Reading in the Age of Constant Distraction

Mairead Small Staid at The Paris Review:

Birkerts’s argument (and mine) isn’t that books alleviate loneliness, either: to claim a goal shared by every last app and website is to lose the fight for literature before it starts. No, the power of art—and many books are, still, art, not entertainment—lies in the way it turns us inward and outward, all at once. The communion we seek, scanning titles or turning pages, is not with others—not even the others, living or long dead, who wrote the words we read—but with ourselves. Our finest capacities, too easily forgotten.

Early in The Gutenberg Elegies, Birkerts summarizes historian Rolf Engelsing’s definition of reading “intensively” as the common practice of most readers before the nineteenth century, when books, which were scarce and expensive, were often read aloud and many times over.

more here.

The Most Scathing Book Reviews of 2019

From Literary Hub:

Happy Holidays, fellow Schadenfreuders.

As longtime devotees will know, for one day and one day only here at Book Marks—a wholesome and benevolent institution dedicated to helping readers find the books they’ll love by spotlighting the best in contemporary literary criticism—we your friendly neighborhood book review aggregators put on our black hats and seek out the most deliciously virulent literary take-downs of the past twelve months. It’s a ritual blood-letting exercise carried out in an effort appease the Literary Gods, thereby guaranteeing a good book review harvest in the year to come, and we take it very seriously.

Among the books lying prone on the sacrificial altar this year: E. L. James’ brain-bleaching Fifty Shades follow-up, Bret Easton Ellis’ needy screed against millennials, David Cameron’s bitter ooze of a memoir, and, of course, another Sean Penn novel.

Let’s get the knives out.

More here.

Sean Carroll’s Holiday Message On Publishing Books

Sean Carroll in Preposterous Universe:

Welcome to the second annual Mindscape Holiday Message! No substantive content or deep ideas, just me talking a bit about the state of the podcast and what’s on my mind. Since the big event for me in 2019 was the publication of Something Deeply Hidden, I thought it would be fun to talk about the process of writing and selling a popular book. Might be of interest to some of you out there!

More here.

Why Fascism is the Wave of the Future

Edward Luttwak, 25 years ago, in the London Review of Books:

That capitalism unobstructed by public regulations, cartels, monopolies, oligopolies, effective trade unions, cultural inhibitions or kinship obligations is the ultimate engine of economic growth is an old-hat truth now disputed only by a few cryogenically-preserved Gosplan enthusiasts and a fair number of poorly-paid Anglo-Saxon academics. That the capitalist engine achieves growth as well as it does because its relentless competition destroys old structures and methods, thus allowing more efficient structures and methods to rise in their place, is the most famous bit of Schumpeteriana, even better-known than the amorous escapades of the former University of Czernowitz professor. And, finally, that structural change can inflict more disruption on working lives, firms, entire industries and their localities than individuals can absorb, or the connective tissue of friendships, families, clans, elective groupings, neighbourhoods, villages, towns, cities or even nations can withstand, is another old-hat truth more easily recognised than Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft can be spelled.

What is new-hat about the present situation is only a matter of degree, a mere acceleration in the pace of the structural changes that accompany economic growth, whatever its rate. But that, as it turns out, is quite enough to make all the difference in the world.

More here.

Letter from The Comoro Islands

Tommy Trenchard at Harper’s Magazine:

had been in Domoni—an ancient, ramshackle trading town on the volcanic island of Anjouan—for only a few summer days in 2018 when Onzardine Attoumane, a local English teacher, offered to show me around the medina. Already I had gotten lost several times trying to navigate the dozens of narrow, seemingly indistinguishable alleyways that zigzagged around the old town’s crumbling, lava-rock homes. But Onzardine had grown up in Domoni and was intimately familiar with its contours.

Stocky in build, with small, deep-set eyes and neatly trimmed stubble, Onzardine led me through the backstreets, our route flanked by ferns and weeds sprouting from cracks in the walls and marked by occasional piles of rubble. After a few minutes, we emerged onto a sunlit cliff offering views of the mustard-colored hills that surround the town, dotted with mango, palm, and breadfruit trees.

more here.

Toni Morrison’s Democracy of Vision

Michael Ondaatje at the NYRB:

When has a voice been this intimate, and versatile? Affectionate, far-reaching, self-aware, and also severe, dismissive of fools?

There’s this range in the manner of Toni Morrison’s voice. She is always full of swerves—from humor, to anger, to music. We see all that in the narrator of Jazz who holds this remarkable novel together.

“I like the feeling of a told story,” Morrison has said, “where you can hear a voice but you can’t identify it. It’s a comfortable, guiding voice, alarmed by the same things that the reader is alarmed by, and it doesn’t know what’s going to happen either… To have the reader work with the author in the construction of the book—is what’s important.”

We are always participating when we read Toni Morrison. During a quiet lull, the Narrator will remember—“And another damn thing.” 

more here.

What Can a Novelist Do to Tackle The Climate Crisis?

India Bourke at The New Statesman:

Kim Stanley Robinson is, uncharacteristically, at a loss. As a science fiction writer, he is famed for dreaming up utopian futures. But when we meet for lunch in his Californian hometown, at times he struggles to maintain his cool.

“What the hell do we write at this point in history?” he asks. “My utopia has reached this low bar: if we avoid a mass extinction event, then, ‘Yay! Leave it at that.’”

Robinson has not always felt so cynical. Across a career spanning over 30 years, he has built a reputation as a pragmatic optimist. From his breakthrough Mars trilogy in the 1990s, about colonising the barren planet, to his latest novel, Red Moon, set at a lunar mine and in China, his novels have deployed science and diplomacy to explore how crises might play out in similar-but-better political worlds. If the Gulf Stream stalls, try adding salt. If climate change exacerbates cross-border conflict, try building better structures of international cooperation.

more here.

Tackling Inflammation to Fight Age-Related Ailments

Jane Brody in The New York Times:

The quest for a fountain of youth is many centuries old and marred by many false starts and unfulfilled promises. But modern medical science is now gradually closing in on what might realistically enable people to live longer, healthier lives — if they are willing to sacrifice some popular hedonistic pleasures. Specialists in the biology of aging have identified a rarely recognized yet universal condition that is a major contributor to a wide range of common health-robbing ailments, from heart disease, diabetes and cancer to arthritis, depression and Alzheimer’s disease. That condition is chronic inflammation, a kind of low-grade irritant that can undermine the well-being of virtually every bodily system.

Chronic inflammation occurs to varying degrees with advancing age in all mammals independent of any existing infection. Researchers call it “inflammaging.” As Roma Pahwa of the National Cancer Institute and Dr. Ishwarlal Jialal of California Northstate University put it in a recent report, “Although chronic inflammation progresses slowly, it is the cause of most chronic diseases and presents a major threat to the health and longevity of individuals.” However, recent studies have identified measures potentially available to everyone that can minimize the potency of chronic inflammation and stymie — and possibly even reverse — its progression. The measures will come as no surprise to people familiar with the healthful advice that has been offered in this column for many years: Adopt a wholesome diet (details to follow), get regular exercise, avoid or reduce excess weight, get adequate quality sleep, minimize stress and don’t smoke.

More here.

Day Tripping

by Joan Harvey

It was inevitable. Michael Pollan’s justly lauded book, How to Change Your Mind, was going to lead straight, sensible, old people to doing drugs. “Today I am a middle-aged journalist working in London, the finance editor of The Economist, a wife, mother, and, to all appearances, a person totally devoid of countercultural tendencies,” writes Helen Joyce in the New York Review of Books, after having gone off to Amsterdam to do a good dose of psilocybin.

And of course all kinds of people are tripping these days. The musician Sudan Archives says she was “doing a lot of psychedelics….I swear to God, when I started to experiment with stuff like that, that’s when I became a little more creative.”

Suzy Batiz, who got extremely rich by developing “Poo-Pouri” (a product I’ve somehow never felt the need to buy) mentions that she has done 94 ayahuasca ceremonies to date. From her ayahusasca experiences she has decided she’s a “business shaman.” Yikes! Has it come to this already?

These nice people are having the usual ecstatic experiences that somehow can be expressed only in cliché. “It is possible to feel differently about things,” the journalist writes. “You don’t have to be who you’ve always been. More things are choices than you imagined. Ordinary things are very beautiful if you’ve the eyes to see.”

Don’t get me wrong. I’m all for this. And I doubt I could write about psychedelic experiences in any particularly interesting way. But in my neck of the woods, the mountains above Boulder, inhabited by an odd mix of outsiders, the children of outsiders, and occasional outsider college professors, I’m pretty sure the percentage of those who have done acid and other psychedelics is far higher than the national (or for that matter global) norm. It is not unusual to be at weddings here in which a decent percentage of the people are in various altered states. The most astonishing aspect of Pollan’s book for many of us was that he didn’t trip until he was almost 60. How did he manage, we wonder, to get so far without? Read more »

Stalkerpooh: A Conversation with Simon Lee and Eve Sussman

by Andrea Scrima

Eve Sussman and Simon Lee are visual artists who use a variety of media, ranging from photography and film to live performance. Some of their work experiments with narrative tropes in video, text, and the act of talking to other people on the phone or in the real world. Their joint projects include CollusionNoCollusion, created during a residency in St. Petersburg, Russia; No food No money No jewels, commissioned by the Experimental Media and Performing Art Center in Troy, New York; the performance/installation Barbershop; and the live channeling performance … and all the reporters laughed and took pictures. Together they co-founded the Wallabout Oyster Theatre, a micro-theatre run out of their studios in Brooklyn. Sussman and Lee also act as producers for Jack & Leigh Ruby, two reformed criminals who are now making art and films based on their previous career as successful con artists. Recently Sussman and Lee have started working with snark.art. Read more »

The Cancer Questions Project, Part 21: Mustafa Cetiner

Dr. Mustafa Çetiner is well-known for his research in Hematology and has published numerous articles in different national and international journals and three books on Hematological Malignancies. He was the chairman of the Turkish Hematology Society Bone Marrow Deficiency Scientific Subcommittee during 2014-2018. He is a member of many national and international associations, including Turkish Hematology Association, American Society of Hematology, European Bone Marrow Transplantation Registry. He is one of the founders of the Cancer Fighters Association and is currently a board member and vice president. Dr. Çetiner is currently working as Professor of Hematology at Acibadem Maslak Hospital in Turkey, Istanbul.

Azra Raza, author of The First Cell: And the Human Costs of Pursuing Cancer to the Last, oncologist and professor of medicine at Columbia University, and 3QD editor, decided to speak to more than 20 leading cancer investigators and ask each of them the same five questions listed below. She videotaped the interviews and over the next months we will be posting them here one at a time each Monday. Please keep in mind that Azra and the rest of us at 3QD neither endorse nor oppose any of the answers given by the researchers as part of this project. Their views are their own. One can browse all previous interviews here.

1. We were treating acute myeloid leukemia (AML) with 7+3 (7 days of the drug cytosine arabinoside and 3 days of daunomycin) in 1977. We are still doing the same in 2019. What is the best way forward to change it by 2028?

2. There are 3.5 million papers on cancer, 135,000 in 2017 alone. There is a staggering disconnect between great scientific insights and translation to improved therapy. What are we doing wrong?

3. The fact that children respond to the same treatment better than adults seems to suggest that the cancer biology is different and also that the host is different. Since most cancers increase with age, even having good therapy may not matter as the host is decrepit. Solution?

4. You have great knowledge and experience in the field. If you were given limitless resources to plan a cure for cancer, what will you do?

5. Offering patients with advanced stage non-curable cancer, palliative but toxic treatments is a service or disservice in the current therapeutic landscape?

Dystopians In High Castles

by Thomas O’Dwyer

A fallen statue of Nazi American leader John Smith.
A fallen statue of the American Nazi leader, John Smith.

It could have been that simple — the Nazis nuke Washington D.C. and it’s all over. Capitulation follows, resistance is futile. There are plenty of right-wingers in high places — political, military, even cultural, who see this not as a conquest but an opportunity. French Marshal Philippe Pétain and Norway’s Vidkun Quisling had been such people. So too is Obergruppenführer John Smith, their fictional American counterpart in Philip K. Dick’s classic novel The Man in the High Castle. The conquering Nazis offer formerly patriotic American officers light temptations and they casually fall, and then rise. The war is lost, collaboration is inevitable. It’s better to be at the front of the queue, showing some willingness to proclaim (by some small actions) that you accept the times as they are a-changing.

Dick’s novel differs in many aspects from the recently completed Amazon TV series based on it. But in both, the Nazis secure the east side of the country, setting up their capital in New York. The West Coast is messier, but wasn’t it always? On that side of the continent, the Japanese have won. Unlike the stiff-necked and murderously pure Nazis, the Japanese are unabashedly nationalist. They are ruthless occupiers too, but ration their resources to inflict their cruelties on identifiable enemies and resisters. Read more »

Conversation with a Genie

by Charlie Huenemann

GENIE: AT LAST! Esteemed Master, you have released me from the ancient lamp! Out of my boundless gratitude, I shall grant you three wishes!

TRAVELER: No thanks, I’m good.

GENIE: Wait, what?

TRAVELER: I’m good. No granting of wishes needed. Have a nice day.

GENIE: But, Master, you must understand that you can wish for anything it is in my power to grant – and let me tell you, that power is enormous!

TRAVELER: I’m sure it is. But I’ve heard all the stories about you genies and the way you grant wishes, and I’d like no part of it.

GENIE: What do you mean, Honored Master?

TRAVELER: Well, you genies are tricky. I might wish to play the piano, but you’ll grant it and then stick me out on a desert island, or you’ll make me deaf so I can’t hear my own playing. Or I’ll wish for a pile of money, but then I’ll go to jail for tax fraud, or the money will be in some outdated currency. Or I’ll ask for a great army to command, and you’ll give me an army of frogs. So no thanks, I’ll have no part of it. Too risky!

GENIE: Well … true, that sort of thing has happened from time to time. But only when there is a lesson to be learned. And let me say that sometimes it is the wisher’s own fault for not being more specific! Like the man who wished to be a great opera singer – how was I supposed to know he didn’t want to be a soprano? Read more »

Reading Myself

by Mary Hrovat

Image of giant opened book that partially encloses a chair and a treeThe indicators that people use to track and understand their moods include exercise, diet, sleep, and many others. I’ve been thinking recently that my library activity surely must be correlated with my mood. I’m a frequent user of two libraries, and my checkouts and returns have a fairly small and regular ebb and flow. Overlying these minor fluctuations are larger and more diffuse patterns that I think offer clues to my inner state.

Reading the clues can be complicated. If there’s a connection between mood and library activity or reading, it’s not clear-cut. But that’s true of various other markers that people track. For example, sometimes I get a lot of exercise because I’m filled with energy and relish the physical pleasure of walking and observing. At other times, a high step count reflects the fact that I’m restless and anxious; part of me is hoping that if I walk far enough, I can out-walk my problems or maybe even myself. Sometimes I push myself to get out a lot even if I feel exhausted and sick at heart, because I hope the exercise will lighten my mood or help me sleep. And sometimes, of course, I walk a lot because there are many errands to run, and I don’t drive.

The depression questionnaire they use at my doctor’s office asks about seemingly contradictory things; one question asks whether you’ve either lost your appetite or been overeating, for example, and another asks if you’re sleeping more or less. I don’t know if that means that depression can either enhance or suppress appetite, or whether people respond to depression by shunning food or seeking comfort from it, or (most likely) a little of both. It can be very hard to tell symptoms from attempts to treat symptoms. Read more »

The Candidate: Running for office in small town America

by Carol A Westbrook

Town Hall on Election Day, Beverly Shores, IN

“You must be crazy,” the current Council president said to me. “Why do you want to run for Town Council?”

Being on the Beverly Shores Town Council was a thankless job. It paid only a small stipend, took up a lot of time in month meetings, committee meetings, and pubic events. There were always calls from irate residents–a tree is down, their trash was not picked up, why did they get a parking ticket, their road needs plowing. Many former councilors told me they started the post with many friends, and ended it with just as many enemies.

Why did I want to run? Was it election fever, inspired by twelve Democratic presidential candidates trying to grab the nomination? Did I have an urgent political agenda?  Did I have to prove myself somehow?  No, to all of these. The real reason I ran for office was because somebody had to do it.

As of March 2019–the deadline to file for a local primary election in the State of Indiana– there were only four candidates who declared for our Town’s five council seats, and one for Clerk-Treasurer. And they were all Democrats. There were also no independent or Republican candidates at that time, either. No need for a primary, but not enough candidates for five seats. Somehow that didn’t seem right. There should be at least five candidates, and they shouldn’t all be from the same party. The electorate deserve a choice. Somebody had to run. Read more »