Blayne Sucks

So, apparently my last update on the Great American Novel Challenge was a bit prophetic. Things have only become crazier over the last two months, and I have now missed my third month in a row. I am still planning on finishing the challenge, and I’m aiming to finish by July 4th, 2010. Unfortunately, I won’t be able to post a review today, and I likely won’t be able to post one until after my upcoming paper deadline. In lieu of a book review this month, I will leave you with this hilarious, truly American video.

Last week, Apple announced their latest creation: the iPad. For those who have been living under a rock, it is a handheld computer that looks like something straight out of Star Trek. The iPad is a 9.7″ multi-touch display backed by Apple’s custom silicon, the A4 processor. Depending on the exact model purchased, it comes with a 16GB, 32GB, or 64GB flash drive and 802.11n wi-fi with 3G support. There are six models with prices ranging from $499 to $829.

There are two big questions to ask of this device. First, what does the iPad mean for the average consumer? Second, how does the iPad change the way we interact with computers? I’m more interested in the second question than the first, but since most people are more concerned with the first question, I’ll start there.

The first rule of buying Apple products for the average consumer is: wait for the second version, and that is my only piece of advice for the average consumer regarding the iPad.

Apple has a history of disappointing early adopters, and there’s no reason to think that won’t be the case with the iPad. Despite Apple’s incredible design team, there are inevitably missing pieces that are corrected or resolved in the second versions of their products. The iPhone 3G was much better than the first version. The MacBook Air prices dropped dramatically in subsequent versions of the product. Even the iPod, which was an almost instantaneous success, improved greatly in subsequent versions. I can’t say specifically what is missing on the iPad. I haven’t even used one, but it’s such a different piece of technology that there are certainly things that aren’t quite right. Here are a few potential examples:

1. No web cam.
2. Not enough storage.
3. No USB ports.
4. No HDMI ports.
5. No multitasking apps.

Now, some of these “obvious” omissions may eventually prove to be brilliant design decisions. Remember: good design is more about leaving things out than cluttering your product with too many features. The problem for early adopters is that we don’t know yet. If you’re an average consumer, then I would hold off.

Of course, if you’re not an average consumer and you have a few hundred bucks to burn on something that might revolutionize the way you live, then suddenly the second question becomes important: how does the iPad change the way we interact with computers? This is an extremely difficult question to answer with any certainty, but we do know that answers to this question boil down into two broad categories: (1) the iPad improves computing and (2) the iPad is a setback for computing.

There are a few important ways that the iPad improves computing. First, as a recovering hardware geek, I was most excited to see Apple use their own silicon on the iPad. It’s nothing all that revolutionary in terms of hardware, but it’s definitely not x86. I generally disfavor computing monocultures. It’s not always that simple (PDF), but the general principle holds up pretty well because nothing innovative happens when everyone makes the same assumptions.

Second, I believe Apple is right there’s a need for some kind of computing device between a smartphone and a laptop. I don’t think Netbooks are the answer simply because they are too similar to laptops. This similarity narrows the utility of a Netbook. I can’t imagine myself reading an electronic book with a Netbook, but I could imagine it working well with the iPad. I’m not sure if the iPad is the answer, but the fact that it is distinctly not a Netbook and distinctly not a smartphone are proof that it’s headed in the right direction.

Third, Apple didn’t include Flash on the iPad. This is the most important argument in favor of the iPad improving computing. It is a sign that openness is winning the web. Adobe Flash is a proprietary, closed-source product that requires a browser plugin to run. Unlike most of the web, you cannot see the source used to render the page you’re viewing if you’re on Flash-based website. View-Source is a good thing. Closed-source development for non-differentiating infrastructure is a bad thing.

I’m not saying that no one should ever produce closed source content because it is somehow inherently evil, but I am saying that it’s just not a good idea unless you know that whatever you’re spending money on will actually increase your net revenue compared to your competitors. It makes sense to ensure that whatever you’re spending resources to produce is actually a business differentiator. For web-based technologies, Flash is no longer a business differentiator. As Gruber says here:

Used to be you could argue that Flash, whatever its merits, delivered content to the entire audience you cared about. That’s no longer true, and Adobe’s Flash penetration is shrinking with each iPhone OS device Apple sells. [...] Developers go where the users are.

—John Gruber

Flash used to enhance the web experience by creating interfaces that weren’t otherwise possible, but now open technologies have basically caught up. YouTube and Vimeo were previously the quintessential Flash-based websites, but they are both already offering HTML5-based video. Heck, there’s even an open-source Flash runtime written in javascript. (It’s called Gordon, as in Flash Gordon…)

Most of the geek backlash against the iPad focuses on things that are missing, like Flash, but one of the key arguments geeks have made against the iPad is that it has a closed-app ecosystem. This is the key, critical way that the iPad is a setback for computing. As Tim Lee points out, closed-app ecosystems are top-down approaches that go against powerful economic forces, which favor an open development environment.

It’s interesting that Apple got open development 100% right with their more traditional computers. While Microsoft forced developers to pay for Visual Studio, Apple ensured that every developer who wanted the best available Mac development tools could do so by registering on their website and downloading the tools for free. This is still true for the iPad. The SDK is available now. The problem is in the installation process. Apple’s more traditional computers can purchase and install applications from anywhere on the Internet. (Also, the actual installation process is much easier than Windows. There’s no registry, and applications are almost always completely self-contained and installable by dragging and dropping them somewhere on your file system.) However, this freedom isn’t available for the iPhone and the iPad, which are stuck with the bottleneck of a top-down app store.

When I talk to non-techies about things like the iPad’s closed-app setup, their response is usually something along the lines of this: “But I’m never going to build my own applications, so why do I care?” This is a fair question to which there are a couple of important responses. First, users still care about the applications they use, but the closed app store model puts the actual decision regarding what’s available in the hands of Apple rather than the users. Even if you never actually build an application that you would use regularly, you still want the pool of developers who might to be as large as possible because someone else might.

Second, the closed app model doesn’t just restrict applications; it also restricts data use. The iPad uses digital rights management (DRM) to ensure that the books, movies, and other content users enjoy has been legitimately purchased. In an ideal world, this would be a good thing. No one wants thieves to prosper (except perhaps the thieves…), but the problem is that DRM doesn’t actually do this in the real world. In fact, DRM breaks more than it fixes because it restricts the rights of legitimate users. It enables censorship, limits free-market competition, and even allows Apple to delete content off your device without notice. Don’t think something like this could happen? Think again. For these reasons, Defective by Design has a petition against the DRM restrictions on the iPad. If you’re interested in more information on the perils of DRM, then I would recommend reading some of the more than 200 excellent posts on the topic by the folks at Freedom to Tinker.

So what’s the overall verdict? One thing we know for sure is that the iPad is distinctly different. Consider this quote:

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”

—George Bernard Shaw

Steve Jobs is a famously unreasonable man, and as a result, Apple has had some mega-hits, like the iPod, and some mega-flops, like the Lisa. The iPad is destined to be one or the other, and that’s far better than just another boring computer gadget.

We also know that the iPad influences two separate platforms: an open web platform and a closed hardware platform. If you think the open web aspects of the iPad is more of a benefit than the closed hardware, then this is a great development for open technologies. However, if you think reverse that opinion, then the iPad is definitely a bad development for open technologies. Currently, I’m leaning towards the latter, but that’s more of a prediction than an actual opinion. We may have to wait and see what changes Apple makes in the second version of the iPad before we really know how this device will affect computing.

Last September, Time Magazine proclaimed that Jay Leno’s new primetime show was the future of television. Less than six months later, NBC is scrambling to figure out what to do with Leno’s show, which has been a ratings disappointment. NBC has announced a plan to move the Leno show back to 11:35 pm and started ordering pilots to fill hours of primetime with new dramas. Guess the future of television will have to wait.

Leno’s predicament amuses me. It takes some hubris to try and bring back the primetime variety show, particularly when you’re copying segment ideas like racing celebrities on your own private track. (Ahem, Top Gear rules!) I’ve always been more of a Letterman fan than a Leno fan, in part because I’m from Indiana, but mostly because Letterman is just funnier. Apparently, Leno’s predicament also amuses Letterman:

Unfortunately, this is serious business and not everyone is amused. In particular, Conan O’Brien is clearly not amused. I thought Kottke’s take on O’Brien’s statement was really good as well, despite not linking to The Colbert Report:

I think companies should hire comedy writers to write their press releases. Why not, right? They already produce our most trusted news sources.

Pretty good idea, in my opinion. People might actually read them, care about them, and become interested in your company if you hired a comedy writer to do your press releases.

I’m not sure what will happen as a result of the Leno debacle, but I do wonder how much this situation has been influenced by the pending GE – Comcast deal. If you’re really interested in the future of television, then that deal is the more interesting story by far. Online content delivery (see YouTube, Hulu, and Netflix) is big and still has even bigger upside, but it’s still too early to tell if this deal is a genius move or another AOL – Time Warner.

Now that I have time to catch up on some blogging, I wanted to point out this interesting and well written article about F. Scott Fitzgerald’s income tax returns. Fitzgerald’s life was quite different than any modern American, wealthy or poor. He was recognized as an important American author almost immediately, which brought him fame and great wealth. He and his wife became famous for their luxurious lifestyle, but perhaps the reality was somewhat different:

What can be learned from Fitzgerald’s tax returns? To start with, his popular reputation as a careless spendthrift is untrue. Fitzgerald was always trying to follow conservative financial principles.

Another surprise from the article was that most of his income didn’t come from his major novels:

Most of his earnings came from the short stories and, later, the movies. His best novels, The Great Gatsby (1925) and Tender Is the Night (1934), did not produce much income. Royalties from The Great Gatsby totaled only $8,397 during Fitzgerald’s lifetime. Today Gatsby is read in nearly every high school and college and regularly produces $500,000 a year in Scottie’s trust for her children.

The Great Gatsby was one of the first books that came to mind when I started thinking about the Great American Novel Challenge. (You can read my review here.) It’s hard to imagine that Gatsby earned so little money compared to his other work.

Much of his wealth was devoted to caring for his wife, who was diagnosed as a schizophrenic and had large medical bills. For example, she spent 15 months in a sanatorium, which cost a total of about $13,000. When he died, his estate was rather small given how much money he had earned in his lifetime. The article notes that the copyrights to his novels, which now earn several hundred thousand dollars a year, were considered worthless.

I’m not sure I would take financial advice from Fitzgerald. He didn’t seem to have a particularly good grasp of money management. Although he did track his spending rather well, he thought that “money usually turns up somewhere in time of need, and that at the worst you can always borrow.” Clearly, this is not particularly good advice. Also, he seemed to miss some of the now-basic lessons of economics. For example:

Fitzgerald did not agree with Chicago School market theory, which is to say, he did not believe that more sellers means more competition, which means lower prices. Fitzgerald thought that if you had more sellers they simply raised prices to whatever they needed to survive.

The differences between the IRS system of Fitzgerald’s era and the modern era are fascinating. Consider the following (emphasis mine):

Before World War II, the government did not know what anyone made. Only the wealthy and upper-middle class filed returns—less than 10 percent of the population. The system was based on what the IRS called “self-assessment,” which meant that the taxpayer told the government what he or she earned the prior year and then sent a check on March 15.

Clearly, this was a very, very different era. There’s a lot more in the article.

On Friday, December 11th, my MacBook Pro stopped working properly. I couldn’t get video regardless of what I did. I took it to the Apple store the next day, where I learned that my graphics logic board was the victim of the infamous NVIDIA recall. I was told that it would take up to 10 days to get it repaired. Just as I was starting to recover from the shock of being without my computer for 10 full days, the Apple employee who examined my laptop said they would need my username and password to complete the repairs.

There is no valid reason Apple needs a username and password to repair a graphics logic board. This is a basic principle of computer security: Do not give anyone your username and password. I asked why they wanted it, and I was told that they needed to be able to log into the machine to verify that it works. This is simply false, and I’m disappointed that Apple would claim it was true. Graphics can be tested in a variety of ways without using an existing username and password. First, they could have used the guest account on the machine. Second, they could have booted into an operating system on a CD/DVD such as Knoppix. Third, they could use a bootable USB drive. Fourth, they could boot from an external hard drive. These options are even documented on their website. Needless to say, I refused to give them my username and password. They refused to send the computer off to be fixed. I asked if there was anywhere else I could get it fixed. To their credit, the Apple store employees were prepared to give me a recommendation to Ten Plus Systems.

I knew almost immediately after walking into their store that Ten Plus Systems was a quality computer repair shop. First, I saw one of the technicians talking with the receptionist about a repair. They were clearly organized, and my gut told me immediately that the technician was a genuine computer geek. Second, they were selling an original, fully restored 1984 Macintosh. It was absolutely beautiful. It looked almost new, and a great deal of care clearly went into restoring this machine. I strongly believe that people who are experts in their field have an intuitive sense that allows them to identify other experts rapidly. (Read Blink by Malcolm Gladwell if you are interested in exploring this concept.) As a computer science PhD student who has built at least a dozen computers from parts, I consider myself an expert in this field. I could tell this store was run by experts.

I arrived Monday morning and my computer was fixed 26 hours later. It was basically a one day turn around on a repair that Apple said would probably take 10 days. They didn’t need my username or password. They didn’t even ask. Ten Plus Systems is an Apple-certified repair store, which means that any machine covered by AppleCare can be repaired there. They also repair Apple and PC machines not covered by AppleCare, and they recycle old computer parts for their customers. If you are near Raleigh and need computer repair work done, I would strongly recommend Ten Plus Systems based on my experiences with them.

Disclosure #1: According to the relatively new FTC rules for bloggers, I should disclose my connection with the companies I’m endorsing. I haven’t been paid for this post. I haven’t been given any gift of any kind for this post. I haven’t had an out-of-body experience in which I was in any way compensated for this post. (At least, not yet…) I’m just a genuinely satisfied customer.

Disclosure #2: I agree with Adam Thierer: the relatively new FTC rules for bloggers are almost completely unenforceable.

I’m going to do something in this post that was probably inevitable: I’m delaying my post for December. There are a myriad of reasons for this. Foremost amongst those is probably best said by Tim Lee:

It turns out that if you enroll in grad school in computer science, they expect you to do computer science work. And apparently writing a blog doesn’t qualify.

Having said that, it’s not all that clear to me that all the frenetic efforts that did take my time this month have produced anything else that might qualify.

Regardless, I will post a review of a book sometime this month. I will theoretically have time to catch up on some reading later in December, so I should be able to be make the January 4th deadline as well. I apologize to anyone who was genuinely interested in my next book review. (Yes, that’s you mom!)

This post is a part of The Great American Novel Challenge. If you’re interested in taking part in the challenge, feel free to jump right in next month.

I’m almost embarrassed to include Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (there is no ‘The’ in the title) in my list simply because doing so is an admission that I hadn’t read it before. Then again, reading great books that we probably should have read by now is partly purpose of the Great American Novel Challenge. Make no mistake about it: Mark Twain’s Huck Finn is a genuinely great American novel.

I should start this review where Mark Twain started his book. The first page contains this notice:

NOTICE

Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.

By the Order of the Author,
Per G. G., Chief of Ordinance

In some ways this notice tells you all you need to know about Mark Twain. It’s humorous, yet half-serious. It sets the reader up to find their own inner Huck Finn because if you do any of these things, then you’re breaking the established rules of the book. Of course, if you don’t see a motive, moral, or plot in the book, then why read it at all?

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn picks up where The Adventures of Tom Sawyer left off. It was conceived as a sequel, but it stands alone. Readers don’t have to have read Tom Sawyer prior to reading Huck Finn. In fact, Mark Twain struggled for eight years to write and publish Huck Finn and the books are considerably different from one another. The preface to my edition of the book explains that Huck Finn comes at the midpoint of his career and “stands on a line between the upbeat humor of the early books and the bitterness of the later ones.” I can’t vouch for the accuracy of this statement, but I can say that Huck Finn delicately balances humorous storytelling with serious social commentary.

The book is ostensibly the story of a young boy’s adventures on the Mississippi river narrated after the fact by the boy himself. The story starts with Huck Finn in his hometown being raised by a widow and her sister. They try to civilize him, but Huck Finn doesn’t particularly like the idea of being forced to do things in a ‘civilized’ way. Eventually, Huck’s abusive father manages to bring Huck back to his place where Huck escapes, fakes his own death, and begins life floating down the Mississippi. While on the river, he meets up with Jim, a runaway slave previously owned by the widow and her sister.

The middle of the book is largely episodic. Each episode can be demarcated by the return to the tranquility and safety of floating down the river on a raft. These episodes are mini-commentaries on a particular part of American culture. For example, there’s an episode in which Huck and Jim run into a gang trying to steal from a wrecked riverboat. Another episode involves a family feud similar to the archetypal Hatfield-McCoy feud. Yet another episode details the exploits of two grown con men as they ply their trade. The episodes serve as satires of the many ways that we become slaves to society. We become slaves to the desire to get rich quick. We become slaves to our deep-seated animosities. We become slaves to unthinking religion. Twain is calling for us to think for ourselves, act as individuals, and take action appropriately.

The over-arching plot of the book is the fate of Jim, the runaway slave. Huck Finn’s individualism and friendship for Jim battle with his upbringing and society’s expectations for him as he decides whether or not he will actively help Jim escape to freedom. It’s worth noting how Huck dismisses inaction as complicity in the predictable result and unworthy of himself. This in and of itself is a commentary on the society in which Huck Finn finds himself. Throughout the book Huck views civilization as something akin to a brainwashed malaise that everyone has accepted. Perhaps this is why his relationship with Jim and the actions he takes as a result of it are so important.

The ending of the book and the resolution of the main plot is bittersweet, which seems almost inevitable because of the book’s structure. There’s simply no river left to for Huck to escape to. Huck and Jim are both freer as runaways than they ever were before the story began or after it comes to an end. The strength of the book is the middle rather than the ending, and I won’t comment further on the ending simply to ensure that I won’t ruin it for anyone who hasn’t read the book.

Twain’s home-spun style starting with the NOTICE on the first page and continuing throughout the book was particularly comforting for me because I have so many fond memories of visiting my extended family in North Carolina as a boy. They all spoke with strange accents and expressions that seemed so magical to me having been raised in the midwest. There was comfort, humor, and seriousness in those conversations that seemed unguarded and real. That’s what reading this book felt like to me, but I suspect that everyone will find some “southern comfort” in Twain’s story telling.

Twain is famous for walking that thin line between sly humor and moral outrage even to those who have not read his books. His dry wit and incisively worded commentary remain relevant for any free society because he is constantly reminding us that freedom and individual liberty aren’t achieved so much as they are maintained. If we aren’t vigilant in analyzing for ourselves the outcomes of our action or inaction, then we will become slaves to something. Twain points this out so masterfully and with such unique style in Huck Finn that I am forced to conclude that Huck Finn is the most American of the books I’ve read for this challenge thus far.

Five books down; eight to go!

My books in the challenge thus far are:
July 2009: The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1925)
August 2009: Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe (1852)
September 2009: The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner (1929)
October 2009: For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway (1940)
November 2009: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain (1884)

Last week Bruce Schneier commented on a story about a prison that let an inmate convicted of credit card fraud reprogram a prison computer. Schneier believes this sort of thing should be an “obvious” no-no, and I agree. However, it isn’t obvious to a lot of intelligent and well-intentioned people. In fact there’s consistently been debate on whether or not criminals should be hired for computer security positions. There are people who fervently believe the myth that being an excellent criminal carries over into being an excellent law enforcement officer or security adviser.

Unfortunately, pop culture continues to prop this myth up with TV shows like the USA Network’s upcoming White Collar. The show is about an FBI agent who teams up with his nemesis-turned-good-guy to solve crimes that no one else could solve. Another TV series, called Dexter, which appears on Showtime, portrays a forensics expert who secretly murders the criminals he finds through his work. Both of these shows operate on the premise that experience committing crimes is useful in preventing them.

In reality, committing crimes and preventing crime are fundamentally different activities not because of the skill sets but because of the motivation and interests involved. In fact, the skill sets may be strikingly similar in a lot of ways. Some pirates are excellent sailors, some outlaws can shoot extremely well, and some hackers know a lot about computers. Don’t focus on asking whether the skill sets overlap. Instead, focus on questions like these: Are they dependable? Can they work well with other people in your particular work environment? How do you know they are actually interested in helping your organization? How do you know they are truly reformed?

After focusing on these questions, the truth comes to light: it is very rare that an excellent criminal history translates to an excellent crime-prevention future. There is a reason that police departments do a criminal background check before hiring someone. There is a reason that day care providers don’t hire convicted child molesters. There is a reason that banks don’t hire convicted felons to do security. Why wouldn’t the same rationale carry over to information or computer-based crimes?

Now, there are instances of convicts making amends and turning their lives around. Frank Abagnale is perhaps the most famous of these reformed con men. Hollywood capitalized on his story with the highly successful movie Catch Me If You Can. I know several people who have heard him speak at security conferences, and they have told me that he continues to apologize for his life of crime at the beginning of his talks, decades after they occurred. In fact, he may be a good model of how to lead a life of contrite contribution to law enforcement after being an extremely skilled criminal. He worked long and hard to earn the trust of banks and the FBI. He was initially paid only for positive results, and used the money he earned as a security consultant to pay back his debts.

Still, as a general rule, it should be obvious that hiring anyone convicted of computer fraud to do computer security work is a bad idea. Why take the risk? There are a lot of extraordinarily talented computer security experts who do not have the baggage of a criminal record. If you find, after searching for a non-felon, that you need the particular skills or expertise of a convicted computer fraudster, then don’t put them in a position of power. Don’t trust them without oversight. Don’t get caught up in the Hollywood story. The Frank Abagnales of the world are exceedingly rare; hiring a felon to do computer security almost never ends well.

This post is a part of The Great American Novel Challenge. If you’re interested in taking part in the challenge, feel free to jump right in next month.

My original list of books to read for the Great American Novel Challenge included Ernest Hemmingway’s The Sun Also Rises, but I chose to read For Whom the Bell Tolls because The Sun Also Rises was published in 1926 and I’ve already read two novels from the 1920s. I’m quite lucky that I made that choice because For Whom the Bell Tolls is a fantastic novel.

In the interests of full disclosure, I must confess that I have not yet completed the novel, but I am very close and sure to finish it soon. I should also note that Allison and I did not collaborate in choosing what to read this month, but we did both read For Whom the Bell Tolls. You can read her review here.

Unfortunately, Allison posted her review before me and has stolen some of my thunder. She expertly points out that the title of the book explains a great deal about the themes in the book. I’ll take a moment to briefly expand on that here. The title comes from a John Donne’s famous poem:

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend’s or of thine own were: any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

It is worth noting that these are just a few lines of the longer, complete poem which you can read here. In particular, I think the ending of the longer version is particularly relevant to the novel:

If by this consideration of another’s danger I take mine own into contemplation, and so secure myself, by making my recourse to my God, who is our only security.

As you may surmise from the title and the poem, Hemingway explores two main themes in this book: the interdependence of humanity and death. It is hard to imagine a writer better suited to the this task than Hemingway, a setting better suited to this task than the Spanish Civil War, or a time period better suited for the novel’s release than 1940. For Whom the Bell Tolls is about the Spanish Civil War, which was from 1936 to 1939. The Spanish Civil War, like many civil wars, mercilessly pitted siblings and families against one another. The scars of this are still visible today. It was fought between the Republicans, who favored a republican form of government, and the Nationalists, who favored a fascist dictatorship. As a result, the Spanish Civil War became a proxy war fought as a precursor to World War 2. The Republicans were supported by the International Brigades, which were basically a long list of anti-fascist countries, including the United States. The Nationalists, who were supported by Germany and Italy, won before the novel was published.

The protagonist of the novel is Robert Jordan, an American fighting for the Republicans. He is tasked with the extremely dangerous mission of destroying a bridge in enemy territory just prior to a Republican attack. Robert must enlist the help of several Republican-supporting locals, many of whom have lost loved ones and share their horrifying war experiences with Robert. He cannot complete the task on his own, but some of the locals are unwilling or unable to help him with the mission. Although Robert recognizes the danger of his mission, he still finds himself falling in love with one of the locals, Maria, who had been brutally raped earlier in the war.

The intended audience of this book must have included people who were struggling to understand the political and military happenings in Europe just prior to World War 2. Hemingway, who served as an ambulance driver in World War 1, was known as a part of the “Lost Generation,” a collection of writers disillusioned with “the war to end all wars.” His disillusionment with war is communicated through some truly gruesome scenes in For Whom the Bell Tolls. For example, in chapter 10, common villagers became brutal murderers in a way that eerily foreshadows scenes described in Ordinary Men, which described how ordinary Germans were able to commit atrocities in World War 2.

Hemingway straightforwardly (his simple, direct writing style was a nice change of pace from Faulkner) displays the stark costs of involvement in a “foreign” war. It is easy to lose sight of the fact that American involvement in World War 1 was not guaranteed because the United States previously maintained an isolationist view of foreign wars. But the U.S. did get involved. And it continued to get involved in foreign wars. These wars have defined modern America: World War 2, Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf war, Afghanistan, and Iraq. The world got a lot smaller in the 20th century. Indeed, it is more clear now than ever that no man is an island, but when is war a justifiable mechanism for preserving mankind? Perhaps we do have some moral responsibility as a nation, but we are still struggling with the cruel costs and exacting execution of “foreign” wars.

Four books (almost) down; nine to go!

My books in the challenge thus far are:
July 2009: The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1925)
August 2009: Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe (1852)
September 2009: The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner (1929)
October 2009: For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway (1940)

This post is a part of The Great American Novel Challenge. If you’re interested in taking part in the challenge, feel free to jump right in next month.

I had an interesting experience while reading The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner. It was the first novel I’ve read that I found both almost incomprehensible and extremely deep at the same time. I will explain this momentarily, but first let me talk about some background on why I chose this book. First, I would probably be remiss if I were to not read any Faulkner during this challenge. William Faulkner is widely regarded as one of the greatest American authors in history. As I Lay Dying was required reading at my high school, and although I can’t say it was my favorite book, it was interesting enough to warrant further investigation of the author.

Second, I have always believed that the Great American Novel would have a truly great title. I am familiar with the cliche that you can’t judge a book by its cover, and I am sure that this should extend to the title. However, book titles like The Sound and the Fury, A Movable Feast, The Grapes of Wrath, and Gravity’s Rainbow all simply beg to be read. How do you move a meal large enough to qualify as a feast? How wrathful could a bunch of grapes really be?

Third, although I knew very little about this book, I did know that it was a sort of precursor to the existentialism movement. I was taught about this in high school as well, but I never really understood much of it until years later. I think there are some important problems with existentialism, but it does serve to highlight one or two deep truths about the nature of humanity. For example, I believe that if human existence is genuinely alone (i.e. if there is no God), then life ultimately carries a devastating hopelessness and meaninglessness. Life without a reason for existence is bleak, and change seems to consistently and implicitly question human reasoning in this area.

Given that rationale, I picked up the book and started reading. I did no additional research into the plot, purpose, or history of the book, which may have been a bad decision, but at least it left me somewhat unbiased. The Sound and the Fury focuses on the Compton family, a southern clan living in the early 20th century. The first two sections are extremely difficult to read. The first section is written in a stream-of-consciousness style from the perspective of a child with a mental handicap. As you might imagine, this is somewhat jarring if you didn’t know that when you started reading the book. The second section uses the form and structure of the writing to reflect the emotional state of the main character. Again, this was quite confusing. The third section is easier to read, which reflects the mental and emotional state of the main character, but it too ultimately ends up full of ’sound and fury.’ It is also worth noting that most of the book is not written in chronological order, and much of the language (as with Uncle Tom’s Cabin) is conversational and colloquial English rather than grammatically correct or formal English.

The final section is the easiest to read and the most direct in conveying the purpose of the novel. I began to figure out much of what I failed to understand from the previous sections. Also, I became more aware of the purpose of the book. Quite honestly, this was probably too late in the book for me to get much out of it. I won’t give away then ending of the book, but I will say that after reading the fourth section, figuring out what Faulkner was trying to say, and – in particular – reading the ending of the book, I found myself wishing I had time to start over and try reading it again. There are almost certainly some fundamentally important aspects of the book that I missed completely the first time through and I suspect that I would enjoy re-reading the book to discover them.

Perhaps I am simply not ‘literary’ (the majority of my formal education has been in engineering and science) enough to have picked up the book with little prior knowledge of it and get something valuable from it. However, I believe such an experience in and of itself was valuable. I began to wonder how the context in which we read affects our understanding of what we read. In trying to figure out what it was that I read, I found that The Sound and the Fury was not immediately recognized as an important literary achievement. Was the context of the book’s initial release partly responsible for this? You can perform your own thought experiment on this by thinking about how you select a book to read. In my case, The Sound and the Fury was selected not from any understanding of the plot, purpose, or content of the book, but instead from the rules and context of the Great American Novel Challenge. This is certainly not my usual method of selecting books to read. For other books, I have a process that includes some synthesis of the plot, purpose, author, context, and probably many tacit metrics that I don’t consciously consider.

Several literary critics believe that Faulkner’s greatest achievement is The Sound and the Fury. I am not qualified to judge either of these since I have only read two of his books and since I have not yet read many other ‘great’ American authors. I can say that Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury is more like an artifact to be studied than a novel to be read. Since I have only read it once, you’ll have to take my evaluation with a grain of salt. As such, the only way for me to evaluate The Sound and the Fury is to consider how “American” it is. It is certainly set in a quintessentially American location, the post-civil war south, but I can’t say that it discusses inherently American problems, dreams, or goals. It has probably affected world culture more than American culture, and I find it somewhat difficult to label it as a Great American Novel.

Three books down; ten to go!

My books in the challenge thus far are:
July 2009: The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1925)
August 2009: Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe (1852)
September 2009: The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner (1929)