Reviews: Books without Plots; House of Blues

 If someone were to recommend a book to you, and tell you it had no plot, you might look at them a bit strangely.  What is a fiction book without the dynamic plot twists, the beginning, middle, and denouement that we so desire?  And believe me, I've read books like that.  Trying to get through a Don Delillo book was enough to give me a nervous breakdown.  But believe me when I say that some of the best books are those that have no plot, because the plot is simply a vehicle to provide philosophy, or a diatribe that would not otherwise be read.  Sorta like this blog.  Take for instance Neal Stephenson's Anathem, reviewed here, which is much like taking Plato and putting him in a science fiction setting.  A marvelous book, but one which is at its best when the plot takes a back seat.  In fact, the end is only non-satisfying because it has to end with plot resolution.

Other wonderful books without plot:

You must read Michael Nesmith's The Long Sandy Hair of Neftoon Zamora. Yes, he is one of the singers of The Monkees, the best one, in my opinion, and yes, his mother invented liquid paper. So he has time to write books and do whatever he wants to do.  The book is as relaxing as his music, as thoughtful and lyrical...well, until the end when a bad guy shows up (symbolizing the epitome of capitalism gone extremely wrong) and the book abruptly ends.  You can read the first 6 chapters of the book here.

The Island by Gary Paulsen reads very much like Thoreau's Walden, and must have been a work of meditation while working on other books like The Hatchet, as the main character basically gets into his boat and wanders around the lake and sees birds and parts of nature and expounds upon them and life.  Sounds extremely boring for a kid's book, but it's wonderful, for those that want that sort of thing.

Also along that same line is the Selected Works of T.S. Spivet, by Reif Larsen, which is philosophical and very relaxing, from the mountains of Idaho to the train ride through the plain states to Chicago.  Then the plot takes over and it seemed like the book just wanted to end.  In my opinion, the book was much better when it meandered around endlessly, much like the travels of the narrator.

I say all this to recommend The Elegance of a Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery. Two apartment dwellers, in upper class Paris, a concierge in her 50's, alone, with a phobia about people discovering that she is extremely intelligent,  and discusses in her journal post-modern French philosophy to Japanese films to still-life art.  Intertwined, of course, with a similarly brilliant 12 year old girl who writes journals about the small things in life, determined to find a reason worth living before she kills herself on her 13th birthday.  Amazing work  in the vignettes in each chapter, looking at life in a new way.  There was a review that I read, said that the reviewer's psychologist  recommended this book over taking Prozac.  Don't know if I'd carry it that far, as the ending comes right out of a Lifetime made-for-TV movie, as if Barbery just needed an ending that tied up the pieces.  It would work better if the journals were carried out longer, with the interactions between the characters longer.  It would work well as an online-blog-story.  So I enjoyed the book very much, but only if the plot stayed far back behind the words.  On a personal note, this was the last book I read while eating lunch in the Borders break room.  Now I have to read using my Kobo or a regular book (of which I have multitudes), but I will have to find a way to do it at home.  Too many electronic distractions....must get around that.

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Review: Hugh Laurie's album Let Them Talk

Why do all Actors want to be Singers? (or for that matter, why do all Singers want to be Actors?) Turns out, it's because there are quite a few people that have multiple talents.  Go watch Jimmy Fallon's Late Night on NBC (watch the Linoleum peel while Jay Leno's on, it's about the same amount of entertainment).  He can do anything he wants, from singing to playing instruments to dancing...comedy... amazing stuff.  He's about as close to Johnny Carson as you're gonna get these days.  Or Wayne Brady, on Who's Line he did most anything for a laugh. Or Justin Timberlake , but I've discussed him here.

Turns out, Hugh Laurie fits this mold, too.  Originally a British comedian (yes, I know he's British, but he did a comedy routine in Great Britain), his role of Dr. House on House leaves me in stitches, while being perfectly serious.  An anti-hero in the vein of Thomas Covenant in Stephen R. Donaldson's books.  But if you watch the TV show, you see him take down a guitar or play at a piano.  Well, that's him, it's not stunt fingers.  Turns out, he's been a fan of Blues music since he was a little tike, forced to take piano lessons.  The only song he liked playing in the instruction booklet was "Suwanee River."  So now that he has all this fame and fortune, he sought out masters of the Blues genre and they accompany him on different tracks.  You can read reviews online, and you'll find them praising his instrumental talent, but not liking his voice.  I disagree with them, since I've been a fan of folk music like Bob Dylan and David Gray, the nasal voice is something I enjoy.  I agree with Shawn Mullins in his album notes from No. 9, that recording blues and folk should be an instantaneous act, with imperfections included, because without that, it's not real.  It's just professionally made crap that everyone else makes.  But to feel like your in one of the bars in New Orleans, or on the streets listening to a musician that hasn't had a day of voice training in his whole life, where the song comes from emotion and grit, from someplace down in his guts.... that's the real stuff.  That's what this album is.  As usual, I'll add a video from youtube, this time an introduction to his music (probably off of the deluxe edition.)

The Mouse in the Cave (Plato Blog Pt.2)

 Pleasure, the inevitable by-product of our civilization...A new world, whose only preoccupation will be, how to amuse itself. The tragedy of your time, my young friends, is that you may get exactly what you want. ~Inspector Shrink, from Monkees' Head.

Our only preoccupation will be how to amuse ourselves.  That certainly fits, whether we use Huxley's Brave New World or Neil Postman's philosophies.  I think it's quite clear that Inspector Shrink's quote is quite correct.  There are two types of people in this world, people who consume entertainment, and those that support them.  We have lost our ability to produce anything, for the most part.  Some specialization still takes place, the scientists who develop the small microchips in our cell phones, or the antibiotics that cure us from disease.  We make those things.  But put me in front of a rod of molten metal and tell me to make a screw out of it, and I'm dumbfounded.  Certainly, those things are made by robots now anyway.  That way we don't have to get our hands dirty and can spend more time talking about last night's American Idol. I certainly do appreciate the many pieces of machinery that makes my life easier, but I say this with the full knowledge that I am not using that time to forward the progress of man, to payback the makers of society with anything substantial with the time I have saved.  No, I am using it finding things on the Internet, or watching the same reruns on TV over and over again.  I would argue that the vast majority of time American's spend on this Earth is used pursuing ways to amuse ourselves, or working so that we may have the money to  take on that pursuit.

A prime example of this in action, squeezed down to 11 minutes for our inspection, is the Phineas & Ferb episode "Attack of the 50 Foot Sister." Take a moment to watch it on Youtube.  Okay, Candace is obsessed with going to the Midsummer Carnival to enter the auditioning for "Flawless Girl" cosmetics. Along the way she runs into Mr. Odda, who is the host of the Oddball show.  As she realizes, both of these companies make money on taking advantage of the insecurities of today's youth.  One by showing off the aberrant objects of the world to make normal people feel better ("at least I'm not like that,") while the other uses modern communication to project an image of perfection, that which can only be attained by purchasing cosmetics from their company.

On the way, Candace stops to ridicule her brothers, Phineas and Ferb, who are trying to help a friend grow a giant watermelon (at the expense of hanging up the shame curtains).  In this sense, the brothers, using their chemistry lab, are the producers, the makers, as Ayn Rand would put it, of this world, while their older sister ridicules them, until she needs their growth elixir for her own superficial needs.

This seems to be the case in reality, as well.  A recent Facebook status by one of my friends describes complex mathematical calculations he took in order to plant a tree that would provide the correct amount of shade for the house, the garden, etc...  For which he was called a geek, a dork, etc... However, if calculations such as this is not done, the shade can kill gardens, and not enough shade can bring sunlight in on a home and cost hundreds in electricity bills.  The thought processes behind planting a tree, the science behind it, is the antithesis to the people controlling the images in the caves.  For producing, or thinking, saves money, creates time saving efforts that has nothing to do with entertainment.  This is the free man living his own life outside the cave, and for which the self-absorbed inside of it are insanely jealous.

Back to Phineas & Ferb for a minute, the other character in the program who consistently builds machines for himself (usually for superficial reasons, which is a paradox to my theory), is Dr. Doofenshmirtz, the evil scientist. His creations are as awe inspiring as P&F's inventions, but his are supposedly used for world (okay, Tri-State Area) domination. However, the boys' also have a hint of wrongness to them, as Candice is always trying to get them into trouble, as if by them creating a portal to Mars, they are doing something wrong against society, or at least Mom's rules. It's amazing how the inventors and thinkers of the shows on the Disney Channel are ridiculed or stereotyped as wrong or evil.  Stewie is done the same way in Family Guy. Those that think are anti-social, awkward, even evil, and those that are rich are so through no thought of their own.  They are stupid, without morals, and always anti-environmental. It's also interesting that the majority of shows on the Disney Channel, the main characters are head actors(tresses) in bands, on television shows, in fixtures of entertainment for teenagers everywhere. Hannah Montana, for instance. Or Icarly's crew on Nick.

In short, those that create or support entertainment are lauded, and those who produce non-entertaining things, or those that impede entertainment, are ridiculed. All this from children's television. How much of this is internalized and brought into adult culture? Where scientists and thinkers are ridiculed and branded as anti-social or perhaps even evil (or sent off to Iceland as in Brave New World),  while entertainers and those that contribute nothing substantial to mankind are lauded as role-models and heroes.  Would that the construction workers working high upon the Brooklyn bridge get as much praise as Kobe Bryant playing an hour of ball and getting  thousands of dollars. I would rather be the worker, standing on the apex of the bridge, looking out over the ocean and seeing the sun rise upon New York City, and know that below him is a structure that he helped to build, to form with his own hands, than to entertain the masses endless staring at the glowing flames, the images from the screens, the television and the computer, the shadows on the walls.

Plato, The Monkees, and Jumping Dandruff

"The tragedy of your time, my young friends, is that you may get exactly what you want" ~Inspector Shrink, from The Monkees Head

If Bill and Ted ever stop by my house in their phone booth, I need to borrow it and bring Plato back to the present and, given my advanced knowledge of Ancient Greek, the conversations we would have.... He would be amazed, I think, with our houses, with the lights and electricity, air-conditioning, all the comforts we have. But I think, after looking at our lives, he would conclude that we haven't progressed much since his days at the Academy, where he would argue with his students and reveal truths about mankind. Specifically, the passage in The Republic, where he creates the analogy of "The Cave."

Imagine Plato sitting in the town square, trying to engage his students in a conversation. Amongst the idyllic manufactured town park, the planted trees, the statues of the local hero, the ancient philosopher sits unable to carry on a lesson in metaphysics, because someone is sitting in their polished crimson sports car blaring music, the female accountant is talking on her cell phone about plans for tonight, the electronics store is showing the football game on the new 50 inch flat screen in the store window. Then there's the kids walking behind their mother, but who often bump into things because they have their heads buried in the latest Pokemon game on their Nintendo DS. But of course, Plato doesn't know all this... all he sees are lights and sounds and images being projected on the walls. For that's what we have, our own walls, projecting unreal images onto themselves and into our minds. We live, unchained, seeing the images that others wish us to see, on the wall.

What Plato doesn't realize is that the metaphor that he used is correct, but incomplete. Seeing the reality of things, the "forms" outside the cave, the man comes back in, tries to tell his friends about the outside world. And it's not that they don't believe him, they simply find it boring. There's so many other wonderful things going on in the images, who cares about the sunlight and the flower and the perfect chair. It's all about the images. So, the man realizes that he now is free, and that he can now take advantage of his knowledge. He goes up to where the images are made, kills the people controlling the fire, and makes his own images. Further, he allows those watching to determine what images they see, as long as they pay him a monthly fee. In the cave then, there are two kinds of people, those that produce the entertainment, and those that consume it.
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A break to tie in the quote at the top.  While looking for the exact wording of the quote above, I chanced upon IMDB's page on the Monkees' movie Head, which had a page of quotes.  Among which was the follow up of Peter Tork's conversation with the philosopher in the sauna.  The swami is included on the Head soundtrack, but Peter's communicating this to his fellow band mates (which is overlooked just as the man in the cave's communication was), is left out.  Here that quote is in it's entirety:

We were talking with the Master regarding the nature of conceptual reality. Psychologically speaking, the human mind, or brain or whatever, is almost incapable of distinguishing between the real and the vividly imagined experience. Sound and film and music and radio. Even these manipulative experiences are received more or less directly and uninterpretative by the mind. They are cataloged and recorded and either acted upon directly, or stored in the memory, or both. Now this process, unless we pay it tremendous attention, begins to separate us from the reality of the now. Am I being clear? For we must allow the reality of the now to just happen, as it happens. Observe and act with clarity. For where there is clarity, there is no choice. And were there is choice, there is misery. But then, why should I speak, since I know nothing?

It further solidifies Peter Tork as the wise fool, the Rousseau-ian Noble Savage, as it were. He becomes the free man, the one who has looked outside of the cave, or, as the Monkees have deemed it, the world in which the band was manufactured, created, and manipulated, and has come back into that world to tell his band mates how they may become free. Of course, much as the metaphor ends for Plato, the Monkees realize they can never be free at all. They are trapped as characters, as images on the wall.  And in real life, the characters of Peter Tork, Davy Jones, and others, become those they portrayed on Television.  As Tork said in the boxing ring, "I'm the dummy. I'm always the dummy."  Moving on...

The entire quote from the inspector is:

Pleasure, the inevitable by-product of our civilization (cut scene of a butcher pounding meat)...A new world, whose only preoccupation will be, how to amuse itself. The tragedy of your time, my young friends, is that you may get exactly what you want.

After this, the Monkees are taken into a scene where they are dressed in white, and are encouraged to jump up and down in what looks like hair. They are dandruff you see, for a shampoo commercial. I wonder what Plato's opinions would be on the suppositions made by Aldous Huxley in Brave New World.  A government that not only provides justice and peace, but controls it's subjects through the pleasures it seeks.  Much like baby Robins following a worm dangling from their mother's mouth.  In order to get the entertainment we desire, we would give up our liberties and our freedom and our education all to be happy.  The philosopher kings would be exiled, to Iceland, as Mustapha Mond reveals to Helmholtz Watson at the end, and the commoners will all be perfectly happy never to achieve self-awareness, as long as their free supply of drugs and religion-sex is unabated.  But we were talking about dandruff...

Because the scene where the Monkees become dandruff is as telling as the rest.  Imagine the Three Tenors having to do such exercises just to fulfill a contract.  The Monkees must sacrifice their dignity in order to pursue their music.  Which brings the money they can use for drugs and other entertainment.  They become the amalgamation of society, both consumers and producers of the entertainment they so are addicted to.  As viewers of the images on the cave wall, they become puppets for the image makers, as well as images themselves for others watching on other cave walls.  There is no freedom here.  No sunshine, no perfect forms, only illusion. 
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I guess I need to split this into two posts, because the making, selling, and consuming of entertainment develops into an economy that is quite interesting, and is best laid out in a Phineas & Ferb  episode. 

Ode to a Home

If you ask me where I would want to live if the world ended, or if America dissolved into a civil war of Repubs. and Dems. with nobody winning, I think I found a place. I think it's a house the Howard Roark would find pleasing, and one that John Galt wouldn't mind living in. While I've been writing through the last two blog entries, I've had this house in mind, in that it conforms only to the needs of the people living there, and not to any standards by which the builders, whoever they were, thought about it looking like any other home on the market. I drove by new neighborhoods in Newton County a week or two ago and found that every house looked exactly the same, with no room between each of them, so you could probably walk between them, but that was about it. Why would anyone want to live in a house that looked like every single other house on the street? I'm reminded of the Monkees song, "Pleasant Valley Sunday,"

...Rows of houses that are all the same
And no one seems to care

See Mrs. Gray, she's proud today
because her roses are in bloom.
Mr. Greene he's so serene,
He's got a T.V. in every room

Another Pleasant Valley Sunday
Here in status symbol land
Mothers complain about how hard life is
And the kids just don't understand

Creature comfort goals
They only numb my soul
and make it hard for me to see
My thoughts all seem to stray,
to places far away
I need a change of scenery

If you notice the people in stanza two... their accomplishments are so small. And while roses are important, I guess, are far from raising a garden to provide sustenance for the family. The televisions are simply methods of escape from the mundane world outside, the one that "numbs my soul" in the last line. It's very obvious that the writers are nonplussed about the world of this neighborhood (which most young people in the 60's were. A shame that that energy was wasted in such a short time. But that's another blog that I'll probably never write.)

The house I'm referring to is located in Walton County, Georgia, just a little ways from Loganville. It's actually a house of a coworker, A., who has worked his whole life and has recently bought this house and is currently working on restoring it to its former splendor. I had to take him home one day, and he took me on a very detailed tour of the entire house. Turns out the architect is one who has made quite a living constructing Walmart buildings. He found this storage shed, with the land around it, and realized that it would make a great house. So he took the large barn-like structure, added a second floor and made it into a home. It's actually the reverse for what happened to Thoreau's home in Walden. After he moved out of the cabin, it was sold to a farmer to be a storage shed, and later had the roof removed, eventually to become a pig sty.

The single most impressive thing about the structure is the living room, which comprises of the storage building, built with a single raised roof, with angled ceilings and windows at odd places that would, for some, be absurd, but the light that the windows let in is amazing. Take a church sanctuary, for instance, with the giant windows and vaulted ceilings. What light should beam down upon the worshipers, letting the light from nature, the complexities that God has wrought in this universe, illuminate the hymnals and the words on the pastor's Bible. But unfortunately, churches seem to want colored glass windows, and drawn curtains, to keep the light out. A somber mood is not what a congregation should need for a Sunday church service. It would make one go to sleep, or view it as a funeral. Let it be a joyous time, and then when you get home, see again the light from the Sunday afternoons glowing through the windows, projecting off the dust in the air and affirming God's presence everywhere.

The openness of this house is what appeals to me. The center of the living room, which houses the sofas and the television, is surrounded by windows, doors opened to the kitchen and study, and above it, to one side, a balcony that is like a game room or study room that goes back to the bedrooms. It is warm and inviting, with only the bedrooms off to one side to afford privacy. As Thoreau said in Walden:

A house whose inside is as open and manifest as a bird's nest, and you cannot go in at the front door and out at the back without seeing some of its inhabitants; where to be a guest is to be presented with the freedom of the house, and not to be carefully excluded from seven eighths of it, shut up in a particular cell, and told to make yourself at home there -- in solitary confinement.

The location of the kids' bedroom is also worth noting, as it is off to the side, almost as in an alcove with large glass doors that open out to a patio, where a basketball goal should be, or where you would see girls using sidewalk chalk to make their favorite games. Then, beyond that, is constructed a large treehouse. And beyond that still are the trees and forests and the creek that lies at the bottom of the hills. What more wonderful things would children need? Paradise, I tell you. But A. told me that his children never play in the treehouse, they would much rather play on their Nintendo DS's. Children have forgotten how to create worlds of their own. They have lost the instincts built into them by God, to create realms and become lords over them. What better than the treehouse to survey your kingdom, to wield a stick as a sword and challenge all enemies lurking in the trees to overtake you? Or to travel over fields and streams to explore the world as Livingston or Louis and Clark had done in the past? Instead, they'd rather catch Pikachu and fight virtual battles in digital realms. It is a tragic loss when the outdoors remain silent because those who would seek its freedom find it rather in electronic gadgets made by corporations seeking to trap children and gain profit from it. Yet the ingenuity and imagination cultivated by romps in the outdoors would create minds sharp enough to solve the world's problems. The cerebral mind must have a physical body to go with it, lest atrophy and lethargy take over.

Yet the house is not finished, as the original designer left much undone, and it has fallen to A. to complete the task. If I had my house to redo, I would tear out so many walls and roofs. Bust through the prison walls that keep me inside. There is no greater joy than that of constructing your own home, nor any task more stressful to undertake. It is building shelter, much like the cavemen did to keep out of the rain and to protect themselves from predators and the like. Building our houses puts us in touch with one of the original motivators of man, an integral part of our subconsciousness. To quote Thoreau, again:

There is some of the same fitness in a man’s building his own house that there is in a bird’s building its own nest. Who knows but if men constructed their dwellings with their own hands, and provided food for themselves and families simply and honestly enough, the poetic faculty would be universally developed, as birds universally sing when they are so engaged? But alas! we do like cowbirds and cuckoos, which lay their eggs in nests which other birds have built, and cheer no traveler with their chattering and unmusical notes. Shall we forever resign the pleasure of construction to the carpenter? What does architecture amount to in the experience of the mass of men? I never in all my walks came across a man engaged in so simple and natural an occupation as building his house.

In The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand puts these feelings into words as Roark looks over the Monadnock Valley resort, or as he is stretched out on the ground outside the house he designed for Gail Wynand and Francon. The house on the hill, overlooking the wilderness that is material for the architect's hands to mold into works of beauty and utilitarian function. For the architect, the builder, the canvas on which he paints is the whole world. The rocks and the clay and the wood and the ground are the materials he uses to make a masterpiece. Sure, anyone can make a house out of these things. Anyone can take a cheap art class and come home with a painting of some trees and mountains. But the master can take those same materials and make stunning works of beauty. Houses are of the same mold. They can be mechanically built boxes meant for meager shelter and banality, or they can be just as organic and full of life and beauty as the people who built and live in them. The abodes mirror those who abide. Thoreau: "And when the farmer has got his house, he may not be the richer but the poorer for it, and it be the house that has got him." and "Most men appear never to have considered what a house is, and are actually though needlessly poor all their lives because they think that they must have such a one as their neighbors have."

If I must live in a house, given a choice, give me the fishing shack with one room, with as little an attempt at becoming like those houses in the Monkees' song, so that I may create the beauty out of the box in which I live. Or give me the materials to build the house, or to someone who has the foresight, like Roark, to create out of the soul of the Earth a structure I would be proud to call mine, to strive to live to the organic energy that pulses through the walls. I want a house that will make me a better person just for having lived in it. Give me a house that promotes freedom and openness, and not the imprisoned walls that provide shelter, but little else.