Dozens of short essays from prominent scientists about what they “know” but cannot, scientifically, “prove,” at least yet. What could have been an energizing look at possibilities by the sharpest minds in science more often comes off as individual posturing, pessimism and promotion of pet ideas, sadly.

There were patterns in the tones of the pieces:

One, the “I have to take some time to backpedal and wryly point out that, since I am a scientist, I believe nothing–NOTHING–it is all about hypothesis and vigorous scientific method.” OK, but that sure takes the magic right out of it, and I got tired of it by the third time I saw it.

Two, the “I am academic and I have a world-altering idea and I can’t seem to get my boneheaded colleagues to just agree that this unproved idea of mine is bloody genius so I’m going to use this opportunity as a soapbox.” Jared Diamond’s essay comes off like this, for one, with him sounding wounded and unheeded, whereas I would argue that Mr. Diamond’s conjectures get a lot of publicity.

Three, the “I didn’t really understand the assignment” scribbles that are kind of awkward to read.

Within the jumble are some gems, and some fascinating conflicting predicitions. My personal favorite is Rudy Rucker’s suggestion of a modified “Many Universes” theory. Only a page long, it packs in so much dense imagery and ideas that it took me half an hour to read. Also compelling: David Buss’ assertion of the scientific existence of true love, John H. McWhorter’s out-there-but-wow theory that some Indonesian languages were actually spoken cross-species (i.e. simultaneously by humans and another higher-order primate), and Bruce Sterling’s hair-raising five-word downer about climate change.

With some more hard-line editing and less cleverness, this collection could have been a stunner. The concept is adrenalizing and full of potential, but the self-consciousness of the scientists–granted, they are not, most of them, writers–got in the way.

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Book #49 of 2008

Tags: Books, collection, essays, reading, review, science

This week, David Ebershoff is participating in an author chat on LibraryThing about his just-released novel, The 19th Wife, which I was fortunate enough to read through LibraryThing’s Early Reviewer program a few  months ago. Ebershoff will also be at Powell’s City of Books in Portland, Ore., on Sept. 10, 2008.

My question to Mr. Ebershoff was:

The research required for The 19th Wife seems like it would be epic in scale. Did you run into some of the same roadblocks with respect to document access as your characters did? Were church leaders helpful with your research? Was it difficult to balance objective research with some of the necessarily more subjective directions of the story?

His answer:

It’s true, the book required a lot of research, but I have to admit that when I started working on the book I had no idea how much I would need to learn. If I had known, I probably would have been scared off the subject and never written the novel. In fact, there were a few times along the way when I thought to myself, I will never master all of this and there are so many people who have spent their lives studying this subject, how will I ever catch up with them. Then at some point, as I got more and more comfortable with the background material — early Church history, LDS theology, Brigham’s life — I stepped back and reminded myself that I was writing a novel. My job is to create credible characters who are indiosynchratic and unique, and who may or may not know everything about LDS history and polygamy in the United States. Most important, the reader needs to believe these characters are alive, even if their understanding of certain subjects is limited. For example, Jordan knows very little about the history of polygamy. And he’s not especially interested. And Ann Eliza, well, she knows quite a bit from her personal experiences, but those very experiences also limit her understanding. Once I began looking at the background material through the eyes of my characters I felt more comfortable about all of the research and more certain of what I needed to know.

On the subject of access, I found many archives and institutions open to general research. The LDS Church has done a fantastic job preserving its history, and in many ways that history is open to public. For example, take a trip to Nauvoo and you’ll be inundated with rich material about early LDS history that is free and open to the public. I spent several days there, visiting every historic site, and researching in the Family History Center, where I found a brief autobiography by Ann Eliza’s father, Chauncey Webb. This short document inspired the autobiography that I wrote in the THE 19TH WIFE. (I should add, there is also a lot of information available on the internet, which of course is not news.)

Just as important, I met many people who helped me do my work — pointing me to information, sharing information, introducting me to other people who might help. It’s true, there are LDS archives that are closed to non-members. What exactly is in those archives I cannot tell you. But I felt I had enough information to write the story in the way I wanted — that is, with the multiple narrators and points of view.

Recently at a reading in California, a woman asked me about Kelly Dee (the graduate student from BYU who plays a role in bringing all these “documents” together) and her ability to gain access to closed LDS archives. This woman doubted whether a young scholar like Kelly would be able to persuade the Church to open up its archives as she does in the book. In my experience, I met a number of individuals who were open about their church’s history, who wanted it to be known, and who graciously helped me. I decided to give Kelly access to the fictional documents as a way of reflecting this openness I encountered. I wanted to complicate the picture, so to speak.

I hope you can make it to Powell’s on the 10th. If you do, please come up and say hello. I’d love to properly meet you.

All my best, and thanks for your question.

The 19th Wife is currently the #4 seller in mysteries/thrillers on Amazon.com and #76 overall.

Read all of the LibraryThing questions and answers for David Ebershoff.

Read my original review of The 19th Wife.

Tags: author, lds, novel, polygamy

The first time I tried reading this novel–thrust upon me with great exaltation by a writer-friend–I flipped through a dozen pages and then gave up. The time wasn’t right.

This time I read it in its entirety in two sittings. Grady Tripp is such a colossal plane crash of humanity that it’s impossible to look away, even as Chabon continues to pull charred limbs and dismembered teddy bears out of his past. Tripp, bluntly, is unlikeable: a philandering, hopeless pothead with minor literary genius long since spent.

His sidekick-cum-editor, Terry Crabtree, is barely better, an opportunistic hedonist wreckless with the psyches of others. Not that hedonism is a given evil, but in “Wonder Boys” Chabon makes it flinch-worthy; Tripp doesn’t even bother keeping an eye on his libido. Anything just kind of goes.

“Wonder Boys” is a yarn of Tripp and Crabtree’s weekend at a literary festival at Tripp’s college (he is, somewhat inexplicably, a professor, based on a long-ago string of novels–he can’t write anything now to save his life). The narrative spins out in a blur of molested youth, drugs, the combination of the two, and their mostly unpleasant after-effects. It’s enough to make the reader feel hungover and queasy.

In between these groggy episodes are some good reading. Tripp’s run-ins (they don’t end well) with pets are slapsticky hijinx, but ultimately hilarious. His perhaps ill-advised impulse trip to his in-laws’ homestead at Passover to (maybe?) try to save his imploding, farcical marriage (his mistress is pregnant) is a tapestry of misfit individuals and neuroses–perhaps the highlight of the novel.

Chabon leaves me feeling sticky and confused at the end. It’s like sitting in a bar during daylight hours: I can only see the stench and the dirtiness and feel the throbbing headache, while the characters are the ones who got to have all the fun.

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Book #48 read in 2008.

Tags: Books, fiction, novel, reading, review

This review is for Sweetsmoke, a novel by David Fuller, published by Hyperion and available in September of 2008. I obtained an advance copy via LibraryThing’s Early Reviewer program. My appreciation to both Hyperion for its participation in the program and LibraryThing for making it possible. You can also visit Sweetsmoke’s Web site.

David Fuller’s “Sweetsmoke” builds on the familiar tradition of modern novels set in the Civil-War ravaged south: slave narratives and personal epics that, through a mixture of history and emotion, bring contemporary audiences face to face with the massive iniquities of our collective pasts. What Fuller does that’s new, however, is tweak this landscape by adding something new: a murder mystery. No, really.

Cassius, our Shakespeare-monikered protagonist, discovers that Emoline, a freed slave who rescued him from the brink of disaster and nursed him back to health (not to mention taught him to read, from his ABCs to Homer, in three weeks. Apparently.) has been murdered. Emoline’s violent demise is a vehicle for the rest of Fuller’s explorations: the conflicts of slavery, the social crisis of the South, the dreadfulness of the Civil War, and a complete rehash of the battle of Antietam. This is a big steak to chew, and it’s occasionally overcooked.

Fuller is a competent writer. Though “Sweetsmoke” is his first novel, his long experience in screenwriting gives his tone a confidence and cleanliness, if sometimes also a paucity of metaphor. The long scene that unfolds at the big “To-Do”, a multi-plantation summer gathering of slaves for dancing, drinking, fighting and loving, reads almost as an inverse of the ante-bellum Tara hedonism in the film adaptation of “Gone with the Wind.” Likely the most evocative portion of the novel, it is a rare moment when Fuller’s (thorough) historical research transcends the literary gap into meaningful sociological application and nuance–that is, the facts of slavery gain warmth and personality; his dip into inter-slave politics and hostilities felt thoughtful.

It’s not that the descriptions that flesh out the rest of the novel are akward or tedious. They’re coherent and specific, but in the end, they don’t tell us much beyond literal rendition. They don’t reach into that sensuous part of our perception. It’s as if Fuller can’t move away from visual description as something to be translated into literal scenes. WIDE SHOT INTERIOR GENERAL STORE WITH DRY GOODS, SACKS OF GRAIN, TOOLS, ETC. would be in some cases more direct and as accurate as anything Fuller is saying.

In the same screenwriting vein, the dialogue is good, and in some places great, though Fuller’s decision to give free people (black and white alike) quotation marks and strip them from slaves is a trifle heavy-handed.

Fuller has to deal with issues of preposterousness. In an interview about the book, he confesses a concern about a scene in which Cassius confronts and threatens a white slave patroller with violence. Fuller asserts that the incident was based on a real occurrence, but unfortunately, it’s his own carefully-built historical framework that forces us to confront the issue of believability–even in fiction. Fuller’s plantation-era Virginia is so tightly bound in historical themes–oppression, racism, poverty, desperation–that to invite in deviations or extradordinary circumstance is troublesome and strains our credibility. The same goes for the whodunnit aspect in respect to Emoline’s murder, though Fuller does, thankfully, treat this loosely: Cassius isn’t chasing down forensic incidentals so much as he’s chasing intuition.

Fuller’s clear enthusiasm for military history breaks through in the climactic scenes that put Cassius in the middle of Antietam. Those of similar passions might find this fascinating, but for me the entire episode seemed glaringly out of place and much duller than the rest of the story. I know enough about the battle to find that Fuller’s descriptions didn’t add much to my understanding, and the long passages seemed to waste space in an already tight novel.

“Sweetsmoke” is an enjoyable read. It’s carefully considered and driven, if heavily expository (Fuller will tell you exactly what characters are undergoing what existential crisis, every time). Read as a story, it’s taut, with nightmarish suspense leaving characters exposed and in danger, with shame and love and murder. But in the end, it doesn’t bring an epiphany.

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Tags: arc, Books, civil war, early reviewer, fiction, novel, preview, reading, review, slavery, south

I participate in LibraryThing’s Tuesday Thingers group — a weekly blogging exercise. This week’s question:

Favorite bookstores. What’s your favorite bookstore? Is it an online store or a bricks-and-mortar store? How often do you go book shopping? Is your favorite bookstore (or bookstores) listed as a favorite in LT? Do you attend events at local bookstores? Do you use LT to find events?

I live in Portland, Ore., so this one’s pretty much a no-brainer. Favorite life-long bookstore is Powell’s City of Books here in town, which is the world’s largest new-and-used bookstore. It has a footprint of a full city block and is several stories high. They are about to expand again (after an epic expansion something around a decade ago). There are several satellite locations of Powell’s around the city, as well, including one not too far from my neighborhood.

We are fortunate enough that LibraryThing has integrated with Powell’s. I can see on works pages immediately if a given book is in stock and how much it’ll set me back.

Approximately half of my book spending is in real life, at Powell’s. I go about once every six weeks: more than that would be dangerous. I also spend a hefty fortune at Amazon.com. I have Amazon Prime (free 2-day shipping) and I’m lazy, so it works out well. Powell’s for when I need the immersive culture, Amazon when I need a particular book, at a good price. I also maintain a membership at Barnes & Noble, but I really dislike their stores (neutered, suburban and sterile). The occasional 50% deal makes it worthwhile for now, but I doubt I’ll renew it.

I do sometimes attend events at bookstores. I noticed yesterday, in fact, that the Powell’s events weren’t getting added to LibraryThing local, so I may add some in the next few weeks.

Finally, I find that there is no good substitute for a small-town, mom-and-pop bookstore. When I travel, I’m a sucker for them, and one day in my wrinkly future I dream of running one.

Tags: Books, bookstores, librarything, powell's, tuesday thingers