White Noise

White Noise won the National Book Award in 1985 and helped establish author Don DeLillo as an icon in contemporary literature; it's a blue-chip read for my recent attempt to become familiar with American fiction. Set in a small college town, this story follows the everyday events of the quirky and likable Gladney family. The Gladneys are a quintessential modern American family: the parents have previous divorces, the children have all the answers, and they all are constantly getting either in or out of their station wagon. We experience White Noise through the eyes of Jack Gadney, the father. He is an overweight college professor with an endearing sense of humor that provides him with a comic outlet for his increasing sense of disconnect with the Technology age. His attempt to find meaning--or at least dignity--in contemporary life is what guides the novel.

Jack Gadney's world is eerie, funny, and, ultimately, familiar. Microwaves, garbage disposals, televisions, highways, and medicine are as prominent as the people with whom he shares his life. The supermarket in particular takes center stage as a metaphor for the artificiality of contemporary living. The simple and natural act of eating has transformed into brightly lit aisles featuring plastic-wrapped meats and boxed meals. One of my favorite lines is when DeLillo subtly mentions a character eating a "winter apple" without elaborating on how out of touch with nature it is to eat fruit in the wrong season. And,what's more, that we aren't even aware of the disconnect.

Mr. Gadney has a broad enough perspective to see his life and his town for what it is. In fact, it is this intellectual distance from his own life that grows to haunt him. The result is a disconcerting numbness to serious events. Serious events that have lost their power because: One, they are submerged in suburban antics; Two, what is important or real has become blurred by an increasing dependence on technology and authority. Imagine Camus' protagonist from The Stranger, Meursault, as a central character in Malcolm in the Middle.

When researching (I use that term lightly) the history behind the NY Times' survey of the Best American Fiction, I noticed the opinion that many nominations were chosen more for being representative of "America" than for literary excellence. I think that observation fits here; White Noise does an excellent job placing a mirror in front of the American life, but the story isn't compelling. Then again, perhaps that is part of the genius: the stories of our lives aren't that interesting.

Blood Meridian

Recently I read an article in the NY Times that listed the best works of American fiction during the last twenty-five years. They compiled their list by surveying one hundred and twenty-five prominent authors, editors, and critics. The first thing that jumped out at me was the dominance of a few individuals--Don Delillo, Thomas Pynchon, Cormac McCarthy, and Phillip Roth have apparently wrote almost all our great novels. The second thing that jumped out at me was the realization that I didn't know who any of these people were. If I was to maintain my street cred at the used book store, I needed to get reading fast. Because Cormac McCarthy wrote No Country For Old Men, I started with his ominously titled Blood Meridian.

Ambivalence (am-ˈbi-və-lən(t)s): simultaneous and contradictory attitudes or feelings (as attraction and repulsion) toward an object, person, or action. That one word captures my attitude towards Blood Meridian. There were so many aspects of the writing that just rubbed me the wrong way, yet somehow it worked. In spite of the difficulties, or perhaps in part because of them, the characters and the story have stuck to me.

The vocabulary was obnoxious. Instead of creating vivid descriptions, McCarthy's pedantic use of words renders his sentences virtually opaque. It is obvious that he did exhaustive research for this book (nicely done, sir), but that hard work need not be used to distance the reader.

The grammar squashed any clarity the vocabulary might have missed; I frequently had to reread sentences due to confusion caused by lack of punctuation. To say "grammatically incorrect" is misleading because one gets the impression that the author is trying, just coming up short. McCarthy's violence toward punctuation is palpable, mirroring the violence in this macabre allegory. There might not have been any commas.

Recognizing that I am not poetically inclined, I still think it safe to say that there were way too many damn similes in this book. I wouldn't be surprised if there was an average of a simile per page. This overuse of similes is annoying and unnecessary like this sentence.

The total impression of these writing techniques is arrogance. The hurdles the reader must jump through to enjoy this book are insulting because they are not necessary. The subject matter is not that difficult to understand. It's a Western for God's sake. The author seems to acknowledge this point by having a central character, The Judge, speak in obtuse language and then explain why it was necessary. The explanation that specific words are required because no other word quite fits doesn't hold water.

So, you must think I hate this book. And I do. Yet, in some ways I love it too. For one, the single best scene I have ever read comes thundering across these pages during a Comanche attack (To be fair, I should aknowledge that this passage would lose its power were it conveyed with standard punctuation). Also, at times I found that I was able to drop into a zone and somehow swim comfortably with the difficult text. At these times I felt witness to mythical battles amid raw and ancient lands. My best explanation is to compare this reading experience to reading Shakespeare: the first ten minutes are wasted as you battle the arcane words, but after a time you find yourself in that world.

Be prepared to enter an epic poem. Many others have compared it to biblical verse. I think this is because the text is elusive and resists logical understanding, yet the impact is there; the reader feels the meaning more clearly than his mind can grasp it. I would recommend this book to people who enjoyed Mulholland Drive. The mystery and other-worldliness can be exasperating, but the works gain a foothold by putting you off-balance with these same characteristics. Check it out and let me know what you think.

With or Without Jim Crow

I am attending the University of New Orleans in the Fall, and I want to get familiar with the work of the professors in my department. Our friend in town recently studied under Arnold Hirsch, a historian of urban policy in America, and so I decided to start with him. I have recently heard that his book Making the Second Ghetto: Race and Housing in Chicago 1940-1960 is fundamental in understanding how racial dynamics has impacted urban planning and led to segregation. As it turns out, that information was learned a little too recently, because I had just purchased another book, Urban Policy in Twentieth-Century America, where he contributes an essay.

I went at this essay with an amateur interest; throughout the years I have been drawn to discuss urban planning with my friends. My travel experiences served to increase this emphasis, as it became clear that the structure of the city plays such an integral role in shaping culture and, ultimately, determining the quality of life. My personal preference is for walking cities and so I tend to enjoy cities that were planned before the automobile--Brugges, Cesky Krumlov, and Chang Mai stand out as particularly pleasant designs.

The essay "With or Without Jim Crow" focuses on the prominent role racism has played in our country's urban planning. Just how overt that role was is shocking. During the early 1900's state laws prohibited blacks from living in certain areas of the city. Where the legislature was unable to strangle diversity, gentleman's agreements and violence finished the job. The Jim Crow laws lasted until the mid 20th century and dominated urban planning through the transparent racism of the national real estate board.

I am familiar with American History and was aware of our legacy of discrimination. The story of racism in urban planning, partly due to my move to New Orleans, enabled that history to step out of abstraction. I can now imagine the victims, the riots, and the powerful lobbies that perpetuated the injustice. In Seattle, the racial aspects of history were weightless. Like the Killing Fields of Cambodia, the tragedy was real, but distance and unfamiliarity precluded a heartfelt response. Lauren and I both feel that we have been given a great opportunity here in New Orleans to re-address racial issues with a fresh perspective.

Strengths Finder 2.0

Strengths Finder 2.0 is a product developed by the Gallup Company. Best known for its polls, Gallup is a multi-faceted organization focused on producing, analyzing, and utilizing information--this book was printed by the Gallup Press, for example.

The late CEO of Gallup, Dr. Donald Clifton, was interested in the idea of strength development. The idea is that successful people are successful because they are utilizing their strengths and not working inefficiently in an area which they are weak in: Einstein would not be famous had he dedicated himself to football. Therefore, it would be beneficial for people to discover their own strength-areas and develop those.

Unfortunately, according to Gallup and Dr. Clifton, our society is upside-down with its approach to personal development. Imagine your child brings home a report card with an A in mathematics, C's in art and p.e, and a D in English. You want to encourage your child to be better student. He needs to focus on his English, right? Wrong. Dr. Clifton and Tom Rath, who wrote Strengths Finder 2.0, believe we should help this student develop his natural gift for math. The child in this scenario has a possible future as an astronaut or engineer, not as a writer; devoting the lion's share of time and energy into his weakness would be unproductive and ultimately frustrating for the student.

Strengths Finder 2.0 is a combination of a book and a test. The test determines your areas of talent, and the book explains what an interested reader could do with their new information. The test is about 20 minutes long and at the end you are given a list of your five top talents. I found that the results matched pretty well with my understanding of myself. At this point, the experience is more interesting than useful. Like discovering that you are a "type A" or "type B" personality, it is fun to examine yourself, but doesn't really mean anything in your day-to-day life. The author understands this and encourages the reader to actively use this information to help guide themselves in directions where they could be successful.

I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys learning about themselves. Whether the information is useful in helping your life is something else. I think there are social forces that guide us to our areas of strength without the aid of conscious decision-making. Positive and negative feedback have forged the life-paths for most of us. More importantly, I think that an individual should take on any challenge that inspires them, regardless of their natural ability in that field. The idea that we should view our lives as an attempt to maximize our comparative advantage is too calculated for me. But, to whatever degree you want to use your results, the experience was fun and knowing your strengths certainly couldn't hurt.

The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down

My girlfriend, Lauren, has been recommending this book to me for over two years and I have continued to put it off. It's not due to a lack of respect for her literary judgement; her other recommendation, Wild Swans, is one of my favorite books. My idea about The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down was, "Yeah, I get it. Cultural differences lead to misunderstandings. What more can I learn by reading the book?" Well, I learned a lot. This book is a page-turner that made me think.

Author Annie Fadiman begins with a brief introduction on Hmong history. They are an ethnic group that has lived in mountainous areas of Asia for thousands of years. Their culture has been protected from assimilation due to remote living and a fierce independence. During the Secret War in Laos they were utilized by the CIA as soldiers to combat the communist Pathet Lao. Now, thirty years later, tens of thousands make their home here in the United States. The Hmong's transition and continued challenges to adapt to Western living serve as the basis for the book--specifically the challenge of a single Hmong family trying to receive medical care for their sick daughter.

The Spirit Catches You does an excellent job of fairly presenting both perspectives: the doctors come across as compassionate and intelligent, while the Hmong family, the Lees, are depicted as very caring parents. In fact, although Ms. Fadiman eventually spills the beans and admits her preference for the family, she initially emphasizes the frustrations of the doctors trying to provide medical care to a non-compliant patient.

The conflict centered on two disparate views of medicine. The Hmongs are shamanistic and view healing holistically. This knowledge has been passed down for generations and they believe in its efficacy as surely as we believe in aspirin. The Western medical community has its own distinguished history and is confident in its technical knowledge of how the body works. I side with the American doctors. What was intriguing to me about the tension in this book, however, was not which side was right, but what rights do each side have in a conflict of interest.

The doctors have all taken the Hippocratic oath. Does this mean that they have the right--indeed, the responsibility--to provide what they think is the best care, regardless of what the parents think? Or, do the parents have the right to select what treatment they want for their daughter even if it flies in the face of current medical understanding?

In the end I support the family's rights over the doctors' responsibilities. Like abortion, it is their body and there is a line of personal autonomy that is inviolable. Where the Lee family lost me is when they insisted on following their traditional methods, but then raced their daughter to the hospital when those methods failed. It was unjust to drop off such a heavy load of stress and financial commitment if you weren't willing to follow the necessary steps to prevent these occurences.

Overall, I would recommend this book to everyone. There is only one catch: The author's tone is a bit anti-American, which gets old. For example, she writes scathingly about culturally unaware Americans and then praises the Hmong's cultural insularity and naivete about foreign customs. She would bash the American looking for a McDonald's burger in India, then insist that we make major accomodations to allow cultural inflexibility here at home. In my opinion, being open to other's values does not require us to forget our own. But, like I said, overall this book is a great read and I wouldn't let this minor annoyance to stand in the way.

The Things They Carried

I have never been to war, have never even been a part of the armed services. I suppose this has to do with my family history: my father was in the Navy, my uncle and grandfather both served in the Air Force. From an early age I remember my dad distanced himself from the military and his experience in Vietnam. He didn't kill anybody, didn't suffer from psychological trauma. I think he just thought it was bullshit. In his later years, he occasionally talked about the discipline and the camaraderie, and how he thought there was some merit to the experience. When it came to his influence on me as a young man choosing a path after high school, however, the military was never even an option.

So, I have no basis on which to claim Tim O'Brien's novel The Things They Carried is realistic or not. That said, the discordant notes of sadness, courage, boredom, and surreal violence in these pages seem authentic. Perhaps this perception is more a testament to the skill of the author than to an accurate depiction of the realities of war. Yet, it is fair to say, because of the the author's pragmatic conception of Truth and personal experience(he served as a foot soldier in Vietnam), this book depicts his reality of the war.

O'Brien expresses a belief in fiction's ability to tell a true story through invention and imagination. Like an impressionist painter, he is striving to capture what he felt, what he lived, through his work. This communication of personal impression is more important than a fidelity to the facts. I think there is validity to this concept; the experiences that effect us most can rarely be captured through a simple description of events. My first accident was far more than a fender-bender, my first kiss was far scarier than any objective lens could capture.

O'Brien uses various methods to show the reader that his experience in Vietnam is always changing. Throughout the work a few stories get told over and over. Each time the details change, sometimes in incompatible ways. It is as if the Vietnam war is trying to find itself, arrive at a definite statement of what actually happened. In the end, however, we are left with a history in flux, with political and personal forces continuing to try and arrange it in a way that makes sense to their needs. The author concludes his own attempt at understanding with the phrase "There it is" and a silent high-five into a rural Vietnamese river where his good friend died. In the end, there was no moral to the story, no meaning to it all. Kurt Vonnegut uses a parallel phrase in his Vietnam classic Slaughterhouse Five: "And so it goes".

What struck me as a non-combatant so much about this book was its relevance to my life. O'Brien touches on this as well. He writes that war and its proximity to death provides us with a vivid glimpse into our Lives--our vibrant, real lives, which are as elusive as war in being understood or defined.

Amsterdam

I rarely read fiction. That said, when I consider my all-time favorite books, many of them are fiction. There is something about this genre that has the potential to make a big impact on me. Amsterdam, by Ian McEwan, does not make that list, but it was pretty good.

McEwan's story is largely character development. The plot, although intriguing, serves primarily to shape his characters. The setting is modern London and centers on upper-class writers and artists. And while I could not relate to the lifestyle of the characters, I enjoyed exploring their complex and darkly humorous minds.

I would consider Amsterdam to be literature and not general fiction. I suppose I make that distinction when the author is attempting to do more than entertain. The idea of reading as mindless entertainment--you know, the small paperback books with obnoxious covers--actually seems bizarre to me. Why not watch a movie and save yourself the trouble?