Pun Salad

For some reason, I got hooked on this series, the continuing adventures of Molly Gray, a maid at a posh Manhattan hotel. She's neurodivergent, which has caused her problems in the past, but that seems to have been toned down a bit for this entry. She's worked her way to the top of her department, she's assembled a team of loyal colleagues and friends, and she's about to marry the hotel's gifted pastry chef, Juan. (They're "living in sin", a little surprising, but OK.)

And the hotel is about to host an episode of the "Hidden Treasures" TV series, where a couple of charismatic gay appraisers evaluate objects brought before them. On a lark, Molly contributes some knickknacks she and her late, beloved, grandmother Flora accumulated, including a prominent object from the previous novel. And the revelation of its true provenance shocks everyone, especially Molly. Even more shocking: (book flap spoiler a-coming) a daring and mysterious heist is perpetrated during its auction!

Molly's narrative is interspersed with chapters from Flora's discovered diary, in which her riches-to-rags story is detailed. (The author, Nita Prose, is pretty skilled at giving Flora her own "voice", very flowery, and distinct from Molly's.) It's pretty lurid, with an eventual murder.

Not my usual cup of tea, not even when served up in my favorite china cup. But, as I said, I'm hooked.

I ordered this book from Amazon back in December. It came auto-delivered to my Kindle on the release date last month, and I noticed that at some point a subtitle had bee added: The Final Arkady Renko Novel.

And a few days later, via the WSJ's book review, I learned that the author, Martin Cruz Smith, had died on July 11.

Well, darn. I still have the $3.95 paperback of Gorky Park I bought and read back in 1982. And I've been a diligent follower of Smith's diligent Russian investigator, Arkady Renko, since then.

As the book opens, Arkady needs to get his adopted computer-whiz son, Zhenya, out of the clutches of the Russian FSB. He was nabbed for protesting Russia's invasion of Ukraine, calling it a "war" instead of the approved term, "special military operation."

I thought this observation was pointful enough to share at Goodreads:

Once more, Arkady thought, you needed only one book to really understand Russia. Not Tolstoy or Pushkin, not Dostoyevsky or Lermontov, but one his mother used to read to him as a child: Through the Looking-Glass, otherwise known as Alice in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll.

Well… those are two separate books, I think. But otherwise, spot on. Of course, you'd need to add a lot more violence, thuggery, and terror to the Alice books to really get it right.

Soon enough, Arkady is given a murder case: a lower-level defense minister has been brutally murdered at the Hotel Ukraine. Arkady's investigative skills (and a little bit of happenstance luck) draw him to the father/son team of Lev and Ivan Volkov, who run the paramilitary "1812 Group". (Think a barely fictionalized version of the Wagner Group, and its (late) leader Yevgeny Prigozhin, and son Pavel.) Arkady and his longtime lady friend, journalist Tatiana Petrovna, take a dangerous trip to Ukraine, discovering atrocities committed by 1812. (And those are barely fictionalized too.)

Soon enough, both Arkady and Tatiana find themselves in extreme peril from Volkov, the 1812 Group, and their allies in the FSB. Leading to a very cinematic showdown in the sewers and subway tunnels of Moscow.

I will miss Arkady Renko and Martin Cruz Smith a lot. I might do a re-reading project.

Well, I learned a new word, one I've never encountered before, almost certainly will never encounter again: "otolaryngologist".

I will use it in a sentence: "If you require an emergency skin graft from an otolaryngologist, do not make pre-surgical anti-Semitic slurs that might apply to their spouse."

Anyway: this is the standard Carl Hiaasen adult novel. A protagonist with anger management issues, but the good news is the people he's angry with are cartoonish stock characters from the Hillary Clinton Shopping Basket of Deplorables: dirty politicians, corrupt regulators, neo-Nazis, Florida developers, etc. There are, additionally, drive-by slams at Fox News, Ginni Thomas, and (of course) Donald J. Trump. Our hero is aided by a beautiful wisecracking receptionist, and a hooker with a heart of … well, probably not gold, but it's eventually in the right place.

There is a lot going on, but the main plot thread involves a group of those neo-Nazis getting utilized by one of those corrupt pols to suppress voter turnout at an assisted living facility on election day, thereby assuring the re-election of the incumbent GOP Congresscritter/substance abuser/white supremacist/pervert.

So, bottom line: if you've read more than three Hiaasen novels, you've pretty much read this one too. And (worse), the hardcover edition of this book clocks in at (according to Amazon) 384 pages. That's just too long, and it feels very padded.

No disrespect to Hiaasen, he's got his publishing contract, he fulfills it with clever abandon, or at least he's got a pretty good AI trained on his oeuvre to do it for him. I admit, he got a few chuckles out of me, just as he did with Tourist Season, decades back.

The reviews I've seen seem to welcome the book as kind of psychotherapy. I assume the same motivations behind the folks who are still watching The Daily Show

Spoiler: the continuation of the book's title is: "… that it is something that we make, and could just as easily make differently."

Since I am still about 25% conservative, I would amend that: history is replete with various bands of "we"s imagining they could "just as easily" impose their vision of utopia on their obviously flawed world. The results are usually poor, and sometimes blood-soaked.

Fortunately, there are some nuggets of truth in this posthumous book of essays by anthropologist David Graeber. He seems like a nice enough guy. (How can you despise anyone who would title one of his essays "What's the Point If We Can't Have Fun?") He is an anarchist, of the left-wing variety. He was heavily involved in the "Occupy" movement; I think it's fair to say it's in the dustbin of history. Activists these days seem more into freelance window-smashing, looting, arson, and murder.

But he's right (of course) to observe that the modern state ultimately rests on its monopolization of legitimatized coercion and (sometimes necessary) violence. I'm a little less enamored of his characterization of police: "bureaucrats with guns." But that's the conservative talking, I guess.

His method of opposition: "direct action", which (in theory) stops short of actual violence, and often involves big-ass puppets.

(I'm not kidding. One of the essays here is devoted to those puppets, and why they tend to disturb/offend the gun-toting bureaucrats sent out to do crowd control.)

Graebar's prose is not always punchy; in fact it becomes downright impenetrable here and there. It might be possible to unwind the densest paragraphs to find what he's actually saying, but as the kids ask these days: "Is the juice worth the squeeze?" I have to admit most times I assumed the answer was "Probably not." In general, when he's at his clearest, his assertions are simplistic, wrong-headed, and occasionally totally misguided.

I was a little surprised to find this book owned by Portsmouth (NH) Public Library, where I looked after reading a largely positive review by Anthony Comegna in a recent issue of Reason. I've had poor luck lately trusting them.

I was a latecomer to the "Slow Horses" series on AppleTV+, but once I got into it, I gobbled up all four seasons pretty quickly. So now I'm awaiting season five, and started in on Mick Herron's book series. This one was the basis of the TV show's second season.

The plot is decidedly twisty. Dickie Bow, an ex-MI5 spy catches sight of an old ex-Soviet nemesis, decides to tail him, and… winds up dead. The official story is "heart attack", but Jackson Lamb is suspicious enough to track Dickie's last moments, finding a phone Dickie (apparently) stashed, which contains the text "CICADAS".

Which indicates, possibly, the presence of a Soviet "sleeper cell" somewhere in England. But where, and who?

No big surprises, though, if you've watched the show. Mick Herron continues to impress with his prose: very observant, often hilarious, sometimes poignant. Sometimes I get put off by what I call "Look, Mom, I'm writing!" unnecessarily florid style. But Herron pulls it off.

I was enticed into getting this book via Interlibrary Loan via the University Near Here by a thumbs-up review from Rachel Ferguson in Reason. And… even though I'm a big Reason fan, I feel I was misled.

The author, Sheena Michele Mason, is an assistant professor of English at SUNY Oneonta, and her writing style is "Woke Academic": overinflated, full of faux profundities and jargon. But it's worse than that. Her primary thesis is that the conventional concept of "race" is fictional and incoherent; hence, she avoids conventional English in discussing it, using her own invented terminology. And lots of scare quotes around words and terms of which she disapproves.

For example, nobody is "white" or "black". Instead, Mason describes them as "getting racialized" as white or black; emphasizing that it's something assigned to them by others. And when that happens, you are being "eraced". Why? Well, of course, there's only one possible reason: to maintain social, economic, class, and cultural power imbalances, cementing the white/black hierarchical structure! All for the benefit of the 1%!

The invented lingo also involves pointless punctuation and mutated spelling. "Racism" becomes "race/ism", "racist" becomes "racial/ist". And racial "eracesure".

A short chapter (co-written with biologist Tade Souaiaia) attempts to establish the unreality of race. I don't want to get into the scientific weeds on it, but I was left unconvinced. I kept visualizing Mason echoing the classic line uttered by Chico Marx to Margaret Dumont in Duck Soup: "Well, who you gonna believe? Me or your own eyes?" Sure, racial boundaries are fuzzy and, in many individual cases, arbitrary. But the thing about even fuzzy boundaries is that they bound something real. Don't get angry, but I think Charles Murray's book Human Diversity is pretty convincing on this score. And (I think) refusing to acknowledge that plays into the hands of actual bigots.

But (see the subtitle), Mason's overall argument advocates for "ending" race. So, colorblindness, right? I'm more than OK with that.

Wrong! Mason sees colorblindness as merely the other side of the coin of racial bigotry. With a considerable amount of handwaving, she asserts (over and over) that even acknowledging the mere existence of race (which colorblind advocates do) is tantamount to classifying Black folk as less-than.

This gets particularly offensive (but also ludicrous) when Mason briefly considers Martin Luther King's famous line: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character." With more unconvincing handwaving (pp. 89-90), she "translates" MLK's words into—surprise—agreeing exactly with her own position.

There are some good things here. She debunks the well-meaning concern of an acquaintance that she is in danger from being shot by some cop at any time. She advocates that the Census Bureau adopt a checkbox for "No Race" on their form. (I guess this is similar to how some consider themselves "agender".)

Finally, she's selling something. Something called the "Togetherness Wayfinder", of which Mason is not the "inventor", but the "innovator". Backed up by workshops, speaking engagements, etc. There's a website.

The beginning of a mini-reading project, Philip José Farmer's "Riverworld" five-book series. This one, the first, won the Best Novel Hugo back in 1972!

I own all five books, but for some reason I don't remember, I didn't read them all, I don't remember why.

And now this one is (apparently) out of print, with ludicrous Amazon pricing on some editions; as I type, someone is asking $71.26 for the paperback I bought for $1.50 back in 1971!

Anyway: the bold premise here is that the entire run of humanity, going back to Homo neanderthalensis, has been resurrected, naked, on Riverworld: about 36 billion souls "scattered" on the banks of the near-infinite River. They are penned into the river valley by impassable mountains. Food, drink, and some luxuries, are provided by "grails"; containers that can be attached to the "grailstones" up and down the valley, which will magically resupply them.

Nobody knows what's going on. But that doesn't stop some of them from reverting to bad behavior: murder, rape, theft, you name it.

The main character here is Richard Francis Burton, an actual historical figure (1821-1890). For unknown reasons, he was awakened briefly pre-resurrection, in the "factory" where bodies were constructed and souls implanted. An inveterate explorer in real life, he's driven to find out the creators of Riverworld and their motives. He assembles a motley crew (including Alice Hargreaves, another actual person) and sets off upriver. Where he encounters more danger and violence, along with clues about the designers.

But it's only the first book of five, so don't expect to get all your questions answered.

Thomas Szasz is a lot of fun to read. This book is from 1996, and centers around—see the title—the notion of "mind". Szasz argues it is a mistake (although a common one) to use that word as a noun. It should be used solely as a verb. As in: "Mind your own businesss". "Minding" is an activity, your self-communication to make decisions and guide actions.

Szasz is especially contemptuous of determinists who equate the "mind" with one's brain, and deniers of "free will". I'm on his side here.

One advantage of reading older books: you get to read how confident predictions made decades ago turned out. For example, on pp. 77-8, Szasz quotes from a 1995 Time article, still online: "Glimpses of the Mind". Why, science is on the verge of letting us "clarify the mysteries of consciousness but also to understand and treat such devastating mind malfunctions as Alzheimer's disease, depression, drug addiction, schizophrenia and traumatic brain damage -- research projects have multiplied dramatically."

And that's why, 30 years later, nobody suffers any more from Alzheimer's disease, depression, drug addiction, schizophrenia and traumatic brain damage. Thanks to dramatically multiplied research projects!

Well, that was interesting.

Amazon will tell you:

Named One of the 10 Best Books of 2023 by The Washington Post and Publishers Weekly • One of Barack Obama's Favorite Books of 2023• A National Bestseller • A New York Times Editor's Choice pick • Nominated for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction

Fiction, I suppose, although it's about real people. John von Neumann, mostly. The book's author, Benjamín Labatut, tells that part, chapter by chapter, in the words of von Neuemann's family, colleagues, and friends. And also enemies. Each in his or her own style. (But mostly, not all, in long multiple-page paragraphs, which can get a little tiring.) It works out to be a biography, sort of.

I read a more conventional bio back in 2023, and one common theme between this book and that one is that genius can be accompanied by mental misery. (That bio discussed Gödel, Turing, Wolfram, George R. Price. This one throws in Paul Ehrenfest, who committed suicide after murdering his own son. Yeesh.

One "contributor" is Richard Feynman, who worked with von Newmann on the Manhattan Project. I've read quite a bit about Feynman, and (it seems to me) that Labatut rendered his part pretty well.

But as far as I could tell, each contributor was an actual person. Even Nils Aal Barricelli; as I was reading his chapter, I said, "This guy has to be made up." Nope. He's real, and he's in Wikipedia! So there.

But when von Neumann dies, the book's not over! The final hundred pages or so is relatively straight reportage about the game of Go, its human masters, and Google's effort to develop a Go-playing AI to beat the humans. (Chess is trivial in comparison.) It concentrates on the showdown between Lee Sedol, probably the greatest (human) Go player ever, and Google's "AlphaGo", which beat him badly back in 2016. Also interesting.

I read A. J. Jacobs' book The Puzzler back in 2022 and enjoyed it quite a bit. This one, not so much, but it's very readable, and has some good stories.

Mr. Jacobs' gimmick here is to live a year of his life "consitutionally". Which can mean various things, of course, especially if you are Joe Biden or Donald Trump. But Mr. Jacobs took to wearing a tricorne hat (pictured on the cover), and engaged in numerous imaginative (I assume publisher-financed) deeds of patriotic significance. He participated in a Revolutionary War reenactment, "dying" early, but in a shady spot. He proposed a Constitutional amendment to a polite Senator, which would expand the presidency to three people. (You may have noticed that didn't happen.) He visits Independence Hall in Philadelphia, where the Constitution was written and signed.

One of the better stories is his exploration of the Third Amendment, the one about soldiers getting quartered in a house without the owner's consent. Jacobs wants to give consent, and wangles a visit! The Army officer he billets is of Indian descent, dines on some authentic 18th-century British food (shepherd's pie) but needs to spice it up a bit with some Mexican hot sauce.

Might be the most American scenario ever.

Unreasonable searches by state agents? Apparently you can make your statement to the TSA before your next flight by buying underwear with "Read the 4th Amendment, Perverts" emblazoned with metallic ink, so it will show up on the x-ray.

Jacobs is a solid Democrat, and this (unfortunately) colors a lot of his commentary, which has a definite blue tinge. For example, the SCOTUS decision in Sackett v. EPA? Jacobs summarizes that it "pared back the power of the EPA to monitor wetlands". I'd suggest reading some analysis that more accurately describes the issue. Other issues are handled similarly: superficially and clearly D-biased.