Monthly Archives: February 2008

The Name of the Rose — Umberto Eco

February 11, 2008 By in Books, Culture Tags: , , , , , , , 1 Comment

Since beginning The Name of the Rose a month ago, it has become the answer to requests for recommendations. It is a vast, engaging novel that makes me feel its greatness: the subject matter is complex but presented well, the plot moves swiftly, no word feels wasted, and the prose is original—I’ve never before seen through the eyes of a fourteenth-century monk. Even if modern ideas about how to interpret ideas and test hypotheses are discussed, I believe the perspective of a monk, especially because Adso of Melk’s interpretation of the world goes through the Biblical lens. It comes from other places too: the references to how great distance really felt then, in the value of books that took individuals working alone years to copy (which makes one appreciate how relatively little they cost today), and how important food was. Contrast this with The Other Boleyn Girl, a world as foreign as a TV show about attractive Californians in swimsuits.

But The Name of the Rose deals too with eternal human longings: lust for power, lust for control, lust for knowledge, and plain, unadorned lust, all of which appear in many guises. If there is a taxonomy of evil implicit in the narrative, then it finds true evil is that of excess, and the forms of “lust” as I use them in the preceding sentence stretches into a synonym for excess. The reasons for the murders tie back into those base desires, although Eco implies that the desire to control knowledge is the penultimate sin. The library, librarian, and abbot conspire together to control knowledge, though their nominal task is to spread it; instead, William of Baskerville trise to unlock the secrets created by man, and his journey toward knowledge—of murder, most directly, and of philosophy at another level, and many others as well, as David Lodge makes clear in his introduction. I never thought I would write that about a novel with long sections devoted to theological debate as it relates to murders, and yet underlying the theological debate is the pursuit of naked power. To discern what characters mean in The Name of the Rose is a great and powerful challenge.

I can’t stop linking to Carrie Frye (see here and here), and I’ll do so again now: Frye quoted A.S. Byatt talking to The New York Times on Possession, and Byatt said: “It’s like the books people used to enjoy reading when they enjoyed reading … It has a universal plot, a classic romantic plot and a classic detective plot. And the plot was more important than anything else in it. People can get the sort of pleasure out of it they got out of the old romantic novel.” It’s just as true of The Name of the Rose, which, like Robert Penn Warren’s All the King’s Men, reminds me of why I like to read. All three can be read them for plot, or for symbol, or for ideas more suited to potential future graduate students like me. A few things implied at that abstract level:

* What is the nature of the detective story?

* How do we know what we know?

* What is the nature of faith?

* How do we search for the truth (and Truth)?

You might also ask why I don’t attempt to give a deep answer to these questions, and the chief reason is that to say anything of substance demands another reading at the very least and probably much more. The Name of the Rose is already so interconnected and works at so many levels of abstraction and symbol that it is impossible to imbibe more than a tiny amount of it on a first reading. And it relates to so much else: I’ve already found two passages that led to posts for my work-related blog, Grant Writing Confidential, one on the tendency to idealize the past and the other on how movements grow and fall apart, as well as the nature of rule versus principle adherence to ideals. The latter is related to William of Baskerville’s vision, which is to pursue truth wherever it leads and try to advance knowledge as well as the principles of good, which come from learning, understanding, and empathizing.

This is in opposition to Bernard Gui, the inquisitor who wields rules as implements of terror. In the most marvelous trial scene I have ever read, Adso describes Gui: “His gaze was really fixed on the accused, and it was a gaze in which hypocritical indulgence (as if to say: Never fear, you are in the hands of a fraternal assembly that can only want your good) mixed with icy irony (as if to say: You do not yet know what your good is, and I will shortly tell you) and merciless severity (as if to say: But in any case I am your judge here, and you are in my power).” He twists rules and principles that are supposed to lead toward goodness into their opposite. The characters representing relative good in the world of Adso are those from the Church, but over time it becomes apparent that their rigid compliance and enforcement with rules can cause them to become evil in the same way as whoever is killing monks.

The resonances among the various strands of idea and plot within the novel create an enormous and phenomenal harmony with enough dissonant notes in it for contrast. Thank Alex Ross for these musical metaphors, but they’re worthwhile: the deepest pieces of music seem to have depth that we cannot fully plumb or understand, and the same is true of the deepest novels. I can explain aspects of them, isolate individual parts so as to better admire them, but never encapsulate the whole by taking it apart. One definition of a great novel might be that no dissection of it can ever leave pieces that add up to the sum of the parts. Lesser novels yield their secrets, and novels even lesser still are not even worth the mental energy of the inquiry. At times I point such novels out—though I don’t enjoy slamming books into which writers have poured their energies—and with the greater novels I try to begin the process of understanding them, and with the greatest novels I begin to formulate ideas that might play out over far longer works than just blog posts.

This is so unusual a novel that it has turned this into an unusual post: one where, rather than asserting something about the structure or scope of a novel, or assaying its merit, I can only point to how amazing it is, try to interrogate what I mean by “amazing,” and scratch a hole into the vast mountain of meaning between two covers. This is a post I have anticipated but also dreaded writing—dreaded because there is so much that can be said about The Name of the Rose and so much that has been. I keep mentioning (here too) The Name of the Rose because it is so big that I reach for commentary on it immediately after finishing—I don’t want to give it up, which is a rare thing. I’m going to start The Key to The Name of the Rose shortly. I don’t think there is a genuine key, but I will search for the pleasure and enlightenment I can find in what I anticipate will be many future readings.

Orhan Pamuk interview

February 10, 2008 By in Books, Culture, Links Tags: , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Orahn Pamuk gives a fantastic interview at the Brooklyn Rail. A sample:

The novel, beginning in the 18th century, began to take over all the previous literary forms. In fact, we can even say it was the early form of globalization. The world, in so many ways, is so culturally globalized that our ways of seeing it are very similar to the post-Renaissance, let’s say from the invention of perspective in Italian and Dutch painting to the invention of photography and thereafter; we still see the world in a similar manner. We are likewise all globalized in our literary imagination, in the forms that we use, and I would say the literary globalization of the world had been completed years ago, when nobody was talking about globalization.

This resonates with Milan Kundera’s The Curtain, a book that deals much with the inherent internationalism in literature. I’m especially prone to such arguments because I’ve been reading so much in translation lately: a post on The Name of the Rose is due tomorrow, I finished Pamuk’s My Name is Red not long ago, right after that I finished Madame Bovary, The Curtain itself was originally written in French by a Czech author, and I’ve even finished books I didn’t especially like translated from Spanish: The Bad Girl and The Savage Detectives. And I began Doctor Faustus a few days ago, though I fear I will have to put it aside for a time so I can work on an academic project. Nonetheless, given the above, what Pamuk says about the globalization of literature is well-taken.

(Link stolen, as usual, from TEV.)

Life

February 8, 2008 By in Books, Life Tags: , , , Leave a comment

“Books are not made to be believed, but to be subjected to inquiry. When we consider a book, we mustn’t ask ourselves what it says but what it means […]”

—Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose

Oops, perhaps, and several points on The Logic of Life

February 7, 2008 By in Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

* Carrie Frye quotes Neil Gaiman, who writes: “I think that rule number one for book reviewers should probably be Don’t Spend The First Paragraph Slagging Off The Genre.” I try not to but occasionally do, as with The Logic of Life. But maybe Gaiman and Frye are only carving out their rule for fiction, as with nonfiction it seems more appropriate to survey existing work to ascertain whether an author is merely duplicating what already exists. I’m also on the record agreeing with the gist of what they say.

* Two readers wrote to ask in effect why, if I didn’t like the idea behind The Logic of Life, I bought and read it. Several answers:

1) I haven’t read all the econ-for-dummies books I listed and so thought I would still benefit from another one.

2) I didn’t realize the problems with The Logic of Life until after I read it, at which point they became more apparent.

3) Tim Harford was visiting Seattle, and I wanted to have the background for his discussion before he arrived.

4) Some of the chapters are also helpful professionally because some topics Harford discusses are perennials in grant writing.

Without number three, I probably wouldn’t have bought it. Number four is probably just a post-purchase justification.

* A friend who edited my post on Logic of Life said apropos of it, “Your beginnings are always very abstruse and hard to follow.” Really?

If I accept the premise that they’re harder-than-some-kind-of-average to follow, I would say that it’s because they often set up important context for what’s to follow. I’ll be more cognizant of this, especially because I began keeping a list a while ago of things reviewers often do that can annoy me. Number one, was, naturally:

1) Reviewing the author’s preceding ouevre before getting to whatever the reviewer is supposed to be reviewing or discussing the genre/similar books more generally. I did it in my discussion of Alan Furst’s Night Soldiers. This is essentially what Frye and and Gaiman were discussing.

2) Developing grand theories: I found myself writing about what makes a good history book when I really wanted to deal with The Pursuit of Glory.

3) Tangentially discuss a book while instead focusing on political or social commentary. This essentially describes The New York Review of Books, to the extent they still write about book, as opposed to galleries, political essays, movies, the universe, pornography, navel gazing etc. And yes, I’m a subscriber.

I’m sure other patterns exist, and I might start pointing out examples as I see them. All three have happened in The New York Times Book Review and elsewhere, I’m sure.

* Overall, the issue of context for reviews makes me think about why trusted criticism and publishing gatekeepers are so important: you’re more likely to read a book or review about a subject if you have a preexisting indicators that you aren’t wasting your time and that someone has vetted whatever you’re reading. This could be generalized to the chicken-and-egg problem of blogs more generally: you don’t have credibility until you have enough fame to generate credibility.

The Logic of Life and Tim Harford in Seattle

February 6, 2008 By in Books, Culture, Links Tags: , , , , , , , , 7 Comments

Tim Harford’s The Logic of Life is another book intended at least in part to capitalize on the success of Freakonomics, which has sold a bazillion copies and been translated into numerous languages (I saw its distinctive cover in Hebrew). Economics are at work: one thing sells, people realize that previously unrealized demand exists, and then rush into the market. “Rush” is a relative term for the publishing industry, as Freakonomics came out in 2005. Since then, you’ve heard the steady beat: Tyler Cowen’s Discover Your Inner Economist hit a few months ago, and Dan Ariely’s Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces that Shape Our Decisions is due February 19. I’m sure more will follow. The same thing happened with Da Vinci Code clones, and the fantasy section of the bookstore has novels like The Name of the Wind and worse lining itself shelves. Those comparisons aren’t entirely fair: there’ve been poorly executed books about conspiratorial secret societies for a long time, and if I recall correctly Edmund Wilson mocked one in a essay. Although Tolkien has inspired hundreds of thousands of lousy novels about Elves who speak as if coming straight from King Arthur’s Court, he is also partly responsible for His Dark Materials and The Earthsea Trilogy.

Maybe it’s unfair to describe so much of the apparatus around Harford’s book prior to the book itself, but all that digression sets up a point, which is that The Undercover Economist is interesting enough on its merits to check out from the library but not so interesting that it’s worth buying. The largest problem is that much of its content is already available online in one form or another: you can read Harford on his blog, or get similar stories from Marginal Revolution (Tyler Cowen, its author, also wrote Discover Your Inner Economist), or go back to Freakonomics or its blog. Plus there’s Steven Landsburg’s More Sex Is Safer Sex: The Unconventional Wisdom of Economics and Robert Frank’s The Economic Naturalist: In Search of Explanations for Everyday Enigmas. So we have three blogs and five books with overlapping content. The blog components are free: you don’t have to be an economist to begin asking the question, “If I’m interested in the subject, why am I buying the book?” A few days ago, Slate posted a Harford article called Amazing Racism that covers similar ground to “Chapter Six: The Dangers of Rational Racism.” Marginal Revolution is hosting a discussion on The Logic of Life, which you can read about here and here, for example. The combination of Harford’s website, Marginal Revolution, and Freakonomics don’t complement The Logic of Life—they substitute for it.

Overall, The Logic of Life is enjoyable enough but never mind-blowing, as something like A Farewell to Alms was—it reoriented the way I perceive aspects of the world. The Logic of Life just piled on the econ-for-dummies stack. Harford is a good writer but his style—pithy, and scattered, yoking together concepts like metaphysical poets but without their artistry—is better suited for the magazines and newspapers he usually publishes in than he is for a book. The magazine and newspaper articles are naturally short, pithy, and to the point, and Hardford is often very funny when he doesn’t have to extend humor that works well in 800 words to a book of more than 40,000. The book feels more like a series of blog posts than a book, which is yet another reason to read the econ blogs, because its chapters are held together only by the tenuous thread of finding something that appears “irrational” and then showing how it makes more sense than it might first appear. As an introduction to some aspects of game theory it’s okay, but the feeling of disjointedness persists even within sections: in Chapter Two: Las Vegas: The Edge of Reason, the narrative skips from a Las Vegas hotel dateline to a discussion of the history of math and game theory to Camp David in September 1961 to Thomas Schelling more generally. Yet those individuals threads aren’t fully developed and don’t come together well.

The two great heroes of this book are Thomas Schelling and Gary Becker. The latter has a blog whose general tone is modeled on the Congressional Budget Office annual report and both are Nobel Laureates. They both also blurb the book, as does Tyler Cowen and Stephen Dubner who co-wrote Freakonomics. Suddenly I find myself commenting on the material around the book more than the book itself yet again, but that’s because 1) I can’t escape the feeling of being pulled into a marketing ploy and 2) find the book largely made redundant by other available material. Consequently, I will reiterate that this isn’t a bad book, and it’s lively enough to keep the reader moving from one idea to the next, but it’s also not terribly original in content or in packaging. I mention “packaging” because that’s what the book essentially is: repackaging of academic work for a non-specialist audience. This is undoubtedly a useful service for those who, like me, are unlikely to read economics journals, but it’s not as useful for those who, like me, are likely to read economics blogs for laypeople. In fact, I must have read too many blog entries because I just used the term “laypeople.” Sorry for that, I’ll try not to let it happen again. It’s the sort of thing Harford avoids, but at the cost of depth—and the cost seems too high. The Logic of Life is too simple and the kinds of material it contains too readily available elsewhere to make it a good purchase.

If The Logic of Life does anything really well, it’s in Harford being a cheerleader for an important and too-often-overlooked field. He was a professor, cheerleader, and pub friend at the University Bookstore in Seattle on Jan. 30, where he told stories, acknowledged the weaknesses in trying to see a rational world when ours isn’t always, and questioned his own metaphors. As a speaker he was fun and also speculated that the the econ-for-dummies books I generally like have done well because “people feel like they’re learning something about the world without having to know hard maths.” Note the “s” on “maths”—Harford is British, and made a joke about how he’s been studying America since being here. I asked what he noticed, and he launched into a short and thoughtful response about how our presidential election system is more rational than he first thought because early voters in Iowa and New Hampshire have a great incentive to learn about the candidates, who in turn advise the rest of the country. I wonder if Harford has read The Myth of the Rational Voter. Its content hasn’t been replicated online.

What's that about technophobic English professors?

February 3, 2008 By in Books, Culture, Links Tags: , , , , , , Leave a comment

* I graduated from Clark University in the not-too-distant past, though back then we read by candlelight and there was no department blog. The blog issue being resolved—as the preceding link demonstrates—also helps kill what a common enough conception that a poster at Rate Your Students summarized:

Unfortunately, the business world stereotypes English profs as probably the least useful among all academics: tweed-clad, bookish anachronisms who, if they’re interesting at all, drive 1960’s English sports cars (but can’t find the gas cap) and make witty chit-chat at parties (but are flummoxed by modern fads like telephones, ball-point pens, and air travel).

Not at Clark! But witty chit-chat is still vogue. Whether this former student’s blog is a testament to the department or a mark of shame has yet to be decided.

* In other news, The New York Times published “Eureka! It Really Takes Years of Hard Work,” about the nature of sudden realizations and creativity:

Epiphany has little to do with either creativity or innovation. Instead, innovation is a slow process of accretion, building small insight upon interesting fact upon tried-and-true process. Just as an oyster wraps layer upon layer of nacre atop an offending piece of sand, ultimately yielding a pearl, innovation percolates within hard work over time.

The same is true of literature and criticism: the great novel always comes after long reading and effort, and the great insight about the great novel doesn’t usually come from the first reading, even if the germ of it can.

* Finally, in still other New York Times news, an essay discusses—yet again—the supposed divide between highbrow / lowbrow literature. My dream? That one day we can just discuss what’s good and bad, rather than what section of Barnes & Noble a book appears in.

What’s that about technophobic English professors?

February 3, 2008 By in Books, Culture, Links Tags: , , , , , , Leave a comment

* I graduated from Clark University in the not-too-distant past, though back then we read by candlelight and there was no department blog. The blog issue being resolved—as the preceding link demonstrates—also helps kill what a common enough conception that a poster at Rate Your Students summarized:

Unfortunately, the business world stereotypes English profs as probably the least useful among all academics: tweed-clad, bookish anachronisms who, if they’re interesting at all, drive 1960’s English sports cars (but can’t find the gas cap) and make witty chit-chat at parties (but are flummoxed by modern fads like telephones, ball-point pens, and air travel).

Not at Clark! But witty chit-chat is still vogue. Whether this former student’s blog is a testament to the department or a mark of shame has yet to be decided.

* In other news, The New York Times published “Eureka! It Really Takes Years of Hard Work,” about the nature of sudden realizations and creativity:

Epiphany has little to do with either creativity or innovation. Instead, innovation is a slow process of accretion, building small insight upon interesting fact upon tried-and-true process. Just as an oyster wraps layer upon layer of nacre atop an offending piece of sand, ultimately yielding a pearl, innovation percolates within hard work over time.

The same is true of literature and criticism: the great novel always comes after long reading and effort, and the great insight about the great novel doesn’t usually come from the first reading, even if the germ of it can.

* Finally, in still other New York Times news, an essay discusses—yet again—the supposed divide between highbrow / lowbrow literature. My dream? That one day we can just discuss what’s good and bad, rather than what section of Barnes & Noble a book appears in.

Life

February 2, 2008 By in Books, Life Tags: , , , , , Leave a comment

“A true collection of art, the sign of its being a true personal collection, would be that it was motley.”

—Normal Rush, Mortals. (He also wrote Mating.)

Alex Ross in Seattle

February 1, 2008 By in Books, Culture Tags: , , , , , , , , 4 Comments

Alex Ross, author of The Rest is Noise (see my initial comments), visited Seattle to “curate” Icebreaker IV: The American Future, a Seattle concert and festival of young composers. Before the main show, he spoke about The Rest is Noise and how it’s targeted especially at those who have interest in but know little about classical music, as well as how the lives of composers were interwoven with history, society, and culture. As I wrote before, he is “telling the story of music in the most tumultuous century along with its politics and art. Or does it cover politics and art through music? You can’t entirely tell, which must be intentional in a book lively and quick as a gliding melody.” Right: and it goes from the last years of what Ross calls the “marble bust” society through today, covering transformation in art and life.

Perhaps the most important thing Ross stressed was plurality: in approaches in art and music as well as how there isn’t a single path toward progress. Different composers worked in different modes, and what appeared stodgy to many critics—like Sibelus, who with Shostakovich is toward the book’s intellectual heart—became seen as more innovative, while revolutionary music like Stravinsky’s eventually became part of the dominant mainstream. The matter just behind plurality in importance how Ross sees classical music is a great 1,000 year old tradition that is still alive and evolving. Modern composers, performers, and others should realize this emphasize the emotional dimension of music and not just its intellectual dimension.

At first Ross seemed nervous, wringing his hands and shifting his weight, but as he spoke passion and confidence emerged, growing as he talked about the excitement in the classical music world. Ross said his “whole task as a writer has been to draw attention to composers,” and I would extend to the classical and other kinds of music in general. This is a particularly important task because he says classical music is underserved at the media level (sound familiar?), which no longer tracks composers. True enough, as I didn’t recognize most of the names after 1960, and the same problems plague writers. But Ross isn’t “doomy” as many are, due in part because of the aforementioned excitement.

And it’s hard not to get excited at The Rest is Noise, which he says is divided in three sections. The first is devoted to the changes in the early part of the twentieth century, with new sounds, a diversity of approaches, the rising power of pop music, and modernism all arising. The second part most explicitly discusses politics, with World War II and Communism affecting composers the world over, who struggled to survive like many others. This is where he most “use[d] music to write [… an] alternate history.” Finally, the third section, which seemed the weakest and least cohesive to me, he says is “wild” and all over the place. “You can’t write history about events that are still unfolding,” explaining why that section appealed less to me. To be sure, the third section was weak only relative to the strength of the other two, as it still surpassed most writing in general.

Then came the concert, with seven pieces by seven composers; the pieces ranged from ones for a pure quartet to others that incorporated electronic music to those that demanded a larger group to one that was described as being built around bits from Michael Jackson songs (and I enjoyed the pastiche.) Afterwards the composers spoke. They didn’t resemble the stereotype that first leaps to my mind when I think of “composer,” which bears a striking resemblance to the guys in stipple portrait on dollars. Rather, they were more akin to the hipsters I’m used to seeing at bars, reflecting the way their music ranged across modes. They answered questions akin to the one I hate most at readings. My favorite answer was glib when he said that, “I take walks till I’m ready to start,” then he hits his head against his computer, then takes more walks as he composes. Other people asked “questions” designed to show the erudition of the questioner instead of elicit information. Overall, though, it was a good session, even if I couldn’t tell to what extent the composers were trying to describe their artistic process and to what extent they blew smoke.

I keep drawing parallels between literature and music because throughout the evening these parallels were so apparent, and the language used to describe phenomena in both mediums so similar. Much of what I wrote above concerning change, styles, and influence could apply equally well to books and literature, and probably to other artistic and even scientific forms as well. The Rest is Noise is extraordinarily deep and yet malleable. This also makes it hard to define: it is about classical music but also music in general, as well as history and art. Only infrequently does one find a book that does so much while being so much fun to read. The book, like Ross’s talk, shows so much contagious enthusiasm that I can’t help catching it.