Embracing Your Inner (and Outer) Atheist

Don’t be an Innie. Be an Outie. Speak out.

That’s my resolution for the new year, now further empowered by Susan Jacoby’s excellent piece in today’s New York Times.

Choosing a College

I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, choosing a college is a really big deal. The choice has so many consequences. On the other hand, it doesn’t matter at all: Most people will be happy at whatever college they choose and, if they try, they’ll get a perfectly fine education wherever they go.

But here is a great primer on the subject by Frank Bruni of the New York Times. Prospective college students should take his advice to heart, especially his closing: “College can shrink your universe, or college can expand it. I recommend the latter.” He’s right: choose a college that will expand your universe. Whatever else it’s all about, that’s the most important thing.

No, Don’t Go to Grad School for a PhD

At least not in the humanities. You might as well sit in a warm bath and slit your wrists.

Well, that’s not exactly what Ron Rosenbaum says in this terrific article on Slate, but the prospects for a happy life are about the same, either way.

Bill Kristol Should Be Ashamed of Himself

Oh, yes. You already knew that, you say. The evidence for that is abundant, you say. Quite true. But are you aware of his latest foray into McCarthy-land? His latest round of smearing people with a label of anti-Semitism?  See here. The man should be ashamed of himself. He has no honor, no decency.

George: The Better Romney

Here's a great piece from The Atlantic's website about George Romney, Mitt's father, who was a bold, thoughtful leader — someone who didn't cower from the truth, didn't pander to his audiences.

In the 1950s and 1960s, at the very height of American automobile dominance, and at a moment when his American Motors Corporation teetered on the edge of insolvency, Romney was calling out the Big Three automakers for a lack of engineering innovation — "most present-day automobiles are the lineal descendents of the ox-cart," he said — and for pandering to consumers' egos.

"Cars 19 feet long, weighing two tons, are used to run a 118-pound housewife three blocks to the drug store for a two-ounce package of bobby pins and lipstick," Romney told the Motor City Traffic Club of Detroit in a 1955 speech titled, "The Dinosaur In the Driveway."

Too bad Mitt isn't half the man his father was. 

 

On the 8th Day

    Source here.

 

Remind Me of This If I Ever Start to Spout “Poor Me” Nonsense

I came across this wonderful piece on Gawker, ripping into an insensitive Toronto douche who whined about how his annual income, which places him in Canada's top 1 percent, isn't really all that much when one considers his expenses.  Sheesh.

 

I think of this "poor me" myopia every morning on my way to work.  I drive by a house at the intersection of Stuart, Waverly, and Ward streets in Newton, MA.  On their front lawn, the owners have a sign that boldly states, "We are the 99 Percent!"  What a laughable concept.  The city assessor's database lists the value of this house at $891,000.  I looked up its owners. Both are comfortable professors at Boston College.  She is a self-promoter whose personal website makes it clear that she is not, in any sense perhaps other than spirit, remotely close to falling out of the top 1 percent.  Surely this sort of hypocrisy (lack of self-knowledge?) is one of the things people outside the top 1 percent dislike so profoundly about those firmly inside it — especially those who portray themselves as in solidarity with the proletariat and opposed to conspicuous consumption.  

Is Iran the Problem? No.

Sure, Iran is a menace.   But Israel is a bigger problem.  The US should step away from its support of Israel; in fact, it should have done so long ago.  US support of Israel explains about 90 percent of our problems in world affairs. F@%k Israel. If Israel attacks Iran, let them fight it out on their own.  The US shouldn't give Israel so much as another BandAid. 

(This is the latest in what will be an ongoing series of short, unreasoned rants about current affairs.  I'm tired of reasoning.  Let's get straight to the gut-level emotions.)

Cut Greece Loose?

The Greeks have created a horrific mess for themselves by astonishingly profligate social spending.  Their extravagant, improvident policies threaten to doom their own nation and the European Union of which they are part.  But there is growing sentiment within the EU for cutting Greece loose.  I say: go ahead cut 'em loose. The EU and global stock markets will take a short-term hit, but that's okay.  The Germans are correct on this one: F@%k the Greeks. 

 

 

“The Paris Wife,” by Paula McLain

I've done lots of reading in the past ten days, too much to report in any detail.  So, I'll simply comment on the best of the five novels and note the others.  The best is good literature; the others are beach reads of varying quality.

 

Paula McLain's The Paris Wife is a luminous look at the young Ernest Hemingway and his crowd of Paris compatriots in the 1920s, seen through the eyes of his first wife, Hadley Richardson.  Though a fictional rendering of that time in Hemingway's life, McLain's novel is thoroughly informed by biographies of Hemingway and by his own writings. Consequently, the reader learns a lot about the great author (the bad as well as the good) and the people with whom he surrounded himself — Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, and others.   To me, the book felt much like Nancy Horan's fine novel about Frank Lloyd Wright, Loving Frank, an intimate portrait of a great (but deeply flawed) figure on the American landscape. 

This is an excellent novel. ★★★★★

 

And here are four other novels to consider.  

The Arrivals, by Meg Mitchell Moore — A story about empty nesters whose adult children, each facing problems of different kinds, find themselves gravitating back home to their parents' home one summer in Burlington, Vermont.  The characters, dialogue, and human dramas are very real.    ★★★★☆ 

 

London is the Best City in America, by Laura Dave — A story about a young woman whose brother's impending wedding forces her to revisit her own decision three years earlier to abandon her fiance right before her planned nuptials — and to deal with her brother's ambivalence on the weekend of his wedding.  This is a really skillful novel that nicely captures the angst and paralyzing indecision that many twenty-somethings and thirty-somethings feel when facing life's big decisions.  ★★★★☆

These Things Hidden, by Heather Gudenkauf — A story about a young woman, recently released from five years in prison for a heinous crime, who tries to fit back into an unwelcoming community and to reconnect with family members who want nothing to do with her.  It's partly a suspense novel, partly a domestic novel. Though it has some flaws, it's diverting entertainment.   ★★★☆☆

 

Heat Wave, by Nancy Thayer — A story about a young woman (32) whose husband has just died of a heart problem, leaving her house-rich but cash-poor, and needing to find a way to support their two young daughters.  They live on Nantucket, so the island itself is, of course, a strong presence in the book, as are the young woman's close female friends, in-laws, and a particularly handsome and available man who was her late husband's best friend.   It's not a bad book, but Thayer is one of those authors whose characters address each other directly by name far more often than people do in real life, distracting the reader (this one, anyway) from some of the book's qualities.  All in all, if you want a good beach read that's set on Nantucket, you're better off going with any of Elin Hilderbrand's books.     ★★☆☆☆