Casebook of the Black Widowers

Posted on August 20, 2009 by smellincoffee

Casebook of the Black Widowers

© 1980 Isaac Asimov
222 pages
Readers who have been with me since last summer know how delighted I was to find the Black Widower mystery series. In the year since, I have checked out of a library or purchased through Amazon every Widower collection I could find. With Casebook of the Black Widowers, I have come to the series’ end for myself, having read the others before. This is not to say I won’t be enjoying them in the future: I chronically re-read my books and Widower solutions are frequently esoteric enough that I can be puzzled all over again.
Although it is last for me, Casebook is actually the third of the collections that gather stories of the Black Widowers social club — a group of intellectuals seven strong (including the waiter, Henry) who meet monthly at the Milano restaurant in New York. Every month’s meal is hosted by a different Widower, and it is customary that he bring a guest. The guest is treated to a fine meal and an evening of “hopefully edifying conversation” for the price of an interview: after the meal is done, the host appoints an inquisitor who “grills” the guest. In the Black Widower tradition, the guest invariably presents a puzzle for the Widowers to reason out a solution. Someone may approach the seated six for help, like an aspiring author did here in “The Backward Look”. At other times, one of the Widowers may spot an unanswered question in the lives of their interviewees, as was the case in “The Cross of Lorraine”. Whatever the question, the Widowers will hash it out, exhausting all of the possibilities until everyone save Henry is stumped. Although the stories all follow this same formula, including Henry seeing the solution that no one else saw, they do not grow tiresome.
The stories are written with Asimov’s characteristic wit and are happily followed by a short afterword. It was as ever enjoyable.
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This Week at the Library (19/7)

Posted on August 19, 2009 by smellincoffee

Books this Update:

  • Dolphins, Jacques Yves-Cousteau
  • The Force Unleashed, Sean Williams
  • A History of the Arab Peoples, Albert Hourani
  • The Venus Throw, Steven Saylor
  • The Essential Koran, translated and edited by Thomas Clearly.
I began this week with Jacques Yves-Cousteau’s accounts of his dolphin studies onboard the Calypso, including his thoughts on dolphin intelligence and dolphin-human relations, supplemented by plenty of pictures. I found this to be more interesting than his Whales — not because of the topics, but because Cousteau spends more time here writing on what the information means and less of simply recounting the information.
I finished Sean William’s The Force Unleashed next, it being a Star Wars novel set five or so years before A New Hope. The principle character of the novel is Starkiller, Darth Vader’s secret apprentice. Vader has trained Starkiller for many years to be his accomplice in overthrowing the Emperor. The Force Unleashed is part of a multi-media release: this story is also being told in graphic novel and video game form. Although slow at first, it became more enjoyable once the main character was thrown out of an airlock.
Moving on to history, I read A History of the Arab Peoples. Author Albert Hourani begins with Muhammad and ends in the late 1980s, attempting to mention everything in between. There’s a lot of scope here, so detailed information is hard to come by — especially after the rise of the Ottoman Turks. Hourani deals not only with political and religious history, but with geography and social history as well — devoting specific sections to describing what life in the cities was like for people at various periods. I think the book is most suitable for general reference.
I returned to Steven Saylor’s Roma sub Rosa series starring Gordianus the Finder, a private eye of sorts. The book’s plot concerns the trial of Marcus Caelius, accused of murdering an Alexandrian philosopher who had come as part of a delegation to lobby on Egypt’s behalf in the Roman senate. The theme of the book is the power of Venus, as nearly every major character in the novel is thrown into the plot through the madness of eros in some way or another. Gordianus, in contrast to the rest of Rome, is driven not by power or lust by by the pursuit of truth — which may or may not feature into the actual trial. As usual, Saylor takes the transcripts of an ancient trial and breathes life into them while giving the readers an enjoyable story.
Throughout the week I read from The Essential Koran, selected readings from the Islamic text. The poetic verses concern the glory of God, urge humans to live justly, and promises justice (and judgement) when the final reckoning comes — and it will, soon. The Arabic may lose something in translation, as most poetry does. It was helpful for me to see some of Islam’s “primary source”.
Pick of the Week: The Venus Throw, Steven Saylor
Quotation of the Week: “The water is always freshest at the mouth of the spring.” – Gordianus the Finder, as written by Steven Saylor in The Venus Throw. This is an idiom similar to “Get it straight from the horse’s mouth.”
Next Week:
  • Casebook of the Black Widowers, Isaac Asimov. Guess who bought this on Amazon last week for $5?
  • The Irony of American History, Reinhold Niebuhr. Over the weekend I listened to a podcast on this man, a Christian theological and political thinker who has inspired both President Obama and Senator John McCain. Niebuhr came up in other podcasts from the same source, so my curiosity was picqued.
  • The Japanese Experience: A Short History of Japan, W.G. Beasley. I’m checking this book out in prepration for a Japanese history course I’m taking this fall.
  • The Audacity of Hope, Barack Obama.
  • Catalina’s Riddle, Steven Saylor
  • Who Needs God?, Harold Kushner. A Conservative rabbi writes to people who are “spiritual, but not religious”.
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The Essential Koran

Posted on August 19, 2009 by smellincoffee
The Essential Koran — the Heart of Islam: An Introductory Selection of Readings from the Koran
© 1994 trans. and edited by Thomas Cleary
202 pages
I was somewhat reluctant to include this as a TWATL post given its nature — poetic verse, rather religious or not, seems as if it should be appreciated bit by bit over a long period of time rather than “consumed” all in one go — but decided to comment on it regardless. I read it bit by bit over the course of a week, as I’ve done with some poetry and short story collections in the past. Although I’ve read a few books reading Islam, I’ve never read the Koran itself. It seemed appropriate that I remedy that situation.
Although the Koran is often compared to the Judeo-Christian bible, its format is very different. Rather than being a collection of many works (mostly prose), the Koran is a collection of poectic verse that — as the stories go — an Arab named Muhammed heard delivered from an angel and repeated for the benefit of his people, eventually converting the verse into written form and thus producing the Koran. Like most poetry, I suspect it loses a lot in translation, claims to the majesty of Arabic aside. The Essential Koran is composed of bits and pieces of the Koran, so I’m probably not getting the full effect.
The verses encourage humanity to worship God and love wisdom while promising retribution for those that do not. The religion that emerges in this is one similar to that promoted by some of the Hebrew prophets: both urge people to purify their inner life by believing only in the religion of God — not in “man-made” beliefs like the Crucifixion and Resurrection of Jesus or asceticism. Most of the verses in The Essential Koran either praise God or urge humans to live justly. Those who love the truth and walk in the light will see their reward in a Garden of Paradise, while those who spurn it will be punished with fire. (Middle-eastern dieties and fire…) At times it seems the eternal Fire is reserved only for the fantastically evil, those who realize what Goodness is and decide to do evil just to be spiteful — but then there are verses that say God is blinding people to light and that these people are beyond help.
Most of the book is lost on a theistic skeptic like myself, but I could enjoy some of the aesthetic quality of the verse and the ideas behind some of them. Some of the references confused me all together, like the sura that says Rome is defeated but will emerge victorious in a few years’ time. What does this mean? Why is Muhammed concerned with Rome? Overall I’m satisfied that I read this, as it serves as prime-source material for things I’ve heard about Islam but have never proven for myself, like Mohammad’s opinions on Jesus.
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The Venus Throw

Posted on August 18, 2009 by smellincoffee

The Venus Throw

© 1995 Steven Saylor
308 pages
Back during the spring I began enjoying Steven Saylor’s Roma sub Rosa series, depicting life during Rome as it passes from republic to empire through the adventures of Gordianus the Finder, ancient Rome’s private eye. This book is set some 20+ years after the last story in The House of the Vestals, which I read last: young Eco, who was once a teenager, is now a man in his thirties following in his father’s footsteps. Gordianus‘ family has expanded in the meantime: he has another adopted son in the Roman army, serving as secretary to Julius Caesar in Gaul, and a daughter by his slave-turned-wife, Bethesda. Gordianus has retired from his detective work, although he takes the odd case now and then to keep himself busy.
The book begins with an old Alexandrian philosophy showing up at Gordianus‘ door: he wants Gordianus‘ help staying alive. He is the only survivor of a delegation once a hundred strong that sailed from Egypt to Rome to lobby on Egypt’s behalf, hoping to keep it free from growing Roman domination. After barely surviving a massacre upon landfall, he and his compatriots have been picked off one by one — even after arriving in Roma itself. Gordianus is in no shape to help him: he has no influence in the Senate beyond being on friendly terms with Cicero, and the philosopher’s enemies are powerful indeed. Before the night is over, he will be dead. A scandalous patrician woman (Clodia Pulcher Tertia) comes to Gordianus and insists that she knows who the murderer was — and she wants him to find the evidence that will convince the courts. Pressured by her feminine wiles, her silver, and — more notably in Gordianus‘ case, since he is the epitome of Roman virtue — his guilt at having turned the old philosopher away, Gordianus agrees. Thus begins the plot of our novel.
There is a strong theme in this book, that of the power of Venus — love, or more specifically eros: passionate love that drives mortals and gods alike mad. With the exception of Gordianus and his family, every major character in this book is pushed into the plot through eros. It is not an accident that the plot is set during a religious festival about the same subject. Venus, not philosophic virtue, dominates the minds of these Romans: one of the main characters keeps a massive statue of Venus in her backyard — the same that graces the cover of the book, which made the elderly librarian volunteer give it a double-take when he checked it out.
Gordianus keeps different statues in his yard, notably a beautiful statue of Minevera — the goddess of wisdom, justice, and in Gordianus‘ case, truth. He is neither a patrician nor a philosopher, but he keeps himself true to his own sense of virtue — one that is properly pious for his time, but admirable to 21st century readers. For all of the silver Clodia offers him, he seeks the truth of what happened — even if what happened isn’t what he or anyone else would have suspected. As usual, Saylor has delivered a very enjoyable narrative that makes ancient Rome live once more, blending historical details with a fascinating story.
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A History of the Arab Peoples

Posted on August 17, 2009 by smellincoffee

A History of the Arab Peoples

© 1991 Albert Hourani
565 pages, including appendices, maps, notes, and index.
I picked this up (with both hands) to add historical context for my reading of The Essential Koran and to fill in the gaps of my knowledge of Arab history, which are as vast as the sands of the Arabian desert. Hourani‘s History is an expansive work, covering Arab history from the arrival of Muhammed to the late 1980s. The work is general history, with seperate sections within a chapter covering political, social, and economic change. There is a wealth of information here, although that comes at a price: some sections, particularly political history after the first part of the book, feel rushed. Sixty pages after the Ottoman Empire rises, it is the sick man of Europe and the Young Turks are attempting to seize control. Although it is readable, I think the book better serves as a reference than a popular history read, especially given the way Hourani divides the book — most notably, his pause from the general political history of the first part of the book to deliver several chapters on the geography of the Arab world and life in its cities and countrysides.
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Star Wars: the Force Unleashed

Posted on August 15, 2009 by smellincoffee

Star Wars: the Force Unleashed

© 2008 LucasFilm & Sean Williams
319 pages
Jar Jar Binks: Where wesa goin?
Qui-Gon Jinn: Don’t worry. The Force will guide us.
Jar Jar Binks: Ohh, maxi big ‘da Force’. Well, dat smells stinkowiff. (The Phantom Menace)
When I saw this in the library catalogue, I blinked — wasn’t The Force Unleashed a video game? Indeed it is, but it’s also a book. LucasFilm decided to do something they’ve done before, which is to present a story told across multiple mediums. I’m assuming Williams took a general plot from one of LucasFilm’s creative types and turned it into a book.
Star Wars legend has it that Luke Skywalker’s original last name was Starkiller, but Lucas changed it to prevent damage being done to his hero’s “feel”. That our main character here – a young apprentice who has been raised as a child to be Darth Vader’s protege — has the name “Starkiller” is no accident. I wonder if this is the story that would have been told had Luke Skywalker been not hidden away on Tatooine, but raised by Vader in secret. Our protagonist is being raised to help Vader overthrow the Emperor, which Anakin was already thinking about on Mustafar, when he told Padme that they could rule as an imperial couple and “make things the way [they] want them to be”.
When the book begins, Starkiller is nearing the end of his training. To test him, Vader dispatches him on a number of assassination missions in which he is to fulfill Order 66 by killing a few Jedi masters who have been hiding in the ten or fifteen years that have apparently passed since Revenge of the Sith. He is joined by a young pilot named Juno Eclipse (Darth Vader evidently forgetting the effect spending a lot of time in dangerous situations has on young people who are attracted to one another) and a droid named PROXY who is able to project holographic images of various dead Jedi and mimic their fighting styles. PROXY has been Starkiller’s nursemaid and friend, although his primary programming is to test Starkiller’s saberfighting by attempting to kill him periodically.
The first 77 pages or so are a bit tedious: they remind me most of a video game in that Darth Vader shows up only to say “Go here, kill him” and the main characters fly off to dispatch their foes within a few pages. Things pick up once the Emperor discovers Vader’s secret apprentice and Starkiller is thrown out of an airlock. I haven’t read very many novels in which the main character is killed within eighty pages, but this is one of them. That’s not the end of it, as you might imagine, but I won’t spoil anything. After this, the novel picks up strength and becomes a fairly enjoyable read for Star Wars fans. Additionally, the book feeds into A New Hope: the Alliance to Restore the Republic, hinted at very strongly in Revenge of the Sith‘s deleted scenes, will feature in the plot.
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Dolphins

Posted on August 13, 2009 by smellincoffee

Dolphins

© 1975 Jacques-Yves Cousteau
304 pages
In every color, there is the light. In every stone sleeps a crystal. Remember the shaman, when he used to say — “Man is the dream of the dolphin.” – “The Dream of the Dolphin“, Enigma
“It is obvious that dolphins are often motivated by curiosity, and especially by curiosity about man. One can literally see it in their eyes. This is a fact that can be doubted only by someone who has never really looked a dolphin in the eye. The brilliance of that organ, the spark that is so evidence there, seems to come from another world. The look which the dolphin gives — a keen look, slightly melancholy and mischievous, but less insolent and cynical than that of monkeys — seems full of indulgence for the uncertainties of the human condition. Among primates, one sometimes detects what appears to be sadness at not being human. This sentiment is alien to the dolphin.” – pg. 27-28
Back in 2007 I read Cousteau’s Whales, consisting of recollections of his years spent on the open seas tracking whales (organized topically) replete with plenty of pictures. Dolphins is very much the same: like Whales, it’s a translation from the original French and consists of informational recollections about dolphins. There isn’t an obvious organization behind the way chapters are arranged: a chapter on dolphin biology may be followed immediately by a chapter recounting human-dolphin interactions throughout history. Nothing other than the subject (and the binding) holds the book together, but given how interesting the subject is to most people, I doubt that it is very much hurt by this.
Despite how familiar dolphins seem, Cousteau writes, we know very little about them. What little information we posses has been collected by observing dolphins in captivity, where their behavior has been “deformed”, to use the word his translator likes to use so often. There’s a lot of information in here, especially in the chapter focusing on historical interactions between humanity and dolphins. A story from Pliny detailing how fishermen used to fish with dolphins, allowing the dolphins to drive fish toward the shore is followed by Cousteau’s account of visiting a tribe in Mauritania that has subsisted on fish caught with the aid of dolphins for untold generations. This section has some of the more interesting pictures, in my view: historical depictions of dolphins. Apparently Jesus has been presented as a dolphin before.
Although the book’s subject is interesting, some of the information contained therein might be dated: this was written in 1975, when technological limitations made it impossible to gather detailed information on dolphins in the wild. Today, palm-sized cameras and equipment like this probably make marine biologists’ jobs a lot easier.
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This Week at the Library (12/8)

Posted on August 12, 2009 by smellincoffee

Books this Update:

  • Gold, Isaac Asimov
  • Aristotle’s Children, Richard Rubenstein
  • Footprints of God, Greg Iles
  • Anthropology for Dummies, Cameron Smith
  • Securing Democracy, ed. Gary Gregg III
  • Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
This was a well-rounded week, I think: history, politics, essays, short stories, intelligently-written novels, and a guide to anthropology. Isaac Asimov’s Gold was first, consisting of essays relating to and stories with the theme of science fiction. I’ve not seen the essays or short stories in any other collection, and they were classic Asimov: funny, charming, and intelligent. In a few of the stories he pushes his creative envelope: one in particular sees a robot named Cal realize that there is something driving him that may override the Three Laws: the yearning to create.
Aristotle’s Children is a work of medieval and church history that focuses on the effect of Aristotelian thinking in the Catholic church’s ever-evolving theology. It’s a very readable narrative featuring characters like Thomas Aquinas and Peter Abelard prominently. Its success may be limited by its topic: the intellectual life of the Catholic church isn’t a topic that enjoys a wide readership.
Greg Iles‘ Footprints of God is a gripping science fiction and fantasy thriller that builds off of the US Government’s attempts to create a superintelligent computer — one that combines the processing speed of a supercomputer with the creativity and reasoning abilities of the human brain. When main character David Tennant and his friend Dr. Fielding attempt to suspend the project so that side-effects of the projects’ human testing can be investigated, Dr. Fielding suddenly dies of a stroke — and Tennant is given a strong impression by his coworkers that if he doesn’t play nice, he will be next. In no time at all, Tennant is running through the woods being chased by government helicopters while having dreams that he is Jesus or God. Iles combines science fiction with metaphysical speculation while doing both well. I enjoyed more than most of Iles‘ works to date.
Anthropology for Dummies is an introduction to the obvious field. Like most for Dummies books, it is heavily organized and written informally, introducing the reader to the field itself as well as to its areas of interest: biology, language, history, sociology, and a litany of other fields relating to the study of humanity. The book was very helpful and nicely written: I may purchase it in the future for my personal library.
In order to determine how the Electoral College functioned, I checked out a book of essays intended to explain its function to Americans like myself who have very little idea of what it was meant to do or how it works. I was particularly interested in the role of delegates. The book was very informative — a feat easily done considering how little I knew on the subject. The essays do their job well, explaining both the College’s function as it was meant at its inception and now after reforms have made the United States more democratic than it was in its beginnings.
Lastly, I read Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, a science fiction novel set in a dystopian world where human happiness is pursued at the expense of human culture. Although it does have a story, there’s no strongly developed plot that I saw and I suspect the book functions more as a peek into a world meant to raise questions about our own than it does as an entertaining story.
Pick of the Week: Gold, Isaac Asimov.
Next Week:
  • The Essential Koran, the heart of Islam : An introductory selection of readings from the Qur’an; Thomas Cleary. I’m reading this for cultural literacy purposes.
  • History of the Arab Peoples, Albert Hourani. This will give me context for the above read, although I had planned on checking it out for itself.
  • Dolphins, Jacques Yves-Cousteau. Back in 2007 I read his Whales.
  • The Venus Throw, Steven Saylor. You may remember me reading a number of Saylor’s historical fiction mystery novels set in republican Rome: it’s been a while, but I’m returning to them.
  • The Force Unleashed, Sean Miller. A novelization of a video game, although not one I’ve played.
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Brave New World

Posted on August 11, 2009 by smellincoffee

Brave New World

© 1932 Aldous Huxley
270 pages
In Amusing Ourselves to Death, Neil Postman introduced the book with his suspicion that Brave New World’s predictions were coming to fruition — namely, that human happiness will be pursued by destroying human culture, or to put it in more ironic terms, all that makes us human. It’s a book you’ve probably heard of: I was introduced to it through a Star Trek novel. The story is set in the future, where Earth is controlled by the World State, which dominates the lives of its wards. Every human institution you know and love — or despise– is gone. Even the most basic, the parent-child relationship, has been removed: the opening chapter has a group of teenagers being taken on a tour of a hatchery. As the guide gleefully tells the story of how human beings come to be in this world, she also explains how the World State arose in the after math of a nine-years war.
Humans are now biologically engineered and socially conditioned to fall into caste systems, ranking from administrators (Alpha++) to brute labor (Epsilon–). Pavlov-like conditioning is implemented throughout a person’s lifetime to keep them loyal to their caste, to their job, and to the ideals of the world state. When emotional distress occurs, it is dealt with through soma, a drug of some sort. The World State doesn’t control everyone: there are “savage reservations” where people still live off the land, and WS people sometimes tour these areas for their own amusement.
The book’s story shows that despite all of this conditioning, the human animal has still not created a society in line with its nature: several of the main characters are frustrated by it, and some by their inability to fit in as well as they would like. One of them — Bernard Marx — takes a female acquaintance of his to a Savage Reservation, where he meets a World State citizen named Linda who was lost on her outing here — and who has in the meantime become a mother, an act which is obscene in the extreme for World-Staters. Her grown son John (“John the Savage, typically referred to as The Savage”) has grown up trying to behave like a man of two worlds: he tries to please his mother, who has been conditioned to live in the world state, and he tries to live like those on the reservation. He can do neither well, so he asks Bernard if he might join him on a trip back to the World State.
From the Savage’s reaction to what he finds in the world state — not the utopia his mother described but a shallow, sterile, and shockingly indecent place where no one cares about anyone else — where the joys and miseries of human existence are absent, replaced by self-indulgent human-sized infants. He eventually confronts a world controller (a top bureaucrat), and the two talk for a few pages as the controller explains why science, art, religion, and the family had to be destroyed — and the Savage defends them.
I don’t know a lot about the book’s historical context. I’m more familiar with HG Wells’ idealistic notions. It’s certainly thought-provoking. One question it raises is the source of human happiness: does it come from avoiding unpleasant things and enjoying as many pleasurable sensations as possible? Or do we as sentient creatures really need things like wonder, art, and family to feel fulfilled? Again, I don’t know the context Huxley was writing, and I’d like to know more about the social developments that led him to write this to see what their long-term implications might mean. I think it, like Ibsen’s A Doll House, could be a “discussion” work, rather than one you just read for the story.
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Securing Democracy

Posted on August 10, 2009 by smellincoffee
Securing Democracy: Why We Have an Electoral College
© 2001 ed. Gary Gregg II
171 pages
“The Framers of the Constitution would have been appalled at the notion that over time the presidency would become an objection pf partisan ambition, that candidates for the Electoral College would be identified on the ballot as supporters of particular candidates or pass unmentioned altogether, that in some states the electors would be required by law to vote for the candidate to whom they were pledged, and that for all intents and purposes the President of the United States would be directly elected by the people.” – p. 61, author Paul Rahe
I collect recordings of political speeches, and there’s one from 2004 that tends to bother me. It’s either former President Bush’s address to the RNC or his victory speech, but in one of the two he addresses party members, citizens, and “delegates”. That one word makes me raise an eyebrow. Delegates? I’ve had a basic understanding of the Electoral College’s function since high school, I suppose, but when I heard “delegates” and remembered that people don’t actually vote for the president, I was instantly bothered. What’s going on here? I know that the winners of a given state’s election get that state’s electoral votes, and it those votes that count in the national election, but I was bothered by the fact that there were people who cast those votes. Who’s to say they won’t just vote how they see it, instead of how the people see it? I decided to read this book to sort out these questions — to figure out where delegates fit into the system. Humorously, I found the answer to those questions in the introduction — but I read the rest of the book, too, and I’m glad I did.
The book is a collection of essays from various authors published as a result of the drama following the 2000 election, when people started calling for the abashment of the College. Concerned, Gregg began looking for contributors for a book meant to explain and defend the electoral college. The themes in the various essays are by and large the same: the Constitution was written to create a series of checks and balances not only in the central government, but between the government, the states, and the people themselves. In his introductory essay, Gregg writes that the founders did not intend to create a wholly democratic country: they intended to create one that created good laws, and to this end they attempted to create means through which laws and presidents would be decided on with great deliberation — not drummed in through majority rule, which is susceptible to growing wildly passionate about one issue or one man. (I suppose an example of that is people in Alabama voting for a ban on same-sex marriage: no gay person in their right mind would come to Alabama to get married. That’s like going to Saudi Arabia as a woman to feel the sun on your face.)
According to Gregg and the other authors, the states were to send delegates — prudent statesmen with no government role and well-respected citizens — to a convention, where they would all talk together and decide on what man was best for the job. Also according to the authors, this worked twice: once to elect George Washington, and once to re-elect him. After that, the formation of party politics changed the nature of the electoral college. Interestingly, although the College no longer works the way it was intended, it works still to moderate the two-party system. Many of the authors elaborate on this.
The book reads well: since the authors were not working in concert with one another, they sometimes repeat one another on general statements, but there’s a general variety of topics here. Often they will mention the same facts or refer to the same situations, but use them to discuss different sides of the issue. The book gives me a lot of think about, as my own political opinions in regard to ideal democratic systems are mixed. It did help me understand the function of the College, both today and as it was intended. The book includes several relevant articles from the Constitution and from the Federalist Papers.
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