National. Security. Miasma.

I just finished reading Steve Coll's Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001. It was well-written, gripping and mind-bogglingly thorough, despite ranging across the Middle East, the United States, Pakistan, various governments, tribes, terrorist cells, coups, government agencies, budgets, technologies, and interwoven timelines.

I've been thinking about why this book, about the origins of al Qaeda in Afghanistan, has been on my list of books to read. After all, we already live in a dense miasma of news about national security (such as, I never want to hear the phrase "Dubai Ports World" again). Every day, every channel, radio program, and magazine has inexhaustible streams of news about developments abroad, about too many places and people, including Palestine, Pakistan, Pashtuns, Predators, ports, plutonium, and so on.

Reading the book was actually rather empowering at first -- because here is a well-written book that puts all of these people, events and places in context -- and then exhausting towards the end, if only because reading it made me realize how much of our collective thought and energy is wrapped up in fears of things, places, and events that we can't possibly understand yet, without time and space for reflection. For example, I picked up the New Yorker this week, and read an article about government lawyers opposing the administration's desire to torture detainees, and then an hour or so later, I forgot if it was part of the book -- my brain just can't resolve the historical events leading to terrorism with what is happening now in Iraq, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Washington D.C., and so on.

The book is terrific, but I'm not sure if I can recommend it as relaxing or escapist in any way. One of the best paragraphs, though, comes in the afterword:

"In any event, it seems too early to radically reinterpret such a recent history, or to reallocate proportions of blame and responsibility.... In such a tempestuous present, an examination of the past seems a relative luxury. It is for now far easier for a researcher to explain how and why September 11 happened than it is to explain the aftermath."

Now It Must Be Told

I, Zil McZillerson, read a Nick Hornby book last night before/instead of going to a party. And I liked it. (And it wasn't even a real book, it was The Polysyllabic Spree, a collection of columns about books he's purchased and books he's read written for The Believer, which, though it calls itself a magazine, is puzzlingly lacking in the features I think magazines must have: photo essays on how stars are just like us, for example, or centerfold photos of Appleheaded Siamese. [Don't you judge me.]) (And while we're at the confessions, let me say that I have actually never read any of Hornby's other books, and I'm just guessing at what kind of author he is based on the many fine movies inspired by those books. I said, don't judge me.)
So why did I like it? In true Hornby spirit (at least as far as I know from what John Cusack did in High Fidelity) let me explain by list.

1. Getting me to like the book involved a high degree of difficulty. First, there is the taint of McSweeney's on it--an organization I semi-irrationally but nevertheless wholeheartedly abhor. I helped Hornby out by skipping all the parts of the essays that discuss the McSweeney's collective in allegedly humorous ways. Second, someone had the dopey idea of putting excerpts from books that he talks about in between the columns to pad the book out. I can't imagine who in the world gets inspired to read, say, The Old Curiosity Shop this way. If you weren't already planning to read it, 3 pages in a pamphlet produced by aging hipsters ain't going to do it.
2. The idea of this book is basically the founding principle of "It's A Book Club" as well--that most people who love books and have disposable income own many, many more books than they are ever going to read, which does not stop them from buying still more books at every opportunity. Though Hornby appears to have a lot more bookshelf space that I do.
3. He and I like a lot of the same books, and he reminded me of some books I'd read and enjoyed and then forgotten about, like Adrian LeBlanc's Random Family, which I now vaguely remember getting from the library and reading just after OlderKid was born. (I pause to marvel at my energy back then.) Also, he likes Moneyball, and I'm so excited about the start of spring training that I'll smile benevolently on anyone who even uses the letter "A," let alone writes excitedly about Billy Beane.
4. [Kind of a corollary of 3]. Dickens is his favorite author. While trying to walk YoungerKid to sleep, I spent a long time working out a theory about how people are either Dickens people or (George) Eliot people and I, as my cell phone clearly has been trying to tell me, am a Dickens person. I had to reject this theory as a) reductive and b) possibly the nerdiest thing I've ever thought about. And yet--if you love Dickens, you love excess, eccentricity, black humor, maudlin sentiment, and people named Vholes, and those are all good things in my book. (Yes, I recognize that Dickens also has some less attractive qualities. See the fourth chapter of my forthcoming monograph.)
5. The book made me laugh out loud at least three times, and that was twice more than I did at the party I went to afterwards. (Which really just proves that I shouldn't go out any more because I'm a bitter old teetotaler, but anyway.)

Last Night's Read Alouds: When Sophie Gets Angry--Really, Really Angry..., Hansel and Gretel, The Two Bad Mice, Ferdinand.

More reasons why golf is evil.

"It's A Book Club" went to the movies again last night, (though it read a little before the show started, if that counts.) Actually this wasn't so much a movie as an important documentary film: Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance, directed by the Canadian Native filmmaker Alanis Obomsawin.

Obomsawin, who was present in person for a Q&A, documented the standoff between Mohawk warriors and the Canadian police and army that ended up costing the nation over $155 million dollars as they turned the tiny town of Oka into occupied territory over the summer of 1990. The film conveyed a lot of important history about Native-White relations since the arrival of the French and British, as well as gesturing towards the general complications of bilingual life in Quebec. What started the Mohawk blockade of a key bridge and highway, however? The insistence by the mayor that the town's 9 hole golf course needed to be expanded to 18 holes by unilaterally annexing Mohawk reservation land. Hey, those greens aren't going to bunker themselves.

My Olympic Fever Continues Despite Frequent Icing

And despite the fact that I am the only member of this book club that is interested in the topic (which, I'll admit, has nothing to do with books).
Yet I must comment on a strange convergence of poser-Jews on Olympic ice.

First, Sasha Cohen and her stupid Kabbalah red bracelet.


Second, Johnny Weir, who reveals in the Washington Post article Drop Till You Shop that he "considers himself "a little bit" Jewish, although he isn't, not technically. He says he's had his past lives read and found out that most recently he was a Jewish girl from Poland during World War II."

Thanks to Gawker for the links.

Now flying off the shelves: The Historical Statistics of the United States

I've seen a couple articles around on the new release of The Historical Statistics of the United States, by Richard Sutch and Susan Carter, two economic historians. Though this is incredibly dorky, I have been meaning to go to the library and take a look at it, because I'm curious what it is like to thumb through it and idly look at the vast tables of numbers about, well, many things. The New York Times, in a background article called "A Book for People Who Love Numbers" here, picks out the challenging, intriguing, and occasionally just plain goofy statistics:

• Fewer than 1 in 10 black children under 5 live with both parents;
• Workers with the highest hourly wages now work the longest hours;
• There are more religious workers (also bartenders, gardeners and authors) than ever recorded;
• There are more shoemakers than at any other time since the Civil War;
• Only half of Americans have access to fluoridated water;
• A growing share of poor people live in the suburbs;
• Philanthropy compared with the gross domestic product has been declining since 1960;
• More Protestants and Jews say they attended religious services within the last week than at any time in the last 50 years;
• The nation is producing record amounts of broccoli;
• It took four days on average to travel between New York and Boston in 1800;
• Attendance at horse-racing tracks peaked in 1976, but rodeo attendance is at an all-time high;
• The proportion of people who have no opinion in presidential approval polls is the lowest in a half century.

Anyway, no article can also resist listing the vital statistics of the book itself: 29 pounds, five volumes, $825, and 5,000 historical statistics, "[up] from 1,235 in the last version, and includes new chapters on slavery, poverty, American Indians, the Confederacy and the nation's territories overseas."

Get your copy now!

One sitting, one book

I had a rather nice, spontaneous reading experience this weekend. By Friday I was brain-dead from the week, and work, and so while idly thumbing through the sale rack at the campus bookstore, I found an interesting-looking Swedish detective novel, Firewall by Henning Mankell. After making a nice dinner on Sunday, I just picked it up, and started reading. I meant to go out and see a movie, but the novel -- a well-written, thoughtful, police procedural -- was so absorbing that I read until one in the morning, by which time I finished it.

I've realized lately that I certainly spend a lot of time thinking about what I'm going to read, rather than actually reading. So it was nice just to read with any pre-meditation or planning, and simply to enjoy the absorption of reading a new book. Sometimes I think that books are freshest and most interesting when you first pick them up, randomly, and you follow what catches the eye, the ear, and your curiosity.

Shut up, Fox News.

Why would you run promos for the graphic execution scene in Prison Break (currently the lead horse in a very crowded field for the coveted title of "Most Racist Show on TV") in between your reports on the delayed execution of Michael Morales? Oh right, because you're Fox News. Shut up, Fox News. (And while you're at it, shut up, Blackeyed Peas. Yes, the gym makes me testy.)

Discuss.

Bitch Ph.D. via Adam Kotsko asks the following question:
Are there "any significant novels or films where the plot hinges on a close friendship between a black woman and a white woman"? Let's expand the question, even, to significant novels or films in which the plot hinges on a close friendship between two women of different races/ethnicities, period.

There's got to be something more interesting than "Bend it Like Beckham," the current frontrunner in Bitch Ph.D's comments....


Last Night's Read-Alouds: The Amazing Bone, Wonderball, The Hello Goodbye Window, Hansel and Gretel

Technorati Tags: Books, Movies, Race

Cingular Wireless versus the Greatest Realist Novel of All Time

So, there have always been signs that the environment of Missouri is hostile to me and mine. That large tree that fell without warning on a perfectly windless sunny day at just the right moment to smash up the passenger side of Pete's car as he drove beneath, for example. But now I've realized the specificity of this hostility. The air of Missouri literally hates Victorian novels. To wit, the following cellphone exchange:
Pete: So, what'd you do today?
Zil: Well, I took the kids to the doctor. [Long complaining ensues.] And then I worked on my personal statement.
Pete: For what?
Zil: You know, that summer seminar on Middlemarch? [Zil's phone suddenly turns off. Pete calls back.]
Pete: What was that about?
Zil: I don't know. Anyway, what's hard about this statement on Middlemarch... [Click. Pete calls back.]
Zil: I hate this phone. What was I talking about? Oh, Middlemarch. [Click. Pete calls back.]
Pete: Don't say that word anymore!
Zil: Are you kidding me? I can't say...
Pete: I'm serious, don't say it!
Zil: This is so ridiculous. All right. Let's talk about baseball. [Conversation continues for another 20 minutes without incident.]

What's crazy is, I've actually condensed this exchange and cut down the number of times my phone hung up when Pete or I said the word "Middlemarch." So tell me, Missouri, why do you hate George Eliot?

Last night's read-alouds: James Marshall's Hansel and Gretel, The Hello Goodbye Window, The Amazing Bone, Animals Should Definitely Not Wear Clothing, Goodnight Owl, Have you Seen My Cat?

Technorati Tags: Books, Mysteries

This one is actually about a book.

Two things that are strange to do together: Watch men's Olympic figure skating and read Jessica Hagedorn's Dogeaters . The reading started out as self-defense; the NBC iceskating commentary team was using their ca. 1985 scripts when judging Evgeni Plushenko (A sample remark: "That was no program! That was just arm movement and jumping. Of course, being Russian, he never got to have a childhood." [Poignant pause].) But, the book is compelling enough (and Johnny Weir's "transportation crisis" lame enough) that reading quickly won out.

I'd start by saying I enjoy the book, except that's true for all the books I read; I have so little time that I don't read anything I'm not fairly certain I'm going to like (or hate in a good way). It's interesting to compare this book to the last one I read in which the Philipines featured prominently, Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon. There the Japanese and U.S. presence in the Philippines was given tangible form, in the shape of a hidden cache of bars of gold left behind during WWII; here the destructive legacy of these global powers is manifested in structure as well as plot. The content is fragmented and relayed by multiple narrators whose fractured personal identities mirror their country's instability.

To give full disclosure, I'm reading the book partly because I unwisely agreed to give a lecture on Asian-American literature for an Honors course on diaspora literature of the Americas. I want to figure out how to defuse the inevitable critique of this work: its lack of racial uplift, beginning with the titular slur. And also maybe the more sophisticated corollary of this critique: well, if things are so fractured, then what's going to be the solution?

And given the terrible news about yesterday's landslide and the BBC's suggestion that the root cause was the area's history of over-logging, this clearly is an important question. But why is it a question we want fiction to solve for us?

Technorati Tags: Books, Philipines

Feel my forehead.

Does it feel a little warm? Do you think I'm coming down with something?
Could it be...

OLYMPIC FEVER?!?!?!?

Technorati Tags: Sports Night, procrastination

More "Fantasy" Reading

I'm probably progressively overcommitting to book clubs, but I've also recently broached the subject of starting a Chinese cities book club with a few of the other graduate students in my department. I should really call this "fantasy reading" -- kind of like fantasy sports, in that I'm tracking books, but not actually reading them -- because I'm adding this, of course, to my other book clubs, which are all, as of yet, unstarted:

• Zil's and my "Ferdinand Braudel" reading project;
• A proposed urban literature reading group (though in my technocratic, rationalist department, this hasn't gained much traction);
• And my proposed "theological conceptions of the city" reading project. After the 2004 election, I intended to develop some theological language by which to convince red-state people that (a) cities are not inherently evil, even if the Bible says they are; and (b) that they should perhaps consider planning their gated communities that are currently serviced by 22-lane highways and SUVs. (OK, that last part might be a cheap shot, but I'm working on my reasonable tone).

So, my currently proposed books for the Chinese cities book club are:

• China's Urban Transition by John Friedmann
• Retreat of the Elephants, an environmental history of China
• The River Runs Black, by Elizabeth Economy, a contemporary book on Chinese environmental issues
• China’s Past, China’s Future by Vaclav Smil
• The Search for Modern China by Jonathan Spence

OK, so perhaps my list is itself somewhat technocratic and rationalist, but it is highly focused on the inexorable impact of China on the world environment. 25% of the air pollution in Los Angeles now comes from China! Even Bible-thumping, city-hating people in red states should care about this.

Technorati Tags: China, cities

"It's a book Club!" Goes to the Movies

So on Saturday I took OlderKid to his second real movie, Curious George. (The first: the delightful The Cat Returns, which also would be especially good for cat lovers who happen to be high (read the imdb.com plot description if you don't believe me.)). I am not a huge fan of the Curious George book series. To me, they are an allegory of slavery played for laughs, and when I say that I always get a lot of verbal (and literal) eye-rolling from people but it's my story and I'm sticking to it. The movie can't really do anything about this, though they do make George's departure from "Africa" to be of his own free will rather than tied up in a sack. But even given that, I thought the movie was quite enjoyable; calm, soothing, with enjoyable visual fantasy sequences and semi-enjoyable singing by Jack Johnson. The plot is now much more Man-in-the-Yellow-Hat-centric, I guess because it's hard to build a 90-minute feature film around a cooing baby monkey, but that's okay too because Will Ferrell does an excellent job as the (voice of) the hat-wearing man, here much more baffled and incompetent than he is in the books.

Plus, the movie encouraged me to read a book that I've had waiting for a while, The Journey that Saved Curious George: The True Wartime Escape of H.A. and Margaret Rey which details the Jewish husband and wife's flight from Nazi-occupied Paris to Rio to New York, all the while carrying the illustrated manuscript that eventually became Curious George. Pretty amazing stuff.

No Comment Necessary.

From today's New York Times: "In Small Missouri Town, "Grease" Ignites a Culture War.

All right, one small comment. The worst part of that story? That, as a result of the controversy over Grease's "inappropriately sexual" pajama party, they are cancelling the spring production--of the CRUCIBLE. It must be quite refreshing to be able to go about your business of high-school-drama-club supervision without any pesky irony getting in your way.

The New York Times vs. Mothers who Think

Just when I think I'm out, they pull me back in...

I don't know what's the most offensive about yesterday's New York Times article "Work Versus Family, Complicated by Race".

Is it that the Times's only evidence for a supposed "opt-out" revolution of mothers abandoning the workplace for stay-at-home parenting is a collection of THEIR OWN ARTICLES?

Is it that, in an even more myopic move, they claim that women of color feel left out of this revolution BECAUSE THEY ARE NOT MENTIONED IN THESE ARTICLES?

Nope, it's neither of those. It's that they run an article on motherhood and race, an article that might tap into incredibly important conversations on child care, education, segregation, and class in America (to name just a few) in the freaking THURSDAY STYLES section, a section so fluffy that even Marshmallow Fluff is embarassed.

Apologies for all the shouting, but I'm a little testy these days. My work and family are all complicated by my race, you know.

I Like Apple Pie, Too

So I've finished Roger Angell's Game Time: A Baseball Companion which is, predictably, brilliant. Angell is basically the alpha and omega of baseball writing (sorry, Michael Lewis), even though people try to damn him with the faint praise of being E. B. White's stepson, and other, possibly more reasonable people, point out that writing about sports for the New Yorker isn't exactly playing fanfares for the common man. The thing about this collection that I kind of didn't like, though, is that the essays are arranged in chronological order by subject matter: we start with stories about spring training and end with pieces on final games of the World Series. But the selected essays span Angell's entire career, 1960s to 2000s, and so there's a fairly jarring temporal disconnect from piece to piece. I can only surmise that this is because if you lined up all his work in a regular order, it would be uncomfortably clear how bitter he is with baseball as it is played in the modern era. Angell is one of those classic fans who's all Polo Grounds-this, Negro Leagues-that, and the idea that players are now paid considerably more money but act considerably less graciously rankles him endlessly. He loves the game for memory's sake: for what it once was and for what he once was as well. But that's not why I like baseball.

In fact I'm probably the opposite of Angell as a fan. (Though I also do like to keep score, when OlderKid and YoungerKid let me, at least). I didn't start liking the game until I was an adult, and then the park I started liking was a cement monstrosity, the players frequently performed with chemical assistance, and, worst of all, the team reliably choked in the first round of the play-offs. I don't even really care that players make as much as they do; if some kid from the D.R. can earn millions for hitting a ball, well, good on him. What I like about baseball is the game itself, the way it takes all these immigrants, and egomaniacs, and goofballs, and over-the-hill greats, and folds them all together, and forces them all to play by its bizarre, pointless rules.

With apologies to the other 2/3 of this book club, this is what makes basketball, soccer, hockey, and football boring to me. In these games, the players run back and forth, trying to achieve the same thing over and over again as many times as they can before time runs out. Baseball, on the other hand, is a game of contingencies that goes on as long as it damn well wants to. Who knows what the best play in a given situation might be? It could work equally well to hit a home run or to tap the lamest, barely-fair dribbler. It all depends, and experience trumps brute strength often enough to keep things interesting.

This isn't a particularly new observation about baseball, I know. But recently I've started thinking that life post-30 is basically a prolonged realization of what older people always seem so disappointed about. I can't retreat from this into idyllic memories of childhood baseball games attended and played, because, well, I don't have any. What I do have, now, is the knowledge that spring training starts in a few short weeks, and, after that the regular season. Yeah, it's just a game, and yeah, it doesn't matter, but as for me: I want to believe.

Sweetie

Max Likes Books Too
Originally uploaded by quietdomino.

Well, we've entered the realm of epic procrastination. I have figured out how to post photos.

Here is sweet Max and behind him, a bookcase I bought at an estate sale over the weekend expressly to hold just a select few of the many books I own that I haven't read yet. (Well, except for Naked, upper right, and Don Quixote, lower left. Not sure if the bookcase is worth the 1/2 hour I had to spend waiting in line to buy it (thanks, woman who endlessly dithered over the price of two plastic binders--NO, 50 CENTS IS NOT TOO MUCH!!!). But, it is now happily serving its purpose, and storing odd wooden children's toys besides. Plus Max doesn't look nearly as skinny here as he does in real life. Small blessings.

Clarifications.

It has taken me some time, but I realize I must acknowledge that people born in June have their half-birthday in December. That is all.

Actually--I also want to mention a book that I'm so super proud of, even though I had nothing to do with its writing, or editing, or subject matter, or, actually, any part of it. (And also I read it last year, so I can't count it here). It's Naked: Black Women Bare All about their Skin, Hair, Hips, Lips and Other Parts edited by Akiba Solomon and Ayana Bird. And the splendiforous Asali Solomon (why yes, she is a friend of mine...) has a great essay in it called "Black Fuzzy Thing" about her hair. Buy this book, everyone.

Last Night's Read Alouds: Round as a Mooncake, The Flopsy Bunnies

"It's a Book Club" Goes to the Gym

Now, I am just not a gym person. The tromping in unison, the smells, the tendency of my face to get frighteningly red when my heart rate rises, all mean that I usually like to do my physical activity hidden from sight, on back trails or else deep in my basement. But a combination of cold weather plus emotional depression plus (technical term alert) "2 pregnancies-related jelly belly" meant that I cautiously ventured into the public gym today. I did not bring a book, or even a magazine. If I'm going to publicly humiliate myself, I might as well go one step further and do it to an internal soundtrack of Green Day.

But I did observe many people reading, which got me thinking. What is the ideal reading matter for the exercise machines? Something with easy to turn pages, something interesting enough to keep you motivated, something impressive to other exercisers? In any case, I'm pretty sure the ideal is not, as the woman in front of me seemed to think, 500 Clean Jokes and Humorous Stories: And How to Tell Them

(Note absence of Braudel-related comments here. Sigh.)