Author Archive
Every so often, newspapers and television reports will break stories 
revealing shocking hazing at college fraternities or reports of sexual assults on campus, prompting outrage, questions and calls for reform. On a lesser level, parents worry about ‘hookup’ cultures among college-aged men, or shake their heads in disbelief when confronted with the amount of time their sons spend playing video games instead of attending classes. The final straw comes as college educated men return to their childhood homes, much to their parents’ disbelief. In all these cases, a common refrain emerges: What is wrong with these guys?
The answer, writes SUNY-Stony Brook sociologist Micheal Kimmel, lies in the little understood world of Guyland. Guyland, Kimmel writes, is a homosocial culture that men in their late teens and early twenties create in an effort to transition into the responsibilities of manhood. Advocates consider it a rite of passage, but Kimmel points out that Guyland’s culture of silence and conformity helps nurture cruel behavior, foster debasing images of women, promote violence, and leads to just plain stupidity.
Why the bizarre behavior from seemingly intelligent, well-adjusted young men? As Kimmel writes, much of Guy behavior is driven by insecurity: other men are perceived as having more sex, able to tolerate more alcohol or simply having more fun then most, pushing men to chase a non-existant pacesetter. And much has to do with a sense of entitlement: as women and minorities have made strides in both education and employment, Guyland offers a spot where guys (whom Kimmel’s reveal are almost always white) are insulated from political correctness, challenges from women and the repercussions of violence that seem to threaten their particular definition of maleness. It blithely divides the world into a dichotomy of those who play along with Guys rules versus those who don’t (and therefore don’t matter in Guyland). While most guys grow out of the stage without any lingering negatives, the fact that the darkest aspects of Guyland occur at all means that more men (and other college groups) need to put aside the ‘boys will be boys’ attitude and find the courage to speak out against abusive cultures.
Kimmel, a specialist in gender studies, conducted scores of interviews with young men, college administrators, coaches and young women in his research for Guyland, and he presents an engaging and readable argument. But there’s also plenty to argue with here as well. I believe Kimmel’s book tends to present Guyland’s lifestyle as the only option for college men, a fact made more noticeable by the lack of any perspective as to how many men actually succumb to the worst excesses of loutish behavior. And Kimmel never fully addresses how so many men can navigate the same school environment and avoid such problems. But like a lot of other books that try to decipher the peculiar behavior of the sexes, the appeal is as much in sparking conversation or following up footnotes as it is in reading. In that respect, Guyland is an accessible road map into the strange territory of the American Guy.
January 2nd, 2009
Katie H.
A while back, someone with a good understanding of my obsession with English costume dramas suggested that I watch Cranford, the new PBS/Masterpiece production based in part on Elizabeth Gaskell’s novel of the same name. Having never read anything by Gaskell and associating her, unfairly, with the most sentimental of Victorian English novels, I didn’t get around to the DVDs until recently. I soon realized that my previous prejudices were completely wrong, and I was smitten. After enjoying the series, I picked up the original novel, curious as to how Gaskell’s serialized novel of 1853 would stand up to readers 150 years later.
Happily, Cranford turned out to be a throughly enjoyable and surprisingly modern read. Centered on the tiny town of Cranford in the 1830s, Cranford tells the story of two sisters of a slightly advanced age, trying to maintain a genteel existence while fending off modernity. Their main comfort is gossip, and since Cranford is populated almost entirely by women in circumstances very similar to their own, Miss Deborah and Miss Matty find plenty to talk about. Gaskell’s later books are primarily concerned with class differences and an increasingly industrial nation, and through several vignettes, many of the same issues pop up with a more muted tone in Cranford. Miss Matty hopes to reconnect with a man whose lower class status made him unacceptable in her youth, and the town is thrown into an uproar when suspicious strangers (men, no less) seem to threaten the peace. In the final chapters, Miss Matty comes to grips with the realization that she might have to undergo a profound change late in life, which even her resourceful friends might be hard-pressed to help with.
Gaskell creates her characters and their adventures with an affectionate tone that still has a slightly satirical edge (Miss Pole, my favorite character in both book and film, is a creation that both Dickens and Austen would have been proud to have invented). Yet their stories of struggling to retain their independence despite economic problems and a changing way of life still resontates today. Fans of such modern authors as Jan Karon, Jennifer Chiaverini and even Debbie Macomber might find the women-centered, small town setting of Cranford to their liking, while neophytes to Gaskell could consider the novel a good introduction to her longer, later works.
December 11th, 2008
Katie H.
At the young age of 18, Beryl Bissell took what she thought would be the final, and most momentous step in her life. When she entered a Poor Claires convent in the late 1950s, she expected to live a long life, but her identity as Beryl had ceased. She would hereafter be known as Sister Mary Beatrix, and her life would be God’s.
In her memoir The Scent of God, Bissell recounts a life that is as much a coming-of-age story as a search for spiritual fulfillment. Raised in typical circumstances by a middlingly devout family, Bissell was drawn to a life of poverty and contemplation by a desire to find deeper meaning in a life given to God. Against her family’s protests, she enters into a life filled with the routine of rising for midnight prayers, raising food for the convent’s needs and trying to achieve a deeper connection with God. But life within the convent walls proves much more difficult in ways that Bissell could not imagine. Hoping to be seen as especially devout, Bissell struggles with anorexia, and develops a fixation on the novice mistress that threatens to distract her from contemplation.
After leaving the monastary to tend to her ailing father in Puerto Rico, Bissell meets Vittorio, a charasmatic priest who stirs her interest. As the changes of Vatican II begin to relax the routine of the Poor Claires, Bissell begins to wonder if living in the world holds greater meaning for her than what she views as her increasingly unsatisfactory experience in the convent. Leaving the order in 1972, Bissell returns to Puerto Rico and Vittorio, ready to begin anew. But life outside of the convent proves to be a greater challenge, testing her faith beyond anything she could have imagined.
The emphasis here is more on how Bissell’s religious search shaped her relationships, rather than a meditiation on her spiritual quest. She shapes her true story almost as a novelist would, recreating dialogue, capturing the atmosphere of her travels in vivid language and creating a sense of suspense when things don’t always go as planned. There isn’t as much insight into her spiritual path–the question of why she wished to become a nun in the first place is never fully revealed. Other former nuns and laymen have gone over this ground somewhat more thoroughly (Karen Armstrong’s The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness and Kathleen Norris’ The Cloister Walk being two good examples). But for a story of a woman coming into her own after a false start, The Scent of God is a gripping account of life’s trials and its ultimate grace.
December 5th, 2008
Katie H.
Quentin Jacobsen is your average teenager. Among his fellow classmates in the Orlando-area high school he attends, he pursues some usual adolescent vices and joys: hanging out by the band room, trying to convince his parents to let him use the car, trying to attain some medicoum of popularity, dreaming about the future. But in one aspect of his life, Quentin has always known that he is extraordinarily lucky: he lives next door to Margo Roth Spiegelman.
Witty, popular, and something of a badass, Margo and Quentin were close friends before a time and life caused them to drift apart. But just before graduation, Quentin is suprised by Margo’s appearance outside his bedroom window. For one night, he joins her in a set of wild pranks as she settles scores. The following morning, Quentin hopes that there’s a chance to revive their friendship. But Margo has disappeared. At first, Quentin isn’t surprised. Margo had run away before, only to turn up without much explaination in nearby Mississippi. But as graduation approaches, Quentin grows increasingly concerned about Margo’s whereabouts, and begins to suspect the worst.
Author John Green blends mystery, road trip antics and ruminations on identity in his latest young adult title, Paper Towns. The title refers to places on a map that don’t actually exist, but are used by mapmakers for copyright reasons. Quentin learns that Margo has something of an obsession with the concept, and he tries to track down the nonexistant town where he thinks she is hiding. But as he pieces together clues, he finds that the question is not so much where Margo is, but whether he even knows who she really is. When Quentin and Co. hit the road, the action becomes an increasingly manic whirl in desperate pursuit of Margo.
Green has traveled smart boy/enigmatic girl territory before in his Printz Award-winning Looking for Alaska. What was a winning combination in that book works with a lighter tone beautifully in Paper Towns. Green has a pitch-perfect ear for dialogue, and his cast of characters throw off zingers with aplomb (”getting you a date to prom is so hard that the hypothetical idea itself is actually used to cut diamonds”). But under all the humor and pranks, there’s the looming question of the fate of friendships as childhood comes to a close. This is my second Green title, and I’m once again impressed by how adroitly he blends humor and wit with the sometimes painful aspects of growing up. I’m already waiting impatiently for his next title.
November 15th, 2008
Katie H.
It was a type of wound that Commissaire Adamsberg thought he would never see again. Three stab wounds perfectly aligned, each the exact same depth on the victim’s stomach, as if made by a trident. For most of his life, Adamsberg had pursued the serial killer known as the Judge through multiple victims in every corner of France, but never saw the man brought to justice. Fifteen years ago, Adamsberg’s quest ended when he witnessed the Judge’s burial after a natural death.
Which makes the reappearance of the Judge’s modus operandi especially chilling. In Wash This Blood Clean From My Hand, the stakes get much more personal for the detective. Shortly after the discovery near Strasbourg of a young woman’s body with the telltale marks, Adamsberg is called away to a workshop in Ottawa. After a night of drowning his sorrows, Adamsberg wakes up alone and bloody on a deserted walking path, with no recollection of the previous hours. When Canadian investigators find the body of a troubled woman with whom Adamsberg had a one night stand, the police immediately close in, forcing Adamsberg into the impossible position of fleeing one set of authorities while trying to work with his own Paris Serious Crime Squad in tracking down the Judge. In the effort to convince his colleagues of a resurrected Judge, Adamsberg struggles with the possiblity that his own demons might have gotten the better of him.
French author Fred Vargas is well known for her complex characters, and this third installment in the Adamsberg series does not disappoint. The secondary characters are vitally key to Vargas’ intricate plot, as their strengths and failures have serious consequences on Adamsberg’s guilt or innocence. Adamsberg knows second in command Danglard has unquestionable loyalty–although who that loyalty is towards remains murky. Cool-headed and perceptive Lieutenant Retancourt startles everyone, including Adamsberg, with the depth of her abilities and resources.
Fans of Georges Simenon’s might find Adamsberg’s blend of humor, perception and tenacity a fitting modern counterpart to the classic Maigret series. Unlike that series, however, Adamsberg relies on a much larger and unexpectedly talented cast of characters to unravel crimes. Vargas, a winner of the CWA International Dagger, has penned three other titles in the Adamsberg series, with another set for release in 2009.
September 24th, 2008
Katie H.
Ask most Americans about what transpired between Columbus’ sighting of the New World and the Pilgrims’ first Thanksgiving, and you’re likely to get a blank look in response. At least, that was the experience of Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist Tony Horwitz, who was appalled to discover that in spite of a college degree and a career of fact-finding, he had no inkling of what transpired in that 130 year void, his own sort of historical terra incognita.
Ever the intrepid reporter, Horwitz sets out to fill in the missing gaps with his own trip, recounting his misadventures in A Voyage Long and Strange: Rediscovering the New World. It’s an apt title, as it refers equally well to the wanderings of hapless Europeans spectacularly out of their depth, or Horwitz’s own state of mind as he encounters modern day Americans still grappling with the effects of the American conquest. Starting out where the Vikings first made landfall hundreds of years before Columbus, Horwitz considers the felicity of Nordic naming practices that gave the barren Newfoundland coast the moniker Vinland before barely surviving a harrowing night in a sweat lodge. Moving on to the Dominican Republic, Horwitz comes close to seeing what could be Columbus’s bones–only to discover the real meaning of the Columbus curse. Finally, he wanders much of the southern United States, following the brutal wake of conquistadors De Coronado and De Soto in their fruitless searches for cities of gold among the wilds of modern-day New Mexico and Florida.
Horwitz’s humorous approach to travel writing reminds me a lot of Bill Bryson’s many misadventures. But Horwitz’s journalistic use of interviews and research is as much interested in determining the relevance of such long ago events as it is in debunking historical myths. For instance, the story of Pocahontas and John Smith has been romanticized into a glossy, Disneyfied love story. But as Horwitz reports, Pocahontas’ legacy has been used to justify racist efforts to deny Native Americans their identity and drive a wedge between them and African Americans–wounds that still linger in Virginia today.
Like his earlier work Confederates in the Attic, A Voyage Long and Strange asks why myths about history persist and what that says about American identity. Under the fun travelogue and various mishaps, the history lesson isn’t quite the same one taught in elementary school, but one that will linger considerably longer.
September 4th, 2008
Katie H.
“These are strange times to be a Jew.” That’s a common refrain in the Federal Districk of Sitka, Alaska. After losing the war to the Palestinians, European Jews settled on the frigid coast of Alaska, left to fend for themselves for 60 years. But the district is about to revert to Alaskan jurisdiction, and three milion Jews have started the long, uncertain journey in search of a new homeland.
Detective (noz) Meyer Landsman should be one of them, but a dead baby and a painful divorce has left him washed up and apathetic in the seediest of Sitka hotels. When a dead man with a false name turns up murdered in his building, Landsman is intrigued, especially by the battered chess set he discovers near the body. Something about the chess problem triggers memories long buried–and points to a distinct mob culture at the heart of Sitka. With his half-Tlingit partner, Berko Semets, Landsman starts digging into a culture of rabbi gangsters, sketchy chess players (patzers) and a few slick Americans ready to pick over Sitka’s bones before Reversion is complete. But in a city with no hope for the future, Landsman learns that the only people interested in the murder of an anonymous chess player are those willing to go to any lengths to keep the truth buried.
It’s tough to catagorize Michael Chabon’s The Yiddish Policemen’s Union as literary fiction, mystery or science fiction. Defying the boundaries of all three genres, Chabon creates a rich work that recalls the noir Los Angeles of Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe. But where Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler gave their disillusioned detectives a brittle slang, Chabon gives Landsman and Berko Yiddish slang that has its own particular rhythm. When Chabon writes descriptions comparing laughter to the sound of someone jumping up and down on a leather valise, the image is unexpected, a little nonsensical and totally apt. Landsman is a dogged character whose problems only make him more endearing as the book moves along. My favorite character, however, was Bina Gelbfish, police commisioner, Landsman’s boss and ex-wife, whose unwillingness to suffer fools makes for delicious complications.
With his rich descriptions, Chabon’s writing is slower reading than the Spade/Marlowe mysteries to which he pays homage, but I found that the evocative, inventive language made up for deficiencies in pacing. Having won the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, Chabon received science fiction’s Nebula Award with Yiddish. A movie, written and directed by the Coen brothers, is also in the works.
August 20th, 2008
Katie H.
When Pulitzer Prize winning historian Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. died in February 2007, his death marked not only the passing of a popular and probing scholar, but of a leading proponent of a political era that seems unlikely to reappear.
From his beginnings as a speechwriter for Adlai Stevenson’s
unsuccessful presidential bid in 1952, Schlesinger was one of the most vocal preponents of postwar liberalism. But he is perhaps best known for his role as Special Assistant to John F. Kennedy, a post that gave him a particularly strong connection to the Kennedy dynasty and lead to the second of his Pulitzer Prize winning books, A Thousand Days. The whole time that Schlesinger was serving in his various capacities as speechwriter, advisor and working historian, he was also working on a series of journals. Beginning with the 1952 presidential campaign and stretching to the 2000 Bush vs. Gore decision, Journals, is a wealth of historical vignettes and glimpses of the powerful at play. But Schlesinger’s entries are most telling in how his grasp of history informed his political advising–and casts light on how proximity to power can shape the perceptions of even the most well-informed.
What stayed with me most while reading the journals is how much Schlesinger’s concerns about policy and power so closely mirror our own times. I was particularly struck by his views following the Kent State shootings in May 1970, worth quoting at length:
The reaction [to the shootings] has been one of gloom and fury–a fury derived from a sense of impotence, from the inability to get hold of the presidential process…the Nixon Cambodian adventure reveals the anomaly in our process–the difficulty of getting control over a President determined to embark on foreign adventures. This anomaly did not matter as long as the foreign adventures seemed essential to the national security; but, when they do not seem essential to the national security, we have to confront a dangerous–I trust not fatal–weakness in our Constitution.
As Schlesinger’s journals progress into the 1980s and 1990s (a period in which he felt further shunted to the side politically), he expresses increasing dismay at the choices of leadership and (in my opinion) exhibits defensiveness in his belief of history as a guide to those in power. What remains is a sense that the golden age (Kennedy’s administration) has passed and the future looks increasingly bleak.
In addition to his historical musings, Schlesinger depicts a social circle both incongruous and lively. Lunches with Henry Kissinger give way to meetings with Lauren Bacall and parties with Mick Jagger at which a bemused seventy-year-old Schlesinger finds himself. The name dropping can be a little grating, but Schlesinger’s ability to keep things in perspective generally keeps his narrative moving along. At a daunting 800+ pages and free from explanatory aids, Journals would appeal most to those with an already strong interest in twentieth century history and politics. For those looking for a somewhat shorter depiction of Washington power players, consider former Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham’s excellent memoir Personal History.
July 30th, 2008
Katie H.
I can’t exactly say why I chose to pick up John Burnham Schwartz’s newest novel The Commoner, but I have a feeling it was on account of the hardcover’s arresting cover image. A shallow way to chose books, I will admit, but in this case, it worked brilliantly. The chilly image of a kimono clad woman, frozen in mid-span of an ornamental bridge perfectly captures Schwartz’s quiet tale of one woman’s struggle between her own hopes and the life that she has chosen.
The commoner is Haruko, a young woman raised in a wealthy household during and after World War II. After her cheeky independence catches the eye of the Crown Prince, Haruko emerges as the ideal candidate to become Crown Princess–and pull the centuries-old Chrysanthemum Throne into the modern era. But once inside the palace grounds, Haruko is isolated, bullied and worn down by the Imperial Court, entrenched in its own suffocating traditions. Somehow, she endures. But years later, Empress Haruko faces the task of convincing a brilliant young diplomat to marry her son, the Crown Prince, and join her at a court whose only regard for a woman comes from her ability to produce a male heir.
In the quiet, cloistered world that Haruko chooses, even world shaking events like the Tokyo bombings register like distant tremors in a well-insulated world. Yet the portrait of Haruko is created so delicately that when the inevitable happens it really is shattering. Schwartz’s depiction of the Imperial Court is so absorbing that if the ending is a little improbable, it’s a slight quibble for an otherwise beautifully written book. And one that doesn’t look too bad, either.
May 12th, 2008
Katie H.
Occassionally, a book appears that seems to defy any attempts at categorization. Anya Ulinich’s ambitious debut novel Petropolis falls under such a heading: it’s a twist on the coming of age story and the immigrant tale, a satirical take on modern American life that occassionally strays into farce. It’s about racism, the Jewish diaspora, class conflict, culture shock, the struggle to find a home, religious hypocrisy, the persistant pull of family bonds, and the promise of the American dream.
At Petropolis’ center is Sasha Goldberg, an art-loving teenager whose lack of musical skill or scholarly genius leaves her ambitious mother despairing over her future. After losing her boyfriend and her baby, Sasha decides to put her hopeless Siberian hometown behind her and head for America, ending up in a blighted Phoenix suburb as a mail order bride. But Sasha is just as adrift in the U.S., and only the prospect of finding her long-absent father keeps her focused through the absurd situations she stumbles into. But when Sasha finally discovers her father, the longed-for answers aren’t what she’s expecting.
It seems like a lot of plot, and it’s true that Petropolis could have done with a bit more editorial pruning. More than once I had to ask myself where Ulinich was going with a particular plot twist. In Sasha, however, Ulinich has a character that grows on you, and it’s hard not to stick with her in the hopes that she’ll have a happier existance in America than she did in Siberia. The novel is populated with great secondary characters, especially Sasha’s formidable mother and a memorably hard-edged art teacher. Those who enjoyed Gary Shteyngart’s recent Absurdistan might find Petropolis‘ post-Communist landscape appealling; others who are willing to overlook the book’s occassional messiness will find a dark, satirical take on assimilation.
May 2nd, 2008
Katie H.
Previous Posts
revealing shocking hazing at college fraternities or reports of sexual assults on campus, prompting outrage, questions and calls for reform. On a lesser level, parents worry about ‘hookup’ cultures among college-aged men, or shake their heads in disbelief when confronted with the amount of time their sons spend playing video games instead of attending classes. The final straw comes as college educated men return to their childhood homes, much to their parents’ disbelief. In all these cases, a common refrain emerges: What is wrong with these guys? 
