Reflections: A Confederacy of Dunces

Ignatius J. Reilley is an eccentric idealist. Highly educated, extremely opinionated, completely frustrated and disillusioned with the ways of society, he lives with his mother, watches juvenile TV shows, criticizes every kind of movie that comes out, and records his intellectual musings in his notebook. In short, he leads a life that is devoid of responsibilities of any kind until one day his mother’s little accident forces him to find a job to scrape together some money. With that begins a series of (mis) adventures that are as funny as they are frustrating as Ignatius fumbles across events with misplaced idealism and obtuseness. Ignatius’s adventures take on more color and absurdity in the backdrop of New Orleans in the 1960s. With rich descriptions of unique characters and situations, the book offers an uncomfortable glance into the life of a socially unadjusted character that evokes humor mostly at his expense.

This is a Pulitzer Prize winning book that is often described as a hilarious read. I wish I had read the book to verify that claim. I listened to the audiobook, and in this case, it seemed like listening to subtle and sarcastic humor that was meant for reading made a difference to the overall experience. While the narrator was great at delivering the distinct New Orleans’s dialect and in giving voice to the different characters, especially the deep booming voice of Ignatius, his monotonous narration fell  flat for me and the humor didn’t come through as much. It is tricky to convey subtle humor through narration. Also, some of the characters took the same “voice”, so it was a little confusing at times, especially given the similarities in the slang and accent. As an aside, the Southern American accent is one of my least favorite accents because I need to concentrate real hard to parse through their unique syntax and semantics. So it was tiring and mildly annoying to hear the repeated “Whoa”s and “Wowee”s. This is just a pet-peeve of mine, and doesn’t indicate anything more serious.

So, all that said about the narration failing to deliver some of the humor, some passages did get some chuckles out of me. However, as Ignatius repeatedly creates chaos, at a certain point in the book, the humor is lost, because the humor is often at the expense of Ignatius, and the reader is heavily aware of the undercurrent of pity, frustration, and mild sadness couched within the sarcasm. I think as unique as Ignatius’s character is, most of us have probably come across a similar persona in real life. They are pseudo-intellectuals who are well educated, but don’t have the right kind of mental framework or substance to live out their idealistic views/opinions that are sometimes radically different from others. But, that doesn’t deter them from holding onto their stubborn views. They therefore become social misfits, and their frustration deepens to the extent that they begin to shun society and morph into ever more difficult and intractable people. They cease to be “normal” and always stand by the wayside of standard societal dictates. Such personalities are frustrating to me, not funny. I feel sorry for them, but at the same time, I also feel sorry for those that lose their peace and happiness over them. Other “normal” people’s reaction and treatment of such individuals is judgmental and foolish too, of course.  So, the whole thing just leads to loops within loops of frustrations involving flawed, imperfect people directing their ill-informed judgements on each other. The author has portrayed all of this through a comedic approach, a dark comedy of sorts, because the author himself committed suicide after writing this book.  It seemed like he poured all his bitterness and sarcastic observations into this story. Tragic isn’t it?

A person who is incredibly frustrating in real life can be represented as an endearing, or at the very least, sympathetic character in literature/movies in terms of how they are portrayed and developed. The writing rendered Ignatius as a frustrating and unsympathetic character.

So, all in all, this is a book that is not going to stay with me. It is memorable in its own way, of course, because Ignatius is a unique character. But, I can’t say I enjoyed the book or appreciated the humor. I did appreciate the novelty of the story and the implied social commentary. But this view may be biased because of listening to the book as opposed to reading it.

Reflections: The Museum of Innocence

Kemal is a young and wealthy Turkish man educated in the West.  He is soon to be engaged to Sibel, another wealthy and westernized young woman wholly in love with Kemal. But when Kemal chances on Füsun, a poor distant relative, he is hopelessly attracted to her. The two begin an affair that soon escalates into something far more serious and destructive than they could ever imagine. Through a detailed narrative of Kemal’s relationships with Füsun, Sibel, his family and friends, Pamuk lays out a comprehensive account on the nature of love, romance, and relationships in Turkey’s patriarchal society.

Obsessions are comforting in some ways. The regularity of faithfully doing something with a mixture of helplessness and dogged determination, oddly enough, imparts a higher meaning to those lives that struggle to anchor onto something. It sometimes elevates the otherwise mundane and unimpressive qualities into something profound and sublime. And that is essentially what happens with Kemal’s life story. It is a story that is at once supremely shallow, indulgent, careless, and annoying as it is profound, romantic, idealistic, and heart-tugging because of how an obsession is portrayed. That a book can evoke and convey such contrasts and ironies from one simple story is testament to the writing and story-telling prowess of the author. With an astounding sense of perspicacity, Orhan Pamuk meticulously pieces together Kemal’s thoughts and feelings, drawing a portrait that is incredibly detailed and true to reality. Every simple element of human interaction is zoomed in and presented through a micro-analytic lens that helps the reader vividly recreate the atmosphere and characters in Turkey. Sometimes, this microscopic narrative does teeter on the edge of becoming mundane and boring, but the narrative is well paced and keeps you engaged. For example, you wouldn’t realize that you just read several pages of text on how Füsun smokes her cigarette. The writing helps with this as well, for it is unpretentiously smart and lucid, so at least it saves you from rereading overloaded sentences. The story, if one can call that, does crawl at a snail’s pace, but it is not frustrating to read Pamuk’s abundantly rich prose on the subtle and intimate aspects of Turkish culture. And since I love books on culture that are woven around a simple story, the long book was engaging to me.

Kemal’s story is a vehicle through which Orhan Pamuk illustrates the dynamics, ideals, and values that shape Turkey’s society, specifically in regards to its attitudes towards men and women. He explains to the reader almost every relevant detail and minutia about the strongly patriarchal culture that struggles to fully embrace certain western ideals whilst holding onto conservative standards on women, notions of propriety, and class-distinctions. What amazed me (I don’t know why it should amaze me) is how identical (well, almost) Turkish society is to Indian society! I could relate to everything the women were going through - the taboos, the prejudices, the subtle mistreatments, the constant reminder of being secondary, the hypocrisy, and how everything comes together to unnecessarily complicate people’s lives. The dynamics between people in a Turkish household is also quite similar to an Indian household, right down to the nosy and gossiping neighbors. It surprised me that even the descriptions of Turkish movies – the stories, the workings of the industry, etc., were exactly like ours! The book also brings to light the all too familiar clash of Western ideals against traditions and socially-conditioned values that are so deeply ingrained, to some measure, in everyone – wealthy, educated, progressive or otherwise. And just as how being educated is different from being literate, the story subtly shows that being “westernized” is different from being truly progressive. But these aspects are Pamuk’s secondary deviations and observations. In this story, he primarily describes the nature of romantic relationships, some of which are universally true and generalizable, and some are specific to Turkish society. There are aspects that everyone can relate to, because that’s how thorough and all-encompassing the narrative is, spanning the entire depth and breadth of what it means to be romantically involved, especially if that relationship is forbidden, elusive, or out of reach.

As the narrator/author often alludes, this is more of an anthropological account of a lovelorn Turkish man in the 1970s, 1980s of Turkey, than a page-turner of a story. But through this subject, Orhan Pamuk delivers a richly ethnographic account of Turkey’s socio-cultural framework. It is an interesting book, for Pamuk’s keen sense of observation and insight makes it an intelligent read. As always, the nuanced writing and insightful portrayal of a culture makes all the difference to an otherwise simple story.

Reflections: The Reader

The choices we make mold us into the people we are today. Sometimes, we underestimate the weight of those beliefs that doggedly lead us to make choices that cumulatively stray us down paths we least anticipate. What does one do when one walks down a road they didn’t mean to take but can see no exit, little alternative, thanks to their beliefs, their insecurities, their mental-model of themselves and their place in the world? So many of us are caught in such traps. We rush headlong into something in order to desperately escape confronting our deepest fears, only to realize that we have landed onto something even more miserable; from the frying pot to the fire. When caught in extenuating situations with no easy answers, no easy alternatives, nothing is more meaningless than the discussion of choice. One can only invent their own meaning, their own purpose, their own reasoning to maintain enough sanity to ensure self-preservation to live through their unintentional mishaps.

The protagonist in the story, Hanna, goes through this struggle. She befriends the narrator when he is a young teenager and begins a unique relationship born out of a desperate need for companionship. Loneliness is a cruel punishment, especially when one is broken in spirit. One of the ways in which she tries to restore her spirit is by listening to the words of great poets and novelists read out to her by the young boy. This ritual deepens their relationship profoundly. But one day, she disappears out of the narrator’s life until he finds her in court, accused of a grievous crime. Hanna’s struggles to find the words and the rationale to defend or explain her choices frames the story with equal measures of shock and poignancy.

The Reader is a haunting exploration of the weighty issues surrounding choice, free will, duty, and morality. It’s actually much more than just these themes. It pinpoints at the most basic insecurities and beliefs that are harbored in the guise of seemingly ordinary foibles, but that slowly erode us, our confidence and the core of our self, and drive us into rash and impulsive decisions in our life. I think this is an aspect that most of us can relate to. Most of us have been in unpleasant situations because we felt it was more bearable to face a harrowing situation that is external to us than face the inner-demons haunting within us. After all, what choice did we have?

But while reading Hanna’s story, it is difficult to empathize with her at times because of the horror and weight of her involvement in a crime that still terrifies the world. However, what the author accomplishes to beautifully address is this - we, as readers and third persons have the benefit and luxury of not having lived Hanna’s particular life, of not knowing what it means to be traumatized by her demons and fears, of not being in those exact situations that she found herself in, and therefore can readily sit on our moral high horse and apathetically view her life as a case-study to be judged and analyzed. But, when one can’t even imagine being in the same situation as Hanna, forcing to speculate on such a hypothetical scenario and engaging in our moral reasoning in the comfort of our secure lives is meaningless. It also brings up the difficult facet within moral dilemmas - what do you do if you are forced to carry out a duty that you know is amoral and terrible? If you fail to carry out the duty, you will be killed, and if you do carry out the duty, your spirit withers. Choosing death seems like the “right” choice to most of us, the privileged third persons, secure in the tacit knowledge that we would never have to make such a choice and therefore discerning the right choice from the “wrong” one. But again, we are not living that exact situation, are we? Maybe there is a third choice, or even a fourth choice in that situation that we can’t even begin to comprehend?

This is a powerful and heavy book that tells a devastating story with sensitivity, clarity, and insight. It is intelligent, poignant and beautiful. The writing moved me and helped me read into Hanna’s difficult life with understanding, if not complete empathy. It explores a confluence of issues surrounding morality through a story that I never imagined would move me.

 

Reflections: The Stuff of Thought

This was my second audio-book. My experience with this one was actually markedly different from the first audio-book. I was more interested and invested in this book than the first one - the subject matter is inexplicably closer to my heart, so I was more riveted to the narration. Secondly, I heard it during a couple of terribly long flight journeys, so it was ideal to just plug my earphones, close my eyes and concentrate on the content. For me, audiobooks seem to work best while flying. I can take notes in a separate book, doze off for sometime, refresh myself, and continue listening. I’m glad to have discovered this.

The narration of this book could have been better. I expected Steven Pinker himself to have narrated it (since I love his presentations), but it was a disappointment that he didn’t. The narrator seemed hurried and rushed in the initial chapters. There wasn’t much emotion or even respect for punctuation, as he just droned on and on. But the style improved in the subsequent chapters - he was more patient, measured, and even entertaining in a few places.

Onto the book itself - Steven Pinker meticulously analyzes how Language and its constructs play a complex role in our understanding of reality. He starts by delving into the ambiguous process by which the human-brain conceptualizes language and puts together grammar and semantics to communicate, and make sense of the world. He demonstrates that our verbs and prepositions reflect the innate ways in which the human-brain is wired. The semantics (meanings and definitions) that we develop through language and consequently, our experiences, influence our perceptions of Reality. Grammar, Verbs, Conjugations, and all the tedious linguistic structures - in any language -  are formulated by the innate process by which we dissect the world into its particulates - its objects, geometry, space, dimensions, time, and action.
For example, it can be argued that both sentences below are theoretically grammatical:
A: Water is poured into the jug
B: The jug is poured with water

Yet, those who are fluent in English, would hardly use sentence B. People who might use B would most likely be native-speakers of another language, and they might be literally trying to translate the sentence from their language to English. This is because, innately, our mental imagery struggles to agree with a Jug - a geometrically stable and solid structure, being poured - an action that indicates fluidity and movement. The verb Pour, and the action Poured, are associated more with the Noun Water, than with Jug. The innate knowledge and understanding of Physics, objects, space, and actions, is the reason why one mental imagery agrees more than the other. Speakers of another language would surely have their semantics and grammar aligned accordingly in their native language, but translations might affect the representation of their actual imagery in a foreign language. One might be quick to therefore conclude that our language, or rather, semantics and grammar, determines the kinds of images we have in our heads. Not exactly, and not always.

This is popularly noted as the Whorfian Hypothesis which basically states that Language can influence cognitive processes, due to the ways in which the linguistic structures shape one’s understanding of the world. Steven Pinker vehemently argues against this hypothesis of Linguistic Determinism. Through multiple experimental results and cogent arguments, he attempts to debunk the notion that Language determines structure of thought. I was initially in disagreement with some of Pinker’s arguments, but in the end we converge on essentially similar ideas. Language might influence, but does not determine thoughts. I do believe Language is integral to Thinking and Reasoning. It does play a vital role. But, I have come to agree that a particular Language doesn’t completely determine one’s thoughts and ability to reason or form newer thoughts. One language isn’t better than the other to make sense of the world better. In our head, we don’t necessarily think grammatically. Our thoughts are not stored or formed through the words or linguistic structures of any particular language. As a bilingual person, I can attest that I don’t think in one language or two languages. I might reason on pen and paper in English, but I don’t believe my thoughts are framed in any particular language. Anyway, this is a highly debated topic amongst Linguists. According to Pinker, Words are represented as far more richer and abstract clusters of thought. When we try to define the Word -  the clusters of our Thought - through Language, the linguistic structures might limit or influence our articulation and the many interpretations we might have of the Word. But within our heads, Language doesn’t determine our core cognitive processes of thinking or reasoning.

After much back and forth, though,  I still feel that there is some grain of intuitive truth to Linguistic Determinism. I’m not an extremist of the theory who would go all the way to state rigidly that one language might help in certain cognitive processes than the other... that German is a better language to learn math and science than another language etc. It’s not true in such specific, micro-level examples. Culture, environment, and so many other aspects might affect cognitive development in a certain country/place.  I believe that in the macro picture, the structure of a language does influence the abstract networks of thoughts we form. The imagery and metaphors in the language surely seem influential in how we interpret, imagine, and create newer thoughts. Speaking from the perspective of programming languages, I am aware of multiple experiments and studies that have evaluated the link between the syntax of the language and the eventual ways in which a programmer reasons to solve a problem or construct an algorithm through the language. The syntax and rules can sometimes inhibit certain kinds of thinking, and consequently affect the creative reasoning of a problem - it doesn’t affect one’s core intelligence or cognitive processes, but it does seem to be an agent in terms of how the processes are triggered. I know, this is also a hairy subject, so I will move onto another topic in the book.

Most of the book explicates each linguistic structure in detail - verbs, prepositions, tense, etc, to demonstrate that these structures were borne out of our mental conceptualization of Quantity, Amounts, Space, Geometry, Spatial relationships, Temporal relationships, and of course, Causality. Causality was an interesting chapter. In here, there are multiple examples of how a sentence structure can sway our logical perception of a situation (see, language does influence our logical thoughts). It’s all about how the situation is framed. It leads to multiple pitfalls in Logic and Fallacious interpretations.
* If widowhood follows marriage, then does marriage cause widowhood?

With so many variables abounding in every complex situation, navigating to the Cause from the Effect is tricky. It is even trickier when we begin to use Language, and its rules alone, to get to the Cause. This is probably why Lawyers make so much money on linguistic technicalities.

But then, I liked the part where Pinker shows that we are so inherently steeped with a moral sense that we can most often make our way out of ambiguous and sticky representations of a morally-dubious situation that’s cloaked in clever Linguistic acrobatics.

I also liked the chapter on Metaphors. There are many theories that Language by itself is a huge set of metaphors to our abstract thoughts. But that aside, metaphors and imagery help us grasp abstract concepts much better. Abstraction is diluted much better through relatable imageries and concepts. This is because the natural way of our thinking is through Metaphors - we constantly make connections of neural networks, relating one concept with the other. We therefore find it easier to imagine and relate.

Further, an entire chapter is dedicated on the subject of Social Niceties and Courteous Language. Why should we say “I was wondering if you could look at my document?”, instead of just saying, “Take a look at the document”, that’s precise and to the point. Language is to communicate direct requests and thoughts, after all. But all the hedging and polite rules are to conform to social protocol. It satisfies the bigger picture of basic human evolutionary requirement - communal cooperation. We insist on using euphemisms even when everybody understands the inferences, we force ourselves to be politically correct despite the other person being aware of it, etc. In the end, we feel far more worse, far more hurt, to hear the brutal truth, the callous sentences, than recognizing a forced-politeness. Most of us can deal with the latter better than the former brutality. We do appreciate the fact that the other person at least respects our feelings a tiny bit to frame their unpleasantness in a polite manner. And hence, we have devised language structures to suit this need - to maintain a measure of fragile harmony.

Finally, do names, even those without an actual meaning, evoke some abstract meaning in you? Does “Tom” conjure a different picture than “Jim”? Why are there trends in names? Why do some names sound older, newer, cooler, sweeter, bolder? Pinker goes into a whole chapter analyzing the motivations behind Names and parents’ naming ideologies. This wasn’t a very interesting chapter to me, but it served as a nice break from all the heavy academic content from the previous ones.

Well, truth be told, I was expecting some content on Language and its correlation with Personality and an Individual's Nature. Along the lines of addressing these questions - Do adjectives, sentence structures, noun phrases etc. reflect a person’s inherent personality or character traits? Can one’s nature influence how they use language while writing versus talking? Can the use of language predict a person's innate nature? Etc. See, the phrase “Window into Human Nature” (from the title of the book) had a whole slew of meaning to me, inside my head. The way I interpreted it, the way my thoughts came together to understand it, was different. Steven Pinker concentrates on the broader aspects of Human Nature and Cognition, and not on individual personality. And the book has helped me appreciate this much better.

To summarize this rambling post, this was an interesting and educative read on linguistics and psycholinguistics. The human brain is far too complicated to arrive at definitive and conclusive facts about how exactly language and thoughts interweave and influence each other. But the book provides ample arguments and scientific experiments to help the reader slowly make sense of at least a part of the puzzle. 

Reflections: Death by Blackhole and Other Cosmic Quandaries

This was my first audiobook. My husband and I finally reached an equilibrium to engage in a shared activity during long road trips. Arguably, when it comes to books (as with anything else), our margins of intersection are pretty thin, but still, we optimistically settled on our common ground of Science, and downloaded this book. It is an achievement in and of itself that we both read/listened to the same book from beginning to end. Hopefully this isn’t the first and the last one!

The book is a compilation of Neil deGrasse Tyson’s essays on Cosmology and Astrophysics. It covers a comprehensive breadth of fundamental topics in Physics, or rather Astrophysics. Most of the chapters were part of our high school textbooks, so in that sense, I don’t think I learned any brand new theories or concepts, but it was a good refresher that helped me internalize some of the harder concepts. I also enjoyed listening to some of the scientific studies that were conducted over the years. My favorite chapters were the initial and the final ones. Tyson knows how to engage his readers/listeners. His initial essays convincingly emphasize on the need for Scientific studies, analytical thinking, and rigorous reasoning to help us understand the unfathomable Universe. He instills the need to inculcate humility and acknowledge our limitations, and to be as open-minded as possible in our studies. The fact that Astrophysicists still haven’t deciphered a major chunk of the mysteries of the Universe is a telling sign of our limitations. But, that doesn’t mean we resign and give up, and attribute everything to something far too intelligent. The more humble and open-minded we are, the more analytical tools we employ, the more we advance in our quest to augment our knowledge and fill our ignorance. I appreciated this stance that threads through all his chapters. I expected a little more from his final chapters - especially the ones on Culture and Scientific Exploration, Science and Religion, but he merely scratches the surface of such topics.

Both my husband and I are interested in Cosmology - while I’m mostly curious of some of the fascinating theories and philosophical aspects of it, my husband is more interested in the mathematics and the hardcore physics behind it all. So, the impressive part of the book is that it managed to keep us both engaged due to the manner in which Tyson has framed the essays. Also, I’m a novice to Cosmology, and my knowledge of Physics is pretty basic, but my husband’s stronghold is Physics. So, it was interesting that the book appealed, in some respects, to both of us.

However, we both thought that there were too many repetitions of topics. Since these were formally essays, each one would work good as a standalone, but there were quite a few overlap between the essays, making the continuity of the overall book a little strained. Some of the essays didn’t flow together either. The repetitions also made our short attention spans drift off.

Now, onto my thoughts on the audio-format. Understandably, it was very hard to concentrate after a couple of hours of listening. We were distracted by the driving or would just nod off. And if there were parts of a paragraph that I didn’t quite understand, the rewinding feature didn’t help me much. I am used to mulling over difficult or thought-provoking sentences and concepts by either repeatedly reading through the words slowly, or writing/sketching something out, or by just referring to a previous chapter/page/paragraph and thinking over everything. I could have perhaps done all this with an audio book as well, had I been at home and next to a paper/pencil, and had the patience to rewind multiple times to get to a specific sentence. But while driving, if you miss something, or don’t understand a few sentences, it’s quite hard to retrace to a specific sentence or paragraph. I couldn’t underline, or highlight, so the interesting sentences and pages could not be marked, and consequently not remembered. These issues wouldn’t surface with Fiction. But with books dealing with more complicated concepts, audio-formats may not work well all the time.

In addition, the narrator plays a tremendous role in how well the book is assimilated. I loved the narration of the book! It was brilliant. Till the end, I thought the narrator was Tyson himself, for the voice betrayed the same baritone and clarity, but I was totally surprised when I heard it was Dion Graham! Wow, Dion Graham did a phenomenal job narrating the book. He captured the enthusiasm, the sarcasm, the wit, the humor, the excitement, the sophistication, the emotions, and the knowledge of the author. The narration made the book so many more times entertaining and engaging. One can just listen to the excellent voice and tune out everything else - which is what I did every time the 2 hour threshold hit!

Well, to summarize, this is a wonderful collection of essays that is sure to appeal to anyone who is interested in the basics of Astrophysics and the debates surrounding the concepts. Experts might enjoy Tyson’s way of elucidating the concepts, and of course, his wit and humor.