus when the physics started to get more complicated and outright weird.

I definitely recommend The Elegant Universe for those uninitiated in the world of string theory (much as I was). Given that this book was written a couple years ago, a lot of this work has been furthered in that elapsed time. I've been trying to find "updates" of sorts, but I'm finding material hard to come by. I'm also looking for anything that might be able to tie chaos theory in with any of this string business. If anyone knows of anything, point me in the right direction...

Yes, Sometimes I Read Fiction

Gary Shteyngart, The Russian Debutante's Handbook

Now it's not often I stray from my beloved non-fiction pop-science geek books, but tore through this thanks to what I must say was a great tip. Since I wasn't a Lit major nor an avid fictioneer, I don't really know how to discuss such books. (Really, anyone who reads this knows I don't actually know how talk about much of anything, but damn if I don't try). That means I haven't the foggiest about the plot arc or allusions to other works or any of that crap. What I do know, however, is that this book kept my attention and had a lot of funny jokes in it. I've also been to Prague, the basis of his fictional city of Prava, which added a level of familiarity to the proceedings.

On a more serious note, I'll say that this book was a fantastic antidote to all the bullshit ravings about "quarterlife" that have been floating around the media lately. I'm 26, have been fairly directionless for the past few years and, um, whatever else "qualifies" someone for a "quarterlife crisis." Oh, having a decent level of neuroticism helps, too. Anyway, before youtube and facebook and all the rubbish self-promotion/self-pity party started folks just went about their business figuring out what to do with their lives without fucking crying about it to whatever gullible anonymous strangers would pay attention. Shteyngart's story here is a product (and a marvelous one at that) of that post-college wonder/wander-ment and there isn't any unwarranted crying over spilled milk.

Now that I've completely butchered another review of something I really enjoyed, I'll recommend this book and look forward to reading his follow-up, Absurdistan.

East v West: Terrorist All-Star Game

Ian Buruma & Avishai Margalit, Occidentalism: The West in the Eyes of its Enemies

Recently we started getting coursebooks in stock at work and, as curiosity dictates, I started skimming through some to see what some of the NYU profs are assigning this term. This one, Occidentalism caught my eye and I ended up reading the whole thing in spare moments over two days. It's not a lengthy tome, but it's an easy read as well as, I think, a well thought out work. The major premise, as I gather it, is that militant Islamism is just the latest in a line of ideologies spawned to opposed "the West." This entity is really the intertwined systems of scientism, progress, democracy, capitalism and not the monolith that those who wish to counter it (with violence it should be noted) would like to make it out to be.
One of the major points that the authors repeatedly make is that a lot of "anti-Western" thought is actually Western (and more specifically, western European) in origin. In fact, a good deal of it is Western systems of thought--communism, fascism, romanticism--that are introduced in one form or another to non-Westerners and summarily bastardized in a context that doesn't mirror that within which the ideology originally grew. It should be duly noted that popular support for such anti-Western sentiment tends to increase because of the disconnect that natives feel between what Western-educated (or connected) elites of their home countries end up doing in the name of "progress" there. Just as many in the "West" have a poor grasp of the realities away from their doorsteps, those in the "East" or "South" have similarly skewed visions of what it means to be "Western" in origin.
I'm off now to search for come critiques of this book, since I'm sure there are a few, but I must state that this book isn't some apologetic for Eurocentrism or West-ism or some other nonsense. I have plenty of issues with elements of global capitalism and misused technology and imperial tendencies. Nonetheless, I'm no romantic (in the true sense of, say, German Romanticism, which is discussed at length in the book) about some idealized past or harbor the delusions of heroism that inform the basis of much anti-modern thought. Anyone who reads here knows my support of responsible scientific inquiry and my disdain for religious and spiritual hokum. Whatever, I'm losing my train of thought...
The point is this book is a quick and intelligent read, definitely for anyone who'd like a good geneology of the roots of anti-modern ideologies, particularly ones that espouse violent means. I'd love to get comments on this from anyone else who has read it.

I want an Ann Druyan of my own

Carl Sagan The Demon-Haunted World: Science As A Candle In The Dark

Here is a collection of essays representing a spectrum of topics ranging from UFOs and alien abduction to the effects of religion on society to the terrible deficiencies in science education among American youth. While the topics are diverse, they flow quite well together and the read never feels disjointed as such a vast array is wont to do.
Later in the book there are several essays that Carl co-wrote with his wife and collaborator Ann Druyan. These tend to be more general in scope; mostly regarding science education, science's role in society and the possibilities for societal betterment that scientific advancement provides. I thought this made sense given Ann's role in co-writing much of the Cosmos tv series. I also get the impression that she probably helped edit and improve the flow of most of Carl's pieces.
What I appreciate most about Carl's work in popularizing science is his continuous encouragement in questioning everything and keeping a sharp, critical, skeptical mind about what confronts us on a daily basis. It's such a simple concept and seems cliché, but to remain vigilant in the face of encroaching darkness and magical thinking is difficult. I can only imagine what Carl would think if he were still alive in this day of pseudoscience and anti-science, of "intelligent design" in schools and diminished science literacy in general. When I was growing up I remember Mr Wizard and 321 Contact among other science shows for kids. Do they even have that now? Sure, kids can use computers, but too many can't think and aren't exposed to methods of critical inquiry at a young age.
I've completely lost focus now and I'm just rambling. I hate to say "we're fucking screwed" even thought it often feels like it, so it makes me terribly happy and hopeful that we still have the work of Carl Sagan as a light in this terrible tunnel.

This Guy Is Way Smarter Than You

Neil deGrasse Tyson Death By Black Hole

This guy is hilariously informative. I highly recommend everybody read this book even if you're not into having your mind blown by science. It immediately places Dr. Tyson in the "Carl Sagan pantheon of great scientists who make the amazing accessible for the lay man". Seriously, who needs religion and spirituality when you can be enrapt with wonder by the very workings of our bodies, our planet, our universe!!!