Diaz on Reading

OK, I kind of remember what Diaz said the other night about novels and reading. He was asked by someone in the crowd if he ever got any push back from his editor or publisher about the use of Spanish in his book.

The short answer was, no, he didn't get much push back. Because he would have just pulled the book and his publishers knew that. But guys, he said (he said that a lot, guys), the only reason that would be an issue is that we've forgotten how to read. When we used to read as kids, we were always coming across a word that we didn't know and we had to look it up. We had to ask questions, we had to do some work, and now that we're adults we think all of that is behind us. Sure, reading can be fun and entertaining and even mindless, but a novel, he said, a novel can be something that does more than that. It can be something you experience like you experience life, which is to say, something you don't completely understand. Just about every day you hear someone or read something that you don't quite understand, someone is speaking in a different language, like Spanish or IT-nerd-ish or politico-conspiracy-ish, and you have to either ask a question or let it go. You either do some work and find out the meaning of that that foreign phrase or that jargon, or you go on with your life and realize that you can't understand everything, you can't control everything, that life is ultimately huge and unwieldy and beyond taming.

And guys, he said, that's why a novel can be such a great form of community building, because ultimately the best way to somehow manage life is to realize that our understanding is really an interpretation. Any meaning we can derive is in the form of interpretation, which we know is in itself a fickle thing, and the best interpretation you're ever going to get is one that includes many voices, many viewpoints. Other people, other readers, who bring their own experiences to the novel and understand it in their peculiar, sometimes even fucked-up, ways can add to the conversation about what this novel "means".

And that meaning, I'd say (no longer paraphrasing Diaz, and hardly being original here), can be so many things, but the best thing you could say about a novel is just that it's true. Fiction is true when you get that sort of it's-funny-because-it's-true feeling, which is a cliche about cliched stand-up comedy. But it's that feeling. The realization that, yeah, this is what life is like, this is my experience somehow snatched and twisted a bit and injected into language in a way I've never seen before. And you somehow understand your life better and feel as if you can live better because of it. Because you've got just a little firmer pinkie grip than you had before, and that's why you keep reading.

Junot Diaz

I saw Junot Diaz last night at Butler University. He kept it very short, just read two pieces. And the first he read off his iPhone because he forgot to print it out.


He seemed to have three personae: Jersey ghetto (which he was in most of the time), Dominican (he spoke in Spanish to some Dominicans in the crowd), and professor (when he expounded during the Q&A). Pretty entertaining. Made me want to go back and read *The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao* again. Haven't read *Drown* yet. Probably will soon.

He said some interesting things about reading and novels and how important they are. Well, I forget exactly what he said, but this is what I remember: reading is way more important to him than writing. I’m always encouraged when I hear that. I can get kind of stupidly depressed when I think about the fact that I want to write something, but I haven't. Everyone wants to write. Not everyone can. But you can read. And, I’m remembering now, I love hearing Borges (in his Norton lectures--they're on CD!) say that first and foremost he's a reader. And an interview by Bolano, where he says that what's really important is that we keep reading--writing, not so much. Is there a Spanish language connection here? Anyway, you can do worse than be a pathological reader, I guess.

Correlation is Causation

Apparently this is old news, but I'm just now learning about this: http://www.obereed.net/hh/correlation.html. Wish I'd known sooner.

David Foster Wallace

Have you read that guy? Oh my gosh. He's good. Was good. If you didn't know, he committed suicide in September of 2008, which makes it a little awkward when he's writing about depression and suicide. But he did it so well. And with levity, and it works, it makes you smile, you can't help it.
(And if you think that's not the sort of thing that should make you smile, then you should not read this guy. Because he's one of those people, like Mel Brooks or Trey Parker, who has shown us that anything can be funny. *Anything*. I mean, without these people we would never have laughed at the Holocaust or AIDS or self-annihilation by microwave oven. And that would have been a shame.)

Early last year I read *Infinite Jest* and it changed my life. I said, Yes, this is it, this is brilliant, this is the kind of book I've been looking for my entire life. And then I went on with my life and basically forgot about that hefty novel (it's 1100 pages). Then I recently picked up *Brief Interviews with Hideous Men* and I remembered, Oh yeah, this guy exists, or existed not so long ago, David Foster Wallace, and he was a genius.

In case you're wondering, Brief Interviews is a collection of short stories, and the title comes from these fictional interviews that are kind of evenly spaced throughout the book. You don't know what the questions are, but the interviewees are all misogynists. I know, hilarious, right?

Here's an excerpt, where two graduate students are being interviewed. Their names are K--- and E---, and they are responding to the same question:

K--- 'What does today's woman want. That's the big one.'
E--- 'I agree. It's the big one all right. It's the what-do-you-call...'
K--- 'Or put another way, what do today's women *think* they want versus what do they really deep down *want*.'
E--- 'Or what do they think they're *supposed* to want.'

And you can imagine what two over-educated, theory-soaked misogynists can tell you about what women *really*, *deep down* want.

Anyway, it's a great book, and I recommend it as an intro to DFW if you're not quite up for Infinite Jest. Also, here's a great essay I found about Wallace at The Point Magazine: http://thepointmag.com/death1.html.

[And yes, I'm one of those people who uses the words "genius" and "brilliant" a bit lightly. Which is one way to divide the world. Those who do and those who don't. The way you might categorize carbonated beverage fans as Coke-lovers or Pepsi-lovers; taxonomical biologists as lumpers or splitters; or physicists as strict-Copenhagen-ers or non-strict-Copenhagen-ers.]

The Post Where Sub-sub Lightens Up

I've been thinking that maybe I should start using this blog more like a blog. In fact, I somehow feel like I owe it to people to make it a bit bloggy-er, if they've gone to all the trouble of clicking into this particular corner of the virtual cosmos, with the expectation that they will find something informal and personal and confessional and all. So I'm thinking that this is what I owe, and really I've been keeping myself to myself very selfishly. The thing I realized (I had an epiphany) is that I'm very special. Like one in six and a half billion, a unique snowflake, and whatever else is unique like that, like a crooked branch on a gnarly tree, or a constellation of freckles on a pale lower back, etc.. And what I need to do is spend loads of time expressing myself in the most idiosyncratic fashion I can muster, with confidence that I'll find this all extremely rewarding.

So I will post more. I will give my opinion and do my best to keep facts, figures, and numbers (scientific, statistical, monetary, astrological) out of it. And I will try not to be holier than thou. Because, I'm being painfully honest with everyone including myself, I have posted some very serious and preachy stuff on this blog. Back to the epiphany: I've been taking myself too seriously. To be fair, no one else was, so I felt that if anyone was going to take me seriously it had to be me. But life is short (the epiphany), and it's better when I'm not so serious. If I'm going to be serious again, I'll warn you beforehand. But I'll try not to do it.

What will this blog be about, now? Well, mostly about what I've been reading. Probably. Or movies and music, that sort of stuff. So, here we draw a line in the Sub-sub space, below this line we do not venture, unless we are curious about how serious and preachy I used to be. But don't bring it up again. Please.
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Is it OK not to be a Luddite?

[I wrote this back in 2006, and some readers may recognize it from its previous life on another blog. I’ve changed very little.]

About 6 years ago I became an enthusiast of Wendell Berry. He is a farmer living in Kentucky who is also a novelist, a poet, and an essayist. It was primarily his essays that inspired me to become interested in the state of American farming, to pay attention to what I eat and how I use natural resources. More than that, I began to adopt his critical way of thinking about technology and “progress” to the point where I could have been labeled by some as a Luddite, just as Mr. Berry has been labeled.

Tonight I am living in downtown Indianapolis, writing this essay on a laptop, enrolled in an urban university and more than satiated from the fast food I ate for dinner. We can hardly consider me to be a Luddite of the Berry persuasion. And yet there are vestiges of my former idealism that survive. I just sold my car because I ride a bike everywhere, I refuse to carry a cell phone, and I buy from the farmers market when I can. It is hard to say if these are just habits that I will eventually discard once I have completely outgrown some Wendell Berry phase, or if this is something that I will never outgrow. It has now been over twenty years since Thomas Pynchon asked Is it ok to be a Luddite? Lately, the question on my mind has been, is it ok not to be a Luddite?

It seems to me there are at least three kinds of people who might oppose any particular technology. The first are, for lack of a better term, the Lazy. These are people who resist any kind of change because they are comfortable with where they are, with how things have been. I’m not sure anyone would call this kind of person a Luddite, but if they did it wouldn’t be a compliment.

The second kind are the Fearful. This would include the historical Luddite movement. In the early 19th century, a group of discontents in England began sabotaging the textile machinery that was putting local skilled workers out of the job. The group claimed the leadership of Ned Ludd, a local mythical hero of the previous century who was said to have demolished two large stocking frames “in a fit of insane rage.” Aside from the damage done to machines, the Luddites were a non-violent group who were violently suppressed by British troops and harsh legal penalties. This is not to paint them as entirely innocent citizens who were unjustly dealt with, but to point out that those who were involved in this movement did so at great personal risk.

This is the Luddism of Edward Abbey’s The Monkey Wrench Gang and organizations that use sabotage tactics to protect the environment. The fear of ecological catastrophe is what drives individuals to do such things, though it is a fear many of us share without participating in vandalism. We can all sympathize with wanting what Pynchon calls the “Badass” to show up and save us from the terrors that seem too big and too powerful.

And the third kind are the Thinkers. These are people who have not bought into the idea that technological progress is an inevitable consequence of innocuous origins. They like to think, and while doing so they consider all areas of thie life fair game for thinkin’ about. This seems noble enough, and will gain lip service from most people who claim to be intellectuals. However, if someone spends their thinkin’ time on the advantages and disadvantages of the latest popular gadget, they are simply considered a nuisance. If they actually come down on the side of refusing this gadget, they are often treated with suspicion. And, if they do this consistently, they are labeled a Luddite, which is in this case the expletive of choice for those who condemn by category without considering the rationale behind the choice.

Mr. Berry is one of these Thinkers. Consider this passage, taken from his essay “Feminism, the Body, and the Machine”:

…[T]he question of the desirability of adopting any technological innovation is a question with two possible answers—not one as has been commonly assumed. If one’s motives are money, ease, and haste to arrive at a technologically determined future, then the answer is foregone, and there is, in fact, no question, and no thought. If one’s motive is the love of family, community, country, and God, then one will have to think, and one may have to decide that the proposed innovation is undesirable.

Our motivations may not directly coincide with Mr. Berry’s, or if they do, we may not come to the same conclusions. But we can appreciate the process of evaluation and the mistrust of dogmatism. Nothing is off limits for critical evaluation, and nothing should be.

Those who would brandish the term Luddite as an accusation are, I’m assuming, under the impression that technology is value free and that this somehow makes it wrong to oppose any kind of technology. In other words, technology has no value, but opposing it has a value, and it’s bad. It’s hard to imagine how something without value can draw such vehement valuations, but let me make the observation that there is nothing in my life, nothing that comes into my sphere of existence, that is value free. I am constantly conferring value every time I make a decision. I do this instead of that. I buy this instead of that. I think this instead of that. It is impossible for any technology to be value free because it necessarily requires the exclusion of something else, as all decisions do. We are under a time limit and the clock is ticking.

It might be argued that there is a difference between moral values and values I determine by my personal choices. One might wonder about the value of making such a distinction.

So, is it ok not to be a Luddite? Of course, this question can’t be answered as it is stated. What kind of Luddism are we talking about? Is it ok to be Lazy, or Fearful, or a Thinker? I will not comment on the Lazy or the Fearful. However, I will say that I not only admire the Thinker, but also I wonder at times whether or not we have an obligation to be such a person. I’m not confident enough to say with certainty what is ok and what isn’t ok about many things. I’m not so sure it is ok to be a human being. But I am quite certain that it’s ok to be a Thinker. And I fear the consequences of a 6 billion plus global population, the majority of which might feel it is ok not to be a Thinker.

Reductionism (The Short Version)

I realized when I posted my last essay that it was way too long for a blog. This is my attempt to reduce it down to a few paragraphs.

Reductionism in biology is the idea that all levels of enquiry, from cells to physiology to ecology, could in theory be explained by molecular biology, and ultimately by particle physics. Physicalism is the idea that there is only one kind of stuff in the universe, matter (or energy—pick your stuff). I find it strange that the majority of biologists and philosophers of science are both physicalists and anti-reductionists. It seems to me that not only does physicalism require a bedrock theory of reductionism, but that reductionism has proven to be the best strategy we have for understanding nature. I suspect that most anti-reductionists are fearful of determinism, and the debunking of free will that it entails, and this is the motivation behind the inconsistency.

One thing I didn’t explain in my first essay was the distinction between theoretical and ontological reductionism. To be fair, most scientists and philosophers are specifically opposed to theoretical reductionism, which is the belief that all higher level scientific theories will one day be explained in terms of particle physics. The classic example of theoretical reductionism is the reduction of Kepler’s laws of planetary motion to Newton’s laws of mechanics. There are fewer opponents to ontological reductionism, which is the belief that the physical world is ultimately made of one basic unit of physical stuff (this is also known as monism).

The view that anti-reductionists posit is called emergence. This is the idea that there are different levels of biological enquiry that require different kinds of explanation. Certain characteristics of the biological world emerge only when matter interacts in large quantities, creating complex systems with fascinating properties all of their own. The whole is more than the sum of its parts. A classic example of an emergent property in physics is color—an elementary particle doesn’t have a color, but a large collection of particles emit a certain spectrum of light and can then be said to have color.

[Stuart Kauffman (Reinventing the Sacred: A New View of Science, Reason, and Religion) is an example of someone who is a physicalist and at the same time rejects both theoretical and ontological reductionism. Not only does he think that certain properties of biology emerge at higher levels of complexity, he thinks those properties represent real fundamental units of reality (what he calls the “furniture of the universe”).]

Emergence and complex systems theory are fascinating to me, and I think they have a lot to contribute in the near future. Ultimately, though, the core of natural science is reductionistic, and I see no reason to doubt that complexity theories will one day be replaced with fundamental physical theories. This prospect is even more likely if it turns out to be true that the principle of natural selection is actually a law of chemistry, as Alexander Rosenberg has suggested (Darwinian Reductionism or How to Stop Worrying and Love Molecular Biology).