studeronomy's reviews
97 reviews

An impassioned polemic. We have come to view elections as synonymous with democracy. But elections, argues David Van Reybrouck, are a rusty old technology that has led to democratic fatigue and the rise of populism, technocracy, and anti-parliamentarianism. We should instead adopt "sortition," or the selection of legislators by lots, which has been the traditional mode of democratic government for its 3,000-year history. The book is quick to read and vividly and entertainingly written. I especially enjoyed the chapter on Classical Athenian and Medieval Venetian democracy. I had always known about these pre-modern democracies but, despite my liberal education, nobody had ever sat down and *explained* how democracy worked, nuts and bolts, in these societies. Absolutely fascinating. The author could have engaged with critics of sortition as fully as he engaged with its advocates, which would have led to a fuller, more well-rounded thesis. Nevertheless, this is a compelling book, more relevant now than when it was originally published. Against Elections would be a great text to engage intelligent undergrads in a philosophy, political science, or writing course.

I love books about national identity and the idea of a nation, novels that explore how ideology and history interact to forge a national personality or national mood. I recently gave five stars to Eugene Vodolazkin’s “Laurus,” which is very much about the idea of Russia, the Russian spirit. “The Underground Railroad” does that for the United States. Each new state is a state of possibility, one character observes, and Whitehead uses the conceit of a literal underground railroad that travels from state to state as an opportunity to explore the different ways that white Americans have sought to reckon and coexist with the oppressed minorities with whom they (often begrudgingly) share this nation. Each state the characters travel through is a new vision of America.

These visions aren’t pretty—if you want fairy tales about the national origin, look elsewhere. Violence, slavery, and imperialism are central themes. How could they not be? The often vexed and violent relationship between the races constitutes the soul of the American nation. Each character represents a different aspect of that soul; these aren’t particularly well-rounded or vividly rendered individuals; these are types, ideas; they each represent a different way of experiencing America.

This is a novel of nationhood, an ambitious work that seeks to squeeze as much of the national experience between two covers as it can. These sort of books—Moby-Dick, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Absalom Absalom!, The Adventures of Augie March, Invisible Man, Song of Solomon, Blood Meridian, Underworld—aren’t for everyone. Not everybody gets sentimental about big-themed books that try to tackle the heart of American national identity (i.e., Great American Novels). But I sure do.

I read about The Book of the New Sun before I started Shadow & Claw. I read about the difficult beauty of Gene Wolfe's prose. I read that there were puzzles in the book, that the unreliable narrator made Shadow & Claw a kind of guessing game—what's real, what isn't? I read comparisons to Joyce, Proust, and Melville. I read Neil Gaiman and Ursula K. Le Guin's glowing recommendations. I was very excited to read the most acclaimed fantasy novel since Lord of the Rings. I was excited to begin my foray into modern fantasy fiction with the author described by fans as the greatest writer alive.

I was extremely disappointed.

Wolfe creates a mildly compelling world, but holy cow, this is a boring book. No plot, undeveloped characters, bad writing. Yeah, I said it, bad writing. I liked the occasional flourishes about "the nature of reality" or whatever, but Wolfe's technical skills seem limited to dropping eighth-century nouns into middle-school-level prose. The nouns are cool, but that's about it.

If this is the best modern fantasy has to offer, then this probably isn't the genre for me.

Most of the critics who charge Marable with sensational revisionism are focusing on minor points (Malcolm's alleged homosexual affair and other sexual dalliances) that constitute, at best, three or four pages of the entire biography. Other, left-leaning critics who charge Marable with downplaying, say, Malcolm's internationalism later in life apparently didn't read the same book that I did—there's an entire chapter, and large portions of other chapters, devoted to this topic. Nearly a decade after its publication, Marable's biography has weathered these criticisms and the portrait it offers of Malcolm's surprisingly conservative, ever evolving, but always structural political analysis is more relevant than ever. The tragedy of his assassination is compounded by how much he had matured as a thinker and a leader in the final years of his life, and Marable's account of that maturity is definitive. The Autobiography of Malcolm X is an important book, no doubt, but Marable offers the account of Malcolm's life that you want to read.

I came to this biography because I was primarily interested in Malcolm's journey from a heretical sect to orthodox Islam. This is, for me, the most fascinating and moving aspect of the book. I believe Malcolm must be understood as a religious figure first and foremost, and the evolution (Marable prefers the term "reinvention") of his views and persona in his final years spring from his journey into Islamic orthodoxy. One feels the loss of Malcolm all the more acutely when one considers the leadership he could have provided for Muslims, both in the United States and globally. Marable's account of Malcolm's spiritual pilgrimage (to Mecca and within his own heart) is worth the price of admission.

My only complaint, very minor, is that Marable could have engaged some of the academic literature, from Afro-American studies and American studies in general, on black nationalism, divisions within the Civil Rights movement, etc. I have scholarly taste and would have enjoyed some detours in those directions. The general reader won't care. This is a fabulous biography.

A simple but challenging introduction to Orthodox spirituality.

A comic novel, a campus novel, a novel of ideas, and a novel of Jewish identity. If those four categories appeal to you at all, I can't recommend The Netanyahus enough. The novel is successful in each category. A deeply serious and intelligent account of the American-Jewish dilemma in the mid-twentieth century that, when it threatens to get too serious or intelligent, erupts in brilliantly funny set pieces. I frequently laughed out loud. The prose is smooth and, at times, gorgeous; Joshua Cohen is a very fine writer, reminiscent of early Saul Bellow.

The central question of The Netanyahus is the big question of Jewish identity, "the Jewish Question" (if I can call it that): how should a minority group thrive in perpetuity as a minority in unwelcoming lands which, as in Europe and throughout the Middle East, threaten their livelihoods and their very lives or, as in America, threaten to absorb and ultimately wash away their ancestral identity? The Zionist retort, that one should embrace nationalism and forge a homeland, is terrifyingly but convincingly argued, with all its warts and horrifying implications, by the perfectly realized character of Ben-Zion Netanyahu, a man who desperately needed to be the subject of a comic novel of Jewish identity. I can't believe it never occurred to me that this man belonged in a novel, but it occurred to Joshua Cohen, and I'm happy it did.