Asymmetric Books and Literature

A couple of years ago, one of my fraternity brothers mentioned that Frater Craig Amshel wrote a book about his Teke experience.

Craig is a pledge brother of mine, one of an elite ten. I remember him as a cool guy, which is why I was sorry that I lost touch with him. I always thought it was because he felt embarrassed that he was just a renowned surgeon while I had my own blog, but my brothers told me that he lived in Florida and had to do a bunch of operations or whatever. I was anxious to hear from him again, even if it was only in print.

Also, chronicling my college years had intrigued me at one time (I abandoned the idea when I realized that a story alternating between progressively more impressive sexual and intellectual conquests lacked drama.), and I wanted to see how Craig did it.

I quit my job, said goodbye to my wife and children, and spent the next two years combing through used bookstores from Maine to California in search of that rare tome, before somebody told me about something called "Amazon." Click. I received the book...and immediately put it away. You see, I've learned to suppress each stage of my life and wasn't necessarily eager to dredge up my eighteenth year on earth.

Like Gollum learning to take responsibility for his descent into madness, I found the courage to face the indiscretions of my youth.

Ahhhh...wow. Fall '86 is the most emotional book I've ever read. It's not just because I'm in it either: Books that revolve around beer strike at my very core.

The first thing that impressed me about Fall '86 was Craig's Homer-like power of recall. I forgot most of the stuff he talked about the day after it happened. He remembers dates, names, conversations, smells. Really incredible.

Fall 86 goes from rush week, continues through some of our trials, and ends with our initiation (AKA the "mind f***). Craig only breaks up the Teke-centric narrative with a lovely episode of his mom and him walking on the beach, a couple of ROTC stories, and some academic stuff (apparently, people gather in rooms called "classes" and scribble down what some old dude says).

Craig shows restraint in other ways: He avoids the temptation to turn social critic and find deeper meaning in his experience, and he doesn't go negative on his fraternity brothers, except for Opie, whose name cannot be mentioned without cursing him and the genetic strain that made him possible (just kidding). Nice, simple, and factual.

Why should you care?

Fall '86 doesn't have any brushes with greatness or pull a scab from society's belly. Neither is it lurid. No story arc or great struggle. It's just one dude telling about his first year in college, like anybody might to his kid when the cable is out.

If you were smart like me and spent hours a day on Wikipedia, you'd know that Fall '86 is something called "Slice of life," a legitimate literary genre.

Books about interesting, yet unknown real-life adventures include Jarhead, whatever spawned Sex and the City, and Barack Obama's own Dreams of My Father. Indeed, it's the basis of many blogs and the ancestor of the reality show. They allow one to peek into a world that they otherwise wouldn't be able to see. Such works set a place and time forever, as Craig does with his mentions of Firbirds and Fast Times at Ridgemont High. It's like reading your aunt's diary, if your aunt was a debauched college freshman with awful taste in Rock.

One of the formative moments of my life.

One last thing: Craig's a surgeon and a military officer, two professions drenched in drama and yet Craig decided to write about one semester in the lives of ten college freshmen.

Fall '86 by Craig Amshel

Fast Times at Ridgemont High (Widescreen Special Edition)

Jarhead [Blu-ray]

Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance by Barack Obama

Voodoo Histories: The Role of the Conspiracy Theory in Shaping Modern History by David Aaronovitch

Dennis Prager interviews David Aaronovitch. Fascinating stuff.

I enjoy the precise prose, Marx-free themes, and sense of decency of the pre-modern writers, even though things can get stuffy at times. Murders in the Rue Morgue, sometimes called the "first detective story," begins with a somewhat lengthy and difficult-to-follow discourse (below the fold) on which mental faculties are best tested by checkers in contrast to chess. Poe seems to think that the more constrictive rules of checkers better tests a man's analytic ability than the more varied move options in chess, although comprehending the exact reasoning would require me to think, and it's Saturday.

Murder in the Rue Morgue is odd because the focus of the story isn't necessarily the mystery at hand, as the characters involved are barely present, but the inductive/deductive powers of C. Auguste Dupin. The reader can't possibly participate in the story: he's merely along for the ride. Or, the reader isn't given the information or time necessary to make a problem-solving guess and must completely rely on Dupin to reveal the solution.

I saw the 1932 Bela Lugosi movie on youtube. Interesting. There's an additional human evolution angle that some may find interesting. The core story itself is radically modified.

You may read the story here. You can test your chess skills below:

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I read these two in my class today. I'm kind of surprised that they let them in the English book actually. Maybe it goes with the "fighting oppression" theme of every other story. Compare the two works below to modern politicians' babbling foolishness.

American Crisis, by Thomas Paine:

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Interesting. We'll see if the secular dismissal of any view that holds sex to be more important or meaningful than the temporary release of pleasure-inducing chemicals produces a sort of backlash whereby people either discover the meaning that is already there (Christopher West) or imbue it with meaning themselves, the latter usually taking the form of a New Age philosophy.

Concerning New Age, I've been reading that Margaret Sanger, the eugenic evangelist, had some sort of pseudo-scientific theory of sex as the creator of genius (in people already born) through glands or whatever.

The report is below and an interview with Christopher West from CNA is below the fold.

The Love That Satisfies by Christopher West

Heaven's Song: Sexual Love as It Was Meant to Be by Christopher West

A Love Forever by Christopher West

Theology of the Body Explained: A Commentary on John Paul II's "Gospel of the Body" by Christopher West

Spiritual Melodies by Christopher West

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This is one subject that's turned the conservative corner. People are starting to wake up to the truth. Let's see which issue we can shed light on next.

Heaven And Earth: Global Warming - The Missing Science by Ian Plimer

Anti-nuclear zealots are foolish and will make us poorer.

Terrestrial Energy: How Nuclear Energy Will Lead the Green Revolution and End America's Energy Odyssey by William Tucker

Blacklisting Myself: Memoir of a Hollywood Apostate in the Age of Terror by Roger L. Simon

People looking for Gulag Archipelago set in Hollywood, with real blacklists, ruined careers, brave principled stances, and other harrowing tales from a vibrant conservative underground will be disappointed by Blacklisting Myself.

In order to claim some kind of covert Hollywood blacklist, Simon would had to have pointed to a job that he lost after declaring that he voted for Bush or show that he was in-demand and on the "A-list" until he expressed ambivalence towards the Sandinista cause or something. In fact, the title is quite misleading in that Simon not only doesn't provide evidence for the thesis it impies but doesn't even make the claim. He admits that he wasn't exactly at the peak of his career when he became a conservative and has no idea whether his public conservatism hurt him in any way professionally (Simon does say that he lost some acquaintances and that his whiteness or, rather, his lack of blackness lost him a job with Richard Pryor) .

Or, shall I say, "public non-orthodox liberalism." Those expecting a Whitaker Chambers (Witness), David Horowitz (Radical Son), Michael Medved (Right Turns) lefty-turned-winger book will also be disappointed, for while Roger Simon was definitely a liberal, his politics never seems to have intruded on his quite normal life except for some youthful civil rights work- it was a latte liberalism, i.e., he'd have radical friends and brushes with lefty luminaries such as Abbie Hoffman and Warren Beatty, follow Timothy Leary on crack runs and New Agers to seances, but when the moment of true dedication arrived, Simon always pulled back.

And, although he voted for Bush, there's nothing "arch" about the contemporary Roger Simon's conservatism, for Simon is ideology-averse, a man equally repulsed by left and right excess, a conservative only because he's not a liberal.*

So, then we get how Simon power-brokered Hollywood deals, authored great art, and innovated Hollywood? Here, not so bad. Roger Simon received an Oscar nomination for Enemies, a Love Story and has screenwritten enough to make a good living. He created Moses Wine, a popular hippie detective, helped found a lunch group for writers that met in the Grove in Hollywood, and is somewhat of an internet pioneer with his Pajamas Media blog.

Is Blacklisting Myself a powerful intellectual achievement? No. Simon's insights are solid and difficult to disagree with: people who get things without earning them don't later appreciate them; some liberals are liberals to assuage guilt. His last chapter is a masterpiece of uncontroversial, moderate stoicism.

Salacious tell-all? Eh. Blacklisting Myself drops quite a few names, but Roger really only goes after people with whom he doesn't expect to work again. His brushes have a "One time I shook hands with..." quality to them as well, as if the people, except for Pryor perhaps, didn't consider him an equal. Simon barely misses a huge artistic achievement several times in the book: Simon almost writes the screenplay for Reds and Yentl.**

Special insights into the entertainment industry? I disagree with Simon that conservatives are inherently less creative. In this, Simon actually succumbs to a lack of imagination and historical perspective. He sees the liberal domination of Hollywood for the last forty years or so and can't fathom it any different (most people would consider sixties movies to be conservative). Conservatives have achieved great art over the centuries with a much more conservative outlook than anybody today except Rick Santorum. Think of Dante, Shakespeare, Bach, Cervantes, Flannery O'Connor, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, John Ford, Evelyn Waugh, Chesterton, Eliot, and the list can go on and on.

That is, unless Simon is equating conservatism with a bourgeois adherence to the status quo, in which case one can apply the term to anybody of any established belief system and Simon contradicts himself because he later says that “conservative is the new liberal” or that conservative ideas are the heretical, exciting ones; or a rigid religious dogma (although religious people have created more than their share) which again would contradict Simon's characterization of liberalism as a secular religion.

If Simon's just saying that it's hopeless to create an ideologically conservative movie, he's partially correct. It's much more romantic to have a protagonist open a homeless shelter with taxpayer money than to have him close one to save taxes. Something about the underdog, etc.

I’d reply that most of it has to do with how the issue is framed: Cutting government can help poor people and make for a stronger nation. Fighting an entrenched bureaucracy can be heroic and bureaucrats make excellent antagonists.

Or I can say that doctrinaire liberal movies are usually as rotten.

Simon attacks the Liberty Film Festival. I've attended two LFF events and enjoyed both of them. It’s only been around for a few years and may yet be a success if it doesn't claim to be "officially" conservative, as per my point above that ideological movies are rarely good.

Despite my criticisms, Blacklisting Myself is a good, interesting book, and I don't regret the afternoon I spent with it. It's eminently readable and quite interesting. Simon has a simple, un-dramatic writing style that neither taxes nor astonishes. Simon's lived an interesting life filled with travel, creative achievements, and some adversity.

Blacklisting Myself's greatest strength and the reason I'd recommend it to people is Simon's honesty. Simon could have fixed many of the potential disappointments above with some strategic exaggerations. Instead, Roger just tells us about his experiences and what he’s learned over that time. If it doesn’t exactly fit what you want it to be- if ideologues can’t quite wave it in front of their enemy’s faces- well, then that’s because you’re an inflexible ideologue who resents the world's complexity, isn’t it?

*I've never been impressed with people who're conservative because of one non-personal event like 9/11 and the O.J. Simpson trial, in Roger's case. One gets the feeling that Roger would chuck conservatism after seeing a 60 Minutes special on mean conservatives.

**As part of Pajamas Media, I had an opportunity to meet Roger Simon at the Blogworld convention in Las Vegas. I introduced myself. He shook my hand, but otherwise looked past me without expressing the slightest interest. I didn't take his indifference as a slight then and you needn't take it as a reflection of Mr. Simon's character now since that's the usual reaction when people meet me.

Roger Simon's movies and assorted items:

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I'm not a scientist, but Horner seems to present a strong case against global warming (now, "climate change") hyteria in this interview. It's fascinating and a must-listen for anybody interested in getting the skeptic's side. Email to your conformist friends.

Red Hot Lies: How Global Warming Alarmists Use Threats, Fraud, and Deception to Keep You Misinformed by Christopher C. Horner

Then, there's this on CNN.

Gwyneth Cravens argues that nuclear power is very safe, in this interview with Dennis Prager. It's on Asymmetric to settle an argument with my liberal friends. Very relevant as we prepare to waste billions of dollars on other stuff.

I plan on reading it.

Power to Save the World: The Truth About Nuclear Energy (Vintage) by Gwyneth Cravens