Subliminal
Leonard Mlodinow
ISBN: 978-0307-378217
Pantheon, 2012
You really ought to see the jacket design for this book. It's frankly brilliant, and I laughed out loud when it arrived. On a bright green cover (people are reassured and made comfortable by green) is a nice blocky text stating the title, subtitle, and author. Just barely noticeable is the counterprinted slightly glossy text complimenting you (people are more likely to listen and conform after being complimented) and instructing you to buy! On the inside flaps and reverse, tis a bit more blatant, with huge BUY BUY BUY instructions marching down the pages in that blink and you miss it printing.
Once you get inside, the book continues to be entertaining (which is good, because frankly, the information presented therein is depressing as hell as it relates to our ability to rationally or logically select our governing bodies or who we believe... ) as Mlodinow draws you in through studies and brain imaging and more studies and surveys and polls and even more studies to show that really - we don't actually decide much of anything at all. In fact, we're really kept pretty busy just deciding on the made-up reasons to justify why we already decided things that we didn't know we decided, but we did, so obviously we must be right, and we need a good persuasive reason for it.
Sigh. Other than unseating my tiny spark of hope that someday humanity would become at least reasonably logical and rational, this was a truly amazing book. Read and be astounded!
Showing posts with label stating the obvious. Show all posts
Showing posts with label stating the obvious. Show all posts
Monday, June 4, 2012
A Jane Austen Education, William Deresiewicz
A Jane Austen Education
William Deresiewicz
ISBN: 978-159420-2889
Penguin Press, 2011
I have a complicated relationship with Jane Austen. As a self-proclaimed hopeless romantic with a serious pragmatic streak, I have difficulties with the Austen/Bronte dichotomy that popular culture and academic culture alike have deemed insurmountable. I really like Jane Eyre, I really do. And I hate Wuthering Heights with a burning passion. I also think that Pride and Prejudice, Northanger Abbey, and Mansfield Park are quite lovely, and I still wish that I could get my hours back from Emma and Persuasion.
Therefore I feel a little unsuited to review this (at times uncomfortably obsessive) tribute to Austen and her ability to use her novels as object lessons to teach people how to be decent human beings. (I also question the parenting involved that leaves someone in their post-graduate work to realize that they are being schooled in how to be decent human beings.)
Our boy Will apparently grew up under a rock, or had his head so far up his nether regions as a child and young adult that I find it hard to believe that he had any long-term friends at all. Once he made the acquaintance of the delightful Ms Austen's writings, he began to slowly work his way intellectually into the social niceties of not being a self-absorbed twit.
Over the course of a review of the six main Austen works (likely much cross-pollinated with his graduate thesis and subsequent publication on roughly the same topic) Will realizes that Austen was purposefully creating main characters with character flaws, so that the reader would be tricked into identifying with them, and then subsequently shamed by their close identification when the character realizes their lapses (or not, as the case may be) and suffers the obvious consequences.
Perhaps I was read too many moralizing tales as an impressionable child, but I really do have to wonder how someone gets to be an adult without realizing much of what Will seems to attribute directly to the near-divine wisdom imparted by Austen's pen. Perhaps our social circles are simply very different.
In any case, while the rhapsodizing gets a little overwhelming at times, the voice is charming and self-deprecating enough that one doesn't quite want to hit him over the head (I did say quite), and the flow is very well handled between episodes of Austenia and episodes of the ongoing Will learns to be a decent person show.
If you're short on time, or have little patience for obsessive devotion, the back jacket will tide you over quite nicely with short paragraphs of the "point" of each of the novels according to our now totally humanized guide.
William Deresiewicz
ISBN: 978-159420-2889
Penguin Press, 2011
I have a complicated relationship with Jane Austen. As a self-proclaimed hopeless romantic with a serious pragmatic streak, I have difficulties with the Austen/Bronte dichotomy that popular culture and academic culture alike have deemed insurmountable. I really like Jane Eyre, I really do. And I hate Wuthering Heights with a burning passion. I also think that Pride and Prejudice, Northanger Abbey, and Mansfield Park are quite lovely, and I still wish that I could get my hours back from Emma and Persuasion.
Therefore I feel a little unsuited to review this (at times uncomfortably obsessive) tribute to Austen and her ability to use her novels as object lessons to teach people how to be decent human beings. (I also question the parenting involved that leaves someone in their post-graduate work to realize that they are being schooled in how to be decent human beings.)
Our boy Will apparently grew up under a rock, or had his head so far up his nether regions as a child and young adult that I find it hard to believe that he had any long-term friends at all. Once he made the acquaintance of the delightful Ms Austen's writings, he began to slowly work his way intellectually into the social niceties of not being a self-absorbed twit.
Over the course of a review of the six main Austen works (likely much cross-pollinated with his graduate thesis and subsequent publication on roughly the same topic) Will realizes that Austen was purposefully creating main characters with character flaws, so that the reader would be tricked into identifying with them, and then subsequently shamed by their close identification when the character realizes their lapses (or not, as the case may be) and suffers the obvious consequences.
Perhaps I was read too many moralizing tales as an impressionable child, but I really do have to wonder how someone gets to be an adult without realizing much of what Will seems to attribute directly to the near-divine wisdom imparted by Austen's pen. Perhaps our social circles are simply very different.
In any case, while the rhapsodizing gets a little overwhelming at times, the voice is charming and self-deprecating enough that one doesn't quite want to hit him over the head (I did say quite), and the flow is very well handled between episodes of Austenia and episodes of the ongoing Will learns to be a decent person show.
If you're short on time, or have little patience for obsessive devotion, the back jacket will tide you over quite nicely with short paragraphs of the "point" of each of the novels according to our now totally humanized guide.
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