This and that

I have a bunch of books knocking around, some of which I've finished and others that I thought I'd like but can't get into.

Pnin Vladimir NABOKOV
Some Die of Heartbreak Saul BELLOW

For better or worse I can't get past the first few pages of these guys. The first gives a lengthy description of a Russian professor lost on a train trip and the second, well, I haven't really figured it out.

Love in the Time of Cholera Gabriel GARCIA MARQUEZ

I loved this book and should have read it years ago. I am told that his better known Solitude volume is more difficult to get through, but Cholera put me in a kind of trance. After learning from the jacket that it was about a man who waits 50 years for his sweetheart's husband to die, I was skeptical, but changed my mind soon enough. This book luxuriates in description, and is particularly intoxicating for someone who has never visited Latin America. Essential reading, I think.

Life of Pi Yann MARTEL

Another book that I never got around to reading when it came out, and appropriate after my taste of Garciamarquesian magic realism. Like Cholera its plot centres on an interminable wait, although the protagonist is in a life raft rather than an ancient colonial capital. There is a lot of musing on religion and zoology--an unlikely but workable combination--although I didn't find myself pondering the issues raised as deeply or with as much interest as the author might have intended. I liked it most of all for being a really good story.

Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince J.K. ROWLING

I think someone already has dibs on this review, so I'll just say that I devoured it in one night and agree with many reviewers that this is the darkest Potter book yet.

World on Fire Amy CHUA

I was skeptical when I first saw this book. Everything about it--from its sensationalist title to its impossibly broad geographical and theoretical scope--made me expect something in the line of Huntington's Clash of Civilizations, subject of much bashing in undergraduate discussion sections the world over. The subtitle reads "How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability." For Chua, economic liberalization concentrates wealth in the hands of a select few. This isn't novel, but Chua makes the less popular point that these few tend to hail from ethnic minorities. When democratization occurs alongside economic liberalization--a peculiar combination that is unique to our post-Cold War times-- it empowers the poorer ethnic majority. When a hated minority controls the economy and the majority dominates the political institutions, ethnic conflict can break out.

Chua's presentation is fairly sound, in large part due to her modesty. The book's approach is not social scientific in the sense of explaining why her forces interact as they do, and addressing variations in the intensity of ethnic conflict and the inequality of economic development. Chua is content to identify the problem and let others flesh out the fuller causal picture. For this reason her theory evades criticism as overly parsimonious--or, as the theoretical purist's favourite euphemism has it, "elegant"--to capture the universe of complex factors at work here.

Then again, Chua's is just one perspective on two multifaceted forces. There are arguments for each of the following hypotheses:

• economic liberalization leads to political liberalization;
• economic liberalization retards political liberalization;
• political liberalization leads to economic liberalization;
• political liberalization retards economic liberalization;
  

all of which are probably true to different extents. No one has a decent idea of the net result we get after all these pull in their directions. Chua writes of what happens when both are introduced at the same time, but is less concerned with the more interesting question of how the two affect each other. Perhaps this kind of account would tell us more about the variations in the severity of her vision.

Powerbook APPLE COMPUTER

This is my favourite book of all. Forgive the gratuitous Mac shot at the beginning of this post -- I am a longtime Mac lover who has only recently taken the buying plunge and I've got many years of cooped-up Machead nerdiness to release.

The Collapse of Globalism

The last time I attempted to read John Raulston Saul was when I picked up Voltaire’s Bastards two or three years ago. His ten kilo deconstruction of the global technocracy was rich with insights and observations related to the power of national and global bureaucracies – and the people who loved them – but I gave up my quest to finish the tome when I was barely halfway through. Like Dickens, it seemed as though Saul was being paid by the word.

Fortunately, however, his latest book, The Collapse of Globalism and the Reinvention of the World was far more concise, and his fresh take on the bi-products of globalization never went the way of last week’s meatloaf. Surprisingly unbiased by his ties to the global elite whose unwavering belief in the capacity of unchecked liberalization to raise the collective bar of the global poor is a constant source of criticism in Collapse, Saul slowly but powerfully succeeds in forcing the reader to question the ideology-cum-religion that’s dominated the global political and economic market place over the past two decades. More importantly, though, is that he succeeds in doing so in language that almost anyone can understand – something he failed to do with Voltaire’s Bastards.

What I found the most striking throughout the book was how easy it was for him to reframe the political and economic history of the past twenty years. Using the same statistics as those who promote unfettered globalization – those living in a constant state of “suspended disbelief” - he argues persuasively how nationalism and the nation-state itself are making a comeback across the globe rather than fading away. Similarly, he underlines just as easily how the growth in global trade and productivity (measured by the classical correlation between GDP and ‘standard of living’) remains largely contained within the bank accounts of the vertically integrated multinationals responsible for all that trade:

"I asked earlier whether the new phenomenon of trade between subsidiaries of the same multinational should be counted as trade at all. This movement of elements probably accounts for the majority of international trade. For the purposes of local regulations, these inner-company movements are usually accounted for as if goods were being sold and bought, as if it were a matter of classical trade. In reality, actual profits are rarely made at each stage of movement. If anything, losses are intended in order to use international movements to avoid taxes.

If the whole process is internal, it resembles not so much market trade as the earliest mercantilist model or that of the nineteenth-century empires.”

From there he goes on to explore the political implications of the resurgence of nationalism – including the increasing prominence of irregular warfare, the growing influence of China and India despite their disconnection from the wave of globalization and implications for the future. These are all relatively prominent phenomenon in our newspapers and television screens, but Saul is one of the first to point out their common foundation.

In the end he makes an appeal for us to use our “most complicated sense of belonging both to feel at home and to find multiple ways to be at home with the widest variety of people and situations.” It’s not a surprising statement to hear from the husband of our Governor General, someone who prides herself on doing more of that than almost anyone else, but an important one nonetheless if embraced by those who remain entranced by the alleged divinity of the gods of globalization.

Mini-Reviews

The Feminine Mystique (Betty Friedan, 1963) - The seminal work that kickstarted the feminist movement of the 60s, it lives up to its hype and more. I thought it was about time that, as an avowed feminist (see November 2002 declaration on this very blog), I do some heavy reading of the important and controversial feminist literature. FM was my starting point and while it may seem outdated now, it is truly incredible to see the direct consequences of Friedan's observations 40 years later. She tears away the idyllic Stepford Wives image of American femininity bit by bit, backed up every step of the way by solid reporting and research and a grasp of the intellectual and cultural movements that came before. I think it should be a must-read in university social science courses.

The Bonfire of the Vanities (Tom Wolfe, 1987) - Rarely have I been entertained by a "literary" (read: non-trashy) novel from start to finish the way I was with this book. Above everything else - its satiric tone and social commentary on New York City society in the late 80s - it is a damn good story. The characters and situations are funny and true-to-life. I'm glad I read it after living in the city, because every few pages I'd find myself recognizing a familiar character-type or institution that is uniquely New York. One of the best novels I have ever read.

The Trouble With Islam (Irshad Manji, 2004) - I picked this up because I'd read commentary on it - mostly talking about how controversial it is. Also because every Muslim I ever heard mention it brought up its faults. The writing style is that of an open letter to her fellow Muslims and its informality and brash tone were jarring for me. But apart from style quibbles, this book alternately riled me up (especially when talking about women's issues) and had me shaking my head in despair. I can see how some say Manji has taken the call for reform too far too fast, but I admire her for saying some very harsh truths and not holding back.

The Sun Also Rises (Ernest Hemingway, 1926) - I actually read this much earlier this year while still in New York, and it was my first foray into Hemingway. After this book, I'm hooked. It chronicles the life of an American expat journalist and his friends in Paris and is beautifully written. This is the type of book that, had I read even a few years ago, I would have found unbearably depressing, because of its grim portrait of the "Lost Generation" aimlessly drinking away their lives. Instead, what shone through for me was the poetry and simplicity of the language, and the harsh romance of it all. One of my all-time favourites.