Stuff I've Been Reading #2: Vonnegut this time, not Nick Hornby.

Books Read:
"The Thinking Fan's Guide to the World Cup" by Various (finished)
"The Educated Imagination" by Northrop Frye (finished)
"A Man Without a Country" by Kurt Vonnegut (finished)
"Me Talk Pretty One Day" by David Sedaris (finished)
"thinking with type" by Ellen Lupton (lovingly looked through)
"Now One Foot, Now the Other" by Tomie dePaola (finished, children's book)

Books Bought:
"Making Things Public - Atmospheres of Democracy" by Bruno Latour, et al.
"Stolen Harvest" by Vandana Shiva (started)
"Vermeer in Bosnia" by Lawrence Weschler

So here I am again thinking of being Nick Hornby, and looking at what I've read in the last month or so. I have to say though, that I'm actually a bit impressed, since I usually have a tough time getting through two or even one non-work related book a month nevermind a bonafide handful, but then again, it is the holidays and all. I saw Ben's stack of books and was suitably impressed and just wondering how he does it. That's a lot of reading going on - maybe another difference in the disciplines of Science and Arts?

Anyway, this aspect on the amount of reading is interesting in its own right, since I recently had a discussion concerning required readings for a course I'm co-designing that will be made available to both Arts and Science undergraduates. My partner in this venture, who is a prof in the Political Sciences, felt that about 100 pages of reading per week (for a 2nd year undergrad) was about on standard for a humanities course. For me, it sounded like a lot for a single course - but maybe that's because science undergrad courses rarely cover so much text related ground. You know, it's more about here's a chapter, do the lab, the exercises, and we'll test you on it later. Ah.. two cultures, two cultures.

So I'm going to start this session (in keeping with our week festivities) with the latest book by Mr. Kurt Vonnegut. Of whom, I'm sure you've noticed both Ben and I are fans of. It would be so much fun to write like he does, and perhaps more importantly, actually get away with it. I don't mean this in a bad way, since his essays are just brilliant, but rather in the objective way of scrutinizing how difficult it must be to get a piece of that type published. In other words, try imagining that style of writing in the last magazine you picked up - doesn't quite fit right? Unless, of course, you are Mr. Kurt Vonnegut.

And I think he realizes this. Also, I didn't know he was a Chemistry graduate, but there you have it, he was:

As an undergraduate at Cornell I was a chemistry major because my brother was a big-shot chemist. Critics feel that a person cannot be a serious artist and also have a technical education, which I had. I know that customarily English departments in universities, without knowing what they're doing, teach dread of the engineering department, the physics department, and the chemistry department. And this fear, I think, is carried over into criticism. Most of our critics are products of English departments and are very suspicious of anyone who takes an interest in technology. So, anyway, I was a chemistry major, but I'm always winding up as a teacher n English departments, so I've brought scientific thinking to literature. There's been very little gratitude for this.

Anyway, if you enjoy his essays, then Man Without a Country is a real treat - and timely as well given the theme of human sustainability that shows up thoughout the text. And I think the best way to give you a sense of what the book is about is maybe showcase an essay he wrote for "In These Times" called "Cold Turkey." Bits and pieces of this essay show up in the book, and in some instances seem to drive its very tangential, very Vonnegut thesis. The essay starts:

Many years ago, I was so innocent I still considered it possible that we could become the humane and reasonable America so many members of my generation used to dream of. We dreamed of such an America during the Great Depression, when there were no jobs. And then we fought and often died for that dream during the Second World War, when there was no peace.

But I know now that there is not a chance in hell of America's becoming humane and reasonable. Because power corrupts us, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Human beings are chimpanzees who get crazy drunk on power. By saying that our leaders are power-drunk chimpanzees, am I in danger of wrecking the morale of our soldiers fighting and dying in the Middle East? Their morale, like so many bodies, is already shot to pieces. They are being treated, as I never was, like toys a rich kid got for Christmas.

Anyway, it's worth checking out.

The first book I actually had a chance to get into last month was David Sedaris' Me Talk Pretty One Day. In truth, I had bought a copy because I had read the odd personal essay of his in the New Yorker (which were generally very enjoyble), and also because there was a certain unescapable amount of buzz about his talents as a humourist. Initially, the book was destined to be a possible personal selection for our book club, but like any weak minded person, I ended up reading it before I should have (which in a book club notorious for its informality, was frowned upon because it broke the one and only rule we hold close - that is, you can't read the book yourself until it is actually assigned to the group). Anyway, it is good, although I guess that is a sort of an average summation, in that there were bits that were "really really" good (the essay, "Jesus Shaves" comes to mind), and also bits that were only "o.k." good. In any event, there was even a bit of science, which is always exciting to an individual like myself. Here it is:

Faced with an exciting question, science tended to provide the dullest possible answer. Ions might charge the air, but they fell flat when it came to charging the imagination - my imagination, anyway. To this day, I prefer to believe that inside every television there lives a community of versatile, thumb-sized actors trained to portray everything from a thoughtful newscaster to the wife of a millionaire stranded on a desert island. Fickle gnomes control the weather, and an air conditioner is powered by a team of squirrels, their cheeked packed with ice cubes.

There you go. David Sedaris on science - maybe we should collaborate?

Or design a font together? Some of you may or may not know, but I do have a bit of graphic design background under my belt. This includes being handy with the usual assortment of software, and generally being a Mac devotee (just got the black MacBook - hmmm...nice machine). One of my personal and decidely unscientific joys is appreciating a nice font, and the book thinking with type is just (if I can sound like I'm from the Valley), like, the prettiest thing, like, ever. The book also led me to one of my favourite "looking" sites, Speak Up, which is just marvelous in a cosmic karma sort of way, because I noticed that they linked to the World's Fair just the other day. Tim, Katherine? Are you reading, could I get the World's Fair to look like that?

Here's a thought: What is it about writer's names that make them sound, well, like writer's names. Could "Vonnegut" have been given a better surname? Michael Ondaatje? Nick Hornby? They just sound right, don't they? Or how's this one for styling points: "Northrop Frye?" I tell you, you just can't make this stuff up, and these names certainly sound a lot more natural than David Ng (although I think "Benjamin Cohen" sounds like a good writer's name). Northrop Frye, by the way, is a noted Canadian writer, probably best well known in academic circles for promoting literary criticism as a discipline, or even a science, in its own right.

Anyway, I did pick up Northrop Frye's The Educated Imagination which promised to query,

"What good is the study of literature? Does it help us think more clearly, or feel more sensitively, or live a better life than we could without it?..."

And it succeeds in answering this to some degree, although I often felt it did so in a meandering and loose manner. I'm not sure if this is a good or bad thing, whether it is the norm or exception for such arguments, but it was definitely something I'm not accustomed to. To be honest, and this might be an odd statement to make, but I'm not even actually sure if I enjoyed the book. It was interesting and all, but I felt a bit lost (and I don't mean confused, just lost) throughout. In fact, this is a sentiment mirrored in a lot in my experiences with the humanities lately - for example, talks I've attended on science history, science philosophy, and so on.

My point, I suppose is that such elements of academia do seem very different from the empirical assurances of talking academics in science, and that perhaps this is the challenge of it all. Ooh, I liked that - let's put that in italics, the challenge of it all.

Anyway, maybe this is a good time to end the post with another excerpt from Vonnegut's Man Without a Country. Something like this:

If you want to really hurt your parents, and you don't have the nerve to be gay, the least you can do is go into the arts. I'm not kidding. The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven's sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something."

And regardless of whether you're the sciency or artsy type, doesn't that just sound about right?

Just a quickie comment on Now One Foot, Now the Other, which narrowingly missed the cut for the children's book stuff we had going on earlier. Anyway, it's really beautiful, words and all. Good for you MD's out there especially.