Little Brother

Little Brother

May 29th, 2008

Little Brother. by Cory Doctorow. New York: Tor Books, 2008.

Review by John Stone

Summary: A high-school senior in San Francisco happens to be near the site of a catastrophic bombing that appears to be the work of terrorists. The Department of Homeland Security arrests, interrogates, imprisons, and mistreats him and several of his friends. After most of them are released, they become underground activists for civil rights, organizing various kinds of demonstrations and protests over an ad hoc pirate network of repurposed Xboxes. Their loose-knit organization becomes powerful enough to prompt a renewed attack by the DHS, which underestimates the resourcefulness of teenagers and, in particular, their ability to use modern communications technology effectively.

The author intended this novel for “young adults,” a category that in this case seems to run from precocious eleven-year-olds to recent high-school graduates. It is set in a dystopian near future in which the consequences of Americans’ willingness to trade liberty for security pervade society. For instance, the protagonist’s high school has security cameras everywhere, running gait-recognition software in a particularly inept attempt to track the movements of students and visitors to the school. DHS officials are portrayed frankly as villains — goonish, occasionally sadistic bureaucrats.

Doctorow uses this somewhat melodramatic coming-of-age plot as a framework into which he can pack quite a bit of information about how to resist and circumvent governments’ attempts to intrude on citizens’ privacy and violate our civil rights. This is less didactic than it sounds. Doctorow establishes the protagonist from the first page as someone who comfortably inhabits a high-tech world and has spent most of his childhood figuring out ways of breaking the ridiculous rules that authorities try to impose, so instead of a lecturer’s drone we hear the voice of a teenage enthusiast explaining to his friends how to beat the system.

The full text of the book is available for free download in many formats at author’s Web site. It’s under a Creative Commons license (Attribution-Noncommercial-ShareAlike 3.0)

This review was previously published on John Stone's Web log, _The free thinker_ (http://grnl-static-01-0198.dsl.iowatelecom.net/free-thinker/). It is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License, and is reprinted here, with the permission of the author, under the same license.

The Corrections

Jonathan Franzen. The Corrections. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001

By Helen Stuhr-Rommereim, Oberlin College '09

This book probably isn't news to many people. The Corrections was published quite a few years ago now, in 2001, and received a lot of attention. I, however, just recently read it for the first time. The first and most obvious fact about The Corrections is that it is fat—almost 600 pages. The novel is ambitious in scope as well as physical size. The narrative mixes timelines and perspectives, jumping from character to character and managing to make it all the way to Vilnius and a chaotic post-Soviet Lithuania. Though The Corrections reaches far across space and time, the core issues of the narrative are quite every day, dealing with one family and its members' (relatively) typical travails.

The Lamberts are a well-educated, upper middleclass family from St. Jude, Kansas, a small city that greatly resembles Franzen's own hometown of St. Louis, Missouri. The novel covers aspects of each of the three Lambert children's childhood and adolescence, but focuses on Denise, Gary, and Chip's adulthood—all in various states of crisis.

Throughout the novel, I had a sense that Franzen was trying to fully capture the spirit of the present day. He covers all the issues of the 1990s: a booming stock market, Post-Soviet nation states struggling to build a national identity and a functional economy, psychotropic drugs, and the angst of average people in a successful, ostensibly untroubled nation. Franzen succeeds, but his book was published in 2001, and everything in the United States and the world in general has come to feel much more unstable since then. The problems that at one point were burbling under the surface are now acutely visible. It is a small tragedy that this clearly great novel about life in America, a novel that seeks to capture a time so completely, was written just a little too early. It doesn't contain a vision of what was to come.

However, The Corrections is a story about family as much as it is the story of a nation. In this aspect, it is both heartbreaking and astute. I frequently found myself crying during passages about Enid's sadness, frustration, and helplessness. As a 21 year old about to finish college and facing years of difficult decision-making, the book seemed to point out how sad life can be for everyone, even when nothing monumental happens. The problems of the Lamberts are cutting because they are problems that everyone will have.

For additional reading, try Franzen's collection of essays How to be Alone, which cover similar territory to The Corrections and reveal much of Franzen's thinking about writing in general and The Corrections in particular.

Burling 3rd Floor PS3556.R352 C67 2001

How to Be Alone. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002
Burling 3rd Floor PS3556.R352 H69 2002

I'll Sleep When I'm Dead: The Dirty Life and Times of Warren Zevon

Crystal Zevon. I'll Sleep When I'm Dead: The Dirty Life and Times of Warren Zevon
New York: Ecco, 2007

Reviewed by T. Hatch

I once heard Garrison Keillor say that the desire to meet a favorite author was like wishing to meet a butcher because one enjoys a particular cut of steak. After reading I'll Sleep When I'm Dead, Mr. Keillor's quip has gained an heightened veracity for me.

Warren Zevon was a songwriter known for pop ditties such as “Excitable Boy,” “Lawyers, Guns, and Money,” “Poor Poor Pitiful Me”, and “Werewolves of London” to name just a few;he was the undisputed king of song noir. As a creator of rock n' roll songs (especially lyrics) he was brilliant. As a human being he was a narcissistic failure.

Zevon's ex-wife Crystal cleverly lets this story reveal itself. The book is a chronologically arranged series of witness statements and journal entries that serve as both oral history and narrative. From Zevon's contact with Igor Stravinsky in adolescence until his death in September 2003 he is obsessed with the self-indulgence of sex, drugs, and rock n' roll as a vehicle to celebrity with all its vapid trappings.

As someone who inadvertently performed a cover of “Excitable Boy” the day of Zevon's death and prior to that had purchased his music in record, cassette tape, and compact disc form since the late 1970s I would that I might have averted my gaze as the butcher cased the sausage.

Rebecca Stuhr is reading and listening ...

Farooka Gauhari. An Afghan Woman's Odyssey. Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 1996. Gauhari's life changed after her husband was abducted during the Coup of 1978. Written before 2001 and the U.S. invasions, this book is less politicized than many recent first person accounts.

Burling 1st Floor DS 371.2 .G379 2004

For enjoyable late night reading ... Barbara Pym. No Fond Return of Love. New York: Dutton, 1982. If you haven't read Barbara Pym, you are in for a real treat. With a strong sense of humor and irony, her heroines battle their way through a world that perceives them as unfortunate and neglected. I have been reading Pym's books since I graduated from college and stumbled upon them in a local ( and most likely long gone) book store near where I was working in San Francisco.

Burling 3rd Floor PR6066.Y58 N6 1982

If you need something to keep you company while you study or work, try the sound track to the movie Babel. This is one of my favorite with music by composers from Ryuichi Sakamoto, Jaques Morelenbaum, Everton Nelson, and Gustavo Santaolalla, as well as contemporary popular music from Mexico, Japan, and the United States (including Earth, Wind, and Fire!).

Grinnell College Libraries have the film on DVD

Listen Rm DVD

B1136

The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

Edward Gibbon. The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (New York: Modern Library,
circa 1940s [1787]) 3 Volumes

Reviewed by T. Hatch

In this epic metanarrative Gibbon caustically laments that virtue and veracity are not destined to triumph over the lethal combination of “pious fraud and credulity.” Instilling the proper enthusiasm for eloquence, arms, and a reverence for the civil law is, at best, a fleeting endeavor. The love of public virtue (we might call it patriotism these days) is easily subverted. Externally, subversion is perpetrated by those ubiquitous barbarians who lack the perspicacity to appreciate urban living, the arts, and a philosophical outlook on life that is rooted in rational intellectual inquiry. Internally, the “credulous multitude” is subject to myriad diversions and are especially susceptible to spectacle and various forms of ocular amusement. Clearly, engaging in licentious and dissolute mirth-making is no way to run an empire!

As a pragmatic and philosophical atheist Gibbon's abuse of Christianity is a salient feature of this magisterial narrative. It was the Christian's “inflexible obstinacy” and what he saw as their contempt towards mankind (“odio humani generis convicti”) that rankled Gibbon. In its last days the Roman empire was propagating the rule of the Caesars and the Christian gospels; what the Romans had won by the masculine force of arms the Church maintained through a series of effeminate frauds.

The glaring irony of an atheist being on the shortlist of the world's greatest ecclesiastical historians is not lost on this writer. Gibbon's sophistication is evident in his easy contentment and the recompense of the philosopher's smile balanced against the multitude's fanatic veneration of those objects which promised eternal life in paradise. As is evidenced by the early chapters of volume iii, when the Saracen Prophet is extensively abused, Gibbon was an egalitarian when it came to reviling what he saw as superstitious religious practices.

As a master of felicitous locution Gibbon's description of the final siege of Constantinople is magnificent.

The religious merit of subduing the city of the Caesars attracted from
Asia a crowd of volunteers, who aspired to the crown of martyrdom;
their military ardour was inflamed by the promise of rich spoils and
beautiful females; and the sultan's ambition was consecrated by the
presence and prediction of Seid Bechar, a descendant of of the pro-
phet, who arrived in camp, on a mule, with a venerable train of five
hundred disciples.(p.682 vol. iii)

With all due respect to Samuel P. Huntington (who is not fit to sharpen Gibbon's pencils) this is an authentic clash of the civilizations!

Burling has several editions of this work: Burling 1st floor DG311 .G5 1960; Burling 1st floor AC1 .G72; Burling 1st floor DG311 .G5 1960b; and for viewing in our Special Collections DG311 .G42 1787

The Paris Review

The Paris Review was founded in Paris in 1953 by Harold Humes, Peter Matthiessen, and George Plimpton. Plimpton had editorial responsibility until his death in 2003. William Styron wrote a letter in the first issue of the review, calling on it to publish "the good writers and good poets, the non-drumbeaters and non-axe-grinders. So long as they're good.” The review also sought to emphasize the writers of fiction and poetry over the writers of criticism. Many important writers and important works appeared in print for the first time within the covers of the Paris Review. Some of the writers introduced to the reading public through the review include: Adrienne Rich, Philip Roth, V. S. Naipaul, T. Coraghessan Boyle, Mona Simpson, Edward P. Jones, and Rick Moody. The Paris Review is also famous for its interviews with writers. Many of these interviews have been anthologized separately and you can check these out from the Grinnell College Libraries. They are also available online at http://www.theparisreview.org/

For an essay on founder Doc Humes see the following article published on February 17, 2008 in the New York Times Book Review: http://tinyurl.com/49x74o


The Grinnell College Libraries have subscribed to The Paris Review since 1953

Other ways to read the Paris Review:

The Paris Review Anthology
Burling 3rd floor PN6014.P23 1990

The Paris Review: Interviews
Burling 3rd Floor PS225 .P26 2006 (2 volumes)

Writers At Work: The Paris Review Interviews
Burling 3rd Floor (3 separate volumes covering different time periods)
PN453 .W3
PN453 .W73 and
PN453 .W735

Chronicle Commentary urges wealthy colleges to buy the New York Times

Lee Smith has written the following commentary in the Chronicle of Higher Education available online on May 5 and May 9 in the print edition: POINT OF VIEW: The Wealthiest Colleges Should Acquire 'The New York Times'." In this commentary, Smith recommends that the wealthiest colleges commit 3% of their endowment toward buying and running The New York Times. Smith notes the dire circumstances of many of the remaining national newspapers and explains why it is important to continue to have journalists and newspapers--whether their primary mode of publication is online or in print.

The Grinnell College Libraries subscribe to The New York Times in print and have past issues on microfilm back to 1851. There are printed indexes in the reference area through which you can search the paper back to 1851. We also have access through Lexis-Nexis Academic and through Access World News. The college participates in the newspaper program that gives away copies of The New York Times and the Des Moines Register in stands across campus including the Spencer Grill and outside the Kistle Science Library.



temporary URL: http://chronicle.com/temp/email2.php?id=ZXnzHRysw3jcHctkhgdfqstWN5SrGNFw
permanent URL for subscribers: http://chronicle.com/weekly/v54/i35/35a03201.htm

A Different Kind of War

Hans C. von Sponeck. A Different Kind of War: The UN Sanction Regime in Iraq. New York: Berghahn Books, 2006.

Reviewed by T. Hatch

Once upon a time the IMF and the World Bank saw Iraq as an up-and-comer with an annual per capita income of $2,400. After 1991 Iraq was the first nation state to have comprehensive economic sanctions applied against it. Historical parallels to the brutally swift disintegration of Iraqi civil society are virtually non-existent. Hans von Sponeck a United Nations humanitarian coordinator concerned with the administration of the much maligned Oil-for-Food Programme witnessed what his predecessor Denis Halliday referred to as “a criminally flawed and genocidal UN Security Council policy.”

Oil-for-Food in operation from 10 December 1996 until 21 November 2003 was entirely funded by Iraqi revenues. The way it was supposed to work was that the low levels of funding permitted by the United Nations Security Council were deposited in the Banque Nationale de Paris (BNP). Those funds under the control of the UNSC were then budgeted for one of eight humanitarian sections of the program. Despite assertions to the contrary by the Clinton administration and the UK foreign ministry there was no evidence that the Iraqi government withheld humanitarian supplies from the civilian population (pp. 74-75). In fact, funding habitually lagged behind that which was already budgeted. Any data which brought into question the US/UK strategy of weakening Iraq through sanctions was dismissed as either Iraqi propaganda or characterized as being based on inadequate UN data.

As permanent members of the UNSC the US/UK could put a hold on Oil-for-Food funds designated for one of the various areas of the program. This prerogative was vigorously utilized and resulted in actions such as the US representative to the UNSC delaying the delivery of 800 ambulances until the radios were first removed. Additionally, the UN Compensation Commission awarded governments and corporations monies from the inadequately funded Oil-for-Food account at a time of immense human misery in Iraq. About thirty percent of Iraq's permitted oil revenues went to these compensations.

Following the Iraqi Liberation Act in October of 1998 (which called for regime change) President Clinton authorized Operation Desert Fox in December of that year. Desert Fox was a bombing campaign against various Iraqi targets which resulted in “enlarged rules of engagement” in the no-fly zones. Many of the targets were Iraqi oil industry facilities which further reduced that government's ability to fund Oil-for-Food. Of course the US and UK governments maintained that they did not target civilians in their bombing operations. Straight from the pages of the Orwellian play book the British Minister of Defense opined in 1999 that: “We have to continue making these air strikes in order to carry on with our humanitarian work.”

Von Sponeck's work suggests several conclusions. While Tony Blair was George W. Bush's trusty “poodle,” Bill Clinton was in fact his first love. And, the continuity between the Clinton and Bush administrations is such that it is safe to say that George W. Bush did not invent unilateralism in recent American foreign policy. By the way, an estimated 500,000 Iraqi children under the age of five died as the result of these “humanitarian efforts.”

On order for the Grinnell College Libraries

The Original Laura

Dmitri Nabokov just announced that he will not destroy his father's last novel, The Original Laura. Vladimir Nabokov, Dmitri's father, left instructions to destroy at his death the 138 index cards that make up the novel. Dmitri, Nabokov's literary executor, after letting the matter rest for thirty years, will likely publish his father's last novel. Nabokov wrote this novel on 3 x 5 index cards in pencil, and died before he could finish it. At the time that he was working on it, his publisher reported that after finishing his index cards, Nabokov planned to "deal himself a novel."

The Grinnell College Libraries have 96 entires in their catalog for Vladimir Nabokov, 28 of which are in Russian. Nabokov's most widely known novel is Lolita. Lolita has been made into movies and has been the foundation for many studies and the inspiration for fiction and nonfiction by other writers, including Azar Nafisi's Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books and Russian composer, Shchedrin's opera Lolita. Click on the following link to read a brief interview with Dmitri Nabokov published in the New York Times on May 4, 2008.

http://tinyurl.com/69bfy6


Find books by Nabokov in the Grinnell College Libraries:

http://cat.lib.grinnell.edu/search/a?SEARCH=nabokov%2C+vladimir+vladimirovich+1899&sortdropdown=-