Destiny of the Republic, A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President

Destiny of the Republic, A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President by Candice Millard

I picked this book up because the cover looked cool and the title was exciting, and what I learned is that it always pays off to judge a book by its cover. What a great book. I’m not a big reader of nonfiction because, regardless of how interesting the person or event, the writing always feels like I’m reading a bunch of facts. I want to know what the people were thinking and feeling, not just what they did. Candice Millard’s writing style, however, is so effortless and gripping, that this nonfiction feels more like a story and less like a factual account of events.

I have to admit that before reading this book I knew absolutely nothing about President Garfield. Rightfully so since he only held the office for a couple of months. Now, however, I have a deep admiration for this man that was so full of character and strength. Millard paints a picture of a man that kept his wit and integrity through times when most of us would break down into self-pity and anger. Garfield’s story is told through a narrative consisting of personal letters, diary entries, and newspaper reports lending it factual credibility as well as insight into the emotions of the main characters.

The book tells the story of Garfield’s meager beginnings to his unlikely nomination for the presidency, his shooting, and fatal medical care. The portions of the book dedicated to the accounts of Garfield’s medical care are a bit difficult to read. I often found myself audibly gasping and admiring Garfield even more for continuing to exhibit such strength of character. The book also contains some very interesting side stories about the people who impacted, or had the potential to impact, Garfield’s life. Millard includes narratives from Alexander Graham Bell’s personal letters about his invention of the telephone and his attempt to create the induction balance to locate the bullet lodged in Garfield as well as excerpts from Charles Guiteau’s diary, Garfield’s assassin who was a crazy, crazy little man.

But perhaps my favorite part of the book was the quotes from Garfield’s letters and speeches. Garfield spoke so eloquently and thoughtfully that I now include him on my short list of people, dead or alive, that I would have a dinner party with if given the opportunity. For example, in a letter to his mother from college where he was working as a janitor to pay his tuition (talk about American dream, poverty to President), he wrote, “If I ever get through a course of study I don’t expect any one will ask me what kind of a coat I wore when studying, and, if they do I shall not be ashamed to tell them it was a ragged one.” Or, from a speech Garfield gave to a large delegation of African American men, “You were not made free merely to be allowed to vote but in order to enjoy an equality of opportunity in the race of life. Permit no man to praise you because you are black, nor wrong you because you are black. Let it be known that you are ready and willing to work out your own material salvation by your own energy, your own worth, your own labor.” Moving.  And, when the doctor told him he had one chance in a hundred of surviving the gunshot, Garfield replied, “We will take that chance, doctor, and make good use of it.” But my all-time favorite Garfield quote that I have even my fiancé repeating, “Of course I deprecate war, but if it is brought to my door the bringer will find me at home.”

I’m very surprised at how much I liked this book, and I’m glad this book exists to shed light on a great man that not a lot of people know about. I’m excited to read more of this author’s works. Or, maybe my next adventure in nonfiction will be to pick up a book about Vice President/successor President Chester Arthur. His part in Garfield’s tale is also pretty interesting.

How Music Works

I am a big fan of the music of David Bryne.  I am also a big fan of books about music.   I disagree totally with the old adage, “writing about music is like dancing about architecture.”  I am happy to over think music.  So there was never any real doubt that I was going to pick up David Byrne’s new book How Music Works.

The book is a series of essays by Bryne that explores a wide range of musical ideas.   He explores how venues or context shapes the music that musicians create in the opening essay Creation in Reverse.   Two later essays describe how technology also shapes the music that is created at any given time. It’s fascinating stuff.   This TED talk that Byrne gave a few years ago condenses those three essays into a short presentation that is representative of the book:

Byrne also discusses his life in performance, which provides a great behind the scenes look at the creative process behind how his bands have undertaken the task of presenting their music live.  The origins of the Talking Heads famous Stop Making Sense tour is particularly noteworthy.  I saw that particular performance in 1984, and it is still one of the most amazing concerts that I ever attended.  Through the magic of the modern age, you can now watch the whole thing from your sofa via Youtube.

Another high point of the book (and there are many) is the essay on Business and Finances of making music today.  Byrne  gives examples from his own career with pie charts and dollar amounts that provide a rare glimpse at how artists make a career of music and how that process has evolved over Bryne’s career.   He also presents, in another essay, the key ingredients that are necessary for a thriving music scene to evolve in a particular area — and the forces that eventually kill it.  For a particular type of  music nerd, this stuff is pure gold.   And I’m that kind of music nerd.

And there’s more!  Much more.  The book is published by McSweeney’s and is thing of beauty.  Do yourself a favor and don’t buy this one as an e-book.  If you’re a music fan and don’t mind reading about it, you really can’t go wrong picking this one up.

Ayn Rand and the World She Made

People have very strong opinions about Ayn Rand. Personally, I never gave her much thought until the audio copy of her biography Ayn Rand and the World She Made by Anne C. Heller ended up in my mailbox. (Thanks, Uncle Dave)

Extensive research went into this 20 hour (16 disc) audio book, and I listened to every minute. I now have my own opinion of Ayn Rand, and I will try to keep it to myself.

Ms. Heller starts at the beginning. Ayn Rand was born Alisa Zinov’yevna Rosenbaum into a financially successful Russian Jewish family.  Her family had a rough time during the Russian Revolution, but from my perspective they managed to find ways to make it work. Rand wouldn’t agree with me.  From an early age, Rand couldn’t understand why she should be denied anything she wanted. Most children eventually grow out of this, accepting the reality that life doesn’t work that way.  Rand never did.  Her entire life was spent working for what she wanted, and in her case, ultimately achieving it.

She moved to America from Russia with the aspirations of becoming a famous writer.  Immediately after changing her name, she began her career as a screen writer in Hollywood.  The way in which she managed to land on Cecil B. DeMille’s radar would be called a ‘stalker’ today, but of course, she would never admit to this. Rand worked in the film studio’s wardrobe department and eventually wrote for silent films and then talking films.  Not all of her films were produced, but she wrote and was compensated for screenplays nonetheless.  From Hollywood to New York, back to Hollywood and New York, Rand never stopped writing (or creating drama) and we all know that it paid off.

Ms. Heller follows Rand’s life in detail, using interviews and journals as references.  I especially enjoyed listening when Ms. Heller pointed out discrepancies between what Rand had said in interviews and the truth which was uncovered later.  Rand liked to say that no one ever helped her get to where she was. In fact, that was false, as many of her acquaintances pointed out – she had plenty of help, which Ms. Heller outlines.  That’s not to discredit her hard work and determination.  She had ambition, there is no doubt.

Ms. Heller also reviews the plots of the books The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged in detail, pointing out events and people in the novels which corresponded to Rand’s real life.  This part of the biography is very important for any Rand worshipers.  When her stories and her life are linked together, the mystery and “brilliance” of Rand fade away, in my opinion.  Like most writers, she wrote what she knew and her writing reflected her life’s experiences.  Great philosopher? Or just reacting to those who had wronged her?

By disc seven, I was listening to a soap opera – a wonderful distraction from rush hour traffic.  At one point in her life,  Rand decided she wanted to take a lover.  She presented the reasons for this affair to her husband and to the wife of her soon to be lover – neither denied her.  The story becomes even more bizarre during the next 14 years as Rand becomes a marriage counselor and the couples become closer than ever.  Tune in to find out the rest of the story!

The Fountainhead brought much fame to Rand and by the time Atlas Shrugged was finally published (a story in itself) she and her “Objectivism” philosophy had obtained a cult following.  This lends more drama to her soap opera life.  The rise and fall of her followers, by Rand’s hand, each have their own individual story and Ms. Heller gives us the insights to those as well.

In the end, Rand achieved what she always wanted.  It is not surprising, however, that she was not a happy person.  She had plenty of followers but not many real friends.  So the question I ask is: “Genius?  Or spoiled brat?”  Each reader can decide for themselves, but either way Ayn Rand’s life was definitely fascinating and entertaining.

Columbine

I have fallen way behind in my book reviews.  For example, I originally bought Columbine by Dave Cullen just after the shootings in Aurora, Co.  Following that tragedy, several people in my Twitter-stream strongly urged that readers pick up Columbine, if they hadn’t already done so.  I bought it and read it immediately.  In the interim there have been at least two additional senseless shootings, which is sobering and sad.

Columbine is an excellently reported book.  One of the books many strengths is that is shows that in the rush of the 24-hour news cycle almost everything that was reported in the immediate aftermath of the shootings was later proved to be wrong.  Almost everything.  For example, the shooting did not take place in Littleton, Colorado:

No one was sure what to call it. Littleton is a quiet suburb south of Denver where the massacre did not actually occur.  Although the name would grow synonymous with the tragedy, Columbine lies several miles west, across the Platte River, in a different county with separate schools and law enforcement.

The list of inaccuracies reported almost beggars belief.  In a chapter provocatively titled “Media Crime,” Cullen catalogs the reporting errors:

We remember Columbine as a pair of outcast Goths from the Trench Coat Mafia snapping and tearing through their high school hunting down jocks to settle a long-running feud.  Almost none of that happened.  No Goths, no outcasts, nobody snapping.  No targets, no feud, and no Trench Coat Mafia.  Most of those elements existed at Columbine–which is what gave them currency.  They just had nothing to do with the murders.

In fact, Cullen shows, it wasn’t supposed to be a shooting at all.  It was actually a bombing that failed.  Had the boys’ plans worked, several large bombs strategically placed around the school would have done far greater damage and would have resulted in deaths at a then unprecedented scale.  The placement of the bombs demonstrates that indiscriminate death is what the killers were after.

Cullen refers heavily to the investigation of an FBI agent, Agent Fuselier, who happens to be a psychologist/criminal profiler.  The Agent  arrived at the scene much earlier than he may have otherwise because his own son attended the school.  Agent Fuselier spent untold hours reviewing the boys’ journals and videos evaluating their behavior.  That they fooled so many people for so long about their true natures does not surprise Fuselier, its an integral part of their illness.  Looking for rationale explanations to explain their behavior is a losing proposition.  These were sick kids.   While it may not be surprising that they boys were seriously mentally ill, it is an unsatisfying conclusion when blame and causes are what we all need to reassure ourselves that such a thing could never happen where we live.

This is an excellent book.  Once I started it, I could not put it down–no matter how badly I wanted to move on to sunnier subjects.  This is required reading for its clear examination of a terrible crime, and its message about the nature of such crimes and the ensuing media reporting.   Don’t wait for the next senseless tragedy to read it.

Updated: This just in.

Updated: And now this.

The Dozens

When I saw the title of Elijah Wald’s new book, The Dozens:  A History of Rap’s Mama, I kind of dropped whatever else I was reading and downloaded it, stat.  Why?  Because I expected the book to be a hilarious overview of mother-centric insults and a play-by-play retrospective of some of the historic feuds in the rap arena.

This was not a good assumption.  With all due respect to Wald, who appears to be a top-notch researcher and scholar, this book was pretty much just a bunch of research and scholarly stuff.  Not that that’s a bad thing, but prospective readers need to set their expectations accordingly.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with The Dozens, it’s essentially a game customarily attributed to the African-American community in which combatants take turns insulting their opponent, with jabs typically targeted at the opponent’s mother and other family members; the duel typically takes place in front of a crowd and ends when one of the participants fails to top the most recent salvo delivered by the other or, in worst cases, actually resorts to physical attack.

To Wald’s credit, there really isn’t a whole lot of documented history of The Dozens, for a number of reasons relating to record-keeping priorities, censorship, and some other less-than-flattering aspects of history.  So Wald explores what there is out there regarding the game’s origins, and he drops footnotes like a Cleveland Browns receiver drops passes.  And while I give him kudos for his painstaking research and analysis, the belly laughs I was expecting were few and far between.

The book culminates with a brief overview of how The Dozens and the concept of “yo mamma” jokes made its way into the world of rap music, citing some of the biggest players in the field and how skilled they were (apparently LL Cool J was the best), but it really wasn’t the payoff that I was hoping for.

A well-written treatise, but be sure to file it under “research” and not “comedy”.

Breasts

It was a little frustrating.  Whenever I mentioned to someone that I was reading Breasts: A Natural and Unnatural History by Florence Williams, I would get a chuckle and a knowing, “of course you are.”  The web site Better Book Titles accurately sums up the assumptions here.  But NO!  Really, breasts is an amazing book of science reporting that I came by honestly.   I first heard of the book when the author was interviewed by Terry Gross on Fresh Air.   I listened to most of the interview parked in front of my house.  The discussion of environmental contamination and its potential for health effects is quite literally my kind of science.  I bought the book immediately.

The book begins with an overview and a discussion of the evolutionary science theories about the human breasts appearance and location, which is different from all other mammals.   Many physical anthropologists suggest that the obvious answer to these questions is to signal and attract men.  The scientists that promote these male-centered theories are typically men.  Williams then delves into “women-centered” theories that are much more compelling for their consideration of what the breasts actually are and do.  It’s an important distinction:

What’s appealing about these women-centered theories for the breasts is that they make some attempt to understand how the organ actually works.  The boobs-for-men theories do not.

By the time Williams is done, the boobs-for-men theorists have surely packed up their labs and moved on to other subjects of inquiry.

Williams also distinguishes between the “aesthetic breast” and the impossibly complex biological machinery breasts.  She visits “boob job ground zero: Houston” to get a first-hand glimpse at the breast augmentation medical/industrial complex.   Williams tells the bizarre story of the first modern medical implant patient (she only wanted an ear tuck) and the evolution of the implant industry.  In the early days of breast augmentation surgery there were only three sizes of implants: small, medium, and burlesque.  Williams notes that the “burlesque” is merely average by today’s Houston standards.

Williams then connects the world of implants to the larger world of chemicals:

The same year that Timmie Jean was exchanging an ear tuck for a boob job, Rachel Carson published a book about the destructive power of pesticides.  These two events had more in common that it might appear, for both heralded a new era of synthetic compounds that would forever alter breasts.

The discussion of the chemical assault on breasts and its health implication is where I think that Williams writing really shines.  The problem, in a nutshell, is that many man-made chemicals that are long-lived and persistent in the environment are structurally very similar to estrogen.  These compounds are then able to activate estrogen receptor sites, which may in turn wreak all kinds of havoc.  Because of their chemical properties, these chemicals are preferentially stored in breasts (and other fatty tissues) and can be passed to infants through breasts milk.  The health implications, ranging from early puberty (which has its own consequences) to breast cancer are staggering.

Breasts is an endlessly fascinating and important book.  I couldn’t stop discussing it with whoever was closest to me at any given time.  According to my Kindle, I underlined 82 passages, which easily destroys my personal record for making notes in an e-book.   Time will tell if Breasts will join landmark environmental books in the pantheon created by Silent Spring, but, to this reader at least, it has that feel.

Butterfly in the Typewriter

John Kennedy Toole’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel A Confederacy of Dunces is a very polarizing book that carries a lot of baggage.  Some people think it’s one of the greatest American novels ever written and captures the spirit of New Orleans better than anything before or since, and some think it’s the most pointless, wandering, contrived piece of garbage they’ve ever read.  Coupled with the known fact that the novel was published a dozen years after Toole committed suicide on a roadside in southern Mississippi, it all makes for plenty of drama and speculation and fodder for discussion.

Cory MacLauchlin’s Butterfly in the Typewriter: The Tragic Life of John Kennedy Toole and the Remarkable Story of A Confederacy of Dunces attempts to tell the story of Toole’s upbringing, his creation of the book, his death, and the machinations that transpired following his suicide and upon the eventual publication of his work.  The challenge that MacLauchlin faced was that there wasn’t a whole heck of a lot of data or evidence for him to rely on to try to tell Toole’s tale, particularly with regard to Toole’s early life.  For this reason, much of the early portion of the book seems to reflect MacLauchlin’s effort to construct a narrative around a single quote or reported incident, and to this reader it was pretty clear that he didn’t have a lot to go on.  Nevertheless, what he doesn’t appear to do is make stuff up or overly dramatize the facts.  And when he gets into the later periods of Toole’s life, he relies on first-hand accounts from those who were close to Toole to build the story.

What a sad story it is.  For those of us who’ve read A Confederacy of Dunces, most of what we think we know about Toole comes from the foreword written by Walker Percy, to whom Toole’s mother Thelma personally delivered the manuscript in an effort to get it published (after Toole had unsuccessfully tried to have Simon & Schuster publish it, eventually giving up and putting the manuscript in a box).  The story would appear to be: (i) young man writes book; (ii) young man can’t get book published; (iii) young man commits suicide; (iv) young man’s mother gets book published; (v) book wins Pulitzer.  The end.  But there is so much more to Toole’s life than that foreword can possibly convey, and MacLauchlin has done an incredible job of sifting through the available resources to share the details as objectively and truthfully as possible.

Toole was an interesting fellow, and it seems pretty clear that he would have been fun and interesting to hang out with.  He was fascinated by the culture of New Orleans, where he was born and raised, and New Orleans instilled in him a tendency to closely observe everyone and everything around him; this keen ability to notice details and personalities carried over into his writing.  From MacLauchlin’s telling of Toole’s story, it seems very clear who the people were in Toole’s life that formed the basis or inspiration for many of the characters in Confederacy.

Sadly, though, it also seems that there was a rather bizarre relationship between Toole and Thelma.  She was very possessive of him, perhaps even more so after his death.  And while writing his book Toole evidently spiraled into depression and paranoia that sound absolutely devastating.  Following his suicide, Thelma went off the deep end herself.  The last portion of the book makes a compelling case that insanity ran in the family, and both Toole, his father, and his mother all demonstrated behaviors that support that theory.

In the end, whether you liked Confederacy or hated it, there is no denying that this is a tragic story.  And if any elements of Toole’s life or his work interest you, you will be fascinated by this book.

Rin Tin Tin

(Another guest post by our friend Debbie in San Francisco. :

I never saw the TV show “Rin Tin Tin”. Never saw a single film starring Rin Tin Tin. Never owned a dog. And yet, and yet….Susan Orlean’s opus to the showbiz dog told me all that was necessary to know about the story of this beloved canine character. The book tells a story, wrapped up in a story, wrapped up in yet another story.

The first story is a plastic figurine of Rin Tin Tin that the author’s grandfather keeps in his office. He does not let the children touch or play with the beloved item (more on that later). The next story is the author feeling compelled to share the story of this wondrous showbiz dog and how she became compelled to do so. Then of course, the next story is of the dog itself, and the man who created the legend. It doesn’t end there. Yes, there is another story, and that is of the continuing parade of dogs that keep the Rin Tin Tin legend alive and the dramas as they are pulled into service to share with a rapturous audience, both on the large and small screens. Then the final story is the denouement, the aftermath….and like many things in life, it fades to black.

While all this sounds convoluted (too many stories?) it is not. Orlean is a master at weaving compelling narrative, and she helps the reader make sense of it all. She is a generous writer, in that she is explanatory and helps us all keep things straight in our minds as we’re turning pages.

The tyranny of the years is sadly apparent in this book, as I was hoping for a little more emotive narrative, a la “Seabiscuit”, which made me cry. I did not cry in one place in this book, which surprised me, as I was prepared to do so. Those of you who are interested in Hollywood history will enjoy this book, as “Rinty’s” story could not be told without sharing the underbelly of the entertainment business at the time. With a bit of Kismet, the quasi-silent “The Artist” has won an Oscar this year. We learn a lot about the migration of Rin Tin Tin films from silent to dialogue-filled “talkies”. The author has some beautiful prose about the magic of movies and the emotional spell they cast on audiences. I was riveted.

This book is a life story. It’s a life story of not one dog, but of a character, an idea and a celluloid creation. The idea keeps a number of people happily employed, and we learn of their sagas in turn. When the last pages are unfurling, the reader feels a sense of joy for having known the story of Rin Tin Tin.

p.s. at the end, the author shares that her grandfather had a momentary lack of judgment/generosity, and lets the kids play with the Rin Tin Tin figure he treasured. Guess what happened to it?

The Book Club Cookbook, Take 2

I am not now, nor have I ever been, a contributing member of a book club. Or a non-contributing member for that matter.  I like to read books, and I like to talk about books, but I just haven’t gotten it together to merge the two.  At one point, I thought it might be fun to start an US magazine book club, where all us moms could drink yummy cocktails and talk about sparkley dresses and reality shows that I don’t even watch, but really I would just want to have the drinks and chat.  Yet somehow, the gods of free books found it in their hearts to send me a copy of the coolest book club book ever.  Judy Gelman and Vicki Levy Krupp, creators of bookclubcookbook.com have come out with a revised and updated second edition of The Book Club Cook Book: Recipes and Food for Thought from Your Book Club’s Favorite Books and Authors.

I missed it when the first edition of this book came out, but I have loved pouring over this second edition.  Even the Table of Contents is fun; each book title is paired with a recipe title so you can search for your favs and decide if you’d want that recipe.  Ahab’s Wife (by Sana Jeter Naslund) comes with a seafood chowder recipe (of course), Bel Canto (by Ann Patchett – when do I get to go to her Nashville bookstore?) is paired with eggplant caponata, and The Great Gatsby has you drinking mint juleps.   The titles and food ideas are endless!

After you check out how many of these books you have already read (most), it’s fun to see what has been written about them.  Each entry includes a brief synopses of the book along with the recipe, but the book club gals have also included discussions with many of the authors about why certain foods or recipes were included in the story or their own reasons for choosing particular recipes. So, sometimes the author’s family recipe for, say, vanilla kipferls (crescent cookies), thank you Markus Zusak, show up because the author has shared that that was what he remembers his own grandmother baking and savored those memories while writing about life in World War II Germany (The Book Thief).  The Novel Thoughts sections after the recipes and the More Food For Thought sections after that include even more information about the books as well as interviews with specific book clubs about their own book/recipe pairings.

When asked about the creation of The Book Club Cookbook, the authors share that each of them discovered a connection between books and food in their own book clubs, a specific pairing of certain books with particular foods, and then a realization that most authors included descriptions of food based on cultural, ethnic, and familial traditions.  Because food figured prominently in their own book club experiences, the authors ‘…thought it would appeal to book club members to have delicious, thematically appropriate recipes at their fingertips…”. It sounds like book clubs around the country really get into connecting what they’re reading to what they’re eating.

I’m not real sure I’ll get to experience this book the way the authors have intended, as I have read most of these books already, do not participate in a book club, and lack the ability to plan ahead.  But, I do hope to at least try some of the recipes (ahem, Demetrie’s chocolate pie, sans poo poo), and I will definitely continue to enjoy reading what the original authors as well as the Book Club Cookbook authors have to say about their books and their food. If you happen to belong to one of these clubs and you still haven’t read The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, go buy this book and start working on some glogg to enjoy with your Swedish meatballs.

Guitar Zero

I recently caught the end of an NPR story about a book called Guitar Zero: The New Musician and the Science of Learning by Gary Marcus that sounded fascinating.   As the NPR story says, Marcus  ”took up guitar at the relatively ancient age of 38, by starting with the video game Guitar Hero.”  In the book Marcus uses his experience to discuss the science of learning and why certain tasks like learning to play a new instrument or learning a language become harder as we get older.  As a student who took up guitar later in life than Mr Marcus and a science nerd to boot, I had to check it out.

I once heard a younger acquaintance remark “well, any monkey can go off and learn how to play guitar.”   Marcus and I are here to tell you that’s not the case.  At least not well.   An old canard popular in the telling of the punk rock movement  is that the bands barely knew how to play their instruments.   While it’s true that they may not have had the mastery of some musicians, I recommend that you try to play along if it’s so easy.  Playing basic chords really fast and in time to create a song that actually sounds (arguably) good are actually several different cognitive skills that are all relatively difficult to master.  That anyone ever does borders on the miraculous.

Marcus walks through the cognitive processes involved in learning the tasks of having your left hand (for righties) bend into impossible shapes on specific strings at just the right moment, while your right hand is doing something entirely different.  Being able to create your own songs, Marcus explains, is its own separate skill.  It’s a relative rarity that some people are able to both learn an instrument and compose new songs on it.   Depressingly, he discusses the barriers to this kind of learning that come with age.

Marcus notes that cognitive scientists estimate that to become proficient at some new skill (like playing an instrument) requires roughly 10,000 hours of focused practice on average.  Some folks may never become proficient, while others may be rock stars in significantly less time.  Marcus investigates why this rule generally holds true, and what happens with those who accelerate the timeline.

In the best sections of this book, Marcus masterfully breaks down the elements of learning to play guitar and puts it in the larger context of how our brain learns new tricks, especially extremely difficult new tricks.   A chapter on what expert musicians know that you don’t is also insightful.  The book strays when it wanders afield of its subtitle.  The chapter on why some music sounds better than others and what the worst (theoretical) song in the world sounds like was a chore for me to work through.   This is, overall,  an interesting read for the mature budding musician and others that are interested in the science of how our how brain learns to make music.  It may come off as  complete mumbo jumbo for  readers lacking a strong interest in at at least one of those subjects.

Recommended Reads

One of the benefits that I’ve enjoyed, now that I’ve switched over to the dark side and own a Kindle, is reading long-form non-fiction pieces that until recently had no place in the market.  These pieces are too long for any but the most profit averse magazines and too short to be sold on their own.  Enter the e-book to save the day.  I’ve recently read two such pieces that I highly recommend.

The first is a Kindle Single that I had to read because it is written by one of my favorite authors Dara Horn.  I’ve interviewed Dara Horn twice (see the sidebar on the right) and we have not coincidentally reviewed two of her novels, All Other Nights and The World to Come.  Horn was also named one of Granta’s Best Young American Novelists.

The Rescuer is a non-fiction account of the life of Varian Fry.  Fry was responsible for rescuing many famous Jews, including Marc Chagall, from occupied France during World War II.  Horn explores why this courageous man is virtually unknown.   Horn is clear that this will not be the typical  Hollywood version of Holocaust rescue stories:

I’ve long been uncomfortable with stories of Holocaust rescue, not least because the painful fact that they are statistically insignificant — as are, for that matter, stories of Holocaust survival. But for me, the unease of these stories runs deeper.  When I was 23 and just beginning my doctoral work in Yiddish, I barely understood the world I was entering.  It is a very distant world from what we are taught to assume in American Culture, where happy endings are so expected that even our stories of the Holocaust somehow have to be redemptive.  In Holocaust literature written in Yiddish, the language of the culture that was successfully destroyed, one doesn’t find many musings on the kindness of strangers, because there wasn’t much of that.  Instead one finds cries of anguish, rage, and, yes, vengeance.

It’s  a quick and fascinating read. Check it out.

The second e-book I’d like to recommend is Vanity Fair’s How a Book is Born: The Making of the Art of Fielding by Keith Gessen.  The author founded the hot literary mag n + 1  along with Chad Harbach.  Harbach is the author of a BGB favorite,  The Art of Fielding (my review).  Gessing and Harbach became friends when the two took “an intense, five-person seminar of Herman Melville” their sophomore year.  This e-book is an “inside baseball” look at how books get published.

With the benefit of hindsight, it is just incredible to read that the novel was rejected.  Repeatedly.  Some of those that didn’t see the promise are named.   And then a bidding war breaks out for the suddenly red-hot novel.  Especially fascinating to me are how Gessing’s impressions of his friend’s novel change over time.  He goes from…:

So the shortstop couldn’t make a throw to first.  So?  I didn’t say it at the time, but it felt a little like a Disney film.  (The Bad News Bears go to liberal-arts college.)

to…

Reading the galley, I saw that Henry’s anguish about perfection, and his sudden inability to make the throw to first, mirrored Chad’s difficulties completing the book, especially with so many people around him demanding that he just do it.  I saw other things, too.  But mostly I was just delighted.

This is absolute required reading for anyone who loves books.

The Whore of Akron

The Whore of Akron, by Scott Raab, is not for everybody.  Not because it’s not interesting or written well enough, but because the topics covered here won’t necessarily resonate with anyone who hasn’t suffered through the historically unfulfilled and unlucky life of a Cleveland sports fan.  Having grown up a couple miles west of Cleveland and having done my undergraduate work at CWRU in Cleveland, I know the story and the feeling all too well.

I left Cleveland in 1990, but I’ve carried my loyalty and passion for Cleveland sports with me ever since, including the self-loathing and “Why me?” attitude that accompanied watching my beloved Indians take a lead into the bottom of the ninth inning of the 1997 World Series against the Florida Marlins only to see one of the best closers in the game blow it and then witness the Tribe lose it in extra innings.  Cleveland has not won a sports title since 1964.  We’ve come oh so close, but haven’t sealed the deal.  And it’s been a painful journey.

Raab now lives in New Jersey, but he grew up in Cleveland and was actually at the NFL Championship Game that the Browns won in 1964.  In this book, he addresses the cult of Cleveland sports through the city’s experience with LeBron James.  And he does not pull any punches.  As a journalist who’s fortunate enough (or not) to be able to get media credentials to sporting events, and as a lifelong Cleveland fan, he got to come along for the seven-year ride LeBron had through Cleveland, starting with the Cavs winning the lottery and selecting the local superstar from Akron with the #1 overall pick in the 2003 NBA draft and then “culminating” (for lack of a better word) with “The Decision”, LeBron’s primetime special in the summer of 2010 in which he ended months of suspense by announcing that he was “taking his talents to South Beach”, gathering the world together to witness him driving the proverbial dagger through the collective hearts of Cleveland fans.

Excuse me — I started talking like Scott Raab for a second there.  But that’s what this book can do to you, particularly if you’re from Cleveland, or if you’re the type of sports fan who can empathize and appreciate the struggles the city has gone through.  Raab engages in a look back, re-examining some of the things LeBron did during his tenure in Cleveland and casting doubts upon LeBron’s motives all along the way, portraying him as a selfish, greedy, unsympathetic villain who never cared for or wanted to be in Cleveland in the first place.  And Raab uses the events that unfolded around and after The Decision, including LeBron’s first season with the Miami Heat, to corroborate the suspicions he raises.

This book is clearly an indictment of LeBron James, and no one should go into it expecting any sort of objectivity.  But if you’re in the mood for some scathing, claws-out, vilification, this is your book.

Inside Scientology

I’ve always been curious and perversely fascinated by Scientology; not in the sense that I want to join, but rather that I want to understand what exactly it is and how it came to be.  We’ve all heard stories about L. Ron Hubbard and how the religion he invented was actually the result of a lark stemming from a bar bet or something like that, where he succeeded in tricking people into buying into a theory that we’re all the spawn of aliens who landed in a volcano millions of years ago, etc.  Inside Scientology:  The Story of America’s Most Secretive Religion, by Janet Reitman, is the result of years of painstaking research and analysis by the author in her attempt to publish the first-ever comprehensive history of Scientology.

Reitman’s book starts with a biography of Hubbard, the science fiction writer who invented Dianetics in the early 1950′s as an alternative to psychotherapy and then lost Dianetics through bankruptcy but re-emerged by repackaging his theories as Scientology.  Based on how his life is described by Reitman, how anyone believed anything Hubbard said or wrote is absolutely beyond me.

While he may have been a charismatic and engaging guy, he is portrayed as a pathological liar who never even came close to doing one tenth of the things he claimed to have done.  He told people he was a former explorer, researcher, war hero, sea captain, and a multitude of other glamorous titles, none of which were true.  But that didn’t stop people from buying into his theories of self-exploration and self-help.  After his health began to deteriorate, he secluded himself in a secret compound in California.  When he passed away in 1986, the organization was taken over by David Miscavige, by all accounts a less “crazy” but seemingly more ruthless leader, who seems to have focused far less on thinking of Scientology as a religion, but instead as a business.  And he appears to use and abuse his power to exercise unrelenting control over the Church and its members.

While this book is heralded as the first full journalistic history of Scientology and as an evenhanded account, even the most objective, evenhanded reading of it can’t mask the fact that Scientology seems to fit every stereotypical characteristic of a cult.  It is absolutely terrifying to read what people who’ve been indoctrinated into Scientology have gone through, and even more terrifying to think that sane people can be held captive the way that they are.

The Church of Scientology has got money coming out its eyeballs.  It was able to get itself classified by the IRS as a religious organization and thereby achieve tax exempt status (and the ability to maintain its books as confidential).  If you think you’ve felt pressured to tithe beyond your means by your church, you have no idea.  Individuals pay freakish amounts of money to be “audited”, something they must do to reach “Clear” status and advance along “The Bridge to Total Freedom”.

As members advance, more and more secrets of Scientology are revealed to them, and they apparently become even more eager to learn what’s behind the next level of advancement.  I would say that you can’t make this stuff up, but apparently you can, and apparently people will buy into it.  And all along the way, the Church of Scientology is just collecting that money and supposedly using it to further its mission to “clear the planet”.  But as you read this book, you see how that money is used for selfish, crazy purposes to satisfy the whims of Church leaders, and how the hierarchy of the Church fosters corruption and abuse of power.

There’s an entire chapter in the book dedicated to Tom Cruise, the most outspoken of the celebrities who’ve joined the Church of Scientology.  Celebrities have long been an avenue the Church has used to grow its appeal, and the things it does to court celebrities would blow your mind — complete with spending millions of dollars to renovate one of its compounds before Cruise’s first visit there.  The leaders who meet with Cruise fake their way through a bunch of stuff specifically to make it look like Scientology is perfect for Cruise, and they continue to cater to him outside of the normal protocols until he’s hooked.  Of course, when he reaches OT3 level and learns that the stuff about the aliens is actually for real, he freaks out and backs away.  But they get their hooks back into him and allegedly mastermind his divorce from Nicole Kidman.  It’s just bizarre — even more bizarre than you can imagine.

Scientology has reportedly used spies and secret operatives (including the largest domestic espionage case in history), fraud, frivolous litigation, and all sorts of other unscrupulous means to continue its growth, gain more power, and build more wealth.  This book explains it all through anecdotal evidence and data collected from current and past members.  Absolutely fascinating stuff.  A must read for anyone with any interest in American culture.  If you’d like a taste of what the book has to offer, check out Reitman’s original article for Rolling Stone that lead to this book.

Steve Jobs

(This is a guest post by our friend Debbie in San Francisco.  She couldn’t stop talking about this book. )

Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson (Benjamin Franklin: An American Life and Albert Einstein: His Life and Universe) is everything a reader could want and more. It appeals to those interested in the formative years of Silicon Valley and personal computing.  It also appeals to those who like to read success stories of groundbreaking corporate founders and even has something special for readers who just like a well-crafted biography.  But the most rewarding thing to take away from the experience of reading this book is the feeling that we have a front row tour of the history of our beloved Apple products.  We learn how the iPod’s continuous scrolling functionality came to be.  We read about who’s idea it was to make the earbuds pure white on the iPod (hint: it’s not Jobs).  Credit where credit is due is another reason this book should be required reading for anyone who uses Apple products.

Do not be fooled by the author’s seemingly breathless and gossipy tone.  While off putting at first, we realize that this is necessary to tell the tale from multiple viewpoints after many exhaustive personal interviews with major players.  The only way to tell the story is to tell what others say and how they feel and that cannot help but read like “he-said/she-said” gossip.  However, since most all the players are living, the device works.

The ultimate triumph of the book is that Isaacson was able to speak to Jobs himself while there was still time.  Over the course of two years, Isaacson conducts over forty in-depth interviews with Jobs.  During the process it’s clear the two develop a friendship of sorts. Jobs implored his biographer to tell the whole story, even if it made him look bad, which it often did.  The perspective gained from these sessions is infinitely rewarding.  Add hundreds of interviews with others and the resulting prose is dramatic and compelling.

And yet, and yet.  The same reader could feel that something was missing in the story.  The book leaves us wanting to know a little bit more about how Mr. Jobs became so brash and narcissistic in the first place, as these traits are usually visible at a very young age.  We never really learn where in his formative years this behavior was allowed to take root and take over.

We get a glimpse of his earlyish years and the fascination with electronics (remember Heathkits?).  We see the willfull youth pushing back on hapless adults (and maybe not so hapless as in the case of Bill Hewlett who ended up offering the 13-year old Jobs a summer job after the kid looked him up in the phone book and called him to inquire about an electronic part).  We see a friendship of youths forged of mutual interests from different perspectives between Mr. Jobs and Wozniak (“Woz”).  The symbiotic (maybe opportunistic?) nature of this coupling is apparent when we read about Woz’s interests (tinkering, hacking, open systems, freeware) and Jobs’ (closed systems, marketing, aesthetics, revenue streams).  These opposing worldviews remain firmly in place throughout the book and professional careers of these gentlemen.  They never really meet in the middle even though they created something significant together.

The best part of this book is the wild ride and we are in the front seat with Jobs (or at least Isaacson).  The adventure that is creating the epic masterpiece that is Apple, which is the world’s most valuable corporation on some days, next to Chevron.  This is no small feat, and the story is transfixing.  Mr. Jobs outsize personality dwarfs most other players, making reading this book exhausting.  But that’s not necessarily a bad thing.  Creating something this successful IS exhausting, so the reader really gets a sense of the drama and hard work and human interplay that gets inserted to each corporate situation and strategy.

Jobs’ lack of interest in the trappings of vast personal wealth is fascinating.  He and his family seem grounded and as normal as they could be under the circumstances.  Opulence was not something to which he aspired.  He aspired to seeing Apple’s ideas manifest in physical reality of useful and pleasurable objects that serve and entertain.  Mr. Jobs is the Chief Architect of this unprecedented bout of forward motion in manufacturing excellence. As stated elsewhere, he deserves a seat in the pantheon of America’s best business leaders.

After all this, we really want to see the protagonist (is Jobs the protagonist?) personally redeemed.  Sadly, this is not the case. That is one of the great disappointments about the book, and perhaps his life story.  We see the fractured relationship he has with his children which the author describes in painful detail.  The heartbreak of the youngest daughter when a long-promised trip to Kyoto is cancelled by Dad  was especially hard to read.  Also hard to read was Jobs’ clear favoritism toward  his son Reed.

Jobs has been identified as having a narcissistic personality disorder.  Author Wendy T. Behary  in an Oct 06, 2008 article offers the best definition of a narcissist I have seen:

A quick definition of a narcissist: someone who has an exaggerated sense of self-worth, is highly self-absorbed, entitled, condescending, superior, show-off-ish, competitive, and approval-craving. They do not appreciate the impact of their often obnoxious behaviors on others. They have a lot of trouble with empathy and with the notion of give and take.

In the end, we are left with Mr. Jobs’ outsize personality and its effect on those in his family, friends and colleagues.  Much of it is gut wrenching.  How much was necessary?  Given what was created in its wake, maybe all of it.  The reader is left not with a feeling of disgust toward Mr. Jobs’ obvious personality handicaps, but a feeling of gratitude for all that was created under the sheer will of Mr. Jobs.  He has made millions upon millions of lives better, and reading a book about this remarkable evolution is a reward in itself.

Thank you. Jobs and Isaacson.  I am going to read Steve Jobs a second time.

Unbroken

I unintentionally jumped from the Vietnam War (Matterhorn by Karl Melantes) right into World War II by listening to Unbroken by Laura Hildebrand.  I had heard it was a great story without being aware of the subject matter.  If I had known I may not have listened to it, but I am certainly glad I did.

The book chronicles the epic transformation of Louis Zamperini.  His life story is so compelling that Ms. Hildebrand (Seabiscuit) decided it was worth telling.  Louis is a young boy being raised in Torrance California. He spends much of his youth during the 1920′s stealing from people and getting into all kinds of trouble.  For being so mischevious, his personality is bright.  He is perennially upbeat.  He lets no one discourage him; he does what he wants.  His saintly and high-achieving older brother Pete saves Louis several times, but the last time he had to make a deal with the high school principal.  Louis wouldn’t be punished if he ran on the school’s Track team.  This turning point in Louis’ young life gave him a passion he didn’t know he had and he ultimately breaks the mile record all the way to the 1936 Olympics.

World War II breaks out in time to cancel the 1940 Olympics and Louis becomes an airman, flying for the US Army Air Corps, the precursor to the US Air Force.  During an air fight, Louis’ plane goes down in the Pacific Ocean with two other men.  The details of their 46 day survival are too impressive and creative to give any spoilers – it’s unbelievable but true.  In fact it should be said that this entire story is true, which makes it that much more incredible.

After a dramatic water shooting scene, Louis is captured by the Japanese.   We are filled with relief and joy when he’s captured because life in a POW camp has got to be better than life on sea.  Not so in Japan.  Throughout Louis’ two year stay in several Japanese POW camps, he is consistently beaten, starved and injected with unknown substances.  The Geneva Convention had drawn up international laws for POWs which the Japanese chose to ignore.  In fact many of their camps were hidden and unknown to anyone other than the Japanese military.   The worst abuser of all is a man named Watanabe. He is noteworthy because he chooses Louis out of hundreds, to beat daily. It is as if he recognizes Louis’ strong spirit and takes it as a personal mission to squash it.

It is said that man can survive without a lot of food and water, however, if a man loses his dignity there is no hope.  While being held captive, the prisoners find various ways to keep this dignity: they steal and share food, and communicate with fellow prisoners by addressing the Japanese guards, knowing the guards do not understand. The communication is for fellow prisoners.  In one camp in which they aren’t allowed to speak at all, they communicate in Morse Code with their fists.  In so many ways they learn how to trick the guards.

After the war when it seems everything should be going well, Louis and his friends continue to struggle through psychological turmoil.  Although Louis marries and tries to live a conventional life, he has nightly flashbacks and dreams of Watanabe and the horror he inflicted.   His wife works hard to be supportive, but even she starts to lose hope.  One evening, Louis has an encounter that changes his life – and that’s all I’ll say.   It is possible to Google Louis to learn the rest of the story, but I didn’t.  I wanted to listen to it via Ms. Hildebrand.

Ms. Hildebrand brings us a shocking tear jerker – tears of sadness and horror and tears of joy.   Louis Zamperini is an amazing man.  He endured torture that none of us can imagine. Throughout it all, when he thought he couldn’t take another lashing, he found a way to keep his dignity and he lived on.  Louis didn’t just survive the camps, after the war he eventually found a way to flourish and use his experiences to help others.  He remained positive and upbeat. According to his brother Pete, everyone loved Louis.  He truly was unbroken.

My respect for our troops and veterans that was renewed while listening to Matterhorn, only deepened after listening to this magnificent story.  So many combat veterans have and survived by the skin of their teeth, ready to sacrifice it all for America.  I am grateful to Ms. Hildebrand for bringing us this detailed chapter of World War II.   I’m also thankful that she researched every character’s life after the war.  So often after reading these stories I’m left with an emptiness of not knowing what happens.  I’m happy to learn the rest of the stories in Unbroken.

Moonwalking with Einstein

As I grow older, my memory seems to be eroding at an alarming rate.  And don’t think for one second that my wife hasn’t noticed this fact.  So when we were marauding through one of the closing Borders locations and she saw a book entitled Moonwalking with Einstein — The Art and Science of Remembering Everything at a bargain basement price, she marched right over to me and put it in my basket.

This book, by Joshua Foer, wasn’t exactly what I expected, but was nonetheless an enjoyable and pleasant surprise.  (Joshua Foer is brother to Jonathan Safran Foer and New Republic editor Franklin Foer – that last name seems to have some magical writing ability attached to it, no?) It’s a mix of journalism, scientific commentary, and memoir.  Foer is a freelance journalist who sort of accidentally stumbled onto some information about the “sport” of memory and subsequently secured an assignment for Slate to attend and write about the 2005 U.S. Memory Championships (yes, Virginia, such an event exists).  He met a fascinating cast of interesting characters at the event, and before he knew it he found himself caught up in the subculture of memory competition and began training to compete in the following year’s U.S. Memory Championships.

He wrote this book as he was training and being mentored by some of the folks he met in this quasi-secret society, and his story is a mix of research into the origins and historical significance of memory, the techniques used by competitors to memorize decks of playing cards, series of random digits, and poetry, some of the characters throughout past and present history who have either naturally or through the use of techniques shown incredible skill at remembering information, and his recounting of his own personal experiences.

As it turns out, they say that anyone can compete in memory competitions — you don’t have to be a savant or have a photographic memory (which many of the members of this subculture don’t believe actually exists).  There are a variety of techniques for memorizing data, which date back to ancient times.  The most popular (if that’s the right word) is the concept of the “memory palace” — the use of the brain’s ability to remember spacial and visual images as a tool to remember data and facts.  As you process data, you envision a physical location that you know by heart (your childhood home or the street you grew up on), and as data enters your mind, you place each piece of data along a path through that location with some sort of visual image that ties back to the data point.  Then when you are required to recite the data back, you do a tour through that location in your mind and see those images, in that order.  Bizarre, but apparently effective.

Other techniques for remembering other types of data include assigning people, places, or things to the numbers and suits of playing cards or assigning images to sets of digits.  It sounds like hard mental work, but these people are brilliant at it.  At present, at least two Europeans have demonstrated the ability to spend less than thirty seconds looking through a shuffled deck of playing cards and then recite them back in order (apparently the best of the best memory competitors seem to come from Europe).

This book is an easy read, and I would share more details here if I could remember them.  Sadly, by the time I recognized the importance of building a memory palace to remember all of the information in this book, I was too far along to start.  And I almost forgot,  you can read Foer’s cover story on competitive memory for The New York Times magazine here.

See a Little Light

I felt compelled to check out Bob Mould’s See a Little Light: The Trail of Rage and Melody.  First, I’m a big fan of his music.  Second, the last time I had read about Mould was in Michael Azerrad’s seminal underground rock history tome, Our Band Could be Your Life (My review).  As BGB’s Shaft pointed out specifically in his review of the book, Bob Mould does not come off in a very positive light in Azerrad’s telling.  Imagine my surprise then to learn that See a Little Light was co-written with none other than Michael Azerrad.  What gives?

Our Band Could be Your Life focused almost exclusively on Bob Mould’s time with indie rock pioneers Hüsker Dü.  However, Hüsker Dü occupied only about eight years of the life of a man now in his fifties.  The lion’s share of See a Little Light, accordingly, is about all the other aspects of Mould’s life.   He is also keen to squash any and all hopes of a Hüsker Dü reunion.  Ever.

If you have an original ticket stub dated 1979-87, you saw Hüsker Dü.  If not, you missed out.

See A Little Light goes back and explores Mould’s childhood and gives more backstory on where Hüsker Dü came from, works through the Hüsker Dü years, and then dives into the years that followed, which includes everything since 1988.  It turns out that quite a bit has happened in Mould’s life, professionally and personally, since then.  He’s performed all over the world as a solo performer, formed a new band (Sugar) that outsold the band he’s ostensibly most known for, branched out in new musical directions, worked as a scriptwriter for WCW Wrestling (!),  and found a way to be happy in his personal life.  He’s had drug ans alcohol problems and found his way clean.

Much of the latter part of the book involves Mould’s coming to grips with being a gay man and deciding to finally live his life openly and in a way that makes him happy.  Sadly, this realization does not come until much later in his life than for most.  A theme that runs throughout the book is how uncomfortable Mould has been within his own skin, worrying about the acceptance of others – of being found out and losing everything that he had worked for.  Occasionally Mould’s fears sound irrational to the straight ear, but then the reader is reminded of the story that he tells early on about a gay teen getting beaten to death in his home town.

The book also serves up a steady diet of tour stories and lengthy discussion on albums being made.  I love that kind of stuff, but it may not be for everyone.   At the beginning of the book, there were sections where I couldn’t believe Mould’s arrogance.  I was sure that See a Little Light would paint a similar picture of the aging rocker that Michael Azerrad portrayed in Our Band Could be Your Life.  By the end, somehow, Bob Mould completely wins over the reader on his own terms.

Mould’s biggest accomplishments with this book may be getting the average straight male indie rock fan to read and experience a gay man’s story of coming out and finding joy in his life.  I finished reading See a Little Light on the evening that New York’s Senate cast its historic vote to legalize gay marriage.  It seemed fitting.  I was happy for the implications for several people in my life, and I was happy for Bob Mould.

Audio Bonus:

The first Hüsker Dü song I ever heard was the title song on the album New Day Rising.  The entirety of the lyrics are “new day rising” repeated over a bed of howling guitars, driving drums, and visceral howls.   The repetition and conviction of the lyrics – a mantra – sold me on the idea that a new day was in fact rising.  This was 1984.   This is what rage and melody sound like.  

Hüsker Dü - New Day Rising

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Bob Mould’s first solo album Workbook was an impressive effort from beginning to end.  The opening instrumental track served notice that Mould was breaking new ground.

Bob Mould – Sun Spots

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This is the track from the same album that gave the book its name:

Bob Mould – See a Little Light

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Bossypants

I’ve been a fan of Tina Fey’s since he first appearances behind the SNL Weekend Update desk and watch 30 Rock religiously.  When I saw the early reviews, I knew that I would need to check out Fey’s Bossypants.   It did not disappoint.  Someone get this woman her own TV show.  Oh, wait…

Some reviewers seemed put out that the book is not as revealing as they’ve apparently come to expect from celebrity memoirs.   But Bossypants isn’t really a memoir.  It’s a collection of humorous essays about experiences in her life.  Think female David Sedaris and you won’t be far off.  Fey mentions her scar and explains why she won’t talk about it.  She says that there was the occasional jerk hosting SNL, but she doesn’t feel the need to name names. Good for her.  What’s left are some hilarious glimpses into the unexpected celebrity life of a self-described nerd with David Foster Wallace references and fart jokes.

Fey does not shy away from describing the ingrained misogyny of comedy – something that she hopes has changed.  As a performer in Chicago’s Second City, it was understood that NO ONE wanted to see two women alone in a sketch together.  That’s not how comedy works! Fey offers her and Amy Poehler’s classic SNL skit as Sarah Palin and Hillary Clinton as Exhibit A of the fallacy of this idea.  She also wonders if the old sexism isn’t behind the personal attacks she received for portraying the reality TV star while her male counterparts eviscerate other politicians with little fallout.  (Have you seen Will Ferrell’s George Bush?)  Maybe. Or maybe it upset some so much because it was so believable.  (See: This.)

Fey seems surprised that Bossypants would be read by men.  On purpose.  In one passage she describes the relative “quease-making” of sticking a contact lens in your eye by relating it to a rather graphic gynecological experience and a breast self-exam.   Then she clarifies the comparison for those of us who may not get these references:

If you are male, I would liken it to touching your own eyeball, and thank you for buying this book.

No, thank you, Tina!

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

Like many people, when the doctor hands me a consent form, I just sign it, not giving it much thought.  After reading The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Kathryn Skoot, I think I may actually read the next one.

Many of us have heard about this book, it appeared on everyone’s “Best of 2010″ lists.  Born in 1920, Henrietta Lacks grew up in poverty, working in the tabacco fields of Virginia.  After marrying her first cousin and moving to Baltimore, her doctors discovered in 1951 that she had cervical cancer.  Before the days of consent forms, her doctor asked if he could take a sample of her cells.  According to her doctor, Henrietta and her husband said  yes, and when her doctor placed her cancerous cells in a petri dish he shockingly discovered that they multiplied.  They kept multiplying – they never stopped unless they were frozen

….as long as they had food and warmth, Henrietta’s cancer cells seemed unstoppable.  Soon, George (the doctor) told a few of his closes colleagues that he though his lab might have grown the first imortal human cells. To which they replied, Can I have some? And George said yes.

Henrietta died from her cancer.  She left behind the immortal HeLa cells that would change medical history.  Less important to everyone at the time, were a husband and small children who were also left behind.  Henrietta’s family never broke free of the poverty into which they were born.  Since their parents were first cousins and their father had given their mother syphilis, the children began life at a disadvantage with medical issues.  When their mother died and their father remarried, they were subjected to the worst kind of abuse by family members and close “friends”.

Not until 20 years after Henrietta’s death did her family discover that something had happened with their mother’s cells.   But even then, not one medical professional took the time to explain to her uneducated family what cells were, and what this meant for medicine.

When Ms. Skoot began her research, she was met with reluctance from Henrietta’s famiy. You can’t blame them, though. Many people had come around over the years asking about Henrietta’s life, adding more confusion to what they believed was the truth about their mother.  Fortunately, Ms Skoot had the patience and dedication to tell this story.  She also took the time to introduce family members to medical professionals who were able to explain the HeLa cells in a clear and simple manner. (I was also grateful to these people, not being clear on the subject myself.)

At first, I didn’t want to read a book about medical discoveries.   I just wasn’t interested in reading a science book.  The Immortal Life is science at its best for someone like me who wants a good story and a history lesson.  While educating me about the miracle of the HeLa cells, Ms. Skoot uncovers the life of Henrietta, her family and the medical scene several decades ago.  Ms. Skoot unveils the history of Johns Hopkins Medical Center and the truth behind the rumors of the day when black people feared the employees of Johns Hopkins, believing that they snatched black people off the streets for medical research.

During Ms. Skoot’s unexhaustible search for the woman behind the cells, she developed a relationship with the family that is invaluable to the entire story.  Henrietta’s daughter only wanted her mother to receive the credit she deserved. Other family members wanted some sort of compensation.  The question that was continuously asked by family members was   “if our mother so important to science, why can’t we get health insurance?”   There was never an answer to this question.

Ms. Skoot has set up a foundation to benefit the the descendents of Henrietta with their medical insurance and education .

Henrietta Lacks’ cells were responsible for so many cures and research that we now take for granted. I’m happy Ms. Skoot is able to share the real story behind these cells.  It’s important for all of us to be aware of the pain and heartache of their origins.

The Bell Jar

Sylvia Plath, Virginia Woolf, Dorothy Parker.  Not only are they three women who’ve never been in my kitchen, they are also three notable female authors that I’ve never read.  As a chapter in my ongoing quest to try to read many of the classics that the cool kids probably read in high school or college, I figured I’d investigate these three.  First stop, Sylvia Plath.

Plath herself is regarded as a tragic heroine, having found herself in a failing marriage to another poet, with two children, in a foreign country, struggling with depression and (I think) borderline insanity at times, eventually taking her own life in 1963.

The Bell Jar is her semiautobiographical novel about a young writer who battles depression and insanity while in college.  The term “the bell jar” is used by Plath in the book to describe the feeling of madness, as if a glass bell jar is constantly hovering over you, sometimes completely surrounding you and stifling you.  Critical note:  this reminded me of Jean-Dominique Bauby’s The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Bauby’s absolutely spellbinding and emotionally riveting story of his life after suffering a massive stroke that left him fully functional mentally, but physically unable to move anything except one eyelid, circumstances he likened to a butterfly in a diving bell, unable to interact with the outside world.  Second critical note:  everyone should read Bauby’s book; if it doesn’t move you, you aren’t human.

Now that I’ve started down the path, I suppose I’ll continue to draw parallels between The Bell Jar and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.  The most significant common thread to me is that both books are fundamentally legitimate.  Legitimate in the sense that the authors actually went through the circumstances described in their works, and so they both speak from a place that most of us have never been and will never be.  So, unlike fictionalized accounts of strange events, or fantastical tellings of difficult situations, as you read these works, you know that the authors aren’t making it up.  And that gives their writing so much more credibility and leads their stories to resonate with the reader so much more than they would if they were told from the third person by someone who hadn’t experienced these things.

With Bauby’s book, this is pretty easy to understand, as each of us can imagine — or more properly, can’t possibly imagine — what it would be like to be trapped in your body with no ability to move, but with full recognition of your surroundings, full use of your brain, full recall of your memories and experiences, etc.  Plath’s situation is more complicated to me, because plenty of writers have written stories told from the perspective of a “crazy person”.  But Plath is able to tell her story and describe the emotional rollercoaster, feelings of paranoia, and skewed perspectives of a person who is losing it from the perspective of a person who was truly losing it.  And so going in to the book, you can’t help but lend a much deeper sense of meaning to what she says.  It’s not a psychiatrist trying to discern what’s going on inside the mind of an unstable person — it’s an unstable person with a gift for prose describing it directly.

The story that takes place in The Bell Jar is not, in my opinion, in and of itself, a particularly ingenious tale.  While the story of a young woman from the Boston area interning in NYC for a summer and then finding herself up against writer’s block when she returns home and eventually being admitted to an asylum isn’t necessarily your everyday run-of-the-mill plotline, it’s also not as clever or unique as some other masterworks.  However, what you know about Plath, and the knowledge that she is really talking about herself and her own feelings pushes this to another level.  In other words, if you read this in a vacuum (i.e., without knowing anything about Plath’s backstory), you’d probably give it a B, if only based on her simple but engaging style of prose.  But when you know the whole story, you understand why this book has earned its place in history.