In almost any given situation, I will find a way to predict and then panic about the worst possible outcome. Sometimes, this quality benefits me. I'm constantly foreseeing dreadful traffic accidents; maybe that's why I never have one. I also seldom run out of anything, ever. When you wake up every morning bracing for a siege, then you're not likely to run low on canned goods, or bottled water, or toilet paper.
I subscribe to several daily-deal electronic book services, and every day, I receive emails listing the day's book deals. Novels, biographies, history (and for some reason, Amish romance novels. Who knew?), and niche, fad-of-the-day books from two years ago are all offered for a dollar or two. It occurred to me, but only for a moment, that a person with my tendency to borrow trouble at high rates of interest might want to think twice before buying a copy of The Worst-Case Scenario Handbook, but then I decided that it was high time that I learned how to fend off a shark attack, or how to survive a hang-glider emergency (My advice: Stay away from hang-gliders altogether. That's for damn fools.)
Maybe I should start to read The New York Review of Books or something, because I didn't realize that The Worst-Case Scenario Handbook was a humor book. It does offer actual advice on how to survive actual life-threatening situations, but at least half of the entries are ironic instructions on how to survive first-world emergencies like blind dates and job interviews.
So this is what I think. Unless you're a genius, you should stick to one thing or another. A book that represents itself as a survival handbook should be nothing but a survival handbook. A book that identifies itself as humorous must actually be funny. Maybe the next edition (apparently, it's a series) should include a chapter on how to survive a coordinated terrorist attack on a major city. Sadly, hashtags won't stop bullets or bomb blasts, and profile photos superimposed with semitransparent tricolores won't prevent the next one. Vive la France.
Saturday, November 14, 2015
Tuesday, November 10, 2015
Truth to power
I started reading e-books in 2010, when I bought a Barnes & Noble Nook device. I still like actual books, but I love the electronic format. It's nice to be able to carry all of your books in one compact device.
Right now, I'm reading Alistair Cooke's Memories of the Good and the Great, which I purchased for $1.99 on an e-book daily deal site. I have vague childhood memories of Alistair Cooke as host of "Masterpiece Theater," and I knew that he was a writer, but that was the extent of my experience with him. I bought the book based on the description (short essays about 20th-century figures whom Cooke had covered as a correspondent for the BBC), and had no expectations at all.
I'm surprised by how much I like the book. The very short essays telescope in and out: A short discussion of the person's significance (the subjects include FDR, Winston Churchill, George Marshall, George Bernard Shaw, Eleanor Roosevelt, P.G. Wodehouse, etc., so they're all pretty significant) and then a close observation of a moment in the person's life or a particular characteristic or event. Cooke met all of the subjects at some point during his career as a foreign correspondent for the BBC and host of the TV series Omnibus, and although he clearly admired all of his subjects, the essays do not read as hagiographic.
I'm surprised by how much I like the book. The very short essays telescope in and out: A short discussion of the person's significance (the subjects include FDR, Winston Churchill, George Marshall, George Bernard Shaw, Eleanor Roosevelt, P.G. Wodehouse, etc., so they're all pretty significant) and then a close observation of a moment in the person's life or a particular characteristic or event. Cooke met all of the subjects at some point during his career as a foreign correspondent for the BBC and host of the TV series Omnibus, and although he clearly admired all of his subjects, the essays do not read as hagiographic.
A few months ago, more because I was avoiding other things than because of any burning desire to read it, I read Lytton Strachey's Eminent Victorians. Apart from the obvious similarities (both books contain biographical sketches of prominent people; Strachey covered the 19th century and Cooke the 20th) there's not much resemblance between the two books. Cooke is an interesting contrast to Strachey, whose goal was to take his subjects down a peg or two.
Cooke approached his biographies with just the opposite in mind: He already saw his subjects as great and good and wanted his readers to see them the same way. In a possibly intentional metatextual comment on journalism, Cooke notes that many (if not most) Americans at the time of FDR's presidency never knew that he was unable to walk, and that even the Hearst organization, known for its hostility toward the New Deal and toward FDR personally, observed the taboo against mentioning his disability. Cooke guessed that the almost 16-year embargo on reporting about FDR's physical condition wouldn't have lasted for a week today, that today being 1999, when his book was published. Today as in 2015, it wouldn't last for five minutes.
Did the news organizations that didn't report or comment on FDR's obvious disability do a disservice to the truth? Did people have a right to know that their President was in a wheelchair? I don't know. I do know that I have no interest in the sort of spurious truth-telling that unmasks faults and shines a spotlight on blemishes, not for the sake of honesty, but for the sake of exposure.
Some people actually are great or good. Nothing useful comes of breaking them down in print, making them smaller and more like the rest of us. If unvarnished truth means unvarnished by flattery or a political agenda, then it might also mean unvarnished by kindness or sympathy for human failings. I think I'd prefer hagiography.
Cooke approached his biographies with just the opposite in mind: He already saw his subjects as great and good and wanted his readers to see them the same way. In a possibly intentional metatextual comment on journalism, Cooke notes that many (if not most) Americans at the time of FDR's presidency never knew that he was unable to walk, and that even the Hearst organization, known for its hostility toward the New Deal and toward FDR personally, observed the taboo against mentioning his disability. Cooke guessed that the almost 16-year embargo on reporting about FDR's physical condition wouldn't have lasted for a week today, that today being 1999, when his book was published. Today as in 2015, it wouldn't last for five minutes.
Did the news organizations that didn't report or comment on FDR's obvious disability do a disservice to the truth? Did people have a right to know that their President was in a wheelchair? I don't know. I do know that I have no interest in the sort of spurious truth-telling that unmasks faults and shines a spotlight on blemishes, not for the sake of honesty, but for the sake of exposure.
Some people actually are great or good. Nothing useful comes of breaking them down in print, making them smaller and more like the rest of us. If unvarnished truth means unvarnished by flattery or a political agenda, then it might also mean unvarnished by kindness or sympathy for human failings. I think I'd prefer hagiography.
Thursday, November 5, 2015
Recipes for the gulag
As the person responsible for preparing and serving 95% of the food that my family consumes, I'm sometimes overwhelmed by the immediacy and relentlessness of the chore. These people want to eat EVERY SINGLE DAY, several times per day. It's exhausting.
If you ask most people who cook because they have to, and not because they want to, they will probably tell you that the actual cooking process is not so bad (and in fact, it can be rather pleasant at times.) What's hard is the figuring out part: planning meals, securing ingredients, working planned menus and mealtimes around various schedule demands. If someone showed up at my house every day and told me what to cook and when to cook it, and then handed me a bag filled with the necessary meal components, then I'd happily do the rest, even the cleaning-up part. This hasn't happened yet, but hope springs eternal. Someday...
My ever-sunny disposition and my persistently optimistic outlook don't stop me from being preoccupied (often) with plague, violent upheaval, complete social and political breakdown, and famine. Especially famine. At any given time in history, in some place in the world, people starve because there's no food, anywhere, and no hope of getting any. Never mind unexpected deliveries of neatly packaged groceries with handy instructions; there's not so much as a slice of moldy bread or a wormy apple to be found, and people just literally die from hunger.
20th-century famines, so often manmade, are a particular preoccupation, as are the excesses of the Soviet Union, especially under Stalin (see previous paragraph re: sunny disposition/optimistic outlook.) When I'm not grieving for the purge victims, I'm worrying about the ones who starved during the Ukraine famine, or the siege of Leningrad, or fill-in-the-blank Soviet hellhole. Apparently, cannibalism was not uncommon in the Ukraine in 1933; meanwhile, in Leningrad during the siege, the rat problem was pretty well in hand.
It's dinner time again. Thoughts of famine are a sure (though temporary) way to silence the internal complaint monologue about the fact that it's dinner time again. It's helpful to imagine that you're cooking for the rat-hunting victims of the Leningrad siege, or for the unfortunate kulaks of Ukraine. Sometimes, I imagine them sitting down to a meal with us, and marveling at the feast before them (This appears to work best when the meal involves potatoes, or bacon. Not so much for salad or grilled salmon.) I don't feel like cooking, because I never feel like cooking, but I feel like eating, and I feel lucky that thoughts of eating aren't limited to the abstract. Bon appetit.
If you ask most people who cook because they have to, and not because they want to, they will probably tell you that the actual cooking process is not so bad (and in fact, it can be rather pleasant at times.) What's hard is the figuring out part: planning meals, securing ingredients, working planned menus and mealtimes around various schedule demands. If someone showed up at my house every day and told me what to cook and when to cook it, and then handed me a bag filled with the necessary meal components, then I'd happily do the rest, even the cleaning-up part. This hasn't happened yet, but hope springs eternal. Someday...
My ever-sunny disposition and my persistently optimistic outlook don't stop me from being preoccupied (often) with plague, violent upheaval, complete social and political breakdown, and famine. Especially famine. At any given time in history, in some place in the world, people starve because there's no food, anywhere, and no hope of getting any. Never mind unexpected deliveries of neatly packaged groceries with handy instructions; there's not so much as a slice of moldy bread or a wormy apple to be found, and people just literally die from hunger.
20th-century famines, so often manmade, are a particular preoccupation, as are the excesses of the Soviet Union, especially under Stalin (see previous paragraph re: sunny disposition/optimistic outlook.) When I'm not grieving for the purge victims, I'm worrying about the ones who starved during the Ukraine famine, or the siege of Leningrad, or fill-in-the-blank Soviet hellhole. Apparently, cannibalism was not uncommon in the Ukraine in 1933; meanwhile, in Leningrad during the siege, the rat problem was pretty well in hand.
It's dinner time again. Thoughts of famine are a sure (though temporary) way to silence the internal complaint monologue about the fact that it's dinner time again. It's helpful to imagine that you're cooking for the rat-hunting victims of the Leningrad siege, or for the unfortunate kulaks of Ukraine. Sometimes, I imagine them sitting down to a meal with us, and marveling at the feast before them (This appears to work best when the meal involves potatoes, or bacon. Not so much for salad or grilled salmon.) I don't feel like cooking, because I never feel like cooking, but I feel like eating, and I feel lucky that thoughts of eating aren't limited to the abstract. Bon appetit.
Monday, November 2, 2015
Progress
It's November 2, and I'm behind schedule. If I'm to finish writing a 50,000-word novel in the next 28 days, I'll need to step up my production considerably. I had the best intentions, of course. I think I heard something once about good intentions paving a road that leads to somewhere; I just can't remember where.
Today was a day off from school, and my sons had friends over. I did actually start to work, but when you hear someone say "Wait--don't start doing the whip and the nae-nae until you have the spacesuit on," how can you not stop what you're doing to investigate? And that wasn't even the most entertaining thing I overheard today.
The bad news is that I only wrote about 200 words (not counting these words.) The good news is that I had a scathingly brilliant idea that might really pull the whole thing together. 200 down and 49,800 to go. Onward.
Today was a day off from school, and my sons had friends over. I did actually start to work, but when you hear someone say "Wait--don't start doing the whip and the nae-nae until you have the spacesuit on," how can you not stop what you're doing to investigate? And that wasn't even the most entertaining thing I overheard today.
The bad news is that I only wrote about 200 words (not counting these words.) The good news is that I had a scathingly brilliant idea that might really pull the whole thing together. 200 down and 49,800 to go. Onward.
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