Category Archives: Life

Two biologists’ sense of humor: Richard Dawkins and John R. Krebs walk into a bar…

May 6, 2010 By in Life Tags: , , , 1 Comment

I’m reading Richard Dawkins and John Krebs’ article in Behavioural Ecology on “Animal Signals: Information or Manipulation?”, which is a relatively dry description of, as the title states, signaling. So I’m going along, taking notes in Devonthink Pro, when I come across these sentences:

“[…] stags compete for hinds to add to their harems, and contests consist of prolonged roaring duels. Escalated contests are rare, and they are costly because of the high risk of injury and because subordinate males, known as sneaky fuckers, may steal matings during a prolonged fight” (294; emphasis added).

Let it not be said that biologists as a group have no sense of humor.

Paging Captain Obvious regarding Why Women Have Sex

April 29, 2010 By in Books, Life Tags: , , , , , 2 Comments

Paging Captain Obvious:

Women also have specialized emotional defenses that protect them from being deceived. Research from the Buss Lab shows that women become extremely angry and upset when they discover that men have deceived them about the depth of their feelings in order to have sex. These emotions cause women to etch those deceptive episodes in memory, attend more closely in the future to possible instances of deception, and ultimately avoid future occurrences of deception.

In other words, women get mad when men lie to them. I wonder if men feel the same. Without a research study, I wouldn’t want to guess. (And what are these “specialized emotional defenses,” and how can they be biologically imparted?)

The quote is from David Buss and Cindy Meston’s Why Women Have Sex, an occasionally useful and often frustrating book that I describe in further detail at the link.

EDIT May 6 2010: Still, as Dawkins and Krebs observe in Behavioural Ecology on “Animal Signals: Information or Manipulation?”, “Whenever there is any form of assessment, for example in combat, courtship or between parents and offspring, bluff, exaggeration and deceit might be profitable strategies.” But in humans, this is obviously not a purely male or female strategy.

Life: Clarity edition

March 18, 2010 By in Life Tags: , , , , , , , Leave a comment

“Eventually I was admitted to the emergency rom, where doctors removed the gravel from my knees, x-rayed my arm, informed me that my elbow was broken, and outfitted me with a cast and sling. The bill came to $1,700. This experience caused me to take a cold, hard look at the direction my life was headed. What was I doing, running around this world—a place about which I clearly understood nothing—writing an endless novel about God knows what? A week later, the department head called and asked if I wanted to return to Stanford. I said yes.”

Okay, so it’s funnier in context (humor is the dominant trope in this book), but some of the flavor comes through (“a place about which I clearly understood nothing”), as does the author’s directness. I don’t remember where I read about Elif Batuman’s The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them, but I’m glad I took that unknown person’s advice.

My new hero and The Hollywood Economist

March 9, 2010 By in Life Tags: , , , , , , , 1 Comment

“Paramount studio head Robert Evans has described [screenwriter Robert Towne] as ‘lethargic, scattered, perpetually late.’ ”

Towne is my new hero.

The quote is from Edward Jay Epstein’s The Big Picture: Money and Power in Hollywood, which is fascinating throughout, though not as much as his newer The Hollywood Economist: The Hidden Financial Reality Behind the Movies, which shares much of the same DNA (by which I mean anecdotes and facts) and goes a long way towards explaining why so many movies are so awful. It also shows how Hollywood is about deals just as much as hedge funds are, how studios use those hedge funds, and how studios need to project an aura of profligacy while counting down to the last dollar. One thing of many that I didn’t know: how vital insurance companies are to making movies.

Amusing edit of the day

February 23, 2010 By in Life Tags: , , , , , , Leave a comment

I’m going through a friend’s edits on the novel I’ve been writing for the last few months and came across this: “Each time you enter a bar you use religious imagery.”

I like how my friend uses the uses the second person “you” to imply that I’m the character. She’s also picked up on the joke regarding modern places of worship. I would consider that success.

(There haven’t been a lot of substantive posts over the last week or so because I’ve been spending every spare moment writing. At some point, space for real thoughts on novels will emerge.)

Life (and love)

February 18, 2010 By in Life, Philosophy Tags: , , , , , Leave a comment

“Is not general incivility the very essence of love?”

—Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

Hope or despair for the would-be novelist?

February 1, 2010 By in Life Tags: , , Leave a comment

I’m reading the edition of Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio edited by Ray Lewis White, and the introduction says:

On September 13, 1915, Sherwood Anderson (1876 – 1941) became thirty-nine years old. He was living in Chicago for the third time, writing advertising copy to support himself while trying to achieve his greatest ambition: to become a published novelist.

It took Anderson—now, if not a major author, then at least an important one—until middle age to find and execute that ambition. Many writers seem to take longer, and at times I wonder how they persevere. Perhaps they are afflicted with what Robertson Davies said novelists must be. I’m reminded of a famous quote, given here in the Guardian: “Robertson Davies, the great Canadian novelist, once observed: ‘There is absolutely no point in sitting down to write a book unless you feel that you must write that book, or else go mad, or die.’ “

Oh, Zuckerman…

January 7, 2010 By in Books, Briefly Noted, Life Tags: , , , , , , 1 Comment

“I gave myself to him and he’ll never forgive me for it. He’s not merely a monster, he’s a great moralist too.”

—That’s from Philip Roth’s Zuckerman Unbound, although the edition I have is called Zuckerman Bound. It’s funnier still in context. I’m reading Zuckerman because I was inspired by a quote in Katie Roiphe’s much-discussed essay, “The Naked and the Conflicted:”

“The sight of the Zipper King’s daughter sitting on the edge of the bathtub with her legs flung apart, wantonly surrendering all 5 feet 9 inches of herself to a vegetable, was as mysterious and compelling a vision as any Zuckerman had ever seen.” I can’t decide what’s so compelling—I think it’s the middle, with the adverb adjective duo of “wantonly surrendering,” which seem like they should be pornographic but are mostly comic, or vice-versa. “Vice-versa” seems like a useful pair of words when dealing with Roth, because he’s constantly got me wondering exactly where in the circuit I stand: at the bottom, the top, the sides, somewhere else? It’s complexity that isn’t complex to read or enjoy.

Or maybe it’s something else about the sentence, like how incongruous or outrageous it is: the Zipper King has a sense of pathos, the idea of the daughter of the Zipper King is vaguely medieval despite the American seen, and the mystery that Zuckerman feels is almost religious in a very much not religious context. It’s got a lot of ingredients in the stew, and trying to pick them out isn’t easily accomplished, even if we appreciate the taste.

Life: Writers' edition

November 17, 2009 By in Life Tags: , , , , , Leave a comment

“Never underestimate a writer’s vanity, especially that of a mediocre writer.”

—Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Angel’s Game

Life: Children and The Children’s Book

October 26, 2009 By in Books, Life Tags: , , , , 2 Comments

“The young desire to be free of the adults, and at the same time were prepared to resent any hint that the adults might desire to be free of them.”

—A.S. Byatt, The Children’s Book (which is excellent and highly recommended so far).