Thursday, November 15, 2007

Legacy of Smoke, Tree of Ashes

While we were home this past weekend, the latest issue of my Dad's subscription to The Atlantic arrived--the one with Andy Sullivan's ode to Barack Obama on the cover. I was flipping through it and came across a somewhat lengthy review of Denis Johnson's much discussed new novel, Tree of Smoke. The review, by somebody named B.R. Myers, is quite a thing of beauty if you, like me, appreciate a good hatchet job now and then. (If you've been missing Dale Peck since he became nice, you'll love Myers.) I've been looking forward to reading Johnson's book--an opus on, among other things, the CIA and the Vietnam War. It got a rave on the cover of the NYTBR and is the kind of book much discussed by people who listen to NPR and subscribe to Tikkun. (I mean that with only a hint of irony since I am, essentially, one of those people--except for the part about Tikkun.) I'm wondering if it can be as bad as (Ms.? Mr.? What's up with those initials?) Myers says it is. Anyway, I keep flipping around and come across the letters section. It appears that, in a previous issue, Mr. Myers has taken his hatchet to Michael Pollan's Omniviore's Dilemma. Mr. Pollan's book, as we have noted before, is pretty close to brilliant. I have not read the review since I am not a subscriber and it is not free on the interwebs for plebs like me, but I gather, from the letters I read, that Mr. Myers is accusing Pollan of being insensitive to the plight of animals. All I can say about that is that it pretty much the opposite of the truth. One begins to worry about Mr. Myers' sanity.

Anyway, I awake this morning to discover that Tree of Smoke has won the National Book Award for fiction. What are we to make of this? For the moment, one of two positions seems appropriate. First, Myers is right and the entire literary elite is suffering false consicsiousness (or, possibly, Bush Derangement Syndrome). Second, Myers is full of shit. I suppose the only way to really settle this is to sit down and read Tree of Smoke and decide for myself if it is any good. For the moment, however, we'll go with position number two.

Speaking of the National Book Awards, Tim Weiner's excellent book about the CIA, Legacy of Ashes, won the nonfiction prize. Concerned that most of our knowledge about the CIA came from spy novels, we read this book several months ago and meant to blog about it. Alas, it was not to be. However, if you are interested in reading an intelligent and not-very-long discussion of Legacy of Ashes, you might want to check out Scott McLemee's review ici.

This was supposed to be a shorter post that also talked about Weeds, Duran Duran, and our blogroll, but we have gone on too long. Perhaps more later.

Posted by jwb at 10:00 AM  · 5 Comments   

Bush Derangement Syndrome

Do you find it difficult to listen to the president speak without thinking that he's a blithering idiot? Do you find it difficult to discuss politics with your Republican friends without wondering if they have gone completely insane? Are you sick and tired of being hectored about foreign policy by an incompetent war monger who shot his friend in the face?

If you said yes to any or all of the above, you may suffer from Bush Derangement Syndrome. Like many Americans, after 7 years of lying and mendacity, I too suffer from Bush Derangement Syndrome. Alas, my doctors have been unable to do anything for me on this score. I guess I will just have to contine to suffer in silence* for the next year or so.

If you said no to all of those questions, you'll just love this piece in the Wall Street Journal from Hoover Institution Senior Fellow and Bush Cool Aid drinker Peter Berkowitz. (As Alicublog notes, "It's like Invasion of the Body Snatchers, only with worse catch-phrases.") I suspect you'll also love his comedy stylings on "Bush v. Gore"--absolutely priceless!

Back to our regularly scheduled programming.

* "Suffer in silence" is blogspeak for "posting occasionally."

Posted by jwb at 9:50 AM  · 2 Comments   

Monday, November 12, 2007

We want a shrubbery!


We just returned from a very nice weekend in Maryland. We spent some QT with my parental units and also headed out to Glenwood for a few hours with the Della Rattas. A nice time was, I think, had by all. (See the photo of Raphy, on the left, and some old guy.)

Thomas Wolfe said that you can't go home again, which is, of course, complete B.S. One thing I've noticed, on going home again, is that everything is smaller, except for the shrubbery. Think about it.

One of the eternal questions one encounters this time of year is whether to get a flu shot or not. (I typically get one if I can do so without much inconvenience.) Most of us, I would guess, would think of getting a flu shot in selfish terms (i.e., I'll get a flu shot to keep me from getting the flu), but Tyler Cowen suggests that it is actually an act of altruism:

I just had my flu shot. Please send your checks to my George Mason address. People who have the flu spread the virus so getting a flu shot not only reduces the probability that I will get the flu it reduces the probability that you will get the flu. In the language of economics the flu shot creates an external benefit, a benefit to other people not captured by the person who paid the costs of getting the shot. The external benefits of a flu shot can be quite large. Under some conditions each person who is vaccinated reduces the expected number of other people who get the flu by 1.5.


Norman Mailer, RIP. I've been thinking recently, given our obsession here will all things espionage, that I ought to re-read "Harlot's Ghost". (I say "re-read" because I read it shortly after it came out, but do not remember a thing about it.)

Posted by jwb at 8:16 AM  · 3 Comments