The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet

 While I have not yet read Cloud Atlas or seen the film, I definitely want to do both (in that order), because I have read David Mitchell’s novel The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet a while ago and it was excellent.  It’s the story of Jacob, a young Dutch clerk who, engaged to be married and in search of fortune to support his future bride, sets sail in the year 1799 with the Dutch East India Company for the trading outpost in Dejima, Japan.  During the Edo Period, in an effort to avoid the incursion of Western culture into Japan, as was occurring in neighboring China, the Japanese government refused to allow any Europeans to actually set foot on the empire’s soil.  As a concession to trade, a man-made island in Nagasaki Bay, connected to the city by a bridge, served as the Dutch trading outpost.  It was the only European trading outpost in all of Japan and the Dutch were fortunate enough to be the only Europeans allowed access.  It is against this backdrop of rigid restrictions that Jacob finds himself falling in love with a Japanese midwife, Orito, one of the few Japanese allowed on the island of Dejima.  Mitchell’s novel is intricate and detailed historical fiction, but it’s far from dry; the details enliven the story and transplant you to a time and place little explored.  I think one of my favorite aspects of the book was that I knew so little about this encounter between the Dutch and the Japanese and everything about the relationship is so constrained, it’s like you are waiting for something to explode.  The plot weaves forbidden romance, ninjas, sieges, humor, prophecy, secret mountain monasteries...  Enough I feel like the Peter Falk in “The Princess Bride” trying to persuade Fred Savage to listen to the the story.  Just read it already!  You will not be able to put it down.

A Thanksgiving Book Review: The Memory Palace by Mira Bartok

The Memory Palace: A Memoir

One summer evening on my drive home, I was tuned into Fresh Air and I heard Terry Gross interview the writer and artist Mira Bartok about her memoir called The Memory Palace. Mira’s mother had schizophrenia and eventually became homeless as Mira and her sister were unable to help her or care for her.  I promptly ordered the book and threw it into my beach bag for a nice day of laying out in the sun.  Sooo the wrong choice.  I mean it’s definitely not odd for me grab a book about mental illness or homelessness and think, “oh yeah, beach reading, that’ll be perfect.”  So it wasn’t really the topic, except that it was.  The Memory Palace is a really moving and personal account of Mira and her sister’s struggle to grow up with a mother with debilitating mental illness and the equally difficult process of dealing with the fact that they simply could not take care of her at risk of their own safety and sanity.  I was laying on my beach towel, tears streaming down my face reading this book.  It’s very well written and engaging, and while it is moving, it’s not saccharine or sentimental because it is Mira’s real experiences, not some imagined version of the story.  The memoir also delves into memory and how memories are formed, reconstructed and preserved as Mira experienced a traumatic brain injury in a car accident that severely damaged her short term memory.

I highly recommend it as an interesting read, and for another perspective on homelessness.  The travesty that is our mental health care system lets people slip through the cracks all the time.  The current presiding policy: Better to let ten mentally ill people became homeless (or worse, think Jared Lee Loughner or James Eagan Holmes) than take away the civil liberties of one person who is mentally competent.  The stigma that still overshadows all mental health care doesn’t help either.  However, all of this is somewhat besides the point this Thanksgiving Day. 

I know Thanksgiving is almost over and we (myself included) are about to go gorge ourselves again, this time our consumerist tendencies, but let's try to hang onto some of that Thanksgiving spirit as we arm wrestle over the last Tickle Me Elmo - oh wait that was 1996. Well, over whatever toy kids "have" to have this year.

Here's the parting thought from The Memory Palace to see you through Black Friday and through the holidays.  One thing Mira talks about in the book is that knowing her mother was out there on the street, but not knowing where she was, changed the way she viewed homeless people.  She found that she began to give some of the homeless people she encountered food or water, thinking, “I hope someone is doing this for my mother right now.”  That experience humanized the homeless for her.  A thought I have since tried to hang onto when I pass by a huddled figure on the sidewalk or in the park, though it is not easy and I still mostly fail.

Improving Your Score on the Facebook BBC Book List Challenge

Okay, so if you are competitive about nerdy stuff like me, then the Facebook BBC Book List Challenge thing is really bugging you right now and you probably hate those smug assholes who have read all 100.  Then you pause for a minute and think, but I can live with myself if I never read Bridget Jones Diary (yeah, I can) and what normal person reads the entire Bible cover to cover? (Yeah, yeah literature references, blah, blah Western culture).  

However, after browsing the list once again most of the rest of the books look pretty good.  Obviously you could head to the library and start checking out stacks of classics, but if you are busy, and endowed with multiple digital devices that can act as readers (i.e. iPhone, iPad, Kindle) it's very easy and FREE to download many of the classic books on this list using the free apps and downloading from numerous free libraries, particularly Project Gutenberg.  It has a number of different ebook formats available for many classic works including: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle; most of Charles Dickens work, which is always entertaining, such as Bleak House or A Christmas Carol; Bram Stoker's Dracula; Pride and Prejudice and most of Jane Austen's work; the Bible; The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett, a childhood favorite of mine; Shakespeare, Zola, Fitzgerald, Hardy, Tolstoy, Twain, Melville, Flaubert, Joyce, all the Brontës, etc.  

I find that the free iPhone/iPad app Stanza works well for me and even includes a "night" profile with dark background and light text for reading in bed next to someone who is sleeping.  Downloading books with Stanza is the work of a moment, and it saves your place for you in the book, so when you come back the next time you don't have to thumb through it.

If you don't have a digital reading device and don't like reading on your computer, there's really only on thing you can do: go through your parents' attic and look for the boxes of books you were assigned in your high school English class but that you didn't read.  That should cover at least 10 of the books right away.  After that, just hit the library.

P.S. If you are looking for a less arduous and more entertaining way of consuming Genesis from the Bible, read The Book of Genesis Illustrated by R. Crumb.  It is so entertaining.  Check it out: http://www.amazon.com/Book-Genesis-Illustrated-R-Crumb/dp/0393061027.

News and Media Part 1: Review of Dennis McDougal's "Privileged Son"

Privileged Son: Otis Chandler and the Rise and Fall of the L.A. Times Dynasty the Micheneresque history of the LA Times written by former LA Times journalist Dennis McDougal is enlightening and an entertaining read.  The book traces the story of the Los Angeles Times and the powerful family that owned it for over a century until its sale the Tribune Company in 2000.  The dynasty that used its power, wealth, and influence to control the City of Los Angeles and its environs for nearly half a century was founded by staunchly anti-union newspaperman General Harrison Gray Otis and passed on to his acquisitive son-in-law with a rapaciousness that complemented his Protestant work ethic, Harry Chandler, the inspiration for Robert Towne's character Noah Cross in Chinatown.  The book is very well written and much less sugar-coated, apparently, than numerous histories of the Times that have preceded it.  For a resident of Los Angeles, I consider it no less than required reading if one wishes to understand this sprawling megapolis.  So much becomes clear; just by understanding a detailed history of the Chandler family financial interests, one can trace the development or lack thereof of numerous components of this fair city including the LADWP, the LAPD, public transit, urban sprawl, the aerospace industry, the ports...  The Chandlers had a hand in almost everything.

While the intrigue and corruption make for an interesting read, one through-line that appealed to me was the development of the Times as a paper and how it attempted to cover the news.  During the lifetime of General Otis and Harry Chandler, the paper was merely a tool for controlling local politicians and a mouthpiece for their virulent anti-union, arch-conservative politics.  Even with the control of the paper passing to Harry's son Norman, the paper remained a "Republican" paper.  It was not until Norman's son Otis took control of the paper in 1960 that the Los Angeles Times attempted to emulate the New York Times in terms of quality.  Intensely competitive, Otis Chandler wanted to have a good product and to him that meant critical recognition.  Otis wanted Pulitzers and  he wanted to beat the New York Times and for that he had to allow his paper to become a more "neutral" observer of society, and spend a lot more money hiring better reporters, comic artists, and opiners.  This brings up the questions of what  approach makes a paper "good," what sells, and what, if any, is the duty of journalists and publishers in publishing the news?

The 20th century saw a development of a set of codified journalism ethics that rely on objectivity and the public's right to know.  However, with the newspaper business seemingly in trouble, it has brought into the public debate the questions above as well as those of "why are newspapers failing?" and "what will be the vehicles and platforms of news and media consumption in the future?"  In a series of articles I intend to explore a number of these issues and at the risk of sounding like a media studies syllabus, I hope to delve into the following topics: the moral and civic "duty" of journalists, centrism vs. objectivity, and the fate of newspapers and future consumption platforms.

The Power of the Mind or what "The Men Who Stare at Goats" (Jon Ronson), and "Eat, Pray, Love" (Elizabeth Gilbert), "Bright-sided" (Barbara Ehrenreich) all have in common.

I think it’s okay write a book review on three books, one of which I have read in its entirety, the other I am currently reading, and the last of which I will probably never read.  Mostly I’m just interested in the intersections of these three books which have happened to thrust themselves upon me this week.  While I have been slogging my way through Eat, Pray, Love for a while now, neglecting it when something more interesting comes along, I flew though the 270ish page Jon Ronson expose of paranormal American intelligence techniques the past two days.  A few days ago I heard Barbara Ehrenreich discussing her new book critiquing “positive thinking” in American culture, blaming on it everything from the recent financial crisis to hypnotizing the American workforce into submission.  What struck me is that all of these books seem to have to do with the power of the mind in one way or another.

Currently in my reading of Elizabeth Gilbert, she is recounting her encounters with the divine through meditation and she describes a feeling of the divine inside of her.  In The Men Who Stare at Goats, Ronson’s contact Guy Savelli describes the same experience when he stares at hamsters and goats.  The evidence presented by Guy to Jon of his ability to fell goats and hamsters with his mind seemed pretty slim.  Jon was clearly not convinced of Guy’s ability and neither am I.  However, Guy was experiencing a feeling described by Elizabeth, which according to her is described by many people meditating, praying, or having a “divine” experience.  It seems like the mind is capable of transforming something, and if not the body it inhabits, what else?

This is where Bright-sided comes in.  As painful as it may be I really may have to read Barbara Ehrenreich’s book, so I can fully comment on it, but her critique of the use of “positive thinking” for healing purposes rubbed me the wrong way.  Her negativity and bitterness is so pervasive in all her work that I already really dislike her and anything she has to say, so I'm already prejudiced against her.  Granted, she is a cancer survivor, so maybe she has safely lodged herself in the impregnable fortress of self-righteousness on this one, but there is lots of evidence that positive thinking can affect the body.  I'm not saying it can cure cancer, but nothing she says will ever persuade me that it's as dangerous as she would have us believe.

Anyway, back to the rambling point.  Can the mind affect the outside world or the body?  Thoughts...?

P.S. Here's Barbara's rant so you can judge for yourself: 'Bright-Sided': When Happiness Doesn't Help