REVIEW: Jay-Z: Made in America by Michael Eric Dyson (5-stars)

Humans have always been resourceful – they find ways to increase power and status, even when it means inventing and convincing others of the validity of something.  For example – at a time when France’s relative power and strength was troubled, Louis XIV basically invented “luxury” lifestyle and merchandise – fabrics, clothing, perfumes and furniture – in the 16th century, and his ambassadors became marketing managers, selling an idea that possessions of a certain quality meant something and inspiring the earliest fear of missing out that we see in modern marketing.

Michael Eric Dyson dives into the “art of hustle” in the first chapter – describing the ways that people, particularly African Americans in poor neighborhoods, have sought to find such niches to improve their circumstances and achieve financial and social success.  He talks about facets of types of hustle based on poverty and opportunity of location as integral to the black experience in the US.

Dyson’s writing works on many levels, skillfully interweaving biographical information about Jay-Z, biographical portraits of other artists, politicians and historical figures, social history, and literary analysis of the lyrics of Jay-Z and other artists.  

Throughout, there are references to conversations that Jay-Z and other artists have through the lyrics of their music – some are serious and some are light-hearted play acting or “dues.” 

Dyson also does a deep dive into masculinity and blackness – analyzing the Hegelian dynamics of Jay-Z and Beyonce’s musical conversations around the complexities of relationships between women and men.  

As a former language major – I really enjoyed Dyson’s analysis of Jay-Z’s lyrics in literary terms, summarized as an “extremely sophisticated romp on poetry’s playground of metaphor and metonymy, simile and synecdoche.”  Dyson dives into all the references to philosophy, history, politics and satire and summarizes as “Jay’s lyrical cleverness masks his deeper intellectual reflections on the world and on black culture itself.”

 “Jay’s openness to a variety of art forms and his understanding that common themes of existential struggle unite disparate genres of music. Thus one of his most successful songs, at a critical point in his career, features a sample from a Broadway musical that highlights the plight of poor, socially invisible children.”  

Jay-Z is a poet, a philosopher and has a strong political voice – which does not lessen as his popularity and success continue.  He’s the first rap artist to become a billionaire, and throughout his career – one where he never writes down his lyrics --  “Jay has also mastered a sneak-and-speak approach to political commentary, He laces his lyrics with pieces of social and political insight, from entire blocs of songs through extended metaphor to just a word or two.”

As Ken Burns highlighted in his documentary of country music in the US -- which featured mostly white artists -- the non-white artists he included stressed repeatedly "it's about the stories."  Hip-hop and rap are also about the stories, and shifting from stereotyped masculine swagger, avoidance of commitment and personal consumption.  There are women calling BS on men treating them poorly and even a young (gay) black artist whose "country trap" song quickly went up the Billboard charts as the most popular song in Billboard history.

Hip-hop / rap artists are not just telling their stories and shining light into the dark corners of our cultural consciousness, but they are working into the general conceptions of many concepts, such as who gets to enjoy "luxury" goods? (See https://www.businessoffashion.com/articles/intelligence/the-new-kings-and-queens-of-fashion-kanye-west-asap-rocky-cardi-b ) -- and importantly, they are changing the rules around power and status.

One of the most appealing traits of Dyson's writing is his passionate enthusiasm for Jay-Z's oeuvre --  his contextualization and analysis of Jay-Z’s music, achievements and life flows in a way that seems clear and almost obvious (as in "Of course it happened that way!").  Dyson provides a fantastic annotated discography at the end of this lovely synthesis of popular culture, history, capitalism and social class.  Or, as my friend Andre says – “Just listen to the music.” 

REVIEW: Jay-Z: Made in America by Michael Eric Dyson 

RATING: 5-stars

© Jennifer R Clark. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. You may share and adapt this content with proper attribution.

REVIEW: Tenth of December by George Saunders (2-stars)

 Clearly, there is something wrong with my brain.  So many people rave about this book and despite having my birthday as the title - it's not something I can get excited about.

The first story is weirdly disjointed -- venturing inside the brain of a teenage girl who seems to have ADHD, and a teenage boy who has strict disciplinarian parents.  The girl is abducted from her home and the boy goes to her rescue, bashing in the head of the abductor.  It's mostly told through internal dialogue of the characters and not an enjoyable read.

Another story about a mother who visits a "white trash" home to look at a puppy with her kids - and discovers a child being kept on a leash in the muddy backyard, decides to "not contribute" to what's going on there (which contributes to the death of the puppy). 

A long story about human experimentation on prisoners -- who are injected with trademarked name products to heighten their perception of attractiveness of the other person, their ability to communicate and their awareness ... or the opposite direction results in a group of two women and 3 men having a ridiculous amount of sex, and a suicide.  It was creepy and sad to say the least.

I tried to read through the remaining stories but didn't find them to be very interesting.  They were drawn out in a way that was just not natural flow of communication.  The epilogue is an interview between David Sedaris and the author -- cooing over each other and the alleged skewering of class in the US (apparently through repeatedly referring to "white trash").  

Your mileage may vary - this presents a distorted reality, like looking through the wrong end of a telescope.

REVIEW: Tenth of December by George Saunders 

RATING: 2-stars

© Jennifer R Clark. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. You may share and adapt this content with proper attribution.

REVIEW: All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr (1 star or less)

So many people recommended this book to me - and even in the "Silent Meditation" pools at Harbin, a random woman could not contain her enthusiasm as I sat silently reading and felt compelled to interrupt me with "That is the MOST PROFOUND book I have ever read."

Aside:  I did not engage with that woman because a) "silent" means no talking; b) if I am reading a book in public, it is not merely a prop to encourage random strangers to strike up conversation; c) perhaps she feels that I am not clever enough to experience the book for myself and she needs to provide guidance (if yes, then piss off); d) if this is the most profound book you've ever read - you clearly aren't reading enough (Start with "Possessive Investment in Whiteness" and piss off).

First - I want to acknowledge that the author's writing style is enjoyable, descriptive and flows nicely.  It was a very quick read.  Lovely descriptions -- but frankly, it got to a point where I felt like this was just a vehicle for his love of writing such descriptions.

Second - his characters are weak and abused, and lacking agency.  

Let's talk about Marie-Laure -- she's the extreme "Angel in a Glass Box."  Oh, poor little thing - she's BLIND!  She can't be expected to do anything, not dress, not pack to flee Paris, not even wash her own hair when she's a flipping teenage girl (no, her father does it while she is, presumably, naked in the bath tub).  

Did the author actually do any research into blindness (causes and correction)?  Did he actually talk to any blind people?  And, how about whether blind people actually count storm drains, make their own breakfast, get dressed and go outside on their own?  I am curious, frankly, to know what she did with most of her time when she wasn't reading from the same two books between age 6 and 16 -- and how did her father find the time to survey and carve intricate wood model puzzle box houses of the French Quarter in Paris and St Malo while also doing all of the things needed to care for his daughter and himself (oh, and work when they were in Paris). 

The orphan Werner and his sister Jutta -- whose parent(s) were killed in the mines (no explanation on the mother) -- find a broken radio and fix it, launching Werner on a quest to learn all about engineering.  He can fix things just by thinking it through -- SHOCKING! Wait - that's what the rest of us do.  We think about things, try a thing and test it out. What's really shocking is that he can be part of a marginal class in a coal mining town and then spend time in a Nazi school and not have any idea that the Nazis were sending trainloads of people off to die. In fact, the German characters seem so protected from the extent of the war that it's laughable.

We can't just let the evil Germans off the hook for ignorance and passive complicity - let's throw in a few random scenes of gratuitous cruelty involving a (possibly Jewish) prisoner, a student who is beaten into a traumatic brain injury because of poor eyesight, rape three women by a group of Russian soldiers (in one sneaky little paragraph) and kill off our German soldier, Werner, on a land mine after he saves the poor blind Marie Laure.

Frankly, I think the more interesting characters are the agoraphobic uncle Etienne whose illegal radio broadcasts reach England and Germany and the housekeeper (60 years of service!) who knows and feeds everyone in the town (where they get the money and food is still a mystery).

So, let's return to Marie Laurent.  She survives the war, doesn't get raped, nary a scratch on her precious little head and... the author doesn't see fit for her to ever have cataract surgery? Not even an attempt to restore some of her vision?  Cataracts are the most curable cause of blindness -- so she goes through a PhD program, works at the museum, collects sea animals (blind) and writes books but hasn't ever bothered to get the cataracts out? Why does the author see fit to punish her this way?  

Oh, wait - because her blindness is merely a trope to allow him to go off on descriptive tangents of sensual exploration.  Used.

Do I have to even get into the ridiculous sub plot of the priceless blue diamond and all it's mythology?  The cancer-ridden Nazi treasure hunter, keen on tracking down the precious gem that will let him LIVE FOR EVER!  YOU WILL NEVER HAVE THE ARK, INDIANA JONES!!!

Why did this get any prizes?  Seriously. I am calling BS. Did Doerr just get the Pulitzer because it was his turn?  Congratulations, white man.

REVIEW: All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

RATING: 1 STAR (or less!)

© Jennifer R Clark. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. You may share and adapt this content with proper attribution.

REVIEW: Dodging Energy Vampires: An Empath’s Guide to Evading Relationships That Drain You and Restoring Your Health and Power by Christiane Northrup (3-stars)

 Reading this book is like having a long chat with a very well informed confidante rather than a medical or psychology book.  I feel like a I have a strong sense of what the author is trying to achieve -- and she has a lot of good advice in this book, illustrated with stories from her life and her friends lives.  Yes, it's true - there's some woo-woo new age stuff in here but for the most part:  nothing in this book will cause harm or injury to anyone who practices her advice.  You might slightly alienate some of your friends and family if you start talking about violet flames and such -- those people can be just as annoying as the narcissists they are trying to avoid. 

The latter half of the book focuses more on self-care and offers a ton of practical advice.  I really like the advice about morning meditation and picturing all the things that can go right, and evening meditation to think about what you can learn throughout the day.  Her description of the benefits of deep breathing through the nose and the way that it stimulates the vagus nerve and shuts down negative self talk generated by your reptile brain is effective at a lay person's level.  

Christiane Northrup is a well educated and well intentioned writer and educator -- but she's also a very big business.  She has a ton of books and videos on her website, but she doesn't self promote herself as a consultant or reference her own books in this book.  Instead, she refers to a lot of other authors -- crediting them for their original ideas.  I found it charming that she referred to the person I most associate with horoscopes in the free local weekly newspaper as a "philosopher"  (Rob Brezsny authors "Free Will Astrology" and a book called "Pronoia").   

Most notably - she's wholeheartedly embraced quite a lot of pseudoscience, generally.  This book comprises a lot of hokum (ie "vampires") but has some good tips buried in what should essentially be a blog post.

The book boils down to the following:  defining and teaching the reader to identify psychic vampires (or narcissists); learning how to create healthy boundaries and distance from those people, and how to avoid them in the future.  Next, she discusses how to find support among people who are not narcissists and how to rebuild one's self-esteem and establish routines for self-care, including focusing on positive news and other inputs (ie, avoid violent/negative films).  All in all - good messages.

REVIEW: Dodging Energy Vampires: An Empath’s Guide to Evading Relationships That Drain You and Restoring Your Health and Power by Christiane Northrup 

RATING: 3-stars

© Jennifer R Clark. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. You may share and adapt this content with proper attribution.

REVIEW: Team Human by Douglas Rushkoff (3-stars)

Ruskhoff is in a privileged position – He makes his living as a speaker (let’s face it – books are publicity for the speaker circuit) – and he’s established himself as a “thought leader.”   

While the book is a bit of ramble – it reads like blog postings or bits of a Ted talk – it’s clear that he’s a voracious reader, and he absorbs concepts and streams of information to synthesize and develop persuasive arguments that skirt the edge of radical recommendations that might get him voted off the Marketworld acceptable speaker’s list.  A lot of what he writes seems kind of “insider-y” for those of us who have been in the tech world (at the Commonwealth Club, he and the moderator chuckled about the wonderful days of Well.com, for example). 

Rushkoff has made a living doing what I wish I had the guts to do since college when a respected sociology professor discouraged me from applying to a MA program in Chicago focusing on pop culture and media as “a fad.” In the first dot com boom – my inner sociologist was totally wigging out on the possibilities of technology and the strangely predictable boom and collapse, increasing bureaucratization and specialization and efforts to “monetize” everything and to “gamify” things to trap users into addictive and exploitive behavior patterns.  

I almost have to say that I enjoy the end notes more than the book itself – unfortunately, he doesn’t use any sort of citations in the text to link users back to these notes which would improve the experience a lot.

He makes a lot of generalizations but since he’s going for a visionary approach – I think that’s acceptable.  Some of what he says strikes me as overly cynical (you can see that in my notes) and I don’t agree with all of his assessments.  He has a fairly linear, causal chain assessment of developments in human society and communication. Hindsight, as we all know, is 20-20. 

For example “Before language, there was no such thing as a lie.”  Really?  So, we’re to believe that pre-language cave drawings were entirely accurate?  Some cave artist never fudged a few extra kills or such?  

Again – as with “Winners Take All” – this author is focusing on a process of co-optation that is inherent in the development of non-distributive, hierarchical human societies.  Of course, web technology has been co-opted to commerce – that’s what commerce does.  We’re so immersed in the pursuit of the success and ideals of Capital that business language and processes are saturating all spheres of our lives.  

While I don’t necessarily believe his dark vision – that computers are programming us to learn how to replace us – but he says some interesting things and overall the book is very thought provoking.  He encourages us to look at the underlying forces and ideologies driving and shaping the requirements of the world around us:  “Technology is not driving itself. It doesn’t want anything. Rather, there is a market expressing itself through technology.”  

“Human ideals such as autonomy, social contact, and learning are again written out of the equation, as the algorithms’ programming steers everyone and everything toward instrumental ends.”

Ruskhoff made a great argument somewhere in this book as well as an NPR interview about education for education’s sake – it’s necessary for people to learn, explore and get exposure to a wide range of ideas and to have the space to experiment intellectually and develop their own perspectives about things.  This is a similar argument to “The Coddling of the American Mind” – and Ruskhoff takes this a step further, eschewing the push to make education a place where people are trained to join the corporate world and to be “useful.”  Education is meant to make you interesting, to make you a human, and to teach you how to interact with adults who have different ideas.  Education is also not meant, as detailed on “Coddling,” to protect you from ideas you find offensive or “triggering.”

Finally – he gets around to the meat of his arguments and his recommendations. He talks about how capitalism as it is implemented is the enemy of commerce because it extracts value and gives it to remote shareholders.  The solutions for underemployment revolve around “getting everyone ‘jobs,’ as if what everyone really wants is the opportunity to commodify their living hours” and punishing the hungry or homeless for “not contributing” even though we don’t really need everyone to be working full time with the abundance we have in our society and economy. 

“We must not accept any technology as the default solution for our problems.”  And – further – question everything around you:  commercial media, mainstream diversions – what are the values they are promoting?  So much of the models around us leave us unable to cope in the face of ambiguity and uncertainty – but increasing our prosocial behavior and interdependence can give us the resilience and resources to solve so many of our contemporary problems.

“Transcending the game altogether means becoming a spoilsport – someone who refuses to acknowledge the playing field, the rules of engagement, or the value of winning” – much like the shaman (or hermit) who lives apart from the tribe.  Delete the app, leave your phone at home, connect with people because “Weirdness is power, dissolving false binaries and celebrating the full spectrum of possibility. Eccentricity opens the gray area where mutations develop and innovations are born.”

Finally, Rushkoff’s key recommendation:  “Just as we can derive an entire ethical framework from the single practice of veganism, we can apply the insights of permaculture practitioners to education, social justice, and government: look for larger patterns, learn from elders, understand and leverage natural cycles.”

“The greatest threats to Team Human are the beliefs, forces, and institutions that separate us from one another and the natural world of which we are a part.”

“We must learn to distinguish between the natural world and the many constructions we now mistake for preexisting conditions of the universe.”

“Find the others.” 

REVIEW: Team Human by Douglas Rushkoff 

RATING: 3-stars

© Jennifer R Clark. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. You may share and adapt this content with proper attribution.

REVIEW: Winners Take All (2018) by Anand Giridhardas (3-stars)

People who are making money at the expense of the common good are not ignorant about the effects they are having on the world around them.

Take as an example – the Winchester Mystery House in San Jose, built by the widow who was the heir to the fortune of Winchester rifles. She earned something like $10,000/minute without having to do a thing because of the pivotal role that those weapons served in the genocide that took place across the US West in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Sarah Winchester lived in mortal fear of the horrors being caused by those weapons in mass killings of innocent people across the landscape of a country that promoted “freedom.”

To avoid the wrath of angry spirits of the slain, and perhaps because she lacked the power, being a woman in the 19th century, Sarah Winchester commissioned continual work on her house to confound the spirits. This is instead of halting production of the Winchester rifles and closing down the business. Given the power and authority of women at that time, I imagine if she had tried, she would have been committed to an asylum. She did not NEED the money – so why continue a business that was so contrary to her own values?

We live in a society where people at the top are encouraged to accumulate and hoard money – and then to use that money for power to manipulate laws and create conditions for them to continue to make even more money. This can only result in ever-increasing socio-economic polarization.

“The Winners Take All” is written by someone who was raised in a fairly affluent neighborhood in Cleveland, worked as a consultant and has circulated with social/economic elites most of his life. Our author has an epiphany – as many people do in their mid-30s – and realizes that the philanthropy of the wealthy was not addressing the root causes of the social issues they were trying to resolve. Our intrepid young author makes a speech that shocks all his colleagues. Surfing on this wave of credibility as a “whistle blower,” he rushes publish detailing how the wealthy protect their ability to continue increasing their wealth and how people are co-opted into this system – whether they are entrepreneurs, consultants or thought leaders.

Let’s be clear: the emperor is starkers. This is not news. The elites who are part of the power structure will work to co-opt and de-radicalize people, movements and culture. Most people, if not everyone, knows this – or maybe it’s just my good fortune for having pursued an undergrad degree in sociology.

Based on the wide array of reviews of this book – so much hyperbole such “scathing” and “important” – it seems to me that many people fail to see it as “a good start” on a better book. He’s got a lot of great anecdotal detail from his first-hand experience and his interviews – but it is definitely skewed toward the politically liberal elites. He presents his evidence as a body of case studies of individuals – and leaves out important details about what they might actually do to create real change.

“Economistic thinking dominates our age,” says our author -- this has been pointed out by plenty of other people. Business processes are being seen as the best solution for many other domains where they may not be exactly applicable. His first case study of an idealistic young graduate student being co-opted into such economistic thinking as a means for making positive changes in the world provides a small glimpse into the changing beliefs about such education in our society.

Are schools just a way to train and future workers at all levels of the capitalist machine and indoctrinate them into economistic thinking? As Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt discuss in “The Coddling of the American Mind” – schools are becoming less of an environment where young people are exposed to a variety of ideas, taught how to think critically and independently and given space for intellectual experimentation.

Instead, according to Lukianoff & Haidt, schools are becoming more insular and resisting that which is “different” as just flat out harmful or wrong. Is this an outcome of the increasing need for co-optation into MarketWorld or a is MarketWorld a result? There’s much to explore here in the world of secondary and post-secondary education that is unexplored in this chapter.

As a society – we need to revisit what we believe about education and schools: schools aren’t just for training future workers. Increasing socioeconomic polarization and the fear of falling into poverty provides plenty of incentive to conform and make oneself as marketable to MarketWorld as possible.

One of the biggest problems highlighted in this book is the fundamental problem of putting reform of social problems in the hands of wealthy philanthropists. In addition to failing to address/masking the root causes of social problems, allowing the elites to operate in this way increases the power of these elites over the political structure and influence over changing laws to benefit themselves.

He provides a few questions here and there which seem to be straw men and which he doesn’t flesh out or address in depth. “In a world of true gender equality, might not the beauty industry shrink?” Isn’t the beauty industry just a part of the overall problem – what about professional sports, for example? Millionaires playing games (for a limited time until they are literally too physically damaged) for billionaires. I would argue that affects and drives perceptions of masculinity at least as much as the cosmetics and fashion industries affect femininity – are either of these areas so easily taken down buy “true gender equality”? Giridhardas provides a profile of the Sackler family – founders of Purdue Pharma, the creator of Oxycontin. It’s common knowledge that our nation is in the midst of a national epidemic of, not just opioid abuse, but the incredibly addictive Oxycontin – which was aggressively marketed by Purdue Pharma.

As with my example of Sarah Winchester – the Sackler family doesn’t need more money. So, why not just halt the production of Oxycontin altogether? They must still have some rights to the formula – so why not just halt production? Focus some of their money and attention on resolving the addiction issues and helping promote non-addictive pain management therapies (how many acupuncture clinics do you suppose are in “ground zero” McDowell County?).

Throughout the book, Giridhardas touches on the calls from within and outside the elite to increase taxes on the uber wealthy – but doesn’t dive into any actual proposals and what it might look like for the elites to lead the way to reforming what capitalism means.

An increase taxes on any income over $10MM – say to 70% -- might encourage the reinvestment of the profits into the company in the form of increased wages across all levels of an organization, especially if paired with a value of reducing difference in salary between lowest and highest paid employee of a company to, say, 500:1 (instead of the 2,438:1 at Manpower, for example). An increased tax might also be used to fund other initiatives (such as the proposal by NY Representative Ocasio-Cortez to fund a “Green. New Deal”).

While I appreciate the spirit of the book – it presents a terribly skewed perception of the players as mostly US and liberal – leaving out, for example, the Koch brothers and others, giving the impression that maybe they are somehow golden geese (what about the philanthropy of the Gates foundation, for example)? Giridhardas leaves out analysis of the broader global issues (and makes a few snipes toward globalization) and ignores recommendations for solutions entirely.

Giridhardas doesn’t even come close to recommending any such ameliorative strategies for people whose incomes are derived from socially destructive activities. In fact, in his wrap-up, he seems to leave the door wide open for any other alternative, good or bad:

“For the inescapable answer to the overwhelming question – Where do we go from here? – is: somewhere other than where we have been going, led by people other than the people who have been leading us.”

Perhaps the elites are malicious and intentionally manipulating perception through philanthropy – or perhaps philanthropy is just a “Winchester Mystery House” being pursued by people who don’t know how to undo the damage being caused by their addiction to capitalism and the unending drive to hoard wealth. What we need – as much as the criticism and “emperor has no clothes” kinds of reportage in “Winners Take All” – is an escape from this system for the elites and a way to rethink our values around society and wealth.

For more reviews of this book – check out Black Oxford’s review of this book from a broader intellectual and moral perspective. Michael Siliski’s review dives into the proposals as well as other defects of the book

REVIEW: Winners Take All (2018) by Anand Giridhardas 

RATING: 3-stars

 © Jennifer R Clark. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. You may share and adapt this content with proper attribution.

REVIEW: Mrs. Chippy's Last Expedition: The Remarkable Journal of Shackleton's Polar-Bound Cat by Caroline Alexander (3-stars)

We all know the true end to Mrs Chippy's expedition -- and I have put off reading this book for ages because of it.  The book itself is an homage to life from the perspective of a very self-assured feline.  The world revolves around him, in his mind, and he doesn't see the ultimate betrayal coming at the end.

There are some laugh out loud passages in this book -- like when two of the ship mates are describing how to turn around in a bunk while Mrs Chippy is nestled between one's ankles.  Mrs Chippy finds this droll but "instructive" because, as he notes -- his sleep has been disturbed by the tossing and turning of louts who were not very considerate.  Mrs. Chippy is depicted as very curious - inspecting and supervising, going on watches and tormenting the dogs who are persistently depicted as less intelligent. 

Whenever someone picks up and carries Mrs Chippy - it's always "I accompanied him on his shoulders ..." or "I accompanied him in the crook of his left arm" ... as if Mrs Chippy is making the decision to have the person pick him up and carry him.

The book is a very amusing exercise in life from the perspective of the cat -- but ultimately, it's an homage to a creature who was betrayed by those humans whose lives intertwined with his.  His mate, Chippy, never forgave Shackleton for this act.  There's a statue to Mrs. Chippy in Wellington!

REVIEW: Mrs. Chippy's Last Expedition: The Remarkable Journal of Shackleton's Polar-Bound Cat  by Caroline Alexander 

RATING: 3-stars

© Jennifer R Clark. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. You may share and adapt this content with proper attribution.