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aegagrus's reviews
57 reviews
The Girls of Slender Means by Muriel Spark
4.0
Describing the schemes and exploits of various residents of a women's hostel in London in 1945, Spark writes with much humor but little malice. Although the young womens' plans and self-images are all somewhat fanciful -- the male characters' intellectual and political pretensions are equally so -- Spark is not satirizing the pettiness of their concerns but observing their lives with amusement and compassion. Alongside the author, we become interested in the ambiguous lives they lead as wartime draws to a close and Britain prepares for what is to come next.
Spark's trademark time-jumping is mostly used as an elegant frame-narrative and as a way to add flavor (and some retrospective sense of proportion) to a concise central narrative. When we eventually come to this narrative's tragic conclusion, further poignancy is added to the characters being depicted. We close with a quite compelling look at a kind of sincere but businesslike mourning which feels insightfully appropriate to the specific time and the specific place being depicted (that is, England in the year 1945).
The clever biblical allegory at play is thoughtfully done, although not heavy-handed enough to force itself upon the reader.
Spark's trademark time-jumping is mostly used as an elegant frame-narrative and as a way to add flavor (and some retrospective sense of proportion) to a concise central narrative. When we eventually come to this narrative's tragic conclusion, further poignancy is added to the characters being depicted. We close with a quite compelling look at a kind of sincere but businesslike mourning which feels insightfully appropriate to the specific time and the specific place being depicted (that is, England in the year 1945).
The clever biblical allegory at play is thoughtfully done, although not heavy-handed enough to force itself upon the reader.
Garbage by A. R. Ammons
4.0
Very finely done. Balances rhetorical gravitas and quirk/idiosyncracy. Also balances philosophical seriousness and freewheeling reference points/imagery. There is a lot to learn here about poetry as craft. Some choices in phrasing a bit dated.
"there is truly only meaning,
only meaning, meanings, so many meanings,
meaninglessness becomes what to make of so many
meanings: and, truly, everything is real"
The Queen and the Mistress: The Women of Edward III by Gemma Hollman
3.75
Gemma Hollman provides a smart, sympathetic look at both Queen Philippa of Hainault and Alice Perrers. Hollman presents Philippa's marriage to and royal partnership with Edward III as remarkably stable for most of their lives, while also effectively illustrating the regular see-sawing between triumphs (military victories, marriages, births) and tragedies (military defeats, childhood mortality) that carried across their long reign. Hollman also does a good job explaining the ways in which Philippa was called upon to intervene with Edward in an appropriately Queenly, feminine way, ritually appealing for clemency and mercy to be given to those convicted of wrongdoings, especially women and vulnerable people. Through Philippa's exercise of this function, we gain a broader understanding of the idealized notion of Queenhood and feminine influence in 14th-century England.
Turning to Edward's later affair with Alice Perrers, Hollman's work is at its most forensic, piecing together the story of Perrers' rise from an obscure mercantile background to immense wealth and influence by relying on records of petitions, legal judgements, and land transactions. Importantly, Hollman takes great lengths to be charitable and generous to both women (and, indeed, to Edward). While she does deny that each might have used their position for personal enrichment, especially Alice, she is also careful to foreground the existence of real care and affection between each of these women and Edward. Unfortunately, her evidence for this is always going to be sketchier, given the largely hostile attitude of contemporary chroniclers towards Alice (both due to their misogyny and to their political agenda against her mercantile clique and in favor of the landed nobility), as well as the fact that "hard evidence" (e.g. business transactions and legal judgements) is much easier to come by. While some of this material is speculative, Hollman's allowance for genuinely loving relationships is an important corrective to overly functionalist historical narratives. Her evident tenderness towards these long-deceased women is also key to our investment in the story she is telling.
Hollman concludes by drawing a comparison between the socially unacceptable way in which Alice obtained wealth and power and the socially-prescribed ways in which Philippa did so, modeling the ideal of a "good Queen". Her point is sound, but she does not spend much time developing a broader theory behind it or teasing out its implications. Instead, The Queen and the Mistress is most valuable as an example of how to do pre-modern history in a compassionate and generous-spirited way, which may require accepting a degree of speculation and uncertainty in the service of bringing a fuller humanity to the lives of her subjects.
Turning to Edward's later affair with Alice Perrers, Hollman's work is at its most forensic, piecing together the story of Perrers' rise from an obscure mercantile background to immense wealth and influence by relying on records of petitions, legal judgements, and land transactions. Importantly, Hollman takes great lengths to be charitable and generous to both women (and, indeed, to Edward). While she does deny that each might have used their position for personal enrichment, especially Alice, she is also careful to foreground the existence of real care and affection between each of these women and Edward. Unfortunately, her evidence for this is always going to be sketchier, given the largely hostile attitude of contemporary chroniclers towards Alice (both due to their misogyny and to their political agenda against her mercantile clique and in favor of the landed nobility), as well as the fact that "hard evidence" (e.g. business transactions and legal judgements) is much easier to come by. While some of this material is speculative, Hollman's allowance for genuinely loving relationships is an important corrective to overly functionalist historical narratives. Her evident tenderness towards these long-deceased women is also key to our investment in the story she is telling.
Hollman concludes by drawing a comparison between the socially unacceptable way in which Alice obtained wealth and power and the socially-prescribed ways in which Philippa did so, modeling the ideal of a "good Queen". Her point is sound, but she does not spend much time developing a broader theory behind it or teasing out its implications. Instead, The Queen and the Mistress is most valuable as an example of how to do pre-modern history in a compassionate and generous-spirited way, which may require accepting a degree of speculation and uncertainty in the service of bringing a fuller humanity to the lives of her subjects.
North Star Country: Upstate New York and the Crusade for African American Freedom by Milton Sernett
3.75
As a resident of what was once the Burned-Over District, I thoroughly appreciated this. Although North Star Country is fairly narrow in focus and mostly chronological in structure, its ten chapters did not always seem to comprise a cohesive throughline. To greater or lesser extents, each chapter seemed unique in its purpose and methods.
Chapter 1 described the unique spiritual environment of central and western New York during the Second Great Awakening. Thanks to a combination of Charles Grandison Finney's style of revivalism and the cultural influence of congregationalist New Englanders moving into the region, the region's religious culture was fervent, but typified by a highly-demanding, highly-idealistic, inward-looking moral perfectionism (in contrast to the more charismatic revivalism emerging elsewhere). Moving into Chapter 2, Sernett explains that this spiritual milieu was the basis on which Garrisonian abolitionists put down roots in the region and eventually displaced the advocates of recolonization. The Garrisonians' philosophy of "moral suasion" demanded that those complicit in slavery be convinced of the error of their ways, publicly repent, and change their behavior out of genuine conviction. It was an ethically uncompromising but practically unrealistic stance, rejecting political action in favor of an untarnished clarion call of conviction. I found these chapters very useful in contextualizing the very specific kind of "radicalism" the Garrisonians embodied, which is somewhat alien to our own context.
Chapters 3 and 4 describe the nascent abolitionist movements in the region beginning to meddle with organizational politics, breaking with the New England Garrisonians to establish the small Liberty Party, grappling with the promise and limitations of single-issue electoral politics, and agitating within their communities and churches, notably forming many "comeouter" congregations which explicitly broke with the organized Baptist, Methodist, and Presbyterian bodies of the time. Sernett does a good job recounting these internecine debates and struggles, as well as the characters involved -- by this time, many noteworthy abolitionists (both Black and white) called the region home, including Frederick Douglass, who had moved to Rochester. Notably, though, all of this politicking occurs in the context of a still-marginal movement -- even when the abolitionists did field candidates under their Liberty ticket, their electoral success was extremely limited and eventually swallowed up by the larger (and less firmly anti-slavery) Free Soil movement. While the political narrative is compelling, and Sernett does make some effective points about the role of Black abolitionists in rejecting the anti-political approach earlier expounded by Garrison and his allies, he doesn't spend much time here laying out the medium- or long-term implications of this marginal politicking in terms of actually convincing people or altering outcomes.
Chapter 5 moves away from the political fringes to describe how anti-slavery sentiment became more widespread in Upstate cities after the Fugitive Slave Law of 1851, most notably Syracuse, where the famous "Jerry Rescue" and other acts of popular resistance to slave hunters and federal agents took place. Sernett distinguishes between the ardently abolitionist instigators of these vigilante actions and the crowds gathering in their support, many of whom harbored more resentment towards southern interference than antipathy towards slavery itself; however, I found myself wishing for more exploration as to how often and how easily the latter evolved into the former. Chapters 6 through 8 follow in a similar vein of describing specific cities and towns and their role in the national abolitionist project, describing Douglass' base of operations in Rochester, Harriet Tubman's base of operations in Auburn, the local influence of Samuel J. May in Syracuse, and the way in which John Brown used Upstate New York as a space in which to network with prominent abolitionists, develop plans, and raise money, in between his missions to Kansas and eventually to Harper's Ferry. These chapters also contain some very effective descriptions of how the relatively small but vocal Black communities in many of these cities organized and played a key role in the cities' overall character and the landscape of anti-slavery agitation.
Chapters 9 and 10, which are primarily devoted to the experience of Black and white Upstate New Yorkers leading up to and during the Civil War, are well-constructed, but somewhat more general, and provided the fewest specific takeaways or themes.
To turn to the book as a whole. I deeply appreciate the way Sernett recontextualizes many towns, cities, and landmarks with which I'm familiar in the light of their important history, when the corridor down the Erie Canal from Utica to Buffalo had a profound religious, cultural, and political impact on the nation. I did find myself wanting more in terms of a thesis being advanced, a theme or argument being developed across the entire set of chapters, and specific implications or takeaways, especially for Chapters 6-10, which feature some of the book's most direct and memorable storytelling but also seem to provide the least in terms of a conceptual or narrative upshot.
Ultimately, however, I think I have been somewhat jaded by the norm in academic history to claim a revolutionary perspective or insight, even when one is not readily apparent. Sernett does not hide why he constructed North Star Country the way he did, seeing it primarily as a project of stewardship; a way of recognizing, honoring, and preserving the history of a region in which he too resides. While this imperative may lead to a book which has less of a unique perspective on its own, and may at times seem to present a bit of a patchwork of topics, considering Sernett's book in the light of his stated priorities, it is hard to term it anything but a great success.
Chapter 1 described the unique spiritual environment of central and western New York during the Second Great Awakening. Thanks to a combination of Charles Grandison Finney's style of revivalism and the cultural influence of congregationalist New Englanders moving into the region, the region's religious culture was fervent, but typified by a highly-demanding, highly-idealistic, inward-looking moral perfectionism (in contrast to the more charismatic revivalism emerging elsewhere). Moving into Chapter 2, Sernett explains that this spiritual milieu was the basis on which Garrisonian abolitionists put down roots in the region and eventually displaced the advocates of recolonization. The Garrisonians' philosophy of "moral suasion" demanded that those complicit in slavery be convinced of the error of their ways, publicly repent, and change their behavior out of genuine conviction. It was an ethically uncompromising but practically unrealistic stance, rejecting political action in favor of an untarnished clarion call of conviction. I found these chapters very useful in contextualizing the very specific kind of "radicalism" the Garrisonians embodied, which is somewhat alien to our own context.
Chapters 3 and 4 describe the nascent abolitionist movements in the region beginning to meddle with organizational politics, breaking with the New England Garrisonians to establish the small Liberty Party, grappling with the promise and limitations of single-issue electoral politics, and agitating within their communities and churches, notably forming many "comeouter" congregations which explicitly broke with the organized Baptist, Methodist, and Presbyterian bodies of the time. Sernett does a good job recounting these internecine debates and struggles, as well as the characters involved -- by this time, many noteworthy abolitionists (both Black and white) called the region home, including Frederick Douglass, who had moved to Rochester. Notably, though, all of this politicking occurs in the context of a still-marginal movement -- even when the abolitionists did field candidates under their Liberty ticket, their electoral success was extremely limited and eventually swallowed up by the larger (and less firmly anti-slavery) Free Soil movement. While the political narrative is compelling, and Sernett does make some effective points about the role of Black abolitionists in rejecting the anti-political approach earlier expounded by Garrison and his allies, he doesn't spend much time here laying out the medium- or long-term implications of this marginal politicking in terms of actually convincing people or altering outcomes.
Chapter 5 moves away from the political fringes to describe how anti-slavery sentiment became more widespread in Upstate cities after the Fugitive Slave Law of 1851, most notably Syracuse, where the famous "Jerry Rescue" and other acts of popular resistance to slave hunters and federal agents took place. Sernett distinguishes between the ardently abolitionist instigators of these vigilante actions and the crowds gathering in their support, many of whom harbored more resentment towards southern interference than antipathy towards slavery itself; however, I found myself wishing for more exploration as to how often and how easily the latter evolved into the former. Chapters 6 through 8 follow in a similar vein of describing specific cities and towns and their role in the national abolitionist project, describing Douglass' base of operations in Rochester, Harriet Tubman's base of operations in Auburn, the local influence of Samuel J. May in Syracuse, and the way in which John Brown used Upstate New York as a space in which to network with prominent abolitionists, develop plans, and raise money, in between his missions to Kansas and eventually to Harper's Ferry. These chapters also contain some very effective descriptions of how the relatively small but vocal Black communities in many of these cities organized and played a key role in the cities' overall character and the landscape of anti-slavery agitation.
Chapters 9 and 10, which are primarily devoted to the experience of Black and white Upstate New Yorkers leading up to and during the Civil War, are well-constructed, but somewhat more general, and provided the fewest specific takeaways or themes.
To turn to the book as a whole. I deeply appreciate the way Sernett recontextualizes many towns, cities, and landmarks with which I'm familiar in the light of their important history, when the corridor down the Erie Canal from Utica to Buffalo had a profound religious, cultural, and political impact on the nation. I did find myself wanting more in terms of a thesis being advanced, a theme or argument being developed across the entire set of chapters, and specific implications or takeaways, especially for Chapters 6-10, which feature some of the book's most direct and memorable storytelling but also seem to provide the least in terms of a conceptual or narrative upshot.
Ultimately, however, I think I have been somewhat jaded by the norm in academic history to claim a revolutionary perspective or insight, even when one is not readily apparent. Sernett does not hide why he constructed North Star Country the way he did, seeing it primarily as a project of stewardship; a way of recognizing, honoring, and preserving the history of a region in which he too resides. While this imperative may lead to a book which has less of a unique perspective on its own, and may at times seem to present a bit of a patchwork of topics, considering Sernett's book in the light of his stated priorities, it is hard to term it anything but a great success.
The Shadow King by Maaza Mengiste
4.25
The New Yorker describes The Shadow King as "an epic of nationhood and resistance". In one sense, I agree: Mengiste has composed her novel using the sweeping, heroic register of patriotic mythology. In another sense, The Shadow King is more of a meta-epic; a contested epic. Her characters all seem to instinctively understand the significance of the moment into which they are thrust. As Benito Mussolini's Italy invades Haile Selassie's Ethiopia, the book's various narrators are all trying to fashion from this moment a defining story. They are choreographing an epic -- or, more accurately, multiple epics, in that each character's narrative vision is distinct.
Mengiste's attentiveness to pagentry and performance, to what is remembered and what is elided, has three notable effects. First, it allows her to be extremely clear about what is glossed over in our historical vision -- in particular, sexual violence -- and about the implicit and explicit sacrifices that are made for the stories we will eventually tell. Second, it helps her present nuanced characters, not by exonerating evil or destructive acts, but by treating each character as a piece of a longer thread of family and cultural influences. In effect, she sidesteps the challenge of managing readers' moral evaluations of these characters; their individual blameworthiness isn't the point. We are much more concerned with their place in history: from whence they have come, and where they are going. The result is that her characters are treated with a great deal of complexity and compassion. Third, Mengiste's exploration of what happens when a narrative runs its course and is no longer recognized is extremely effective. In particular,there is a brief but stunning scene at the end in which Minim, a peasant who temporarily played the role of a body-double for the exiled emperor, rousing his countryfolk to fight against the occupation, comes to terms with his renewed anonymity after the war has ended; with the secret weight he now bears.
The Shadow King is pretty dense with structural devices, including photographic descriptions breaking up the main text, a Greek chorus, and interludes from the perspective of Haile Selaisse, far from events on the ground. I found the photographs to be a really effective device; one of our characters is a photographer, and the contrast between the moments in which he takes his pictures and the stories told by the pictures themselves is trenchant. I also liked the Haile Selaisse interludes -- the emperor's sense of the Italian invasion as a problem he must first reconcile intellectually is very intriguing. I was somewhat less sold by the Greek chorus, as I felt that its sweeping, declarative tone -- and the points it was employed to emphasize -- were both largely present in the main body of the text already.
Misc. thoughts:
- Mengiste is very good at incorporating language differences, and different degrees of language fluency, into her scenes.
- The book's description in blurbs and on its jacket copy (presumably from the publisher) strikes me as a little inaccurate; this certainly is the story of a woman at war -- and of the sexual violence often glossed over in historical memory of warfare -- but not exclusively or even primarily. All of the characters who narrate parts of this story are important as Mengiste explores the construction and contestation of national and individual narratives.
Mengiste's attentiveness to pagentry and performance, to what is remembered and what is elided, has three notable effects. First, it allows her to be extremely clear about what is glossed over in our historical vision -- in particular, sexual violence -- and about the implicit and explicit sacrifices that are made for the stories we will eventually tell. Second, it helps her present nuanced characters, not by exonerating evil or destructive acts, but by treating each character as a piece of a longer thread of family and cultural influences. In effect, she sidesteps the challenge of managing readers' moral evaluations of these characters; their individual blameworthiness isn't the point. We are much more concerned with their place in history: from whence they have come, and where they are going. The result is that her characters are treated with a great deal of complexity and compassion. Third, Mengiste's exploration of what happens when a narrative runs its course and is no longer recognized is extremely effective. In particular,
The Shadow King is pretty dense with structural devices, including photographic descriptions breaking up the main text, a Greek chorus, and interludes from the perspective of Haile Selaisse, far from events on the ground. I found the photographs to be a really effective device; one of our characters is a photographer, and the contrast between the moments in which he takes his pictures and the stories told by the pictures themselves is trenchant. I also liked the Haile Selaisse interludes -- the emperor's sense of the Italian invasion as a problem he must first reconcile intellectually is very intriguing. I was somewhat less sold by the Greek chorus, as I felt that its sweeping, declarative tone -- and the points it was employed to emphasize -- were both largely present in the main body of the text already.
Misc. thoughts:
- Mengiste is very good at incorporating language differences, and different degrees of language fluency, into her scenes.
- The book's description in blurbs and on its jacket copy (presumably from the publisher) strikes me as a little inaccurate; this certainly is the story of a woman at war -- and of the sexual violence often glossed over in historical memory of warfare -- but not exclusively or even primarily. All of the characters who narrate parts of this story are important as Mengiste explores the construction and contestation of national and individual narratives.
On the Problem of Empathy by
4.5
This early work of Stein's is an edited and translated version of the doctoral dissertation she completed under Edmund Husserl in 1916, which is to say that she was not writing for a general audience. My own familiarity with German phenomenology is limited, and while I could almost always follow Stein's general argument, I certainly misinterpreted or missed significant aspects of her commentary or reasoning.
Having said that, Stein's conception of empathy resonates extremely deeply with me. Stein argues that empathy cannot be understood as imitation, ideation, outward perception, or propositional knowledge. Instead, she considers empathy a sui generis "experience of being lead by the foreign experience". Her crucial insight is to analogize empathy to memory, expectation, and fantasy, experiences which are themselves "primordially given" while being "non-primordial in content". That is, these are states we directly experience, even though the content of our memories or expectations or fantasies is mediated, rather than primordial. Empathy, however, differs from these experiences by combining the primordial presence of a foreign experience with an awareness of separateness. Relevantly, this implies that empathy is not simply "putting ourselves in another's shoes", suppressing the consciousness of our separateness to imagine another's world. Stein writes that this may be a strategy to prompt or engender empathy, but it is not in itself empathy, which is distinct from mere imagination.
Stein saw her account of empathy as necessitating an account of personhood, and began to develop such an account, a theme she would return to in later work. Building on other phenomenologists, she describes the experience of personhood as an orientation around a physical and spiritual "zero-point of orientation". Applying this to empathy, she describes how empathy can be understood as becoming aware of (which is to say, being lead by) the presence of a foreign zero-point. While some might object to the mystical tone of this argument, to me it represents a useful framework for capturing what empathy is, how it can be developed and practiced, and how it can help us examine our own identities, all of which Stein discusses.
I spend a lot of time thinking about empathy, in part because I believe that many people I otherwise agree with ethically and politically have become convinced of its meaningful impossibility, a position I consider deeply misguided. While Stein's investigation of empathy is academic, and sometimes difficult to penetrate, I find her account of empathy is not only an appropriate rejoinder to many anti-empathetic arguments but also the best description I have yet encountered of empathy's presence in my own life. Stein's framework allows for fruitful further development of ideas related to the balance between physical embodiment and empathetic personhood, the relationship between empathy and storytelling, and the active force with which empathy "leads" us to some previously unrealized terminus.
All in all, these ideas will continue to be extremely important to me, even if I would love to find an annotated version for any future encounters with this text.
See also:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14zv0c7cQmo
Having said that, Stein's conception of empathy resonates extremely deeply with me. Stein argues that empathy cannot be understood as imitation, ideation, outward perception, or propositional knowledge. Instead, she considers empathy a sui generis "experience of being lead by the foreign experience". Her crucial insight is to analogize empathy to memory, expectation, and fantasy, experiences which are themselves "primordially given" while being "non-primordial in content". That is, these are states we directly experience, even though the content of our memories or expectations or fantasies is mediated, rather than primordial. Empathy, however, differs from these experiences by combining the primordial presence of a foreign experience with an awareness of separateness. Relevantly, this implies that empathy is not simply "putting ourselves in another's shoes", suppressing the consciousness of our separateness to imagine another's world. Stein writes that this may be a strategy to prompt or engender empathy, but it is not in itself empathy, which is distinct from mere imagination.
Stein saw her account of empathy as necessitating an account of personhood, and began to develop such an account, a theme she would return to in later work. Building on other phenomenologists, she describes the experience of personhood as an orientation around a physical and spiritual "zero-point of orientation". Applying this to empathy, she describes how empathy can be understood as becoming aware of (which is to say, being lead by) the presence of a foreign zero-point. While some might object to the mystical tone of this argument, to me it represents a useful framework for capturing what empathy is, how it can be developed and practiced, and how it can help us examine our own identities, all of which Stein discusses.
I spend a lot of time thinking about empathy, in part because I believe that many people I otherwise agree with ethically and politically have become convinced of its meaningful impossibility, a position I consider deeply misguided. While Stein's investigation of empathy is academic, and sometimes difficult to penetrate, I find her account of empathy is not only an appropriate rejoinder to many anti-empathetic arguments but also the best description I have yet encountered of empathy's presence in my own life. Stein's framework allows for fruitful further development of ideas related to the balance between physical embodiment and empathetic personhood, the relationship between empathy and storytelling, and the active force with which empathy "leads" us to some previously unrealized terminus.
All in all, these ideas will continue to be extremely important to me, even if I would love to find an annotated version for any future encounters with this text.
See also:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14zv0c7cQmo
The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin
4.0
Penguin's 2019 paperback edition of The Left Hand of Darkness commemorates the celebrated novel's 50th anniversary. Among the testimonials printed on the back cover, from The Guardian: "A quietly revolutionary study in gender." This assessment intrigues me.
To be sure, the novel revolves around the cultural disconnect between Gethen, a world without sexual dimorphism or fixed gender, and "bisexual" (i.e. sexually dimorphic) worlds, including our own. Our two narrators are the Terran envoy Genly Ai and the Gethenian nobleman (politician?) Estraven. Each narrator's voice is compellingly nuanced. Ai is ignorant of and oblivious to much, but self-consciously so. Being aware of ignorance in an unfamiliar cultural setting doesn't necessarily improve one's ability to operate in spite of it; in some cases Ai's constant rumination on ignorance leads him to his most ill-advised judgements. Estraven, meanwhile, seems a quintessential statesman: blessed with clarity of forethought and decisive judgement, but laden with an almost somber sense of his limited power over the currents of history (the choice of pronouns being Le Guin's).
Our narrators are complex and thoughtful people, and Le Guin is good at world-building, paying attention to Gethenian culture, politics, climate, and history, along with their androgynous life-cycles. As a consequence, it is seldom entirely clear how essential the question of gender is to the difficulties Ai and Estraven have in understanding one another. They speculate as to its potential influence on each other's actions or worldview, but cannot do more than speculate. In truth, Le Guin's story is rich enough that her protagonists might equally misapprehend one another without physiological difference. The ambiguity is important and fruitful; we learn a lot more by never having the historical impact of gender explicitly settled. However, it is hard not to wonder how "revolutionary" this all is, if politics and weather and so on are equally important drivers of the novel's plot.
Further compounding things, Ai's attitudes towards gender seem quite tethered to 1969, the year of the novel's original publication. For today's reader this can be odd, although it certainly does make the cultural difference at play more obvious or more extreme. But as Charlie Jane Anders notes in the 2019 edition's afterword, Le Guin isn't actually questioning biological essentialism at all: the Gethenians' society only differs insofar as their biology differs, and all of her characters, in their own ways, draw fairly straight lines between biology and what we would call gender. So, in what ways does The Left Hand offer anything revolutionary?
I think the answer is also to be found in Jane Anders' afterword. Anders notes that "unresolved sexual tension" is a fundamental and productive force throughout the novel, and it's true. Not only is the moment of greatest mutual understanding between Ai and Estraven brought aboutby Estraven entering kemmer (a cyclical estrous state) during their shared odyssey across the Great Continent's ice shelf , but the trust Estraven places in the extraterrestrial Ai, and the pair's complex but strong impulses towards one another, ultimately represent a vague and unrealized eroticism (as they themselves will realize). In this way, The Left Hand of Darkness seems, to me, more of a "quietly revolutionary" study in sexuality, than in gender -- a thought experiment about the latent sexual forces that play unexpected social roles as society changes and diversifies.
David Mitchell's foreward cites loved ones' "benign transphobia" as an example of the kind of cultural difference Le Guin writes about overcoming, and he's not entirely wrong. There are moments of kindness and solidarity in the face of difference-- the most touching, for me, was Ai's ability to share meaningful space and time with a dying Gethenian convict in a prison camp, the pair brought together by circumstance and almost entirely incapable of understanding each other. But I'll remember this book more following Anders' train of thought than Mitchell's.
All of that being said, it's quite good. Le Guin's thought-provoking Author's Note, first published in 1976, is an added delight.
To be sure, the novel revolves around the cultural disconnect between Gethen, a world without sexual dimorphism or fixed gender, and "bisexual" (i.e. sexually dimorphic) worlds, including our own. Our two narrators are the Terran envoy Genly Ai and the Gethenian nobleman (politician?) Estraven. Each narrator's voice is compellingly nuanced. Ai is ignorant of and oblivious to much, but self-consciously so. Being aware of ignorance in an unfamiliar cultural setting doesn't necessarily improve one's ability to operate in spite of it; in some cases Ai's constant rumination on ignorance leads him to his most ill-advised judgements. Estraven, meanwhile, seems a quintessential statesman: blessed with clarity of forethought and decisive judgement, but laden with an almost somber sense of his limited power over the currents of history (the choice of pronouns being Le Guin's).
Our narrators are complex and thoughtful people, and Le Guin is good at world-building, paying attention to Gethenian culture, politics, climate, and history, along with their androgynous life-cycles. As a consequence, it is seldom entirely clear how essential the question of gender is to the difficulties Ai and Estraven have in understanding one another. They speculate as to its potential influence on each other's actions or worldview, but cannot do more than speculate. In truth, Le Guin's story is rich enough that her protagonists might equally misapprehend one another without physiological difference. The ambiguity is important and fruitful; we learn a lot more by never having the historical impact of gender explicitly settled. However, it is hard not to wonder how "revolutionary" this all is, if politics and weather and so on are equally important drivers of the novel's plot.
Further compounding things, Ai's attitudes towards gender seem quite tethered to 1969, the year of the novel's original publication. For today's reader this can be odd, although it certainly does make the cultural difference at play more obvious or more extreme. But as Charlie Jane Anders notes in the 2019 edition's afterword, Le Guin isn't actually questioning biological essentialism at all: the Gethenians' society only differs insofar as their biology differs, and all of her characters, in their own ways, draw fairly straight lines between biology and what we would call gender. So, in what ways does The Left Hand offer anything revolutionary?
I think the answer is also to be found in Jane Anders' afterword. Anders notes that "unresolved sexual tension" is a fundamental and productive force throughout the novel, and it's true. Not only is the moment of greatest mutual understanding between Ai and Estraven brought about
David Mitchell's foreward cites loved ones' "benign transphobia" as an example of the kind of cultural difference Le Guin writes about overcoming, and he's not entirely wrong. There are moments of kindness and solidarity in the face of difference
All of that being said, it's quite good. Le Guin's thought-provoking Author's Note, first published in 1976, is an added delight.
Lakota America: A New History of Indigenous Power by Pekka Hämäläinen
3.75
Hämäläinen's project here is very much grounded in political and diplomatic history, and as such may for some readers seem to have a bit of a musty, antique aura. Taken on its own terms, I think this book succeeds at a lot of things. Hämäläinen is very good at describing geographical space using concepts like technological and ecological frontiers, buffer zones and areas of effective control, and demographic fracture/displacement/migration to thoroughly redraw the map of the political realities of the North American interior in the 17th-19th centuries; for those of us still laboring under the weight of the conventional maps and boundaries we memorized in high school, this may be his most valuable contribution. He is also successful in giving a striking account of Lakota governance over time, describing a fluid political order which underwent many changes as the Lakota detached themselves from the eastern Sioux nations near the Great Lakes, consolidated themselves in the Missouri River valley, adapted to a new environment and carved out an extensive sphere of influence in the plains, and continued to drift northward and westward when confrontation with the post-civil war United States reached its peak. Hämäläinen also emphasizes the long time-horizons under which the Lakota strategic vision operated and makes good account of the role of ecological resources, namely game. Finally, I think Hämäläinen strikes a good balance in devoting roughly equal attention to Lakota-US/European relations and intra-indigenous relations, understood as influencing one another but never fully blending into one another (at least not until the very end).
Although the earlier portions of Lakota America are interesting, and essential to the story of geographic drift, the actual historical inquiry feels stronger towards the latter half of the book, in which Hämäläinen is able to draw more extensively on Lakota sources (namely Winter Counts) and clearly describe the differing inclinations and political/diplomatic strategies of individual Lakota leaders (especially Red Cloud, Spotted Tail, and Sitting Bull). The earlier history, which seems to rely more on frontier narratives, is useful, but the source material available does limit my ability to fully credit all of Hämäläinen's proposals or interpretations.
Although I haven't been able to find as many grassroots Lakota responses to Hämäläinen's book as I would like, one point of controversy in its reception has been Hämäläinen's use of the term "empire" to describe the polity created by Lakota after migrating westward from a more condensed area in the Missouri and Minnesota river valleys. The term "empire" is worth problematizing; Lakota expansionary warfare against Crows, Shoshone, and others notwithstanding, the historical context in which the Lakota polity arose and operated was very distinct from the context in which "empires" of settler-colonialism constituted themselves. Ultimately, I don't think Hämäläinen is particularly interested in wading into this conceptual issue; he seems to be using the term "empire" mostly as a shorthand indicating extensive territorial power and diplomatic/strategic/historical agency (and because he used the term "empire" in regards to Comanche history in his previous book). I think Hämäläinen's discussion of the Lakota polity is specific enough that the word is unnecessary, and that he might have avoided valid concerns towards the political implications of his work by omitting it.
Lakota America moves at a measured, detail-oriented pace until reaching the Battle of Little Bighorn. After the Battle, Hämäläinen wraps up quickly, describing the final subjugation of Lakota power in the 1880s and 1890s in much scantier detail before adding a welcome but somewhat halfhearted epilogue about Lakota presence in contemporary struggles for Native American sovereignty from the AIM/Red Power movements to Standing Rock. I don't think choosing to end his core historical work at Little Bighorn is a problem; Hämäläinen's interest is the sociopolitical and geopolitical evolution of sovereign Lakota power in the American interior, and Little Bighorn is a valid end point for this story. Still, some readers may find a stronger conclusion wanting.
Although the earlier portions of Lakota America are interesting, and essential to the story of geographic drift, the actual historical inquiry feels stronger towards the latter half of the book, in which Hämäläinen is able to draw more extensively on Lakota sources (namely Winter Counts) and clearly describe the differing inclinations and political/diplomatic strategies of individual Lakota leaders (especially Red Cloud, Spotted Tail, and Sitting Bull). The earlier history, which seems to rely more on frontier narratives, is useful, but the source material available does limit my ability to fully credit all of Hämäläinen's proposals or interpretations.
Although I haven't been able to find as many grassroots Lakota responses to Hämäläinen's book as I would like, one point of controversy in its reception has been Hämäläinen's use of the term "empire" to describe the polity created by Lakota after migrating westward from a more condensed area in the Missouri and Minnesota river valleys. The term "empire" is worth problematizing; Lakota expansionary warfare against Crows, Shoshone, and others notwithstanding, the historical context in which the Lakota polity arose and operated was very distinct from the context in which "empires" of settler-colonialism constituted themselves. Ultimately, I don't think Hämäläinen is particularly interested in wading into this conceptual issue; he seems to be using the term "empire" mostly as a shorthand indicating extensive territorial power and diplomatic/strategic/historical agency (and because he used the term "empire" in regards to Comanche history in his previous book). I think Hämäläinen's discussion of the Lakota polity is specific enough that the word is unnecessary, and that he might have avoided valid concerns towards the political implications of his work by omitting it.
Lakota America moves at a measured, detail-oriented pace until reaching the Battle of Little Bighorn. After the Battle, Hämäläinen wraps up quickly, describing the final subjugation of Lakota power in the 1880s and 1890s in much scantier detail before adding a welcome but somewhat halfhearted epilogue about Lakota presence in contemporary struggles for Native American sovereignty from the AIM/Red Power movements to Standing Rock. I don't think choosing to end his core historical work at Little Bighorn is a problem; Hämäläinen's interest is the sociopolitical and geopolitical evolution of sovereign Lakota power in the American interior, and Little Bighorn is a valid end point for this story. Still, some readers may find a stronger conclusion wanting.
Shelter Theology: The Religious Lives of People Without Homes by Susan J Dunlap
3.75
Dunlap's title, "Shelter Theology", is an effective bit of marketing but a misleading way to sum up her book. Fortunately, once I readjusted my expectations, I found a great deal of valuable insight here.
At its heart, this is a book about the pastoral difficulties associated with ministering to people whose religious lives are very different from your own. Dunlap recounts her experiences working as a chaplain at an emergency shelter in Durham, NC. She describes the ways in which her own pastoral training prioritized listening, empathy, accompaniment, and subtle theological interpretations which didn't offend a modernist and scientific view of the world. These pastoral instincts often proved to be at odds with the spiritual needs of those attending prayer services in the shelter. Predominantly Black and steeped in various Low Church traditions, the attendees valued oratory and testimony which directly called upon familiar scriptural and proverbial source material, affirmed the active presence of God and the Devil in the material world, and was often driven to theodicy and the presence of divine meaning in personal narrative. Dunlap reflects on the life-sustaining force of these forms of religious expression and belief, letting her interviewees speak for themselves by reproducing their narratives at length. She finds wisdom in their practical theologies, but also asks open-ended questions. Most interestingly, she acknowledges that she herself will never be able to tap into their religious modalities in an authentic way, and reflects on the ways in which she can use her social and educational capital to create, facilitate, or sustain spaces in which peer-to-peer ministry and encouragement is possible.
Dunlap's book, then, is not primarily a theological account of the condition of being unhoused, or even a sociological account of unhoused peoples' religious practice in general. Indeed, when it comes closest to this territory -- in its first and last chapters -- it is at its weakest and most superficial. Dunlap's book is closer to a personal reflection on the experience of running a non-denominational prayer service at a shelter in North Carolina, the stories and narratives that shelter's residents shared with her, and the changing ways in which she came to understand and carry out her role as chaplain. It is on this basis that those interested in pastoral practice may benefit quite substantially from this book, especially when working with religious forms and/or content which may be unfamiliar or uncomfortable.
At its heart, this is a book about the pastoral difficulties associated with ministering to people whose religious lives are very different from your own. Dunlap recounts her experiences working as a chaplain at an emergency shelter in Durham, NC. She describes the ways in which her own pastoral training prioritized listening, empathy, accompaniment, and subtle theological interpretations which didn't offend a modernist and scientific view of the world. These pastoral instincts often proved to be at odds with the spiritual needs of those attending prayer services in the shelter. Predominantly Black and steeped in various Low Church traditions, the attendees valued oratory and testimony which directly called upon familiar scriptural and proverbial source material, affirmed the active presence of God and the Devil in the material world, and was often driven to theodicy and the presence of divine meaning in personal narrative. Dunlap reflects on the life-sustaining force of these forms of religious expression and belief, letting her interviewees speak for themselves by reproducing their narratives at length. She finds wisdom in their practical theologies, but also asks open-ended questions. Most interestingly, she acknowledges that she herself will never be able to tap into their religious modalities in an authentic way, and reflects on the ways in which she can use her social and educational capital to create, facilitate, or sustain spaces in which peer-to-peer ministry and encouragement is possible.
Dunlap's book, then, is not primarily a theological account of the condition of being unhoused, or even a sociological account of unhoused peoples' religious practice in general. Indeed, when it comes closest to this territory -- in its first and last chapters -- it is at its weakest and most superficial. Dunlap's book is closer to a personal reflection on the experience of running a non-denominational prayer service at a shelter in North Carolina, the stories and narratives that shelter's residents shared with her, and the changing ways in which she came to understand and carry out her role as chaplain. It is on this basis that those interested in pastoral practice may benefit quite substantially from this book, especially when working with religious forms and/or content which may be unfamiliar or uncomfortable.
The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
4.5
Newland Archer bridles at social convention, but can only muster impotent resistance; he is clear-eyed but feckless. Ellen Olenska uses her outsider status shrewdly, never quite letting on how much or how little she understands New York's genteel society, but is ultimately imprisoned in her gambit. Newland and Ellen are fascinating characters in their own rights, and their frustrated relationship is at the core of The Age of Innocence. Their interactions with and feelings towards one another are endlessly compelling.
Wharton deserves further praise for her memorable secondary characters -- the mischievous elderly Catherine Mingott is a particular gem -- and the sophisticated emotional note on which her story ends -- calm, elegiac, bittersweet. Readers today will also be intrigued by the degree to which the New York gentry she depicts are still living in the shadow of Europe, sometimes imitating and sometimes drawing a contrast, but always conscious of their society's immaturity -- innocence -- relative to old world aristocracies.
May Welland was, to me, the one significant character to whom Wharton could have been more generous. She serves well as a conceptual foil, through which Wharton is able to depict some of the subtle but powerful ways traditional New York society managed to reproduce itself. One almost feels, however, that she exists as a functional element for storytelling and point-making, more than as a fully realized human character. It is worth noting, though, that our understanding of May is filtered through Archer's, to which some of these deficiencies can be attributed.
Wharton deserves further praise for her memorable secondary characters -- the mischievous elderly Catherine Mingott is a particular gem -- and the sophisticated emotional note on which her story ends -- calm, elegiac, bittersweet. Readers today will also be intrigued by the degree to which the New York gentry she depicts are still living in the shadow of Europe, sometimes imitating and sometimes drawing a contrast, but always conscious of their society's immaturity -- innocence -- relative to old world aristocracies.
May Welland was, to me, the one significant character to whom Wharton could have been more generous. She serves well as a conceptual foil, through which Wharton is able to depict some of the subtle but powerful ways traditional New York society managed to reproduce itself. One almost feels, however, that she exists as a functional element for storytelling and point-making, more than as a fully realized human character. It is worth noting, though, that our understanding of May is filtered through Archer's, to which some of these deficiencies can be attributed.