Man's best friend outside of a dog, 11: World's Fair, by E.L. Doctorow

Last week I said I liked two out of the three final books I had read during the trip to Aruba. Oddly enough, this was the one I didn't think much of at all. I have nothing against Doctorow, and rather liked Ragtime, but there must be something up with him that rubs people the wrong way. Suffice it to say, among major literary authors, he has more copies of his works sitting in the $2 rack at used bookstores than anyone else I can think of. Janet Evanovich, Clive Cussler, sure, and about every mystery author who has ever lived, but also a constant stream of Doctorow. I haven't been able to find a single Vintage press copy of anything by Nabokov for less than 3/4 the retail price for years, but I could have owned 10 copies of Water Works or Billy Bathgate had I wanted to. In some ways, it takes some of the fun out of finding them in bookstores, since there's no excitement in the find. A nice copy of Vonnegut is impossible, Calvino a rare treat, and we've found John Irving from just about every printing through years of work, but Doctorow is just too easy.

Anyway, on to the actual review. World's Fair is a fictionalization of what I have to assume is Doctorow's own childhood growing up in New York. Unfortunately, Doctorow seems to have had a childhood much like most of ours, full of events that are only passingly memorable and the rare moment that rises to the level of minor excitement. Unfortunately, that is about the extent of it. In theory, I am supposed to suggest that New York City in the 1930's is itself a character, but the narrator is much too young to really have experienced much of it at all. As a result, the novel is more than a bit flat. The emotion ranges from kind of happy to kind of sad, and even though our narrator's parents certainly have a troubled marriage, nothing ever really comes of it to spark some real dramatic tension. The dramatic ending, in which he sees both the magic but also the tawdriness of the New York World's Fair, similarly fails to inspire, breaking no new ground whatsoever. If you want to really read about the magic and horror of a World's Fair, try Devil in the White City, by Erik Larson.

Man's best friend outside of a dog, 10: Good Omens, by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett

Having discussed what some of the more backwards amongst us consider to be cultural Armageddon in our first post of the evening, we move onward in our second to a literary take on Armageddon that is vastly more enjoyable than the Left Behind series. Any time the end of the world is foisted upon you by Neil Gaiman, author of The Sandman graphic novels and the brilliant novel American Gods, among others, as well as Terry Pratchett, author of the Discworld series, well, you know it has to be good. Just to get the obvious references, both men have the same British wit that is typically associated with Monty Python, Douglas Adams, or maybe Shaun of the Dead. It is unclear why the British are just funnier than Americans, most likely having to do with a certain fatalism inspired by the nasty weather, horrible food, and typically undrinkable coffee. Then again, maybe when you grow up watching your politicians hurl witty insults at each other rather than vapid sound bites, it can be a bit inspirational.

In any case, this little novel, written before either of them became famous, ranges from the drop-dead hilarious to the sidesplittingly funny, even when some of the subjects of the humor are a bit obscure. Still, you have to give them credit that they made me laugh about the M25 Motorway (the loop road around London: think the Beltway, I-95, and the tri-state tollway if you are familiar with DC, Boston, or Chicago; for NY readers, think I-287 with the traffic typical of the BQE or Van Wyck) and the planned town of Milton Keynes. A sample of the book's take on life:

Many phenomena — wars, plagues, sudden audits — have been advanced as evidence for the hidden hand of Satan in the affairs of Man, but whenever students of demonology get together the M25 London orbital motorway is generally agreed to be among the top contenders for exhibit A.

The plot, such as it is, concerns plans by the hosts of heaven and hell to spark Armageddon, each hoping for the ultimate victory, while a pair of friendly demons, realizing that low-level employees for competing firms often have more in common with each other than either has with their corporate management, do everything in their power to stop this from happening. Of great benefit to them is the fact that the Antichrist was misplaced at birth, and many of the supernatural beings about to wage battle are caught in traffic. Honestly, if this plot doesn't grip you yet, you probably need professional help. Fleshing out the novel are a multitude of jokes and witticisms, and it is a fun challenge to try to figure out which author wrote what. Having read a good bit of Gaiman and one book by Pratchett, I was pretty stumped, but I would imagine that an aficionado could do much better. Gaiman is the more Vonnegutian of the two, preferring jokes that rely on timing and misdirection, whereas Pratchett likes the more carefully constructed comic scenarios, but the book flows pretty seamlessly from one to the other without any obvious hitches. Even though it contains something of a moral conclusion, in that humans often act both better and worse than either God or the Devil could even imagine but that life is still better with us having free will than if we didn't, the book avoids adding too much saccharine to the mix.

If I had to choose between Gaiman and Pratchett, I could pretty comfortably choose Gaiman, but life is generous and we are lucky to be able to enjoy both. This one is definitely worth it, start to finish.

It's something no sensible person would do... I wish I was married to you

It was kind of lost in the shuffle this week, what with the continuing scandals that the administration likes to create instead of actually governing, but Governor Eliot Spitzer of New York announced he will be submitting legislation to legalize gay marriage in the state. This is a very good thing, even though it stands almost no chance of passing the Republican-led New York State Senate. It's been debated how much "political capital" he should use to try to impose his will, but short of a State Senate majority, it will have to stand for the moment as a powerful but temporarily symbolic gesture. If New York can manage to pass civil unions instead, which seems likelier at the moment, and Rhode Island also joins New Hampshire in allowing them, you will basically have legalized gay marriage in Massachusetts (all efforts to overturn it have basically gone nowhere), civil unions throughout the rest of the Northeast and West Coast, and additional pressure on the more liberal states in the Midwest that have Democratic governors and state houses to possibly follow suit (that means Illinois, by the way). It would come as no shock whatsoever if a very significant percentage of the country soon has civil unions, and the continuing refusal of Massachusetts to actually break out in Armageddon will only make it more likely that states go further, not retreat. Honestly, once you've got NY and CA, you;ve basically got the cultural centers of America (Chicago would be a bonus, and call me an unreasonable optimist but I truly believe in the power of the media elite to both reflect the culture in which they find themselves and to normalize it for the rest of the country. We've all basically known that someday gay marriage will be viewed like interracial marriages are today, as inherent rights for people opposed by bigots and those who refuse to deal with the modern world, but I think it happens sooner than we think. I give it about twenty years, give or take, especially if the Supreme Court ever goes liberal by a 6-3 majority with younger justices being able to assert themselves.

One can ask, in the midst of this hopeful flight of fancy, if there is a political price to be paid. Honestly, the answer is yes, but not for Spitzer or the NY state Democrats. No, he is way too popular at the moment to be touched, and he's actually going on the offensive against State Senate Republicans for blocking campaign finance reforms. This latter move has the potential to reshape NY State politics for the first time in my lifetime, but some explanations are in order. For basically forever, the State Assembly has had a Democratic majority , and the State Senate a Republican majority. As a result, the leaders of both houses, along with the governor, sit in a room each year and basically run the state. It's a classic top-down, party boss system and in no way allows the interests of the public to be represented at all. The stability of the arrangement has been maintained by an informal, off-the-record truce, in which neither side nor the governor really interferes in the other's affairs. Thankfully, Democrats seem to have realized that with the entire Northeast trending heavily blue, this arrangement basically screws them over for no reason. Earlier this year, they actually picked off a Republican-held State Senate seat, and indications are that they might actually try to win more in 2008 for a change.

It's important to remember that dissatisfaction with the Republicans, which led to the Democratic wave in 2006, shows no signs of retreating. We've got all sorts of indictments either underway or in the works, and public opinion continues to turn against the war in a big way. Just today, it was reported that 55% of Americans agree with Harry Reid that the war is lost, so one could easily argue that no matter how much the Republicans hyperventilate about treason and such, it really does help the Democratic cause, since the war is so bloody unpopular. Call it a hunch, but I think issues like this may carry a bit more weight that Spitzer's take on gay marriage in 2008.

Tuesday Feet blogging

Results of the first big sonogram below. All systems check out perfectly, everything looked good. We got to see the heart (all four chambers), the brain, various appendages, and all sorts of other stuff that was hard to identify. As to the big question, we're still in the dark. It seems the wee lass or laddie curently has the umbilical cord running between his/her legs, which made it impossible to see what does or does not lie beneath.

Left Foot, with approximately 5 toes (along with the giant brain [left]):


Right Foot with approximately 5 toes (looking down the leg):


Side view. Crown of the head is to the left. Face, looking upward, is the brighter area running horizontally on the left. He/she is chewing on one hand, which is balled into a fist. The humerus runs off horizontally to the right about 60% of the way up on the image.

Keeping busy

Just in case anyone took a break from Rooted Cosmopolitans, there are four posts up from today and yesterday. We've got book reviews of Los Gusanos, by author and film director John Sayles, and Dreaming in Cuban, by Cristina Garcia, who for some reason I've been completely misidentifying as a relation of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, even though she's Cuban-American and he's rather famously Colombian. UPDATE:Forgot to mention, I'll have reviews out soon of Good Omens, by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, World's Fair, by E.L. Doctorow, and Running With Scissors, by Augusten Burroughs. I like two out of the three. Anyone care to hazard a guess as to which two?

On the political side, we've got my surprising support for the media in light of the Virginia Tech tragedy, though I'll note that NBC's branding of Cho's materials was more than a bit tasteless.

Finally, I seem to have started a trend by complaining about the Great Wall of Baghdad. Just yesterday, it seems, the Iraqi government let us know that they don't want it either. Needless to say, this is a colossal FUBAR on the part of everyone involved. It's getting harder and harder to say with a straight face that they are in charge when we keep disagreeing with their government about whose troops should be doing what, and we're already sounding out overthrowing the government now in power. Even if Harry Reid actually hedged his statements, I see no need. The War is lost.

Man's best friend outside of a dog, 9: Los Gusanos, by John Sayles

For the second half of our Cuban-American double feature, we have Los Gusanos (The Worms), by John Sayles. I should say off the bat that Sayles is one of those guys who has slipped under my radar. Best known as a director (Lone Star, Return of the Seacacus 7, Brother from Another Planet), the only movie of his that I've actually seen is Eight Men Out, and that only because it's about baseball. I can't claim any credit for picking this book up somewhere; as I remember, we got it during a Christmas book exchange, but sometimes you really do get lucky. Like the book I read immediately prior to it, the focus is on the Cuban-American and Cuban communities, though with a primary focus on Miami. Even though the basic setups are roughly the same, spanning decades in the lives of its protagonists, the books could hardly be more different. Sayles has a definite story to tell, and even though we often get looks insides his characters heads, they are very much rooted to their own location and situation. This is not a novel of dreams, but one of concrete histories, showing how we reach our current state through a series of events and experiences. Put another way, whereas the motivating forces in Dreaming in Cuban are primarily internal, here they are almost exclusively external. Characters are much more deeply tied to each other, in the tangled web of politics and culture that is Miami.

In many ways, the governments exist in Los Gusanos immediately off-screen, acting via the CIA and other sources to keep the community constantly in flux. Then again, I think it is fair to say that the Cuban community in Miami does a pretty good job of that all on their own. One of the greatest mysteries to me has been how the US government seems willing to maintain a policy towards Cuba that has never shown any sign of working, all while the expat community supports the vociferously no matter how many times the CIA undercuts their aspirations of retaking the island. From the Bay of Pigs to later failed insurgencies, it seems that some forces in our government are willing to trade something, be it reliable Republican votes, some control over organized crime in Southern Florida, or god only knows what, just so long as they make sure to say really mean things about Fidel. As for the Cuban-American community, you might think that having failed to overthrow Fidel for 40 years now, they might be willing to consider some amount of compromise in order to see long-separated family members...but apparently you'd be wrong.

In the novel, this plays out as a generation torn between the appeal of organized crime, ragtag invasion militias, or quieter, more humdrum lives in the beautiful weather of South Florida. Living so fast, many fail to see just how much they are pawns in the hands of the powerful (or to quote Fidel himself, Gusanos). Through vignettes, we get to see fragments of the life stories of the many protagonists, reminiscent of something one might expect from Robert Altman. It's hard to identify any particular story that is truly more compelling than the rest, but it's interesting to read a big, sprawling novel that can manage to balance any number of competing threads to paint a picture of a city across the years much more successfully than groups of blind men are typically assumed to describe elephants. If the characters themselves are a bit flat, the settings themselves certainly jump out. It's not the language per se, which features a somewhat intimidating amount of Spanish intermixed with decent prose, but rather the clear idea that he has for each chapter, infusing each with a strong sense of narrative flow that carries throughout the novel. I have to say, for a random acquisition, I really liked the book, enough to add several of his films to our Netflix queue.

Man's best friend outside of a dog, 8: Dreaming in Cuban, by Cristina Garcia

There is something of a recurring theme in the female characters that appear in magical realism novels, in that at least one woman per family needs to live at least partially on the spiritual plane. This is very clear in Isabel Allende's "House of the Spirits", forms perhaps the main theme of "Like Water For Chocolate (haven't read it, but I've seen the movie a couple times), and makes up the heart of this novel as well. The story of three generations of a family split between Cuba and New York, the book takes a very ethereal approach to issues of dislocation and separation, much more concerned with people's dreams than their politics. Garcia isn't much of a narrative storyteller, more a spinner of tales that illuminate facets of her characters and their relationships. Perhaps befitting the image of the Cuban community as a wee bit out there (let's face it, every fictional work ever set in Miami basically assumes this as truth, from Scarface to Miami Vice to CSI, or the novels of Dave Barry and Carl Hiaasen, among others), most of the characters are a wee bit insane, at least at times.

If there is a running theme in the book, it is the ways in which isolation can force us to extremes, regardless of whether the isolation is caused by family or by the politics of an embargo. From generation to generation, we have love and other emotions expressed as both alliance and antagonism, as only families can inspire. Most of the action here, such as it is, lies within it's protagonists' minds.They retreat into memory, seek out connections, and basically try to find a place in the world for themselves, all while the potential sources of stability generally conspire against them. Still, it is not so much the events in their lives that define them, but rather their reactions to them, and the people who surround them. Inasmuch as the book is a meditation about mindsets, it is ultimately successful, more a painting than a story to remember. Garcia, it should be noted, writes in English like the world's finest writers write in Spanish, heavy on the adjectives but in a way that explores the bounds of expression. Think Marquez, but with multiple sentences per page. It's rare to find such confident prose stylings, and really stands out among the various Spanish/Latin American authors out there.

The little ones sit by their tv screen, no thoughts to think, no tears to cry, all sucked dry, down to the very last breath

I actually surprised my wife with this one: the Virginia Tech gunman mailed a series of photos and videotapes to NBS news, so should they, and other news agencies, have shown excerpts on their nightly newscasts/websites, etc.? It's easy to suggest no. The killer was already dead by his own hand, and this gives him a posthumous gift of the recognition he wanted, and could in theory motivate others to similar action. Oddly enough, I find this argument wholly unconvincing. Don't get me wrong, after a traumatic experience it can be brutal seeing repeated images of the killer...but that really is a phenomenon over which has some control. Turn off the TV, avoid the newspaper for a couple days, and stop watching Cable news entirely (actually, that last bit of advice applies for everyone, frankly, regardless of the situation). What worries me, among others, is the media declaring a blackout on things that are on their face newsworthy, to prevent us from having our sensibilities challenged. See the arguments by Atrios:

I'm a bit puzzled by all the conversation about whether NBC and other news outlets should've broadcast Cho's videos. While there can always be debates about what should be front and center, the idea that this kind of thing should be withheld by a Media That Knows Best is rather disturbing. Emphasis and placement is always an issue, which is why if nothing else this stuff can be put on the internets where people can make the effort to take a peek if they wish.

And, no, I didn't have much desire to see any of it, I just reject the idea that our Elite Filters really know what's best for us.

and Kevin Drum:

There's no question that these images and videos are intense; they undoubtedly cause pain to the loved ones of the victims; and they might even help promote copycat behavior — though I suspect this is more urban legend than reality. But like it or not, they're also a key part of helping us understand one of the biggest news stories of the year.

I think this is exactly right. When the media acts like gatekeepers, we are shielded from violent images at the true cost of not understanding their context at all. I would argue that the lack of bloodshed from Iraq shown on tv has led us to ignore the deaths of several hundred thousand innocent civilians, since we never see the true picture of all the suicide bombings and executions that plague that country. We don't even see the true effect on our military, since the media is banned from showing soldiers' coffins and they have dropped the ball utterly on the effects of serious injuries on the troops. Until the recent expose of Walter Reed by the Washington Post, the media was basically happy to pretend that these things just didn't deserve widespread attention, even though Salon pointed out many of these issues years ago.

That said, some discretion is called for. Rather than pimping the Cho videos endlessly, it was probably appropriate to show brief snippets and post the remainder to websites, but in the end, it is up to us to decide what we wish to watch and what we would prefer to avoid, not up to them to censor the news for the sake of the most sensitive individuals.

By the way, what of the argument that we are just provoking copycats? More from Kevin Drum at Political Animal:

Still, does publicizing specific mass murders inspire copycats? I'm not so sure about that. In fact, it might be just the opposite: the massive publicity these events generate makes everybody far more vigilant about the possibility of "disturbed loners" in their midst and might actually reduce the likelihood of copycat sprees. What's more, when all is said and done, most of these killers come across in media accounts as delusional, hopeless losers, not as heroes to emulate.

What we all need to remember is that no matter how brutal this killing was, random killing sprees, including those at schools, are extremely rare. There is not some "wave of killings" taking place at schools, just like there is no wave of kidnapped children, or any of the million other problems blown up to ridiculous proportions by the various news outlets. What there is, rather is much more hyperventilating news sources to which we have access, who are willing to make random isolated events into trends so that we may be scared into watching their programs. VT was a true American tragedy, but also a rare and reasonably random occurrence. Some perspective goes a long way into fitting it into a reasonable narrative, and that requires both access to details about the case, as only the news can provide, but also a reasonable approach, which we can rest assured they most definitely won't provide.

PS: It seems that Rosa Brooks of the LA Times feels similar to me about assuming the tragedies and trauma of others, in that it is overdone in modern society:

Convincing ourselves that we've been vicariously traumatized by the pain of strangers has become a cherished national pastime. Thus, the Washington Post this week accompanied online stories about the shooting with a clickable sidebar, "Where to Find Support" — apparently on the assumption that the mere experience of glancing at articles about the tragedy would be so emotionally devastating that readers would require trained therapists...

Our self-indulgent conviction that we have all been traumatized also operates, ironically, to shut down empathy for other, less media-genic victims. On the day of the Virginia Tech shooting, for instance, Army Sgt. Mario K. De Leon of San Francisco (like the Virginia Tech victims) died of "wounds sustained from enemy small-arms fire"). On Wednesday, car bombs killed at least 172 people in Baghdad. But no one has set up a special MySpace page to commemorate those dead.

Some stagger and fall, after all, it's not easy...banging your heart against some mad bugger's wall

So the big news on the international front is that just like Pink Floyd, the US Army is busy building a wall. No, this time it's not a metaphor about shielding oneself off from the public eye, but rather walling off a Sunni neighborhood to "protect" them from Shiites by basically turning their neighborhood into a ghetto in the classical sense. Needless to say, the residents are vastly unhappy, since they now live in a walled-off enclave surrounded by enemies and cut off from friends. Funny that.

Not to say that the news we get from Iraq may be unduly optimistic, but that's basically what I'm suggesting. First, we have very quietly abandoned the latest rationale for our troops doing what they do: that as "they stand up, we'll stand down". Seems like they aren't standing up at all:

Training Iraqi troops, which had been the cornerstone of the Bush administration's Iraq policy since 2005, has dropped in priority, officials in Baghdad and Washington said.

No change has been announced, and a Pentagon spokesman, Col. Gary Keck, said training Iraqis remains important. "We are just adding another leg to our mission," Keck said, referring to the greater U.S. role in establishing security that new troops arriving in Iraq will undertake.

But evidence has been building for months that training Iraqi troops is no longer the focus of U.S. policy. Pentagon officials said they know of no new training resources that have been included in U.S. plans to dispatch 28,000 additional troops to Iraq. The officials spoke only on the condition of anonymity because they aren't authorized to discuss the policy shift publicly. Defense Secretary Robert Gates made no public mention of training Iraqi troops on Thursday during a visit to Iraq.

In a reflection of the need for more U.S. troops, the Pentagon decided earlier this month to increase the length of U.S. Army tours in Iraq from 12 to 15 months. The extension came amid speculation that the U.S. commander there, Army Gen. David Petraeus, will ask that the troop increase be maintained well into 2008.

About that increase in the length of military rotations. Bush tried to blame it on Congress not sending a bill...but a few reporters even picked up on the fact that the increase was announced BEFORE funding "ran out', by which I mean won't really run out at all:

This speculation was fueled by Wednesday’s White House press conference, where Dana Perino explained the strange timing by claiming that President Bush had been in the dark about this major policy shift until the morning it was announced:

Q So why did he tell the American Legion that people would be staying in Iraq longer because of the Democrats, when his own Pentagon, 24 hours later, was going to keep people there longer?

MS. PERINO: Well, one, I don’t know if the President knew about the — the meeting — remember, yesterday morning is when Secretary Gates came and talked to the President. […]

Q And so the President didn’t know about his own policy until Wednesday?

MS. PERINO: I’m not aware that the President knew that there was going to be — that Secretary Gates had come to any decisions.

We might be hearing more about our problems in Iraq, of course, but for the fact that the military is telling officers to keep their mouth shut and won't let them talk to Congress:

national Journal's Congress Daily:

Pentagon lawyers abruptly blocked mid-level active-duty military officers from speaking Thursday during a closed-door House Armed Services Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee briefing about their personal experiences working with Iraqi security forces.

The Pentagon's last-minute refusal to allow the officers' presentations surprised panel members and congressional aides, who are in the middle of an investigation into the effort to train and organize Iraqi forces.

Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee Chairman Martin Meehan, D-Mass., called the Pentagon's move "outrageous" and left open the possibility of issuing subpoenas.

One correspondent suggests: "My guess: the training is not going well, there are some big gaps, and a bunch of horror stories that the Pentagon doesn't want aired. ... That said, this will backfire."

Right now, the"grown-ups" are debating on the Sunday morning news shows whether Harry Reid was wrong to suggest "The war has been lost" if we continue on our current course. He is right of course, and let me suggest that it only shows the vapidity of today's media that they are discussing this in relation to its effects on politics, rather than asking if he is indeed correct. After all, what are a few thousand deaths in relation to the opportunity to strategize and fundraise for the various political committee's right?

In the water, he was beautiful

It's tempting to talk about politics tonight. For several hours, the Attorney General was schooled by the Congress, including passages where he was reminded that if he was going to suggest that US Attorneys were fired for being poor managers, he should lose his job as well, as well as Chuck Schumer reminding him that the burden of proof lies with Gonzales to explain his actions to Congress, and not the other way around, since Congress isn't actually putting him on trial. It's a bit pathetic, really, that the Attorney General doesn't seem to be so well versed in the whole law thing, but rank incompetence no longer comes as such a surprise.

I'm even going to hold off on the news that the FBI raided Rep. Rick Renzi's (R-AZ) and he had to step down from the Intelligence committee. The investigation likely cost Arizona's US Attorney his job during the abovementioned Attorney firing scandal, just as San Diego's Carol Lam was forced out after successfully prosecuting the now former-Rep. Duke Cunningham (R-CA). Renzi's raid occurs just days after the FBI raided Rep. John Doolittle's (R-CA) house, forcing him to step down from the House Appropriations Committee, a committee whose ranking Republican member is Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-CA), who you may be shocked to find out is also under investigation, in an inquiry started by former US Attorney Carol Lam, who as we mentioned was fired during the US Attorney scandal.

No rather than not mentioning politicians, I thought it would be a good opportunity to not review a book. During our trip, I read "The Sweep of the Second Hand", by Dean Monti, since it cost $2 and the cover review said it begged comparisons to Woody Allen and Nick Hornby. It doesn't. It begs comparison, rather, to Joseph Heller's "Something Happened". This is very, very much not a compliment. I could go on about the book I read, and take some potshots, but what's the point? It's not like anyone who reads this is likely to even see it in print during their lifetimes. Instead, I will take some potshots at Joseph Heller, by comparing him to the guy we killed by going on vacation, Kurt Vonnegut.

It is tempting to link Heller and Vonnegut in a way, as they wrote two of the most famous American novels about war during the previous century, books about WWII that seemed to describe Vietnam just as well. It should be noted that Catch-22 came out in 1961, long before Vietnam had entered into the American consciousness, whereas Slaughterhouse-Five was written in 1969. I have to say, between the two, I'd probably have to take Catch-22 if I was forced to choose. It's satire is as sharp as just about any serious novel ever written, and it is difficult to imagine a time where one can't describe the classic contradiction posed in the novel in any other terms. Without risk of hyperbole, it certainly deserves consideration as possibly the greatest American novel of the century (along with To Kill a Mockingbird, Gatsby, and what? Faulkner, Hemingway, Steinbeck?). It is, sadly, really the only great novel Heller wrote.

This is not much of a criticism, mind you, very few of us have even a readable novel in us, much less a good one. Heller wrote one of the best of all time. Still, why could he never reach that height again? The sequel, Closing Time, felt like a pale imitation of the original (think U2's most recent stuff compared to their mid-80's peak). Good as Gold is like a lesser novel by Bellow, God Knows is funny but hardly memorable, and for the life of me I don't remember a thing about Picture This. Something Happened, on the other hand, is wretchedly awful, a long slog of several hundred depressing pages filled with quasi-ironic "insights" about how much life sucks that we are supposed to find deeply meaningful, as if Heller's discovery of angst is really something new. The contrived ending only makes the rest seem like an even greater waste of time. The question becomes: why did Heller have one great book, and so many more that pale so much in comparison?

I think the answer lies in the way he writes. He is always funny, but it is a cold humor. The insanity he channels throughout Catch-22 is madcap but somewhat passionless at times, and that lack of empathy shows through much more in his later works in which the cold glare falls on our very real lives. Where Catch-22 can be enjoyed for finding humor in what would otherwise be tragedy, the rest of his books basically seem like descriptions of just how tragic life in general tends to be, and the jokes have a gallows quality that kind of ruins the enjoyment. Sure Heller is a satirist, but he just doesn't always seem to care about anything or anyone, and that grates after a while.

Vonnegut, on the other hand, may have been a satirist and a notable pessimist about human behavior, but in the end he remains one of the most deeply humanist authors ever to achieve greatness. I'm not talking about the Secular Humanist sense (which he was), but rather in the sense that he had a deep and powerful love for humans and humanity. It's been said that his books are "bitter-coated sugar pills", with a thin veneer of irony covering an almost cloying desire for people to be better. I can't say that this is description is wrong, but in many ways it is what makes him such a joy to read. No matter how bad things are, and in a Vonnegut book, we're usually talking about Armageddon-level bad, there remains the hope that if people are better, things could improve. It's not that he thinks we'll actually be better, just that we have the potential. He even could see it in himself, in a way. Tonight's post title is taken from his description of himself in the foreword to "Welcome to the Monkeyhouse".

Our book club will be reading Cat's Cradle for next month, perhaps his greatest novel (unless you prefer Breakfast of Champions or Slaughter House-Five), but even a middling Vonnegut novel can stick with you for years. In Slapstick, which Vonnegut himself only graded as a "D" (really!), he manages to introduce a concept for artificial communities that I really think might radically change American society for the better if we ever tried it, by assigning random names and numbers to all people that would serve as communities to which everyone gets to belong. If you think about it, given that we bond with people because of common interests in sports teams, favorite authors, and any number of other random things. Why not give people a few more, in such a way that everyone gets to have some. There is literally no downside, beyond getting used to middle names like Daffodil-11 or Raspberry-19.

It's strange, both men are dead, and I will be forever glad that Heller ha one amazing novel within him, but I feel like I miss Vonnegut and will for a long time.



So it goes.

Your beaches so much admired with palm trees all adorned, your coat of arms and flag is the proudness of us all!

After a couple days worth of venting, and plenty more to discuss, I thought it might be a good idea to change the topic anyway. If our society thinks it wise to track literally everyone in the country on antidepressants, but doesn't bother to keep records on gun owners because that would be an invasion of privacy...well, need any more be said?

Instead, it's about time to finally discuss our trip to Aruba, before finally doing a weeklong series of book reviews (guess what I spent my time doing in Aruba). The most obvious thing that apparently everyone says about Aruba is that it's very much like being in America. After all, everyone speaks English, as well as Dutch and a local creole language known as Papimiento. Yes, I mean virtually everyone born there is at least trilingual, and a decent number of people seem to speak Spanish as well. While there is a local currency, we couldn't find a single place that didn't take US dollars (their currency is pegged to ours, so there's little risk for merchants to do so). At tourist locations, you might not even know that they use anything but dollars, and the menus certainly don't give that fact away. If you are wondering if this is just a reflection of the wealthy tourist regions, you may be a bit surprised. Aruba has a standard of living the places it below Northern Europe and America, but above Southern European countries like Italy and Spain. The houses in the countryside may not be huge, but they look solidly middle-class. As one who suffers from the occasional pang of liberal American guilt, Aruba gave me just about nothing to feel guilty about. They do so much tourist business that the living standard is relatively high and labor needs to be imported from neighboring countries. Honestly, many Arubans do seem happy, what with living in a tropical paradise, and they seem to be using at least part of the tourist income to promote the local culture and language. I just didn't manage to find anything to feel particularly guilty about.

Just to cement the linkage with America, while the beaches are lined with the palm trees so proudly mentioned in the national anthem by which I titled this post, the rest of the island, basically all 20 miles long and 7 wide, is the sort of vegetated desert that looks exactly like the Arizona countryside:

It may seem strange to have a desert in the tropics, but Aruba, apparently like neighboring Bonaire and Curacao, has no rivers and very little rainfall, averaging something like a foot per year. On the good side for them, the lack of rain is due in part to the fact that it lies well south of the Hurricane belt in the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico. Essentially, the weather forecast is temperatures in the mid to low 80's with a 10-15 mph breeze from the northeast, every single day of the entire year.

Along the leeward coasts, you basically have the endless line of hotels and resorts to the west, and a string of towns to the south, including Oranjestad, the capital. Oranjestad is a pretty town, with a harborside street devoted to all the cruise ship visitors and several others for people, including some gorgeous wood-panel architecture in the pastel colors you come to expect in the Caribbean:

Just a quick aside. In case anyone was curious, we have some news that we may not have shared with all of the friends who read this blog. The photo above may make it pretty obvious, and if you go over to the flickr photoset of our vacation, rest assured that the drink shown here was a non-alcoholic strawberry concoction. I only managed one beer myself during the trip, though I can now say that Balashi, the local pilsner, is rather good.

As for the recommended tourist attractions, I would recommend the Jeep safari around the island, making sure to note that when they say you are going off-road, they are really, REALLY not kidding. Also, make sure to visit the butterfly farm, which was a true highlight of the trip. We particularly enjoyed the "butterflies gone wild" segment, in which we saw the first flight of a female butterfly after hatching that morning, followed by the first and only mating event in her life not five minutes later.





Lest anyone think Aruba is some form of paradise on Earth, it should be known that it hides a terrible, awful secret, and it's not the fact that the Cable News will blow any incident on Aruba out of proportion so that their correspondents can "work" there for months, roaming the beaches and nightclubs in search of "news". No, while Arubans are happy to say that 75% percent of the visitors to the Island come from America, they do everything possible to hide the fact that the overwhelming majority of these visitors come from New Jersey. Not that there's anything wrong with the Garden state...but let's face it, it's New Jersey. Everywhere we turned, Jerseyites. (Jerseyans?) I haven't seen so many Yankees hats and visors during visits to NYC. Also, who wears visors?!? Seriously, when you head south from the City, you don't actually hit Trenton and Philadelphia, you just somehow fly over the ocean and end up in Aruba. Given how many of them were sitting on the beach around us, talking about Cawfee and visiting the Shawre, I can only imagine that commuting along the Parkway and the Turnpike must have been a breeze for the week. i don't really have anything more to say, I'm just enjoying bashing a state where some of my inlaws live, hoping against hope that none of them ever read this.

Anyway, we had a fantastic time, and had I remembered to put sunscreen on my back before going snorkeling, it would have been the perfect trip. Instead...well, let's just say that I'm not red in the face, but rather some other places which now itch like crazy.

One more untitled thought

Just to follow up on my esteemed colleague's post, I thought I might also take the time to let loose on the media, though I'll note that the more reputable sources (NYTimes, WashPost, NPR) have done a pretty good job. I refuse utterly to watch the cable news coverage, so I can't comment on them in particular.

Still, I can only imagine how many times, as dkon mentioned, some poor student still clearly in shock has been asked, "How do you feel". Let's just all concede for the moment that within 24 hours of such an event, if not much longer afterwards, the answer is some strange combination of too many things to describe and nothing at all. The human brain is not meant to deal rationally with these kinds of things. They put us into shock, which is a real condition, not just some kind of metaphor. I seem to remember that when many Simon's Rockers were asked inane questions by the media, they realized that by inserting a few choice four letter words in the midst of otherwise cogent thoughts, they could piss the hell out of annoying TV reporters. I personally didn't act so mean to them, but in my defense, I was stoned on Percocet at the time.

Someday, I'd like to ask reporters why they ask people how they feel after virtually all events, both positive and negative, when such a question is fundamentally unanswerable. I've got a theory, of course. Whatever gets answered, it feeds into our sense of vicarious experience, which many in the media will mistakenly label "empathy". We wish to know how victims feel so that we may imagine ourselves in their place, as noble victims, just like we can imagine ourselves as Super Bowl winners, hurricane victims, children waiting for loved ones to come home from war, etc. It's pure, simple, utterly vapid vicariousness. We never actually feel what the interviewee actually feels, nor could we. Feelings are fundamentally intangible, no matter how carefully we describe them. For all the inanity, I understand why people want to empathize with people celebrating...it's kind of obvious. Vicarious victimhood scares me, though. People love to assume the role of victim. The Christian right talks about being persecuted in America, ignoring the fact that they basically run the show at the moment. Lou Dobbs, a very wealthy man, bashes immigrants every night on behalf of the poor American worker. Let's not get started on how many of society's ills are blamed on the gays (or minorities, or immigrants, or looking further back, Jews, women, Irish, Italians, Catholics, etc.). Playing the victim is a sickness in American society; having not really suffered squat (being average in America puts a human being at the pinnacle of the species' frickin existence on the planet so far), we need to assume others' tragedies in order to assuage our survivor's guilt, or in this case, our guilt with regard to luck of our birth. I am always struck by the obsession America has for the holocaust, not within the Jewish community but outside it as well. Honestly, it's not done to keep the memory alive, it often just means that we need a godawful big tragedy on which to project ourselves, and that one is the clearest. Frankly, anyone who bemoans the situation of the German Jews and then bashes any minority or ethnic group...well, hypocrisy just doesn't describe it.

Today's media obscenities were produced by a couple of Right wing bloggers who do humanitiy's reputation a great deal of harm. John Derbyshire of National Review (h/t Ana Marie Cox):

As NRO's designated chickenhawk, let me be the one to ask: Where was the spirit of self-defense here? Setting aside the ludicrous campus ban on licensed conceals, why didn't anyone rush the guy? It's not like this was Rambo, hosing the place down with automatic weapons. He had two handguns for goodness' sake—one of them reportedly a .22.

At the very least, count the shots and jump him reloading or changing hands. Better yet, just jump him. Handguns aren't very accurate, even at close range. I shoot mine all the time at the range, and I still can't hit squat. I doubt this guy was any better than I am. And even if hit, a .22 needs to find something important to do real damage—your chances aren't bad.

Yes, yes, I know it's easy to say these things: but didn't the heroes of Flight 93 teach us anything? As the cliche goes—and like most cliches. It's true—none of us knows what he'd do in a dire situation like that. I hope, however, that if I thought I was going to die anyway, I'd at least take a run at the guy.

and Nathanael Blake of Human Events Online (h/t ThinkProgress):

College classrooms have scads of young men who are at their physical peak, and none of them seems to have done anything beyond ducking, running, and holding doors shut. Meanwhile, an old man hurled his body at the shooter to save others.

Something is clearly wrong with the men in our culture. Among the first rules of manliness are fighting bad guys and protecting others: in a word, courage. And not a one of the healthy young fellows in the classrooms seems to have done that. …

Like Derb, I don’t know if I would live up to this myself, but I know that I should be heartily ashamed of myself if I didn’t. Am I noble, courageous and self-sacrificing? I don’t know; but I should hope to be so when necessary.

It never ceases to amaze how the pro-war right, having gotten us into a war for which they have literally made no sacrifice whatsoever, instantly project themselves into the role of the heroes they idolize but have already proven they could never emulate. Honestly, in a shooting, people go on pure instinct, there's not a rational thought in sight. Perhaps if either of these wastes of phosphorus had some actual law enforcement or military training, they might be able to react like they so fervently believe they would in their Dirty Harry-esque wet dreams...but they fight evil using their keyboards, bashing those of us who often suggest that just because our soldiers are courageous doesn't mean they need to be sacrificed to our quixotic national nightmare. Here, rather than take on the role of victim, they actually project themselves into heroism, and woe unto the rest of us mortals who fall short of their delusional estimates of their own self-worth. Honestly, when you haven't done jack shit, the least you can do is shut the hell up when talking about a group of students who just faced the most horrible event of their lives. It's just utterly reprehensible.

In closing, here's a tip for both our media and our chickenhawk critics: try asking "Is there anything you'd like to say?", or even better yet, "What would you like people to do in response to this?" You see, rather than being badgered or accused of cowardice in the face of a threat only a chickenhawk blogger could hope to overcome, you could always allow the traumatized students to express themselves in their own words or describe how we can help them. In the end, this is actually better than allowing them to help us by allowing us to suffer without pain or consequences...I just don't see it ever happening.

words fail

There's not much to add to Dr. Faber's post below about the massacre at Virginia Tech. In these situations the words mostly distort and cheapen and inflate and trivialize. That's why I remember such a visceral distaste for the media circus after the comparatively minor massacre at Simon's Rock. And that's why it seems grating to me today, like in the only "news" clip I saw on the internets today. Why is the first question to a wounded student, "how do you feel?" How do you think he feels, idiot?

I'm all for reporting the news and finding facts, but do you need any extra emotion for this story? Why are we so fascinated by other people's misery? Do we not get enough on our own, or does it make us feel better by comparison? And yet, after sucking down the last morsel of impertinent information, and learning about the perp's best friend's favorite bands, we promptly forget and do absolutely nothing until the next massacre.

We all suck.

No title tonight

Well, we're back from Aruba, and the real world seems to be butting in on what was supposed to be a lighthearted vacation recap. I already had a tribute piece to Kurt Vonnegut planned, but that will happen later in the week. First, a few words on an actual real news story, unlike Imus, which was an utterly vapid piece of navel-gazing by the American news media in which any interesting aspects of the story were pushed aside for empty theatrics.

The shootings at Virginia Tech are utterly horrific, needless to say, ranking not only as one of the worst such incidents in US School shooting history, but the worst spree killing in US history, period, and possibly the third-largest in recorded history. Over the next couple days, the ratio of information to misinformation will gradually rise from the current 1:10 ratio to something approaching 1:1 or so, and as details become clear, they will almost certainly be horrible. As I was discussing tonight with alexm, when these things get so large in scope it necessarily implies that a lot if things went wrong; when the police and campus security respond correctly, the casualties by definition will be significantly fewer. What happened here is likely to be the same story as with the Simon's Rock shooting 15 years ago: the authorities failed to act in time, because they were put in a nearly impossible position and reacted badly, as people do. Put a group of people under immense and unexpected pressure, and they will frequently not do such a fantastic job. We're human, and we're imperfect, and extreme acts can bring out the worst in us just as they can bring out the best.

It's hard not to bring up the gun control issue at a time like this. Needless to say, I am a strong gun control supporter. We happen to live in a society that is a bit too comfortable with random acts of violence (see our media, romance for war, even the casual cruelty with which hunting is accepted), and our romance of the firearm is part and parcel of this. Many conservatives out there (see Lawyers, Guns, and Money for some links to reprehensible examples) seem to think that had students been allowed to pack heat, this could have been stopped. First of all, who carries to German class? Second, imagine encouraging acts of vigilantism in tense situations by students completely untrained in crisis situations: they are as likely to shoot the hostages as they are the gunman/gunmen, to say nothing of the fact that the police will have a fun time figuring out who is who. Third, and most importantly, COLLEGE STUDENTS DRINK TOO MUCH AND MANY ARE CLINICALLY DEPRESSED!!! This is not a good mix with widespread firearms. Think of how many fights occur at college bars, and now add heavy weaponry. Think of how many students are distraught over bad breakups, wondering if they should confront the person who replaced them, and add the capacity to commit homicide. Let's face it, college students are not a particularly trustworthy lot, and it's best to pacify the crazier part of the population, not arm it.

In the end, many people will ask why these things happen. Here is a list of the reasons as best I've been able to figure out from being on the barrel side of the gun, rather than the trigger side:

1. There is no reason. These things happen. A small percentage of the population can be driven to homicidal behavior, and accessing deadly weaponry is not particularly difficult.
2. God moves in mysterious ways. Honestly, I find this explanation to be a complete crock, but if it works for you, so be it.
3. College students are a bit emotionally unstable by nature, because adolescent brains do not possess the full suite of behavior control techniques. Moreover, there is a significant percentage of people who are either clinically depressed or on strong psychotropic drugs that can cause violent behavior. More moreover, college is a disruptive time in life where you are displaced from family, and it is not so hard to become isolated. These all combine to make it inevitable that students will flip out every so often, though we really never know where, when, or how many will suffer as a result.

So, I hear you saying, what can we do? Honestly, not much in the short term. In the long-term, try not to be such violent bastards, basically.

If anyone is interested, I've posted a scanned version of my one published poem, which was written about the Simon's Rock shooting, on my website as two image files. You can find the first half here and second half here. Warning: contains strong language and graphic imagery, as one might expect.

On a happier note, I've posted our pictures from Aruba to my flickr account. More on that tomorrow. Also, Alexis, check the comments to dkon's piece for the song about which you asked.

More tomorrow, kids.

art and agricultural pests

Recently I've revived my love of Talking Heads, thanks in part to seeing my neighbors' TH tribute band, Houses in Motion. They do all the songs quite faithfully, and their frontman is amazingly David Byrne-esque.

Speaking of the dude, he has a nifty journal where he pontificates quite lucidly on various topics. For a music geek, even more fascinating is his web radio. He puts together a 3-hour playlist every month, which then loops continuously.

This dude keeps on top of music and is always listening to new artists, so his playlists are pretty educational. He has his old favorites, like the Brazilian strange-ass old dude Tom Ze, who keeps making great music, like last year's Estudando O Pagode, an operetta(!) about women and feminism, in the vein of the samba/hip-hop amalgam called Pagode. It's pretty stunning.

But back to David Byrne Radio: one of the songs I heard there was Boll Weevil by Greg Hale Jones. I had no idea until I read up about it, but it was a vocal taken from an old field recording of folk tunes (maybe Alan Lomax?) that sits in the Library of Congress. This modern poducer then added instruments to a digitized and processed voice from 60 years ago to create a words-fail-me beautiful tune about devastation from boll weevil invasion ("I see boll weevil, he's sittin' on the square, next time I see him, he got his family there"). Even an agrarian blog added some commentary about the veracity of the old folk tune's description of the biological reality. If you can't wait until the song comes up on the playlist, there's an mp3 still available here, but it cuts off the end of the song.

This made me think again about context in art. Somebody, likely a sharecropper with no education, performed this tremendous tune, and then it's dressed up with modern studio trickery, but has the essence really changed? Or was it just put in prettier frame?

Finally, for old time's sake, here's Talking Heads in all their geeky and funky glory from 1983:

Great Art and the American Commute

The former is no match for the latter:

This story rouses a roller-coaster of conflicting emotions: first, of infinite sadness for humanity, second of hope, because at least the kids consistently wanted to stop and listen to a great musician, and then of more sadness, because you know the curiosity and emotional receptiveness will be be wrung out of them with time.

(hat tip: David Kurtz at TPM)

Off to Aruba

I'll be back on the 14th, and I promise to return to daily posts when I get back. Look for an essay-length piece on the meaning of the term un-American (hint: I don't really side with Joe McCarthy), a buttload of book reviews, and of course, many photos of Aruba. Until then, dkon has the floor, and if you have some time on your hands, read Atrios, Talking Points Memo, and Digby's blog for national news, check out our friends' blogs, and consider donating to the llama of the month or the previous charities. Thanks, y'all. Hasta semana.

One little goat, one little goat, that Father bought for two zuzim.

It's the first night of passover tonight (we just had a lovely Seder with some of the wife's coworkers, and in the spirit of the holidays, the time has come to choose this months Rooted Cosmopolitans Charity of the Month. This month, we'll be guided by the notion of Tzedakah, the religious concept in Judaism that translates roughly into charity, but with a notion of social justice as well. According to Maimonides, perhaps the greatest philosopher among the medieval rabbis, the highest form of Tzedakah is:

Giving a poor person work (or loaning him money to start a business) so he will not have to depend on charity. This is because the person is now free from having to rely on charity. The giver has not just helped the recipient for the short while, but instead for the rest of their life.

In honor of a rather familiar passover song, we're going to try to give a family a goat, which means that the Charity of the Month is The Heifer Project. Operating worldwide, they give animals to needy families, but also teach them about sustainable agriculture and then ask them to pass along this knowledge, along with the female offspring of the animal, to their neighbors, strengthening communities worldwide.

Heifer International works to ensure that the gift of each animal will eventually help an entire community to become self-sustaining. Animals such as goats, water buffalo and camels are seven M animals- they provide meat, milk, muscle, manure, money, materials and motivation. Once its immediate needs have been met, a family is free to sell any excess at market. Heifer International provides a breeding animal along with the gift animal so that it can produce offspring. Participating families are required to "pass on the gift", that is: they must give at least one of the female offspring to a neighbor who has undergone Heifer's training. In time, that neighbor will pass along one of the offspring of its animal, and so on.

To make things more convenient, I've set up a gift registry on their website, which can be found here. In honor of passover, we have the option of giving a goat, or for the Simon's Rockers out there, you may also choose a llama. No need to buy an entire animal all at once, you can buy fractions of an animal as well (apparently, they wait until the fractions add up to a whole, rather than shipping them a leg or piece of a torso at a time). I chipped in for a share of both a goat and a llama, and I'm counting on our dear readers to finish off one of the two. C'mon people! Everyone needs a llama or goat! We can make this happen. Do it for the kids (that's a pun, y'all)!

Help us buy a llama!

All images and graphics in this post are copyright of Heifer International, of course.

Man's best friend outside of a dog, 7: Persepolis 1 and 2, by Marjane Satrapi

Continuing the Iranian theme we had in the last book review, tonight we've got a pair of graphic novels from an Iranian expat who now lives in France. For those unfamiliar with the term, which seems unlikely given the known preferences of most of our readership, graphic novels are long-form comic books.

Compared to most of the other prominent graphic novelists out there, Satrapi is quite the crude illustrator, preferring a rather simplistic drawing style with a black and white palette. She has a few pretty poetic touches, but nothing to compare to the more artistic panels in Maus or something done by a professional illustrator, like V for Vendetta or The Watchmen. Then again, that's not really the point. She has a story to tell, and comics are her medium of choice. The graphic elements certainly are there to add to the story, but it is the narrative that makes or breaks it. How is that narrative you ask? It is interesting certainly, a very personal take on growing up, first in Iran during the Revolution, later in Europe as a teenager, and finally in Iran as a twentysomething.

Satrapi lacks much of the intellectual grounding that Azar Nafisi, the author of Reading Lolita in Tehran, but she may be better at describing her own situation (Nafisi is certainly more gifted at describing that of others). This is both a blessing as a curse in her case: she is able to describe her own reactions to situations throughout her childhood and teenage years in great detail, but the result is something less than sympathetic at times, even though she is the one telling the story about herself. Maybe it's me speaking as someone who kind of missed out on their rebellious phase, but while I understand that life's troubles can be hard to deal with, I can't help but have mixed feelings about some of the situations the author put herself into. Then again, this may be part of her point: life can put us in impossible situations, frequently in the case of Revolutionary Iran, but we can also put ourselves into similarly difficult spots through our own handiwork.

Just like in the reading Lolita, we see again that the standard perceptions of Iranians is a poor reflection of the society as a whole (one could make the same claim about Iraq, or just about anywhere else, of course). The upper class in Iraq was, and remains, extremely Western in outlook, and the middle class seems to be more concerned with what people in the middle class are typically concerned about than about most of the religious nonsense put forth by the government. Iran, like many nations, is propped up by the blood of the masses (who were slaughtered during the Iraq-Iran war), and that seems to be where the current religious officials still draw most of their support. Somehow, reactionaries always seem to know that they can prey upon the religiously guided ignorance of large segments of the population in many nations, even those that one would think too modern to fall under their spell (cough, Karl Rove, cough).

In the broader sense, these books should serve as a reminder that wars are really, really bad. Yeah, I know, some insight there, but go with me on this one. The US was busy supplying arms to Iraq in the 80's, in order to contain the Iranians, to whom we were also supplying arms, but less publicly. This containment managed to strengthen the mullahs in Iran, strengthen Hussein to become the figure we became familiar with during our wars against him, and generally made a mess of the region. Scarily enough, these weren't our biggest strategic mistakes at the time. That would be our support for the Taliban in Afghanistan. I think it is fair to suggest that when we encourage our bastards over there to fight against the other bastards over there, the result is generally a lot of dead people, a lot more poorer people who will be more likely to get behind unsavory leaders, and a bunch of formerly weak unsavory leaders who are now much stronger unsavory leaders. This is not idle speculation, given that we are rather actively supporting the government of Ethiopia during their current efforts to boot out Islamic militias in Somalia. Needless to say, I predict that this will likely lead to the standard awful results in the coming years, which is really saying something when you are talking about Ethiopia and Somalia getting worse (think famine and Black Hawk Down for our current images of both nations).

Anyway, back to Persepolis. I'm not entirely sold on Satrapi as a particularly good storyteller, but she lived through incredibly interesting times, and that counts for an awful lot in a memoir. I learned more than a bit from the books, and would recommend them to anyone in a heartbeat. They are two long comic books in the end, not War and Peace, and more than justify the minimal time it takes to read them. Go do so!

BTW, we announce the next Rooted Cosmopolitans Charity of the Month tomorrow, so donate to Doctors Without Borders today of you haven't done so already. Also, the Mets won the first game of the season, so let's see if they can go wire-to-wire in first place. Expect much more baseball here coming soon!