October 3rd, 2015: A Day Which Will Live In Infamy

Happy Halloween again! As you might have guessed, any plans I had for this momentous day fell through, but that's okay, because now I can share my latest HonorSociety.org piece with you! This one is a bit polemical even by my standards, but considering how the overall product turned out, I'm very happy with it. You can access the original article here or read it below:

                                     October 3rd, 2015: A Day Which Will Live In Infamy

As Halloween approaches, it seems like only yesterday that October reared it's head around the corner and was upon us. Indeed, few can forget the horrific event that rang in the new month: the mass murder of 9 innocent people at Umpqua Community College in Oregon. This senseless act sent shock waves across the nation, with thousands mourning and President Barack Obama himself addressing the country shortly afterwards. In his speech, he offered condolences to the families affected, praise for the emergency service personnel acting on the scene, and most notably vitriol for what he termed our "inaction" in the face of gun violence (as opposed to violence in general). "Somehow, this has become routine. The reporting is routine. My response here at this podium ends up being routine. The conversation in the aftermath of it. We've become numb to this," he lamented, before pronouncing judgment on the American people, like an indignant Old Testament prophet: "This is a political choice that we make to allow this to happen every few months in America. We collectively are answerable to those who lose their loved ones because of our inaction." Unsurprisingly, the president's display of opprobrium proved to be very controversial, with some arguing that he was exploiting the Oregon shooting to push an anti-gun agenda, while others commended him for taking a stand against the gun lobby and pushing for "common sense" gun legislation. The reaction of all parties involved would be very different, however, when another massacre occurred just two days later, albeit under very different circumstances.

On October 3rd, under cover of darkness, a low-flying, heavily-armed AC-130 gunship made it's way towards Kunduz, the capital of Kunduz Province and the fifth largest city in Afghanistan. The previous month, the city had fallen to the Taliban, marking the group's first successful seizure of a major population center since a U.S.-led coalition invaded the country in 2001 and turning the area into a heated battleground between Taliban fighters and American and Afghan government forces. It was against this bloody backdrop that the gunship was deployed, and before the night was over, it would contribute most indelibly to the ongoing carnage. As the plane lumbered across the Afghan sky, the crew, taking a closer look at their orders, phoned their superiors. Something didn't seem right: their target, if they understood their orders correctly, was a hospital, specifically the Medecins Sans Frontieres (known in the English-speaking world as the Nobel Peace Prize-winning charity Doctors Without Borders) hospital that was renowned in the area for treating wounded soldiers and civilians alike. The crew questioned the legality of their mission, but judging by what followed, the brass assuaged their doubts and gave them the go.

One can only assume the majority of the hospital's patients, variously afflicted by bullets, ordinance and disease, had been asleep for some time when the first bombs were dropped in the wee hours of the morning. And 15 minutes later, another round of bombs was dropped. And another 15 minutes later, another. Several patients burned to death as they lay in their beds, incinerated by their purported liberators. Another was lying on an operating table ready to undergo examination by hospital staff when the bombing started. Fearing for their lives, the doctors fled, leaving the patient to die as he waited to be operated on. Half an hour into this airborne onslaught, the staff finally figured out what was happening and immediately phoned American and Afghan authorities, urging them to tell the plane to stand down. The end result of the phone exchange can be seen in a shocking statement provided by MSF spokeswoman Dalila Mahdawi: "The bombing continued for more than 30 minutes after American and Afghan military officials in Kabul and Washington were first informed."  When the bombs finally stopped falling after an hour, 30 people, including 10 patients, 13 MSF staff, and 7 unidentified individuals, were dead, dozens more wounded, and the only health facility of it's caliber in the region was destroyed, denying such life-saving services as high-quality surgeries, post-operative and rehabilitation care to countless Afghans for the foreseeable future.

Understandably, the hospital's parent organization (as well as a great many others) was outraged. MSF General Director Christopher Stokes referred to the air strike as a "war crime" and demanded that an independent, third-party investigation look into the incident and hold the perpetrators responsible. Others chimed in to condemn the bombing, with anti-war group Voices For Creative Nonviolence calling upon activists in the U.S. and around the world to congregate in front of hospitals with signs and banners that read "Dropping bombs here would be a war crime!" and "The same is true in Afghanistan," and oddball Republican-turned-Democratic candidate Lincoln Chafee obliquely referencing it at the Democratic debate on CNN, in an attempt to appeal to liberals' traditional noninterventionist leanings (going by his recent exit from the race, it didn't do him much good). Indeed, the act was so blatantly egregious that even President Obama issued what The New York Times dubbed a "rare" apology to MSF (how merciful of him!) It wasn't, however, a televised statement like the self-righteous one in which he once again wagged that finger of his at Americans for being too stupid to agree with him that he gave on national television a couple days before, but, tellingly, a short, meek statement issued by his Press Secretary and published on the White House website, where only people who were informed and interested in the subject matter would go out of their way to find it. Prefacing his apology with a disclaimer that he spoke "On behalf of the American people," (were these the same American people he chided for among their many sins, "inaction" just two days before?), he extended his "deepest condolences" to everyone killed and injured in the air strike. He (and he added, his wife Michelle too, for good measure) offered their "thoughts and prayers" to all civilians involved, as well as to their family members. He even promised to "work closely with President Ghani, the Afghan government, and our international partners" to continue their war against the remnants of the Taliban. But he flatly refused to consent to an independent investigation of the Kunduz air strike, insisting that a joint military, NATO and Afghan team remain at the lead of any inquiries into the bombing. If the arrival of the team at the compound where the hospital was located, in which the team arrived on the grounds in a tank and almost surely destroyed potential evidence in the case, is any indication, it will be a whitewash.

There will be no accountability. On the off-chance that there is, the crew of the gunship will be held entirely responsible, court martialed, and maybe even executed, while the higher-ups, however high it goes up, will get off-scotch free. It won't matter that they were just following orders, that they had doubts but their superiors insisted that they bomb the hospital anymore than it mattered that Second Lieutenant and convicted war criminal William Calley was, as he maintains to this day, ordered by his commander to slaughter 347 Vietnamese civilians at My Lai. They will be scapegoats, as instrumental in carrying out this atrocity as they were; a tainted offering to absolve their co-conspirators of their sins. But it will be a long time before it is undeniably established that a sin has indeed been committed. Not by some shadowy, cigar-smoking men huddled around a table in a darkly-lit room, but by the people we have elected to represent us and the people we pay to fight overseas for us. By the people who elected and paid these people. By us.

At this point, I wouldn't blame you for thinking I had descended into a most morbid form of hysteria. Who knows, maybe I have. But say what you will, considering everything you have learned all your life about living in a democratic society where the government represents you, where it cannot take action without the demonstrated support of the people, and where it's armed officers, agents, and enforcers are paid for by your taxes, whose actions do you really feel responsible for: Christopher Harper-Mercer's or the crew on that gunship's? Whose salary did you pay? And who did you vote to send to the site of their respective massacres? If you answered with the former, please forward me your address so I can direct a SWAT team to it. 

It is for precisely this reason that October 3rd, 2015 will forever more live in infamy. It is not only a day in which the premeditated destruction of a facility that aimed to heal the sick and aid the weak and the gruesome, state-sanctioned murder of innocent lives occurred, but it is also a day in which the perpetrator, after vowing to crusade against violence days before, shrugged their shoulders, essentially said "sorry, sh-t happens", and moved on. A day in which America announced that it felt more responsible for the acts of a lone wolf gunman than for the acts of it's legally constituted armed forces. A day in which "inaction" was held to be worse than immoral actions. A day in which we abdicated our responsibility. A day in which we abdicated our humanity.

Book Review: Kurt Vonnegut's "Cat's Cradle", "God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater", and "Breakfast of Champions"

Happy Halloween, dear readers! It's been a very busy, very exciting month for me, so I apologize for not updating lately. However, I do have stuff to share with you, so dig in! First is my review of a Kurt Vonnegut volume I wrote for HonorSociety.org. It's one of the longest reviews I've ever done (even longer than the Zora Neale Hurston review I did), but please bear with me and check it out! You can access the original article here, or read it in it's entirety below.

           Book Review: Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle, God Bless You Mr. Rosewater, and Breakfast of Champions

In the wake of, among other things, several mass shootings that have paralyzed the nation, one could reasonably argue that there is little to laugh about in the current political and social climate. Yes, comedy is supposed to push boundaries, but surely you have to draw a line somewhere, right? To do otherwise would not only trivialize these horrific events, but the memories of their victims of as well, the argument concludes. However, as with every argument, there is a counter-argument to be made: rather than simply trivialize tragedy, satire and comedy draw attention to and underline the elements that make a given development or phenomenon tragic. And while the first thing that might come to mind when one thinks of such humor is an Internet troll making racist or sexist remarks in the comment section or a 10 year-old repeating dead baby jokes they read on the Internet to friends on the playground, dark comedy has played a prominent, perhaps even integral role in our arts and culture for centuries. Indeed, one of America's most celebrated writers of the 20th century, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., made this style of humor his stock and trade. A veteran of the Second World War who was captured by the Germans and subsequently witnessed the fire bombing of Dresden, Vonnegut saw his fair share of horror. But instead of being broken by these horrors, he was inspired by them, writing dozens of novels and short stories over the course of his prolific career. His most well-known work (as well as the one widely regarded as his magnum opus) is the slim-yet-sublime Slaughterhouse-Five, but the three collected in this volume, Cat's Cradle, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, and Breakfast of Champions, are also worthy entries in his impressive canon. A writer of great contrasts, each of these novels bear the simple, straightforward yet still deeply profound manner Vonnegut wrote in, the pitch-black sense of humor he reveled in, and the hopeful, humanist outlook he believed in.

The first selection, Cat's Cradle, would be a real downer if it weren't so hilarious. In fact, it starts off with John, the protagonist, telling the reader that the following chaos started when he set out to write a book called "The Day The World Ended" (Vonnegut, pg. 11) about the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and what Americans were doing that day. Not what one would exactly call a rich spring of mirth, but astonishingly, Vonnegut is able to use one of only two incidences where nuclear weapons were offensively deployed (against civilians, no less) as a springboard for this chuckle-inducing satire. Making frequent quotation and reference throughout to a cryptic religious figure called Bokonon (who offers such droll tidbits of wisdom as "She was a fool, and so am I, and so is anyone who thinks he sees what God is Doing," [Vonnegut, pg. 13]), John explains how his research for his book set him on the trail of one Dr. Felix Hoenikker, the "Father of The Atom Bomb" and thus a prime target for inclusion in John's book. Described by colleagues of his as inscrutable and indifferent to the point of callousness, Hoenikker is revealed to have not only passed on, but to have limited his interaction with his children to fashioning the titular cat's cradle out of string, developed a dangerous chemical substance called ice-nine that freezes water solid, and when told by a fellow scientist after testing their first prototype atomic bomb that "Science has now known sin," (Vonnegut, pg. 19), earnestly replied "What is sin?" (Vonnegut, pg. 19). Taken aback by the literally devastating ramifications of ice-nine, John resolves to track down Hoenikker's estranged children in the hope that they can tell him more about the substance, learning that one of them, the hopelessly technical Franklin, has by virtue of his surname become Minister of Science for the Caribbean island of San Lorenzo. Soon enough, "[a]s it was supposed to happen [as] Bokonon would say" Vonnegut, pg. 53), John finds himself assigned a story about San Lorenzo-based humanitarian Julian Castle and on a plane to the curious nation, where, depending on how you look at it, fate awaits (as Bokonon would have it), or nothing awaits (as Bokonon would also have it).

On San Lorenzo, John meets a litany of larger-than-life characters: "Papa" Monzano, the island's aging dictator who is waging a brutal crackdown on Bokononist activity, Mona Monzano, "Papa's" stunning adopted daughter who plays a xylophone at a welcoming ceremony for the American ambassador and flirts with men by rubbing the bottoms of their feet with hers, and Newt Hoenikker, Frank's midget brother who spends his time painting abstract art, of which John remarks, "The scratches formed a sort of spider's web, and I wondered if they might not be the sticky nets of human futility hung up on a moonless night to dry," (Vonnegut, pg. 93). None, however, are bigger than the civilian residents of San Lorenzo, who speak in a dialect of English so completely removed from any such existing dialect as to be utterly laughable. When asked by one of John's fellow Americans who Bokonon is, the cab driver ferrying them around says he is a "Vorry ball moan," (Vonnegut, pg. 85) and that anybody who tries to help him will get the "hy-u-o-ook-kuh" (Vonnegut, pg. 85). Or as we might say in American English, Bokonon is a very bad man, and anybody who helps him will get the hook, shorthand for the San Lorenzan execution tool of choice. In spite of this horrific treatment of his followers and potentially himself, Bokonon takes it all in stride, musing in a poem that John reads, "'Papa' Monzano, he's so very bad,/But without bad 'Papa' I would be so sad,/Because without 'Papa's' badness,/ Tell me, if you would,/How could wicked old Bokonon/Ever, ever look good?" (Vonnegut, pg. 62).

While all of this is going on, John continues his search for the late Dr. Hoenikker's ice-nine, learning that his children split what remained of it amongst themselves and attempting to figure out what should be done to neutralize the threat it poses. As it turns out, "Papa" had Frank's share of ice-nine, and uses it to commit suicide, prompting a changing of the guard in which John marries Mona (much to his joy) so that he may take over as President of San Lorenzo in place of Frank, who feels he can't handle the pressure of the job. Just as things seem to taking a turn for the better, a terrible accident destroys "Papa's" palace and plunges his frozen body into the sea, turning the whole ocean solid and irreversibly changing the planet's climate. Millions die in the ensuing cataclysm, among them many of the characters in the story, with John and Mona only surviving by hiding in one of the now-destroyed palace's undergound dungeons. Upon emerging, however, Mona is shocked to the point of hysterics by the site of an apparent mass suicide of San Lorenzans, and resolves to join them. "...still laughing a little, she touched her finger to the ground, straightened up, and touched the finger to her lips and died," John matter-of-factly tells us (Vonnegut, pg. 150). Wandering through the frozen wilderness, the grief-stricken John meets the mythical Bokonon, who miraculously survived as well. Sitting on the forever-frozen earth with pencil and paper in hand, the ever-adaptable Bokonon reveals that he is at last ready to complete The Books of Bokonon, which end with him climbing San Lorenzo's highest mountain and "tak[ing] from the ground some of the blue-white poison that makes statues of men; and I would make a statue of myself, lying on my back, grinning horribly, and thumbing my nose at You Know Who" (Vonnegut, pg. 157). After this grim conclusion, readers won't be able to help but wonder if all this (this as in life, the universe, and everything) is part of some plan privy only to a higher power or intelligence with too much time on their hands, or if, as Newt says when remembering all the times his father would make X's with string and tell him there was a cat's cradle somewhere in the mess betwixt his hands, there's "No damn cat, and no damn cradle," (Vonnegut, pg. 94). 

For those put off by the bleak nihilism of Cat's Cradle, the next novel in this collection, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, presents a more optimistic side of Vonnegut's philosophy, even as it operates in the same satirical vein as the previous entry. It concerns the multi-million dollar fortune of the illustrious Rosewater family, which is protected from government expropriation through a charitable foundation meant to safeguard it and fated to pass into the hands of Eliot Rosewater. A war hero, Harvard graduate and volunteer firefighter, it appears that Eliot would be a responsible steward of his family's vast fortune. But as the reader learns however, others are not so keen on the thought of Eliot inheriting his family's vast fortune, and are determined to prove him not fit to handle such a responsibility. Norman Mushari, a young, conniving lawyer eager to nab a piece of the Rosewater pie, sets out to prove that Eliot is insane and thus incapable of running the Rosewater Foundation. How does he reach such a conclusion? By reading confidential documents of Eliot's that contain lines such as this: "Be generous. Be kind. You can safely ignore the arts and sciences. They never helped anybody. Be a sincere, attentive friend of the poor," (Vonnegut, pg. 170). Crazy? More like Christ-like to this writer. But when you consider how they treated the actual Christ, it's no surprise that the Mr. Rosewater's altruistic tendencies would be pathologized by those around him. Even his wife, Slyvia, is baffled by Eliot's eccentricities, as seen when she tells him she is going to burn some overalls, fields jackets, and other working-class clothes he traded most of his high-end wardrobe for and he bluntly replies, "Burn my tails, my dinner jacket, and my gray flannel suit instead," (Vonnegut, pg. 177). He couldn't care less about the luxurious garments, the great wealth, the very life of privilege he was born into. All he cares about is helping those less fortunate than him. So great is this desire that Eliot abruptly leaves Sylvia and his responsibilities behind and heads out to Rosewater County, Indiana, built and envisioned by previous generations of Rosewaters as a great port of commerce and left to fend for itself when this vision failed to materialize. Endeavoring to care for the predominantly blue-collar residents of Rosewater County abandoned by his ancestors and become "an artist" (Vonnegut, pg. 186), Eliot explains to Sylvia over phone, "I'm going to love these discarded Americans, even though they're useless and unattractive. That is going to be my work of art," (Vonnegut, pg. 186). A tad messianic on his part, yes, but I didn't compare him to Jesus for nothing!

Naturally, Eliot's mission to become a good Samaritan is not smoothly received by his loved ones, least of all Sylvia. Having put up with Eliot's charitable inclinations since they first married, Sylvia finds herself succumbing to a nervous breakdown (the second since her marriage to Eliot) when he runs away, only to recover and find her frustration over Eliot's humanitarianism giving way to self-loathing about not being able to live up to the radical example set by him. Nor is Eliot's father, powerful conservative Senator Lister Ames Rosewater, pleased about his decision to leave the family, their foundation, and most importantly, their fortune behind and walk amongst the dregs of society, causing him no end of irritation when he tries to convince Sylvia to get ahold of Eliot and initiate sex with him on the chance that she will get pregnant and father a son who, in light of Eliot's madness, will become the rightful heir to the Rosewater fortune and she flatly refuses, saying that despite how much it hurts her, she ultimately accepts his choice. When the Senator becomes incredulous that she could agree with Eliot's decision to seek "the sniveling camaraderie of whores, malingerers, pimps, and thieves," (Vonnegut, pg. 198), the heartbroken Sylvia lets him in on a secret: "The secret is that they're human," (Vonnegut, pg. 199). Meanwhile, the wily Mushari plots to have a cousin of Eliot's, twice removed and barely making ends meet as an insurance agent in a small Rhode Island town, designated as the fortune's trustee so that he might have a chance to keep some of the loot for himself in the inevitable legal confusion. As for Eliot, he occupies himself with running a Rosewater County branch of the Rosewater Foundation (staffed exclusively by himself) from which he day and night manned two phone hotlines, one for fire department alerts and one for Rosewater Foundation business (that is, if you call letting bums and whores pour their hearts out to you "business"). Things come to a head when Senator Rosewater, his hand forced by Mushari's efforts to prove Eliot's insanity, comes calling for his son so that he can defend himself before his peers and is mortified by the ascetic lifestyle Eliot has arrogated to himself, claiming that only a "nut" (Vonnegut, pg. 272) could live like that. "What if the nut came out and gave sensible explanations for his place being the way it is?" Eliot innocently asks (Vonnegut, pg. 273). "He would still be a nut," the Senator retorts (Vonnegut, pg. 273).

The strain of looking after the people of Rosewater County and handling his family's efforts to extricate him from said people proves to be too much for him, and sure enough, the metaphorical prophecy fulfills itself and Eliot actually undergoes a nervous breakdown, from which he is snapped back to reality only by the intervention of Kilgore Trout, an obscure science fiction author (as well as Vonnegut's recurring, perpetually unfortunate spirit animal) who was summoned by Senator Rosewater to the facility Eliot was staying at on account of the Senator remembering Eliot's passionate appreciation of his work. After being told that Trout explained to everyone else involved that, far from being the acts of a lunatic, Eliot's stint in Rosewater County "was quite possibly the most important social experiment of our time," (Vonnegut, pg. 294), Eliot learns that a plan by Mushari to tarnish his reputation backfired when one of the prostitutes Eliot comforted in Rosewater County claimed he fathered twins by her, sparking a series of similar allegations to arise across the county. With the sheer volume of women claiming to be pregnant by Eliot, Mushari's original claim is effectively discredited and the family fortune is once again safe. Having regained control of his faculties as well as his fortune, Eliot delivers one last, unwelcome surprise to his father: he is adopting all of the children in Rosewater County, making them the new inheritors of the fortune shielded by the Rosewater Foundation. Not content to share the family's wealth with his newly-adopted sons and daughters, he instructs the Foundation's legal counsel "And tell them... to be fruitful and multiply," (Vonnegut, pg. 300). Considering that one might look at God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater as a 20th century variation of the Christ story, it's only fitting that it concludes with a quotation of scripture. Not bad for a book by an avowed atheist like Vonnegut.

The final entry in this volume, Breakfast of Champions, is easily the most experimental of the bunch, and thus the most open to interpretation. It ostensibly revolves around the karass (to borrow a word from Cat's Cradle's Bokonon, meaning two or more people linked by fate) of Kilgore Trout, promoted from a cameo appearance in God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater to the admittedly protagonist of his own novel, and Dwayne Hoover, a well-off automobile salesman on the brink of losing it. What pushes Dwayne to finally lose it? A combination of his body "manufacturing certain chemicals which unbalanced his mind," (Vonnegut, pg. 322) and an invidious idea put into his head by one of Trout's absurd novels: that "Everybody else was a fully automatic machine, whose purpose was to stimulate Dwayne. Dwayne was a new type of creature being tested by the Creator of the Universe. Only Dwayne Hoover had free will," (Vonnegut, pg. 323). Trout, as down on his luck and starved for recognition as ever, is not entirely responsible for this unfortunate development however. In fact, he isn't even aware of Dwayne's existence until he is invited to be the guest speaker at an arts festival in Dwayne's hometown of Midland City. It is here that Trout meets Dwayne, who at this point is drunk, desperate, and begging for "The message, please" (Vonnegut, pg. 496), leading him to seize Trout's copy of the book containing his dangerous idea. Having read that "You are surrounded by loving machines, hating machines, greedy machines, unselfish machines, brave machines, cowardly machines, truthful machines, lying machines, funny machines, solemn machines... Their only purpose is to stir you up in every conceivable way, so the Creator of the Universe can watch your reactions," (Vonnegut, pg. 498), Dwayne promptly goes on a rampage, sending eleven people to the hospital, including visiting Gothic novelist Beatrice Keedsler, earnest cocktail waitress Bonnie MacMahon and his gay son Bunny before being apprehended. Strapped down in an ambulance, Dwayne doesn't "notice the restraints. He thought he was on the virgin planet promised by the book by Kilgore Trout... The book had told him that he went swimming in cold water on the virgin planet, that he always yelled something surprising when he climbed out of the icy pool. It was a game," (Vonnegut, pg. 511).

Of course, Vonnegut doesn't let the plot resolve (and I use the term loosely) as smoothly as I make it sound. Much of the book digresses from the action involving Dwayne and Trout to explain familiar objects, symbols, and various other things to the reader as if they were an alien phenomenon. Accompanying Vonnegut's plain-English descriptions are hand drawn illustrations, rendered in a child-like but truthful manner by the author's own hand. These explanatory episodes usually serve to point out failings or shortcomings of humanity in general and the United States in particular as Vonnegut saw them, an example being a detailed drawing of an electric chair followed by this line of text: "The purpose of it was to kill people by jazzing them with more electricity than their bodies could stand. Dwayne Hoover had seen it twice-once during a tour of the prison by members of the Chamber of Commerce years ago, and then again when it was actually used on a black human being he knew," (Vonnegut, pg. 428). The honest, direct language forces the reader to shed their prejudices about whatever is being described and reevaluate their opinions towards it while the pictures make us wonder what our children would make of such things. Vonnegut's commentary is not just limited to a passive role as narrator. Towards the end of the book, he directly addresses the reader, bemoaning the way Americans live as though they were characters in story books. "Once I understood what was making America such a dangerous, unhappy nation of people who had nothing to do with real life, I resolved to shun storytelling. I would write about life. Every person would be exactly as important as any other. All facts would also be given equal weightiness. Nothing would be left out. Let others bring order to chaos. I would bring chaos to order, instead, which I think I have done," he declares (Vonnegut, pg. 466). From this point on, he is directly involved in the story, sitting in the same cocktail lounge as his characters and observing their actions as he writes them. When Dwayne is taken away, Vonnegut pursues Trout, revealing that he, unlike the people he so derided, actually is a character in a book and that he is his Creator, the Creator of his Universe so to speak. Overwhelmed by this revelation, Trout breaks down and collapses on his knees, only for Vonnegut to add some heartening news. "I am approaching my fiftieth birthday, Mr. Trout... I am cleansing and renewing myself for the very different sorts of years to come," he explains. "I am going to set at liberty all the literary characters who have served me so loyally during my writing career... Arise, Mr. Trout, you are free, you are free," and with that, Kilgore Trout fades away from the hard, unrewarding life Vonnegut consigned him to (Vonnegut, pg. 526). As his avatar disappears, Vonnegut catches what are both Trout's and the novel's last words: "Make me young, make me young, make me young!" (Vonnegut, pg. 526), followed by a large, hand-drawn "etc." and ending with an illustrated side profile of a teary-eyed Vonnegut. This postmodern ending perfectly demonstrates the ambiguous tone of Breakfast of Champions; should we rejoice that Vonnegut has developed spiritually and artistically as he set out to do by freeing his long-suffering literary avatar, or should we mourn as Vonnegut does that he has let a significant part of himself go? It's a value judgment that discerning readers will have to make for themselves.

Although each of the aforementioned novels offers seemingly different takes on mankind and existence, they are all united by a common theme: adaptation. This is most evident when Vonnegut exclaims to the reader in Breakfast of Champions, "It is hard to adapt to chaos, but it can be done. I am living proof of that: it can be done," (Vonnegut, pg. 467). For every disaster caused by man's folly and triggered by his increasingly terrible weapons, there is a Bokonon to climb to the highest peak and thumb his nose at the architect of such apocalyptic affairs. For every lawyer scheming to acquire what isn't his and every senator who can't see beyond his own fortunes and misfortunes, there is an Eliot Rosewater to step up to the plate and look after the people that no one else will. And for every Dresden, every wanton destruction of innocent lives, there is a Vonnegut, to remind us that we can and indeed we must change. This message is so urgent and yet so simple that Vonnegut is able to convey it in almost-excessively accessible prose without diluting it's importance whatsoever. Even when Vonnegut makes jokes at the expense of his characters or treats crimes and catastrophes as premises to mine for laughter rather than calamities to decry in solemn tones, it is because of the weight of the situations in question that there is humor, not in spite of it. If, in these trying times, you don't know whether you want to laugh, cry, or something in between, read Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, and Breakfast of Champions. I challenge you to come away from reading all three saying anything other than "God bless you, Mr. Vonnegut."

Book review: Steven Pinker's "The Language Instinct: How The Mind Creates Language"

It's finally here, my friends: my last (or first, depending on how you look at it) article for this past September, a review of Steven Pinker's The Language Instinct: How The Mind Creates Language, finally realized in all it's glory! This is my first attempt at reviewing a book dealing with science, so believe me it was quite the challenge to not only explain it to others, but to make sure I definitely understood what the heck the author was talking about! You can read the original article here or read it below. Please let me know how I did, I'm dying to know!

                                Book Review: Steven Pinker's The Language Instinct: How The Mind Creates Language

Considering the elementary, even mundane nature of them, it is not at all surprising that many people get through the day without giving a second thought to the words that come out of their mouth, from the pen they use, or from the keys they push. How did we come up with the sounds that create words? Why do we associate particular ones with certain objects or ideas? Where do they even come from? Such questions rarely arise in day-to-day life, but for the times they do, many likely conclude that humans simply made them up over time as they saw fit. It's not the most in-depth explanation, but it is certainly a fair guess for the average layperson. Fortunately, none other than esteemed cognitive scientist and Harvard psychology professor Steven Pinker has taken it upon himself to offer a rigorous explanation for the mechanics and development of human language in The Language Instinct: How The Mind Creates Language, albeit one that contrasts irreconcilably with the "just so" explanation settled upon by individuals without formal training in linguistics or psychology. Rather, Pinker posits that language is a phenomenon with an indisputably biological basis, itself a result of evolution nudging humanity along towards a refined form of communication over countless millennia. Drawing from various disciplines and thinkers and writing in an accessible but firmly matter-of-fact manner, Pinker excellently defends his argument and illustrates his points, all in a way that doesn't scare off the previously-mentioned layperson.

However, our hypothetical layperson is in very good (and, in Pinker's eyes, very wrong) company, for the "Standard Social Science Model" (Pinker, pg. 23), or the notion that the human mind (and thus human language) is essentially nothing more than a lump of clay in the hands of society and culture, is taken for granted in most academic circles, particularly those involving fields such as anthropology and sociology. While it might be considered tenable within the quarters of it's acolytes, the Model has an unfortunate tendency to not only insert itself into hard science fields where the incessant refrain that "[blank] is a social construct" holds little to no water (you wouldn't say "Gravity is a social construct," would you?), but to also rely on dubious evidence, as Pinker amply demonstrates. Nowhere is this more evident than in his rebuttal of the notorious Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, advanced by Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf and long held up by adherents of linguistic determinism as proof that environment dictates language and language in turn dictates thought. For evidence, they pointed to studies carried out by Whorf purporting to find that the language of the Apache, with it's odd, often-imprecise descriptions of events, and Hopi Indians, with it's lack of words designating exact times and dates, were fundamentally different from English because the lives of Apache and Hopi Indians were fundamentally different from English-speaking people. There is one small problem with Whorf's claim though, as Pinker points out: "Whorf did not actually study any Apaches; it is not clear that he ever met one. His assertions about Apache psychology are based entirely on Apache grammar - making his argument circular. Apaches speak differently, so they must think differently. How do we know they think differently? Just listen to the way they speak!" (Pinker, pg. 61). In the case of the Hopi, Whorf's argument that they do not think of events as distinct occurrences and dates as quantifiable entities crumbles when Pinker challenges: "What, then, are we to make of the following sentence translated from Hopi?: 'Then indeed, the following day, quite early in the morning at the hour when people pray to the sun, around that time then he woke up the girl again'," (Pinker, pg. 63). In short, Whorf was, as he might have claimed the Apache would say, communicating verbally by movement out of his, or somebody's, rear end.

Other myths about language are no more safe from the scrutiny of Pinker's razor-sharp pen. He debunks the "Great Eskimo Vocabulary Hoax" (Pinker, pg. 64) - that is, the oft-repeated claims that the Inuit, due to the major role snow plays in their lives, have an extensive number of words for it - with as much skill as he did the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, showing that no respectable linguist or anthropologist has ever come forward with data suggesting anything even remotely close to the reported dozens upon dozens of Inuit cognates for snow. The actual number, as it turns out, is commonly accepted to be a dozen, which, when compared to the choice English speakers get to make between sleet, blizzard, hail, and several others when discussing snow, is not nearly as astounding as the Hoax made it out to be. What is astounding though, is the motive that drove trained academics to push such blatantly false assertions as scientific fact. "Linguistic relativity came out of the [Franz] Boas school, as part of a campaign to show that nonliterate cultures were as complex and sophisticated as European ones. But the supposedly mind-broadening anecdotes owe their appeal to a patronizing willingness to treat other cultures' psychologies as weird and exotic compared to our own," Pinker expounds (Pinker, pg. 64). People like Whorf, Sapir and the pushers of the Great Eskimo Vocabulary Hoax might very well have had good intentions: indeed, many people who lie to others imagine they do so. But when the truth comes out and the lie falls apart, the liar's intentions are forgotten and everyone else suffers for it, as countless people do when they parrot inaccurate stories about Native American tribes with no concept of time and a surplus of words for snow to others. 

So if people don't think in words, what do they think in? According to Pinker, "We end up with the following picture. People do not think in English or Chinese or Apache; they think in a language of thought," (Pinker, pg. 81) or what he later refers to as a "universal mentalese" (Pinker, pg. 82). This is because when we think of a given objects, the first thing that comes to mind isn't the word, it's the object itself: only afterwards do we attach the appropriate word to it. Furthermore, the relation between the objects when we think of them is much more abstract than the relation between said objects and concepts when we try to verbalize or otherwise communicate them. This is because spoken and written language requires clear delineation of boundaries between objects so that others may understand what the speaker or writer is trying to convey. Others are not privy to the inner workings of the speaker/writer, but thanks to language, they have a powerful tool to communicate their thoughts. However, while language may indeed be a tool rather than the driving force linguistic determinists hold it to be, it is not a tool that can be used whichever way one sees fit. For instance, "Grammar is a protocol that has to interconnect the ear, the mouth, and the mind, three very different kinds of machine. It cannot be tailored to any of them but must have an abstract logic of it's own," (Pinker, pg. 125), meaning that the way we structure sentences is a self-contained phenomenon, operating only one correct way without regard for our ability to verbally or mentally improvise new, incorrect structures. True, one might dissent and point to irregular words as evidence against Pinker's case for structured, finely-tuned language, but it would behoove them not to, for as it turns out, "irregularity is tightly encapsulated in the word-building system," (Pinker, pg. 141). People don't call each other lowlives: they call each other lowlifes (Pinker, pgs. 142-143). They don't call their personal sound systems Walkmen either: they call them Walkmans (Pinker, pg. 142-143). Why? Because the speaker senses the irregularity, the "headlessness" (Pinker, pg. 143) of the word. They sense that the noun in the word, or the head, is false, meaning that they don't have to render the word as they would if it actually were the noun in question. The fact that even people little academic training are able to correctly render such challenging words without much thought testifies to not only the awe-inspiring complexity of language, but the innate nature of it as well.

While there may still be much to learn about the human brain and the role it plays in creating language, Pinker gives us a fascinating glimpse into what is known about this relationship. In a segment on the division of labor between the left and right hemispheres of the brain, Pinker refers readers to a study of deaf people with aphasia, a linguistic disorder caused by damage to the brain. Since the disorder inhibits speech, one could be forgiven for assuming that deaf people, many of whom are now able to communicate in sign language, would be unaffected for the most part. This, as we learn, is absolutely not the case: the study reveals that deaf people with damage to the left hemisphere of their brains struggle as much with signing as hearing aphasics do with speaking and writing (Pinker, pg. 302), indicating that not only can –and does - language take nonverbal forms, but also that it can be localized to the left hemisphere. “The left hemisphere must be handling the abstract rules and trees underlying language, the grammar and the dictionary and the anatomy of words, and not merely the sounds and the mouthings of the surface,” Pinker surmises (Pinker, pg. 302). The ramifications are staggering. Language does not simply come about because people will it: it comes from something much deeper, something honed by hundreds of thousands of years of adaptation. The sheer amount of components that go into the process – grammar, irregularity, morphemes, and many, many more – are impressive enough, but the thing they build is truly a triumph of evolution, a triumph that allowed humans to advance beyond being just another type of primate and live to see the achievements of their offspring. To put it as Pinker does, “The language instinct, like the eye, is an example of what Darwin called ‘that perfection of structure and co-adaptation which justly excites our admiration,’ and as such it bears the unmistakable stamp of nature’s designer, natural selection,” (Pinker, pg. 362).

Some might suspect that this review barely skims the surface of Pinker’s tome. Believe it or not, they’re right: an in-depth analysis that does justice to Pinker’s work would in all likelihood take the form of a paper published in an obscure academic journal, something beyond the average reader’s attention span and frankly, this reviewer’s capabilities. What this reviewer can tell you though is that if you take it upon yourself to read it and stick to it, you will come out knowing a great deal more about language, how it works, and where it came from, than you might have thought possible. It truly is a privilege for Pinker, rightfully considered by many to be one of the preeminent minds of our time, to share his carefully considered, pragmatic analysis of such an important part of our existence, a privilege compounded by the clear, stimulating way in which he presents information, data, and his own observations. Readers interested in linguistics, psychology, or who are just looking for something that's both enlightening and enjoyable would be wise to go with their gut and check out Steven Pinker's The Language Instinct: How The Mind Creates Language.

Concert Review: Randy Newman @ Royce Hall, Los Angeles 10/03

Photo by Bruno Bollaert.

Before we get started, let's get something out of the way: Randy Newman's music is repetitive. This is totally beyond debate. For each melody he uses in a song, there is another one for a different song that sounds similar, if not outright identical, to it, and any variations in the subject matter of said songs are effectively cancelled out by his limited vocal (the uncharitable might even go as far to say artistic) range. For most musicians, an assessment like this would be a death sentence. After all, nobody likes a one-trick pony, right? Wrong: if the pony's trick is so amusing, so engaging, so impressive, not only will people will pay to see it for two hours, but the pony will earn a standing ovation from both longtime fans and first time viewers. And that is precisely what happened at the end of Randy Newman's show at UCLA's Royce Hall last weekend. Blown away by Newman's sheer personality and yes, ye of little faith, his manifest talent, the audience (this writer included) rose and applauded in unison, with many literally begging for more.

By a remarkable stroke of luck, I had managed to purchase tickets for seats just a few rows away from the stage, a welcome step up from the balcony seats I had to watch the Philip Glass Ensemble from. Indeed, I didn't fully appreciate what a nigh-miraculous occurrence this was until my brother and I were seated in the vast auditorium that is Royce Hall, surrounded by waves of what I assumed to be a combination of UCLA faculty, alumni, and die-hard Randy Newman fans with no connection to UCLA outside of Randy Newman. Not the most diverse group, yes (or for that matter, the most young), but a surprisingly large one. One of the people sitting behind us was a professor, and he spent most of the time before the show and during the intermission complaining to his companion, a graduate student, about other grad students. Looking forward, one could see Randy's sleek, ebony piano, the centerpiece of the otherwise empty stage. This sparse set-up indicated that unlike his albums, with their session musicians and often lush arrangements, it would just be Newman, his piano, and the audience. One might think that this would be most intimidating for a musician, but if Randy was, he certainly didn't show it when he came on stage. He made a beeline for the piano, the only sound being the enthusiastic applause of the crowd, and dived right into what he simply calls the "Putin Song".

As the sinister-sounding melody set in, Randy spit out the Russian president's name, followed in succession by descriptions of various garments - his hat and his pants (which he, of course, put on "one leg at a time") - he was "puttin'" on. In retrospect, it should have been a given that a Randy Newman concert would open with clever wordplay and light political satire, but somehow it took the audience by surprise because many of them burst into laughter at Randy's putdown of Putin. Not the put-on (pun definitely intended), polite laughter that you make when a friend or relative makes an unfunny joke, but the non-put-on, carefree laughter from deep in your gut when something that a minute before you didn't expect but within seconds you understand happens. The song continued with what Randy claimed was a conversation between Mr. and the former Mrs. Putin on the shores of the now-annexed Crimea. "We fought a war for this?" he quizzically asked before setting his sights on the Mediterranean, noting that the Greeks, Turks and Kurds might have something to say about this. No biggie, he decided. They could just make "Kurds and whey! Kurds and whey!" If one didn't know any better, they might have have come away with the impression that it was a tribute to the "Putin Man", which Randy informed the audience afterwards he threw in at the very end so that he wouldn't kill him - a valid concern, given Putin's KGB background.

He showed no such restraint with the next song, "Birmingham", which is one of the finest instances in music of damning with faint praise. It starts off nicely enough, with the piano playing warm, laid-back notes and a speaker who identifies himself as a blue collar family man in downtown Birmingham. But then he tells us about his father, "a most unsightly man", who "died right here in Birmingham". This is the first indication that something isn't right with the speaker's narrative, even as he appeared totally oblivious to it. He goes on, identifying Birmingham as "the greatest city in Alabam'" and declaring there is no place quite like it. Between the three-room house, the extended factory shifts, and the "meanest dog in Alabam'", perhaps this isn't such a bad thing. For those of a less cynical disposition, you can simply focus on the piano and Randy's singing, as they give the (false) impression of a light-hearted, agreeable song. The following piece was similarly deceptive, albeit inversely. While the lyrics could be described as sounding relieved, even grateful, the tune itself sounded downright depressing. Kind of weird to use the word "depressing" in anything involving Randy Newman, but the song really is. It also really is an example of a different, vulnerable side of him that people only familiar with the stereotypes of him and his music are largely unaware of. As the piano keys rang softly, Randy lovingly reassured the subject of the song that she was "still the same girl you always were". He proceeded to plead with her, for "a few more nights on the street" and "a few more years with me", and ended with one final reminder that she is "still the same girl, That I love." Solemn, simple, superb. That's "Same Girl" for you.

The show wasn't confined to just snarky and mopey songs, however. Before too much time had passed, Randy played the preeminent crowd pleaser of his long-and-storied oeuvre (which is saying a lot, given the plentiful number of crowd pleasers under his belt). That would be none other than "You've Got A Friend In Me," which even uncultured plebs who've never heard of Randy Newman can sing off the top of their head, thanks to Toy Story. The song, it's lyrics, and it's structure are so well-known that one can hardly imagine it being done any way but the way it's heard it in Toy Story (well, done any other way and done well, at least), so it was a bit jarring to hear him play those iconic first few piano rolls without the accompanying horn, strings, and percussion. The initial shock quickly wore off, as Randy carried the song well beyond the call of duty on his own. Seeing the composer of a song that was a major part of my childhood actually perform it live was a spectacle in and of itself, but on top of that, Randy brought so much character, so much believability to the song that it resonated deeply with the crowd, many of whom were already pushing 40 or 50 when Toy Story came out. I wouldn't be surprised if some of the few young people in the audience were transported back to their childhoods and only came back when the song ended, at which point they joined the rest of the crowd and whooped and thundered in rapturous applause.

The hits kept on coming, and Randy followed up with his biggest one. He mused about how unfortunate it was that the song in question, given it's subject matter, was the one that brought him the most success and thus the most attention. Under this increased scrutiny, he found himself the target of complaints and hate mail from what he would only identify as a "very small group of people" when the song was originally released. The offending song, of course, was the notorious "Short People." Fortunately, the audience was very short on outrage and very high on mirth, cracking up at Randy's infamous proclamation that short people, with their "little hands, little eyes" and "platform shoes on their nasty little feet", got "no reason to live." In today's hypersensitive environment, with card-carrying "victims" and identity politics-fixated bloggers eagerly sniffing around for hurt feels, it's almost a shock nobody protested this blatant micro aggression. I guess the audience was too busy laughing at the absurdity of the speaker's obsessive hatred of the vertically challenged and taking in the ironically-pleasant piano chords to be offended. It's not often that I refer people to Randy Newman fans for guidance on behavior and etiquette, but in this case, I firmly believe many internet commenters could learn a thing or two from them.

Later on, we returned to downbeat themes and melodies with another ditty called "In Germany Before The War", a disturbing, M-esque account of a shopkeeper in Dusseldorf a few years before World World II. As Randy delicately played the off-key tune, he revealed that every night, the shopkeeper would walk to the park and sit on the shore of the Rhine River, launching into a sublimely haunting chorus: "I'm looking at the river, but I'm thinking of the sea." Shortly afterwards, a little girl who "has lost her way" wanders onto the scene and catches his eye. Come the end of the piece, they're both laying "beneath the autumn sky", the girl lying perfectly still, and all that that implies. Randy wouldn't leave anything to the listener's imagination in another selection of his, the supremely-satirical "Political Science", which, depending on one's ability to perceive sarcasm, is an anthem for either American exceptionalism or noninterventionism. Genuinely confused, the speaker wonders why, in spite of our various efforts to the world safe for democracy, freedom, and other assorted platitudes, "no one likes us" before concluding that we should "drop the big one, and see what happens." Mind you, this particular line is said without any hint of malice. Indeed, Randy (who interestingly, is starting to look a little like Noam Chomsky) made the speaker sound more like a 7 year-old planning a prank on his friends than the most powerful nation in the world resolving to deploy weapons of mass destruction on every other country on Earth, causing the audience to explode once again into laughter. Well, not every nation. "We'll save Australia," the speaker mercifully deigns. Wouldn't want to "hurt no kangaroos," would we?

If I were to list and talk at length about every song Randy played, this post would be several orders of magnitude longer than it already is. Given the brevity of most of his songs, Randy was able to squeeze in a sizable amount of them into the show, which of course is great for concertgoers, but not for aspiring bloggers with limited musical knowledge. Fret not, for I, like Randy, have no intention of leaving viewers hanging. After the last song, he took a bow for the audience, which had risen in standing ovation. He quickly departed from the stage, even as the audience kept applauding and shouting for an encore. During all of this, I noticed that he hadn't played the song most appropriate to the venue: that is, "I Love LA." It should have been obvious enough, but he was saving it for the very end, so as to end on a high, provincial note (the best kind!) And that's precisely what happened. Once again, he emerged from the side of the stage to invigorated cheers, headed straight back to the piano, and started playing the song's jaunty melody. After singing the beginning local sight-and-landmark-filled verse, Randy invited the audience to help him with the chorus, calling out "I love LA!" and them responding with "We love it!"

As far as I could tell, "We love it!" was the general consensus amongst the crowd about the show as a whole. They loved Randy's banter, they loved the gags, but above all, they loved the music. Between those two hours, he admirably showcased his ability to write catchy music, his knack for penning funny and even heartfelt lyrics, and his skill at performing both. Not only was Randy able to accomplish all this, but his voice, in all it's unique, off-beat glory, really shone through and bore itself before a nearly sold-out venue to nigh-universal acclaim, something that many singer-songwriters can only dream of. Go ahead, laugh. Repeat "repetitive" over and over. Say his music is always the same. Watch that South Park parody of him. But ask yourself: if the music Randy Newman creates is always funny, catchy, and heartfelt, what's to hate?