aegagrus's reviews
72 reviews

 Let The Record Show is an immensely valuable resource, grounded in 188 oral history interviews as well as Sarah Schulman’s own experiences and recollections. Though this is a long and multifaceted work which covers a great deal of ground, all is held together by a fairly clear thesis: that ACT UP NY both succeeded and ultimately broke apart because of “a strategy of difference facilitating simultaneity of response”. Schulman describes an intensely heterogeneous group with an internal culture dominated by largely autonomous and self-selecting affinity groups, which limited overall liability for the its most disruptive actions while also allowing people from different backgrounds to contribute in dramatically different ways (the “outside/inside” strategy), bound together by the radically democratic space of Monday general body meetings. To some extent, this heterogeneity was a strategic choice. In other ways, it was a reflection of the unique dynamics of the AIDS crisis between 1987 and 1993; a crisis which brought together a certain number of previously wealthy, connected, and culturally empowered gay men with unhoused people, intravenous drug users, and other socially marginal groups. This duality allowed ACT UP to employ certain tactics that most activist organizations today could not replicate – for instance, achieving its most significant funding windfall by leveraging connections in the art world (and HIV- artists’ feelings of guilt) to hold a lucrative auction of contemporary art (a strategy that, in part, allowed ACT UP to eschew 501(c)(3) status and the political constraints that come with it). Many tactics and tools, though, can be learned from ACT UP, and Schulman orients her book to making such information available to those who might use it. For instance, she provides extensive discussion of the ways in which ACT UP members became scientific and policy experts, devising their own solutions to problems before protesting to demand those solutions be implemented. She also provides valuable accounts of internal teach-ins, creative/theatrical demonstrations that at the same time facilitated easy media access to designated spokespeople, and legal strategies that orchestrated valuable  test cases for civil disobedience (most specifically, needle exchange). 

Let The Record Show also covers the interesting ways in which subgroups split off from the activist core of ACT UP to become direct service providers (in the case of Housing Works) or community-based scientists (in the case of the Community Research Initiative). Schulman profiles a great many prominent ACT UP members, most notably Larry Kramer, Mark Harrington, and Maxine Wolfe, using Harrington and Wolfe as a vehicle to discuss the 1992 split in which Harrington’s TAG (Treatment Action Group) left ACT UP. Both Harrington and Wolfe gave interviews for the project and are quoted at length. Schulman does not hide her own perspectives and opinions, but also doesn’t spend much time on them – she was not a particularly partisan participant during the split, and her project in compiling this book is to document the personal and ideological clashes involved rather than to comment upon them. Much of the story here is about the distinction between a focus on treatment (“drugs into bodies”) and access, although Schulman acknowledges that this is a reductionist framing. Still, she clearly explains how the mostly white and middle-class but HIV+ men in the Treatment & Data committee, relatively politically-connected and desperate to use those connections to save their own lives, differed from the Women’s Committee and other factions broadly aligned with Maxine Wolfe, who saw ACT UP's work as a grassroots political struggle for access to healthcare. Some of the thorny issues implicated in this divide revolve around the dilemma of patient-centerdness when experimental treatments are the only treatments available; to what extent are studies about the interests of study participants, and to what extent are they about getting the highest-quality data possible? Specific disputes include issues surrounding placebo groups, the inclusion of study participants with certain opportunistic infections, the inclusion of women (and pregnant women specifically), and the flexibility of dosing protocols (especially in reference to AZT, which is highly toxic and was at first prescribed in dramatically excessive doses). Schulman’s effort here is not to resolve these disputes, but to build a picture of the different priorities of different ACT UP members, informed and shaped by their often radically-different identities. She succeeds. 

It cannot be omitted that Let The Record Show provides fascinating and humanizing insights into the lives of ACT UPers, for whom ACT UP became a social and sexual milieu as well as a political one. It is notable how many of the quoted interviewees describe attraction to and/or fluid relationships with other ACT UP members as meaningful drivers of the group’s overall vitality. Such aspects of the ACT UP experience might not appear in more conventional histories, but they valuably contextualize many of the interviewees’ lives and experiences. Also on a human note, Schulman ends by describing a series of political funerals that occurred in the early 1990s. Choosing a political funeral for yourself or your comrade is an intensely dramatic step, and Schulman quotes two eulogies from such funerals in full to leave the reader with some impression of the immense grief and rage embodied in these moments.
 

Schulman’s writing is not beautiful, but it is clear and direct. More importantly, the way in which she structures this book leaves a stronger and more usefully applicable sense of ACT UP than a straightforwardly chronological history would have done. As all 188 oral interviews are listed and have been made available online, Schulman is to be commended for having given us not one but two precious resources of enduring political value. 

Chambers' writing is lush and at times poetic, but very modern in its sensibilities. The world she creates is pleasant and inviting.  A Psalm for the Wild-Built is certainly a very compassionate book, though somewhat straightforwardly didactic at times. I didn't mind this too much -- others have called this book a parable, and that feels right to me. The moral worldview being imparted felt familiar, but its familiarity doesn't much detract from its value. Chambers pulls off one or two especially heartfelt scenes that were truly lovely, especially at the book's very end. 

The translation I read -- in alitterative verse by E Tablot Donaldson -- was readable and entertaining. Langland's allegorical characters play multiple roles at once -- as vividly-drawn personages, as abstract concepts, and as didactic voices -- and frequently are not what they initially seem. I found the imaginative forms with which these characters appear in the dreamer's mind the text's most evocative feature -- particular favorites include Meed and Gluttony.

Langland's overall ethical vision seems to be of a society which does not do away with hierarchy or distinction, but in which different social roles and obligations are adhered to in an honorable and forthright way (contrasted with his satirical vision of a world filled with hypocrisy and greed, especially among the clergy). The agricultural allegory in which Piers Plowman himself figures is also of note; Langland seems to suggest that most humans will not be able to fully transcend into spiritual abstraction or lives of renunciant piety, but can nonetheless serve Christian unity by laboring honorably and diligently according to their role and station.

That being said, the introduction stresses that Piers Plowman was an ambiguous and problematic text in its own time, and it is even more so in ours. We are out of practice reading allegories or dream visions -- both staples of medieval writing -- and it can be hard to know what to make of significant portions of this work. The preponderance of variously-compromised narrators and the lengthy biblical recapitulations make for a piece of literature that sometimes feels opaque or even tiresome to the generalist reader. Still, there is much that is puzzling and provocative and funny about Piers Plowman; readers who are inclined to take the plunge will likely be rewarded. 

[different edition] 

In Beloved Beasts, Michelle Nijhuis asks what if any relevance early (western) conservation movements hold for ecologists and environmental activists today. Her thesis is that, though understandings of humanity's role in protecting nonhuman species have indeed changed drastically, a common thread of love for other creatures undergirds and ties together these evolving movements. Accordingly, Nijhuis is interested in the emotional connection that important conservationists of the past had with the species they encountered, as well as in the very different ways such love can manifest. For instance, she provides a fascinating explanation of William Hornaday, a naturalist who began his career as a hunter, even killing some of the last American bison to create a taxidermy display, then helped advocate for captive breeding programs to restore bison populations and for statutory limits on the number of birds that could be hunted each year for the millinery trade. Nijhuis describes both personal and institutional growth as the characters and movements she chronicles progressed from a focus on preserving game animals for hunting, to protecting charismatic animals of all kinds (even predators and animals considered a nuisance), to a holistic understanding of preserving ecosystems, habitats, and biodiversity. Describing community-based conservation arrangements in Namibia today, which allow some heavily-taxed trophy hunting by wealthy tourists in order to fund their ongoing work (and also allow a degree of subsistence hunting in their own communities), Nijhuis makes an instructive comparison with Hornaday, who also loved and related to nonhuman species in ways other animal-lovers would find deeply alien. 

I also appreciated Nijhuis' consistent framing of conservation movements as an alliance between "passionate experts and passionate amateurs" (such as the early 20th century New York patrician and bird-lover Rosalie Edge), and her work documenting the ways in which other academic disciplines influenced conservation (most especially the work of Elinor Ostrom). The uneasy line between academic expertise and engaged citizenship is also well described in her chapters on the formation of "conservation biology" and the emergence of activist scientists in the second half of the 20th century.

Generally speaking, Nijhuis' writing is very efficient at conveying information, and while her relatively short chapters on individual conservationists only present a broad survey of each person's work, she is able to get across enough information in each chapter to advance her overall conclusions. I did feel that some chapters were less well-organized than others (notably the chapter on Julian Huxley), and that at times her efforts to describe the globalization of ecology and the role played by ecologists from the global south in these developments were somewhat halfhearted.  

Schor's poetry is erudite and formally adventurous, offering a great many ideas for writing exercises or compositional strategies. Much is historical, ekphrastic, or travelogue-based; literary sources and personal experiences are employed in a variety of ways. Strange Nursery is thus an invaluable resource for poets seeking inspiration. 

On its own terms, the poems in this collection are often lighthearted, often challenging. Among the historical poems, I'm drawn to Laika and Achilles at Dien Bien Phu for their forceful composition and tonal complexity. Perhaps the most challenging poem of the set is Harvest, which Schor contextualizes in a note at the end of the collection as based on an inner dialogue between her experience serving on an oversight board overseeing animal research and her personal study of the Talmud, each leading her to question what we are willing to do to "press knowledge out of living things". I was somewhat less compelled by the final poem in this set, The Hills of Holland, although I can appreciate the ambitious historical setup and the use of three distinct voices. 

While I've always been rather ambivalent towards the mythic ideal of the Great American Novel, American Pastoral certainly feels like the outgowth of a distinctly national tradition. Philip Roth's meandering volubility and detailed industrial digressions reminded me of Melville, while his emphasis on neurotic interiority called to mind the celebrated novelist's 20th century peers. Roth's prose is not what I would describe as elegant, but it is exquisite in its own way -- especially for connoisseurs of the finely-crafted run-on sentence.

At the novel's heart is a three-pronged fall from innocence -- the intertwined destruction of a personal idyll, an aspirational immigrant ethos, and a city's economic identity -- and the sheer bewilderment and paralysis these calamities produce in Seymour "Swede" Levov, the man who tried to do everything right. Courting self-destruction by straining to embody all that which is expected of him, the Swede is ultimately trapped in a tense, claustrophobic limbo -- a sensation best captured in the masterfully neurotic dinner party that comprises the novel's final chapters. Ultimately, there is no explanation to be had:

"Jerry thinks he can escape the bewilderment by ranting, shouting, but everything he shouts is wrong... Reasons. But there are no reasons. She is obliged to be as she is. We all are. Reasons are in books." (281)

On a personal level, I paid special attention to the Swede's feckless compassion:

"As usual, the Swede's default reaction to not being able to fathom cause and effect...was to fall back on a lifelong strategy and become tolerant and charitable" (341). The reference here is to a friend's puzzling choice of spouse, but the broader critique resonates because it reflects a predisposition I often notice in myself.

Merry Levov, the Swede's beloved daughter cum domestic terrorist, is an interesting character. On the one hand, I appreciated that her political violence is not presented as the unfortunate misadventure of a young, gullible, ideologue -- and that the Swede fumes at the "provincial smugness" with which his neighbors presume to understand what has happened to her. On the other hand, the stereotype of a young ideologue is deemed objectionable because it posits a rational account of violent radicalism where there is none -- not because the novel is interested in offering a better account.

Roth is sometimes deemed a misogynist. I haven't read enough of his work or engaged enough with his public persona to have an informed  stance on this. In the case of this novel, the multilayered frame narration means that we are always at some remove from "the truth" -- often in a character's unreliable or purely imagined reconstruction of events. This being so, I found the troubling sentiments expressed by various characters at various points largely appropriate to the novel's bleak and confused moral universe. Taking this work in isolation, I did not think any of these preoccupations and prejudices were being endorsed by the author (again -- the content of these character's explanations for things is largely besides the point). However, it seems that  the critique of Roth's body of work concerns his proclivity to inhabit certain minds, give voice to certain feelings, and repeatedly ignore or sideline others. I find this line of argument eminently reasonable, though once again I will have to defer to those having more familiarity with his entire corpus. Taken as an individual book, American Pastoral was an immensely compelling read. 

Insistent Life consists of two distinct sections. In the first, Donaldson and Bajzelj give an overview of Jain philosophy and cosmology, paying special attention to the ethical reasoning present in canonical texts. In the second, Donaldson and Bajzelj present and discuss data gathered from a survey of Jain medical professionals who were asked about various controversial issues in contemporary bioethics. 

Section I is generally successful. The philosophical systems in question are described in considerable detail, but always thoroughly explained and clearly tied to their textual sources. One aspect of this discussion was especially resonant: because Jain cosmology describes a universe teeming with  many different types of lifeforms (humans, plants, animals, water-bodied, air-bodied, fire-bodied, and earth-bodied, seeds and particles, heavenly beings, hell beings, and so on), it is deemed impossible to live in the day-to-day world without committing violence and thereby accruing karma (believed to be a physical substance). Ultimately, this means that Jain mendicants on the path towards escaping samsara should gradually withdraw from this world and eventually from purposeful action itself. However, for lay Jains, the impossibility of fully practicing the value of ahimsa (nonviolence) means that careful decisions must be made to minimize and restrain one's violence in the present lifetime, while retaining ahimsa as an aspirational principle undergirding lives of admitted imperfection. Notably, different commitments may be taken by different laypeople (or different mendicants!) based on what is reasonable in each person's position. I feel quite similarly about the harm that is done in the course of human life and consumption, and the need to maintain an ethically-exacting awareness of these harms while also accommodating lived imperfection and diverging capacities for action. 

Section II was interesting but somewhat less useful, in my judgement. Donaldson and Bajzelj are to be commended for bringing these two distinct methodologies together. However, because contemporary western bioethical frameworks and concerns don't neatly map to the Jain frameworks described in Section I, it is not always clear what to make of the survey responses presented. Gathering these responses was surely of some usefulness to the field, but for generalist readers, a greater emphasis on qualitative reflections from these respondents may have yielded more insight and driven more productive conversation. In short, I was dissatisfied with the methodology of Section II, and found myself wishing that respondents had been interviewed, rather than surveyed. 

In researching for this book, Lindsey Fitzharris certainly uncovered many interesting stories and anecdotes relating to the surgical work of Harold Gillies during WWI. Fitzharris is a good writer, and her enthusiasm for sharing these stories with the reader is obvious. Sometimes, however, her enthusiasm seems to get the better of her, and the details she chooses to include seem rather arbitrary or extraneous; as a whole, The Facemaker suffers from the lack of any clear vision of what kind of a  history it is to be. 

The book's most notable throughline is an emphasis on the collaborative nature of Gillies' work -- how he actively sought out mentors, collaborators, and subordinates from fields including medicine, dentistry, anesthetics, sculpture/metalwork, visual art, photography, and so on. Fitzharris makes a persuasive case that this interdisciplinary approach was necessary in the context of a newly emergent discipline -- plastic surgery -- and shows how the collaborative atmosphere Gillies fostered at the Queen's Hospital in Sidcup was responsible for fundamental and lasting advancements in the field. The Facemaker also effectively conveys something of the atmosphere at Sidcup -- sometimes eerie and quiet (the patients generally being unable to speak due to jaw injuries), sometimes marked by great camaraderie among wounded men who were stigmatized outcasts to the outside world but not to one another. Fitzharris demonstrates the extent to which society was unwilling to accommodate facial deformity, providing important context to her accounts of the wounded mens' struggles with their senses of self, and the ways in which Gillies took this into account when dealing with them. The inclusion of several plates of photographic progressions before, during, and after treatment is key -- Fitzharris is to be commended for her choice to include these images, and the thoughtful way in which she addresses the matter in an author's note.

I personally would have preferred a history which focused more attention on these questions of disability and stigma. However, this book could also have been successful as a focused work of medical history, guiding the reader through the necessary medical background to understand the clinical importance of the innovations being made. Or, this could have been a more straightforward work of biography, attempting to capture Gillies' motivation in undertaking this work and expanding upon the epilogue in which we learn of his continued involvement in the development of plastic surgery until his death in 1960 (including performing the first known phalloplasty). As it was, I'm not sure The Facemaker was any of these things. Digressions into medical history, military history, social history, and Gillies' personal history were all present, but did not feel systematic or purposeful enough to make this book a truly useful resource in any of these categories. My frustration with the book's haphazard overall construction and its lack of a clear motive or thesis may not be a frustration shared by all readers -- if one were simply looking for an interesting assortment of historical info, one could certainly find that here -- but it did, in my mind, lead to a less incisive, less memorable project.  

Tokarczuk's narrator, an eccentric woman of advancing years named Janina Duszejko, is a delight. As a narrator she is both very charming and very interesting, and much of the book's appeal lies in seeing the world through the prism of her rather idiosyncratic assumptions and beliefs. Mrs. Duszejko (for she abhors her first name) makes for a doubly sympathetic figure in that she is continually distraught by the wider world's obliviousness to what she considers a grave injustice (the killing of animals) and in that she is acutely conscious of the extent to which her convictions are brushed aside on account of her identity (her age and her gender) -- both are experiences with which many can relate. Placed in the hands of such a strong narrator, I was extremely ready to forgive the slow-to-develop story, as well as to grant an unusual level of credence to her sometimes off-kilter perspectives.

The Guardian praised the novel for its "anarchic sensibility". For me, this anarchic sensibility comes across in an exploration of ad-hoc, transient communities. Mrs. Duszejko seems to draw in "the sort of people whom the world regards as useless", finding joy and companionship in these awkward, makeshift, impermanent "families". The formal institutions of police and government are not objects of outright hostility, but seem almost irrelevant; a curious afterthought far removed from the daily worlds of those they ostensibly oversee. I appreciated this treatment of community and kinship, and its political implications, while remaining far from certain about other features of the novel's moral vision --

to what extent, ultimately, are we supposed to pass judgement on Mrs. Duszejko's actions, whether to exonerate or to condemn?

 

Misc thoughts: 
- I'm of two minds on some of the astrological concepts on which Mrs. Duszejko muses. On the one hand, I did feel that some of her reflections were somewhat opaque to readers (such as myself) without a solid grasp on western astrological tradition. On the other hand, her belief in astrology is so central to her worldview that I do think her unique voice would have been watered down or made to feel less authentic if things were changed. 
- This book contains some very lovely nature writing, including descriptions of seasons/flora/fauna in rural Poland. Also, some quite humorous observational writing about the people. 
- While "mystery" and "crime/thriller" and so on are accurate labels for this book, be aware that it reads much more like litfic (it goes without saying that this was one of the things I liked about it)

Lucille Clifton's use of language has incredible rhythm; her lines are measured, purposeful, and incisive; thematically complex but generally only employing a handful of images at any one time. She very successfully uses repetition to create an almost liturgical gravity, especially when invoking specific names. She is also very good at letting language fail when words can take us no farther, as in the last day.

Structurally, my favorite works in this collection were those in which Clifton literally "quilts" newspaper clippings, quotes, or specific events or people into her own voice. 

In terms of content, some of these poems feel more "current" than others. Some of the explicitly feminist poems feel dated because the ways in which feminist discourse today tends to relate to female physiology are less straightforward than they were in the late 1980s (it's probably worth interrogating to what extent this is because the straightforward reclamation Clifton is doing here is less urgently needed today, and to what extent this is simply due to a more complex understanding of gender and of social movements' relations to one another. But I digress).

I also wasn't entirely feeling the grouping of poems inspired by the different heavenly beings' perspectives on the fall of Lucifer, which was an interesting concept but felt less sharply focused in execution. In contrast, I found other biblically-inspired poems in this collection highly effective, as well as those dealing with animals, news/public affairs, and race (that the poems regarding race seem not to have aged in the same way that the poems regarding gender have is, of course, an indictment of the lack of cultural progress which seems to have been made in some respects since publication).