kylegarvey's reviews
346 reviews

Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder by Salman Rushdie

3.0

 

I've not read much Rushdie. Quichotte, a later novel of his, is pretty much the only full book, plus there have probably been some essays and such from the New York Times. But the thrust of Rushdie's whole life -- principles vs indulgence, speech freedom vs la-la playboy NYC artiste thang, or something -- all reflects back toward me, toward my personal life, in very illiberal liberality I'm kind of feeling I have to try to juggle. So I relate, but it may be kind of reluctant, no offense to him. 

 

This later memoir, Knife, can jump significantly higher than Rushdie's earlier memoir, Joseph Anton. In my opinion! But with all due respect to myself, who cares? Uh. "It is said that Henry James’s last words were 'So it has come at last, the distinguished thing.' Death was coming at me, too, but it didn’t strike me as distinguished. It struck me as anachronistic" (17). Ok? Are you saying you're like Henry James? Huh. (The gall on this fellow! like he has decades and decades of experience on me, perspective, reams of paper, whatever, etc.! Jeez. ) 

 

In dealing with liberality (Western secular free-speech, in Rushdie's case; or government benefits, in mine) you deal with it in starkly illiberal ways (anti-religion, disrespect in his case, or lazy no-work cushiness in mine); or even deeper, obscurer, stupider kind of examples (Van Morrison's music-biz poetry stuff just given to crusty revenge-song whines early on). Etc. Reverse chronologically I go, and imho maybe reverse quality-wise too? Oh but years-long Rushdie affair tackled ideologically: big whoop. It was paradoxically deep? 

 

This small little scrap of memoir -- Rushdie's Anton Joseph, a bigger memoir, came years before -- seems more my speed. Knife's a deeper, later, more concise illustration. Its predecessor took its third-person pov very earnestly, while the later one relaxes into more normal first person. Also, just by the by, what's 'Islam' to you, 'freedom'? What's 'being able to write', 'being a writer', 'being among writers'? Arrogant? Seeming / being? Uh. 

 

Uh, to take stock of all the luxurious privilege you got and waste, better zoom up on your "contemporaries" (lol): "There are things that are lost in the past, where we all end up, most of us forgotten" (20). He thought I might relate to him and offered me a book; oh, thanks, guy, I really do. Really! "And so that Chautauqua morning I experienced both the worst and best of human nature, almost simultaneously" (28). But, sorry, I've never been to the city, don't really know what it's like. I don't really know what anything is like. 

 

The whole affair, though, to put it frankly a stupid one and a mean one, maddening so much that it can make everyone just mad, is nevertheless strung with principles better. Like, in a general sense --  "intimacy of strangers. That’s a phrase I’ve sometimes used to express the joyful thing that happens in the act of reading, that happy union of the interior lives of author and reader" (29) or "Something strange has happened to the idea of privacy in our surreal time. Instead of being cherished, it appears to have become, for many people in the West, especially young people, a valueless quality -- actually undesirable" (58). Kids these days. (My mama said there'd be 'kids like this' / 'days like this' / 'kids these days' / etc.) 

 

Or even in a big general sense, a Leach paraphrase Rushdie can mention about Brits -- "The family, with its narrow privacy and tawdry secrets, is the source of all our discontents" (59); but he can pull it back toward himself, like a cape around his shoulders. I like capes, am impressed by them, even when supposedly 'arrogant' people are underneath? To the far more successful private sense -- like, when, post-stabbing, he's linked by phone from his hospital bed transatlantically to his son Zafar, when he reports "I heard him and wiggled my toes" (76). Aww. 

 

And much later, to try another principled metaphor, seeing New York in a better way again -- "Cities’ stories were my story too, and here again was my preferred ocean, this story-sea of concrete and steel in which I had always preferred to swim" (116). To tidy up the small ("vile ignominy… penis begging for mercy" is how he recounts getting a catheter (119)) to the horrifyingly huge ("For the record: there were, to my knowledge, at least six assassination plots against me in the years after the fatwa" (130)) to the small again ("Trousers falling down were funny. Knife attacks were not" is a breezy little gag he tries once (181)). They go high, we go low, so they go high again? 

 

Or I like the very grave, very-unsuccessful attempt once: "I tried to make light of the situation. 'We could imagine that we are rich enough to have personal chauffeurs,' I ventured. 'No,' she said. 'It doesn’t feel like that at all.' 'Or we could think of all the money we’ll be saving on Ubers,' I said. She gave me a look" (245). To be self-efffacing about it all, even in not-successful a light, looks like modesty. Or when you turn it a tiny bit self-congratulation. Or to turn it another little bit a modest self-congratulation? How's that again? 

The Best of Everything by Rona Jaffe

2.0

 

Who is this book for? Not for me (lol). Who is literature in general for, though? Up-to-the minute sociological slice, give or take 70 years or so, but of a gender I'm not, in a place and situation I'm not, et al. Oh dear. But the style of Jffe's book's very soapy yet very rough; it's not easy to relate to, so you might not. And that's just that. 

 

You know I think it's kind of for life-happy 'young' people, older than my parents but younger than my grandparents, getting into that big city and discovering life, identity, Industry, specialness. Culture always a little older, like Larson's Rent, Stiller's Reality Bites, Lena Dunham's Girls; or younger, so I don't even know any titles at all. Isn't that just the thickest problem of all? 

 

Or realistically contemporary, but still afterward; before McCarthy's Group took inspiration, or Plath's Bell Jar, or even Sex and the City… Jaffe put her deep, deep sociological stamp on NYC professional young women, but crucially of the '50s only! 

 

The heroine is a Radcliffe grad named Caroline. She's in the typing pool now but hoping to one day get to the editor's office. April is a country girl and Gregg's an aspiring actress and Barbara's a single mom, and all of them want to get through this NYC roughness, dodge soapy inequities as best they can, and arrive somewhere better. 

 

Chapter 9 is as good a place as any to break in, though, I think; convenient that way, no? "summer of 1952, five girls, at least, stayed awake thinking of love and careers and worrying, each in her own and different way" (226). Oh. Precious! But thankfully that kind of flip sassiness is rare: we're usually a lot more fully provocative, while wisely sedate, than all that. 

 

I think when Jaffe broadens her perspective beyond her own characters, the alchemy can often become a little more powerful, overall successful. Like, when heroine Caroline muses about other people's lives: during chapter 16 when it's "isn’t that what we all do anyway, in our own way, until something goes wrong? And if it goes wrong, and you know you made a mistake, you try to find the good things again" (411) or shortly thereafter when she's all "through her life at a safe and amusing distance, interesting to watch and talk about, but not really of personal concern to her" (429). I haven't made any mistakes myself, and I'm not really familiar personally with what a 'safe and amusing distance' might be. 

 

Or even toward the end of the book, during Chapter 23, when she muses "Girls always think, 'I am going to be the exception,' Caroline thought; it’s a weakness of the species, like a collie’s tiny brain" (588): wow, lmao, even I know that's totally out-of-pocket garbage, to put it as fine as possible. Girls as dogs! Who would even concoct a silly metaphor like that! These sons of b__s and their metaphors! 

 

In Chapter 14, I shudder at some little rape-excusing reminders -- "You know, you read about these things happening all the time, but if it ever really happens to someone you know it’s such a shock. It’s just a shame, a nice young boy like that with his future ahead of him. Now he’ll have a stigma over him for the rest of his life" (362) -- but sadly it's the right-here-right-now Kavanaugh type, much less the 'nice young boy' of pre-Roe yesteryear who gets saddled with 'stigma'. Before loudness of abortion? I appreciate the inclusion for sure, but we can't exactly be progressive with it, I guess? Jeez. More problems than just one. 

 

Or Chapter 12's "with a look of real concern on his face. 'I only wanted to kiss you,' Mr. Shalimar went on, his voice rising. 'What did you think I wanted to do, rape you?' The room was as silent as a snowbound night" (308). Alarmingly frank, but unfortunately not unrealistic? 

 

Like this sexist discomfort, soon after (in chapter 15) we brush against another uncomfortable myth: "wild fantasy, the suicide. She knew she would never do it. People who really meant to kill themselves shot themselves through the head or jumped in front of trains, they did not take pills when they knew there was someone near at hand to make sure it was not too late. This pill bit was a woman’s trick, a device of the lovelorn. It didn’t take courage. Courage was to live" (389). Well, girlfriend, haha, ok. 

 

Sometimes, in life, we can be cute, just cute. Like, kind of toward the end, in Chapter 29, the book lets Caroline have another moment comparing her life to others' lives: "Caroline told Eddie about her friends in New York and her job and her apartment, about Gregg who collected garbage and April who had finally married a boy from home, and about the day she herself had gone to Mary Agnes’ wedding and had pretended it was hers to Eddie" (684). 

 

Or, or, maybe just quieter naughtiness, like in Chapter 26, there's a "pillowcase full of dirty laundry which Gregg had forgotten to take downstairs to the Chinaman" (631). I have some questions! Not only about ethnic slur (sign-of-the-times eye roll, ok), but also: some Chinese guy does her laundry? Was this a common arrangement? Ha! Sorry. 

 

But very soon after, this modesty kind of curdles into judgment anyway. Chapter 29 sees 'naturalness' come up in an odd way: "She could not even think of her affair with Eddie as 'An Affair with a Married Man' except as a joke, because she knew it was different. It almost seemed more natural for her and Eddie to be together than it was for him to be married to Helen" (714). Ha! Ok. 

 

Jaffe's book is surprisingly light on the one element I think it would be much heavier on, and therefore successful: publishing industry, gossip, cattiness of that specific moment. Early on we see some brushes, true. In Chapter 1, it's only "articles he writes sound very pious but they’re just a lot of words. I feel sorry for the poor souls who believe them, but I feel sorrier for Mr. Rice. I often think he must be very lonely" (29) or "sounded even sorrier for himself and his unpleasant predicament than he was for her, who only had to read what he had written and see her future and her happiness shatter quietly around her" (34). 

 

Shortly thereafter, we bend toward office dreams, and gradually get a little more assertive, as in chapter 3's "She was thinking that she didn’t like the working world at all, and yet, underneath, she was exhilarated. It was all like a dream in which you could have anything you wanted, if you were very very careful" (106) and then chapter 4's "It was odd, she thought, how quickly one could become attuned to the undercurrents of office feeling: the fears, the jealousies, the connivings and the secret panics. It was not safe to think that anyone was unafraid; certainly if Mr. Shalimar was mistrustful of young ambition then Miss Farrow must be" (123). 

 

But soon spilling, anyway, into some slightly more blatant misogyny, as during Chapter 12, when there's an office party and a discussion of women's literary role: "'You know half these magazines for men are dominated by harpies. Women don’t know what men want.' He winked at her. 'Well, at least, they don’t know what men want in a magazine. We’ll keep the women in the kitchen and in the typing pool, where they belong'" (299). Well, 70 years later, that's not quite the case. Thankfully. But it's still unfortunately the case a little bit, some of the time? Jeeeez. 

 

Chapter 22 answers the sexism in a sense? Make it occupational? "You look like a girl who’s in love. I hope you’re not just in love with your job?' 'I don’t think I’m that type, really,' Barbara said lightly. She shrugged. 'Maybe I’m just in love with spring. That happens" (558). Still sexist in a strict sense, just pushing at the world a little differently. 

 

Or as in Chapter 23, by looking more deeply at a page in which the story finds interest? The fictional magazine, titled Unveiled, gets criticized quite viciously: "But by the time you got to the end of the article and groped your way through the leering, sneering prose it had been written in, you would think that there had been all manner of obscene orgies going on. 'I couldn’t figure out,' Lorraine said, 'whether they had been doing anything or not.' 'Neither can Unveiled,' Caroline said disgustedly. 'They get their pictures from old newspaper files and movie magazines and make up half their scandal at their editorial meetings" (587). 

 

By Chapter 31, we'd already seen that 'collie’s tiny brain' slip, and we're left with only a little grief: "she was numb with bewilderment and unhappiness and she felt as if there were a little motor in the top of her brain that she could not turn off, no matter how hard she tried" (737). 

 

But it's always riveting, I know, to have other people who are in love describe for you who is not in love the love they share. Or like a dream, described after the fact to someone who hadn't dreamed it. Yes. Riveting. But usually, fortunately, Jaffe can carefully manage the feeling as it intersects with the minute incidents of life. In Chapter 1 it's curt: "I'll never look like that, she thought firmly" (40). In Chapter 2 we're softening: "But she felt instead the stirring of a new feeling, a kind of romantic intoxication. It warmed her, secretly and a little guiltily now that she had embraced it" (79). 

 

And in Chapter 3 entirely melted: "There was something about Mike Rice that Caroline liked; she felt she could say anything to him and he would never be shocked or think she was getting out of her place. 'Maybe I’m way out of line,' she said, 'but I had the feeling he’s had a comedown and he’s ashamed of it. The way he talks about the past all the time and about what he was'" (104). 

 

Ok, ok, often a limp battle-of-the-sexes thing, and with the extra limpness of a thing from 70 years ago, I know. Talk about freshness! Woo! And the lengths you'd go for something it seems obvious you shouldn't go long for at all! Like, in chapter 2, where we moan "'I wish I were in love with someone who loved me.' 'And what about fun?' He was looking at her more closely. 'Wouldn’t you like to meet someone you could have fun with, without necessarily being in love?'" (73): wow, mister, never thought about it like that, I appreciate you naturally replying with it there! 

 

Or very simiarly, love with a capital L, smooth like butter, scoots into everything. But to my modern disappointment, it's rarely picked up and dealt with. Just occasionally I suppose, and mostly with myths. Early on, Chapter 3's "[Love] ought to be an accident, not something you plan too carefully, or else you’re apt to be disappointed" (112), lapping right into Chapter 4's "With each of those boys it seemed as if there was a barrier, hurled up because she was a woman and he was a man and each wanted something from the other. It was a kind of juvenile competition. With Mike, it was as if because he was a man and she was a woman each had something to give to the other. She wasn’t afraid of him" (137). Looks more assertive but really isn't, kind of a disappointment. 

 

But Chapter 12 clarifies. Myths she wants, but she wants them not to seem like myths? Oh, '50s woman, I know! "Caroline had always liked a man who could take over, find a taxi during the rush, maneuver her through a jam of people, manage to attract a waiter’s attention in a crowded restaurant, act as though he had enough self-respect to demand his rights. Since she had known Mike she had been noticing this lack in many of the younger men who took her out" (284). 

 

Alongside of serious life business, we're fortunate enough to take some alcohol, though? some 'fun'? In the Mad Men era, you know alienation we faced, in big old New York City, had to be chased by a drink of some kind. Chapter 2's "In the moment he was weakening her drink she noticed every line and tiny mark on his face, at first with curiosity because he was a great man she knew so little about, and then with a feeling that was a kind of intimacy" (68) 

 

Or Chapter 13's "I know damn well I’m not a woman at all even at my better moments, I’m just a young girl with so many responsibilities it throws me into a state of shock.' Sidney took his handkerchief out of his breast pocket and unfolded it for her. She wiped her eyes, trying to smile at him, and saw that her mascara had left black streaks on his handkerchief. 'I’m sorry ...' she said. 'I’m glad it’s finally being used,' he said. 'It’s just a decoration up there.' 'You’ve been very kind. I guess you weren’t expecting Niagara Falls. It doesn’t really go with the Hawaiians, does it?' 'They’re fun, aren’t they,' he agreed. 'I’m glad I met you,' Barbara said sincerely. 'I don’t see why. You’ve spent most of the time feeling miserable.' He smiled at her then, the having-fun smile” (321). 

 

Or Chapter 14's "bourbon.' 'I just had gin.' 'That’s all right. It’s not the combination that makes people sick, it’s the quantity. Drink up" (349) -- not sure that's accurate, but ok -- all the way to Chapter 16's "Oh, I don’t care,' Uncle Fred said. 'I love weddings. Dance, have fun, drink, meet pretty girls. Weddings are fun. After all, it’s only once in a lifetime. Then you have the housework and the babies and the work begins" (423) to Chapter 29's "I have champagne,' Eddie said. 'I thought it would be fun. Champagne for breakfast" (677). 

 

All the way, lol, to Chapter 23's little spot, when feeding a bird some alcohol is under discussion, "Scotch before lunch. He needs a clear head or he’ll fly into a windowpane" (596). 

 

Luckily, we get some random poetry, sometimes, to accompany all of that. Like Chapter 3's "her breath go off in puffs of smoke on the cold clear air. Up ahead, where the smoker would stop, were the men who commuted" (86) or Chapter 11's "How complicated life had become! There were so many people here, doing so many different things, each living his own life which was so different from the life and wants of his neighbor" (274). 

 

From Chapter 13's "Hawaiian musicians roaming the room, stopping at each table to play Hawaiian songs on their strange instruments that always sounded to her like the tropical surf at midnight. If there were music coming off the moon, she thought, it would sound like that" (313). 

To either Chapter 19's "What am I going to do? Sit home in Port Blair and polish my nails and wait for a husband? This isn’t the nineteen-hundreds. A girl has to do something" (516). Or Chapter 23's "And she might even turn to him and ask, “Do you think I’m boring, honey?” But she wouldn’t mean it for an instant, and her husband wouldn’t even know what she was talking about. Boring? Half of his heart, the woman he loved? How could she be boring? Was life boring, was breathing boring, was serenity and calm and hope for the future dull?" (577): Not to be too nihilistic or anything, but (at least from 2025) kind of, maybe, yeah. Or the very same chapter's "a long look.' 'I don’t know,' April said wistfully. 'I don’t know anything any more" (600): wow, lmao, even I know that's totally out-of-pocket garbage, to put it as fine as possible. Or have I said that before? 

 

Chapter 28 has a triumphal sort of end, but all in a sheen that's "Nobody ever thinks that other people have exactly the same problems and thoughts that she has. You always think you’re all alone.' 'Oh, I’m going to miss you!' April said. 'I’m going to miss you so much!" (661). 

 

Or Chapter 13's earlier one that's still in the middle -- "that all over New York City right now, this minute, there are people trying to get rid of other people because they’re bored with them. And somehow it depressed me.' 'But the people who have been gotten rid of are probably relieved to be free again. Haven’t you thought of that aspect of it?' Barbara thought for a moment. 'You’re absolutely right. That’s just how I feel.' Sidney put his hand on the seat beside hers and then picked her hand up in his. 'May I?" (325). Uh, sure, guy. It's a free country. 

Poverty, by America by Matthew Desmond

informative inspiring sad

4.0

 

Princeton sociologist Desmond, who already got a Pulitzer for previous book Evicted, asks about poverty in a very incisive, novel way. Not really in individual misery, nor in big mismanagement (I can just see and shrink from unwise political movements that might engender, or not engender, even to sympathies I ought to have and presume I do but somehow, mistakenly, stupidly, accidentally don't), but in big statecraft accidents. We need poverty abolition in this country. Now I see a little better. 

 

Early on, an artificial lake, luxurious but wasteful, separated from begging people by only a few blocks, first spurs a question for our author: "How could there be, I wondered, such bald scarcity amid such waste and opulence?" (14). He knows the environment he's in, hopeless boredom and shame writ large: "Workers quickly learn they are expendable, easily replaced, while young people are graduating into an economy characterized by deep uncertainty" (29). Whole society, then, polluted by vain money search. 

 

At least we're all in it together, though? No, we aren't? "Still, poverty is no equalizer. It can be intensified by racial disadvantages or eased by racial privileges" and then in a parenthetical Desmond can furthermore simplify his argument "(And which is more primary, race or class? Which is the root of social inequity and which the branches? Which organ is more important to you, your heart or your brain?)" (35). Ah. Fresh distillation: "Poverty isn’t a line. It’s a tight knot of social maladies" (37). Ok, nice, I begin to see. 

 

Into past-present analysis we jump then. Right. "You can’t eat a cell phone. You can’t trade one in for a living wage" (39) is a wise sociological point (except can't I? Who says?); and then we see an easy conclusion, popularized at the time and then exacerbated decades into the future, wrongly deciding increasing minimum wage would depress employment: "Stigler was wrong… increasing the minimum wage has negligible effects on employment (64). George Stigler was an economist of the '40s defending classical-liberal/libertarian stuff, notably regulatory capture. I know enough to know there's not much political wisdom there. 

 

Healthy reminder, though, unions are valuable ("The American economy is less productive today than it was in the postwar period, when unions were at peak strength" (68)) and we're stuck in a corporate dump too deeply now: "Uber is now a verb. Americans rank Amazon as one of the most trusted institutions in the country, second only to the military. These companies have become ascendant because we love them. I still find myself, after all these years, mystified that I’m able to have just about anything I can think of arrive on my doorstep in twenty-four hours" (79)). Little anecdotes are thankfully very rare in this volume. 

 

To exacerbate poverty, we can undercut workers and force the poor to pay more. Landlording warped often enough nowadays, turned mean and stingy, "traditionally intended as a side hustle, a source of 'passive income,' into their main hustle, 'active income' that they believe should pay the bills and support them in their silver years" then problems ensue (90). And on top of that, a grid of exploitation's unrolled: "The products of the fringe banking industry rely on the feverish present-mindedness of the vulnerable, and the industry’s precognition that its customers will remain that way longer than they can bring themselves to admit" (100). All at once, there can be a cycle of poverty, where poverty's, in a sick way, actually expensive. 

 

Or -- hitting closer to home now -- welfare that might be generous, healthful actually isn't?  But say nothing about welfare, nothing at all, lest it be immediately and unjustly ripped from you. Instead of 2 Euros you want 3 Euros, or instead of 2 Euros you want 2 dollars, or you want corrupt mafiosos to get 1500 instead of 2700, etc., etc., etc.; ok, eveyone wants something! Just try wage slavery then, or worker-company debasing citizen-state, or some other arrangement. Desmond quotes Strain "kind of an evidence-free topic" and simply contradicts him: "It’s not" (114). 

 

Well, "Virtually all Americans benefit from some form of public aid. Republicans and Democrats rely on government programs at equivalent rates, as do white, Hispanic, and Black families. We’re all on the dole" (120); including me? Simple facts like "Psychologists have shown that we tend to feel losses more acutely" (127) begin, and then a UBI proposal like what's "mailed out to homeowners each month. The federal budget is a giant circle of money, a whirl of funds flowing to the state from taxpayers and back to taxpayers from the state. You can benefit a family by lowering its tax burden or by increasing its benefits, same difference" (128) -- feels like Gold Diggers '33 starting, or something. I don't know. 

 

"Every day we confront the capriciousness of life, the unfair, stupid ways [is my way a stupid way?] our future is determined by background or chance. / Most of us believe that working hard helps us get ahead—because of course it does—but most of us also recognize that advantages flow from being white or having highly educated parents or knowing the right people. We sense that our bootstraps can be pulled up only so far, that self-help platitudes about grit and self-control and putting in the hours is fine advice for our children, but it’s no substitute for a theory of how the world works" (131) and "The biggest government subsidies are not directed at families trying to climb out of poverty but instead go to ensure that well-off families stay well-off" (133) both supply so much great, great, wise, wise stuff that I think they should be quoted in full as much as possible. 

 

Anyway, what's opposing any malfeasance and sickness, there, besides a little 'shameful' fraud or something? Nothing [answers own questions, ok]. To explain liberality, might not want to use something illiberal, even if it's handy? That fortunately makes no sense at all. Sure, you can throw a bindle over a shoulder, blow a harmonica toot or two, and settle down to some good quirky Sullivan's Travels-like naughty 'fun' -- but no, what if you think that's enormously bad, shouldn't happen, and could disappear tomorrow? I'd probably have to think on it. More. Carefully. 

 

But "Has there ever been another time, in the full sweep of human history, when so many people had so much and yet felt so deprived and anxious?" (134); and "In a country with such vast inequality, the poor increasingly come to depend on public services and the rich increasingly seek to divest from them. This leads to 'private opulence and public squalor,' a self-reinforcing dynamic that transforms our communities in ways that pull us further apart" (136); and "Massive tax cuts, which fundamentally reshaped the agendas of the nation’s two major political parties and resulted in the rise of private fortunes alongside public poverty, were not simply a response to government overreach. They were a response to white people being ordered to share public goods with Black people" (142). Ah. The triple threat. 

 

And finally "This kind of circumscribed liberalism, which ends at your property line, not only denied low-income Americans access to some of the nation’s best public schools and safest streets: It also meant that working-class white families were asked to bear the costs of integration in a way that white professionals never were. This bred among blue-collar whites a festering resentment" (150). Oh, what looks like self-defeating stubbornness might, again, be more sophisticated and sadder underneath? Yes. 

 

To keep 'em there, might need to thoroughly pin 'em down? "How do we, today, make the poor in America poor? In at least three ways. First, we exploit them" (154), "Second, we prioritize the subsidization of affluence over the alleviation of poverty" (155), "Third, we create prosperous and exclusive communities" (156). If the arrangement were made healthy, and poverty were abolished, what would happen? "What could $177 billion buy? Quite a lot. We could ensure that every person in America had a safer and more affordable place to live. Every single one of us. We could put a real dent in ending homelessness in America, and we could end hunger. We could provide every child with a fairer shot at security and success. We could make immense headway in driving down the many agonizing correlates of poverty" (161). 

 

And I appreciate when Desmond pauses to correct, pre-empt, shut down his opponents' nay-saying -- "I'm not calling for 'redistribution'. I’m calling for the rich to pay their taxes. I’m calling for a rebalancing of our social safety net. I’m calling for a return to a time when America made bigger investments in the general welfare. I’m calling for more poor aid and less rich aid" (170). 

 

We could always, maybe, empower the poor? Catch some parallel issues, like reproductive freedom, when you do all that. "When women exercise control over family planning, including the ability to seek an abortion, they expand their educational and economic possibilities. And when reproductive choice is constricted, women and their children are often cast into poverty" (194) as well as "Just as global warming is not only caused by large industrial polluters and multinational logging companies but also by the cars we choose to drive and the energy we choose to buy, poverty in America is not simply the result of actions taken by Congress and corporate boards but the millions of decisions we make each day when going about our business" (197). Important to remember! 

 

Quite literally, tear down the walls? We could "replace exclusionary zoning policies with inclusionary ordinances, tearing down our walls and using the rubble to build bridges" (209). Know about the abandonment of high principles, so you might not abandon them? "Stacks of social psychological evidence confirm that when we feel resources are scarce or could be, when we sense that our status (or that of our racial group) is slipping, we discard our commitments to equal opportunity" (215). And, saddest maybe but most important to remember, everything has been normalized already: "Our institutions have socialized us to scarcity, creating artificial resource shortages and then normalizing them" (216). Sickest stuff around, believe it. 

 

And in a very nice conclusion, Desmond gets another well-aimed shot at his inarticulate, small opponents: "Conservatives like to say they are not for equality of conditions (everyone gets the same thing) but equality of opportunity (everyone gets the same shot). Fine by me—but only if we actually work to make equality of opportunity a reality. It is hard to put into words what the end of poverty would mean for millions of workers and parents and tenants and children below the line. It would mean a wholly different existence, a life marked by more safety and health, by more fairness and security. It would mean lives directed not by the scramble of survival but by passions and aspirations" (224). 

 

Too often I think, leftist politics can neuter itelf, give itself too much a handicap, by presenting 'modesty', reasonable, compromise-able -- and I don't mean to say Desmond isn't reasonable or anything, lol, as he previously wrote that he wasn't 'calling for "redistribution" [but simply for] more poor aid and less rich aid' -- just that when he starts writing about 'aspirations' it's suitably stiff and I like it a lot. 

 

Also returning to the image at the beginning, not in superficial text itself but maybe in unspoken feeling, our author can return to what's incorrect, overall, in our whole society: "We can feel it, the emotional violence we inflict upon ourselves, knowing that our abundance causes others’ misery. It’s there in that residue of shame and malaise coating our insular lives; that loss of joy, the emptiness; our boring satiation, our guilt" (227). And in a final epilogue that's crisp but hugely stacked still, Desmond writes of the supremacy of "usefulness over purity—and we must organize" (230): ok, very nice, I like all that. 

Translations of Shakuntala and Other Works by Kālidāsa

 Very rough ancient play. I think I could handle the bulk of it. The poetry that I think Kālidāsa actually wrote is fine and interesting, but I'm afraid the prose in between is frequently obnoxious, telling not showing, and yet weirdly unsure of itself. Of course, 1500 years is a huge jump! Reputing omnivorousness to me, to say Kālidāsa's like the Shakespeare of India, Sanskrit, other things, is ok theoretically, and I'm a generous reader; but I'm afraid it didn't charm me. Ever. 

 

The plot of the play (arguably influencing passion things, Goethe's Faust, and other more recognizable Western departures) is a simple romance involving Śakuntalā, an orphan daughter raised in Kanva's hermitage, wooed and married by local king Duṣyanta until, years later, after a curse, he fails to recognize her. But see, she has this ring and, after some myth-crashing, she and her son reunite with the guy. What's a hermitage, though? Where? In what religion? Haha. Dense I can be, I know, immoderately! But still. 

 

Among archaic oddities of romantic love -- evoking some of the baddest and clumsiest Bollywood kind of AŚOKA plot, to me https://letterboxd.com/kylegarvey/film/asoka/ -- any color is passed away quickly enough. Like Leopardi's writings to me are Kālidāsa's, overall, and comparing them volume to volume I find K a lot less successful than L. https://app.thestorygraph.com/reviews/07f084ef-5b45-49ed-9d4e-3c775db6de54 I don't know where you'd put Kinks's "Got Love If You Want It" on top of this drama, for random instance! Lol.  

If I Must Die: Poetry and Prose by Refaat Alareer

dark reflective fast-paced

2.0

Posthumous Palestinian power, a miscellany of writings. Ok. ❤️ https://letterboxd.com/kylegarvey/list/palestine/ 

Bel Canto by Ann Patchett

reflective medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.0

 

Like Woolf's To the Lighthouse (zeroing in on minuscule modern life) or DeWitt's Last Samurai (heavily important freshness), Patchett's book presents a curious sort of literary intrigue. Hostage crisis observed through opera? Love bursting forth from trauma like some kind of caterpillar from some kind of weird cocoon? 

 

I'm just obsessed now, I'll admit, with the irresistible book-review headlines that editors would have to go through. O Cant Bel-ieve Patchett's Novel Doesn't Charm. Patchett's Book Claims Titular Beautiful Song It Can't Deliver. Bel Canto? More Like Smell Canto. O if only Patchett could ring my Bel but she Cant. Bel Canto Can't Be Literary Bellwether Patchett Wants. Etc., etc., etc. 

Prep by Curtis Sittenfeld

adventurous challenging reflective medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

 

Curious anthropology, self-consciousness so screamingly immature it must come from a high-school-age teen, painful but interesting. You'll relate. "Things like weather or certain songs could make me forget it sometimes, but I was always still myself" (404). Novelistically fluid but feeling like a bunch of discrete sketches -- of incident, feeling, character, whatnot -- were roped together, taught to blend. I think I can tell because that's how I write everything. Prep really doesn't achieve the Mount Everest it sets for itself, but I think it's close enough, for respectful golf clap at least (lol). 

 

Like Fosse's memoir-ish pain/ecstasy film All That Jazz it almost is, except that film had significant show-opening life-closing triumph for an end and Sittenfeld's book really doesn't. Well, other than dad almost disowning her, dumbly almost-witnessing her friend's almost-suicide, or accidentally providing the scandalous meat to an exposé article about her boarding school (on the terrible eve of her graduating it), among other life gashes. Or Knoll's novel Luckiest Girl Alive. Or the film Vox Lux? "Once they’ve decided to occur, will the bad coincidences of your life seek you out, their shape changing, their consequences staying the same?" (61) -- but thankfully, rarely as heavy! 

 

Heavenly occurrences sometimes, anyway. "I knew they would not belong. I think it often comes down to nothing but contrast—the way that it’s only when you’re sick that you wonder why, during the months and months of being up and about, you never appreciated your health" (284). Almost, but crucially not, a sociopath. "From now on, I thought, I would pass over surfaces without leaving a mark, without entangling myself. After I’d been in a place, there’d be no evidence" (386). Sittenfeld's Prep prepared me in a way, but for what I just don't know (you'd think I'd have known to "craft" that sentence first-thing immediately, but that's honestly the last sentence I wrote for this review.)

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

adventurous sad medium-paced

2.0

 

Liesel the heroine. Says constantly to others "Saukerl", "Saumensch", "Arschloch"; stepfather Hans Hubermann, stepmum Rosa, Rudy (a kid her own age), Max (the Jew they hide), etc. A Germany in the grips of early-'40s Third Reich fanaticism. "When she made it down to Munich Street, the book thief swerved in and out of the umbrellaed men and women—a rain-cloaked girl who made her way without shame from one garbage can to another. Like clockwork" (364). Real life, but saddened. Grey-smeared. Ok. 

 

Zusak's whole book, a YA Holocaust story if there ever were one, is narrated remarkably enough by Death. Not necessarily in mean judgment, but maybe just waiting: "Each one an attempt—an immense leap of an attempt—to prove to me that you, and your human existence, are worth it. Here it is. One of a handful (39). I like that style. I wish it held more. All supposedly in his voice, but in actuality not much; bits and pieces, but really not enough, other than the beginning and the end: "'Your job is to …' And I stop listening to me, because to put it bluntly, I tire me. When I start thinking like that, I become so exhausted, and I don’t have the luxury of indulging fatigue" (515). 

 

The style here I expected to be great, but to me I'm afraid it's the usual YA narrative hiss with a occasional blooms of MFA-style, ostentatious prose, like "A beautiful, tear-stomped girl" (781) or "Papa was an accordion! But his bellows were all empty. Nothing went in and nothing came out" (784). Unfortunately too much plain still. All in all. By the lot. 

 

At the end, when Zusak supplements his own book with meta-discussions about writing process, is really the only time The Book Thief really came alive for me -- "Usually, if an idea keeps calling you back, it’s the right one" (815) or when he discusses "the moment when you suddenly understand that if you keep working on the book, you’re going to start hurting it. You might be making things more correct, but never more right" (826). It's a little unfortunate how that happened, I suppose, but I think that's how it happened. 

Amazing Immortals: A Guide to Gods and Goddesses Around the World by Dinah Dunn Williams

3.0

 

If gods are so godly then why mess with mortals at all? I ask that of lot of things, including apparently scholastic books for 10-year-olds that have no interest or business answering them, but I will press on. Good illustrations here! And I appreciate the way it's laid out, careful with country, religion, tradition, type of god, and all. 

The Age of Magical Overthinking: Notes on Modern Irrationality by Amanda Montell

fast-paced

3.0

Petty dilemmas, pedestrian run-throughs, impossible-to-straighten kinks. Yes, these biases and society-wide psychological issues are concerns, but i fail to see still why I'm reading a little dispatch on it. And from a hopped-up millennial no less! (Younger than me somehow!) Ha. No, I kid. I honestly don't mind her much, appreciate the soul-baring she did. "My fixation with modern irrationality took root while I was writing a book about cults" she writes (11) and "While magical thinking is an age-old quirk, overthinking feels distinct to the modern era—a product of our innate superstitions clashing with information overload, mass loneliness, and a capitalistic pressure to 'know' everything under the sun" (13). Ah, yes. 

 

We start with halo effect, and it's in this early chapter where I think Montell blends pop-sci reporting and her memoir best. "as an adolescent, one of my unhealthiest social habits was engaging in lopsided friendships where I felt more like a fan than an equal, drawing false conclusions that because the popular girl in school had a bright smile and effortless charisma, she’d make a loyal confidante" (22). Nice. And we even hit upon a fine, novel image: "When the modern mind is starved of nourishment, sometimes it tries to nurse in uncanny places where no milk can be found" (28). Yes, "modern mind": lol. Do I have one of those? Don't we all? 

 

We move soon to proportionality bias, where memoir's still held, a little. Info kids these days might prefer "they could access for free on their phones, to tell them in certain terms that there was one big, on-purpose reason why they were feeling terrible and the world couldn’t breathe, not a haphazard miscellany of tiny reasons that looked different for everyone" (37); and furthermore, Montell writes, "my choices didn’t make me an indefensible numbskull. They made me a social creature, full of hope, who wanted a beautiful story to be told about her. Fundamentally, that’s still who I am" (60). Awww! 

 

More interestingly, I guess, is trying to tenderly, gradually deprogram people from 'cult of one' harshness: "if you want to help, Savage said you can let the person know, even if you haven’t spoken to them in a while, that if they ever want to get out—to stay somewhere, or even just chat—you will be there. You won’t judge, interrogate, or throw it in their face. You’ll just pick up the phone, open the door. If the person is anything like I was, they might not be effusively receptive to this offer; they might scoff and dismiss" (65). 

 

In Chapter 4, when Sylvia Plath pops up briefly during discussions on zero-sum bias, her suicide glibly set aside, the quickness, elsewhere a blessing for Montell, becomes a curse (68). Much better, to me, is when money comes up briefly: "The overthinkers among us (hi) are well positioned to turn our already clunky instincts about money into full-blown paranoias that everyone we trade with for anything—not just cash, but time, clout, or ideas—exists only to deplete us" (70). 

 

Many of the following blur together, unfortunately. Survivorship bias plugs into Youtube (91), recency illusion plugs into shallow 24/7 news (where tech critic Jenny Odell says "capitalistic pressure to 'colonize the self,' to treat our bodies and minds like productivity machines, is identical to that which colonizes our time with excess news" (99)), and then overconfidence bias plugs into subtler media (where "American culture provides such mixed messaging on the matter of confidence. Flaunt your accomplishments, but don’t be a narcissist. Be authentic, but also be perfect. Tell the casting director you can tap-dance even if you can’t and someone else is better for the job" (120).