![[what I read in 2002]](/images/review_banner.gif)
The Brethren: Inside the Supreme Court ::
In retrospect, Bob Woodward’s carreer seems to have been all but defined for him after All the President’s Men was published. Since then he’s written some book or another about every single President, and has in many respects become the go-to guy when it comes to spinning a compelling tale about the people who run the political institutions in in Washington, DC. He’ll probably be remembered just as much for the work he did after his first book as he was for All the President’s Men itself. That’s no small feat and I say, Good for him.
But that doesn’t mean that everything he’s written has been a worthwhile read. I mean sure, if I’m reading Woodward I’ll almost invariably come across some passage, some description of a scene that seems a little too secret, a little too sensitive, and I’ll find myself asking, Wait a minute, was I supposed to read that? That’s always fun. But still, when his work comes to rely on that kind of access (or assumed access) to the professional lives of political figures, the writing becomes almost gimmicky, predictable, and ultimately less interesting and valuable. Which all translates into making his books hard to read.
The Brethren doesn’t quite fall victim to this problem. The book follows the decisions and the internal dynamics of the Supreme Court for five years in the 1970’s, starting in the year that Earl Warren stepped down as Chief Justice and Warren Burger (a Nixon appointee) took his place. As the book progresses we see the Court shift from the political Left to the Center, and ultimatly starts leaning to the Right, as the Center-Right Justices (John-Paul Stevens) and Right-Wing Justices (William Rehnquist) we know today begin to appear. It’s a compelling story. I was able to see (what I felt was) an honest portrayal of highly intelligent people who were forced to constantly strike a balance between their own staunch beliefs and the need to compromise with the other justices in order to develop the opinions of the court. Sometimes the Justices chose to stick to their ideological guns, at other times they would change their opinions unexpectedly. In the case of Justice Blackmun, his internal struggles with abortion and women’s rights and the right to privacy as he was developing his opinion on the Roe v. Wade decision eventually pushed him to support Abortion rights. As a conservative Justice, that was a very unexepected turn for him, and his struggle was so complex and deep, I couldn’t help but think it was real. As I read, I hoped that the story was real, that Woodward’s portrayal wasn’t embellished, that I wasn’t getting served another one of the authors all-access tricks. Because if government did actually function this way, and these sorts of questions were being asked and debated, then I could believe that system does in fact work. In some way or another.
I had a hard time giving myself over entirely to my hope, however. Intertwined with stories such as the one about Blackmun were plenty of typical Woodward tricks, which as I mentioned before, do get tiresome. But more than that, the book tended to focus more on the nature of power and how it was delegated (and fought over) within the Supreme Court. And while I realize that that’s a fundamental reality of life in Washington, Woodward’s focus on it does get to be a little petty and lame. Especially when compared to the deeper, more significant issues that faced not only the Court, but the human beings who are in charge of it as well. However, the strengths of the book far outweigh the weaknesses, and I always found myself interested in continuing to read.
The Elements of User Experience ::
I remember when I first got into this Web development business, I had a hard time describing exactly what made a good Website. I could use words like “accessibility,” "architecture," and “usability,” but those words had only internal meanings, and at best the only people who knew what I was talking about were those who worked in the same industry as me. You could forget explaining to my parents what exactly it was that Web sites were supposed to do. And the president on the IT firm I was working for? Forget it.
Well, the good news is that those frustrations were not entirely the result of the vagueness of a novice. And the problem also wasn’t entirely that the words I was using were just nonsensical buzzwords hijacked by the marketing forces and stripped of any real meaning. (Though I am in no way denying that those issues did in fact play a role.) No, the biggest single problem I was facing, the singlemost significant barrier to my getting my idea across was -- you guessed it -- a lack of contextual meaning.
Between those early years of my professional development and now, I was able to figure out what the problem was on an intuitive level, though I was never able to put it into words. So I think at best I was working in a way that compensated for the obstacle, instead of actually moving it out of the way. Which was why when I read this book, I breathed a sigh of relief. Finally, finally someone has put together a system of thought, that allows us to leverage all those fragmented ideas that go into making functional Web sites. Finally, we who make Web sites can forge ahead using a unified conceptualization of what exactly we’re supposed to be doing. I can’t believe it took so long for such a thing to be published, but I will not turn it away simply because it was late.
Now, you shouldn’t think that this is any sort of howto guide. Nor is it a silver bullet that will suddenly make your Web development life easy. No, discipline and skill are still a big deal. But this book does provide a common language and direction and vision for all Web development people. I can’t help but think that such an accomplishment will play a role in making the Web a significantly more sane and useful place.
Samaritan ::
OK, so I haven’t been reading much at all for the past few months. As a result, any attention paid to this corner of the site has fallen off as well. I don’t want to call it a vicious circle, but it does seem that the resulting atrophy has built upon itself, become more of an issue, until I’ve gotten to the point I’m at now, where I finish a single book, then have to retroactively write a review for it in the previous month, because I was incapable of getting something written in time.
It’s foolish, really. And I have no excuse for my behavior. Or at least I have no excuse worth mentioning here.
But let’s focus on the book at hand, shall we? The good news is, Samaritan is a great book. It tells a compelling story of a guy who is beaten to within an inch of his life in his own apartment, and then won’t come forward to say who the attacker was. The underlying question of course is, why? and the resulting persuit on the part of the police detective assigned to the case (who is, incidentally, a childhood friend) is really an exploration of the nuances of the main character. His flaws, his strengths, his emotions all come begin to come clear, and it is pretty clear that in the end, while Richard Price was interested in creating drama and suspense within the story, his real interest was in creating a person who we could understand and and with whom we could empathize, even if we did find his behavior to be a dispicable at times.
The bad news is, this book wasn’t the best character-driven tale I’ve read. That was something I was hoping for when I got the book, in part because I love Richard Price’s work, but also (unfortunately), I bought into the publisher’s marketingspeak somehow. But that’s OK -- a disappointment from Richard Price is still significantly better than ninety percent of the stuff being published these days.
Solaris ::
I usually read Science Fiction for the story line. I don’t expect much in the way of poetry or complex writing style, nor to I expect the themes to be all that compelling. So I was pretty amazed after I read the first twenty pages of Solaris and found all of those elements involved in the book. I soon felt comfortable making the assertion that it was the most textured, captivating novel I’d read since, well, maybe The Spectator Bird. (Not that the two had anything else in common, of course.)
Solaris is also interesting because for all the complexity and artistry in its discourse, there really wasn’t much in the way of plot. Basically, you have this guy who travels across the galaxy to a space station that is in orbit around a planet where it is determined that the sea is a living, sentient being. Soon after he gets there, it turns out that the ocean may be manipulating the minds of everyone on the station, because everyone there is experiencing physical manifestations of their own memories; for the hero, Kris Kelvin, he is visited by a lover who died ten years earlier. That introduces a significant amount of confusion and emotional intensity for him, but once it starts happening, most of the events and ensuing struggles are internal and emotional, so not all that much happens that advances a plot. But that was OK with me -- there was more than enough going on to keep me interested. At least for a time.
For all its surprises and its complexities, I did find in the end that it was a difficult book to read. There was a lot of words spent describing the speculations and internal searchings that Kris went through when his long-lost love was reintroduced into his life. And it seemed like he was mostly barking up the wrong tree -- he spent all of his time trying to understand scientifically the manifestation of his dead lover, rather than wondering why she had showed up rather than someone else. In the end, I found it hard to believe that anyone could have such an intense internal stuggle without having emotional issues arise in any meaningful way.
But then, maybe that was the point that Stanislaw Lem was trying to make. Maybe that weakness on the part of the hero was intended to reveal some strength in the reader they might not know existed. Not that I want to spend much time speculating -- I’d rather just read the book and enjoy it for what it was.
Joe Hill ::
I have two problems with martyrdom. First off, the martyr’s story is always so wrapped up in the ideology of the political or social movement they died for that a significant amount of their humanity is wiped away. For example: in the mythologizing of John Brown, we do not discuss the fact that he was crazy; we also don’t discuss any of the emotional, spiritual, or intelletual struggles he had that led him to Harper’s Ferry. No, he was always fated to fight his battle against oppression, no questions asked. But then on the other hand, when a political movement is blessed with a martyr, they somehow gain the ability to not be held accountable for their views or their political beliefs. It’s as if they have a belief that because they sustained such a loss, what they have to say is no longer up for debate, it is simply right.
The story of Joe Hill that Stegner tells illuminates this double-trouble of martyrdom. Very little is known about the man Joe Hill. He was an immigrant, he traveled the West Coast, and his belief that the IWW was the only answer to the oppression brought on by early twentieth century industrialization was all but unshakeable, right up until the point when he died. As far as anyone could tell, he was in life, as in death, inseparable from the Wobblies. Then on the other hand, his martyrdom is talked about to this day as an event that was emblematic of the injustice of not only Justice system in this country, but the whole economic and political setup as well. But never in that discussion of martyrdom will there be a discussion about the politics that Joe Hill and the Wobblies represented, or their absurd belief that the best way to end oppression in this world was through the perpetuation of violent uprisings.
Joe Hill gave me a sense of labor as it once was in this country. And the fact that it was written by someone who knew labor history but hadn’t made it his religion made the settings so textured and real that I felt I could them when I closed my eyes. But most importantly, this book gave me a version of Joe Hill I don’t think I could find anywhere else. I saw his flaws, his obsessions, and his anger; I saw his commitment and his quiet emotional intensity. I was able to see what made him such a leader in the labor movement, but I also saw what made him a real human being. I wonder what would happen to the present-day IWW if they started viewing Joe Hill as Stegner created him. But then, what would the world look like if we started looking at all our martyrs as a actual people?
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