News of the World: Armadillos and more

from armadillo-online.org

Exotic as an eight-banded armadillo. Did you know that armadillos generally give birth to identical quadruplets? They do. While I don't think I've ever seen an armadillo other than in a zoo (if even there), I've had a fondness for them as a symbol for many years. Just look at their adorable snoutlet and perky ears, their attractive bands, and who could resist their ability to curl up like a pillbug to resist harm? There is a Jan Brett book for children called Armadillo Rodeo about a spunky lil 'diller from the Texas hill country who tries to befriend a fancy cowboy boot. I actually have a collection of armadillos: armadillo pins, stuffed armadillos, an armadillo planter, an armadillo mug. And yet I don't recall ever having met an armadillo. Why do I like these critters so much? They are cute, tough, resourceful, self-protecting. That they are symbols of Texas has always been incidental, and yet they indubitably are.

A New Yorker trashing Texas should probably to be expected, since (real) NewYorkers generally trash everyone. Meaning, everyone is fair game to a New Yorker. Texas isn't as desirable a target as say, California (bunch of fruits and nuts who are going to fall into the Pacific any day now), but the stereotype of gun-toting, big-haired Dallas oil magnates and tumbleweeds brushing against pick-up trucks crashing into drive-through liquor barns - well, it's there.

I've never been a fan of the western genre, neither in movies nor books, but I did read some examples over the past several years. Cormac McCarthy's No Country for Old Men and The Road made it pretty clear that Texans are some gritty-ass people. After reading those I wouldn't mess with Texas either.

The most recent book I read about Texas was much more benign.  It was News of the World by Paulette Jiles. It tells the story of a elderly itinerant newspaper reader in Texas who has to deal with informing a highly polarized post-Civil War society that the 15th Amendment to the Constitution has passed (outlawing slavery). While doing this he agrees to take a 10 year old blonde girl who was taken captive when she was 6, back to her German parents near San Antonio. Drama ensues. It's actually very beautifully written, with beautiful, poetic descriptions of nature, and simple, straightforward explication of the characters. I'm too tired to write more about it now, and I've promised myself to write something every day, so I'll sign off here. I am writing again so that I can look back in the future and see what I was thinking now, much as I am able to do with my old diaries from ages 8 to 25 or so. Good night.

In the Ring: Dostoevsky vs. Tolstoy

When it comes to fans of the Russian classics, they say you are either a Dostoevsky person or a Tolstoy person. It's not clear why this dichotomy has been bandied about; my guess is that those are the big two and, people like to see a fight, and so you're encouraged to pick sides. You can check out a piece on this from The Millions called, "Tolstoy or Dostoevsky? 8 Experts on Who’s Greater."

There's more than one such book.

Going with the flow of this idiocy, I always considered myself a Dostoevskian. My friends and I in college got a big kick out of reading Dostoevsky, acting out the characters in our Slavic Club, and even considered putting together a musical based on Crime and Punishment (still a good idea, I think). We had a band called "Slavic Kenotic", inspired by the Dostoevskian focus on purification through suffering. The themes of the band were often more ribald than kenotic, but I think we claimed to be channeling Marmeladov and Svedrigailov as an excuse for that focus.

Tolstoy was clearly the less popular in our crowd. He seemed naive and preachy, hung up on adulteresses and dying old men. The story of an aristocratic morphing into a highly spiritual mendicant didn't appeal to us. We were all so over Hesse's Siddhartha, and Leo just seemed like such a self-indulgent trust fund case. I am sure we weren't fair to him.

Now I'm an older lady and the time has come to do what I hadn't dared to do earlier: read War and Peace. In the introduction I learned that Leo wasn't really such a ridiculous fuddy-duddy. He took it upon himself to educate the local serf children, and seems to have been genuine in his intention to improve the world. I'll learn more, I'm sure.

Regarding translations, there are quite a few choices, and apparently not one canonical original. In any case, I'm using this version in Russian, and a number of translations into English. The latest one is by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, and it seeks to remain as faithful to the original as possible, with the obvious drawback/advantage of including the original French as well as all manner of stilted speech and rarified vocabulary. An earlier (off copyright) translation by Louise and Aylmer Maude is available for free via Kindle and on Project Gutenberg here. It translates most of the French and is more colloquial, and much more accessible. My plan to is go back and forth between the original and the P&V, periodically checking in or Maude, and a Penguin paperback I have, translated by Rosemary Edmonds.

Getting back into the swing of social reading, I've revved up my Goodreads account, joined a group dedicated to reading War and Peace (admittedly the catalyst to this decision), and delved in headfirst, splashing around joyfully in all the history and culture of the thing. The characters? The plot? The atmosphere? I'll save that for tomorrow.

Sail

Sailboat by Natalya Goncharova

by Mikhail Lermontov, 1832-1834  
translated from the Russian by Alfia Wallace, 2011
 

The lonely sail whitely widens

in the fog of the deep blue sea!

What is it seeking in a land so distant?

What has it left in its native city?..

The waves are playful, the wind it whistles,

The mast it bends and bends and squeaks..

Alas, it seeks not joy, nor fortune

Nor from joy and chance retreats. 

Above it shines a sun so golden,

The brightest lapis streams beneath,

And he, a rebel, invites the tempest,

As if in storms he will find peace.

Парус 
 

The Storm on the Sea of Galilee 
by Rembrandt van Rijn 1633

Белеет парус одинокий
В тумане моря голубом!
Что ищет он в стране далекой?
Что кинул он в краю родном?..

Играют волны - ветер свищет,
И мачта гнется и скрипит...
Увы, - он счастия не ищет
И не от счастия бежит!

Под ним струя светлей лазури,
Над ним луч солнца золотой...
А он, мятежный, просит бури,
Как будто в бурях есть покой.

Brightsided

"How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America"
by Barbara Ehrenreich (2009)

Right makes might.  This could be the motto of the positive thinking movement, whose history and impact Barbara Ehrenreich examines in Brightsided.   If we are convinced that all is right with the world, with ourselves, that we contain a divine spark which renders us potentially omnipotent, well, what road is not open to us, what great achievement unattainable?  What banal, self-serving desire, what exploitative scheme, what atrocity is not justified with impunity?  What don't we have a right to attain?

Like in The Giver, one considers the removal of human suffering to be for the putative greater good, and like in The Giver, we see that this impulse can and is taken way too far by some people, and movements.  As a transplanted New Yawka who has felt both tremendous relief at no longer being surrounded by jaded, hostile crowds every day, and some Californian pressure to appear chirpier than I really am, I can see both sides of the picture.  Being negative in the face of adversity is only useful up to the point that it helps you cope with or solve the problem.  Being positive or negative is not what necessarily determines the outcome of a problem though, and that's where the Brightsiders tend to miss the point.

Barbara Ehrenreich became especially pissed off when she was being treated for breast cancer and found that many "support groups" insisted that participants only express hope and "positive" thoughts.  Anger and indignation were not acceptable, and bogus studies were bandied about which purported to link positive attitude with positive medical outcomes.  When Ehrenreich pointed out that people were dying who had tried having a positive attitude and others survived while being grumpy and angry, she was told she was a downer and banned from the group.

The early history of "New Thought"/"right thinking" movements in the United States is full of well-meaning people trying to improve their lives and the lives of others.  Christian Science developed in large part as a response to an unregulated domestic drug policy which allowed the marketing of all manner of drugs and even poisons as medicines.  The self-actualization ideologies of the Unity movement and Norman Vincent Peale's Power of Positive Thinking were responses to the dour message of self-abnegating Calvinist Protestantism, an ideology which no longer served a world in which the possibilities for humanity seemed to be expanding along with the industrial revolution and improved human rights. The common idea in New Thought was that individuals are the masters of their destinies, that God wants us all to be happy and prosperous, and to attain this, we just have to reach out and grab it.  We have to be the positive change, reflect it, project it, be it. Sounds good to me.. up to a point.

Positive thinking becomes pathological when it leads to delusional, irresponsible behaviors, such as fiscal policies based on what people would like to happen, rather than what would logically happen as a result of one's actions.  Pyramid schemes, real estate bubbles, going into massive debt to finance an untenable dream that's been sold you by positive-think hucksters - we have seen the disastrous effects of the dark side of positive thinking this past decade and Ehrenreich gives plenty of convincing examples of positive thinking in the service of greed.  That said, it is unfair to characterize positive thinking as being responsible for the downfall of America, as suggested in the title of Ehrenreich's book. Positive thinking while struggling for progress against the odds, has helped Americans to attain great things. Consider the successes of struggling immigrants, the  Horatio Alger stories, single moms who manage to start businesses or send kids to college, and anyone with an idea and the passion and energy to make it happen.

Despite Ehrenreich's misgivings, and the potential for abuse in any ideology which demands absolute adherence, there's a lot to like in the positive thinking philosophy.  Fatalism is a drag, it is regressive, and I would generally rather deal with an honest, can-do optimist than with someone who is a defeatist downer. On the other side of the cookie, wish therapy's no good unless you're going to be methodical and work hard to make your wishes come true.  Also, just because you want something, doesn't make it right.  Whether you are entitled to it, have a right to it, is a whole other question which some "positive thinkers" might do well to consider.  

Moribundant Mermaid

This blog is moribund.  Happily, I am not.  This is just a peek up to the surface from my underwater library where I am cataloging fish tales and dog-eared tomes. It sure is cozy and colorful down here, not to mention relatively safe.  If marauding sharks or sting rays approach, there's a munitions depot full of razor-sharp-clawed harpies wielding harpoons (if not razor-sharp wit.)  It's rarely an issue though since everything moves much more slowly under water.

A holiday in the benthos is a stand-in for pathos.  From shallow tidepools teeming with flashy starfish to the abysmal depths of some blackeyed godforsaken trench - it all serves to remind: there's just so much sunken seaweed, and so very little time.  The lurid lives of those starfish, the freaky folkways of the abyssopelagic. Back off, humpback anglerfish! I'm trying to interview this mellow smack of jellyfish about the triumphs and travails of living the bioluminescent lifestyle! Never stop exploring your world, kids.  Or the worlds of others.

 

Some thoughts on The Enchantress of Florence

by Salman Rushdie (2008)

Antonino Vespucci, a handsome young blond magician from Florence either wheedles his way into the heart of a Mongol emperor, or is earnestly in search of his rarified roots.  A princess-survivor enchants and sleeps her way to safety or genuinely beguiles all who encounter her with a glimpse of the divine.  Both are tricksters , both hustlers and survivors. It's hard to tell what the real deal is with the adventurer-protagonists of this tale.

The Enchantress of Florence feeds into two deep psychological tributaries for me: Renaissance Italy and the Mongol (Mughal) Empire.  Renaissance Florence fascinates many of us.  It has been widely portrayed in popular culture from best-selling novels and films to the iconic art of Michelangelo, Botticelli, and others.  Most educated people have heard of Niccolo Machiavelli, the author of The Prince, and a character in this book.  Renaissance Florence is widely hailed as the birthplace of modern Humanism, as well as the place where the mercantile class became the ruling class (the Medici).  It is an historical locale steeped in creativity, beauty, intrigue, possibility.  The Mongol Empire, in contrast, is one which conquered in a more traditional manner, by brute strength.  Both societies shared a certain ecumenical character though: the Italian Renaissance was made possible by the reintroduction of pagan (Greek and Roman) myth and learning, which was transmitted via Muslim and Jewish scholars and traders who had preserved and translated the works of the Classical world.  The empires forged by the various lines of Mongol warriors, the Ottoman and Mughal for example, were likewise ecumenical.  As evident in the book, other religions were tolerated and even assimilated into the courts of the Muslim Mughals.  Salman Rushdie creates a mirror between these two cultures in The Enchantress of Florence. 

My father was a professor of Italian Renaissance history and Florence is where he met and wooed my mother. The aesthetics and intellectual curiosity of the Italian Renaissance were set up as ideals in my family.  We also had a print of Genghis Khan on horseback brandishing a bow and arrow, which hung at the top of the staircase.  Not that I am into astrology, but I am a Sagittarius, and somehow associated myself with this print even before I knew who it was.  As a result I have had a life-long fascination with the Mongol empire and Mongolia.  It sounds nutty, I know, but there you have it. 

"This may be the curse of the human race, not that we are so different from one another, but that we are so alike."

Mirroring is a major theme throughout the book.  Qara Koz, the eponymous heroine, has her mirror servant girl.  Simonetta, the Florentine model for Botticelli is also a mirror of Qara Koz, who is a mirror of Alaquwa, the Mongol sun-goddess, the ancestor of Genghis Khan.  Qara Koz and Simonetta (who modeled for Botticelli as both Venus and the Virgin Mary) are also mirrors of the archetypal goddess-enchantress, the objectified essence of female power, perfection and mystery.  (Alanquwa - Mongol sun-goddess: compare with Virgin Mary and Amaterasu, Japanese sun goddess?)  Vespucci, the "Mongol of Love", is mirrored in the story of his putative (grand?)father Arcalia the Turk, who mirrors the nomadic, battlefield prowess of the Mongols.  Florence mirrors Sikri.  The Florentine bordello mirrors the Sikri bordello.  Qara Koz and her servant mirror the Skeleton and Mattress who mirror the Florentine prostitutes.   There are also mirrors on the inside of Emperor Akbar's brocade yurt, but does he have a mirror? Thanks to the associative imagination, I am reminded of recent research into mirror neurons, which allow us to feel compassion, to mimic, to learn from copying sensory perceptions, and even to learn from memories of sensory perceptions.

(Spoiler alert - the rest of this reveals the plot and some of the ending of the book.)

Nomadism, wandering, settlement, trying to return home, are all themes in the book as well.  Rushdie was born and raised a Muslim in India but completed much of his higher education in England, moved to the Islamic Republic of Pakistan with his family in the 1960's when India and Pakistan were at war, and ended up as an outspoken atheist living in New York City.  Thanks to the fatwa issued against him for satirically portraying the prophet Mohammed in The Satanic Verses, he in permanent exile from his homeland. I wonder: Is how Qara Koz finally returns to her homeland a reflection of the only way he can return to his, as a ghost?

The Enchantress of Florence as been critiqued for making too facile a comparison between Florence and "the East", between West and East, but I think Rushdie wrote this book for himself, for the elements in his own psyche and ancestry which he tries to reconcile. The Mughals were a far cry from the intellectual despots some would like to equate with certain "Eastern" civilizations, but they were certainly not democrats.  Note Emperor Akbar's internal struggle with his own despotism

"The Almighty is not a tyrant.  In the House of God all voices are free to speak as they choose, and that is the form of their devotion." .. "The adoration of the divine was reimagined as an intellectual wrestling match in which no holds were barred."

Akbar, the Mughal emperor, struggles with the concept of god as a Renaissance humanist, as a pluralist, would.  He even goes so far as to suggest that the divine may rest in the very questioning of the divine.  Paradise is envisioned as a democracy, a place with true human rights.  He imagines not using the royal we, of expressing himself as part of a whole, not just as a despot.  He goes so far in his transgressive inner narrative as to question the existence of god, and to wonder whether it might be easier to figure out what goodness is without a god. 

"This business of worship, of the abnegation of the self in the face of the Almighty, was a distraction, a false trail". 

"Wherever goodness lay, it did not lie in ritual, unthinking obeisance before a deity but rather, perhaps, in the slow, clumsy, error-strewn working out of an individual or collective path."

Repeated comments like this smack a bit of a Humanist screed.  On the other hand, Rushdie also invokes a tribe of "Afghan Illuminati" who used a sort of pantheistic religion to justify any and all behavior, an amoral use of ecumenical spirituality.  Modern-day fundamentalists accuse Buddhists, Unitarians and Humanists of similar amorality stemming from moral relativism. 

This book has also been criticised for being too stylistically self-indulgent, too fawning over the personality of the writer (the storyteller).  May be.  The only annoying aspect of this novel for me was the incessant reference to how marvelous or beautiful such-and-such a character was.  In retrospect, I think this is part of the point of the story.  This style is the stuff of ancestral stories, of national mythologies.  You need to hyperbolize the hero, the goddess.  Otherwise he's not a hero, she's not a goddess.  The adulation, the repetition is necessary to solidify the myth.   

Witchcraft of language, storytelling and survival: Funny stuff: "Shah Ismail had fallen victim to the rarely used Great Uzbeg Anti-Shiite Potato and Sturgeon Curse, which required quantities of potatoes and caviar which were not easy to amass.."  "

"All men needed to hear their stories told."
"While you were anesthetized to the tragedy of your life you were able to survive."

Akbar's existential angst "I am absurd", he told himself. "A cockroach in a steaming turd has more significance than I."   Where does it fit in with the main themes of the story?  Because he has no one to mirror him, no one to contradict him? The novel also ends in a sense of tentativeness, of impermanence, albeit with tenderness towards our impermanence.

"I have come home after all," she told him. "You have allowed me to return, and so here I am, at my journey's end.  And now, Shelter of the World, I am yours."

 "Until you're not, the Universal Ruler thought.  My love, until you're not."

I urge you (Romans 12:1-2, 9-13)

Romans 12:1-2, 9-13
Letter of Paul to the Romans
Translated from Biblical Greek by Alfia Wallace 

My cousin, Nick, asked that I read this passage at his wedding.  Not sure of what I was reading, I checked out the original and came up with my own translation. 

I urge you brothers and sisters,
through God's mercy, to give
your bodies in living service,
which is your logical offering.

Don't just conform to the times,
but be transformed
by the renewal of your mind
to know that the will of God is
goodness, and gratitude, and completion.

Love is not devious.
So keep away from that
which is evil, and stay
close to that which is good.

Love each other warmly,
with tender affection
and in honor,
prefer one another.

Don't let your dedication wane,
but let your spirit soar,
serving the Lord.

Rejoice in hope.
Endure in tribulation.
Persevere in prayer.

Tend to the needs
of the saints,
and extend your kindness
to strangers.


Saint Paul in Prison by  Rembrandt van Rijn

The Giver

The Giver
by Lois Lowry, 1993

This book is required reading in the middle school my sons attended and both of them raved about it as one of their favorite books.  When I recently read it for book club, I was surprised that such an intense, bleak book was being read by our tender, suburban 11 and 12 year olds.  Surprised, but pleased.

The Giver raises important questions about what we value in society, and in humanity.  What are the essential qualities of our humanity?  What role does suffering play?  What is love?  Is it worth reducing our humanity in order to have a more orderly society?

In the utopia of The Giver, all families are chosen.  Everyone is adopted.  Each family has a mother, a father, a son and a daughter.  Family members express appreciation for each other but not "love" (which is deemed too vague a term; they may have a point there). At the beginning of each day, dreams are shared and analyzed away at breakfast.  In the evening there is another mealtime sharing of feelings which serves to monitor and normalize each person's psyche.  Apologies and forgiveness are automatically proferred as part of the rigid, yet cozy set of emotional rituals members of this society exhibit.  This is presented in a rather believable, unpathologized manner.  Built-in therapy is an obligatory family tradition.

All potentially negative experiences are sanitized or analyzed away, including sexuality which is controlled with drugs when children reach puberty and begin to experience "stirrings".  If it could cause emotional pain, it is neutralized.  Interestingly, they still have to employ birthmothers to gestate children, and this is considered a low-class job.  Birthmothers get to be indulged for the few years that they are employed as such, but then go on to live as manual laborers, perhaps to discourage girls from wanting to become birthmothers.  In this society you cannot apparently be both a birther and an intellectual, or even a manager. 

Many aspects of this society seem quite cozy, and indeed it has been carefully constructed to ensure its members' optimum utility and emotional safety.  People need not fear making the wrong decision regarding course of study or job or spouse, since this will be chosen for you.  Furthermore, even children are especially chosen for families.  From a certain perspective this could seem reassuring.  Knowing what we are supposed to do is comforting; people like boundaries and traditions. The problem is that, as in any totalitarian regime, the tradition is not optional and the price of noncompliance may be the ultimate price.

When people are consistently unable to comply with society's requirements, they are relegated to be "released".  "Release" is a semi-mythical exile for members of this society who do not fit in, or who have reached the ends of their lives. Children do not know what it means, and it seems that many adults don't know either.  The Giver is a story of one boy, Jonas, who finds out the real meaning of release.

The book is named after the one person the society employs to act as the repository for all the culture's emotional history, including its painful history, of which everyone else is blissfully ignorant. Through a sort of visceral, sense-memory transfer, the Giver shares these experiences with the Receiver, who will become the next Giver, ensuring a redundant source of these memories.  Twelve-year-old Jonas is presented with the honor of becoming the Receiver, while his friends are being apprenticed to become teachers or scientists or day care providers.  The Giver also functions as a sort of uber-Elder, being consulted by the council of Elders on matters of policy for the society.

What my kids found most impressive about this book, aside from the sheer weirdness of its controlled society, was that the members of the society had lost the ability to see color or hear music.  Jonas, as the Receiver, is gradually given the ability to experience color and music, and with this the sublime and painful emotions that come with their nuances.  This society is predicated on the notion that there must be severe limits placed on human experience so that people will not suffer, so that there will be equilibrium in society.  One is reminded of ascetic movements that extol the plain, such as the Amish, and of Buddhism's assertion that desire is suffering.  Many have tried to reduce human suffering by reducing our ability to feel, or even to perceive, never mind our ability to procreate.  Placing restrictions on behavior is the basis of civilized society, but when is it too much?  When does it lead to pathology, to dehumanization?  It's a good thing this book, banned in some school districts, is required reading in our kids' public school. Far from advocating dehumanizing practices, it encourages kids to appreciate the wide range of experiences that make us human, and to weigh their worth.

A Confederacy of Dunces

A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole

(written in the 1960’s, published in 1980, 11 years after Toole’s suicide)

This book is a broad, rip-roaring farce but it also deals with serious issues of alienation and coping as an outsider.  The author took his own life after years of trying to get published with no luck.  It was his mother who finally got someone to read the work and realize its genius.

Ignatius J. Reilly, the hero of A Confederacy of Dunces, is a morbidly obese, over-educated, indignant misfit who hides his insecurities behind his intellectualism. He is a spoiled, peevish agoraphobic slob who, at age 30, lives with his mother in New Orleans and blames everyone else for all of his problems.  He is hostile, gluttonous, scholarly, prudish, delusional, brazen,  libidinous, visionary and completely hilarious.  Ignatius J. Reilly is my homeboy. 

A Confederacy of Dunces was first published in 1980, when I was in high school, but I honestly don’t remember who gave it to me or how I came to read it.  It certainly wasn’t required in school and I didn’t take any English classes in college.  I remember identifying with Ignatius, with his high-falooting put-downs, his crazy indictments of “modern society”,  his harkening back to some golden age of humanity.  My adolescence in New York City was pretty rocky, and the comfort of someone with more outlandish problems than my own was welcome.   

There is much to love about this novel. It's the story of the spoiled and socially retarded Ignatius and his dysfunctional relationship with his mother, his colleagues and his community, the city of New Orleans, which is a palpable character throughout.  Bourbon Street, the Charles River, the bars and stores and streetcars named Desire.  Wrought-iron balconies, jazz tunes and steamy decay prevail.  The people who live there are a cast of characters indeed: the earnest itinerant, the hard-up cop, the sleazeball barkeep, the miserable neurotic business owners,  the useless professor, the cranky old romancer - the list of oddballs is long and they all  make up Toole's confederacy of dunces.

Ignatius’s Bible is early medieval philosopher Boethius’s The Consolation of Philosophy, a work which plays a significant role in the unfolding of Confederacy’s plot.  Fortuna and her Wheel of Fortune are regularly invoked to take the blame for various twists and turns of fate, or just as often, for the consequences of Ignatius’s deliberate decisions.  Ignatius does a lot of blaming, often in very colorful language too.  His particular brand of emotional immaturity is a classic: blame someone or something else for every shortcoming, inconvenience or misfortune encountered, including those for which one is personally responsible.  His Goddess, Fortuna, allows him to do this with impunity.

Boethius's Consolation is a dialogue between himself and Fortuna which argues that hardship must be endured with philosophical detachment.  This is the furthest from how Ignatius reacts to life.  Ignatius's pyloric valve, a character in its own right, reacts violently to any stress in his life, dramatically opening and slamming shut in response. Ignatius too, reacts violently to any diversion from his expected plan of non-stop self-indulgence.

Another appealing aspect of Ignatius is his absurdly positive body image.  This is a morbidly obese man whose digestion has been utterly ruined by near-constant indulgence in junk food and soda.  Nonetheless he refers to his body as "muscular" and "imposing".   This may be in part due to a southern tolerance for fat, as several other characters are favorably impressed with his girth.  He considers himself to be a likely target of sexual predation by both females and males.  While many of the illustrations of Ignatius make him look rather like a bumbling Oliver Hardy, I imagine him more as a portly Oliver Reed, brooding, brilliant, dishevelled and disoriented in everyday reality. 

There are a lot of sexual themes in the book, mostly treated in a grotesque or absurdist context.  Ignatius is a horny but prudish virgin who has run-ins with the gay scene, a pornography ring, and a "sexually liberated" New York gal who shows him her undercarriage.  He has strange fantasies. A lady in my book club thought he had been sexually molested by Professor Talc, due to a comment about "underdeveloped testicles", but that may have just been Ignatius's hallmark, outrageous hyperbole.  

The range of characters in this novel is impressive.  There's  Jones, a young itinerant black dude who is trying to avoid "vagrancy", and who knows he is being exploited by his boss.  There is the working class coterie of Ignatius's Mom, Santa, the mom's commie-focused suitor, and the chronically masqueraded cop Mancuso.  There are the sleazy denizens and proprietors of the "Night of Bliss" bar.  There is a misguided teen, a tow-the-line shopkeeper, a senile secretary, a militant feminist New Yorker, an ineffectual and phony professor, and many more.  An entire essay could be written about any of these characters, they are so rich and and contextually provocative.

My book club read this recently and the only thing everyone agreed on was that the the Levys were believable.  The Levys are a not atypical, quite dysfunctional bourgeois family that owns a failing and obsolescent pants factory where Ignatius "works".  All of us found the members of this family to be very believable, probably because we are familiar with upper-middle-class suburban families and lifestyles.  The husband has inherited a business he hates, from a father he resents.  The wife is a carping, misguided and utterly ineffectual would-be progressive whose furious and far-fetched calls for social justice might be reminiscent of some Marin "actions for peace" such as taking mass photographs of naked women in trees, etc.

Some have written that A Confederacy of Dunces couldn't have been published during Toole's lifetime because it is too politically incorrect.  It contains controversial portrayals of blacks, Jews and gays and this is considered political plutonium in the New York publishing community.  The fact that Toole's own people, working class Irish Catholics (as well as intellectuals and every other character in the book) are shown with all their foolish foibles, should erase any claim of prejudice or bigotry.  If anything, this work is very much along the lines of Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift, in which humanity is likewise seen in all its ridiculous, frenzied striving. 

Puccini's Triptych ("Il Trittico")

Il Trittico (The Triptych) By Giacomo Puccini, (1918)
(San Francisco Opera, September 2009)

A triptych is a work of art divided into three parts (from the Greek τρίπτυχο, from tri- "three" + ptychē "fold").  In European-derived cultures it is traditionally associated with religious subjects, the centerpiece of which provides the focal point.  Many triptychs were constructed as tabernacles, or a set of paintings with hinged wings which could be closed to hide and protect the images inside.   Puccini's Il Trittico is just this sort of triptych, unfolding its lyrical wings to expose the hidden connection between its three seemingly disparate operas.

Il Trittico comprises three consecutively composed one-act operas: Il Tabarro (The Cape), a violent tale of romantic and social disappointment among the working poor; Suor Angelica (Sister Angelica), the heart-wrenching centerpiece focused on a submissive birthmother who is sent to a convent; and the famous Gianni Schicchi, a social farce set in the medieval Florence of Dante Alighieri. 

Triptych by Bernardo Daddi (active c.1320-1348)

Giacomo Puccini is probably most famous for his exquisite romantic tragedies, La Boheme and Madame Butterfly.  Il Trittico gives us some very different works: violent, un-romantic, farcical in turn. Some have compared Il Trittico to the French theater of horror, Le Grand Guignol, which sometimes alternated its graphic horror programs with comedies. This has been done primarily because the great Italian maestro, Arturo Toscanini, rashly called the first opera, Il Tabarro (The Cloak), "un grand guignol di estremo cattivo gusto" (a horror show in extremely poor taste).  Thanks to this, others have wrongly expanded this analogy to the entire triptych.  This is wrongheaded on several counts.  The only part of The Triptych with any violence is Il Tabarro, which includes one crime of passion, and no gratuitous horror.  It is more in line with the naturalist or verismo movement which sought to expose the very real plight of the less fortunate in society.

Puccini's chosen framework, the triptych, suggests that the work should be viewed from a religious or spiritual perspective.   We know that Puccini composed each piece consecutively, and that he was adamantly opposed to their being performed separately.  The plays of the Grand Guignol, in contrast, were presented for the sole intent of viscerally appalling the audience using shock value even to the point that the success of an evening's fare was registered by how many people in the audience fainted. While Puccini is often accused of gratuitous sentimentalism (which might be compared to the gratuitous sensationalism of Le Grand Guignol), I would argue that the plays in Il Trittico are not at all gratuitous, but rather form a cohesive picture Puccini very deliberately wanted to draw.

The triptych's Cloak (or Cape), Il Tabarro, opens to reveal a slummy Paris embankment at dusk with dock workers, rag pickers and organ grinders all drinking and singing to keep their blues away.  The opera's female lead is Giorgetta, a disaffected young woman who is the wife of a much older barge owner, Michele.  Giorgetta is having an affair with Luigi, a dockworker her age.  The misery of the relatively wealthy Giorgetta and Michele is contrasted with the loving relationship of the destitute rag-picker Frugola and her husband, the dockworker Talpa.   Giorgetta sings a duet with her lover, Luigi, reminiscing about their carefree youth.  Michele sings to Giorgetta and bemoans the loss of their early love, and the death of their baby son.  He remembers holding them all close inside his cloak.  Giorgetta refuses to kiss him and he wonders if he is too old for her, whether she loves another.  They fight a lot. 

My impression was that Giorgetta married Michele, who is twice her age, to improve her social lot.  She was initially happy with her new station and her baby, but once the baby died, so did Giorgetta's enthusiasm for her marriage.  Young and lusty, bored with her old but loving husband, she bides her time from tryst to tryst with her dockworker.  Michele is hard-working, adoring and jealous.  This is a disaster waiting to happen. 

So what place does The Cloak play in this triptych?  It is the presentation of triptych as tabernacle, a narrative cloak that opens up to reveal its icons.  The cloak opens and we have the starting point, humanity at its animalistic core: scrounging survival on the primordial banks of a dirty, watery world.  The elder Michele once used to cloak to protect, to gather in the family.  By the end of the opera he uses it to hide and then disclose his dirty work, that of eliminating his competitor.  The curtain closes on his cloak's revelation: a silverback has defended his territory. 

The centerpiece of the Triptych, Suor Angelica, takes place in an overtly religious setting, a convent, which invokes images of the Madonna, sacrifice, and the pain of a lost son, a symbol of Christ.  Sister  Angelica is a birthmother who has been banished from her upper class family to the convent after surrendering her child to adoption.  When the story opens it has been seven years since she gave birth and she has resigned herself to her convent life, becoming an adept gardener and herbalist.  Her aunt visits her to get her to sign away her inheritance rights, and while there, the aunt shames Angelica for dishonoring the family.  Angelica begs the aunt for news of her son and the aunt tells her that he is dead.  Angelica crumbles, signs the aunt's papers, and proceeds to poison herself.  Realizing that she is committing a sin by committing suicide, Angelica prays to the Virgin Mary to forgive her, to deliver her, and to show her a sign of her forgiveness.  The final scene is Sister Angelica's dying vision of a small boy inviting her to heaven.  Sinner and saint, the lost and the redeemed: these comprise the center panel of the triptych in Suor Angelica. 

 Il Tabarro/Suor Angelica/Gianni Schicchi, by Dru, 2008, Acrylic on Canvas

The final panel in the series is the most famous, Puccini's social comedy Gianni Schicchi.  The scene opens with the extended Donati family hovering over the dead body of wealthy family elder, Buoso.  Rinuccio, one of the sons, wants to marry the lower-class daughter of Gianni Schicchi, and he tries to bribe a relative into allowing this if the dead man's will is favorable to her.  As it turns out, his will leaves everything to a local monastery and all the relatives gnash their teeth in anger, curse the dead man, and refuse to let Rinuccio marry his lower-class beloved.  In their greedy desperation, they finally allow Rinuccio to talk them into allowing Gianni Schicchi to come over and figure out a way to change Buoso's will in their favor.  One of Puccini's most beautiful arias, "O mio babbino caro" is sung by Lauretta as she tries to cajole her father into helping Rinuccio's revolting relatives. Schicchi agrees and sends his daughter away so that she will be innocent of what he is about to do.  What follows is a comedy of errors in which the greedy relatives get their comeuppance and the young lovers prevail.  The triptych closes on an upbeat.  The unrepentant sinners have been punished, the repentant have been redeemed, and the innocent have their lives ahead of them.

Why would Puccini have so wanted these three operas to be performed together?  They do form a cohesive unit, not only as a triptych depicting different types of sinners, their punishments and penances, but also as a narrative of Puccini's attitude towards these things.  The first two operas feature "fallen women", both of whom have lost children, the last two feature ambivalent and controversial attitudes towards the Church.   In the course of the evening we are transported from the primitive to the sublime to the ridiculous. Ending the series with a comedic farce suggests that there is some sin so banal that it only worth ridicule. One could track the seven deadly sins or the ten commandments through Il Trittico to get a better idea of Puccini's vision in Il Trittico.  I've included links to the libretti below in case anyone is interested in doing a more in depth study of this matter.

Is the triptych a commentary on Catholicism's Madonna-whore complex?   The centerpiece, the only piece with an overtly religious theme, shows a birthmother as Madonna, with the promise of her lost Christ child returning at the end to redeem her.  The whore Giorgetta and the virgin Lauretta flank the centerpiece of this triptych, Suor Angelica, a true tragic figure who represents both. 

Libretti

Il Tabarro
Suor Angelica
Gianni Schicchi

Dreaming in Hindi

by Katherine Russell Rich (2009)

Recently my Mom heard the author of Dreaming in Hindi talking on NPR, and since my Mom knows that I like Bollywood movies and have been studying Hindi, she decided to buy me the book. The good news is that there is lots of material of genuine interest to those concerned with language learning and second language (and writing system) acquisition. The bad news is that there is something very bizarre about Ms. Rich's diction which begs the question of whether she is deliberately strangling English grammar to emulate a linguistically disoriented state, or whether she really does not have a very firm grasp of English grammar.

As a person, the author is very likable. She is a middle-aged, divorced, rather bourgeois New Yorker who survived breast cancer and then decided to run off to India and study Hindi for a year. That takes some nerve. She is also something of a naive, curious sweetie, and with very little background information on India or Hindi, she plunges head-first into a Rajasthani adventure. The book alternates between her memoir and her research into language learning. While she is not a very talented writer (and is arguably incompetent as an editor), I was touched by how earnest she was in trying to understand her adopted culture, and the processes by which we gradually assimilate another language.

Palace at Udaipur, Rajasthan

Why she chose the state of Rajasthan as the place to study is unclear, since Hindi is not the standard register there. This complicates her language learning inasmuch as the Hindi she is learning in class is significantly different from the Mewari spoken on the streets and in her host family. We learn that Hindi is considered something of a colonial language in India since most people speak other languages or widely divergent dialects of Hindi. Several Rajasthani variants claim or are struggling for language status.¹

Alienation and the re-creation of one's sense of self play a large part in this book. Katherine arrived in India a few weeks before the events of 9/11/01. As an American, after 9/11 she is sequestered away, then brought out as a symbol of a fellow nation terrorized by radical Islam, and then shunned as the GW Bush administration does not respond aggressively enough against Pakistani-sponsored attacks within India. At this early point the author's language skills are paltry and her disassociation begins. She alternates between seeking solace among her fellow expatriates and delving head-first into various immersive situations such as working as a tutor for poor, deaf children. Working with deaf children doesn't do much for her Hindi, as most of the educated people with whom she makes contact speak English, but it does provide food for thought on the nature of language, multilingualism and second language learning.

Some Indians may be uncomfortable with a number of the cultural and political issues discussed in the book. Much has been written about the Indian dowry system which requires a daughter's family to pay sometimes exorbitant, debilitating sums to a prospective groom for marriage. This has been linked in some cases to female infanticide, dowry murder, and instances of repeat dowry abuse by the groom's family. In a side-note Ms. Rich reveals that it costs twice as much for a family to procure an engineer husband as it does to procure one who is a physician. It wasn't specified, but I wonder whether engineers in India make twice as much as doctors do. In the United States the situation is the reverse, with physicians generally making twice as much as engineers or more.

The terrorism storyline includes India as both victim and as perpetrator, and a controversial parallel is made with America's experience during 9/11 vs. its subsequent military forays into Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. In the case of India, it too suffered terrorist bombings at the hands of Islamist-sponsored terrorists. On December 13, 2001, while the author was in India, there was a high-profile terrorist attack on the Indian Parliament². India expected at least strong condemnation from the GW Bush administration, which Rich's Indian contacts claimed was not sufficiently forthcoming. Little information is provided on the organizations responsible for this and other, similar attacks inside India, such as Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed. A good deal is revealed however, about Hindu fundamentalist organizations inside of India.

This brings us to India as perpetrator of terrorism. Hindu fundamentalist-supported massacres occurred in Gujarat in early 2002 in response to a local train fire in which Hindus were killed. Mention of the train fire was omitted from Rich's book, but is the accepted instigation on both sides, although each claims a different source of the fire. Those who justify the massacres are certain that the train fire was set by local Muslims. Others claim that the fire was an accident which was blamed on the Muslims. Rich gives some in-depth and damning reportage on the Bajrang Dal and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), both groups part of the Hindutva, or Hindu nationalist, movement. She provides an incendiary quote from the founder of the RSS, M.S. Golwalkar, who admired Hitler and who is quoted across the Internet as being an exemplar of Hindu fascism.

While these less than laudable fringe views of Indian society may besmirch the rosy-hued lenses through which many yoga and biryani-loving Americans see India, it's important to remember that India is a secular, multi-ethnic, multi-religious democracy. Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Christians, Jains, Buddhists and Zoroastrians all hold political positions and people of many faiths hold high federal office. In choosing which country in South Asia is most like America, one would have to choose India. Ms. Rich's many exotic experiences tend to drown out any commonalities our nations may have, and the common humanity is all too often blurred by a culturally bewildered, exoticising eye. Nonetheless, we do meet some charming and distinguished characters such as selected local teachers, poets and expatriates.

The on-going acculturation story is intertwined with Rich's post-facto deconstruction of her language-learning experience. Her thesis is that learning a new language creates a new identity. You cannot be the same person speaking a different language. This is a bit overstated, but along the way we are regaled with fascinating forays into neurolinguistics and applied language learning research. Ms. Rich is not someone who easily picks up languages and she wants to find out all she can about those who do, and what might make it easier to do so.

One approach to this is to evaluate motivation. The impact of competition is discussed and it is noted that, like novelty, it can be motivational or demotivational. The Stimulus Appraisal Theory proposed by Austrian scholar Klaus Scherer, outlines five ways in which one appraises an experience, and depending on the responses, one can come up with a good picture of a person's attitude towards anything. Ms. Rich talks with linguist John Schumann about his research into second-language acquisition which builds on the motivational model. Schumann notes that many language learners never get beyond a pidgin-state, while others go on to various levels of fluency. The markers for success in Schumann's view are highly subjective and vary widely from person to person. This doesn't tell us much about natural linguistic aptitude, only strength of motivation.

The standard claims of the existence of a childhood "language-learning window" are made. In my opinion this is a somewhat tenuous marker for long-term second-language ability.  I have known many people exposed to multiple languages as children who did not gain or retain fluency as adults because the language was not consistently used or did not continue to be used. On the other hand I have known many adults who were not exposed to multiple languages as children who subsequently became fluent in foreign languages.  Genuine immersion, motivation and natural ability are much more reliable indicators of language acquisition success. 

What it takes to excel at language learning depends on what type of learning you are doing. Ms. Rich notes that people with lower inhibitions learn to speak more readily since they are not afraid to make mistakes. This doesn't mean that their grammar will be perfect, nor that they will develop advanced listening comprehension skills, but it does mean that they will learn to communicate more quickly. I have seen this in action and can confirm that this is indeed the case. When dealing with reading, writing and listening comprehension, other proclivities come in to play such as aural and visual pattern recognition.

Devanagari: the syllabery used in writing Hindi,
Sanskrit, Marathi and Nepali.

Ms. Rich had some difficulty learning the devanagari alphabet, which is used to write Hindi. Alphabets rely on sequential visual pattern recognition and the ability to quickly associate a visual sequence with a series of sounds and a group of meanings. There is a fascinating description of how different areas of the brain are stimulated when presented with a written word (in which the Russian word for "fleece" is misspelled, but never mind). Ms. Rich quotes a study that suggests there is a "Chinese region" in the brain which recognizes Chinese writing. My guess is that people with photographic memories, people who easily imprint icons, are better at learning Chinese. Since the Chinese have no other writing system, you either have a situation in which the writing system fits the neurologic predisposition of he population, or the population gradually selects for people with superior photographic memories. As with the tendency for the Chinese, who speak a tonal language, to have superior musical pitch, those who can memorize the most characters generally have better photographic memories.

It woule seem that the Chinese associate their characters first with ideas, rather than sounds, whereas users of phonetic writing systems associate the writing first with sound, then meaning. (I recently read that Chinese characters contain radicals also associated with a sound.) Once you can read an alphabetic script, you can sound out virtually any word in the language but not necessarily know its meaning.  In Chinese you learn the picture with its meaning, but the character may sound completely different depending on the dialect or language (Japanese and Korean also use Chinese characters), and will also encounter numerous homophones for a given character (cf. Japanese on and kun pronunciations).  This might suggest a trade-off in memory efficiency and I'm sure some Ph.D. somewhere is studying the effect of so much picture memorization on various areas of cognition and creativity. 

Speaking of creativity, my favorite study in the book is one from the Nijmegen Institute of Cognition and Information in the Netherlands. This study shows that multilingualism spurs greater linguistic association, suggesting that the associative imagination may be especially sensitive among multilinguals.  Apparently when bilinguals sits down to read, every word they encounter stimulates other words they know in other languages. This is like the mind of a poet, whose imagination is constantly stimulated to branch any given word or image into a web of associated words and images.  As someone who has studied many languages, I can vouch for this being partly the case.  The more words we know in any language, the more we naturally  compare sounds and meanings.  The more languages one learns, the easier it becomes to learn more languages as one explores, navigates and imprints phonetic and lexical inventories, grammars, idioms, and patterns of intonation. 

Do we really become other people when speaking another language though?  I don't think so.  Yes, we express ourselves using different nuances and conceptual frameworks when speaking different languages and this can alter our experience of time, space and interconnectedness.  The realization that there are many more ways to show emphasis or respect or desire than our native language offers probably increases linguistic intelligence.  Do we become something other than ourselves when this happens though, or is it simply that the map of ourselves is expanded?  Studies in stroke victims have showed that language information can be very compartmentalized, with victims recalling only one language and not another, or even one category of speech over another.  Yet, as the Dutch study above suggests, the healthy brain is able to reach across these compartments to find a word's mirror-sibling in another language, to launch the ship of associations that allows us to synthesize seemingly disparate,  random sounds and ideas.

Studies on mirror neurons, neurons which fire when we do something and when we watch it done, have shown that these neurons also fire when people read about something being done³.  It has been suggested by V.S. Ramachandran that mirror neurons, and the mimicking behavior they control, were instrumental in the evolution of human language, and possibly in language acquisition today.⁴  If we are wired to mimic that which is around us, and then to assign meaning to our mimicry, we must favor a neurological composition that imprints these patterns and their associated meanings.  What renders one's makeup flexible enough to easily switch one meaning pattern for another?  Is the ability to add vocabulary in one language similar to that of adding vocabulary in others?  If we are repeatedly exposed to new syntactic structures as adults, we can indeed assimilate them, which would suggest that repeated exposure and true immersion really is the key to learning a new language.  The number of repetitions one person versus another needs to remember a given word or syntactic structure varies.  So does the ability to easily recognize audio-visual patterns associated with meaning.  These innate aptitudes, given the same amount of exposure, will determine whether someone more or less easily learns a new language. 

Getting back to Katherine Rich and her adventure in learning Hindi, it is fair to say that her ability to integrate into her surroundings was indeed limited by her inability to penetrate the language, but I would add that it was further hindered by her lack of cultural preparation and her questionable choice of locale for studying Hindi.  Her squeamish revulsion at some of the cultural and political circumstances could have been avoided had she not had to waste so much emotional capital on bring shocked and then paralyzed by her shock.  I still admire that she was brave enough to throw herself into a foreign culture, to attempt to learn the language, and to try and understand the linguistic processes helping or hindering the process.  Had she taken more time to try and understand the anthropology and political history before embarking, she would have come away more successful on all counts. 

Hindi Language-Learning Links

Writing System (Devanagari):
* Hindi Script Tutor

Language:
* UniLang Hindi Lessons Online
* Hindi Bolo Blog

Soviet-era Limericks

Here are some translations I did of Russian chastushki from the Soviet era. The chastushka is a form of Russian folk verse, often sung to the strains of a guitar, balalaika or accordion.

Red cow of the collective farm, we all admire
How you give us milk and lots of fertilizer.
Instead of being fed, you were sent to school for Marxists,
Labor leaders are still awaiting cream because of this.
The whole collective farm is very, very proud of you,
Oh horned one, you're our very own main attraction true.
For in response to Lenin's own appeal throughout the land,
You heaped a load of fertilizer on the socialist plan.

What sort of Bolshevik is this
Climbing on the armored car?
He wears a little buttoned cap,
He can’t pronounce the letter r.
His arm is lifted to the sky,
Can you guess who this is? Try!
A car is standing on the hill,But with no tires it won't go far,All the tires were dragged away,
To make condoms for our collective farm.

Illustrations by Herb Allred
More of my Частушки translations

Deep in Siberian Mines (Pushkin)

Deep in Siberian mines
by Aleksandr Pushkin, 1827
translated by Alfia Wallace

Deep in Siberian mines
hold your proud endurance high,
Your woe-filled work will not be lost
nor the striving of your mind.

Misfortune's stalwart sister,
Hope, lurks in dungeons' gloom,
she'll waken and you'll jump for joy,
so know the wished-for day will come:
Love and friendship will o'errun you
through the sombre, shackled gates,
As my free voice now comes to you
through these craggy grates.

Your leaden chains fall to the floor,
your prison will collapse -
as freedom greets you at the door -
your brothers hand you a sword.


Во глубине сибирских руд...

Во глубине сибирских руд
Храните гордое терпенье,
Не пропадет ваш скорбный труд
И дум высокое стремленье.
Несчастью верная сестра,
Надежда в мрачном подземелье
Разбудит бодрость и веселье,
Придет желанная пора:
Любовь и дружество до вас
Дойдут сквозь мрачные затворы,
Как в ваши каторжные норы
Доходит мой свободный глас.
Оковы тяжкие падут,
Темницы рухнут - и свобода
Вас примет радостно у входа,
И братья меч вам отдадут.
1827

Images: Abandoned Siberian mine from the 1930's; Old Siberian house

Love and Sex with Robots

Love and Sex with Robots: The Evolution of Human-Robot Relationships by David Levy (Nov. 2007)

"Let's face it . The singularity is a religious rather than a scientific vision. The science-fiction writer Ken MacLeod has dubbed it ”the rapture for nerds,” an allusion to the end-time, when Jesus whisks the faithful to heaven and leaves us sinners behind.


Such yearning for transcendence, whether spiritual or technological, is all too understandable. Both as individuals and as a species, we face deadly serious problems, including terrorism, nuclear proliferation, overpopulation, poverty, famine, environmental degradation, climate change, resource depletion, and AIDS. Engineers and scientists should be helping us face the world's problems and find solutions to them, rather than indulging in escapist, pseudoscientific fantasies like the singularity."

from The Consciousness Conundrum by John Horgan, on the IEEE website, June 2008

The New York Times recently published an article on its cover entitled "Scientists Worry Machines May Outsmart Man" (7/25/09). It suggests that we may be on the cusp of a post-human era in which computerized superintelligences reign on Earth. The moment this starts to take place is called "The Singularity", meaning the latest in several technological singularities which have changed the way humans live and process information. Technologists and futurists called Singulatarians are worried about how the public will deal with the ramifications of this event. After all, we have already been giving up our jobs and human interactions to robots and artificial intelligence (AI) systems plenty over the past several decades. Are we ready for robot bosses and lovers?

David Levy's book "Love and Sex with Robots" includes an edutaining history of AI, robotics and sex toys and presents this alongside a sometimes disturbing psychological study of our emotional attachment to inanimate objects such as dolls, cars and yes, robots. This is all fascinating, but Levy makes the annoying mistake of insisting throughout that it is simply a hop, skip and a jump from loving a doll and using a vibrator to falling in love with and marrying a robot. I'm not talking a cyborg here, either - Levy insists that the AI will be so convincing and customizable, the sexual prowess so indefatigable, that the lure of the robot lover will be much more compelling than that of any human lover.

Research on human interactions with computerized systems shows that people like to interact with AI that behaves in an empathetic manner, and that we tend to respond as we would to a kind person when dealing with a "kind" computer program. Levy claims that a simulation of a human being would be just as good as a real human being inasmuch as it can be programmed to behave in the way we would like. He uses examples of people who use sex dolls and vibrators to bolster his argument, as these marriageable robots (and humans?) are ostensibly just dolls with really good programming.

Japanese culture plays a large part in the book. The Japanese are great pioneers in robotics and their animist religion allows them to see robots as beneficent living things, much as a sacred rock or sand sculpture. Levy tries to make a case that, because of this cultural premise, the Japanese are quicker to accept non-human and even inanimate objects as being equally valid to humans. He also tries to say that Western culture has tended to paint robots as sinister a la Hal in 2001: A Space Odyssey, but remembering the likable robots in Star Wars, Lost in Space, and The Jetsons, I don't buy that argument.

The New York Times magazine from July 26, 2009 has an article called Love in 2-D, which is all about lonely Japanese men who carry on relationships with stuffed pillowcases emblazoned with the images of scantily clad young cartoon women. The one man whose photo was included with the article looks like your classic "loser", the likes of which we also have plenty in the West. Perhaps it is Japan's higher public tolerance for what we regard as fetish behavior (panty vending machines, rape comics, etc.) which Levy is confusing with the synergistic compassion and empathy that living creatures feel for one another. Levy would argue that this compassion and empathy can be virtually reproduced, creating the requisite chemical responses in us humans that render their source, their inspiration moot.

Robot minders are now being used in Japan to monitor senior citizens who are left alone. Japan also boasts a highly successful brothel chain specializing in the rental of sex dolls. My husband, who also read the book, made a compelling suggestion when we were driving the other day. He works at a Veterans' hospital where he regularly encounters men with serious post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), men who are so psychologically disabled by this condition that they cannot have normal relationships, so no one takes care of them, and their health further deteriorates. A robot-minder who cared for them, provided talk therapy, made sure they took their medicines, and yes, had sex with them, my husband argues, would greatly improve these alienated and deteriorating veterans' lives. Even if they only talked and had sex with them it would be an improvement.

My husband then asked whether I would prefer spending time with an AI-programmed robot of my late father (may he rest in peace) or a to-be-unnamed person whom I don't like. Seeing as I'd rather spend time alone than with someone I dislike, it wasn't entirely a fair question, but it did make me miss my Dad. The father-robot would be programmed with my father's bank of interests, deductive abilities, ethnic and local background, communicative style and sense of humor. That I'd like to see. Or would I?

Am I being sentimental in embracing the frailty, the foibles of life, of preferring them to pre-programmed perfection? This response is inevitable when being banged over the head by Levy's insistence that there really is no difference between being inspired by an inanimate or an animate object. It's not that I discount the real and potential value of robots, or even that I haven't experienced strong emotional responses to things like paintings and characters in novels. My objection is to Levy's facile reductionism. Yes, we may one day better understand how our brain works - memory, inspiration, creativity, attraction, deduction and a host of other brain activities - but, despite Levy's incessant urgings, we really aren't there yet. As a specialist in computer chess and games he confuses the ability to deduce with the whole of one's humanity.

Getting back to the notion of an imminent "Singularity", some proponents of this perceived inevitability (Singulatarians, who are a variant of the Transhumanist Movement) tout that supreme AI will solve all of humanity's problems, ushering in an era of peace and prosperity for all. This is the view of the Zeitgeist movement, which blames the current global monetary system for all the world's ills. Their online forum actually features posts in which movement activists assure members that drunk driving will not be a problem in the future because vehicles will a) fly, and b) include avoidance sensors, and c) be so well-padded and well-suspended that any collision would be rendered harmless. The movement also claims that since technology will take care of all drudge tasks, humans will be free to engage solely in creative and self-improving endeavors. Opponents warn that robots will steal even more (if not all) human jobs and their supremacy will lead to further natural degradation and humans living under a totalitarian regime, not to mention a further degradation of telephone and internet support services.

So, will a significant number of us be schtupping robots in the next few decades? Will people be marrying robots in 2050, as Levy prognosticates? Who knows? I have to agree with the quote at the beginning of this blog entry though - we have serious problems to tackle. The puerile fixation on how far we can take the blow-up doll is disappointing. The notion that a profit motive driven by the popularity of long-distance robo-sex using the Internet and haptic interfaces will make this happen sooner - is just creepy.

Images, I, Robot movie poster, 20th century Fox; Astroboy by Osamu Tezuka, Dark Horse Comics