Life of Pi, by Yann Martel

Another book just lying around the house, as if it had volition of its own, waiting to be read. Someone had placed a copy on the end table in our guest bedroom which doubles as an office for me. I had just finished that le Carré novel and picked up Pi. Channeling those ancient Greek philosophers I’ll try to define the book by what it is not. It is not superlatively written and it is not full of revolutionary ideas. But that hardly goes anywhere. It is, however, an accessible, easy read with lots of humor. It has a spiritual and philosophic edge as any story might that narrates a teenage boy surviving at sea in a 20 foot lifeboat with a 500 pound untamed bengal tiger. As improbable as that situation sounds, it makes for great suspense. By far the most entertaining and interesting part of the story is the unfolding of how Pi manages to survive the initial onslaught of storm and instability of the tiger/hyena/zebra/orangutan dynamic aboard the lifeboat and the subsequent détente between tiger and boy. As a guide for life, the tale may fall short for many. But for others, it may serve as a compass for a deeper, more enriching way to live. I suppose that is up to you to decide. That being said, it’s a fun read and not terribly professorial; a little bit for everybody. As an aside, I tried to see the Ang Lee film adaptation in Florida while visiting my father and the theater lost power halfway through -  about 10 minutes after the ship sank; I haven’t seen the rest. Probably not a film for little kids (I have a six year old boy and won’t take him). The first 40 minutes or so are quite slow and a little kid would probably fidget too much (unless you gave them Benadryl, which I don’t advise as a physician, unless they are having an allergic reaction to something). 

A Most Wanted Man, by John le Carré

About 18 months ago I read Our Kind of Traitor by le Carré and feel similarly about this novel. Certainly not one of his best even of his post – Cold War era books (echoing that former post). I am especially disappointed by the reviews that it got, or seemed to by the blurbs that decorate the book’s cover, back cover and inside pages. The New York Times Book Review, for example, writes, “This is le Carré’s strongest, most powerful novel…One of the best he’s ever written.” Really? Now, that is not the entire review and admittedly I have not read the review. Anything written by him prior to 1985 is superior. And that’s for starters. Another, even greater disappointment is the lack of character development. Weak when compared to his prior works. And the writing is bland and unexciting; felt like I was reading one of those pop thriller/espionage writers. OK. Enough – that is plenty of digital space spent on this novel.

Oblivion, by David Foster Wallace

It’s probably because I am a parent that I was so traumatized by Wallace’s shortest in this collection of short stories. Incarnations of Burned Children left a hollow feeling in me for days that I still cannot shake entirely. And I thought what else lays in store for me if I continue to read this collection. I went back to it. I thought well, it can’t get any worse than that. And I am glad that I did – the stories that followed are exceptional reads. All are quite good and a few are noteworthy for this brief space. “Oblivion” presents the conflict between a man and wife over his snoring. He insists that he is not snoring, that he is in fact wide awake when she routinely awakens and yells at him in the middle of the night. She insists that he is snoring and is in denial. We are narrated by the husband and the backdrop to the story is the wife’s family and the relationship between the man and his in-laws. The end is sudden and surprising. Another fine read is about a man who is preparing to kill himself. He goes to great trouble to narrate his “fraudulence” – why he is a fraud, when he learned that he was one (age 4, I recall?) and how it has impacted his relationships (with his girlfriends, psychiatrist) and with the world at large. These long, self-insightful passages reminded me passingly of Dostoevsky’s short story “Notes from the Underground,” one I couldn’t finish reading, where a misanthrope goes on and on about his not so positive relationship with people and the world. Wallace’s is a moody, but surprisingly uplifting, tale. The long narrative musings on time and what happens after death are brilliantly paced, atmospheric and tightly written. The name has “Neon” in it – cannot recall the complete title. The last story that I should mention is the “The Suffering Channel.” A great, galloping ride down modern America’s obsession with entertainment (echoing a theme from Infinite Jest) and fashion. Satirical and dark. Capturing the wonder of Wallace’s writing is an impossible task, you just have to read it for yourself. A review of this collection stated something like, “reading Wallace is like listening to the best kind of rock band” – that about sums it up.

Neuromancer, by William Gibson

Probably most remarkable for the time in which it was written. 1984. Not Orwellian. Rather, a bit prescient with its fantastic landscape of “cyberspace.” Gibson is credited with coining the term and his story takes place in a digi-surreal world where the boundaries between computer “world” and the physical one are blurred. Certain skilled operators can glide virtually through cyberspace while being “jacked in” with “trodes” via a computer terminal called a “deck.” One immediately summons scenes from the Matrix (movie) and wonders if those authors weren’t inspired by Gibson. The Sprawl (name given to the data landscape) and the technology, however, are only the scaffolding on which sits a mystery pursued by a private investigator of sorts – a mystery that unfolds in detective novel fashion. A good story and a fantastic landscape with some cool thoughts on technology. The author is definitely ahead of his time. Good read – but a bit convoluted and difficult with all the foreign terminology. But once you are accustomed, the atmosphere (dreamy, surreal, weird) coupled with the unfolding mystery are worth the effort.

The Crying of Lot 49, by Thomas Pynchon

I liked it better the second time around. Pynchon’s works were too dense for my underdeveloped brain when I first started reading him in my twenties. Like a badge of honor I made my way through this book, Vineland, V and Gravity’s Rainbow back in the early 1990’s. I don’t remember much of any of them and, admittedly, left them at the time a bit confused. If this reading is any indication, I should revisit his others as well. Fun read and crafted with a prose that is sharp and delicious. Conspiratorial, in both content and tone, set against a backdrop of whacky California culture and an odd set of curious characters that dance in and out of the protagonist’s life over a week’s period. Ms. Oedipa Maas (don’t get me started on the funny names throughout, no doubt some with hidden meaning I didn’t perseverate on, that include her husband Mucho, her psychiatrist Dr. Hilarius, the dead lover whose estate she is executing, Pierce Inverarity, Genghis Cohen, Mike Fallopian, you get the gist) is the vehicle for a tightly woven paranoid’s dream. She cannot, nor can the reader, discern the truth from an elaborate hoax. Lurking just beneath the surface of our everyday life is a centuries’ old battle between two postal distribution companies: the real European “Thurn and Taxis” (they did exist, apparently and the Pynchonesque “Tristero” which appears in the guise of a muted postal horn here, there and everywhere along with vague textual references in an obscure play (as an aside, gave me the feel of a “play within a play”) and subtly altered stamps (well, more like weird and deviantly altered stamps…).There’s even an encounter with a group of inventors that are somehow tied to an underground organization (the same Tristero organization?) who purportedly invented a machine that harnesses “Maxwell’s Demon” to create a perpetual motion machine (this “demon” was part of a thought experiment by James Clerk Maxwell, one of the great minds in physics which I won’t get into here but can be searched easily enough) that reminds me too vividly of that subset of Americans who believe in things like this, along with government conspiracies of all types (for starters suppressing new energy technology in order to prop up the oil interests and car manufacturers, faking the moon landing – for a nice rebuttal of this check out Phil Plait’s site “Bad Astronomy,” sanctioning the World Trade Center disaster in 2011, controlling the minds/sedating the public by spraying them with chemicals from jet airplanes – aka “chemtrails”, water fluoridation and all associated evils, and many others...). And the text is more than just this paranoid’s dream. It crackles with beautiful writing: “Either way, they’ll call it paranoia. They. Either you have stumbled indeed, without the aid of LSD or other indole alkaloids, onto a secret richness and concealed density of dream; onto a network by which X number of Americans are truly communicating whilst reserving their lies, recitations of routine, arid betrayals of spiritual poverty, for the official government delivery system; maybe even onto a real alternative to the exitlessness, to the absence of surprise to life, that harrows the head of everybody American you know, and you too, sweetie. Or you are hallucinating it.” But the hoax, if this is a hoax, in The Crying of Lot 49, is woven so tight that Ms. Maas has no escape. She has either uncovered this great conspiracy or is descending into a paranoid’s madness. As readers, we are left to wonder as well, but it is not our world to be stuck in and we are left to reflect on our own propensity to search for conspiracy when there really is none or, perhaps more deeply, to try to find meaning in a sometimes, otherwise, meaningless world. Or, at the very least, try to avoid that “exitlessness” and “absence of surprise” without falling victim to delusional fears.

Townie, by Andre Debus III

I don’t self-identify with New Englanders having spent the majority of my life in New Jersey. And I was fortunate to have not grown up in a tough mill town in Massachusetts (my brother-in-law Dan did, who loaned me a copy of this book). Nevertheless, the beginning of Debus’ memoir is compelling and I was ready for his tale. The author’s narrative of a long, torturous Saturday run with his father is solid prose with a great tempo. I lost my feel for his story, however. I don’t know how much this is due to my lack of familiarity with Haverhill, Massachusetts or just to my discomfort with his narrative style. It feels like a sustained staccato burst of sequences from the author’s childhood, some inter-related, but oftentimes giving the feeling that much is missing as one who leaves the room in the middle of a movie and returns 20 minutes later – there is a familiarity, yet a sense that something important was missed. I stopped reading after about a quarter of the memoir. This is not reflection on the quality of writing; it just didn’t stick.

Critical Mass, by Carter Plymton Hydrick

Extensively referenced (and relatively convincing) thesis on how the U.S. procured German enriched uranium for use in production of its atomic bombs near the end of World War II. The book is divided into two distinct parts. The first being the timeline and production obstacles associated with the Manhattan Project 1942 -1945. This gives a nice background to some of the basic physics behind the atomic bomb (minimal), the political and military backdrop to the Manhattan Project under General Groves and the production problems associated with enriching uranium. There is also a nice section on parallel efforts in Germany to do the same under the Nazi regime. Equally detailed in this first section is information on the capture/surrender of a German U-Boat which, according to this theory, delivered German enriched uranium and German timing fuses necessary to the production of American bombs. The second part of the book is a carefully constructed argument as to how Martin Bormann orchestrated the delivery of these German materials to the Americans in exchange for his escape from Germany during the last days of the Reich in 1945. There are nice (brief) sections on how Martin Bormann rose to influence in the Nazi regime and arguments both for and against him escaping Germany alive. The author makes a genuine effort to draw conclusions based on best available evidence – some compelling, much lacking. Due to the dearth of hard evidence to support his hypothesis (e.g. that Martin Bormann survived the war), the author is left with an argument based on circumstantial evidence. Many of the author’s references are other books while some are actual government documents. At times the book has a conspiratorial tone. But, to his credit, the author comes clean and admits the paucity of hard evidence and is transparent with his belief in his thesis. It is likely that the truth will never be known. But what is known is that the U.S. managed to detonate two atomic bombs in Japan and lead the charge into the nuclear age. A good read if you are interested in military history or just like a juicy “how the U.S. government conspired to hide this from the world” book.

Infinite Jest, by David Foster Wallace

One of my more entertaining reads in recent years. The dense prose and alternatingly hilarious and horrifying sequences of addiction and withdrawal and their attendant mental torture grip you by the throat and don’t let go. The criticism of modern American excess is like a sledgehammer to the forehead. And it’s meant to be. After all, an obsessively clean, former crooner elected President who realigns the U.S. northern border (laying waste to large parts of Canada as well) to create a tidy waste disposal region is anything but subtle. Also not so subtle is the appropriation of video as a means of excess-induced death by “pleasure.”  But these are mere vehicles for showing off Wallace’s brilliant prose – especially if the indulgence of which by the reader mirrors the novel’s underlying theme. I couldn’t help reading it through to the end, all thousand pages plus notes. This is not exactly like reading Pynchon, to whom some compare the author. Pynchon is denser and a bit more obtuse (I’ve read Crying of Lot 49, V, and Gravity’s Rainbow). Wallace’s writing is comparably lyrical and a bit more accessible. If the material wasn’t at times so sordid (how else to describe a bespoilt, filthy transvestite heroin addict racking with symptoms of withdrawal holed-up in a public library bathroom?) one could liken reading Wallace to slipping into a cool spring on a hot summer day with the soft steady splash of a waterfall only interrupted by forest birds and a gentle breeze. Still, an apt comparison, maybe, despite the toughness of the subject matter. I am finishing off a five year run living in the greater Boston area (Watertown) and working at a hospital in the Longwood medical complex. I ride my bicycle and/or run to work every day traversing the areas of Brighton and Allston that are the backdrop for much of the story. For this the novel resonated even more.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, by Rebecca Skloot

I am biased by having worked in the medical world (I am a physician/pathologist) for the past ten plus years. To me, this tale is mostly about Ms. Lacks and her family. More specifically, a tale of her descendants who carry the weight, in varying proportions and with varying obsession, of the “cells” that were cultured from Ms. Lacks’ cervical cancer and led to many groundbreaking advances in medical technology. For the non-medical professional, the world of the scientists at Hopkins and elsewhere is a dark and mysterious place. It is clouded with ideas that are foreign, if not difficult to understand; the language is opaque. Members of Henrietta’s family (brother, son) harbor resentment at Hopkins for “stealing” their mother’s cells and then allowing others to make money off of them. I keep waiting for some sort of understanding on their part as to the basics of what exactly transpired. It never really happens, even with the protagonist/daughter (Deborah). Much of the tale is an effort to navigate this lack of understanding. Hovering over the narrative is the history of cell and tissue culture and medicine in general over the past 60 plus years. Medicine is a human enterprise fraught with error and greed, just like every other human enterprise. The procurement of tumor without consent does not happen today, but it was common medical practice in Henrietta’s time. The man who cultured the tumor cells did not make any money off of them – he gave them away. It was later groups (starting with the government) who profited from the mass production and distribution of the cell line. Ms. Skloot’s narrative is a well-paced and informative read; some of the historical anecdotes are funny, enlightening and maybe even a little frightening. But, in the end, it does not make the medical profession look bad (at least in my eyes - but I live in the field and see things from a different perspective). Some readers may not be so forgiving.

Ant colonies and the prisoner's dilemma; an organizational dilemma

E.O. Wilson, an evolutionary biologist (entomologist) working at Harvard, was recently the focus of a New Yorker article on ants and altruism. Wilson is an ant man. He’s spent a career studying and writing about them. He’s one of the most accomplished scientist in his field and made his name half a century ago when he identified the scent-producing gland in the ant enabling colony members to find their way to food and back home. Altruism is a double-edged sword. A group that acts purely altruistically will be destroyed by its competitors. As an extreme example, a “for profit” enterprise that gives its profits away won’t compete for long. What about at the individual level within a group? A group composed of individuals that work at least partially selflessly will promote the interests of the group before themselves and make the group stronger. At what expense? Most likely individual gain. A group that is composed of individuals acting purely selflessly may eventually be carved up by competitive individuals who join the group. Or, perhaps, the culture of the group will be sufficient to exclude them; the selfish intruders simply leave. An ant colony is a great model for thinking about this: within the colony, the ants work toward a common goal and show extreme amounts of altruism. These colonies, admittedly, are formidable feats of construction; some are enormous. At the colony level, however, altruism is not the driving force. These colonies are expansive, territorial and ferocious; not terribly neighborly. They are certainly not altruistic. So the dynamics that mediate individual relations within a group (balance of altruism versus selfishness) are not the same dynamics that mediate group behavior.

In game theory, the “prisoner’s dilemma” is a great way to model the individual component of this dynamic. Briefly, two individuals are detained for a crime and are not allowed to communicate. They are each offered a deal: if both prisoner A and prisoner B confess, they each get 3 months of jail time. But if one prisoner confesses while the other remains silent, the “defector” who confesses will go free while the silent one gets a year in jail. However, If they both remain silent, they each get one month. What to do? The dilemma for the prisoner is that the optimal outcome for the individual is to “rat out” your partner and go free if your partner doesn’t confess. The optimal outcome for the group (both prisoners) is to keep your mouth shut, expect your partner to do the same, and serve minimal time. But what happens in reality? When the game is simulated, prisoner behavior is to maximize individual gain and confess, yielding a sub-optimal outcome and 3 months of jail time. Within organizations, an individual will “remain silent” and act altruistically if there is something to be gained - but only if other individuals are motivated to behave similarly. The selfless individual within a group who is surrounded by selfish people will be eaten up (like the prisoner who remains silent while the other confesses). How does an organization surmount this obstacle? Clearly, an organization that has a component of altruistic behavior at the individual level will be more competitive at the group level (don’t believe me? remember the ant colonies?). Here’s where organizational leadership and “vision” play a role. You think all “mission statements” are mere window dressing? Wallpaper? I’m referring to  real structural ones – the ones that hold up the building and define the organization (if you’ve never worked for an organization like this, trust me, they do exist). The provenance of this vision is the leadership of the organization. A principal role of an organization’s leadership is to foster an environment where individuals frame their work in terms of the organization’s goals, not the individual’s.

A History of Russia, by Nicholas Riasanovsky

This single volume digestible sweeping history of Russia is now in its 8^th edition. I recently finished the 4^th edition which ends in the early 1980’s before the “wall” came down and before Soviet influence over a significant portion of Asia and eastern Europe waned. This is not just a chronological view of historical events. The author weaves politics, life-style, arts, as well as religion, war, intrigue and individual personalities into a nice narrative. I knew little of Russia prior to reading this book. I know a little bit more now. I suppose it helps having this overview if one were to read a Tolstoy novel (e.g. War and Peace – which I have read) or, perhaps, some Dostoevsky whose stories have more meaning if one is familiar with the social customs and manner of living of 19^th century Russians (his, too, I have read, though faultingly, especially the Brothers Karamazov which is a beast of a novel and one I truly felt I didn’t understand). Riasanovsky does a great job with the history – I highly recommend the effort if you are interested in a broad view of Russia, past and present.