Edward O. Wilson The Future of Life (2002)

     

Edward O. Wilson The Future of Life (2002) Humankind has become the dominant species on Earth in the only sense it really matters: we have a greater effect on the global ecosystems than any other species, and are almost certainly affecting the climate itself. [We are.] In our not so remote past, we could do at most local damage; and in those places where we had practised agriculture for millennia, we had created new stable ecosystems. But now that has changed; and there is a very real risk that ecosystems will change so much that they cannot sustain human life. We have reached a bottle neck, and although Wilson is hopeful that we will pass through it, the Earth will be changed forever.
      Why bother with efforts to sustain at least samples of old ecosystems? Why bother preserving wilderness? Wilson makes the usual economic arguments, and extends them, For example, we need the biodiversity of wilderness because we don’t know what pharmaceutical treasures are hidden there. We need wilderness because such ecosystems are carbon sinks,  and so help sustain human activities such as agriculture and fossil fuel burning. And so on.
     These arguments are enough to at least catch the attention of the money grubbers, but Wilson extends the argument. He claims a deep spiritual value for the natural world. We need it, he says, because we are adapted to it by thousands of generations of evolution. We even create versions of our putative original home, the sub-tropical savannas, in our gardens and parks, especially in temperate climates, whose natural ecosystem is the forest, not the savanna. Even our agricultural landscapes support Wilson’s thesis: where large scale agri-industry hasn’t converted large tracts of land to mono-cultured fields of wheat, the patchwork of fields and copses, of pastures and woodland, tends to reproduce the look of a savanna. And our enduring fascination with Africa also testifies, since we want to see documentaries about the open plains, not the rain forest. When you think about it, the universal human habit of making pleasure gardens of some sort is rather odd. Unlike agriculture and gardening for food, it has no practical value whatever. So I agree with Wilson that nature in and of itself sustains the human spirit. It would be a crime against our descendants to destroy wilderness and jungle.
      I am less certain that Wilson has good reasons for his hopefulness. He cites mostly government and non-government efforts to set aside and manage wilderness areas, to provide economic alternatives to clear cutting of rain forest, and so on. But although he spends a large chunk of one chapter describing the huge ecological footprint of the Western lifestyle, he doesn’t touch on what in my opinion is essential: developing an ethic that opposes continued economic growth, and one that in the short term (i.e., a couple or three generations) proposes a scaling back both of our consumption levels and our population. We need to think of how we can manage economic shrinkage. If we don’t do this, the only long-term value of the wilderness preserves will be as seeds of future temperate forest and tropical rain forest; for we will surely destroy our civilisation, and the vast majority of humans will die. Perhaps Wilson realises this, and that is why he carefully focuses on preservation rather than economic changes.
     The first part of the book, where Wilson describes the current state of the Earth, is well written, clear, and full of new and not so new information. The last chapter amounts to little more than a catalogue raisonnee of agencies and NGOs in the nature conservation movement. *** (2002, edited 2021)

Alfred Hitchcock, ed. Alfred Hitchcock’s Deathmate (1973)

     Alfred Hitchcock, ed. Alfred Hitchcock’s Deathmate (1973) Most of the stories date from the early 60s, which means that the dollar figures don’t have the impact they should have; the reader should mentally multiply by 10. Hitchcock likes stories with a twist, usually a dark one, and characterisation etc don’t matter except to drive the plot. Amusing stories, worth a read when you have no energy for anything demanding and there’s no TV handy. ** (2002)

Mordecai Richler, ed. The Best of Modern Humor (1983)

     Mordecai Richler, ed. The Best of Modern Humor (1983) Funny, this isn’t. There are a few pieces that elicit laughter (eg, Nora Ephron’s piece about breasts, Rosten’s tale of Hyman Kaplan, or Leacock’s brilliant “Gertrude,” one of his Nonsense Novels), but most of the fiction is about sad, pathetic losers. Only one of the satires (Bruce McCall’s parody of Mechanix Illustrated and Popular Mechanics) has the combination of fun and sharp criticism that I expect of the “best”.
     The pieces are very well written, but too many ask us to laugh at their protagonists, not with them. That is of course the function of satire, but when the targets are lower class caught in a web they never made and cannot escape, the laughter sounds mean. Those targets are too easy. The earlier pieces tend to be funnier than the later ones, even when their satire is sharp (as in Sullivan’s “Cliche Expert....”) The newer pieces have a sour tone, and there is a nasty streak of class superiority in many of them. Is this one of the reasons Richler chose them? The humour, what there is of it, relies a lot on the insider’s knowledge of already dated class and ethnic peculiarities. Some of the stories elicit compassion rather than laughter, but I suspect that Richler laughed rather than wept when he read them.
      Was Richler trying to demonstrate his cultural superiority over the rest of us once again? That has been the repeated theme in his pieces about Canada. Those pieces strike me as prime examples of the whine of the colonial who has felt the contempt of the mother country, and forever after feels that he must show he is really not a colonial after all. The book is worth keeping because of the few classics in it, but it reflects badly on Richler’s’ taste. But when I consider his own output, I shouldn’t be surprised. After Duddy Kravitz, his work becomes more and more peevish; that peevishness informs this collection, unfortunately. His early short stories about Montreal, for example, combine sharp satiric observation with a compassion for the humanity in us all. In his later work, that compassion appears fitfully and weakly, like the silent lightning of distant thunder storms, if it appears at all. * to *** (2002)

Stephen Jay Gould. I Have Landed (2002)

     Stephen Jay Gould. I Have Landed (2002) Gould’s last collection of essays. They display both his strengths and his weaknesses. As his fame as an essayist grew, Gould became increasingly self-conscious about himself as a writer, and occasionally that results in comments that should have been edited out. He also developed an unnecessarily multi-syllabic style, and some verbal tics (eg, “optimal” for “best”) that I noticed too often, and which began to annoy me. But these are minor cavils.
     What shines through more clearly than ever is Gould’s generosity, wonder, and awe. He simply refuses to put down past sages because they happened to be wrong: they did the best they could with the data and theoretical frameworks they had. Just as we do. If we put down the past for not having our advantages, surely our descendants will do the same to us when their turn comes.
     Gould loved this world we live in, he loved to trace out the many surprising connections between its parts, and between the people who described, thought about, and tried to explain those connections. He was I think a very joyful man, although his life had grief enough for anyone: the cancer that killed him after 20 or so years of acute episodes and remissions; an autistic son; and a first marriage that faltered and broke; not to mention misappropriation of his words by Creationists when they weren’t attacking him.
     Gould describes himself as a humanist, but he was without a doubt a man of faith. His faith did not rest in a personal God such as is proffered by his Jewish tradition, or its Christian and Muslim derivatives. But he knew that the realm of ought-to-be and would-it-were are absolutely necessary to us as human beings, and that we must construct an ethic that will enable us to act with compassion and justice, and to share our joys and griefs. His comments on the attacks of September 11th show this clearly: he contrasts the many thousand acts of kindness and decency that make our communal life worth living with the horrendous evil perpetrated by a few. He notes this asymmetry of numbers, and argues that it should give us hope. By far the vast majority of us want to live not only the good life, but the moral life, and so we do. That’s why our daily life does not make news. It’s the rare and unusual acts that make news, and the rarer they are, the greater their news value. The acts of greatest evil are the rarest of all. They are for most of us simply unimaginable until they happen, and for many still unimaginable then.
     As to why the perpetrators commit their acts of evil, Gould does not attempt to answer this question beyond the usual general hints of social and personal damage of some kind. But he does emphasise that one of the main sources of evil is the kind of limited and limiting faith he rejects, the belief in a personal God with an exclusive relationship with the faithful few.
     Yet in the end, Gould quotes from the Bible. I think Gould shows that faith need not be exclusivist or narrow; it need not be in a personal God. It’s more an attitude towards the world than a creed. That attitude starts with awe, and ends with joy.
     Rest in peace, Stephen. (2002) ***

John Penn. An Ad for Murder (1982)

     John Penn. An Ad for Murder (1982) A pleasant entertainment, in which what seems to be an advertisement for a forthcoming book turns out to be a warning of an actual murder. The murder happens, but apparently the wrong person is the victim. Until Inspector Taylor on a hunch (and because of a deepening interest in the victim’s daughter) decides the murderer accomplished his task exactly as intended, and proceeds to unravel a very knotted plot. The puzzle is a good one, the characters are pleasant, the author sometimes shifts point of view for no good reason, and the police procedure is a bit wonky, but all in all, the story works. It would make a nice little 2-hour TV special, and for all I know has been done. **-½ (2002)

Paul Fussell. BAD: Or, The Dumbing of America. (1991)

     Paul Fussell. BAD: Or, The Dumbing of America. (1991) A collection of rants of varying quality. The style is often oddly flat and ponderous. It seems as if Fussell had written a few of these pieces, and then someone suggested he make a book, which pushed him into forced humour, soggy satire, and jejune jokes. Well, not entirely: many of the points he makes are valid enough.
     However, much of what he discusses is really matter of taste or fashion, both of which are impervious to skewering, and are rendered silly by time alone. Some of his targets are too easy, such as ads aimed at the semi-literate and semi-cultured, offering them “exclusive heirloom” collectibles, manufactured by the tens of thousands, to store in a cheap glass fronted case for future generations to ooh and aah over.
     Fussell’s rage at the dumbing down of academic studies is worth reading, but I doubt many university presidents these day are even capable of understanding his critiques, and none I would think would want to act on them. Provincial premiers (and State governors) might stare suspiciously at anyone offering these critiques, aware that they are missing something, but uncertain just what it might be. That’s perhaps the saddest conclusion to take away from his book, that much of what Fussell has to say can’t be understood by those who might profit from it, but merely provides reasons for a mean-spirited sense of superiority for many of those who can understand. At his best, Fussell laughs at follies we might otherwise weep over; at his worst, he sounds merely peevish. I suppose that’s the risk a curmudgeon takes. ** (2002)

Robert E. Howard. The Incredible Adventures of Dennis Dorgan (1974)

     Robert E. Howard. The Incredible Adventures of Dennis Dorgan (1974) Howard wrote far more stories than he ever sold, and often plagiarised himself, changing stories to suit different markets. This collection includes one published, seven unpublished, and two accepted but never published stories (the magazine went out of business.) I read the introduction, which retails these facts, and part of the first story. Howard tries to reproduce the dialect of a lower class fellow who is good with his fists. The attempt fails. It takes more than the odd “phonetic” misspelling to convince me that I’m listening to a sailor with more wit than education. So I stopped reading.
     Howard is best known for his Conan the Barbarian series; the movie adaptations made Arnold Schwarzenegger famous. If this book is any indication of Howard’s talents, the movies are much better than the books. Howard is good at imagining content, but his execrable style makes the tales almost impossible to read. Readers whose main interest is in what happens next won’t be put off. Readers who want a sense of living in a well-imagined universe will find it hard to read Howard for other than “academic” reasons. It’s a good thing that writing style doesn’t transfer to a movie, except perhaps for dialogue, which in the Conan movies is mercifully brief. (2002)

S. A. Wakefield. Bottersnikes and Gumbles (1967)

     S. A. Wakefield. Bottersnikes and Gumbles (1967) Bottersnikes are nasty, scale beasts with sharp teeth, and their ears turn red hot when they are angry (which is most of the time). Red-hot ears are useful for starting fires. They live in garbage dumps and are very, very lazy. This deprives them of the comforts of life, so they are very, very bad tempered. Gumbles are agreeable, soft and furry, and squishy. They giggle a lot, and live in the bush, where they chat, play games, soak up the sun, and do just enough work to feel comfortable. Bottersnikes want Gumbles to work for them, so they put them in jam tins. Gumbles occasionally get away from the Bottersnikes, but as soon as they get the giggles, they are helpless, and the Bottersnikes put them in jam tins again. And so on.
     This is a Puffin book, designed to make eight-year-olds giggle like Gumbles, I suppose. However, the premise promises more than it delivers. The humour is strained and contrived as often as not, and the stories don’t have much point. That’s probably why this book never had a sequel, and its characters never showed up on TV. The author is Australian. Maybe the book’s humour is too Aussie for me. * (2002)

Peggy Coyle, Peggy, ed. Faith of Our Fathers (1980)

     Peggy Coyle, Peggy, ed. Faith of Our Fathers (1980) Six women write about their fathers, all priests in Algoma Diocese. These men come across as focussed on their work, willing to accept all kinds of hardships, devout and dedicated priests, and more or less easy-going fathers. They also had a wide range of interests, worked hard establishing various programs for the youth in their community, and enjoyed life. The daughters all clearly loved their fathers, and don’t tell us much of the flaws they must have had, but concentrate on the kinds of anecdotes that every family accumulates about its members. A few personal remarks reveal the closeness of these pioneer families. The overall effect is one of impressive dedication to one’s lifework, and of men who gave more than they got from their communities.
     There are also a number of really funny stories, all of them true. The one that sticks in my mind is the one about a bride’s worth. After the wedding (which was a grand affair, with more than the usual number of flowers, decorations, and pretty dresses), the bridegroom asked the priest what he owed. “Whatever you think your bride is worth,” said Mr Balfour. The bridegroom dug in his pocket, and found fifty cents, which he handed over to the priest.
     Worth reading, and a useful and more than entertaining addition to anyone’s collection of local histories.*** (2002)

Ray Bradbury. S is for Space. (1968)

      Ray Bradbury. S is for Space. (1968) Bradbury was at one time a favourite of mine, but rereading these stories makes me wonder at my early taste. He over-writes, is all. When his style matches the story’s theme, the effect can be very good; but much of the time the style seems intended to add a significance that isn’t there, like the swelling chords of a banal piece of pop music. Or something like that.
     In any case, only a few of these stories satisfied me. The best is “The Million Year Picnic,” in which a family escapes from a nuclear war on Earth and settles on Mars. Bradbury’s style suits the mix of elegy and hope in this story perfectly. In fact, the Mars stories generally work better than most of the other stories, even though there’s no attempt to make them consistent with each other. Bradbury uses Mars as a fabulous new Frontier. The themes of new beginnings and escape from the evil old world are what really interest him, and Mars permits him to play effectively with them.
      “Zero Hour” I have in a dramatised version on tape; it’s much better as a radio play than a story. A couple other stories work the motif of the hidden invader, recognised too late – very Cold War.
     But Bradbury’s most persistent theme and motif is the Lost Past, or its variation, Lost Childhood. In one form or another, these show up in every story. One of the best, more a meditation in the form of a narrative than a story, is “The Trolley,” in which we take the last ride on a trolley about to be replaced by buses. Here, Bradbury’s fey and whimsical style is an almost perfect match for the nostalgia of the piece, which never quite descends into mawkish sentimentality, though a couple of times it comes close. * to ***-½ (2002)

Bertolt Brecht. The Threepenny Opera Transl.. By Desmond Vesey

     Bertolt Brecht. The Threepenny Opera Transl.. By Desmond Vesey (book) and Eric Bentley (lyrics). This is not the book that the Stratford (Ontario) company used. I have no idea how the different versions compare in terms of fidelity to the German; this one advertises itself as including every word of the German text. I’ll have to read The Beggar’s Opera now, for comparison. Anyhow, the script is fairly straightforward. Brecht’s insistence on spelling out his theme is rather irritating, he knocks you over the head with it. His use of “epic drama” techniques is also rather obtrusive; or rather, his “actor’s tips” about this feature in my opinion demonstrate that he didn’t really understand theatre very well. Recent scholarly work has shown that his scripts were in large part written by others.  Considering the obtuseness of his advice to actors and the virtues of the script, I can well believe it.
     Reading this script so soon after seeing the debacle at Stratford probably prevented my enjoying it. However, Bentley’s lyrics are not as good as the traditional ones. Mack the Knife especially suffers from what appears to be Bentley’s attempt to reproduce the German text. ** (2002)

Charlotte Vale Allen. Dream Train (1988)

     Charlotte Vale Allen Dream Train (1988) I’ve been collecting fiction with a railway theme or setting; this is the most recent one I’ve read. Joanna James, photographer, has a gig riding the Venice-Simplon-Orient-Express, the luxury train cruise that’s the remnant of the original Orient Express. The book is a romance presented as part travelogue and part quest.
     Joanna encounters a variety of people and situations. She makes friends that reflect and refract her character back to herself and so help her on her voyage of self-discovery. Memories of her dysfunctional family intersect with her responses to her new friends and acquaintances. She comes to terms with her family’s past, discovers that she can be her own person, and who that person is; and chooses the man that’s right for her. As in all proper quests, the goal is the integration of a broken personality, in this case the competent and highly skilled professional with the shy, self-effacing, injured and repressed child that never grew up. Simple plot, simple theme. The book is well written in a style a cut or two above cliché, the characters have the kind of depth we expect from a moderately serious TV mini-series, the train trip is wonderful.
     Marie said the book was superficial, and it is, but there are enough hints of depths below the surface to persuade us these people matter, at least while we are reading about them. The main characters are too good to be true, the darkness of the human heart is glimpsed on the periphery and throws only a few shadows, and the crises are triggered by external events, not by weaknesses or flaws of character. But in all these respects, the novel conforms to the demands of its genre, so why cavil at them? The book is above average of its kind. I enjoyed reading it. **-½

Charles Seife. Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea (2000)

     Charles Seife. Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea (2000) It looks like I read this last year, but I can’t remember. Re-reading it, it’s not hard to see why. While Seife provides lots of interesting information, and explains a good deal, his writing is at best workmanlike, and often sloppy. I suspect the sloppiness may be the effect of trying to “explain complex ideas in simple language,” but the result is often conceptual blurriness and even error. I found myself mentally rephrasing many of his statements. For example. He says that Cantor compared the size of rational and irrational numbers. He of course means the size of the sets of those numbers. Since he already explained what a set is, and uses a very clear metaphor to illustrate how one compares sets without actually counting, there’s no excuse for such sloppy language. He does have a knack for the illustrative metaphor: comparing sets is like asking everyone in a stadium to sit down, he says. If some seats are empty, then there are fewer people than seats. If there some people left standing, then vice versa. If there are no empty seats and no people standing, then the two sets match: they are the same size. Well, that’s very well done; so why the sloppy language a page or so later?
     Seife also occasionally uses a technical term without explaining it. For example, towards the end he talks of the heat death of the universe as the ultimate result of its continuing expansion. But in the next sentence he refers to this as death by ice (in contrast to the fiery death of the big crunch). How these two terminologies can be reconciled may be a mystery to him; it certainly will be a mystery to many readers.
     Seife’s understanding of history consists of conventional wisdom, which also occasionally misleads the reader. Overall, however, his philosophical points are well made, and the power of Zero to confound metaphysics and theology is clearly conveyed. The appendices illustrating several mathematical and logical arguments in detail are concise and clear. I like the one that uses the a=b, ab=a^2 etc proof that 1=0 (or 2=1) to show that Winston Churchill is a carrot.
     In short, this is an adequate introduction to a number of mathematical, physical, and philosophical problems and their solutions, with a good deal of pleasantly conveyed history along the way, and will do for a high school library. ** (2002)