Conservative Book Talk

DISCLAIMER: I had to read this book for a historiography class, so it wasn’t my idea, for one thing. Also, the point of the assignment was to learn as much as I could from skimming/reading really fast, so portions of the book were skimmed over.

The title of this book caught my eye because, as a history fan, I love a good footnote. Long dissertations on sources and people not directly relevant to the point at hand make for great biographies. By way of explanation: a footnote is when there’s a little number or parenthetic citation in a sentence, and the source is at the bottom of the page. An endnote is the same thing, only all the information is at the back of the book (more cumbersome as a reading aid, but still worth looking at in most good biographies). An explanatory footnote is a footnote that not only lists the source, but also some useful or interesting information (a mini-biography on this servant of Edward III, the full Latin text of the Magna Karta, a recipe, etc).

PLOT: Unfortunately, Grafton isn’t really interested in explaining his promised history of the footnote (I had to ask the professor for that), more in rambling on about how we can’t really know the truth or accuracy of anything, and other elements of post-modernist philosophy. Its really confusing, because he also isn’t big on grammar or specificity. Apparently there is a school of post-modernist thought that argues for obscurity in writing (as a way of emphasizing their theory that all meaning is defined by what other people think of what is written, not what the writer thinks he wrote). I didn’t understand that from the book itself, either, but again asked the professor and my Dad about postmodernism, and figured it out from there.

GOOD: To illustrate his philosophy about history writing, Grafton mentions many important figures in the field of historiography (the study of the history of writing history). So we are introduced to a lot of obscure but influential people like Leopold von Ranke (German historiographer, he argued for history as the study of facts as recovered from written sources, of which the best were eye-witness accounts, and of these the best were in state archives, because the state is the ultimate figure in history). These people are all important because their theories have profoundly influenced thought and scholarly practice in our modern society (Ranke, for example, invented the idea of a college seminar, where students do their own research instead of just listening to the professor talk about doing it, and writing their own research papers, etc). I’d never read a book that actually USED postmodern writing techniques, and to such a blatant extent; so that was enlightening…

BAD: …if really confusing. I wanted to learn more about the drift from marginal notes in Bibles to numbered verses to combining both elements in other areas of scholarship (Shakespeare’s numbered lines for example), and how all that evolved into Chicago style, MLA, etc. Instead, I found a jumbled mess of obscure people and even more obscure explanations of why they were important. The assignment for my class was to skim the book and grasp its basic meaning. I couldn’t make heads or tails of any points he might have been trying to make, or any narrative structure at all, even after reading twice or three times.

OVERALL: Not recommended. If a reader can’t make heads or tails of your argument, the book is pointless: which may be the point, but it isn’t worth 250 pages of monotony to figure that out.

Tags: Anthony Grafton, History, Sincerelyornot, The Footnote

This is probably the most widely read piece of philosophy to come out of England, and understandably so, because its also a very interesting novel. In the story, More meets a man who just got back from the perfect country (Utopia), and the bulk of the novel revolves around the people and customs of this faraway island. It’s a quick read, though a bit tedious if you’re not a socialist (or communist, both of which could have been copied from parts of this work). Its got lots of sarcastic pot-shots at contemporary Tudor England, and I’m told that the original Latin has even more inside jokes on More’s generation.

There isn’t really a plot, and most people have heard of these ideas already (no locks on the doors, eating together, no private property, can’t leave the city without a license, etc) either in school or in a movie. So, instead of recapping the whole litany of ideas from More’s book, I thought I’d share my college paper on the subject. Our teacher had us create our own perfect world (with the assumption that we’d all be good and create nice worlds where there are no guns or religion or environmental abuse). Naturally, in More’s sarcastic tradition, I thought I’d put my favorite fantasies of how-to-get-rid-of-the-environmentalists in the structure. A disclaimer: I am strongly in favor of stewardship of the environment, but such stewardship should benefit humanity, not the other way around. With that, here is my version of “A Green Utopia:”
• Location: A floating island in the sky, powered by green energy, functioning entirely off the clouds and generating only steam exhaust. Utopia looks something like a series of blimps, topped by a platform covered in giant blue-tinted bubbles. The aeronautic plastic bubbles are actually individual platforms that are interconnected for wind and weather adjustments (a hurricane, for example, would contort the platforms but not destabilize them due to the flexibility of the cable connections). Protected by an invisibility shield, radar, and at last resort non nuclear non-chemical anti aircraft and anti missile bombs (preferably deployed over the enemy’s country, or, if said enemy’s country lacks a desert or tundra or grassy plain where the bombs won’t impact the local ecology as badly, over the Sahara). At first it will be one island, but as the project grows there will be families, children, and new potential citizens who see the value of this way of living and want to become part of the ideal society. Every 20 years, therefore, new islands will be built per the number of successful people who complete the citizenship process.
• Mechanisms for social control: Each floating island can hold only so many people, thus each person must be useful. Therefore, as the children grow up and desire to start families and islands of their own, and as more people wish to come live on the island, new islands must be created. Before starting their own island, the desirous group of people will be dropped in the middle of a tropical African war zone and work together to bring peace and harmony to between the locals and the ecology. This will give each new island citizens who confidence that their passion and hard work will bring success, and unscrupulous lazy persons won’t survive to pollute my Utopia. Once the people entering the society have proven their worth, there is no need for social controls beyond the usual respect people have for people who fulfill their ideals and the lack of respect that comes when others fall short.
• Crime and Punishment: the citizens of Utopia have but two remedial methods for criminals. For lesser crimes or for repentant criminals who broke the rules by accident, temporary banishment is in order. The offending party is returned to the earth’s crust and given a non-political, non-monetary, environmentally friendly goal (such as saving a particular tree from destruction while teaching the locals about living in harmony with the ecology. In this example, when they have convinced the locals to spare the tree, they are fully restored to citizenship). The most severe offenses are punished with banishment.

Anyway, it was really amusing exercise, especially since the professor gave me an A and loved the whole floating island and (especially) initiation ideas. My sister loves it to: we’ve always wanted to see the people calling for protection of white mosquitoes and gun control would react to an African war zone. Assuming they survived long enough to get back here.

OVERALL: More is a very interesting author, and while I didn’t like most of his points, its worth reading. The idea of what the perfect society looks like is intriguing, and now I ought to go write my REAL Utopia (no environmentalists allowed).

Tags: Environmentalists, Sincerelyornot, Thomas Moore, Utopia

Book three of the Alex Rider series. Alex Rider is British, and really, he shines in England. Something about the interactions across the pond seem to flow naturally and be so lifelike I can see the book unfolding in my head. Once you add Americans into the picture, its another story. Or maybe just less of a movie-in-book-form than previous volumes; either way, the Americans stand out like cardboard cut outs on a live action set. Thankfully, that is rectified when our main bad guy shows up (he and the main minions are Russian), and things kick into high gear for another rousing adventure.

PLOT: revolves around Alex getting roped into another mission, this one in America, involving a Russian nuclear nutcase. Instead of the British spy agency backing him all the way, he has to work with two American CIA agents (who aren’t supposed to tell the kid anything), and as usual, nobody knows what they’re actually after, even Alex. Alex, one female agent, and one male agent are soon in Florida, trying to get into the mansion of an impressively protective former Soviet general. His house consumes an entire island, and only a deep underwater cave is left unguarded…

POSITIVE: The world of spies is murky and uncertain in this series (as in real life), and Alex, while clearly brilliant, doesn’t know anything more than the agents he’s assigned with. As in, yay for adult competence! He saves everyone, but only once he’s willing to admit that he doesn’t know very much and so approaches each new thing with caution and humility. The story line also flows very naturally, making the transition from rainy London to the swamps of Florida and eventually the Russian Arctic Circle very natural. One of my pet peeves is “crazy” bad guys who are really just deluded idiots; this one is genuinely crazy, so he’s creepy, but he acts like you’d expect a lunatic to act, with unexpected logic, especially regarding his treatment of Alex. And the supporting minions are developed well enough that they supplement the performance, by treating his insanity as normal. And yes, that will only make sense once you’ve read the book. In short, the author has figured out what makes a good horror story, and applied the principles to his spy tale. He also discusses, subtly, several adult themes of women in the workforce, pride going before a fall, nuclear ethics, manipulation of the media, and security systems and their effectiveness being based on the people running them. These are positive because as an adult I enjoyed finding something to think about over the course of the book, and they are subtle enough that a kid could miss them entirely.

NEGATIVE: This is the darkest book in the series, in my opinion. Usually, authors forget to make the minions behave as if they’ve been minions for a long time, and the illusion of craziness is broken. Horowitz does a good job here of making it very real and therefore very scary. And something like seven different horrific ways to die are presented. Two bad words; many action scenes including bad guy sends minions to their death among the alligators, several life-threatening scenes where a young person is in danger of being electrocuted, eaten alive by sharks, chomped on my mechanical teeth, blown up, nuclear poisoning, ripped in pieces, etc –not graphic, and thereby more terrifying; our hero is unkind to a deformed minion (who wants him chopped in pieces); one stereotypical macho American guy who does stupidly risky things; and several characters consume alcohol liberally and one gets raving drunk.

OVERVIEW: four stars, because as a kids book it’s really rather more mature than it should be, with regard to the creepiness and violence levels. Otherwise, though, it’s very well crafted and though provoking.

Tags: adventure, Alex Rider, Anthony Horowitz, fiction, Mystery, Sincerelyornot, Skeleton Key, youth