Review: Mammoths at the Gates by Nghi Vo

This little novella is the sixth work I’ve read by Nghi Vo, making Vo the fiction author I’ve returned to most frequently over the last four or five years since her 2020 debut. What I appreciate about Vo is how each of her books explores the same theme, which I previously summarized as “the relationship between reality and the stories we tell, and how this relationship is modified by who tells the story.” I also enjoy her ability to linger in a strange world, letting its foreign logic wash over you without explaining it.

Mammoths at the Gates is the fourth instalment in her Singing Hills Cycle series, which each feature the monk Chi travelling through the land to collect stories to be stored in their monastery. Unlike in The Empress of Salt and Fortune (Book 1) and When the Tiger Came Down The Mountain (Book 2), the monk Chi is our protagonist, rather than the characters featured in the stories Chi collects. This fourth book therefore carries on in the vein of Into the Riverlands (Book 3), which was the first to bring Chi to the forefront, although story-telling remained a core aspect of the narrative. In contrast, in this novella most of the emotional moments and thematic exploration occurs within the “frame” story; story-telling makes up just brief passages mostly towards the end of the novella.

The book packs in a lot of world building, but rather than adding to the development of the themes or characters, it felt like rote exposition. We learn more about the long-memoried bird companions, the operational logistics of the monastery, and the monastery’s relationship with local politics. I wondered if this lore dumping was in response to fan questions. Myself, I preferred swimming in the more mysterious world of the previous volumes.

Without the distinctive features I enjoy about Vo’s work, the rest of the story was just fine. It’s a cozy setting: Chi returns home to their monastery after years of traveling. The plot is relatively simple and low stakes: the abbot has passed away and both the monastery and his granddaughters lay claim to his remains, a dispute that must be solved while everyone mourns his passing. The ideas explored revolve around homecoming and grief. Whether you leave or stay, the world moves on; it is never possible to go back to the same home you knew, but you can reconnect. You can grieve someone who was never in your life to begin with, like the abbot’s granddaughters, who only ever heard of him in stories. The loss of someone close to you can be transformative. This last theme underpinned the emotional climax of the novella, but having just read the heart-wrenching Ti Amo, which explored the same theme but more intensely introspectively, it felt a bit limited and plain.

Review: A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki

I almost gave up on this book after the first few pages. The main character’s voice was gratingly irritating. The themes the book promised to explore seemed like pale imitations of Italo Calvino’s If On A Winter’s Night A Traveler — that is, meditations on the acts of reading and writing and the relationships that form between reader and writer. Looking back, I had a good read on the book. It was both those things. There was a little more than that, but not much more.

One of our two main characters is a Japanese girl named Nao. Her diary pages make up about half the novel, and it was this prose that I found so irritating. The author deftly captured the odd mixture of childishness and worldliness of a lonely teenage girl. Our other main character, Ruth, is a middle aged woman living on a remote island in British Columbia, who finds Nao's diary. Her chapters act as a foil: her small everyday activities like walking to the post office are a respite from the excruciatingly severe bullying, familial trauma and sexual exploitation Nao experiences. Ruth’s interpretation of the diary is also a device that allows the author to discuss emotional insights that Nao was too immature to write about. (This is a drawback of the teenage diary device. Another approach is the one used in David Copperfield, where the protagonist recounts his childhood and youth from a close first-person perspective but with the hindsight granted by old age.)

There were many touching moments in the story. Nao’s realization that she was using the diary as an imaginary friend in her intense loneliness and search for escape, for example, was well done. Ruth's marriage with her husband was also sweet, and rare in fiction if not in life: their quiet mutual support, their familiarity (and occasional grumbling) with each other's quirks that can only be collected over many years together, their squabbles and reconciliations. I enjoyed much of Grandmother Jiko's mentorship of Nao: “surfer, wave, same thing.” (“A wave is born from deep conditions of the ocean. A person is born from deep conditions of the world. A person pokes up from the world and rolls along like a wave, until it is time to sink down again. Up, down. Person, wave.”)

But overall, I thought the book attempted to do too much, and ended up rather less than the sum of its parts. The event that determines the outcome of the climax involves Ruth time-travelling during her dreams. In a book like If On A Winter’s Night A Traveler, where surrealism and magical realism infuse every page, such a climax might serve to further develop themes of the translucency of the barrier between reader and writer. However, A Tale for the Time Being — for all the extreme sexual violence and emotional torture Nao suffers through — is otherwise realistic. The difficulty in reaching out of your shell and communicating your suffering is one of the major themes Ozeki explores through Nao and her father, and the deus ex machina of a fairy godmother dream sequence felt cheap.

Similarly, the themes of the relationship between reader and writer were overshadowed by the intensity of Nao’s life’s twists and turns. It seems the author might have found these two threads difficult to weave too. In balancing the development of Nao’s life and the frame story of Ruth reading and responding to the diary, the author had Ruth act inexplicably, like forgetting that a diary encased in a barnacle-encrusted lunchbox detailing events shortly after the dot-com bubble burst were not actively unfolding in the 2010s, or choosing to read the diary slowly so as to live at the same pace as Nao, while worrying incessantly about her welfare. Again, the various themes kept stepping on each other’s toes.

Nao’s great uncle was a pacifist Kamakazi pilot, and through learning about his experiences, Nao reflects on resolve and fortitude, finding the strength to pull through her own plight. Although these passages did contain some beautiful moments, I thought the book’s treatment of fascism was overly simplistic. All the fascists were incomprehensible bad people who were in positions of power: the prime minister, commanding officers in the army, etc. All the people portrayed with complexity were objectors to fascism: Nao’s family members, other soldiers in the fascist army. But this is never how fascism comes about: fascists are found amongst your neighbours and colleagues. Fascism’s sway is comprehensible. This element of the book is underdeveloped, perhaps because the book is already trying to accomplish too much and stumbling over itself. Nao’s uncle briefly describes (secondhand) the Nanjing Massacre, but the brutality of the Japanese treatment of China is not really tied to the brutality of Nao’s classmates towards her. It was a missed opportunity to explore the violent ideology and othering of fascism that continues on in our cultures. Perhaps fittingly, Heidegger's philosophy is also presented abstracted away from his Nazi past, a harmless well of wisdom about “authentic temporality, historicality, and Being-in-the-World” stripped of its fascistic implications.

Nao’s uncle commits suicide, intentionally landing his plane harmlessly in the sea. This is a heroic act, but it is also one that exonerates the individual without changing the battle lines between fascism and anti-fascism. Similarly, Nao’s father heroically sacrifices his career in objection to the military application of his inventions, but the relationship between Silicon Valley and the American military industrial complex blazes ahead unstopped. These acts of individual purity and detachment from the real world are consistent with the Buddhist philosophy explored through Nao’s grandmother. Life is about a search for personal enlightenment and lightness in one's soul, not a struggle against the fascistic violence that continues to cause suffering in our society.

Review: Meditations by Marcus Aurelius

How should you read Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations? One option is to peer into it for hints of how it has shaped thinking in the 1900 years since its writing — this collection of disconnected aphorisms is one of the most famous texts of the Roman Empire. In this reading, you might reflect on the author’s views on cosmic order and nature and on the cyclical flow of time, and how philosophers as diverse as Isaac Newton and Friedrich Nietzsche might have approached his writing on these themes. Or perhaps you might do more of a feminist critique: how has Marcus Aurelius’s stoicism shaped what it means to be a man? To be unbothered by other people’s opinions of you, to prize rationality, to be principled and purposeful and not caught up in frivolities — these commandments continue to shape social expectations of masculinity. I like this reading, and if you’re interested in the development of human thought it’s a worthwhile reason to read this book.

Another reading would take Marcus Aurelius’s writing as normative life advice. This is a reading I don’t care for. Marcus Aurelius’s philosophy teeters on nihilistic individuality, and therefore reinforces the status quo: time is cyclic and your life is short so you shouldn’t strive to change society; forget about what other people think, follow your own nature. It is also only a partial picture of morality: he has relatively little to say about community, about our social obligation to each other, or about resolving conflicting perspectives (we could call these feminine virtues). That said, it is a philosophy more compassionate about accepting the shortcomings of others than some individualistic worldviews (“If a man is mistaken, instruct him kindly and show him his error. But if thou art not able, blame thyself, or blame not even thyself.” (Book X)). But to approach this work as a source of guidance is to invite cherry-picking of poignant quotes: it is not a systematic, rigorously developed worldview, but a scattering of sometimes contradictory thoughts.

A third reading — and this is where my mind kept going as I read the work — is to read it metatextually: why did Marcus Aurelius write these particular thoughts down? The work was never meant to be published: he wrote it for himself. What personal struggles was he grappling with as he penned these meditations? Death, surely, was one: he emphasizes over and over the fleetingness of life. Other anxieties appear to trouble him too; when he writes lines like

What is such a person doing, and why, and what is he saying, and what is he thinking of, and what is he contriving, and whatever else of the kind makes us wander away from the observation of our own ruling power. (Book III)

does he speak from a self-chastising position, as someone still trying to care less about what some other person is thinking of? Is he thinking of a particular example, but cloaking it as a general conclusion? (If so, Marcus, you would have loved the invention of the subtweet.)

I like this metatextual reading best for a few reasons. First, it explains his contradictory and repetitive writing: he is trying an idea on for size to see how it fits, or working through a difficult idea. While many of his aphorisms are expressed as confident exhortations, others are tentative explorations of a thought:

If our intellectual part is common, the reason also, in respect of which we are rational beings, is common: if this is so, common also is the reason which commands us what to do, and what not to do; if this is so, there is a common law also; if this is so, we are fellow-citizens; if this is so, we are members of some political community; if this is so, the world is in a manner a state. (Book IV)

I think we should read these statements — the confident and the tentative — as more in continuity than a superficial reading might suggest (“To read carefully, and not to be satisfied with a superficial understanding of a book.” (Book I)). These meditations are not battle-tested wisdoms the author hopes to disseminate broadly, but pep talks he gives to himself (“Begin the morning by saying to thyself, I shall meet with the busybody, the ungrateful, arrogant, deceitful, envious, unsocial. All these things happen to them by reason of their ignorance of what is good and evil." (Book II)), or records of his deliberations for himself.

Second, this reading explains the incompleteness of the morality presented here. Marcus Aurelius was a philosopher-king, his views on man-as-citizen or man-as-shaper-of-society he would have debated extensively and applied as part of his imperial duties. The views scribbled here, just for him, naturally cover what remains: how to handle day-to-day emotional challenges in the right way.

Finally, there is a comfort in recognizing that even the literal Emperor of Rome struggled with navigating the complex waters of his internal life.
 

A few favourite lines not woven into the above:

• “We ought to observe also that even the things which follow after the things which are produced according to nature contain something pleasing and attractive. For instance, when bread is baked some parts are split at the surface, and these parts which thus open, and have a certain fashion contrary to the purpose of the baker’s art, are beautiful in a manner, and in a peculiar way excite a desire for eating. And again, figs, when they are quite ripe, gape open; and in the ripe olives the very circumstance of their being near to rottenness adds a peculiar beauty to the fruit.” (Book III)
• “Men quarrel with that with which they are most constantly in communion.” (Book IV)
• “First, do nothing inconsiderately, nor without a purpose. Second, make thy acts refer to nothing else than to a social end.” (Book XII)
• “How close is the kinship between a man and the whole human race, for it is a community, not of a little blood or seed, but of intelligence.” (Book XII)
• “If our intellectual part is common, the reason also, in respect of which we are rational beings, is common: if this is so, common also is the reason which commands us what to do, and what not to do; if this is so, there is a common law also; if this is so, we are fellow-citizens; if this is so, we are members of some political community; if this is so, the world is in a manner a state.” (Book IV)
• “By remembering, then, that I am a part of such a whole, I shall be content with everything that happens. And inasmuch as I am in a manner intimately related to the parts which are of the same kind with myself, I shall do nothing unsocial, but I shall rather direct myself to the things which are of the same kind with myself, and I shall turn an my efforts to the common interest, and divert them from the contrary. Now, if these things are done so, life must flow on happily, just as thou mayest observe that the life of a citizen is happy, who continues a course of action which is advantageous to his fellow-citizens, and is content with whatever the state may assign to him.” (Book X)
• “Observe constantly that all things take place by change, and accustom thyself to consider that the nature of the Universe loves nothing so much as to change the things which are and to make new things like them. For everything that exists is in a manner the seed of that which will be. But thou art thinking only of seeds which are cast into the earth or into a womb: but this is a very vulgar notion.” (Book IV)

Review: Canada's Long Fight Against Democracy by Yves Engler and Owen Schalk

Washington’s role in destabilizing and otherwise interfering in democratic governments in the imperial periphery has been well-documented (see, for example, Manufacturing Consent, Washington Bullets, or The Jakarta Method). Canada has curated an image as a friendlier, more peaceful version of its southern neighbour, while aiding the US in its regime-change efforts (or sometimes playing a leadership role in such efforts, as in the anti-Venezuelan Lima Group). Canada’s role in geopolitics is under-explored, and Canadians should be more informed of the real foreign policy of their state. Engler and Schalk aim to address this need, but I found the book disappointing.

One of the most important tasks for a work of this sort is to draw out the tactics and repeated themes underlying western interference in global south politics. In Manufacturing Consent, the authors present their propaganda model, then show its application through several examples of American interventions. In Washington Bullets, Prashad presents a manual for regime change, and explores how intervention has shifted from one of “boots on the ground” and assassinations to economic warfare and lawfare, again providing a slew of examples from American interventions. Excepting three paragraphs or so in the brief conclusion to his work, the authors provide no such structural analysis to the events they recount. 

Another angle for a work of this sort is to educate the reader on a small handful of examples with enough context that the reader really understands the conflict. Vincent Bevins takes this approach in The Jakarta Method, using a combination of archival research and witness interviews to show the reader how Washington pushed for regime change in Indonesia in the 1960s, and then applied this same method to later interventions. In contrast, Canada’s Long Fight Against Democracy covers 22 conflicts in 210 pages, providing just a cursory summary of each event.

The result is essentially a listicle in book form. The authors seem to hope to convince via a fire-hose of facts rather than providing their readers with the structure and context needed to remember or recognize Canadian regime change operations. And even this approach could serve a useful function in being a repository of resources for deeper research, however the small handful of references I investigated out of curiosity were of low quality. (Clicking through the footnotes did introduce me to Canada in the World by Tyler A. Shipley, which seems to be a more promising read.)

The real prize for a Canadian writer would be to put forward something like the “manual for regime change” or the “propaganda model” but for Canada. Is there a difference at all between Ottawa’s approach and Washington’s approach? How does Canada distribute its aid dollars and diplomatic resources differently? Does its media apparatus — just as concentrated in the hands of billionaires as the US, but also with a prominent public broadcaster — manufacture consent any differently? Canada’s focus appears to be drawn towards the locations of its mining operations, but protecting its corporations alone cannot explain its involvement in countries like Ukraine; is its goal in geopolitics the same as the US’s, or are there slight differences? Canada is far less likely to deploy troops abroad: is military capability and expense the sole explanation or is there more to it? The answers to these questions are not in this book.

Review: The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

The various currents of American identity jump out of this novel’s pages, and then sing you to sleep with flowery, melodramatic Victorian prose.

The first of these currents is puritanism, sharply criticized by the narrative for its hypocrisy and unneighbourliness. That this streak remains within American culture despite the novel’s consistent place in school reading lists suggests the critique doesn’t quite land. Do readers laugh at the townsfolk who snub the lovechild of an adultress until she becomes a rich heiress (I certainly did), but not see themselves in these small-minded, selfish folk (I certainly didn’t)? 

Another current is the pride and tenacity in standing up for one’s beliefs, no matter the social opposition — even if it demands braving the Atlantic to reinvent oneself. This theme, too, the author weaves into his work with intention. Adulteress Hester Prynne’s quiet rebellion in transforming the scarlet letter she is forced to wear into something beautiful, her refusal to cover the letter in shame… these passages are touchingly written, heroic.

Combining these two currents together, there is a deep mistrust in the state — which is, after all, composed of people, who tend towards being cruel puritans. Highlighted secular institutions are the prison and the cemetery. Elections are pompous, revered, capricious rituals. Social interventions callously and sanctimoniously try to part mother and child. Through personification in Hester, the virtues elevated by the narrative are individual charity and truthfulness to oneself.

Some currents perhaps less intentionally flow from the author’s pen. The noble savagery of the indigenous neighbours is an artifact of the author's era. There is a heavy christian morality that coats every character’s emotions — particularly that of guilt. It weighs so leadenly on the characters that I find the novel almost not worth reading for its lack of insight into human psychology, the focus of the novel.

Review: Rewriting the Rules of the American Economy by Joseph Stiglitz

This book works as a corrective for people who think that government policy has little impact on wealth equality, but who also care about wealth inequality as morally bad. I'm not sure exactly what audience that is. Some elected democrats, I suppose, and some of their more dedicated but privileged voters. And that is, of course, who this book is addressed to. (Stiglitz wrote this report in 2016, presumably imagining a Clinton administration. In 2024, his discussion of recession recovery, inflation rates, etc, seems already somewhat dated.)

There are many entirely reasonable policies presented here. Capital gains rates should indeed be taxed at a higher rate. Worker bargaining needs to be strengthened. Patent laws are stifling innovation and hurting the general public, who cannot afford life-saving medications, or who have to pay exorbitant costs for it due to laws that block the public sector bargaining for a discount. Addressing these issues would indeed lead to a better economy for the majority of Americans. Though (perhaps because of this work and works like it) there is nothing particularly novel about these recommendations nor the way in which they are advocated.

There is very little role for the State to play in Stiglitz's path forward, other than simply tweaking the rules here or there. I, for example, would argue that if a business is too big to fail, it should be a state owned enterprise, while Stiglitz thinks such banks merely need to have better wills, and maybe be held to a higher level of scrutiny. I also think there should be a public retirement savings plan and many other such public programs, subsidized and well-governed, while Stiglitz believes the main responsibility of a public program is to encourage better market competition and that they should not be subsidized or otherwise given "unfair" advantages.

The analysis is overall flawed for three reasons, one economic, one political, and one philosophical. First, Stiglitz believes that "The American economy is not out of balance because of the natural laws of economics. Today's inequality is not the result of the inevitable evolution of capitalism." This is stated without further justification, as an axiom on which the rest of the book rests. Capitalism necessitates inequality, and sharpens inequality. If everyone has equal wealth and opportunity, there would be no workers for capitalists to hire, or no capitalists for workers to sell their labour to. Because owning capital means you can make money by having money, and without working, inequality naturally rises. Stiglitz takes aim primarily at the financial sector for not doing its job of providing liquidity for investing in production. This is, of course, not the job of the financial sector. The financial sector, like the manufacturing sector and every other private sector, has as its task the goal of accumulating capital. That is what it means to live under capitalism. The finance sector has done a fantastic job of accumulating capital. Stiglitz's proposals, such as implementing a tax on all financial trades, are no more than a game of whack-a-mole of trying to curb the less useful innovations in accumulation of capital.

Second, Stiglitz appears to be uninterested in how policy changes. There is, of course, a hand-waving towards how the government is primarily composed of the wealth, and how the private sector has captured the bodies that regulate them. These issues are to be solved with, for example, easier voter registration and holidays on election days (which are, I agree, policies worth fighting for!). But why would people with political power fight to disprivilege themselves? There is little evidence presented that they would, and Stiglitz seems convinced that simply reasoning with his audience and presenting them a few statistics would be enough for them to willingly sign over a few extra million dollars of their own wealth each year.

Finally, Stiglitz's analysis is ahistorical. In his telling, past efforts were all simply misguided policy decisions. "We now know" that "[supply-side economics] is incorrect and outdated", that "developed economies can rise without lifting all boats," that by "giving into such threats" that businesses would move elsewhere if we did not deregulate we "lost doubly" by hurting the economy and worsening income inequality, and that "the arguments put forward by advocates for capital tax breaks--that they spur investment--is wrong." But these were known before. Each of these policy changes were sharply criticized and opposed at the time. These critics have been proven correct, to little fanfare or reward. But Stiglitz seems uninterested in pursuing why we made these erroneous policy changes. And without asking that question (is it because of who had political power? is it due to fundamental assumptions about economics that must be revised, such as whether capitalism inherently breeds inequality?) how do we know we are not making incorrect policy decisions once more?

Review: Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin

At its best, this book sparkles with those moments that are so recognizable but so hard to express: the suffusion of love you feel on accomplishing a goal with a person you love, the despair of failed creative work and brushing off a bruised ego, the self-consciousness of being 22 and feeling like you should know more than you do, the awkward tearfulness of knowing a long-term relationship of your twenties has run its course. These vignettes are marked by the vulnerable honesty Zevin allows her characters to express.

However, these moments come a little too few and far between. Rather than lingering in these emotionally intense everyday events, Zevin relies too much on rare and traumatic life events or inexplicable lack of communication to add drama to the novel and redirect her characters' lives. Seemingly for no reason other than to ensure Sadie and Sam are at odds while creating their game, Both Sides, Zevin has Sadie create an entire fiction in her mind about how Machiavellian Sam is and then rather than having a conversation with her supposed best friend about it, the relationship simply deteriorates for over a year. Sadie keeping her relationship with Marx a secret from Sam feels similarly unnecessary. With so much secrecy and resentment between the characters, I began to doubt the veracity of their friendship. Perhaps it was merely mutual respect for each other's brilliance, shoe-horned into a friendship because society does not have a better model for this sort of relationship, but I do not think that was the story Zevin aimed to tell.

It isn’t just the characters that lack honesty with each other: Zevin withholds information from the reader for no real purpose but for heightened melodrama. We learn two thirds of the way through the novel that apparently the two characters had each been grappling with romantic interest in each other the entire time. Why not weave this tension into the story, allowing the reader to incorporate this information into their understanding of the characters? The same holds true of Sadie's secret abortion, something we only much later learn inspired her design for her first published game, Ichigo. Perhaps the intention is that we, the reader, only discover this information at the time that the friends discover this information about each other. But the result is that we feel like we don’t really know either of the characters.

Part of this unfamiliarity is the narrative perspective; we switch from person to person, from past to present to future, without much change in narrative voice (I felt a renewed appreciation of David Copperfield’s adult reflections on stories told through the eyes of his child self). Even side characters like a hospital nurse, become point of view characters. But I never really felt “in” someone’s head; there was a lot of “Sadie felt” or “Sadie worried” type of story-telling.

It’s a very millennial book. There’s nostalgia for the 90s and 00s — those pre-internet days where you could create without being self-conscious of the critics online and struggle in puzzles without being able to look up solutions, when low graphics expectations enabled three kids to pull together a game over the course of 8 months. But at the same time, it was very conscious of the discourse of the 2010s and 2020s, although without adding much new (with the exception of Sam’s defense of charges of cultural appropriation). It makes sense, the author is a millennial, its highest accolades have come from millennials.

I discovered the author’s husband is in the indie film industry, and this made a lot of the videogame aspect of the book click for me. Where my gaming experience comes from highly competitive or mechanics/puzzle-driven games, the videogames of the novel seem to be completely void of mechanics, with discussion focusing on themes and artistic choices and plot — much like auteur film creation. It was in the discussion of the design process, in the characters’ reactions to critics, in the complex relationship between the characters and the works they create, that I thought the author brought the most new insight to the table, likely because she herself is so immersed in this world.

Perhaps because the landscape of a relationship that spans romance, collegiality, and friendship has so much potential, I found the creation and resolution of the love triangle to be rather facile and cliche. One of the guys dies, but don’t worry, his DNA lives on. My “script doctor” of the book would be to streamline the plot (the mass shooting and the witnessed suicide seemed overly dramatic, and the author had little new to add to these conversations), rewrite the character arcs that rely on people not being honest with each other, and have the three characters recognize that love for each other can be multi-faceted and complex and doesn’t need to fit into a box (just like Ichigo's identity).

Review: A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers

Let’s start with the world for this story. It deserves some space in this review: the author devotes a considerable amount of this 160-page novella into exploring the repercussions of the premise she sets up. It’s also novel and intriguing: it is some unspecified time in the future, humans have headed off climate devastation and other environmental concerns, and entered a post-scarcity world. A few hundred years ago, robots gained sentience, and chose to separate from human society, vanishing into the wilderness of the Earth.

How did humans manage to steer the violent, brainless beast of capitalism away from total climate destruction? Unclear. How did humans achieve a new society where all human needs were met? Unclear. How did humanity react to the rebellion of the labourers they had been exploiting? Apparently peacefully, magnanimously, without a shred of the brutality and exceptionalism of our colonialist (and capitalist) past.

These are pressing questions—our challenges are to save our environment and overthrow our still-imperial power structures—and the book dwells on none of them. The world is fleshed out with paragraphs of detail about buildings made from mushrooms, and cell phones that last a lifetime, solar power and bicycle-based transportation. It’s a cozy, non-threatening world unconcerned with how it came to be, a fantasy of how lovely things will be once we finally have the ugly parts solved.

Of course, all stories must have a conflict; this novella revolves around the main character’s search for a purpose in life. Dex switches careers from garden monk to tea monk — a sort of therapist — but finds this too doesn’t quite fulfill them. Their desire to be surrounded by the cricket sounds of the countryside rather than the bustle of urban life goes unquenched: crickets went nearly extinct during the mysteriously averted climate crisis. In a search for life’s meaning, they spontaneously decide to travel through the wilderness, reserved for only robots. They meet a robot, Mosscap, who has struck up a hobbyist’s curiosity in humans. The two journey together, discussing their two societies, and, eventually, Dex’s search for purpose in life: 

You’re an animal, Sibling Dex. You are not separate or other. You’re an animal. And animals have no purpose. Nothing has a purpose. The world simply is. If you want to do things that are meaningful to others, fine! Good! … You keep asking why your work is not enough, and I don’t know how to answer that, because it is enough to exist in the world and marvel at it. You don’t need to justify that, or earn it. You are allowed to just live. 

But just living isn’t enough for Dex. The world is post-scarcity, it is no longer a question of survival but about thriving, and they see their mortality approaching in the distance:

All I have is right now, and at some point, I’ll just end, and I can’t predict when that will be, and—and if I don’t use this time for something, if I don’t make the absolute most of it, then I’ll have wasted something precious.

I found myself wondering why such a detailed, fantastical world was created to explore the rather introspective and everyday question of one’s purpose in life. Is it to contrast mortality with immortality in terms of meaning in life (a theme in Circe)? No, the robots who first gained consciousness chose to be mortal, we learn, and so when their time comes, their parts are reassembled into new robots, the “wild-built”. The link between the world and the central conflict is finally revealed when Mosscap argues:

But when we woke up and said, We have realized our purpose, and we do not want it, you respected that. More than respected. You rebuilt everything to accommodate our absence. You were proud of us for transcending our purpose, and proud of yourselves for honoring our individuality. So, why, then, do you insist on having a purpose for yourself, one which you are desperate to find and miserable without

But it’s an unpersuasive argument, it comes unearned: we have no idea how humanity accommodated the robots’ demand for self-determination. Human history has zero examples of oppressed peoples being handed their autonomy because they peacefully demanded it. So our answer to this search for purpose, the unifying element between world and conflict, is this event we are supposed to be proud of that we never see in the pages.

Perhaps a longer fantasy epic, dealing with these world-shaking events and later linking them to Dex’s own individual search for meaning, would address this issue. But I think the flaw in the novella goes deeper. For all the pages are filled with cozy passages about cooking dinner and growing plants and watching stars, Dex’s world is very empty. They have no family that relies on them, no lovers, no friends (excepting Mosscap). They do not even seem to have a sense of duty and responsibility to the clients that come to Dex with their heavy hearts. The world is nearly perfect, extinct crickets aside, and so there is nothing Dex is building towards or trying to fix. (Maybe Dex should find meaning in reviving extinct crickets?)

Finding purpose in your life is not trivial, but it is these pursuits — loved ones, science, social welfare — that help me answer this question. Dex does not find an answer — it is enough just to exist, but it is rational to want more, and good to define your own purpose. And here the theme truly ties in with the setting: a sleepy, cozy village, filled with petty bourgeois farmers market stands, and a Proudhonist yearning for bucolic individualism. The resulting story is soporific. The hard problems will be solved (by who? how?), and what remains is just what you want and define for yourself.

Tl;dr: 30-something with professional ennui discovers the joys of hiking.

Review: A Political Economy of Contemporary Capitalism and its Crisis by Sotiropoulos, Milios, and Lapatsioras

One incorrect view of the world is that capitalism was going swimmingly until finance came in and distorted everything. As the authors trace in this book, financialization was present centuries ago (there is an amusing story about 18th century Genevan bankers speculating by identifying young women of good life expectancies and purchasing lifetime annuities for them from the French state). More importantly, the different classes of capitalists cannot be so neatly separated from each other: debt and futures and other financial tools are crucial for the smooth functioning of a firm, and industrial capitalists invest their gains in financial instruments as part of a balanced portfolio. In place of this notion, the authors present a better way of understanding the role of finance in neoliberal capitalism: one of risk commodification and the leveraging of risk to organize capitalists and states to the benefit of capitalists.

The book is a challenging read: the intended audience is unclear, the argument is poorly organized, and its main points are often stated more than proven or fiercely defended. It spends an inordinate amount of time explaining the genealogy of “finance as parasite” ideas, coyly pointing out how each is wrong without fully laying out their argument. When it finally comes time to put forth the thesis of the book (by Chapter 7-8!), it lands with more of a whimper than a bang. Still, I thought it highlighted some useful ideas (many taken from Marx and other writers), which I will attempt to summarize below.

• Finance is inherent to capitalism, and is necessary for the efficiency we see today. It turns every last bit of savings (personal, state, or other source) into profit-generating capital, and more rapidly punishes failing capitalist enterprises and rewards successful capitalist enterprises. 
• Finance is fetishistic: capital is the reification of social relationships, and commands the behavior of everyone in the economy.
• Finance is rational: individual actors make rational decisions based on incomplete information. Finance plays a role in gathering information (on company fundamentals, etc), but also in creating information (demand, response to demand, etc). The value of financial instruments is not based on the whims or delusions or “animal spirit” of the market, but on a consensus (and ideologically-rooted) understanding of risk and future returns.
• Finance commodifies risk: via derivatives, without which financialization would be “incomplete”, separate components of risk are split apart and rebundled and traded. 
• Risk, rather than being understood as a quantification of the probable range of expected returns, should be understood as playing a normative role: firms (or states) that deviate from the behavior seen as correct under capitalist (or neoliberal) ideology will be priced as risky. This in turn makes it more difficult for these firms (states) to raise the funds needed. As a result, states and firms are disciplined into behaving according to neoliberal norms (austerity, union-busting, etc). Society is thus efficiently organized into a structure that most effectively exploits labour to accumulate capital.

Or, summarizing it in the authors’ own words:

The big secret of finance is that the valuation process does not have to do only with some competitive determination of the security price, but primarily plays an active part in the reproduction of capitalist power relations.

Review: When China Rules the World by Martin Jacques

The Western punditry can’t make much sense of China. It has elections, but they don’t look anything like the Presidential horse race the US hosts every four years. It has capitalists and markets, but these too don’t look like the western equivalents: there are state owned entities and communist party cells and capital flow restrictions everywhere. It has adopted industrialization, international trade and the internet, but these institutions of modernity did not bring with them the value system that the West recognizes as modernity. What gives? This book is a corrective to the prevailing level of discourse. 

The strengths of Jacques’ book is its recognition that “modernity” (values, and the political structures that reflect them) can take multiple forms, and that a non-Western version of modernity becoming the (economically, demographically) dominant form is not necessarily a travesty. The first few chapters of the book stand out in particular: Jacques examines the history of China and Japan, with the latter providing a comparison point of an industrialized country that has tried to align itself more closely with “Western” conceptions of modernity despite lacking European roots. Jacques emphasizes the influence of Confucianism on popular understandings of the relationship between the State and the governed, and the continuity in philosophy between pre-1949 China through to the present day — another strength of the book. 

However, Jacques ignores the impact of Marxism-Leninism in shaping not just Mao-era China but also present-day China. Marxist figures and quotes are frequent reference points in public speeches. But perhaps more indicative of the influence of Marxism-Leninism is programs like the extreme poverty eradication program, in which communist party members act as guides to local political efforts:

The targeted phase of poverty alleviation required building relationships and trust between the Party and the people in the countryside as well as strengthening Party organisation at the grassroots level. Party secretaries are assigned to oversee the task of poverty alleviation across five levels of government, from the province, city, county, and township, down to the village. Most notably, three million carefully selected cadres were dispatched to poor villages, forming 255,000 teams that reside there. Living in humble conditions for generally one to three years at a time, the teams worked alongside poor peasants, local officials, and volunteers until each household was lifted out of poverty.

This is a method of poverty alleviation alien to neoliberalism, similarly strange to welfare states and not particularly Confucian, and yet remarkably effective: in 2021, China announced it had eliminated extreme poverty. Because Jacques’ picture of the guiding principles of 21st century China is essentially neo-Confucianism, I think his model for China’s growth and future decision-making as world power is incomplete.

In place of really understanding the philosophical traditions guiding the countries—both those of the West and those of China—Jacques turns to psychologizing the countries. Even economic factors, like level of development, fade to the background. The root of trade disagreements is found in hundreds of millions of people acting in unison out of shame or pride based on their sense of national identity. It’s not to say that these factors are not important; China’s resolution to gain independence following its “century of humiliation” and the role the Declaration of Independence plays in the US’s self perception as a fighter for freedom are undoubtedly relevant. But one can’t help but feel there’s several variables missing. 

Finally, while Jacques tactic of using a sort of “neutral, outside observer” lens for understanding China and Japan is instructive, that he does not do the same for the United States limits his analysis. (I’m a scientist, I like controlled experiments.) What, for example, would a “neutral, outside observer” say about racism in 21st century USA?

Overall, although Jacques’ book is a corrective to a far worse sort of analysis, it leaves much to be desired. Written originally in 2009 (it is peppered with references to the ‘08 recession), it reads a bit dated, and China/West relations have changed a lot.

Review: Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson

Our current society is particularly ill-suited to tackle climate change. Fixing climate change will require two things: (1) knowledge spanning disciplines as diverse as economics, agriculture and physics and (2) massive scale and multi-pronged collaboration between teams and countries. This presents a challenge for fictional stories of humanity solving the climate crisis: our current mode of storytelling is best suited for internal emotional journeys, following a handful of characters setting out to achieve one goal, with little prior background knowledge required. But we need fiction to handle this topic: fiction has long played a role in how humans understand value systems and social expectations, examine complex emotions, and envision large-scale collective achievement. 

In Ministry for the Future, Kim Stanley Robinson presents a unique way to overcome this writing challenge. Narrative chapters are interspersed with expositions on energy technology, gini coefficients, the Bretton Woods financial system, the carbon cycle and other pertinent topics. The narrative follows two main characters (Mary and Frank) most closely, but we see through the eyes of scores of other characters that are navigating the devastation of climate change (memorably, climate refugees who spend years in camps, a lone survivor of a village wiped out by a heat wave, and a kayaker who rescues Los Angelinos during a record flood) or trying to fix it (memorably, farmers in India and scientists in antarctica). In this way, the book succeeds at conveying information the author feels is necessary to prevent humanity’s pending extinction (addressing point 1 above) and presents a realistic and collective effort at harnessing all the tools available to society towards this end (addressing point 2).

Because of this unusual structure, I hesitate to call it a novel; Tolstoy rejected the label for War and Peace, which intersperses philosophy and history with narrative, if less disjointedly than Robinson’s work. I was a fan of this technique for War and Peace, and I found it to be compelling and enjoyable in Robinson’s less deft hands too. However, from discussions with others and from perusing book reviews for both literary efforts, I might be the only reader with this opinion. Climate change sci-fi authors are therefore recommended to further innovate on this approach to achieve broader appeal.

Robinson has clearly thought through possible paths towards maintaining a livable planet, and therefore I think his political and technological solution deserves some commentary: it sucks.

Briefly, his solution rests on blockchain financial instruments funded by modern monetary theory, although he engages with none of the critiques of MMT (and there are many). Through a convoluted system of privacy-focused social media networks (really!) and carbon coins, technological solutions arise magically due to competition. Sure, a weird techno-utopian neoliberal solution, I could have anticipated that much based on my reading of Red Mars. But what surprised me was its full-throated defense of terrorism (and the lack of mainstream critique he has received for this!).

The story begins when Frank kidnaps Mary at gunpoint, and this event causes her to radically shift her view on her role as a high-ranking official in the branch of the UN charged with addressing climate change (the Ministry for the Future). It is quite clear that without this act of terrorism, the reforms she ultimately implements would never have come to pass. Several chapters center around the actions of the Children of Kali, a terrorist group who, by attacking cattle and airplanes, very effectively terrorize the planet into no longer eating carbon-intensive foods or flying in carbon-emitting planes. This terrorist organization is even secretly supported by the UN itself! These terrorists are portrayed with bottomless empathy, and are largely rewarded for their actions, which are presented as critical for humanity addressing climate change. It is hard to imagine what a more pro-terrorist science fiction work would look like, and that others don’t seem to view this political work in the same way leaves me feeling a little rattled.

Review: Not Enough by Samuel Moyn

Samuel Moyn’s Not Enough identifies a very interesting phenomenon: that discourse around human rights kicked off only as the USSR disintegrated and neoliberalism kicked off. Such an interesting coincidence deserves an explanation.

Over the last few decades, human rights have fit quite comfortably within neoliberalism. But should they? Neoliberalism takes little issue with the first twenty-one articles of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR): these have to do with political freedoms and property rights, and have close kin in the UDHR’s predecessors, the American Declaration of Independence (1776) and France’s Declaration of the Rights of Man (1789). 

The next seven articles are harder to square within neoliberalism since they demand, among other social and economic rights, the right to shelter and food, to education, and even to paid holidays. These were sharply censured by one of neoliberalism’s leading thinkers, Hayek:

The conception of a ‘universal right’ which assures to the peasant, to the Eskimo, and presumably to the Abominable Snowman, ‘periodic holidays with pay’ shows the absurdity of the whole thing. (Law, Legislation and Liberty, 1979)

Moyn argues that human rights set merely a floor for basic needs, allowing limitless wealth accumulation for the few provided some allowances are made for bare subsistence living for the many. To address inequality — both between nations and within a nation — a new framework is needed. In this conception, indeed, human rights are exactly the fig leaf necessary for a return to the horrors of 19th century capitalism after the cannibalization of the welfare state. I agree with him that human rights organizations have largely prioritized political rights, and that the neoliberal era has made embarrassingly poor progress in the provision of shelter and food, education and paid holidays, globally. 

I am less convinced that it is so much an inherent failing of the tool of human rights than simply the doing of those wielding it. Article 27 demands “Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits.” Article 28 declares “Everyone is entitled to a social and international order in which the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration can be fully realized.” Together, I think these rights demand that the technological progress of the Global North (high speed rail, internet, the most cutting edge cancer drugs, for example) be made available to all the people of the world regardless of their place of residence. The human rights movement under neoliberalism has not chosen to work towards these ends (and indeed this human right is also violated for many people residing in the wealthiest countries). 

Moyn argues throughout his book for the need of a distributive concept of equality versus ideals that aim only for a subsistence existence. However, he never dares to venture a positive vision of what that could look like — a privilege of the ivory tower, and not one a burgeoning state attempting to bring equality to its people can afford. Presumably, his conception of the rights due to all people would have to encompass a “share” of all wealth? It is interesting, therefore, that Article 27 (quote above) indeed provisions to all humans a share of science and technology. Simply declaring a right to a share evidently hasn’t been enough. So what sort of government permits that?

One of the neoliberal critiques of human rights is whether it is possible to satisfy them within a worldview founded on individual responsibility. Here’s Hayek again:

It is evident that all these ‘rights’ are based on the interpretation of society as a deliberately made organization by which everybody is employed. They could not be made universal within a system of rules of just conduct based on the conception of individual responsibility, and so require that the whole of society be converted into a single organization, that is, made totalitarian in the fullest sense of the word.

Moyn, likewise, is terrified of the “totalitarian” systems that chose an alternative to the welfare state in their efforts to eliminate inequality (i.e., socialism). It is not clear what system he calls for, nor how this system would avoid such “totalitarian” tendencies.

Moyn’s argument largely traces the intellectual history of the concepts of distributive equality versus subsistence allowances — particularly from an American perspective. He does not investigate the source of wealth inequality (although he nods briefly towards the devastation wrought by colonialism), nor does he ground his analysis in what sorts of interventions effectively reduced inequality (though there is a brief foray in how investment in education both satisfies a human right and reduces inequality). This is a blind spot: it is very difficult to tackle a problem without knowing what causes it and what has fixed it in the past. 

His treatment of intra-nation versus inter-nation inequality is simplistic. Political projects are largely judged by their intent to lift the very neediest in the globe out of poverty. In this way, the USSR’s accomplishments in dramatically raising literacy and life expectancy within its borders are dismissed because they aimed for “socialism in one country” (rather than addressing global inequality). (Nor is there curiosity regarding why the Soviets pivoted from their original goal of socialism across the world to just socialism in one country.) Similarly, heightened intra-nation inequality during the marketization of China is lambasted, although the wealth gap between China and the wealthier countries narrowed during this time for both its poorest and its better off citizens. Is it possible to reduce intra-nation inequality without, at least for some period, heightening inter-nation inequality? Because Moyn examines neither the source of inequality nor practical examples of addressing it (beyond the former colonial empires’ welfare states), he cannot answer this question.

Review: A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman

This book does a couple things well, but has a lot of infuriating ticks and bad philosophies. Let's start with the things I hated, and end on a pleasant note. And let’s do internet-friendly numbered lists, because why not: 4 Things I Hated and 3 Things I Loved about A Man Called Ove:

1. The book is grossly fatphobic. The overweight character Jimmy cannot complete an action without Ove remarking on how his “blubber” moves or how his weight causes his Saab to sway. It can’t be chalked up to the worldview of the narrator, Ove (unless Ove hallucinates): the character is constantly asking for something to eat.
2. The book strictly observes gender roles. The amount of emotional labour the women of this book contribute is unreal. While the book explores positive masculinity versus toxic masculinity, it is the women — neighbour Parveneh and wife Sonja — who patiently coax Ove out of his rut, help him find purpose in life, and rescue him from suicide. Over the book, Ove comes to accept that men who don’t know what to do with joists are still valid people, but he still doesn’t take on basic “social glue” tasks like remembering people’s names.
3. The book distrusts institutions, who never do anything good. The narrative gives good reason for Ove to be skeptical of some social workers, who suggested he might want to divorce his wife and/or put her in a home after she is left paraplegic. But his crusade against “men in white shirts” is always righteous, or at worst, tedious but principled. Although the overall message of the book is the importance of community, the bounds of community are limited to one’s neighbourhood. There’s not a single instance of the positive benefits of state coordination of tasks — although presumably this is how the train system on which Ove fell in love with his wife came into being. The ideal world appears to be one where there is no government intervention save for the administration of driver’s licenses (the one sole positively portrayed government function), and groups of people manage their needs via homeowner associations (even if HOAs are plagued by petty squabbles over snow blowers and heating systems).
4. The humour is unfunny. This arises naturally from the three points above: the fat jokes, the jokes about women having too many coats, the jokes about how you can’t do anything these days without men in white shirts telling you no, they’re tiresome and unending. There’s a lot of angry violence played for humour — which is odd in a book that seeks to understand toxic aspects of masculinity.

The book is a long 337 pages, and I think if all the above (plus a few scenes played just for jokes) was cut out, it could have been a really tight 150-page novela. It writes some things skillfully:

1. Ove’s backstory is revealed fantastically. We hear about his tasks for the day, which include installing a hook in the ceiling. Throughout the day, he thinks about what he should tell his wife. He does things like check the radiators to make sure his wife hasn’t sneakily increased the temperature. Perhaps a quarter through the book, not until after we get to know Ove and his relationship with his wife, do we learn that his wife has been dead for six months, and he is installing a hook to hang himself. Similarly, asides and observations, like tire marks on the living room floor, presage the discovery that his wife used a wheelchair. These mysteries kept me wanting to read more.
2. Ove is an odd sort, but so is everyone else. Ove has many flaws. A worse comedy could leave it at that, have its characters act as straight men to Ove’s grumpy particularity while Ove softens up. However, we learn that Ove isn’t so strange at all: his quirks are shared by others. Parveneh in particular matches him in force of will, but other neighbours mirror him in how they hide their pain, or their joy in new machines (cars for him, an iPad for Parveneh’s daughter), or their fastidious expertise in tools (cables for Jimmy, and less electric tools for Ove). Nobody is a normie.
   
3. The portrayal of love and loss is excellent. Ove is curmudgeonly, but not unloveable. His wife is wonderful — it was a pleasure to discover such a vibrant woman through Ove’s adoring eyes. Through this seemingly odd pair, we see how wonderful it is to be understood, appreciated, loved by someone else. We learn how seamlessly the two people fit together, and it’s heartbreaking to then see Ove try to struggle through on his own after her death. These passages are sincere and very emotional.

Review: Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson

There is not an overwhelming amount of science fiction writers tackling the climate crises and other challenges of social organization from a leftist perspective. Kim Stanley Robinson, or KSR, is probably the most decorated of this crew, and the Mars trilogy is the most well-known of his work. For these reasons alone, I thought it would be interesting to check out this series. 

Fiction provides a good way to explore topics like social organization at a level of distance or abstraction, can provoke discussion and debate, and at its very best it can inspire a desire for change. Its ability to explore these topics and spark discussion rely on how well it portrays the interconnectedness of issues, the relationships between peoples and the problems they face. This doesn’t exclude fantastical elements: R.F. Kuang’s Babel wonderfully explores the internal contradictions of imperialism and capitalism in a world powered by magic. But within the world the author builds, the issues and their solutions have to seem realistic, each challenge and its solutions arising naturally from the world, and they need to feel relevant to our example. For the work to inspire, it has to show an appealing path forward for us: good characters who resonate with us, and who are tied into the challenges in the world and the solutions.

Red Mars, the first installment of the trilogy, does not achieve these tasks. Its characters do not demonstrate a way we can change society, and its analysis of sociopolitical relationships is superficial.

The premise of the book is the formation of a new society on Mars: in an international collaboration, 100 scientists are sent to Mars to begin colonizing efforts, followed by waves of additional immigrants. The narrative follows a handful of these “First Hundred” scientists, while off-scene, Earth increasingly struggles with inequality, overpopulation, and powerful international corporations. This choice of setting sets KSR up for a challenge in making the issue he’s discussing relevant to our world. For the next century at least, our social projects must build on the foundations of existing societies — how would this change the characters’ solutions? The novel does not explore this. Additionally, there’s something off-putting about a story about the colonization of a new frontier without people — this is also how the first settlers in the Americas viewed their task and we haven’t really reckoned with this past yet. (There is a brief discussion about the danger of terraforming Mars without first ensuring it had no original traces of life, but the scientist in favour of a “red” Mars is quickly over-ridden and her concerns are made to look silly.) 

In their nine-month voyage to Mars, the scientists discuss declaring independence from Earth and forming a new society. A scientist named Arkady sparks this debate with some of my favourite lines of the book:

“To be twenty-first-century scientists on Mars, in fact, but at the same time living within nineteenth-century social systems, based on seventeenth-century ideologies. It’s absurd, it’s crazy, it's — it’s —” he seized his head in his hands, tugged at his hair, roared “It’s unscientific!”

The conflicts between them rapidly dissipate when they arrive and diffuse across the planet. I liked this analysis: this reflects the dissipation of social tensions in Europe as the “surplus population” spread to the (“unpopulated”) colonies. The pacing gets a bit weird after this. There are endless passages about dust and ice as the scientists terraform Mars, pumping as much heat into the environment as possible (also off-putting to read about, given present challenges). In the background, Arkady agitates among the new immigrants while the transnational companies tighten their grip on earth. These off-scene maneuverings come to a head in what ends up being a failed revolution.

This is where the novel fails in its tasks as political fiction. First, our main characters have surprisingly little to do with the "main" events of the book. They drive around Mars in their Jeeps and ponder the implications of their pharmaceutically-induced immortality, bemoaning that there are really too many immigrants coming to Mars. Some are a little sympathetic to Arkady’s movement, but their support seems lukewarm, disinterested. Second, the political actions and reaction don’t feel relevant to our world, and are thrown into the plot with little connection to each other. In one of the few scenes in which we witness a point-of-view character impacting events, Frank convinces the President of the United States of America to stand up to the multinationals because it would be embarrassing for him not to. And Washington is swayed! What was the rebel’s plan, how did they develop it, and why did it fail? These questions aren’t really answered.

From my brief summary of the story here, it might sound like a complete failure of a novel — but I actually don’t think so. It does actually have a cohesive emotional arc. The underlying issue with Red Mars is that the backbone of the story has very little to do with its premise. At its heart, Red Mars is about the dynamics of a group of a hundred people required to work together out of necessity and proximity — like colleagues or homeowner association members, but in Space. The structure of the story reflects this: the book opens with a critical scene where one of the First Hundred arranges and executes the assassination of another of the First Hundred, the climax of a power struggle built over decades. Next, we flash backwards, learning how the First Hundred came to get to know each other, how they formed their first friendships, romances and allegiances. Next, we see how cracks form, developing into the feud that leads to the assassination. Much of the (slow, dust- and ice-filled) middle of the book is driven by the tension of some of the First Hundred looking for a faction that has gone no-contact, and how they deal with the feelings of regret and rejection. The climax of the novel is not the revolution, but of the First Hundred uniting again, surviving together in the chaos caused by Arkady’s rebellion.

When I thought the novel would be about forming a new society on Mars, I wondered at the choice of point-of-view characters. Why do we not see the perspective of someone on Earth, perhaps someone in the Global South, particularly at the mercy of the transnationals, and able to access neither Mars nor the pharmaceutically-induced immortality? Why do we not see through the eyes of a new immigrant to Mars, struggling with the lack of infrastructure and the oppressive laws of the transnationals, eager to join Arkady's movement? Why are our only point-of-view characters these older, white, privileged First Hundred scientists that care more about science and each other than forming a new society on Mars? Because it’s not a story about forming a new society on Mars, it’s a novel about the friendships and competitiveness of adult professional societies.

Review: The City and the City by China Mieville

The setting of this otherwise fairly cliched police procedural is a pair of cities that share a geographical location but refuse to acknowledge that fact. Citizens of the two cities walk the same streets and breathe the air, but carefully ignore the people and buildings of the “other” city, learning from birth the architectural, ethnic and fashion traits that distinguish the two cities. Why are the two cities like this? The cleavage of the cities predates written history, and is never discovered. What keeps the two cities apart? A shadow court with absolute power might sick a SWAT team on you if you gaze for too long at the wrong building.

Given that the cop drama starts a little ho-hum (no-nonsense alcoholic cop, young woman shows up dead, the whodunnit turns into a matter of jurisdiction) while the setting is so unique, the book seems positioned to make a political critique. After all, we can live in the same location as others but experience the location wildly differently. Race, wealth, gender all shape how comfortable we are in a particular setting, what actions or locations are open to us, and what actions or locations are threatening. Glimpses of a political critique appear here and there throughout the novel: one city is embargoed by the United States and aligned with Mao and the Black Panthers and economically thriving, the other is on friendly terms with the US while its infrastructure decays. But beyond these symptoms of political differences between the two cities, there is no mention of actual political difference, discussion of how these differences arose, or how these differences impact the citizens. Indeed, the people of each city seem remarkably culturally similar: each city has its own language but the differences end there. The two cities hold no animosity towards each other; their relationship is more like two awkward strangers that would rather not have to sit next to each other on a bus. There’s nothing like what typically, historically, separates feuding states: religion, differing opinions on the role of private property in society, genocidal intent. This absence is made all the more stark by the explicit mention of “border cities” like Berlin and Jerusalem.

So the fact that there appears to be nothing preventing the unification of the two cities (even for the sheer convenience of being able to go to the coffee-shop next door without having to first cross the border 5 miles away) but an ethos that “it has always been this way” plus the fear of the shadowy mob accountable to no one appears to be the point of the book. It winds up feeling a little empty, like a night spent passing around a joint musing “isn’t it crazy that there’s unspoken social rules that you just, don’t, like, question, man?” The detective plot echoes this conclusion: for a moment, it seems like perhaps there is a third city unbeknownst to the other two, a new world to explore. But no, a faceless American corporation was just stealing things and murdering people for profit, like they do in countless far less unique locations around the world. “Isn’t it crazy how like, evil, corporations are, man?”

Review: The Art of Cruelty by Maggie Nelson

I kinda struggled with this book for the first couple chapters, but to be honest, that one is on me. I went in expecting something on the art of cruelty — should it ever be wielded, and if so, how? That is, I was expecting something along the lines of Yves Winter’s Macchiavelli and the Orders of Violence. In that text, Winter looks at the historical context in which Macchiavelli was writing, and from this perspective, proffers a model for how to understand violence (and cruelty, which he defines in Machiavelli's terms as lethal violence that upsets the social expectation of dignity and bodily integrity). Although the title is The Art of Cruelty, the subject matter is cruelty in art — something very different, and once I shifted my frame of reference, I felt better able to swim through Nelson’s waters.

In The Art of Cruelty, Nelson reflects on various meditations on cruelty in art and media (or reactions of people who accuse specific works of art of excess cruelty). She strolls through theatre (e.g., Antonin Artaud), visual arts (e.g., the other Francis Bacon), performance art (e.g., Yoko Ono), pop culture movies (e.g., Quentin Tarantino), poetry (e.g., Sylvia Plath) and mainstream news (e.g., Bill O’Reilly). Initially I found myself probing for why these examples of these genres were selected and not some others. Learning that Nelson taught an undergraduate seminar with the same title as this book made a lot of pieces fall into place: it should be approached as a tour through the hot topics of 2001-2011 (when this book was published and when she taught her seminars) and of academic discussions around contemporary art. This also explains why my expectations that Nelson would cast judgement on this or that object of art as “warranted” or “good” use of cruelty were constantly disappointed: Nelson presents many examples but seems very careful not to conclude too much about them.

“[The Neutral] allows for a practice of gentle aversion: the right to reject the offered choices, to demur, to turn away, to turn one’s attention to rarer and better things. Preserving the space for such responses has been one of this book’s primary aims. Of equal importance has been making a space for paying close attention, for recognizing and articulating ambivalence, uncertainty, repulsion and pleasure. I have intended no special claim for art of literature – that is, no grand theory of their value. But I have meant to express throughout a deep appreciation of them as my teachers.” 

I could see this approach working well in a context where the examples are encountered and debated collectively. But I wasn’t reading this book in a group or seminar, so I had to have a debate with myself. Perhaps in a university classroom, Nelson provides a little more guidance to structure the debate. I found very little structure present in this book, which is grouped mostly according to topic (theatre, pornography, beauty, etc). Without a better guide, I turned to the aforementioned Winter for help. His triadic model of violence, consisting of object, subject and audience, is helpful for examining cruelty in art. Who does the artist put in the role of object and subject, and do they include an audience within the frame, or is the audience only the viewer? Winter also discusses the political role that hate (collective, unites people in action) and fear (isolating, inhibits action) play — this too would be a useful lens: does a cruel work of art cause us to hate or fear something? 

I think if Nelson had used these frames for examining cruelty, the examples she picked would have been a little more varied, and the discussion a little more interesting. For example, she discusses at some length the reaction to the horrors committed by the US military in Abu Ghraib, made public in 2004, but highlights only American reactions. As she points out, this “model of shaming-us-into-action-by-unmasking-the-truth-of-our-actions cannot hold a candle to our capacity to assimilate horrific images, and to justify or shrug off horrific behaviour.” But in Abu Ghraib, the perpetrators of the cruelty are the Americans — the same group she presents as the audience. In the triad model (object, subject, audience), we are missing two parties: how did those in the territories invaded by the US react to these images? How did those in uninvolved countries react? Did it elicit fear? Or hatred? (Or, perhaps it registered as only one more action to add to the pile.) Either way, I think these parts of the triad would have been unlikely to shrug off or justify such horrific behaviour.

Despite its lack of theoretical framework and its US-centric focus, Nelson does pull together philosophical comments on cruelty from a variety of sources (Nietszche, Adorno, Plato, Derrida, etc) and it was fun to see these very different approaches collaged together. It was also an interesting time capsule: many issues it presents (for example, Stephen Colbert's "truthiness", and reality TV) were fiery topics of debate just as I was entering adulthood and I haven't really examined them since.