Paul Vitols's Blog, page 19

prose sketch: rainy afternoon at the public library

Wed. 16 Apr 2014 ca. 2:30 p.m. North Vancouver District Public Library

Is it the patter of rain on a steel roof high above, or the whir of the air conditioning? Rain is falling outside: jewel-drops cling to the fingertips of the little potted yew trees out front. The broad colored pavements of the plaza are glazed with rain. Ghostly drops are visible against the dark geometrical shapes of the wide eaves; they fall from a blank gray-white sky.

Inside the library, the muted traffic of a few people: a hooded teenager sleeping opposite me; an elderly man out of sight beyond the potted tropical plant by me, talking loudly on his cellphone, probably in defiance library rules. In a thick accent he cheerfully says, “Okay, goodbye Carlo! Goodbye!” A curly-haired woman who sat down briefly with her umbrella now rises to go. To my left a bearded, tousle-haired graybeard reads a book by the light of the high windows. In the industrial-sized space there are echoes of trundling bins and slamming drawers.

And just now the main area of the bottom floor is empty of people, but a moment later people stride quietly through from different directions like extras cued for a movie scene.

au revoir, print publishing

My project has changed. What was going to be a large epic in one volume I am breaking down into smaller pieces—”episodes”—that I can publish faster. And since I am the publisher, it is my call to make. Welcome to the Wild West of e-publishing.

As an aspiring writer while growing up, I always imagined becoming part of the regular publishing world—the only kind that existed back then. I read of exciting publishing stories like Malcolm Lowry’s submission of Under the Volcano to Jonathan Cape in 1945. He received a personal reply from Jonathan Cape, accepting his novel on the condition that he make certain changes. Lowry returned with a response of his own, 20 pages or more, defending the choices that had been criticized by Cape’s readers, and eventually gained publication for his work mostly as first submitted. A triumph!

It’s the kind of story that writers cling to, holding it in mind like a candle to carry through the long wintry darkness of creation and rejection of their own works. “Someday I too will be accepted—just like Malcolm Lowry!”

Well, maybe. By far the most common response is rejection. And, to be sure, usually this is because the work itself is not good. But sometimes it is good, and that doesn’t help. James Joyce strove for years to get Dubliners published, and when someone finally accepted it, the publisher kept pushing changes at Joyce. In a different genre, many publishers rejected Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone before Bloomsbury finally bought it, mainly, according to Wikipedia, because they deemed it too long at 90,000 words. Bloomsbury said yes only because the publisher’s eight-year-old daughter, fed chapter 1 of the manuscript, came back and asked for chapter 2. But none of these professional publishers recognized that they were looking at a blockbuster.

I think too of a story I read years ago, in which someone, as an experiment, submitted manuscripts of already published and successful novels to publishers to see how they would respond. Sending works by John Steinbeck and Jerzy Kosinski, he was rebuffed time and again, often with withering critiques of the writing.

And I recall reading an anecdote by Stephen King, I think in his book On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, in which he had already reached great heights of commercial publishing success, and was his publisher’s best-selling author, but discovered that the CEO of the publishing company could never remember his name on the few times they met. Even superstar, “golden goose” authors get dissed by their publishers.

For these reasons, in addition to the more practical ones, such as the slowness with which print publishing takes place, the brief window of exposure one’s book gets on store bookshelves, and the slim share of any proceeds that are allocated to the author, I am happy to cast my fate to the winds of e-publishing and be my own publisher.

There’s a lot to do, so I’d better get back at it. Wish me luck.

where’ve I been hiding?

Where have I been?

Good question. An author’s blog is supposed to be one of his central duties; it’s the hub of his “platform,” in publishing-marketing-speak. If a writer wants to keep his platform alive, he needs to be posting to it at least once a week. Back in November 2013 I resolved to post to mine every 4 days, and every 7 days at a minimum.

It’s been 18 days since my last post. What am I doing with my time?

For one thing, I’ve been adjusting my lifestyle. I’m getting more exercise and I’m doing more meditation—a practice I’ve returned to after having gotten away from it for 11 years. And I’m happy to be doing these things, for if one’s mind and body are not looked after, then one is going to be in trouble sooner or later.

I’ve also been slowly expanding my “marketing” efforts in other ways online, by participating in Twitter and in a Goodreads group (Classics and the Western Canon). I’m tinkering with setting up a mailing list; you look for that to launch in the coming weeks. I’ve posted 110 book reviews to Amazon.com and have climbed into the top 10,000 reviewers there. And I’ve looked for others’ blogs that I can post comments on and thus engage with the online world more. I’m also trying to sort out the artwork for my site and my books, and am searching for a good artist.

All these things I think are gradually boosting my “visibility,” that elusive thing that nonfamous writers need in order to get readers interested in their work. I’m now getting more than 1,000 visits to my blog each day (the highest number in March thus far: 1,360); when I started it in 2011 I was getting a few dozen visits a day. Even though many of these visits are by comment spammers and so on, the number of real, worthwhile visitors is climbing. Thank you!

Oh: and then there’s the writing. I’m keen to get Episode 1 of The Age of Pisces out the door, and so I’ve been working on that. Because I already have a first draft fully in hand, I thought that this should be relatively quick and easy. I was wrong about that, but I have been working with renewed enthusiasm and pleasure lately, so that’s a wonderful thing. I expect that these feelings will show up in the finished work.

But I do want to keep up with my blog! So again, my goal is to post at least weekly.

But how fast the weeks go by . . .

storyteller vs. history-teller

Historical fiction is a well-known and popular genre, and there wouldn’t appear to be much doubt as to which works belong in that category; indeed, my own epic work in progress, The Age of Pisces, set in the ancient world, is in that category. But I keep on musing on the question: What exactly is a historical novel?

The Historical Novels Review uses this definition:

a novel which is set fifty or more years in the past, and one in which the author is writing from research rather than personal experience.

This is a handy pragmatic definition, and interestingly places its main emphasis on the author’s reliance on research rather than on experience. This points back to a fact that I have noted before, namely that the English words history and story both derive from the same ancient Greek root, namely histor, which meant “learned man.” That word was the basis of the word historia, “knowledge obtained by inquiry,” and hence, as John Ayto notes in his Dictionary of Word Origins:

“written account of one’s enquiries, narrative, history.” English acquired it via Latin “historia,” and at first used it for “fictional narrative” as well as “account of actual events in the past” (a sense now restricted to “story,” essentially the same word by acquired via Anglo-Norman.

So when we speak today of historical fiction or a historical novel, etymologically we’re talking about a historical story, or “historical history.”

History and story parted company, forming up on opposite sides of the literary divide between fiction and nonfiction. History is now reserved for nonfiction, and applies only to stories that purport to be true, that is, to concern events that have actually happened; while story is reserved for stories depicting events that have not taken place in the real world. And for most purposes that distinction is good enough; but here again, if you look more closely, the issue becomes cloudy.

For one thing, it can be hard to tell when a narrative has become fiction. If I write:

A man walked across the street

is that fiction? Countless men are walking across countless streets as I type. I can start to particularize it more:

Dave Jones walked across Cordova Street

but here too, it’s more than likely that a Dave Jones has walked across Cordova Street at some time.

However, I don’t know of any particular Dave Jones who has walked across Cordova Street, and I don’t have any particular Dave Jones in mind, and these facts would seem to make my sentence fictional. It’s not that the statement is untrue; it’s that it is undocumented, either in written records or in my own memory. And the more circumstantial details I add to my narrative, the more likely it becomes that it is indeed something that has never happened as written. However, Cordova Street is a real street in Vancouver, and by mentioned it, I have made use of a real, historical, documented location. And if I go on to describe the street in a way that is true to its actual character, then my narrative, I would say, becomes that much more “historical” in the modern sense. A reader who has never seen Cordova Street could learn something about it from my description. Furthermore, this sense of reality in an otherwise fictional narrative gives a story a strong sense of vitality and presence: it makes it more interesting and involving to read. It makes it better fiction.

Looking now at history writers, we see that their aim is, roughly, to tell it like it was. As much as possible, a work of history should be composed of documented facts. But that’s not all a history is; for a mere list of documented events in order is a chronicle rather than a history. What’s missing is the story part. For a historian is still a storyteller; using documented data as raw material, he builds his narrative. He is said to be “interpreting” the facts. And this is how two historians can construct different stories from the same original data. The two accounts are both offered up as something “true,” and yet in some ways they contradict each other. What’s going on?

The data of history float on a sea of undocumented reality: all the facts and events and forces that have come together to produce the documented bits, and whose presence and nature have to be inferred. These include the important and invisible forces of human nature. A historian is someone who brings his understanding of the world in the widest sense—its scientific realities as well as its human dimension—to the task of creating a plausible account of actual specific events. And because no two people’s understanding is the same, no two histories can be the same, even if the historians have access to exactly the same facts.

So in what sense then is a history true? I would say that it’s true to the extent that it’s factually accurate, and that it presents a persuasive narrative. That is, the historian makes us believe that the causal factors at work were as he presents them; he puts together the most plausible account.

Ludwig von Mises, in his masterwork Human Action, notes that it’s impossible to write history without resorting to what he calls ideal types. Thus, a historian can’t write about, say, Napoleon without making reference to such terms as revolutionary leader or conqueror. The historical person is assimilated to an archetype. And to the extent that this happens, he loses his personal, individual character—his truly historical character. For the archetype is a thing of myth rather than everyday fact. But it is because of his reflecting one or more archetypes that Napoleon is a figure of historical and literary interest.

So what am I saying. It seems that fictional stories get much of their interest from their “historical” aspects—the concrete details of their settings—while histories get much of their interest from their evocation of archetypes, that is, of myth. So these two things, fact and myth, seem to be the basic ingredients of both story and history; but while stories start with myth and stir in fact, histories start with fact and stir in myth. When the historical novelist includes historical personages (like Napoleon) in his story, and when the historian invents dramatic scenes in order to bring his tale to life, the two genres reach out and touch each other.

So while the novelist and the historian have seemingly different aims, they are descended from a common ancestor, and the family resemblance between them becomes stronger and stronger the more closely you look.

The Great Deformation by David A. Stockman: what exactly has gone wrong

The Great Deformation: The Corruption of Capitalism in America by David A. Stockman

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A massive, undocumented polemic that nonetheless tells it like it is.

I hadn’t heard of David Stockman until I came across an article by him on LewRockwell.com discussing American Middle East policy and actions. I was struck by his blunt, caustic, and seemingly well-informed criticism of the imperialist bungling of successive administrations. When I noted that Stockman had written a book on the history of the current economic crisis, and when I noted further that his credentials included service as a U.S. congressman and budget director in the Reagan White House, followed by a career on Wall Street, I immediately bought the book.

Now I’ve read it. Well, most of it: by the time I got to page 459 I was more than ready to accept that a great number of economic absurdities and injustices had resulted from misguided government policies, and skipped to the final chapter to see how it might all play out. But Stockman does not make many specific predictions about exactly what “Sundown in America” (the final chapter) will look like; rather, he alludes to “collapse,” and proposes a number of steps to get America back on a financially and economically healthy course.

In essence, his book answers the question, “How did we get into this mess?” As he sees it, the roots of the problem extend back at least to 1913 with the creation of the Federal Reserve system, America’s central bank. Stockman seems to have nothing against the existence of a central bank in the context of a sound-money economy, but he finds that it did not take long for the soundness of the dollar to degrade in the wake of World War I, prompting a credit boom that led to the stock-market crash of 1929. In a truly free-market economy, that crash would have been a mere blip; but in the event, the federal government under Franklin Roosevelt effectively created the Great Depression by devaluing the dollar, canceling its redeemability for gold by American citizens, and launching the behemoth of statist enterprises known as the New Deal.

Thereafter, except for a few periods of attempts at fiscal responsibility by principled leaders such as Dwight Eisenhower, the levers of power over economic policy came ever more into the hands of misguided ideologues who regarded Keynes’s ideas as valid, and self-serving cynics such as Richard Nixon, willing to sacrifice everything on the altar of reelection. It was on his watch in 1971 that the system became unhinged, when the final link between the dollar and gold was severed. Since then, the American state, and along with it American society, has entered on a parabolic path of reckless borrowing and spending, a path whose final stages are playing out even now, as I type.

The dark heart of this evil system, according to the author, is the Federal Reserve, especially as it has been run by Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke. According to Stockman, the reckless, persistent, and unjustifiable policy of holding interest rates at close to zero has wreaked enormous damage on the American economy and on American society. And he spends hundreds of pages showing the reader exactly what this damage has been, from the dot.com bubble and collapse of the 1990s to the ensuing bubbles in capital markets and housing.

It’s not a pretty picture, but it is, I’m convinced, an accurate one. The beneficiaries of these policies are not Main Street America; they are, rather, the rapacious “one percent” of Wall Street and the other crony capitalists who have a privileged relationship with lawmakers and above all with the Fed. The Fed, by reassuring “markets” that they will keep interest rates low, provide a low-risk means for Wall Street to skim enormous profits on an endless “carry trade” of borrowing cheap and lending dear. When their speculative orgy led to the crash of 2008, the Fed stepped in and bailed them out. According to Stockman, many billions of that bailout money went into the pockets of the principals of Wall Street firms.

Stockman writes with passion and authority, but his writing is too undisciplined to make the impact it should. Even though he himself describes the book as a polemic, his argument would be much stronger if it were not so larded with sarcasm, sneer-words, and hyperbole. Flipping open a page at random:

Nixon was listening almost exclusively to Connally, whose ignorance of economic history exceeded even Nixon’s meager grasp.

Or how about:

In a state of feverish panic which made the Greenspan Fed after Black Monday seem like a model of deliberation, the Bernanke Fed expanded its balance sheet at a pace which sober historians someday will describe as simply berserk.

Or how about this heading in chapter 13:

Implicit Rule by Monetary Eunuchs

You get the flavor. It is candid and, to begin with, refreshing, but after a while I found it wearing on me.

Stockman’s prose is also filled with economic and business jargon and slang, which means it’s really only aimed at those who have a deep understanding of high finance. Few fit into that category. Worst of all for me was the author’s continual use of weasel words: words and expressions intended to create the impression that proof or demonstration of the point at hand is unnecessary. If I had a dollar for every “needless to say,” “it goes without saying,” “most certainly,” “clearly,” “undoubtedly,” and “self-evidently” I found in the text, I would have a tidy sum. In short, if writing style is important to you, you’ll find this book to be tough sledding.

Also, there are no footnotes, although Stockman names many of his sources in a final Note on Sources at the back of the book. Admittedly, footnotes or end notes would have made this big book a lot bigger.

Those reservations aside, I’m persuaded that David Stockman has got his story right. For excellent reasons, he believes in the importance of sound (that is, gold-backed) money and is ferociously critical of Keynesian economics. But, although he was a high-ranking member of Ronald Reagan’s team, he favors neither Republicans and Democrats; he feels that both parties have lost their soul in the orgy of deficit budgets and money-printing, and thinks that salvation can be found only in a constitutionally changed nonpartisan future.

For some years now I’ve been trying to piece together what’s happened to American and world finance, why we’re in this ongoing fiscal and monetary “crisis.” I’ve read quite a few books and articles. With Stockman’s book I feel I have answered that question. I know what has happened, and what is unfolding around me. It’s vicious and it’s sickening, but I know. For that knowledge, I’m willing to excuse Mr. Stockman’s liberties of style and tone.

The author offers 13 specific policy reforms to get America out of its mess. They are sensible, and some of them will require constitutional amendments. Probably any one of them would be regarded as a political impossibility in today’s climate. For that reason, I sadly conclude that the American ship of state will not make it to any riverbank before it goes over the falls.

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Arundel by Kenneth Roberts: human passion in a merciless landscape

Arundel by Kenneth Roberts

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is how novels are supposed to be.

I came across this book by way of the Goodreads recommendation engine, which presented it to me when I was searching for “epics.” The American Revolutionary War is far out of my time zone with respect to my own epic in progress, but since true epics are about the birth of nations and societies, and this book seemed to be very favorably viewed by critics, I thought I would give it a chance.

Am I ever glad I did. As soon as I downloaded the e-book to my Kindle and started reading the prologue, I was drawn in. The narrator and central character is one Steven Nason of Arundel (modern Kennebunkport) in the province of Maine, who, against his natural inclinations, is writing a book describing his role in Benedict Arnold’s 1775 expedition to Quebec. He is driven reluctantly to this task by the grossly inaccurate tales that are current about the expedition and its members; he feels driven to set the record straight. In his own words:

Above all, because of the lamentable occurrences at West Point, the countryside is filled with men of mighty hindsight who speak with scorn of Colonel Arnold, whose boots they were not fit to clean, and belittle or ignore the expedition to Quebec.

What follows is a stirring tale of adventure, courage, passion, and humor, filled with surprises of all kinds.

For reasons that in time are revealed, Nason starts the story in his own boyhood, describing the circumstances that brought his father, a blacksmith, to settle on the bank of the Arundel River, and describing his family’s way of life there. Everything about it is striking and has the stamp of authenticity (the author, Kenneth Roberts, was something like a fourth-generation native of Maine): the trees, the weather, the ocean, the food, down to delightful surprises like young Steven’s pet seal Eunice. These are frontier people, and in fact their property is surrounded by a palisade and he refers to their residence as a “garrison house.” Steven’s family are in close, intimate contact with the Abenakis, the local Indians.

Indian characters and lifeways form a big part of the story. Roberts swings a wrecking-ball through the cliches of Indian-European relations and shows frontier society as a place where these two cultural groups collided, intermingled, interacted, and interbred. The Indian characters, like the white characters, are all distinct, vividly portrayed individuals with their own foibles and strengths. There is no monolithic them-versus-us consciousness, but rather a sense of individuals and groups acting from diverse motives as events swirl around them. When some Indians join the expedition to Quebec, their motives vary from personal loyalty to monetary gain to political calculation, among other things. In a book filled with memorable characters, one of the most vivid for me was the Indian Natanis, a superb woodsman who forms a strong bond with Steven and becomes an unsung hero of the expedition.

Another memorable character is Benedict Arnold, stocky, athletic, temperamental, and passionate. Nowadays his name is proverbial for treachery, and indeed I knew nothing else about him but that, but in this story we see a man of shrewdness and courage, a natural leader whom Steven regards as second only to George Washington as a model officer.

In brief, the story documents how Steven is engaged as a guide to the expedition, and how he travels with 1,000-odd ragtag American troops through the wilderness of Maine to reach Quebec City, which has been captured by the British. Among those who go with him are his burly, thieving friend Cap Huff, and a diminutive but resourceful and sharp-tongued local girl named Phoebe. Steven’s own motivation is mostly personal: he knows that a girl he met in childhood, Mary Mallinson, is being held in Quebec and he intends to rescue her.

Everyone knew that the expedition would be no cakewalk, but no one expected the indescribable ordeal that they actually face. Much of the novel is an account of that ordeal, and it is an amazing survival story, mixed in with a lot of infighting, intrigue, and suspicion.

The quality of the writing itself is very high. Roberts is an intelligent, confident stylist who did a huge amount of research to get every detail right—and there are a lot of details. So everything has that wonderful, fresh, lifelike quality: unexpected but true. Steven Nason is a perfect narrator; he has great knowledge of what he’s talking about, and a strong point of view that he’s not shy about expressing. His plainspoken woodsman’s perspective is often in contrast to the preening and dandyism of the more citified people he comes in contact with. Churlish and tongue-tied around women, he’s incapable of expressing what he really feels. He needs their help.

In sum, this is one of the best novels I have ever read. If I had to hunt for flaws in it, I might say that there was perhaps a bit much wilderness adventure for my taste. But it is a story of an expedition, after all—and it does pay off. This novel was published in 1930 and is about events in the 18th century, but it reads as though it were published yesterday and relates events that happened the day before that. The characters are vivid, present, and timeless. This must be what classic means, if it means anything.

I serve notice to all my own readers, present and future: Kenneth Roberts is my role model. He is the standard I agree to be judged against. I won’t measure up, but I will try.

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Around the Roman Table by Patrick Faas: Italy has always been about the food

Around the Roman Table: Food and Feasting in Ancient Rome by Patrick Faas

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

An entertaining and wide-ranging look at ancient Roman cuisine.

When I decided I needed to know more about food and eating in the ancient world of my own work in progress, I went overboard and ordered three different books on it. When they arrived I had to choose which one to start with. Looking them over, I thought that Patrick Faas’s book would provide the best introduction. Now, although I haven’t read the other two books yet, I feel sure that I chose right.

The other books are primarily cookbooks, and Faas’s book is also that, with plenty of recipes drawn from ancient authors, notably Apicius, who wrote “the only gastronomic cookery book handed down to us from classical antiquity.” But it’s also much more than that. Faas sets the scene by taking us through all the things that surrounded the dishes themselves, starting with a “culinary history” of Rome that looks at the agricultural basis of Roman society and the various influences that affected it, such as Africa and Greece, and other factors such as feast days, philosophy, and sumptuary laws. He moves on to a study of “the meal,” with chapters on table manners, the courses of a meal, the menu, and “the carousal” or drinking party that usually followed a dinner party. The author goes on to discuss Roman wine and other drinks, the Roman cook, and his condiments. Only then, in Part Two of the book, 175 pages in, does Faas start presenting recipes for actual dishes.

I was captivated by so much of what I found in this book. I knew that Romans reclined to eat their dinners, but how exactly did they arrange themselves around the table, and who reclined next to whom? The answers are here, along with illustrations. Did Romans really gorge themselves and then vomit up their food to eat more? (Not often, according to Faas; after drinking, though—that’s another matter.) What kinds of dishes and utensils did they eat with? What kinds of pots and pans did they cook with? All here, and illustrated.

The recipes section is broken down interestingly into four parts named after the four elements, presenting dishes drawn from the land (cereal and vegetables), from the fire (cooked meat), from the air (birds), and from the water (fish). I’ve read some authors who claim that the typical Roman diet was monotonous and frugal, but the great wealth of ingredients, flavors, and techniques presented here seem to give that notion the lie. The Romans liked strongly flavored, highly seasoned foods. But they also liked fresh vegetables, and Roman gentlemen took pride in their skill at growing them—much like modern Italians that I’ve known in the Vancouver area! And Roman women did not cook. If a slave was not cooking, then the head of the household would attend to it himself; even emperors would practice cuisine and personally see to the feeding of their family and guests.

Faas does not simply give recipes; the various dishes offer opportunities to explain various facts, attitudes, and peculiarities in the Romans’ approach to food. The section on vegetable dishes starts with a discussion of the Roman garden, including its required statue of Priapus, the phallic god of gardens.

Each recipe is presented first as the original Latin text followed by its English translation, then a more detailed discussion intended to make the recipe doable for the modern cook. For hard-to-get ingredients he suggests good modern alternatives. The ubiquitous garum or fermented fish sauce, for example, can be replaced with soy sauce or anchovy paste. The equally ubiquitous herb lovage can be replaced with parsley or celery root.

It seems that Faas has made all these dishes himself, even the most exotic, such as roast flamingo or brain pate or sow’s udders. He notes when the food is likely to be less palatable for the modern diner, but also how often the Roman dish is very good as is.

I have not been bold enough myself to try making any of the dishes; that was not my aim in reading the book. But Faas’s enthusiasm and depth of knowledge have got me interested in trying some. For cuisine makes its own strong, definite statement about a culture, and this book gives a real flavor of ancient Rome.

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On Intelligence by Jeff Hawkins: no ghosts in this machine

On Intelligence by Jeff Hawkins

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This engaging, non(too)technical book offers a new and plausible theory of how the brain, or more specifically the neocortex, works.

When I learned about the existence of this book, I was drawn to it for a number of reasons. For one thing, I’m intrigued by the faculty we call intelligence: what is it, exactly? For another, I, like the author Jeff Hawkins, have long been fascinated by the brain and how it works. And finally I was eager to read a book on neuroscience by a nonscientist, for Hawkins, inventor of the Palm Pilot and other things, is a technologist who has long pursued brain science as a hobby. I love the idea of contributions to knowledge being made by amateurs, for they seem best able to think outside the box.

And thinking outside the box is what Hawkins has done here. His point of attack was to discover whether it is possible to build an “intelligent machine,” and how this might be done. He noted the relative unsatisfactoriness of the results achieved by “artificial intelligence” in the computing world, and wondered why this was. How was it that a computer, with processors executing millions of instructions per second, could not seem to remotely approach the prowess of the human brain at most tasks requiring “intelligence,” when the cells in that brain could only execute a few tens of “instructions” per second? Even relatively simple perceptual tasks, like recognizing faces and chairs, are done effortlessly and almost instantly by humans, while machines toil to achieve a success rate well below 100%. What have humans got that computers don’t got?

Humans have got a way of processing information that is completely different from the way computers process it. The brain, unlike a computer, does not run on the instructions of a single master program controlled from the top. The brain, says Hawkins, operates as a vast array of small, localized processing systems. In particular, the neocortex—that sheet of neurons that covers the upper frontal part of our brain, and is responsible for all of our human intelligence—is set up as an intricate, interconnected feedback system that can be boiled down to performing two functions: memory and prediction. He’s saying that what we call intelligence is the interplay of memory and prediction.

To defend and illustrate this thesis, he goes into some detail on exactly how he thinks the neocortex is wired up. It is known to consist of 6 layers of neurons, which are all interconnected in certain characteristic ways. Hawkins shows why they are so interconnected, and how this results in the formation of memories at increasingly high levels of abstraction. What we call intelligence is the recognition of a current sensory input as belonging to an abstract category already in memory. According to this view, animals that also possess neocortexes have this same intelligence, but in lower degree than humans, who have the most sophisticated neocortex (one interesting fact in the book was that dolphins, which are intelligent and also possess large brains, have a neocortex with only 3 layers, as opposed to the humans’ 6).

Hawkins makes his case very well; I found it persuasive. Where I found myself less persuaded was in what I would call the philosophical side of the book, where the author addresses questions such as, What is creativity? What is imagination? What is consciousness? And of course the basic question: what is intelligence itself? I think that Hawkins, an extremely able technologist and even scientist, overplays his hand as a philosopher.

Along the way, for example, he talks about Plato’s theory of forms as an explanation of how we are able to recognize sameness in the hurly-burly of our ever-shifting sensations. Hawkins notes offhand, “His system of explanation was wildly off the mark.” Well, maybe it was and maybe it wasn’t, but what makes Hawkins so sure? I recall that Roger Penrose, in chapter 1 of his Road To Reality, treats the world of mathematical truth as one part of a Platonic world of forms, seemingly real but also different from the worlds of mental experience and of physical things. My point here is just that Plato’s ideas live on; they’ll keep climbing back out of the dustbin of history.

I had similar feelings about Hawkins’s take on the other philosophical questions. He contends that there the difference between the intelligence of, say, a rat and of a human is purely one of degree. But Mortimer J. Adler, in his book Intellect: Mind over Matter, contends the opposite. According to him, intellect—which was the word formerly used to label the faculties that we now point to with the word intelligence—is something more than the rudimentary power of abstraction used by brutes. In this view, animals are able to respond to individually differing things in the same way, as when a rat is able to press different triangular buttons to get food, but this is not the same thing as

cognizing what is common to them or knowing them in their universal aspects. . . . By means of concepts, and only by means of concepts, we understand kinds or classes as such entirely apart from perceived particulars and even though no particular instances exist.

Adler argues that the brain is a necessary but not a sufficient condition of the human intellect. The existence of the intellect, he thinks, is a sign that a human being is something more than just a body.

Is Adler right in this? I don’t know. And I don’t think Jeff Hawkins knows either, no matter how confident he is in his assertions. But for someone who wants to build intelligent machines, I think a cautious outlook would be fitting. Hawkins dismisses people’s worries that superintelligent machines might become our overlords or our executioners, like HAL in 2001: A Space Odyssey or the Skynet computers in the Terminator movies. He thinks that such behavior would require the presence of the equivalent of the emotional centers of the brain in addition to the neocortex, and he’s only planning to build an analog of the neocortex. So don’t worry, folks.

I recall reading a comment from the Dalai Lama, apparently changing his mind about whether robots or machines could become sentient. He said that if some being had the necessary karma to take birth or manifestation in a machine, then that would happen. I note that karma is not a word that occurs in the index of Hawkins’ book.

But this is a good, clear, strongly argued, plainspoken, provocative, and, yes, intelligent book. Hawkins has persuaded me that “intelligent” machines are very likely in our near future. And I’m sure they will be very helpful and will have no reason to do anything mean to us, their intellectual inferiors.

If they do turn on us, then, well, maybe God will help us.

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The Biology of Belief by Bruce H. Lipton: our genes are not our destiny

The Biology of Belief: Unleashing the Power of Consciousness, Matter, & Miracles by Bruce H. Lipton

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Partly life science, partly life story, this book points the way beyond a mechanical view of life.

It’s the kind of science book I really enjoy: a bold, paradigm-shifting theory presented by a researcher who knows what he’s talking about. One of the ways Bruce H. Lipton busts conventions in this book is by spending so much time talking about his own life. And while his life is very interesting, in most scientific books this might be perceived as self-indulgent; in this case, however, it fits perfectly due to the nature of the theory that he is presenting, and its implications.

For the core assertion of this book, contrary to the “central dogma” of cell biology, is that genes are not destiny. For proof the author offers the simple fact that genes are not self-activating; the genes of a cell, encoded in its chromosomes, are activated by triggers coming from outside the cell’s nucleus, and ultimately from outside the cell itself. It is the cell’s environment that dictates how a cell will behave, and which genes will be activated, and when.

The author spends time showing how it is not the cell’s nucleus, with its set of chromosomes, that is the “brain” of the cell, but rather the cell’s membrane—the fatty envelope that holds the cell together—that performs this function. It is the cell’s membrane that holds all of its sensory apparatus and does its decision-making. Lipton points out that in the development of an embryo, the cells that go on to form the skin of the newborn also go on to form its brain and nervous system, pointing back, he thinks, to the identity of these functions in the single cell.

Lipton then goes on to talk about quantum physics and its implications for biology. He observes that biologists in general, including himself, tend not to have a very sophisticated understanding of physics, limiting themselves to a few courses on basic Newtonian physics early in their university careers. But physics has moved on from Newton. The 20th century brought the stunning revelations of quantum physics; what do these mean for biology?

Lots, according to Lipton. For just as Einstein’s theory of relativity showed the deep identity between matter and energy, so quantum theory has shown the deep identity between mind and matter, or mind and the physical world of matter-energy. This means that the “environment” of a cell—and each of us is a collection of several trillion cells—is not just the physical medium in which it rests, but also the mental medium surrounding it. Each cell responds sensitively to the innumerable gross and subtle influences on it, chemical, physical, electrical, and mental or spiritual. The response is determined by the cell’s membrane, and the genes execute that response.

If Lipton is right about this—and he has persuaded me that he is—then the implications for each of us are vast. For we are not, as biological and medical science currently teach us, mere organic robots executing programs encoded in our genes, which were bestowed on us at birth and cannot be changed. We are active, choosing participants in our world and in our life, whose genes are following the commands that we are directly or indirectly sending them. If we wish to lead healthy, fulfilling lives, our task is to discover how to send the right instructions to our own genes.

This is easier said than done, but it is eminently possible, and certainly more so than changing our genome.

The insights that the author presents so simply and picturesquely—he has honed his presentation of the ideas over many speaking engagements with nontechnical audiences—are easy to grasp for the nonscientist. Indeed, if you have scientific training you may find his explanations too simplistic and protracted.

He understands the difficulty people may have in accepting these ideas, for he arrived at them only over a long period, and with a number of setbacks along the way. But the accounts of how he made his discoveries have the mark of authenticity, and are exciting, as all stories of discovery are.

One of Lipton’s strongest messages is that his discoveries have changed his own life, not just professionally, but to the core. He frankly admits that as a young man he was unhappy and envious of others; but since his discoveries in cellular biology, he has found the means to change his thinking and become a happy person. And it is this power which he wishes to help put in the reader’s hands.

He doesn’t actually do this, though, for it turns out that the most important factor in improving the biology of our own cells is amending our subconscious beliefs (hence the title of the book), and there is no book-given way of doing this. He suggests a couple of possibilities for the reader to pursue, but other than that, you’re on your own.

But the book as it is presents a wonderful message. It is joyous, freeing, and empowering. Our cells are here to help us achieve what we want to achieve in life; we just need to learn to tell them what to do.

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Fall of Giants by Ken Follett: the pulse of life amid global conflagration

Fall of Giants by Ken Follett

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Some angles on World War I, told in a simple and human way.

This is the first Follett book I’ve read since I read The Key to Rebecca in about 1979. I enjoyed The Key to Rebecca, even as I found it a little bit “comic book” in its feel, perhaps in keeping with the mood of the time, when Star Wars and Raiders of the Lost Ark were dominating popular culture. Regarding myself as a serious writer, I didn’t seek out any more books by Ken Follett.

Until now. At work on an epic of my own, I started to cast about for other writers’ works that might demonstrate an epic sensibility; and in my search I came across Fall of Giants, volume 1 of the (possibly) epic Century Trilogy. I downloaded the sample to my Kindle, and, finding myself enjoying the story at the end of that, I plunked down the Cdn$11.78 to read the rest (you’re welcome, Ken).

Before I started this review I checked the existing reviews on Amazon.com, of which there are 2,966 as I type these words. The average rating is 4.0 out of 5 stars, but I was curious to see that a sizable minority, 391 people, had given the book only one star. When I looked at some of those reviews, I found a number of people excoriating the book due what they regarded as its contrived, unbelievable plot and its oversimplified characters. Many of these reviewers were self-professed Follett fans, and many affirmed how well they had enjoyed his The Pillars of the Earth. My takeaway: hell hath no fury like a disappointed reader.

I understand and to some extent share their criticism, although I think they go much too far (one star?). The author has set out to tell the story of World War I through its effects on the lives of eight (by my count) main characters, whose lives are all bound up with the war in different ways in different countries. Their paths cross and their lives intersect, and some of these connections, looked at objectively, do seem fortuitous indeed. I noted this, but was not really bothered by it, since I believe that coincidence does not mar a story unless it is used as a device to get a character out of trouble. I don’t recall that the author did this with any of his fortuitous meetings between characters; indeed, Follett is very good at the storytelling technique of getting his characters deeper into trouble. Rather, the meetings between characters serve here to keep them connected and to keep the story strands braided together. In my own life I have had a number of meetings with people that struck me as being stunning coincidences, so such things do happen.

As for the other main complaint, that the characters are too flat and too familiar, here too I understand what they mean, for the characters are drawn with bold strokes and do tend to have a “stock” feeling: the arrogant British aristocrat Fitzherbert, his pert Welsh housekeeper Ethel, the idealistic American political aide Gus, the urbane German diplomat Walter, Fitzherbert’s suffragette sister Maud, and so on. But here too I feel the criticism is much overdone. For one thing, with so many characters, you can’t have too much complexity in any one character; there isn’t room for it. The complexity arises from their interrelationship. It’s more important that the characters have different personas and different objectives, and this the author achieves very well.

But I would argue that these characters do have complexity in at least one sense: several of them change throughout the course of the story, and this is a mark of high-quality character writing. Ethel, the housekeeper, changes under pressure as she is forced from service and has to struggle on her own in London, where she develops a political consciousness. I found this very lifelike. And, interestingly, other characters resist change, and find themselves instead weathering the consequences of their refusal to adapt. A roguish Russian character, Lev, continually leaps from frying pan to fire and back to frying pan again, always using the charm and tricks that have worked for him since childhood. He occasionally feels a pang at being so feckless, but that’s as deep as his self-reflection goes.

The characters do at times seem a bit comic-book or a bit network-television, but the story has the pulse of life. I was interested to see how the author handles sex between his characters (and there are three or four love stories among the plots); he neither indulges it nor shies away from it. He sees it as part of life and narrates it as such. When Ethel finds herself embroiled in an affair while in service, she discovers that in her continual desire she is wetting her undergarments and has to wash them several times a day. She takes it in stride and so do we.

The most important question for me in reading this or any story is, do I feel anything as I read? And here the answer is yes. I identified with the characters’ romantic yearnings; I identified with their political arguments as the world sleepwalked its way into a conflagration. In a kangaroo court-martial toward the end of the book I felt a strong sense of outraged justice. All of these facts mean one thing: I was involved.

If I had to state what I thought was the main flaw of the book, I would point to the narration. Follett’s prose is simple and clear, but I find that he has a habit of spoon-feeding the reader information that should remain in the subtext of a scene. Hunting for a random example, I come across this near the middle of the book:

Walter had made it obvious he wanted to get away. The reason was that he needed to spend a quiet hour thinking about Gus Dewar’s message. But he had been discourteous to his mother, whom he loved, and now he set about making amends.

This kind of explanation belongs more in an outline than in the finished text. It’s as though the author wants to show the action and explain it as well, perhaps because he’s not confident that he’s presented it well enough, or maybe so that the dullest-witted readers won’t miss anything. But there is a price: this deprives the rest of the audience of the pleasure of discovering the subtext for themselves—one of the greatest pleasures in reading. The subtextual explanation should be what arises in the reader’s own mind as a result of the action he has been shown in the text.

So that’s my main criticism. Apart from that, my actions speak loudest: I finished the book, which is a long one, and I cared about what happened to the characters. Ken Follett describes hmself as a “master storyteller” on his own website, and, from what I’ve read, he has earned the title. I’m sure I won’t let another 35 years elapse before I try another one of his books.

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