As mentioned previously, the NYC Link kiosks have been posting NYC quotes and provided a pointer to E.B. White’s travel guide to NYC. At the time of the writing, White had left New York for Maine where he had set up a bucolic existence. He returned to the city during a heat wave and, in a vein similar to Steinbeck, had occasion to reflect on what had happened to the town where he’d cut his teeth.

What’s left is a reflection on the bliss and indignities of New York life. It is always, and ever was, the agony and the ecstasy, all the time. Every line is a gem. White’s gift for laconic, efficient text is on full display here. I highly recommend reading through the notes for some solid laugh-out-loud takes on the magic, majesty, mystery, and sweaty crowdedness of NYC.

And, should you be on a flight into Our Fair Town any time soon, load this bit of reading up for the flight. It will fill you with the excitement and expectation that only Gotham knows how to provide.

While I always include my notes as JSON, I’ve extracted these lines out for easier enjoyment after the jump.

When we were looking to figure out what breed of dog to buy, poodles were a possibility, and I saw several references to Charley, the traveling dog from the John Steinbeck book. While I’d been compelled to read Cannery Row and Of Mice and Men by the educational system of Texas many years before, I had never heard of this book. Years on from reading the title, and years on into poodle ownership, I thought I’d take a listen. Audiobook I picked it up because it was available at the NYPL and the audiobook version was read by Gary Sinise. Sinise brings a loveable curmudgeon’s voice to the Steinbeck of the story and voices the variety of characters along the way wonderfully.

I listened to Ottessa Moshfegh’s “My Year of Rest and Relaxation” (MYRR, hereafter) this late Summer. My reaction was distaste for the story and dislike of the unnamed protagonist / narrator. As I finished the book, my overwhelming sense was that Moshfegh had written a book to test sexism: “Can one write a character as unlikable as Mersault from Albert Camus’ The Stranger, and get away with it?"¹

MYRR closely follows The Stranger. In both works, the reader is given little to explain protagonists’ lack of attachment with the world. Why does Mersault feel nothing when his mother dies? Why does the narrator feel comfortable entering a narcotic-induced coma? They are both horrible to those that care for them: Mersault to Marie, Moshfegh’s narrator to tag-along, Reva. And in the closing pages of their respective denouements, they both have a jarring event rip across their respective skylines that seems to jar them to a conscious more familiar to our own.

In the aftermath of their respective tales, we are asked: does their flat affect and lack of affection for the world outside, our world, render them inhuman? Or are their reactions to our world entirely reasonable? It was this question that I wasn’t certain how to answer over these last few months. And I wasn’t sure how to write about this book without having my take on the question settled.

But now I believe I’ve reached a conclusion. In her character’s choices, Moshfegh provides an exploration the proposition of the “The Hero of Non-Action” as presented by David Foster Wallace’s character Hal in Infinite Jest:

We await, I predict, the hero of non-action, the catatonic hero, the one beyond calm, divorced from all stimulus, carried here and there across sets by burly extras

Thus, Moshfegh’s narrator’s disaffection, her desire to sleep a year away through irresponsibly-dispensed drugs, and behavior designed to loosen all social ties is her “Hero of Non-Action” response to a world of artifice and insincerity, “our world.” The Mersault-like behavior of the narrator is therefore secondary to the book’s examination of the question: “How are we to survive these times?” For the narrator, and many of the characters of Infinite Jest, the answer is: “in a narcotic haze to preserve our souls which cannot handle this type of world’s demands.” Seen through this lens, the book became far more sympathetic and compelling.

While this book will never be something I love of glow about, it does have a perspective, and a unique one at that, which suggests value in reading the book.

Researched in exhaustive depth, Bird and Sherwin trace the life, motivations and mystery of one of the true sphinxes of American life (rivalled perhaps only by Thomas Jefferson), J. Robert Oppenheimer.

To capture the scope and breadth and Protean nature of this man would daunt all but the most sedulous and dedicated researchers. But in this carefully-researched biography, Bird and Sherwin tame the untameable mess of anecdote, hearsay, and testimony to give us a picture of this most perplexing, and most thoroughly American, man.

It’s now a trope that’s become near-universal as we’ve seen as geek culture move into the mainstream: “zombie stories aren’t about the supernatural; zombie stories are about humanity and how it works (or fails to work) when being confronted by the unbeatable, supernatural, and unstoppable.” I’ve stayed largely away from much of the nű-zombie media e.g. The Walking Dead, but when my friend Mike recommended this book I decided to take it for a spin. Based on the strength of this offering I was further inclined to read Whitehead’s other work, the widely acclaimed “The Underground Railroad.”

In the story, “Mark Spitz” is part of a team of “cleaners.” Amidst a resurgent humanity, cleaners are combing Manhattan block-by-block to make the island safe for the living again. To return it would be a symbol that the living had “made it.” As he walks around, Spitz reflects upon his survival after the Event, his loneliness, and his part in the decimated society that persists. There are scenes of biting undead and their disposal, as the genre demands, but the greatest part of the book is spent in Spitz’s headspace.

This was a really spectacular read. It’s very popular around Flatiron School and I can see why it’s so useful. There are many management books but this one provides specific steps that help create a culture of leadership at every tier of your organization.

I wrote this document circa October, 2005. I have resurrected it from where it was an independent file and am now re-integrating it into this site.

Introduction

This document is the result of a discussion of distasteful contrivances within literature that tend to make a story “hokey” or that are hallmarks of a lack of creativity. In particular, my correspondent, Rohan Wynar Ph. D., and I noted that the elements of prophecy, ability to see the future, and tehcnological savior were particularly odious.

“The absurd does not liberate, it binds.” — Albert Camus

I loved this book. It was probably my favorite book of 2018.

Scarred by tragedy and a world of unreliable adults, Theo finds his way to manhood, sans solid role models, in our vale of sorrows. Along the way he’s buoyed by a love-from-afar for a fellow tragedy-scarred girl; he’s nourished by a charismatic and druggy best friend; and he’s soothed by the sweet oblivion of a meticulously-meted drug habit.

Theo’s painful origins scream for remedy like Abel’s blood in the Garden. But in this novel, as in real life, he has no choice but to bear his burdens and journey onward. Fortunately, for the reader, and Theo, he has two key means for surviving and contextualizing the tragedies that define him.

First, he has a philosophical-historical mind and we are privy to his ruminations, reflections, and coping mechanisms. Second, Theo’s mother, an art scholar, taught Theo to appreciate art and gifted him with the serenity and equanimity that come from Schopenhauer’s aesthetic contemplation. The primary object of Theo’s aesthetic contemplation is the priceless Dutch masterwork The Goldfinch by Karel Fabritius. A curious and delicate painting, it, like Theo, is the lone survivor of a tragedy: the gunpowder magazine explosion at Delft.

We see Theo cherish, fret over, and worship this masterpiece. His responsibility for and adoration of it is total because, like the narrator in Camus’ The Fall, he stole it.

Rightfully appearing in a number of ‘best of the year’ books, Tara Westover’s memoir, Educated is one of the best memoirs I’ve ever read. Not only is it an excellent memoir in terms of its plot (which reads a bit like Dickens), it’s also a manual for starting afresh and healing when your past is full of horrors. I’ll focus, first on the plot arc element as that frames the more important “how to survive the trauma of severed ties” discussion that comes second. Life Off the Grid Growing up in rural isolation in Idaho on the property of a religiously devout Mormon extremist father, Westover’s father runs his family with an iron fist under the blessing and commandment of the Bible.

Earlier this week I decided to start the well-recommended “Bad Blood” and, less than 24 hours later, I had finished it. I’ve never listened to an audiobook (admittedly, on 2x-3x speed) in one day, but this story was gripping, staggering, galling, and endlessly fascinating.

The Theranos that emerges is paranoid, vindictive, and capricious. They recall “I, Claudius” under Caligula where at the peak of summary executions and orgiastic excess the ringleader, Caligula, asks “Am I mad?” We, in both the case of Theranos and the Julio-Claudians can only marvel at “How can you not know?”

Also appropriately called into question by the author is the culture of the lone genius and the American, if not the world, economy’s need to believe that something special is happening in the Santa Clara Valley and that the people there are doing the quotidian business of business better and grander than ever before, that the people there are titans only on the caliber of Steve Jobs et al.

There are no twists and turns as the startup dreams, launches, grows, metastasizes, fleeces, and then keels over — the seeds of destruction are obvious very early, but the collapse is beyond breathtaking.

Around the City, Google’s LinkNYC kiosks stand as monolithic sentries along our major thoroughfares. They’re a place for free phone calls, wifi, and a cell phone battery top-up. They also have cameras installed and are, no doubt, mining our traffic patterns and more direct use of the kiosks for advertising insights. No such thing as a free lunch.

When idle, the machines have taken, lately, to posting pithy quotes about the city, its inhabitants and both of their incomprehensible customs. A recent winner by E.B. White from his magnum opus urbis urborum “Here is New York:”

New Yorkers temperamentally do not crave comfort and convenience — if they did they would live elsewhere.

I could think of no finer way to honor White than to check out this book from the library system of this city. To my chagrin, and proving White’s maxim, there were no copies available.

However, while browsing, I found this collection of his work on dogs. Being a dog owner myself in the selfsame city, I checked it out.

Cal Newport’s years of experience as a blogger shine through in this wonderfully cogent, clear, minimalist and well-structured blog post that lies at the heart of the book. It’s a powerful argument against the perma-connected, perma-distracted state of the world. Needlessly fattened by (occasionally breathless Tom Friedman-esque) name-dropping and anecdotes that suggest a minimal page count required by the book contract, it left me with the thought “Shoulda been a blog post.” To this I add, now, “Woulda been unforgettable as a blog post or pamphlet.”