Shakespeare and Company
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/mar/07/shakespeare-and-company-bookshop-paris
Automatic Pilot
http://scienceblogs.com/cortex/2009/03/free_throws.php
What’s a Nudge?
http://nudges.wordpress.com/2009/03/13/what-is-a-nudge-the-video/
On Updike
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/22391
The Big Read
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/08/nyregion/long-island/08Rbookli.html?emc=tnt&tntemail1=y
Epistolary Poetry
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2009/mar/06/poster-poems-letters
3.14.2009
3.13.2009
Exceptions to the Rule
Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers currently ranks number 2 on the New York Times hardcover nonfiction best-seller list; it has been high on the list for the past 15 weeks. As I noted in my February 6th blog, the popularity of Gladwell’s books is a matter of concern to me, as I believe his arguments are only superficially credible. When considered more critically, they are often, in my view, seriously in error.
The best that any reader can do is to approach them with some degree of skepticism. Look for the exceptions to his claims and to the flaws in his logic. That is the only way a reader can go beyond their apparent validity to know if they are genuinely sound. One of the few reviewers who have done that is Joseph Epstein in his Weekly Standard essay, Jack-Out-of-the Box.
At the outset Epstein makes it clear that Gladwell has a practice of setting up straw men as the “received opinion and conventional wisdom” of the day. For instance, Gladwell’s central point is that “personal explanations of success don’t work.” Whoever claimed that was all there was to explaining success?
Gladwell claims that the magical 10,000-hour rule of practice is required to achieve any degree of success. How bizarre! Whoever believed that success in any field does not come without countless hours of dedicated practice? But 10,000 hours? Who can ever know how many hours any genius devotes to his or her craft?
By identifying several exceptions to Gladwell’s arguments, Epstein exposes the major limitations of his account. Any reader might best approach Outliers in a similar fashion. Think of an exceptionally successful person and try to explain his or her success. Is their life history consistent with Gladwell’s view?
Regarding the very considerable success of Bill Gates, Epstein says “Gates wouldn’t have been the success he is today if he hadn’t been born wealthy and sent to a private school that could afford him unlimited time to work on a mainframe computer…” He then points to Steve Jobs, who Epstein claims came from a broken home, grew up with adoptive parents, and had none of the advantages that Gates did. Exception number 1.
Gladwell seems to discount the importance of natural talent, the kind of talent you are born with (leaving open the question of how that occurs). For example, he argues that the time of the year a person is born is crucial for athletic success in hockey and soccer. Epstein counters by saying that over time athletic ability tends to even out and so will physical gifts.
Here, he points to Michael Jordan who reached his full height rather late in his youth. He mentions Brett Favre who is possessed of “physical courage of a kind that date of birth, culture, or anything else can’t explain.” In turn, I will mention Roger Federer whose genius on the tennis court is a matter of “mystery and metaphysics” as David Foster Wallace put it. Exceptions 2, 3, and 4.
Gladwell argues that people born between 1935 and 1945 benefited from belonging to an extremely small birth cohort that in turn led to smaller classes and less difficulty in getting in to the college of their choice. Epstein adds: “…this generation, of which I happen to be a member, has never put a president in the White House. Go figure.”
Gladwell discuss the Beatles at some length and attributes their success to the many long hours they spent in their early years playing all night in the bars and strip clubs of Hamburg. Again, he ignores the natural musical talent that surely played a role in their enormous success. As Epstein says: “But they also happen to have had, in Paul McCartney and John Lennon, two immensely gifted songwriters, along with a fortuitous—and no doubt fortuitous—combination of personalities and talents…” Eliminate Lennon, eliminate McCartney—poof! The Beatles are just four more working-class kids hoping to win the rock’n’roll lottery.” Score another exception or two.
Lastly, Gladwell spends a good deal of time comparing the fortunes of two men of very high intelligence—Chris Langan and J. Robert Oppenheimer. He claims Oppenheimer became the success he did because he, unlike Langan, had the benefit of a superb education, a cultivated, wealthy family, and a “sense of entitlement,” none of which was available to Langan. In response, Epstein writes that Oppenheimer “…was a man of such suavity, subtlety, and layered complexity as to be quite beyond Malcolm Gladwell’s ken and comprehension.”
In his effort to discount the role of natural talent, a keen sense of desire, and distinctive personality, Gladwell simplifies throughout his treatment the incredible complexity and variability that govern the course of anyone’s life. Yes, culture, date of birth, effort, social class, ethnic background, etc are all important. But so are chance, merit, gumption, and all those unknown factors that combine in totally mysterious and unpredictable ways to give rise to extraordinary achievement.
Explaining exceptional accomplishment is surely not as straightforward as Gladwell implies. There are limits, boundary conditions, if you will, for each of the factors he identifies. It is his failure to acknowledge these constraints and to make any effort to deal with them that make Outliers so misleading and presumptions to me. Epstein is to be praised for making the effort to confront these realities squarely.
The best that any reader can do is to approach them with some degree of skepticism. Look for the exceptions to his claims and to the flaws in his logic. That is the only way a reader can go beyond their apparent validity to know if they are genuinely sound. One of the few reviewers who have done that is Joseph Epstein in his Weekly Standard essay, Jack-Out-of-the Box.
At the outset Epstein makes it clear that Gladwell has a practice of setting up straw men as the “received opinion and conventional wisdom” of the day. For instance, Gladwell’s central point is that “personal explanations of success don’t work.” Whoever claimed that was all there was to explaining success?
Gladwell claims that the magical 10,000-hour rule of practice is required to achieve any degree of success. How bizarre! Whoever believed that success in any field does not come without countless hours of dedicated practice? But 10,000 hours? Who can ever know how many hours any genius devotes to his or her craft?
By identifying several exceptions to Gladwell’s arguments, Epstein exposes the major limitations of his account. Any reader might best approach Outliers in a similar fashion. Think of an exceptionally successful person and try to explain his or her success. Is their life history consistent with Gladwell’s view?
Regarding the very considerable success of Bill Gates, Epstein says “Gates wouldn’t have been the success he is today if he hadn’t been born wealthy and sent to a private school that could afford him unlimited time to work on a mainframe computer…” He then points to Steve Jobs, who Epstein claims came from a broken home, grew up with adoptive parents, and had none of the advantages that Gates did. Exception number 1.
Gladwell seems to discount the importance of natural talent, the kind of talent you are born with (leaving open the question of how that occurs). For example, he argues that the time of the year a person is born is crucial for athletic success in hockey and soccer. Epstein counters by saying that over time athletic ability tends to even out and so will physical gifts.
Here, he points to Michael Jordan who reached his full height rather late in his youth. He mentions Brett Favre who is possessed of “physical courage of a kind that date of birth, culture, or anything else can’t explain.” In turn, I will mention Roger Federer whose genius on the tennis court is a matter of “mystery and metaphysics” as David Foster Wallace put it. Exceptions 2, 3, and 4.
Gladwell argues that people born between 1935 and 1945 benefited from belonging to an extremely small birth cohort that in turn led to smaller classes and less difficulty in getting in to the college of their choice. Epstein adds: “…this generation, of which I happen to be a member, has never put a president in the White House. Go figure.”
Gladwell discuss the Beatles at some length and attributes their success to the many long hours they spent in their early years playing all night in the bars and strip clubs of Hamburg. Again, he ignores the natural musical talent that surely played a role in their enormous success. As Epstein says: “But they also happen to have had, in Paul McCartney and John Lennon, two immensely gifted songwriters, along with a fortuitous—and no doubt fortuitous—combination of personalities and talents…” Eliminate Lennon, eliminate McCartney—poof! The Beatles are just four more working-class kids hoping to win the rock’n’roll lottery.” Score another exception or two.
Lastly, Gladwell spends a good deal of time comparing the fortunes of two men of very high intelligence—Chris Langan and J. Robert Oppenheimer. He claims Oppenheimer became the success he did because he, unlike Langan, had the benefit of a superb education, a cultivated, wealthy family, and a “sense of entitlement,” none of which was available to Langan. In response, Epstein writes that Oppenheimer “…was a man of such suavity, subtlety, and layered complexity as to be quite beyond Malcolm Gladwell’s ken and comprehension.”
In his effort to discount the role of natural talent, a keen sense of desire, and distinctive personality, Gladwell simplifies throughout his treatment the incredible complexity and variability that govern the course of anyone’s life. Yes, culture, date of birth, effort, social class, ethnic background, etc are all important. But so are chance, merit, gumption, and all those unknown factors that combine in totally mysterious and unpredictable ways to give rise to extraordinary achievement.
Explaining exceptional accomplishment is surely not as straightforward as Gladwell implies. There are limits, boundary conditions, if you will, for each of the factors he identifies. It is his failure to acknowledge these constraints and to make any effort to deal with them that make Outliers so misleading and presumptions to me. Epstein is to be praised for making the effort to confront these realities squarely.
3.12.2009
David Foster Wallace
It was over two years ago that I read an elegant essay on tennis by David Foster Wallace. It is one the most memorable piece of sports journalism that I’ve ever encountered. To be more specific, Wallace wrote about the miraculous game of tennis that Roger Federer plays. Wallace calls watching Federer play in person a religious experience, not almost religious, rather genuinely religious. It is also a thing of beauty and grace. Wallace writes:
“The human beauty we’re talking about here is beauty of a particular type; it might be called kinetic beauty. Its power and appeal are universal. It has nothing to do with sex or cultural norms. What it seems to have to do with, really, is human beings’ reconciliation with the fact of having a body.”
If you’ve ever had the privilege of watching Federer play tennis, even if was on TV, which Wallace says is a poor approximation of watching him play in person, you’ll understand what he means. This is the case even on those days, which were uncommonly numerous last year, when Federer wasn’t winning. Wallace calls his miraculous plays “Federer Moments” and attributes his genius to three factors: “One involves mystery and metaphysics and is, I think, closest to the real truth. The others are more technical and make for better journalism.”
David Foster Wallace committed suicide last year. He had been deeply depressed throughout most of his adult life and was only able to survive as long as he did with one or more of the anti-depressive medications he took. Although, Wallace never wrote about his own mental illness, in a short story titled The Depressed Person, he did write about these drugs: “None had delivered any significant relief from the pain and feelings of emotional isolation that rendered the depressed person’s every walking hour an indescribable hell on earth.” It is hard not to believe he wasn’t at the same time talking about himself.
Wallace is the subject of a sadly engrossing profile by D. T. Max in a recent New Yorker. Max writes:
“He was only forty-six when he killed himself, which helped explain the sense of loss readers and critics felt. There was also Wallace’s outside passion for the printed word at a time when it looked like, it needed champions.”
His incredibly lengthy novels (Broom, Infinite Jest and the unfinished The Pale King) are full of facts, qualifications, footnotes, witty language, lengthy sentences and a large number of digressions. Wallace also wrote three collections of short stores, two books of essays and one titled Everything and More, a history of infinity that reflects his background in philosophy and mathematics.
Max’s profile is rich with details about Wallace’s life, illnesses, and his novels. According to Max, Wallace was continually struggling with the question of the purpose of fiction and never felt that he had answered it satisfactorily. Here are some of the things he said:
“Fiction’s about what it is to be a fucking human being. Good writing should help readers to become less alone inside.”
“Look man, we’d probably most of us agree that thee are dark times, and stupid ones, but do we need fiction that does nothing but dramatize how dark and stupid everything is?”
Until then [when he began to write fiction] Wallace had seen novels primarily as a pleasurable way to get information.
…he realized that fiction could order experience as well as philosophy could and also provide some of the same comfort.
This is a generation that has an inheritance of absolutely nothing as far as meaningful moral values and it’s our job to make them up.
The Pale King, the novel Wallace was trying so desperately to finish at the time of his death, explores his continuing preoccupation with boredom. He apparently assembled page after page of research studies about it trying to come to a better understanding of the desolation it can give rise to.
The novel centers on a group of IRS agents who spend hours, day after day, year after year auditing tax returns. Max suggests that Wallace felt that “Properly handled, boredom can be an antidote to our national dependence on entertainment” leaving open the matter of what “properly handled” means. For Wallace it meant:
“Pay close attention to the most tedious thing you can find [Tax Returns, Televised Golf) and, in waves, a boredom like you’ve never known will wash over you and just about kill you. Ride these out, and it’s like stepping from black and white into color. Like water after days in the desert. Instant bliss in every atom.”
Be mindful, concentrate on the important things, the things that will devastate you once you lose them.
As Max notes in conclusion, Wallace’s death was not an ending “anyone would have wanted for him, but it was the ending he chose.”
“The human beauty we’re talking about here is beauty of a particular type; it might be called kinetic beauty. Its power and appeal are universal. It has nothing to do with sex or cultural norms. What it seems to have to do with, really, is human beings’ reconciliation with the fact of having a body.”
If you’ve ever had the privilege of watching Federer play tennis, even if was on TV, which Wallace says is a poor approximation of watching him play in person, you’ll understand what he means. This is the case even on those days, which were uncommonly numerous last year, when Federer wasn’t winning. Wallace calls his miraculous plays “Federer Moments” and attributes his genius to three factors: “One involves mystery and metaphysics and is, I think, closest to the real truth. The others are more technical and make for better journalism.”
David Foster Wallace committed suicide last year. He had been deeply depressed throughout most of his adult life and was only able to survive as long as he did with one or more of the anti-depressive medications he took. Although, Wallace never wrote about his own mental illness, in a short story titled The Depressed Person, he did write about these drugs: “None had delivered any significant relief from the pain and feelings of emotional isolation that rendered the depressed person’s every walking hour an indescribable hell on earth.” It is hard not to believe he wasn’t at the same time talking about himself.
Wallace is the subject of a sadly engrossing profile by D. T. Max in a recent New Yorker. Max writes:
“He was only forty-six when he killed himself, which helped explain the sense of loss readers and critics felt. There was also Wallace’s outside passion for the printed word at a time when it looked like, it needed champions.”
His incredibly lengthy novels (Broom, Infinite Jest and the unfinished The Pale King) are full of facts, qualifications, footnotes, witty language, lengthy sentences and a large number of digressions. Wallace also wrote three collections of short stores, two books of essays and one titled Everything and More, a history of infinity that reflects his background in philosophy and mathematics.
Max’s profile is rich with details about Wallace’s life, illnesses, and his novels. According to Max, Wallace was continually struggling with the question of the purpose of fiction and never felt that he had answered it satisfactorily. Here are some of the things he said:
“Fiction’s about what it is to be a fucking human being. Good writing should help readers to become less alone inside.”
“Look man, we’d probably most of us agree that thee are dark times, and stupid ones, but do we need fiction that does nothing but dramatize how dark and stupid everything is?”
Until then [when he began to write fiction] Wallace had seen novels primarily as a pleasurable way to get information.
…he realized that fiction could order experience as well as philosophy could and also provide some of the same comfort.
This is a generation that has an inheritance of absolutely nothing as far as meaningful moral values and it’s our job to make them up.
The Pale King, the novel Wallace was trying so desperately to finish at the time of his death, explores his continuing preoccupation with boredom. He apparently assembled page after page of research studies about it trying to come to a better understanding of the desolation it can give rise to.
The novel centers on a group of IRS agents who spend hours, day after day, year after year auditing tax returns. Max suggests that Wallace felt that “Properly handled, boredom can be an antidote to our national dependence on entertainment” leaving open the matter of what “properly handled” means. For Wallace it meant:
“Pay close attention to the most tedious thing you can find [Tax Returns, Televised Golf) and, in waves, a boredom like you’ve never known will wash over you and just about kill you. Ride these out, and it’s like stepping from black and white into color. Like water after days in the desert. Instant bliss in every atom.”
Be mindful, concentrate on the important things, the things that will devastate you once you lose them.
As Max notes in conclusion, Wallace’s death was not an ending “anyone would have wanted for him, but it was the ending he chose.”
3.11.2009
The Car in Literature
I return to the car for an additional comment. While automobiles play such a central role in the life of most individuals, as far as I know, they hardly play any role in contemporary literary fiction. However, there is one notable literary exception, It is in Ian McEwan’s novel Saturday. Henry Perowne, the neurosurgeon depicted in the novel, keeps a silver Mercedes S 500 parked in a nearby garage. McEwan describes what this car means to Henry who tries to see it, or feel it, in historical terms and in so doing makes it clear that there’s nothing about a car that cannot be the stuff of fiction:
“...this moment in the last decades of the petroleum age, when a nineteenth-century device [automobile] is brought to final perfection in the early years of the twenty-first…
Henry lives in a fashionable section of London where three and four story townhouses were built around a central square long before anyone ever heard of an automobile, let alone a garage in which to park it. So Henry must walk to down the way a bit to collect his car parked along with others inside a nearby building
He walks down a faint incline of greasy cobbles to where the owners of houses like his own once kept their horses. Now, those who can afford it cosset their cars here with off-street parking. Attached to his key ring is an infrared button which he presses to raise a clattering steel shutter. It’s revealed in mechanical jerks, the long nose and shining eyes at the stable door, chafing to be free. A silver Mercedes S 500 with cream upholstery— and he’s no longer embarrassed by it. He doesn’t even love it—it’s simply a sensual part of what he regards as his overgenerous share of the world’s goods. If he didn’t own it, he tries to tell himself, someone else would. He hasn’t driven it in a week, but in the gloom of the dry dustless garage the machine breathes an animal warmth of his own…
It’s Theo [Henry’s son] who disapproves most, saying it’s a doctor’s car, as if this were the final word in condemnation. Daisy, [Henry’s daughter] on the other hand, said she thought that Harold Pinter owned something like it, which made it all fine with her. Roslind [Henry’s wife] encouraged him to buy it. She thinks his life is too guiltily austere, and never buying clothes or good wine or a single painting is a touch pretentious. Still living like a postgraduate student. It was time for him to fill out.
Still Henry has mixed feelings about the car. Yes, he doesn’t drive it much. And at one time it embarrassed him to have such a fancy car. But he likes having it, owning it, having it there, much like a piece of jewelry or a Picasso on the wall. Then there are those days, when he takes the car out on the road and his ambivalence about the thing vanishes very quickly:
For months he drove it apologetically, rarely in fourth gear, reluctant to overtake, waving on right-turning traffic, punctilious in permitting cheaper cars their road space. He was cured at last by a fishing trip to north-west Scotland with Jay Strauss [Fellow physician]. Seduced by the open road and Jay’s exultant celebration of “Lutheran genius,” Henry finally accepted himself as the owner, the master, of his vehicle.…He and Jay fished the streams…One wet afternoon, glancing over his shoulder while casting, Henry saw his car…and felt for the first time a gentle, swooning joy of possession. It is, of course possible, permissible, to love an inanimate object. But this moment was the peak of the affair; since then his feelings have settled into mild , occasional pleasure. The car gives him vague satisfaction when he’s driving it; the rest of the time it rarely crosses his mind. As its makers intended and promised, it’s become part of him.”
Yes, I often felt that way about my car too. It became a part of me, an extension, another limb as it were. We were melded together as one. But it had to be that car and no other. Now that I look back upon that feeling, I realize how stupid I was, how much havoc and destruction the automobile has led to. Like Henry, I often felt embarrassed by my driving machine and I hardly drove it at all. I too was “addicted” to the thing, to both having it and using it. I know now that feeling this way is no long possible, that it is, in fact, untenable, that it must abandoned for good. Will a large segment of the population ever come to feel this way? Well, that is the 24 dollar question, isn’t it?
“...this moment in the last decades of the petroleum age, when a nineteenth-century device [automobile] is brought to final perfection in the early years of the twenty-first…
Henry lives in a fashionable section of London where three and four story townhouses were built around a central square long before anyone ever heard of an automobile, let alone a garage in which to park it. So Henry must walk to down the way a bit to collect his car parked along with others inside a nearby building
He walks down a faint incline of greasy cobbles to where the owners of houses like his own once kept their horses. Now, those who can afford it cosset their cars here with off-street parking. Attached to his key ring is an infrared button which he presses to raise a clattering steel shutter. It’s revealed in mechanical jerks, the long nose and shining eyes at the stable door, chafing to be free. A silver Mercedes S 500 with cream upholstery— and he’s no longer embarrassed by it. He doesn’t even love it—it’s simply a sensual part of what he regards as his overgenerous share of the world’s goods. If he didn’t own it, he tries to tell himself, someone else would. He hasn’t driven it in a week, but in the gloom of the dry dustless garage the machine breathes an animal warmth of his own…
It’s Theo [Henry’s son] who disapproves most, saying it’s a doctor’s car, as if this were the final word in condemnation. Daisy, [Henry’s daughter] on the other hand, said she thought that Harold Pinter owned something like it, which made it all fine with her. Roslind [Henry’s wife] encouraged him to buy it. She thinks his life is too guiltily austere, and never buying clothes or good wine or a single painting is a touch pretentious. Still living like a postgraduate student. It was time for him to fill out.
Still Henry has mixed feelings about the car. Yes, he doesn’t drive it much. And at one time it embarrassed him to have such a fancy car. But he likes having it, owning it, having it there, much like a piece of jewelry or a Picasso on the wall. Then there are those days, when he takes the car out on the road and his ambivalence about the thing vanishes very quickly:
For months he drove it apologetically, rarely in fourth gear, reluctant to overtake, waving on right-turning traffic, punctilious in permitting cheaper cars their road space. He was cured at last by a fishing trip to north-west Scotland with Jay Strauss [Fellow physician]. Seduced by the open road and Jay’s exultant celebration of “Lutheran genius,” Henry finally accepted himself as the owner, the master, of his vehicle.…He and Jay fished the streams…One wet afternoon, glancing over his shoulder while casting, Henry saw his car…and felt for the first time a gentle, swooning joy of possession. It is, of course possible, permissible, to love an inanimate object. But this moment was the peak of the affair; since then his feelings have settled into mild , occasional pleasure. The car gives him vague satisfaction when he’s driving it; the rest of the time it rarely crosses his mind. As its makers intended and promised, it’s become part of him.”
Yes, I often felt that way about my car too. It became a part of me, an extension, another limb as it were. We were melded together as one. But it had to be that car and no other. Now that I look back upon that feeling, I realize how stupid I was, how much havoc and destruction the automobile has led to. Like Henry, I often felt embarrassed by my driving machine and I hardly drove it at all. I too was “addicted” to the thing, to both having it and using it. I know now that feeling this way is no long possible, that it is, in fact, untenable, that it must abandoned for good. Will a large segment of the population ever come to feel this way? Well, that is the 24 dollar question, isn’t it?
3.10.2009
The Automobile
To my surprise there was lengthy essay on car sharing in the Sunday’s New York Times Magazine, one of the most widely read magazines in the country. Since I had been involved in the development of the first commercial car sharing organization in this country, I had always wanted to write this article but I could never have done it was well as its author, Mark Levine, did. Levine discusses the history of the car sharing movement, the major car sharing organizations in this country, and how they are changing the way we drive automobiles.
For years I wanted to give up my car when I lived in Portland. Like so many others in the Northwest, I continued to be dismayed by the way the automobile had taken over the landscape. The countryside is cluttered with highways and urban sprawl. Cars, roadways, and garages dominate the major cities. Summer air quality alerts occur routinely now in Portland. Seattle is ranked in the top ten most heavily congested cities in the nation.
Similar situations exist in most of the major metropolitan areas of this country, while very little headway has been made in solving the many problems the automobile has brought to our communities. There is no mystery about this. Each time I thought of giving up my car, I pull back in the face of a long list of anticipated inconveniences, hassles, and endless delays. I am sure I’m not alone my thinking.
However, a few years ago I was pleased to be a part of a group of individuals who decided to try to do something about this dilemma. We were aware of the development of car sharing in Europe, especially in Switzerland and Germany. These programs were based on the notion that it is access to a car that is crucial. You didn’t have to own one for that. It was only necessary to have one available when you needed to drive somewhere.
A car-sharing organization consists of a group of individuals who share a fleet of cars much as members of a farm co-op share agricultural equipment or library users share books. Car sharing provides access to a vehicle when walking, cycling or public transit is not possible. It differs from auto renting by providing a car for very short periods, say for an hour. Members are usually charged only for the mileage and time they use the car with the full costs of maintenance, insurance, and fuel paid by the organization.
Here’s how it works. When you need a car, you simply reserve it for as long you want on the organization’s website. The cars are, typically located within three blocks of your residence at one of the permanent sites located throughout city neighborhoods. Today all you need to do is head over to the car you’ve reserved, swipe you membership card on the windshield, whereupon the door opens, fetch the key kept in the glove compartment and head off. When you’ve finished your trip, return the car to the place you picked it up and swipe the card again to lock the doors. Bingo--your fee is charged to your credit card.
Zipcar is the largest car sharing organization in this country with over 275,000 and 5,500 cars including those it also has in Canada and London. There are also several non-profit groups in this country and Canada that compete with the for-profit companies. Car sharing is clearly not for everyone but based on evidence collected in Europe and this country, it makes economic sense for individuals who drive less than 10,000 miles a year and do not have to commute to work every day. It also appeals to individuals who do not own a car or would like to give up one or more of those they own. Car-sharing also meets occasional transportation needs far less expensively than a taxi or rental service and more conveniently than public transit. Unlike owning a single car, it also provides access to a range of vehicles, such as a pick-up, minivan, or utility vehicle.
Do people drive less once they join a car sharing organization and thereby contribute in some small measure to the reduction of congestion and greenhouse gas emissions? In my view the research on this question is equivocal when the total vehicle miles of travel of automobile owners, who tend to drive less, is combined with the non-automobile owners who tend to drive more. What is clear, however, is that the car-owners are more likely to give up one or more of the cars they owned before joining the organization, which when it occurs across a large population of drivers can have an enormous impact on traffic congestion, greenhouse gas emissions, and petroleum usage.
I know that switching to a car sharing mode of travel will not be easy. But I also know it is time to do something about the transportation problems in this country. Joining a car sharing organization is one way to contribute to a solution. If other individuals make the same choice, we may, at long last, begin to make a dent in the rising financial and environmental costs of automobile driving.
I invite you to read the very excellent article in the Times if you are interested in knowing more about the car sharing concept, Or write to me for further references or information.
For years I wanted to give up my car when I lived in Portland. Like so many others in the Northwest, I continued to be dismayed by the way the automobile had taken over the landscape. The countryside is cluttered with highways and urban sprawl. Cars, roadways, and garages dominate the major cities. Summer air quality alerts occur routinely now in Portland. Seattle is ranked in the top ten most heavily congested cities in the nation.
Similar situations exist in most of the major metropolitan areas of this country, while very little headway has been made in solving the many problems the automobile has brought to our communities. There is no mystery about this. Each time I thought of giving up my car, I pull back in the face of a long list of anticipated inconveniences, hassles, and endless delays. I am sure I’m not alone my thinking.
However, a few years ago I was pleased to be a part of a group of individuals who decided to try to do something about this dilemma. We were aware of the development of car sharing in Europe, especially in Switzerland and Germany. These programs were based on the notion that it is access to a car that is crucial. You didn’t have to own one for that. It was only necessary to have one available when you needed to drive somewhere.
A car-sharing organization consists of a group of individuals who share a fleet of cars much as members of a farm co-op share agricultural equipment or library users share books. Car sharing provides access to a vehicle when walking, cycling or public transit is not possible. It differs from auto renting by providing a car for very short periods, say for an hour. Members are usually charged only for the mileage and time they use the car with the full costs of maintenance, insurance, and fuel paid by the organization.
Here’s how it works. When you need a car, you simply reserve it for as long you want on the organization’s website. The cars are, typically located within three blocks of your residence at one of the permanent sites located throughout city neighborhoods. Today all you need to do is head over to the car you’ve reserved, swipe you membership card on the windshield, whereupon the door opens, fetch the key kept in the glove compartment and head off. When you’ve finished your trip, return the car to the place you picked it up and swipe the card again to lock the doors. Bingo--your fee is charged to your credit card.
Zipcar is the largest car sharing organization in this country with over 275,000 and 5,500 cars including those it also has in Canada and London. There are also several non-profit groups in this country and Canada that compete with the for-profit companies. Car sharing is clearly not for everyone but based on evidence collected in Europe and this country, it makes economic sense for individuals who drive less than 10,000 miles a year and do not have to commute to work every day. It also appeals to individuals who do not own a car or would like to give up one or more of those they own. Car-sharing also meets occasional transportation needs far less expensively than a taxi or rental service and more conveniently than public transit. Unlike owning a single car, it also provides access to a range of vehicles, such as a pick-up, minivan, or utility vehicle.
Do people drive less once they join a car sharing organization and thereby contribute in some small measure to the reduction of congestion and greenhouse gas emissions? In my view the research on this question is equivocal when the total vehicle miles of travel of automobile owners, who tend to drive less, is combined with the non-automobile owners who tend to drive more. What is clear, however, is that the car-owners are more likely to give up one or more of the cars they owned before joining the organization, which when it occurs across a large population of drivers can have an enormous impact on traffic congestion, greenhouse gas emissions, and petroleum usage.
I know that switching to a car sharing mode of travel will not be easy. But I also know it is time to do something about the transportation problems in this country. Joining a car sharing organization is one way to contribute to a solution. If other individuals make the same choice, we may, at long last, begin to make a dent in the rising financial and environmental costs of automobile driving.
I invite you to read the very excellent article in the Times if you are interested in knowing more about the car sharing concept, Or write to me for further references or information.
3.09.2009
Book Groups
Although I’ve never participated in a book group, I’ve been hearing about them for years. According to a recent estimate there are roughly four to five million such groups in the United States. I am told there is an annual Book Group Exposition and even a professional book group facilitator who you can hire to guide your group for an annual fee of $250-$300. Now there’s a job for the countless unemployed readers in this country.
In my long time search for readers of the kind of books that I like, I thought I’d try my hand at forming group in my new hometown. After several failed attempts, I succumbed to the lure of language and the Internet and posted a notice with a “seductive” title on the Groups page of the local Craigslist.
Rather than call it a book group, I referred to it as a Salon. Basically that’s what I wanted to create anyway. By labeling it a “salon” I was not referring to a place to have my hair cut. Rather I meant a gathering of individuals to discuss a book, an issue, or any common interest or goal during afternoon coffee or tea. Doing this has a long history in several European countries especially during the 18th and 19th century. The idea appealed to me a great deal and I thought it would be the sort of term that would mean something to a reader who is serious about literature and quite willing to leave the drama to the books they ostensibly discussed, rather than the personal lives of the discussants.
Eventually, I received one response from a person who was a freelance writer for the Associated Press. That was it. She, in turn, asked a few of her friends to join and was successful in obtaining 4 individuals, all women with very busy lives at work or at home with children. So we were a group of 6, 5 women and one aging yuppie.
However, they all wanted to read a book I was not the least bit interested in (Annie Proulx’s new collection of short stories, Fine Just the Way It Is). In addition, they wanted and could only meet at a time when I could not. I realized this was not for me, not the book the wanted to read, not the time or the day they preferred. So I bowed out as gracefully as I could.
More importantly, I realized I really prefer to be a solitary reader with a pen in hand. In a note about communal reading Gregory Cowles put it best: “…reading has more in common with the cloisters that it does with the congregation.” Perhaps one day I will meet in person a serious reader and then we will be a twosome to talk about the books we both enjoy.
That surely won’t happen until I enter the Pearly Gates and can sit down one afternoon at the feet of Mr. Harold Bloom himself. Or wonder of wonders, I locate a like-minded reader on this island in the Pacific. Again, Cowles expressed it well: “And there is an undeniable thrill when you discover that the beautiful stranger on the subway likes Alice Munro as much as you do.”
In my long time search for readers of the kind of books that I like, I thought I’d try my hand at forming group in my new hometown. After several failed attempts, I succumbed to the lure of language and the Internet and posted a notice with a “seductive” title on the Groups page of the local Craigslist.
Rather than call it a book group, I referred to it as a Salon. Basically that’s what I wanted to create anyway. By labeling it a “salon” I was not referring to a place to have my hair cut. Rather I meant a gathering of individuals to discuss a book, an issue, or any common interest or goal during afternoon coffee or tea. Doing this has a long history in several European countries especially during the 18th and 19th century. The idea appealed to me a great deal and I thought it would be the sort of term that would mean something to a reader who is serious about literature and quite willing to leave the drama to the books they ostensibly discussed, rather than the personal lives of the discussants.
Eventually, I received one response from a person who was a freelance writer for the Associated Press. That was it. She, in turn, asked a few of her friends to join and was successful in obtaining 4 individuals, all women with very busy lives at work or at home with children. So we were a group of 6, 5 women and one aging yuppie.
However, they all wanted to read a book I was not the least bit interested in (Annie Proulx’s new collection of short stories, Fine Just the Way It Is). In addition, they wanted and could only meet at a time when I could not. I realized this was not for me, not the book the wanted to read, not the time or the day they preferred. So I bowed out as gracefully as I could.
More importantly, I realized I really prefer to be a solitary reader with a pen in hand. In a note about communal reading Gregory Cowles put it best: “…reading has more in common with the cloisters that it does with the congregation.” Perhaps one day I will meet in person a serious reader and then we will be a twosome to talk about the books we both enjoy.
That surely won’t happen until I enter the Pearly Gates and can sit down one afternoon at the feet of Mr. Harold Bloom himself. Or wonder of wonders, I locate a like-minded reader on this island in the Pacific. Again, Cowles expressed it well: “And there is an undeniable thrill when you discover that the beautiful stranger on the subway likes Alice Munro as much as you do.”
3.07.2009
Weekend Links
Writing: Is writing a pleasure or a pain?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/mar/03/authors-on-writing
New Novel: New Anita Brookner
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/feb/28/strangers-brookner-review
Reading: Books on the iPhone
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/jacketcopy/2009/03/kindle-for-ipho.html
Secrets: Have you told this lie?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/arts_and_culture/7925720.stm
Cinema: Lost in translation
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/feb/28/salman-rushdie-novels-film-adaptations
Speaking: Harmonies of disparate voices
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/22334
Cheever: Was his own existence was a mistake?
http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2009/03/09/090309crbo_books_updike
3.06.2009
Susan Sontag
For years I have admired the work of Susan Sontag. But I have done so from a distance for the breadth of her erudition is so far beyond me as to be virtually unapproachable. Nevertheless, I was eager to read Volume 1 of her journals, recently published under the title Reborn. They cover the period of her life between 1947-1963, beginning with her adolescence, college experiences, marriage, years abroad in Paris and Oxford, as well as the birth of her son, David Rieff, who has taken on the task of editing the material.
She began writing them as a teenager, a precocious one at least in terms of literature. Her reading appetite was voracious. Soon it became clear that was also true of her sex life. She was a great believer in making lists and the journals abound with them, including one in the beginning which I have condensed slightly:
I believe:
(a) that there is no personal god or life after death
(b) that the most desirable thing in the world is freedom to be true to oneself, i.e. Honesty
(c) that the only difference between human beings is intelligence.
(d) That the only criterion of an action is its ultimate effect on making the individual happy or unhappy
(e) That is wrong to deprive any man of life
(h) I believe, furthermore, that an ideal state…should be a strong centralized one with government control of public utilities, banks, mines…
There are countless list of books in Reborn that she has read or would like to read. Here is a partial list of the first:
The Counterfeiters—Gide
Tar—Sherwood Anderson
The Island Within—Ludwig Lewishon
Sanctuary—William Faulkner
Diary of a Writer—Dostoyevsky
Johnny Got His Gun—Dalton Trumbo
The Forsyte Saga—Galsworthy
The Egoist—George Meredith
Sontag was devoted to the cinema. Rieff notes that one of the notebooks from 1961 is simply a list of films seen. He writes: “On no occasion is there a break of more than four days between films seen; most often [she] notes having seen at least one, and not infrequently, two or three films per day.” That was surely the golden era of the cinema, for today we live in an time when we are lucky if we can find one decent film to see during the week.
Perhaps the best way to convey the intensity and range of Sontag’s life during this period is to quote directly some of her entries:
On Journaling: In the journal I do not just express myself more open than I could do to any person; I create myself.
On Needs: All I feel, most immediately, is the most anguished need for physical love and mental companionship.
On Music: Music is the most wonderful, the most alive of all the arts—it is the most abstract, the most perfect, the most pure—and the most sensual.
On Marriage: Whoever invented marriage was an ingenious tormentor. It is an institution committed to the dulling of the feelings. The whole point of marriage is repetition. The best it aims for is the creation of strong mutual dependencies.
On Writing: Why is writing important? Mainly, out of egotism, I suppose….I write to define myself—an act of self-creation—part of the process of becoming—In dialogue with myself, with writers I admire living and dead, with ideal readers…
In the introduction to Reborn Reiff wonders whether he should have published his mother’s journals since she never made her wishes known to him. To be sure the journals are frank, intimate, cranky, often little more than sexual bookkeeping and emotional quarreling. Yet simultaneously they depict a life that is dedicated to the arts and literature that, as Rieff notes are matters of life and death for his mother and “where seriousness is the greatest good.” Like a fine film, you are fortunate if you encounter a single such person every now and then.
She began writing them as a teenager, a precocious one at least in terms of literature. Her reading appetite was voracious. Soon it became clear that was also true of her sex life. She was a great believer in making lists and the journals abound with them, including one in the beginning which I have condensed slightly:
I believe:
(a) that there is no personal god or life after death
(b) that the most desirable thing in the world is freedom to be true to oneself, i.e. Honesty
(c) that the only difference between human beings is intelligence.
(d) That the only criterion of an action is its ultimate effect on making the individual happy or unhappy
(e) That is wrong to deprive any man of life
(h) I believe, furthermore, that an ideal state…should be a strong centralized one with government control of public utilities, banks, mines…
There are countless list of books in Reborn that she has read or would like to read. Here is a partial list of the first:
The Counterfeiters—Gide
Tar—Sherwood Anderson
The Island Within—Ludwig Lewishon
Sanctuary—William Faulkner
Diary of a Writer—Dostoyevsky
Johnny Got His Gun—Dalton Trumbo
The Forsyte Saga—Galsworthy
The Egoist—George Meredith
Sontag was devoted to the cinema. Rieff notes that one of the notebooks from 1961 is simply a list of films seen. He writes: “On no occasion is there a break of more than four days between films seen; most often [she] notes having seen at least one, and not infrequently, two or three films per day.” That was surely the golden era of the cinema, for today we live in an time when we are lucky if we can find one decent film to see during the week.
Perhaps the best way to convey the intensity and range of Sontag’s life during this period is to quote directly some of her entries:
On Journaling: In the journal I do not just express myself more open than I could do to any person; I create myself.
On Needs: All I feel, most immediately, is the most anguished need for physical love and mental companionship.
On Music: Music is the most wonderful, the most alive of all the arts—it is the most abstract, the most perfect, the most pure—and the most sensual.
On Marriage: Whoever invented marriage was an ingenious tormentor. It is an institution committed to the dulling of the feelings. The whole point of marriage is repetition. The best it aims for is the creation of strong mutual dependencies.
On Writing: Why is writing important? Mainly, out of egotism, I suppose….I write to define myself—an act of self-creation—part of the process of becoming—In dialogue with myself, with writers I admire living and dead, with ideal readers…
In the introduction to Reborn Reiff wonders whether he should have published his mother’s journals since she never made her wishes known to him. To be sure the journals are frank, intimate, cranky, often little more than sexual bookkeeping and emotional quarreling. Yet simultaneously they depict a life that is dedicated to the arts and literature that, as Rieff notes are matters of life and death for his mother and “where seriousness is the greatest good.” Like a fine film, you are fortunate if you encounter a single such person every now and then.
3.05.2009
Still Alice
I have known people who had Alzheimer’s Disease and it has been heartbreaking to try to be with them. It is something to be concerned about as your time draws to a close. What would the experience be like? Are my ordinary memory lapses signs of something more serious? There are 5 million people in the United States who have Alzheimer’s. Am I next?
While much has been written about the neurophysiology of the disease, little is known about what it is like to experience it. Anyone who tries to write about it is limited by the fact that they are either beset with it or are only able to observe how the stricken person behaves.
Still Alice a striking and moving fictional attempt to describe the experience from the point of view of an individual who has been diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s. It was written by Lisa Genova who holds a Ph.D. in neuroscience from Harvard. Currently she is an online columnist for the Alzheimer’s Association and has begun work on her second novel. Genova’s initial attempt to publish the book was rejected by over 100 literary agents and almost as many publishers. Eventually she managed to sell the book to a major publisher; it has become a best seller and currently ranks number 9 on the New York Times trade paperback fiction list.
Still Alice unfolds the course of Alzheimer’s in Alice Hovland who was diagnosed with early onset Alzheimers at the age of 50. At that time she was a distinguished, widely published Professor of Psychology at Harvard. The novel traces the course of the “molecular mayhem” of the disease as Alice begins to loose any connection with herself and the surrounding world
At first she couldn’t find a word in a sentence she was trying to finish. “She has a loose sense for what she wanted to say, but the word itself eluded her.” Then one day she became lost on a familiar street in Cambridge. She had trouble following conversations, could no longer make sense of research papers. She forgets the people she had just met at a party. One day she goes to the class she is teaching and sits in the back with the students waiting for the lecturer to appear. She gets angry, forgets a recipe she has made every year at Christmas, puts her Blackberry in the freezer, and enters the home of a nearby neighbor after returning from a run. . It is a horrible descent into mental oblivion and while it is a fictional account it sounds to me very much like what the actual experience must be.
Eventually she is asked to leave the department and turn over her research and teaching responsibilities to other faculty members. It is a graceful departure. Still she tries desperately to carve out a life for herself. She organizes a support group of early onset Alzheimer’s patients, volunteers to write for an Alzheimer’s organization, and visits with her children each of whom, along with her husband, also a neuroscientist at Harvard, devote as much time as they can in caring for her.
Astonishingly, she is able to deliver an address at an Alzheimer’s Association conference. She writes an eloquent speech and reads it without error. “We feel like we are neither here nor there….I am losing my yesterdays. If you ask me what I did yesterday, what happened, what I saw and felt and heard, I’d be hard pressed to give you details…Being diagnosed with Alzheimers’s is like being branded with a scarlet A….My yesterdays are disappearing, and my tomorrows are uncertain, so what I do I live for? I live for each day. I live in the moment. Some tomorrow soon, I’ll forget that I stood before you and gave this speech. But just because I’ll forget it some tomorrow doesn’t mean that I didn’t live every second of it today. I will forget today, but that doesn’t mean that today didn’t matter.”
At the end of her speech every member of the audience was standing and remained clapping for quite some time. A few tears were visible, including one my own. I found Still Alice one of the most poignant accounts of Alzheimer’s Disease that I have read.
For readers interested in learning more about what this experience is like to those to whom it comes and their caregivers, I strongly recommend the book. It ranks with John Baley’s Elegy for Iris an equally moving account his wife’s (Alice Murdoch), descent into Alzheimer’s and Away from Her, the film Sarah Polley wrote and directed of Alice Munro’s short story, The Bear Came over the Mountain.
In her preface to a reprinting of Munro’s story Polley remarks: “The Bear Came Over the Mountain entered my life when I was twenty-one years old. It crept right into me, had its way with me, and shifted my direction in ways I didn’t understand until years later….I can say without danger of overstatement that I have had a relationship with this story that has been as powerful and as transformative as any I have had with another human being….The story reshaped my idea of love..”
While much has been written about the neurophysiology of the disease, little is known about what it is like to experience it. Anyone who tries to write about it is limited by the fact that they are either beset with it or are only able to observe how the stricken person behaves.
Still Alice a striking and moving fictional attempt to describe the experience from the point of view of an individual who has been diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s. It was written by Lisa Genova who holds a Ph.D. in neuroscience from Harvard. Currently she is an online columnist for the Alzheimer’s Association and has begun work on her second novel. Genova’s initial attempt to publish the book was rejected by over 100 literary agents and almost as many publishers. Eventually she managed to sell the book to a major publisher; it has become a best seller and currently ranks number 9 on the New York Times trade paperback fiction list.
Still Alice unfolds the course of Alzheimer’s in Alice Hovland who was diagnosed with early onset Alzheimers at the age of 50. At that time she was a distinguished, widely published Professor of Psychology at Harvard. The novel traces the course of the “molecular mayhem” of the disease as Alice begins to loose any connection with herself and the surrounding world
At first she couldn’t find a word in a sentence she was trying to finish. “She has a loose sense for what she wanted to say, but the word itself eluded her.” Then one day she became lost on a familiar street in Cambridge. She had trouble following conversations, could no longer make sense of research papers. She forgets the people she had just met at a party. One day she goes to the class she is teaching and sits in the back with the students waiting for the lecturer to appear. She gets angry, forgets a recipe she has made every year at Christmas, puts her Blackberry in the freezer, and enters the home of a nearby neighbor after returning from a run. . It is a horrible descent into mental oblivion and while it is a fictional account it sounds to me very much like what the actual experience must be.
Eventually she is asked to leave the department and turn over her research and teaching responsibilities to other faculty members. It is a graceful departure. Still she tries desperately to carve out a life for herself. She organizes a support group of early onset Alzheimer’s patients, volunteers to write for an Alzheimer’s organization, and visits with her children each of whom, along with her husband, also a neuroscientist at Harvard, devote as much time as they can in caring for her.
Astonishingly, she is able to deliver an address at an Alzheimer’s Association conference. She writes an eloquent speech and reads it without error. “We feel like we are neither here nor there….I am losing my yesterdays. If you ask me what I did yesterday, what happened, what I saw and felt and heard, I’d be hard pressed to give you details…Being diagnosed with Alzheimers’s is like being branded with a scarlet A….My yesterdays are disappearing, and my tomorrows are uncertain, so what I do I live for? I live for each day. I live in the moment. Some tomorrow soon, I’ll forget that I stood before you and gave this speech. But just because I’ll forget it some tomorrow doesn’t mean that I didn’t live every second of it today. I will forget today, but that doesn’t mean that today didn’t matter.”
At the end of her speech every member of the audience was standing and remained clapping for quite some time. A few tears were visible, including one my own. I found Still Alice one of the most poignant accounts of Alzheimer’s Disease that I have read.
For readers interested in learning more about what this experience is like to those to whom it comes and their caregivers, I strongly recommend the book. It ranks with John Baley’s Elegy for Iris an equally moving account his wife’s (Alice Murdoch), descent into Alzheimer’s and Away from Her, the film Sarah Polley wrote and directed of Alice Munro’s short story, The Bear Came over the Mountain.
In her preface to a reprinting of Munro’s story Polley remarks: “The Bear Came Over the Mountain entered my life when I was twenty-one years old. It crept right into me, had its way with me, and shifted my direction in ways I didn’t understand until years later….I can say without danger of overstatement that I have had a relationship with this story that has been as powerful and as transformative as any I have had with another human being….The story reshaped my idea of love..”
3.04.2009
The Schopenhauer Cure
In my post (Feb 4, 2009) about physicians who are or become writers I neglected to mention Irvin D. Yalom. Yalom is Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry at Stanford University who has written two highly regarded textbooks, Existential Psychotherapy and The Theory and Practice of Group Psychotherapy, as well as several short stories and novels related to his therapeutic practice.
On his website he notes that it was “mainly in fiction where I found a refuge, an alternative, more satisfying world, a source of inspiration and wisdom. Sometime early in life I developed the notion—one which I have never relinquished—that writing a novel is the very finest thing a person can do.” And while he decided to a pursue training in medicine he knew from the beginning that he would eventually go into psychiatry.
In his novel The Schopenhauer Cure Yalom describes the experience of a psychotherapist who, when confronted with his own mortality following a routine physical exam, begins to wonder about his former patients and whether or not he made any difference in their lives. He is especially interested in one patient who he treated unsuccessfully for sex addiction many years ago. Julius tracks down this individual, Philip, who much to his surprise has become a philosophical counselor dedicated to educating his clients about the power of Schopenhauer’s philosophy in overcoming their problems.
Throughout the novel, Yalom describes Julius’s ruminations as he approaches the end. He sees a woman walking toward him: She’s probably no older than me. In fact, she’s my future—the wart, the walker, the wheelchair. As she came closer, he heard her mumbling. And he comes to the realization that …to grow old gracefully I had to accept the limiting of possibilities. No longer would any “nubile, breasty girls with the Snow White faces … turn his way with a copy smile and say, “Hey, haven’t seen you here for a while. How’s it going?”
And yet, at the same time he is aware that: Though he had loved Miriam from the moment he laid eyes on her in the tenth grade, he simultaneously resented her as an obstacle blocking him from the multitude of women he felt entitled to enjoy. He had never completely acknowledged that his mate-search was over or that his freedom to follow his lust was in the slightest way curtailed.
What is one to make of this apparent contradiction? Whenever I think about this sort of dilemma, I recall a remark Jane Smiley made in an essay about marriage:
Let’s say there is only one thing we know about men: that they feel a tension between monogamy and promiscuity. Let’s further say that the balance of that tension is different in different men, and that possibly the balance is inherited, and it changes as the men age, sometimes from monogamy toward promiscuity and sometimes from promiscuity toward monogamy.
Much of the Schopenhauer Cure describes the meetings of Julius’ therapy group composed of former clients, including Philip who is relentless in his explanations of Schopenhauer’s philosophy. In this way Yalom contrasts his own approach to therapy with Schopenhauer’s pessimistic views about the conditions that give rise to change.
It’s not ideas, nor vision, nor tools that truly matter in therapy. If you debrief patients at the end of therapy about the process, what do they remember? Never the ideas—its always the relationship.
We should treat with indulgence every human folly, failing and vice, bearing in mind that what we have before us are simply our own failings, follies, and vices. For they are just the failings of mankind to which we also belong and accordingly we have all the same failings buried within ourselves. We should not be indignant with others for these vices simply because they not appear in us at the moment.
In spite of its academic flavor, I greatly enjoyed reading The Schopenhauer Cure. It is that rare mix of philosophical and personal reflection combined in an ongoing dialogue between individuals who have led lives of considerable interest.
On his website he notes that it was “mainly in fiction where I found a refuge, an alternative, more satisfying world, a source of inspiration and wisdom. Sometime early in life I developed the notion—one which I have never relinquished—that writing a novel is the very finest thing a person can do.” And while he decided to a pursue training in medicine he knew from the beginning that he would eventually go into psychiatry.
In his novel The Schopenhauer Cure Yalom describes the experience of a psychotherapist who, when confronted with his own mortality following a routine physical exam, begins to wonder about his former patients and whether or not he made any difference in their lives. He is especially interested in one patient who he treated unsuccessfully for sex addiction many years ago. Julius tracks down this individual, Philip, who much to his surprise has become a philosophical counselor dedicated to educating his clients about the power of Schopenhauer’s philosophy in overcoming their problems.
Throughout the novel, Yalom describes Julius’s ruminations as he approaches the end. He sees a woman walking toward him: She’s probably no older than me. In fact, she’s my future—the wart, the walker, the wheelchair. As she came closer, he heard her mumbling. And he comes to the realization that …to grow old gracefully I had to accept the limiting of possibilities. No longer would any “nubile, breasty girls with the Snow White faces … turn his way with a copy smile and say, “Hey, haven’t seen you here for a while. How’s it going?”
And yet, at the same time he is aware that: Though he had loved Miriam from the moment he laid eyes on her in the tenth grade, he simultaneously resented her as an obstacle blocking him from the multitude of women he felt entitled to enjoy. He had never completely acknowledged that his mate-search was over or that his freedom to follow his lust was in the slightest way curtailed.
What is one to make of this apparent contradiction? Whenever I think about this sort of dilemma, I recall a remark Jane Smiley made in an essay about marriage:
Let’s say there is only one thing we know about men: that they feel a tension between monogamy and promiscuity. Let’s further say that the balance of that tension is different in different men, and that possibly the balance is inherited, and it changes as the men age, sometimes from monogamy toward promiscuity and sometimes from promiscuity toward monogamy.
Much of the Schopenhauer Cure describes the meetings of Julius’ therapy group composed of former clients, including Philip who is relentless in his explanations of Schopenhauer’s philosophy. In this way Yalom contrasts his own approach to therapy with Schopenhauer’s pessimistic views about the conditions that give rise to change.
It’s not ideas, nor vision, nor tools that truly matter in therapy. If you debrief patients at the end of therapy about the process, what do they remember? Never the ideas—its always the relationship.
We should treat with indulgence every human folly, failing and vice, bearing in mind that what we have before us are simply our own failings, follies, and vices. For they are just the failings of mankind to which we also belong and accordingly we have all the same failings buried within ourselves. We should not be indignant with others for these vices simply because they not appear in us at the moment.
In spite of its academic flavor, I greatly enjoyed reading The Schopenhauer Cure. It is that rare mix of philosophical and personal reflection combined in an ongoing dialogue between individuals who have led lives of considerable interest.
3.03.2009
Reading & Reality
In the 1996 Boyer Lecture (a lecture series given each year by prominent Australians) Pierre Ryckmans discusses several aspects of the reading experience. Concerning the question on how literature can change a person’s life, Ryckmans comments:
Earlier on I made the point that no book in particular can actually affect your life, except in a ludicrously limited sense. Having said that, I must now hasten to add if individual books have no such power, what can most certainly transform your life is the very experience of reading itself.
As I think back upon my own experience, I can’t think of any single book that has changed the course of my life. Some have been more influential than others and have led to a line of inquiry that guided my research for a while or motivated me to read other books written by the author.
But it was a collection of books that greatly influenced the course of my life. In the days when I was a freshman in college every student took a full-year course in the history of Western Civilization and then often followed it with another in the Humanities that was devoted to literature and the arts. Those courses and the books I read for them introduced me to the world of academic scholarship and I've never recovered from the experience or found an alternative that comes close.
In this case it wasn’t any particular book that had this effect. Rather it was the more general effects of the reading experiences themselves, their subject matter, and mode of analysis that so strongly influenced me.
Perhaps your experience has been different. Many individuals have reported a particular book, read at a crucial time in their life, did deeply influence them. If that is true for you, I’d very much enjoy hearing about it if. Rychmans also notes:
Looking back into your own past along the landmarks of your life, you will find that great readings occupy a place no less significant than actual happenings. For instance, a long and adventurous journey through strange lands which you undertook in a certain year may in retrospect appear no less memorable than your first exploration of A la recherche du temps perdu, or again you might realise that your encounter with Anna Karenina or with Julien Sorrell proved more momentous than meeting most of your past acquaintances.
My literary friends are as real to me as any of my actual friends. They are individuals who I never seem to come across in my ordinary life, people who I would like to know and talk to with a while. It is a treat to know them. They are always there, ready to take up where we last left off, full of sparkling wit and thoughtful commentary. Moreover, I probably know some of my fictional friends better than my real ones. In How to Read and Why Harold Bloom wrote that one of the reasons we read is “Because you can know, intimately only a very few people, and perhaps you never know them at all. After reading The Magic Mountain you know Hans Castorp thoroughly, and he is greatly worth knowing.”
Does this bespeak of some kind of malady? Is it crazy to think that your reading experiences are just as real as your actual encounters? I don’t think so. Others have put it much the same way. In So Many Books, So Little Time, Sara Nelson writes:
I talk about my books as if they were people, and I choose them the way I choose my friends; because somebody nice introduced us, because I like their looks, because the best of them turn out to be smart and funny and both surprising and inevitable at the same time.
And Proust is said to have compared friendship to reading, because both activities involved communion with others. He also noted that reading had a key advantage:
In reading, friendship is suddenly brought back to its original purity. There is no false amiability with books. If we spend the evening with these friends, it is because we genuinely want to.
I thank Patrick Kurp of Anecdotal Evidence for alerting me to Ryckman’s lecture.
Earlier on I made the point that no book in particular can actually affect your life, except in a ludicrously limited sense. Having said that, I must now hasten to add if individual books have no such power, what can most certainly transform your life is the very experience of reading itself.
As I think back upon my own experience, I can’t think of any single book that has changed the course of my life. Some have been more influential than others and have led to a line of inquiry that guided my research for a while or motivated me to read other books written by the author.
But it was a collection of books that greatly influenced the course of my life. In the days when I was a freshman in college every student took a full-year course in the history of Western Civilization and then often followed it with another in the Humanities that was devoted to literature and the arts. Those courses and the books I read for them introduced me to the world of academic scholarship and I've never recovered from the experience or found an alternative that comes close.
In this case it wasn’t any particular book that had this effect. Rather it was the more general effects of the reading experiences themselves, their subject matter, and mode of analysis that so strongly influenced me.
Perhaps your experience has been different. Many individuals have reported a particular book, read at a crucial time in their life, did deeply influence them. If that is true for you, I’d very much enjoy hearing about it if. Rychmans also notes:
Looking back into your own past along the landmarks of your life, you will find that great readings occupy a place no less significant than actual happenings. For instance, a long and adventurous journey through strange lands which you undertook in a certain year may in retrospect appear no less memorable than your first exploration of A la recherche du temps perdu, or again you might realise that your encounter with Anna Karenina or with Julien Sorrell proved more momentous than meeting most of your past acquaintances.
My literary friends are as real to me as any of my actual friends. They are individuals who I never seem to come across in my ordinary life, people who I would like to know and talk to with a while. It is a treat to know them. They are always there, ready to take up where we last left off, full of sparkling wit and thoughtful commentary. Moreover, I probably know some of my fictional friends better than my real ones. In How to Read and Why Harold Bloom wrote that one of the reasons we read is “Because you can know, intimately only a very few people, and perhaps you never know them at all. After reading The Magic Mountain you know Hans Castorp thoroughly, and he is greatly worth knowing.”
Does this bespeak of some kind of malady? Is it crazy to think that your reading experiences are just as real as your actual encounters? I don’t think so. Others have put it much the same way. In So Many Books, So Little Time, Sara Nelson writes:
I talk about my books as if they were people, and I choose them the way I choose my friends; because somebody nice introduced us, because I like their looks, because the best of them turn out to be smart and funny and both surprising and inevitable at the same time.
And Proust is said to have compared friendship to reading, because both activities involved communion with others. He also noted that reading had a key advantage:
In reading, friendship is suddenly brought back to its original purity. There is no false amiability with books. If we spend the evening with these friends, it is because we genuinely want to.
I thank Patrick Kurp of Anecdotal Evidence for alerting me to Ryckman’s lecture.
3.02.2009
Read A Book--Change Your Life
How often have we heard it said that literature doesn’t influence anyone? “…in spite of my being a voracious reader, I have rarely been truly affected in my behavior (in any durable manner) by anything I have read.” Nassim Taleb
And then how often have we heard a person say it was a book that has had a major influence on their life? “I’m reading Martin Eden for the first time in three years. I can see clearly now, over four years after I first read it, how enormous a personal influence it has been on me…” Susan Sontag
Is there a way to decide between these competing views? Surely there must be some evidence on the matter. Well there is, but it isn’t very extensive and it isn’t very good. One of the most interesting programs that has tried to test the efficacy of reading literature is known as Changing Lives Through Literature. It was written about in the Book Review section of the Sunday, 3/01/09 edition of the New York Times. The program is designed as a sentencing alternative for high-risk offenders with a large number of prior convictions. In addition, the program is restricted to offenders who express a willingness to participate in lieu of a jail sentence.
Changing Lives Through Literature is based on the belief that criminal offenders can derive considerable benefit from the experience of reading and discussing major works of literature. Robert Waxler, one of its founders, suggests that "...offenders often commit criminal acts because they operate from a value system that gives priority to emotions and primal instinct, rather than to reason and critical thinking. We need to challenge that single-minded value system by using novels and short stories that unfold the complexity and diversity of character and human consciousness."
Literature, according to Waxler, can achieve that goal by providing individuals with an opportunity to engage in serious reflection and analysis of their behavior. The program involves intensive reading and group discussions of contemporary literature, including works such as Bank's The Affliction, Dickey's Deliverance, Ellison's Invisible Man, Hemingway's Old Man and the Sea, London's Sea Wolf, Mailer's An American Dream, and Morrison's The Bluest Eye. The discussion sessions take place every other week for two hours.
In a study of the first four groups of offenders, the recidivism rate of 32 men who completed the course was compared with a matched group of 40 probationers who were not exposed to any aspect of the program. An analysis of follow up criminal records indicated that only 6 of the 32 men in the reading group (18.8%) were convicted on new charges after completing the program. In the comparison group, 18 of the 40 men (45%), three times more than the reading group, were convicted on new charges during this period.
While these differences are important, it is not entirely clear they can be attributed to the specific works that were read or to the reading experience itself, independent of its content. The differences could also be due to the group discussions or the contact the offenders had with each other, as well as the group leader. Moreover, the attempt to match the groups was not successful, as those in the reading group had more prior convictions and were rated as more motivated to "make changes in their lives" than members of the comparison group. Without further tests that ideally should include a control group of offenders who read non-literary materials, these factors cannot be ruled out as possible explanations for the initial findings.
In spite of this uncertainty, the Changing Lives Through Literature program impressed me. It sought to measure objectively the effects of a literary reading program. It did so in a formidable setting with a group of individuals who are not often responsive to recidivism reduction techniques. Perhaps the offenders did gain some insight about their own behavior from the readings and discussions after all. As one of the participants reported: "I started to see myself in him [the ship captain in Sea Wolf] and I didn't like what I saw."
And then how often have we heard a person say it was a book that has had a major influence on their life? “I’m reading Martin Eden for the first time in three years. I can see clearly now, over four years after I first read it, how enormous a personal influence it has been on me…” Susan Sontag
Is there a way to decide between these competing views? Surely there must be some evidence on the matter. Well there is, but it isn’t very extensive and it isn’t very good. One of the most interesting programs that has tried to test the efficacy of reading literature is known as Changing Lives Through Literature. It was written about in the Book Review section of the Sunday, 3/01/09 edition of the New York Times. The program is designed as a sentencing alternative for high-risk offenders with a large number of prior convictions. In addition, the program is restricted to offenders who express a willingness to participate in lieu of a jail sentence.
Changing Lives Through Literature is based on the belief that criminal offenders can derive considerable benefit from the experience of reading and discussing major works of literature. Robert Waxler, one of its founders, suggests that "...offenders often commit criminal acts because they operate from a value system that gives priority to emotions and primal instinct, rather than to reason and critical thinking. We need to challenge that single-minded value system by using novels and short stories that unfold the complexity and diversity of character and human consciousness."
Literature, according to Waxler, can achieve that goal by providing individuals with an opportunity to engage in serious reflection and analysis of their behavior. The program involves intensive reading and group discussions of contemporary literature, including works such as Bank's The Affliction, Dickey's Deliverance, Ellison's Invisible Man, Hemingway's Old Man and the Sea, London's Sea Wolf, Mailer's An American Dream, and Morrison's The Bluest Eye. The discussion sessions take place every other week for two hours.
In a study of the first four groups of offenders, the recidivism rate of 32 men who completed the course was compared with a matched group of 40 probationers who were not exposed to any aspect of the program. An analysis of follow up criminal records indicated that only 6 of the 32 men in the reading group (18.8%) were convicted on new charges after completing the program. In the comparison group, 18 of the 40 men (45%), three times more than the reading group, were convicted on new charges during this period.
While these differences are important, it is not entirely clear they can be attributed to the specific works that were read or to the reading experience itself, independent of its content. The differences could also be due to the group discussions or the contact the offenders had with each other, as well as the group leader. Moreover, the attempt to match the groups was not successful, as those in the reading group had more prior convictions and were rated as more motivated to "make changes in their lives" than members of the comparison group. Without further tests that ideally should include a control group of offenders who read non-literary materials, these factors cannot be ruled out as possible explanations for the initial findings.
In spite of this uncertainty, the Changing Lives Through Literature program impressed me. It sought to measure objectively the effects of a literary reading program. It did so in a formidable setting with a group of individuals who are not often responsive to recidivism reduction techniques. Perhaps the offenders did gain some insight about their own behavior from the readings and discussions after all. As one of the participants reported: "I started to see myself in him [the ship captain in Sea Wolf] and I didn't like what I saw."
2.28.2009
Weekend Links
This edition of the Weekend Links point to some of the issues previously discussed on Marks in the Margin, as well as some literary and educational happenings during the past week.
Award to Exceptional Writer-Provocateur
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/feb/24/naomi-klein-warwick-prize
Online Communal Book Club
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/bookclub/
The Future of the Book
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/24/technology/personaltech/24pogue.html?_r=2&emc=tnt&tntemail1=y
National Health Reform
http://www.pnhp.org/news/2009/february/massachusetts_is_no_.php
Online University Lectures
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16624-itunes-university-better-than-the-real-thing.html?DCMP=OTC-rss&nsref=online-news
How Prolific Can One Writer Be?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/feb/26/philip-roth-humbling-nemesis
Another Newspaper Closing
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090228/ap_on_bi_ge/rocky_mountain_news_closes_15
Award to Exceptional Writer-Provocateur
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/feb/24/naomi-klein-warwick-prize
Online Communal Book Club
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/bookclub/
The Future of the Book
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/24/technology/personaltech/24pogue.html?_r=2&emc=tnt&tntemail1=y
National Health Reform
http://www.pnhp.org/news/2009/february/massachusetts_is_no_.php
Online University Lectures
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16624-itunes-university-better-than-the-real-thing.html?DCMP=OTC-rss&nsref=online-news
How Prolific Can One Writer Be?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/feb/26/philip-roth-humbling-nemesis
Another Newspaper Closing
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090228/ap_on_bi_ge/rocky_mountain_news_closes_15
2.27.2009
I'd Rather Be At Powell's
After living in Portland, Oregon for most of my adult life, I recently moved to Honolulu largely to escape the long, cold, wet winters in the Northwest. It is almost March and a friend wrote me today that in snowed last night in Portland.
I think often of the city and what I’d be doing there now. Even when it was cold or rainy, I went to Powell’s Bookstore several times a week. I was fortunate in that it was located a few blocks from my home. Of all my favorite places in Portland, Powell’s is the one place I miss the most.
Just before moving to Hawaii, I went one night over to the store. It was the first time I had been there in a while. I went upstairs to the book holding room. I had ordered a book from their warehouse the day before and here it was the very next day. It is a long walk up to the 5th floor but I didn’t mind, since it took me through the philosophy section with all those treasures I wanted to read or read again. I came downstairs to the 4th floor where a reading was about to begin and stopped to scan the book the visiting author was going to discuss. It seemed interesting and I thought about staying. Afterward, I regretted that I didn’t.
And then I wandered around the travel section on the third floor and eventually returned to the new book section on the 1st floor. It felt really good to be there, so close to where my home was, even though the night was cold and wet. And the next morning I thought it might be hard to live in a place where Powell’s wasn’t just a couple of blocks down the way. And then I wondered if a bookstore, if Powell’s, could keep a person, keep me, in a town that I found so cold and oppressive most of the year.
Many writers have written about Powell’s. Many Portland area writers work there and many others would like to. Most writers speak at Powell’s on their national book tour. I have listen to former students talk about the books they have written and well known writers read from their latest novel. More often than not I must stand to listen. Even though there is an ample supply of seats in the Reading Room, it is always filled to capacity long before the author arrives.
The writer Laila Lalami recently left Portland for a teaching position in California. Here is what she wrote just before leaving:
We went to Powell's last night, and being in those aisles almost brought me to tears. The Blue Room! The literary magazine rack! The Cavallini notebooks! I picked up two travel books by Pico Iyer (The Lady and the Monk and Video Night in Kathmandu), a used hardcover, in excellent condition, of Moroccan anthropologist Abdellah Hammoudi's A Season in Mecca, Coetzee's memoir Youth, and a few other titles for fall. Few places give readers so much opportunity as Powell's to explore and try something different. I don't know what I'm going to do without it.
David Shipley, coauthor with Will Schwalbe of their recently published Send, a guide to e-mailing wrote:
I was born in Portland (1963) and grew up there. Powell's was a fixture of my childhood, … The store was smaller, colder, dingier, moldier. The windows — and this could be memory talking — seemed perpetually steamed up. I can't help thinking back to those days now — back to those afternoons when my mom carted my brother and sister and me (all of us crowded in the wayback of her deep green 1972 Volvo, long before seatbelts were mandatory) downtown to hang out at Powell's and get lost in and among books.
The late Susan Sontag called it the “best bookstore in the English-speaking world.” And Susan Sontag usually knew what she was talking about. If you do not live in Portland, I invite you to visit Powell’s website, where you can stroll about the shelves, buy a book or two, or subscribe to their several e-mail newsletters.
Powell’s has been widely written about in the press. From the many observations collected on its website, I have selected a few to post below:
"The point is Powell's probably is the world's greatest bookstore. It is a place of staggering ambition, hidden in the very humble wrapper of a worn-out warehouse. Any library we seek tax money to build ought to measure up to Powell's or it isn't worth it." The Seattle Times
"And I love the unique sense of expectancy that, time and again, carries me into Powell's. It's not unlike the anticipation wrought by a great book ... and it is the hallmark of a great bookstore." Steve Dunn, The Oregonian
"The once heretical notion of putting new books next to used ones turned out to be absolutely brilliant." Inc. Magazine, May 2004
"Party crasher Ralph Nader, on walking Monday night through Mike Powell's bookstore: 'This is what civilization should look like.'" The Oregonian, January 23, 2002
"There simply is no place in America like Powell's. No bookstore is so big or so meticulously organized, and none has such a psychic hold on so large a community.... Authors on book tours have been known to ask for an extra day [in Portland] just to wander its aisles." John Balzar, Los Angeles Times
"They are just one of the finest operations in the country, the most innovative and creative..." The Wall Street Journal, September 21, 1998
I think often of the city and what I’d be doing there now. Even when it was cold or rainy, I went to Powell’s Bookstore several times a week. I was fortunate in that it was located a few blocks from my home. Of all my favorite places in Portland, Powell’s is the one place I miss the most.
Just before moving to Hawaii, I went one night over to the store. It was the first time I had been there in a while. I went upstairs to the book holding room. I had ordered a book from their warehouse the day before and here it was the very next day. It is a long walk up to the 5th floor but I didn’t mind, since it took me through the philosophy section with all those treasures I wanted to read or read again. I came downstairs to the 4th floor where a reading was about to begin and stopped to scan the book the visiting author was going to discuss. It seemed interesting and I thought about staying. Afterward, I regretted that I didn’t.
And then I wandered around the travel section on the third floor and eventually returned to the new book section on the 1st floor. It felt really good to be there, so close to where my home was, even though the night was cold and wet. And the next morning I thought it might be hard to live in a place where Powell’s wasn’t just a couple of blocks down the way. And then I wondered if a bookstore, if Powell’s, could keep a person, keep me, in a town that I found so cold and oppressive most of the year.
Many writers have written about Powell’s. Many Portland area writers work there and many others would like to. Most writers speak at Powell’s on their national book tour. I have listen to former students talk about the books they have written and well known writers read from their latest novel. More often than not I must stand to listen. Even though there is an ample supply of seats in the Reading Room, it is always filled to capacity long before the author arrives.
The writer Laila Lalami recently left Portland for a teaching position in California. Here is what she wrote just before leaving:
We went to Powell's last night, and being in those aisles almost brought me to tears. The Blue Room! The literary magazine rack! The Cavallini notebooks! I picked up two travel books by Pico Iyer (The Lady and the Monk and Video Night in Kathmandu), a used hardcover, in excellent condition, of Moroccan anthropologist Abdellah Hammoudi's A Season in Mecca, Coetzee's memoir Youth, and a few other titles for fall. Few places give readers so much opportunity as Powell's to explore and try something different. I don't know what I'm going to do without it.
David Shipley, coauthor with Will Schwalbe of their recently published Send, a guide to e-mailing wrote:
I was born in Portland (1963) and grew up there. Powell's was a fixture of my childhood, … The store was smaller, colder, dingier, moldier. The windows — and this could be memory talking — seemed perpetually steamed up. I can't help thinking back to those days now — back to those afternoons when my mom carted my brother and sister and me (all of us crowded in the wayback of her deep green 1972 Volvo, long before seatbelts were mandatory) downtown to hang out at Powell's and get lost in and among books.
The late Susan Sontag called it the “best bookstore in the English-speaking world.” And Susan Sontag usually knew what she was talking about. If you do not live in Portland, I invite you to visit Powell’s website, where you can stroll about the shelves, buy a book or two, or subscribe to their several e-mail newsletters.
Powell’s has been widely written about in the press. From the many observations collected on its website, I have selected a few to post below:
"The point is Powell's probably is the world's greatest bookstore. It is a place of staggering ambition, hidden in the very humble wrapper of a worn-out warehouse. Any library we seek tax money to build ought to measure up to Powell's or it isn't worth it." The Seattle Times
"And I love the unique sense of expectancy that, time and again, carries me into Powell's. It's not unlike the anticipation wrought by a great book ... and it is the hallmark of a great bookstore." Steve Dunn, The Oregonian
"The once heretical notion of putting new books next to used ones turned out to be absolutely brilliant." Inc. Magazine, May 2004
"Party crasher Ralph Nader, on walking Monday night through Mike Powell's bookstore: 'This is what civilization should look like.'" The Oregonian, January 23, 2002
"There simply is no place in America like Powell's. No bookstore is so big or so meticulously organized, and none has such a psychic hold on so large a community.... Authors on book tours have been known to ask for an extra day [in Portland] just to wander its aisles." John Balzar, Los Angeles Times
"They are just one of the finest operations in the country, the most innovative and creative..." The Wall Street Journal, September 21, 1998
2.26.2009
Riffing With Words
In addition, to the empirical temperament of Ian McEwan’s literary works, there is a subtle appreciation of music lurking the background. I am occasionally reminded of a jazz musician riffing when I read some of the long reveries in his novels. He remarks in Zalewski’s New Yorker (February 23, 2009) profile that “…in terms of the pulse of a sentence I care as much as anyone.”
This is clearly illustrated in Saturday when Perowne takes off on one of the many daydreams that McEwan sprinkles throughout the novel. In the unforgettable early morning scene that begins the novel Perowne falls into such a state as he observes his own mood:
“It is not clear to him when exactly he became conscious, nor does it seem relevant…It’s as if, standing there in the darkness, he’s materialized out of nothing, fully formed, unencumbered….Henry thinks the city is a success, a brilliant invention, a biological masterpiece—millions teeming around the accumulated and layered achievements of the centuries, as though around a coral reef, sleeping, working, entertaining themselves, harmonious for the most part, nearly everyone wanting it to be work.”
Zalewski quotes the ending of McEwan’s 1992 novel Black Dogs as further example of his tendency to drift into a meditative trace-like mood which is this case becomes almost poetic:
“She was delivered into herself, she was changed. This, now, here. Surely this was what existence strained to be, and so rarely had the chance: to savor itself fully in the present……the smooth darkening summer air, the scent of thyme crushed underfoot, her hunger, her slaked thirst, the warm stone she could feel through her shirt, the aftertaste of peach, the stickiness on her hand, her tired legs, her sweaty, sunny, dusty fatigue.”
While writers often describe how hard it is to write well, rarely do they speak about how enjoyable it can be. McEwan is an exception. He notes: “One thing that’s missing from the discussion of literature in the academy is the pleasure principle. Not only the pleasure of the reader but also of the writer. Writing is a self-pleasuring act.”
One of the several passages in Saturday where Perowne enters into a recollection of an operation he had earlier performed also illustrates the great pleasure McEwan finds in his “love of sculpting prose:”
"For the past two hours he’s been in a dream of absorption that has dissolved all sense of time, and all awareness of the other parts of his life. Even his awareness of his own existence has vanished. He’s been delivered into a pure present, free of the weight of the past the past or any anxieties about the future. In retrospect, though never at the time, it feels like profound happiness. It’s a little like sex, in that he feels himself in another medium, but it’s less obviously pleasurable, and clearly not sensual. This state of mind brings a contentment he never finds with any passive form of entertainment. Books, cinema, even music can’t bring him to this…This benevolent dissociation seems to require difficulty, prolonged demands on concentration and skills, pressure, problems to be solved, even danger. He feels calm, and spacious, fully qualified to exist. It’s a feeling of clarified emptiness, of deep muted job."
McEwan’s obvious pleasure in riffing with words leads me to wonder if he might secretly wish to be a musician. I do know from Zalewski’s profile that he likes live music and that recently he wrote the libretto for a new opera. And in Saturday while ruminating about his son’s rock musical career, Perowne admits
“There’s nothing in his own life that contains this inventiveness, this style of being free. The music speaks to unexpressed longing or frustration, a sense that he’s being denied himself an open road, the life of the heart celebrated in the songs. There has to be more to life than merely saving lives.”
It was a treat for me to learn about McEwan’s life, his many friends and many talents. He is one of those authors whose next novel I look forward to reading and will inevitably purchase a copy the moment it becomes available.
This is clearly illustrated in Saturday when Perowne takes off on one of the many daydreams that McEwan sprinkles throughout the novel. In the unforgettable early morning scene that begins the novel Perowne falls into such a state as he observes his own mood:
“It is not clear to him when exactly he became conscious, nor does it seem relevant…It’s as if, standing there in the darkness, he’s materialized out of nothing, fully formed, unencumbered….Henry thinks the city is a success, a brilliant invention, a biological masterpiece—millions teeming around the accumulated and layered achievements of the centuries, as though around a coral reef, sleeping, working, entertaining themselves, harmonious for the most part, nearly everyone wanting it to be work.”
Zalewski quotes the ending of McEwan’s 1992 novel Black Dogs as further example of his tendency to drift into a meditative trace-like mood which is this case becomes almost poetic:
“She was delivered into herself, she was changed. This, now, here. Surely this was what existence strained to be, and so rarely had the chance: to savor itself fully in the present……the smooth darkening summer air, the scent of thyme crushed underfoot, her hunger, her slaked thirst, the warm stone she could feel through her shirt, the aftertaste of peach, the stickiness on her hand, her tired legs, her sweaty, sunny, dusty fatigue.”
While writers often describe how hard it is to write well, rarely do they speak about how enjoyable it can be. McEwan is an exception. He notes: “One thing that’s missing from the discussion of literature in the academy is the pleasure principle. Not only the pleasure of the reader but also of the writer. Writing is a self-pleasuring act.”
One of the several passages in Saturday where Perowne enters into a recollection of an operation he had earlier performed also illustrates the great pleasure McEwan finds in his “love of sculpting prose:”
"For the past two hours he’s been in a dream of absorption that has dissolved all sense of time, and all awareness of the other parts of his life. Even his awareness of his own existence has vanished. He’s been delivered into a pure present, free of the weight of the past the past or any anxieties about the future. In retrospect, though never at the time, it feels like profound happiness. It’s a little like sex, in that he feels himself in another medium, but it’s less obviously pleasurable, and clearly not sensual. This state of mind brings a contentment he never finds with any passive form of entertainment. Books, cinema, even music can’t bring him to this…This benevolent dissociation seems to require difficulty, prolonged demands on concentration and skills, pressure, problems to be solved, even danger. He feels calm, and spacious, fully qualified to exist. It’s a feeling of clarified emptiness, of deep muted job."
McEwan’s obvious pleasure in riffing with words leads me to wonder if he might secretly wish to be a musician. I do know from Zalewski’s profile that he likes live music and that recently he wrote the libretto for a new opera. And in Saturday while ruminating about his son’s rock musical career, Perowne admits
“There’s nothing in his own life that contains this inventiveness, this style of being free. The music speaks to unexpressed longing or frustration, a sense that he’s being denied himself an open road, the life of the heart celebrated in the songs. There has to be more to life than merely saving lives.”
It was a treat for me to learn about McEwan’s life, his many friends and many talents. He is one of those authors whose next novel I look forward to reading and will inevitably purchase a copy the moment it becomes available.
2.25.2009
An Empirical Temperament
When I read Saturday by Ian McEwan a few years ago, I was not only impressed with the power of the novel, but also by the extent to which McEwan introduced neurophysiological and psychological analysis in his tale. There is this foolish tradition that fiction and science simply don’t mix. To my mind, McEwan’s talent in disabusing the reader of this myth in Saturday and elsewhere is among his greatest strengths.
In the February 23, 2009 issue of The New Yorker Daniel Zalewski has written a wide-ranging, highly informative profile of Ian McEwan. Because I have such great admiration for his literary fiction, I would like to convey some of what I learned about McEwan by discussing Zalewski’s profile during the next day or so.
Zalewski begins by pointing out that: “All novelists are scholars of human behavior but Ian McEwan pursues the matter with more scientific rigor than the job strictly requires.” Elsewhere he notes that McEwan regularly introduces his observations with reference to peer-reviewed studies. Doing this is very unusual but never once in reading Saturday did I feel it intruded on his fictional narrative.
In Saturday as Henry Perowne, a neurosurgeon, approaches the owner of the car he had just scraped in heavy traffic, he makes a mental note to himself that “…even as he sees, or senses, what’s coming towards him at such speed, there remains a portion of his thoughts a droning, pedestrian diagnostician who notes poor self control, emotional lability, explosive temper, suggestive of reduced levels of GABA among the appropriate binding sites on striatal neurons.”
And a few pages later “Who could ever reckon up the damage done to love and friendship and all hopes of happiness by a surfeit or depletion of this or that neurotransmitter?”
According to Zalewski “McEwan’s presiding interest has always been psychology.” In discussing his novel Atonement McEwan “pointed to a study in cognitive psychology suggesting that the best way to deceive someone is to first deceive yourself…(She [referring to Briony Tallis, the precious teenager who makes a false accusation of rape that led to the ruin of two lives] trapped herself, she marched into the labyrinth of her own construction.”
The study McEwan mentioned is one of the most widely cited in experimental social psychology. It laid the foundation for most of the work in cognitive dissonance theory whose central tenant is that holding two inconsistent ideas is a highly discomforting experience that individuals strive to reduce in a variety of non-obvious ways.
Oddly I was actually a subject in that experiment when I was an undergraduate student in psychology and I remember it vividly. After it was over, I was quite agitated for quite some time for the deception I was induced to make as a result of the experimental manipulation.
Zalewski notes that “Like many scientists of his generation, McEwan has shifted his intellectual allegiances. At first, he studied perversity; now he studies normality. His first god was Freud. Now it is Darwin.”
It is also clear McEwan is extremely well informed about current research in neuroscience. In Saturday, he writes about Perowne’s visit with his dementia stricken mother: “The disease proceeds by tiny unnoticed strokes in small blood vessels in the brain. Cumulatively, the infarcts cause cognitive decline by disrupting the neural nets.”
And further on in over six densely written pages he describes in exquisite technical detail one of the two surgeries that Perowne performs in the novel: “Perowne asks for the first of the big-self-retraining retractors…Although Rodney leans in with a Dakin’s syringe…Perowne takes a scalpel and makes a small incision in the dura…”
In a word Saturday was, as Zalewski points out “…a direct assault on the modern novel’s skepticism toward science.” No wonder I enjoyed reading it so much as it naturally blended the two cultures that have been so much a part of my life yet, at the same time are widely held to be incompatible with each other.
In the February 23, 2009 issue of The New Yorker Daniel Zalewski has written a wide-ranging, highly informative profile of Ian McEwan. Because I have such great admiration for his literary fiction, I would like to convey some of what I learned about McEwan by discussing Zalewski’s profile during the next day or so.
Zalewski begins by pointing out that: “All novelists are scholars of human behavior but Ian McEwan pursues the matter with more scientific rigor than the job strictly requires.” Elsewhere he notes that McEwan regularly introduces his observations with reference to peer-reviewed studies. Doing this is very unusual but never once in reading Saturday did I feel it intruded on his fictional narrative.
In Saturday as Henry Perowne, a neurosurgeon, approaches the owner of the car he had just scraped in heavy traffic, he makes a mental note to himself that “…even as he sees, or senses, what’s coming towards him at such speed, there remains a portion of his thoughts a droning, pedestrian diagnostician who notes poor self control, emotional lability, explosive temper, suggestive of reduced levels of GABA among the appropriate binding sites on striatal neurons.”
And a few pages later “Who could ever reckon up the damage done to love and friendship and all hopes of happiness by a surfeit or depletion of this or that neurotransmitter?”
According to Zalewski “McEwan’s presiding interest has always been psychology.” In discussing his novel Atonement McEwan “pointed to a study in cognitive psychology suggesting that the best way to deceive someone is to first deceive yourself…(She [referring to Briony Tallis, the precious teenager who makes a false accusation of rape that led to the ruin of two lives] trapped herself, she marched into the labyrinth of her own construction.”
The study McEwan mentioned is one of the most widely cited in experimental social psychology. It laid the foundation for most of the work in cognitive dissonance theory whose central tenant is that holding two inconsistent ideas is a highly discomforting experience that individuals strive to reduce in a variety of non-obvious ways.
Oddly I was actually a subject in that experiment when I was an undergraduate student in psychology and I remember it vividly. After it was over, I was quite agitated for quite some time for the deception I was induced to make as a result of the experimental manipulation.
Zalewski notes that “Like many scientists of his generation, McEwan has shifted his intellectual allegiances. At first, he studied perversity; now he studies normality. His first god was Freud. Now it is Darwin.”
It is also clear McEwan is extremely well informed about current research in neuroscience. In Saturday, he writes about Perowne’s visit with his dementia stricken mother: “The disease proceeds by tiny unnoticed strokes in small blood vessels in the brain. Cumulatively, the infarcts cause cognitive decline by disrupting the neural nets.”
And further on in over six densely written pages he describes in exquisite technical detail one of the two surgeries that Perowne performs in the novel: “Perowne asks for the first of the big-self-retraining retractors…Although Rodney leans in with a Dakin’s syringe…Perowne takes a scalpel and makes a small incision in the dura…”
In a word Saturday was, as Zalewski points out “…a direct assault on the modern novel’s skepticism toward science.” No wonder I enjoyed reading it so much as it naturally blended the two cultures that have been so much a part of my life yet, at the same time are widely held to be incompatible with each other.
2.24.2009
Unfinished Books
A letter-writing friend and I have been discussing the difficulty we have in not finishing a book we have started to read. We do not have an e-mail correspondence, rather it is one of the old fashion kind, where letters are written or typed, placed in a envelope, and then delivered in the mail all too many days later by the US Postal Service. We have been writing letters, truly wonderful letters, the type no one sends to you anymore, for almost three years. We have never met and I don’t imagine we ever will but we have become the best of friends. So much for speed dating.
In her last letter she writes: “But O the keenness of one’s disappointment in a book that one eagerly anticipated reading, as I did Steven Millhauser’s Dangerous Laughter—I’ve been listlessly turning each page, wrestling with the temptation to lay it aside without finishing it. (I almost never do that, but probably should.)”
It seems that lately I’ve also been doing that more often than I like. After reading Pascal Mercier’s Night Train to Lisbon, most of my book reading has been downhill. It seems to me there simply isn’t any intellectual fare among the writers of literary fiction at this time. A new Roth will be published later this year and I understand the same is true for Coetzee. Ian McEwan is also working on a new novel. But this isn’t helping me now.
For example, after reading an interesting interview of Richard Ford, I decided to try once again to read his first novel, The Sportswriter. It was going along just fine during the first 100 pages and I had made note of a goodly number of provocative passages. But then it simply stopped, no doubt at the same place it stopped when I first put it down many years ago. It was going nowhere then and it wasn’t going anywhere now. I had the same experience late last year when I began reading Ford’s latest novel, The Lay of the Land. It started off well and then seemed to me to simply come to a halt in mid-stream
What was I to do? I had read a third of both books. The passages were interesting. Couldn’t I tough it out for another 200 pages. Well, I wasn’t sure I could and since I am reluctant to add material to my Commonplace Book without finishing a book, these passages remained duly noted and parked on my shelf of unfinished books.
I am sure this is not an uncommon experience. A recent (March 2007) survey of 4,000 readers in England found that almost half of the books they bought remained unfinished. Booker winner Vernon God Little was the least-finished fiction title, followed by Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Autobiographies by David Blunkett, Bill Clinton, and David Beckham led the non-fiction unfinished list.
Some of the survey respondent’s accounts of why they failed to finish a book are rather amusing. From the larger collection, I selected the following to post below:
I am so jealous of those who didn’t finish Captain Coreill’s Mandolin. I persevered through that book, which built me into a frenzy, but the ending was awful and unsatisfying I threw the book out the window. As far as I know it’s still there.
I really struggled with Captain Coreilli’s Mandolin as the start of the book is very confused and actually quite dull. However, I persevered and after about page 25 it started to make sense and I ended up enjoying it immensely.
Several runs through Proust’s A la Receherche du Temps Perdu have failed to reach the finish line….
I started reading A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth about four times but have never got past half-way, although it’s a wonderful book. At 1474 pages, it’s difficult to stick with it when other new books are tempting you.
The one book that really shouldn’t be on the unfinished list is The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. It’s such a beautiful and inspirational read, and it’s relatively short in comparison to the others. No excuse people—finish what you started!!
Not the least surprised The Alchemist is up there. Glad to see so many other people must have shared my personal loathing for it. It must be the shortest book up there, why else would people not have finished it? Even shy of 200 pages, it was still unexpurgated tripe.
Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time is surely the most inaccessible best-selling book ever written. I suspect you could count the percentage of people who finished it on one hand!
War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy, after 100 pages—too many balls, banquets, and battles!
How can someone NOT finish a book? Surely when you open a book and decide to read it you make a commitment to read it through to the end. I read every day and have NEVER NOT FINISHED A BOOK.
I actually failed to finish reading the results of the survey. How many more ridiculous things can they find to ask the good old British public about?
In her last letter she writes: “But O the keenness of one’s disappointment in a book that one eagerly anticipated reading, as I did Steven Millhauser’s Dangerous Laughter—I’ve been listlessly turning each page, wrestling with the temptation to lay it aside without finishing it. (I almost never do that, but probably should.)”
It seems that lately I’ve also been doing that more often than I like. After reading Pascal Mercier’s Night Train to Lisbon, most of my book reading has been downhill. It seems to me there simply isn’t any intellectual fare among the writers of literary fiction at this time. A new Roth will be published later this year and I understand the same is true for Coetzee. Ian McEwan is also working on a new novel. But this isn’t helping me now.
For example, after reading an interesting interview of Richard Ford, I decided to try once again to read his first novel, The Sportswriter. It was going along just fine during the first 100 pages and I had made note of a goodly number of provocative passages. But then it simply stopped, no doubt at the same place it stopped when I first put it down many years ago. It was going nowhere then and it wasn’t going anywhere now. I had the same experience late last year when I began reading Ford’s latest novel, The Lay of the Land. It started off well and then seemed to me to simply come to a halt in mid-stream
What was I to do? I had read a third of both books. The passages were interesting. Couldn’t I tough it out for another 200 pages. Well, I wasn’t sure I could and since I am reluctant to add material to my Commonplace Book without finishing a book, these passages remained duly noted and parked on my shelf of unfinished books.
I am sure this is not an uncommon experience. A recent (March 2007) survey of 4,000 readers in England found that almost half of the books they bought remained unfinished. Booker winner Vernon God Little was the least-finished fiction title, followed by Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Autobiographies by David Blunkett, Bill Clinton, and David Beckham led the non-fiction unfinished list.
Some of the survey respondent’s accounts of why they failed to finish a book are rather amusing. From the larger collection, I selected the following to post below:
I am so jealous of those who didn’t finish Captain Coreill’s Mandolin. I persevered through that book, which built me into a frenzy, but the ending was awful and unsatisfying I threw the book out the window. As far as I know it’s still there.
I really struggled with Captain Coreilli’s Mandolin as the start of the book is very confused and actually quite dull. However, I persevered and after about page 25 it started to make sense and I ended up enjoying it immensely.
Several runs through Proust’s A la Receherche du Temps Perdu have failed to reach the finish line….
I started reading A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth about four times but have never got past half-way, although it’s a wonderful book. At 1474 pages, it’s difficult to stick with it when other new books are tempting you.
The one book that really shouldn’t be on the unfinished list is The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. It’s such a beautiful and inspirational read, and it’s relatively short in comparison to the others. No excuse people—finish what you started!!
Not the least surprised The Alchemist is up there. Glad to see so many other people must have shared my personal loathing for it. It must be the shortest book up there, why else would people not have finished it? Even shy of 200 pages, it was still unexpurgated tripe.
Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time is surely the most inaccessible best-selling book ever written. I suspect you could count the percentage of people who finished it on one hand!
War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy, after 100 pages—too many balls, banquets, and battles!
How can someone NOT finish a book? Surely when you open a book and decide to read it you make a commitment to read it through to the end. I read every day and have NEVER NOT FINISHED A BOOK.
I actually failed to finish reading the results of the survey. How many more ridiculous things can they find to ask the good old British public about?
2.23.2009
In the Country of Books
Permit me just this once to promote a book I have written. My new book, In the Country of Books, has just been published in England. If you have an extra dollar or pound, it can now be purchased at all the online bookstores in the US and UK. I describe the publication this way.
In the Country of Books is an inquiry into the way literature enters the lives of readers and sometimes changes them. In most commentaries on literature the experience of the reader is virtually ignored as scholars and critics attempt to discern the meaning of the text from various theoretical or cultural frameworks. Instead, this volume focuses on the experience of readers, illustrated with accounts of the author’s reading experiences and current research findings.
The first section of the volume presents a historical background of commonplace books—an individual’s record or journal of memorable reading passages. The critical analysis of this literary form is not extensive. In antiquity commonplace books functioned as organized sources of knowledge and wisdom collected for use in philosophical discussions, public speeches, and legal disputes. Over the course of the following centuries, the form developed into personal collections of notable literary extracts organized in highly idiosyncratic ways.
In the Country of Books is the first contemporary review of the commonplace book tradition, as well as a unique, in-depth analysis of a single commonplace book. It also presents the results of the first-ever survey of individuals who currently keep such a record. This is followed by an overview of the recent appearance of commonplace books on the Web, a study of the author’s commonplace book, and a discussion of the future of the commonplace book tradition.
The essays in the second section of In the Country of Books discuss a number of literary topics including several contemporary literary works, the function of bookmarks in the reading experience, The New Yorker magazine, and the current status of libraries. The volume concludes with an analysis of the varied effects of reading literature, including a review of anecdotal and empirical research on this issue.
I invite readers to e-mail me (rkatzev@gmail.com) if you have questions about the book or would like to discuss its contents.
In the Country of Books is an inquiry into the way literature enters the lives of readers and sometimes changes them. In most commentaries on literature the experience of the reader is virtually ignored as scholars and critics attempt to discern the meaning of the text from various theoretical or cultural frameworks. Instead, this volume focuses on the experience of readers, illustrated with accounts of the author’s reading experiences and current research findings.
The first section of the volume presents a historical background of commonplace books—an individual’s record or journal of memorable reading passages. The critical analysis of this literary form is not extensive. In antiquity commonplace books functioned as organized sources of knowledge and wisdom collected for use in philosophical discussions, public speeches, and legal disputes. Over the course of the following centuries, the form developed into personal collections of notable literary extracts organized in highly idiosyncratic ways.
In the Country of Books is the first contemporary review of the commonplace book tradition, as well as a unique, in-depth analysis of a single commonplace book. It also presents the results of the first-ever survey of individuals who currently keep such a record. This is followed by an overview of the recent appearance of commonplace books on the Web, a study of the author’s commonplace book, and a discussion of the future of the commonplace book tradition.
The essays in the second section of In the Country of Books discuss a number of literary topics including several contemporary literary works, the function of bookmarks in the reading experience, The New Yorker magazine, and the current status of libraries. The volume concludes with an analysis of the varied effects of reading literature, including a review of anecdotal and empirical research on this issue.
I invite readers to e-mail me (rkatzev@gmail.com) if you have questions about the book or would like to discuss its contents.
2.21.2009
Weekend Links
Here are some of the most interesting pages I read or viewed on the Web this week. They range all over the place from music to evaluation research and the economy, as well as literature, of course.
A Musical Sensation
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/astonishing_performance_by_a_venezuelan_youth_orchestra_1.html
Other Literary Blogs
http://books.guardian.co.uk/links/areas_of_interest/general/links/0,6135,1406190,00.html
Return of Evaluation Research
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/16/health/policy/16health.html?_r=1&th&emc=th
McEwan on Updike
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25035626-16947,00.html
In Praise of Pinter
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090302/byrne
A Cautionary Tale
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/13/business/economy/13yen.html?ref=business
A Musical Sensation
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/astonishing_performance_by_a_venezuelan_youth_orchestra_1.html
Other Literary Blogs
http://books.guardian.co.uk/links/areas_of_interest/general/links/0,6135,1406190,00.html
Return of Evaluation Research
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/16/health/policy/16health.html?_r=1&th&emc=th
McEwan on Updike
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25035626-16947,00.html
In Praise of Pinter
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090302/byrne
A Cautionary Tale
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/13/business/economy/13yen.html?ref=business
2.20.2009
About Schmidt--The Film
In response to my post on Louis Begley’s About Schmidt, I was asked about the subsequent film version of the novel. I have no idea why they gave the film the same title as the Begley novel. The Schmidt in the film is nothing like the Schmidt in the book, at least as far as I had imagined him to be.
I am glad I knew that in advance, for I would have been even more disappointed than I was with the film if I had not known it. I might even have felt differently about the film if it been given a different title, something like “A Life of Cheerful Desperation.” I know I would have been eager to see that one.
Naturally a film doesn’t have to be a replica of the novel upon which it is based. However, if you have read the novel first you develop certain expectations about the characters and the situations they encounter. If the film departs widely from these notions, viewing it can sometimes be unsettling or as I felt in the case of About Schmidt rather jarring. On the other hand, I did not feel this way in viewing The Reader, Atonement or, say, The English Patient or more recently Revolutionary Road, each of which remained fairly true to their novelistic predecessor and, at least in my case, contributed to a deeper understanding of it.
In the book, Schmidt is a rich attorney in upper crust New York society with a Harvard degree and a second home in the Hamptons. In the film Schmidt is a middle class insurance actuary in Omaha, Nebraska with a degree from Kansas State and a huge Winnebago bought for his retirement.
The original Schmidt is also a bit of an anti-Semitic, has always slept around, most recently with the mother of his future son-in-law. In the film Schmidt hardly knows what an affair might be, couldn’t care less about a person’s religion, and is repulsed by his future mother-in-law.
I have been thinking a lot about the reasons for these differences, why those who wrote the film created a totally different Schmidt than Begley did in his book. Did they think the film would have greater appeal this way? What else could have motivated them? I am at a loss for any other explanation. However, the Schmidt of the book is far more interesting to me than the one in the film.
Yet both Schmidts are desperate to know what do with their life. What is a man to do, what can a man do, who has lost it all at this point in his life?
In reviewing the film (New York Times January 19, 2003) Begley comments that he “missed the theme of the redemptive and regenerate power of Eros, embodied in my novel by Carrie, the personage I care for most among all that I have created.”
“She is an improbably beautiful and adventurous half-Puerto Rican waitress, just a tad over 20 years old, and her love for Schmidt, and the torrid sex between them, ripen him and open the possibility that he will become a freer and wiser man.”
Yes, very nice, and maybe that is the case for some. But I think not for Schmidt, at least in the light of the previous experiences of Eros that Begley gives to the Schmidt-of-the-novel before his wife died. That did nothing for Schmidt then and it is even less likely that it will do much of anything for the Schmidt-of-the-film either.
Eros cannot solve the problems of the two Schmidts, or if she can, she will do so only superficially and never for very long. Eventually, the problems will resurface in all their maddening desperation.
I am glad I knew that in advance, for I would have been even more disappointed than I was with the film if I had not known it. I might even have felt differently about the film if it been given a different title, something like “A Life of Cheerful Desperation.” I know I would have been eager to see that one.
Naturally a film doesn’t have to be a replica of the novel upon which it is based. However, if you have read the novel first you develop certain expectations about the characters and the situations they encounter. If the film departs widely from these notions, viewing it can sometimes be unsettling or as I felt in the case of About Schmidt rather jarring. On the other hand, I did not feel this way in viewing The Reader, Atonement or, say, The English Patient or more recently Revolutionary Road, each of which remained fairly true to their novelistic predecessor and, at least in my case, contributed to a deeper understanding of it.
In the book, Schmidt is a rich attorney in upper crust New York society with a Harvard degree and a second home in the Hamptons. In the film Schmidt is a middle class insurance actuary in Omaha, Nebraska with a degree from Kansas State and a huge Winnebago bought for his retirement.
The original Schmidt is also a bit of an anti-Semitic, has always slept around, most recently with the mother of his future son-in-law. In the film Schmidt hardly knows what an affair might be, couldn’t care less about a person’s religion, and is repulsed by his future mother-in-law.
I have been thinking a lot about the reasons for these differences, why those who wrote the film created a totally different Schmidt than Begley did in his book. Did they think the film would have greater appeal this way? What else could have motivated them? I am at a loss for any other explanation. However, the Schmidt of the book is far more interesting to me than the one in the film.
Yet both Schmidts are desperate to know what do with their life. What is a man to do, what can a man do, who has lost it all at this point in his life?
In reviewing the film (New York Times January 19, 2003) Begley comments that he “missed the theme of the redemptive and regenerate power of Eros, embodied in my novel by Carrie, the personage I care for most among all that I have created.”
“She is an improbably beautiful and adventurous half-Puerto Rican waitress, just a tad over 20 years old, and her love for Schmidt, and the torrid sex between them, ripen him and open the possibility that he will become a freer and wiser man.”
Yes, very nice, and maybe that is the case for some. But I think not for Schmidt, at least in the light of the previous experiences of Eros that Begley gives to the Schmidt-of-the-novel before his wife died. That did nothing for Schmidt then and it is even less likely that it will do much of anything for the Schmidt-of-the-film either.
Eros cannot solve the problems of the two Schmidts, or if she can, she will do so only superficially and never for very long. Eventually, the problems will resurface in all their maddening desperation.
2.19.2009
American Sucker
The current economic crisis (What is it, anyway? A short-term crisis? A long term recession? The start of a major depression? Something even worse? Does any one really know?) has reminded me of American Sucker, David Denby’s account of his stock market woes during the last time we had an economic meltdown.
Like countless other stock market investors, Denby, who writes very fine film reviews for The New Yorker, lost a bundle in the market when the “bubble” began to collapse in March of 2000. It is depressing to read Denby’s account of his experiences during the ensuing period. It is even more so when it is framed against the disintegration of his family after his wife leaves him and he tries to care for their two boys and maintain a home for them. The experience tears him up.
American Sucker is also about the people (Henry Blodgett, Sam Waiskal, etc) who he met during the boom and how they let him down, as well as his obsession with the rising market in spite of all that he knew and all that he had studied about comparable situations. There are passages of insight but there is nothing funny about any of them.
It became a “necessity” of sorts for him to profit from the boom, in order to collect sufficient funds to buy his wife’s share of their West Side apartment. Greed and desire got the better of him and so he hung on when the world around him was collapsing.
He was aware of all that too. He knew what was happening. He knew how to extricate himself. Still he kept making mistakes, kept up the hope for the turnaround that never came. We all did. Hope can be so destructive.
I found it interesting to compare his experience with mine. The boom never became an obsession with me as it had with him. More than anything it was a lot of fun. How could it not be with those daily ten-point jumps in Qualcomm and the morning call each day from my guy on Wall Street?
It became somewhat disappointing as the bottom fell out of the market. But that was only because I, along with most everyone else, had formed unrealistic expectations. They vanished very quickly, mostly because I wasn’t hung up on winning big and had profited more than enough, actually far more than I deserved, if one can speak of making money that way.
Denby is well read. In this book about financial and personal collapse he writes about Aristotle, Veblen, the Greenspan logic, and economic theory. He asks good questions, fundamental ones. He learned from the experience. We all did or think we did.
He is cognizant of the danger of dismissing bad news, how easy it is to become blind to evidence contrary to your own views, or to ignore the tell tale signs of corporate hanky-panky.
And so the bubble burst. It was amusing to recall those days, those heady days that come, if you are lucky, once in a lifetime. The current market collapse is different, of course, more troubling and far more widespread. But again there have been the unrealistic expectations, investor and corporate manipulations, and outrageous acts of executive greed. I am not sure we have learned all that much since the last time the bubble burst.
A few of Denby’s remarks about the experiences he describes in American Sucker follow. Some seem as relevant today as they did nine years ago:
For I had already lost something of incomparable value—not a possession but the center of my life…
Obsession leads not to satisfaction but to more obsession.
The sane approach to life, I told myself, was to find something that you were good at, something that gave you pleasure and was useful to others, and then discover a way to make a decent living out of it.
But if they were bored or stymied, was it any wonder that they devoted themselves to clothes and furniture or household goods or cars and the rest? Consumerism was the displacement of exasperation. You might deplore it, but there was no reason not to regard it with sympathy.
And what hurts most of all is that I knew. I knew about the delusions, the tulpenwoerde, the South Sea disaster. I knew and was convinced that this time it was different….Hope and greed are such commanding emotions that I filtered, censored, and abolished what I didn’t want to hear…I listened again to those I wanted to listen to.
People have now lost a lot of money. They can say I made a mistake, I lost a lot or they can say, Somebody fucked me. It’s much easier to say the latter.
It was a bubble. This is just the way that markets behave and the way people behave.
The system seemed to work, but the precariousness of it stunned me.
Like countless other stock market investors, Denby, who writes very fine film reviews for The New Yorker, lost a bundle in the market when the “bubble” began to collapse in March of 2000. It is depressing to read Denby’s account of his experiences during the ensuing period. It is even more so when it is framed against the disintegration of his family after his wife leaves him and he tries to care for their two boys and maintain a home for them. The experience tears him up.
American Sucker is also about the people (Henry Blodgett, Sam Waiskal, etc) who he met during the boom and how they let him down, as well as his obsession with the rising market in spite of all that he knew and all that he had studied about comparable situations. There are passages of insight but there is nothing funny about any of them.
It became a “necessity” of sorts for him to profit from the boom, in order to collect sufficient funds to buy his wife’s share of their West Side apartment. Greed and desire got the better of him and so he hung on when the world around him was collapsing.
He was aware of all that too. He knew what was happening. He knew how to extricate himself. Still he kept making mistakes, kept up the hope for the turnaround that never came. We all did. Hope can be so destructive.
I found it interesting to compare his experience with mine. The boom never became an obsession with me as it had with him. More than anything it was a lot of fun. How could it not be with those daily ten-point jumps in Qualcomm and the morning call each day from my guy on Wall Street?
It became somewhat disappointing as the bottom fell out of the market. But that was only because I, along with most everyone else, had formed unrealistic expectations. They vanished very quickly, mostly because I wasn’t hung up on winning big and had profited more than enough, actually far more than I deserved, if one can speak of making money that way.
Denby is well read. In this book about financial and personal collapse he writes about Aristotle, Veblen, the Greenspan logic, and economic theory. He asks good questions, fundamental ones. He learned from the experience. We all did or think we did.
He is cognizant of the danger of dismissing bad news, how easy it is to become blind to evidence contrary to your own views, or to ignore the tell tale signs of corporate hanky-panky.
And so the bubble burst. It was amusing to recall those days, those heady days that come, if you are lucky, once in a lifetime. The current market collapse is different, of course, more troubling and far more widespread. But again there have been the unrealistic expectations, investor and corporate manipulations, and outrageous acts of executive greed. I am not sure we have learned all that much since the last time the bubble burst.
A few of Denby’s remarks about the experiences he describes in American Sucker follow. Some seem as relevant today as they did nine years ago:
For I had already lost something of incomparable value—not a possession but the center of my life…
Obsession leads not to satisfaction but to more obsession.
The sane approach to life, I told myself, was to find something that you were good at, something that gave you pleasure and was useful to others, and then discover a way to make a decent living out of it.
But if they were bored or stymied, was it any wonder that they devoted themselves to clothes and furniture or household goods or cars and the rest? Consumerism was the displacement of exasperation. You might deplore it, but there was no reason not to regard it with sympathy.
And what hurts most of all is that I knew. I knew about the delusions, the tulpenwoerde, the South Sea disaster. I knew and was convinced that this time it was different….Hope and greed are such commanding emotions that I filtered, censored, and abolished what I didn’t want to hear…I listened again to those I wanted to listen to.
People have now lost a lot of money. They can say I made a mistake, I lost a lot or they can say, Somebody fucked me. It’s much easier to say the latter.
It was a bubble. This is just the way that markets behave and the way people behave.
The system seemed to work, but the precariousness of it stunned me.
2.18.2009
About Schmidt: A Review in Real Time
Most commentaries on books occur after they have been read. And they usually tend to focus on the meaning of the story, the way it is written, and perhaps other works by the author. Surely there must be other ways to review a work of literature.
As far as I can tell few reviews describe the reactions of the reader while the book is being read or how their reactions change as the story unfolds. In this way, a review becomes more of a recollection, an interpretation rather than a description of the reading experience itself.
A few years ago I read Louis Begley’s novel About Schmidt. I had admired Begley’s first two novels Wartime Lies and The Man Who Was Late and regularly looked forward to his next book. However, there must have been something about About Schmidt that troubled or annoyed me for I was led me to express my reactions while I was in the process of reading it. Here is what I wrote over the course of that period.
No one told me that one could not write about being lost in a fog.
Louis Begley
I am reading Louis Begley's novel About Schmidt. There's nothing special about it. No romance. No real drama. Few, if any, heavy weight moral issues. Just a long, languorous chronicle of one man's last lap.
The man, Schmidt, well he is my age, a retired lawyer, who achieved some degree of fame and financial security. I think he did much love his wife. Schmidt graduated from Harvard, was a senior partner in a distinguished Manhattan law firm (Aren't all Manhattan law firm's distinguished?) had a large apartment on Park Avenue and a lovely family home in Southhampton on Long Island. All the usual upper crust stuff.
But Schmidt's wife has just died and so now he is at loose ends. Their only child, a daughter, is about to be married to a young man in the firm, a man who is Jewish and is not much appreciated by Schmidt. What father ever really likes the man who takes away his daughter?
He goes from day to day trying to find things to do. He sells the Park Avenue apartment, moves out to the Southhampton, but is not content there. So he decides to give his daughter the lovely family home on Long Island as a wedding gift.
The book works its way back to his past, where it lingers a while, dwelling on a few causal indiscretions.
Schmidt cannot go back to the office. His friends no longer belong to his club in the city. He doesn't golf. Doesn't seem to read much more than junk. He is not a happy man.
And as I read, page after page of this tale, I find it more and more enjoyable. I don't know why. Nothing is happening. He is going nowhere. Maybe that's the theme that keeps me going. It does ring a bell.
His life has changed. It is coming to an end. What is a man to do who loses so much, almost everything, in a relatively short span of time--his profession, his wife and his daughter? Is it time to close up shop or to make some effort to carve out a new life? Is one even possible?
But now I am growing weary with this story. Schmidt, whose life and personality had seemed so interesting has taken up with a woman. A woman without culture or refinement. A woman not much beyond 20. A woman who flaunts her body. Here we go again. His long days and endless nights of solitude are over. It also becomes clear he is a bit of an anti-Semite. But I will stick it out for a while, hoping he will get back on the track of existential despair.
And as I read further, I begin to see this tale in a new light. Schmidt continues his affair with the woman. It goes on and on. But where can it possibly go?
It is what it does to him that interests me. It turns him away from his world, his life, himself. It diverts him from the real dilemmas that he faces now. The woman leads him away from those issues-- issues whose resolution might enable him to extract whatever meaning is left in his life. It puts off the inevitable. The confrontation with himself, his days, his endless days until there are no more. It annoys me that Schmidt does not see this. And so the book has come alive for me again.
The story is over now. What a relief. The ending is unsatisfactory. All the questions remain unanswered. All the difficult problems sidestepped. He continues with the girl. I remind you that she was 20 and he was thrice that and then some. It is a mystery, a miracle. Yet, I seem to see it everywhere now.
She says she loves him deeply. That is very touching. He inherits another bundle from his stepmother and decides to move to her enormous home in Palm Beach. I was wondering if he might shoot himself.
As far as I can tell few reviews describe the reactions of the reader while the book is being read or how their reactions change as the story unfolds. In this way, a review becomes more of a recollection, an interpretation rather than a description of the reading experience itself.
A few years ago I read Louis Begley’s novel About Schmidt. I had admired Begley’s first two novels Wartime Lies and The Man Who Was Late and regularly looked forward to his next book. However, there must have been something about About Schmidt that troubled or annoyed me for I was led me to express my reactions while I was in the process of reading it. Here is what I wrote over the course of that period.
No one told me that one could not write about being lost in a fog.
Louis Begley
I am reading Louis Begley's novel About Schmidt. There's nothing special about it. No romance. No real drama. Few, if any, heavy weight moral issues. Just a long, languorous chronicle of one man's last lap.
The man, Schmidt, well he is my age, a retired lawyer, who achieved some degree of fame and financial security. I think he did much love his wife. Schmidt graduated from Harvard, was a senior partner in a distinguished Manhattan law firm (Aren't all Manhattan law firm's distinguished?) had a large apartment on Park Avenue and a lovely family home in Southhampton on Long Island. All the usual upper crust stuff.
But Schmidt's wife has just died and so now he is at loose ends. Their only child, a daughter, is about to be married to a young man in the firm, a man who is Jewish and is not much appreciated by Schmidt. What father ever really likes the man who takes away his daughter?
He goes from day to day trying to find things to do. He sells the Park Avenue apartment, moves out to the Southhampton, but is not content there. So he decides to give his daughter the lovely family home on Long Island as a wedding gift.
The book works its way back to his past, where it lingers a while, dwelling on a few causal indiscretions.
Schmidt cannot go back to the office. His friends no longer belong to his club in the city. He doesn't golf. Doesn't seem to read much more than junk. He is not a happy man.
And as I read, page after page of this tale, I find it more and more enjoyable. I don't know why. Nothing is happening. He is going nowhere. Maybe that's the theme that keeps me going. It does ring a bell.
His life has changed. It is coming to an end. What is a man to do who loses so much, almost everything, in a relatively short span of time--his profession, his wife and his daughter? Is it time to close up shop or to make some effort to carve out a new life? Is one even possible?
But now I am growing weary with this story. Schmidt, whose life and personality had seemed so interesting has taken up with a woman. A woman without culture or refinement. A woman not much beyond 20. A woman who flaunts her body. Here we go again. His long days and endless nights of solitude are over. It also becomes clear he is a bit of an anti-Semite. But I will stick it out for a while, hoping he will get back on the track of existential despair.
And as I read further, I begin to see this tale in a new light. Schmidt continues his affair with the woman. It goes on and on. But where can it possibly go?
It is what it does to him that interests me. It turns him away from his world, his life, himself. It diverts him from the real dilemmas that he faces now. The woman leads him away from those issues-- issues whose resolution might enable him to extract whatever meaning is left in his life. It puts off the inevitable. The confrontation with himself, his days, his endless days until there are no more. It annoys me that Schmidt does not see this. And so the book has come alive for me again.
The story is over now. What a relief. The ending is unsatisfactory. All the questions remain unanswered. All the difficult problems sidestepped. He continues with the girl. I remind you that she was 20 and he was thrice that and then some. It is a mystery, a miracle. Yet, I seem to see it everywhere now.
She says she loves him deeply. That is very touching. He inherits another bundle from his stepmother and decides to move to her enormous home in Palm Beach. I was wondering if he might shoot himself.
2.17.2009
Revolutionary Road
Richard Yates’ novel Revolutionary Road and the recent film version of the same name are interchangeable. The film is just as difficult to watch as the book is to read. Frank and April Wheeler live in a suburb outside New York during the 50s. They have two children, several unfulfilled dreams, and one conflict after another.
Their story is widely seen as yet another critique of life in the suburbs. But it is just as much, if not more so, about the trap that marriage can become regardless of where it occurs--suburbs, city, farm or village. In either place, lives become stuck, hopes are abandoned, and marriage becomes little else but a war zone.
In writing about the film Stephanie Zacharek (Salon.com 12/25/08) says “…the people stuck living these lives tend to either shriek at one another or silently, stoned on their own resentment. We’ve seen this sort of thing in movies and in literature over and over again, done well and done badly.” I think Yates, as well as Sam Mendes the director of the film, do it as well as anyone.
In another review of the film James Berardinelli writes astutely: “A lot of marriages are like this, with many of the fundamental problems not having changed in 50 years. Too many unions begun with hope and optimism degenerate into stale existences with two disconnected individuals living under the same roof. Today many such couples divorce. In 1955, divorce was less common, so husbands and wives would argue and find ways to make temporary peace. It’s unfair to claim that the happy suburban family was (or is) an illusion, but the reality is not as perfect as the illusion.”
And in revisiting the Yates novel, James Wood writes in The New Yorker (12/15/08) that the novel is yet another familiar critique of the suburbs. Again, I think the story is much more general than that. Indeed, Yates agrees in saying that he intended the novel to be “an indictment of American life in the nineteen-fifties.” And later he wrote “I meant the title to suggest that the revolutionary road of 1776 had come to something very much like a dead end in the Fifties.” Have the deeper aspects of life in this country moved much beyond that, more than fifty years later?
Wood claims that the “Yates suburban life, with its dreary drunken rituals and stolid neighbors, along with the Yateses’ frequent marital fighting” provided the material for Revolutionary Road. And later that “Yates was playing a morbid joke on himself when he created Frank Wheeler, because Frank is Yates without the writing…”
Many reviewers make claims that the stories authors write reflects their own life, that their fictional tales are in many ways autobiographical. I always find such assertions irrelevant to the appreciation of the story. I say “So what? The story stands alone independently of any conjectures about the writer’s life.
I have selected the following passages from the several I made note of while reading Revolutionary Road. I believe they will convey the intensity of the story and the spirit that Yates brought to its telling.
…larger absurdities of deadly dull jobs in the city and deadly dull homes in the suburbs. Economic circumstance might force you go live in this environment, but the important thing was to keep from being contaminated. The important thing, always, was to remember who you were.
What the hell kind of a life was this? What in God’s name was the point or the meaning or the purpose of a life like this?
The black kitchen window gave him a vivid reflection of his face, round and full of weakness, and he stared at it with loathing.
…an enormous, obscene delusion—this idea that people have to resign from real life and “settle down” when they have families.
…is it any wonder all the men end up emasculated? Because that is what happens; that is that’s reflected in all this bleating about “adjustment” and “security” and “togetherness…
…the hopeless emptiness of everything in this country.
…ordinary Sunday-evening sadness.
What is any spring but a mindless rearrangement of cells in the crust of the spinning earth as it floats in endless circuit of its sun? What is the sun itself but one of a billion insensible stars forever going nowhere into nothingness?
The hell with “love” anyway, and with every other phony, time-wasting, half-assed emotion in the world.
The house looked very neat and white as it emerged through the green and yellow leaves; it was such a bad house after all. It looked…like a place where people lived—a place where the difficult, intricate process of living could sometimes give rise to incredible harmonies of happiness and sometimes to near-tragic disorder, as well as to ludicrous minor interludes…
Their story is widely seen as yet another critique of life in the suburbs. But it is just as much, if not more so, about the trap that marriage can become regardless of where it occurs--suburbs, city, farm or village. In either place, lives become stuck, hopes are abandoned, and marriage becomes little else but a war zone.
In writing about the film Stephanie Zacharek (Salon.com 12/25/08) says “…the people stuck living these lives tend to either shriek at one another or silently, stoned on their own resentment. We’ve seen this sort of thing in movies and in literature over and over again, done well and done badly.” I think Yates, as well as Sam Mendes the director of the film, do it as well as anyone.
In another review of the film James Berardinelli writes astutely: “A lot of marriages are like this, with many of the fundamental problems not having changed in 50 years. Too many unions begun with hope and optimism degenerate into stale existences with two disconnected individuals living under the same roof. Today many such couples divorce. In 1955, divorce was less common, so husbands and wives would argue and find ways to make temporary peace. It’s unfair to claim that the happy suburban family was (or is) an illusion, but the reality is not as perfect as the illusion.”
And in revisiting the Yates novel, James Wood writes in The New Yorker (12/15/08) that the novel is yet another familiar critique of the suburbs. Again, I think the story is much more general than that. Indeed, Yates agrees in saying that he intended the novel to be “an indictment of American life in the nineteen-fifties.” And later he wrote “I meant the title to suggest that the revolutionary road of 1776 had come to something very much like a dead end in the Fifties.” Have the deeper aspects of life in this country moved much beyond that, more than fifty years later?
Wood claims that the “Yates suburban life, with its dreary drunken rituals and stolid neighbors, along with the Yateses’ frequent marital fighting” provided the material for Revolutionary Road. And later that “Yates was playing a morbid joke on himself when he created Frank Wheeler, because Frank is Yates without the writing…”
Many reviewers make claims that the stories authors write reflects their own life, that their fictional tales are in many ways autobiographical. I always find such assertions irrelevant to the appreciation of the story. I say “So what? The story stands alone independently of any conjectures about the writer’s life.
I have selected the following passages from the several I made note of while reading Revolutionary Road. I believe they will convey the intensity of the story and the spirit that Yates brought to its telling.
…larger absurdities of deadly dull jobs in the city and deadly dull homes in the suburbs. Economic circumstance might force you go live in this environment, but the important thing was to keep from being contaminated. The important thing, always, was to remember who you were.
What the hell kind of a life was this? What in God’s name was the point or the meaning or the purpose of a life like this?
The black kitchen window gave him a vivid reflection of his face, round and full of weakness, and he stared at it with loathing.
…an enormous, obscene delusion—this idea that people have to resign from real life and “settle down” when they have families.
…is it any wonder all the men end up emasculated? Because that is what happens; that is that’s reflected in all this bleating about “adjustment” and “security” and “togetherness…
…the hopeless emptiness of everything in this country.
…ordinary Sunday-evening sadness.
What is any spring but a mindless rearrangement of cells in the crust of the spinning earth as it floats in endless circuit of its sun? What is the sun itself but one of a billion insensible stars forever going nowhere into nothingness?
The hell with “love” anyway, and with every other phony, time-wasting, half-assed emotion in the world.
The house looked very neat and white as it emerged through the green and yellow leaves; it was such a bad house after all. It looked…like a place where people lived—a place where the difficult, intricate process of living could sometimes give rise to incredible harmonies of happiness and sometimes to near-tragic disorder, as well as to ludicrous minor interludes…
2.16.2009
Nudges
Those who study social influence have learned that it is sometimes much more effective to use modest rather than strong pressures to change a person’s behavior. The well-known foot-in-the-door technique is an example. Obtaining a person’s agreement to carry out a small request first is more effective in gaining their subsequent compliance to a large request than asking them for a large request first.
Other research has shown that a person’s interest in pursuing an intrinsically enjoyable activity is often undermined by rewarding them for it. Similarly, superfluous threats for engaging in an undesirable behavior can sometimes increase rather than decrease its occurrence. In a word, deliberate attempts to change a person’s behavior are often most effective when a subtle, low-key approach is used. While a heavy-handed approach may induce immediate compliance, it rarely leads to a lasting change.
The studies by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein reviewed in their recent book Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness are consistent with these findings. They report that very subtle, almost undetectable alterations in the environment can exert considerable influence on behavior.
Placing an image of a fly on the urinals of the men's room at the Amsterdam airport reduced “spilling” on floor by 80 percent.
In a cafeteria replacing the large tables that seat many people with small, tables for two led people to eat less. This nudge is based on research indicating the amount of food people eat in a restaurant increases as of the number of people at the table increases.
And when the high calorie deserts (pies & cakes) are placed well back in the desert section of the cafeteria or in another line, they are chosen less often than the low calorie deserts (fruit) that are placed in the front. A simple rearrangement of many food items like this is said to increase or decrease their consumption by “as much as 25%.”
A vending machine that uses the traffic light system to label various food options reduced the selection of junk food items (soda & chips) by 5% when users learned there was a five cent surcharge for those marked with a red light. In contrast, sales of the green light items increased by more than 16%.
When the parking spaces in the city of Florence, Italy were reduced in size so that they accommodated a car about the size of the Smart, there was a sharp reduction in the number of large sedans, utility vehicles, and trucks that entered the central city.
Providing feedback to a highway driver about how fast they are driving by posting a large miles-per-hour roadway monitor tends to reduce speeding behavior. Providing moment-to-moment feedback to a homeowner about the cost of energy they are consuming tends to reduce their consumption. When this feedback is adjusted for time-of-day rates, further reductions in usage occur.
In a word, a simple redesign of the normal environment or the use of very low-key, often unobtrusive, techniques can often play a powerful role in changing behavior.
Advice is like snow: the softer it falls…the deeper it sinks into the mind.
---Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Other research has shown that a person’s interest in pursuing an intrinsically enjoyable activity is often undermined by rewarding them for it. Similarly, superfluous threats for engaging in an undesirable behavior can sometimes increase rather than decrease its occurrence. In a word, deliberate attempts to change a person’s behavior are often most effective when a subtle, low-key approach is used. While a heavy-handed approach may induce immediate compliance, it rarely leads to a lasting change.
The studies by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein reviewed in their recent book Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness are consistent with these findings. They report that very subtle, almost undetectable alterations in the environment can exert considerable influence on behavior.
Placing an image of a fly on the urinals of the men's room at the Amsterdam airport reduced “spilling” on floor by 80 percent.
In a cafeteria replacing the large tables that seat many people with small, tables for two led people to eat less. This nudge is based on research indicating the amount of food people eat in a restaurant increases as of the number of people at the table increases.
And when the high calorie deserts (pies & cakes) are placed well back in the desert section of the cafeteria or in another line, they are chosen less often than the low calorie deserts (fruit) that are placed in the front. A simple rearrangement of many food items like this is said to increase or decrease their consumption by “as much as 25%.”
A vending machine that uses the traffic light system to label various food options reduced the selection of junk food items (soda & chips) by 5% when users learned there was a five cent surcharge for those marked with a red light. In contrast, sales of the green light items increased by more than 16%.
When the parking spaces in the city of Florence, Italy were reduced in size so that they accommodated a car about the size of the Smart, there was a sharp reduction in the number of large sedans, utility vehicles, and trucks that entered the central city.
Providing feedback to a highway driver about how fast they are driving by posting a large miles-per-hour roadway monitor tends to reduce speeding behavior. Providing moment-to-moment feedback to a homeowner about the cost of energy they are consuming tends to reduce their consumption. When this feedback is adjusted for time-of-day rates, further reductions in usage occur.
In a word, a simple redesign of the normal environment or the use of very low-key, often unobtrusive, techniques can often play a powerful role in changing behavior.
Advice is like snow: the softer it falls…the deeper it sinks into the mind.
---Samuel Taylor Coleridge
2.14.2009
Weekend Links
From time to time I would like to post some of the blogs and articles that I've enjoyed during the week. Here are a few for this week:
On Chekhov:
http://evidenceanecdotal.blogspot.com/2009/02/if-we-want-to-know-what-other-people.html#links
People Reading:
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/bookspotting/
Power of the Situation
http://thesituationist.wordpress.com/
Subtle Influence
http://nudges.wordpress.com/
Tennis & Age
http://scienceblogs.com/cortex/2009/02/tennis_and_time.php
Visiting Tolstoy
http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2009/feb/09/tolstoy-visit-homestead-1905
The Film Revolutionary Road
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20081230/REVIEWS/812309997/1023
Weekend Treats
http://www.ted.com/talks
On Chekhov:
http://evidenceanecdotal.blogspot.com/2009/02/if-we-want-to-know-what-other-people.html#links
People Reading:
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/bookspotting/
Power of the Situation
http://thesituationist.wordpress.com/
Subtle Influence
http://nudges.wordpress.com/
Tennis & Age
http://scienceblogs.com/cortex/2009/02/tennis_and_time.php
Visiting Tolstoy
http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2009/feb/09/tolstoy-visit-homestead-1905
The Film Revolutionary Road
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20081230/REVIEWS/812309997/1023
Weekend Treats
http://www.ted.com/talks
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
