by Kieran Healy on August 11, 2006
By the time I got to Chicago yesterday my flight to Montreal had been cancelled and I got re-routed through Toronto. (One Canadian city is as good as another, eh?) My bag went on a mysterious and still-unfinished journey of their own. As a consequence, I did something I’m slightly ashamed to admit I rarely do these days: I read a novel. I picked up Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close in Chicago and by the time I arrived in Montreal I had just finished it. The main protagonist is Oskar Schell, a nine-year-old boy whose father was killed in the World Trade Center, and the novel is told mostly from his point of view. When we’re not inside Oskar’s head, the voices of his grandmother and grandfather (who have complicated stories of their own) take over.
It’s a good novel. I was unconvinced by some aspects of each of the main characters, and I thought the central plot device could have been handled better. But at the same time, the book drew me in and I found parts of it quite moving. It is exceptionally difficult to write plausibly about the inner world of a child, if only because it’s so easy to forget what being a child is like. Foer’s strategy is to make Oskar irresistibly kinetic: high-energy, endlessly talkative, exceptionally smart, and independent to an almost absurd degree. It mostly works, except of course when the plot requires that Oscar not be as smart as all that. It would have been easy to have Oskar come off as a kind of miniature Woody Allen, neurotically roaming New York in search of something or other. But Foer manages to make you like him.
It strikes me that Roddy Doyle’s Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha would make for a good comparison with Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. Paddy is ten and Oskar is nine. They are both quite talkative. In different ways, bad things happen to both. Yet Paddy is ordinary and Oskar is one of a kind. Paddy lives a routine existence in late 1960s Dublin. Oskar is on the Upper West Side. Paddy’s parents fight. Oskar’s father was killed in a terrorist attack. I read Paddy Clarke when it came out (ten or more years ago I think), and remember being astonished by how well Doyle got the reader inside Paddy’s world, especially the way he showed how awful even ordinary domestic problems can seem when you are ten and don’t fully understand what is happening. I may be biased because it’s easier for me to identify with Paddy’s life and mode of speech, but I think Doyle meets the challenge of writing from a child’s point of view better than Foer. Perhaps Foer’s problem is that the weight of 9/11 is just too much for Oskar as a character to bear, just as within the novel it is too much for him as a person to manage.
by Henry Farrell on August 9, 2006
Scott McLemee’s “column”:http://insidehighered.com/views/2006/08/09/mclemee today is on a new collection of essays by George Scialabba. I’ll be getting the collection – everything by Scialabba that I’ve read I’ve enjoyed – but I want to take issue with Scialabba’s very interesting “essay”:http://www.nplusonemag.com/hitch.html on Christopher Hitchens for _N+1_ last year. The burden of the piece is that Hitchens used to seem like a brilliant essayist when he agreed with Scialabba, but now seems anything but; less because of his disagreement than the manner of it, a form of argument which is, in Scialabba’s lapidary phrase, “a tempest of inaccuracy, illogic, and malice.” After having thought about it on and off over the last year, I think that this is right in broad outline, but it doesn’t get at the root of what’s wrong with Hitchens’ writing. Hitchens can be a brilliant stylist (less so today than he used to be, but even now a beautiful sentence occasionally pierces through the fog), but he doesn’t seem to me to be a political thinker. Which is to say that the political positions that he takes seem to me to be grounded more in a sensibility than in a coherent view of politics. This was as true when he was unambiguously on the left as it is now – his earlier essays are sometimes wonderful taken one by one, but they really don’t add up to a whole. Hitchens is notoriously fond of comparing himself to George Orwell, but the better comparison is with Orwell’s friend, “Cyril Connolly”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyril_Connolly. A bit of a waster, with a prose style to die for, but not much at all in the way of political _nous_.
by Jon Mandle on August 6, 2006
Joe Conason has a short but interesting review of a biography of Eliot Spitzer. He nicely summarizes what Spitzer did that “earned him the enduring fury of the Wall Street Journal editorial page, the conservative Federalist Society and every other exponent of an unfettered marketplace”:
He exposed widespread corruption, cronyism and immorality at the commanding heights of the American economy, exploding the myth of the self-regulating market. And he refashioned the conservative version of “federalism” into a weapon for liberal elected officials in the states, while the Bush administration was letting lobbyists write legislation and run regulatory agencies.
And he rightly points out the new challenges that Spitzer will face if elected governor:
Rather than policing business executives, he will need to persuade them to invest in the depressed upstate region. Instead of filing lawsuits and indictments, he will have to pursue his laudable goals within the constraints of a balanced budget and a bipartisan culture of legislative inertia.
I, for one, am eager to see how Spitzer handles these responsibilities. I have a friend who works in Spitzer’s office, and he tells me that in addition to Spitzer being very driven (obviously), he is also very, very smart. This certainly doesn’t guarantee success, but when you look at the alternative…
In the course of recounting Spitzer’s privileged upbringing, Conason comments that “the most challenging crisis faced by the real estate millionaire’s son [was] a last-minute change in thesis topics (from the philosopher John Rawls’s theory of justice to ‘Revolutions in Post-Stalin Eastern Europe’).” I assume this was his senior thesis at Princeton. I wonder how far he got with that first one?
by John Q on August 6, 2006
One of the big questions for academics engaged in blogging is whether and how blogs should count towards measures of academic output, like traditional journal articles and book chapters. The obvious answer is to write journal articles and book chapters about blogging. Uses of Blogs edited by Axel Bruns and Joanne Jacobs is the first edited collection of scholarly articles on blogging (at least so the blurb says, and I don’t know of any others), and includes a chapter from me on economics blogs. With the book coming out of QUT, there’s a strong Brisbane flavour including chapters from Mark Bahnisch (who’s already posted on this and Jean Burgess ditto.
I’ve only had time to dip into a few chapters so far, but it looks very interesting and the opening chapter by Axel and Joanne is available free
by Kieran Healy on August 3, 2006
My new book, Last Best Gifts: Altruism and the Market for Human Blood and Organs has just been published by the University of Chicago Press. You can buy it from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Powells or of course any bookseller worth the name. There’s a website for the book, too. Amongst other things, there you can learn more about the cover image, which the people at Chicago did such a nice job with after I came across it by chance.
The book is a study of the social organization of exchange in human blood and organs. In a nutshell, it tries to show that gift exchange can do both more and less than we think when it comes to organizing the blood and organ supply: more, because there’s a lot of heterogeneity in actually-existing systems of donation. Some countries and regions do much better than others, and, in many cases (especially cadaveric donation), market incentives would probably not work any better. But also less, because gift exchange is not some magical mechanism for generating social solidarity out of thin air, especially in a procurement system that is increasingly rationalized and globalized. The book argues that the consequences of rationalizing the blood and organ supply are in many ways more important than the consequences of commodifying it. In particular, the logistical demands of procurement systems — short-run, nuts-and-bolts stuff about finding bodies and procuring organs — are in tension with the public account of donation as a sacred gift of life.
I’d like to think that the book has something new to contribute to the ongoing debate about commodifying human blood, organs and tissues. And I’d like to think that it’s written in an accessible and engaging way. And while I’m waiting for UPS to deliver my pony, I’d like you all to go and buy it, not just for yourself, but for your friends, and for the sake of this small kitten beside me. You wouldn’t want anything bad to happen to the kitten, would you?
by Harry on July 23, 2006
In response to my post about William and Nicholas fatwhiteduke confessed that he (and I bet he is a he) still cannot bring himself to admit that William is better than Jennings. During a rather long period of my childhood I would beg my dad to take me on Saturdays to the bookshop in Aylesbury so that I could browse the Jennings books, waiting till I had saved enough pocket money to buy the next one. I think I read them all, which I still have not done with William. The Jennings books occasionally go out of print, unlike the Williams. Several have recently been reprinted, and are available in the States here and here (UK here
and here).
I recognize that William is, in some sense, superior, but never had the relationship with William that I did with Jennings. (I actually had a friend in secondary school who resembled Jennings a good deal in both looks and surface personality, and who, interestingly given the influence of Wodehouse on Buckeridge, reveled in the name of Mulliner – any information on his whereabouts welcome, because google is bloody useless when your target shares the name of a world famous croquet player). I suspect that my and fatwhiteduke’s fondness of Jennings is partly a response to authorial intention. Crompton wanted to make adults laugh, and entertaining children was an unexpected side benefit; Buckeridge clearly adored children and wanted to engage and amuse them. The stories offer a great deal to adults, but the world is created for the child reader. Although the boys are the heroes, the world is controlled by adults, who (unlike the adults in William who are being pretty mercilessly satirised) have the best interests of the boys in their charge always in focus. The reason we became so enamoured with boarding school life without ever wanting to go to one is because the Linbury Court staff are like a composite ideal parent, the boys have enough freedom really to enjoy themselves, but not enough ever to be in real danger, and when all their plans go wrong (as it often does), while they are terrified of the consequences, the reader knows that kindness will prevail.
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by Maria on July 19, 2006
There are good reasons why I haven’t bought Wired Magazine in about five years. The whole bleeding edge thing frayed a bit with the dot com crash. And that hyperactive, slightly autistic gadget-boy take on the world (a planet which only spanned the west coast of the US and the high tech bits of Asia) just started to seem ever so recursive. But today, in honour of being on the west coast and much delayed on a flight from L.A back to Europe, I cracked and bought the magazine.
Wired now has fashion tips for how to wear your bluetooth, a rather pointless feature on ‘Earth 2.0’, advertisements for Gilette (because the best a man can get is a whopping five blades), and far more car ads than I remember – most of them for Japanese vehicles that improbably combine performance, high tech fuel efficiency, and the nodding respect of other techies. So ‘Wired Man’ is slightly more environmentally aware than he used to be, but just as insecure and rather implausibly hirsute.
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by Henry Farrell on July 19, 2006
William Browning Spencer, in the introduction to his new collection of short stories, _The Ocean and All Its Devices_, contemplates the one form of life that the unsuccessful writer can look down on.
bq. How does the ignored writer dodge envy and bitterness? How does he keep clear of the thought that he is writing in a vacuum, making no real sound as he topples over in the forest? Is he as deluded as some drug-addled blogger alone in a room with his computer and the cast-off shells of ordered-out pizzas, ranting to a potential audience of millions (because they are irrefutably out there; those millions of readers are out there on the Web)?
(The implication in the above that we get forests in vacuums might suggest to the unwary that Spencer is a bad writer, which is wildly untrue. The collection is very good, although so far I haven’t found anything that’s quite at the level of his utterly wonderful short, “The Entomologists at Obala,” in which two increasingly lunatic biologists conduct war-by-proxy in the wilderness via wasps and spiders)
by Kieran Healy on July 1, 2006
Over at “the Valve”:http://www.thevalve.org/go/valve/ John Holbo “has an epiphany”:http://www.thevalve.org/go/valve/article/i_have_not_thought_it_worth_while_making_the_small_alterations_deemed_neces/ upon reading the Author’s Note from Stephen Potter’s classic “Lifemanship”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1559212969/ref=nosim/kieranhealysw-20 (a kind of joke English Bourdieu _avant la lettre_, or vice versa, but that is for another day). Here’s the author’s note:
bq. I have reprinted these lectures more or less as they were delivered. I have not thought it worth while making the small alterations deemed necessary. Any inaccuracies or repetitions must be put down to the exigencies of the platform – to the essential difference between the Written Word, which is inscribed, and the Spoken Word, which is, essentially, speech.
John says: “I was rereading Derrida on “Plato’s Pharmakon”. And then beneath my eye happened to fall the Author’s Note … Imagine the crackle in my brain as I realize: that’s _all_ of Derrida, _right there_. ”
Imagine further, then, the corresponding crackle in _my_ brain. My immediate reaction upon reading John’s post was that Potter is eerily foreshadowing “a different Author’s Note”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0674598466/ref=nosim/kieranhealysw-20 provided by an author with a cult following in some ways not unlike Potter’s — or Derrida’s — own.
bq. In January of 1970, I gave three talks at Princeton University transcribed here. As the style of the transcript makes clear, I gave the talks without a written text, and, in fact, without notes. The present text is lightly edited from the _verbatim_ transcripts; an occasional passage has been added to expand the thought, but no attempt has been made to change the informal style of the original … I hope the reader will bear these facts in mind as he reads the text. Imagining it spoken, with proper pauses and emphases, may occasionally facilitate comprehension.
So, the content of Derrida, the style of Kripke, and both encapsulated in one note.
by Kieran Healy on June 28, 2006
Say what you like about the free-marketeers, they certainly know how to ignore market forces, eschew profit and embrace subsidization when it suits them. I just got the 2006 “Liberty Fund”:http://www.libertyfund.org/ catalog in the post, and as usual I am having a hard time not buying a lot of their absurdly under-priced offerings. You can get the “complete Sraffa/Dobb edition of Ricardo”:http://www.libertyfund.org/details.asp?displayID=1876 (eleven volumes!) for about a hundred bucks, or $12 for individual volumes. (The true measure of value is in there _somewhere_.) For similar prices, there’s more “Gordon Tullock”:http://www.libertyfund.org/details.asp?displayID=1877 or “James Buchanan”:http://www.libertyfund.org/details.asp?displayID=1598 than any sane person would ever want to read. You can also get the whole “Glasgow Edition of Smith”:http://www.libertyfund.org/details.asp?displayID=1654 for seventy five dollars. Or sixteen hundred pages of “Armen Alchian”:http://levine.sscnet.ucla.edu/General/ALCHIAN.HTM for fifteen dollars. They’re also strong on Enlightenment types, with “Hume’s History of England”:http://www.libertyfund.org/details.asp?displayID=1659 on the cheap, and you can find any amount of reactionary commentary on the French Revolution, too.
On the other hand, you can get a lot of this stuff (the Ricardo, for instance) “for free and in PDF format”:http://oll.libertyfund.org/Home3/AuthorsAll.php at their Online Library of Liberty.
by Eszter Hargittai on June 27, 2006
The competition in the Anonymous Colleague contest was fierce with a very close outcome. The winner is Nabakov with the following entry:
“Mr Happy, who believes if something funny is worth saying once, it’s worth saying a thousand times, the fucker” having received 33.5% of the votes. He wins the free Anonymous Lawyer book from the publisher.
Congrats also – but no book, I’m afraid – to M. Gordon for the “Amazing Vanishing Advisor” entry, which came in close second with 30.2% of the votes.
There are more opportunities to have anon legal fun including the chance to win an Anonymous Lawyer T-shirt and the book. The Anonymous Law Firm is accepting job applications and the top ten entries get goodies.
by Belle Waring on June 26, 2006
As a young girl I was an avid reader of Stephen Potter, especially the peerless Lifemanship. I also re-read Thackeray’s Book of Snobs many times, for the not particularly compelling reason that it was the only interesting book in my brother’s room at my grandmother’s house. (I say “not particularly compelling” in spite of the manifest excellence of the book, which is hilarious, but rather because we had a library on the second floor.) These two books did much to make me the cynical, frivolous person I am today. The thing is, I was convinced, at an early stage, that there really was a Lifesmanship organization at 681 Station Road, Yeovil, and it was a hazy dream of mine that I might travel to England and join at some time in the future. By the time I was 10 I think I was starting to suspect this was never to be (and, in my defense, I never imagined that I might actually meet, say Odoreida.) But I have always wondered, is there supposed to be something particularly funny about Yeovil? I gather that it’s a real place and everything. Is it a really boring place? A thrilling town full of laffs and hilarity? What?
by Harry on June 24, 2006
My daughters gave me Nicholas Again (U.K.) for Father’s Day (an institution of which I faintly disapprove for no reason that I can articulate) and promptly, if rather ungracefully, asked me to read it to them. It is fantastic. Short, tautly written stories, translated beautifully (into American, not British, English), every single one of which made us all laugh outloud (the 9 year old and I for slightly different reasons than the 5 year old, I think). Everything is told from Nicholas’s perspective, but of course your child knowlingly sees it in part from an adult perspective, and can just see the problems he can encounter before he encounters them. I suspect my wife gave permission for the gift because the author is Goscinny, who is responsible for the success of my kids’ and my campaign to persuade her that comics can be literature (via Asterix). Yesterday my 9-year-old had a brainwave — she pointed out that if the book was called Nicholas Again that probably means that there is a Nicholas. So we’re onto that next.
Now, Nicholas will only make you laugh out loud. If you want to read the kids a book which will, at least on occasion, make you laugh uncontrollably you might want to try Just William. William is 10, and the stories are, again, beautifully constructed and tersely written, and not infrequently achieve the level of high farce. William’s failure to become popular in America (though successful everywhere else) has always bemused me — I have yet to meet an American who didn’t love the books once they’ve been introduced to them, and I’ve met enough 10-year-old Americans to know that William is not a uniquely English type. (So I find it much easier to understand why Enid Blyton has not been successful here, and I used to find it easier to understand why Jennings has not made it big until the Harry Potter phenomenon made it clear that portraying minor English public school-life was no barrier to success in the American market).
by Eszter Hargittai on June 14, 2006
Thanks to all those who submitted entries in the Anonymous Lawyer contest. There are several funny submissions that merit being included in the final vote, but I thought more than five options would make it too cumbersome so I have limited the poll to five entries. Using input from Jeremy Blachman (the author of the Anonymous Lawyer book) the following entries are hereby declared finalists:
- The Double Mocha-Latte Drinking, Gel-Haired, Brown Courduroy Blazer Wearing Trendoid
- The Amazing Vanishing Advisor
- Prof-Who-Burnt-His-Beard-Off-With-That-Pretentious-Pipe
- The Apprentice Loser
- Mr Happy, who believes if something funny is worth saying once, it is worth saying a thousand times, the fucker.
Please vote for your favorite Anonymous Colleague description below the fold.
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by Eszter Hargittai on June 7, 2006
With all this talk about fun books, it’s time for me to write a post about Jeremy Blachman’s new book Anonymous Lawyer. Better yet, I even have a copy to give away courtesy of the publisher, so this time I’m holding a contest with an actual prize. Yipee.
First, a few words about the book. (Disclosure: I was Jeremy’s TA for a class in college and have been in touch with him over the past few years.) It is in the format of a blog. (But no, uhm, you don’t start on the last page flipping backward.) The story is told through blog posts with email messages interspersed. If you have read the blog Anonymous Lawyer then you will be familiar with the topic and style, although rest assured that the book content is new and not simply a copy-paste of what is already available.
More about the book, a special book-related Web site and contest details below the fold.
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