Review of Ken Goldberg's Peter Squared

Ken Goldberg’s novel Peter Squared is an interesting read. It is about Peter Branstill who is a 43-year old mathematically obsessed accountant. He is (in lay terms what sounds like an) obsessive compulsive, neurtotic guy who we would all say should be in therapy, or given something to help him with his condition. He is a man with no friends, no emotional life, and who thinks that it would be a great idea to try to make friends at the peep shows he frequents, and masturbates frequently while fantasizing about horses. He calculates the days he has been sane, and calculates most everything, actually, including the dirt of which he is deathly afraid. He meets a guy named John and they become friends in an odd sort of way, though it is not clear that Peter ever actually says a word to John.

This book says a lot about clinical research and what it might be like to be someone like Peter. If you plan on going in to clinical psychology, it is worth reading. As a novel it is OK, but I kinda liked it.

I happen to have the press release that came from the book’s publicist. It is the dumbest thing I ever read. It claims that the author’s treatment is a “humanistic, existential viewpoint of the mental health system”. What the hell is an existential viewpoint of a mental health system? Apparently there are also unorthodox views on religion and morality in the book.

There are suggested questions that you might want to ask Ken Goldberg, the author, should you ever be interviewing him and was not really in the mood to spend the two hours actually reading the book. (Keeping in mind that the book came out in 2000) here are some of the questions: “. . . To what degree is your work autobiographical?” (I do not want to know how autobiographical one is being when he talks a lot about sexual fantasies involving horses.) “We have a president who apparently feels torn between his sexual drive and his moral code. What is your take on whether Clinton lied when he denied having sexual relations with Monica Lewinsky?” (As if there is a “take” on whether he lied. The real question is whether or not we should care if he lied during a sexual harassment suit, and if presidents should be dealing with this. Moreover, Clinton was not torn between anything and anything else. He wanted to not embarrass himself and the office of the presidency; that is why he lied.) “How do you feel about pornography as entertainment for adults?” (I hope Goldberg had a clever and creative answer for this one. It is the dullest question there.)

I wonder how many of these “interviews” he attended. No wonder interviewers appear so mindless. They are not quite sure what they are saying. They just read questions made up for them by a publicist.

Review of Lispector's The Hour of the Star

Clarise Lispector's novel The Hour of the Star is odd, and I didn't like it. To illustrate why, I am writing the review of the book in the style of the short book. If you can tolerate my review, then perhaps you will be able to tolerate this for 80-something pages. And just so you are not tempted to ever buy it and read it, I give away the ending: She dies. The end.

Imagine (bang!) that there is a book. Before I tell you about the book I must tell you about the author. Why am I writing this review? Why indeed does anyone write at all? After all, words are like snow that fall over houses. I am in love with the author who will never know me. She will never know me because she is dead. (bang!) There, I said it. I had hoped there was a more dramatic way of saying it, but I write this at a time of innocence where author and writer fuse in melancholy ways. To get back to the book, it is about a narrator talking about a girl. The narrator is someone who you don't find out much about. I want to tell you about what gets narrated, but is there time? The girl in the book, did I mention her name? No matter. The girl likes Coca Cola (bang! some real information) , though I don't recall her drinking any in the novel. Novels are like time, as they are both quantified. I write that because there is no other way to tell you. Did I mention that nothing happens, but she dies? (Bang!) Endings are pitiful, like characters in her books.

Review of Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night

Whichever bookstore I stepped in to in Israel there was Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night. Apparently it is really popular there both in the original English and in the Hebrew translation. It was a very good book.

The Book is narrated by Christopher, a 15 year old autistic boy. He is obsessed with Sherlock Holmes. He discovers a murder and decides to investigate on his own. The victim - his neighbor's poodle.

In the course of this "investigation" we discover that the narrator is writing this book, he is a mathematical savant and the book is lightly peppered with nice mathematical anecdotes about things like the Monty Hall problem and the Turing Test. Christopher has problems doing things that most of us find natural, like taking a subway or eating. He has numerous quirks, some of which I, and I suspect, many of my friends share.

The narrator discovers many things in the course of the investigation, including who murdered the dog, and why, but the most important and interesting feature of the book is not the plot, but the style, the mind of the narrator.

Not being autistic, I cannot speak to its authenticity, but regardless, it is an insightful look at a different kind of mind.

The book reads really fast, and I would recommend it to anyone.

Review of Rabih Alameddine's I, the Divine

I decided to take a chance on Alameddine's other book, despite the fact that I really did not like his first one. This time persistence paid off. I, the Divine is a much better book.

It is a novel in first chapters. It is written from the standpoint of Sarah Nour el-din, a woman who keeps telling us the story of her life over and over. There is an anecdote in the story where Sara wants a particular painting she sees in a museum. So she decides to replicate the painting. It takes her 17 tries to get the painting right, and then the whole series gets exhibited as a history of the making of the painting, in chronological order. This book, written as her autobiography, is the same way. It is a collection of first chapters in her autobiography. Each time she has a new way of looking at her life, as if she can't make up her mind what is important. What sort of events should she tell about. Is her relationship to her mother most important, her brother, her first sexual encounter, her grandfather, her birth, her lovers, her child? So each time she writes the first chapter, we see a new angle of her life. The effect is rather good, and not nearly as pretentious as it sounds.

The book has no traditional plot, other than Sarah's life. Sara is Lebanese. She is a mother. She is a lover. She is part of a family, a friend, a player in a series of relationships, she exists in a social hierarchy, which is all conveyed well in the book. Her whole life is articulated, in a successive series of false starts in an attempt to convey her life.