Sarang's latest effort, Through the Center of the Earth, is generating a lot of buzz in the literary world—so much so that when Michael Chabon participated in an Ask Me Anything on Reddit, the majority of the questions were not about his own work, but about his opinion of Through the Center. And the New York Times famously ran dueling reviews of the book on the same day, one by Woody Allen ("arguably the best book of the century") and the other by John Banville ("simply this: a triumph—undoubtedly the best of the young century"). It's all anyone can talk about.
But I can't help feeling that people are paying attention for the wrong reasons. The collection of short stories is mostly remarked upon for its imaginative and downright weird plotting. This isn't misguided, exactly: the stories really are fascinating. (More on this in a moment.) And his plotting really is much tighter and more focused than it was in Bletchley Park. But hidden behind the well-crafted stories are hauntingly personal themes of loneliness, depression, and alienation, and unfortunately this nuance is at risk of being lost in all the celebratory fanfare.
About those plots: Through the Center is, to a large extent, an exercise in implausible ideas made to seem plausible through the alchemy of Sarang's vivid prose. In one story, the CIA recruits an up-and-coming Latvian chef, Māris Rubenis, to infiltrate the world of Soviet cooking. After establishing himself as the USSR's foremost culinary star, Rubenis introduces what he calls "socialist realist cuisine," the most notable feature of which is that it involves eating prodigious amounts of asparagus at every meal. As a result, the CIA is able to round up thousands of KGB agents, easily identifying them by the pungent odor of their urine.
But where do Rubenis's loyalties really lie? Having defected to the United States, he serves the entire National Security Council a meal with well-disguised beets in every course. After dinner, the council members are horrified when their urine is almost blood-red, and because their insecurities prevent them from talking to each other about it, a national crisis ensues.
This is all amusing enough, and no one does mordant humor better than Sarang. But it is not just a clever story. The all-consuming paranoia of national security finds its echo in Rubenis's relationships with his wife and her relationship with her lover, a Ukrainian expert in livestock management. We come to realize that Rubenis's many deceptions are intimately bound up with his inability to trust other people. In fact, Sarang suggests that an essential part of happiness may be the ability to trust the people we love, even (or especially) when they don't deserve our trust. Everyone gets the joke when the urine starts flowing blood-red, but few readers seem to pick up on the quiet tragedy of Rubenis's gradual alienation from the people he loves.
Throughout the book, Sarang escalates the stories to ever-increasing levels of silliness. In the title story, a physicist, Jan Elias, is hired to develop a system of communication between New York and Tokyo that works by projecting a beam of neutrinos through the center of the earth. The story is an extrapolation from a real-life project using a trans-arctic cable to profit from a faster connection between those financial centers. With their even-faster system, Elias's financial backers hope to get rich at the expense of their competitors. Elias builds a giant tank of water directly beneath the Tokyo Stock Exchange and a particle accelerator directly beneath the New York Stock Exchange, and soon his employers are busily using their market-best informational edge to accumulate vast profits.
Part of the joke here is the ease with which Elias accomplishes otherwise impossible tasks, thanks to his financial backing. (Imagine building a particle accelerator under the most densely populated land in the United States.) Of course, the corruption of late-stage capitalism has been a theme throughout most of Sarang's work, but here it has a particularly sharp edge. Sarang hints that the financialization of our society is inexorable, and the only chance at preserving anything of value involves tawdry compromises. (For instance, Elias slips a lot of pure science into his project, and finds that he is better-funded than any of his colleagues in the civilian world.)
But again, these themes, which ramify and deepen as they reverberate through the characters' lives, don't seem to be getting any attention. Wall Street traders are said to like the story, apparently not recognizing themselves in its villains. (Or, more chillingly, they are embracing the villainy.) Sarang is in danger of creating a paean to the world he is trying to puncture.
The book has plenty more to offer in the way of fabulous storytelling. In one story, Nabisco spends a large portion of its marketing budget encouraging people to use the term "Triscuit conditional" in place of the traditional "biscuit conditional," and the campaign is so successful that soon all of the major snack companies are scrambling to keep up. In another story, a psychologist develops a highly effective method of teaching patients self-control. But the method is catastrophically successful: the modern economy is so dependent on exploiting people's addictions and self-destructive impulses that when they gain the willpower necessary to lead happy, healthy lives, the economy implodes.
But I urge you not to get carried away by Sarang's high-flying flourishes. Re-read the stories with an eye to the sadness and sense of loss that is so easily obscured. The surface is beautiful, but the real substance lies beneath.
Monday, April 11, 2016
Tuesday, February 9, 2016
Calista's The Phantom Laundry
Do poetry and politics have anything to do with one another? Political oratory occasionally ascends to rarefied heights—Lincoln's "better angels of our nature," Churchill's "broad, sunlit uplands," Nehru's "tryst with destiny." But rhetoric aside, is there any meaningful way in which poetry influences politics or vice versa? Or are these human endeavors mutually incomprehensible, and insulated from each other by their incomprehension?
These are the issues broached by Calista in her latest effort, The Phantom Laundry. The book opens with a typical scene from modern American politics: a young conservative governor from the Midwest, who has just launched his campaign for the presidency, appears on a Fox News morning show. Smooth and winning, white, religious, and very conservative, Governor Wilkerson seems to have everything it takes to make it in the modern Republican Party. The cheerful, puppyish interviewers lob a few softball policy questions and then start chatting about his favorite movies, his favorite music, and so on. When they ask about his favorite book, Wilkerson says that apart from the Bible, his favorite book is The Bell Jar. "I think voters might have chosen very differently in 2008 and 2012 if they had heeded its message," Wilkerson says, shooting a knowing look at the camera.
The interviewers move on, but something is pulling at the corner of Wilkerson's mind. Only as he walks off the set does he realize his mistake: he meant to say The Bell Curve, not The Bell Jar. It was an inexplicable slip-up, since he has never read The Bell Jar. But his campaign is just making its first impression on the voters, and now is not the time to admit that he bungled a simple question on national television. He has no choice but to stick to his answer.
Wilkerson hastily reads the book, comes up with a few trite things to say if anyone asks about it, and then focuses on his tour through Iowa. But almost in spite of himself, he finds his thoughts returning to the novel and its harrowing story of youth, ambition, and mental illness. In minutes stolen between campaign appearances, he looks up Sylvia Plath poems on the internet, compulsively clicking from one to the next. His aides find it harder and harder to draw him away from his smartphone to go on stage or to work a line of voters.
Meanwhile, the Republican primary devolves into a clown show, with each candidate vying to be more outlandish and obnoxious than the last, like a political version of the penis game. Here Calista is at her sardonic best, punctuating long chapters of prose with punchy interstitial material consisting of candidates' Twitter feeds. The madness of the race is palpable.
As the novel builds toward its climax, Wilkerson finds himself on the ropes, unable to compete with the lunatics who have come to dominate the race. Where Wilkerson tends to use dog whistles to attract bigoted voters, his competitors freely express their bigoted thoughts, almost as asides, easily drawing in the voters who previously would have gone to Wilkerson. His campaign is capsizing, but he can salvage it with a strong performance in New Hampshire, and so he spends more and more time in the state, practicing the retail politics that launched his career in the first place.
It is here, in front of a gaggle of cameras and microphones, that he gets a troubling question from a distraught young woman. She describes her struggles with addiction and mental illness and holds up a tattered copy of The Bell Jar. Laboring to enunciate her words through her tears, she says that she knows Wilkerson must be able to empathize with people like her, since he found Plath's book so touching. But if the Affordable Care Act is repealed, then treatment will be beyond her reach. What will Wilkerson do for people like her if he is elected?
We don't see his answer. Instead, the book closes with a long car ride home from New Hampshire, the defeated candidate tired and pensive, surrounded by his dejected but loving family. Did he do the right thing? Calista doesn't answer, at least directly, and a lively debate has flared up, with many commenters insisting that no race-baiting Republican could possibly be redeemed by reading Sylvia Plath poetry, of all things. But if you believe that poetry can mean something even to a politician, that once it takes hold in someone's heart it never stops exerting its tidal pull, then maybe you have found a different answer somewhere in the pages of this beguiling novel.
These are the issues broached by Calista in her latest effort, The Phantom Laundry. The book opens with a typical scene from modern American politics: a young conservative governor from the Midwest, who has just launched his campaign for the presidency, appears on a Fox News morning show. Smooth and winning, white, religious, and very conservative, Governor Wilkerson seems to have everything it takes to make it in the modern Republican Party. The cheerful, puppyish interviewers lob a few softball policy questions and then start chatting about his favorite movies, his favorite music, and so on. When they ask about his favorite book, Wilkerson says that apart from the Bible, his favorite book is The Bell Jar. "I think voters might have chosen very differently in 2008 and 2012 if they had heeded its message," Wilkerson says, shooting a knowing look at the camera.
The interviewers move on, but something is pulling at the corner of Wilkerson's mind. Only as he walks off the set does he realize his mistake: he meant to say The Bell Curve, not The Bell Jar. It was an inexplicable slip-up, since he has never read The Bell Jar. But his campaign is just making its first impression on the voters, and now is not the time to admit that he bungled a simple question on national television. He has no choice but to stick to his answer.
Wilkerson hastily reads the book, comes up with a few trite things to say if anyone asks about it, and then focuses on his tour through Iowa. But almost in spite of himself, he finds his thoughts returning to the novel and its harrowing story of youth, ambition, and mental illness. In minutes stolen between campaign appearances, he looks up Sylvia Plath poems on the internet, compulsively clicking from one to the next. His aides find it harder and harder to draw him away from his smartphone to go on stage or to work a line of voters.
Meanwhile, the Republican primary devolves into a clown show, with each candidate vying to be more outlandish and obnoxious than the last, like a political version of the penis game. Here Calista is at her sardonic best, punctuating long chapters of prose with punchy interstitial material consisting of candidates' Twitter feeds. The madness of the race is palpable.
As the novel builds toward its climax, Wilkerson finds himself on the ropes, unable to compete with the lunatics who have come to dominate the race. Where Wilkerson tends to use dog whistles to attract bigoted voters, his competitors freely express their bigoted thoughts, almost as asides, easily drawing in the voters who previously would have gone to Wilkerson. His campaign is capsizing, but he can salvage it with a strong performance in New Hampshire, and so he spends more and more time in the state, practicing the retail politics that launched his career in the first place.
It is here, in front of a gaggle of cameras and microphones, that he gets a troubling question from a distraught young woman. She describes her struggles with addiction and mental illness and holds up a tattered copy of The Bell Jar. Laboring to enunciate her words through her tears, she says that she knows Wilkerson must be able to empathize with people like her, since he found Plath's book so touching. But if the Affordable Care Act is repealed, then treatment will be beyond her reach. What will Wilkerson do for people like her if he is elected?
We don't see his answer. Instead, the book closes with a long car ride home from New Hampshire, the defeated candidate tired and pensive, surrounded by his dejected but loving family. Did he do the right thing? Calista doesn't answer, at least directly, and a lively debate has flared up, with many commenters insisting that no race-baiting Republican could possibly be redeemed by reading Sylvia Plath poetry, of all things. But if you believe that poetry can mean something even to a politician, that once it takes hold in someone's heart it never stops exerting its tidal pull, then maybe you have found a different answer somewhere in the pages of this beguiling novel.
Monday, December 28, 2015
Alan's The Residence of the Soul
Alan's latest effort, The Residence of the Soul, is a remarkable novel that represent's Alan's first, and hopefully not last, foray into historical fiction. (I am excluding All of Gaul, the best-selling comedy from his early "New Orleans" period. All of Gaul consists of the dispatches of a Roman general to his compatriots in Rome, intended to burnish the general's reputation but in fact revealing him to be a petulant, self-regarding buffoon. The book makes no pretense to historical accuracy, and should be categorized not as a historical novel but as a farce.)
Residence is a much darker work. At the beginning of the book, the protagonist, Andrei Solovyov, sails to New York seeking work as a war reporter. (Solovyov is not to be confused with Andrey Soloviev, a real-life Russian war photographer.) Solovyov is not so much chasing foreign adventure as fleeing domestic strife: both his mistress and his wife are pregnant, and his creditors are hounding him for his gambling debts. Solovyov may also be envious of the attention paid to his younger brother, Anatoly, who fought in Crimea and who is now a respected opinion columnist with a decidedly nationalist bent.
Solovyov's experience in the United States is first sobering and then shattering. He expects to find an egalitarian utopia, but instead is repelled by the unrefined and avaricious Americans he meets. He is surprised to find himself nurturing a snobbish disdain for the Americans' lack of culture and their barely-disguised social-climbing, and he wonders if this undignified scramble is the price of democracy, and if so, whether it is worth paying. However, in a stab of painful introspection, he admits to himself that his family would be better off if he were imbued with some of the American passion for money.
Solovyov briefly mingles with politicians and diplomats in Washington, and is amazed that an ungainly and unpolished rube like Lincoln has been entrusted with the presidency. But soon Solovyov is on the front lines, filing reports of the major battles in the Western theater and becoming accustomed to a rough and unpredictable way of life. It is here in the heart of the country that Solovyov will lose himself.
Following the surrender of Vicksburg, the last holdout of the Confederacy on the Mississippi River, Solovyov heads north to follow the Union's Army of the Cumberland, which, under the able leadership of General William Rosecrans, is chasing the Confederates out of Tennessee. (Coincidentally, Vicksburg's surrender came on the day after the withering Confederate defeat at Gettysburg. The tide of the war has turned, though much blood remains to be shed before it is through.) Solovyov's abolitionist, pro-Union sentiments have already made it difficult to file objective reports, and at Chickamauga he goes over the edge. Responding to cries for help, he finds a Yankee soldier who has taken a shot to the head and who is missing a large piece of his skull. Union surgeons have made a fateful mark on his coat—according to the cruel dictates of triage, he is to be left for dead, since he is beyond medical help. But the soldier is a mere boy, and Solovyov cannot ignore his need for water and his desperate fear of being abandoned to the advancing Rebels. Solovyov cradles his head in his lap, trying to keep the brains from spilling out, and alternately cries and talks to the boy. Clearly slipping away, the soldier starts slurring his words and becomes incoherent, and finally Solovyov must leave him. As Union soldiers hustle him away in front of Longstreet's charging Confederates, Solovyov casts his mind back to his parting from his tearful son in Russia, now thoroughly ashamed of his own indifference. Solovyov is almost literally beside himself, perceiving with terrible clarity the wretchedness and selfishness of his existence. He finds a kind of purity in his self-abhorrence and in his love for the dying soldier, whose name he never learns. (Rosecrans, too, is unnerved by the slaughter at Chickamauga, and despite Lincoln's reassurances, he effectively resigns his role as leader of the Army of the Cumberland.)
Abandoning his journalistic pretensions, Solovyov joins the Union army as a nurse and follows General Grant from his ingenious reinforcement of Chattanooga (besieged after the Union's retreat at Chickamauga) through his pursuit of General Lee and the remnants of the Confederate army two years later. President Lincoln joins Grant in Virginia, where he is thronged by ecstatic freed slaves (freed not just by the Emancipation Proclamation but by the Thirteenth Amendment, recently passed by the House of Representatives and awaiting its inevitable ratification by the states). Solovyov is ashamed by the shallowness of his original assessment of Lincoln, who is now his idol. When Lincoln is shot, Solovyov, beset by grief, decides that his time in the United States has come to a close. It is time to return to Russia to face the music.
Now begin Solovyov's trials. His family is shocked by his self-proclaimed pacifism, and his brother goads their father into disinheriting him. (Characteristically, Solovyov refuses to accept the label "pacifist," insisting that his standards for just war are simply too high for any actual war, short of the Civil War, to satisfy them. His father declines to honor this distinction.) His wife, fearing for the welfare of her children, leaves Andrei for his younger brother. Andrei tells Anatoly not to get too big a head: "she comes with the house."
This is unfair. His wife is actually impressed by his new depth, and where before he was sleek and rakish, he is now lean and hardened. She has never been so attracted to him. But she is frightened by his political extremism and strange philosophical meditations, and his spiritual awakening strikes her as a convenient way to deflect her anger over his mistress. Solovyov sails back to the United States alone, this time for good.
Alan now draws a curtain over Solovyov's life, hereafter revealing only the general shape of things. The Russian expatriate, head in the clouds, moves to Philadelphia and experiments with Quakerism; after several theological quarrels, he renounces the faith and moves to New York City. Revealing unexpected talent as a bookseller, he nevertheless lives in borderline poverty because of his tendency to use his money to support any oppressed minority that comes to his attention. He is particularly concerned with the welfare of freed slaves, and as a result he becomes involved in Republican politics. Predictably, though, he has a falling-out with his fellow Republicans over an arcane point of political philosophy, and he founds his own political party, which attracts a few dozen members at its peak.
All of this is presented in detached, sketchy prose. But Alan pulls back the curtain when Solovyov's daughter, now a young woman, arrives to tell him that his wife has left Anatoly and wishes to reconcile. Solovyov is in turmoil. He has embraced celibacy and fears the temptations that his wife will bring him. Mixed with this fear is his shame about his financial condition—he is little better off than he was when he left Russia, and without his estate, he has no way to provide for his family. Unable to corral his unruly thoughts, he takes his daughter on a trip to visit the battle site of Chickamauga. There for the first time he tells the story of his life-changing encounter with the injured soldier, and he breaks down.
I'll leave the story there (in fact, Alan doesn't take it much further), and part with a few thoughts. I'm gratified to find that Alan's immersion in Civil War history has yielded big dividends in the form of immediacy and verisimilitude. The war is not just a backdrop to the story, it provides the impetus for the big philosophical and spiritual ideas that animate the novel. I wish more authors would bring this kind of unifying conceptual coherence to their work.
This coherence can also be found in my favorite scene of the book. Solovyov, seeking refuge from family drama, goes for a ride through the Russian countryside. Here, he encounters a former serf who begs him to describe his encounters with Lincoln. (By itself, this is a fascinating set-piece, a serf freed by imperial proclamation, mostly ignorant of the world beyond his village and yet hungry for information about the great American emancipator.) Solovyov's conversation with the peasant lasts only a few pages, but in capsule form it captures Solovyov's volatile feelings, his grandiosity (almost justified by the subject matter) and his depression (almost appropriate given his idol's tragic end). We see a man gripped by powerful feelings but unable to navigate them or channel his frantic but sporadic energy, a man with rare moral vision but no means to turn it into anything meaningful. A waste of human potential, maybe, who recognizes himself in the vast waste that was the Civil War.
Residence is a much darker work. At the beginning of the book, the protagonist, Andrei Solovyov, sails to New York seeking work as a war reporter. (Solovyov is not to be confused with Andrey Soloviev, a real-life Russian war photographer.) Solovyov is not so much chasing foreign adventure as fleeing domestic strife: both his mistress and his wife are pregnant, and his creditors are hounding him for his gambling debts. Solovyov may also be envious of the attention paid to his younger brother, Anatoly, who fought in Crimea and who is now a respected opinion columnist with a decidedly nationalist bent.
Solovyov's experience in the United States is first sobering and then shattering. He expects to find an egalitarian utopia, but instead is repelled by the unrefined and avaricious Americans he meets. He is surprised to find himself nurturing a snobbish disdain for the Americans' lack of culture and their barely-disguised social-climbing, and he wonders if this undignified scramble is the price of democracy, and if so, whether it is worth paying. However, in a stab of painful introspection, he admits to himself that his family would be better off if he were imbued with some of the American passion for money.
Solovyov briefly mingles with politicians and diplomats in Washington, and is amazed that an ungainly and unpolished rube like Lincoln has been entrusted with the presidency. But soon Solovyov is on the front lines, filing reports of the major battles in the Western theater and becoming accustomed to a rough and unpredictable way of life. It is here in the heart of the country that Solovyov will lose himself.
Following the surrender of Vicksburg, the last holdout of the Confederacy on the Mississippi River, Solovyov heads north to follow the Union's Army of the Cumberland, which, under the able leadership of General William Rosecrans, is chasing the Confederates out of Tennessee. (Coincidentally, Vicksburg's surrender came on the day after the withering Confederate defeat at Gettysburg. The tide of the war has turned, though much blood remains to be shed before it is through.) Solovyov's abolitionist, pro-Union sentiments have already made it difficult to file objective reports, and at Chickamauga he goes over the edge. Responding to cries for help, he finds a Yankee soldier who has taken a shot to the head and who is missing a large piece of his skull. Union surgeons have made a fateful mark on his coat—according to the cruel dictates of triage, he is to be left for dead, since he is beyond medical help. But the soldier is a mere boy, and Solovyov cannot ignore his need for water and his desperate fear of being abandoned to the advancing Rebels. Solovyov cradles his head in his lap, trying to keep the brains from spilling out, and alternately cries and talks to the boy. Clearly slipping away, the soldier starts slurring his words and becomes incoherent, and finally Solovyov must leave him. As Union soldiers hustle him away in front of Longstreet's charging Confederates, Solovyov casts his mind back to his parting from his tearful son in Russia, now thoroughly ashamed of his own indifference. Solovyov is almost literally beside himself, perceiving with terrible clarity the wretchedness and selfishness of his existence. He finds a kind of purity in his self-abhorrence and in his love for the dying soldier, whose name he never learns. (Rosecrans, too, is unnerved by the slaughter at Chickamauga, and despite Lincoln's reassurances, he effectively resigns his role as leader of the Army of the Cumberland.)
Abandoning his journalistic pretensions, Solovyov joins the Union army as a nurse and follows General Grant from his ingenious reinforcement of Chattanooga (besieged after the Union's retreat at Chickamauga) through his pursuit of General Lee and the remnants of the Confederate army two years later. President Lincoln joins Grant in Virginia, where he is thronged by ecstatic freed slaves (freed not just by the Emancipation Proclamation but by the Thirteenth Amendment, recently passed by the House of Representatives and awaiting its inevitable ratification by the states). Solovyov is ashamed by the shallowness of his original assessment of Lincoln, who is now his idol. When Lincoln is shot, Solovyov, beset by grief, decides that his time in the United States has come to a close. It is time to return to Russia to face the music.
Now begin Solovyov's trials. His family is shocked by his self-proclaimed pacifism, and his brother goads their father into disinheriting him. (Characteristically, Solovyov refuses to accept the label "pacifist," insisting that his standards for just war are simply too high for any actual war, short of the Civil War, to satisfy them. His father declines to honor this distinction.) His wife, fearing for the welfare of her children, leaves Andrei for his younger brother. Andrei tells Anatoly not to get too big a head: "she comes with the house."
This is unfair. His wife is actually impressed by his new depth, and where before he was sleek and rakish, he is now lean and hardened. She has never been so attracted to him. But she is frightened by his political extremism and strange philosophical meditations, and his spiritual awakening strikes her as a convenient way to deflect her anger over his mistress. Solovyov sails back to the United States alone, this time for good.
Alan now draws a curtain over Solovyov's life, hereafter revealing only the general shape of things. The Russian expatriate, head in the clouds, moves to Philadelphia and experiments with Quakerism; after several theological quarrels, he renounces the faith and moves to New York City. Revealing unexpected talent as a bookseller, he nevertheless lives in borderline poverty because of his tendency to use his money to support any oppressed minority that comes to his attention. He is particularly concerned with the welfare of freed slaves, and as a result he becomes involved in Republican politics. Predictably, though, he has a falling-out with his fellow Republicans over an arcane point of political philosophy, and he founds his own political party, which attracts a few dozen members at its peak.
All of this is presented in detached, sketchy prose. But Alan pulls back the curtain when Solovyov's daughter, now a young woman, arrives to tell him that his wife has left Anatoly and wishes to reconcile. Solovyov is in turmoil. He has embraced celibacy and fears the temptations that his wife will bring him. Mixed with this fear is his shame about his financial condition—he is little better off than he was when he left Russia, and without his estate, he has no way to provide for his family. Unable to corral his unruly thoughts, he takes his daughter on a trip to visit the battle site of Chickamauga. There for the first time he tells the story of his life-changing encounter with the injured soldier, and he breaks down.
I'll leave the story there (in fact, Alan doesn't take it much further), and part with a few thoughts. I'm gratified to find that Alan's immersion in Civil War history has yielded big dividends in the form of immediacy and verisimilitude. The war is not just a backdrop to the story, it provides the impetus for the big philosophical and spiritual ideas that animate the novel. I wish more authors would bring this kind of unifying conceptual coherence to their work.
This coherence can also be found in my favorite scene of the book. Solovyov, seeking refuge from family drama, goes for a ride through the Russian countryside. Here, he encounters a former serf who begs him to describe his encounters with Lincoln. (By itself, this is a fascinating set-piece, a serf freed by imperial proclamation, mostly ignorant of the world beyond his village and yet hungry for information about the great American emancipator.) Solovyov's conversation with the peasant lasts only a few pages, but in capsule form it captures Solovyov's volatile feelings, his grandiosity (almost justified by the subject matter) and his depression (almost appropriate given his idol's tragic end). We see a man gripped by powerful feelings but unable to navigate them or channel his frantic but sporadic energy, a man with rare moral vision but no means to turn it into anything meaningful. A waste of human potential, maybe, who recognizes himself in the vast waste that was the Civil War.
Tuesday, November 17, 2015
Calista's Into the World
Calista's latest effort, Into the World, a novel of manners set at a prestigious American university, seems almost quaint in light of recent campus tensions, but it provides a welcome respite from weightier matters. Calista owes a clear debt to novels like Lucky Jim, but she updates its madcap aesthetic to take full advantage of the absurdities that abound in modern academia. I confess I can't get enough of this kind of send-up of the modern university—you might even call me an academia nut!
As the book opens, Peter Goldthwaite, a professor of philosophy, has been accused of selling drugs to undergraduates. The accusations are not quite true, but the disciplinary committee is unmoved by Goldthwaite's insistence that he never accepted money from the students. However, Goldthwaite's friend and lawyer, the irrepressible Alain de la Droite, manages to shift the venue to the School of Humanities, which provides more fertile soil for his theory of the case. There, de la Droite argues that it is spurious to identify present-day Goldthwaite with the individual who distributed the drugs more than a year ago. Present-Goldthwaite bears no more resemblance to past-Goldthwaite than present-Goldthwaite does to any other professor, de la Droite claims. But it would be wrong to punish one professor for another professor's actions. Present-Goldthwaite is an innocent man! By a narrow margin, Goldthwaite prevails, and the charges are dropped.
But Goldthwaite's nemesis, the sinister Dean Villiers, hatches a plan to take revenge on the arrogant philosopher. A nontenured philosophy professor, Diane Rothblatt, acting as Villiers's cat's-paw, befriends Goldthwaite and encourages him to delve back into his work. Eager to forget his trials and reinvigorated by the admiration of the young, attractive Rothblatt, Goldthwaite dusts off some of his old drafts and gets them into shape for publication. After sending off his final revisions to the galleys, Goldthwaite invites de la Droite and Rothblatt to his house for celebratory champagne, and that night Goldthwaite and Rothblatt consummate their budding love affair.
But Rothblatt is riven by self-loathing, for Goldthwaite's moment of triumph also sets the stage for his destruction. Later, at the launch party, just as Goldthwaite is preparing to give a few remarks, Villiers storms in with the campus police and escorts Goldthwaite off campus. The professor stands accused of plagiarizing large passages of his new book from the work of past-Goldthwaite, who has been adjudicated to be a separate legal person. It's an open-and-shut case: side-by-side comparisons of the just-published book next to Goldthwaite's prior drafts reveal that entire passages have been copied verbatim. Rothblatt confesses her duplicity to de la Droite and flees, afraid to face Goldthwaite's disappointment.
De la Droite, calling Goldthwaite's destruction on the rocks of his (de la Droite's) legal strategy "the story of my life," becomes despondent and gives up hope for his good friend. But Rothblatt returns and startles him from his brandy-soaked self-pity with an audacious suggestion: Goldthwaite's book is plagiarism only if it fails to credit past-Goldthwaite for his intellectual labor. But the book simply names "Peter Goldthwaite" as the author. All they have to do to prevail is to convince the disciplinary committee that the reference of "Peter Goldthwaite" is fixed on past-Goldthwaite, not present-Goldthwaite. If Villiers had waited a few more minutes before raiding the launch party, present-Goldthwaite would undoubtedly have taken credit for the book, sealing his fate. But Villiers's impatience has left a small door open, though which de la Droite must steer Rothblatt's intricate argument.
Rothblatt throws herself into the defense. It is hard going—this is not her area of expertise, and she has never had much patience with arguments about reference. But the bigger problem is that Goldthwaite's brilliant early work, the work that earned him tenure, involved "problematizing" the theory of reference. Rothblatt and de la Droite must overcome not only Villiers's ingenious arguments (he has recruited Goldthwaite's many rivals from the philosophy department to develop the prosecution's case) but also Goldthwaite's own philosophical positions.
And so the novel skips cheerfully into 50 pages of dense philosophical argument, leavened by Calista's sharp irony and almost slapstick sensibility. (You can get a sense of the issues at stake here.) Calista gets a lot of mileage out of the mismatch between the sophistication of the arguments trotted out by de la Droite and Villiers, on the one hand, and the disciplinary committee's befuddled attempts to follow them, on the other. I won't reveal Goldthwaite's fate, noting only that Calista has a few philosophical tricks up her sleeve to keep the plot aloft until she sticks the landing.
I hesitate to compare the book to other philosophical works of fiction. Dave's famous "philosophical mystery novel" Will We Ever Arrive? (inspired by a webcomic of the same name) is simply a reprint of his magisterial tome on artificial intelligence, with a new opening chapter in which Detective Montrose discovers that the murder weapon is a magisterial tome on artificial intelligence, which is then replicated for the reader's edification. No conclusion to the mystery is provided, a move that Dave justifies on the grounds of "exercising the atrophied American imagination." Into the World is every bit as erudite as Will We Ever Arrive?, but its ratio of fiction to philosophy is far more satisfying.
But however you categorize Into the World, it provides a welcome escape into the world of ideas and the lighter side of the modern university. When I finished the book and put it down, I found myself wanting to stay a little while longer in its unpredictable but oddly comforting universe.
As the book opens, Peter Goldthwaite, a professor of philosophy, has been accused of selling drugs to undergraduates. The accusations are not quite true, but the disciplinary committee is unmoved by Goldthwaite's insistence that he never accepted money from the students. However, Goldthwaite's friend and lawyer, the irrepressible Alain de la Droite, manages to shift the venue to the School of Humanities, which provides more fertile soil for his theory of the case. There, de la Droite argues that it is spurious to identify present-day Goldthwaite with the individual who distributed the drugs more than a year ago. Present-Goldthwaite bears no more resemblance to past-Goldthwaite than present-Goldthwaite does to any other professor, de la Droite claims. But it would be wrong to punish one professor for another professor's actions. Present-Goldthwaite is an innocent man! By a narrow margin, Goldthwaite prevails, and the charges are dropped.
But Goldthwaite's nemesis, the sinister Dean Villiers, hatches a plan to take revenge on the arrogant philosopher. A nontenured philosophy professor, Diane Rothblatt, acting as Villiers's cat's-paw, befriends Goldthwaite and encourages him to delve back into his work. Eager to forget his trials and reinvigorated by the admiration of the young, attractive Rothblatt, Goldthwaite dusts off some of his old drafts and gets them into shape for publication. After sending off his final revisions to the galleys, Goldthwaite invites de la Droite and Rothblatt to his house for celebratory champagne, and that night Goldthwaite and Rothblatt consummate their budding love affair.
But Rothblatt is riven by self-loathing, for Goldthwaite's moment of triumph also sets the stage for his destruction. Later, at the launch party, just as Goldthwaite is preparing to give a few remarks, Villiers storms in with the campus police and escorts Goldthwaite off campus. The professor stands accused of plagiarizing large passages of his new book from the work of past-Goldthwaite, who has been adjudicated to be a separate legal person. It's an open-and-shut case: side-by-side comparisons of the just-published book next to Goldthwaite's prior drafts reveal that entire passages have been copied verbatim. Rothblatt confesses her duplicity to de la Droite and flees, afraid to face Goldthwaite's disappointment.
De la Droite, calling Goldthwaite's destruction on the rocks of his (de la Droite's) legal strategy "the story of my life," becomes despondent and gives up hope for his good friend. But Rothblatt returns and startles him from his brandy-soaked self-pity with an audacious suggestion: Goldthwaite's book is plagiarism only if it fails to credit past-Goldthwaite for his intellectual labor. But the book simply names "Peter Goldthwaite" as the author. All they have to do to prevail is to convince the disciplinary committee that the reference of "Peter Goldthwaite" is fixed on past-Goldthwaite, not present-Goldthwaite. If Villiers had waited a few more minutes before raiding the launch party, present-Goldthwaite would undoubtedly have taken credit for the book, sealing his fate. But Villiers's impatience has left a small door open, though which de la Droite must steer Rothblatt's intricate argument.
Rothblatt throws herself into the defense. It is hard going—this is not her area of expertise, and she has never had much patience with arguments about reference. But the bigger problem is that Goldthwaite's brilliant early work, the work that earned him tenure, involved "problematizing" the theory of reference. Rothblatt and de la Droite must overcome not only Villiers's ingenious arguments (he has recruited Goldthwaite's many rivals from the philosophy department to develop the prosecution's case) but also Goldthwaite's own philosophical positions.
And so the novel skips cheerfully into 50 pages of dense philosophical argument, leavened by Calista's sharp irony and almost slapstick sensibility. (You can get a sense of the issues at stake here.) Calista gets a lot of mileage out of the mismatch between the sophistication of the arguments trotted out by de la Droite and Villiers, on the one hand, and the disciplinary committee's befuddled attempts to follow them, on the other. I won't reveal Goldthwaite's fate, noting only that Calista has a few philosophical tricks up her sleeve to keep the plot aloft until she sticks the landing.
I hesitate to compare the book to other philosophical works of fiction. Dave's famous "philosophical mystery novel" Will We Ever Arrive? (inspired by a webcomic of the same name) is simply a reprint of his magisterial tome on artificial intelligence, with a new opening chapter in which Detective Montrose discovers that the murder weapon is a magisterial tome on artificial intelligence, which is then replicated for the reader's edification. No conclusion to the mystery is provided, a move that Dave justifies on the grounds of "exercising the atrophied American imagination." Into the World is every bit as erudite as Will We Ever Arrive?, but its ratio of fiction to philosophy is far more satisfying.
But however you categorize Into the World, it provides a welcome escape into the world of ideas and the lighter side of the modern university. When I finished the book and put it down, I found myself wanting to stay a little while longer in its unpredictable but oddly comforting universe.
Sunday, November 15, 2015
Sarang's The Fedwire: How It Works and Why It Matters
Sarang's latest effort, The Fedwire: How It Works and Why It Matters, is a probing and detailed exploration of the Federal Reserve's funds transfer system. The book is part of Sarang's "the infrastructure of our society" series, which seeks to educate the public about the legal, technological, and institutional structures that underpin our system of democratic government and free enterprise. Fedwire traces the history of the Fedwire and explains how it works today. He also includes a chapter of interviews with political leaders, heads of labor unions, and captains of industry—men and women of real substance who describe the importance of the Fedwire in carrying out their services. When I put the book down, I had a new appreciation for the role that the Fedwire plays in American capitalism.
But did I also detect a certain elegiac tone to the book? For there is an elephant in the room: Sarang's otherwise exhaustive account makes no mention of Bitcoin, the disruptive cryptographic currency that is rapidly displacing obsolete technologies like the Fedwire. It is as though Sarang has crafted a loving homage to the horse-and-buggy just at the dawn of the automobile era. The Fedwire currently moves several trillions dollars a day, but that daily volume will surely plummet as the Bitcoin system, which is fully digital and (as a result of its encryption technology) far more secure than the Fedwire, supplants it. Right now a bitcoin trades for around $320, a sign that not just the Fedwire but the dollar itself may be on the way out.
And so Fedwire decisively proves Sarang's consummate skill: even in a technical and somewhat dry work of nonfiction, he manages to "bring/The eternal note of sadness in."
But did I also detect a certain elegiac tone to the book? For there is an elephant in the room: Sarang's otherwise exhaustive account makes no mention of Bitcoin, the disruptive cryptographic currency that is rapidly displacing obsolete technologies like the Fedwire. It is as though Sarang has crafted a loving homage to the horse-and-buggy just at the dawn of the automobile era. The Fedwire currently moves several trillions dollars a day, but that daily volume will surely plummet as the Bitcoin system, which is fully digital and (as a result of its encryption technology) far more secure than the Fedwire, supplants it. Right now a bitcoin trades for around $320, a sign that not just the Fedwire but the dollar itself may be on the way out.
And so Fedwire decisively proves Sarang's consummate skill: even in a technical and somewhat dry work of nonfiction, he manages to "bring/The eternal note of sadness in."
Dave's The Party of Lincoln
When Dave shared a stage with Aaron Sorkin at the Conference on American Television in the 21st Century (CAT21C) this summer, the tension was palpable. Sorkin had previously called Dave "a purveyor of cynicism and doubt," while Dave had started an Indiegogo campaign to buy Sorkin a writing class. But against all odds, the men quickly found common ground, and co-sponsored what turned out to be the only manifesto to emerge from CAT21C. (The CAT21C attendees were near-unanimous in their condemnation of the second season of True Detective, which Sarang called "Truly Defective," but his motion to repudiate the show bogged down when Dave inserted a poison-pill amendment endorsing the use of a chain-type price index for calculating cost-of-living adjustments for Social Security recipients.)
The Dave/Sorkin manifesto, entitled "What Kind of Day Has It Been?", bemoans the polarization that has gripped American politics and the partisanship that has frozen our institutions of governance. While both men largely blame the rise of an ignorant and aggressive right-wing movement mobilized by resentment and hate, the manifesto argues that "sometimes to build a bridge, you have to reach out from your side of the chasm and trust, no, hope that someone is reaching out from the other side, bolting steel on steel in the mists." In that spirit, the manifesto calls on American liberals to "find what is good in the Republican Party and celebrate it not just in our work but in our hearts." (Dave has issued an addendum reaffirming the manifesto but disclaiming any responsibility for its prose.)
One can fairly ask whether Sorkin has upheld the spirit of the manifesto. By and large, in the months since the manifesto he has praised Republicans who are pro-choice, Republicans who believe in global climate change, Republicans who favor gun control... in other words, he finds Republicans praiseworthy mostly when they aren't being Republicans. This is not perhaps the best way to build a bridge.
Dave's latest effort, The Party of Lincoln, takes a very different approach. Despite the name of the book, Dave focuses on the personal, not the political, and portrays conservatives in moments of personal integrity or sacrifice. He opens with a domestic story about a conservative politician in rural Indiana. The man's politics are decidedly conservative, with a strong undercurrent of spite against homosexuals and single mothers. But when his teenaged daughter begins acting out in high school, often disrupting class or skipping school altogether, he defends her and manages to avoid her expulsion in exchange for a promise to get counseling. His wife wants to send her to their minister, who is also a good friend and political supporter. The politician insists on hiring a licensed psychologist from a big town, someone with no personal or political entanglements with the family.
Dave never explains what motivates the politician's stubbornness in the face of intense pressure from his wife and his fellow parishioners. Does he sense something in his daughter that might make his minister an unsuitable source of counseling? Does he harbor doubts about his minister? Or does he simply believe that his daughter deserves to be helped by a professional psychologist? Whatever the reason, he risks paying a high personal and political price to get his daughter the counseling she needs.
My favorite story revolves around a gun store owner in Florida in the Vietnam era. His son is seeking conscientious objector status, and he asks his father to sign an affidavit attesting that he (the son) is a member of the Communist Party. The story shifts back and forth between present-day (late 1960s) and 1950, when the father's unit withstood a savage attack by the Communists at the Pusan Perimeter, a battle that cost him his left arm. It's clear that the father has never been able to acknowledge his son's politics, but over the course of the story he engages in the painful process of disentangling his son's values from his love for his son. It's a beautiful and touching story that remains psychologically true-to-life even though it could stand as an allegory for the entire Dave/Sorkin project.
Unfortunately, it seems probable that Dave's efforts will be unavailing, at least in the short term. Already conservative reviewers are calling the gun store owner a "pussy" and attacking Dave's protagonists as RINOs (Republicans In Name Only). But in a way it doesn't matter: the book is more than justified by its artistic merits, and it will have served its purpose even if for now it only expands liberal minds and hearts.
The Dave/Sorkin manifesto, entitled "What Kind of Day Has It Been?", bemoans the polarization that has gripped American politics and the partisanship that has frozen our institutions of governance. While both men largely blame the rise of an ignorant and aggressive right-wing movement mobilized by resentment and hate, the manifesto argues that "sometimes to build a bridge, you have to reach out from your side of the chasm and trust, no, hope that someone is reaching out from the other side, bolting steel on steel in the mists." In that spirit, the manifesto calls on American liberals to "find what is good in the Republican Party and celebrate it not just in our work but in our hearts." (Dave has issued an addendum reaffirming the manifesto but disclaiming any responsibility for its prose.)
One can fairly ask whether Sorkin has upheld the spirit of the manifesto. By and large, in the months since the manifesto he has praised Republicans who are pro-choice, Republicans who believe in global climate change, Republicans who favor gun control... in other words, he finds Republicans praiseworthy mostly when they aren't being Republicans. This is not perhaps the best way to build a bridge.
Dave's latest effort, The Party of Lincoln, takes a very different approach. Despite the name of the book, Dave focuses on the personal, not the political, and portrays conservatives in moments of personal integrity or sacrifice. He opens with a domestic story about a conservative politician in rural Indiana. The man's politics are decidedly conservative, with a strong undercurrent of spite against homosexuals and single mothers. But when his teenaged daughter begins acting out in high school, often disrupting class or skipping school altogether, he defends her and manages to avoid her expulsion in exchange for a promise to get counseling. His wife wants to send her to their minister, who is also a good friend and political supporter. The politician insists on hiring a licensed psychologist from a big town, someone with no personal or political entanglements with the family.
Dave never explains what motivates the politician's stubbornness in the face of intense pressure from his wife and his fellow parishioners. Does he sense something in his daughter that might make his minister an unsuitable source of counseling? Does he harbor doubts about his minister? Or does he simply believe that his daughter deserves to be helped by a professional psychologist? Whatever the reason, he risks paying a high personal and political price to get his daughter the counseling she needs.
My favorite story revolves around a gun store owner in Florida in the Vietnam era. His son is seeking conscientious objector status, and he asks his father to sign an affidavit attesting that he (the son) is a member of the Communist Party. The story shifts back and forth between present-day (late 1960s) and 1950, when the father's unit withstood a savage attack by the Communists at the Pusan Perimeter, a battle that cost him his left arm. It's clear that the father has never been able to acknowledge his son's politics, but over the course of the story he engages in the painful process of disentangling his son's values from his love for his son. It's a beautiful and touching story that remains psychologically true-to-life even though it could stand as an allegory for the entire Dave/Sorkin project.
Unfortunately, it seems probable that Dave's efforts will be unavailing, at least in the short term. Already conservative reviewers are calling the gun store owner a "pussy" and attacking Dave's protagonists as RINOs (Republicans In Name Only). But in a way it doesn't matter: the book is more than justified by its artistic merits, and it will have served its purpose even if for now it only expands liberal minds and hearts.
Monday, October 19, 2015
Sarang's Don't Look Down
Sarang's latest effort, Don't Look Down, is one of his saddest and best movies to date. (The movie should not be confused with Eliseo Subiela's No mires para abajo, which is called Don't Look Down in its English translation.)
The movie centers on the relationship between Jason O'Neil, a law firm librarian, and his wife Margaret. At work, Jason is stressed out, barely able to keep up with his tedious work. At home, he is disrespected when he isn't ignored. In a revealing scene, Margaret tells him that her friends are coming over for drinks. There is an awkward back-and-forth until Jason realizes that Margaret is asking him to leave the house until her friends have come and gone. Margaret can be cruel, but she can't bring herself to acknowledge her own cruelty.
It's no wonder, then, that Jason finds refuge from both spheres of his life by taking long, unnecessarily meandering walks to and from work. Here, striding along the sidewalk, admiring his surroundings, Jason seems happy and in his element. He can name the types of the trees and the architectural styles of the houses. His sense of the city, its contours and rhythms, its impulses and pent-up energy, is encyclopedic.
When we meet the couple, Margaret is barely bothering to conceal her affair with Jin-woo, a real estate speculator. But things are more complex: through Margaret, Jin-woo has met Jason, who turns out to be hugely useful in Jin-woo's work. Jason can tell him, almost as an afterthought, whether a particular house is undervalued or overvalued. He has an instinctive sense for which neighborhoods are about to pop, and Jin-woo easily translates these insights into huge profits.
But it is more than that, and here Sarang draws down some of the audience's sympathy for Jason. When Jin-woo is selling a house, he arranges for the real estate agent to "bump into" Jason while showing prospective buyers around the neighborhood. Jason then poses as a neighbor and gushes about how much he loves the neighborhood. Jason has a gentle, avuncular appearance—a running joke throughout the movie is that people keep mistaking him for Cass Sunstein, even though Jason is in his early 40s. While Jason doesn't look like Margaret's idea of a good husband, he looks like almost everyone's idea of a good neighbor: earnest, enthusiastic, and ever-so-slightly disheveled.
But of course it's a ruse—Jason doesn't actually live in whatever neighborhood the sale is in—and it's a little hard to see what Jason gets out of it. Jin-woo doesn't give Jason a cut of his enviable profits, though Jason could certainly use the money. Perhaps Jason just wants to feel useful, even in such a tawdry and compromising way. But whatever the explanation, Jason's behavior raises interesting questions about Jin-woo's relationship with Margaret. Jin-woo appears to be losing patience with her. Maybe he is sticking around not because he wants Margaret but because he needs Jason. The three are locked in a triangle that is more transactional than any of them can admit, balanced at the edge of the precipice. And none of them dares to pull any of the loose threads because of what might be revealed, and what might be lost.
The only discordant note came not when I saw the movie, but afterward, when I sent a congratulatory note to Sarang about it. He must have thought I was being sarcastic, because he responded with a quick apology, urging me not to "take it personally." I have no idea what he thinks he's apologizing for. It is one of the best movies I have seen in a long time. I wonder if our correspondence is another one of Sarang's performance art pieces, like the time he published a Chrome extension designed to "improve the accuracy of the internet" by deleting the string "syncra" from all descriptions of me. I still haven't figured out what that was about, either.
The movie centers on the relationship between Jason O'Neil, a law firm librarian, and his wife Margaret. At work, Jason is stressed out, barely able to keep up with his tedious work. At home, he is disrespected when he isn't ignored. In a revealing scene, Margaret tells him that her friends are coming over for drinks. There is an awkward back-and-forth until Jason realizes that Margaret is asking him to leave the house until her friends have come and gone. Margaret can be cruel, but she can't bring herself to acknowledge her own cruelty.
It's no wonder, then, that Jason finds refuge from both spheres of his life by taking long, unnecessarily meandering walks to and from work. Here, striding along the sidewalk, admiring his surroundings, Jason seems happy and in his element. He can name the types of the trees and the architectural styles of the houses. His sense of the city, its contours and rhythms, its impulses and pent-up energy, is encyclopedic.
When we meet the couple, Margaret is barely bothering to conceal her affair with Jin-woo, a real estate speculator. But things are more complex: through Margaret, Jin-woo has met Jason, who turns out to be hugely useful in Jin-woo's work. Jason can tell him, almost as an afterthought, whether a particular house is undervalued or overvalued. He has an instinctive sense for which neighborhoods are about to pop, and Jin-woo easily translates these insights into huge profits.
But it is more than that, and here Sarang draws down some of the audience's sympathy for Jason. When Jin-woo is selling a house, he arranges for the real estate agent to "bump into" Jason while showing prospective buyers around the neighborhood. Jason then poses as a neighbor and gushes about how much he loves the neighborhood. Jason has a gentle, avuncular appearance—a running joke throughout the movie is that people keep mistaking him for Cass Sunstein, even though Jason is in his early 40s. While Jason doesn't look like Margaret's idea of a good husband, he looks like almost everyone's idea of a good neighbor: earnest, enthusiastic, and ever-so-slightly disheveled.
But of course it's a ruse—Jason doesn't actually live in whatever neighborhood the sale is in—and it's a little hard to see what Jason gets out of it. Jin-woo doesn't give Jason a cut of his enviable profits, though Jason could certainly use the money. Perhaps Jason just wants to feel useful, even in such a tawdry and compromising way. But whatever the explanation, Jason's behavior raises interesting questions about Jin-woo's relationship with Margaret. Jin-woo appears to be losing patience with her. Maybe he is sticking around not because he wants Margaret but because he needs Jason. The three are locked in a triangle that is more transactional than any of them can admit, balanced at the edge of the precipice. And none of them dares to pull any of the loose threads because of what might be revealed, and what might be lost.
The only discordant note came not when I saw the movie, but afterward, when I sent a congratulatory note to Sarang about it. He must have thought I was being sarcastic, because he responded with a quick apology, urging me not to "take it personally." I have no idea what he thinks he's apologizing for. It is one of the best movies I have seen in a long time. I wonder if our correspondence is another one of Sarang's performance art pieces, like the time he published a Chrome extension designed to "improve the accuracy of the internet" by deleting the string "syncra" from all descriptions of me. I still haven't figured out what that was about, either.
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