What we Talk About When we Talk about Love by Raymond Carver

This post is really a continuation of my previous one on Raymond Carver

I have not read many short stories in my time. After now having completed the second collection by Carver I am beginning to appreciate the skill involved in delivering messages about the characters using very little text. A full length novel has the luxury of being able to develop characters over time, and often still does not succeed. How do you, therefore, accomplish it in seven pages? Perhaps "developing" the character is not even the right term. How do you give glimpses of insight into the characters that allow you to, even momentarily, understand them? I am finding Carver's writing to rely on the logical thinking of his readers. Each sentence has a purpose in his writing and he leaves it up to us to determine their significance based on our own interpretation.

There are two stories that stayed with me the most. The first one is titled "Viewfinder". It is about a man with no hands who takes photographs of peoples houses and then sells them to the owners. He visits one house where the owner offers him coffee not necessarily because of his hospitable nature but instead due to a nagging curiosity to see how a man with two hooks for hands would hold the cup.

The second has the same title as the book itself. It is essentially a discussion between two couples about love. Their openness to elaborate on the more intimate aspects of their relationships is greatly aided by two bottles of gin. The conversation is good, honest and disturbing.

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Will you Please be Quiet, Please? by Raymond Carver

I do not exactly recall how I first came across Slavoj Zizek. I believe it was in my search for contemporary philosophers who discuss the events of modern society at a deeper level than journalism is able to do. A few online pieces of his work proved to be rather interesting, especially his fascination in film and the underlying messages it often conveys. So, I was happy to see an interview with him in the Financial Times a few months after my initial introduction. The interview jumps from the financial crisis to Marxism and even includes a brief anecdote on the movie, Titanic. However, it was one reference he made to the film, Short Cuts that caught my attention. He claimed it be a Hollywood film which deserves to be called "art" compared to many "fake" European films. This stuck with me namely because I remember as an early teen looking at the VHS case of Short Cuts at my local Blockbuster. It was a blue case with little cut outs of all the different actors in the movie. I never did rent it, most likely opting for True Lies instead.

Nearly 15 years after having first seen it dawning the wall of the New Release section at Blockbuster, I finally sat down to watch Short Cuts. It did not disappoint. As an American living abroad now for several years, I am becoming more and more curious about my native country. I find myself constantly in search of those cultural works which best describe the true essence of the U.S. This serves two purposes. The first is that it allows me to have a portfolio of recommendations for those individuals who actually show a curiosity in better understanding the U.S. and its people beyond the stereotypes often conveyed by our own pop culture. I have not come across many interested takers yet but I am ready when it does happen. The second is simply because I relate to these albums, books, or films more now than when I am living in America. I appreciate them more, mainly due to nostalgia. Returning to Short Cuts it depicts the real life of normal people living in the more mundane neighborhoods of Los Angeles and confronts the difficulties they face in their day-to-day lives.

The film was based on the short stories of Raymond Carver. The director, Robert Altman, took a dozen of Carver's stories and weaved them together. The Criterion Collection of this film included a documentary on Carver. Thus my introduction to Carver began here with the first scene being of his widow reading one of his poems above his gravestone in Port Angeles. I only discovered he was buried there after the fact. However, I only needed to see the evergreens in the background running up to the cliffs edge above a large body of water to know that she was in the Pacific Northwest. Such an interesting string of connections served as the sign to me that the author's works deserved reading.

Will you Please be Quiet, Please? is Carver's first collection of short stories. He lived his entire life on the West Coast and this comes through in the stories. I found myself relating with his words. I have two more collections of his short stories to read and will describe in my future posts those that I enjoyed the most. In the meantime, go and rent Short Cuts. It is certainly no longer in the New Release section of Blockbuster, especially the one on N.E. 8th in Bellevue which closed down two years ago. Actually, the action "go and rent" isn't really valid any more either. It can be substituted with "go to 'Your Favorites' folder on your browser, left click, Search on Netflix 'Short Cuts', left click three times".

15 years is a long time.

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Bowling Alone by Robert Putnam

After having finished Hope against Hope which spoke of the condition of Russia in 1930's, I decided to swing in the opposite direction with the next book. In this case, Bowling Alone maps the sociological progression of the American community after World War II by examining the external relationships that Americans have with one and another. In 1930's Russia, no clubs, teams, or organizations could exist except one - the State. On the opposite end of the spectrum is the USA, where people are given the full freedom to take part in any community-based organization that exists. And, if one does not exist, we are entitled to create our own. This freedom of social involvement is one of the most crucial aspects of a vibrant democracy. Unfortunately, it has been in consistent decline since the late 1960's. Putnam attempts to seek out why this is the case and what can be done about.

The first part of the book introduces an important theme running through America. There are more clubs and organizations now than there ever were in the preceding decades. How then can one say that club memberships are down? What Putnam shows is how the dynamics of membership in these clubs are different. Today, there are all types of clubs imaginable. Organizations like Greenpeace, the NRA, or the Sierra Club have millions of members. However, the vast majority of these members will never actually come together to discuss a new approach to recycling or the caliber of their assault rifle. Instead they will rely on these organizations to act as lobbies mainly for political purposes. It is the other type of clubs that Putnam says are at risk: local Kiwanis, Boy Scouts, and Knights of Columbus.

Why have these organizations seen their memberships decline? Putnam plows through piles of data in search for the answer. However, like much in life, there is never just one justification. Instead, he identifies a few key contributors, which come as no surprise. Longer commutes, television viewing, duel income households and a generations shift, e.g. Americans in the 1940s were united by World War II. All of this leads to a reduction in social capital, which along side human and physical capital are crucial components of a successful society.

People that interact with others often are happier, more civic and less likely to commit crimes than those who are isolated. The communities in which social interconnectedness is strong, is a better, safer place to live than a less connected society. And, what I found to be most interesting is that encouraging certain aspects of social capital will lead to positive effects in what, at first glance, would seem not related.

For example, North Carolina scores 41st in the nation on SAT scores in High school while Connecticut scores 8th. According to Putnam, "by controlling for all the other ways in which the two states differ (wealth and poverty, race, adult education, and so on), for North Carolina to see education outcomes similar to Connecticut's, according to our statistical analysis, residents in the Tar Heel state could do any of the following: increase their turnout in presidential elections by 50%; double their frequency of club meeting attendance, triple the number of non-profits per thousand residents." As he goes on to explain, these factors above have a greater effect on test scores than many traditional, and often costly, education policies such as reducing class room size. Social capital is more difficult to measure but its presence in our lives cannot be ignored when attempting to tackle many of the problems facing our schools, inner cities, or entire states.

The question that I kept waiting to be answered is - so what do we do now? It never really was. I have a hard time believing the findings of this book came as a huge surprise back in 2000 when it was written. Has the situation improved since then? Have the I-pod or Facebook done more to worsen the situation? Has September 11th brought us together like World War II did in to previous generations?

On an even more philisophocial level, are these devices and trends simply a reflection of our society and the direction in which we want to go? Is it wrong if we find more satisfaction in isolating ourselves from others than in meeting with others? I, personally, believe it is. However, more importantly, my human instincts often act as my guide pushing me towards interaction with others. For me it is the best guide. However, I am not burdened by many of the damaging factors Putnam atributes to the reduction of our social interaction, namely a grueling commute or excessive TV watching. Eliminating these two factors would certainly open a new world up to hundreds of millions of people throughout the world. It seems like a good start could be to put down the remote. Let's start there.

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Ghost Wars by Steve Toll

History is fascinating because of its continuous progression through time. Events that have already taken place will combine themselves with events yet to occur. This combination will create future outcomes that will then be discussed and written about as history. Three major, international events are unfolding before our eyes without any foreseeable end in sight. Their story is yet to be completed, their history not yet ready to be declared. The link which connects Iraq, Afghanistan and the financial crisis is how each are in some form a consequence of how the United States has managed itself and viewed the world after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

So much of our past has up until now been condensed into historic episodes - The Great Depression, World War II, Vietnam & 1968, The Cold War. How will the episode we are currently living through be later defined? What overarching conclusions, yet to be drawn, will weave these three events together? These are questions I have been asking myself with greater regularity.

I have found it interesting to see Ronald Reagan's name emerging with greater frequency in the international media when discussing the Financial crisis. An icon of fiscal conservatives, his disdain for government involvement in the market has within the last year been called into question like never before. From a military and foreign policy perspective we have seen how those from the Reagan school, i.e. Rumsfeld, Cheney, Wolfowitz, struggled to see the world through a Post-Cold War lens when orchestrating their military strategies in the Middle East. This school had viewed the world up until 1989 in terms of good and evil. As a result, it was easier to mount a military and propaganda-based war against a single, devilish individual than it was to understand and make understood the country of Afghanistan. Once again, September 11, 2001 was carried out by the Al-Qaeda members located at camps in Afghanistan. Iraq had no involvement in it.

"Ghost Wars - The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001", will certainly be consulted for years to come as an essential read for those seeking a historic context behind September 11th. The book is laid out in a perfect chronological sequence. It does an excellent job of tying in the numerous individuals who in some way played a significant role in the developments of Afghanistan over the last 30 years. And it does so by adequately introducing the individuals, something that was not accomplished in the book, Paris 1919, for example.

To summarize Afghanistan from the US perspective, the CIA was heavily involved in the country as it was battling the Soviets in the early 1980's. Unable to conquer this incredibly difficult country, the USSR withdrew which led to a decline in US interest in the region. From that point up until September 2001, the US did not take a position on the country due to several complicated relationships it had in place with Pakistani and Saudi intelligence as well as one particular warlord in Northern Afghanistan.

The U.S. was well aware of Bin Laden's presence in the country. Its failure to capture him can be hailed as a truly bi-partisan effort. Clinton was too often bogged down with his own personal issues and with different poorly timed election campaigns. The eight months Bush was in office prior to September 11th, showed a cabinet wide lack of interest in terrorism and Bin Laden even though the CIA was ringing the alarm bells months before the attacks.

However, in the end, Ghost Wars proves that blame cannot be placed on one person. September 11th was a result of a series of mistakes and several instances of bad luck which accumulated over two decades to finally detonate with the attacks on the Twin Towers and Pentagon. the book also hints that "the system" in place regarding international law on such issues as assassination, had been constructed before the rules of war were turned on their head with the introduction of a new, more deadly form of international terrorism.

I fully recommend this book and strongly urge people to read it especially considering the critical juncture we find ourselves at in the start of 2009 with a new president. Obama will be forced to make the decision whether to drastically increase the troop presence, and therefore causalities, or to withdraw from the country all together as the Soviets did thirty years ago. Our current approach is simply not working.

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Nudge by R. Thaler and C.R. Sunstein

UPDATE: Sunstein has become the "legal czar" for the Obama administration.

Access to nearly endless choice is one of the defining elements of the capitalist world we live in, unless you are one of my North Korean or Cuban followers. Allow any firm the ability to offer their goods or services to the market. Those with the strongest offering will find success, while those not able sell their goods and make a profit will, in their own right, cease to exist. GM not included.

The premise of this book deals with how human beings make decisions in response to these choices and how they can be "nudged" into doing so as to better benefit themselves. For economists all decisions are rational while in reality we know this is not the case. Human instincts are very strong and are weighed down by various biases which prevent a rational decision making process.

A trip to the supermarket confirms that companies are well aware of this irrational decision making and they take all the steps to "nudge" you towards their product by paying more for eye-level shelf space, wafting the smell of baking bread throughout the store, and placing milk at the back of the store.

The gist of the book is built around the following - the placement of a certain, more expensive, yogurt may convince me to buy one I normally would not, but I have hundreds of future opportunities to correct this poorly made decision. However, certain decisions regarding investments, retirement plans, health care, and university are drastically limited. So much so that many of these decisions will be made perhaps only one time in your life. Better not screw it up, to say it mildly. Yet, just like the yogurts in the supermarket, the number of healthcare or pension plans has become endless. How do we nudge people to make the best decision regarding these important long term subjects?

One example of how to nudge effectively without restricting choice is by selecting, well-researched and balanced default options for people while always allowing them the choice to select a plan for themselves. With Medicare, this would mean by default that a selection of prescription medicine plans for the elderly would be made from one of the 60 available plans based on previous prescription records of the recipient. This seams logical enough. In reality, when the overhaul of Medicare took place in 2003, the default option for prescriptions medicine plans was in most cases "non-enrollment" or "random selection". To further complicate matters, the process for selecting the plan (from 60 of them!) was not very clear for various reasons explained in the book.

This is an entertaining and insightful read. It demonstrates how, namely, government and its associated bodies can direct the majority of its citizens, from school lunchrooms to organ donations, to mutually beneficial outcomes without imposing sweeping regulation.

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The Eagle and the Fried Chicken by Vittorio Zucconi

I enjoy Zucconi the journalist, who acts as the US correspondent for La Reppublica newspaper in Italy. Perhaps the enormous letdown of this book was amplified even more because I had expected much more from this author. I guess I will continue to read Zucconi's articles but not his books.

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A Man without a Country by Kurt Vonnegut

Supposedly, Vonnegut broke a promise he made never to publish another book when he put together a series of ramblings and published it shortly before his death in 2008. The book is far from a success, considering the reputation of the author that I have developed over the years even though I have never, until now, read one of his books. However, it does serve as an interesting starting point for me - beginning with the last work of an author. He talks mainly about his own life. What he had to say was intriguing. There was just not enough of it.

At one point he briefly discusses socialism in the USA and his own Socialist leanings. After a lifetime in America I can assume that even Vonnegut began to develop an appreciation of the free market considering he compiled a few writings into a book which can be read in an afternoon and sold it for $23.95. He must have known that his fan base was large and loyal enough to pay to get their hands on his last insights.

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Paris 1919 by Margaret MacMillan

The title of this book refers to the six month period after World War I, when all the countries involved in the war, and many who were not, descended on Paris to negotiate the peace treaty, later to be known as the Treaty of Versailles. The three central figures shown on the book cover were Woodrow Wilson (USA), Lloyd George (UK), and Clemenceau (France). Vittorio Orlando (Italy) rounded out the "Big Four" but he and his country acted more like the little, whiny stepbrother that the older brother and his two buddies had to invite to along in order to play 2 on 2. These three central characters had an enormous task, which was bound not to succeed 100% due to the endless numbers of variables involved in the negotiation.

The three themes most present in the negotiations were borders, ethnicity and reparations, with the first two often being related. What became clearer while reading this book is how before the Great War the modern day definition of borders did not exist. This was mainly a result of colonization outside Europe and the size of the Austria-Hungarian Empire (AHE) inside of it. After the fall of the AHE, Europe found itself with certain ethnic groups scattered throughout the continent who before had lived under the umbrella of the empire. Such examples included Germans in Romania and Italians in Croatia. Defining the borders and determining where these ethic groups should live was an impossible task, especially in Yugoslavia. The repercussions were still being witnessed in the Balkan War 80 years after.

How to handle the reparations was the other critical issue to be resolved during the six months in Paris namely by determining how much money Germany needed to pay the UK and France. Demand too much and the German economy would become crippled, too little and they would rise to power again too quickly. The overarching question was how the Big Four, through reparations and new border alignments could ensure Germany became strong but not dominant. History confirms that an outright answer in 1919 was not readily available.

The majority of the chapters in Paris 1919 are written about each individual country involved in the negotiations. The sections on Greece and Turkey were particularly fascinating. Others, such as the tension in China and Japan, seemed out of place. I say this because the reader is led to believe that the majority of the focus will be centered around the three main figures (just look at the cover) and how they would negotiate with Germany. I was left without a true feeling of what was driving these three individuals. Equally, the sections on Germany were not much more in depth than those on the rise of Ataturk in Turkey. The conclusion focused entirely on Germany, while the book was truly international in its scope. This is understandable considering the events which would follow twenty years later. However, the "German question" did not come across as the outright, central theme of the book as the conclusion leads the reader to believe.

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Barbarians at the Gate by Burrough & Helyar

I had to interrupt the book I was reading because the events occurring in the global financial markets dutifully called for such action. Instead of reading the daily news and agonizing over what was unfolding, I decided to turn back in time, not long ago, when new, creative financial instruments were allowing private equity firms to takeover companies by running up enormous debt. This process is known as a Leveraged Buyout (LBO) and it was rife on Wall Street in the Geckoesque period of the mid 1980's.

The creativity of our modern day financiers is amazing. Without launching into the populist calls for their heads that one could read in the newspapers these days (not me though), the fundamental truth remains that out capitalist system, with its constant evolution, require such magical tools of finance. They are required in order to maintain the same growth levels that investors of all types have become accustomed to. However, the Western world is no longer in a post-war boom phase. The conditions are much more mature in nature and we need to start considering how our societies should be shaped in the "post-modern economy". There are only so many financial spells to cast; cheap-labor arbitraging opportunities to exploit, and wars to start. However, lets not get to far ahead of ourselves.

"Barbarians" tells the story, over a six month period, of the takeover of RJR Nabisco, the maker of Ritz crackers, Oreo cookies and Doral cigarettes by KKR, a major private equity firm. We do not need to look as far back as the 1930's to draw similarities to today's dilemmas. Just as barely- employed recent graduates were snapping up two bedroom condos over the last year with ridiculous amount of leverage, i.e. no money down on a $300,000 condo, private equity firms, with the help of Wall Street investment bankers, were purchasing Main Street companies, either private or publicly held, using enormous leverage ratios (little cash and lots of junk bonds). In both situations, the problems began when repayment on the loan amounts was brought into question.

I can only imagine what is being said in the newspapers and online over the last month. Why were the bankers so greedy? Didn't they see it coming? Are profits never enough? The answers - yes, yes, no. My favorite metaphor in the book was told by one investment banker. If you have 11 beauty pageant contestants in a room and in walks a $100 prostitute, you still have 11 beauty pageant contestants and a hooker. But if a prostitute walks in and tells them she earns $1m, the room is immediately made up of 12 hookers. The investment banks, just like the friends of our condo-buying recent graduate, have a hard time resisting when others around them are making money. Equally, once you are making lots of money, you are not going to stop out of goodwill for mankind. Oil companies know their resources will one day finish and drilling next to the house of a cute polar bear is the wrong thing to do just as a guy slinging mortgages out of his guestroom making $25,000 a month knew that he was probably selling a mortgage or two too many to people who would have been better off renting. Finally, the rampant growth opportunities are simply going to be harder and harder to come by.

Every cloud has a silver lining. The true tragedy would be if we live through the difficult upcoming years without giving thought to the direction we are going. It is this "pioneering capitalism" which needs to be reevaluated. There need to be checks in place along the way. Government does not have to be the enemy of economic growth. In truth, it can and will need to be an enabler by improving infrastructure that allow for smoother business and by educating its people to be the most competitive in changing times. And, yes, it needs to remember that it is often the last line of defense for untethered economic pursuits whose long term costs for society often dwarf the short term profits of a few.

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The Good Rain by Timothy Egan

I would recommend this book...to anyone raised in the Pacific Northwest (PNW) who is currently living away from home and is a bit nostalgic. I will be curious to know the thoughts of non-PNWers or PNWers still living in the area if they have read or decide to read this book.

Timothy Egan is the Seattle correspondent for the New York Times. I came across his writing in a very particular way. One morning while purusing the NY times online, I read an editorial written by a Stanford undergraduate student studying in Italy. She was writing about the impressions she had of being an American in Bologna while another student from Seattle (Amanda Knox) was being held in an Italian prison as a murder suspect after her British roommate was found fatally stabbed in their apartment in Perugia. Anyone from Seattle, Italy or the UK will know of this story.

I was very impressed with the article written by the Stanford student. Only later, while reading an Italian paper, was it mentioned that the writer's father wrote for the NY Times. This same article inferred that this was the reason her article was published. Regardless, the father is Timothy Egan, author of The Good Rain.

The Pacific Northwest is truly a region without borders. It stretches into British Columbia and moves down through Western Oregon. There is certainly something that links people from this area. The terrain plays a role as people from the area are comfortable both with the ocean and in the mountains. The long gray and drizzly winters become normal for those adapted but standout for the new arrivals.

Egan certainly loves the PNW and represents it very well in this book and in his Times articles and blog . Even when he writes about the Iraq war you can tell he is not doing it from the 42nd floor of a Manhattan skyscraper.

This book is about the history of the region. He travels from one area to the next tying in current events with historical ones. He justifiably declares the importance of the geography giving particular focus to the Columbia river and Cascade Mountains. He also drives home the message (perhaps too often) that the Army Corp of Engineers mutilated a lot of rivers in the area with dam construction thus drastically reducing the salmon runs. As a result, the way of life of the Indians in the area was altered forever because they were no longer able to fish the rivers they had depended on for 10,000 years. European Americans push west certainly did not help the situation either as Indian land was snatched up with support from the federal government and was only relinquished after drawn out court rulings, which were often too late.

This book was written in 1990 which in Seattle terms is a lifetime ago. The city has changed so much since then. This book demonstrates how European Americans moving west wanted to take as much from the land as possible in the shortest amount of time. They also felt that the power of man could conquer the massiveness of the terrain mainly though engineering. Land protection, zoning laws, pollution, were not terms that were digested well by the new arrivals. My fear is that these same issues are still not given enough consideration as the population in the Seattle region is estimated to reach four million over the next two decades. Many things I am seeing, hearing, and reading are convincing me that a book such as Egan's holds vital messages that are still relevant today.

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