Monday, February 14, 2011

Review: MRS. DALLOWAY by Virginia Woolf


Mrs. Dalloway is one of those modern classics (published in 1925) that I somehow managed to bypass in the course of my reading. I actually started it once before but became bogged down after only 20 pages or so. This time, I found myself caught up in the story’s unfolding through the thoughts and memories of the heroine, Clarissa Dalloway, over the course of a single June day in London. She is preparing for an important party that evening. The novel travels forward and back in time and in and out of the various characters’ minds, constructing an image of Mrs. Dalloway’s life and the social milieu of post-Great War England. A complementary character is Septimus Warren Smith, a shell-shock veteran who has retreated into a private world and ends the day by committing suicide. Mrs. Dalloway and he never meet, but their lives are connected by external events and news of his death is casually mentioned at Clarissa’s party. Richly observed, it is a story that stays with you.

Monday, February 7, 2011

Review: BATTLE HYMN OF THE TIGER MOTHER by Amy Chua

It’s been hard to miss this book in the month or so its release. Several days before it came out, The Wall Street Journal ran an article about it under the headline “Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior: Can a regimen of no play dates, no TV, no computer games and hours of music practice create happy kids?” At once, it seemed, Tiger Mom and her views on parenting became the subject du jour in the media, as the book cruised to number 2 on the New York Times Best Sellers list.

I decided it was worth a listen. In hearing Chua read her own book for Penguin Audio, one gets a sense for her intensity. The memoir itself is not nearly so confrontational as the media storm would have you believe. Yes, she advocates a child rearing style that accepts “nothing but the best” from children and refrains on principle from saturating them with praise. Yes, she takes to that philosophy to an extreme, e.g., “the solution to substandard performance is always to excoriate, punish and shame the child.” Yet there is an underlying wistfulness to her account of applying these methods to her own daughters. Despite years of playing the manipulative bully “for the sake of the children’s future,” Chua ends up meeting her match in the forcefulness of her younger daughter’s teenage rebelliousness.

As father of a sixteen year old myself, I am sympathetic to the pressure parents feel these days to ensure our kid’s futures in what often feels like a downwardly mobile society. From offering the best possible education to over-scheduling “free” time to early specialization in sports, the seemingly rational response to making one’s way in a meritocracy can create a sort of collective cultural madness. What distinguishes my friends and I from the Tiger Mother is more a matter of degree than of kind.

Saturday, February 5, 2011

Review: DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA by Alexis de Tocqueville


I felt a rare virtue slogging through the 834 pages of Tocqueville’s classic account on the democratic system of the United States, originally published in two volumes, the first in 1835 and the second in 1840. I was motivated to take the work on by my recent reading of Parrot and Olivier in America, a novel by Peter Carey which entertainingly imagines an American tour during the same historic period by a Tocqueville-like French aristocrat and his hardscrabble English sidekick. To my disappointment, Tocqueville’s work lacks the sort of anecdotal detail suggested by Carey’s book. Clearly reasoned, it is nevertheless quite dry.

Democracy in America is essentially a political science treatise, analyzing why republican representative democracy has succeeded in the then 50 year old United States while failing in so many other places. He is particular concerned to compare the functional aspects of American democracy with what he sees as the failings of democracy in his native France. Tocqueville speculates on the future of democracy in the United States, discussing possible threats to democracy and possible dangers of democracy. These include his belief that democracy has a tendency to degenerate into "soft despotism" as well as the despotism of public opinion, the tyranny of the majority, conformity for the sake of material security, the absence of intellectual freedom—which he saw to degrade administration and bring statesmanship, learning, and literature to the level of the lowest. Democracy in America predicted the violence of party spirit and the judgment of the wise subordinated to the prejudices of the ignorant.

Tocqueville observes that the strong role religion played in the United States was due to its separation from the government, a separation all parties found agreeable. In contrast, he perceived there to be an unhealthy antagonism between democrats and the religious in France, which he relates to the connection between church and state.

Wednesday, February 2, 2011

Review: The Help by Kathryn Stockett

Stockett's novel (her first) tells the engaging story of a young white woman in 1962 Jackson, Mississippi who convinces two black maids to share secretly their stories about raising white children. Narrated by these three distinctive voices, The Help alternates between humor, outrage and pathos as it explores the complex dynamics between white women in the Mad Men-era South and the black women who raised their children. The characters are well-rounded and believable without becoming cliched. I listened to the Penguin Audiobooks version, whose vocal characterizations of the three narrators were very well done indeed.