CHRISTINE PALMA
“To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric” –Theodor Adorno
Archive for Book Reviews
October 14, 2009 at 12:12 am ·
Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez gave Obama this book as a gift in April 2009. It chronicles five centuries of Latin America’s exploitation by the United States of America.
In the 20th century section of the book, Eduardo Galeano mentions something interesting in passing. Robert McNamara, the World Bank president who was chairman of Ford and then Secretary for Defense, has called the population explosion the greatest obstacle to progress in Latin America; the World Bank, he says, will give priority in its loans to countries that implement birth control plans.
The definition of a Mathusian Crisis from Wikipedia:
Malthusian catastrophe (also called a Malthusian check, crisis, disaster, or nightmare) was originally foreseen to be a forced return to subsistence-level conditions once population growth had outpaced agricultural production. Later formulations consider economic growth limits as well. The term is also commonly used in discussions of oil depletion.
Based on the work of political economist Thomas Malthus (1766–1834), theories of Malthusian catastrophe are very similar to thesubsistence theory of wages. The main difference is that the Malthusian theories predict over several generations or centuries, whereas the subsistence theory of wages predicts over years and decades.
An August 2007 science review in The New York Times raised the claim that the Industrial Revolution had enabled the modern world to break out of the Malthusian Trap,[1] while a front page Wall Street Journal article in March 2008 pointed out various limited resources which may soon limit human population growth because of a widespread belief in the importance of prosperity for every individual and the rising consumption trends of large developing nations such as China and India.[2]
Paul R. Ehrlich in his book “The Population Bomb” predicted worldwide famines. Ehrlich wrote that India “couldn’t possibly feed two hundred million more people by 1980.” This was disproved just six years later:
However, the introduction of high-yield grains and improved techniques resulted in India becoming self-sustaining in cereal production by 1974…
From LifeSiteNews.com
ROME, October 13, 2009
The head of the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) told a gathering of African bishops in Rome on Monday that the theories of Thomas Malthus, equating increased population with food shortages, are incorrect. In response to a question from the floor at the African Synod, Dr. Jacques Diouf said that “food security” is possible in Africa now without the reduction of population, if there is the political will to achieve it.
…
Infrastructural development, improved living conditions for farmers, irrigation, the increased use of fertilizers, building and maintenance of rural roads, availability of high-yield seed and seed quality control and certification, will bring Africa into the “Green Revolution” that has taken place in Mexico since the 1950s and Asia and India since the 1970s, said Diouf.
…
Diouf’s address painted a picture of hope for Africa, based on her increasing population. Citing demographic trends in his prepared address, he said that in the next 50 years, Africa will have a population of 2 billion “and will represent the largest market in the world.” Africa, he pointed out, has 80 per cent of the world’s deposits of platinum and manganese, 57 per cent of the world’s diamonds, 34 per cent of gold, 23 of bauxite and 18 per cent of uranium. This wealth of natural resources and human resources means that “Africa cannot be ignored in the economic development of the planet,” he said.
If Latin America, like Africa, is rich in natural and human resources that the people of those nations have not been able to tap into for themselves disproportionate to first world “partner” countries and if the Malthusian Catastrophe is a myth that has been disproved, what does this make of the World Bank’s ongoing demands for population control? Is it a racist policy?
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April 25, 2009 at 8:27 pm ·
This was one of the finalists for the 2008 Pulitzer Prize. It would have been my choice for winner. The writing is witty and funny and nuanced. Seven of these interconnected stories first appeared in The New Yorker magazine.
SYNOPSIS:
Ilka Weisz has accepted a teaching position at the Concordance Institute, a think tank in Connecticut, reluctantly leaving her New York circle of friends. After the comedy of her struggle to meet new people, Ilka comes to embrace, and be embraced by, a new set of acquaintances, including the institute’s director, Leslie Shakespeare, and his wife, Eliza. Through a series of memorable dinner parties, picnics, and Sunday brunches, Segal evokes the subtle drama and humor of the outsider’s loneliness, the comfort and charm of familiar companionship, the bliss of being in love, and the strangeness of our behavior in the face of other people’s deaths.
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April 12, 2009 at 8:55 pm ·
Weighing in at over 600 pages, Denis Johnson’s Tree of Smoke is beautifully crafted, but in the end I had serious issues with the plot development; it simply goes nowhere. There are several story lines to follow, which start out promisingly, but fatigue the reader with the wait for a resolution. This style worked well for Johnson’s earlier book Jesus’ Son which was made up of smaller vignettes that played up a poetically sparse prose style. Tree of Smoke could definitely have been edited down 100 to 200 pages.
SYNOPSIS:
This is the story of Skip Sands — spy-in-training, engaged in Psychological Operations against the Vietcong — and the disasters that befall him thanks to his famous uncle, a war hero known in intelligence circles simply as the Colonel. This is also the story of the Houston brothers, Bill and James, young men who drift out of the Arizona desert into a war in which the line between disinformation and delusion has blurred away. In its vision of human folly, and its gritty, sympathetic portraits of men and women desperate for an end to their loneliness, whether in sex or death or by the grace of God, this is a story like nothing in our literature.
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March 24, 2009 at 5:24 pm ·
This novel follows several generations of a family cursed by ill-advised love choices.
This book was not a pleasure to read. So much so that at a certain point I cursed Junot Diaz for making me work so hard to get through his novel. I forced myself to finish it in one sitting. The choppy narrative I blamed on his penchant for throwing around Spanish phrases like salt. I often could not get the gist of the Spanish from the context. Adding to the morass, there was an excess of pop-culture references and profanity that failed to advance the narrative. The excessive pop-culture references felt like cheap bling, ornamental and hip for it’s own sake. The frequent use of long footnotes told of an interesting meta story, a political backdrop for all of the violence. I did not mind the long footnotes or this meta story, but was turned off by the narrative style. It was just like the rest of the text, as told from the voice of Yunior, an off-putting Dominican Republic youth. Yunior is unsympathetic, crude, unredeemed. Finally, take away the Spanish phrases, the urban slang, the profanity, the pop-culture references and you are left with a weak ending. No spoiler here. That this won the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction points to how uneven and rarefied judging is from year-to-year.
Synopsis:
Junot Díaz tells a brutal, but irresistible, story in The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. Through the eyes of various narrators, readers enter the frightening world of a Dominican Republic family living in New Jersey. The characters’ lives are overflowing with injustices, unrequited love, lost opportunities, physical cruelties, and as one narrator points out, an ancient Dominican curse called Fukú.
The background of the story takes place in the Dominican Republic under the fearsome dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo, a man who, according to one narrator, imprisoned, tortured, and murdered thousands for merely looking at him in the wrong way. Oscar, the character around whom this novel revolves, had a grandfather who was imprisoned for almost two decades because he refused to bring his oldest daughter to meet Trujillo. A few years after the doctor was sentenced, only one of his daughters remained alive. The rest of the family had been victims of the Fukú, a curse of doom that would continue to track down the doctor’s descendants.
Beli, the surviving daughter who would become Oscar’s mother, grew into a dark-skinned, tall, and big-breasted young woman—an object of lust and jealousy in her small Dominican village. Her tia (aunt) La Inca tried her best to raise Beli properly, but Beli was strong-willed and eager for more than her aunt could provide. In her naivety and desire for excitement, Beli falls in love with one of Trujillo’s men, hoping that he (referred to only as Gangster) would cure her boredom. Gangster, unfortunately, is a married man. His wife, even more unfortunately, is Trujillo’s sister. One night, Beli is beaten, many of her bones are broken, and she is left in a cane field to die. She doesn’t die, but she comes close. In order to protect her, her aunt sends her to New Jersey. There, Beli recovers and marries a man who sticks around only long enough to twice impregnate her. She has a daughter, Lola, and a son, Oscar.
Lola is strong, beautiful, and determined. Oscar turns out to be quite the opposite. He is very overweight and hides behind science fiction books (both reading and writing them) and in front of the screens of video games. Oscar longs for friends, especially girlfriends, but if his looks do not scare the girls away, his lack of social skills certainly does. He comes close, one time, with Ana Obregón. But it turns out that Ana just wants a friend to talk to. Ana already has a boyfriend, Manny, who often punches her in the face. At one point, Oscar takes a gun and waits for Manny to come home. Oscar wants to kill him. Fortunately, Manny doesn’t come home that night, but the idea of death has entered Oscar’s mind, and twice he tries to kill himself.
Oscar’s mom decides he needs a taste of his roots. So she sends him to La Inca in the Dominican Republic. Once there, Oscar falls obsessively in love with a prostitute who lives two houses down the block. Ybón is several years older than Oscar but enjoys his company. They spend a lot of time together in her house, at the beach, and at the movies. Word gets out, unfortunately, to Ybón’s suitor, a Dominican cop referred to only as the Capitán. Although Oscar and Ybón’s relationship is merely platonic (despite Oscar’s fantasies), Oscar is badly beaten one night and, like his mother before him, left to die in the cane fields. Oscar also survives and returns to New Jersey. Oscar is still young (in his early twenties by then) and vulnerable. While he heals, he can think of nothing but Ybón and plans his return.
When he gets back to the Dominican Republic, he tells Ybón he loves her. He wants desperately to have sex, which she finally agrees to, though she is extremely frightened that the Capitán will discover them, which he does. Oscar is beaten again, and this time he dies of his injuries. However, he does not die a virgin, which was one of his greatest fears.
Joyce Hart. ”The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao: Overview.” eNotes: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. Ed. Penny Satoris. Seattle: Enotes.com Inc, October 2002. eNotes.com. 27 April 2009. <http://www.enotes.com/brief-wondrous-life-oscar-wao/overview>.
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March 19, 2009 at 4:23 pm ·
“No one who can rise before dawn three hundred sixty days a year fails to make his family rich”
Outliers: The Story of Success
Malcolm Gladwell unravels the mystery behind success. It is shaped by a confluence of factors: family and community, birthplace, birth date, class structure, genealogy, ethnicity, practical intelligence, hours of hard work, work ethic, stick-to-itiveness, luck, and timing. The result is humbling.
In looking at middle-class versus lower-class advantage, in Chapter 4, he discusses entitlement that comes from upbringing.
He writes, “In Lareau’s words, the middle-class children learn a sense of “entitlement.” … Laureau means it in the best sense of the term: ‘They acted as though they had a right to pursue their own individual preferences and to actively manage interactions in institutional settings. They appeared comfortable in those settings; they were open to sharing information and asking for attention… It was common practice among middle-class children to shift interactions to suit their preferences.’ They knew the rules. ‘Even in the fourth grade, middle-class children appeared to be acting on their own behalf to gain advantages. They made special requests of teachers and doctors to adjust procedures to accommodate their desires.’ By contrast, the working-class and poor children where characterized by ‘an emerging sense of distance, distrust, and constraint.’ They didn’t know how to get their way , or how to ‘customize’ – using Laureau’s wonderful term – whatever environment they were in, for their best purposes.”
In Chapter 6, he presents a plausible reason for the failure of American primary and secondary schools and for their low ranking when comparison to Asian school systems. Among other reasons, he faults long Summer vacations and less study time. He writes, “The school year in the United States is, on average, 180 days long… The Japanese school year is 243 days long.” This flies against the current trend arguing that our school kids are overburdened by too much homework.
Time plays another role in explaining success. He cites the ten thousand hour rule for the success of The Beatles and Bill Gates. In Chapter 2, he quotes neurologist Daniel Levitin,
“The emerging picture from such studies is that ten thousand hours of practice is required to achieve the level of master associated with being a world-class-expert ¬– in anything.”
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December 11, 2008 at 2:39 pm ·
Former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto completed the manuscript to this book just before her assassination in December 2007 at the age of 54. This book gives context to her recent martyrdom. It is also a plea to the West to mend our ways.
Only two months earlier upon her return to Pakistan as the figurehead of the Pakistan People’s Party, terrorists bombed her homecoming procession and the armored truck she rode on. She survived, but 134 died and over 400 were wounded. Under the shadow of this massacre, she writes on borrowed time.
The first section of the book is in defense of the Koran. She argues that it is a book that embraces plurality and democracy and even equal rights for women. The second section is a history lesson, a country by country breakdown of Western intervention in the Middle East, parallax to the political record told in the West by our leaders. She also traces the historical roots of the Suuni and Shiite conflict. The third section is more theoretical. She argues that the “Clash of Civilizations” between West and Middle East is not inevitable.
The book is well-written and clear in its arguments. Bhutto, a graduate of both Harvard and Oxford, a former debate champion and a lawyer(1),was an accomplished writer. She would have been the tipping point in the United States’ war in Iraq which is now hamstrung by Pakistan.
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1. http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/02/19/arts/bookmer.php
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November 2, 2007 at 3:20 pm ·
Several months ago, I reread Alice Miller’s Drama of the Gifted Child as part of some research I am doing.
Last week, I had time to read more from her body of work translated into English from the German and released in the late-80s and early-90s. This includes Thou Shalt Not Be Aware: Society’s Betrayal of the Child; The Untouched Key: Tracing Childhood Trauma in Creativity and Destructiveness; and Banished Knowledge: Facing Childhood Injuries.
In all of her books, she speaks out against psychoanalytic theories as a form of intellectual self-deception that can only get in the way of recovery. She eventually breaks completely from psychotheraphy, unable to reconcile the role of therapist with this self-discovery. Actually, she is open to a new primal therapy proposed by J. Konrad Stettbacher which listens to the “language of symptoms.” The logic is irrefutable: when all the symptoms are gone, then you’ve addressed the root cause or “the truth” and are well.
Read the rest of this entry »
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June 25, 2007 at 10:28 pm ·
Does it pay to take a bullet for the Executive Branch?
Whether I. Lewis Libby sits in jail at all, no longer matters. His recent fame is enough to revive a flatlined literary career. St. Martins Press reissued his one book, “The Apprentice: A Novel”, published in 1996 during his 2005 indictment. Demand from booksellers led to a 25,000 copy reprint in paperback. At one point, used first editions of Libby’s book fetched as much as $2,400 on Amazon.com despite the consensus that this was an uninspired freshman attempt at a thriller. The novel is set in Japan with overtones of bestiality, pedophilia and rape to move the story forward.
When perjury becomes patriotism, and this brand of patriotism has a Presidential pardon attached, to be followed by cable news and talk show appearances upon his release, I can only imagine that a million dollar book deal and a tie-in cable program are in the offing. Add to that a writing partner and a literary pardon.
The dust jacket has already been written:
“…he has served the nation tirelessly and with great distinction… I have always considered him to be a man of the highest intellect, judgment and personal integrity…
-Vice President Dick Cheney
“I know Mr. Libby to be a patriot, a dedicated public servant, a strong family man, and a tireless, honorable, selfless human being. Our country is fortunate to have had his service.”
-Donald Rumsfeld, former Secretary of Defense
I was deeply impressed by his dedication, seriousness, patriotism and essential decency.
-Henry Kissinger, former Secretary of State
…he has helped us successfully navigate through the end of the Cold War, and… played a decisive role, after the terrorist attacks of 9-11, in the development of effective defenses for the country against a biological attack…
For more than four years, he drove himself day-after-day, often for twelve to fourteen hours per day, sometimes to the point of exhaustion, for no reason other than the enormous sense of responsibility he felt at having been placed in a position where he could make a major difference…
Mr. Libby has played an influential role… as an advisor to the Vice-President, in developing policy and strategy on a wide range of other issues, including responses to various terrorist threats, the North Korean nuclear issue, the problem of Yasir Arafat and the Middle East peace process, and the policy and strategy for wars in Afghanistan and Iraq
-Paul Wolfowitz, former Deputy Secretary of Defense and former World Bank President
Scooter presented a personal interest in protecting the freedoms and rights of all Americans, men and women, of all races, religions and creeds… with a love of the Constitution… Scooter’s humane outlook on policy matters is consistent with the kind disposition he has towards people on the personal level.
-Douglas Feith, former Under-Secretary of Defense
We can look to Oliver North, on this the 20th anniversary of the Iran-Contra hearings. North’s “patriotism” has sold half-a-million copies of his books to date. North recently signed an eight-book deal with Christian house B&H Publishing Group.
In the May issue of Publisher’s Weekly, Rachel Deahl writes:
The contract calls for North to do four fiction titles plus four nonfiction titles based on his Fox News Channel show, War Stories. North will co-write the novels with Austin Boyd, a former navy pilot and published author.
B&H previously published North’s fiction—his military-inspired titles include Mission Compromised, Jericho Sanction and The Assassins—and, according to the publisher, his books have sold nearly 500,000 copies.
Moving forward, the house plans to aggressively market the former lieutenant colonel, releasing a new fiction and nonfiction title from him annually over the next four years, starting in 2008. B&H publisher David R. Shepherd said that the house will “double team the North publishing plan,” with groups from both the fiction and nonfiction sides working with him. North’s first book, from the planned War Stories tie-in series, is scheduled for April 2008.
I heard an excellent essay on PBS’ Bill Moyers Journal this week. Moyers quotes,
So it may well be, as THE HARTFORD COURANT said editorially, that Mr Libby is “a nice guy, a loyal and devoted patriot…but none of that excuses perjury or obstruction of justice. If it did, truth wouldn’t matter much.”
Does truth matter at all when it can be spun into a fictionalized or dramatized autobiography ala O. J. Simpson, Jessica Lynch, James Frey and Oliver North.
As for his writing career, despite Mr. Libby’s rising star meter among cable news and his apologists in the White House and GOP, no amount of PR can excuse an ill-conceived plot and cheap literary tricks. A presidential pardon for Libby erodes faith in American government. One more literary pardon, contributes to the decline of civilization.
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