Category Archives: Books

Recent Reads—Fell, Sandman, Batman: Year 100, A People’s History of Science

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Clifford Conner’s A People’s History of Science: Miners, Midwives and Low Mechanicks offers a nice corrective to the great-man history that often serves as the discipline’s founding myth. While notable names from Pythagoras to Newton receive attention, Conner’s focus is on the unnamed artisans, craftsman and observers of nature who incrementally created a body of knowledge through countless hours of labor. He inverts the notion that scientific advancements are rooted in theory, showcasing quotes from eminent researchers throughout history about the value of the knowledge possessed by the “miners, midwives and mechanicks” cited in the title. (The relative uselessness of the classical curriculum offered by Oxford and other academies throughout much of their aristocratic past is oft-referenced as well.)

The book is most fascinating at the beginning, when it explores the knowledge and learning of traditional cultures, touching upon the astronomy of prehistoric people and the advanced navigational skills of Polynesian sailors. The book falters a bit as it nears modern times; it lacks a comprehensive take on the successes of modern, professional science, and it also falls into the trap of muddling research and politics. Systematic theories of nature, rightfully frowned upon by Conner when they’re formulated by the Greeks, are presented as a compelling alternative during the French Revolution.

Ultimately, the book is refreshing in presenting a more democratic history of science. Great anecdotes and a lively contrarian nature make for a good read.

Continue reading Recent Reads—Fell, Sandman, Batman: Year 100, A People’s History of Science →

Falling Short

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With Great Experiment, his short story in the March 31 issue of the New Yorker, Jeffrey Eugenides furthers his reputation as one of the most pitch-perfect authors writing today. The story focuses on Kendall, a former literary up-and-comer whose arc has atrophied, but it isn’t an examination of art and compromise. Instead, it’s rooted at the ground level, with concerns about time and money and health insurance—all of which Kendall and his family lack—and the sense that some fundamental inequity lies behind these unmet needs.

With small details—an open oven providing a brief respite from a fixed thermostat, a mound of laundry that expands organically—Eugenides conjures an unbroken sense of strain. Underlying the unease is the prevailing belief that normal moral codes have stalled in the face of larger, unpunished misdeeds.

The example set on high wasn’t one of probity and full disclosure. It was anything but.

When Kendall was growing up, American politicians denied that the United States was an empire. But they weren’t doing that anymore. They’d given up. Everyone knew about the empire now. Everyone was pleased.

And in the streets of Chicago, as in the streets of L.A., New York, Houston, and Oakland, the message was making itself known. A few weeks back, Kendall had seen the movie “Patton” on TV. He’d been reminded that the general had been severely punished for slapping a soldier. Whereas now Rumsfeld ran free from responsibility for Abu Ghraib. Even the President, who’d lied about W.M.D., had been reëlected. In the streets, people took the point. Victory was what counted, power, muscularity, doublespeak if necessary. You saw it in the way people drove, in the way they cut you off, gave you the finger, cursed. Women and men alike, showing rage and toughness. Everyone knew what he wanted and how to get it. Everybody you met was nobody’s fool.

One’s country was like one’s self. The more you learned about it, the more you were ashamed of.

The agonized tone seems to mirror Eugenides own disquiet, but it’s also subsumed to a larger narrative, one that builds to a queasy ending. Overall, the feeling is one of resignation, lending the story an understated, desperate tone. No one believes things are going to get better; the safe bet is that they’ll only get worse.

Not Quite Invincible

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Austin Grossman’s novel, “Soon I Will Be Invincible,” is a prose distillation of the world of superheroes, taking the heavy hitters, absurd plot twists, and insane plans of comic book lore and condensing them into a single narrative. Extradimensional energies and stray magic wands bestow powers and take them away; a supervillain endeavors to pull the planet out of orbit; and Batman, Wonder Woman, Doctor Strange and Superman all weigh in via slightly flawed homologues.

Grossman offers an internalization of the medium, one that’s hard to achieve on the illustrated page. Half of the proceedings—the better half—is dedicated to Lex Luthor stand-in Dr. Impossible rationalizing his motivations as he walks us through his latest evil scheme, assuring us, constantly, of his genius. “I often wonder what Einstein would have done in my position,” he ponders at one point. “Einstein was smart, maybe even as smart as Laserator, but he played it way too safe. Then again, nobody even threw a grappling hook at Einstein.”

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So Mr. Darcy Walks Into a Parlor…

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We often hear that humor, unlike wine, doesn’t age well. Rob the joke of its context, the argument goes, and it’s often stripped of its ability to make the listener laugh. Barbs rooted in the details of their day wither—think of old political cartoons, the fine points of which often elude us, as this example shows. (Beyond the fact that the anthropomorphic bull has a drinking problem, I’m not too sure what’s going on.)

But other themes are universal, and thus timeless. Love, debt, arrogance and mortification about what your family just said in public have been with us throughout history. These themes lie at the heart of Pride and Prejudice, a warm, humanistic novel that takes great delight in puncturing our shared human frailties.

The book’s plot uses a standard romantic-comedy framework. Indeed, the novel, written by Jane Austen in 1813, can credibly claim to have invented the mold. There’s hatred, then love, obstacles and misunderstandings, all with a big, happy ending to tie it together.

But what registers most is the wit. Austen’s characters benefit from the loquacious style of their time. They deliver ornate insults, the kind that take a minute to register and a lifetime to rebut. The excess courtesy of the era helps to inspire the comedy of manners, as indirectness and excess flattery establish a perpetual contrast between the superficial politeness of the speech and the sharp barbs contained within.

That humor is hard to capture in excerpts, as its effect is cumulative, building up through keen characterization and a number of perfectly expressed (and often absurd) characters. It’s abundant in the book, however, and retains the ability to make the reader laugh out loud, even after nearly 200 years.

Life and Death in the Public Eye

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The Chicago Reader has published its annual fiction issue, and one story worth checking out is Song for Dana Plato by Whet Moser. The piece is inspired by a real-life incident of Wayne Newton bailing troubled former Diff’rent Strokes star Dana Plato out of prison after she robbed a Las Vegas video store with a pellet gun. Moser uses this account as a launching point to explore larger issues of celebrity and human dignity.

His reimagining of real events and people is reminiscent of Jim Shepard’s excellent stories on John Ashcroft and John Entwhistle in his short-story collection Love and Hydrogen. Readers can debate whether stories in this vein are exploiting their subjects or enlivening them, but I’ve enjoyed the results in each instance. By appropriating the voice of a public figure, Moser and Shepard highlight the complexities of public image—and personal identity—in the media age.

We’re conditioned to feel we know celebrities (and to judge them as well—witness the poor Spears family), but we don’t. By offering a fictionalized glimpse into their inner lives, stories such as these humanize their subjects, providing one interpretation as to how they’ve been shaped by the society around them. At the same time, they also further that sense of false intimacy, leading to an interesting literary (and ethical) muddle.