Psycho

Book: Opening Skinner’s Box by Lauren Slater
Subtitle: Great Psychological Experiments of the Twentieth Century
Rating: 8/10 … an excellent survey for the neophyte.

Here’s a little experiment to try out on yourself.  Go to a part of the bookshop you never visit and choose a book on a subject you’d never usually consider.  Last week I tried it out by accident and I stumbled on this little gem.  Actually, I wandered into the psychology rows, looking for a book, Musicophilia by Dr. Oliver Sachs. I’d heard his podcast and the book sounded interesting.  Having located it, it struck me as rather dry. I changed my mind, chastised myself for wandering in where I didn’t belong and then I stumbled on Lauren Slater.  Her book, that is.

This is a little book describing ten advances in research psychology, but from a very human angle.  She talks about the experimenters and their subjects (animal and human) and herself.  The experiments were often controversial, using methods on the ethical frontier, and the conclusions disputed.  Slater herself is often present in the narrative, evaluating her own reactions, drawing examples bravely and even recklessly from her own life, and experimenting with herself as guinea pig.  She meets many of the protagonists and is blunt (and sometimes indiscreet) in her judgement and reporting on them.  She is balanced and open-minded about the experiments, setting out the pros and cons and letting the reader decide.

I found the whole a delightful and easy read for an utter novice in the field and I’ll be roaming unfamiliar aisles in my bookshop in search of more surprises.

Anti-Matter

Book: Matter by Iain M. Banks
Rating: 4/10 … the well is running dry.

I read somewhere recently that Iain had to drag himself away from computer games to work on his books.  I’m sad to say, it looks like he’s losing the battle.  Following on his The Steep Approach to Garbadale, this is the second effort in a row that just wasn’t worth the trouble.  For many years I considered him the very best science fiction writer on the planet and his recent The Algebraist was as good as they come.

Although packed with his signature inventiveness, this book fails utterly to deliver on plot which boils down to: wicked aide kills king, prince flees to seek his (Culture trained) sister and wanders the universe to find her, meets several of Bank’s fantastic (but mainly irrelevant) civilisations on his journey and returns to claim his inheritance after battling the ‘dragon’ who avenged him.

If you haven’t read Banks, don’t despair, there’s a treasure trove of his work available.  Avoid this one – it is the worst!

The Islamic Revolution

Book: La Maison de la Mosquée (The House of the Mosque) by Kader Abdolah
Translated from: Dutch (author’s adopted tongue)
Rating: 8/10

Kader Abdolah is a pen-name, constructed from the names of two of the author’s friends murdered in the troubles surrounding the Islamic Revolution in Iran.  This is my second experience of his writing, the first being Cunéiforme (My Father’s Notebook) and I conclude he will come to be recognised as a great and subtle writer.  Right now his books are slow to appear in English.

This is a book by an exile who loves the country he fled.  He writes with a light touch, spanning decades and giving us a view of the country during both the Shah’s reign and the Khomeini years from the point of view of the peaceful head of a household who is repeatedly drawn by family members into confrontation with the authorities.  The disgraceful conduct of America in supporting the Shah’s regime and in supporting Saddam Hussein’s savage chemical war gets a restrained and honest airing in the book.

It’s so easy to dismiss Iran, based on the country as reported to us in the evening news.  Read this book for an entirely new perspective on a dignified and cultivated people living under two consecutive intolerable regimes.

There wasn’t a dry seat in the house

Book: Brooklyn Follies by Paul Auster
Rating: 4/10 … more sentimental than chick lit

This book should win Auster new admirers wrote the Sunday Telegraph on the jacket of my paperback copy. Faint praise indeed from the anonymous author, but more than this travesty deserves. I discovered Auster when his New York Trilogy was first published about twenty years ago and delighted in a new and interesting voice in world literature. Since then, sadly, the quality of his works has been very mixed, with none scaling the heady summits of The City of Glass. The recent Travels in the Scriptorium was a decent if imperfect effort. Not so this folly.

This one is told in the first person by Nathan Glass, a retired insurance salesman. The quality of the writing is about what I’d expect from an insurance salesman. Auster often packs his books with stories and this one is no exception. However, these tales are implausible, sentimental twaddle for the most part. The characters are among the cheesiest I’ve met. I shouldn’t have persevered to the end but I felt I owed it to Auster for his better work. Who knows? Maybe it was a big joke and the punchline would be revealed on the last page. Wrooong!! Just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse, the last page arrived:

It was eight o’clock when I stepped out onto the street, eight o’clock on the morning of September 11, 2001 – just forty six minutes before the first plane crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Centre.

There wasn’t a dry seat in the house! Sorry Paul, I’ve been loyal and I’ve been patient, but when a publisher is screaming for the next book, don’t let him have it unless it’s really ready.

Hear all about it

Book: Herzog by Saul Bellow
Rating: 8/10

Never throw out your unread books. You’ll come back to them! I remember an unsuccessful attempt on this book about twenty five years ago, but a recent recommendation put it back in my mind. I completed it last September and found it a truly excellent read. Perhaps it’s my age and I was ready for it. The author of this autobiographical fiction was three years younger than me when he wrote it and picked up the Nobel Prize for Literature for his efforts.

A very modern novel, with little or no plot, the narrative takes place in the mind of Herzog, who I understand is a fairly fair depiction of Bellow and a rather pathetic fellow really. I decided I had nothing to say about this complicated and interesting novel until I had the good fortune to hear, this week, a 90-minute podcast by Robert Adams concerning the book. This is such a really fine testament to the book that I decided I’d write it up just to link to it.

Read the book and, only then, listen to the lecture. Thank heavens for really fine writers.