Jimmy Carter is not an anti-Semite!
Now that may come as a shock to the chair of the Anti-Defamation League or the Israeli prime minister, but then it would also be quite shocking if either deigned to read Palestine: Peace not Apartheid before jumping to their conclusion.
Carter's latest, most controversial book is mostly history - with a touch of memoir - but it is decidedly not screed. If the critics must quibble, they'd be wise to do so with the facts of Carter's presentation. Indeed, he invites them to do just that with a collection of appendices, seven-strong, that trace the problematic Middle East peace process across a 35-year arc - from U.N. Resolution 242 (1967) through Ariel Sharon's response to the Roadmap for Peace (2003).
Attacking the former president's integrity, though, and applying a very technical term with all the grace reserved for wielding a sledge hammer will profit the critic very little.
What is of interest to many readers wading into Palestine: Peace not Apartheid as a crash course in Middle East affairs is a question of blame. "Who is responsible," they wonder, "for the mess over there?" A careful read of Carter's book would generate a laundry list of an answer. Owing to some of its more draconian policies, Israel would be included. But the author frequently notes the disastrous contributions of the Palestinians, other Arab countries, a wide variety of paramilitary factions, and, of course, the United States government. Everyone is responsible, and Jimmy Carter would be the first to acknowledge that.
Of course, responsibility is not the former president's interest. Peace is. Very little of the text is opinion - mostly delivered in the book's final two chapters and almost wholly concerned with how to work out a lasting peace between Israel, Palestine, and the Arab world. To Carter, a man who tasted it at Camp David in 1978, peace does not seem a faraway goal. And what's more, it would be a tragedy were peace not to prevail.
I worry that I, too, made up my mind about this book before I cracked the spine. Even if that were true, though, I would still say this much to recommend it: Jimmy Carter knows of what he speaks. His stories from the region - even the most dreadful - exactly coincide with my own.
Friday, February 23, 2007
Wednesday, February 21, 2007
"Mr. Pirzada Comes to Dinner" and "Interpreter of Maladies"
I'm thinking that i need to read this story again as I have been unable to follow all of it. I think back to Poe's idea that a short story should be read in one sitting and Lahiri has benefited from that so far (I can easily sit and read her stories at one time, generally). The mystery of "A Temporary Matter" is not present here but her voice is enchanting. The story looks at Mr. Pirzada who is from Pakistan, while the narrator's family is from India, and it takes place during the fighting in the area of the early 80s (maybe 70s, my Indian subcontinent history is crap). He plays a weird sort of father figure to the narrator, but sadly it left little impression on me. I was reading this story in class during our independent reading time, and then, when the students write about their books, i do the same with mine. I wrote the first paragraph here and now that I look back on it, it brings little to mind. The next story, "Interpreter of Maladies", does not fail me though. This could be a matter of it being the second time I have read the story as well, which only goes to show that "Mr. Pirzada..." could still hold a place in my heart. I love this story for the hopeless romantic elements of the main character and his infatuation with the wife in the story. The views of a grossly americanized version of this Indian family is unobtrusively sad, and I fear it is too close to depiction of what the American family looks like to others. However, when Mrs. Das, the main character from the story who is unhappy in her marriage, confesses to the tour guide (whose name fails me), it becomes clear her attitude is born in selfish pity. She has wanted him to translate her anguish, to prescribe a remedy but he merely changes words; he does not offer solutions. She has wanted someone to help so much she is unable to choose the appropriate person to help her. The ultimate irony is that while she has wanted help, he has wanted her (as he too is in a passionless, arranged marriage). He gives Mrs. Das exactly what she asks for then realizes it is not what she wants, as any good penance should. The story ends with the epiphany that the tour guide/interpreter of maladies has about his own relationship with his wife, the relationship Mr. and Mrs. Das have, and the relationship he imagines between himself and Mrs. Das. The first is only a formality, the second is the same but louder, and the last is fictional. While it seems sad, there is something that should be reassuring in it, as the reality of anyone's situation should be comparable to the imaginary lives we sometimes lead in happiness. When that is out of whack too much, something needs to be done, even if it is just an acknowledgment of it. It ends well though; there are monkeys.
Sunday, February 18, 2007
"I've become an unnatural self."
I think I've always been a fan of science fiction. Star Wars was as ingrained at an early age as was Catholic Doctrine; there are three aspects of God that are the holy trinity, and Darth Vader is Luke and Leia's father. Because of this fandom, on my part, I've recently wanted to read some of the more modern classics of science fiction, and when my mother-in-law gave us gift certificates for Amazon, I went SF-crazy.
I picked up Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick. This was the inspiration for Blade Runner (starring none other than Han Solo) and, though i think I've seen the movie, I don't remember half of what was in the book. Once again, I had to pick a book that made me question my own humanity, and what that word even means.
Allow me to digress. I also got a copy of The Canticle for Leibowitz which has a foreword that talks about the difference between literature and fiction. I, being a reading snob, have often wondered about the difference between these two things as well; the definition it gave was that literature changes you. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, I am happy to say, does just that.
The book is about Rick Deckard, a bounty hunter who works for the San Francisco police, tracking down rogue androids, which are now illegal on the planet Earth (there are a lot of details I'm leaving out; just read the book if you need them). As much as I felt distant from him at first, I related to the almost manic changes he seems to go through in the course of his day. He is introduced to a new type of android that is even harder to tell apart from normal humans; he is introduced to a man whom he thinks, for a moment, is an android; he breaks a "retiring" record by "killing" six androids; He sleeps with an android. Throughout the whole thing he thinks about what it is he's doing, and, although I paid little attention to it the first time, his wife's words, as the beginning of the story, resonate with him throughout the day: "just those poor andy's."
Do we feel bad for robots when they are destroyed? Now imagine that robot had feelings. What about if you got super attached to your computer, then it (and we use this term) dies. I always hated finishing books, because I had to leave them then. Those characters would go away, a reason, I believe, why I love monthly comic books. In the novel, Deckard has an electric sheep, because in the post-apocalyptic world, caring for animals is considered a duty and privilege (though also a status symbol). How much is our awareness really play a role in what we feel and experience? If you had a pet dog and it died, you'd feel sad. if you had a pet dog that was an electric dog, would you still? Now imagine not knowing whether it was or not.
That's how I feel after reading this book. There is a weird ambivalence, but at the same time I'm quite happy to realize that it is the choices that I make that allow me to feel the things I feel. It is my interest in reading books like Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? that will guarantee I may change my mind about that with the next book; only for it to evolve again with the next, and so on.
At the end of the book, to spoil part of it, Rick Deckard goes to sleep. I'm going to go do the same.
I picked up Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick. This was the inspiration for Blade Runner (starring none other than Han Solo) and, though i think I've seen the movie, I don't remember half of what was in the book. Once again, I had to pick a book that made me question my own humanity, and what that word even means.
Allow me to digress. I also got a copy of The Canticle for Leibowitz which has a foreword that talks about the difference between literature and fiction. I, being a reading snob, have often wondered about the difference between these two things as well; the definition it gave was that literature changes you. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, I am happy to say, does just that.
The book is about Rick Deckard, a bounty hunter who works for the San Francisco police, tracking down rogue androids, which are now illegal on the planet Earth (there are a lot of details I'm leaving out; just read the book if you need them). As much as I felt distant from him at first, I related to the almost manic changes he seems to go through in the course of his day. He is introduced to a new type of android that is even harder to tell apart from normal humans; he is introduced to a man whom he thinks, for a moment, is an android; he breaks a "retiring" record by "killing" six androids; He sleeps with an android. Throughout the whole thing he thinks about what it is he's doing, and, although I paid little attention to it the first time, his wife's words, as the beginning of the story, resonate with him throughout the day: "just those poor andy's."
Do we feel bad for robots when they are destroyed? Now imagine that robot had feelings. What about if you got super attached to your computer, then it (and we use this term) dies. I always hated finishing books, because I had to leave them then. Those characters would go away, a reason, I believe, why I love monthly comic books. In the novel, Deckard has an electric sheep, because in the post-apocalyptic world, caring for animals is considered a duty and privilege (though also a status symbol). How much is our awareness really play a role in what we feel and experience? If you had a pet dog and it died, you'd feel sad. if you had a pet dog that was an electric dog, would you still? Now imagine not knowing whether it was or not.
That's how I feel after reading this book. There is a weird ambivalence, but at the same time I'm quite happy to realize that it is the choices that I make that allow me to feel the things I feel. It is my interest in reading books like Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? that will guarantee I may change my mind about that with the next book; only for it to evolve again with the next, and so on.
At the end of the book, to spoil part of it, Rick Deckard goes to sleep. I'm going to go do the same.
Blindness by Jose Saramago
Whither human nature - are we naturally good or do we lean toward evil - is a question as old as asking. All people ponder it and most who pick up the pen will, at some point, address it more deliberately. Enter Nobel laureate Jose Saramago and his book, Blindness.
Saramago's enterprise is to wonder aloud about who we really are, and so he follows the old proverbial wisdom and plunges his characters into the honesty of crisis: a pandemic of unexplainable and incurable white blindness. Are we the government, motivated by expediency to quarantine the stricken, even if to do so requires that we also dehumanize them? Are we a certain segment of the quarantined, drunk enough on the "will to power" to become murderous and marauding, wolves to our fellow men and women? Or are we the optometrist's wife, whose vision never fades and whose desire to shepherd the afflicted produces innumerable tiny acts of heroism? It is not at all clear precisely whom Saramago thinks we are, but it is easy to guess who he wants us to be.
Of course, to so clearly distinguish characters and groups would be to do the author a disservice. Saramago's writing is light on things like quotation marks and names that would make identification easy. His style is almost deliberately vague, and even the characters themselves acknowledge how superfluous names are in a world full of the blind. And even as anonymity makes possible all sorts of things - not all of them atrocities - enough constants remain to separate the heroes from the villains.
There is much scattered wisdom in Blindness, and as one so oft seduced by ideas I found myself sometimes just bouncing from one concept to the next. If all one could pull out of this book were some of those quotable pockets of thought, it would still be worth reading.
Saramago's enterprise is to wonder aloud about who we really are, and so he follows the old proverbial wisdom and plunges his characters into the honesty of crisis: a pandemic of unexplainable and incurable white blindness. Are we the government, motivated by expediency to quarantine the stricken, even if to do so requires that we also dehumanize them? Are we a certain segment of the quarantined, drunk enough on the "will to power" to become murderous and marauding, wolves to our fellow men and women? Or are we the optometrist's wife, whose vision never fades and whose desire to shepherd the afflicted produces innumerable tiny acts of heroism? It is not at all clear precisely whom Saramago thinks we are, but it is easy to guess who he wants us to be.
Of course, to so clearly distinguish characters and groups would be to do the author a disservice. Saramago's writing is light on things like quotation marks and names that would make identification easy. His style is almost deliberately vague, and even the characters themselves acknowledge how superfluous names are in a world full of the blind. And even as anonymity makes possible all sorts of things - not all of them atrocities - enough constants remain to separate the heroes from the villains.
There is much scattered wisdom in Blindness, and as one so oft seduced by ideas I found myself sometimes just bouncing from one concept to the next. If all one could pull out of this book were some of those quotable pockets of thought, it would still be worth reading.
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