For Feisty Feminists

Book 9 in Cannonball Read 2

John Hodgman, contributor to NPR, The Daily Show, the PC in those Mac commercials, and generally adorable person, has written two books of random, often fictional, trivia. The Areas of My Expertise : an Almanac of Complete World Knowledge Compiled with Instructive Annotation and Arranged in Useful Order was the first to appear, and it covers such subject matters as hoboes, the 51 states in America (yes, there’s a 51st state), and “movies in which I, John Hodgman, have appeared”.

The Areas of My Expertise is a good bus book; you can pick it up when you have a few minutes to spare, and not worry that you will lose the plot. There is no plot, it’s just random stuff Hodgman makes up and talks about in a funny, ironic, adorable way.

I enjoyed reading it, although it would be a better book to skip around and read what interests you (i.e. Hodgman’s essay on the mythical lost city of Chicago) rather than read it straight through, including reading every name on Hodgman’s list of 500 hobo names. It is enjoyable light reading.

Book 8 in Cannonball Read 2

Grave Secret is the fourth book in the Harper Connelly series, written by Charlaine Harris (most famous as the author of the Sookie Stackhouse novels that have been turned into the tv show ‘True Blood’). The Harper Connelly mysteries have quite a few things in common with the Sookie Stackhouse series, not the least of which is diminishing returns for the reader as the series goes on.

Harper Connelly has a supernatural gift (just like Sookie Stackhouse!). She can communicate with dead bodies, receiving information on their last few moments of life and their cause of death by being nearby. Her gift is in some ways a curse (just like Sookie Stackhouse). She has suffered childhood trauma and grew up parentless for part of her life (just like Sookie Stackhouse!) due to her neglectful, drug-addicted parents. Some people despise her gift, and others don’t believe in it despite pretty strong evidence (just like Sookie).  (I think you get the point. Harper’s a lot like Sookie).

However, instead of having a hot, slutty brother who she can’t really depend on, Harper has a step-brother who is her only real friend, and they have the hots for each other. By the time Grave Secret rolls around, they’ve been together for awhile and are planning on getting married. I don’t know about you, but I’ve always found the ‘but they’re not really related’ thing pretty creepy, even in The Royal Tenanbaums, so having a book and a half about Harper and her step-brother - who may not be related by blood, but grew up together as brother and sister - having sex and talking about marriage is just weird.

Harris subscribes to the Harry Potter school of ‘mysteries’, where the mystery happens to the main character.  A series of weird things happens to Harper, she can’t figure out what’s going on, and then she figures it out in the last 50 pages - usually when someone does some sort of violence to her, and then explains what has been going on. It can be somewhat suspenseful, but by the fourth book just seems silly, and embarassing to read in public.

I recommend The Hunger Games, John Le Carre, or The Turnaround if you’re looking for a page-turner. If you’ve already started the Harper Connelly series, you’ll probably continue, just like me; if you haven’t started yet, the choices above are far more worthwhile, and more entertaining.

Book 7 in Cannonball Read 2

Bright-sided: How the Relentless Pursuit of Optimism is Undermining America is a Barbara Ehrenreich’s takedown of positive thinking. To some, this may seem needlessly negative, a knee-jerk cynical response to other folks optimism. However, Ehrenreich’s writing makes a great deal of sense, especially to me - it fits well with my worldview.

Ehrenreich is not railing against hope or optimism, but rather the head-in-the-sand approach of positive thinking that has become increasingly ubiquitous due to books such as The Secret.  The Secret is based on the premise that if you wish for something really hard, and send positive thoughts about it out into the universe, it will happen. I’ve never read the book, because holy jeezy creezy, I do not want to sit through hundreds of pages of that crap. You see, the problem with this ‘positive thinking’ is not so much that it encourages people to think positively, as that it correlates positive thoughts with positive outcomes in such a way that not only are we being told that positive thoughts, not hard work and sometimes luck will result in positive results, but it results in a dangerous, victim-blaming corollary: if you don’t have positive outcomes, you must have not put out enough positive thoughts.  After all, if really wanting to have your dream job and visualizing it can make it come true, then isn’t that unemployed guy down the street probably just not visualizing hard enough?

Ehrenreich opens the book with her experience after being diagnosed with breast cancer. She was repeatedly told to ‘be positive’ and even told by other cancer patients that having a negative attitude (in this case a ‘negative attitude’ was being angry that her insurance company was dicking her around and that her treatment options didn’t seem too great) would harm her chances of survival and recovery. Ehrenreich digs into the reality, which is that positive attitudes have been shown to have no effect on outcomes. Not only that, the ‘positive attitude’ meme has been debunked as a way to make caregivers feel more comfortable with cancer patients, while making those patients suppress negative emotions such as doubt and fear.

Ehrenreich talks to various corporate leaders and speakers, and details the ways in which criticism and bad news was suppressed before the economic downturn. Some corporate leaders were acolytes of positive thinking, ignoring bad news and signs of bad things to come in favor of hiding their heads in the sand and hoping for the best. Condoleezza Rice is quoted concerning the taboo on negativity and criticism in the Bush administration, which arguably contributed to 9/11.  Ehrenreich piles on example after example of ways in which positive thinking and false optimism has taken the place of real planning or risk assessment.

These examples, and the themes that Ehrenreich highlights, add up to a tiny powerhouse of a book. I was pretty hard on Ehrenreich in Nickel and Dimed, but this book is totally different, calling out trends in our culture that are invisble but everywhere.

Beyond the political and economic implications of positive thinking, I find this trend alarming because it attempts to blot out a huge part of the human experience and suppress naturally occurring - and sometimes necessary - negative reactions and emotions. It’s pretty deplorable to tell a cancer patient to stop being so negative, or their continued cancer is their own fault for thinking bad things. I mean, they have fucking cancer, let them think through those negative thoughts - like ‘I might die’ and ‘chemo is crap and makes me feel like death’ - without forcing them to put on a smile and a pink ribbon for your benefit. Not only is negative thought allowed when you have fucking cancer, it’s allowed all the time. I know folks these days can be a bit too self-obsessed, and the tiniest thing can lead to wallowing in self-pity and exclaiming ‘poor me’, but the answer is not to ban all negative thoughts. Without allowing people to express doubts, hopelessness, despair, worry, and anger with one another, those happy smiles and mindless optimism don’t have much meaning - they’re just a happy mask put over empty, shallow lives.