One of the many books I'm reading currently (by which I mean keep a bookmark in) is The Lost Continent, Bill Bryson's first travel narrative and a description of his trip across the continental US soon after the death of his father. Like all debut books, I get the sense that it generally sank without a trace at its first publication, a fact he alludes to in his next book, Neither Here Nor There. In fact I believe both books were completely ignored by the British book-buying public until he came out with Notes from a Small Island, which just goes to show that nobody pays attention to you until you start talking about them.
In any case, ignored or not, I end up re-reading the Lost Continent every couple of years (along with In A Sunburned Country, which is published here as Down Under), because I'm fascinated by his take on America at the time, and because he has an amazing gift for metaphor. But in the midst of the current re-read I was struck by something odd: he devotes almost as much space in the book to Philadelphia as he does to New York City, and the state of Pennsylvania gets twice as many pages as all of New York State (yes, I just went back and counted).
Now, part of this is because of the vagaries of Bryson's itinerary. He had access to a car for the Pennsylvania section, but got to New York by bus. This, and his route up the coast toward New England, is why he doesn't have anything to say about upstate New York. But I still found it kind of odd, because Philadelphia, as far as I can tell, doesn't appear to be part of the cultural conversation in any way.
Obviously most foreigners think of New York City when they think of America, which is fair enough because it is, in many ways, the cultural epicenter of Anglophone civilization (some British patriots might say it's London, but London spends so much time trying to become New York that I think it's clear which is the more influential city). They're also familiar with Los Angeles, and in a more nebulous way with San Francisco, although charmingly they aren't aware that the two cities aren't right next to each other, as they appear on maps.
New Orleans and Chicago and Boston are well-known, as is Washington DC, all for obvious reasons. Baltimore is also on the cultural map, because of the Wire, but Philadelphia? It's rare that I hear anybody mention the place these days, except in the context of how they put up a statue to Rocky Balboa (in fairness, there's also the sitcom It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, but that doesn't seem to be A Thing like the Wire was).
So this was why I was struck by Bryson's description of the place, with unknown treasures and even its own dialect of sorts (I was reminded by the book that Philadelphians call sidewalks "pavements"). I was even more struck by the fact that when he got to New York, he had to introduce key features of it, like Donald Trump or Times Square, and that he was constantly in fear of mugging and/or murder.
The latter can be explained by the fact that he was writing in 1989 or so, which puts it during the late Ed Koch's mayorship of the city. He was about four years off from the Giuliani years, so deep within New York City's dark period, something that I think New Yorkers haven't really recovered from, at least based on my mom's impression of Columbia, way up in the 120s (what she still calls Harlem), when I was going there.
Harder to conceive is the idea that anyone reading the Lost Continent might be unfamiliar with Times Square, or even Donald Trump. Because New York's emergence from the squalor of the 70s and 80s coincided with my awareness of the place, I find it hard to get away from its current glitzy image as a shopping mecca (incidentally, that's why I call it the Anglophone world's cultural capital, not because it's got better museums or art or publishing). Even when I moved here for the first time in 2001, people in London knew about Manhattan, Times Square, all of that stuff - shows like Sex and the City were even then working their way in the cultural consciousness.
But then, I guess that's what happens as time passes (I'm aware this is a subject I've been covering a lot recently on this blog, but please bear with me). We are now almost as distant from the publication of the Lost Continent as Bill Bryson himself was from the vacations he describes taking with his family in the late 1950s and early 1960s. In the past three decades the world has grown more interconnected, so that a person in London (or Sao Paulo, or Mumbai, or wherever) actually is familiar with what life is like in New York - or at least life for certain socio-economic strata.
At the same time, though I think it's a shame that the world's image of America has narrowed onto primarily New York and LA. As I hinted in the previous paragraph, we may know about life in New York, but it's mainly from the perspective of rich white people who can afford to live there. Even the polarizing Lena Dunham show Girls depicts a certain class of people who are pretty divorced from life in the Outer Boroughs.
By being so interested in what shoes rich white socialites are wearing, we miss out on seeing what life is like for normal people in places like, say, Baltimore or New Orleans or Philadelphia. When I watch Friday Night Lights, which is set in small-town Texas, it's clear that you aren't seeing the same America that Carrie Bradshaw lives in.
I'd like to see more of it - so where are the dramas set in Philadelphia?
Sunday, 25 August 2013
Sunday, 18 August 2013
Rate of Change
I'm currently reading The Shining Girls, by Lauren Beukes, as a result of an outpouring of enthusiasm on Twitter, along with Amazon UK pricing it at 99p a few weeks ago as part of a special promotion. It's not bad, but I have to admit I'm not loving it - I'm not much for thrillers in general, and the ones about serial killers have never appealed to me.
But something struck me while I was reading it, which I figured I'd try and discuss briefly here. The plot, without any major spoilers (because I'm only about halfway through anyway), revolves around a serial killer who travels through time, between the 1930s and the early 1990s, collecting victims in an order of his own choosing, rather than chronologically. At one point, reflecting on the House he uses to travel, he notes that his range of travel is limited to those years, with 1993 the latest he can go.
Having glanced through the table of contents, with chapters denoting the date in which they occur, I'd noticed that, and was wondering about it myself. My conclusion was that 1993 was probably the last year before the internet started to become widely known - it was certainly my first experience of it (and just as you'd expect from the early years of the web: reading snarky top ten lists about Star Wars and Star Trek).
This is important to the story, because one of the killer's victims survives an attack, and when she's recovered she goes looking for him by taking on an internship at the Chicago Sun-Times. All of her research is analogue, involving microfiche and sifting through loads of boxes.
So what struck me was this: a possible reason why Lauren Beukes set her story during those decades is that the internet would have made the search for the killer much easier, and that those decades were a lot more similar to one another than the years since the internet spread throughout our culture.
I've written before about how I think the 80s had more in common with the 50s than with the 90s. I might be over-generalizing, but I do think it's correct to say that the rate of change in our culture has accelerated since the internet took over. As I stated in that previous post, my sisters' experiences growing up were pretty different from my own, and this was with just seven and ten years of age gap between us all. I grew up watching Sesame Street, Mr Rogers, and reruns of Star Trek and Hawaii 5-0 and old Western TV shows; they had Barney and cable TV.
This is why, whenever I read Bill Bryson's more autobiographical books - like The Lost Continent or Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid - I can recognize certain aspects of my own childhood in his, despite the fact that he was born almost thirty years before I was. And going back even further, I can recognize some of what Bryson talks about in stories and sketches by, for instance, James Thurber, who died in 1961 and whose career spanned the 30s, 40s and 50s.
So when I think of the life I'd like to lead, if I ever marry and have children and all of that, my imagination uses my own childhood milieu as a template: suburban house, car, yard, dog and/or cat (I like both), family trips once or twice a year, and so on. On the other hand, this all might be unrealistic, for the simple reason that it's not sustainable anymore. If it ever was.
For one thing, house prices are way out of reach for most people, I'd say, particularly if they're single and not working in finance or tech. For another, every place is getting more and more crowded. It seems perverse to say this about California, when I live in London (which I sometimes find unbearably full; I kind of dread going to China as a result), but it's true - developments creep out farther and farther each year, and the freeways are crowded even at midday on weekdays.
So no house in the suburbs, which means no yard, probably no car (because they're a pain in the ass to have in the city), and probably no pets (not that I particularly want to clean up dog shit - this is one of those jobs that I could theoretically farm out to my notional children), because landlords are strict about that and apartments are no fun for animals that need space.
On the other hand, this life that I'd like, and that currently appears out of reach, is kind of a new development in and of itself, despite already being a relic. This concept of a suburban middle class, which a lot of us seem wedded to, has really only existed since the early 20th century, where before the middle classes (or mercantile classes, if you go back far enough) lived in the cities. Naturally, technology moved on between the Middle Ages and the Enlightenment, but not quite as fast as it did following the Industrial Revolution (and the rate of change sped up even more once we got flight and cars and electricity).
So I guess the whole convoluted point comes down to this: I'm kind of nostalgic for a way of life that seems to have been around for a long time, but actually wasn't. My grandmother - who was born in 1917, when flight was still new - probably saw the suburban way of life of the 50s and 60s and 70s as a new innovation, compared to her own upbringing.
The question, then, is what kind of life people just graduating from college now are envisioning for themselves. And further, will that gap between wishes and reality be even wider for them than it is for me?
But something struck me while I was reading it, which I figured I'd try and discuss briefly here. The plot, without any major spoilers (because I'm only about halfway through anyway), revolves around a serial killer who travels through time, between the 1930s and the early 1990s, collecting victims in an order of his own choosing, rather than chronologically. At one point, reflecting on the House he uses to travel, he notes that his range of travel is limited to those years, with 1993 the latest he can go.
Having glanced through the table of contents, with chapters denoting the date in which they occur, I'd noticed that, and was wondering about it myself. My conclusion was that 1993 was probably the last year before the internet started to become widely known - it was certainly my first experience of it (and just as you'd expect from the early years of the web: reading snarky top ten lists about Star Wars and Star Trek).
This is important to the story, because one of the killer's victims survives an attack, and when she's recovered she goes looking for him by taking on an internship at the Chicago Sun-Times. All of her research is analogue, involving microfiche and sifting through loads of boxes.
So what struck me was this: a possible reason why Lauren Beukes set her story during those decades is that the internet would have made the search for the killer much easier, and that those decades were a lot more similar to one another than the years since the internet spread throughout our culture.
I've written before about how I think the 80s had more in common with the 50s than with the 90s. I might be over-generalizing, but I do think it's correct to say that the rate of change in our culture has accelerated since the internet took over. As I stated in that previous post, my sisters' experiences growing up were pretty different from my own, and this was with just seven and ten years of age gap between us all. I grew up watching Sesame Street, Mr Rogers, and reruns of Star Trek and Hawaii 5-0 and old Western TV shows; they had Barney and cable TV.
This is why, whenever I read Bill Bryson's more autobiographical books - like The Lost Continent or Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid - I can recognize certain aspects of my own childhood in his, despite the fact that he was born almost thirty years before I was. And going back even further, I can recognize some of what Bryson talks about in stories and sketches by, for instance, James Thurber, who died in 1961 and whose career spanned the 30s, 40s and 50s.
So when I think of the life I'd like to lead, if I ever marry and have children and all of that, my imagination uses my own childhood milieu as a template: suburban house, car, yard, dog and/or cat (I like both), family trips once or twice a year, and so on. On the other hand, this all might be unrealistic, for the simple reason that it's not sustainable anymore. If it ever was.
For one thing, house prices are way out of reach for most people, I'd say, particularly if they're single and not working in finance or tech. For another, every place is getting more and more crowded. It seems perverse to say this about California, when I live in London (which I sometimes find unbearably full; I kind of dread going to China as a result), but it's true - developments creep out farther and farther each year, and the freeways are crowded even at midday on weekdays.
So no house in the suburbs, which means no yard, probably no car (because they're a pain in the ass to have in the city), and probably no pets (not that I particularly want to clean up dog shit - this is one of those jobs that I could theoretically farm out to my notional children), because landlords are strict about that and apartments are no fun for animals that need space.
On the other hand, this life that I'd like, and that currently appears out of reach, is kind of a new development in and of itself, despite already being a relic. This concept of a suburban middle class, which a lot of us seem wedded to, has really only existed since the early 20th century, where before the middle classes (or mercantile classes, if you go back far enough) lived in the cities. Naturally, technology moved on between the Middle Ages and the Enlightenment, but not quite as fast as it did following the Industrial Revolution (and the rate of change sped up even more once we got flight and cars and electricity).
So I guess the whole convoluted point comes down to this: I'm kind of nostalgic for a way of life that seems to have been around for a long time, but actually wasn't. My grandmother - who was born in 1917, when flight was still new - probably saw the suburban way of life of the 50s and 60s and 70s as a new innovation, compared to her own upbringing.
The question, then, is what kind of life people just graduating from college now are envisioning for themselves. And further, will that gap between wishes and reality be even wider for them than it is for me?
Sunday, 11 August 2013
Ben Carson vs Socialism: the Myth of the Self-Made Man
On Wednesday, while waiting for my flight back to London, I had occasion once again to survey the selection of books on offer at San Francisco International Airport's news stand/bookstore. It was a powerful reminder that, awful as the WH Smith concessions at UK airports are, they usually have a wider selection than the thrillers and right-wing screeds infesting American airport bookshelves. I suppose that's why Tom Clancy's books are called "airport novels", eh? Because they satisfy both of these requirements.
Anyway, one of the books that caught my eye was by Ben Carson, entitled America the Beautiful: Rediscovering What Made This Nation Great. Not being in the current of American news, I had no idea who this guy was (although that's now remedied thanks to Wikipedia), so I had a quick look at the back cover, and the inside front blurbs, to see who was endorsing him. After all, you can generally get a good idea of where someone's politics lie by who likes them. And, appropriately enough, one of the endorsements was from Billy Graham's grandson.
Not that I really needed that - conservatives are usually the only ones writing books like that. I'm not sure why, because I don't really think liberals are particularly satisfied with the way America's going, and it might help us win the meme war if we co-opted some of that language for ourselves.
Anyway, Dr Carson had a chapter in his book entitled "Capitalism: Pros and Cons". I wanted to see what a conservative guy thought was negative about capitalism (maybe that there isn't enough of it?), so I flipped through and had a look. Instead of a nice, orderly list, or even sections entitled "pro" or "con", he just talked about growing up in poverty in Boston and how his mother pushed him to excel in school. So far, so uncontroversial - conservatives may not believe this, but liberals like to see people do well, too. That is, after all, why we advocate social programs and sharing wealth.
He then talked about a friend of his who worked at the FAA and came up with an invention to make plane landings more stable. This friend was offered $500 or so for his invention, so he (not unreasonably) decided to go into the private sector to see if he could get more money for it. He was promptly hired and told he'd get a certain percentage of the profits, but then just as promptly quit when his new boss reneged on that deal. So he then went into business for himself.
That's where I stopped reading, because I wanted to grab a sandwich ahead of my flight, and it wasn't that interesting anyway. But the implication seemed to be that this friend's experience could only have occurred in America. I'd like to posit the opposite: not only are European countries amply supplied with bureaucratic and inefficient agencies, but you can get cheated by your employer just about anywhere. So much for a shining city on a hill.
More to the point, and jokes aside, it is also possible to set up your own business in supposedly socialist countries like the UK, Germany, Sweden, etc. I'm always irritated by this idea that a lot of American conservatives have, that the US is the only productive place in the whole world, while the rest of Europe is sitting around eating bon bons on vacation. While the rankings change all the time, depending on who's crunching the numbers, the US consistently fails to hit the top spot - particularly considering that the European economies offer a lot more vacation time and still hit comparable productivity numbers. It also kind of suggests that the Asian economies could let their people ease off, since they're never anywhere near the top anyway.
The other thing that bothers me about Dr Carson's line of reasoning is the widely cherished idea among conservatives that they're completely self-made. Obviously Dr Carson's experience will be different from mine: he's black, he grew up in poverty and pulled himself out, and built himself a successful medical career, followed by time in the national spotlight thanks to his writing and speaking opportunities.
But what if one little thing had been different? What if, at any given point in his life, he hadn't had help from somebody else? For instance, if his mother hadn't pushed him to continue studying, would he have eventually become a neurosurgeon? I suspect not. Same with his college and medical school experience - people helped him along the way at various points, while others of his peers didn't receive the same help at the right time and didn't end up with the same level or type of success.
Or think of his friend at the FAA - without the "socialistic" idea of a federal agency to regulate aviation, this guy might not have had a job in the first place. He certainly wouldn't have had the experience to come up with his invention, or the credibility to pitch it convincingly to a company in the private sector. He might have come up with something else that would have made him rich - but it's not a given.
I guess all I'm saying is that the next time someone says they're completely self-made, and that nobody gave them anything to get them where they are today, they should take a closer look at their own experiences. They might find that they've received a lot more help from the people and institutions around them than they thought.
Anyway, one of the books that caught my eye was by Ben Carson, entitled America the Beautiful: Rediscovering What Made This Nation Great. Not being in the current of American news, I had no idea who this guy was (although that's now remedied thanks to Wikipedia), so I had a quick look at the back cover, and the inside front blurbs, to see who was endorsing him. After all, you can generally get a good idea of where someone's politics lie by who likes them. And, appropriately enough, one of the endorsements was from Billy Graham's grandson.
Not that I really needed that - conservatives are usually the only ones writing books like that. I'm not sure why, because I don't really think liberals are particularly satisfied with the way America's going, and it might help us win the meme war if we co-opted some of that language for ourselves.
Anyway, Dr Carson had a chapter in his book entitled "Capitalism: Pros and Cons". I wanted to see what a conservative guy thought was negative about capitalism (maybe that there isn't enough of it?), so I flipped through and had a look. Instead of a nice, orderly list, or even sections entitled "pro" or "con", he just talked about growing up in poverty in Boston and how his mother pushed him to excel in school. So far, so uncontroversial - conservatives may not believe this, but liberals like to see people do well, too. That is, after all, why we advocate social programs and sharing wealth.
He then talked about a friend of his who worked at the FAA and came up with an invention to make plane landings more stable. This friend was offered $500 or so for his invention, so he (not unreasonably) decided to go into the private sector to see if he could get more money for it. He was promptly hired and told he'd get a certain percentage of the profits, but then just as promptly quit when his new boss reneged on that deal. So he then went into business for himself.
That's where I stopped reading, because I wanted to grab a sandwich ahead of my flight, and it wasn't that interesting anyway. But the implication seemed to be that this friend's experience could only have occurred in America. I'd like to posit the opposite: not only are European countries amply supplied with bureaucratic and inefficient agencies, but you can get cheated by your employer just about anywhere. So much for a shining city on a hill.
More to the point, and jokes aside, it is also possible to set up your own business in supposedly socialist countries like the UK, Germany, Sweden, etc. I'm always irritated by this idea that a lot of American conservatives have, that the US is the only productive place in the whole world, while the rest of Europe is sitting around eating bon bons on vacation. While the rankings change all the time, depending on who's crunching the numbers, the US consistently fails to hit the top spot - particularly considering that the European economies offer a lot more vacation time and still hit comparable productivity numbers. It also kind of suggests that the Asian economies could let their people ease off, since they're never anywhere near the top anyway.
The other thing that bothers me about Dr Carson's line of reasoning is the widely cherished idea among conservatives that they're completely self-made. Obviously Dr Carson's experience will be different from mine: he's black, he grew up in poverty and pulled himself out, and built himself a successful medical career, followed by time in the national spotlight thanks to his writing and speaking opportunities.
But what if one little thing had been different? What if, at any given point in his life, he hadn't had help from somebody else? For instance, if his mother hadn't pushed him to continue studying, would he have eventually become a neurosurgeon? I suspect not. Same with his college and medical school experience - people helped him along the way at various points, while others of his peers didn't receive the same help at the right time and didn't end up with the same level or type of success.
Or think of his friend at the FAA - without the "socialistic" idea of a federal agency to regulate aviation, this guy might not have had a job in the first place. He certainly wouldn't have had the experience to come up with his invention, or the credibility to pitch it convincingly to a company in the private sector. He might have come up with something else that would have made him rich - but it's not a given.
I guess all I'm saying is that the next time someone says they're completely self-made, and that nobody gave them anything to get them where they are today, they should take a closer look at their own experiences. They might find that they've received a lot more help from the people and institutions around them than they thought.
Sunday, 28 July 2013
My Malign Influence Spreads
A friend asked me to post something to his social-network-type thing, so I've taken my blogging time for this week and applied it there. You can read it here.
Just a quick note: I wasn't going to write a blog this week. My grandma passed away back in California, and I wasn't sure if I wanted to write about that, while writing about all the other silly subjects I usually write about didn't seem appropriate.
But...
It was kind of therapeutic to talk about the thought process that impelled me to go buy a couple of fantasy novels as a way to cope. Hope you enjoy it, and that you leave me a comment, either at that blog or even here.
Just a quick note: I wasn't going to write a blog this week. My grandma passed away back in California, and I wasn't sure if I wanted to write about that, while writing about all the other silly subjects I usually write about didn't seem appropriate.
But...
It was kind of therapeutic to talk about the thought process that impelled me to go buy a couple of fantasy novels as a way to cope. Hope you enjoy it, and that you leave me a comment, either at that blog or even here.
Sunday, 21 July 2013
The Dark Side of the Long Tail
The other week I read this article on LinkedIn, by Anita Elberse at Harvard Business School, which cites figures saying the top 1% of performing artists account for 56% of concert revenues. It was interesting timing, as just a day or two after the article was published, Nigel Godrich and Thom Yorke from Atoms for Peace said they were pulling their music from Spotify, because they say the music-streaming service screws musicians, particularly up-and-coming ones.
I talked about Chris Anderson's second book, Free, a couple of months ago, but I still haven't gotten around to reading his first, The Long Tail (in which he coined the phrase). Nevertheless, the book's subtitle - Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More - gives a good idea which side of this debate Anderson falls on. And in fact, Elberse's disagreed with him on this before, so this is all clearly a long-running argument that I'm getting ready to stick my oar into.
I wasn't entirely surprised when I read Elberse's article, or about Godrich and Yorke's Spotify protest. I've read elsewhere (can't remember where, unfortunately) that iTunes is actually the best-paying digital market for artists - they make something like a hundred times more in royalties and so forth on iTunes than they do on services like Spotify. And for all the talk of long tails, it makes sense to me that, per Elberse, artists like Madonna would still command a larger share of the market than all of the bands who, just a few years ago, wouldn't have had any sort of distribution at all.
This probably comes down to how consumers react to choice. If you're looking on Ticketmaster's website for a concert to go to, you'll be confronted with a page full of artists you've probably never even heard of, with the odd familiar name sprinkled in. Too many choices like that means your brain shuts down and you lose all desire to make a decision; or in other words, screw all these guys, I'm going to see Justin Bieber.
On Spotify, meanwhile, try as they might to improve recommendation engines and stuff like that, your best bet for finding something to listen to is to search by artist or album name, and you can only search for artists whose names you already know. Which means that you have to be the proverbial informed customer - but who has the time for that? Or, once again in other words: screw all these guys, I'm listening to Coldplay.
Maybe that's all glib. But my point is, while digital music is undeniably a big step forward in allowing unknown bands (or authors, if you want to talk about publishing) to get their work out without going through the traditional gatekeepers, just being allowed on the shelves isn't enough to move units. And even marketing campaigns can't fix everything - if you're only big in Minnesota, that's a step forward, but you're still competing with established artists who are big everywhere.
All of which is to say, the long tail is an extremely useful meme when talking about categorizing things (you have your top five sellers, and then your ten thousand others), but with apologies to Chris Anderson, I still don't see it as the future of business, unless somebody figures out how to control a large enough portion of the long tail. And then by definition you're no longer part of the long tail anyway.
I talked about Chris Anderson's second book, Free, a couple of months ago, but I still haven't gotten around to reading his first, The Long Tail (in which he coined the phrase). Nevertheless, the book's subtitle - Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More - gives a good idea which side of this debate Anderson falls on. And in fact, Elberse's disagreed with him on this before, so this is all clearly a long-running argument that I'm getting ready to stick my oar into.
I wasn't entirely surprised when I read Elberse's article, or about Godrich and Yorke's Spotify protest. I've read elsewhere (can't remember where, unfortunately) that iTunes is actually the best-paying digital market for artists - they make something like a hundred times more in royalties and so forth on iTunes than they do on services like Spotify. And for all the talk of long tails, it makes sense to me that, per Elberse, artists like Madonna would still command a larger share of the market than all of the bands who, just a few years ago, wouldn't have had any sort of distribution at all.
This probably comes down to how consumers react to choice. If you're looking on Ticketmaster's website for a concert to go to, you'll be confronted with a page full of artists you've probably never even heard of, with the odd familiar name sprinkled in. Too many choices like that means your brain shuts down and you lose all desire to make a decision; or in other words, screw all these guys, I'm going to see Justin Bieber.
On Spotify, meanwhile, try as they might to improve recommendation engines and stuff like that, your best bet for finding something to listen to is to search by artist or album name, and you can only search for artists whose names you already know. Which means that you have to be the proverbial informed customer - but who has the time for that? Or, once again in other words: screw all these guys, I'm listening to Coldplay.
Maybe that's all glib. But my point is, while digital music is undeniably a big step forward in allowing unknown bands (or authors, if you want to talk about publishing) to get their work out without going through the traditional gatekeepers, just being allowed on the shelves isn't enough to move units. And even marketing campaigns can't fix everything - if you're only big in Minnesota, that's a step forward, but you're still competing with established artists who are big everywhere.
All of which is to say, the long tail is an extremely useful meme when talking about categorizing things (you have your top five sellers, and then your ten thousand others), but with apologies to Chris Anderson, I still don't see it as the future of business, unless somebody figures out how to control a large enough portion of the long tail. And then by definition you're no longer part of the long tail anyway.
Sunday, 14 July 2013
Trayvon Martin and Edward Snowden: Be the Change You Want to See in the World
So George Zimmerman walks for killing Trayvon Martin. Or to be more precise, pursuing, provoking a fight (that he quickly realizes he can't win) and subsequently shooting Trayvon Martin. Good job, America - how's that shining city on a hill thing working out?
I don't want to be too simplistic or snide with the above, but it's hard not to feel disgusted. Sure, I read the article in Slate where Justin Peters pointed out that the case against Zimmerman isn't clear beyond a reasonable doubt, and I agree that you can't convict a person based on the public sentiment against them. But if we look at Emily Bazelon's article this morning, following the verdict being handed down, she notes something even more chilling:
This comes at the same time that the extent of the government's spying program, PRISM, becomes gradually clearer. When the news broke, I remember being surprised at how little reaction there seemed to be - while we've got protests in Brazil that started over bus fares, protests in Turkey that started over land redevelopment, and in Egypt the populace has deposed the Muslim Brotherhood's Mohamed Morsi. I get a lot of "progressive" petitions (I use that word in quotation marks, because I'd like to reclaim the word "liberal"), and it was weeks before any of them addressed PRISM or Edward Snowden.
Not to get too nerdy, but the best assessment of the predicament we're in came from John Champion and Ken Ray's Star Trek podcast, Mission Log (bear with me). In the podcast from last November, while discussing an early episode, one of the hosts - I believe it was John, but can't confirm - pointed out how the Enterprise had disabled an alien ship that had threatened it, and then Captain Kirk offered to help the alien ship. While discussing that, he talked about how that tied into how we need to adhere to our ideals all the time, not just when it's convenient - and he tied that into the political climate at the time.
It struck me then (I was listening to it earlier this week), and it feels incredibly relevant now, with this judgement handed down. It's too easy to be cynical, to believe that our actions don't matter if we talk about the right ideals, but neither of those things is productive, frankly. Do we want to be a country where people can walk down the street without fearing for their lives? Do we want to be a country that doesn't treat its citizens as potential criminals or terrorists?
Then let's get off our asses and live those ideals. If you're scared of missing American Idol, DVR it.
I don't want to be too simplistic or snide with the above, but it's hard not to feel disgusted. Sure, I read the article in Slate where Justin Peters pointed out that the case against Zimmerman isn't clear beyond a reasonable doubt, and I agree that you can't convict a person based on the public sentiment against them. But if we look at Emily Bazelon's article this morning, following the verdict being handed down, she notes something even more chilling:
After all, as Adam Weinstein points out, the lesson right now for Floridians is this: "in any altercation, however minor, the easiest way to avoid criminal liability is to kill the counterparty."So does this mean that in Florida "stand your ground" is going to turn into "preemptive strike, shoot to kill"? A reasonable person would hope not - would hope, in fact, that this tragedy spurs Florida (and other states with "stand your ground" laws) to change the legislation. But it seems more and more apparent that there aren't any reasonable people writing legislation in America. You only have to look at what's been happening in Texas, with the abortion bills and Wendy Davis's filibuster, to see that.
This comes at the same time that the extent of the government's spying program, PRISM, becomes gradually clearer. When the news broke, I remember being surprised at how little reaction there seemed to be - while we've got protests in Brazil that started over bus fares, protests in Turkey that started over land redevelopment, and in Egypt the populace has deposed the Muslim Brotherhood's Mohamed Morsi. I get a lot of "progressive" petitions (I use that word in quotation marks, because I'd like to reclaim the word "liberal"), and it was weeks before any of them addressed PRISM or Edward Snowden.
Not to get too nerdy, but the best assessment of the predicament we're in came from John Champion and Ken Ray's Star Trek podcast, Mission Log (bear with me). In the podcast from last November, while discussing an early episode, one of the hosts - I believe it was John, but can't confirm - pointed out how the Enterprise had disabled an alien ship that had threatened it, and then Captain Kirk offered to help the alien ship. While discussing that, he talked about how that tied into how we need to adhere to our ideals all the time, not just when it's convenient - and he tied that into the political climate at the time.
It struck me then (I was listening to it earlier this week), and it feels incredibly relevant now, with this judgement handed down. It's too easy to be cynical, to believe that our actions don't matter if we talk about the right ideals, but neither of those things is productive, frankly. Do we want to be a country where people can walk down the street without fearing for their lives? Do we want to be a country that doesn't treat its citizens as potential criminals or terrorists?
Then let's get off our asses and live those ideals. If you're scared of missing American Idol, DVR it.
Sunday, 7 July 2013
Guy Gavriel Kay's Rich Tapestry
In the nine or so years since I started seriously reading fantasy, I've managed to turn my dad into a fan of a number of the authors I've discovered, including such luminaries as George RR Martin and Joe Abercrombie. In a few cases, this has turned to my advantage, as he went and picked up the authors' other books before I could. One of the authors for which this has happened is Guy Gavriel Kay - in fact, my dad ended up buying so many of Kay's books that I've been consistently borrowing them for the last couple of years, and ended up bingeing a little this year when I grabbed five books from my dad's shelves. And then promptly bought the Kindle versions of two more.
Having read so many books by a single author in such a short time, you can't help but notice certain patterns in his or her work, and Kay's work is no different, in that respect. But the patterns that he follows are themselves what sets him apart from other fantasy authors (I've read that he prefers not to be pigeonholed there, but it'll have to do for the moment).
The main idea running through almost all of his books is, of course, how his novels are based on historical events. His two most recent were inspired by key events in Chinese history, and previous ones have explored settings as diverse as the Byzantine Empire, Moorish Spain, and the Albigensian Crusade in southern France. The only ones that didn't hew to this historical fantasy mode were his opening trilogy, The Fionavar Tapestry, and a sort-of sequel called Ysabel.
Being kind of an obsessive completist, I started with the Fionavar books, several years ago, although I wouldn't say they're Kay's best. They felt a little too indebted to Tolkien - he helped edit some of Tolkien's papers while still at university - and ended up pulling in a few threads (no pun intended) that felt sort of out of place to me (think King Arthur and Lancelot). But for whatever reason, after finishing those books, Kay went off in a completely new direction, and I think it's served him well, allowing him to avoid the usual settings reminiscent of medieval northern Europe, and the usual plots of dark lords and sieges.
He's said himself that he's interested in the historical settings, but with fantasy trappings, because it frees him from having to write exactly what happened, or portray historical figures as they "really" were. That said, I've learned from hard experience to avoid reading the Wikipedia entries on those specific historical periods until finishing the book in question, otherwise I end up getting some brutal spoilers.
The other striking thing about his work is how he uses female characters. Some fantasy authors portray women really badly, alternately as scolds or sex toys; others arbitrarily make them badass soldiers, which is a neat idea in itself, but sometimes gets overused. Given that Kay's books are mostly based on historical events, his women rarely pick up swords, but even when their societies deny them power, they still have agency. A notable example is his 1992 book, A Song for Arbonne, based on the Albigensian Crusade, which took place in Provence; there he posits a society ruled by women, where the arts most appreciated at court are wit and poetry. Perhaps to contrast it with the prevailing themes of epic fantasy literature, the antagonists are from a heavily sexist, warlike country to the north, which despises Arbonne enough to eventually launch an invasion.
Arbonne was the first book of his that I read after the Fionavar books, and this struck me, in no small part because I'd found his treatment of one of his female characters in the first volume, The Summer Tree, to be pretty awful. Where most of the other main characters in the book - a group of Canadian students who travel to a magical fantasy world - gain powers of their own, one of the women sits around being pretty for the entire book, until she's captured by the evil god and raped. I remember almost putting the book down at the time, because it felt as if she'd been put in there exclusively for that (although, unlike, say, Paul Kearney, Kay doesn't lovingly describe it happening).
Now, what happens to the character in the next two books kind of refutes that, but not entirely. So I've always wondered if his amazing female characters since then - like the Empress Alixana or the physician Jehane - were intended to make up for that early mistake. Whatever his intentions, Kay's female characters set a standard that every fantasy author should aspire to.
Another notable thing about Kay's books is that, poetic and beautiful as they are, they also don't shy away from warfare and violence (or sex). Much like I said in my laudatory post about Joe Abercrombie's work, Kay allows you to see the violence that characterized these societies, and its effects as they ripple out from one act, seemingly insignificant, without flinching or even reveling in it. The description of what happens to a pair of characters toward the end of The Lions of Al-Rassan, set in an analogue to Moorish Spain, is brutal and heart-rending, but also rings true.
If I have any criticism of Kay's work, it's that his style has perhaps become more solidified - I won't say set in its ways: there were a few too many points in River of Stars, his latest, where the omniscient narrator talks about how a character's actions affect the rest of his or her life, or the history of their nation. It was also sometimes difficult to tell why certain characters did certain things; but for all that, the very end of the book was amazing, and like in all of his books, the prose does a fantastic job of conveying the surroundings to the reader.
And that, in the end, is why I believe that every would-be fantasy author should read Guy Gavriel Kay. His prose is amazing, probably the best in the business - the only one I think can come close (and that's because he's funny) is Joe Abercrombie. F Scott Fitzgerald said that a person who wants to write fiction should read six top-flight authors each year - Guy Gavriel Kay should comfortably sit in that rank of writers.
The man himself.
Having read so many books by a single author in such a short time, you can't help but notice certain patterns in his or her work, and Kay's work is no different, in that respect. But the patterns that he follows are themselves what sets him apart from other fantasy authors (I've read that he prefers not to be pigeonholed there, but it'll have to do for the moment).
The main idea running through almost all of his books is, of course, how his novels are based on historical events. His two most recent were inspired by key events in Chinese history, and previous ones have explored settings as diverse as the Byzantine Empire, Moorish Spain, and the Albigensian Crusade in southern France. The only ones that didn't hew to this historical fantasy mode were his opening trilogy, The Fionavar Tapestry, and a sort-of sequel called Ysabel.
Being kind of an obsessive completist, I started with the Fionavar books, several years ago, although I wouldn't say they're Kay's best. They felt a little too indebted to Tolkien - he helped edit some of Tolkien's papers while still at university - and ended up pulling in a few threads (no pun intended) that felt sort of out of place to me (think King Arthur and Lancelot). But for whatever reason, after finishing those books, Kay went off in a completely new direction, and I think it's served him well, allowing him to avoid the usual settings reminiscent of medieval northern Europe, and the usual plots of dark lords and sieges.
He's said himself that he's interested in the historical settings, but with fantasy trappings, because it frees him from having to write exactly what happened, or portray historical figures as they "really" were. That said, I've learned from hard experience to avoid reading the Wikipedia entries on those specific historical periods until finishing the book in question, otherwise I end up getting some brutal spoilers.
The other striking thing about his work is how he uses female characters. Some fantasy authors portray women really badly, alternately as scolds or sex toys; others arbitrarily make them badass soldiers, which is a neat idea in itself, but sometimes gets overused. Given that Kay's books are mostly based on historical events, his women rarely pick up swords, but even when their societies deny them power, they still have agency. A notable example is his 1992 book, A Song for Arbonne, based on the Albigensian Crusade, which took place in Provence; there he posits a society ruled by women, where the arts most appreciated at court are wit and poetry. Perhaps to contrast it with the prevailing themes of epic fantasy literature, the antagonists are from a heavily sexist, warlike country to the north, which despises Arbonne enough to eventually launch an invasion.
Arbonne was the first book of his that I read after the Fionavar books, and this struck me, in no small part because I'd found his treatment of one of his female characters in the first volume, The Summer Tree, to be pretty awful. Where most of the other main characters in the book - a group of Canadian students who travel to a magical fantasy world - gain powers of their own, one of the women sits around being pretty for the entire book, until she's captured by the evil god and raped. I remember almost putting the book down at the time, because it felt as if she'd been put in there exclusively for that (although, unlike, say, Paul Kearney, Kay doesn't lovingly describe it happening).
Now, what happens to the character in the next two books kind of refutes that, but not entirely. So I've always wondered if his amazing female characters since then - like the Empress Alixana or the physician Jehane - were intended to make up for that early mistake. Whatever his intentions, Kay's female characters set a standard that every fantasy author should aspire to.
Another notable thing about Kay's books is that, poetic and beautiful as they are, they also don't shy away from warfare and violence (or sex). Much like I said in my laudatory post about Joe Abercrombie's work, Kay allows you to see the violence that characterized these societies, and its effects as they ripple out from one act, seemingly insignificant, without flinching or even reveling in it. The description of what happens to a pair of characters toward the end of The Lions of Al-Rassan, set in an analogue to Moorish Spain, is brutal and heart-rending, but also rings true.
If I have any criticism of Kay's work, it's that his style has perhaps become more solidified - I won't say set in its ways: there were a few too many points in River of Stars, his latest, where the omniscient narrator talks about how a character's actions affect the rest of his or her life, or the history of their nation. It was also sometimes difficult to tell why certain characters did certain things; but for all that, the very end of the book was amazing, and like in all of his books, the prose does a fantastic job of conveying the surroundings to the reader.
And that, in the end, is why I believe that every would-be fantasy author should read Guy Gavriel Kay. His prose is amazing, probably the best in the business - the only one I think can come close (and that's because he's funny) is Joe Abercrombie. F Scott Fitzgerald said that a person who wants to write fiction should read six top-flight authors each year - Guy Gavriel Kay should comfortably sit in that rank of writers.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)