JPod

Douglas Coupland's flashy pop-culture novels have beckoned me with their promise of hip, irreverent humor and young characters I can relate to. Like MTV's "Best Week Ever" - only nerdier in a very good way - the up-to-the-moment culture references and jokes in JPod were its best feature; great dialogue followed at a close second.

If there are parallel-universe Laurens floating around out there, they would be: a Marine or police officer, a novelist, an actress and a video game designer/writer, so books that let me live vicariously through these kinds of people are off to a great start with me. JPod is a collection of great characters, people I wish I knew. Where I'm embarrassed to "be imaginative" or brainstorm in front of other people, they feed off of each other's bizarre thoughts and come up with great ideas. The book is mainly about finding identity within and in spite of a corporate environment. Each person in the book started their careers thinking what a cool thing it would be to have a job as a game designer, but the reality is getting stuck in a cubicle (pod) (albeit in a Google-type atmosphere), working 20 hours a day and getting beloved projects screwed over by idiot execs.

Where they find meaning is in their fellow JPod-ers [as a side note, I can't stand the word "pod" because my mom says "Gotta go pod" before going to take a pee], and eventually using their work to better ends. I'd like to be one of those office assistants who finds small pleasures and/or humors in her job, but I've found it difficult. (Maybe I should start journaling?) The obligation to find a hundred and one ways to tell people there's no way in hell they're going to get to talk to my boss, not even for three minutes, could be an opportunity to get creative, but it ends up being draining when people have the nerve to get mad when they're refused. My job is made up of a series of moments like those, some less demeaning than others, and I am so grateful that I'll be going to school so soon. Maybe I'll end up in a job that actually encourages me to be a human being.

Deja Vu

All time-travel movies unravel into nonsense at some point and I don't care. If time travel is possible, it's impossible to know what's going to happen next, and it gives the characters something interesting to talk about: the method, physics and ethics of time travel. As a person with wide-ranging movie taste, I highly recommend Deja Vu. I love watching a good, fast-paced thriller and being distracted from the details that could drive me crazy about it. Every character had something interesting to contribute to the story, and they made me feel like the things on screen might really be happening, right now. After all, if there is a team of time-travelling cops who go back into the past and change things, it could be happening right now and we would never know; we would never meet them, assuming thier efforts always brought us back to a time before we needed their intervention (and they would then only exist in some sort of parallel universe able to intersect with ours).

This might sound silly, but it's exactly why I like every sci-fi/fantasy movie I do. The Nevending Story, The Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Labyrinth, Stargate, The Fifth Element, Total Recall: they all explore either the power of human imagination or the possibilities that could be in store through sheer effort or advances in technology, and they all center around a single character who takes a chance in realizing those possibilities. Sometimes, when I feel like nothing ever changes and people will never change, watching a movie that's beyond possibility gives a tiny little hope of something better in store.

Autism

So the book I'm reading right now, JPod, has a character in it who is convinced that everyone around her has a mild form of autism. She works at a videogame development place, so certainly there are some odd people, but it's got me thinking about that diagnosis. As some people know, I am not a believer in most "syndromes" (ADD, ADHD and others I won't name so I don't blatantly offend anyone). They are not helpful in any practical way and often encourage "solutions" that detract from the real (psychological, social and environmental) problems at hand.

However, autism is definitely real (although I it's not really a "syndrome") and people definitely have it in different degrees. But what in the world does that mean? And can I ask a question that could come off as incredibly insulting and ignorant, but which I have no answer for: is autism what used to just be called "mentally retarded"? Because then, of course, I would have to say that all people are autistic in some degree, just as they are all mentally retarded in degrees ranging from nondetectable to debilitating.

When does it start becoming helpful to refer to someone as autistic? How autistic do they have to be in order to get this diagnosis? For instance, if disliking loud voices and being touched by strangers are symptoms, I share them with an autistic person. This is helpful in an I-can-empathize-with-you way, but mild autism would not be a helpful diagnosis for me. It doesn't do anything for me and could only serve to have negative effects (such as feeling helpless to change myself in spite of the condition or lowering my self-esteem or giving me an excuse for bad behaviors). And for a highly functioning autistic, why would the diagnosis be helpful when in theory they could already be counteracting the condition by behavioral therapies not directly related to autism? Is autism only a helpful diagnosis for those it effects most severely and can't comprehend what it means, and if so, how is it helpful to be diagnosed in this way?

Anyway, random thought for the day.

The Art of Travel

After reading How Proust Can Change Your Life, I bought two more books by Alain de Botton. His novel, On Love, could quite possibly be unreadable, but I'll try again soon. The Art of Travel, though, was a nice reminder to start paying more attention to what's around me and, of course, to travel when I have the chance. [I've gone back to using commas where appropriate. I can't help it.]

One particularly insightful chapter was on anticipation. "The anticipatory and artistic imaginations omit and compress; they cut away the periods of boredom and direct our attention to critical moments, and thus, without either lying or embellishing, they lend to life a vividness and a coherence that it may lack in the distracting wooliness of the present." Everything I hope for, read, watch, remember or anticipate has some piece of reality omitted or changed; when I am doing any of these things (hoping/anticipating/experiencing art/remembering) either I don't have all the information (anticipation/hope of the unknown), I'm distracted by what's in front of me (books, movies, art), or I consciously (or unconsciously) throw aside or distort or enhance pieces of the things I know (memory).

People talk a lot about living in the moment, but the moment is informed by all my experiences, the things I've read and watched, and the things I hope for. These things determine the way I interact with the present and I use them to make sense of what's in front of me. De Botton reminded me that the thoughtful person is the one who doesn't stop with observation ("That's pretty") but attempts to understand ("Why does that seem pretty to me?"). Art is always made by answering that question, but this is also how rich experiences in the present are made. You might answer the question objectively ("The lines are symmetrical, the colors do this or that"), with reference to human characteristics ("The oak tree gives an impression of stoicism"), or informed by your own experience ("That reminds me of the time when..."), but in some way my present is always informed by the answers to those questions and it becomes richer and more memorable when I think about the answers for more than a split second.

I worry sometimes that grad school will stump me; it's all about asking good, thoughtful questions. But asking why is always a good place to start in real life and in art; maybe I like literature because there's a great chance of getting to a satisfying answer.

Leave Me Alone, I'm Reading!

Maureen Corrigan does the book reviews on NPR's "Fresh Air." My love for books about books (while not as strong as yours, Chris!) led me to buy yet another book to show me what else I should read: Leave Me Alone, I'm Reading!. I bought Kingsley Amis's Lucky Jim on her recommendation, and I'll probably go back to buy a few more. She has unassuming taste, even though she has her PhD from Penn and is a college professor. However, she goes to far as to embrace contemporary "hard-boiled" mysteries, her specialty in both personal taste and academia, whereas that's a genre I tend to stay away from now (after reading plenty in junior high).

Corrigan examines the hard-boiled mystery, the Catholic martyr stories and something she calls the female extreme-adventure tale. The first two I will probably never pursue, but I was intrigued by the third since I wouldn't normally put that label on Jane Eyre, Pride and Prejudice or Wuthering Heights. Her main argument is that as male extreme-adventure tales focus on physical strength and courage, their female counterparts describe the psychological strength and endurance a woman must have in the face of their seemingly innocuous trials. A woman's life hangs in the balance when, for instance, she considers or waits for marriage proposals, when she cares for aging parents or her husband, or when she dares to deviate from the path usually laid out for her according to her gender.

As a girl who often fantasizes about being a police officer or joining the Marines, I would like to take refuge in the idea that stoically facing life changes amounts to some sort of heroism. It's a valid comparison in many ways. However, the value of dubbing these kinds of stories "female extreme-adventure tales" is dubious. As Joseph Campbell notes, many stories are journeys or quests. While the female version of a quest usually takes a different format from the male version, the quest motif is a much more helpful way to talk about "women's" stories.

An extreme-adventure tale is as narrow a genre as the name betrays and trying to squeeze the female experience into that category takes away from the importance of the story. I don't see the use in comparing Jane Eyre and Elizabeth Bennett to John Krakauer; on the other hand, I do see value in comparing their plights with those of Odysseus or Raskolnikov or Holden Caulfield or any other male character who "goes through" something. Besides, the name "extreme adventure" is derogatory given recent popular culture's usurption of the word "extreme" for soft drinks and pseudo-sports.

There is value in pointing out that women go on meaningful journeys even if they never leave home, and highlighting the similarities in the physical versus psychological challenges faced by men and women. But as much as I hate to admit it, men and women are different and that's not changing any time soon. For now, men are still the ones who excel at mountain climbing, military careers and fixing cars and women are the ones expected to deal with children, aging parents and breast cancer. If Corrigan wants to remind us that Women Are As Good As Men, point taken, but the comparison to extreme-adventure tales is one to mention and then move on from and not one that deserves any lengthy consideration. As a woman I don't care about feeling as manly as someone who climbs Everest, but I would be honored to be counted among the ranks of those who take a meaningful, often perilous, journey through life.

Blood Diamond

I like a good horror-slash-political-slash-educational film. Nothing short of going to war-torn countries and seeing the carnage yourself could have as much impact as a good film or book about what's been going on. Blood Diamond follows the tradition of the most moving of these films (Schindler's List and Saving Private Ryan being the most obvious) by closely following the life of an Everyman who, we come to realize, could have just as easily been us.

Blood Diamond wasn't a great movie, even if it was full of incredibly poignant moments. Previews with Leondardo DiCaprio's affected accent had made me skeptical, but he put on a great performance, and the main character, Solomon Vandy (played by Djimon Hounsou), was likeable if one-dimensional. But character is where the movie failed: every one was a cliche except for Leonardo DiCaprio, whose story played out in a very predictable way. (Don't even get me started on his love interest.) Sure, sympathetic journalist Jennifer Connelly had the added interest of being a tough gal, but it was hard to see why she was in the story at all. Additional details about Vandy's life could have added much more vitality to the film than Connelly's serene face; all we got to see were a few domestic scenes and him being wide-eyed and innocent through the rest of the movie.

Blood Diamond failed to be complex where it needed to be; it seemed as though the movie's makers wanted to simplify the situation for us, unsure that we'd be able to understand without a white American woman showing us the way. They took out the details in order to make the story more relatable, making it dull and predictable when it should have been moving and surprising.

How Proust Can Change Your Life

So, Chris, I read Plato, Not Prozac! and came to a slightly different verdict than yours. I, too, found it tedious to read through the cases he presented, but only when they were not relevant to my own life. I do wish he would have presented some sort of method by which a person might face her own problems, but as you mention, the method he offers is to talk to him or one of his colleagues, since they are obviously so much more qualified and well read.

Bullshit.

You and I have read more than most people in the world. As I always say, I think I and many of my friends are unquestionably smarter than 99% of the world (and before being falsely humble or appalled by my arrogance, consider that 1% of the world still amounts to 65 million people). All Marinoff does is pay attention to the lessons learned in what he reads. He has read and understood the work of philosophers around the world, just as you and I have read and (at least sometimes) understood countless works by philosophers, novelists, filmmakers, songwriters, and friends.

The importance of Marinoff's book (and his profession) is the recognition that the things you learn are tools for living; even if you feel you have found a philosophy or viewpoint that you feel is true, when it stops working for you or when you have come to an apparent impasse in your life, you must consider other possibilities. Not as a replacement for your own philosophy, but as an aspect of your philosophy you need to emphasize in order to make sense of things and solve your problems. Sure, there are some truly contradictory philosophies (idealism vs. materialism, theism vs. atheism), but when it comes to living, nearly every philosophy has something helpful to say (and nearly all of them say the same things in different ways). Marinoff urged me to consider more carefully those ideas which for whatever reason (their label, my ignorance of them, their followers) I have moved on from.

Marinoff's value lies in the fact that he has read widely of useful things and remembers what he's read. More helpfully, perhaps he could cross-reference his philosophers with problems and ways of looking at things in order to either remind people of things they've forgotten or open their minds to viewpoints they've never considered.

Which brings me to a book that has been an important, practical lesson (reminder?) for me. Alain de Botton's How Proust Can Change Your Life examines the author and his work, basically answering the question, How on earth could those one-and-a-quarter-million words be worth the read? Using a little of Proust's life and work paired with his own philosophies on life and love, de Botton's take on the importance of art might be the best I've read.

Do you really miss out by not reading In Search of Lost Time or any other book? De Botton first proposes a very practical value of literature and art: improving our relationships. By reading a good book, you recognize in the characters those in your circle of acquaintance and by doing so realize that you are not alone, no matter where you are. Through an author's eyes, you can attend to details you might never have noticed had you not read a 100-page description of someone's troubled sleep habits. By more fully understanding people and being able to recognize characters from a novel in the world around you, you will also not feel so out of place in foreign situations or places. Reading widens your circle of acquaintance and opens your eyes to the plight of those around you, and the unread person limits herself to knowing in a very limited way only those people and things in her immediate vicinity (an unfulfilling, usually prejudiced and unenlightened, state).

Proust wrote his novel about the people and places he knew intimately and showed his readers aspects of them that hold an endless power to fascinate. Proust talks of a particular artist who painted tablescapes and ordinary people and settings, noting that he takes what is overly familiar and makes it beautiful merely by drawing attention to its existence. If we fail to see the beauty in the things around us, we fail to take the lesson of art: it is not the particular things being written about, painted, sung, but the way of seeing things that the artist wishes us to delight in. If we visit Notre Dame in Paris because we read Notre Dame de Paris (The Hunchback of Notre Dame), we are missing the point entirely. By paying attention to how an author tells a story, we can use the insight to see our own worlds more clearly.

If, instead, we cease thinking (or writing or creating in some way) after we read, we put too much importance in the book itself rather than its point of view. A work of art allows us to recognize in our own worlds those things worth painting, singing, writing.

De Botton also offers very practical advice from Proust, but for me he sparked a realization that I can't let authors paralyze me. He noted that Virginia Woolf was incredibly depressed when she read Proust, since how could anything be written after that? Eventually she was able to write Mrs. Dalloway. Proust could have his sphere and she her own, however insignificant it might seem in comparison. Proust, Faulkner, Dickens, Jonathan Safran Foer, Scarlett Thomas, none of them have lived my life. I do have a unique perspective and I do have something worth saying; I just need to find out what that is. In the meantime, I will try to be more attentive to what authors and artists are trying to show me, after being reminded that they are not writing travel guides and self-help books, they are writing their own particular way of seeing.