Blayne Sucks

Surveillance by Jonathan Raban is a book that I wasn’t planning on reading. I saw it at Von’s Books last week when I was at Purdue for the CERIAS Symposium. I have a list of books that I look for at used book stores, but Surveillance wasn’t on the list. I saw it on the shelf and thought, “Why not give it a chance?” I’m glad I did because it is an excellent book.

Raban’s writing is fluid and quite fun to read despite the political content, which might otherwise be dense and evoke unthinking knee-jerk reactions. He used a third-person limited omniscient viewpoint throughout the book, but did so in a way that felt very close to the characters. The narrator almost sympathizes with each character in a completely genuine fashion. In addition, Raban’s colorful phrasing made the story vibrant and engaging. His writing style stood out to me as exceptional, which is rather hard to do with fiction.

The story follows five characters as they live their lives in a highly charged political atmosphere. Tad is a HIV-positive homosexual actor who is angry with the government’s recently enacted policies aimed at preventing terrorism. Augie is a Holocaust survivor, professor, and author of a popular memoir of his boyhood years in a concentration camp. Lucy is a freelance writer working on a piece about Augie’s book. Alida is Lucy’s 11-year-old daughter, who loves math and is trying to make sense of the world around her. Charles Lee is a Chinese businessman and owner of several parking lots and the apartment building in which Lucy and Tad live.

The primary plot of the book is Lucy’s investigative reporting of Augie and his memoir. Augie’s memoir is being made into a movie, and little is known about Augie, who is perceived to be a recluse. The circumstances surrounding the publication of the novel open up interesting questions about the nature of history, eye-witness reports, and how our motivations and experiences influence our perspective. Lucy plays the role of an interested, left-leaning investigator while Tad and Augie represent the liberal and conservative perspective in the broader debate that underlies the entire novel. Tad comes off a bit more rabid in his politics than Augie, but they are worthy foils for one another. Charles Lee’s position of power as the landlord for Tad, Lucy, and Alida provides another interesting conflict for discussion.

The book explores numerous smaller subplots to further dissect the politics of terrorism, security, privacy, and freedom. For example, each major character gives their opinions on which publications and newspapers are worth reading and why. This alone would make for an interesting discussion. Also, everyone in the book is portrayed as seeking information about someone else. Lucy seeks info on Augie. Tad on Charles Lee. Charles Lee on Lucy. Alida on her mother and her classmate, Finn. The way the characters approach their quest for information provides yet another discussion point.

The ending of the book may actually provide the biggest discussion point of them all. If you read the Amazon.com reviews for this book, then you’ll see that almost everyone disliked the ending. I hesitate to talk about it much because to do so gives it away. I will simply say that I absolutely loved it. It couldn’t have ended any other way, and it speaks volumes about our current political approach to terrorism, security, and privacy. I’m not sure why other folks didn’t like it, but I suspect that they are missing the broader political statement.

Lastly, this book provides so many fascinating inroads for discussion and paints such a vivid picture of post-9/11 politics as well as the nature of security, privacy, and freedom that I’m going to make a grandiose claim: This could be one of those books that becomes much more popular after its initial release because it so essentially encapsulates the politics of the moment. It has some edgy scenes that might make it too strong to be required reading at a high school, but few other works of fiction so concisely introduce and define contemporary political problems as well as Surveillance does. In addition, the literary risk of the ending and the impressive writing style could easily support a high school level English class discussion. I strongly recommend reading it, particularly if you have a regular book club and enjoy discussing books and politics.

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.

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.

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)

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)

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.

For the second book in my search for the Great American Novel, I attempted to answer a question that lingered in my head for years: “Why is Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin consistently mentioned in History classes and almost never mentioned in English classes?” The book is clearly an influential novel. It’s likely that every high school history textbook mentions this book, and they probably do so right next to the supposed quip Abraham Lincoln said upon meeting Stowe early in the Civil War: “So this is the little lady who made this big war.” In fact, I was inspired to read it because of the role it played in the first quarter of Team of Rivals, which is a history/biography of Abraham Lincoln’s rivals for the Republican nomination for President in 1860. It could have been the instructors I had or the books I’ve read, but at some point in my public education I began to wonder how this novel became a piece of history rather than a work of literature.

For those who may not be familiar with the book, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, or Life Among the Lowly, is an anti-slavery book published in 1852, eight years prior to the civil war. It sold incredibly well at the time it was published, and has shaped the course of civil rights in America straight through to the present. The book itself describes virtually every aspect of life as a slave in a strikingly graphic fashion, even to the modern reader. The book tells of slaves escaping, being sold, being cared for, and being beaten as well as masters being cruel, kind, and indifferent. The book follows the life of one slave in particular: Tom, the title character and intended hero of the book. Tom is a Christian slave, and Christianity plays an extremely important role in the novel. For example, Tom consistently expresses compassion rather than hatred for his masters, including the cruel Simon Legree. Although the book is ostensibly about Uncle Tom, many other slaves and masters feature prominently and the book paints a rather comprehensive picture of “life among the lowly” as the subtitle indicates.

The answer to my long-running question about the book was readily apparent, even on the first page. Stowe’s style simply does not meet with the traditional understanding of novels in literature. It is a strange mix of polemic essay and fictional story. For example, she refers to the reader, to herself, and sometimes ambiguously to both using the pronoun ‘we.’ She doesn’t bother to hide her plot, which is presented directly and not particularly complicated. In fact, the plot feels quite straightforward and there are few real surprises. The story reads easily and feels more like someone telling a tale in a Northern formal room of their trip to the South than a traditional novel. In short, the answer to my question is this: “Literature snobs have decided that the book doesn’t deserve to be in their quaint little club.” This is probably true of many genuinely good books that are easy to ready while still conveying a moral tale.

Women’s literature in the nineteenth century has become synonymous with authors like Austen and the Brontë sisters. They wrote about the role of women in society, and they remain undeniably influential. Unfortunately, like the American male stereotype, I find their books to be impenetrable. I consider myself to be a fairly well-educated man, but chances are that I will never actually understand books like Pride and Prejudice. Unlike the other novels by nineteenth century women writers I’ve attempted to read, Uncle Tom’s Cabin comes across clearly and perhaps a bit too directly. If I may be so bold as to quote every English teacher I’ve ever had, “If the reader doesn’t understand what you’re trying to say, then it is your fault and not theirs.” For my money, this makes Stowe the better writer when compared to Austen and the Brontës. At the least, Stowe should be considered the greatest American female author of the nineteenth century. (Quick: Can you name another?)

Many of the faults identified by critics of Uncle Tom’s Cabin may be due to its own popularity. For example, critics say that it created lasting stereotypes of African Americans. These stereotypes appear in the novel, and they certainly made me uncomfortable while reading them, but assigning the blame for the creation or even the popularization of these stereotypes to Harriet Beecher Stowe seems unwarranted. Correlation does not imply causation. Something did popularize these stereotypes, and Uncle Tom’s Cabin is a very easy target, but I would need more convincing evidence to start assigning blame. Stowe was certainly not the only person writing about slavery at the time.

Another concern with Uncle Tom’s Cabin is the modern use of the name ‘Uncle Tom’ as an insult deriding someone who is at best too willing to go along with an oppressor and at worst complicit in the acts of the oppressor. Tom was intended to be a noble Christian slave, and the compassion Tom shows for his captors flows from this role. Consider this Biblical passage:

Servants, be subject to your masters with all respect, not only to the good and gentle but also to the unjust.

1 Peter 2:18 (ESV)

This could be interpreted as ‘pro-slavery’ or as condoning slavery and some further argue that the Bible as a whole views slavery as acceptable though I’m not sure how anyone could read the Old Testament and miss all the parts about God freeing slaves. I would argue that this passage is rightly interpreted as the correct individual response to slavery as a slave because violence begets violence. Here are a few more modern quotes along similar lines:

Victory attained by violence is tantamount to a defeat, for it is momentary.

Gandhi

The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

The key to understanding Tom’s actions is to recognize that he is acting as Christian individual should and not as a Christian society as a whole should. Tom recognizes that violence is not the answer. He knows that he is responsible for his actions and not responsible for those of Simon Legree. Further, he recognizes that Simon Legree is responsible for Simon’s actions, and Tom knows the consequences of those actions will be truly severe in God’s eyes. In the final chapter, Stowe addresses the readers directly and describes how she believes a Christian society should respond, but she does not contrast this Tom’s actions. It is perhaps the only thing in the book not presented in the most direct fashion possible. As a result, modern Americans recognize the truth in the words of twentieth century civil rights advocates like Gandhi and Dr. King, and yet they use ‘Uncle Tom’ as a form of derision. I must lay the blame at the foot of the writer.

Although I enjoyed reading Uncle Tom’s Cabin, I would not say that it is the Great American Novel if only because it is too laden with the depressing truth of human nature: we are more than capable of great evil. The novel is certainly an American one, if only because of the subject matter and the ensuing controversy surrounding the novel. (Americans are nothing if not fans of controversy.) To me, the Great American Novel might well uncover uncomfortable truths, but it would also inspire us to overcome them. Uncle Tom’s Cabin doesn’t inspire the imagination so much as serve as an in-your-face moral compass.

Two books down; eleven 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)

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.

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald is classic required reading for high school students across the country. However, I somehow managed to avoid reading this book until a time of my own choosing. (Though I was required to read Like Water for Chocolate which no one outside of my high school seems to have read.) The Great Gatsby is also considered universally to be a masterpiece of American literature. It was chosen by editors from Random House as the second best novel published in the English language since 1900. Radcliffe Publishing chose it as the best novel in their rival list. It is consistently mentioned as a Great American Novel, and it is only about 180 pages long, so it’s a perfect way to start investigating all those things that you should have read when they were assigned.

I have to confess that this was one of the books that led me to create the Great American Novel Challenge. I chose to spend part of my summer improving my writing, and in this effort, I found Susan Bell’s analysis of how editing improved The Great Gatsby. I felt convicted for not having read the book. Now that I have read it, I feel like I need to read it again. Almost as soon as I finished I knew that Susan was right: this book was meticulously crafted. The book has not become outdated; it has become more elegant with age. This is where all that careful editing pays off. There are several sentences, particularly later in the novel, that are packed with meaning.

One could say that The Great Gatsby is another book about materialism or debauchery, but that sells it short. One could also say that it is about one man’s attempt to recapture the past, but that too sells the novel short. It is about the nature of authentic love, but again, labeling it as such sells it short. It is about the culture war between the midwest and the east coast, but in some ways it is about every culture war. It is about achieving the American Dream, or maybe defining your own American Dream, but this too seems to be incomplete.

Perhaps it is best to label The Great Gatsby as the first book to explore the quarter-life crisis. Although the term itself is relatively new, Fitzgerald shows that the concept is not. Virtually all the characters are in their late twenties and early thirties. They are all frustrated with their relationships, struggling to form meaningful long-term plans, and most of them are nostalgic for some earlier time in their lives when things seemed to make sense. F. Scott Fitzgerald was in his late 20′s himself when the book was published. It seems that Generation X and Generation Y are not the first to wonder about their place in the world. Even before America was a world superpower, Americans have struggled with trying to find a way to live meaningfully, contribute to the world, and in so doing become the “greatest” images of ourselves. In many ways, we are still living in the Jazz Age.

I promised myself that regardless of the books I chose to read as a part of the Great American Novel Challenge, I would offer some critique rather than simple-minded, endless affection. It’s easy to praise the things that worked because everyone likes to hear about what works. In addition, most reviewers don’t want to believe that they read something generally not worth reading. However, no book is perfect, and for me the part of the book that was least effective was the role of Nick Carraway as both participant in the novel and narrator of the novel. Weaving between these two literary roles would be challenging for any author, but Fitzgerald doesn’t do it well enough to avoid all confusion about whether Nick was a ‘real’ character. Nick’s character development seems stunted, particularly in the early parts of the book. I suppose this bothered me less by the end either because Nick was more of a participant or because I had grown accustomed to it.

Nick’s character development aside, The Great Gatsby is a fantastic book. It’s a short read, and if you haven’t read it you can easily finish it in an afternoon. Since much of the book actually takes place around the fourth of July and throughout the summer, I would urge you to consider reading it on a lazy summer Saturday afternoon. It’s not as stuffy or “intellectual” as you might think. There’s drugs, sex, controversy, murder, and all the things that would get it an R rating if Michael Bay turned it into a movie.

Now that I’ve posted this review, I have officially accepted the Great American Novel Challenge. One book down, twelve to go. I will update this post on Monday with a list of the links to other participating blogs. If you are interested in participating, feel free to start at any time.

[Update: At this point in the challenge, there are two other participating bloggers. Allison posted her review of Absalom, Absalom! (William Faulkner, 1936) on the morning of the 4th, and Carl posted his review of The Last of the Mohicans (James Fenimore Cooper, 1826) just under the wire on the evening of the 4th. I'd encourage you to take a look at their thoughts on these books. If you're interested in participating, grab a book and post a review on August 4th.]