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Around (and Out of) the World (April Reading)
Thunderstruck (Erik Larson): The invention of radio and the killer caught because of it. The story of Marconi's OCD approach to wireless communication and his extravagant lifestyle might is interesting, and the story of the investigation of Belle Elmore / Cora Crippen's murder by her husband is also interesting, but somehow, Larson uses the two threads of narrative against each other and makes each story less interesting by intercutting. There is a great story about Marconi's thoughtless neglect of his wife to parallel Belle Elmore's domination of her despised husband; there is a splendid story about the American and the Italian struggling in foreign London; there's Marconi's tendency to live a first-class life while his employees roughed it in isolated wireless stations, and Hawley Crippen's struggles to keep his demanding wife in the style to which she became accustomed; but somehow, Larson makes all of this fire and ice lukewarm, even Crippen's affair with his secretary. How one makes an escape to the Continent, under an assumed name, with your very female lover cross-dressing as your "son" kind of "meh" is beyond me. It's interesting material, but it's not delivered as evocatively as it could be.
Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture (Ariel Levy): This is in-your-face Feminism 101, and I am past the 100-level stuff. Levy's premise is spelled out in the title: some women "succeed" by aping the chauvanist pigs who benefit from heteronormative American patriarchy, while others are overtly degraded and objectified by men, and now also women imitating men.
I think you could say Levy isn't a fan of pornography and "let it all hang out" attitudes in much the same way that I am not a fan of milk: it gives me indigestion and gas. Levy is pretty one-note in her condemnation, and - this is my big problem - doesn't offer suggestions toward what she would consider a healthy model of adult female sexuality. Bashing the existing set of options is easy (partly because so many of them are just awful, and if you think I'm wrong I have unkind words to say, drawn from my personal experiences), but if it were easy it would already be done.
Also, I haven't followed a Girls Gone Wild photoshoot around during spring break; if I did, I might want to say a strident and unkind word too.
Intuition (Allegra Goodman): It's like Byatt's Possession, but shorter and with more science! A postdoc accuses one of her fellow postdocs of falsifying records, and it's tremendously uncomfortable and upsetting for everyone who works or worked in the lab. Goodman knows - or learned - just enough about science to make the story depressingly plausible. Things like
Talent and intelligence, not to mention tireless hard wor, got lab scientists through the door, but - this was the dirty secret - you needed luck. (HC p18)
and excerpts from the lexicon of Feng:
Successful grant proposal (idiom): "major disaster, long-term"
Analyze (verb): "to flounder"
Hypothesis (noun): "highly flawed thinking"
Conference (noun): "cancer junket"
Government Appropriations for Cancer Research: GAC (acronym): "sick tax"
Breakthrough (noun): "artifact"
(p25)
are entirely true. Research can be utterly abysmal, if you let it be your life. And that's just the experiments: how do you get grant money, and how do you survive the people you have to work with? Look at Sandy, the lab rainmaker!
This was Sandy's genius as a public speaker. He never let his own words run away with him, but invited every doctor and researcher in his audience to run away with his message, and discover its significance. (p115)
While it was hard for Sandy to keep track of the details at home, he was attuned to the lab and everyone in it. He did not love the lab more than his family, but he thought about it more. (p117)
Who could live with that sort of love, and not feel something missing?
But then there is Robin and Cliff. Just think, if they hadn't broken up, lines like
He [Cliff] lacked her [Robin's] perfect recall of every argument. Nor did he possess her hair-trigger imagination, her ability to find a slight in every argument. (p153)
would never have been applicable, and Robin might have declined to poke at Cliff's notebook and find his... lack of moral character.
The thing is, these 300 pages of despair are technically correct, but neglect the flipside of the coin: the moments when things work right, when an idea comes together or some small part od the experimental procedure goes right and it makes you happy. Plus the other parts of a balanced lab life: socializing, finding non-lab hobbies to balance out your hard work, interacting with people who believe in the same ideals you share, even if they're in a different field.
Larry and Wendy were both atheists, of course, but they kept the scientific faith, hallowing intellectual honesty and technology, and the persuit of progress. Though they were nerdy, they were pure of heart. (p183)
Note that "atheists, of course". Intuition grasps a depressing average but ignores the individualizing quirks that make science - and life - so interesting.
And there's also the inquiry into Cliff's data, which is excruciating for everyone involved: the accuser, the accused, the ostensible bystanders, who worked with Robin and Cliff for years before everyone got hauled in front of a jury for cross-questioning.
She had been granted a hearing, but she was nothing to these men; she had no rights or reputation, no useful results to offer, only her critique, her niggling doubts about a fine research paper, her failure to reproduce what Cliff had done so well. (p200)
Feng on the inquisition:
And yet, even in his anxiety, the violence of Robin's action overshadowed everything else. To go to the highest authorities and press charges on Cliff's data! She might as wellhave come into the lab with a knife and ripped Cliff's notes to shreds, and smashed the glassware, and seized the poor mice and thrown them against the wall . . . what had influenced her to act this way? Whose spell had she come under? (p229)
There are, however, two beautiful, shining moments, both toward the end of the novel. First, Redfield's mistake:
"Your rationalizations are no better then those of the Germans who collaborated with the Nazis."
. . .
"Sir," Sandy said, "I take exception to your remarks as a scientist, as an American, but above all, as a Jew. Six million of my people perished in the Holocaust, among them members of my own extended family. To compare my conduct to that of Nazi collaborators is an insult to me and to the entire Jewish community. To compare my conduct to that of the Nazi collaberators is an insult to me and to the entire Jewish community. Such a statement is beyond tasteless; it is deeply anti-Semitic, and I demand an apology." (p269-270)
It's Godwin's Law in science! If that doesn't make you a little giddy with the impending disasterous flamewar, and the way that Redfield may have been right, but now he's wrong, wrong, wrong (because if you invoke Nazis, you have forfeited by default), there's nothing I can say.
A lighter moment is Feng's keys, both true and slightly absurd:
He [Feng] had always particularly enjoyed the fact that no matter no matter how frantic you where looking for something, objects could not get up and move on their own from place to place. There was such satisfaction that your books or keys were so often exactly where you'd put them. (p326)
But the shining moment, analogous to - drat, what was his name - Roland's poetry: when Marion presents her paper findings at the very end, and the light of truth shines on everyone in that lights-off presentation. That is the second beautiful moment that makes the book stick with me, instead of being merely a depressing technical exercise.
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charlie_ego said the science was too far out of her field for her to comment on the details; cancer and mouse research isn't my sub-speciality, but the general tone rings true to my experiences of biological research.
Funny in Farsi: A Memoir of Growing Up Iranian in America (Firoozeh Dumas): Short, lightweight autobiography. The experiences of an Iranian girl transplanted to California: American food, Persian festivals far from a Persian community, the shame of a mother who speaks less English than her young daughter, changing American reactions to the foreigners with a funny name during the Lebanon hostage crisis. Reads like essays strung into chapters.
Miles Vorkosigan reread/power skim: A Civil Campaign, Memory, Komarr, Diplomatic Immunity, in about that order. Reading ACC after... whatever the heck else I'd been reading... was jarring; jumping from arguments about queerness and race to Kareen and Ekaterin's dilemma's was bit of a discontinuity. ACC remains very funny, but also too pat: every loose end tied up in a shiny neat bow. Miles and his cohort remain shielded by money and position: as Miles points out, he will never be an advocate for certain womens' rights, such as the right to inherit, on Barrayar. Which is why I love Memory most: it's very much about faults and mistakes, even when it's about Miles refusing to believe the accused (who happen to be his friends) are guilty. God save me from another such victory. And LMB has a knack for lines. Don't you know there are children almost present?
Numbers games: 8 total. 4 reread, 4 new; 5 fiction, 3 nonfiction.
Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture (Ariel Levy): This is in-your-face Feminism 101, and I am past the 100-level stuff. Levy's premise is spelled out in the title: some women "succeed" by aping the chauvanist pigs who benefit from heteronormative American patriarchy, while others are overtly degraded and objectified by men, and now also women imitating men.
I think you could say Levy isn't a fan of pornography and "let it all hang out" attitudes in much the same way that I am not a fan of milk: it gives me indigestion and gas. Levy is pretty one-note in her condemnation, and - this is my big problem - doesn't offer suggestions toward what she would consider a healthy model of adult female sexuality. Bashing the existing set of options is easy (partly because so many of them are just awful, and if you think I'm wrong I have unkind words to say, drawn from my personal experiences), but if it were easy it would already be done.
Also, I haven't followed a Girls Gone Wild photoshoot around during spring break; if I did, I might want to say a strident and unkind word too.
Intuition (Allegra Goodman): It's like Byatt's Possession, but shorter and with more science! A postdoc accuses one of her fellow postdocs of falsifying records, and it's tremendously uncomfortable and upsetting for everyone who works or worked in the lab. Goodman knows - or learned - just enough about science to make the story depressingly plausible. Things like
Talent and intelligence, not to mention tireless hard wor, got lab scientists through the door, but - this was the dirty secret - you needed luck. (HC p18)
and excerpts from the lexicon of Feng:
Successful grant proposal (idiom): "major disaster, long-term"
Analyze (verb): "to flounder"
Hypothesis (noun): "highly flawed thinking"
Conference (noun): "cancer junket"
Government Appropriations for Cancer Research: GAC (acronym): "sick tax"
Breakthrough (noun): "artifact"
(p25)
are entirely true. Research can be utterly abysmal, if you let it be your life. And that's just the experiments: how do you get grant money, and how do you survive the people you have to work with? Look at Sandy, the lab rainmaker!
This was Sandy's genius as a public speaker. He never let his own words run away with him, but invited every doctor and researcher in his audience to run away with his message, and discover its significance. (p115)
While it was hard for Sandy to keep track of the details at home, he was attuned to the lab and everyone in it. He did not love the lab more than his family, but he thought about it more. (p117)
Who could live with that sort of love, and not feel something missing?
But then there is Robin and Cliff. Just think, if they hadn't broken up, lines like
He [Cliff] lacked her [Robin's] perfect recall of every argument. Nor did he possess her hair-trigger imagination, her ability to find a slight in every argument. (p153)
would never have been applicable, and Robin might have declined to poke at Cliff's notebook and find his... lack of moral character.
The thing is, these 300 pages of despair are technically correct, but neglect the flipside of the coin: the moments when things work right, when an idea comes together or some small part od the experimental procedure goes right and it makes you happy. Plus the other parts of a balanced lab life: socializing, finding non-lab hobbies to balance out your hard work, interacting with people who believe in the same ideals you share, even if they're in a different field.
Larry and Wendy were both atheists, of course, but they kept the scientific faith, hallowing intellectual honesty and technology, and the persuit of progress. Though they were nerdy, they were pure of heart. (p183)
Note that "atheists, of course". Intuition grasps a depressing average but ignores the individualizing quirks that make science - and life - so interesting.
And there's also the inquiry into Cliff's data, which is excruciating for everyone involved: the accuser, the accused, the ostensible bystanders, who worked with Robin and Cliff for years before everyone got hauled in front of a jury for cross-questioning.
She had been granted a hearing, but she was nothing to these men; she had no rights or reputation, no useful results to offer, only her critique, her niggling doubts about a fine research paper, her failure to reproduce what Cliff had done so well. (p200)
Feng on the inquisition:
And yet, even in his anxiety, the violence of Robin's action overshadowed everything else. To go to the highest authorities and press charges on Cliff's data! She might as wellhave come into the lab with a knife and ripped Cliff's notes to shreds, and smashed the glassware, and seized the poor mice and thrown them against the wall . . . what had influenced her to act this way? Whose spell had she come under? (p229)
There are, however, two beautiful, shining moments, both toward the end of the novel. First, Redfield's mistake:
"Your rationalizations are no better then those of the Germans who collaborated with the Nazis."
. . .
"Sir," Sandy said, "I take exception to your remarks as a scientist, as an American, but above all, as a Jew. Six million of my people perished in the Holocaust, among them members of my own extended family. To compare my conduct to that of Nazi collaborators is an insult to me and to the entire Jewish community. To compare my conduct to that of the Nazi collaberators is an insult to me and to the entire Jewish community. Such a statement is beyond tasteless; it is deeply anti-Semitic, and I demand an apology." (p269-270)
It's Godwin's Law in science! If that doesn't make you a little giddy with the impending disasterous flamewar, and the way that Redfield may have been right, but now he's wrong, wrong, wrong (because if you invoke Nazis, you have forfeited by default), there's nothing I can say.
A lighter moment is Feng's keys, both true and slightly absurd:
He [Feng] had always particularly enjoyed the fact that no matter no matter how frantic you where looking for something, objects could not get up and move on their own from place to place. There was such satisfaction that your books or keys were so often exactly where you'd put them. (p326)
But the shining moment, analogous to - drat, what was his name - Roland's poetry: when Marion presents her paper findings at the very end, and the light of truth shines on everyone in that lights-off presentation. That is the second beautiful moment that makes the book stick with me, instead of being merely a depressing technical exercise.
charlie_ego said the science was too far out of her field for her to comment on the details; cancer and mouse research isn't my sub-speciality, but the general tone rings true to my experiences of biological research.Funny in Farsi: A Memoir of Growing Up Iranian in America (Firoozeh Dumas): Short, lightweight autobiography. The experiences of an Iranian girl transplanted to California: American food, Persian festivals far from a Persian community, the shame of a mother who speaks less English than her young daughter, changing American reactions to the foreigners with a funny name during the Lebanon hostage crisis. Reads like essays strung into chapters.
Miles Vorkosigan reread/power skim: A Civil Campaign, Memory, Komarr, Diplomatic Immunity, in about that order. Reading ACC after... whatever the heck else I'd been reading... was jarring; jumping from arguments about queerness and race to Kareen and Ekaterin's dilemma's was bit of a discontinuity. ACC remains very funny, but also too pat: every loose end tied up in a shiny neat bow. Miles and his cohort remain shielded by money and position: as Miles points out, he will never be an advocate for certain womens' rights, such as the right to inherit, on Barrayar. Which is why I love Memory most: it's very much about faults and mistakes, even when it's about Miles refusing to believe the accused (who happen to be his friends) are guilty. God save me from another such victory. And LMB has a knack for lines. Don't you know there are children almost present?
Numbers games: 8 total. 4 reread, 4 new; 5 fiction, 3 nonfiction.