How to Review a Book

The ruminations, or perhaps more properly speaking the grousing, below was prompted by a book review.  It was not a good book review; indeed, it was a really lousy book review.  And it was the poor quality of the review itself that caused me to start wondering why some people just don’t seem to understand the idea of the book review.

The book:  Scorpions by Noah Feldman.  I reviewed this book a few months back here on this blog, and so let me hasten to say that the blog review is not an example of a good book review—for one thing, the blog format is too informal for a proper book review.  But, the general direction of that blog review is the right general direction.  And therein lies the tale.

The review which prompted my grumbling:  Joseph Tartakovsky’s review in National Review.

Now, let me also note at the outset; I liked Scorpions.  A lot.  Tartakovsky did not.  That isn’t a problem at all; I often learn much about a book from a reviewer who has a different opinion than I do.  The problem is that Tartakovsky didn’t really review the book at all.  Indeed, if the first time I had heard of this book had been Tartakovsky’s review, then I would have completely dismissed the book as puerile drivel, never picked it up, and thereby missed out on reading a rather interesting book.  That is a problem; a good review should not make someone want to skip a book which would make one think.

Where did Tartakovsky go wrong?  Many, many places, and the discussion of them is illustrative of the problem with a great many book reviews.  The book is a discussion of how four of FDRs Supreme Court nominees had a long-lasting effect on the Court.  Feldman introduces each of these people with a biographical chapter, which helps set the scene for what comes after.  Tartakovsky devotes nearly a quarter of the space in his review to four one-paragraph summaries of these background biographies.  Now in a 528 page book, the background biographies are not intrusive.  But is a short book review?  It’s odd.  And the reason it is odd is that the book review does not need these biographical sketches; the reader learns nothing about the book, the argument of the book or an evaluation of that argument by reading four paragraphs of background material.  So, why did Tartakovsky include all these biographical details?  Hard to say. I suspect it is because it is easy to write such material; you don’t have to think about a book as much if you spend a quarter of your allotted space on superficial detail.

Then when you turn to the review itself, Tartakovsky makes another elementary error.  He complains that Feldman elevates the role of these Justices too much in the book.  Tartakovsky argues that other people also had important roles to play.  You think?  We have here a book which seeks to explore the importance of four people; Tartakovsky complains that this elevates the role of these four people.  In other words, the complaint here is that the author didn’t write a different book.  Of course a book about four people elevates the role of those four people; that is the thesis of the book after all.  One can argue that Feldman was wrong, that these four men were not really all that important, but to do so requires more than simply saying there are other people in the world.

Then Tartakovsky goes on to complain that Feldman “undermines” his tale that there was a clash of legal theories on the court by looking at the psychological and political motivations of the justices.  That, again, was the whole point of the book.  

And then, finally, Tartakovsky complains that the book isn't written with enough literary flair.

So by the end of the review, what have we learned about the book or the argument of the book?  Almost nothing.  What have we learned about the merits of the argument underlying the book.  Nothing again.  If we put Tartakovsky on a stage with Feldman, would we learn anything from Tartakovsky’s interaction with Feldman’s book?  Not at all.

Now the point here is not to elevate Tartakovsky to the role of a particularly bad book reviewer.  He isn’t.  I read reviews exactly like this all the time.  And they annoy me.  National Review is particularly prone to sloppy book reviews—the books tend to be reviewed on the basis of how closely they hew to the conservative line.  So, Scorpions was doomed in a National Review book review because it is, after all, about FDR Justices, we know FDR was bad, Feldman doesn’t seem to think everything FDR did was bad, ergo this book must be bad.  (Remind me again why I subscribe to National Review.) 

So, how do you write a proper book review?  Oddly, it isn't really all that complicated.  The review is an essay.  It should read like an essay.  The book is the subject of the essay.  The reader should be told exactly enough about the book to evaluate the argument of the book and no more than that.  The author should evaluate the central argument of the book.  Interesting asides either from the book or from the author’s reading of the book can be added for flavor, but not if they detract from the evaluation itself.  By the end of the review, a reader should a) know what the book argued, b) know whether the book is worth reading, and c) have learned something about the idea being discussed in the book.  Following that advice, even a bad book can prompt a good book review. 

So, why don’t we see more good book reviews?  I suspect there are two parts to the problem. First, there really aren’t enough people who are capable of writing excellent book reviews.  Writing an excellent review is hard; it means reading a book well (which few people know how to do), thinking about it seriously (which takes time), and in the end having something interesting to say about the book (which cannot be guaranteed when one starts reading book).  The second problem is time; book reviews are often commissioned in a hurry. A good book review takes time.  But, the whole point of a book review is to review books which were recently published.  So, not enough good reviewers coupled with not enough time leads to lots of sloppy book reviews.  Which is too bad, because I really enjoy good book reviews.

Finnegans Wake

1. Last night I saw a production of Willy Wonka Junior, a play based on the movie (the Gene Wilder version) based on the book by Roald Dahl.  Lily and Clara were acting in said play.  Lily and Clara Stole the Show--every time they were on stage (or more technically, near the stage—surprisingly little of this production took place on the stage—the director seems to prefer having actors stand on the steps or the floor in front of the stage), the production Sparkled and was Glorious. Other than that, it was exactly what one would expect from a Community Theater production in which all the actors are under the age of 18 (well, except the Director also gave himself a role--and there was one odd adult in a minor role for no apparent reason).

2.  The moral of the play based on the movie based on the book?  I have been puzzling this over since the production ended last night and have finally realized what this story is meant to teach:
If you are a very nice young boy, then, if you are fortunate, a disturbing man with an unhealthy obsession with young children and small people from foreign lands will take an interest in you.

3. In related news, Emma and I watched Pulp Fiction earlier in the week. So, here is the question: which is more disturbing--Charlie and the Chocolate Factory or Pulp Fiction?  And why is one considered Children's literature?

4. I'd seen Pulp Fiction before.  Indeed, I have seen almost all the Tarantino films. (I haven’t seen his homage to schlock 1970s horror flicks—not interested.)  Tarantino is an interesting producer/director/writer.  At his best, he is devastatingly funny.  There are moments in his movies which are as witty as anything ever filmed.  He has quite the obsession with violence, and that too is often incredibly well done.  But, what connects the brilliant dialogue and artful violence is often surprisingly tedious.  When an actor isn’t engaged in witty repartee or dismembering someone, it is almost as if Tarantino doesn’t quite know what to do with him.  Case in point:  there is a scene in Pulp Fiction in which the Bruce Willis character rides in a cab and talks to the driver.  The scene is pretty dull and pointless.  It is, a quick Goggle search reveals, an homage to some obscure film that Tarantino  liked.  So, cute—if you saw that earlier movie (and you probably didn’t) then you can think—Hey!  I know where this is from.  But, so what?  The scene is still boring.  Tarantino has too many parts like this in his movies.  Indeed, Jackie Brown was almost entirely dull moments like that.  His most complete movie is, oddly enough, Kill Bill—which may well be the most violent movie ever—and which oddly doesn’t have any of the lengthy witty dialogue as seen in Pulp Fiction or Reservoir Dogs.  (Word of warning to the squeamish—Kill Bill is seriously violent.)  (Word of advice to the non-squeamish—it is a seriously good movie (or, technically, pair of movies).)  Tarantino reminds me a bit of Victor Hugo—brilliant, but seriously in need of an editor who will ask, “Is this part really necessary?”

5.  Janet hated Pulp Fiction.  She has no interest in seeing another Tarantino movie.

6. Yesterday was St. Patrick’s Day.  I didn’t wear orange.  I always want to wear orange on St. Patrick’s Day, but I don’t own an orange shirt.  (Or pants or socks or shoes or a hat or a scarf or a jacket for that matter.)  (And I can't justify keeping an orange shirt in my closet just so I can wear it once a year as some sort of vague protest against the assumption that all Irish are Roman Catholic.  Well, that and Janet gets seriously upset with me every time I mention wanting to wear orange on St. Patrick's Day; I hate to think what she would do if I ever actually did wear orange.)  I did listen to Flogging Molly, though.  Amazon has a Dropkick Murphys album as one of their $5 albums in March.  I have two Flogging Molly albums, and I cannot figure out if that is enough Irish Rock or if I should drop $5 to increase my collection of that genre by 50%.

7.  Here is a Flogging Molly link.  Cleverly edited.

8. And the link has Johnny Depp in it, which means this blog post is now officially circular.

The Worst Idea Ever

At long last Spring Break is here.  Not surprisingly, my life revolves around the academic calendar.  What is curious to me is that there are three times during the year when work becomes ridiculously time-intensive--the first two are the ends of Fall and Spring semesters (and Spring semester is the busier one).  The other time is right before Spring Break.  Spring Break is such a big break in the schedule that lots of work needs to get done right before the break.  Most of the time, I can easily put something off for another few days (I am quite adept at the whole procrastination-thing (but don't tell my kids--I am trying to convince them that procrastination is a really bad habit)), but my procrastination hits a wall right before Spring Break, so suddenly all sorts of things need to get done.  Spring Break is nice, though--I make a long list of all the things I really need to get done over the break and then proceed to put off most of them until the following week.  But, hope springs eternal--and it is a good feeling to at least imagine that maybe I'll get those midterms graded before next Tuesday.

But, talking about my schedule is not the real point of this post.  (What do you mean there is never a real point to any post??)  I hate Daylight Savings Time.  It has become one of the most absurd things in the year.  Consider.  We now spend only about one-third of the year on regular time.  So why not simply move the time zones over one?  This whole "We don't want the kids getting on the bus in the dark" nonsense is no excuse.  After all, in the winter, they do get on the bus in the dark.  It's dark in winter.  The days are short.  The whole "Daylight Savings Time extends the length of the day in summer" line is even more absurd.  Days are longer in summer.  And, if we switch the time zones over by one, then the summer won't be affected,.  It would be the winter which would be affected.  And, it won't be any darker or lighter in winter if we move the time zones and get rid of DST.  So, what are those benefits of Daylight Savings Time again?  And even if you want to pretend there is a benefit, how in the world does anyone think said incredibly small and probably utterly absurd benefit is larger than the manifestly obvious cost of competely disrupting sleep patterns?  I am tired again today.  It will be two or three more days before I adjust to going to bed an hour earlier and getting up an hour earlier than I am used to doing so.  While I can mentally say, "For some stupid reason, humans have decided it would be fun to pretend that it is now an hour later," the rest of my biological being, not being in tune with such irrationality is wondering, "Why are you trying to go to bed an hour earlier, and even more importantly, why are you getting up so early?"

I suspect the Decline of Western Civilization dates from the adoption of Daylight Savings Time.  After all, it is nothing more than an act destroying the benefits of sleep in the quest of proving that we humans are so smart we can control time.  The rest of the universe goes on merrily without daylight savings time, but we humans, we brilliant humans, have to show our mastery over everything including Time itself.  But, as much as I am a proponent of the whole "Humans are the Best" philosophy--seriously, Humans are the Best--Humans do not have the ability to overrule Time.  And, the biological part of me really, really would rather have a decent night's sleep than feel some pathetic thrill by trying to show Time who is Boss.

The State of First Things, March 2011

Next in a continuing series.

A. Must Read Articles

1) McClay, “Whig History at Eighty”

An excellent discussion of Butterfield’s The Whig Interpretation of History.  “Whig history’” is now a term of disdain, indicating someone who sees history as simply a gradual march of progress leading to that best of all possible worlds, the modern world.  When you see history as a fight between the Progressive, Enlightened Souls who argued that the world should look like it does today and the Enemy who fought against the Progressive Enlightened types, you are a Whig Historian.  (And you don’t want to be that.)   Butterfield argued that historians should spend time looking at everyone, not just the winners.  McClay does a fantastic job showing that a) Butterfield helped end a really bad practice among historians, but also, b) inadvertently helped fuel the nihilistic, postmodern history we see today.  Butterfield would be appalled at modern history too.  Butterfield didn’t like Whig histories for their imposition of modern beliefs onto the past, because they put the historian in the place of God, evaluating everything according to the historian’s beliefs with an underlying presumption that the historian’s beliefs are the right beliefs.  But, modern history has gone to the other side, abandoning belief altogether (well at least in historians’ official statements—actual practice varies).  Butterfield wouldn't have liked that either—he wanted historians to look beyond the winners because God looks beyond the winners.  As McClay put it, Butterfield is saying that historians should “aspire to have the mind of God rather than merely discern God’s intentions.”  That is, to put it mildly, both presumptuous and a bit beyond human capability.  So, in the question McClay doesn’t answer:  Is it better to be an old-style Whig historian or a new-style nihilistic historian?  Surely McClay would argue for a third path, but if forced to choose, which is better?  And which would Butterfield choose?  Given that choice, I think the Whig historians aren’t too bad.

2) Hart, “Whooshing Through Life”

A review of Dreyfus and Kelly’s  All Things Shining: Reading the Western Classics to Find Meaning in a Secular Age. With a title like that, I probably would have eventually read the book being reviewed.  Hart has done an invaluable service by saving me from that fate.  The quick review: “An oddly empty book: It asks so many seemingly deep questions, and then provides such incandescently shallow answers.”  The Western Classics Dreyfus and Kelly have in minds are Homer’s epics.  And the thing we can learn from Homer:  he had lots and lots of gods.  Since we, in the modern world, have moved beyond monotheism, we can look back to Homer to learn how to live in a world without one God.  We can live in a world with lots of gods, well, expect that we don’t believe in the gods of Homer either.  So, we can live in a world where we have beliefs in lots of gods without actually believing in gods.  How does this work?  Well, for example, Homer’s heroes feel gratitude toward lots of different gods.  So, we can feel grateful to lots of different gods, but since there isn’t actually a set of gods to whom we can feel grateful, we get a Homerian gratitude without the gods.  And as long as you don’t think about that too much, maybe it will sound like an excellent idea.  We can all be grateful and that is good, right?  Just ignore the fact that gratitude necessarily requires both a subject and an object and we are all good.  Hart’s review is nice because it illustrates another aspect of the problem with the modern world—having rejected God and gods, people still want to believe in something, anything—so why not a polytheistic world without the theist part?

B) Worth Reading Once

1) Meilaender, “The Business of Medicine”

A review of Elliott, White Coat, Black Hat; Adventures on the Dark Side of Medicine.  Meilaender’s review does little to convince me that Elliott’s book isn’t sensationalist.  But, I did learn something really interesting.  Drug companies need people on whom to test drugs—and there has arisen a set of what can only be called professional drug testers, people who repeatedly offer themselves for drug testing.  Who knew?  Now, I have a new career to suggest to students who despair about never being able to find a job; I can’t wait to casually say, “Well, you could become a professional drug tester.”  That will have even better shock value that saying, “McDonalds is hiring.”  [And, by the way, the McDonalds line has forced many a student over the years to realize that her employment prospects aren’t really as bleak as she imagined—after all, no Mount Holyoke Student needs to descend to the depths of the McDonalds’ kitchen for employment.]

2) George, “Reading the Bible With the Reformers”

The parts of this article that were good were not really all that insightful; if I had never once thought about reading the Bible with attention to church history, then the article may have been more interesting.  But, the thing that elevates George’s article to the status of being worth reading once is the incredibly bizarre part of the article.  George isn’t satisfied with showing that the Reformers had a more nuanced view of Scripture than the anti-intellectual parts of 20^th century protestants.  Instead, he wants to wrap the Reformers up in the postmodern movement—you see, those postmoderns also reject those anti-intellectual 20th century interpretations.  So Luther and Calvin, well, they are just like those postmodern scholars.  Pity the poor postmodern theologians—not only is their project intellectually bankrupt, but in a desperate attempt to give some respectability to their views, now they have to claim that Luther and Calvin are really just like them.  Calvin the postmodern scholar?  Now that is humor.

3) Oakes, “Newman’s Ideal University”

A nice enough article, I suppose.  It isn’t clear what it adds if you have read Newman, but it is a nice summary of Newman, and since Newman is interesting, the article was worth reading.

4) Howard, “The Dialectic and the Double Helix”

See the previous item; replace “Newman” with “the relationship of Church and State in European and American Politics.” 

Two additional notes:

1) At last!  This issue acknowledges the editorial changes at First Things.

2) My subscription ran out with this issue.  But, since Reno has not yet taken the helm, I still have no idea what he will do with it.  Curiosity is a powerful motive.  So, I renewed for another year.  May this not be the triumph of Hope over Experience.

Harmonices Mundi

The always interesting Eric Felten had an essay in Friday's Wall Street Journal that has had me thinking all weekend.  (The essay is here, but I am not sure if non-subscribers can read it.)  [And, I am serious that Felten is always interesting--I cannot remember the last time I thought an essay or book review he wrote wasn't good--indeed, I can't remember ever thinking that about something he wrote.  Curiously, he is also a musician, but I have never bought any of his music.  If someone is a great writer, will I also enjoy his music?]

But, to return to the point, the essay argues that the single will save the music industry.  With the rise of digital music, the single has made a comeback.  Now people can buy a single song as easily as a whole album.  So the days of having to pay $15 for a CD because you like one or two songs on it are over.  This will be the end of the bloated album--you know those albums with 2 songs and endless filler which really should never have been recorded.  Felten notes that once upon a time, singles ruled the music industry--all the old crooners made singles--Frank (Don't ask Frank Who?  There is only one Frank), for example, used to put out a new single every few months, in addition to the concept albums he pioneered.  Even in the early days of Rock, the single was king--the best Rolling Stones album to buy is the boxed collection of their singles from the 60s and early 70s--much better than any album they put out during those years.  But, sometime in the 70s or 80s the LP became king, and by the CD age, the album was everything.

But now the single is back.

And, it occurred to me after reading Felten's article, that it isn't just the ability to buy a single that is changing things.  The ability to listen to singles has improved dramatically.  In the old days of record players, I still liked albums better--you could put on a stack of 5 albums and not have to flip the records for an hour and a half.  But, if you put on 5 singles, you had to change the music every 15 minutes.  Now suddenly, on an iPod, you can throw the singles into a playlist of whatever length you want and play them either in some desired order or randomly.  You can, in effect, create whatever album you want at any time.  And the album you just created isn't fixed once for all.  Modify it at will.  Now the young'ins have no appreciation at all of how revolutionary this ability is--indeed, right now any young'in reading this (a small set to be sure) is thinking, "This is what happens when old people start talking about the modern age--welcome to the 21st century...".  But, I, still stuck in my Album-oriented days, never really thought about how stunning this change actually is--even though I have taken advantage of it, I never really thought about it.  And the aforementioned young'in has never really realized how much of the way music is packaged is driven by the way music used to be--why, dear youngster, do you put whole albums on your iPod when you know a bunch of the songs on the album aren't as good as the ones you like?  And why do you have to wait for an "album" to be released, anyway--why doesn't Ke$ha release a new single every three months?  And what does it mean to say she has released four hit singles from the album--if the album is already available in digital format, how do you release a single from it?

This will, over time, cause a huge change in the music industry, which we are only beginning to see.  It won't be much longer before the idea of an album is dead.  Some bands will produce individual songs and sell them.  Then other bands will make concept albums.  But there won't be anything in between.  Either an album is a collection of related songs or you are really just buying a preset group of singles--and there is no reason to buy a preset group of singles unless a) all the songs are good and b) the cost of buying the bundle is less than the cost of buying each song individually (which means, incidentally, that the cost of albums will come crashing down--you can probably price a non-concept album for the cost of roughly 3 songs--price it much more than that, people are just going to buy the three songs they really like).  In other words, sooner or later, the Amazon $5 album will be the norm.

That is unless the music subscription service gets here first.  Right now, in the USA, the music industry is blocking the equivalent of a Netflix-like service which allows you to listen to any song at any time over your wireless connection.  That too may change someday.  And if it does, then we will all just be listening to the music stored in the Cloud. (Which oddly sounds like something Kepler wrote about.)

[Incidentally, I am writing this while listening to Pandora Radio (the Robert Plant station--highly recommended (I love the pretense that you are creating your own radio station at Pandora (someone at Pandora was clever--who doesn't dream of creating a radio station?))) which is as close as you can come to the World-To-Be.]

On Evil Empires

In the 1980s, Ronald Reagan announced a plan to defeat the Soviet Union and the threat of communism.  He was confident that Western values of freedom would beat Soviet repression; he was confident that people living in countries ruled by tyrants wanted to be free.  See here and here and here.  He was widely ridiculed at the time.  Within four years of the time he left office, the Communist Empire collapsed.  He was right.

Twenty years later, George W. Bush announced a plan to defeat Islamic Terrorists.  He was confident that Western values of freedom would beat Islamic repression; he was confident that people living in countries ruled by tyrants wanted to be free.  So confident, in fact, that he led a fight for 8 years in Afghanistan and Iraq.  He was widely ridiculed at the time  Within four years of the time he left office...Tunisia, Egypt, Libya...and counting.  Do we have to say that Bush was right?

Oh, and by the way, Reagan was Bush's forerunner in the battle against Islamic terrorists.  See here (in 1986, Reagan notes that a certain Libyan strongman needs to go--who knew?) or here.

Unfortunately, it's not all triumphant in the news.  As dictators fall across the region, it matter a great deal who comes out on top afterwards.  See Iran, 1979.  So, where oh where is the US in helping the right people attain power?  Why exactly did the US government seem to be more interested in removing the leader of Egypt than the leader of Libya?  Where is the US as Libyans are being murdered by their own ruler?  Is it really all that complicated to destroy the airfields in Libya from which helicopters are being sent out to gun down the people and mercenaries from other countries are being flown in to aid in the killing?

Buzzards Gotta Eat

Another Day, Another Book about financial crises.

It's shaping up to be a rather repetitive semester for reading.  Between my two classes, I have assigned 9 books which relate in some way to financial crises.  My tutorial is reading War and Peace, but it will be the end of the semester before we finish that one.  And, between the reading for my classes, and the other assorted obligations which life imposes, my other reading has been coming in bits and pieces.  And so, unless I take up reviewing short stories or some such thing, it will be all financial crisis all the time here for a bit. 

Fortunately, financial crises are really interesting.

Today's entry:  Roger Lowenstein, The End of Wall Street.
The alert reader will notice this is the second Lowenstein book this semester---he also wrote the book on Long-Term Capital Management (When Genius Failed) previously reviewed in this space.  When Genius Failed  is a classic.  The proposal for this book writes itself, "After Lowenstein's smashing success in writing a book about a previous fiancail crisis, Lowenstein's book about the Financial Crisis of 2007-2008 is a sure-fire, can't miss."  It missed.

Don't get me wrong.  The book is OK.  I has some decent anecdotes in it, and it does tell the story.  Perhaps the problem is that it is really not good at all compared to Sorkin's Too Big to Fail.  Without Sorkin's book, this one might seem better.  But, all in all, it just isn't that good.  And the problem is interesting.  In When Genius Failed, it seemed like Lowenstein talked to everyone--the book read like an authoritative account.  Surely, there are some details here and there which Lowenstein did not know, but it is hard to imagine that there is much we will ever discover about LTCM which isn't in Lowenstein's book.  the End of Wall Street tries to emulate that feeling of an authoritative account, but this crisis is too big for a 300 page book to have everything.  And so, the book skips lightly across the crisis.  Ultimately, the timeline is all there, and if you knew nothing about what happened, at least this book has the story from beginning to end.  But, there isn't much that is really interesting to someone who knows about the timeline.  And, if you want to just read one book about the crisis, Sorkin's is vastly better. 

[My favorite anecdote from this book doubles as a Rorschach test.  When everything was melting down, Pandit, CEO of Citigroup went out to dinner, and wanting a good glass of wine, ordered a bottle of wine which cost $350, and drank just one glass.  Lowenstein presents this as an example of outrageous "excessive indulgence."  I couldn't see the problem--if Pandit wants to spend $350 for a glass of wine, what difference does it make to me?  I told Janet the story.  She, like Lowenstein, thought it was outrageous.]

It will be interesting to see what my students who have not read Sorkin think about the book.  I get the impression that while they enjoyed When Genius Failed, it is taking a long time for them to force their way through this book.

And in a serendipitous note:  last night Emma and I watched The Outlaw Josey Wales.  That movie is just like The End of Wall Street.  If one had never seen a Clint Eastwood western, it might have been a good movie.  But, if you have seen his other westerns, this one is just OK.  A few good parts, Eastwood is Eastwood, and Dan George (or as he is listed in the credits Chief Dan George) was fantastic, but on the whole, neither Emma nor I  was really all that impressed with the movie.  If you want to watch an Eastwood western, try A Fistful of Dollars or The Good, The Bad and the Ugly or Unforgiven.

It was the best of times...

1) Last week, I got a smartphone.  An HTC Evo Shift, to be precise.  I have now joined the 21st century.  Technological Advance is a wonderful and beautiful thing.

2) Last night, the hard drive on our computer at home decided to start dying.  The computer is no longer usable.  I am hoping that with several more hours of work I can rescue the assorted files which are not currently saved anywhere else.  Forget what I said about Technological Advance in item #1.

Hot Stock Tip

Buy now--you can't lose.  Well, except if you do.  But, then I'll have another deal for you.

I get asked for stock tips all the time.  My advice: read Burton Malkiel's A Random Walk Down Wall Street.  Said book demonstrates what economists think:  you can't predict the stock market.  Nobody can predict the stock market.  So, don't even try.  Buy a diversified portfolio and wait.  It's boring, but you can't do any better.

"Ah," but the skeptic says, "you can do better.  I know someone who did better.  So it is possible.  So, really, what is the way to do better?  I know you know.  And now you know I know you know.  So, you might as well tell me."

OK.  Here it is: the secret to making a fortune.

Get a really large mailing list.  Write to everyone on the mailing list explaining that you have a great method for predicting short term movements in stocks.  Explain that you know the reader is skeptical, so you will demonstrate the method.  Pick a stock--any stock, it makes no difference.  To half the list, write that your secret method predicts the stock will rise in the next month.  To the other half, say that the stock will fall in the next month.  Wait one month.  The stock either went up or down.  So drop the half of the list that got the wrong prediction.  Write to the half that got the right prediction and say, "See, I was right.  But, you are surely thinking that maybe I was just lucky.  So, to show you that it works, I'll give you another prediction."  Pick another stock--again it doesn't matter which.  To half of your new list, write that the stock will go up, to the other half that it will go down.  Wait one month.  Repeat process.  After 4 months, you are down to 1/16 of your original list.  Write them.  Say, "See my method works.  I have been right for 4 consecutive months.  Sign up with me and I will give you my expert advice.  My fee is $X.  [Make X as large as you want.]"  Collect money from the Fools who send it to you.  Laugh the whole time on your vacation in the Bahamas.

Interestingly, this is akin the process used by stock predictors as a group.  You usually never hear from the ones who were wrong.  You only hear from the ones who are right--or at least the ones who can convince you that they were right (curiously, in the real world, being wrong doesn't always matter; some people can convince others they were right even when they were not.)  But in a large enough world (like the one in which you live) there will always be people who have been right for several time periods in a row.  That doesn't mean they knew more. If some people predict rising prices and some predict falling prices, somebody has to be right.  Even if it is random.

And, that is the great thing--it is random. Stocks drift up over time as the economy gets more productive.  But there is no way to know in advance which stocks will rise faster than trend and which will rise slower than trend over short periods of time. 

Malkiel has been updating this book for decades.  The message never changes.  The evidence never changes.  It is a random walk down Wall Street.

I assigned this book to a class this semester--I've never assigned it before.  I am curious to find out if the students believe the argument or not.

And, by the way, if after reading all of the above, you want my Super-Duper Secret Stock Tip, I'll tell you for $100.

Bowties are Cool

I recently finished watching the first Matt Smith season of Doctor Who.  I am not at all sure how Doctor Who has been able to remain so consistently good.  Seriously--how does it do it?  It's been five seasons since the reboot, and all five have been great.  And that is three different actors playing the Doctor.  Not many shows can make it for 5 really good season.  And the ones that do are all heaped with critical praise--yet Doctor Who still lingers almost exclusively in the Geek Cave.

As with all new doctors, it took several episodes before the show felt normal, but somewhere along the time the Weeping Angels showed up again, it was hard to remember a time before Matt Smith was The Doctor.  And, as an added bonus, this season has the best season-long story line since the franchise was rebooted--and what's even better, it sets up next season quite nicely.  Amy Pond is great, and Rory, well, he grew on me too.  But Matt Smith is excellent.

My kids still don't watch it with me.  Every time I was watching an episode and Emma wandered into the room, she just shook her head and said, "Oh, the cheesy 70's special effects show." Sigh.

Drink No Longer Water

In Vino Veritas doesn't even begin to capture the Truth according to Roger Scrunton's I Drink Therefore I Am: A Philosopher's Guide to Wine.  This is an odd book; I enjoyed reading it, but I have a hard time imagining recommending it to anyone.  The basic problem:  It is all over the place.  One part biographical reflections on Scrunton's life with wine, one part a tour of the world and wine, one part philosophy using wine as the hook on which to wander off onto all sort of topics, and one part an amusing guide to which wine to drink with which philosopher.

The big message of the book: Wine is Important, Really Important.  It is not simply something you drink.  It is not even an accompaniment to a meal.  It is Something Big.  For example:

"When we raise a glass of wine to our lips, therefore, we are savouring an ongoing process: the wine is a living thing, the last result of other living things, and the progenitor of life in us.  It is almost as though it were another human presence in any social gathering, as much a focus of interest and in the same way as the other people there.  This experience is enhanced by the aroma, taste and the simultaneous impact on nose and mouth, which--while not unique to wine--have, as I have argued, an intimate connection to the immediate intoxicating effect, so as to be themselves as intoxicating.  The whole being of the drinker rushes to the mouth and the olfactory organs to meet the tempting meniscus, just as the whole being of the lover rises to the lips in a kiss."

Or, to take another example:

"At some level, I venture to suggest, the experience of wine is a recuperation of the original cult whereby the land was settled and the city built.  And what we taste in the wine is not just the fruit and its ferment, but also the peculiar flavour of a landscape to which the gods have been invited and where they have found a home.  Nothing else that we eat or drink comes to us with such a halo of significance, and by refusing to drink it people send an important message--the message that they do not belong on this earth."

And you get the idea.  On the whole, Scrunton is very persuasive that I should drink a better class of wine.  However, I had a fundamental problem with the whole book--of all the alcoholic beverage categories, I think wine is my least favorite.  I like a good glass of wine with a formal dinner, and I can appreciate a glass of wine other times, but all in all, while I don't dislike wine, it isn't something I ever choose to drink.  I much prefer beer, gin, whisky, brandy, rum, tequila, and so on.  If faced with the choice of a half-dozen different alcoholic beverages, it would be a rare list where wine was at the top of my list of the one I would choose.  (I would, for example, choose even the worst wine over Southern Comfort--now that is a repulsive substance.  I would also prefer a really good wine to a really cheap beer, but it is hard to imagine the circumstances under which that is the choice.)  Now, my taste preferences are neither here nor there, one would think, but according to Scrunton, my taste preferences are a sign of a serious Moral Failing.  You see, the book is not the philosphers' guide to alcohol, but wine.  And Wine is not just any other alcoholic beverage, but a Class Unto Itself.  And if you don't appreciate Wine, then you are akin to the person who doesn't appreciate opera.  You are a barbarian.

[Unfortunately, my wife agrees with Scrunton here---wine is the only alcoholic beverage my wife really enjoys.  She'll drink a vodka and fruit juice concoction if there is no wine around, but given the choice, she would always have a glass of wine.  Always.]

But, this argument that wine is morally superior to other drinks is where I have a hard time following Scrunton.  I can buy that wine is good; I can buy that drinking wine can be a prelude to serious thinking.  But, I cannot buy that wine is fundamentally in a different category than beer or whisky--that one of those drinks is reflective of a deeper moral and spiritual order than the other two.

But, as soon as I convince myself of Scrunton's exaggerated claim for wine, he reminds us yet again that the Eucharist is bread and wine, not bread and beer.  Indeed, were a church to offer beer as a substitute for wine in the Eucharist, it would be outrageous.  (Though why the low protestant churches feel perfectly free to substitute sweet grape juice for wine is a thing I cannot understand.)  Maybe Wine really is important after all?  OK, I still don't think so, but "This is my blood" is a really hard argument to simply ignore.

 

Money for Nothing

Stop me if you have heard this before:  A giant financial crisis caused by speculative bets by financial wizards going bad all at once threatens to bring down the entire world economy until a combination of desperate measures and luck saves the world.  The year is:  1998.

1998: the financial crisis nobody noticed.  There is an excellent book about it too.  Indeed, it is one of the best books in the "Kiss and tell stories about Financial Firms gone bad" genre.  Roger Lowenstein's When Genius Failed is, as the subtitle says, the story of "The Rise and Fall of Long-Term Capital Management."  (Oddly, the subtitle is printed above the title on the cover--does that make it a supertitle?.)

The book is excellent at telling a gripping story (well, at least if you are the sort who finds the idea of people making and losing staggerings amounts of wealth to be gripping).  Lowenstein is great at the character sketch part of books like this--the people in the book, who could easily have been drawn as "Generic Wall Street Type" all end up seeming like different people.  And as for the hubris of these guys?  Truly Shakespearean hubris.  Oedipus-style hubris. 

The book is a bit weak on the details of the financial assets these guys were constructing--going light on the technical details helps make the book vastly more readable, but I assume it would be frustrating if you really wanted to understand what exactly these guys were doing.  Then again, figuring out things like that is why Google was invented, I suppose.

My favorite story line in the book was about the two Nobel Laureates who were part of LTCM.  (The fact that there were two, not one, but two Nobel winners on the LTCM board was one of the things about which LTCM liked to brag.)  Merton and Scholes were funny--classic academics who were suddenly wealthy, very wealthy.  And not only that, they were wealthy because they were so smart they figured out how to get really wealthy and then there were the Wall Street guys who did the sort of thing they said someone should do and it worked.  It really, really worked!  Well, until it didn't.

The moral of the story:  People always want a Get Rich Quick scheme.  And the funny thing is that people believe there is such a thing.  Sometimes people do get rich quickly.  Sometimes people win at roulette too. But, for some reason if someone tells people they have a scientific means of predicting the number which will turn up on a roulette wheel, everyone is skeptical, but if someone says the same thing about picking what will happen to financial assets, people believe them.  Why?  Why do people believe that those who make a fortune on Wall Street did so by superior knowledge rather than a combination of a) working really, really, long hours and b) being lucky.  And it is both parts of those that are interesting--those rich guys on Wall Street did not get that way by working 40 hours a week.  They work insane hours; they get called back from vacations and have to go to work right away.  They get calls in the middle of the night and have to go to work.  And it is stressful work--really stressful.  Most of them fail.  Some of them get fabulously wealthy.  But, it can all turn around in a a few weeks--and they all know it.  There is something impressive about the Wall Street types, but it is not that they have some secret insight and knowledge or some magic ability to make money grow on trees. 

So, the moral?  If you work really hard and you get really lucky, you can become worth billions.  But, you will probably fail.

I assigned this book in my Money and Banking class this semester--I suspect many of the students will learn a different lesson from it.  What will they learn?  "I can make a fortune by being really smart and not repeating the stupid mistakes those guys at LTCM made."

But. if you really want a Get Rich Quick Scheme:  Here is the best one about which I know. (Ah, the early years of MTV...)

The State of First Things, February 2011

Before getting to the review of this issue, a note about the Editorial changes.  There is still no mention in the magazine about any change in the editor--which is really quite surprising.  The web page did announce that R.R. Reno is taking over as the new editor.  Earlier, the web page also had a very brief note from the editors announcing that Joseph Bottum had left--it was the nice pro forma announcement that should have been issued months ago.  But, here is the odd part.  Joseph Bottum also sent out an e-mail, apparently to everyone in his e-mail folder (which is the only reason I would have received the letter), announcing that he had left First Things.  Both Bottum's e-mail and the editors said he left to pursue other projects--which is the normal thing to say.  But, the two statements had different dates on which Bottum left--the editors marked his departure a month earlier that Bottum said he left in his e-mail.  Why?  I have no idea.  And, honestly, I wouldn't even care if this whole thing hadn't been handled in such an utterly bizarre, secretive fashion.  How secretive has it been?  Well, here is an odd indicator.  I have a statcounter running on this blog, which keeps track of, among other things, what google searches people used to find this blog.  Since my post about the January issue in which I noted that Bottum had left, I have been getting  steady stream of visits to the site from people searching for such things as "Joseph Bottum fired" or "Joseph Bottum leaving First Things" and so on.  Now, this blog had absolutely no information about the matter, but if one was curious about the editorial change and googled anything looking for information about it, my blog post on it was one of the few things you would find.   That is really not a great state of affairs--this should have been handled better.  Someone with absolutely no inside information should not be the primary place people end up looking for information.  Piecing it all together, it looks like it was a really acrimonious split, and there was probably some sort of strange dual separation date--he might have been removed as editor but they kept paying him for another month--and I suspect that everyone agreed to not talk in public about it.  At some point in the not-too-distant future, I suspect some enterprising journalist will piece together the story--I hope the details aren't as embarrassing for First Things as all this secrecy makes them seem.

But, the editor change presents me with a serious problem.  My subscription has one more issue left.  Will Reno make the magazine better or worse?  Is it worth $40 to find out?

[Note added much later: my concluding comments on the Joseph Bottum/First Things split, can be found in the review of the June/July issue.]


And now for the review of the February 2011 issue:
A. Must Read Articles
1. Meilaender, "The Catholic I Am"
This is an essay nominally about why Meilaender has remained a Lutheran, but really about the ecumenical idea.  There are quite a few Protestants who feel a real tension in the unhealed break with Rome.  The church is universal, so why have all the denominations?  And, as Neuhaus once noted, if the church is going to become whole again, it will do so in the Roman Catholic church.  Yet, formal reconciliation doesn't seem possible.  It's hard enough to imagine reconciliation between the Lutheran Church and the Roman Catholic church, but imagining it between small nondenominational evangelical churches and Rome is really hard.  Meilaender makes a really interesting point in the midst of his discussion--Lutherans spend too much time trying to figure out what it means to be distinctively Lutheran.  Lots of protestant churches do that.  A small, non-denominational evangelical church constantly feels the need to explain its existence by explaining how it is unique.  But, why?  Why try to make oneself distinctive?  Why not simply say that the church is simply a part of the holy, catholic and apostolic church, that there is nothing distinctive about it at all, but that it is simply a faithful part of God's kingdom.  Such an answer is remarkable for its simplicity.  It approaches the ecumenical impulse from the other way around--instead of asking how the small church can be reconciled with Rome, it asserts that we already are united in the only way that really matters through Faith.

2. Wilken, "Culture and the Light of Faith"
Much of the essay is a restatement of how Athens and Jerusalem came together to create Western Civilization.  I know a fair amount about htis topic.  Yet, I still learned quite a few things in this article.  The details on Isidore were particularly fascinating.  In the 7th century, Isidore put together an encyclopedia--this is over a thousand years before the Enlightenment thinkers decided to do the same thing.  Isidore also put together a dictionary--again a thousand years before the Enlightenment.  The whole article is well done.

3. Hart, "A Philosopher in the Twilight"
Hart is rapidly becoming one of those authors who is always worth reading.  This article is about Heidegger.  It is popular philosophy of the best sort--in a few pages, Hart not only provides an excellent survey of Heidegger's thought, but he evaluates it as well.  Hart always strikes me as a fair critic--giving credit where credit is due, but never pulling his punches.  The central question in Heidegger is whether our very attempt to understand the world has destroyed our abilty to acutally see the world as it is.  By trying to make everything comprehensible we may be syetmatically destroying our ability to see things that are outside of our abilty to comprehend.  And, when you think about it, there is no reason to assume that the world is comprehensible.  Heidegger, in other words, ends up being another means by which Christian thoelogy is given philosphical standing--knowing the Truth may require fauth.  The "twilight" in Hart's title is Heidgger's ultimate conclusion--Western philosophy has led inevitably toward nihilism, the coming night is going to block out our ability to understand the world.

4. Robert Miller, Waiting for St. Vladimir"
I was torn about whether to put this article here or int the next section.  The problem: the article is really quite good, but I didn't learn all that much.  It does an excellent job systematically taking apart the silly economic arguments of Alasdair MacIntyre, whose economic views are like those of many other vulgar Marxists.  As such, it is the sort of thing that someone who wanted to know why vulgar Marxism lacks anything like intellectual rigor should read.  And it ends with a really nice observation that the vulgar Marxist argument that workers are exploited because they aren't given the value of what they produce implicitly assumes that people are entitled to own what they produce, which is, of course, the whole point of a capitalist economic system.

B. Flawed, but worth Reading
1. Weigel, "The End of the Bernadin Era"
An overview of the American Catholic Church in recent decades--I found it mildly interesting.  It reminded me, though, of one of the reasons I am a Protestant (which was useful coming right before Meilaender's article)--I have absolutely no problem saying that sometimes church leaders are horribly wrong (they are flawed, sinful human beings after all).  And I have absolutely no internal tension in believing that if the Roman Catholic Hierarchy wanders from the Truth, that faithful Christians need not follow them.


After last month's issue I had just about given up hope for the magazine.  Now, this issue comes along, and reminds me why I liked First Things.  This was an issue well worth reading.  ( A few inane articles (How I became a Catholic through Yoga?  Please.), but not too many. And, I really want to like Armond White's movie reviews, but so far they aim to be so pretentious they end up a vague mush.)  Of course, this issue was put together by the interim editor, so who knows how it relates to the future.

Let it Snow

For the first time in my life, when I heard the news earlier in the week that another storm was heading our way, I sighed with dismay.  I just spent the morning removing snow and ice--again.  That makes 5 days in a row in which I have spent between 2 and 8 hours removing snow from our roof and things that used to be walkways.  I have been shovelling snow, chipping ice, melting ice, standing on ladders perched on top of mounds of ice, standing on ice-covered roofs, knocking out ice dams, putting buckets under leaky roofs where ice dams have formed, pulling out drenched insulation, wading through snow in drenched and frozen clothing, and generally been thinking that snow just isn't as much fun as it used to be. There is more snow on the way this evening. 

Too much.

Book of Wisdom

Today's review is of an underappreciated, little-known Classic work of literature, which should be owned and cherished by all people, who, by owning it, would be able to Lift the Spirits of one and all by regularly reading said Tome, the general effect of such reading being the Development of a Proper Perspective on life.  Said book, moreover, begins to solve the question left unanswered in the preceding post:  Should one be an optimist or a pessimist?  Imagine that human nature was malleable.  Would it be better to create a pessimistic or optimistic outlook on life?  The pessimistic outlook has the Virtue of being Accurate, but the Optimistic outlook has the Virtue of inducing a general sense of happiness (well, until the inevitable disappointment comes, says the pessimist (which need not come, says the optimist (but it will, says the pessimist))).

The book in question has brought a cheerful end to many of my most miserable days.  Not long ago, having had one such day, I pulled out said volume, read it, and was instantly reminded that there was no need to be so miserable.  It works every time.

Now one would think that a masterpiece guaranteed to end the feeling of Woe which overcomes one after a most unfortunate event would be more widely known and appreciated.  Indeed, one would assume that every reader of these words is now thinking of this exact book.  But, for reasons I cannot understand, the book is not as widely known and loved as I would think.  It has won far too few literary awards and has never been included on a list of the Best Books of All Time or even the Best books of the 20th century or even the Best books of the 1970s or even, sad to say, the Best Books of 1972. It did win, according to Wikipedia (that font of all knowledge) a few awards of which I have never heard.  It did not win the Nobel Prize for Literature--nor did it win the Noble Prize for Peace, which if the book were better known, it undoubtedly would have won.

And, so, I would like to take this opportunity to offer high praise to this marvelous book, to recommend that all Right-thinking People acquire a copy and keep it handy for Days which induce feelings other than bliss.

The book:

Judith Viorst, Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

In this book, we read about Alexander's day and we realize two things:
1) My day wasn't that bad
2) Sometimes, days are just bad, and so you might as well just go to bed.

Never has so much wisdom been packed into so few pages.

Toccata

I've never quite known if I should describe myself as an optimist or a pessimist.  I think the world is falling apart, think the aggregate level of human intelligence is falling (while the population is rising), think that just about all art forms are in irreparable decline, and think that while in the short term Western Civilization will Reign Supreme, it is in the process of committing suicide.  But, I am generally cheerful, think things will be OK, don't dwell on the negatives, and don't worry much.  I tend to laugh at the comedy of human existence.  Does this make me an optimist or a pessimist?

In part to sort out this less-than-earth-shattering question, I read John Derbyshire's We Are Doomed: Reclaiming Conservative Pessimism.

Derbyshire reliably writes moderately to rather interesting material, and this book is no exception.  (He is one of the few bright spots in National Review--sigh, I just got the latest issue of National Review--how I long for the days when I looked forward to the next issue of National Review.  I haven't even looked through it to see what is in it.)  This book was moderately amusing.  Derbyshire is tired of those happy conservatives--the ones who think that if only the world just became more conservative, things would all work out. (Yeah, he's looking at you George and Sarah.)  He's tired of all those conservatives who think that things are getting better.  They are not.  Derbyshire argues in area after area that things are getting worse.  Much worse.  And there is nothing we can do about it.  They are just going to keep getting worse and worse and worse.  Politics?  Education?  Diversity?  Immigration?   War?  The Economy?  Human Nature?  Culture?  Yep.  All getting worse. And worse. As I said, the book is somewhat amusing for one who likes to laugh at life.  And the joke here is not just on the culture, but also that Derbyshire is so unrelentingly gloomy.  Even the author picture on the back cover is a picture of him scowling.

And here is the funniest part.  In one part of the book, Derbyshire is actually optimistic.  He thinks he is being pessimistic, but he isn't.  The joke is on him.

The subject?  Religion.  Derbyshire can't stand religious conservatives; he is really really annoyed with the Creationists.  And so he has a whole section devoted to showing how Religion is getting worse, that people are becoming less religious, that the new atheists are getting more persuasive and that the whole religious enterprise is going to smash on the hard facts of science.  He writes as if this is yet another side of decline--after all religious faith is declining.  But, and here is the funny part, Derbyshire is obviously pleased about the end of religion.  So, while he writes as if he is arguing that things are getting worse, the fact that in this case he wants to see the forces of Religion lose means that he actually thinks things are getting better.  Derbyshire is an optimist!  And he doesn't even know it!

You want to know how bad things are getting?  Even a thoughtful conservative who wrote a whole book to explain about how bad things are getting sees reason to be optimistic about the future. 

So, you make the call:  Is this a reason for optimism or pessimism?

You are keen, my lord, you are keen

You know the problem of sequels--movie does big business, so they make a sequel even if there is no hope that the sequel will mimic the success of the original.  Well, I recently read--or, more accurately, glanced through--one of the book equivalents.

Hill and Ottchen, Shakespeare and the Art of Verbal Seduction

The authors had an earlier book which collected all of Shakespeare's insults.  That is a funny idea--I had heard of that book, but I have never actually seen it.  And, truth be told, I can't imagine ever hunting it down to see it.  But even still, it is a funny idea.  That book did moderately well.  So, a sequel.  You can just hear the authors (or more properly editors) thinking, "Hmmm.  How can we do this again?  I know.  Love."  So, they amassed a bunch of Shakespeare quotations about love--from meeting someone through consummation (but not of the type devoutly to be wished).  The book is really dull.  Reading insults could be fun.  Reading "your praises are too large" and "what should I do? I confess it is my shame to be so fond, but it is not in my virtue to amend it." and "I dare not offer/What I desire to give; and much less take/What I shall die to want" and "Stand no more off,/but give thyself unto my sick desires,'/Who then recovers." and so on is really, quite dull.  How dull?  Well, here is an interesting measure--nobody has ever written a review of this book on Amazon.  Nobody.  You can still go there and be the first to review the book if you want--but why bother?  Oddly, the book is now available in paperback too--sometimes it is really hard to explain the Publishing World.

Fortunately the book didn't cost me anything--I picked it up at a Yankee Swap (the Easterners' name for a White Elephant Gift Exchange).  I love Yankee Swaps--it is a great way to get rid of things you don't want but feel bad throwing away because somebody might want them and getting things you don't want but have no problem tossing away because after all you got it at a Yankee Swap.  (Janet is always in angst about them, by the way--she is constantly telling me that the things I wrap up to take to such event aren't good enough for a Yankee Swap because, as she notes, "Nobody would want that!" To which I reply--"Uh, that's the point.")  So, Shakespeare and the Art of Verbal Seduction will be available on the Free Book shelf in the Mount Holyoke Library whenever I next wander over to the library, and some Lucky Undergrad will get a book she too will find utterly useless.

I figured it would be good to add a link to a YouTube clip of some song related to the theme here--has anyone ever written a song about Love?

Finally, I thought of one:  that staple of wedding receptions:  I can't remember a wedding reception at which the DJ didn't play that song. 

Creepy, Crawly

Neil Gaiman, The Graveyard Book

Another book that Mallory has been telling me for months I should read--and again, she was right.  What an excellent little novel.  It's labeled Children's literature and even won the Newbury Medal.  But, like the best children's literature, it works well for adults too.  It is clever, very clever.  Indeed, I think I think I would rank it second only to The Sandman among the Gaiman books I have read so far.  At first blush it is just a creepy story of a kid who lives in a graveyard.  But, it is packed with clever twists and characters.  In Gaiman's fashion, there are all sorts of bizarre creatures---there is, as always, the Shadow world which only our Hero can see.  And the Shadow world in this case is fun--the ghosts of the people buried in the graveyard, but since the graveyard is very old and has of late been turned into a Nature Preserve, all the ghosts are from Olden Times.  And, in addition an array of fantastical creatures, whose nature is never stated, but gradually becomes apparent.  One of the main characters, for example, is a vampire, but he is never actually called a vampire in the whole book.  The story is episodic--Gaiman likens it (in a talk on the book included as an appendix) to The Jungle Book and the comparison is pretty accurate.  It also makes for an interesting comparison for Gaiman--100 years from now, will people still talk about Gaiman the way we talk about Kipling?  Or will he be lost to obscurity?  (Speaking of which, there is a great bit in the book about the ghost of a poet who was so angered about a bad review that to get revenge he posted a note all over town saying that he would never publish another poem, and he never did.  Instead, he had all his poems buried with him.  That way, when in the future people discovered how great he was, they would all lament that the rest of his poems were never published.  And then, when everyone was really sad about never being able to read all his work, it would be revealed that his poems were all in his casket and they would dig up the casket and discover the poems and rejoice.  When our hero asks the poet if they had dug up the poems yet, the poet replied that it hadn't happened yet, but there was still plenty of time.)  Gaiman's future status (to return to the point from before the parenthetical aside) an interesting puzzle.  I suspect the answer hinges on what people 100 years from now think about comic books--when your greatest work is a comic book, your reputation hinges on the perception of comics.  He also has at least two really good children's books (this one and Coraline).  But, his novels, while interesting and fun to read, are not going to make it into Great Book status.  So, 100 years from now, if he is going to have a reputation, it is going to be based on comics and children's lit.  I am not sure if he would be happy with that or not.

I would have hated this book when I was a kid, by the way.  When I was young, I was terrified of the dark.  Ghosts, vampires, etc. scared me a lot.  A lot.  I hated going to bed--the dark room really scared me.  And it didn't take much to scare me--there is a Gilligan's Island episode in which Gilligan has a dream and there is a vampire in it--that episode scared me a lot.  A lot.  I was also frightened by The Count on Sesame Street.  Really--I'm not kidding.  When I start thinking of all the things that scared me, it is a ridiculously long list.  So a book like this would have seriously frightened me.  I have still never watched a horror movie as a result of my childhood fears.  Every now and then, I think I should watch one just to get over the lingering sense of dread, but to date, I have never been able to convince myself to do so.  What interests me about this is that in real life I have no fear of the supernatural or the dark or anything like that.  And, I can't remember the last time I actually thought something in a movie was scary or frightening.  Yet I still have this part in the back of my brain that gets agitated at the idea of watching a scary movie.

So, The Graveyard Book is a children's story that I loved when I read it but only because I didn't read it when I was a child.

And, for a coda: the best Creepy song.

Scorpions

Noah Feldman's Scorpions: The Battle and Triumphs of FDR's Great Supreme Court Justices was one of my Christmas gifts this year.  The title alone is good (based on a remark by Alexander Bickle ("The Supreme Court is nine scorpions in a bottle")); the book is even better.

This is casual history of the best sort--a highly readable book, paced with enough detail that you learn a lot in every chapter, but not so much detail that the casual reader gets bogged down.  And, I learned a lot in this book--much more than I would have thought I could learn in a book of this sort.  I actually know a fair amount of 20th century history and I know a decent amount about legal theory, but this book made me rethink all sort of things.  That is about the highest praise I can give a book.

The book centers on the lives of Hugo Black, Felix Frankfurter, Robert Jackson and William O. Douglas; all four were put on the Supreme Court by FDR in the wake of the "switch in time that saved nine."  They were all put there because FDR believed they would help turn the court in a direction he wanted it to go.  All four disapproved of the pre-FDR court.  Yet, as they matured on the bench, these four ended up a very bitter rivals.  Very bitter.  Their constitutional philosophies evolved to be remarkably different from one another.  But, in their Last Act, they were all part of the unanimous Brown decision.  Then, Jackson died, and the rest wandered off into the twilight.

The most amazing insight from the book--the reason the Supreme Court is such a mess these days and has been for the last 40 years is the direct result of FDR's decision to put these four guys on the Court.  The Brown decision is the root of the problem.  But to see that, we need to back up a bit.

As noted, these four Justices developed separate theories of jurisprudence.  In slogan form: Frankfurter developed the theory of "judicial restraint;" Black developed "originalism;" Jackson developed "legal pragmatism;" and Douglas was a pure politician.  They all started reacting negatively to a Holmes-era decision (Lochner) and worked out reasons why that decision was bad.  By the time they had been on the Court for a few years, their theories were pushing them into disagreement.  Now that alone would make an interesting tale.  But, a fascinating thing happened when the Brown case came before them.  All four knew the conclusion they wanted to reach--all four wanted to end segregation.  Yet, none of their legal theories led to that conclusion.  So, they all tortured their theories around to make them support Brown.  After that, the Court was unambiguously politicized, and legal theory was a mess.

The basic problem is that for all four of these Justices, the conclusions they wanted to reach in the case were always first; the legal theory was secondary.  So, rather than starting with the case, the legal theory, and the relevant law and proceeding to the conclusion, they started with the case, the relevant law, and the conclusion and worked toward the legal theory that connected them.  Such a process can work for a few cases, but over time, the problems multiplied.  If you think you need theory A to reach a particular conclusion, then what do you do if later in order to reach a different conclusion in a different case, you find that Theory A stands in the way?  Well, as it worked out, you torture Theory A to make it fit the conclusion you want.  This process was becoming apparent as the cases multiplied, but by Brown, the whole idea that the Theory had any independent relevance to deciding the case was manifestly an obstacle to reaching the desired conclusion.

The problem here is pretty interesting.  Looking back, we are all glad that segregation has ended (well, at least everyone outside the fever swamps is glad that segregation has ended).  But, here is the problem--there are two statements:
1) I think segregation is a really bad thing and should not be legal.
2) The Constitution of the United States prohibits segregation.
The problem is that it is entirely possible to agree with the first sentence but not the second.  So, what do you do if you are on the Supreme Court faced with a decision about segregation?  Your choice is:
a) say that even though you think segregation is a bad thing, there is nothing you can do about the laws in particular states, or
b) say that segregation is a violation of the Constitution.
The first makes you, de facto a supporter of segregation.  You don't want to be a supporter of segregation.  So, you opt for Option 2.

But, then, once you have done that, you have opened the floodgates--now replace "segregation" with anything else in the above.  What is to stop you from simply ruling anything you don't like is a violation of the Constitution?  You have already abandoned any pretense that you are reaching your conclusion based on a legal theory.  So, why not simply issue a ruling based on your preferences?  And suddenly, we have an unelected legislature.

Until now I never understood why the Brown decision became a test of the viability of a legal theory.  I have seen a steady stream of articles in my life in which an author tries to show that the reasoning in Brown is a disaster, but the same end result would be reached in a nice, legally coherent manner using the author's own legal theory.  The problem is that I have never seen how the new argument for the same end result in Brown was any better than the original reasoning. 

Why is it seemingly impermissible to say that the Constitution of the United States allows for bad laws, and that it is the responsibility of the electorate to get rid of bad laws?  (Slavery was bad, after all, but it was pretty obviously constitutionally allowed before the 13th amendment.  The fact that the Constitution didn't prohibit it is not an argument that it was somehow morally acceptable.) And similarly, why it is seemingly impossible to say that the Brown decision was not well argued, but that it is still a good thing that segregation has ended?  The reason is because of the FDR court--by blurring the distinction between legal reasoning and moral reasoning, it has become difficult to express a legal opinion without people hearing it as a moral judgment.  That is not good for legal theory or moral discussion.
 

So What

A Panoply of Topics of No Concern to Anyone.

1.  Now that was a storm.  We didn't get snow like that when I was growing up in California.  (Actually, we didn't get snow at all.)  This storm added a whole new level of snow removal to my life.  Clearing the driveway is Old Hat now.  But, this year, I had to go dig out Janet's greenhouse.  There was so much snow that the roof of the greenhouse was potentially in danger of collapsing.  But the snow was piled up on the sides, so I had to dig out the sides so that the snow could slide off the roof.  I was wading through snow piles a few feet deep.  But the greenhouse is now safe.  The plants inside are rejoicing.

2. Speaking of California, being back in Davis was really odd.  I left there 17 years ago.  The town looks really different now.  Not only has there been a huge amount of new building in areas that used to be vacant, but most of the stores that were there when I was there are gone.  Our favorite restaurants have survived though--and most importantly, the best Mexican food place is still there.  Dos Coyotes.  I still remember when they opened up--even for those of us who grew up on Mexican food, it was obvious that this place was something special.   If you are ever in Davis, be sure to eat there.

3. In a sign of the times, the old video store in Davis from which we rented VCR tapes is now a Trader Joe's.  It was right across the street from us.  Janet and I would have loved to have lived across the street from Trader Joe's.

4. Speaking of VCR tapes, I mentioned a record store yesterday--Emma laughed at me.

5. I can still feel the disappointment of Trader Joe's coming to Hadley, MA.  One of the best things about Trader Joe's is the cheap wine--they get great wine, slap a Trader Joe's label on it so that you don't know what it is and sell it for cheap, very cheap.  (A great question for Economics students--why would this happen?)  So, as grad students we were able to get very good wine for not much money.  When Trader Joe's came to a town near us in MA, we were really happy.  But, then we learned about MA alcohol laws--no chain can sell alcohol in more than two locations in the state.  So, we have a Dry Trader Joe's.  Annoying to say the least.  Why does MA, which prides itself on being so liberal, still have alcohol laws from the Puritan era?  (Yes, I know that economics students can provide an answer to that too, but that doesn't make it any less annoying.)  It was odd walking through a Safeway in Davis and seeing the alcohol aisle--one forgets how normal that is.

6. I am currently listening to Mumford and Sons.  You can hear them here.  It's an amazing album.  They are Big, but I hadn't paid much attention.  I was talking to Janet one day in the car when the came on the radio, and I mentioned how Amazon had really been pushing this album in their MP3 Deal of the Day section.  $5 download in December.  She said she would like the album, so I got it.  I think I may like it even more than she does.  It's seriously good music.

7.  Meanwhile when in my truck, I am currently listening to Miles Davis.  Listen here.  The album was $4 from Amazon.

8.  I am turning into a walking commercial for the Amazon MP3 download of the day.

9.  None of my kids like listening to Miles Davis in the truck.  Sigh.

10. Interesting slate of games this weekend.  The Steelers-Ravens game is the one to watch if you are only going to watch one.  That should be a fantastic game.  Pats-Jets could be entertaining, but only if the Jets play above themselves--Sanchez is so bad, though, the game could be a blowout.  In the NFC, the Falcons-Packers could be good--but I still have a hard time figuring out the Falcons (quick, name three players on Atlanta--yeah, I can't do it either without thinking about it for a minute or so).  As for Bears-Seahawks--are you kidding me?--how exactly did this become a playoff game?

Travels in Demonia

Since I was flying to to Davis, CA and back (to take care of my grandfather's estate (said journey was a story in its own right--do you know how hard it is to find a flight from Hartford to California on New Year's Eve or Day less than a week after every Northeast airport was shut down for a blizzard? (I ended up in first class on the way out there--I have never flown first class before--it really isn't much different than regular class, to be honest))), I, as usual on such trips, took along a lengthy book that I knew I would never get around to reading were it not for the fact that I would be stuck on a plane for long periods of time with nothing to do other than read it.  This trip's long book:

Vladimir Nabokov, Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle (often just called Ada (pronounced Ah-dah (a thing learned in the novel itself)).

Now I picked up this novel because I had recently read Speak, Memory, and Nabokov does write in nice prose.  I also knew the book was long, easily Nabokov's longest novel.  I also knew it was famous.  That is the extent of what I knew.

What is it?  Take Tolstoy, filter it through Joyce, and add a little Pynchon.  What's left?  Honestly?  A mess.

Don't get me wrong.  Nabokov is a great prose stylist.  Great.  The book is nice enough for what it wants to do.  I am sure English Lit types love it.  It has endless puzzles to be solved, including such things as figuring out where it takes place--it's in a place that looks like Earth, but really isn't quite Earth--so one of the many puzzles you can think about if you are so inclined is what we can learn about this Fake Earth by deciphering all the hints.  Or you can just ignore the whole Fake Earth thing and read along merrily, ignoring the fact that the locations are all close to locations like those on Earth, but not quite locations on Earth. (The latter was my strategy.)   Nabokov likes puzzles.

Actually, I like puzzles too, but I prefer an endless stream of puzzles to be in a, well, puzzle.  I like my novels to have things like, well, novels in them.  So, how does it measure up on those grounds?  It's OK.  Not bad, just OK.  There are some nice things in it; some interesting ideas and scenes.  Structurally it is clever--the novel is in the form of an autobiographical series of reminisces, with marginal notes added by the author himself, and Ada (the love of his life), and the editor.  So the book reads like something not quite completed, with notes interspersed throughout.  That part was extremely well done.

The story itself is a love story spanning about three-quarters of a century.  Boy meets girl, they fall in love, and their happiness is delayed and delayed until late in life when they finally live together.  So far, so cliche.

Yet, with Nabokov, there is always a twist.  he made his fame with Lolita, a vastly better book.  Part of the greatness of Lolita is the remarkably clever way the narrator lulls the reader into the thinking everything is normal, when what is being discussed is pedophilia.  Brilliantly done.

Ada isn't about pedophilia.  The two characters in love are only a couple of years apart in age.  But, the girl is 12 when they start engaging in illicit sexual activity.  And, they are brother and sister.  So, the central relationship is incestuous.  Yep.  It all seems perfectly normal, just like in Lolita.  And, to be fair, this is not a book about incest at all.  Insofar as it is about anything, it is a Russian family history.  And the philosophical part of the book is about time and space and everything other than incest. 

Pulling this trick--taking something shocking and being nonchalant about it--in writing Lolita is clever.  Repeating the same thing in Ada is just a cheap parlor trick.

On the whole, then, the book is good; the writing style is very good and there are some clever things, but on the other hand, I liked every other Nabokov book I have read much better.

Curiosity about the Shop

Over the last several months I have been reading Dickens' The Old Curiosity Shop.  Dickens novels are nicely structured to be read slowly over time--after all, that is how they were originally published.  This particular novel has long been on my list of books I wanted to read because of Oscar Wilde's remark about it: "One would have a heart of stone to read the death of little Nell without laughing."  I have long wondered about that remark--was the death of little Nell supposed to be funny or was Wilde making a remark about Dickens' writing?  Presumably the latter, but without reading the book, it was impossible to be sure.  Dickens would also be fully capable of writing a death scene that was sad and funny all at once.

The other famous Little Nell story was of a crowd of people in America meeting a ship coming from England and screaming out to the sailors to ask if Little Nell had died.

Clearly Little Nell is an important person.  So, I finally read the book.

Wilde was making an observation of Dickens at his overwrought best--that scene is so over-the-top, it is impossible not to laugh at it.

But, much to my surprise, Little Nell was not  terribly interesting character.  Quilp, the villain, is much more curious--a purely malevolent character.  And, in one of those things which dates this book--Quilp, the evil Daniel Quilp, is a dwarf, and his stature is clearly designed to amplify the horror of his soul.  Imagine someone writing a book with an evil dwarf in it today.

The other big surprise, the shop in the title is irrelevant to the story--sure there is a shop, but it is abandoned shortly after the novel starts, never to reappear.  I'd have a hard time coming up with a more misleading title of any novel than this one.

So, the evaluation of the book:  It's Dickens,  It is exactly what one would expect from Dickens.  Charming with lots of caricatures--but caricatures in the best sense of the word--very clever portraits in which the caricatures become perfect illustrations of character types.  Dickens stands alone among novelists--there is really nobody like him.  And one thing about him that really intrigues me--it is really hard to rank his books in order of quality--there is a uniform goodness throughout his work.  His shorter novels get assigned more often in school, but I suspect that is less an evaluation of relative merits and more a desire to assign a shorter book.  English Lit types like to talk about Early Dickens and Late Dickens, with the later books being the more weighty (at least I think that is what they mean), but honestly, I have a hard time seeing all that much of a difference--even in Late Dickens there are amusing characters and happy endings.

I am getting close to the end of Dickens, though.  I only have four of his novels left unread (Barnaby Rudge, Martin Chuzzlewit, Dombey and Son, and Little Dorrit).  Fortunately, with Dickens, I look forward to starting all over again once I finish all his novels for the first time.  (I also haven't read much of his shorter work and his non-fiction, but I have not heard much about those things, so I am not sure how good they are.)

C. A. Grubb, RIP

My grandfather, Clarence Arthur "Chuck" Grubb, died on December 30, 2010.  He would have been 92 on January 4.  I have been out in Davis, CA since Saturday dealing with all the paperwork (I am the executor of the estate).  The last few days have been odd--a combination of lots of busywork and lots of reflection about my grandpa.

He was an interesting guy.   He grew up in the middle of Idaho, living on ranches and doing all sorts of things.  His father went broke in the Depression--at one point, his father took something like $1.13 out of his pocket, showed it to his two sons, and said, "That's all we have."  When Pearl Harbor was bombed, my grandfather joined the Navy and spent most of his career there, retiring as a Captain.  After that, he worked at Stanford Research Institute for a while, and then moved back to Idaho to build houses.

The most interesting thing my grandpa did in the Navy was work in all the nuclear testing after the war.  He used to say he had been in more nuclear explosions than anyone else--he was part of the crew that would go out after the explosion to measure radiation activity.  He lived to be 92, so the radiation didn't seem to do him much harm.

I learned a lot from my grandparents.  (My grandma died some time ago.)  They always treated me very well; indeed, I think they both liked me a lot--but, they were never the real emotional types.  They helped me pay for my college education which was an immense relief to me all the way through college.  I learned about cocktail hour from them  Janet and I used to love cocktail hour when it rolled around when we were visiting them.

In his later year, my grandfather started a foundation, designed primarily to help out the people in rural Idaho where he grew up.  He was particularly interested in making sure the cemeteries are well-maintained.  I am now the trustee of that Foundation; it is nice to think about carrying on his vision.  My grandfather was a very patriotic man; he served his country well and honorably, and never forgot the place where he was born and raised.

He had three daughters.  All three of them have done some great things in their lives.  From talking with him, I know he was proud of all three, but again, he was never real emotional about it.  His death has obviously left a big hole in the hearts of all of them; he will be missed.

He lived in a retirement community for the last 15 years.  Everyone there spoke very kindly about him--I think he was well known for his sense of humor and his gentlemanly ways.  In his papers, he had printouts of about a zillion of those joke e-mails that get forwarded around--I suspect he kept a ready supply of them so that he would always have a new joke to tell.  I didn't read them all (I am not a big fan of the genre), but I was amused to note that a fair number of them were rather racy.

All in all, he was a good man.  I am very glad that I knew him.