Hey, have you heard the one about the difference between me, Wit, and my cousin, Hilarity? No? Okay, so I walk into a bar, you see, very unassuming, and order a martini. Then the bartender, Hilarity, hauls off and squirts me in the face with a seltzer bottle, ruining my nice new camel hair suit, dousing my monocle and my watch fob, soaking my cravat. So, do I let him have what for, and blow my top? I do not. I simply say:
Sorry I believe I said ‘very dry.’
— The Learners, Chip Kidd
Yesterday, I finished the aesthetic masterpiece that is The Learners by Chip Kidd. Kidd is a graphic designer turned novelist and you can tell by his book. His book is beautiful.
The Learners is nominally about the Yale Milgram Obedience experiments in the 1960s, and a lot about the main character’s, Happy’s, transformation because of them. There are many underlying themes in this book, including but not limited to torture, suicide, and typography. Kidd writes in a clever, quick style that is breezy while grave and the writing is as mentionable as the book design- there are many different typefaces, the cover is gorgeous, and there are digressions about the function of form peppered throughout the book.
I probably wouldn’t have bought this book if I had known more accurately what it was about, but it was still a good read, and the design alone made it worth reading. There’s also a lovely letter from one of the administers of the Milgram experiment, which is interesting and historically relevant for people interested in the actual Milgram experiment.
It’s been a really long time since I’ve finished two books in one day!
#INeverRead Moby Dick and I never will.
As anyone who has tried to outfit herself in an American shopping mall knows, sizing often seems utterly arbitrary. One manufacturer’s size 4 can announce itself as an invitation to a StairMaster; another as an excuse for a soufflé.
—
This quote comes from an NYT piece I just read, Plus-Size Wars, which I thought was well-written, insightful, and honest. I think These kinds of problems with fit and availability of different clothes affect women of all sized and shapes. This quote is an example of the well-turned phrasing of the article.
I have to say something lucid, articulate, and expressive about the way I felt about Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart. If I achieve these things in my review, it’ll be more than Shteyngart was able to pull off in his book.
I know he was just named one of the next big names in literature, and he’s a nice guy. I’ve met him. He loves New York City, and I do too, and I feel like I am betraying him when I say I hated this book. I hated it from the moment I started reading it. The narrator is whiney, borderline pedophilic, a little stupid, and most criminally, boring. The book is from his point of view, so that should be enough to make this book viewed as a bad book. But, Sheyngart also manages to inject Lenny Abramov, the protagonist, with a withering superiority complex which grates almost immediately. He is consistently droning on about his fear of death, his love of Korean women, and his love of books. All of which he thinks make him better than the America he resides in. He’s behind the times, and by all accounts, he looks terrible and smells even worse.
I never once laughed with the author while reading this book. I wasn’t sure how anything was supposed to be pronounced or perceived. I found Eunice, the Korean love interest, a little endearing, which I’m pretty sure I wasn’t supposed to. She was young and unsure, she has an excuse. Mostly, I thought this book needed someone to take a red pen and make liberal use of it, because I don’t think the idea is bad. Even though it seemed a little Infinite Jest-ey, the idea was pretty good.
This book needed a critical eye from the beginning. Without one, Super Sad True Love Story (a misnomer if ever there was one) became derivative, lazy, and self-indulgent.
I just spent about two months reading The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins. Sure, I read books in between starting and finishing, but The God Delusion was my main squeeze for most of the summer. I starting dog-earing all the pages that really struck me, that confused me a little bit, that had beautiful quotes on them. There are a lot of dog-eared pages.
The God Delusion was a difficult read. Dawkins is not the simplest of writers, and his style is reminiscent of a really good, personable teacher. Which is great, but like any good teacher, he can be a bit long-winded and anecdotal. This makes The God Delusion a little hard to focus on, and a little slow to read. There were amazing quotes throughout the book, a lot of comparative literature work, scientific backgrounds, and experimental and psychological studies mentioned. Dawkins is nothing if not thorough. His ideas about morality and biology are completely conveyed.
The last two chapters, dealing with children and religion and conclusions that can be drawn from the work as a whole were truly mesmerizing and spellbinding. These two chapters flew by, as I folded the corners of pages and tried to make myself remember as much information as I could.
Finished a book tonight! Now I have to decide what to read next, an always difficult decision.
