I am a Slacker

How many months ago did I finish Intellectuals and Society by Thomas Sowell?  Am I like my eldest son who seemed to believe that if he kept a library book that he liked way beyond the due date, it was his?  This I believe is a tad of my rationale for not writing a review of said book.  My politically conservative friend from work lent me this book and introduced me to Sowell.  I now look for his editorials in the NY Post where before his small picture left me cold.  It is like spotting a unicorn walking down the street ...the political pundits and newspapers have declared the possibility of an African American intellectual as much an oxymoron as military intelligence or now IRS neutral competence.  

But I proudly join the ranks of Sowell groupies, if such a group exists and would eagerly ready more of his essays and theories.  But on to I & S.  (E McM forgive me for dog-earring the following excerpts in his graciously loaned copy.)  

With another headline to re-emphasize Sowell's disdain for the intellectual elite who consider themselves the true rulers, the penultimate policy setters, as the headlines blare about Bubba and Hellary foisted their wannabe clones of In-Huma and her aptly named Weiner spouse, let me quote:

" ... help 1explain why so many leading intellectuals have so often backed notions that proved to be disastrous.  It is not simply with particular policies at particular times that intellectuals have often advocated mistaken and dangerous decisions.  Their whole general approach to policy making -- their ideology -- has often reflected a critical misconception about knowledge and its concentration or dispersion.  Many intellectuals and their followers have been unduly impressed by the fact that highly educated elites like themselves have far more knowledge per capita .. than does the population at large ... They have often overlooked the crucial fact that the population at large may have vastly more total knowledge ... If no one has even one percent of the knowledge currently available ... the imposition from the top down of the notions in favor among the elites, convinced of their own superior knowledge and virtue, is a formula for disaster."  ... "Other forms of this general notion include judicial activiism, urban planning and other institutional expressions of the belief that social decisions cannot be left to be determined by the actions and values of the less knowledgeable population at large."

Why is this not echoing from the rafters of American?  Why isn't Sowell the 21st Century equivalent of the Federalist Papers?  

I am too tired tonight to copy the many dog earred pages that I wanted to quote at length.  Sowell makes one thinks that there could be an intent to, a la 1984, reduce the thinking power of Americans.  How much as school curriculum debased critical thinking and debate?  How intolerant have we become to be normal and not different or logically presenting the other side of an argument?  Debate is replaced by tarnished filibuster?  Dissertation by sound bite and spin.  Has America lost its Sowell?  He should be required reading in any high school participation in government course.  Newspapers, not just the NY Post, should publish him along side the opposition on editorial pages.

Overbuilt

I really wanted to title this blog post "An Awful Book" but I did it to myself,  once again, falling for the ads and reviews in the NYT's book review.  Reconstructing Amelia by Kimberly McCreight is no We Have to Talk About Kevin.  Kevin broke through family taboos, not so much for having raised a high school shooter, but for honestly having the mother narrator bare her soul and all her emotions.  Kate, the mother of Amelia, postures.

I can just envision this book being added to the agenda laden high school reading list to convey the not too subtle messages:  it's okay to be gay; cliques and bullying in school are bad, even deadly; families headed by lawyer-mothers are conflicted; women who are not sure who the father of their child is suffer; private schools are run by Dickensian monsters and conspicuous consumption parent boards of directors; it's okay to be late or cut class as long as you are with your best friend; etc. etc.

I don't think there is a chapter without forced fed messages directed at the reader, chicks of all ages.  I'm left feeling McCreight herself has a lot of issues to work our family-wise and career-wise herself, nothwithstanding her acknowledgements to husband and daughters.  Her portrayal of Amelia suggests paranoia, almost anyone could have killed her ... yes this is a modern moral play murder mystery.  Zero points.

Staying in Place Traveling

A couple of days ago I finished Trans Atlantic by Colum McCann.  While reading it, the New 
York Times published two book reviews, one favorable, the other more cautious.  Where do I come down?

I think the first chapter soars stylistically and with humming literary tension as the first transatlantic flight from Nova Scotia to Ireland takes place in 1919.  McCann showcases his best turn of phrase and selection of the perfect word, two attributes that I find most often in the Irish, including TC Boyle.  This selection carries forward McCann's up in the air as a feat of human excellence, continuing the Petit and the Twin Towers adventure.   But adding more complication and interweaving of characters, McCann goes beyond people connected in NYC in As the Great World Turns to spanning generations as well as oceans.

You could almost get jet lag if you tried to count how often McCann moves his characters between the Old Sod and the New World.   I found myself inventorying how often I flew across the Pond ... four times.  First to Paris with a high school friend a few years out of college; next the vacation of a lifetime with my mother, three weeks in Switzerland, Austria and northern Italy, staying at only the best of hotels in Venice, Lucarno, et cetera; and then finally, the relevant trips back to Ireland, once before and once after I married my Orange husband.

While McCann uses the women across four generations to tie the book together, it is his chapters on men that I find more enticing.  The post World War II pilots for their adventures and the human side of George Mitchell who said in a role of anonymity throughout the cease fire negotiations so two extremes of human excellence, when the result is more memorable than the actor.

When McCann is at his best, his words soar like tightrope walkers and daredevil pilots.  On balance, Trans Atlantic is a tad too earthbound, even if that weight is peat