aegagrus's reviews
72 reviews

Reading The Way of All Flesh, I passed through two distinct phases. At first, I relished Butler's clever writing and unstinting anger. Later on, I found my enjoyment marred by the choices Butler made in developing his plot.

My initial experience was very positive. Butler is primarily telling a semi-autobiographical story about the life of Ernest Pontifex, but narrates Ernest's story through his godfather, Overton. Overton's voice is a sophisticated one, cleverly observing and reflecting upon events. Overton advocates a pragmatic and commonsensical approach to life over the tortured doctrines of churchmen or academics. Separating his narrator from the character standing in for his younger self also lets Butler express his blistering anger in an articulate and knowing way without falling into the cool, detached sarcasm which can rob satire of its moral urgency. He is particularly conscious of the injustices done to children and youth, of which his bitter depictions are extremely compelling. We begin to meet some truly exquisite characters early on, such as the brazen and hypocritical headmaster Dr. Skinner or the painfully feckless young Theobald Pontifex (who is to become Ernest's father).  Female characters like Christina, Alethea, or Ellen unfortunately seem to be more instrumental; they are present to serve a specific purpose in advancing the plot and their characterization is not nearly as rich.

Ernest's gradual journey from childhood trauma to independence as an adult eventually comes to hinge on a significant plot point with which I was very uncomfortable. Ernest is continually depicted as acting out of obliviousness or ignorance as a consequence of his upbringing. However, when

he is sent to prison for assaulting a woman he wrongly believes is a prostitute

this "explanation" rings hollow; however oblivious and impressionable he may be, his actions seem out of character and somewhat thoughtlessly written. Although it effectively serves the plot and Ernest's eventual arc, this episode puts a damper on the rest of the book, which also seemed to me to lose some of its edge, to flatten some of the interesting nuances in existing characters, and to end on a less biting and overly cathartic note.

The Way of All Flesh is remarkably ahead of its time in the way in which it handles intergenerational trauma, contrasting Theobald's development in response to his own overbearing father a generation earlier with Ernest's gradual journey towards assertiveness and a secure sense of self. Butler's observations and sarcastic tangents are often exceptional -- all in all this is an extremely quotable book. But I was unable to shake the feeling that the latter portion never recovered from a deeply ill-judged plot choice and an undeservedly sanguine denoument. 

As an aside, there is a good bit of church politics in this book -- readers who are familiar with the historical context of high-church and low-church Anglicanism, as well as the evangelical movements of the time (e.g., early Methodism) will at times benefit from this familiarity. 

Poisoned Wells effectively reflects both the merits and the pitfalls of academic monographs. Everything is well-structured, well-sourced, and well-argued. Much of the book is also quite rigidly constructed, narrow in scope, and excessively concerned with justifying the uniqueness of its project. One common academic vice is absent: all of the writing is very accessible. 

Barzilay focuses on two intense episodes of well-poisoning allegations, one stemming from southern France in 1321 and one occurring in the German-speaking lands between 1348 and 1350. The story he tells is fascinating: the evolution of well-poisoning from a highly localized concern targeting lepers to an established conspiracy implicating lepers, Jews, foreign Muslim rulers, and marginalized Christians including the indigent, the itinerant, and religious dissidents. The central claim of the conspiracy which emerged over several months in 1321 was that Islamic leaders were masterminding an operation in which Jews acted as intermediaries, recruiting lepers to join them in systematically poisoning European water sources in an attempt to overthrow Christendom. The comparison with modern notions of "triadic populism", in which the demonization of marginalized groups is justified by portraying the groups in question as agents of a more powerful and more distant enemy, is striking. Barzilay primarily works with records left by the persecutors: chronicles, court documents, and official correspondence. Using these sources, he is able to build up a compelling portrait of the way in which Inquisitorial action justified itself by creating an escalating paper-trail of intra-community allegations and coerced confessions which were nevertheless entirely legitimate and valid by their own legal standards; for Medievalists, the dialogue with the way in which investigations were carried out during the Witch panics and during the suppression of the (alleged) Cathar heresy is potentially fruitful. 

Most importantly, wading into the debates surrounding causality, Barzilay nuances the issue but does not nuance it into oblivion. That is to say, in considering whether elite action or popular sentiment was the driving cause of these episodes of accusation and violence, Barzilay argues that while various cultural factors made these allegations convincing to the public, elite machinations were the driving force behind the "transfer" of allegations from lepers to other groups and the development of the elaborated conspiracy and its accompanying investigations (specifically focusing on power politics waged between centralized Court and Ecclesial bureaucracies and local power-holders like the lesser nobility, guilds, and burghers). Barzilay's account is nuanced enough to grant significant causal importance to both elite and popular factors but does not devolve into a wishy-washy causal emptiness in which no strong thesis is sufficiently "nuanced" to venture. 

Most of the significant limitations of this project are acknowledged by Barzilay. He is generally not working with victims' experiences, and his explicit repudiation of the more generalized theses advanced by prior scholarship has lead to a work which is very narrowly focused on two historical episodes. This is very much Barzilay's intention, but the non-specialist reader may be left wishing he had undertaken more engagement with broader contexts. 

Emergency is an excellent collection of short essays meditating upon the Popol Vuh and its resonance in America today. Edgar Garcia does not hit you over the head with direct modern parallels or political moralism. Instead, he carefully elucidates themes such as ambivalence, duality, displacement, and empathy, briefly putting those themes in dialogue with the world in which we live and letting you work out the rest. Importantly, Garcia is very comfortable leaving questions unanswered or acknowledging a multiplicity of possible answers. The result is that reading this book feels very much like working through Popol Vuh alongside Garcia; paying close attention to the historical text, then resurfacing to the present context with new lines of thought suggesting themselves.

Garcia also does an excellent job of explaining the Popol Vuh itself. I came away with meaningful insight on K'iche' cosmology, on how to conceptualize the hazy "penumbral anticipation" in which the Popol Vuh takes place, on the troubled history of the colonial-era manuscript that is our only extant source, and on the ways in which the Popol Vuh has been a resource and a dialogue partner for Maya and Latin American activists, poets, mystics, and everyday people up to the present. I would not have gotten any of these insights to the same degree had I just read a translation of the Popol Vuh, even a well-annotated one.

Emergency is a quick read and an elegant work, each essay clearly identifying a conceptual focus but also fitting cleanly into the sequence of ideas through which Garcia is working. I highly recommend this book. 

Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People on Earth arises from a satirical tradition focused on the abuse of power and the devaluation of human life. This novel differs from an intuitive point of comparison, Ayi Kwei Armah's The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born, in that the latter is primarily interested in diffuse, pervasive, enduring political dysfunction. Soyinka's work, by contrast, is interested in the brazen machinations of powerful individuals -- along with the downstream effects their schemes can have on a political culture. Soyinka's perspective here is welcome, but the comparison is not all favorable. Armah's famous novel is sparsely constructed but tonally complex, ending on a note of simultaneous rage, elegy, and hope. Soyinka's latest novel is more elaborately constructed but ends on a less nuanced emotional note. 

The satire here is extremely dense. Sometimes the sardonic asides and digressions feel a little extraneous. The world these characters inhabit is obsessed with brands and labels and titles and sobriquets, which contributes to the sense of conceptual density. Soyinka plays fast and loose with chronology and often describes things in an erudite, sideways way. This tactic is often effective, as the reader does not realize the depravity in what is happening until thoroughly in media res. It does, however, lead to a book which it took me some time to be fully invested in, which sets up its key plot points slowly, and which feels somewhat anticlimactic at its end. 

Soyinka is a genius and justly regarded as a giant of literature, and there are many things he does well here. At times he pulls of beautiful, creative, and evocative prose descriptions, or sly sarcastic jokes, or tense and engrossing madcap sequences in which characters are working at cross purposes. His righteous anger at the casual way in which humans are made to suffer is entirely authentic and, coming from him, authoritative. The book taken in sum, however, struck me as somewhat unwieldy and undisciplined, sacrificing coherence and resonance for freewheeling and lengthy satirical diatribes and indictments of varying levels of importance. 

Words like "clear", "intuitive", or "lucid" often lie at the upper limit of credible praise due to an economist's writing. Nancy Folbre's writing is more than just lucid. It's compelling, warm, and thoroughly hers. Folbre is also particularly good at weaving dissociated strands of information into very tight conceptual packages and models. Even if all of the facts in question are already known, the elegance with which she fits them together may be novel. 

The Invisible Heart effectively demonstrates the practical and theoretical problems which arise when we try to fit care work into a market. For instance, ingrained social norms and the "prisoner of love" effect change market participants' preferences over time. It's difficult to objectively assess the "quality" of care work, or its diffuse effects. Caring requires person-specific non-standardized knowledge. Labor power is systematically limited by institutions like the family, or by the difficulty of actions such as strikes. 

Turning to the history of welfare provision and care organization, The Invisible Heart lags somewhat. Some of the basic stories are a little too well known at this point: the inadequacies of GDP, the regressive nature of benefits, tax credits, and school funding. There are some valuable insights into the specifically gendered nature of these dynamics (e.g. issues with the ways in which child support is enforced, issues with taxing married couples' income jointly). However, it often seems as though these insights are given short shrift in favor of a more general history which is not particularly unique to this book. 

In the book's closing sections, Folbre's stances are quite explicit. Globalization, marketization, and changes in social norms have created deep inadequacies in communal sentiment and care work. Neither "patriotic protectionism", which seeks to reverse globalization, nor social conservatism which would bolster the supply of care work by increasing the degree to which women are artificially pressured to specialize in it are real solutions. You cannot just increase compensation for care labor (in ways which might trap women in those sectors), nor can you just strive towards more equitable divisions of labor (which doesn't address care work's systematic undervaluing). You have to do both. For Folbre, this means a shift towards market socialism, limited social ownership, and a careful mix of tax incentives and state investments oriented towards a more robust and equitable care sector. 

It is worth noting that this is a rather dated book at this point, some of the specifics rendered inaccurate by changes in the landscape of social services. It's also a book which is sometimes unfocused, which devotes too much time to rehashing general arguments at the expense of providing specific insights, and which is not always charitable in the models of conventional economic thinking with which it takes issue. However, The Invisible Heart is a strong resource for improving theoretical and practical understandings of care work's economic position, presents a number of useful policy insights, and is an enjoyable and accessible basis for engagement with Folbre's eminent work which has carried on from the publication of this book to the present. 

Elizabeth Barrett Browning's language in Aurora Leigh is very beautiful, full of elaborate Victorian similes, lush description, and clever dialogue. Some modern readers might find the language excessive and indulgent. This was not my reaction. EBB's poetic register is very much of its time and it serves her characters well. These are people who obfuscate and conceal not by tight-lipped caution but by overflowing verbosity.

I was struck by how unreliable of a narrator Aurora is. It's not so much that she's lying to the narrator; she's lying to herself, and a great amount of cognitive dissonance makes its way into the story she's telling. At several points she acts in ways which will self-evidently produce results contrary to her purported (and probably genuine) intent. The characters with whom Aurora interacts are similarly unreliable in their dealings with her, all of which makes for a work which is sometimes thematically ambiguous. It is not always clear how to read EBB's depictions of aristocratic society, socialist idealism, or literary culture. These depictions are plainly satirical in certain ways, but it is not always clear in which direction the satire is aimed.

The clearest unifying thread is that the three major characters -- Aurora, Romney, and Marian -- all struggle with a tension between some transcendent purpose (respectively art, social reform, and an idealized love) and the concrete relationships in which they find themselves. While we cannot know exactly what EBB made of this tension, we can be sure that she wrestled with it. She was a poet, inclined towards the transcendent, and also a woman, socialized towards the domestic and relational. Cognitive dissonance or no, Aurora's reflections on art, gender, and love offer a fascinating glimpse into some of the conflicting loyalties EBB lived with (it is this sense in which Aurora Leigh is "semi-autobiographical"). 

The story's ending is likely unsatisfying to many readers today, and one wonders whether EBB was simply offering a concession to the expectations of her readers. Even then, the ending is "saved" somewhat by the fact that the reader has by this point learned to be wary of taking the story they are being told at face value. 

Dust in the Blood consists of two sections. In the first, Coblentz grounds her discussion of chronic depression by using first-person narratives (including her own) and Heideggerian phenomenology to describe depression in terms of Unheimlichkeit. Coblentz describes the religious angst that can be occasioned by this sense of living in a world mysteriously denuded of value and meaning and provides some critiques of common Christian theodicies that rationalize depressive suffering as either penance or as instruction. Interestingly, she observes that these theodicies betray a mindset strikingly similar to the post-Enlightenment secular mindset, obsessed with "proving" some particular etiological account of depression. Following Karen Killby, Coblentz goes on to argue that regardless of how right or wrong such explanations might be, their essential flaw concerns positionality; it may be appropriate for a depression sufferer to find some particular meaning in their condition, but it is inappropriate for someone else to try to impose such a meaning.

In the second part of her book, Coblentz attempts to provide "theological resources" which may or may not be useful to depression sufferers seeking ways to autonomously understand their experiences. Specifically, she is concerned with the "sacred possibility of meaningless suffering", an interpretative avenue she feels is neglected in much of Christian discourse. She examines Hagar's wilderness experience in Genesis 21, arguing that the biblical narrative emphasizes God's attention and presence to Hagar's dislocation and suffering without necessarily affirming that her suffering was justified. Coblentz's theological reflection concludes with an application of Delores Williams' soteriological thought to the notion that, for sufferers of chronic depression, daily adaptation and "small victories" may be deeply salvific.

Coblentz is to be commended for the seriousness with which she reflects on her role as a theologian, making clear repeatedly that the reflections she provides in part two may or may not be useful to any given person and are not to be imposed from the outside. She is also to be commended for the intensity with which she rejects a prevailing theological landscape which often leads the Church to ignore or downplay earthly suffering rather than committing to accompaniment of and allyship with those who suffer.

Coblentz's argumentation is not always completely satisfying. For one thing, the critiques she levels against prevailing theodicies are of necessity far from conclusive. As she is more interested in critiquing the act of theodicy itself, with Killby, this shortcoming is not a significant blow. More damagingly, her discussion of Hagar in the wilderness sometimes feels superficial. This too makes a lot of sense; she's working with what amounts to a scriptural footnote and is trying to keep her reflections broad enough to remain useful across different metaphysical accounts of God. One also gets the sense that she is concerned that further editorializing may risk imposing meaning on sufferers in the way she rejects. As I see it, however, if Coblentz wants to provide elective "theological resources", it needn't be a betrayal to sketch out these resources a little further. 

Overall, Dust in the Blood is an inventive and compelling book, grounded in and strengthened by its reliance on first-person depression narratives. This is a book which will be useful to many Christians suffering with their own depression or accompanying depressed loved ones. Though Coblentz's reference points are learned ones, her book does not assume any background in medical or philosophical treatments of depression. Some background in Christian theological terms will be helpful but is not requisite. 

Empire of Pain is a smart and thorough chronicle of three generations of the notorious Sackler family. Radden Keefe may write in the dramatized language commonly found in tales of “true crime”, but his credibility is bolstered by the years he’s put into this story and the vast quantity of source material he’s able to cite. His book does many things well. It provides a fascinating case study of the ways in which ill-gotten wealth can change a family over time, altering each generation’s proclivities and character. It effectively demystifies relatively arcane fields like pharmaceutical advertising and bankruptcy law. It doesn’t spare those peripherally implicated in the Sackler saga – well-known political figures from both major parties, doctors, lawyers, consultants, and museum administrators. Most importantly, it elucidates where we stand today, unflinchingly demonstrating the insufficiency of the ways in which the Sacklers have been “held to account”. 

 

For all its thoroughness, Empire of Pain has a fairly narrow focus. Radden Keefe readily admits that his book is not intended to be a broad sociological account of the opioid crisis. At times, this tight focus on the Sacklers leaves the reader with questions. Radden Keefe does a pretty good job separating out the impact of Purdue Pharma from that of other opioid suppliers, citing empirical studies to show the close association between Purdue’s activities and the emergence of the crisis writ large. Purdue was an early and aggressive mover; in ascribing responsibility for the crisis, to start at Purdue is entirely justified. In other instances, though, the centrality of the Sacklers to this narrative may have led Radden Keefe to overstate their centrality – on the birth of medication-based psychiatry, for instance, or even on the ideological battles over how the medical field should approach chronic non-malignant pain (which is not to say that the Sackler’s astroturfing did not have a major impact in this regard). 

 

It is also notable that a full third of the book is spent on the activity of Arthur Sackler, the family patriarch, who was already dead by the time OxyContin was created. The ways in which Arthur shaped the family’s trajectory are certainly relevant, getting the Sacklers started in the worlds of art and philanthropy, passing down an array of corporate structures, and inculcating deeply held ideologies in the succeeding generations. Arthur’s role in creating modern pharmaceutical advertising and his aggressive profiteering off of non-opioid tranquilizers (namely Valium) are also interesting. Nonetheless, too much time is probably spent mythologizing the dynasty’s origins, time which could perhaps have been better spent providing somewhat broader context for later material about the marketing of OxyContin and the ensuing litigation. 

 

Empire of Pain is, all in all, well worth reading. If the reader is seeking to understand the opioid crisis itself, this book is probably not a perfect starting point. If the reader already has some background in the opioid crisis, however, or is primarily interested in a case study of the corrupt abuse of corporate, legal, and political power, Empire of Pain is an excellent choice. 

Merle Rubin, writing in the Wall Street Journal, called The Rings of Saturn "an extraordinary palimpsest". It's an apt metaphor for this series of meditations on decay, decline, and memory. The shoreline is a palimpsest. The mind is a palimpsest. The human project is a palimpsest, always being wiped clean and written over.

Sebald demonstrates great fluency in many different modes of analysis. He is comfortable writing sociology, natural history, literary criticism, biography, travelogue. He is always eloquent. At times I wondered how we were expected to engage with his reflections. Are we to pick out bits of relevance from this erudite catalogue of ideas? Or are the ideas themselves meant to be impermanent -- lapping upon our consciousness before withdrawing into the sea. I was also never quite sure of facticity, but I do not see this as unintentional: I admire Sebald's willingness to hunker down in his extended allusions, and the vivid imagination he brings to each.

I appreciated the strongly ecological dimension to Sebald's conceit, especially because it is not a straightforwardly apocalyptic or political one, as ecological messages today often rightly are. I also appreciated the various devices Sebald seems to use to describe his own task as a writer -- building a matchstick model of the Temple of Jerusalem; toiling away at a loom; compiling a mental museum of invented curiosities. Perhaps the most resonant for me comes early on when Sebald describes the early modern writer Thomas Browne as a master of using exquisite prose to elevate the reader to a world of fundamental truths beyond those straightforwardly contained in the text. Having read some Browne, I agree. Sebald is gently critical but also admiring of this gambit. He knows it is a double-edged sword; he is keenly aware of its drawbacks. In The Rings of Saturn, he employs it regardless. 

Perhaps surprisingly, I will firstly and foremostly remember Wuthering Heights as a very funny book. Most of its content is delivered in a frame narration, as servant Nelly Dean recounts the history of two local families to Mr. Lockwood, a newcomer. Nelly's narrative voice is constructed extremely skillfully and somewhat cheekily. Her subtle editorializing and sly asides were a consistent highlight, making understated hilarity of human nature, class, and religious attitudes. 

The story itself is a tale of manipulation -- most famously Heathcliff's vengeful machinations, but not exclusively. Emily Bronte explores the tragic perversity bred by manipulative relationships, and the heartbreaking alienation in which such relationships often conclude. Throughout all of this, her treatment of child and adolescent characters is particularly notable. Her young characters are not passive objects of manipulation by their elders. They are indeed manipulated in particular ways, and Bronte is deeply sympathetic about this. They are also players with unique agency, and very often the instigating forces moving the story along, for good or for ill. 

Wuthering Heights is deservedly a classic. Bronte's highly evocative descriptions of the Yorkshire moors lend a significant gravitas to the work, as do her unflinching depictions of the emotional nadirs in her tragic saga. 

Bronte's use of illness (chronic and otherwise) as a strong narrative propellant may feel too neat to the modern reader. It is worth noting that the relationship between physical health and moral/emotional health would have been thought of differently by the Victorian reader (which is perhaps why it is never quite clear whether illness is a cause or an effect). The novel's ending may also come across as an unnecessary concession which detracts from its otherwise unflinching character. This may be so, but if Bronte's ending is a concession to anything, it is in all likelihood nothing more than a concession to the literary environment of her time.